The Democrat Thread

[Steve9347]

I told my wife about giving this thread the gay, she said "tell them based on the wedding gowns they did last night he was the right one to go home."

That's BS and she knows it. Korto's was even more of a trainwreck. Whatever. Haha.

[BigSqwert]

Biden today, basically calling McCain a pussy:

 

"All of the things they said about Barack Obama in the TV, on the TV, at their rallies, and now on YouTube ... John McCain could not bring himself to look Barack Obama in the eye and say the same things to him ... In my neighborhood, when you've got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him."

[Soxy]

I told my wife about giving this thread the gay, she said "tell them based on the wedding gowns they did last night he was the right one to go home."

But his bridesmaid dress was better than Korto's I thought. It was a pure bulls*** challenge, designed to save Kenley's skin. Although Jerrell did have some execution issues throughout the season--but he was the most fashion forward, conceptually interesting of the designers.

 

I'm just mad Kenley didn't get kicked off last week.

[Steve9347]

But his bridesmaid dress was better than Korto's I thought. It was a pure bulls*** challenge, designed to save Kenley's skin. Although Jerrell did have some execution issues throughout the season--but he was the most fashion forward, conceptually interesting of the designers.

 

I'm just mad Kenley didn't get kicked off last week.

That.

 

If Jerrell had listened to TG and taken care of the bust line issues, and just used white toole instead of the ugly gray, he's in the finale.

 

Why do people continue to ignore TG's suggestions?

[Soxy]

That.

 

If Jerrell had listened to TG and taken care of the bust line issues, and just used white toole instead of the ugly gray, he's in the finale.

 

Why do people continue to ignore TG's suggestions?

I don't know, but they'll get their comeuppance since he's the guest judge on the finale. Mwahaha.

[bmags]

I think it's cause by the time that he comes in they already feel committed.

[BigSqwert]

These are the kinds of interviews Palin would rather do.

 

Palin sat down with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, who asked Palin about... born-alive fetuses... Ayers... ACORN.

 

Not a single question on the economy, the most important issue to voters in polls, on a day when the Dow dropped another 678.91 points.

 

LINK

[kapkomet]

LINK

Yea because RSO will make the markets rise again! WOOT! Holy s***, we know the guy can walk on water and all and Palin and McCain are piles of lying, heaping s***. Oh wait, I'm in the Democrat thread. Nevermind.

 

 

[NorthSideSox72]

Yea because RSO will make the markets rise again! WOOT! Holy s***, we know the guy can walk on water and all and Palin and McCain are piles of lying, heaping s***. Oh wait, I'm in the Democrat thread. Nevermind.

What does that even have to do with his post?

 

[kapkomet]

What does that even have to do with his post?

Well, because they didn't ask Palin about the market and the economy. How dare they not expose her as if it's her (and the GOP, by default) fault. And therefore, RSO will then fix it because he's "better" then McCain and Palin (but that goes without saying).

 

[bmags]

Well, because they didn't ask Palin about the market and the economy. How dare they not expose her as if it's her (and the GOP, by default) fault. And therefore, RSO will then fix it because he's "better" then McCain and Palin (but that goes without saying).

 

kap, take a breath, then read it again.

[kapkomet]

kap, take a breath, then read it again.

Now why would I do that?

 

I'll stop stirring the pot. I haven't done that in a while.

 

[StrangeSox]

Well, because they didn't ask Palin about the market and the economy. How dare they not expose her as if it's her (and the GOP, by default) fault. And therefore, RSO will then fix it because he's "better" then McCain and Palin (but that goes without saying).

 

Who's trying to blame her or say that Obama has the magic answer? The post/ link was about an interview with Sarah Palin in which no economic questions were asked.

[BigSqwert]

Now why would I do that?

 

I'll stop stirring the pot. I haven't done that in a while.

So I take it you're all for small government McCain buying bad mortgages if he's elected?

[lostfan]

I really was sort of apathetic about how the election would turn out despite who I was supporting, but in the past month or so, the way the Republican base has been acting, inspired by Sarah Palin, has really started making me feel spiteful, and I'd take some kind of pleasure in seeing them upset. It's not really a feeling I like, it's a polarized feeling I've managed to shake off a couple of years ago. But nothing pushes me away from the Republican party (who, truth be told, I have a lot in common with) better than the Republicans themselves.

[BigSqwert]

Meet Sarah Palin’s radical right-wing pals

 

Extremists Mark Chryson and Steve Stoll helped launch Palin’s political career in Alaska, and in return had influence over policy. “Her door was open,” says Chryson — and still is.

 

Oct. 10, 2008 PALMER, Alaska — | On the afternoon of Sept. 24 in downtown Palmer, Alaska, as the sun began to sink behind the snowcapped mountains that flank the picturesque Mat-Su Valley, 51-year-old Mark Chryson sat for an hour on a park bench, reveling in tales of his days as chairman of the Alaska Independence Party. The stocky, gray-haired computer technician waxed nostalgic about quixotic battles to eliminate taxes, support the “traditional family” and secede from the United States.

 

So long as Alaska remained under the boot of the federal government, said Chryson, the AIP had to stand on guard to stymie a New World Order. He invited a Salon reporter to see a few items inside his pickup truck that were intended for his personal protection. “This here is my attack dog,” he said with a chuckle, handing the reporter an exuberant 8-pound papillon from his passenger seat. “Her name is Suzy.” Then he pulled a 9-millimeter Makarov PM pistol — once the standard-issue sidearm for Soviet cops — out of his glove compartment. “I’ve got enough weaponry to raise a small army in my basement,” he said, clutching the gun in his palm. “Then again, so do most Alaskans.” But Chryson added a message of reassurance to residents of that faraway place some Alaskans call “the 48.” “We want to go our separate ways,” he said, “but we are not going to kill you.”

 

Though Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure figure outside of Alaska, Chryson has been a political fixture in the hometown of the Republican vice-presidential nominee for over a decade. During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin’s campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.

 

Palin backed Chryson as he successfully advanced a host of anti-tax, pro-gun initiatives, including one that altered the state Constitution’s language to better facilitate the formation of anti-government militias. She joined in their vendetta against several local officials they disliked, and listened to their advice about hiring. She attempted to name Stoll, a John Birch Society activist known in the Mat-Su Valley as “Black Helicopter Steve,” to an empty Wasilla City Council seat. “Every time I showed up her door was open,” said Chryson. “And that policy continued when she became governor.”

 

When Chryson first met Sarah Palin, however, he didn’t really trust her politically. It was the early 1990s, when he was a member of a local libertarian pressure group called SAGE, or Standing Against Government Excess. (SAGE’s founder, Tammy McGraw, was Palin’s birth coach.) Palin was a leader in a pro-sales-tax citizens group called WOW, or Watch Over Wasilla, earning a political credential before her 1992 campaign for City Council. Though he was impressed by her interpersonal skills, Chryson greeted Palin’s election warily, thinking she was too close to the Democrats on the council and too pro-tax.

 

But soon, Palin and Chryson discovered they could be useful to each other. Palin would be running for mayor, while Chryson was about to take over the chairmanship of the Alaska Independence Party, which at its peak in 1990 had managed to elect a governor.

 

The AIP was born of the vision of “Old Joe” Vogler, a hard-bitten former gold miner who hated the government of the United States almost as much as he hated wolves and environmentalists. His resentment peaked during the early 1970s when the federal government began installing Alaska’s oil and gas pipeline. Fueled by raw rage — “The United States has made a colony of Alaska,” he told author John McPhee in 1977 — Vogler declared a maverick candidacy for the governorship in 1982. Though he lost, Old Joe became a force to be reckoned with, as well as a constant source of amusement for Alaska’s political class. During a gubernatorial debate in 1982, Vogler proposed using nuclear weapons to obliterate the glaciers blocking roadways to Juneau. “There’s gold under there!” he exclaimed.

 

Vogler made another failed run for the governor’s mansion in 1986. But the AIP’s fortunes shifted suddenly four years later when Vogler convinced Richard Nixon’s former interior secretary, Wally Hickel, to run for governor under his party’s banner. Hickel coasted to victory, outflanking a moderate Republican and a centrist Democrat. An archconservative Republican running under the AIP candidate, Jack Coghill, was elected lieutenant governor.

 

Hickel’s subsequent failure as governor to press for a vote on Alaskan independence rankled Old Joe. With sponsorship from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Vogler was scheduled to present his case for Alaskan secession before the United Nations General Assembly in the late spring of 1993. But before he could, Old Joe’s long, strange political career ended tragically that May when he was murdered by a fellow secessionist.

 

Hickel rejoined the Republican Party the year after Vogler’s death and didn’t run for reelection. Lt. Gov. Coghill’s campaign to succeed him as the AIP candidate for governor ended in disaster; he peeled away just enough votes from the Republican, Jim Campbell, to throw the gubernatorial election to Democrat Tony Knowles.

 

Despite the disaster, Coghill hung on as AIP chairman for three more years. When he was asked to resign in 1997, Mark Chryson replaced him. Chryson pursued a dual policy of cozying up to secessionist and right-wing groups in Alaska and elsewhere while also attempting to replicate the AIP’s success with Hickel in infiltrating the mainstream.

 

Unlike some radical right-wingers, Chryson doesn’t put forward his ideas freighted with anger or paranoia. And in a state where defense of gun and property rights often takes on a real religious fervor, Chryson was able to present himself as a typical Alaskan.

 

He rose through party ranks by reducing the AIP’s platform to a single page that “90 percent of Alaskans could agree with.” This meant scrubbing the old platform of what Chryson called “racist language” while accommodating the state’s growing Christian right movement by emphasizing the AIP’s commitment to the “traditional family.”

 

“The AIP is very family-oriented,” Chryson explained. “We’re for the traditional family — daddy, mommy, kids — because we all know that it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. And we don’t care if Heather has two mommies. That’s not a traditional family.”

 

Chryson further streamlined the AIP’s platform by softening its secessionist language. Instead of calling for immediate separation from the United States, the platform now demands a vote on independence.

 

Yet Chryson maintains that his party remains committed to full independence. “The Alaskan Independence Party has got links to almost every independence-minded movement in the world,” Chryson exclaimed. “And Alaska is not the only place that’s about separation. There’s at least 30 different states that are talking about some type of separation from the United States.”

 

LINK

[kapkomet]

I really was sort of apathetic about how the election would turn out despite who I was supporting, but in the past month or so, the way the Republican base has been acting, inspired by Sarah Palin, has really started making me feel spiteful, and I'd take some kind of pleasure in seeing them upset. It's not really a feeling I like, it's a polarized feeling I've managed to shake off a couple of years ago. But nothing pushes me away from the Republican party (who, truth be told, I have a lot in common with) better than the Republicans themselves.

Truth be told, I agree with that. I was just stirring the 'ol pot yesterday.

 

It really pisses me off that the Republicans have been handed a chance on a gold platter to explain why they can help better then their (socialist) pals. But for whatever reason, they've just played dead, and all they want to do is fear monger. Guess what? It isn't going to work this election. Talk about why RSO will take away money from the economy as a whole and they win, but for some reason they can't do that, and it's sad.

 

[lostfan]

Truth be told, I agree with that. I was just stirring the 'ol pot yesterday.

 

It really pisses me off that the Republicans have been handed a chance on a gold platter to explain why they can help better then their (socialist) pals. But for whatever reason, they've just played dead, and all they want to do is fear monger. Guess what? It isn't going to work this election. Talk about why RSO will take away money from the economy as a whole and they win, but for some reason they can't do that, and it's sad.

I know, you just like f***ing with people. You don't really count. Not really talking about this board per se, but like when I watch Palin speaking at rallies and I see the crowd shouting out random calls to violence, or begging John McCain to go even MORE negative, or desperately whining about the MSM to cover [insert obscure, irrelevant, previously unknown because nobody cares detail about Obama here]. Do they want to know why McCain is getting skull-raped in the polls right now? Because they're ignoring the economy, and focusing on s*** nobody cares about besides them.

[BigSqwert]

Truth be told, I agree with that. I was just stirring the 'ol pot yesterday.

 

It really pisses me off that the Republicans have been handed a chance on a gold platter to explain why they can help better then their (socialist) pals. But for whatever reason, they've just played dead, and all they want to do is fear monger. Guess what? It isn't going to work this election. Talk about why RSO will take away money from the economy as a whole and they win, but for some reason they can't do that, and it's sad.

 

Like the way McCain wants to have taxpayers bail out the banks?

 

[HuskyCaucasian]

Obama Vindicated:

[BigSqwert]

McCain's attacks fuel dangerous hatred

 

By Frank Schaeffer

October 10, 2008

 

John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as "not one of us," I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.

 

At a Sarah Palin rally, someone called out, "Kill him!" At one of your rallies, someone called out, "Terrorist!" Neither was answered or denounced by you or your running mate, as the crowd laughed and cheered. At your campaign event Wednesday in Bethlehem, Pa., the crowd was seething with hatred for the Democratic nominee - an attitude encouraged in speeches there by you, your running mate, your wife and the local Republican chairman.

 

Shame!

 

John McCain: In 2000, as a lifelong Republican, I worked to get you elected instead of George W. Bush. In return, you wrote an endorsement of one of my books about military service. You seemed to be a man who put principle ahead of mere political gain.

 

You have changed. You have a choice: Go down in history as a decent senator and an honorable military man with many successes, or go down in history as the latest abettor of right-wing extremist hate.

 

John McCain, you are no fool, and you understand the depths of hatred that surround the issue of race in this country. You also know that, post-9/11, to call someone a friend of a terrorist is a very serious matter. You also know we are a bitterly divided country on many other issues. You know that, sadly, in America, violence is always just a moment away. You know that there are plenty of crazy people out there.

 

Stop! Think! Your rallies are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs.

 

John McCain, you're walking a perilous line. If you do not stand up for all that is good in America and declare that Senator Obama is a patriot, fit for office, and denounce your hate-filled supporters when they scream out "Terrorist" or "Kill him," history will hold you responsible for all that follows.

 

John McCain and Sarah Palin, you are playing with fire, and you know it. You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us. You are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations.

 

Change the atmosphere of your campaign. Talk about the issues at hand. Make your case. But stop stirring up the lunatic fringe of haters, or risk suffering the judgment of history and the loathing of the American people - forever.

 

We will hold you responsible.

 

Frank Schaeffer is the author of "Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back." His e-mail is [email protected].

 

LINK

[BigSqwert]

Former Republican Governor of Michigan William Milliken tells the Grand Rapids Press that he's "disappointed" in John McCain and the campaign he is running:

 

He endorsed John McCain in the presidential primary, but now former Republican Gov. William Milliken is expressing doubts about his party's nominee.

 

 

"He is not the McCain I endorsed," said Milliken, reached at his Traverse City home Thursday. "He keeps saying, 'Who is Barack Obama?' I would ask the question, 'Who is John McCain?' because his campaign has become rather disappointing to me.

 

"I'm disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign, when he ought to be talking about the issues."

[HuskyCaucasian]

damn your fast. i just read the headline fo the endorsement article 5 seconds ago, clicked on my Soxtalk tab and it was already posted!

[HuskyCaucasian]

Per CNN on Troopergate:

At their meeting today, Alaska lawmakers plan to vote to release the estimated 300-page report and some of the 1,000 or more pages of supporting documents. The 14-member legislative panel could recommend that the case be closed, that another committee continue to investigate or that the matter be referred to criminal investigators.

 

The vote is expected at Noon central time.

Edited October 10, 2008 by Athomeboy_2000

[HuskyCaucasian]

Per CNN on Troopergate:

 

 

The vote is expected at Noon central time.

Now this is spin:

Palin's lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, tried to preemptively discredit the report, telling the ADN that it won't be comprehensive because Branchflower didn't interview Palin or her chief of staff, Mike Tibbles.

 

"They didn't even try to interview the governor. You want to know why she reassigned Monegan, it would be nice to talk to her. They didn't even try," Van Flein said. "It's a report that's going to be half-done at best. And anything that's half-done will likely be half-baked."

 

They didnt interview her because she refused to be interviewed... claiming it was practically a witch hunt. And she'd know something about witch hunts

 

I think they are really worried about this. There is a TON of pre-report spin.

Edited October 10, 2008 by Athomeboy_2000