I’m going to take an opportunity for some sarcasm here, so be warned: The word “maverick” is not found anywhere in the first Article of the US Constitution.
So is being a “maverick” a qualification for President of the US? Before we can make a definitive statement on this question, I would like to explore what exactly a “maverick” is. Merriam Webster’s online dictionary traces the word to a feller on the Great American Plains during the second (and therefore super-romantic) half of the 19th century named Samuel A. Maverick. This guy apparently did not brand his calves, for whatever reason. This is interesting to me, that this word, which has been appropriated by both McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin to describe themselves, should come from such a source. It seems to me that since January 20, 2001, our country has been presided over by someone who affects cowboy images and cowboy lingo to describe his foreign policy. Need we bring up the “Wanted Dead or Alive” comment?
We can leave off that a maverick is, according to mw-online, an unbranded calf. I find the etymology of the term especially interesting because of the second definition of the term: “an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party”. Does McCain not have a Party? Does he NOT vote with the Republican Leadership and President George W. Bush more than 90% of the time?
Right, right, those are talking points of the Obama Campaign. Gotta watch out for that. Fact is McCain is a Republican. He is running on the Republican Brand. He doesn’t consider himself a libertarian, he considers himself a fiscal and social conservative. Read the rest of this entry »
First, a preemptive word. I have been getting like 50 or so hits on each of these posts on Sarah Palin. This says a couple things to me. Most of the people who are googling her name aren’t coming up with Supernova Earth’s site. And second, those who are keenly interested in reading about her (either against or for her) are not reading Supernova Earth. The right wingers continue to pay attention to their media, and the left wingers continue to pay attention to larger leftist blogs. This is fine. I write for myself anyway, and if someone else sees it, I am that much more famous for it. I raise this topic, because just this once I hope Sarah Palin visits my blog, so she can rectify some of her recently identified deficiencies.
Second, I want to make a note as to why I have dramatically increased my volume of posting since the conventions. Sarah Palin is just a great story. It is my opinion that she is less qualified than George Bush to have anything to do with the White House, and that is saying a lot. She regularly supplies material for a curmudgeon like me to write about. In short, I don’t know if I could help it but to write about her even if I wanted to.
Now to the meat. Let’s talk about Sarah Palin’s lack of knowledge about the Bush Doctrine. You can see her “soft” ball interview with Charles Gibson, but pay special attention to the line of questioning about the Bush Doctrine . Clearly (and pretty much everyone agrees) that she tripped on this one. “In what respect, Charlie?” is almost the stock answer to a “yes or now” question in which someone doesn’t know the context and doesn’t want to fuck it up. Ok Cool.
1st point. The media rallied to Palin’s defense on this one. Don’t believe me? Youtube is a remarkable resource where not only is a source usually cited, but you can watch the words coming out of someone’s mouth. I discovered there, after a one minute search, a clip of people on several news channels saying “Oh. Don’t worry about that. Nobody refers to it in these terms, nobody knows what the Bush Doctrine is. It’s no surprise that Palin doesn’t.” Here’s the link. No one knows what it is, so why should she? It is simply stunning to me that the corporate media is willing to give her a pass on this, because the Bush Doctrine is the ideological foundation for the war in Iraq. Read the rest of this entry »
