Andrew Sullivan needs help!
Here is Andy’s stunning reason for why the Press has not followed him down the dark pit of insanity: It’s because the media is all about maximizing ratings by not causing offense.
Hello, Andy? It’s reality calling. It misses you.
The Media has maximized their ratings simply by dropping the P-Word at every turn, including any story that would probably be considered offensive to Palin or her family.
The cable news rivals (and the print media) all agree on one thing: Palin brings viewers (or readers). Whether you love her, hate her, are annoyed by her, or are curious about her, an awful lot of people want to hear the latest Palin story.
She is the most talked about marginal political player at the national level since…..well, who? She is an irresistible Boogy Man to the liberals, and an attractive departure from the political old guard for the Conservatives. Call her a guilty pleasure for all those who enjoy watching liberals froth at the mouth regarding her, yet would never consider voting for her as a Presidential candidate.
Let’s be serious. Most polls have her consistently lagging well behind several other Republican options. Most Conservative politicians pointedly talk all around her viability as a Presidential candidate. Her folksy, but repetitive, dialogue and inch-deep generalizations about current events and policy leaves most potential voters suspcious.
Yet her name is like catnip to those who love her and those who despise her. Including those in the media. So they will continue to search out and publicize every nugget from either Crazy Palin or Real American Palin, until the next Big Thing comes along. And yes Andy, that would include a story about Palin being a Delusional Baby-Switch Conspirator with her daughter. If there was even a whiff of truth to it.
But there isn’t.
So the public will have to mollify itself with the latest stories of Palin adoration or Palin embarrassment, from a media machine that is anything but reserved when it comes to trumpeting the latest Palin nugget to a hungry audience.
April 22nd, 2010 at 12:42 am
I’d disagree with your take on Andrew Sullivan’s stupid article, i.e. Andrew’s quote in your first paragraph does not stand on its own, and may even fail in the broader context . However, it needs to be considered in the broader context he lays out of how she is managing her image (arguably most unsuccessfully) and how Fox’s exclusivity may be playing along. Whether that’s fully accurate or not, it seems that the link Andrew provided at the start of his article belies your interpretation of what Andrew is saying ( http://spectator.org/archives/2010/04/19/the-problem-with-palin/print )
Are selected medical records of candidates in the USA normally released by candidates to settle accusations? I don’t think we’d do that in Canada.
As for the delusional baby-switch conspirator angle, what were the “relevant” & “legitimate questions of fact, and that the press decided that it would never ask” but instead would “ostracize and ridicule those who did [ask]”, according to Andrew (and confirmed by Craig’s own post above.) I could use a good laugh.
April 22nd, 2010 at 12:50 am
Never mind, the questions were easy enough to find: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/things-that-mak.html
Strange, they don’t sound that silly. Is it true that they were never answered properly?
April 22nd, 2010 at 6:38 am
I actually think she has a pretty good shot at becoming the R nominee. She’s adored by the Tea Party and the conservative base and gets them pretty fired up. If she can sharpen her debate and interviewing skills, yes, I think she has a pretty good shot.
April 22nd, 2010 at 8:50 am
I know we are still a ways away, but really, who else is there? Romney? he is capable but he just can’t seem to get people excited. The guy from Louisiana isn’t pretty enough, Jingle? Jindal, can’t remember. And then who are the D’s going to use? Hillary? Could the first woman president be assured?
April 22nd, 2010 at 10:50 am
From what I understand it’s Romney’s religous beliefs that seem to be holding him down. Which really is a shame. That Jindal guy has about as much charisma as a wet paper bag, I think that’s his problem. I think people in the R party were just looking to him right after the 2008 election because he had brown skin. I don’t hear too much about him these days.
Seriously I think she could get it. I might actually go throw 20 bucks on it for the heck of it. The odds most gambling sites are giving her make it worth a try!
April 22nd, 2010 at 11:18 am
For the reasons Craig stated she should make it interesting. Do you think she has had enough exposure to make her a little more bullet proof with personal issues? for instance the grandchild, is there any more traction to be gained by Democrats there or will they need fresh dirt? (which I am sure she will provide)
April 22nd, 2010 at 12:40 pm
I think so…
Forgetting for a moment that I mostly despise what she says, I’ve always thought she was a pretty good speaker and can definitely get a crowd pumped up. She’s youthful and energetic but she just lacks substance, in my book. Like I said I think she really needs to sharpen her interview and debating skills but she has time to do that.
April 22nd, 2010 at 12:54 pm
NL, where I disagree is that if she hasn’t been able to “sharpen” her interview and debating skills by now it just is not going to happen. It might be possible to teach her to not talk if she is not sure of the right answer, but it’s not likely.
April 22nd, 2010 at 1:25 pm
I disagree Knarly, I think you can definately learn those skills, and most of what is learned is just what you said, not talking when you don’t know the answer, something the VP, what ever his name is, hasn’t learned. She can learn and is doing what is required, getting a lot of stage time. I saw Liz Dole speak once, she gave a wonderful off the cuff speech, making everyone in the room a 10,000 feel she was talking to you alone. I found out later she practiced her speeches so well that she gave them exactly the same each time, to the point her staff said they sometimes thought they were watching a replay. Now that doesn’t make them qualified to be Pres but as we have seen with Obama it is enough to mobilize enough people to get elected.
a lot will depend on Obama’s poll numbers as the election gets closer and how we (Rs) do in the mid terms. If we do well and Obama is doing well we may use a throw away candidate.
April 22nd, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Biden, that’s it!
April 22nd, 2010 at 1:39 pm
I see what you’re saying knarly, in order to sharpen those skills she’ll have to practice. Right now she doesn’t allow questions at her events or from reporters. It’ll be hard to learn if you don’t get real world practice. Especially if she has to go up against Obama who is probably the best off the cuff question taker I’ve ever seen.
April 22nd, 2010 at 4:08 pm
NL, well yes, that too but mostly all I’m saying is Palin has already been groomed extensively, besides all her practice at the state level.
Wasn’t the training and practice during her post on the McCain ticket as intense, rigorous and as extensive and professional as can be had anywhere in the world? You could put her through “training and practice” again, like putting a dirty stained diaper in the wash/spin/dry cycle again with more bleach, but at the end of it all you would only have a diaper.
A diaper is not formal wear.
Palin is an ignoramus, her capacity to learn is minimal. She’s a nicely rounded lump of coal rather than a diamond and she’s not even a diamond in the rough.
April 23rd, 2010 at 6:36 am
LOL. You starting to compete with shcb for the best analogies?
But we have to remember that Dubya was elected… twice.
April 23rd, 2010 at 8:46 am
And Obama once.
April 23rd, 2010 at 9:03 am
Ha! Say what you want about his policies and political beliefs but you have to admit he’s very smart and can articulate himself and handle questions very well.
Bush could barley string a coherent sentence together and mangled the English language almost daily. Palin, when not reading from prepared remarks, or her palm :) lacks any substance at all.
That was my point.
April 23rd, 2010 at 9:51 am
He is very smart, and he can articulate himself, that is a fact. He doesn’t handle questions well. Bush handled questions better than Obama. he just wasn’t good at giving prepared talks. Obama can skate around questions well, so it looks like he is answering but he really lacks much knowledge, much like Palin, and like Obama, she can learn that skill. To have someone that actually can answer a question well you have to look to someone like Newt, as you say, you may not like what he is saying but he knows the subject matter and can answer. Bill Clinton and Reagan were two that could really do it all, at least they could by this point in their presidency, they were a little clunky in the beginning. Those two could give a great speech, answer questions, and sell the product all at the same time, they were good.
April 23rd, 2010 at 10:08 am
I agree with most of what you’re saying except I do think Obama handles off the cuff questions very well. His appearence at the GOP retreat proves that. He schooled them.
April 23rd, 2010 at 11:10 am
I’m not saying he is bad at it, to the contrary, he is very good, there are just some that are better. What I see is he is good at reciting things he has memorized and very good at tiptoeing around things he doesn’t know. This art form is typical of congressmen, I think it is just because of the way they debate on the floor and the limited scope of bills they are involved in. Governors seem to be better at answering a broader range of questions since the job requires it, which is probably why most of our presidents come from the ranks of governors. They are better at giving more generalized answers. Of course by now a president has had a couple years experience so he will naturally get better, he will become more like a governor.
Bush just never mastered the teleprompter, Clinton and Obama did, and it was a natural for Reagan since he grew up with cue cards. Bottom line is I think Palin has the potential to be every bit as good as Obama, whatever that means. I’m just not sure if I want another good looking silver tongued devil, I think I would rather have someone that understands the issues and can’t put a sentence together to save his/her soul, but that won’t get you elected.
April 23rd, 2010 at 11:42 am
Yeah, we don’t have a very good selection of leaders up here right now either. Actually that might even be sugar coating it lol.
April 23rd, 2010 at 12:50 pm
I think it shows we should appreciate the good ones better, they may only come along once a lifetime
April 23rd, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Fox’s “exclusivity” is a very recent event, and is hardly a reason for any limitations of the press to be able to report on her or her actions. There isn’t a day that goes by that all the cable news networks don’t mention Palin or some apparent revelation regarding her or her family. Just how many sensationalized news stories have to be created regarding her, from the Fall of 2008 until now, before this “media cocoon of protection” theory of Andrew’s can be put to sleep for good? Regardless of what people think about her, no one can say that there has been any political figure today who has been scrutinized both personally and professionally on a daily basis more than her (and including her family).
Not that she deserves sympathy. She uses the media as much as they use her. Each for their own purposes.
Andrew’s “silent media” argument is laughable. He’s really only concerned that his frevent belief of Palin being a psycho baby-switch conspirator has not been taken as seriously has he wants it to be. Dozens of reporters and professional political operatives have chased down every bit of potentially embarrassing information on the Palin’s since she was named a VP candidate. That includes all the rag magazines. That also includes ferreting info from personal and political enemies.
Levi Johnston alone has the motive and the inside knowledge to expose plenty of bombshells, including whether a special-needs baby that he conceived with Bristol was secretly taken as her own by Sarah. The best that Levi can do is suggest that Sarah offered to raise Tripp as her own child. Its a very short walk from that accusation to saying, “just like she did with Trig, who Bristol gave birth to”. But he didn’t. Why make one wacky accusation without connecting it to the other? Simply not logical.
Palin and Obama won’t give in to their own set of nutty birthers for the same reasons: responding to their requests makes it look like they have a reasonable point; anything they provide will be dismissed as a fake; and all the rest of the population who never gave the situation any thought would now begin to wonder why Obama or Palin felt the need to provide any proof.
Here is my take on why Palin prefers to not shed any more light on Trig’s birth: She choose to fly home from Texas to Alaska during the very early stages of going into labor. Some could argue that flying in such a late stage of pregnancy could have been too risky for the child and the mother. Especially a special-needs baby. It could be politically damaging to her “every life is sacred” stance if the spin could be made that she took an unsafe risk to her unborn child by insisting on flying home.
So, the less talk about Trig’s birth and the rumours surrounding it, the better.
April 23rd, 2010 at 4:01 pm
craig, you must not be a father: Super Sarah’s water broke in Texas. Any rational person would have gone to the hospital. Immediately. You risk infection once the amniotic sack is breeched. Instead she went on to give a speech. Then she boarded a flight and went to CO (I think?) and gave another speech. Did she then go to the hospital and deliver the baby? Nope. Flew to Alaska. Did she get off the plane and head to the big city hospital? Nope. She went all the way back to her local provider… no offense, but this was her, what 4th, 5th kid? (did she already know about his downs syndrome, probably). And yet she can just hold the kid in all day after her water broke? It goes to judgement and the choices people make… bad choices, bad judgement. Please keep this trash-talkin snowbilly loon as far away from The Button as possible.
Unbelievable.
Obama’s provided his state approved birth certificate. There are two newspaper accounts from the era with his birth announcement in the papers! He is an American by birth: his mother is American. Give it up already crazy folk!
Hey craig/malkin, how are you doing on your The Very Big List of Left Wing Violence and Murder? wwnj had nothing… you?
Personally I hope you wwnjs run her in 2012, it’ll be a laugh and a half!
And assure Obama of a second term (IND voters like me think she is completely unqualified for higher office).
April 23rd, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Actually she gave her speech in Texas, left immediately after, had a flight change in Seattle, conferred with her doctor, and flew on to Alaska.
There was no Colorado speech.
But as I said, she took a risk by flying home. That is why she would rather not have her decision reexamined by the public or the press by calling attention to her “birthers”.
April 24th, 2010 at 10:57 pm
Conferred with her Dr.? Really? And still she decided to make the 8 hour trip back, on an airline that has a rule against women in their third trimester flying?
April 25th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
According to Palin and her doctor, they talked about it while she was in Texas, and again during a flight change in Seattle.
Actually, I don’t believe that Alaska Airlines (who she flew back home with) has any specific restrictions on allowing a late-term pregnant woman to fly.
Again, not a choice I would have been in favor of if it were my wife, but so be it.
April 25th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
On their website Alaska Airlines has no policy to restrict later term flying. However they will not allow a woman to board a flight whose water has broke.
Her doctor told her it was okay to take an 8 hour flight (ten hour trip) after her water broke with her 5th baby? Really? I doubt that.
Also, once a woman has had a baby or two the delivery times are reduced way, way down.
Why didn’t she tell the airline flight attendants? Was she afraid they’d tell her to “get the freakin’ hell off this plane you crazy woman!”
April 26th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
According to her doctor and Palin, in statements around the time of Trig’s birth, and in Palin’s book, they did indeed consult over the phone regarding the situation.
The Palin’s clearly did not want to deliver the baby anywhere but in Alaska. The fact that her water was beginning to leak was only revealed when her father happened to mention it to the press. I’m sure that Sarah didn’t intend for that fact to be made public because, a) it was a bit too personal of information than what the public needed to know, plus, b) it would possibly invite questions from the public and the press on why she chose to fly and possibly endanger her special-needs baby.
As I said before, such questions could be uncomfortable for a politician who is pro-life.
April 27th, 2010 at 12:51 am
Yes, the story is that she consulted her doctor. That was not my question. My question was:
Nice try though, Craig.
Also, nice try with your “…why she chose to fly and possibly endanger her special-needs baby,” Craig. There was no “possibly”, it was clearly a decision that endangered her baby, and gravely too; and the rationale is typical Palin – incomprehensible.
Here’s what an OBGYN’s would say:
“the Dish asked several distinguished OB-GYN specialists from some of the top hospitals and medical schools in the country what they would advise any woman in such a position to do. As you might expect, every doctor urged that any woman whose water has broken or whose amniotic fluid may be leaking in the eighth month of pregnancy should immediately seek medical attention. If your water breaks at 4 am, with a special needs child, you call for an ambulance. Period. This isn’t a judgment call. It’s an emergency. The least you should do is get the fluid tested and your potential labor checked out.”
And here’s what the Anchorage Daily News reported on April 22, 2008:
Palin did not ask for a medical OK to fly, the doctor said. Wow, that Doctor is certainly covering her own ass.
(FYI – Only after the fact, after Palin took all the risks did her OBGYN make the statement: ‘”I don’t think it was unreasonable for her to continue to travel back,” Baldwin-Johnson said.’ A statement for which the good doctor may never earn back the respect of her colleagues.)
Aaah, but Craig says the consult to fly is also in the Book! So it must be true…
whole thing here: http://sarahpalintruthsquad.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/beware-the-powerful-fantasy-world-of-sarah-palin/
April 27th, 2010 at 12:57 am
So I don’t see anything anywhere that states her Doctor told Palin it was Okay to fly, in fact her Doctor denies being asked by Palin to give a medical approval to fly.
And just for fun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgWqz95JDcU&feature=player_embedded
So if this is the best the Republicans have to offer, by all means let her run in 2012! I could use the entertainment.
April 27th, 2010 at 5:35 am
And none of us have ever done anything as silly as driving through a snow storm to get somewhere when it would have been smarter to stay where we were? We take calculated ricsk in our lives.
April 27th, 2010 at 9:26 am
False comparison.
April 27th, 2010 at 9:59 am
I think what her supporters need to be asking is where is all the money going from her PAC? According to records, she spent most of it – hundreds of thousands – on consultants and private jets, clothes, fancy hotels and has only given about $10,000 to actual candidates. It might actually be much lower than that.
Seems to me she’s playing her followers for fools and using their donations to live the high life instead of what she says she’s going to use the money for. I know if I donated any money to her she’d be getting a pretty nasty email from me right about now. Good lord no wonder she quit her job as gov she’s making a killing off of the sheep who follow blindly behind her.
April 27th, 2010 at 10:12 am
Why is it a false comparison? I’ve put my kids at risk before, luckily it all worked out, it also all worked out because I calculated the risk and decided it was worth the risk. I have also been in situations where I didn’t do something because my kids would be in more risk than I was comfortable with, a risk I would have taken had they not been there.
April 27th, 2010 at 11:03 am
Palin witheld a material fact from the airline that she knew, or ought to have known, was her obligation to advise about and which would be critical in whether Alaska airlines would allow her on to the airplane. Withholding material facts = lies.
When risks of a snowstorm on a highway are excessive, highways are closed to prevent idiots from unnecessarily “placing their lives in the hands of God.”
If one proceeds into a snowstorm and conditions worsen, one can pull over and wait it out. Air flight is nothing like that. By getting on the plane, Palin had set the ball rolling on a path with no low cost “outs”. Had the labour intensified, NO adequate medical attention to deal with the special needs baby was available when needed, she had removed her baby from the safety of medical care. The plane would have to be diverted, hundreds of people would have been seriously inconvenienced or worse. Her boarding the airplane was off the scale of selfishness. And recklessness.
And the pros / cons that went into that decision? Care to justify her taking the risks for us shcb, with a full accounting of her decision to take a 8 hour flight / 10 or more hour trip? I could use a laugh.
Hers was not the act of a maverick, but rather the act of an idiot.
April 27th, 2010 at 11:47 am
Sure I’ll justify it, she thought she could make it and she did. I don’t think the kid being “special needs” is pertinent here, the kid doesn’t become “special” for a couple years with his ailment as far as I know. What she did certainly opens her self to criticism and you are justified in criticizing her, I just wanted to put it in perspective.
I drove home from the lake in our motor home pulling a boat with 5 of the 8 wheel studs broken once, we made it. I helped a lady on a busy interstate once with my daughter sleeping in the back seat of the car, what if she had woke up and decided to get out of the car, she didn’t wake up, everything was fine, she’s now married with 2 and a half kids. I had a friend that pulled to the side of the road to look at an eagle and a lady rear ended his truck and killed him, he took every precaution and lost his life. Palin gambled and won, most of us do it, sometimes we lose but if we are smart we usually don’t.
April 27th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
shcb, you fail. We’re talking about her decision making capability, not her luck. If you can’t understand the difference I see no reason to waste my time with you.
Again, what risks did she incur to herslf and others, and for what gain?
No, she lost. Lost credibility, for reasonable people, that risk was a big stinking black mark against her. For examples, take a look at all those online community discussion forums relating to children or birthing.
FYI – what you “think” is not relevant. The fact is that special needs babies are especially vulnerabe to oxygen deprivation during child birth, that’s just one reason that the best medical facilities are critical. Any delays or complications during delivery can be dealt with by the proper facility and with experienced OBGYN’s present, don’t deal with it and the mental handicap is magnified or the brain dies. Surely her Doctor told her that when they discussed the matter?
April 27th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
shcb, as for your examples, here’s some advice: don’t run for public office.
April 27th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
as usual it is interesting to see the differences in our thought processes
I don’t think there is a pass/fail here, just different opinions.
April 27th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
oh, shcb, been meaning to tell you… watched the race with the old man on Sunday (well I seen that last few laps), great finish! and the gordon/johnson drama was pretty good too. now if they’d have more of that i’d def watch more lol.
April 27th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
watch Richmond Saturday night, it’s a fast short track under the lights. I was bummed Sunday when my guy Newman crashed, but that is what happens when you pick a guy.
the funny part is Gordon is part owners in Johnson’s car, but when you’re that competitive…
April 27th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
shcb,
I see. In your opinion it doesn’t matter how much someone’s poor choices jeapardize other people, as long as they get away with it.
To extend your analogy, you also would think it was also okay if Palin decided instead of the airplane that she would drink a gallon of whiskey and drive herself to Alaska through a blizzard, just as long as she thought she could make it and she did.
http://www.madd.org
April 27th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
No of course not, there are limits, If she decided to have two beers and drive herself to Alaska that would be ok, the risk is manageable. Toss in the blizzard and it becomes less manageable but not insurmountable, make it a bottle of whiskey and it is unmanageable in any weather. She had kids before, she thought she knew her body, as it turns out she did. She weighed the pros and cons, having the baby with her husband and kids was a priority, the possible, underline possible, inconvenience of the other passengers was also a priority it was just way down the list. If she had popped the other kids out after a couple hours of labor all the priorities would have changed and so would have her decision, or if this was her first kid.
But yes the fact that she didn’t have the kid on the plane, the fact that the plane landed without any interruption or inconvenience to the passengers and no ill effects on the kid or her does count. She took a chance and it worked out, good for her. Teddy Roosevelt was shot, determined the bullet didn’t hit his lungs because he was a hunter not because he was a doctor, he finished giving the speech and then got medical treatment, was that reckless? Of course, but it worked out ok. Maybe you have never taken a chance in your life so this is all foreign to you but most of us take chances all the time.
But as I said, this is certainly in the area where speculation and criticism is warranted, it just needs to done in a rational manner. If you look at my motor home incident on the face it is crazy to drive a vehicle in that condition, but when you look at all I did and that particular situation and the options available, coupled with the discussions with my wife and kids before we started it was a manageable risk, but it was a risk, and one not everyone would make. That is why God gave us fee will.
April 27th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
So the outcome doesn’t always justify the risks taken. Seems we just disagree on the degree of risk to which she exposed her baby and the other airline passengers.
I also say she as much as lied to get on the plane, the airline should have had a say in whether they would take the risk of her flying while going into labour. Who would pay the costs if the plane needed to be diverted?
Maybe you have more information than me, can you say how long was she in labor with her previous kids based on anything that records or witnesses have substantiated? (Her word is dirt, she’s a brazen liar.) Or how well that predicts the term of the next child if that next child is ONE MONTH premature? Sounds awfully risky to me just to change a birth state.
As for the general theme of your last post, it makes sense, but I think you’ve missed a heck of a lot of my earlier points. I take far more risks than “normal” people and am extremely lucky but also have plenty of scars and old injuries to prove my risk taking. Still, I wouldn’t risk the death of an unborn child for an issue of pride, although it would be tempting in order to avoid the enormous burden of raising a special needs kid… maybe that tipped the scale of her weighing the pros and cons of the flight.
Sooo, how’s that big list of pro’s and con’s of Sarah’s reckless flight coming along? Surely you’re done with the pros by now. No? Here you go.
1. Born in state husband wants baby to be born in.
2. Will be with my OBGYN, family and friends (they couldn’t fly to Texas?)
3. Won’t have to travel after the delivery (or did she anyway?)
4. I’ll be a maverick.
Almost done with the con’s yet? Here’s a few to get you started, I’m sure there are many moreI haven’t thought about.
1. If labour progresses faster than I expect, the baby has a good chance of death or suffering a lifetime with more severe brain damage than if I stayed put.
2. If I go further into labour and can’t hide it anymore, the plane will need to be diverted costing hundreds of thousands of dollars
3. If I go into labour on the plane, hundreds of people will face major inconveniences and many will miss important events of their own family.
4. If I get caught, trying to board a plane while in labour it will reflect poorly on my judgement.
5. If I do not get caught, and get to a hospital in time, I’ll still sufffer criticism for putting my baby at such risk for such selfish reasons.
6. If my child is infected or more brain damaged than expected I could be blamed or held liable for contributing to his suffering by choosing to take a long flight during labour.
7. IF my baby dies, or suffers, I’ll be held to account for not asking my OBGYN for approval on whether to fly or not.
April 27th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
oops nearly forgot Pro #4 – if her baby dies, she will not have to be burdened by a special needs child. Please add that to your list.
April 27th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
“Nice try” Craig? Just what am I actively “trying” to do?
You act like I’m trying to give Palin a free pass! That is hardly the case.
I think that Palin basically told her doctor the situation, and that she really wanted to deliver the baby in Alaska. My guess is that she essentially told the doctor ‘unless you specifically tell me that I cannot get on a plane, I am going to do so. You don’t have to give me any official approval to fly, but I am going to fly’.
So, she consulted with her doctor. Her doctor didn’t specifically order her not to fly home. So she flew home, and her doctor had reasonable deniability if something happened.
Here is the crux: Did she take an insanely reckless risk, or a calculated one that many people would reasonably deem too personally risky for themselves?
There are some variances in professional opinion, due to the distance in which these ob/gyn’s are dispensing their advice.
This, from the same Sullivan article you used:
“Despite contractions and leakage of amniotic fluid/water breaking, labor had not begun. In fact, Palin later said that the labor had to be induced so that Trig was born around 29 hours after the original amniotic fluid leak/water breaking. This is remarkable given the fact that successive labors tend to be progressively shorter and shorter. A fifth child is usually delivered rather swiftly. But it is not impossible. From one OB-GYN specialist consulted by the Dish:
It’s very possible that it could take that long, especially if it was a small [amniotic fluid] leak. Again, there is something of a dividing line based on the gestational age and other complicating factors.”
Let me explain once again, and very s-l-o-w-l-y for some people:
I am not defending Palin’s actions as being perfectly reasonable. It isn’t a decision that I would be comfortable with for my own wife. I think Palin herself knows that her decision was one that could be open for criticism by many people. That is partly why she never volunteered that information herself. I never understood why her political enemies, who threw every other personal attack at her (both real and rumoured) during the campaign, never leveraged this issue. How could a Right to Life activist put her own baby at such risk, just to be sure he was born in Alaska? Isn’t every life sacred?
Sure seems like a awkward thing for her to have had to address.
Oh well……
Anyways, we have tread quite far from the point of my post, which was that Sullivan believes that the press has somehow been soft on her in order to maximize ratings by not causing offence to her.
Now THAT’S crazy!
April 27th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
That’s pretty much what I was going to say, I have no issue with anything you said Knarly, it’s just a matter of degree. If we took all your points and gave them a 1 to 10 scale of the risk level, and then gave them another 1 to 10 scale of priorities you, Sarah and me would have very different numbers. In the end you would have stayed where you were and the baby would have come over a day later and you would have been happy you didn’t take the chance, she was happy she did take that chance because of her priorities, I think it is enough of a wash I would have supported either of your decisions. But to Craig’s point, it isn’t near enough to disqualify someone from a job, any job. And the thing with Obama not being born here is similar, partisans are making a bigger deal out of it than it is in both cases.
April 27th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Craig, fine then you just seemed overly defensive and dismissive of any risk to the child – as if premature babies with Down’s syndrome were delivered on airplanes regularly with good results.
You give a much kinder speculation of what part of the conversation was like. I’d guess that Palin said to her Doc: “If I were to ask you whether it was safe for me to get on the plane now, I’m not asking but if I did ask that then what might you say?” The Doc would say that since the baby was a month premature then if labour progressed quickly the result would likely be disasterous. etc.
shcb, as you state, Palin would have ranked these as low risk or low prioirity and that makes many people aghast.
1. If labour progresses faster than I expect, the baby has a good chance of death or suffering a lifetime with more severe brain damage than if I stayed put.
2. If I go further into labour and can’t hide it anymore, the plane will need to be diverted costing hundreds of thousands of dollars
3. If I go into labour on the plane, hundreds of people will face major inconveniences and many will miss important events of their own family.
April 28th, 2010 at 5:01 am
from a practical standpoint most of the people that are aghast wouldn’t vote for her anyway. Even the pro lifers Craig is refering to will hold it against her, but in the end they will vote for her, I mean really, are they going to vote for a Democrat?
April 28th, 2010 at 6:54 am
A friend’s grandson did this for his spanish class project, I thought it was pretty good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPkNbFQitsI
has nothing to do with the subject at hand, just some mindless fun that they got a grade for.
April 28th, 2010 at 8:39 am
Ha! That was pretty good! I get a chuckle from that Slap Chop dude’s commercials.
I’ll probably be watching that race on saturday, my cousin is coming up for the Freedom March (for the decriminalization of cannabis) and he’s a big nascar buff so he’ll want to watch it, while we much out on junk food. so don’t blame me if i can’t remember any of the race ;)
April 28th, 2010 at 11:16 am
Oh, and since this post is about Palin somebody should ask her how that “drill, baby, drill” thingy is working out. More like “spill, baby, spill.”
Good to see the Obama admin approved that massive wind project off Massachusetts.
I’d like to see the cost comparison of exploring, drilling, building the infrastructre out in the ocean, the costs to clean up spills, operating and then the eventual tear down costs once the oil is gone of an offshore oil project versus building offshore wind turbines that will run forever (with routine maintenance and upgrades) and never cause even close to the amount of damage to the environment.
April 28th, 2010 at 11:54 am
That would be an interesting report, I’m sure both sides of the argument have done such studies :) my guess is like any emerging technology the wind isn’t even close to being as efficient and may be more destructive to the environment even with an occasional oil spill taken into account.
We’re working on some things now that are pretty cool, they are proprietary so I can’t say what it is but we are running into the problem that the technologies we are merging are so new that the end product is more novelty than a real solution but if you want to get above the curve you have to keep in front of the wave. With the progress they are making the real solution should be economically and practically realized in a few years, so we keep plugging away on our end.
April 28th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
NL,
shcb’s right, you should be able to find such studies.
The appealing part of oil is that after the well is drilled and future capping/cleanup costs are accounted for the earnings are still fantastic.
The Cantarell Oil Field in Gulf of Mexico cost approx. $5 bn to develop and produces 772,000 bopd for gross revenues at say $40/bbl for that crude would be about $30 million per day or $1 billion per year. So the overall investment (including capital reserves for end-of-life well capping & contingencies for environmental damages) would have about a 6 or 7 year payback period after which it’s all gravy for the next 20 years or so, hence the drill baby drill refrain.
If you want to get in on that action all you have to do is rent a rig in the Gulf to drill you a deep well, it’ll only cost about $500,000 per day to rent the rig.
The thing with wind etc. is that the power produced per day is not as enormous as what oil provides. So for the same $ investment the payback takes longer.
http://industry.bnet.com/energy/10004113/peak-oil-era-why-the-cost-and-risk-of-oil-exploration-will-keep-rising/?tag=content;selector-perfector
Gulf of Mexico wells cost $10 to $100 million or more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_well#Production
Another cool article about the science & costs of offshore drilling:
http://www.economist.com/science-technology/technology-quarterly/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15582301
April 28th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
NL,
shcb’s right, you should be able to find such studies.
The appealing part of oil is that after the well is drilled and future capping/cleanup costs are accounted for the earnings are still fantastic.
The Cantarell Oil Field in Gulf of Mexico cost approx. $5 bn to develop and produces 772,000 bopd for gross revenues at say $40/bbl for that crude would be about $30 million per day or $1 billion per year. So the overall investment (including capital reserves for end-of-life well capping & contingencies for environmental damages) would have about a 6 or 7 year payback period after which it’s all gravy for the next 20 years or so, hence the drill baby drill refrain.
If you want to get in on that action all you have to do is rent a rig in the Gulf to drill you a deep well, it’ll only cost about $500,000 per day to rent the rig.
The thing with wind etc. is that the power produced per day is not as enormous as what oil provides. So for the same $ investment the payback takes longer.
http://industry.bnet.com/energy/10004113/peak-oil-era-why-the-cost-and-risk-of-oil-exploration-will-keep-rising/?tag=content;selector-perfector
Gulf of Mexico wells cost $10 to $100 million or more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_well#Production
April 28th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Another cool article about the science & costs of offshore drilling:
http://www.economist.com/science-technology/technology-quarterly/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15582301
April 28th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
wow
just… wow
April 28th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Enky, you have to figure the unit of energy produced divided by the amount of raw material and energy to make the windmill/oil rig, amount of land used etc. You have to look at the whole picture not just a beautiful sunset behind a glistening wind farm in one picture and an oil covered duck in the other.
April 28th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
how does nuclear compare Knarly?
April 28th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
shcb, good question, and I agree that nuclear is tempting. However, I don’t know if an answer is possible because it is hard to quantify Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island even the leakages at Chalk River facility; plus I fear / suspect that as the number of N facilities increases the probability of another disaster increases more than a linear rate due to human complacency & diffusion of expertise amoungst facilities. Also, why there are nuclear power plants along the San Andreas fault (and other similar disaster prone areas in Japan and China) just blows my mind. Maybe Rumsfeld or Cheney had a hand in those decisions?
April 28th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Or one of Palin’s relatives?
April 28th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
I was just wondering if there was a comparison on the sites you were looking at
April 28th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
even if nuclear were the handsdown best decision from an ecconomic standpoint it doesn’t mean it’s the best decision but I would like to know how it compares. but not so much as to go look very hard :)
April 28th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Ontario hydro had a good Q&A on this but it’s 20 years out of date now, so the cute beaver is the highlight of their link now: http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/cnf_sectionC.htm
Nuclear is more expensive initially but cheap to operate. I don’t think the paybacks are as quick as oil investments, iirc investments in nuclear power plants typically have paybacks in the 15 – 20 year range but then they produce at a high rate for another 30 years. So there is a potential for huge losses if you invest big in nuclear and then alternative energy sources continue to decrease in cost…
The price of electricity required to cover costs for various sources of power are available from different sources (“levelized energy costs”). In looking at them I’m surprised that nuclear comes out so high, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_cost_of_electricity_generated_by_different_sources
But this seems like the best public comparison without looking to hard :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_development#Relative_cost_of_electricity_generated_by_different_sources
excerpt:
April 29th, 2010 at 6:47 am
I understand that oil rigs can produce huge profits, but not forever. I do know though, that the wind has been blowing on this planet for billions of years and if a windmill falls over in the ocean it wouldn’t be an environmental catastrophe. Same with the sun, pretty sure it’s been shining on this planet for billions of years as well. Ocean tides? All of these can be added into the mix and not spew crap into our atmosphere, like mercury and CO2 and they are sustainable – they never run out!
I also read an article recently on a company that’s using the warm water in the South Pacific and Caribbean to generate power. The water is very warm at the top but very cold several hundred metres down and they use that somehow to spin turbines. I’ll try to find it, it was pretty interesting.
April 29th, 2010 at 9:11 am
One thing to add to the nuke equation: what to do with all the waste (with half life that stretches into the tens or hundreds of thousands of years… ) Thorium based reactors might improve the nuke outlook, but with India selling them instead of US…
On the other hand, Bill Gates is excited about a new type of nuclear reactor that would eat spent conventional nuke waste as its fuel. Not sure about what by-products would be left, but if one of the smartest guys on the planet is interested there is probably something there.
We have to stop powering our civilization on burning rocks and gunk. Easy to put that on a bumper sticker, harder to not have the bumper (I can say that from experience, having given up one of our IC autos – waiting for the Leaf or Volt to come out – lots of biking and walking)
April 29th, 2010 at 9:55 am
shcb, I posted a response yesterday but it didn’t show up. Wiki has some great comparisons, scroll down a page to see “Relative cost of electricity generated by different sources” here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_development
but don’t overlook this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
April 29th, 2010 at 9:56 am
NL, Enk,
Of course those considerations are overwhelmingly key for reasonable people in choosing between energy options, however I was talking to shcb. He. like Craig, dismiss or can’t comprehend that it’s stupid to risk of getting on an eight hour flight while labour is starting during the eighth month of a pregnancy, so shcb is not likely to be concerned about radioactive materials with a half life of 100,000 years being trucked around the country and buried in holes for our ancestors to deal with.
Anyway, nuclear doesn’t stack up very well due to it’s high initial costs (making the economics highly dependent on capital assumptions) and long paybacks of up to 20 years (increasing the risk that alternative energy will become cheaper in the meantime and undercut demand / cost recovery of the nuclear investment)
Even a conservative consensus like wiki cites California, Australian and German studies that put nuclear in the same overall cost ballpark as geothrermal, hydro, wind, biomass, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelised_energy_cost
April 29th, 2010 at 10:15 am
A lot of good links there knarly, thanks!
April 29th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Returning for a moment to the palin delivery story: this was her, what? 4th or 5th child? she knew it was a special needs child? yet she takes a 8-10 hour journey by plane after her water broke?
Something fishy about that… either she isn’t the actual mother (can we see a DNA test if we show you Obama’s birth certificate – available on line btw) or she took some absolutely crazy risks.
Either way, it goes to judgement (or lack thereof).
Personally I pray every day that the wwnjs run her in 2012: it’ll be a cakewalk for Obama’s second term. Plus it’ll be the best season of The Daily Show ever. The debates would be entertaining as well.
April 29th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Enk, Not just special needs which would require immediate medical attention if there were even small complications with the delivery, but the llabour was a month or so premature virtually guaranteeing that special medical attention would be necessary.
So she takes the baby as far as possible away from that medical attention.
Obviously she cared more about her husband and his secessionist buds having a hissy fit if the child wasn’t born in Alaska than any conerns for the child.
April 30th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
Well it’s started, the oil spill is Obama’s Katrina. Why did it take so long for the government to act? Why aren’t they doing more? Why are they doing so much? Why are they only doing the wrong thing? Rush decided today that this is proof that Obama really doesn’t want the job of president, he just wants to change America, make it socialized, destroy free enterprise etc.
It looks like this was sabotage now, if you look at this picture right at the lower left corner you can see that the bubbles are upside down, a noted ocean scientist, F.H. Leghorn, says this is never found in nature but Biden was heading a super secret left wing faction of the CIA months before the inauguration that was developing the technology to suck oil from the pores of the well casing. The fire was all done on a green screen, there was never an oil platform there, only an old capped well. Here are official documents showing the well was capped just before the war of 1812. This is all being done so the lefty’s that have so heavily invested in green technologies can reap a huge profit. As we speak billions are being laundered through Icelandic off shore accounts, the “volcano” was a ruse to divert attention, in a short period of time we will be hearing that computers in Iceland have “failed to function” but we all know what that is code for. The cover up is just starting.
Now don’t ask me for citations, that was from my fertile mind (natural fertilizer of course, male bovine variety) first paragraph is most true.
May 1st, 2010 at 9:41 pm
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/04/30/sarah_palin_drill_spill and I bet she’s pregnant again too.
May 2nd, 2010 at 5:40 am
That’s just too funny, it was being towed to a SALVAGE YARD. Nothing like a little political opportunism.
May 2nd, 2010 at 3:59 pm
shcb, Yes, & totally unecessary in light of the BP saga unfolding.
I’ve never really thought of this before been though I’ve worked in the oil industry (e.g. when 17 as the new guy on the rig I cleared a 100 x 100 oil spill on on a well lease over the span of about a week using a shovel and a bucket, while the other guys snickered…) so the answer is undoubtably simple, but why can’t and armada of pumper ships suck up the oil off the surface and from the well hole and flow it into into holding tanks then spit out the seawater and reclaim the oil into a tanker ship?
oasat, bee scared … http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/02/food-fear-mystery-beehives-collapse
on the plus side, mason bees in our neck of the woods seem to be doing well.
May 2nd, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Stupid. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/no-evidence-of-taliban-link-to-suv-bomb-nypd/article1553799/
There’s also no evidence that Iraq, North Korea, or Iran have anything to do with this, as far as I can tell. Let’s see… amateur? bbq propane tanks? fertilizer? gas? alarm clocks with batteries attached as improvised detonators? Circumstantially it sounds like a tea party moran to me. Wait for better evidence, but I bet this is another wwnj out to kill leberals.
May 2nd, 2010 at 4:07 pm
anyone want another beer? I’m going in anyway…
May 2nd, 2010 at 4:44 pm
I’ve never been anywhere near an oil spill but I’ll take a stab at your technical question, my guess is that the oil is so dispersed by the time it gets to the surface that even though it is millions of gallons it is in billions or trillions of gallons of water and you just can’t effectively skim the oil, it isn’t until it reaches shore where it condenses again. I don’t know why they can’t shove a pipe over the top of the well head with a flexible hose and take most of it to the surface, a hundred by hundred foot steel box with a hole in the top. I’m sure we are just way oversimplifying the problem.
I read today the oil leaking was equal to two Olympic size pools, I don’t know if that was total or per day, but at any rate it doesn’t seem like a lot of fluid to somehow control.
May 2nd, 2010 at 5:50 pm
shcb, the oil dispersion must be the limiting facor, hence the booms to try to contain it so it can be mopped up. Volume Olympic pool = 660,000 us gal, by the way, them olympic sized pools are big. Dep horizon: “underwater oil well that’s gushing 42,000 gallons a day from the site of a wrecked drilling platform”
& dispersion:
“The oil spill already stretches across more than 1,800 square miles of water in the Gulf Of Mexico, ” So, basically that is a 1,800 square miler zone of death for flora or fauna crossing the ocean surface.
May 2nd, 2010 at 5:51 pm
it’s either type of dink more beer, can’t do both… cheers.
May 2nd, 2010 at 6:06 pm
“I don’t know why they can’t shove a pipe over the top of the well head with a flexible hose and take most of it to the surface, a hundred by hundred foot steel box with a hole in the top.”
I think there was talk of doing something similar to this (probably a bit more complex, but same basic idea). However, it may take a few months to implement properly.
They have been skimming some of the oil off the surface; however, I suspect the rate of the leak combined with the surface area of the spill has rendered this as little more than a delay tactic.
Another issue may have been the initial underestimation of the rate of the spill. I think the estimated rate of the leak increased by a factor of 5 after a few days.
May 2nd, 2010 at 6:36 pm
if anything good comes from this maybe they can make such a device and have a few handy. I wouldn’t think it would even have to be steel, some sort of cloth (high tech of course) like a big parachute with weights, maybe a tube 10 feet in diameter that just dumps into an open bottom ship. don’t know, thinking aloud.
I had heard they wanted to drill another hole to relieve the pressure but that was going to take months. In the future maybe we should already have that hole in the groound and tapped off a half mile away.
the double hulled tanker seems like such a simple idea now but someone had to think of it and someone had to force the oil companies to do it, yes you heard it from me, a proper use of government.
May 2nd, 2010 at 6:38 pm
Knarly, I know it is a lot of oil, I was just saying it doesn’t seem like it would be unworkable,
May 2nd, 2010 at 10:21 pm
yes… & drilling that second hole as a contingency ahead of time hmmm, it would almost double the cost of completing each deep sea well, hmmm no, I don’t think president Palin would go for mandating that kind of caution.
tube to the surface would need to be plenty tough to withstand subsurface currents and deal with the psi pressures of 5000 feet of ocean overhead. Wish it could work but if it was feasible they’d be all over that idea.
Hmmm, what would Palin suggest? I know! What about detonating several nuclear bombs around the well bore to seal off the hole? That’d work, you becha!
May 2nd, 2010 at 10:44 pm
hey, just learned they do drill those second wells as a contingency when working in Arctic waters, the industry started to lobby against doing so last fall:
May 2nd, 2010 at 10:52 pm
shcb – turns out they are “all over it”:
“But the biggest leak, at the end of the riser pipe, which Mr. Fryar said was the source of most of the spewing oil, cannot be shut off this way. The company intends to address that leak by lowering a containment dome over it and then pumping the oil to the surface. That effort is still at least six days away, Mr. Fryar said. Another containment dome, for the third leak, which is on the riser near the wellhead, would follow two to four days after the first. ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/us/03spill.html
May 3rd, 2010 at 5:09 am
well, there you go. If they can’t get the second hole in the same season they can put it in the second season, that seems a reasonable compromise, at least we are mitigating the problem. I think Palin has been for environmental regulations of the oil industry, she wants to drill for sure, but in a responsible way, I saying that from memory but I wouldn’t paint her with such a broad brush just because we are conservative and pro growth doesn’t mean we are stupid about it.
May 3rd, 2010 at 7:07 am
shcb, I find it kind of ironic how you and Rush are blaming the government for a private sector disaster… Are you saying the government (i.e. taxpayers) should be charged with this clean up? Do they need to create the Department of Oil Spills? Doesn’t the oil industry – which made, I dunno, about a trillion dollars last year have plans and equipment in place in case something like this happens? Sure as hell doesn’t look like it.
Until they can prove that I’ll be working my ass off to make sure no holes are getting drilled in the Arctic, which belongs to Canada (and maybe Russia too) by the way. So please tell those greedy oil companies down there to stay the f*ck away.
May 3rd, 2010 at 7:18 am
While we’re discussing enery, check out this neat little invention:
http://www.thestar.com/business/cleanbreak/article/802844–hamilton-a-revolutionary-way-to-cut-power-consumption
May 3rd, 2010 at 11:13 am
No I was just comparing it to Katrina, why did it take Bush so long to react? Well, why did it take Obama so long? Why isn’t the oil industry made to make sure this didn’t happen? Well, why wasn’t New Orleans made to keep the dikes in better shape? Why wasn’t the military mobilized faster after Katrina? Well why wasn’t the military mobilized sooner after this oil spill, why did it take a week for Biden to authorize C130s. That type of thing.
The fact is these things take time to analyze and mobilize, I’m sure Obama did the best he could under the circumstances just as Bush did the best he could, could either have been handled better, sure, everything is better in hindsight.
May 4th, 2010 at 6:29 am
I think the major difference is that they were warned repeatedly for days leading up to Katrina that it was going to be bad. Whereas the company responsible for this spill took days to even determine what was going on.
Excellent question though about why the oil industry isn’t made to make sure this stuff doesn’t happen. I’m furious that companies are allowed to build these things out in the water but seem absolutely clueless about how to handle an event like this. No emergency plans, no clue, no brains.
The only silver lining I can see is that this is galvanizing the public to move away from fossil fuels. So that’s good. And just wait till the price of oil/gasoline goes up because of this, you be seeing some anger then!
May 4th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
NL, good points.
Don’t expect oil prices to go up much as a result of this, haven’t heard about gulf of mexico production been shut it like when hurricanes hit so there’s no big supply impact, of course longer term costs may increase if more stringent environmental protection regs are put into place which will, as shcb is sure to point out, be passed along to the consumer, but which will also, as shcb is sure to NOT point out, ultimately be less costly to everyone than the environmental nightmares from such spills. On the plus side, there should no longer be any need to use cooking oil when frying gulf cost seafood.
BP’s share price is down about 10 or 15% from just prior to the explosion, so that gives an indication of the relatively low economic impact to the oil industry relative to other operations, despite this apparently being a disaster of epic proportions to the US Gulf Coast..
As to why emergency plans are not in place, my understanding is that they are and it all looks good on paper, however the “problem” is that the need for such emergency measures is quite rare so the people become complacent and plans are forgotten and equipment difficult to locate immediately when required. Besides, the rig had like Three redundant safety measures for every critical function to ensure that a disaster like this could never happen.
People who believe in the infallibility of their systems or plans are so stupid, right shcb?
May 4th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
This is funny:
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=-LIpAxjPt9U
May 4th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Knarly, remember the Titanic? when I make a piece of equipment that will replace something else, I always tell people to keep the old one around if they can cause mine will eventually break at the worst time.
NL, the counter to this and Katrina is this was very isolated, Katrina was a major part of the whole coast, more localized can be handled better with swift action, but I’m not criticizing here, I’m just saying much of the criticism of Bush was unjustified, some was, but not all.
May 5th, 2010 at 6:18 am
I agree, he received a lot of criticism for the faults of governors and local officials. Of course, it didn’t help when he told that FEMA dude he was doing a huckuva job when clearly he wasn’t.
May 5th, 2010 at 10:43 am
Another potential medical breakthrough researched by doctors in our socialist health care system…
http://www.healthzone.ca/health/yourhealth/women'shealth/womenandcancer/article/804861–toronto-scientists-uncover-potential-key-to-breast-cancer?bn=1
May 5th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
that’s right, bush should have been criticized for the FEMA problems but not for the people in the Super Dome. I just want the criticism to be fair.
I heard something today about there was a plan to put a boom around a situation like this since the mid nineties that would have stoppet 95% of the spill, but it wasn’t done for several days when it should have been done in several hours? don’t know particulars and I just got home after driving 14 hours in the last 48 and spending the day in the hospital with my dad so good night friends. maybe tomorrow
May 5th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
I heard there were weather issues with associated waves that negated the boom getting into place or working even if it were put into place, plus you’d be talking about a large area (5 to 20 sq mi) even initially… remember the leak is 5000 ft below the surface s oit may be difficult to determine where the oil will surface due to the currents / tides and basic stochastic variations through a depth of almost a mile of ocean; and besides, didn’t Bush give the direct order to herd people into the superdome (or was that Cheney?)
May 6th, 2010 at 5:00 am
Good points, just something I heard or read briefly. Perhaps the plan they were refering to was for shallow wells.
I think the Super Dome was all local until the Army arived a week later. And that only after the Gov authorized it a few hours before. That is the part that Bush was unjustly criticized for, there was plenty of blame to go around but put it where it belongs, just as there is plenty to go around here.
May 6th, 2010 at 8:18 am
Bush/super dome was attempt at joke. sorry to hear your Dad’s in hospital.
May 6th, 2010 at 10:11 am
he’s fine, it was just a checkup but it had to be done 2 hours from his home in case they needed to do something to him, all’s well, thanks for the concern.
got the joke now, a little slow, I’ve always said I don’t the show “the office” because they don’t have a laugh track and I’m not bright enough to know when to laugh without one.
If I’m a little distracted in the next couple weeks excuse me please, Atlanta on Sunday, back Friday, drive to Kansas for my niece’s graduation Saturday, home sunday, Louisville Tuesday home late Wednesday night, not sure if I’m excited or dreading it.
May 6th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Palin’s a nutcase.
100th comment.. yes! lol
May 6th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
as good a comment to get to 100 as any i spose lol
May 12th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Oh my, goes over a trillion, puts it in a new league, new rules. But who could have predicted taking the profit out of something would actually raise the cost of that thing, hmmm, oh well, guess all the other socialized countries going broke, us going broke, them wanting us to bail them out once again has got the boy worried, so now he wants congress to do the impossible and pay for something socialized without cutting services. Oh my.
May 12th, 2010 at 11:39 pm
yea, f*ck it: you idiots don’t deserve comprehensive health care anyway.
May 13th, 2010 at 3:18 am
Deserve it, we don’t want it!!!!! we can take care of ourselves, we have jobs. give us MSAs and we wouldn’t even have to depend on our employer running our health care, even better, I manage my auto insurance, I think I can manage a health policy
May 13th, 2010 at 4:56 am
“Deserve it, we don’t want it!!!!!”
Dying from preventable illness is the American Way. All you damn Socialists, with your being alive and basic human rights. Fuh, we don’t need none of that. Being the world’s richest third world country is the root of American Exceptionalism. Afterall, I, as a brainwashed conservative who regurgitates AM radio talking points, am eminently qualified to speak on behalf of all Americans. Those opinion polls that showed 60% of Americans wanted a public option were lies created by non-“Real Americans”. You betcha. In Limbaugh’s name we pray, Amen.
May 13th, 2010 at 9:06 am
Damn right
May 13th, 2010 at 10:11 am
I love the polls that claim a majority of American’s are unhappy with the HCR law: what nearly every commentator who repeats that stat doesn’t add is the fact that more people are unhappy because it doesn’t go far enough. Add me to that percentage. I am unhappy that there is no public option or Medicare buy-in.
I run my little company and our healthcare premiums rise 10 to 20% a year.
Every year.
This was no big deal in the Clinton years when the economy was booming. But the bush years and Great Recession has moved this from annoyance to crushing financial burden. I just don’t get why we won’t give basic healthcare to everyone and screw the ‘insurance’ companies (like they have done a great job? at making profits from human suffering). It would cost less than the emergency care really sick people get now (which would you rather pay for: a yearly check up and mb a statin script? or a massive heart attack and quad bypass?)
May 14th, 2010 at 2:49 am
Then why do you support something that is going to cost more?
May 14th, 2010 at 7:40 am
shcb,
“has got ‘the boy’ worried”
Come on man, you’re better than that…
May 14th, 2010 at 8:12 am
is Fearless Leader better :)
I’m down south this week, when in Rome (ga)
May 14th, 2010 at 8:17 am
Actually, I didn’t mean that in any racial context, I use “the boy” for all races, I know it has that connotation, but I just meant it as a guy who is a little inexperienced and full on himself as young men tend to be.
but I don’t mind going after the communist aspect either.
May 14th, 2010 at 10:35 am
Well alright then…
Hey, the G8/G20 is coming to my neighbourhood next month and I wasn’t going to protest but now they moved the Jays/Phillies game to Philly cuz of security concerns which really pisses me off because it’s not like anything is going to get accomplished anyways. Now we don’t to welcome Roy Hallday back to the Skydome so…
I’m gearing up baby! So far my girlfriend has made a Spill Baby Spill sign with a picture of a dead sea turtle on it. Hey jbc, want me to hold up a “lies.com” sign? Talk about a worldwide audience! lol
May 14th, 2010 at 11:29 am
you should be the only one there with a sign protesting moving the game, that might get you noticed
May 14th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Hahaha… that was pretty good man… lol.
Actually more ppl are pissed about that than a lot of other things, believe or not…. just lucky it’s not a hockey game or shit would really hit the fan!
May 15th, 2010 at 12:33 am
yea, don’t mess with hockey. go Habs.
Way off topic, but may be interesting read to some of you for different reasons… brief context: Atlantic salmon (less tasty but bigger fish) being raised in open net farming pens in bays on the pacific coast have lots of problems, major issue is sea lice being rampant in the pens and infecting wild salmon that swim past causing devastation to the natural stocks, lots of other issues like the farmed salmon are fed fish pellets made from fish harvests that used to feed south american villages but which those villagers can no longer afford to buy as its more profitable to gind the fish into meal to raise the farmed salmon for our restaurants, antibiotics thrown into the pens causing problems with other species or the huge dead zones under the pens and extending throughout the bays that were previously very productive shellfish habitats collected by first nations peoples but no longer viable, plus there is specious but perhaps verifiable anecdotal evidence of Atlantic salmon escaping and interbreeding with spawning pacific salmon -supposedly impossible but some say it has already happened…anyway the less profitable alternative for the salmon farming industry is a more expensive (2x the cost ?) for salmon pens inland & thus safely removed from interfering with the natural stocks (which have in fact been suffering profoundly for various reasons over the years.) So that’s the context. The beef is that our local newspaper seems to have a bias (yes, I know that’s shocking.) Here is the item about an anti-salmon farming rally that might be interesting to some of you for different reasons (or not)”
May 16th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Fyi..http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/12/01/marijuana-to-control-alcohol-abuse/9863.html
May 16th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
? http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/12/01/marijuana-to-control-alcohol-abuse/9863.html
May 19th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
I got one for you Craig/Malkin!
http://wokv.com/localnews/2010/05/fbi-investigating-mosque-pipeb.html
oooops, it is a disgruntled, overweight, middle aged white guy. Firebomb and pipebomb in a mosque. You stay classy Ron Burgundy!
May 21st, 2010 at 11:36 am
You still seem to be looking for examples, here is Muslim liberal that wants to exterminate all the Jews just like the terrorist organization she supports. Exterminate the Jews, hmm, can’t remember, didn’t someone else want to do that?
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/18/opinion/la-oe-goldberg-censor-20100518
Can’t wait to see how you spin this one.
May 21st, 2010 at 12:14 pm
I am not looking for examples of wwnj (or ienj) violence, but they do seem to be in the news with increasing frequency.
Where do you see that she is a liberal? That makes no sense. So now I have to answer to any nutty thing some wacko from Hezbollah says? No. This woman says the Muslim student association is hosting a h!tler youth week? wtf? she is much more a right winger than anyone here on lies.com
So, how many people has this loathsome woman killed? Injured?
None? wow No one? huh
Is she even an American? She shows up in a hijiblyjab (or whtvr the f they call that doo rag thingee, which reminds me: are all country singers mooselmen? those bandanas look jes like that hibillybob or whtvr u call it)
I find her speech hateful (and confrontational… just like Horowitz’s and Beck’s and Limpbaugh’s and Savage’s and Rosen’s and Coulter’s and Malkin’s and Palin’s) and to some extent, hate speech (like yours) is protected speech. Within limits.
Trying to paint every whacko mooselman as a liberal (and vice versa?) might work for you fauxnews morans, but it has no basis in reality.
Try again.
May 24th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/kane_west_memphis_arkansas_shootings.php?ref=fpb
Anti-government? check
fat n stupid? check
‘sovereign citizen’ whackdoodle? check
threatened to ‘take care’ of a IRS agent with a baseball bat? check
(that sounds so familiar… didn’t Andy Coulter once say that about liberals?)
armed to the teeth? check
killed two police officers at a traffic stop? check
shoot out in WalMart parking lot? check
I don’t know if the police officers were liberal or not, but I expect they were normal people. Normal people gunned down by yet another right wing extremist.
Oh wait, yet another isolated incident… nothing to see here move along… move along…
May 25th, 2010 at 9:50 am
Where does it say he was a conservative?
May 25th, 2010 at 11:15 am
Any rational person looking at this wingnut and his whackdoodle extremist views would put him to the right of center.
If ‘sovereign citizen’ doesn’t make you think ‘right wing nut case’ then your compass is broken…
What makes you think that Muslim nutter is liberal?
May 25th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
the school’s reaction or lack there of
May 25th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
So when the audience groans or boos while this ienj talks, that makes her liberal?
As usual, you make no damn sense at all.
wwnjs are increasingly violent and there are many examples in the US. You have yet to furnish even a single example of a left wing nutter going postal on right wingers (or even normal folks) in the last two years (or even the last ten, but if we go back ten, let’s go back to the OK federal bldg bombing by those two wwnjs)
May 25th, 2010 at 8:12 pm
not the audience, the school administrators,
May 27th, 2010 at 9:07 am
so…. that ienj is liberal because of the school administrators?
seriously, you make less and less sense with each post
You have yet to furnish even a single example of a left wing nutter going postal on right wingers (or even normal folks) in the last two years (or even the last ten) in the US. It has been months and the wwnj violence examples just keep coming. The latest: a wwnj refuses to talk to a census worker, pulls a gun on her and then when the cops arrive, wwnj pulls a shotgun on the police and gets herself killed. Seriously, I fully expected you to dig up a couple examples and I’d have to say, well ok, but there are *more* examples of wwnj violence… amazing you haven’t been able to find even *one*.
Just to point out the errors in your latest ‘example’:
no one was killed by the ienj’s outrageous opinions
(same w Horrorwitz’s hate speech, execrable but protected speech afaik)
no one was injured
we have no idea if this ienj is even an American
oh wait, she hurt David Horrorwitz’s feelings or said mean things
or are you just outraged at her (lack of) fashion sense?
do try again
May 27th, 2010 at 9:38 am
What can I say, we’re pissed and armed.
May 27th, 2010 at 10:31 am
stupid is as stupid does
I view this sort of suicide by stupidity as evolution in action
Personally I hope millions upon millions of you wwnjs refuse to answer the census: that way we’ll gain more reps, more of our tax dollars will be spent in our states and so on. Currently CA gets back something like $0.78 on every dollar we send to the feds http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/266.html [2005}
To get back to the grand challenge: can you find even one US left wing nutter killing or injuring US wwnjs (I’ll even open it up to normal folks as well) in the last 2 years (again, I’ll open it up to the last 10 years) in America for ideological reasons? So far I have something like 10 examples and you have… none.
Just saying something shocking, mean and/or stupid doesn’t count (otherwise the majority of your posts would count)
May 27th, 2010 at 10:52 am
So we’re killing more of you that you are killing us, sounds good to me.
I didn’t answer any questions on the census that had to deal with race, just didn’t think it was proper or any of their damn business, their are two of us in this household and we are both US citizens, done.
May 27th, 2010 at 11:35 am
What can I say Enky, you have a student that wants to eliminate an entire race of people, the same people one of the most evil person to live wanted to eliminate, a school administrator that evidently sees little wrong with that view since he/she didn’t do much about it and a school administration that didn’t do anything to that administrator, all of them liberal, with the possible exception of the student. But that isn’t enough, you are setting the rules so you are going to win, you won, done. Happy now?
May 27th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
I think normal people are going to start pushing back on the wwnj fringe elements like yourself. Hate speech like
doesn’t endear you to many normal folk. I’ve lost track of how many times right wing nutjobs like you (including you of course) have threatened to kill me (or worse;) Fact is, I haven’t seen any left wing nutter killing wwnjs (or even normal people) in the US in decades.
There is no equivalency: wwnjs are violent and murderous dipshits who should be shouted down, laughed off stage and marginalized as much as humanely possible. Liberals, progressives and normal people want cooperation, understanding, growth, wealth, science and the Enlightenment to guide us. You nutters iz jes afraid Obama is comin fer yer boomstick (and the socialimalism!) Just admit it: to a ton of you teabaggers this is all about President N!gger being in *your* White House. The majority of the minority? mb, mb not
I have no idea what you are saying in your second post. Please use English, not hate speech. Horrorwitz is a scam artist who uses confrontational and objectionable speech to fleece rubes like you. He made all the wild claims. The ienj just agreed with him. And honestly wtf cares what some terrorist group of morans wants or doesn’t want: it’s not the 4th century. Go live in a cave in Somalia if you don’t like our Enlightenment.
Hey how about that Muslim American Miss America!?! I loved seeing her in the bikini contest: if this is how muslims assimilate, then western civilization should have no problem absorbing yet another kooky religion.
Enjoy your cave!
May 27th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
me in a cave? i got the gun, i don’t need to hide.
May 28th, 2010 at 8:18 am
So let’s look at a couple of your statements:
No one has been killed or injured by any of my statements so why is it ok for her to support a group bent on genocide, supporting a group that not only talks about it but has been actively perusing that goal by actually killing people for decades.
I’ve never threatened anyone except in jest, which you promptly take out of context or blow out of proportion. Of course when one is playing Calvin Ball one can do that.
May 28th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
You support a group that preaches violence (you revel in it) against unbelievers.
“So we’re killing more of you that [sic] you are killing us, sounds good to me.”
ring a bell?
doesn’t sound even remotely like a joke…
However if you actually, you know, read what I wrote instead of inventing a strawman for you to savage, you would see that I actually included a smiley face
here:
I’ve lost track of how many times right wing nutjobs like you (including you of course) have threatened to kill me (or worse ;) Fact is, I haven’t seen any left wing nutter killing wwnjs (or even normal people) in the US in decades.
That was from your lil joke about how I should be impaled at the stake or worse… jes a lil joke fellers har har!
wwnjs are just as violent, intolerant and whacked as their counterparts: the islamic extremist nut jobs. Normal people abhor violence and use it only as a last resort or in self defense (see: pinky biter)
wwnjs are violent in word and deed. I fear that another OK bombing will happen before the country wakes up to the domestic terrorism threat from within.
Unless of course you can come up with all those examples of lwnjs going postal in the last 2 years (in the US, on US citizens).
And remember us libs is super duper scared of Super Sarah! please don’t run her in 2012! I think I jes wet m’self in trrrrr of her brilliance… and please don’t for a minute moderate the Rethugglican party, go even further to the extreme right (what’s next, armbands?)
May 28th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
“Normal people abhor violence and use it only as a last resort or in self defense” you have said recently that you consider liberals “normal” so I assume you are saying that sentence applies to liberals, and I would agree with that. Conservatives do believe in preemptive attacks, in that respect we are more violent than liberals, in most respects we are more violent than liberals, that is what gives liberals the ability to be liberal for the most part is our willingness to do violence in your behalf.
Interesting story about liberals and violence; a friend and colleague from Holland was over here this week, in the middle of a marathon 4 hour dinner and picture show of his WW II vehicles he restores was a picture of his young son with am M1 Garand, it seems they were at a museum and the young lad got to hold the gun. Bart said “he could tell I was very unhappy that he was enjoying holding the weapon”. On the way back to the hotel he asked if I owned a weapon, it was an odd question for an old farm boy to be asked and his English is just broken enough that I didn’t catch it at first. He said he had never fired a weapon or even held one, I then realized what he was asking, so the next day I took a couple weapons to work, unfortunately meetings took the whole day and we didn’t get to go shoot them. I thought it was a little hypocritical that he would chastise his son for doing something he wanted to do.
May 28th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
ah yes, the old ‘libs can be soft cuz we iz so mean an tough an stuff!’ meme
allow me to answer in three simple letters: FDR (that cripple would’ve kicked your ass six ways from Sunday fat boy)
I can’t make heads or tails of your little anecdote. Kids love teh boomsticks, they get to imagine using it in righteousness. An adult knows a bullet can end a life. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
I am an excellent shot btw. The key is to control your breathing and squeeze smoothly at just the right time. Rifles of course, pistols are for chumps. ;)
As a boy I used to beg my mom to drive us down to an armor museum in KY. On one of these trips we discovered the M551 Sheridan’s escape hatch was open. We crawled inside and had a grand time (must have made my mom nervous when we disappeared for that long). A couple years ago we went down to the armor museum outside of Ft Knox. We will be visiting Bovington next time we go to jolly old England. Kids’ll love it. Nothing pleases me more than that TV show (in HD!) about refurbing old tanks – the Panther episode was fantastic.