The Washington Independent - Latest Comments in The Torch Is Passed

Re: The Torch Is Passed

Chris Censullo — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:18:24 -0000

And another thing, how stupid to Palin/McCain think people are? They parade around the country criticizing "government" when they both have made a substantial living on the people's payroll. McCain has NEVER HAD A JOB IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR, from his career in the military to the House and then the Senate. He's been living off of our taxes his entire life, as did his father and his grandfather. And yet, we cannot have access to the same health insurance choices we've been paying for him to have his entire life?

Re: The Torch Is Passed

Chris Censullo — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:12:40 -0000

The "thing" that Palin represents is nothing new. Her disdain for ideas in general and contempt for details and rigor in intellectual endeavors have been preached before, in other lands and during other times. Her trading of science for gut instinct, scholarship for the easy answer, and hate for those who work hard in learning about issues was at the heart of another political movement, this one in Germany in the 1920s. The banner of "anti-elitism", in fact a whipping up of the downtrodden against those who tried hard in school, and "country first", in fact a whites-only racial pig dressed up with lipstick, is exactly what was carried by the Nazi party into power in 1933 in Germany. Add into the mix the conscious diverting of working people's economic anxiety to easy targets of people of color, immigrants, and "smart" people, and you have rallies with hate speech and the attacking of reporters that would make Adolf Hitler beam with pride.

Palin is nothing new, in fact, her politics are old enough to be feared.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

Howie Kurtznot — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:43:59 -0000

"What she represents finally is a turning of the dial, the torch being passed to a new generation of women."

Let's see if I've got this straight: The torch has been passed because Palin is a monumental disaster, who has accelerated the collapse of the McCain campaign?

What a concept.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

Kwaayesnama — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:35:19 -0000

Sarah Palin and me.

I wish to share my views on Sarah Palin with you; she and I have a lot of things in common.

My education matches hers it took years for me to earn my degree taking a few courses at a time here and there, so I guess I have that in common with her.

I was president of my PTA and an officer in my woman’s club we have that in common.

I was a soccer, baseball, and basketball mom, so we have that in common.

I own a small business where I make out budgets, so you could call me an executive that is another thing we have in common.

I am married to a Joe six-pack, but he says he is a Joe 12 pack, I wish we did not have that in common!

I have three children and five grand children, she’s catching up to me.

I am a catholic and have never had an abortion. I used birth control when I was too old to safely have a healthy child.

I will be voting for Obama. Why? Because I would never presume that I have the intellect and education to be 1/2 a breath away from being the leader of the most powerful nation in the world. It takes more then charm and snappy remarks to have a finger on the nuclear button. That is something that speechwriters and pundits can’t teach a candidate in a few weeks. Sorry I want intelligence running this nation. So this white, Catholic 61 year old, Republican grandmother will be voting for Barack Obama.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

D. Swan — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 14:59:03 -0000

Perhaps, oh heck, I could be wrong, but being "unabashedly feminine" for me includes being HONEST about how one treats others, and paying attention when one's family is in crisis, like when one has a young family and a pregnant, unmarried teenage daughter, who will need her family, most specifically her mom, when that baby is born. The winks and blinks and false folkiness mask raw ambition and misplaced loyalty, not a cute-as-heck babe.

And her Christian touchstone? Balderdash...underhanded dealings, hatred and racism have no place in a Christian person's heart or mouth.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

double w — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:09:50 -0000

McCain's job as a candidate was to choose someone that could step into his pace at a moment's notice should something awful happen. By choosing Palin in an utterly cynical attempt to drag in votes, he has demonstrated that he simply doesn't care about anything other than finally outranking his dead father. After a career of dressing up his spoiled-brat behavior as fiery passion while making backroom deals to line his pockets, he has destroyed the final shreds of his own dignity and will die a bitter and lonely old man if he loses the election.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

fac — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:02:23 -0000

Just because it's said she's running on common sense, doesn't make it so. She's running on ideas that are wrong, and are being delivered in the most divisive, nasty way.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

ScottPruden — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:41:56 -0000

Do we REALLY want the idiots to be in charge?
I personally recognize the President and Vice President to be public SERVANTS; they work for US
WE are THEIR bosses. This nonsense about an imperial Presidency leads to absolute power in the hands of lucky MORONS. I want the most 'elite' people possible for the hardest job in the world; if they screw up, we FIRE em and get somebody else.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

NikkyM — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 09:59:13 -0000

The problem with Palin's "common sense" is that it's more like nonsense. I don't find her ideology honest, nor helpful to the middle or working class. One of her tricks is spewing ugly prejudices disguised as values, often shared by her constituents. I find her a power-hungry figure disguised as a friend to the working class community. But she is not, in fact, working to raise the working class' standards, neither financially nor morally. Signed, An educated woman who works for a very modest living.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

snizz — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:56:52 -0000

Erick, please point us all the direction of these throngs of liberals that are crossing our fingers for the "gang rape" of Palin. If you're trying to assert that Sandra Bernhard's unfortunate joke was somehow echoed anywhere--ANYWHERE--else in any liberal outlet, you're going to need sources.

Barring that, it just makes you appear to be reveling in some pathological projection, like you are uncomfortably fetishizing this incredibly disturbing image. You're a slanderous creep.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

gerimay — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:06:46 -0000

I can't believe any woman would support this type of candidate. The floozie flirtie ignorant joe 6-pack type. Where are we headed ?

Re: The Torch Is Passed

gerimay — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:04:48 -0000

You are so right. I don't want women to be ignorant girls, like they were back years ago.
As you said so well "Palin embodies the "feminine = ignorant" stereotype that many of us have been fighting against for years".

Re: The Torch Is Passed

California crone — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:33:48 -0000

elite: Roget's II: The New Thesaurus
Main Entry: best
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: The superlative or most preferable part of something.
Synonyms: choice, cream, crème de la crème, flower, pick, prize, top, cream of the crop, flower of the flock, pick of the bunch

Sounds good to me :-)

Re: The Torch Is Passed

Moira — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:54:32 -0000

I fervently hope that it's not true that Palin is the template for the new female politician. I hate to think that that being vapid and pernicious is the new ideal to which women must aspire if they want to make a place for themselves in politics. Palin embodies the "feminine = ignorant" stereotype that many of us have been fighting against for years.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

magginkat — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:19:42 -0000

Paylin's winks, hair tossing, & other teen-age girl shenanigans is beyond absurd. I find it hard to believe that anyone takes this floozie seriously. She, the silly teenager, seems to be signaling the star quarterback that she will hop in bed with him or anyone else to achieve her goals. One good bit though, she makes McCain look like the doddering old fool that his is and has been.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

Deborah Rael-Buckley — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:09:32 -0000

She's alot of "wonking" and no policy, that's what I say about Palin. She is the quasi "real people" vp candidate, who has been turned into a vicious, lying, attack dog seeking to cover up all of the lacks and missteps of the McCain/Palin ticket. It will NOT work because she has been proven to be vacant on her own issues and woefully unprepared for the highest office in the nation. In choosing her to be his running mate, McCain fails the American people on all accounts and has taken a Rovian-win at any cost approach. Her new role as attack dog is proof that they have nothing left to fight with, nothing appealing or substantive to offer the American public-the result...attack, attack, attack. Barak Obama is still fending off the sometimes racial tinged attacks, but he remains on his message of tax relief, economic checks and balances, health care, global security and fairness.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

Maine_Voter — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:11:08 -0000

What has Sarah's so-called experience taught her? The woman is still as dumb as a moose.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

Maine_Voter — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:03:03 -0000

In Sarah's world it's okay to be foggy on the facts, to not show any interest in history, to not be able to id any newspapers you read, to not be able to recall any Supreme Court cases you disagree with (not even Exxon Valdez), to not grasp what a VP does, to have so little interest in the outside world that you don't get a passport until 2007, and to not even blink tho you surely know you have no business serving as VP. With the right spin, that just proves you are a Washington Outsider!

That's not a new breed of woman, but a very poor failure to vet by McCain.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

Frank G Randazzo — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:01:47 -0000

I find Palin an insult to the mature women of this nation who have worked hard to be heard. Now is their opportunity and along comes the prime candidate herself, a new "hotlips" like that of "Mash' the comedy hit of at least 20 years or more. It seems to me that she has put the womens movement back 20 or more years. Let's hear for Sarah Palin.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

zeke — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 19:26:03 -0000

One need not be an unsophisticated rube to find Palin viable as a candidate. One can also be a dishonest, disingenuous and sophisticated ideologue. One who hopes to protect her own wealth and status by pulling the wool over the eyes of working class citizens; one who pretends that candidates who favor corporate welfare and tax breaks for the rich are actually champions of the middle class. Unfortunately for these selfish elites, the "rubes" out there seem to have learned their lesson after eight years of rule by an intellectual nonentity and a vicious oil profiteer. As we rubes like to say, in our inimitably alliterative manner: you can put populist lipstic on plutocratic politician, but that porker is still a pig.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

onion — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 21:55:30 -0000

the above comment should be taken down. Liberals want Palin gang raped? Ridiculous, and offensive.
Or rather, leave it up, to highlight the fact that the radical republicans are far, far more deluded and "radical" than any who may vote for Obama.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

slacker — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:44:00 -0000

Politicians lie. On that you can always count. If you look at FactCheck, you'll see that there was plenty of "truth stretching" to go around:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factche...

Palin's a sham and her ticket is going to lose.....BIGtime!

Re: The Torch Is Passed

Warren Metzler — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:35:05 -0000

I find it fascinating that people are incapable recognizing Sarah for who she is. It is patently obvious to me that she cares less about the real issues underlying a situation, always going for the catchy slogan to present as her "expertise"; which was repeatedly demonstrated in the debate, and in all her public speaking since being nominated. I defy a person to find a single issue that Sarah has an in depth understanding of. And, by the way, having an in depth understanding of an issue is not synonymous with being a policy wonk; so Hillary, who is a policy wonk, is not necessary deeply informed about any issue.

Yes, Joe is pompous, and quite often divorced from reality; and has been so for most of his political career. But his deficiencies don't lead to Sarah being competent to lead anything. Note her popularity is tanking in Alaska as this campaign is progressing.

And is no one bothered by her repeated lying, such as claiming she rejected the bridge to no where; when a major point of her campaign for governor was to support it, and after it was canceled by Congress, she kept all the money and spent it on Alaska projects. And her claim to cut taxes, when there is no income tax or state sales tax in Alaska. And do you honestly believe this women reads the news section of a single national or international periodical???? If she did, Katie Couric wouldn't have stumped her with that question. No one, regardless of how nervous they are forgets the name of periodicals she reads every day.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

New mother at 42 — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:16:13 -0000

I may be out of line here, but... Common sense? Exercises/diets so intensely that no one knows you're pregnant until you tell them...at seven months. At 44 and over seven months pregnant, flies from Alaska to Seattle to Texas and then (with ambionic fluid leaking) passes up excellent medical facilities at each stop, flies back from Texas to Seattle to Alaska ... and drives to her hometown clinic (that has no special facilities for a high risk pregancy/birth). Again, maybe I'm out of line, but I believe in the combination of leaving something in God's hands And Taking Responsibility in addition to using Common Sense. Or did she want to leave that baby in God's hands?

I'm sure opposed to placing this country/world in the hands of such a woman.

Re: The Torch Is Passed

Margaret — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:09:29 -0000

I have a Masters Degree and a CPA certificate and I think Sarah Palin is great. I studied political science as an undergraduate. The elitism in this article is concealed until the end.

Joe Biden had so many factual errors in his statements during the debate. Just one small example: he confused Gaza with the West Bank. And he is the one who has been sitting in the senate for all those years and was selected for his foreign policy experience.