Replies to post #87354 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[DesertDrifter]

Her lack of expansive views about virtually anything is easy to discern, and any interview is painful to watch, if you can hang on for more than a few sentences. She has very little to offer in regards to even a scintilla of leadership and certainly a huge zippo in the widsom category.

Which is why it is so astounding that she has been attacked rarely for that... she had her family trashed right out of the chute, the press was merciless, then put down because she is considered attractive, now because she rides a plane instead of train, she is a bumpkin from the sticks, etc.

Is it somehow un-PC to call her dimbulb personna into question, yet okay to nail everything around her, hoping for collateral damage? I have noticed that even Campbell Brown doesn't whine about Palin's children any more, so maybe the wave has crested.

Fine. I reserve the right to give her guff, and i don't even think she is all that attractive, as dumb women just ain't my type.

Her looks are okay, but good grief, her voice alone can cause salmon to go belly-up in alaskan rivers... But let's compare her to one of the other people that have been sneaking back into the news.... Mitt Romney. Mitt also has a three-lane voice that sounds as if it is an electronic creation direct from science fiction. He is right out of Central Casting for a Southpark character.
His tanning-bed skin tone rivals George Hamilton, the perennial world tanning champion. (come to think of it, Sarah is a bit dark for wintertime in alaska, too, tone-for-tone, her skin color rivals obama's, and he got his the old fashioned way, genetics, but i am drifting slightly, real alaskans would probably use spray-on tan)

At least the Mittster comes out and says that anyone who is not a CEO should eat hamster turds and be glad they are American hamster turds, or whatever the Corporatariat allows them to have. He has a sucky message of moneyed entitlement that is devoid of any compassion or recognition of human suffering, but it is not a new message or one that is inspiring to anyone other than his type, but at least he is not a dunce. Sarah would need to go do a little research to find out what a hamster is.

Anyway, long story short, i think it is refreshing that people are noticing that sarah is stunningly dense. I guess it is possible for Americans to see beyond someone's appearance for once.

[fuagf]

For Sarah .. and others ..

The Bush Doctrine is a phrase used to describe various related foreign policy principles of former United States president George W. Bush. The phrase initially described the policy that the United States had the right to secure itself from countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups, which was used to justify the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.

Later it came to include additional elements, including the controversial policy of preventive war, which held that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represented a potential or perceived threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate; a policy of spreading democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating terrorism; and a willingness to pursue U.S. military interests in a unilateral way. Some of these policies were codified in a National Security Council text entitled the National Security Strategy of the United States published on September 20, 2002.

The interviewer in the 2nd video asked the question .. "What do you do in elections where guys you don't want win?


Armed members of Hamas blow up the Palestinian Preventative
Security headquarters and intelligence headquarters in Gaza Strip,
14 June 2007. (Hatem Omar/MaanImages)

.. well, firstly you funnel ..

"weapons and tens of millions of dollars to unaccountable militias, particularly the "Preventive Security Force" headed by Gaza warlord Mohammad Dahlan, a close ally of Israel and the United States and the Abbas-affiliated "Presidential Guard." US Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams -- who helped divert money to the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s and who was convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal -- has spearheaded the effort to set up these Palestinian Contras." [...]

From the moment of its election victory, Hamas acted pragmatically and with the intent to integrate itself into the existing political structure. It had observed for over a year a unilateral ceasefire with Israel and had halted the suicide attacks on Israeli civilians that had made it notorious. In a leaked confidential memo written in May and published by The Guardian this week senior UN envoy Alvaro de Soto confirmed that it was under pressure from the United States that Abbas refused Hamas' initial invitation to form a "national unity government." De Soto details that Abbas advisers actively aided and abetted the Israeli-US-European Union ..

What else do you do if you don't like the guys who win the democratic election? If the Bush Doctrine of spreading democracy in protection of American interests does not work, as hoped? Do you just say, well, we were stupid to push the Bush Doctrine there at that time, but now since the winners are being pragmatic about it, perhaps it can be managed intelligently from here? No, you cut off aid and put the winners of the election, and their electorate under seige. That's a more intelligent way of dealing with these people who won our Bush Doctrine election. Cut off aid and put Gaza under sige, That's the intelligent thing to do, so let's do it.

".. aid cutoff and siege of the Palestinians under occupation, which led to massively increased poverty for millions of people. These advisors engaged with the United States in a "plot" to "bring about the untimely demise of the [Palestinian Authority] government led by Hamas," de Soto wrote."

What else, after funneling military equipment to the guys we stupidly thought would win, after cutting off aid and putting the place under siege, do you do if the wrong guys won under the wonderful Bush Doctrine policy? Well, again, what else stupid, let's have a coup! That should be easy against these incompetent winner fools who thought they could con us by taking a pragmatic stance. We'll show those pragmatic winners! Let's have a coup!

"Despite a bloody attempted coup against Hamas by the Dahlan-led forces in December and January, Hamas still agreed to join a "National Unity Government" with Fatah brokered by Saudi Arabia at the Mecca summit. Dahlan and Abbas' advisers were determined to sabotage this, continuing to amass weapons, and refusing to place their militias under the control of a neutral interior minister who eventually resigned in frustration."

A setback for United States and Israel

The core of US strategy in the Southwest and Central Asia, particularly Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon is to establish puppet regimes that will fight America's enemies on its behalf. This strategy seems to be failing everywhere. The Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan. Despite its "surge" the US is no closer to putting down the resistance in Iraq and cannot even trust the Iraqi army it helped set up. The Lebanese army, which the US hopes to bolster as a counterweight to Hizballah, has performed poorly against a few hundred foreign fighters holed up in Nahr al-Bared refugee camp (although it has caused death and devastation to many innocent Palestinian refugees). Now in Gaza, the latest blow.

Israel's policy is a local version of the US strategy -- and it has also been tried and failed. For over two decades Israel relied on a proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army, to help it enforce the occupation of southern Lebanon. In 2000, as Israeli forces hastily withdrew, this militia collapsed just as quickly as Dahlan's forces and many of its members fled to Israel. Hamas is now referring to the rout of Dahlan's forces as a "second liberation of Gaza."

A consistent element of Israeli strategy has been to attempt to circumvent Palestinian resistance by trying to create quisling leaderships. Into the 1970s, Israel still saw the PLO as representing true resistance. So it set up the collaborationist "village leagues" in the West Bank as an alternative. In 1976, it allowed municipal elections in the West Bank in an effort to give this alternative leadership some legitimacy. When PLO-affiliated candidates swept the board, Israel began to assassinate the PLO mayors with car bombs or force them into exile. Once some exiled PLO leaders, most notably Yasser Arafat, became willing subcontractors of the occupation (an arrangement formalized by the Oslo Accords), a new resistance force emerged in the form of Hamas. Israeli efforts to back Dahlan and Abbas, Arafat's successor, as quisling alternatives have now backfired spectacularly.

In the wake of the Fatah collapse in Gaza, Ha'aretz reported that Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert will advise President Bush that Gaza must be isolated from the West Bank. This can be seen as an attempt to shore up Abbas whose survival Israel sees as essential to maintaining the fiction that it does not directly rule millions of disenfranchised Palestinians. A total collapse of the Palestinian Authority would expose Israel's legal obligation, as the occupying power, to provide for the welfare of the Palestinians it rules.

What now for the Palestinian under occupation?

Now what, after funneling military equipment to out losers, after cutting off aid and putting the whole population under siege, after our attempted coup and our attempt to impose a quisling government, have all failed what now do intelligent people do? Declare a State of Emergency and dismiss all the pragmatic winners, that's the intelligent thing to do. YEAH! Let's try dat, even if is just pure bs rhetoric.

"Abbas has declared a "state of emergency" and dismissed Ismail Haniyeh the Hamas prime minister as well as the "national unity government." The "state of emergency" is merely rhetorical. Whatever control he had in Gaza is gone and Israel is in complete control of the West Bank anyway.

Haniyeh in a speech this evening carried live on Al-Jazeera rejected Abbas' "hasty" moves and alleged that they were the result of pressure from abroad. He issued 16 points, among them that the "unity government" represented the will of 96 percent of Palestinians under occupation freely expressed at the ballot box. He reaffirmed his movement's commitment to democracy and the existing political system and that Hamas would not impose changes on people's way of life. Haniyeh said the government would continue to function, would restore law and order and reaffirm Hamas' commitment to national unity and the Mecca agreement. He called on all Hamas members to observe a general amnesty assuring any captured fighters of their safety (this followed media reports of a handful of summary executions of Fatah fighters). He also emphasized that Hamas' fight was not with Fatah as a whole, but only with those elements who had been actively collaborating -- a clear allusion to Dahlan and other Abbas advisors. He portrayed Hamas' takeover as a last resort in the wake of escalating lawlessness and coup attempts by collaborators, listing many alleged crimes that had finally caused Hamas' patience to snap. Haniyeh emphasized the unity of Gaza and the West Bank as "inseparable parts of the Palestinian nation," and he repeated a call for the captors of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston to free him immediately.

The contrast between Abbas' action and the Hamas response is striking. Abbas, perhaps pushed by the same coterie of advisors, seems to be escalating the confrontation and doing so when there is no reason to believe he can prevail. Hamas, while standing firm and from a position of strength, spoke in a language of conciliation, emphasizing time and again that Hamas has a problem with only a small group within Fatah, not its rank and file. Abbas, Dahlan and their backers must be surveying a sobering scene -- they may be tempted to try to take on Hamas in the West Bank, but the scale of their defeat in Gaza would have to give them pause.

Both leaderships are hemmed in. Abbas appears to be entirely dependent on foreign and Israeli support and unable to take decisions independent of a corrupt, self-serving clique. Hamas, whatever intentions it has is likely to find itself under an even tighter siege in Gaza.

Abbas, backed by Israel and the US, has called for a multinational force in Gaza. Hamas has rejected this, saying it would be viewed as an "occupying force." Indeed, they have reason to be suspicious: for decades Israel and the US blocked calls for an international protection force for Palestinians. The multinational force, Hamas fears, would not be there to protect Palestinians from their Israeli occupiers, but to perform the proxy role of protecting Israel's interests that Dahlan's forces are longer able to carry out and to counter the resistance -- just as the multinational force was supposed to do in Lebanon after the July 2006 war.

Wise leaders in Israel and the United States would recognize that Hamas is not a passing phenomenon, and that they can never create puppet leaders who will be able to compete against a popular resistance movement. But there are no signs of wisdom: the US has now asked Israel to "loosen its grip" in the West Bank to try to give Abbas a boost. Although the Bush doctrine has suffered a blow, the Palestinian people have not won any great victory. The sordid game at their expense continues.

Yes, it was a setback to the Bush Doctrine in Gaza,. Sure was.

[StephanieVanbryce]

Going Rogue: An American Life, by Sarah Palin



John Crace
Tuesday 8 December 2009

It was the Alaska State Fair, August 2008. I passed the Right to Life stand with my daughter's face on their poster. "That's you, baby-girl," I said to Piper. "There's no member of this family your momma wouldn't sell out to promote her career." As we watched three commy abortionists being burned to death, Senator McCain called my cell phone. Would I like to help him lose the presidential race?

My parents moved to Alaska when I was three and I fell in love with the outdoors and killing things. Swearing the Oath of Allegiance in school gave me a sense of civic pride and I vowed to serve America and go to church a lot.

After coming runner-up, and last, in the Miss Alaska pageant, I married Todd Palin, a guy with his own snow mobile who blessed me with five children: Track, "we'd have called him hockey if he'd been born in the winter"; Bristol, "Todd said he hoped she'd have a rack like mine"; Willow, "we misspelled pillow"; Piper, "after our light aircraft"; and Trig, "short for the trigger on our AK47".

"Dang it," I thought, "this election campaign is getting mighty dirty." But Todd told me God had a purpose for me and after praying for his guidance, I was duly elected mayor of Wasilla by nine votes to six. Various stories have been told about how I dismissed a librarian for stocking anti-American literature on evolution and how I tried to get my brother-in-law fired from his job as a state trooper. Well I don't have space in this 400-page book to go into this in any detail, but if I did I would say that anyone who messes with God or my family has to deal with this pitbull in lipstick!

My proudest moment in office was seeing off an attempt by the police chief to introduce gun and alcohol controls. I hate liberals who don't understand how things work in the 49th State. It is a God-given right for any Alaskan to get drunk and take out anything that moves. Why else did God create guns? Would He have made animals out of meat if He had wanted us to be vegetarians?

Having served on the Oil Commission, I realised that Alaskan politics was rife with corruption and the waste of public funds, and when I was elected governor in 2006 by 73 votes to 59 I vowed to end pork-barrel politics. Mysteriously, though, I find I have omitted my initial support for the "Bridge to Nowhere, Jobs for the Boys" scheme, a $300m construction project to build a bridge to reach 11 people. I would rather now concentrate on my vice-presidential campaign.

"Tell me what you know about American foreign policy," McCain said, when we met at his ranch in Arizona.

"About as much as the average American," I replied. "So that's nothing, then." "Hell, Senator. I don't need to know anything about the history of the Middle East to know the Iraqis are all a bunch of Russian Czechoslovakian Shiites."

"Where do you stand on God?"

"Sarah Palin won't hold back on God, Senator. I'm proud to believe in the book of Genesis that says the Garden of Eden was in Alaska. Jeez, every December I even go out hunting dinosaurs."

For some reason I didn't get to see much of Senator McCain after this and although there were great moments, such as talking to President Sarkozy of Paris, Texas on the phone, our campaign never really took off and we were narrowly beaten by 250m votes to 23.

The mud-slinging started in earnest once we returned to Alaska. Rumours about my marriage circulated – dang it, why would I want to divorce a man with the biggest skidoo in Anchorage? – but most damaging were the complaints about my ethical conduct, all of which have been dismissed except the ones that haven't. So I won't be standing for governor again. But if the American people are as stupid as I think they are, it's Palin for president in '12!

Digested read, digested: Going Rouge, An American Embarrassment.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/dec/08/going-rogue-sarah-palin-digested