vicarz | (no subject)

I have to remind everyone as we get stuck talking about superstars, that the real elections that count are legislative and local. The prez is sexy, but the country is run on laws which both percolate from below and are written by people who largely percolate from below. It's a waste to blow this political wad on one person and one of the three branches of government. Your votes count far more in the local legislative, and where applicable the judicial elections.

Please turn in your REP or DEM card and be independent. Have views, and vote with those views. Base the views and your votes on DATA rather than speeches and personalities.

That said, some cliche Palin questions:
1. I agree, now that I think about it, that the kids shouldn't be in the spotlight - but what if the mother put them there? Palin defended herself against accusations by disclosing something about her daughter, then complained that the media talked about her daughter. What am I missing here?

2. I've heard that Palin, while calling herself an anti-pork-barrel maverick, requested more special project money per capita than any other gov. Is this accurate or no? What reliable data can I view to know this?

As I hear about questions on the vetting process, I rather like the idea of an unsanitized candidate making it through the dumbing down of USian politicians. Remember 7 of 9's husband, who told the party he had nothing to hide - before his attempts to force his wife to perform sex acts publicly in the fetish club against her will? Seen the busts of politicians who championed against escort services while using them? It's only sad that we keep busting people on this moral crap. It's easy to voice moral viewpoints, but practicing those viewpoints is a whole nutter ballgame. Anton LaVey noted the churchgoers who sinned every weekend...

Work:
I just read a book "Managing up," which I really don't recommend. It's by the secretary of the CEO of GE, and how she worked with him. The biggest problem I have with this book is the sunuvabitch used the holy hell out of this woman and gave her nothing back. Sure, she got to engage in hero worship and ride in the wake of a powerful man - but what did she get? She served the company for decades working insane hours, for what pay? With what profits from options? She retired as a secretary, still. She had no family. She sacrificed everything and only to be a lifetime servant. A real leader would have developed her, and most importantly taught her independence from him.

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Palin: The pregnancy of her kid should be off limits. Her unblinking support of teen pregnancy and insistance that what happened is an example of moral values, however, should not be.

Her earmarking is accurate, I think, but you'll just find news articles on it. The documents that they cite aren't easily available themselves...I can't find them at least. But earmarking and pork-barrell are two different things, the latter being a specific kind of abuse of the former. So what she did wasn't really that bad, as the structure of Alaska requires a lot of special needs money, but they shot themselves in the foot because McCain never really made a distinction between Earmarking and Pork Projects in his fight against them, and has heavily criticized both.

Good points both, thanks.

I'm not sure whether you're looking for a straight list of funded projects for Palin, but here's CBS news piece on the subject: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/02/politics/washingtonpost/main4406403.shtml?source=mostpop_story

That has quite a lot of hard numbers.

WOW. Thank you, and thank WaPo. Fantastic easily tracked details. Can't wait for the issue with the divorce/cop firing to be fully developed.

I can't believe that there weren't better VP picks, even amongst female socially conservative republicans.

Glad to be of service...

Palin defended herself against accusations by disclosing something about her daughter, then complained that the media talked about her daughter. What am I missing here?

Uhhh... no. She was defending her daughter against accusations. The original accusation was that the 17 year old had birthed the youngest son with down's syndrome and that Palin was claiming the kid as her own. The kid was born in April. Her 17 year old was five months pregnant ergo could not be her kid. Plus, hiding a baby bump would be damn well impossible pretty soon. Even in the original speech you saw how she held the youngest child and a blanket.

--k

So that's what I'm missing. It's a touch distinction - the question was about what Palin was doing, and the daughter was just incidental. Fine line to me.

"Managing Up" -- I wish it were an artifact of past times. Since the 1950's, administrative support was one of the few corporate careers open to women, and that support position always involved acting as a sort of domestic surrogate, offering administrative but also emotional support (in the form of warm subservience) to a more powerful male. It was also expected that unmarried administrative assistants were in the field looking for a nice boss to marry. Even recently women are expected to act out traditional femininity in the workplace, more or less depending upon their field.

This was a retired secretary - hopefully I read too much in to it, and it is merely an artifact from another times. She had been working since the 60s or so. I found some reasonable tips in there about attitude and time management, but...I couldn't really find any meat in the book. The more in depth the subject matter was, the more pointless and fluffy the suggestions became.

The funniest scenes where were she scolded the execs for not bring more females into the manufacturing and engineering areas...this from an exec asst. Sigh. You know, bring those OTHER women here. Oh, and she couldn't have kids of her own because she was a servant full-time all hours.