The Human Rights Commission in the US just released a comprehensive report on Senator McCain's record on GLBT issues. It can be found at http://www.hrc.org//documents/McCain_onepager_final_rev.pdf

Additional information is at the main HRC site: http://www.hrc.org/McCain


Suffice it to say he is no supporter of GLBT equal rights.

Sarah Palin belongs to a church that seeks to 'pray' gay and lesbians straight. Can this woman get any more frightening?


AOL

Only if she gets elected.

God I hope not.

I hope not as well and that is putting it mildly. Talk about trying to send us back to the dark ages. :eek

Palin: wrong woman, wrong message

Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

By Gloria Steinem
September 4, 2008

Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.
But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton . Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.

Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq , she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq ."
She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq ; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

what a nice bit of plain-speaking. GS rocks.

re Palin: someone clever dubbed her Caribou Barbie. How refreshingly sneerk-worthy.

Ah Jeanna

Thanks for posting the article by Gloria Steinem, so I can once again remember that there are some truly great women still fighting the good fight in this country. Nobody says it better than Gloria. Such an eloquent way of speaking the truth. With a hurricane barreling down on us in Houston, this has lifted my spirits. :hug2 :kiss1

Thank You Jeanna for posting that article .

I take an interest in American politics but being a non American ( I am an Australian ) I don't get to read or see a lot of stuff that is reported or written about American Politics or the Politicians .

But I am interested in the elections every 4 years and I try to keep up with what is going on and who is standing for election .

I don't agree with some of the things that she stands for .

Any way thank you for the article it gave me a bit more insight into this woman that has come from no where to centre stage in a blink of an eye .

Ningi .

Palin is scary, but I'm fascinated by the people who support her.

Not the cynical Republicans who were looking for a way to harness the country's obsession with empty celebrity and take control of what passes for mainstream news, but the people who insist that she'll make a good vice president because they identify with her. Her life reminds them of their own, so they'd like to see her succeed. That means electing her to office of Vice President.

My immediate question to them would be, do you people think that YOU are qualified to be President of the United States and represent the country's interests to other heads if state in this complex world? Do you think that at a moment's notice you could take on the unraveling US economy and make informed decisions to put it on the road to recovery? I'm sure you can almost hear the outrage I feel when I take that attitude. But I had an epiphany today. The answer is, yes, they do!

By his bumbling incompetence and proud anti-intellectualism, George W. Bush has so lowered the image that average Americans have of the presidency, that they genuinely think anyone can do it if they're feisty enough, so it's only a matter of finding a candidate they like. They have accepted that if George W. Bush can be President of the United States for eight years, credentials and experience are irrelevant.

To make matters worse, the Republicans and the other Democratic candidates have made such an issue of Barack Obama's short tenure in the Senate, that Americans who only get their news from mainstream television genuinely think that a first class education, ten years as a Constitutional scholar, a lifetime spent in public service, State Senator in one of the more densely populated states, two years in national office with a place on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, an upbringing that included living outside the United States, the ability to write well and communicate clearly, not to mention excellent financial management of a multimillion-dollar campaign for a year and a half, all add up to "no experience".

So they can successfully convince themselves that all of the above is the equivalent of a journalism degree earned over six years, mayor of a town of 6,000 people and then governorship of one of the smallest economies of any state in the union for less than two years. Oh yes, and contempt for science, a belief that Iraq attacked the US on 9/11 (despite all the studying she's been doing lately), holding the opinion that praying is the best way to get a multibilllion dollar project approved and a demonstrated belief that federal tax dollars should go to projects that benefit few but will get her re-elected.

Fascinating....

I am hearing all sorts of nonsense in my local paper..."she's just like me...ad nauseum.

To paraphrase another article...I don't want anyone like me...I want someone in the White House who is BETTER than me...

It McCain/Palin is elected...we need somewhere to hide...because all hell is going to break loose. What is it about zero regulation coupled with corporate greed and endless war that isn't understood?

The only thing McCain knows is war...the only thing Palin knows is ....well, nothing!

Actually, just the thoughts of these two render me totally inarticulate, but I am very frightened for the US and the world...

I sure do hope someone can explain to me, Joanne Simple Taxpayer, how the *f*ck* we are supposed to afford almost a trillion dollars to bail out a bunch of BANKS when we cannot afford to provide any kind of health care for our country, social security has more or less run out of money, and a decent educational system seems beyond our reach. Hello, children, smell Rome burning.


Also....

Why this isn't the only issue being discussed seriously in the campaign is just a tad puzzling. Surely it's the only important issue, at this point? Say what you will about Bill Clinton (and, for the record, I thought he was a pretty damn good president), he stayed *ON* message for his *entire* campaign. It's the economy, stupid. He then stayed ON message for the next 8 years, and in fact, worked on... the economy.

Is that really such a difficult concept to grasp? Don't get me wrong, I'll vote for Obama, but since he was positioned at frontrunner, I have yet to see an even halfway competently-run campaign. The guy was used to being an underdog. Now that he's not, no one on his team knows what to do. They're simply reacting to stuff: there's no plan that I can see. Real encouraging.

/ sliding in disillusionment off soapbox & trundling home to watch more investments tumble /

I freely admit that my attention has drifted away from the US Presidential election but I read with total fascination the brilliant Gloria Steinem article about Sarah Palin. What horrifies me these days is to reflect that this woman makes the other fraudulent example of supposed ‘women making it,’ Margaret Thatcher be outflanked on the sight, something that I wouldn’t have believed possible, by either man or woman. Both serve as salutary warnings.
This part of the article gets to the core of the problem, something that as a socialist I can relate to. “Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.”

Ekny’s point about ‘fiddling while Rome burns’ strikes an immediate chord this side of the pond. As I write, I also watch incredulously while the New Labour government also flings huge quantities at the banking system , not to say wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while letting everything elso go hang- except that your side of the pond, the rot has got that bit further. What is mindboggling is that those at the top of the banking system both sides of the pond have been held up as examples of paragons of virtue, the ‘go getting, entrepreneurial, risk takers’ while public servants are hopelessly passé.

Perhaps some time, those at the top of the media might finally get the message??

E., since you live in a state that the Democrats consider "safe", then the Obama campaign is not aiming its efforts at you. The strategy is to win the electoral college even if they lose the popular vote. (2000 in reverse.) However, in those key states that went narrowly one way or the other four years ago, the "message" has apparently been relentless and it has been that ordinary people can't afford four more years like the last eight.

I think it was wise to let the Palin lovefest play out except for aggressively counteracting the lies aimed at Obama. It's time for the press to do their jobs and simply report on Palin's past without prejudice rather than attempting to counteract the circus. The fact of Palin is worse than anything spin could do to a competent candidate.

The fact that the bailout of AIG didn't work to reassure markets and that the bailout had to be proposed was, I believe, a surprise to everyone involved, including both campaigns. The Obama/Biden ticket has a pretty comprehensive economic plan on their website aimed at shoring up the pre-bailout economy, but I don't think any response they came up with in the last three days could have been close to adequate in addressing a post-bailout economy, so I'm willing to wait a week or two. Of course I'm not a right-winger who wants assurance that "daddy will fix it", so I'm surprised McCain/Palin hasn't proposed a "fix" to pacify their base.

To paraphrase an analogy used earlier in the campaign, though, the Bush administration has driven the bus (the economy) into a ditch and there are only limited ways to get it out. Prior to the bailout, investors the world over were pulling money out of US capital markets at an alarming rate because they had no idea how many worthless assets were still on the books of its financial institutions. If that continued to happen, then 401K's and pension plans would continue to depreciate in value over time and nobody could predict the bottom. Offering to buy the crap assets in a bailout made investors believe that the truth, good or bad, would come out. So they started pumping money back in overnight on Thursday.

The cost to buy assets might go as high as one trillion (or 8 years in Iraq), but unless the actual value of all those assets is zero and the economy never recovers, some will be resold into the markets and with any luck the price to taxpayers will net out lower. But allowing investment banks to "play" in mortgages and failing to regulate mortgage brokers or the mortgage introduction process has been such an unmitigated disaster that I can't think of a better solution.

But it's going to take higher taxes. Best case scenario is that the Obama plan of going back to Clinton-era tax levels on the rich will do it, but if Americans vote McCain and he makes good on his campaign promise to make the Bush cuts permanent and cut even more, then it's only a matter of time before the US government stops paying its bills and its bonds are worth as much as toilet paper. I think that scenario is what the head of the Fed and the Secretary of the Treasury presented to congress that scared them into approving the bailout.

These are truly scary times, but it's even scarier to think where the country would be now if Bush had managed to privatize social security and people's pensions were wrapped up in today's capital markets. :( Of course if the government goes bankrupt, the result will be the same.

CBG has pretty nicely summed up the situation. I am terrified that too many Americans can't see that playing out however and will play into the GOP's tried and true tactics of fear. That, plus the media who no longer does its job of investigation and reporting facts but instead just puts on talking heads and spends hours focused on red herrings, fixed elections, and the one thing Barack Obama cannot change -- his race, are a powerful combination to try and overcome. Prejudice and prideful ignorance unfortunately is at home in the good old US of A. Why people would rather see a former beauty queen who shoots moose and struggled to complete a college degree in five years instead of a thoughtful and intelligent Rhodes Scholar in the White House never ceases to amaze me. I fear we are headed the direction of Rome as a country and pray to God for an Obama/Biden victory.

CBG, thanks for the seminar...this stuff is hard for me to understand except for the fact the continuing parade of financial institutions going under is a bad thing.

You're right, can you imagine if Bush and gang had actually been able to sell the Social Security privatization thing? Jeeze...years of deregulation has been bad enough.

Back to the US election. This is an incredible website. It tracks daily presidental polls across the country; does a running tally of electoral votes; breaks the down the states as to tie or swing or just outright red or blue....you can click backwards to previous maps and tallies or you can click on a state and see the running line of polls and how Obama fares vs McCain...this is a great tool for considering those "swing" states of which ek, marymartin and I do not reside in. The site also has daily blurps on political news as well as writeups about individual Congressional races.
http://www.electoral-vote.com/
Check it our...conclusion, I think the United States should be divided in two....the coastal states and "flyover" states.

Amen to that. As it were.

Agreed abt the Obama ticket. And... apparently, Daddy is suspending his campaign in order to go "fix" the economy. Imagine my relief.

I'm so absolutely gobsmacked at this I don't know what to say. "Rise above politics"? Um. Excuse me, but taking a *leak* is political for these people. Please. What, does he have a headache, is the crisis too much to deal with at the same time as campaigning? I have trouble believing--even in the alternate universe that votes for Bush--that anyone could possible accept at face value that this is an appropriate stunt for a Presidential candidate to pull.

I hear you. Your reply was very helpful & clear, thanks a lot for it, by the way--explaining this stuff to people like me is not easy! :D

I just wanted to point out--Reagan deserves blame here too, by letting banks play in this sandbox in the first place.

so, are you all going to watch the debate tonight, now that McCain has resolved the bail out issue and is willing to participate.

McCain's stunt ended up looking pretty dumb, didn't it? I went to a debate-watching event sponsored by Democrats Abroad in a restaurant in Yorkville. And, geek that I am, I'll probably be going to another one to watch the vice-presidential debate on Thursday. But this time, I'll be going drinking beforehand, just to get in the mood...

Hope you all are well despite the stresses of global politics!

A.

Prepare yourself for this Thursday’s vice presidential debate by printing out the rules below for this year’s Vice Presidential Debate Drinking Game! Without further delay, we bring you the rules.

For Sarah Palin:

Every time Palin mentions one of her kids by name, take the number of drinks corresponding to that child’s number in her brood (e.g. 1 drink for Track, 2 drinks for Bristol, 3 drinks for Willow, 4 drinks for Piper and 5 drinks for Trig). If she does not give a name, take 1 drink.
When Palin mentions 9/11 in a textually-relevant manner (e.g. “We need to prevent another attack like the one on 9/11″), take 1 drink. When Palin mentions 9/11 in a gratuitous, textually-irrelevant manner (e.g. “When my son Track was sent over to Iraq on 9/11…”), take 2 drinks.
If Palin uses the phrase, “hockey mom”, drink until she takes the self-satisfied smirk off her face.

For Joe Biden:

Every time Biden chuckles condescendingly at Sarah Palin, take 1 drink. Every time Biden chuckles condescendingly at moderator Gwen Ifill, take 2 drinks.
Every time Biden refers to himself in the third person, take 1 drink. If he uses his full name (e.g. “When people ask me, ‘Joe Biden, how did you become so good looking?’”), take 2 drinks.
If Biden points out that despite being less than 1/100th the size, Delaware has more people than Alaska, drink until you see the bottom of your glass.
If either candidate says:

Russia, take 1 drink. U.S.S.R., take 2 drinks. Swimming the Bering Straight, take 3 drinks.
Hillary Clinton, take 1 drink. Bill Clinton, take 2 drinks. Monica Lewinsky, take 3 drinks.
Dick Cheney, take 1 drink. Tricky Dick, take 2 drinks. Sucking dick, take 3 drinks.

Finally, if at any point Biden uses the phrase “I know Geraldine Ferraro; Geraldine Ferraro is a friend of mine. Governor, you’re no Geraldine Ferraro,” chug your beer, turn off your TV, and shoot yourself in the head.

:drinkies OK MM if one actually plays this game please find a designated caller to 911 because if you do drink this much you will need an ambulance :rofl

Thanks Lockup but I'm planning on drinking milk. :innocent

LGBT Alaskans on Sarah Palin


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfL2l1dk8nA

Palin's ambition knows no bounds. McCain better watch his back if he is elected. She may not want to wait until 2012 to become president. :eek

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/pal...c_b_131482.html

:eek :eek :eek :eek :eek :eek

The good news is:

McCain has simply closed up shop in Michigan. Suspended campaigning.

They're talking about places like Florida going slightly Democratic. *Virginia*. NORTH CAROLINA. I mean--hello. That sounds pretty much like a slaughter to me. Electoral college estimates have Obama around 250-350, depending who you believe.

Good.

so, both candidates won the v.p. debate - at least according to their respective campaigns. congratulations!!!

i've also noticed BOTH campaigns are using the catchword "change".

i understand the following flow chart has gone viral (whatever that means), but in case any of you missed it:

Well I sure hadn't seen it & think it's wonderful, thanks! :)

Well, by all rights it *should* be a 51-0 slaughter (DC counts), but I think we need to be very aware of the Bradley effect. IMO if Obama isn't ahead by a clear 10-15 points (or has, say, 320 electoral votes put firmly in his column), it's something to really worry about.

I dunno. Obama's electoral votes are pretty high right now... I'm starting to worry they're over-inflated or optimistic. It's starting to look like it really might be a slaughter. ColorADO?

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_con..._college_update
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

And these people have Obama at well over 300:
http://www.electoral-vote.com/

Last couple weeks can always get flakey, & this has been the longest most intense campaign I can remember. Plus there are still 2 more debates.

Interesting to see how this is going. We've had someone else on another board make a very good point - and that is we've seen various blogs etc getting a bit of a siege mentality just because other people elsewhere (for example the British Press) have attacked Palin/McCain.

We certainly sure a bit of that happening during the last election, and while I doubt it is enough to swing the vote either way - its worrying to see some people plumping to vote for someone, just because they aren't getting a fair press elsewhere in the world in their eyes.

I admit, I was worried when Palin first came into the race and it did seem to lift the rankings a lot in their favour, but fortunately that now seems to have settled some and its just down to other factors now for many.