Category Archives: Political Commentary

More On Palin The Libertarian

Matt Welch has an interesting interview with an Alaskan Democrat:

Q: So libertarian-minded people should be fine with that, right?

A: Let me tell you all the nice things about Sarah Palin: Sarah Palin has been a pretty freaking awesome governor. She came in saying that the entire system was corrupt, and that Republicans were evil, and she was going to just mix everything up and get us a gas pipeline and end of story. And she got to power, she was elected overwhelmingly by independents, beat Tony Knowles, who had been governor before.

The Republicans hate her. If you go and talk to the Alaska delegation here, they despise her.

Q: Really?

A: Hate her. Oh my god! This whole thing about her retarded son really being her daughter’s was started by Lyda Green, who is president of the senate, a Republican…

Q: I was just talking to someone who claimed to have knowledge of Alaska to some degree, and they say where Sarah Palin comes from it’s the equivalent of Humboldt or Chico in California, like, of course, you know, she’d have a Girls Gone Wild phase, and smoking pot. Is this just wishcasting, or what can you tell us about her geographical background?

A: So the Mat-Su Valley, you know, Matanuska-Susitna Valley, otherwise known as Upper Wingnuttia, is full of right-wing libertarian militia fundamendalist Christian gun-toting, pot-growing dope-heads.

Q: Awesome.

Like totally cool, man.

Who Do You Want To See?

I just heard that Fox News reported that they had a poll that indicated that people were more interested in the vice-presidential debate than the presidential one by about two to one. But they left out the most interesting debates (unlikely as they would be). What do you think?

Which debate would you most like to see?
McCain versus Obama
Palin Versus Biden
McCain Versus Biden
Palin Versus Obama
  
pollcode.com free polls

I’ll tell you my vote late tomorrow.

Well, Now He’s Got My Vote

The latest from the fever swamps:

If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness – and hopelessness!

The frightening thing is that these people probably really believe this stuff.

[Update a while later]

The ends justify the means:

If health insurance for all, an end to the Iraq War, an end to torture and illegal wiretapping, and a sane energy policy can be obtained at the price of destroying one teenage girl, her family, and the surrendering our self-respect I see that as a cheap trade.

And to think that these creatures consider themselves our moral betters.

Kudos

I want to say that I appreciate both Senators Obama and Biden strongly declaring that candidates’ children should be off limits. Of course, they know that this stuff is poison, and can severely damage their campaigns with the non-nutroots.

I hope that their campaign staff (and surrogates) are listening. They can’t be held responsible for what Kos and TalkLeft and their ilk (including, sadly, Andrew Sullivan) do (and I expect the vile behavior from those quarters to continue, and I also expect a big backlash against it from McCain supporters, both current and future). But I also hope that if evidence does come to light that a staffer has been feeding this stuff to the bottom feeders that Senator Obama follows through on his pledge and has him or her (or them) shown the door.

No, she’s not going to step down. This is only going to make her and her supporters more determined to stay in and defeat these digital brownshirts (and their enablers in the press).

Sea Versus Space

Dwayne Day has an interesting history comparing undersea exploration technology with space exploration technology.

One other point of coming convergence–the increasing use of underwater suit concepts for space suits (particularly for high-pressure suits that can eliminate the need to prebreathe). Historically, NASA has generally ignored the undersea folks, though there has been a lot of private interaction (Phil Nuytten of Can-Dive has been developing hard suit concepts for decades). It looked like that might be changing with the selection of Oceaneering for the new EMU program, until NASA cancelled the contract and reopened the competition. We’ll see what the future holds, and if Hamilton Sunstrand retains their grip on the agency space-suit budget.