It's a girl!
ooh, way to trump the Friday news cycle, gramps (thus endangering any post convention bounce Obama's camp might receive)!
Sarah Palin...what do we know about her?
Background Information
Gender: Female
Family: Husband, Todd
5 Children: Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, Trig.
Birth Date: 02/11/1964
Birthplace: Sandpoint, ID
Home City: Wasilla, AK
Religion:
(no religion?! how can she call herself an American??)
Education:
BA, Communications/Journalism, University of Idaho, 1987.
Professional Experience:
Media
Utilities.
Political Experience:
Governor, Alaska, 2006-present
Former President, Alaska Conference of Mayors
Former Mayor/Manager, Wasilla City
Former Council Member, Wasilla City Council.
Organizations:
Member, Alaska Miners Association
Member, Alaska Outdoor Council
Member, Alaska Resource Development Council
Member, Chambers of Commerce (Various)
Member, Iditarod Parent-Teacher Association
Member, National Rifle Association
Member, Valley Hospital Association Board
Coach/Hockey Team Manager, Valley Youth Sports
Member, Youth Court Steering Committee
Former Member, American Management Association
Former Member, Salvation Army Board.
Caucuses/Non-Legislative Committees:
Chairman, Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, 2003-2004
Former Member, Alaska Municipal League Board
Chair, Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission
Vice Chair, National Governors Association Natural Resources Committee.
Her record? Check out what Project Vote Smart has collected here.
Compare this 'bright shining star in the Republican firmament' to McCain on women's issues, economic empowerment issues and, other progressive issues (gay rights? racial justice?) and compare her to Bush on these things, too.
Good thing? Bad thing?
LeBlanc has this to say over at Bitch, PhD.:
I want you to hammer Sarah Palin on this stuff. If I were you, or if I were a reporter, or anyone who had a loud voice, today I would ask Sarah Palin the question:
If you were elected vice-president, and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act came before the Senate once again, and the vote was tied, and you were called upon in your constitutionally-mandated role as tie-breaker, how would you vote? Would you, like me, vote that when women are denied equal pay for equal work, they should get restitution, or would you, like John McCain, vote that a Supreme Court decision making it nearly impossible for them to receive that restitution, should stand?
Don't let her get away with the "I'm a woman, of course I care about women" bullshit. Make her answer for the hypocrisy of her party.
This is the identity politics election sweepstakes, folks.
Who's feeling some conflict?
6 comments:
What hell is this nomination? It now makes Obama/Biden an obvious pick. I'm sure there are going to be Hillary die-hards who will now think that a vote for McCain is a vote for women, but just to think that another a woman (not Hillary) is so close to the oval office should make them want to vote otherwise. Besides I know hear that this PUMA group is a fake. Repubs swiftboaters acting like pissed off Dems.
The length that the Repubs will go for power. Jeez
right before i left the office today, i got into a very loud discussion with an older man who supported hillary (but now supports obama.)
he said that when he got the news, he forwarded it to his female friends, all of an age with him. most of them, he said, emailed him back and said that mccain's pick gives them pause and now they're thinking about voting mccain.
i lost my shit, calling it really wrong headed, illogical and the equivalent of the naderites who split the vote on the left so they could feel good about their values while dooming us to a republican asshat.
he said, Ding, i know. but you have to understand these women - they feel betrayed.
and this is the thing for me: mccain is clearly counting on that feeling of generational betrayal to eat into obama's female base. (how much of that base is statistically significant is unclear.) but - oh! it made me so mad. it's such the WRONG thing to do. there are supreme court nominations at stake!
palin will fail on the stump, of that i have no doubt. but more and more i'm becoming impatient with what i'm calling the Ferraro Generation and their focus on the wrong forest.
Well, and this is what scares me. Her nomination was so transparent as to be laughable, and yet, all I've seen, all over the intertubes, is smart women saying "and then I heard X at the office saying how exited she is that a woman is still on a ticket!" Or "we've so lost my mother's Obama vote." I want to believe women are smarter than that, but I am deathly afraid there are just enough boneheads in the bunch to sink us all.
I'm fucking PISSED. As an American, I'm pissed as hell at the McCain camp right now. For choosing a woman who is clearly unqualified, and was caught on tape proudly announcing a month ago that she doesn't even know what the veep does--one who then had the freaking gall to actually mention HRC in her speech as though they are ideologically even in the same hemisphere.
Sorry. I'm rambling.
Let me tell you, it's a good damn thing I took today off, because in my corporate culture--at a certain media company that prides itself on being all about women and family--I am certain I would have overheard something similar and had to piss in someone's nonfat yogurt cup.
i hear you. i had to avoid the news yesterday because i was too mad. and i had to stop talking to my Boomer co-worker because i was about to call his female friends hysterical.
(yes, it brought out all my anti-Boomer sentiment, man.)
the time to be emotional and waffly was the primary season, IMO. you know? we're IN it, now. we have a chance to win. and what's happening? the same thing that happens every election season on the left: we can't exercise the merest bit of discipline.
it's 'my feelings of betrayal,' 'my personal narrative wasn't validated,' 'i'm having issues with ideological compromise XYZ.'
well, you know what? welcome to the party, bitches! you think gay, poor and brown people have been always, 100%, behind our candidate's issues (which sometimes only glancingly touch on ours)? our feelings haven't been fucking validated for years!
but because the Green party is too scary and has no hope in hell of winning, this is the only game we've got.
my primary reason i'm voting for Obama: Supreme Court nominees.
and if some people who are undecided are going to vote for mccain because of the optics of the skirt, then bullshit on them and their hollow ideas.
PS: this is the scenario my Boomer co-worker outlined for me -
the Ferraro Generation breaks for McCain and McCain/Palin wins
in 2012, HRC runs again, handily beats Obama in another primary (assuming he runs again)
HRC then goes up against Palin, making it a win-win for a historical women-centric election.
he said this is what his middle of the road female friends (his die hard liberal friends are appalled) are contemplating and why they're justifying a mccain vote.
how totally insane is that?
Oh my sweet sanity. What kills me is the fact that because these women are comfortable enough right now to endure another four years and SCOTUS noms, that they should just go ahead and screw us ALL over in hopes of some possible-maybe-it-will-go-down-like-I-hope-in-2012 fantasy.
I have to go spew bile and coffee.
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