Alaskans on Sarah Palin– some extracts

Jim Wright (link via Whatever):

This just ticks me off.

Don't get me wrong here, I like Sarah Palin. I do. A lot. Her house is less than ten miles from my own. She grew up right here in the MatSu Valley, just down the road from Stonekettle Station. I've met her. My wife has met her - and we've got the pictures to prove it. She’s tough, and smart, and very Alaskan. She’s been good to the military here in Alaska, and unlike a lot of Republican Neocons these days she has a son in uniform who is serving in Iraq right now. [actually, deploys there on September 11 - o.g.] She stood up to her own party and went after corruption with a vengeance. She slapped Big Oil upside the head, something that is completely unheard of for an Alaskan politician. She not only bit the hand that fed her corpulent predecessors, she dammed near gnawed it off - which is something that fills me as an Alaskan with more than a touch of glee. I don’t agree with everything she stands for, especially her stance on core Republican agenda planks, but I do very much admire Sarah Palin and respect her.

I voted for her - after I swore I would not vote another goddamned Republican into Alaskan office. And I fully intend to vote for her again when and if she runs for reelection as Alaska's Governor.

I think her exceptional common sense, tough frontier mentality, and tenacious no-nonsense attitude is a good compliment to John McCain. I think Sarah Palin will make a dandy VP, and an even better President a few years down the line.

I also happen to think that she's the best thing that has happened to Alaskan politics in a long, long while.

So what the hell is my problem?

Well, I happen to think she's the best thing that's happened to Alaskan politics in a long, long while.

And I want to keep her. Here. In Alaska.

McGehee (hey, he counts, he’s “formerly”!):

Okay, so John McCain has picked Sarah Palin for his running mate. I was against it months ago, more for reasons having to do with Palin’s best interest than anything else really. As I replied to reader Bobbert by e-mail:

I like what I’d been reading about Palin. She’s popular up there in a way that no other governor I know of has been. I thought she could have had a real future in national politics—but this kind of short-circuits that.

Barack Obama has been running for president longer than Palin has been governor. All the enthusiasm for her nationally has to do almost entirely with her second X chromosome and her attractiveness.

Since writing that, I’ve actually seen her (on TV) in action on the stump, at the rally in Ohio where her VP candidacy was announced. I’m warming up to the idea now and getting a much better idea of why she’s as popular in Alaska as she is. Hint: it’s not as much because of X chromosomes up there as it is in the Lower 48.

Also worth bearing in mind is how she got to be governor. She defeated an incumbent Republican governor in the primary, someone who was already a big fish in Alaska politics even before becoming governor (a little more detail here) You don’t do that, even in Alaska, without some chops.

“Stormrider” (also here, via Blair):

My plea is "Don't underestimate her."

I worked on the Tony Knowles gubernatorial campaign 2 years ago... Sarah, a relative unknown, was running in the primary against Frank [Murkowski] and a wide field of well-liked Alaskan politicians, and was treated like a joke, right up to the primary election night when it became clear that she was the Republican candidate.

The general election season continued the theme... To many of us it felt like the Democratic party didn't ever take her seriously. We all knew Sarah had a chance of winning, even a good chance, ...but no one predicted the landslide that developed, or her ability to maintain an 80% approval rating.

Sarah is a shark. She is smart, and she is shrewd. However, she comes across as extremely personable; you can't help but like her in person. She is a good public speaker, I've seen better from her in Alaska, and considering how little time she had to prepare for today's speech, I think we'll see much better from her in the near future.

The biggest mistake we can make is to write her off, ignore her, or think she won't bring anything to the campaign. Quit with the jokes and the remarks about how cute and quaint she is. Stop with the pats on the back and the hurr hurr stuff...

Our job is to remember and remind everyone else that it is John McCain running for President and not Sarah Palin... We don't want people thinking about Sarah as the President.

I say this because I believe Sarah could win if she were the one running for President...

Read ’em all.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 22:21:04 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Re: Palin

Best quote so far, from Steven Den Beste:

John McCain just sewed up the vital Otaku vote by picking a meganekko to be his VP candidate.

Some more links:

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 00:50:32 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Laptop vendors: Ignoring the customer

Vista wars: Report from the field:

...what is truly impressive is the hatred for Vista out there on the net, and the lengths that it inspires people to go to to get rid of it and, in the spirit of the net, help others get rid of it.  Googling for info about getting XP up and running on this particular machine [Toshiba Satellite A200 laptop] yielded pages and pages of helpful information about exactly what must be done to round up the necessary drivers (many from the OEMs who supplied the various components of the machine)...

The other really startling thing was how many non-expert users were doing this...

I had the same experience installing XP on my Dell XPS 1530 (great computer, once you disinfect it) - there is basically a community dedicated to purging it of Vista...

When you are inspiring legions of both expert users and ordinary non-techy people to go through the pain of installing an operating system using an ad hoc collection of unsupported drivers, something is badly, badly awry.  I am critical not of MS so much as Toshiba, Dell and co - they are the ones who have made the key decision to support nothing but Vista.  I wonder if they realise the lengths their users are going to to get around this choice?

And if your customers have to go around you to get what they want, then why should they deal with you in the first place?

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 16:12:26 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Why Bill Ayers matters

Ken Talton explains:

This goes to the heart of why the modern left is actively scary....and why they can’t see that they are.  They see nothing wrong with associating with a terrorist if the terrorist was a leftie...and they are so detached, ethically bankrupt and provincial that they can‘t see why this is an issue.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 16:45:16 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Variation on a meme redux

They told me that if George W. Bush were re-elected police would arrest reporters for taking pictures of political fat cats on public sidewalks.

Via:  “sonofdy,” in a comment at Michelle Malkin

Moments later:  Insty beat me (not surprisingly!):

You can't make this stuff up.

UPDATE 080827 23:03:  Eating their own?  (via mesablue at Ace)

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 21:44:59 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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D’ya remember those Republicans...? (cont’d.)

The platform committee didn’t get the memo:

Members of the GOP platform committee voted Wednesday to stick with an energy plank that doesn’t mention drilling in the [Alaska wildlife] refuge... - “GOP platform backs off Arctic oil to help McCain”

And National Review’s Stephen Spruiell thinks it’s a good thing!

By taking a heavy pen to the working draft, the subcommittee prevented a big fight over climate change from breaking out in the full committee, where it would have gotten a lot more press coverage. [Yeah, as if the media isn’t going to notice– you wish! - o.g.] Better a messy draft than a messy split between the party and its candidate on the eve of the convention.

How about trying a little truth? Oh well, nobody believes anything that politicians say, anyway...

Via: Michelle

Previously:

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 21:26:52 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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mmmmmmmmmmmmm... SPLAT!

Excellent (if wince-producing) comment [in thead to this post at The Big Picture] on trying to use the “decrease in the rate of acceleration of the fall of  prices” as an excuse to call the bottom in the housing market:

I’m a mechanical engineer by trade so I “see” things in the physical sense.  Let me give you a physical analogy to the bottom callers and the decreasing acceleration that I’ve grown so sick and tired of hearing about.  If I jump out of a plane with no parachute, I accelerate (via gravity) until I reach a point that the air friction... equals the force of gravity pulling me toward the earth.  This point is called terminal velocity.  The highest... acceleration I experience is the instant I jump out the plane and it “decreases” to zero... at terminal velocity...  BTW – terminal velocity for a human is about 125 mph (store this trivia tidbit for use in just a second.)  So the housing rate of acceleration slowed, SO WHAT!!!!  At terminal velocity my acceleration has slowed to zero, BUT I'm still screaming toward the earth at 125 mph!  The instant right before I face plant into Firma Terra, I'm still experiencing no acceleration.  My point is the acceleration, while important, has NOTHING to do with calling a bottom in housing! The only thing that matters is the direction.  If I’m still heading down then there is no bottom reached regardless of whether I’m headed down faster or slower (acceleration) than last period.

Posted by: Rob P. | Aug 27, 2008 9:50:58 AM

Via:  Howard

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You don’t HAVE to be crazy, but...

Frank James writes good stuff.^[1] Like this story of metal thievery in the hinterlands, the use of a manure spreader as a getaway vehicle, and the importance of reputation as an element of rural crime control:

It’s not a question of whether or not I would actually shoot ’em, but it's the public perception that I would LIKE TO shoot ’em that tends to keep our particular place a little less disturbed than others...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 17:05:42 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Belated blogmeet report

End-of-the-month wind-down + start of school + Colts game + Blackwater + 2 meets in one month + whatever = thinner but still companionable turnout on Sunday. Present were Shermlock & Mrs. Shomes, Roberta X, and yrs truly. Amongst topics of discussion: Why a Single Point of Failure is a Bad Thing, Especially when it Involves Air Conditioning, the merits of different methods of popcorn popping (Oh look, here’s a steam engine used for driving a popcorn popper... Steam-powered popcorn- kewl!), and Why School Should Not Start Until After Labor Day. Good time was had by this participant and, I see, the others.

Roberta X promises enhanced advance notice re: September’s date.  Watch this space (or this one).

Posted by: Old Grouch in Meta at 15:54:26 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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At least they didn’t name him “Eerie”

UPDATE 080822 17:25:  Daily Mail story
(Daily Mail via Rachel Lucas, where they’re fightin’ like cats ’n’ dogs)

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