Palin Gets Tutored in Foreign Policy

HOw fun! Now Facebook is getting involved via a fun group of posters there! At least we can start having a giggle or two about it. I know we all need that right now. WOOF!

Any woman that enters Amreican politcs must be a brave woman, simply because the way issues are portrayed are enough to push them out, and any one reading this article knows that this has basically nothing to do with her capacity in foreign policy. If she did not have the knowledge then Senator McCain would not have made the choice.

While both tickets have someone who is strong in foreign policy, it does matter that it’s not the same. Obama will have Biden to turn to if he has any questions, and it’s not like he doesn’t have some instinct for it already. He does, after all, have family on three different continents. Should, heaven forbid, something happen to Obama after he takes office the person in the big chair has foreign policy strengths he can call on, and a large network of friends in Washington to help him get the nation through such a tragedy. Palin, on the other hand, is extremely weak in foreign policy. She lacks the perspective to deal with it. And if, heaven forbid, something should happen to McCain after he takes office, she won’t have those same resources to draw upon. She won’t have the network in Washington, either. We really need to see VP as more than an advisory role. The two candidates both have high risk factors to take them out of office early - sad, but true. McCain has had serious medical problems in the past, and at this point I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say he’s past his prime. Obama is a huge target, both for being African American and for bearing an Arabic name. I don’t think anyone really doubts that sometimes politicians make decisions based more on appearance than substance. This is definitely one of those choices - she is ideal to ramp up the Republican base, attract women voters, and presents someone that is nearly impossible for the Democrats to attack without opening themselves up to a counter-attack.

This article is from the staff of wowOwow? Incredible or should I say UNcredible! Not only is the staff demonstrating sexism, now it’s age discrimination! McCain’s experience: 20 years military; 22 years as a US senator. Obama’s: 142 DAYS as a US senator. “But to understand the complexities in this world takes time, takes a great deal of understanding, some experience, and Governor Palin came to the table with none of the above.” And Obama, who is at the TOP of the ticket, brought those qualities to the table??? As Rudy would say, he brought “Nada.” “But from the day she takes office, Palin will get daily briefings and sit on the National Security Council with the president and secretaries of state, treasury and defense. She will be up to speed in her first year.” Palin can afford “on the job training”; Obama, candidate for POTUS, cannot.

I think that to question her ability is perfectly appropriate. If she were a man we would ask the same questions If his experience was comprised of PTA president, mayor of a town of 6,000 and governor for less than 2 years of a state with a population of less than three quarters of a million people with very little racial diversity. Last time I checked Illinois and Hawaii have substantially more diverse populations than Alaska. One might argue that it is easier to understand and work with other cultures and religions when one has been exposed from childhood through young adulthood. Does Sarah Palin have the reputation of a consensus builder? Her speech did not seem to me to be one that sought to be, it seemed very divisive. I did not hear any new fresh ideas on her part or what she brings to the table to help American families. Has she done anything on health insurance for the state of Alaska. What about student loans, home foreclosures, how has she funded education in Alaska. Has she dealt with budget shortages like they are in California or many other states or because they have oil money they are not dealing with the same issues the rest of the continental United States are. What about taxes I have read they don’t pay income taxes or sales taxes in Alaska so how can we judge her record on taxes and how she reacts to problems the majority of Americans deal with. What about jobs, how many jobs did she help to create for Alaskans. I heard her say we need to drill but according to T.Boone Pickens sure we can drill in the ANWR but without a new oil pipeline we have no way to get the oil from Prudo Bay to Valdez Alaska and he says that will take a lot of time and money it is not a solution, hmm. I’ve also seen her on a video clip saying that she had not paid much attention to the Iraq war. So what type of executive experience does she bring to this ticket. I have heard Fox news bragging about all of her executive experience I want concrete decisions not just bragging by the Fox news channel. So basically what does she bring to the table. Since I live in the midwest my question is “Wheres the Beef” and I don”t want to substitute beef for moose. I knew what Hillary would bring to the table.

After four days of following the Republican convention, I know what Alice must have felt when she fell down the rabbit hole. The Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota was an unreal place. The Center — where the Republican faithful gathered— with its high tech design and clean, beautiful stage just didn’t fit with the medieval nature of the party’s platform toward woman and the ugliness of a McCain team convention script channeling the 19th century. Speaker after speaker and most of the delegates interviewed on the floor followed the basic message of that script. It called for continuing tax cuts for the most wealthy in the spirit of McKinley and the robber barons. It constantly referenced the protection of the unborn, repeating the party’s platform opposing abortion even in the cases of rape and incest. It used phrases related to the 21st century, like “energy independence” and “environmental protection”, but its content didn’t sound like the reality of America’s women’s lives outside the Energy Center. As Humpty Dumpty said to Alice,”When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” And so it went, the Humpty Dumpty script ruled with half-facts. The truth was stretched. Delegates and speakers heralded McCain and Palin as mavericks who would clean up Washington and make things right for Americans. They pretended that McCain and the Republicans were not largely responsible for the mess they decried. “Rabbit hole politics” hit its zenith with John McCain’s acceptance speech. McCain has spent 25 years in Washington as a Republican elected official. Last night McCain— who has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time in recent years— attempted to disown the President and to pretend that the Republicans were not the party of the governing establishment. It was a bizarre performance. All week long the convention script described McCain as a maverick. Last night in a shift from the culture war intensity of the previous days, McCain made a soft pitch for nonpartisanship. He labeled himself a maverick who works for the public, not special interests or a party. Yet he has proven to be a cynical partisan politician and has bowed to the forces of regression within his party. In exchange for the strong financial and grassroots backing of the religious right forces that have run the national Republican social agenda since 1980, McCain gave them their choice for vice president and the possible future of the GOP. This was not the move of a reformer. It was a gift to those who have kept themselves in power by using a backlash strategy to win the votes of people fearful of the goals of the feminist movement. Since l980, the religious right has grown used to mothers in elected positions. It no longer has any discomfort with a woman in the White House as long as she is one of theirs. John McCain has launched Sarah Palin as the new leader of the religious right. She is their Joan of Arc. Like the Red Queen, Sarah Palin has one view, hers, on issues directly facing all women. She opposes sex ed in the schools, birth control, emergency contraception and abortion under all circumstances. In a desperate attempt to win women the GOP has ignored for years, McCain sold out. Like both Bush presidents, he gave in to the special interests of the religious right. A new ABC News poll out today reports that “Palin’s initial impact on voter preferences and on views of McCain looks like a wash, and contrary to some prognostication, she does not draw disproportionate support from women. But she could potentially assist McCain by energizing the GOP base, in which her reviews are overwhelmingly positive.” Hillary’s women voters are not fooled as polls in the last few days indicate. The majority are moving toward Obama. The McCain convention script will help convince them that McCain-Palin will NOT bring health care for all, provide tax cuts for the middle class, shore up social security, create new green jobs, protect the environment, honorably bring U.S. troops home from Iraq and restore the world’s respect for our country. They are not convinced that McCain’s military background is what America needs to keep America safe in this new, inter-dependent world. As for McCain’s cruel positions on reproductive issues, it’s hard to believe that there are many Hillary voters who would agree with them. Palin didn’t talk about these in her first speech to the convention. Her tough style was like Richard Nixon’s running mate Spiro Agnew, who did Nixon’s dirty work in the highly charged l968 campaign with speeches often written by Pat Buchanan. Outside of promising to be an advocate for special needs children, Palin played the traditional role of a vice-presidential nominee. With verve that seemed to excite the males in her audience more than the females, she hypocritically attacked Obama and Biden. She made it appear that they were responsible for the highest federal government debt in American history. Again I felt like Alice. What Wonderland were these Mad Hatters and Humpty Dumptys of 2008 living in? Bush, Cheney and the Republican House and Senate are responsible for this debt, as well as many of the other problems facing our nation in the last almost eight years. During that time Republicans have run the White House. Until January 2007, Republicans controlled both the U.S. House and Senate. They are responsible for this historic debt. Today, the House is controlled by the Democrats but their legislation rarely becomes law. Republicans have paralyzed a 51-49 Senate with the help of McCain’s friend, former Democrat and now Independent U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Through filibuster and threat of filibuster, the Senate Republicans have stopped passage of most legislation. Despite the McCain team showcasing Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, both successful women business executives who spoke of his appetite for reform and their observations that he “values the contributions of women to our nation,” McCain contradicts their faith in him. If he cannot reform his party, he has shown he does not value women. This convention is more reactionary than the one that nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964. If McCain thinks he can reform his party when he’s President, he’s mistaken. The rules passed now will govern the 2012 convention and only an uprising in the GOP could change them— a highly unlikely prospect. As President, McCain will let the religious right craft his Administration’s social policy decisions including appointing justices to the Supreme Court in the Scalia-Thomas mode. McCain is interested in foreign and defense policy where he has mainly supported the Bush agenda. Whether he wins or loses, he has killed any moderating of the GOP. It is now completely a hard-right-of center party, interested in solving the problems of American women by following the Palin path. Orwell would have recognized the audaciousness of the GOP’s “rabbit hole” politics. The Republicans have nominated a woman for VICE President even as its policies keep women from making their own choices. On the day McCain announced his selection of Palin, the Commerce Department reported that personal incomes dropped by the largest amount in three years and consumer spending had slowed significantly. Food and energy prices continue to rise even as the price of gas has slowed down slightly. Democratic nominee Barack Obama calls for a second stimulus package. The Republican convention speakers were too busy attacking the Democrats to talk seriously about the economy except to cry for tax cuts and offshore oil drilling. McCain has been a consistent supporter of the supply-side economic policies of the Bush Administration. He has not indicated he would change them as President. By appointing a woman as his running mate, McCain finally broke the presidential glass ceiling in the Republican party, but his gesture is an empty symbol. It brings little. Until the party can adopt policies that will help more than well-off women, the GOP is not the friend of America’s women. That is the most significant fact to come out of the St. Paul convention. Tanya Melich is a nationally recognized authority on women in politics. She was a co-founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus and led the fledgling National Women’s Education Fund, the first organization to educate women systematically on how to gain political power. Melich lectures extensively on college campuses and at domestic and international forums

The press has given the Republicans a free pass on fake postings on blog sites since February, by ‘Hillary Supporter’ threatening to vote for McCain. The fact that McCain and the GOP elders so ‘don’t get it’ that they think that the women vote they might get will be ‘swing voter’ women who otherwise would have gone for Hillary, is disingenuous. What they are really intent upon is diverting the attention from the deep flaws of McCain. Even Palin is no more, no less than another manifestation of McCain’s flawed mind.

P.S. when I say ‘free pass’ I refer also to the large number of donors from Wall Street and hedge funds to Obama during the primary season to defeat Hillary. These “$4600” Wall Street backers of Obama have been piling the money into the McCain and GOP 507 coffers ever since it became clear that their greatest threat (Hillary) was out of the running.

Foreign policy knowledge has a lot more to do with than a “crash course” on facts. It takes a certain world view. It takes a curiosity. It takes years of reading and studying it. It takes a feel and working knowledge of history. And, most of all, it takes choosing the right advisors and think tanks to help you prepare. No human being can really be prepared for what is going to happen when he enters the Oval Office the first day. Richard Holbrooke, in his article this month in Foreign Affairs Magazine, calls this moment in history as the most complex the nation has faced since WW2. We have 2 wars going on and major international problems in a world which has largely lost respect and confidence for our actions this past 8 years. At no time in our history has multi-lateral cooperation been so important. We have major problems with nuclear powers in Pakistan and India. There is a crisis taking place on the Pakistan/Afghan border as we speak. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07pakistan-t.html?hp No person is prepared to face the awful possibility of making the hard decision of sending young men into war to be killed. Look at the history of LIncoln, Roosevelt or Truman. It is not to be entered into lightly. To look at the American public and have to say”Mistakes were made…..” Horrible to say the least. This White House did not heed the advice of their advisors in the run-up to this Iraqi war that Bush/Cheney started. Foreign Policy decisions are based largely on advice given by foreign policy advisors, the Secretary of State, and the Sec’y of Defense, and the NSA, the combined intelligence of the CIA and other intelligence gathering organizations. So, the most important thing the voter can do is to discover for themselves who the foreign policy advisors are, what the candidates believe in regards to diplomacy, and what they know. Do your own research. Don’t rely on a lot of “pundits” that make their money from corporations that perhaps have a special interest in what they report. And, remember this: The Neo-Conservative teams are the advisors that the Bush administration followed in the lead-up to the war. You can find their position papers all the way back to 1992, when they were discussing how to start a war in Iraq if they obtained the White House. The major advisors to Obama are advisors that assisted in the Clinton administration, as well as foreign policy scholars that work at Harvard and are well respected in their field. And, one more thing: The Bush administration is finally starting to realize the importance of how the region will be affected if and when we leave Iraq. The whole Middle East Region, folks. I have not seen anything that reflects McCain’s opinions of what he thinks the region ought to look like other than a reluctance to use diplomacy and to talk tough. This is a critical point, especially when we are looking at the neighbors; i.e. Turkey, Syria, Iran and extending all the way to Israel. No person can hold all of the knowledge necessary on these issues, but they must have the right blend of foreign policy experts at their disposal, and the historical knowledge and the curiosity to familiarize themselves with the information quickly (Clinton was considered the best foreign policy brain in his ability to absorb the knowledge and complexities at an astounding pace; he had the feel and the passion for it). We are entering a very dangerous time in our history. We’d better learn about it, all of us, and start getting real serious real fast.