Palin

It's just a signature line, David. Lots of people use them. Sorry if it offends you, but I won't be obeying your order to drop it. Trust me, I don't see being the moderator of any online forum as some big deal or badge of honor. I could replace it with my web site URL, but I think that would be too blatantly commercial.

Actually, the President's oath of office says not one word about protecting the citizens. In fact he swears only to "protect, uphold, and defend" the Constitution. I think this clearly reveals the President's true first priority. The individual responsibilities specified in the Constitution are not prioritized or assigned greater weight than the entire document.

Personally, I could do with less "protection" and more Constitution from these guys. I can think of a lot of things that worry me more than terrorists, many of them coming from our own government.

Like this, for example:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/30/police_raids/

Behold the American Gestapo.

9/11 has been used by politicians as an excuse for an unrelated, unprovoked war, for violations of our rights, for the diminution of our freedoms and dignity, and in general for harping on fear to preserve and increase their power. 9/11 wasn't worth turning our country upside down over. It shouldn't determine our policies and our very state of mind forever. It was a terrible criminal act, but it wasn't an act of war against us, unless a few fanatics with box cutters can declare war against us and be taken seriously, regardless of the deadly success of their plan.

Since then, has the use of torture saved us from some further attack? I don't know, though if it had it's hard to believe Bush could have held back from crowing about it. Maybe he'll reveal all once he's out of office, unless that's all part of his papers and records he's ordered locked up forever.

After all, why should Osama bother to launch another attack? All he has to do is release a video now and then to send us all flailing about again. From his standpoint, I think his attack was more successful than he could ever have dreamed, and in more ways than one.

What bugs me most is not the complete transparency of picking her,(do they really think that women will vote GOP just because it has a female evangelnazi on the ticket?). The main point is that his choice is the clearest evidence yet that McCain has sold his soul to win. When he locked up the nomination I was pleased because with Obama and McCain, I viewed it as a win-win election. I supported McCain in 2000---before he was swift-boated by his own party---and I am certain the world would be a better place if he had been president then. However, now he is 72 years old, has suffered 2 bouts with cancer and has permanently swollen lymph nodes. He should realize that there is a significant probability he will not survive his term without atleast periods of incapacitation. To put this country into the hands of someone as woefully unqualified as Palin, is nothing short of reckless. While it is not certain her manicured nails will ever be on "the button" an international crisis is a virtual certainty and it will still come down to Palin taking that 3:00 a.m. call. As his first "presidential" decision, he has shown that self-interest trumps country. "Country First" my a$$. He's sold out and we all know to whom.

I absolutely agree that the world would have been better off if McCain had been elected in 2000. 2008 though? Naw.

Les Chambers said:
Keep in mind that one of her first acts as Gov. was to sheppard legislation to approve a 1750 mile long natural gas pipeline. Does McCain thinkg we are blind AND stupid?
Les

I'm afraid I haven't kept up with ultra-liberalism as well as I should. So pipelines are automatically bad now, or is there actual rational *reasoning* involved?

At least give a passing thought to the fact that we *need* the natural gas. How else do you propose getting it here?

Terry

Joe Bergeron said:
I however have learned not to bet on the discernment of the American electorate.

I suspect that your definition of "discernment" would not match mine! Further, I'm reasonably sure I'm glad the American electorate doesn't meet your definition; I'm prepared to be surprised, though.

Terry

No one said pipelines are per se bad. The point was--and I think you know this--is that the pipeline had been stalled for years because of enviromental, economic and other concerns. Yet, Palin who is tied to the oil industry makes it her first priority as governor. Forces it through the legislature while ignoring every concern raised against it. It illustrates that her priorities may not be the same as the public as a whole. This is a far right ideologue who wants to sunset the Endangered Species Act so polar bears wont get in the way of the oil industry. Nothing worse than an idealogue and she is a poster-child for putting an agenda before the facts.

That figures, Don. You see something you don't like, so you attempt to devalue the source rather than deal with the facts. So, do you think this didn't happen, because Salon reported it? You think they invent everything they publish? how about this?

http://www.startribune.com/local/27703754.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4OW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUX

Oh, but Minnesota sometimes votes Democrat, so maybe their papers aren't to be trusted either.

Any comment on Buckley's remarks on recent Republican antics before his passing?

"While writing about the war in National Review: "One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed," Buckley declared. "Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans." He urged the Bush administration to consider "acknowledgment of defeat." In an earlier November 2005 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Buckley went even further, declaring that the invasion of Iraq was "anything but conservative."

Buckley explicitly distinguished the conservatism he founded from what it had become under the Bush-led Republican Party. In July 2006, he told CBS Evening News that "Mr. Bush faces a singular problem best defined, I think, as the absence of effective conservative ideology." And he specifically identified the war in Iraq as a major cause of the nation's problems, arguing that the war was such a failure that it had single-handedly rendered the Bush presidency a failure: "If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign."

On one key issue after the next, Buckley came to reject the defining principles of today's conservative movement. In the same CBS interview, he rejected the neoconservative approach of belligerence toward Iran and, more generally, labeled as "too ambitious" the sweeping vision of democracy promotion set out by Bush in his second Inaugural Address. In a subsequent interview, Buckley warned: "The neoconservative hubris, which sort of assigns to America some kind of geo-strategic responsibility for maximizing democracy, overstretches the resources of a free country.''

Les Chambers said:
No one said pipelines are per se bad.

OK -- glad to hear it.

The point was--and I think you know this--is that the pipeline had been stalled for years because of enviromental, economic and other concerns. Yet, Palin who is tied to the oil industry makes it her first priority as governor. Forces it through the legislature while ignoring every concern raised against it.

I view this from a different perspective. At some point, logjams like this have to be resolved. It doesn't sound to me as though concerns were ignored -- they'd been argued over for years. It sounds to me as though she weighed these concerns against the need for the pipeline and decided to push the project ahead.

It illustrates that her priorities may not be the same as the public as a whole.

And maybe they *are* -- lots of folks heat their homes with natural gas, and natural gas prices have gone up quite a bit in recent years. I know I'd certainly rather build a pipeline than freeze all winter, and I'll bet I can find a few other folks who agree with me.

This is a far right ideologue who wants to sunset the Endangered Species Act so polar bears wont get in the way of the oil industry. Nothing worse than an idealogue and she is a poster-child for putting an agenda before the facts.

Oh, please. The left is shot through with ideologues of their own. And "putting an agenda before the facts" just means that someone else weighs the facts differently than you do.

I think what she did was right -- that doesn't mean *I'm* an ideologue and doesn't mean that I have malicious intent or sinister ties to the oil industry.

Terry

No problem Joe....It is just irrelevant in this forum....