Convention Wrapup / Moderation / Miscellaneous

First of all, being that the timeframe on talking about Sara Palin has been compressed due to convention madness, I found these articles by former Dukakis campaign manager Susan Estrich and former VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro on the Palin pick. As both of these ladies have views that I usually respect and usually disagree with, I though it would be instructive on which histroric benchmark was going to be set in November.

Now, as promised, I'm not just going to wipe out comments this week I don't like. Here's what got pulled this week and my response. Any further comments here will be passed through without moderation. So if you think I'm muzzling free speech, you're wrong. Read on:

Shaw Kenaw: PS. Comment moderation? Why? Yours was one of the very, very few Rightie blogs that isn't afraid of hearing another point of view. I don't use offensive language. Why the moderation?

To keep everything on topic. Other point of views are welcome and offensive language is preferred if it makes me laugh. But it has to relate more or less directly to what is going on at the convention. Otherwise we get completely off the subject of the Democrat speeches and goings on and start talking about Republicans exclusively:

Shaw (again): Here's another VERY BIG issue McCain is WRONG on: Petraeus Disagrees With McCain, Says Success In Iraq Was Possible Without The Surge Gen. David Petraeus, top commander of coalition military forces in Iraq, recently sat down with Newsweek to do a “valedictory” interview before he takes up his new post as CENTCOM commander next month. Newsweek reported that while Petraeus recognized that al-Qaeda in Iraq has been significantly diminished, he refusesd to say the terror group had been “defeated.” Moreover, Petraeus acknowledged that the recent successes in Iraq may have been possible without the surge> Petraeus is careful not to credit all the progress to the surge of U.S. troops in 2007. The sea change came last year from a series of movements now known as the Awakening. So would the Sunni Awakening have succeeded without the surge? Possibly, he concedes. The Right kept hounding Obama to admit the surge worked. And AGAIN Obama was right to not cave into that sound-bite admission. Even Genral Petraeus acknowledges that the reduction of violence was not because of the surge. And he also said not to call what has happened in Iraq a "victory" or to run around yelping "We won!" "We won!" In fact, he remarked that the Champagne bottle is still in the refrigerator. The Republicans, so desperate to find any good news about Iraq, disregard the chaos and mess still rampant in the beleagured, destroyed country and try to sell the fantasy that "We won!" McCain, the guys who's supposed to have foreign policy expertise, has been wrong on every important foreign policy issue, especially issues involving Iraq and the ME.

Somebody probably covered this in a speech. But without relating it to the convention, it ends up in comment purgatory, or would be better served if it was a response to McCain's speech.


Interesting postscript to my convention coverage: the last couple of days, Ive peen having those good old computer issues. But ever since I wiped everything out on my main computer (it helps to have tow), it's been working fine except for Firefox, which has been crashing due to an addon. Being that's where I'm typing this that's a bad thing. So just to remind you: BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP!

Okay, that all the fun for week one. Now I can tear the GOP a new one. But before I go, here's one last reason for the liberals to vote Obama (nod to Toad for this one):