Current Events

[DFender]

Cuz I actually pay attention to the news... here's a place for me to rant


Dateline 7/03/09
MSNBC.com

Palin to resign as Alaska governor
Former vice presidential hopeful says she won't finish out first term

BREAKING NEWS
NBC News and news services
updated 4:03 p.m. ET, Fri., July 3, 2009

WASILLA, Alaska - Sarah Palin announced Friday she plans to resign as governor of Alaska in a few weeks, saying she will try to "affect positive change" from outside government.

Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008, made the announcement at a press conference Friday.

She said the decision has been "in the works" for a while and comes after "prayer and consideration."

She is handing the reins over to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who will be sworn in on July 25. Parnell and most of Palin's cabinet were present at the announcement.

"We know we can affect positive change outside government at this moment in time on another scale and actually make a difference," she said, adding that politics had become a "superficial, wasteful bloodsport."


Some have speculated in the past that Palin may be interested in running for president in 2012, but she did not mention running for another office.

Palin was elected Alaska's youngest and first woman governor in 2006 at age 42. She was the surprise pick of Arizona Sen. John McCain as running mate in the 2008 presidential election.

She was only the second woman to appear on a major party presidential ticket — Democrat Geraldine Ferraro was the first when she ran unsuccessfully for vice president with Walter Mondale in 1984.

© 2009 msnbc.com
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31726640?GT1=43001



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[milkman]

Isn't this great!!!

[DFender]

Originally Posted by milkman Isn't this great!!!

Well it could be a great thing... lol... but what I wanna know is WHY? Why is she resigning? Something's gonna come out. It can't be over the Letterman gimmick... can it?

[BrickBanland]

More time to perform her duties as a "soccer mom".

[DFender]

Originally Posted by BrickTamland More time to perform her duties as a "soccer mom".

Ha... I don't think that's IT though. It's botherin' me... I need to know these things! I have an inquiring mind, dammit.

[milkman]

I think it will come out how much she spent on the govs tab and on what.

[DFender]

Originally Posted by milkman I think it will come out how much she spent on the govs tab and on what.

Like snowmobiles and jetskis and whatnot? Free plane trips for her loser husband and kids? LOL

[milkman]

Sumthin like that....not to mention the favortism she had....They're all crooks IMO!!

[DFender]

Originally Posted by milkman Sumthin like that....not to mention the favortism she had....They're all crooks IMO!!

That's the problem, Milkster. They'll never be an honest politician because you can't be honest and be a politician. The miserable fucks.

[milkman]

Exactly why our system as it is sucks. We need term limits bad!! Not to mention open records for their spending. It will never happen. The latest on open spending is it will be delayed till Nov, just enough time to modify and cover up.

Now they just want to tax everything that THEY think is a sin, beer, smokes, sex, movies.

We need another revolution!! Although I hope a peaceful one!! This shit is getting to be ridiculous though!!

[DFender]

Originally Posted by milkman Exactly why our system as it is sucks. We need term limits bad!! Not to mention open records for their spending. It will never happen. The latest on open spending is it will be delayed till Nov, just enough time to modify and cover up. Now they just want to tax everything that THEY think is a sin, beer, smokes, sex, movies. We need another revolution!! Although I hope a peaceful one!! This shit is getting to be ridiculous though!!

I think about that too, Milk. Another revolution, that is. I dunno how else everything is gonna get fixed. *sigh*

[DFender]

Oh no... lolol... she'll get stomped into the ground if she runs in 2012... at least I hope that's what would happen.


MSNBC.com

Palin prepping for a run for president?
Fineman: Palin is potentially a major GOP player in 2012 race
ANALYSIS
By Howard Fineman

updated 6:56 p.m. ET, Fri., July 3, 2009
WASHINGTON - I have covered politics for a long time. I can tell when someone is running for president. Sarah Palin is running for president.

On a sunny (slow news) day in Wasilla, Alaska, the governor and former GOP vice presidential candidate appeared before the cameras and announced that she was stepping down as the state's chief executive 18 months before her term expires.

Just like that — like the distant sound of a chain saw in a stand of northern pines — the 2012 Republican race lurched into gear.

Palin is not the front-runner — there IS no front-runner — but she potentially is a major player in the Republican contest, her disastrous turn as John McCain’s running mate notwithstanding.

Why now? Why this minute? Well, perhaps there is scandal lurking in the Great North that we in the Lower 48 don’t know about. Maybe there is video of the Palin family setting a polar bear adrift on ice floes. But there is no reason to suspect so and, in the meantime, it’s worth noting that both the timing and the manner of Palin’s announcement were pretty shrewd.

She picked a long holiday weekend at the onset of summer (when, by the way, "Meet the Press" is pre-empted by Wimbledon tennis) to issue her stunner. She took no questions after her announcement and then disappeared into her house. As a result, she controlled the message, which was:

I’m the scrappy “point guard” (her basketball position on a state-champion team long ago) and I’m gonna take it to the hoop of freedom for ya!

Now she will be free to travel the country, rake in a lot of dough as a speaker, work the GOP and conservative dinner circuit, hawk her book once it comes out — and see how the game develops.

No rocket scientist
Now: a trawler-full of caveats.

Scrappy though she is, Palin is no rocket scientist. Her knowledge of the issues and of the wider world remains shallow and incomplete. In some respects, her family life is a monument to confusion, if not hypocrisy, about Traditional Family Values. The cutesy-pie thing is fading fast, and isn’t the route (as Tina Fey proved) to Margaret Thatcher-hood. Her performance on the national campaign trail (after the first scripted moments in St. Paul) was, for the most part, not only laughable, but also cringe-worthy. She was in over her head.

But you never say “never” in politics, and there are reasons why it’s worth paying attention to what she is up to these days.
She is popular with core Republicans and conservatives for her emotional approach to abortion, for her Alaskan devotion to guns and hunting, and for her libertarianish theory of government whose last true devotee was Barry Goldwater.

Palin comes from the core of the core GOP demographic: rural, Protestant, married and churchgoing. She is in THAT mainstream.

Some of her potential rivals are just as busy making fools of themselves as she ever was during the 2008 campaign. At least she hasn’t been caught doing the tango in Buenos Aires (Mark Sanford), or having sex with a staffer (John Ensign) or calling Supreme Court noiminee Sonia Sotomayor a “racist” (Newt Gingrich) or disappearing to an ambassadorship in China (Jon Huntsman).

No expectations
Early polls show that none of the other men left standing — Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, to name two — is exactly a colossus. To be blunt, the GOP is in such a shambles that in that land of the blind, even this one-eyed woman could become queen.

And as simplistic as she is, her reductionist view of the role of the federal government could be appealing to a GOP grassroots that is already apoplectic about the aggrandizements of the Obama administration in health care, environmental control, education and other aspects of our lives.

Expectations are on her side. Essentially, there are none; at least among the media elites she already has, in Nixonian fashion, made her foil. She may not have a Phi Beta Kappa key, but she knows how to play a victim of the people who do — and that is popular among the conservatives she now courts.

Finally, there is that scrappy thing. She genuinely was a good — and tough — point guard. And in an Alaska bar fight, I would bet on her any day against the boys who leaked bad stuff about her anonymously to Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair.

They didn’t have the class or the guts to attack her on the record as they frantically tried to blame her for their own horrendous judgment in picking her as McCain’s running mate.

She wasn’t ready then. She may never be. But at least she’s still in the game. Those guys are finished, we all can hope.

© 2009 msnbc.com. Reprints
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31727978...ics/?GT1=43001


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© 2009 MSNBC.com

[Feisty]

Did you hear her speech? Good god is made no sense, something about basketball and a refrigerator magnet. Also, her poll numbers were in the tiolet I hear in Alaska...

[DFender]

Cheeky motherfuckers.

SKorea says North fires 7 missiles off east coast
By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press Writer
1 hr 58 mins ago

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea fired seven ballistic missiles off its eastern coast Saturday, South Korea said, a violation of U.N. resolutions and an apparent message of defiance to the United States on its Independence Day.
The launches, which came two days after North Korea fired what were believed to be four short-range cruise missiles, will likely further escalate tensions in the region as the U.S. tries to muster support for tough enforcement of the latest U.N. Security Council resolution imposed on the communist regime for its May nuclear test.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said three missiles were fired early Saturday, a fourth around noon and three more in the afternoon. The Defense Ministry said that the missiles were ballistic and are believed to have flown more than 250 miles (400 kilometers).

"Our military is fully ready to counter any North Korean threats and provocations based on strong South Korea-U.S. combined defense posture," the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the first three appeared to be Rodong missiles while the rest were an upgraded version of Scud-C missiles, citing intelligence authorities.

The Defense Ministry said it could not confirm the report, saying more analysis needs to be done.

Scud-C missiles have a range of up to 300 miles (500 kilometers), which could hit most of South Korea. The Rodong has a range of up to 800 miles (1,300 kilometers), putting most parts of Japan within striking distance. Yonhap said, however, that the range of the Rodong missiles launched Saturday had been reduced.

U.N. resolutions ban North Korea from firing Scuds, medium-range missiles or long-range missiles. Among the U.N. measures is Resolution 1874, passed after North Korea's May 25 nuclear test, that prohibits any launch using ballistic missile technology.

Thursday's missile launches, on the other hand, did not violate the resolution, according to South Korea's Foreign Ministry. Kim Tae-woo, vice president of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, said they were believed to be cruise missiles.

Ballistic missiles are guided during their ascent out of the atmosphere but fall freely when they descend. Cruise missiles fly low and straight to their target.
The North has a record of timing its missile tests for U.S. Independence Day, which fell on Saturday.

"The missiles were seen as part of military exercises, but North Korea also appeared to have sent a message to the U.S. through the missile launches," a senior official in South Korea's presidential office said, without elaborating.
The official told The Associated Press that North Korea could fire more missiles in coming days, but said there was little possibility it could fire an intercontinental ballistic missile, as it threatened in April.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.

Yonhap said North Korea was pulling out personnel from its missile launch site and was allowing ships to sail again in waters off its east coast — an indication no more missiles would be launched in the near future. Yonhap cited an unidentified military official.

The Defense Ministry said it could not confirm the report.

The North had initially warned ships to stay away from its east coast through July 10 for military exercises.

But the South Korea-U.S. combined forces command will not change its heightened alert level until tensions are eased, the Defense Ministry said. The command increased surveillance in May, when the North threatened military strikes on South Korean and U.S. troops.

The U.S. has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a deterrent against North Korea.

Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based analyst for the International Crisis Group think tank, said both political and military reasons were behind the launches.
"I think it's a demonstration of their defiance and rejection of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, for one thing, and to demonstrate their military power capabilities to any potential adversaries," Pinkston said.
He also pointed out that July 4 is not only U.S. Independence Day but also the anniversary of a 1972 joint communique in which the two Koreas agreed to work toward peacefully reunifying their divided peninsula.

During the U.S. Independence Day holiday in 2006, Pyongyang fired a barrage of missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2 that broke apart and fell into the ocean less than a minute after liftoff. Those launches, which occurred on July 5 in North Korea, also came amid tensions with the U.S. over North Korea's nuclear program.

North Korea's state news agency carried no reports on the launches.
South Korea and Japan, which are within easy range of North Korean missiles, condemned the launches as a "provocative" act that violates the U.N. resolution.

South Korea "expressed deep regret over the North's continuous behavior that escalates tensions in Northeast Asia by repeatedly defying" the resolution, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura said in a statement that the launch of missiles "is a serious act of provocation against the security of neighboring countries, including Japan, and is against the resolution of the U.N Security Council."

In Beijing, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said he had no immediate comment. China is the North's closest ally.
___
Associated Press writers Yuri Kageyama and Tomoko A. Hosaka in Tokyo, Henry Sanderson in Beijing, and Jae-soon Chang in Seoul contributed to this report.

[Hank]

I know I'm way late but I aint been around so....Palin is finally gone, fucking sweet she was a disgrace to women in politics. She was placed up there like a milf model, and made females in poitics look really shitty. Like all that they can do is be proped up to look good, talk about nothing but family and being a mother..etc... She was a disgreace to female politicians..IMO My mom was so disgusted with her, it was like I was talking to meself about her.