Sorry, Palin ain't my thing.....neither is Obama

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Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial expertise in the complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure. Palin's pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.

She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and exhorting people to obey their worst impulses . In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of "the other." For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don't want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind. (Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact that Sen. Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his arrival on the scene.) I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin�s message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.

Look at what she stands for:
--Small town values -- a denial of America's global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
--Ignorance of world affairs -- a repudiation of the need to repair America's image abroad.
--Family values -- a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don't need to be heeded.
--Rigid stands on guns and abortion -- a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.
--Patriotism -- the usual fallback in a failed war.
--"Reform" -- an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn't fit your ideology.

Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which has been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that minorities and immigrants, being different from "us" pure American types, can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is a foreign threat. The radical right marches under the banners of "I'm all right, Jack," and "Why change? Everything's OK as it is." The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time. She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are voting against their own good. The Republicans have won multiple national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness.

Obama's call for higher ideals in politics can't be seen in a vacuum. The shadow is real; it was bound to respond. Not just conservatives possess a shadow -- we all do. So what comes next is a contest between the two forces of progress and inertia. Will the shadow win again, or has its furtive appeal become exhausted? No one can predict. The best thing about Gov. Palin is that she brought this conflict to light, which makes the upcoming debate honest. It would be a shame to elect another Reagan, whose smiling persona was a stalking horse for the reactionary forces that have brought us to the demoralized state we are in. We deserve to see what we are getting, without disguise.

www.deepakchopra.com

Here is Obama's response on all the Palin family stories swirling around. He said he would fire any staffer found to be stoking the fires on these stories. I agree with him 100%:

Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown reports: At a press avail in Monroe, Mich., Barack Obama on Palin: "Back off these kinds of stories."

"I have said before and I will repeat again: People's families are off limits," Obama said. "And people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as a governor and/or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn�t be a topic of our politics."

is nothing but lie after lie. I've listed on this forum many times the lies that Obama has told. He also just told another recently with these investigations into harsh interrogations. He said he wouldn't go after people and now he has totally flip flopped on the subject which I think is sad. He says he wants to move forward but you can't move forward by constantly dragging up the past. I'm very saddened that our current administration is going to go after people who kept us safe and also prevented a follow-up attack. How many people in LA would have been killed if they had not done this? They kept us safe and now we are attacking them.....that's nice.

Only God truly knows Obama's heart and what he stands for but I cannot handle the blatant lies coming out of that man's mouth. I know politicians lie to get elected and all that jazz but he has just lied about so much and yet the biased news media and his kool-aid drinking followers look right past it and refuse to see what is right in front of them.

While I can see the controversy about when life begins when we are talking about the very early stages of development, I have this question for anyone who has ever had a child....or been one. Generally when a mother is about 20 weeks pregnant, give or take a couple of weeks, she starts to feel the baby moving around inside her body. The baby moves more and more as the weeks go by. Toward 30 weeks or so, you can actually feel the baby changing positions to get more comfortable, moving around. So you are saying that baby I felt moving in my body wasn't alive yet?

not to sign any bills with pork in it....oh wait.....he lied about that and signed it anyway, didn't he?

She banned reporters from her 1st meeting with world leaders. Only allowed access to photographers and a television crew. I'm just curious as to if anybody read as to why.

She has backed the Alaska Independence Party. Its platform calls for the defense of "states rights," to "seek the complete repatriation of the public lands, held by the federal government, to the state and people of Alaska in conformance with Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17, of the federal constitution." Basically, the AIP wants a vote on secession. The AIP says that Gov. Sarah Palin used to be a member of the party. Earlier this year, Palin recorded a welcoming address to the AIP's convention.

Officials of the Alaskan Independence Party say that Palin was once so independent, she was once a member of their party, which, since the 1970s, has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United States.

And while McCain's motto -- as seen in a new TV ad -- is "Country First," the AIP's motto is the exact opposite -- "Alaska First -- Alaska Always."

In an interview of extremists Mark Chryson and Steve Stoll helped launch Palin�s political career in Alaska, and in return had influence over policy. �Her door was open,� says Chryson � and still is.

So, this is group is just one of her past supporters. They helped her get where she is today. And dont even get me started on McCain.