Double Standards

A friend of mine sent me the following. peace, mjh

I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight…..

(A) If you grow up in Hawaii , raised by your grandparents, you’re “exotic, different.”

(B) Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, [yours is] a quintessential American story.

(A) If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

(B) Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you’re a maverick.

(A) Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

(B) Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.

(A) If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor,  spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of  13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.

(B) If your total resume is: local weather girl,  4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.

(A) If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.

(B) If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.

(A) If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

(B) If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you’re very responsible.

(A) If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.

(B) If you’re husband is nicknamed “First Dude”,  with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA , your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

Think Progress » The Sarah Palin Digest

 

Palin Believes The Founding Fathers Wrote The Pledge Of Allegiance. In 2006, when asked by the Eagle Forum Alaska if she found the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance offensive, Palin replied, “Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me.” But the words “Under God” didn’t appear in the Pledge until 1954. The Pledge itself wasn’t written until 1892. [Huffington Post, 9/1/08; Slate, 6/28/02]

Palin Responded ‘Hang ‘Em Up’ When Asked About The Death Penalty. When asked about the death penalty in extreme cases, Palin replied, “My goodness, hang ‘em up, yeah.” [Anchorage Daily News, 8/18/06] …

Palin Left Wasilla $20 Million In Debt. As mayor of Wasilla, Palin cut taxes while simultaneously expanding the town’s operating budget by almost $2 million. She ended her term in 2002 with Wasilla $20 million in debt. [Anchorage Daily News 10/23/06; the Politico, 8/29]

Think Progress » The Sarah Palin Digest

The Reformer

Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home

By James V. Grimaldi and Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writers

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a “per diem” allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd, has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.

Palin, who earns $125,000 a year, claimed and received $16,951 as her allowance, which officials say was permitted because her official “duty station” is Juneau, according to an analysis of her travel documents by The Washington Post.

The governor’s daughters and husband charged the state $43,490 to travel, and many of the trips were between their house in Wasilla and Juneau, the capital city 600 miles away, the documents show. …

She wrote some form of “Lodging — own residence” or “Lodging — Wasilla residence” more than 30 times at the same time she took a per diem, according to the reports. In two dozen undated amendments to the reports, the governor deleted the reference to staying in her home but still charged the per diem.

Palin charged the state a per diem for working on Nov. 22, 2007 — Thanksgiving Day. The reason given, according to the expense report, was the Great Alaska Shootout, an annual NCAA college basketball tournament held in Anchorage.

In separate filings, the state was billed about $25,000 for Palin’s daughters’ expenses and $19,000 for her husband’s. …

The family also charged for flights around the state, including trips to Alaska events such as the start of the Iditarod dog-sled race and the Iron Dog snowmobile race, a contest that Todd Palin won. …

In the past, per diem claims by Alaska state officials have carried political risks. In 1988, the head of the state Commerce Department was pilloried for collecting a per diem charge of $50 while staying in his Anchorage home, according to local news accounts. The commissioner, the late Tony Smith, resigned amid a series of controversies.

“It was quite the little scandal,” said Tony Knowles, the Democratic governor from 1994 to 2000. “I gave a direction to all my commissioners if they were ever in their house, whether it was Juneau or elsewhere, they were not to get a per diem because, clearly, it is and it looks like a scam — you pay yourself to live at home,” he said.

Knowles, whose children were school-age at the start of his first term, said that his wife sometimes accompanied him to conferences overseas but that he could “count on one hand” the number of times his children accompanied him.

“And the policy was not to reimburse for family travel on commercial airlines, because there is no direct public benefit to schlepping kids around the state,” he said. The rules were articulated by Mike Nizich, then director of administrative services in the governor’s office, said Knowles and an aide to another former governor, Walter Hickel.

Nizich is now Palin’s chief of staff.

Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home

Ignore the Feeble Old Man Behind the Curtain — Look at the Pretty Lady!

Good news, everybody. The GOP has discovered that some people are still sexist and they aren’t going to put up with it any longer. Never mind the fact that the Republicans regularly roll their eyes at Politically Correct speech and insist that everyone is so damn sensitive to harmless speech. No, now the Republicans are the feminist, if not the femi-nazis.

I assume McSame Failin’ will be speaking out in favor of equal pay and a woman’s right to control her own body. Yes? I assume Conservatives everywhere are asking forgiveness for the hateful things they said about Janet Reno and many other women. I assume McCain has called up that supporter who called Hillary a bitch and finally said, “Madam, I won’t stand for that,” instead of laughing along with the crowd.

Yup, with Republicans Against Sexism, it’s morning in AmeriCo again.

 Palin Drone

Palin Drone

Sexism and the GOP’s candidate for VP

By Jim Scarantino

On the basis of experience alone, one cannot answer yes to Obama as president and no to Palin as vice president without applying a sexist double standard.

Palin has her own remarkable life story to tell. Like Obama, she must overcome stereotypes and prejudice. She has only two short, intense months to get that done. [mjh: Poor Palin! Perhaps she should have gotten involved in the national scene a little sooner. Did the GOP learn nothing from the last nasty governor they anointed?]

Palin Drone

Obama has been running for over 18 months. There is no one in America who hasn’t heard something about him. (No one who should vote, at least.) Palin is an unknown to most of her own party. It just isn’t comparable, Jim.

We’ve seen this VP before

By Jerry Ortiz y Pino

We know Sarah Palin because we know Fox News and because we know Ann Coulter. She is a fresh face on the scene, but the ideas she espouses are certainly not fresh; they deviate not an iota from the Karl Rove memo-of-the-day repeated endlessly by the clones at Fox. And she delivers them with the venom and bilious smirk we know all-too-well from watching Coulter when we can’t escape. …

We know Palin because we knew Spiro Agnew. She has been assigned the Spiro Agnew role, the Spiro Agnew dialogue, the Spiro Agnew bludgeon. She is, despite her gender, Spiro Agnew the way Mary Martin was, despite her gender, Peter Pan.

Ach, Du Lieber Mann!

really?!

Another Democrat for McCain? Really? I wonder who these Democrats supported before Obama got the nomination. I can’t think of any Democrat other than Lieberman who is like McCain. What kind of Democrat switches from some hard-to-imagine Democratic candidate to McSame Failin’? A so-called Raygun Democrat? A so-called Southern Democrat?

Understand, it’s still mostly a free country — in spite of BushCo’s best efforts (finally, their incompetence shows a benefit). You’re welcome to support whomever. And you’re welcome to call yourself whatever. But, a Democrat for McCain? That’s like Caribou for Palin. peace, mjh