Uechi-Ryu.com

Well, I sort of meant that in a political sense rather than personally. She's a weird politician because she claimed she was stepping down in part because she wasn't "wired" to play the role of a lame duck. Yet every President is a lame duck at some point, and for a heck of of a long time if they get re-elected. People start using the term of the president nowadays after the mid-term election of their second term.

Personally, I like the chick. She's my age and she looks pretty good to me, too, but I don't want to see her on the Republican ticket for 2012. I don't want to see any of my friends on the ticket, either. They have their strengths, but I don't think any of them would make a good POTUS.

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Mike

Normally I'm not a Palin supporter. MILF? You bet - assuming I could get through the hair spray and the plastic personality. CEO of the world's most powerful economy? Not so much.

Given the Obamagasmic movement in the last presidential election, this tag on Palin just doesn't stick. We have a "community organizer" who served part of a term as senator and was best known for voting "present" who was viewed so glowingly by his admirers that socialists in Norway nominated him for the Nobel Peace prize when he had been in office for one (1) month.

Meanwhile... Have you been following Obama's Asia trip? He has accomplished nothing (zero, zilch, nada) and has been disrespected by leader after leader. The world now sees that the king is an empty suit who was used by his opposition to get a historic swing in Congress.

And yet Palin has no experience? One day in the governor's mansion is one more day of "executive" experience than what Obama brought to the oval office. Senators - particularly those who vote "present" - have no (zero, zilch, nada) executive experience. Legislative experience? It's a stretch, but I'll give him a few days' worth. Executive experience? Nope!

Walk a mile in her shoes before laying that label on her. Progressives found a way to use the legal system to destroy the leader of a movement they despised and feared. (Given the results of the last election, I'd say they had good reason to fear her.) Had she stayed on as governor, they would have brought the state of Alaska down with her. The end justifies the means you know...

I'm not a fan of putting MILFs in the oval office. But I'd vote for her just to pi$$ off those who use our legal system unethically. What recourse did she have other than to save the state of Alaska by walking? Please, please tell me. I really want to know.

I was no more a fan of this than I was of other forces who chose to drag the office of the presidency into soap opera territory as a means to an end over Whitewater. Diddled an intern in the Oral Office? Yup! Would I have gotten fired for the same thing? You might find it interesting to see what happened to a high-ranking Wellpoint/Anthem executive who was getting his share of pootang on the side. We in industry have required ethics training on a yearly basis, and are threatened with the door if we put our company in a bad light. But hey, he was the philanderer in chief, and a soap opera nation had inquiring minds. Lied to Congress? Yup! He lied about HIS SEX LIFE. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!!! My business? Not so much. A reason to cause Clinton to be a distracted driver while al qaeda was busy plotting? No. Just what did this ridiculous vendetta accomplish? Very little good. Wild Willie is back preaching to the masses and who knows what else. (I really don't want to know.) The "victim" wife is Secretary of State. And many of his enemies got dragged down in the battle. And then there's that 9/11 thing...

Back to lurking.

- Bill

Did somebody here say she had no experience? Wasn't me. I thought Obama didn't have enough experience, either. That's one of the reasons why I didn't vote for him (it sure wasn't because I liked McCain). I'm pointing out here that voters didn't give experience enough weight in the last presidential election. The Republican party probably can't count on the swing voters to set that issue aside as easily now as they did then.



What label? First of all, I don't think she is an unethical politician in any sense. She was beset with (almost all) frivolous lawsuits, true. She fought the lawsuits one by one, but she couldn't get the ethics law revised to limit abuses? Secondly, I'm not politician. No high-ranking politician I know of would even be able to walk in my shoes on an average day. I don't ask them to. There's no point in it. What I ask them to do is solve political problems that need to be solved, and probably a lot of them that do get solved, I wouldn't have been able to. I'm sure I wouldn't always want to know how it's done, but failure is failure. Whether it was unavoidable failure is generally unknowable from where I sit. I acknowledge the information that we have, but I think it hardly proves that a more skillful politician would also have failed.

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Mike

Pray tell, how on earth did she fail?




The treasury of the state of Alaska was spared a raping by Progressive-backed trial lawyers.

And then...





As they say, payback's a beach.

What failure???

My guess is that you don't quite understand this metaphor. That's odd for a martial artist of our making.



One can only guess what might have been had Willie decided to take a step back rather than extend the hard-headed conflict with Kenneth Star et al. I've already spoken of at least one major blow our country suffered from that. (Not that I'm excusing his tormentors)

Political thinkers and historians wiser than yours truly have written that the best way to achieve fiscal restraint is to have a lame Democrat president and a fiscally conservative, opposition party Congress. If we aren't already there, we're damn close to it.

Oops... there goes that yin-yang thing again.

What failure?

- Bill

Are you serious? She failed to complete her term as governor. I do understand the excuses for this failure.

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Mike

I'm only surprised you can't see it, Mike.

But people see what they want to see.




People see what they want to see.

- Bill

So, you're saying that Palin is poised to be elected president in 2012?

You're, right, I don't see her winning the Republican nomination. Don't worry that I'll be embarrassed if it happens. It may not even be the only time that particular day.

But there have to be a dozen Republicans I'd rather see and would vote for first in the primary. Am I weird?

Now, do I think a Republican who is not Sarah Palin could win in 2012? Sure. It's tough to beat an incumbent, but a jobless recovery, let alone another recession, makes for a hostile environment to incumbents.

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Mike

No I never said that. I never implied that.

Pailin is a highly polarizing figure. And unlike another individual with similar views from the past (Ronald Reagan), she doesn't have the same marvelous ability to communicate with the common (wo)man. I don't (yet) know if that will change.

Palin may or may not choose to run in 2012. I don't know what goes on in her brain. I'm sure she isn't ruling the possibility out. Given how badly Obama is stinking things up, you gotta wonder if a lot of people aren't eying that Republican ticket. But he'd have to pull a Jimmy Carter (stagflation, world humiliation) to make Palin electable in the oval office.

I AM saying that Palin is far more qualified to be in the oval office than Obama. But then that's like saying Cruella de Vil would win a beauty contest against Medusa. The point in bringing it up is to ridicule Obama supporters who claim Palin has no experience. Only governors, mayors, and CEOs have executive experience. Palin's done two out of the three. Obama didn't even finish a single term in the legislative branch of government. Legislators are not executives. It didn't take long to expose "the chosen one" as a silver-tongued empty suit.

Palin can however be a formidable force in politics along the lines of a Newt Gingrich. Maybe not as smart, but possibly as effective in shoring up a base and being a voice for a movement. As an occasional or permanent contributor to myriad media outlets, she could torment the PBS/NPR/CNN crowd for years to come. They don't "get" Sarah, and yet her supporters love her. That's the maddening part of it all for them.

- Bill

Sorry. It was the only way I could see to connect your response to me with what I myself wrote and implied. Indeed, I agree with you, so maybe you misinterpreted/over-interpreted me somewhere back there.

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Mike

You mean like this?

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Life begins & ends cold, naked & covered in crap.

That's a start.

Jimmy Carter faced a defiant OPEC and an Iran which ousted a US-backed dictator and held an entire US Embassy hostage. And by the way, an attack on a US embassy is an attack on US sovereign territory.

Carter's response to OPEC was to tell the US that we should be more humble. Riiiggghhtttt. That went over well. Gasoline prices quintupled, and we had lines and assigned days at the gas pump. The Japanese and German auto industry capitalized on the change. Honda, Datsun (Nissan), VW, and Toyota blossomed. Detroit stumbled. Remember the VW Rabbit? Van is happily driving one of its many offspring. Remember the Civic? Ditto with my son. Detroit put the muscle car in mothballs and came up with... the Pinto and the Vega.

The blow left a permanent mark.

GM is now Government Motors. It took Carter's years to start the hemmorhage. Full system shock happened under Obama. And when it came time to recast how we build cars here (tell Union labor to find another job), Obama just caved in to those who got him in office.

It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Carter attempted an Iran hostage rescue and that resulted in a helicopter crash in the desert far from the point of attack. Iran's leader was shown picking over the remains of US soldiers (abandoned by us) and ridiculing the US for their attempt.

Not surprisingly we went into a recession. But the insult to injury was hyperinflation in the middle of that recession.

His own party challenged him with Teddy Kennedy's vigorous run for the nomination. Carter put Kennedy in a straight jacket (kicked his ass in Jimmy's own words) by admonishing us all we couldn't talk about the Iran hostage crisis because we might screw things up by doing so.

I still remember the mess. In the early part of it I helped win a contract for my geology/geochemistry company to explore the entire US for trace radiation AND to analyze those samples for 26 other elements while we had them. Ultimately the stagflation was a big reason why I decided to hunker down and borrow to educate myself (to PhD) until the economy recovered. Why more businesses don't do that (actually INVEST in R&D during down times) is beyond me. But then one good thing about recessions is they kill bad businesses.

And they also end the political aspirations of ineffective leaders.

Obama isn't quite there. Yet... But he's tempting fate. That hopey changey sheet don't fly when it hits the pocketbook.

Jimmy Carter was and still is a very intelligent human being with a big heart. But he suks as a leader. It was The Presidency on lupron.

- Bill

Hey, Bill, if the liberals go nuts and nominate someone to the left of Obama, and the Tea Partiers dominate the Republican nomination, do you think the country will steer hard to the left, or to the right? Or do you think 2012 might actually be the year America declares a pox on both their houses?

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Life begins & ends cold, naked & covered in crap.

Jason

First... Folks constantly want to view the political spectrum as one-dimensional. Now more than ever, the two-dimensional spectrum appears to be getting a voice. This is the classic Nolan Chart which explains it all.



Given that I'm a big fan of Thomas Jefferson, you can see how irritated I get when someone tries to classify me as "left" or "right."

Democratic "blue dogs" can be found in that TJ area of the political spectrum. I call that libertarian leaning; others call that classic liberal. They are fiscial conservatives and social liberals. Many of them got creamed in this last election. And why is that? I'm thinking that independents who tend to be more fiscally conservative and socially ambivalent punished them for falling in lock step with ObamaCare. The remaining Democrats are the modern liberals who will continue to get elected because they come from areas like San Francisco.

Meanwhile Rand Paul is the face of the Tea Party movement, and guess what? He falls right in that Jeffersonian region of the 2-D spectrum. You aren't going to be hearing him rant on about prayer in school, abortion, or enforcing drug laws. As Bill Clinton's team used to preach when they beat GW Bush, "It's the economy, stupid!" Clinton also got spanked in his first mid-terms. And why? HillaryCare. Once he got elected, Bill strayed from the philosophy which got him there. But the reason for his future success was because he FAILED at his version of a health care monstrosity. That gave him the freedom to finish the rest of his 6 years as a Blue Dog.

Obama's biggest problem is that ObamaCare passed. It's especially problematic because it got rammed through with no (zero) votes from the opposing party. Now he's stuck with it until it gets challenged in the Supreme Court. All those who had their hands on it will themselves be in danger of losing their seats.

If what remains of the Democratic party is this Pelosi-loving trash and the Republicans throw out a classic social conservative (e.g. "Far right"), independents (who swing elections) may indeed swing to a wild card candidate who gets the mantra that Clinton's team preached. Priorities are priorities. Independents will vote for an array of candidates as long as they understand that the average voter is hurting economically. To them, everything else is a distraction and a reason to punish representatives of the classic parties who don't get it.

That's my view on things anyhow. Time will tell.

- Bill

Bill, I'd just like to say how amusing it is to me that the loudest of those who are currently looking for personal and group security/safety from expression or action that one considers improper, are so heavily found on the Left (NAACP/Race groups, GLBT groups, anyone who screams racist/homophobic/teabagger at the slightest challenge to their social agenda).

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Life begins & ends cold, naked & covered in crap.

Politics knows some strange bedfellows. But yes, Jason, you are correct. Only a multi-dimensional view of the spectrum can illustrate how this could be.

Sometimes when people who hold such feelings are presented with the metaphorical mirror, their reaction is "Eeeeuuuu!!!!!!!" Sometimes... And then sometimes they remain just like the intolerant parents they thought they broke away from. In these cases the apple never seems to fall very far from the tree.

- Bill