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Sarah Palin 'Target WikiLeaks Like Taliban'
DMandPenfold writes "Sarah Palin, who is widely tipped as a possible Republican candidate for president in 2012, has said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be hunted down in the way armed forces are targeting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda." So that means we should spend billions of dollars and not catch him? Good plan.
She is unelectable, why the hell does the media pay so much attention to her? She has to be the most hated political figure in the US for the left/left leaning middle. The dumbest thing the republicans could possibly do is run her in 2012.
People are watching her, reading her books and identifying with her at an alarming rate.
It's the same down South. As a matter of fact, back in 2008, someone wrote to the editor of the Economist saying how they liked Sarah because "she is just like me."
To write Palin off as a "nut" or as "unelectable" would be a mistake. I see a lot of Democrats hoping that Palin runs in '12 - they should be careful of what they wish for.
Alaska balances their budget by taking more federal dollars than the other states. They are the number one recipient of federal pork.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/business/19stimulus.html
Plus, she is only a supporter of the Constitution when it's the parts of the Constitution she likes.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
On the contrary, I feel it is News for Nerds. It directly addresses the way technology is facilitating the globalization of information and how it conflicts with regional/local laws. The message was delivered by Facebook, so nerds should appreciate the irony that Palin is advocating censorship of information on a site that believes in opening up private information for all to view. Finally, the fact that a mainstream political figure (one does not have to hold office to be a current politician) is advocating the use of potentially illegal internet warfare (From the article: She [Palin] said “cyber tools" should be used to "permanently dismantle WikiLeaks") should also be of interest to nerds.
I don't think the topic is flamebait, I think it is controversial. The internet is a force of globalization, especially in the realm of information distribution. When that distribution starts to threaten state secrets, how far do we (the US) go? How about the UK, Germany, or France? How about China or India? How about Iran, Syria, or Saudi Arabia? If it is legitimate for the US to do a DDoS against Wikileaks, what about Venezuela attacking US news websites that it feels are threatening its State secrets?
Yes, I already dislike Palin, but as a nerd who tries to pay attention to the news, I want to know who is siding with Palin on this issue... and to some extent, it appears that is the current administration (who once advocated an open government).
That's an interesting theory. The problem is that the August 24, 2008 meeting with advisors at which Sarah Palin became the top choice to be McCain's running mate occurred several months after Clinton's conceded the race for the Democratic nomination and endorsed Barack Obama on June 7, 2008; the August 27 meeting at which she was offered the #2 spot on the ticket took place during the Democratic Convention, on the same day Barack Obama was formally nominated as the Democratic Party's candidate for the Presidency.
So, its historically indefensible to claim that the McCain campaign was nominating Palin in response to the perceived current strength of the Clinton campaign at the time.
It's more defensible to claim that they did it in response to the defeat of Hillary Clinton, in belief that that defeat might provide an opening to pick up some disappointed Clinton supporters that really were focussed on seeing a woman on the ticket. (I'm not saying this is true, or that, if true, it was a reasonable expectation on their part -- but its an argument I've heard that is certainly more plausible than the explanation that the choice was made because they thought the Clinton campaign was still going strong and that that is who they would have to face in the general.)
Actually, the Kennedy's in general and JFK in particular DESERVE to be ripped apart--but not for the vapid reasons that Sarah Palin's ghost writer came up with.
Look, I'm not here to turn this into some JFK and RFK and Ted Kennedy did all this horrible crap and killed a woman and got away with it and were womanizing nepotistic rich bastards ... all or or some of these things could be said. But what I was trying to say here was that nobody has ever run on that platform. You can write a book of dirt when you're done with politics but writing such a book before you become president is sort of like asking your future opponent if they'd like to have their way with you right now. I mean JFK, though flawed, was a hero to a lot of Americans. And his martyrdom was just icing on the cake. And to call into question one of his most loved and cherished speeches is more than ballsy, it's downright dangerous.
Sarah Palin is a new kind of political monster, unlike the ones I'm used to watching comfortably from my armchair. She's got a twitter feed that sports so many errors, she might actually be the person running it! From a classic Bush-esque prescriptive versus descriptive linguistics error to making accusations and weird religious remarks. It's a microblogging service! Look at what the rest of the politicians use it for: a paid staff techie is told what to put on it and what goes on it is only tepid words praising safe topics for that candidate to like. And those are usually reviewed seventy times before they go up. She has broken the rules of and committed fouls in politics many times and yet people embrace her.
All I wanted to say in my post was that from what I've seen of Sarah Palin, we should have stuck a fork in her long ago yet she remains. And why is that? Well, she's a dangerously well liked and amicable to a large part of the population that you are not familiar with. If she makes a mistake they seem to forgive her and say "I've made that mistake too." If she uses cracked logic or argument tactics long ago written off by academics, her followers just write off the academics. Trust me, as someone who's tried to reason with a supporter with some fairly simple debate analysis of Glenn Beck's logic, I can tell you that you don't want to approach this as some fancy pants intellectual telling them how dumb they are.
Don't confuse this with praise of Sarah Palin or defense of JFK. This is just me trying to warn people about how I see the situation at present. What happens when she runs for president and her opposition preys on some stupid social gaffe of hers? If it's any less than what she's already done, it's merely going to be ignored by or reinforce her supporter's commitment.
My work here is dung.