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><channel><title>Chris Abraham &#187; exaggeration</title> <atom:link href="http://chrisabraham.com/tag/exaggeration/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /><link>http://chrisabraham.com</link> <description>Because the Medium is the Message</description> <lastBuildDate>Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:08:23 +0000</lastBuildDate> <language>en</language> <sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod> <sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency> <generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1</generator> <xhtml:meta xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="robots" content="noindex" /> <item><title>How to Make Constructive Criticism Online</title><link>http://chrisabraham.com/2009/02/19/how-to-make-constructive-criticism-online/</link> <comments>http://chrisabraham.com/2009/02/19/how-to-make-constructive-criticism-online/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:48:06 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Chris Abraham</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Chris Garrett]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Online Criticism]]></category> <category><![CDATA[The Blog Herald]]></category> <category><![CDATA[alls]]></category> <category><![CDATA[audience]]></category> <category><![CDATA[audiences]]></category> <category><![CDATA[brand]]></category> <category><![CDATA[change]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Chris]]></category> <category><![CDATA[doe]]></category> <category><![CDATA[empathy]]></category> <category><![CDATA[evenings]]></category> <category><![CDATA[exaggeration]]></category> <category><![CDATA[expectation]]></category> <category><![CDATA[fair warning]]></category> <category><![CDATA[fairness]]></category> <category><![CDATA[feelings]]></category> <category><![CDATA[humanities]]></category> <category><![CDATA[lawyer]]></category> <category><![CDATA[lawyers]]></category> <category><![CDATA[leaves]]></category> <category><![CDATA[likeness]]></category> <category><![CDATA[liking]]></category> <category><![CDATA[onli]]></category> <category><![CDATA[online]]></category> <category><![CDATA[people]]></category> <category><![CDATA[personable]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Personal]]></category> <category><![CDATA[personal attacks]]></category> <category><![CDATA[personality]]></category> <category><![CDATA[personalization]]></category> <category><![CDATA[perspective]]></category> <category><![CDATA[perspectives]]></category> <category><![CDATA[possibilities]]></category> <category><![CDATA[post]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Publicity]]></category> <category><![CDATA[relevance]]></category> <category><![CDATA[relevancy]]></category> <category><![CDATA[reputation]]></category> <category><![CDATA[reputations]]></category> <category><![CDATA[reviewers]]></category> <category><![CDATA[rewrite]]></category> <category><![CDATA[rule of thumb]]></category> <category><![CDATA[second opinion]]></category> <category><![CDATA[shoulds]]></category> <category><![CDATA[taked]]></category> <category><![CDATA[think]]></category> <category><![CDATA[traffic]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Video]]></category> <category><![CDATA[walks]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Writing]]></category> <category><![CDATA[wrong idea]]></category><guid
isPermaLink="false">http://chrisabraham.com/2009/02/19/how-to-make-constructive-criticism-online/</guid> <description><![CDATA[Chris Garrett has a super-smart, &#8220;stop, think, breathe, write, review, share, rewrite, and then maybe don&#8217;t hit post,&#8221; list of things to consider before criticizing anyone or anything online, 10 Tips for Criticism Without Harming Your Reputation: Calm down &#8211; Take a breath, walk away, posting emotionally could cause more trouble than cure. Know what [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div
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style="display:none">Chris Garrett has a super-smart, &#8220;stop, think, breathe, write, review, share, rewrite, and then maybe don&#8217;t hit post,&#8221; list of things to consider before criticizing anyone or anything online, 10 Tips for Criticism Without Harming Your Reputation: Calm down &#8211; Take a breath, walk away, posting emotionally could cause more trouble than cure. Know what [...]</span></a></div><p></p><div
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href="http://www.blogherald.com/author/chrisg/">Chris Garrett</a> has a super-smart, &#8220;stop, think, breathe, write, review, share, rewrite, and then maybe don&#8217;t hit post,&#8221; list of things to consider before criticizing anyone or anything online, <a
href="http://www.blogherald.com/2009/02/19/how-to-criticize/" rel="bookmark" title="10 Tips for Criticism Without Harming Your Reputation">10 Tips for Criticism Without Harming Your Reputation</a>:</p><blockquote><ol><li><strong>Calm down</strong> &#8211; Take a breath, walk away, posting emotionally could cause more trouble than cure.</li><li><strong>Know what you want</strong> &#8211; Why are you doing this? What is it you want changed or to achieve?</li><li><strong>Does it need to be public?</strong> &#8211; First the best approach is to contact the company or person in question directly. I often go buy the rule of thumb “<em>Praise in public, complain in private</em>“. We all slip occasionally, but worth to keep in mind.</li><li><strong>Stick to the facts</strong> &#8211; If you only present the facts as you see them then you are normally safe as far as legal grounds are concerned (though I am not a lawyer), and only use relevant information.</li><li><strong>Get a second opinion</strong> &#8211; Before making something public, ensure you have expressed the issue clearly &#8211; this is not a time to be misunderstood!</li><li><strong>Keep to the issues</strong> &#8211; Personal attacks, name-calling, embellishments, posturing and exaggerations will just make you look nasty and foolish. The issues should speak for you.</li><li><strong>Swearing</strong> &#8211; Some people swear because they think it is funny or just part of their brand, which is fair enough if this is what your audience expects. I find though more people are put off than engaged by swearing, particularly where the quantity seems excessive even for swear fans. While you might like swearing, and might even think it is warranted, you will lose the support of your audience who want to see your points articulated well without resorting to it. If you must swear, give fair warning in your introduction, particularly if you are using audio or video.</li><li><strong>Balance?</strong> &#8211; Can you balance it out with any positive, empathy or second perspectives? Is it possible you just got the wrong idea? Show that you are a human being with an issue, not going after someone for links and traffic.</li><li><strong>Don’t sell</strong> &#8211; Make your point and leave it. Do not use the opportunity to sell or pump up your own stuff otherwise your audience will question your motives and you will lose their trust and credibility.</li><li><strong>Use a mirror </strong>- Is your own house in order before you go attacking someone else? And spare a thought for how you would feel if you were on the receiving end of your article.</li></ol></blockquote><script type="text/javascript">(function() {var s = document.createElement('SCRIPT'), s1 = document.getElementsByTagName('SCRIPT')[0];s.type = 'text/javascript';s.async = true;s.src = 'http://widgets.digg.com/buttons.js';s1.parentNode.insertBefore(s, s1);})();</script><a
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/> </a></div><p>If you have not been keeping on top of all of the great comments streaming in to the <a
href="http://ahpoll.com">AH Poll</a> entitled <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/palin/">&#8220;If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Palin be competent to be President?&#8221;</a> you are really missing out!  Some of them are the most insightful, thoughtful, and brilliant collection of thoughts representing the best and the worst of the right and the left! Roll up your sleeves and batten your hatches because you&#8217;re going to have one hell of a ride. Oh, also, these comments are in reverse-chronological order so the most recent are at the top. If you want to keep track of them live, please <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/palin/#comments">go visit them where they love and breathe</a>. Read below for the most amazing Sarah Palin comment thread of the Internets!<br
/> <span
id="more-5087"></span></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-147">Palin = MORON</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://sogetthis.com" rel="nofollow">Anonymous</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/10/2008 &#8211; 12:58.</div><div><p>Only  a complete moron would vote for a Republican after the past 8 years of  idiocy. McCain is a Bush croney and Palin is just an idiot.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/147">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/147/Palin-MORON">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-146"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-146">reply to KB in IA</a></div><div> Submitted by ab (not verified) on Fri, 10/10/2008 &#8211; 08:52.</div><div><p>KB,<br
/> Sorry, I don&#8217;t usually reply to these remarks, but I couldn&#8217;t resist&#8230;&#8230;..<br
/> What message of &#8220;hate&#8221; are you talking about?<br
/> If someone doesn&#8217;t agree with your worldview, that doesn&#8217;t<br
/> mean they hate. Where is your tolerance?<br
/> AB</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/146">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/146/reply-KB-IA">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-145"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-145">Palin</a></div><div> Submitted by Walter Arndt (not verified) on Thu, 10/09/2008 &#8211; 22:23.</div><div><p>Only a person with his head in the sand would vote for a democrat.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/145">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/145/Palin">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-144"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-144">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by KB in IA (not verified) on Thu, 10/09/2008 &#8211; 21:54.</div><div><p>Things  might get interesting soon, since the Alaska Supreme Court said today  that the investigation known as Troopergate could proceed, dashing the  hopes of the McCain/Palin campaign to stonewall it until after the  election (article at <a
href="http://www.adn.com" title="www.adn.com">www.adn.com</a>).  Amazing that someone CURRENTLY under investigation for misuse of public  office, could be stirring up crowds with a message of hate.  Mind-boggling that someone who had to attend 5 or 6 different colleges  before getting a degree in journalism, can try to make a bogeyman out  of someone who graduated with honors from Harvard Law. I hope Alaska  gets their Governor back soon&#8230;if they even want her back.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/144">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/144/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-143"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-143">Re: Palin</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 10/09/2008 &#8211; 18:06.</div><div><p>Are  you as crazy as she is? It IS the republican party that has messed up  this Country over the last 8 yrs. We may not get out of this mess we  are in. Take your head out of the sand. Obama IS the best selection  this election.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/143">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/143/Re-Palin">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-142"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-142">Qualified?</a></div><div> Submitted by  Leo (not verified) on Thu, 10/09/2008 &#8211; 17:17.</div><div><p>Mrs.  Palin is much more qualified to be President than Obama who has done  absolutely nothing but organize thugs in ACORN! She could save this  Country from Socialism and all the corruption the Democrats are up to.  He is not capable of telling the truth and Hollywood and the Media are  doing their best to cover for him. He is not qualified to be a Senator  and should be on trial for treason.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/142">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/142/Qualified">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-141"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-141">Pailin </a></div><div> Submitted by GE Mayer (not verified) on Thu, 10/09/2008 &#8211; 16:53.</div><div><p>Not  only is Palin not qualified to be Vice President much less President, I  am incensed, that John McCain would insult my intellegence by picking  such a &#8220;newby&#8221; above several well qualified, experienced women who have  served the country and the Republican party.<br
/> I expect my Comander in Chief to Carefully sellect an individual more  qualified than him/herself to take over. It shows John&#8217;s thinking.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/141">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/141/Pailin">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-140"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-140">Palin?  Presidential material?  No, doggone it!</a></div><div> Submitted by Krissi (not verified) on Wed, 10/08/2008 &#8211; 21:35.</div><div><p>While  I admire Sarah Palin&#8217;s spunk and determination, I think that she is  completely out of her league as not only a vice president but also a  president. If people would take a good look at her record, they&#8217;d see  that she doesn&#8217;t even have a good grasp of the issues.</p><p>In addition, she&#8217;s been caught in numerous lies and distortions. For  example, she did not sell a jet on eBay &#8212; she tried but failed; the  jet was sold later to a private buyer. She did not leave the town of  Wasilla financially sound; she left it in debt. She says she;ll be a  strong supporter of kids with needs. In truth, Palin actually slashed  funding for schools for special needs kids by 62%.</p><p>And her famous, &#8220;I told the Congress &#8220;thanks, but no thanks,&#8221; for  that Bridge to Nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, we&#8217;d build it  ourselves&#8221; line? More spin. Congress&#8217; requirement that funds be spent  on that bridge (aka the &#8216;earmark&#8217;) were removed before Sarah Palin  became governor. She was, therefore, in no position to tell Congress  anything about the bridge, one way or the other. During her campaign,  she said she supported funding for the bridge.</p><p>There are more examples, of the fibs and many examples of her poor  insight into our nation&#8217;s problems. I could list them all, but I  encourage you to do your own homework (forwarded emails DO NO COUNT)!</p><p>If MCCain and Palin win this election, I&#8217;ll probably be hoping for a lengthy, overseas assignment &#8212; maybe four years or more!</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/140">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/140/Palin-Presidential-material-No-doggone-it">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-139"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-139">Palin is Failin</a></div><div> Submitted by GA for Brains in the White House (not verified) on Wed, 10/08/2008 &#8211; 21:02.</div><div><p>W &#8211; below C student<br
/> McCain &#8211; at the bottom of his class<br
/> Are we really electing the best? Shouldn&#8217;t we elect someone better than  we are? And someone not ready for the assisted living home? Someone who  can remember the name of his opponent instead of calling him &#8220;that  one&#8221;. McCain left right away after the debate &#8211; seniors do go to bed  early, probably past his bedtime. As for integrity, check out McCain&#8217;s  involvement in the S&#038;L bailout, he was right there along side W&#8217;s  brother Neil. All working to steal investors&#8217; money. Just like King  Henry is doing now, rewarding his Wall St. buddies.</p><p><strong>And we wonder why this happens to us???</strong></p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/139">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/139/Palin-Failin">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-138"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-138">Palin</a></div><div> Submitted by Ed Sherrill (not verified) on Wed, 10/08/2008 &#8211; 10:49.</div><div><p>Not  only is Sarah Palin competent to become President, she is idealogically  and tempermentally better suited to be President than John McCain.  Republicans are going to be very sorry thet chose McCain over Mitt  Romney. I only pray the Democrates don&#8217;t screw up the country so bad  over the next four years that it can&#8217;t be fixed.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/138">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/138/Palin">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-136"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-136">Is she for real?</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 10/07/2008 &#8211; 22:13.</div><div><p>If  Joe Biden winked at the camera 5-6 times during the debate, wouldn&#8217;t we  be calling him a pervert? Come on people, get serious. Sarah Palin is a  joke &#8212; an embarrassment to Americans who take our politics &#8212; and the  plight of our country &#8212; seriously.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/136">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/136/she-real">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-134"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-134">Is Sarah Palin Qualified to be President?</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.selfhelpdaily.com" rel="nofollow">Joi</a> (not verified) on Tue, 10/07/2008 &#8211; 13:34.</div><div><p>To  be sure, Sarah Palin doesn&#8217;t deserve the crucifixion the media and  entertainment world are giving her (and her family). McCain might  deserve some of it, after all &#8211; he picked her. Why? She&#8217;s female. I  admire the man completely &#8211; he is an American hero and I can&#8217;t even  begin to imagine the hell this brave man endured.</p><p>However, when it came to choose running mates, I belive Obama chose  one that was best for the country and McCain chose one (he thought) was  best for the campaign.</p><p>I THINK that he lost the race with his choice.  I KNOW he lost my vote.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/134">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/134/Sarah-Palin-Qualified-be-President">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-133"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-133">Surprising VP choice</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com" rel="nofollow">olivier blanchard</a> (not verified) on Tue, 10/07/2008 &#8211; 13:30.</div><div><p>Hindsight  is always 20/20. Perhaps Gov. Palin&#8217;s weaknesses weren&#8217;t 100% obvious  to Sen. McCain when he picked her. (So much for due diligence, I  guess.) Did he want a dynamic, charismatic, family-friendly VP  running-mate? Of course. And she fit the bill&#8230; on the surface, at  least. But honestly, weren&#8217;t there better choices (male or female) for  the job? Competent, charismatic, appealing, worldly Republican  governors or senators? People he actually knows and trusts? 30 years in  politics, and he can&#8217;t think of a single person he has worked with who  would be a better choice for a running mate? He goes with a complete  stranger? I find that bizarre. Irresponsible, even. I just don&#8217;t get  it. There are plenty of smart, competent, experienced women in the  Republican Party who would have made a great running mate.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/133">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/133/Surprising-VP-choice">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-132"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-132">Don&#8217;t confuse appeal with competence</a></div><div> Submitted by DBStevens (not verified) on Tue, 10/07/2008 &#8211; 12:21.</div><div><p>Too  many people in this country confuse personal appeal with competence,  and make decisions based on who&#8217;s the most charming or even who&#8217;s  sexiest. Or they make decisions based on generalities such as &#8220;we need  a woman in the White House.&#8221; A COMPETENT woman in the White House would  be a great asset to this country. There is no doubt of that.</p><p>But we can&#8217;t decide the leaders of our country based on a visceral  reaction to her charm and folksy demeanor (there is a lot of doubt as  to the sincerity of that demeanor anyway&#8230;she shows signs of being  rather ruthless). During these times of uncertainty and fear, it&#8217;s  natural to want some comfort, to feel that the person leading our  country is down-to-earth and &#8220;real.&#8217; We felt good about Bush and people  like Rudy Guiliani for a short time right after 9/11. They appealed to  our emotions and need for reassurance. But that demeanor means nothing.  It&#8217;s the actions that matter, and in the time following 9/11, both Bush  and Guiliani&#8217;s true nature was revealed&#8230; incompetence and  self-serving.</p><p>Sarah Palin acts cute and has a pretty face. That&#8217;s perfect for  president of the PTA. But has not gained enough experience to be  president of a country. The job of Vice-President or President is NOT  an &#8220;on-the-job-training&#8221; type of job. Being Mayor of a tiny town in a  remote state, then Governer of that remote, sparsely populated state  (670,000, way smaller than a city like El Paso, TX) is not enough  experience to lead a country whose every move has global implications.  Palin treated the job of Governer like a telecommuting job, she worked  form her hown home for 86% of the year.</p><p>No matter how intelligent she may seem to be, no matter how  ambitious or driven she may seem, and ESPECIALLY no matter how pretty  or charming she is, she is not ready for the responsibilities of a job  like President. Without experience, without having the time to really  begin to understand the nature of national and global dealings on every  level, no matter how much coaching or guidance she would receive, Palin  would either crumble under pressure or make very bad decisions with  repercussions that could shake this country and its international  stature to the core. Or she wouldn&#8217;t act quickly enough at  all&#8230;stalling and deflecting decisions (as she does with many  questions, or with such events as the investigation dubbeed  &#8220;Troopergate&#8221;).</p><p>I also worry about the demands of her family. During times of her  family&#8217;s need, do we want someone faced with the dilemma of either  neglecting her family&#8217;s needs because of her duties as Vice-President,  or neglecting the VP duties because of her family&#8217;s needs? Neither of  those are good choices&#8230;.Sarah Palin has too many personal  responsibilities.</p><p>Palin also shows all the signs of behavior very similar to  Bush&#8217;s&#8230;including a tendency toward cronyism, abuse of power, and  self-serving decisions that flout the law.</p><p>She even mispronounces the word &#8220;nuclear&#8221; just like Bush. Certainly  that&#8217;s a small point, and that pronunciation is commonly recognized as  a sub-standard metathesis of the word, but it&#8217;s very annoying to listen  to.</p><p>So wake up American. Move your responses from your gut to your  brains, and make sure you understand the repercussions of your vote.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/132">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/132/Dont-confuse-appeal-competence">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-131"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-131">I&#8217;m moving&#8230;</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.andyosier.com" rel="nofollow">Andy Osier</a> (not verified) on Tue, 10/07/2008 &#8211; 10:15.</div><div><p>John  McCain himself isn&#8217;t capable of running the country; I shudder to think  of the train wreck a Palin administration would be. If they win, I&#8217;m  seriously considering a moving. How&#8217;s the January weather in Berlin,  Chris?</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/131">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/131/Im-moving">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-130"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-130">Big State&#8230;&#8230;little experience!</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/126" rel="nofollow">Anonymous</a> (not verified) on Mon, 10/06/2008 &#8211; 18:11.</div><div><p>Granted, we&#8217;ve got plenty to worry about at home!<br
/> But we&#8217;re talking about a Governor of a state bordered by 2 foreign  countries, Palin is the proud NEW owner of a passport! (barely 1 year)<br
/> The world is smaller than ever and so is our standing in it. We don&#8217;t  need &#8220;a little Wasilla in Washington&#8221;. We already have a narrow minded  view of the world with our current administration.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/130">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/130/Big-Statelittle-experience">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-129"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-129">Palin for presidnet?</a></div><div> Submitted by Joyce (not verified) on Mon, 10/06/2008 &#8211; 16:49.</div><div><p>She  would call on the brightest brains in the Republican party, put them in  positions of power and support, and do her best to do the best she  could for her country. She&#8217;s an acheiver and would never accept failure  for herself. She has Condeleesa, Romneys, Huckabees and several others  who want to serve and members to help and advise her. Her history shows  that she uses support and advise to guide her towards her goals and  accomplishments. She would take the credit for it too.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/129">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/129/Palin-presidnet">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-128"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-128">Re: If McCain dies is America Screwed?</a></div><div> Submitted by Allison (not verified) on Mon, 10/06/2008 &#8211; 15:10.</div><div><p>Palin  is the only person that does not have someone dictating what she says  about policy and does not try to appear to have all of the answers. She  certainly knows how to find the answers. She has integrity, and knows  truth when she sees it and definitely has mankind&#8217;s best interests as  her priority. These are some of the things that make her the best  candidate for the job. I am sick and tired of politicians with agendas!  She is a real person that is capable of any good, or decent task put  before her. She will also employ the same type of people to work beside  and under her. The point that she is not capable of selling us down  stream for a special interest group, or her own pocket, or fame makes  her my choice in a leader &#8211; regardless of the presence of McCain.  Allison</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/128">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/128/Re-If-McCain-dies-America-Screwed">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-127"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-127">Re: If McCain dies is America Screwed?</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 10/06/2008 &#8211; 15:08.</div><div><p>Palin  is the only person that does not have someone dictating what she says  about policy and does not try to appear to have all of the answers. She  certainly knows how to find the answers. She has integrity, and knows  truth when she sees it and definitely has mankind&#8217;s best interests as  her priority. These are some of the things that make her the best  candidate for the job. I am sick and tired of politicians with agendas!  She is a real person that is capable of any good, or decent task put  before her. She will also employ the same type of people to work beside  and under her. The point that she is not capable of selling us down  stream for a special interest group, or her own pocket, or fame makes  her my choice in a leader &#8211; regardless of the presence of McCain.  Allison</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/127">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/127/Re-If-McCain-dies-America-Screwed">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-126"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-126">Re: Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 10/06/2008 &#8211; 12:47.</div><div><p>She didn&#8217;t ride in on her &#8220;own merits&#8221; She rode in on her SEX. PERIOD.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/126">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/126/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-125"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-125">If McCain dies is America Screwed?</a></div><div> Submitted by RisingFromDecadence (not verified) on Mon, 10/06/2008 &#8211; 12:17.</div><div><p>It&#8217;s  the most frightening and compelling reason to not elect McCain to date.  It&#8217; clear that the choice was to win vs. what&#8217;s right for the country.  And it saddens me that with so many strong female candidates out there  McCain has landed on this choice. It speaks volumes of his lack of  sound judgement and doesn&#8217;t do justice to the feminist movement.</p><p>I couldn&#8217;t agree more with &#8220;Double Standard&#8217;s&#8221; comments about  education, and intelligence vs. the &#8220;experience&#8221; of a low-population  governor. Has it somehow become a negative trait for our president to  be articulate well educated and even published?</p><p>I think its safe to now say, like every great civilization, America  has grown from it&#8217;s indestructible, can-do &#8220;adolescence,&#8221; and has  entered it&#8217;s &#8220;decadent&#8221; period of greed, fear, fat and a lack of clear  vision. America needs a president who will bring intelligence, a new  vision, and optimism so that we don&#8217;t lose the real values we&#8217;ve grown  up to believe are American such as truth, innovation, compassion,  charity and vision.</p><p>Our values as a nation should not be confused with same sex  marriages or religious agendas. I seem to remember from my grade school  social studies classes that America was born as a nation with the  purpose and promise of many freedoms. Personal choice values are not to  be mixed with National values. Growing up, this difference has been why  I&#8217;ve been so proud to be an American. In the last 8 years much has  changed. I believe that only with the leadership of Obama will we be  able to regain our credibility and our course as a nation. Most  importantly, America could be &#8220;Proud Again.&#8221;</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/125">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/125/If-McCain-dies-America-Screwed">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-124"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-124">Answer the question</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://ascannerbrightly.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">Jaz-Michael King</a> (not verified) on Mon, 10/06/2008 &#8211; 10:40.</div><div><p>As  an unbiased, unable-to-vote immigrant, can I point out that as usual,  from either of your minimalist two sides, when the question is simply  If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Palin be  competent to be President?&#8221;, the arguments spin off to why the opponent  isn&#8217;t. Maybe that will be the next question, but like I wanted to yell  at Palin while watching the debate&#8230; answer the question posed to you.</p><p>Everyone has their weak points, and in some respects, Obama, who has  considerably more than two years in the US Senate as his experience (he  was a state senator, you know) has plenty. However, I think there&#8217;s a  good reason hockey moms and joe sixpacks don&#8217;t run. No-one wants  regular folk in charge. You all want a ruling elite no matter how much  you profess to the contrary.</p><p>There are plenty of strong, competent women on both sides of the aisle in the USA. Gov. Palin is not one of them.</p><p>She is not qualified because she is not qualified. Being as  unqualified as anyone you wish to compare her to does not make her  qualified. Her inabilty to answer a straight question makes her  unqualified. I personally believe the fact she is the kind of person  who can compete in a beauty contest makes her unqualified. And as of  today, her assertion that Obama&#8217;s political career started off in the  living room of a terrorist (all of a sudden, he&#8217;s been a politician a  lot longer than two years according to the Republicans) has pulled her  from the absurd to the surreal.</p><p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong, Obama seems to pander to some vaporous &#8220;change&#8221; mentality, but that wasn&#8217;t the question.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/124">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/124/Answer-question">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-123"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-123">Palin Unqualified</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous jones (not verified) on Mon, 10/06/2008 &#8211; 09:16.</div><div><p>The  difference between Obama and Palin is that Obama thinks. He&#8217;s smart  enough to go to Harvard, graduate high enough in his class to be  president of the Harvard Law Review there. He&#8217;s a thinker who doesn&#8217;t  shoot from the hip. He knows the Constitution inside and out and knows  if something is just a whim to increase his own power compared to a  great idea which would help millions of people (think fairer taxes,  health insurance coverage). Palin bankrupted Wasilla which is now 23.5  MILLION dollars in debt. She has no idea of what real issues are out  there&#8212;she doesn&#8217;t have any idea of what to do in a financial  situation, a diplomatic situation or anything beyond her own home. She  shows no compassion for others who are not in her situation (religious,  financial, educational, political) and has no international experience.  We do not need another DOPE in the White House. McCain has shown very  poor judgment in choosing an under-educated (a BA is like a high school  degree these days) fool rather than a smart, intellectually  sophisticated worthy VP candidate. This is a sellout of the Democratic  process. Such a shame. But then again, McCain graduated at the bottom  of his class (894 out of 899), so what does he want with a smart second?</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/123">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/123/Palin-Unqualified">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-122"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-122">Just because she could, does not mean she should.</a></div><div> Submitted by Bjshazam (not verified) on Sun, 10/05/2008 &#8211; 22:34.</div><div><p>Does  it not trouble anyone who has been posting here that we have reached  this point at all? I&#8217;ve been writing draft after draft of posts here,  trying to find the right balance that won&#8217;t come across as too  ideological, or that won&#8217;t be automatically dismissed by the true  sycophants because it contains some Left or Right code word that  justifies their turning off of the brain. Can&#8217;t do it. She&#8217;s too  dangerous, and it angers me so much that we as a country have been put  in the position of having to opine about the staggering impropriety of  her selection as McCain&#8217;s running mate.</p><p>Consider:</p><p>My brother is a great guy. Smart as a whip, with what I think is  decent judgment (except for his love of the Yankees). I trust him  implicitly. So, should I be in a position to name him to, say, the  Supreme Court, I would expect no questions from anyone about his  qualifications. According to the Constitution, he is legally qualified  to be a Justice, even the Chief Justice. I already told you he is smart  and has good judgment. What else do you need to know? How dare you  question my choice or his desire to serve?</p><p>The President of the United States has a mind bogglingly huge amount  of discretion in executing the job. The president can, without  obstruction by court or Congress, lay waste to our financial system,  impede entirely the execution of justice, or unleash Armageddon. The  office of the president can disband virtually unilaterally the entirety  of the intelligence gathering power of the U.S., or focus it all on the  least secure among us &#8212; with no recourse by anyone.</p><p>Most of the time, this isn&#8217;t an issue. Regardless of your political  persuasion, we have been blessed mostly with chief executives that took  the burdens of job dead seriously. A president of the entire country,  not just those who cast the votes.</p><p>Now the bar has been set so low that we cannot figure out the right  words to describe how wrong it is for a candidate to relish the fact  that she really doesn&#8217;t understand the job the Constitution has laid  out. That this is somehow an asset to a campaign makes me ashamed for  my country.</p><p>That John McCain affirmatively foisted this train wreck upon his own  party, and possibly upon the country, is a sin for which he should  never be forgiven.</p><p>That she is considered by some to be the next face of the GOP, and a  real contender for the nomination next time around, should make my GOP  colleagues shudder and the nation weep.</p><p>I don&#8217;t want a hockey mom or joe six-pack running the country. Hell,  I don&#8217;t want anyone like me running the country. I want a president.  And she is not it.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/122">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/122/Just-because-she-could-does-not-mean-she-should">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-121"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-121">make that Palin UNQUALIFIED PERIOD</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 10/05/2008 &#8211; 22:25.</div><div><p>Darn, brain outrunning my fingers.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/121">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/121/make-Palin-UNQUALIFIED-PERIOD">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-120"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-120">Palin qualified period</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 10/05/2008 &#8211; 22:22.</div><div><p>And  the mental midgets who are using that as a ruse to comment on Obama  miss the entire point. Biden IS qualified to fill in shoudl something  happen to Obama (go to smoking gun to see why that IS an issue).</p><p>Palin is a bimbo and if you do not think so, Palin supporters, then  take this simple acid test: were it Obama who made those brain dead  comments instead of Palin, what would you be saying about him? Gotcha!</p><p>jim</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/120">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/120/Palin-qualified-period">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-119"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-119">Palin Not Qualified</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 10/05/2008 &#8211; 22:01.</div><div><p>Anyone  that believes that Sarah Palin is qualified to be President is kidding  themselves. It has nothing to do with the fact that she is a woman. The  fact that she is SO unqualified is what made her pick an insult to  every hard-working, intelligent woman out there. She was picked for her  good looks and her folksy charm. There were MANY more qualified women  in the ranks of the Republican party that could have been chosen.<br
/> Palin attended five different colleges before she was finally able to  stick out a degree program. She majored in journalism and  communications and couldn&#8217;t name ONE newspaper or magazine that she  reads on a regular basis. She minored in political science and doesn&#8217;t  know what the Vice President&#8217;s role and duties are in our government.  She has abused her power in every political post she has been elected  to, has lied about her record both as mayor and governor and her short  political career has been marked by scandal. She says that she fought  the energy interests in Alaska, but her campaigns have all been heavily  funded by energy companies.<br
/> In short, she&#8217;s not smart, she&#8217;s lacks integrity, she has gotten most  of what she has attained on her looks and charm and these things don&#8217;t  add up to someone who is qualified for Vice President, nevermind the  Presidency. If you want her to be your leader, move to Alaska. This  country and the world cannot afford another incompetent leader at the  helm. One more bumbling idiot at the helm will spell doom for the  future of all of the citizens of this country.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/119">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/119/Palin-Not-Qualified">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-118"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-118">qualifications.</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://crazypolitics.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">Crazy Politico</a> (not verified) on Sun, 10/05/2008 &#8211; 20:10.</div><div><p>If Gov. Palin isn&#8217;t qualified to &#8220;POSSIBLY&#8221; become president, then what of Barack Obama?</p><p>What exactly is his qualification for the job? A couple of  non-descript years in the Senate with no major legislation to show for  that time? A history of voting &#8220;Here&#8221; on controversial issues so as to  keep a rather neutral record when running for the next higher office?</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/118">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/118/qualifications">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-117"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-117">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 10/05/2008 &#8211; 14:49.</div><div><p>Does  she have enough political experience for the position of president? I  would say not&#8230;.. but then again, there&#8217;s nothing like a long run of a  president that can&#8217;t even string a sentence together in English to  remind you that you don&#8217;t really need much skill for the job. It&#8217;s  whose behind the president that counts no?</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/117">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/117/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-116"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-116">Is Palin Qualified to be President?</a></div><div> Submitted by Thoughtful_Independent (not verified) on Sun, 10/05/2008 &#8211; 11:49.</div><div><p>I&#8217;m  a registered independent. I was waiting for the VP picks to be made  before making my mind up. VP&#8217;s Gore and Cheney have both illustrated  the growing importance of the VP position in the Executive Branch. The  magnitude of the nations and worlds problems highlight the fact that  the top two elected officials in the US need to have a wide range of  capabilities., strong intellect, and global perspective. At minimum,  the President needs a knowledgeable confidant and advisor he/she can  trust.</p><p>For all of her folksy charm, Governor Palin displays very little of  these qualities or qualifications. If you take the time to investigate  the educational and professional accomplishments of our sitting VP&#8217;s  over the past 50 years, even the most biased observer would conclude  that Governor Palin would be the least educated and least experienced.  If you don&#8217;t have the time to look at all of them, just compare her  against Dan Quayle who was arguably the weakest of the sitting VP&#8217;s.  Quayle&#8217;s accomplishments at the time he was selected as Bush&#8217;s running  mate dwarf Palin&#8217;s.</p><p>Upon inspection, the rabid and exaggerated claims about her energy  expertise and executive experience vaporize (the claims of foreign  policy experience are not even a valid topic). Living in an oil rich  state, shuffling petrodollars from the oil companies to the citizens in  the form of dividends, &#8220;negotiating&#8221; potential terms of a yet unplanned  and unfunded natural gas pipeline, and a college degree in journalism  do not qualify one as an energy expert.</p><p>Furthermore, the role of Governor of Alaska is diminished in  complexity compared to the Governors of the lower 48 due to factors  such as: 1) very small population (the whole state has a population  smaller than typical medium sized US cities), 2) the largest Alaskan  cities are smaller than many small ciities or large towns in the lower  48 (Anchorage = ~280K, Fairbanks = ~35K, Juneau = ~35K), 3) low  industrial output (Alaska is ranked near the bottom compared to the  other 50 states), and 4) a budget which is majority funded by revenues  from oil and gas companies. The hardest problem of the Alaskan governor  appears to be deciding how much money to send from the Permanent Fund  to the citizens versus how much to stash away for a future time when  oil revenues begin declining.</p><p>I find the argument that Palin has more &#8220;executive experience&#8221; than  McCain, Obama or Biden to be disingenuous. If executive experience is  really so important, Mitt Romney should be the Republican candidate for  President or, at minimum, the VP candidate. While I was not a huge fan  of Mr. Romney, his skillset is so superior to Palin&#8217;s that comparisons  are impossible. The same can be said with respect to experience in  matters of the economy. Ironically, Mr. Romney&#8217;s biggest shortcoming  appeared to be that he was a Washington outsider. Now being from our  most remote state is a strength for Palin?</p><p>My perspective is that the most successful Presidents of the last 50  years (for arguments sake Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton) were able to  balance their core idealogical positions with advocacy for programs and  policies that improved the situation for the majority of US citizens  and improved our stature in the global community. Each of these  Presidents had well educated and highly skilled running mates. As an  Independent who holds a blend of conservative and liberal positions,  this mix is what I am weighing the most. My assessment is that  Obama/Biden have a better overall leadership/intelligence/world view  profile than McCain/Palin. McCain could have selected a male or female  running mate who would have tilted my assessment in his favor.  Unfortunately, for reasons only he and his advisors can comprehend, he  went with a female ideologue with weak academic, intellectual and  professional skills.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/116">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/116/Palin-Qualified-be-President">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-115"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-115">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 10/05/2008 &#8211; 06:15.</div><div><p>@  CanIGet2NewZealand</p><p>What does it take to satisfy people like you?<br
/> or&#8230; is this a display of jealousy ? Ms Palin does make a rather  impressive appearance on a simple &#8216;ride in from the Wilds of Alaska&#8217;.<br
/> Instead of complimenting a person on a job well done you prefer to show the &#8220;cat fight&#8221; attitude.<br
/> What has Obama more than Palin?</p><p>If Obama had been a white boy from Illinois, would he have received  the nomination of the Dem Party? If your answer is NO _ then you must  vote for Palin for she rode in on her own merits not on her skin color!</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/115">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/115/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-114"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-114">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://questionitnow.com/educationb" rel="nofollow">REB 84</a> (not verified) on Sun, 10/05/2008 &#8211; 00:35.</div><div><p>Would John McCain be a competent president?  This is a question you should be asking.<br
/> <a
href="http://questionitnow.com/educationb/2008/09/which-is-real-mccain.html"> QuestionItNow &#8211; Will America lead?</a></p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/114">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/114/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-113"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-113">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by CanIGet2NewZealand (not verified) on Sat, 10/04/2008 &#8211; 19:28.</div><div><p>Palin has been governor of a state with the population of Poughkeepsie, New York .</p><p>The State of Alaska, despite its conservative appearance has been  giving out money to its citizens from its oil dividens (Alaska  Permanent Fund) (<a
href="http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2003/sharing_alaska_style" title="http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2003/sharing_alaska_style">http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2003/sharing_alaska_style</a>)  since the 1970&#8242;s. The money Palin boasts about giving her citizens is  money of this sort, the citizens of Alaska have been receiving these  payments for almost 40 years. How can she use these payments as part of  a discussion of her fiscal capabilities as Governor?</p><p>Governor Palin impresses me as being a cross between a Barbie Doll  and that really annoying head cheerleader that the intelligent girls  all could not stand in highschool.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/113">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/113/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-112"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-112">Palin was a mistake for McCain in the 1st Place</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.ireport.com/people/FranklinB?view=documents&#038;viewingAsOthers=true" rel="nofollow">FranklinB</a> (not verified) on Sat, 10/04/2008 &#8211; 16:52.</div><div><p>I  have been publishing my thoughts on this matter for awhile now  regarding the selection of Sarah Palin for VP. I gave my views on her  initial selection here:</p><p>Did John McCain have good judgement?<br
/> <a
href="http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-72657" title="http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-72657">http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-72657</a></p><p>Sarah Palin is not my Vice President<br
/> <a
href="http://digitalseller.tblog.com/post/1970016179" title="http://digitalseller.tblog.com/post/1970016179">http://digitalseller.tblog.com/post/1970016179</a></p><p>Sarah Palin is just another pretty face<br
/> <a
href="http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-86323" title="http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-86323">http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-86323</a></p><p>McCain will have to pick a new VP<br
/> <a
href="http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-94699" title="http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-94699">http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-94699</a></p><p>VP Debate was great, for Biden and Obama<br
/> <a
href="http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-102625" title="http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-102625">http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-102625</a></p><p>Overall I agree that McCain is kind of a maverick, but also he is a  big gambler. Instead of picking one of the most qualified in the arena,  he went outside to a relatively unknown woman who he knew could  energize the base. That has happened, but with such obvious liabilities  that only a pure conservative will think she is qualified, because pure  conservatives don&#8217;t care who is in that position as long as that person  is republican, conservative and can walk &#038; talk. Hannity has said  publicly that he believes she would be qualified to fill the top job,  and so did Limbaugh as well. I got yelled at the other day by one of my  very oldest and best friends who couldn&#8217;t believe I didn&#8217;t think she  was for real. That was before the Couric interview. Now after the  debate I know I have made the right choice with Obama and Biden. The  financial collapse is bad enough, but if there was a President Palin  someday, it could be an even worse disaster for our country.</p><p>Obama and Biden are consistant in their positions on the Iraq war  and other matters regarding the need to help the middle class. I  believe McCain has no interest in the working class folks in this  country, and even if Palin does have that interest, she is not  knowledgeable enough to make any difference. JMHO</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/112">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/112/Palin-was-mistake-McCain-1st-Place">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-111"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-111">You&#8217;re Kidding, right?</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://onthebloc.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">Shelly Roberts</a> (not verified) on Sat, 10/04/2008 &#8211; 14:04.</div><div><p>Sarah  Pallin is an embarrassment to the Republican Party, who may well be  qualified to run for PTA vice president, but hardly for the  heart-beat-away position of Vice President of the United States.</p><p>In the debate with Sen. Bieden Palin spoke repeatedly an d stiltedly  from obviousy drilled-in talking points rather than from any  appropriate knowledge. With a wooden, albeit cheerful presentation  worthy of earning her the title of Best Stepford Candidate.</p><p>Palin&#8217;s presentation was a constant one-note, praise-singing  golly/gee campaign advertiisement for John McCain, and did litttle if  anything to present any viable credentials as a candidate for the high  office into which she has been so thoughtlessly thrust.</p><p>I&#8217;d pity her for the position for which she has been recruited if  the holder of that position didn&#8217;t stand such a strong chance of  becoming the leader of the free world with a 79 year old unhealthy  running mate &#8211;shudder&#8211; a horrifying thought.</p><p>It shouldn&#8217;t be enough merely that she didn&#8217;t panic, screw up or cry  to qualify her as even a contender in the so-called debate. I have some  issues with Mr. Bidden as well, but at least he came across as someone  who has done more than simply look west and north in the direction of  the former Soviet Union, and self-pronounce a competency in foreign  affairs. That&#8217;s way too much like watching Animal Planet and  proclaiming veterinary competence with elephants.</p><p>Did Sarah win the debate?  She wasn&#8217;t ever even qualified to enter the race.</p><p>Is she qualified to be President regardless of the state of John McCain&#8217;s health?  You&#8217;re kidding, right?!</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/111">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/111/Youre-Kidding-right">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-110"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-110">Dummy be gone! THINK!</a></div><div> Submitted by Skillet Marimba (not verified) on Sat, 10/04/2008 &#8211; 11:27.</div><div><p>The G.O.P. targets DUMMYS but DUMMYS are finally starting to wake up. Dummy be gone.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/110">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/110/Dummy-be-gone-THINK">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-108"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-108">If McCain Died, Is Sarah Palin Qualified To Lead This Nation?</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://legalconsulting.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/obama-biden-a-winning-ticketbut-obama-clinton-a-landslide-victory/" rel="nofollow">Patrick Pearce</a> (not verified) on Sat, 10/04/2008 &#8211; 09:33.</div><div><p>Let  me first establish that I am not hopping on any band waggon here to  vilify or demonize Sarah Palin because she is a woman. My argument is  limited to choice. Based on both Vice Presidential Candidates, Sarah  Palin and Joe Biden of the Republican and Democratic Party  respectively, should one of these men (Whether Obama or McCain) died or  become incapacitated as President of the United States, and  constitutionally the Vice President is next in line to assume the  presidency, I unequivocally would trust the experience of Joe Biden to  lead this great Nation over Sarah Palin. I am sure I share the same  views as most sensible Americans. I used to hear that John McCain was a  stubborn man, I am now convinced. There are so many more experience and  viable Republicans out there to be VP, why did he chose Sarah Palin? If  only some of these potentially great men would listen to somebody  instead of arrogating to themselves because of ego, they would be such  great leaders. Obama-Biden victory in November, hands down! See my  recent post at: <a
href="http://legalconsulting.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/obama-biden-a-winning-ticketbut-obama-clinton-a-landslide-victory/" title="http://legalconsulting.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/obama-biden-a-winning-ticketbut-obama-clinton-a-landslide-victory/">http://legalconsulting.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/obama-biden-a-winning-ti&#8230;</a></p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/108">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/108/If-McCain-Died-Sarah-Palin-Qualified-Lead-Nation">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-107"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-107">Palin Better than Most</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://thescoundrel.wordpress.com" rel="nofollow">thescoundrel</a> (not verified) on Sat, 10/04/2008 &#8211; 09:21.</div><div><p>I  tend to disbelieve anything that comes out of any politicians mouth.  Politicians are liars&#038; cheats. While they are kissing your baby  they are picking your pocket at the same time. The President&#8217;s Job is  limited. The Congress is where most of the power in this country lies.  They make legislation, they pass legislation and even if the President  vetoes that legislation, they have the power to override it. A relative  rookie politician, Palin, actually has more executive experience than  McCain, Biden or Obama. Now that is scary since she is merely a VP  nominee. I would vote for her over Obama or Biden. She has a limited  track track record of what Obama/Biden pretends to have without any  track record to prove their claims: Palin has shown the grit to fight  her own party as governor of Alaska. Obama has shown me nothing for the  time he was in my state of Illinois government or once he was elected  Senator. He was no more than a puppet to Emile Jones that is the strong  arm thug of DEmocrat Gov. Governor Blagodabitch, the soon to be cell  mate of ex Republican Gov. George Ryan. So yeah I would trust Palin  much further than I would Obama leading this nation. Obama only  understands Chicago and Springfield style corruption which he was a  part of.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/107">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/107/Palin-Better-Most">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-106"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-106">If John McCain died&#8230;</a></div><div> Submitted by Pat Baker (not verified) on Sat, 10/04/2008 &#8211; 08:21.</div><div><p>To Anonymous:<br
/> I have been hollering &#8220;Double Standard&#8221; all summer&#8221;. You hit the nail  on the spot. When Obama was trained by the late great Saul Alinsky  &#038; his staff to learn how to be a better community activist, take  surveys, housing problems, school problems in the poor Chicago  districts, Palin sneered at the his outcomings, stating all those  programs arenow defunct. Her ignorance is bliss. Reason: Viet Nam war,  &#038; the 60&#8242;s riots cost us plenty At least Obama was vetted. Some  pundits t laughed him. I too, was trained by Alinsky, this great Jewish  community consultant for the poor back in the late 60&#8242;s. If Palin was  crossed examined by a Judge/Atty she would simply say I will only  answer the questions I wish to reply to. My people call it &#8220;double  standard&#8221;. Thanks, Anonymous for reminding me that I don&#8217;t need on the  job training vp by McCain/Palin ticket.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/106">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/106/If-John-McCain-died">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-104"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-104">my vote</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.squidoo.com/leanandripped" rel="nofollow">joe</a> (not verified) on Sat, 10/04/2008 &#8211; 07:35.</div><div><p>Ihave  no faith or trust in any politition, democrat or republican, they all  end up shafting the middle class in the end,She will be no better or  worse than the rest of the lot.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/104">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/104/my-vote">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-103"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-103">This Election is More Irritating than Usual</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 10/04/2008 &#8211; 07:26.</div><div><p>Why  do people feel someone who has been a Senator for 2 years is more  qualified to be President than in the unlikely event McCain has to be  replaced by Govenor Palin??? The other thing that keeps being over  looked is Nancy Pelosi has been two heartbeats away from President??  She is qualified?? Unfortunately, people are being too influenced by  the media and not doing there own research. Quit using the medias  opinions and form your own. Do some real research. Somethinf fun to do  is go to <a
href="http://abcnews.go.com/politics" title="http://abcnews.go.com/politics">http://abcnews.go.com/politics</a> scroll down to the Match-o-Matic II  game.  It is ver interesting.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/103">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/103/Election-More-Irritating-Usual">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-102"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-102">Does Being Governor Make Governor Palin Qalified?</a></div><div> Submitted by artbcpa (not verified) on Sat, 10/04/2008 &#8211; 01:54.</div><div><p>In  &#8220;Third Out of Four&#8221; the commentator points out that Clinton and Reagan  were both Governors before becoming President. We shouldn&#8217;t forget that  Jimmy Carter was also a Governor before becoming the most incompetent  president in the history of the United Staetes. He also may have been  among the academically brightest of all recent Presidents. What does  all that tell us?. &#8230;NOTHING.</p><p>Whether Sarah Palin was a Governor or Barack Obama was at the top of  his academic class does not ensure that either will or will not do a  good job in their respective positions.</p><p>We need to make our decision based on factors more likely to lead to  a successful Presidency. After eight years of the most secretive,  nontransparent Presidency in history, we need someone who will instill  trust in the institution of the Presidency and restore confidence in  the people of the country.</p><p>We had several such Presidents in the prior century &#8211; Franklin  Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan. Each had a vision for the  country which was clearly articulated and embraced by the people. In a  choice between the idealistic Barack Obama and the wily curmudgeon,  John McCain, Barack Obama is clearly the choice of what this country  needs at this time in history.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/102">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/102/Does-Being-Governor-Make-Governor-Palin-Qalified">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-101"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-101">Palin is not our woman.</a></div><div> Submitted by Pam (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 23:59.</div><div><p>I  know that I do not want Palin. I know that I don’t want her anywhere  near our foreign policy. I know that I don’t like what she said in the  debate about ‘expanding’ the role of vice president. I know that I  don’t like her far right, religious views that can impact the world in  a bunch of ways that I don’t like.</p><p>There are other things I don’t like about her, though, I can’t say I  am completely sure about my reasoning. I don’t like her winks and her  nods. I don’t like how she talks to us like children.</p><p>I question my own opinion about these things, as I am not sure if I  know what I want or expect in a female politician. It’s a very  important thing. This first woman. This example of all of us. This  person in whom I place so much of my future and that of my daughters.  Hmmm, too much pressure?!?</p><p>Do I want her to be more of a man than any of the men at the table?  Competing in the same way as men, but climbing the ladder in stilettos?  Or do I want her to be the nurturing female that gets things done  without men being any the wiser? With charm and feminine wiles that  could will men to do what they might not have done, otherwise?</p><p>I thought, when considering Hillary, that I didn’t want a woman  President who had a husband that is a former President. My sister then  pointed out that we might not consider too many women that did not have  such a sense of the White House.</p><p>It’s difficult. These women, up for consideration, don’t have  military backgrounds. Yet, she would be responsible for ‘pushing the  button’ and/or ending a war.</p><p>I guess, even if I did not have a problem with her foreign presence,  her religious intent or her understanding of the role she was about to  take on, I would still have an issue to deal with.</p><p>So, I don’t like Sarah, but, who do I like?  And, the bigger question for me, why?</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/101">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/101/Palin-not-our-woman">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-100"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-100">Re: Poll</a></div><div> Submitted by FD (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 23:24.</div><div><p>To King of Chatalot: I&#8217;m an independant, but I voted once and the poll will not allow me to vote again.<br
/> The only way someone could vote twice is through a proxy, but I tested that idea fater reading your comment.<br
/> It didn&#8217;t work.<br
/> I tried several different proxies, I reset my ip, and nope, it would not allow me to vote again.</p><p>Take off the tin foil hat.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/100">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/100/Re-Poll">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-99"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-99">Poll</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.chatalot.net" rel="nofollow">King of Chatalot</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 22:11.</div><div><p>I  find it amazing that Democrats would stoop so low as to make multiple  votes in this silly poll just to bend the outcome towards their way of  thinking&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;..so to make it appear as if they are the  winners&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.</p><p>&#8230;but then&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;considering that they will ultimately lose in November I&#8217;m not totally surprised&#8230;&#8230;..</p><p>&#8230;..merely amazed&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/99">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/99/Poll">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-98"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-98">Palin&#8217;s hand on the &#8220;Nukular&#8221; button? </a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://mediaconcepts.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">Media Concepts</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 21:39.</div><div><p>I  can&#8217;t decide whether that&#8217;s hilarious, or horrifyingly frightening. I  think it&#8217;s both. Based on McCain&#8217;s age alone, historian Doris Kearns  Goodwin says that there&#8217;s almost a one in three chance that McCain  would die in office were he to be elected. Factor in his FOUR bouts of  Melanoma, which is often fatal regardless of the victim&#8217;s age, and  those odds increase markedly.</p><p>Something to think about.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/98">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/98/Palins-hand-Nukular-button">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-97"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-97">It&#8217;s about leadership</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://politicalvindication.com" rel="nofollow">Shane from PV</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 20:30.</div><div><p>The  presidency is about leadership, and if we can survive eight years being  led by an Arkansas governor who would rather molest the hired help than  pay attention to what Osama Bin Laden is doing, then America will do  just fine with a President Sarah Palin. She certainly has more  leadership experience than her opponents. Does that mean I would have  made her my choice for VP? I would have loved to see Mitt Romney as VP,  but she&#8217;s smart, focused, and knows how to lead. The important  question, if she should ever end up in the Oval Office, would be who  she surrounds herself with. That&#8217;s another reason why Obama would be  very scary as president. He has terrible judgment, and considering the  people he has surrounded himself with throughout his life, and the fact  that as president he will have to decide what advice to act on when it  comes to important issues &#8211; I don&#8217;t trust him to be able to distinguish  from among a bevy of poor advisers the advice least damaging.</p><p>Obama supporters, like so many on this comment board, have no idea  who Obama really is &#8211; frankly, no one does. Obama has locked up his  records, is protected by a compliant press, and says only what he  thinks Americans want to hear. He&#8217;s a charlatan, but his supporters  don&#8217;t care. <em>That&#8217;s why this question is so ironic.</em> They hate  Bush/Republicans/conservatives more than they fear the inexperience of  their presidential candidate and manchild Barack Obama. The derangement  of the left has led them to support and oppose issues not because they  want to protect their country or improve the lives of Americans, but  because they hate their adversaries and will do or say anything to beat  them (the &#8220;this war is lost&#8221; quote by Harry Reid comes to mind &#8211; how  incredibly telling). I think this frothing derangement will cause them  to self-destruct again as they did in 2000 and 2004, where Americans  got a good look at the mindless bitterness and spite that inspires the  left. McCain will win in a squeaker.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/97">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/97/Its-about-leadership">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-96"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-96">Palin is more qualified than most&#8230;</a></div><div> Submitted by Greg (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 20:24.</div><div><p>I&#8217;m  not a big political kind of guy nor do I follow many campaigns. I voted  for a democrat and a republican for president; the best person for the  job always gets my vote. But this is the first time in a long time that  I&#8217;ve seen an honest person make it this far in politics. Usually they  get creamed by the media &#8211; Palin is still holding her own. What you see  is what you get &#8211; nice change of pace especially since I&#8217;m originally  from Delaware. No doubt this isn&#8217;t true for Biden &#8211; he&#8217;s all over the  place telling you whatever it is you want to hear whenever you want to  hear it.. I don&#8217;t dislike Biden and yes, he is qualified to continue  the same old Washington politics; not what I&#8217;m looking for this year at  least.</p><p>I&#8217;m still wondering why Obama thinks Biden represents change? Not even close.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/96">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/96/Palin-more-qualified-most">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-95"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-95">Sarah Palin&#8217;s much sharper than Obama or Biden</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.morethings.com" rel="nofollow">Al Barger</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 20:08.</div><div><p>Not  to put too fine a point on it, Sarah Palin&#8217;s the sharpest person of the  four here. People I think get that when they get a good look at her as  in her famous nomination speech or last night&#8217;s vice presidential  debate.</p><p>Of course, this ain&#8217;t from lack of media attempts to Quayle-ize her.  Look at the double, triple, quadruple standards. It&#8217;s supposedly some  proof that she&#8217;s a moron that she didn&#8217;t choose to spit up a list of  newspapers she reads for Katie Couric.</p><p>But Joe Biden says the most ignorant nonsense day after day, and it  doesn&#8217;t make the news. When the current financial meltdown started a  few weeks ago, Biden was out criticizing Bush reaction. See, when the  1929 market crash happened, FDR when on television to show people that  he was involved and doing something. FDR wasn&#8217;t president, and there  was no television then. This nonsense didn&#8217;t make the news. Imagine if  Palin said something that stupid.<br
/> =====================================<br
/> Little known Palin fact:<br
/> FACT: Having run out of ammunition during a hunting trip, Sarah Palin  once took down a moose using a beauty pageant tiara as a boomerang.</p><p>More Palin fun facts I just made up, and a couple hundred pictures of our girl<br
/> <a
href="http://www.morethings.com/images/sarah_palin/sarah_palin-photo_gallery001.htm" title="http://www.morethings.com/images/sarah_palin/sarah_palin-photo_gallery001.htm">http://www.morethings.com/images/sarah_palin/sarah_palin-photo_gallery00&#8230;</a></p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/95">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/95/Sarah-Palins-much-sharper-Obama-or-Biden">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-94"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-94">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Robert (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 20:00.</div><div><p>Joe Biden, VP  (Vice and Plagiarist)</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/94">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/94/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-93">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Ethel W (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 19:50.</div><div><p>Obama has done much good thru working for ACORN.  Remember, from tiny acorns, might oak trees grow.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/93">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/93/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-92"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-92">Barack&#8217;s leadership skills in government?</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://playborhood.com" rel="nofollow">Mike Lanza</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 19:43.</div><div><p>Please folks &#8211; give us an example.  And please, make it a good one.</p><p>If this were an election for Student Body President, I might vote  for the dude, but he&#8217;s applying to be the Leader of the United States  of America. Is there anything in his governmental experience that  indicates that he can be a great leader? Anything?</p><p>This ain&#8217;t no popularity contest&#8230;</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/92">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/92/Baracks-leadership-skills-government">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-91"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-91">Palin as Prez? No Way</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://janetleejohnson.com" rel="nofollow">Janet Johnson</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 19:41.</div><div><p>I&#8217;m  tired of Sarah Palin. I&#8217;m tired of kicking her around, of waiting for  her to have a public brain freeze, of hearing her droppin&#8217; g&#8217;s and  bringing nuc-u-lur back into the lexicon (I hope we&#8217;re almost finished  with that coming out of the White House).</p><p>At the same time, I&#8217;m proud that she&#8217;s the second legitimate woman  who&#8217;s a running mate on a presidential ticket, the first to &#8220;electrify&#8221;  a country. I&#8217;m mortified as I write that, but I&#8217;m proud of that big ol&#8217;  crack in the glass ceilin&#8217; she&#8217;s added to Hilary&#8217;s 18 million others.  (sigh)</p><p>As most of your poll-takers agree, no way is she qualified to be president. God help us all if she&#8217;s a heartbeat away.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/91">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/91/Palin-Prez-No-Way">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-90"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-90">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Stevie (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 19:35.</div><div><p>Do  I feel that a citizen of this country who has not kept abreast of the  foreign policy situations, and the current administration doctrines is  qualified to step in as head of state in an emergency? No&#8230;.<br
/> Do I feel that someone who will terminate people who disagree with her is worthy to be in the White House? No&#8230;&#8230;.<br
/> Do I feel that someone who feels that because she is a woman she should  be treated with deference in a television interview should be leading a  country? No&#8230;..<br
/> Does a cram session with various political pundits counteract her  inacurate knowledge of what life is like for the rest of us in the  lower 48? No&#8230;&#8230;<br
/> Does this woman have the ability to gain respect of various world  leaders particularly those from countries where women are considered to  be less than equal? no.<br
/> what we really need is a Margaret Thatcher type.. the closest we have is Hilary Clinton.<br
/> Anita Palin is no Hilary Clinton<br
/> And being a POW and being in the Vietnam War does not make you the  right person to be president either. There are plenty of Vietnam Vets  and others who were POW&#8217;s .. and they aren&#8217;t running for President&#8211;  though John Kerry did.. and he wasn&#8217;t a POW.. he served his country.  Don&#8217;t bank on that one being the ACE..</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/90">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/90/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-89"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-89">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Ken S (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 19:29.</div><div><p>Or maybe Obama would want his friend Tony Rezko to advise him on ethics in government.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/89">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/89/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-88"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-88">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Ken S (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 19:28.</div><div><p>Or maybe Obama would like William Ayers for his Secretary of Defense, since he knows how to blow things up.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/88">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/88/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-87"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-87">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Ken S (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 19:25.</div><div><p>Maybe  Obama can install Rev. Wright as Secretary of State. All the other  nations of the world will love his philosophy: God damn America!</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/87">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/87/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-86"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-86">Re: amazing 75% believe Palin cant be President</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 19:23.</div><div><p>I  think where the logic breaks down is that you&#8217;re assuming all  Governor&#8217;s are created equally. An American Governor&#8217;s principal job is  running the state, and to be honest, I&#8217;m not sure how good a governor  she is, but thats for the people of Alaska to decide. But as an  American, I feel that she&#8217;s dangerously ignorant of world affairs and  issues around a global economy.</p><p>And frankly, I think we&#8217;ve had enough of that already.</p><p>On the other hand, Obama and Biden are far more savvy. If you  watched the debate, you&#8217;ll have noticed how rarely Palin answers a  direct question. She&#8217;s not dumb, but she&#8217;s not worldly either. And  worse, she revels in her inexperience.</p><p>If she ever gets into the Presidential office, you might just wish  for the good ol days when GW was in charge. And if that doesn&#8217;t scare  you, it should.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/86">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/86/Re-amazing-75-believe-Palin-cant-be-President">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-85"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-85">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Ken S (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 19:21.</div><div><p>Don&#8217;t you love it when a public relations man calls people degrading, hateful names?</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/85">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/85/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-84"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-84">That is just dumb</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.dpkpr.com" rel="nofollow">Dan Keeney, APR</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 19:16.</div><div><p>You  and your swill slinging dopes really should stop. Aside from Billy Bobs  missing teeth with Confederate Flags in their pickups, Americans  understand that Senator Obama is as American as you or I.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/84">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/84/just-dumb">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-83"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-83">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Ken S (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 19:15.</div><div><p>Someone  commented on here that we live in a Global society and therefore need  Obama. Folks, this world is getting so screwy and dangerous, that is  exactly why we do NOT need a post-modern green horn such as Obama as  POTUS. All the pie in the sky he professes is absolutely meaningless  without solid, tough, and REAL national security. Somehow, grandiose  social programs lose their luster when you have a nuclear missile up  your ass.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/83">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/83/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-82"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-82">double standard</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.madeinhead.org" rel="nofollow">Jason Preston</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 19:12.</div><div><p>Palin  took five tries and five years to get a journalism degree at  undistinguished schools, and managed to be an undistinguished student  at all four schools involved in her quest for a chance to be a TV  reporter. Obama was at the top of his class at every step of his  collegiate journey. When pressed three times to answer, Palin cannot  name a single existing newspaper or news magazine that she reads. If  you can&#8217;t see the difference here, perhaps you&#8217;re not an ideal student  or intellect either, but only through pride does a person lacking in a  certain virtue seek to exalt that lack. Just because I&#8217;m not tall  enough to slam dunk doesn&#8217;t mean I push for the NBA to hire more short  people! The Presidency&#8217;s the hardest job in the world, or one of them.  Stellar intellect, stellar ethics, and stellar success in life should  all be ironclad prerequisites to the job. If Palin is qualified to be  President, I am twice as qualified and will expect Palin fans&#8217; votes  when I make my run for high office.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/82">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/82/double-standard">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-81"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-81">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Cowboy X (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 19:10.</div><div><p>Who  is qualified to be the President? There is no class to take to become  certified. We have to put our trust in a person. I wish that person  were Ron Paul!</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/81">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/81/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-80"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-80">amazing 75% believe Palin cant be President</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 19:00.</div><div><p>So  75% believe Palin cant be president in case something happens to  McCain. So I guess its OK to be an inexperienced presidential  candidate, but if your a vice presidential candidate who has actually  run a state, you don&#8217;t qualify. The logic here escapes me completely.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/80">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/80/amazing-75-believe-Palin-cant-be-President">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-79"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-79">Sarah Palin: Unfiltered</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.petitiononline.com/CBSPALIN/petition.html" rel="nofollow">John Schuller</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 18:50.</div><div><p>CLICK ON MY NAME TO SIGN THIS PETITION</p><p>To:  CBS News</p><p>Sarah Palin herself has requested to speak to America without the  Media Filter in the Vice Presidential debate. ?I like being able to  answer tough questions without the filter of the mainstream media  telling the American people what they just heard,? she said in her  closing.</p><p>The people of the United States of America deserve to see the CBS Katie Couric interviews with Sarah Palin in their entirety.</p><p>This should be acceptable by Republicans and Democrats as it will  let Sarah Palin talk to America without the filter created by editing  and leaving important information on the cutting room floor.</p><p>Let us see an edition of &#8220;Sarah Palin: Unfiltered&#8221;.</p><p>This will allow Americans to see the real Sarah Palin.</p><p>Sincerely,</p><p>The Undersigned</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/79">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/79/Sarah-Palin-Unfiltered">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-78"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-78">Seriously&#8230;</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://newyorkmomentsblog.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">newyorkmoments</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 18:49.</div><div><p>regardless  of the VP candidates&#8230;are we really going to vote in a Hussein????  Seriously?? I&#8217;m saddened that I&#8217;m not going to be able to vote Democrat  this election.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/78">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/78/Seriously">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-77"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-77">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 18:43.</div><div><p>I  sent John McCain a $1000 in September 2007&#8230;when his campaign was  flailing. I believed his voice needed to be in the debate. Until Sarah  Palin&#8217;s acceptance speech I did not send a penny to any other  candidate.</p><p>I was so outraged by the poor judgment demonstrated by McCain &#8212;  there were thousands, if not tens of thousands, of more capable,  competent men and women who could serve as his VP. I promptly sent a  large contribution to Obama. And with every solicitation letter I  receive from John McCain (they arrive daily), I write to ask for my  money back.</p><p>Whether &#8220;Joe six-pack&#8221; likes it or not&#8230;we live in a Global  Society, not an igloo nation. We already had Joe-six pack from  President for the last 8 years. Doesn&#8217;t any one remember &#8211; &#8220;George W.  Bush is the guy I want to have at my BBQ&#8221;???&#8230;Well &#8211; we got him&#8211; only  we got bbq&#8217;d.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/77">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/77/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-76"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-76">Re: Would it be so much to ask&#8230;</a></div><div> Submitted by Eric (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 18:35.</div><div><p>Would it be so much to ask for a Presidential nominee who actually had some experience?</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/76">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/76/Re-Would-it-be-so-much-ask">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-75"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-75">Would it be so much to ask&#8230;</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.liesdamnedlies.com" rel="nofollow">Ian Thomas</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 18:32.</div><div><p>&#8230;for a VP nominee who actually had some experience *before* she takes office?</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/75">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/75/Would-it-be-so-much-ask">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-74"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-74">Third out of four</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 18:30.</div><div><p>Stack  rank all four candidates &#8212; Obama, Biden, McCain and Palin &#8212; in terms  of experience, and she comes out 3rd out of 4. Obama is last.</p><p>Stack rank all four candidates in terms of executive experience &#8212;  meaning, &#8216;has the candidate ever managed a budget before, had headcount  before, and had to make decisions as opposed to provide advice&#8217; &#8212; and  she incredibly comes out first amongst the four, as she&#8217;s been both  governor and mayor.</p><p>Being the governor of a state was good enough for Clinton, good enough for Romney, and good enough for Reagan.</p><p>Those who attack her experience must feel terrible that Obama is the  leading candidate for the Dem&#8217;s, given his extraordinarily thin resume.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/74">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/74/Third-out-four">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-73"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-73">If Barack Doesn&#8217;t Die, Is He Qualified?</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://playborhood.com" rel="nofollow">Mike Lanza</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 18:29.</div><div><p>Be  honest, folks. In his career in *government*, not running a campaign,  has he ever demonstrated outstanding leadership or executive skills?  Sarah certainly has, but her experience may nonetheless be too light.</p><p>Barack Obama has the least leadership or executive skills of *any* of the major candidates for president or vice president.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/73">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/73/If-Barack-Doesnt-Die-He-Qualified">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-72"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-72">Not a fan, but c&#8217;mon</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.dpkpr.com" rel="nofollow">Dan Keeney, APR</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 18:21.</div><div><p>I&#8217;m  not a Sarah fan, but she has a solid foundation &#8212; an ability to  connect with men and women, powerfully deliver her messages and ramp up  quickly on complex subjects. The actuaries estimate that there is a 75%  chance that Mr. McCain would survive a first term. Presumably, the  chances of him passing in the first YEAR would be very small. So the  real question would be &#8212; If Sarah Palin had at least a year as Vice  President under her belt, would she be competent to be President if  John McCain were to be incapacitated? I don&#8217;t have any doubt that she  would. I will not be voting for the GOP ticket, but the fear mongering  about Ms. Palin&#8217;s ability is baseless and perhaps sexist.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/72">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/72/Not-fan-cmon">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-71"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-71">To Pat Baker,  Actually, she</a></div><div> Submitted by The Sensible J. (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 18:01.</div><div><p>To Pat Baker,<br
/> Actually, she has NOT been governor for a few years. She has been a  governor since 2007, she won the election at the END of 2006. So, not  even 2 years yet.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/71">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/71/Pat-Baker-Actually-she">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-70"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-70">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by The Sensible J. (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 17:58.</div><div><p>When  a lot of people say she was put in the VP nominee ticket because she  would shake things up for the Republican party, that&#8217;s scary. Why was  that the first and foremost reason why she was picked?!</p><p>We are not running a popularity contest here for god&#8217;s sake. We need  a leader, a WORLD LEADER that will get American back into the  respectful country it is amongst other nations in this world. Not a PTA  mom who claims she can juggle 5 kids when in fact her nanny, chef,  driver/pilot, gardener and 20 other staffers take care of the Mom role  for her. I&#8217;m all for the &#8220;women can do the same if not better job than  men&#8221; ideal, but come on, she isn&#8217;t even up to par on her events and  history. When you can only make punch points and be a talking head,  that is NOT a leader. She can&#8217;t even name ONE supreme court decision  other than Row vs. Wade. And being able to see Russia from Alaska does  not qualify as foreign experience. We do not need and DO NOT want an  average Joe or Jane to be our president or vice president.</p><p>It is scary when our (by that I mean the republicans) expectations have sunk so low.</p><p>And it&#8217;s even more scary when people are voting for republican  SIMPLY because she&#8217;s pro-life, even for those women who were victims of  rape or incest would NOT get a choice. That alone, to me, is hugely  undermining the equality so many women have worked so hard for so many  years.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/70">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/70/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-69"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-69">Sarah Palin Qualified</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://cashflowtipsbydon.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">Don S</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 17:54.</div><div><p>Maybe  the most appropriate question is . . . if Barack Obama is elected  president, whether or not John McCain dies, is he qualified to lead the  country?</p><p>Being a governor is a proven road to the White House. Alaska is a  strategic state. Let&#8217;s see: Clinton was from Arkansas &#8212; even less  strategic, Carter from Georgia and Reagan from California . . . Bush  from Texas . . . oh, sure, I saw a post on the Huffington Post this  week that said &#8220;Bush is intellectually challenged.&#8221; Of course, there  was no evidence to support the claim.</p><p>Obama is currently more likely to become president than Sarah Palin  and that&#8217;s something that should concern all clear-thinking Americans.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/69">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/69/Sarah-Palin-Qualified">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-68"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-68">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Jerome Schindler (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 17:53.</div><div><p>How  could she possibly be any worse that what we have been subjected to  recently. I am sure Harry Truman&#8217;s skills woudl also have been panned.  McCain ought to be a good choice as nobody has been sure what party he  belongs to for many years.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/68">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/68/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-67"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-67">Re: Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah</a></div><div> Submitted by Bill Platt (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 17:45.</div><div><p>Deluded?  Although she has as much or more experience than Obama, you are willing  to suggest that my delusion is that she could not be President, but  Obama can be?</p><p>The only delusion is that Obama&#8217;s experience is greater than hers.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/67">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/67/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-66"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-66">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 17:31.</div><div><p>Palin is absolutely not qualified &#8211; anyone who thinks so is deluded.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/66">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/66/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-65"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-65">Re: pailin would shove her heels up putin&#8217;s a&#8230;</a></div><div> Submitted by Chemosapien = Idiot (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 17:29.</div><div><p>The point was she won&#8217;t take no crap.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/65">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/65/Re-pailin-would-shove-her-heels-putins">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-64"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-64">Re: Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah</a></div><div> Submitted by Chemosapien = Idiot (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 17:27.</div><div><p>Too bad they don&#8217;t have a minimum test for people to take in order to qualify for the job.</p><p>Then James they should do the same before becoming parents. Maybe  then we won&#8217;t have so many libetards. Bunch of whiners don&#8217;t know a  good thing when it slaps them upside the head.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/64">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/64/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-63"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-63">Re: Re: Palin is a Disgrace Which Makes McCain a Fool</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.taipaninvestor.info/blog" rel="nofollow">Gerald</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 17:26.</div><div><p>As  a Vietnam veteran I can assure you that sad fact by itself (yeah, we  lost a war we had no business being in) does not qualify anyone to be  President. While I respect McCain&#8217;s service to his country McCain  himself has admitted that he collaborated with the enemy and signed  documents condemning America&#8217;s.bombing of Hanoi as being war crimes.</p><p>As at the time we were carpet bombing a densely populated Hanoi with  low level B-52 bombing runs, the North Vietnamese perhaps had a point  that a stressed out and in terrible pain McCain decided to agree with.</p><p>Not that I blame him. Fortunately, my POW camp experience was  limited to a combat training exercise at Camp Lejeune, N.C. It was only  for a very long day but that was enough to make brave grown men trained  for combat by battle hardened US Marines cry out in pain. McCain&#8217;s  experience had to be horrible and I&#8217;m sure that the scars, mental and  physical, must still be with him.</p><p>However, I wasn&#8217;t referring to McCain other than his grandstanding  poor judgement in selecting Governor Palin as his running mate. Sarah  may be a swell gal, certainly her down home nature appeals to a lot of  down home people across America, but please, qualified to perhaps have  to step into the President&#8217;s role?</p><p>She is a little league player suddenly thrown into the major  leagues. I admire her spunk but fear her aggressive claim that she is  ready to serve when she can&#8217;t even handle soft ball interviews. Who  wants a President just like an average Joe? In case you haven&#8217;t noticed  there are very complicated problems that America faces that will  require outstanding leadership to solve.</p><p>I&#8217;m not a big Obama fan either but at least the man has first class  intelligence and a first class temperament. He doesn&#8217;t tend to shoot  from the hip or fire, ready, aim like old fighter pilots are apt to do.  Palin was a choice designed to fire up the Republican Party&#8217;s  conservative base and in that the move was successful. But at what risk  to the country if McCain and Palin are elected?</p><p>With the odds being about one in four that a 72 year old cancer  survivor would not make it another four years a President Palin is a  frightening possibility.</p><p>That&#8217;s putting country first? Please! Give me a break.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/63">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/63/Re-Palin-Disgrace-Which-Makes-McCain-Fool">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-62"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-62">ldaught2  AHEM ! ! !</a></div><div> Submitted by Chemosapien = Idiot (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 17:24.</div><div><p>ldaught2</p><p>AHEM ! ! !</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/62">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/62/ldaught2-AHEM">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-61"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-61">Re: Competent?</a></div><div> Submitted by ldaught2 (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 17:16.</div><div><p>//Until then, keep reading all the world&#8217;s magazines and Newspapers. They actually can teach you a lot.//</p><p>Are you kidding?? what can a bias newspaper and magazine teach??  (and that would be all of them)That is the most idiot statement I have  read!</p><p>To answer the question&#8230;Could Palin be President?&#8230;yes yes and  yes&#8230;.The other 3 on the ticket was in the senate and HELPED drive  America where we are today! I dont care if Palin comes from a goat  farm, she could do better than this stinkin government!!</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/61">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/61/Re-Competent">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-60"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-60">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Ken S (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 17:15.</div><div><p>Lady Coveted&#8230;.another woman that feels threatened by good looking successful women.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/60">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/60/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-59"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-59">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Ken S (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 17:14.</div><div><p>James flew in from that alternate universe that Joe Biden lives in.   Maybe the Missouri Truth Squad can help him.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/59">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/59/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-58"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-58">pailin would shove her heels up putin&#8217;s a&#8230;</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://the-coveted.com/blog" rel="nofollow">lady coveted</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 17:14.</div><div><p>being as putin&#8217;s no longer president of russia.</p><p>dmitri medvedev succeeded putin back in march, she&#8217;s so out of touch she&#8217;d probably miss that point too.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/58">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/58/pailin-would-shove-her-heels-putins">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-57"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-57">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by James (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 17:08.</div><div><p>She&#8217;s  competent all right. Competent enough to ban books at the public  library, books she has never even read. Competent enough to try to fire  a librarian who was just doing her job, Competent enough to veto sex  education for minors, (surprise there huh?), competent enough to fire  the head of the troopers who refused to fire her ex-brother in law for  unjustifiable reasons.</p><p>No wonder repugs love her so much, she&#8217;ll fit right in..*L*</p><p>At least Obama went through a process and garnered enough votes to  earn the right to be where he is today. Palin was handed the position  because McCain needed a quick fix and liked the way she looked and  talked.</p><p>Was she the most qualified and best suited republican for the job?  Of course not and people are not being genuine if they say yes. For  that reason McCain should and will lose this election.</p><p>Too bad they don&#8217;t have a minimum test for people to take in order to qualify for the job.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/57">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/57/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-56"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-56">Re: Re: Pansies? then what&#8230;</a></div><div> Submitted by Chemosapien = Idiot (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:54.</div><div><p>Palin would shove her pretty heels up Putin&#8217;s ass.  Then make him beg for more.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/56">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/56/Re-Pansies-then-what">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-55"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-55">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Ken S (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:52.</div><div><p>Yes.  She would do a great job, because she has intelligence coupled with  common sense, grit, and good solid values. Would to God that this  country had had dozens of Presidents like her instead of some of the  buffoons we&#8217;ve suffered through.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/55">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/55/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-54"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-54">Re: People around you</a></div><div> Submitted by Chemosapien = Idiot (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:52.</div><div><p>No he&#8217;ll bring them in from the hood.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/54">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/54/Re-People-around-you">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-53"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-53">Shooting wolves from a Copter</a></div><div> Submitted by chemosapien (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:50.</div><div><p>is  not the kind of Hunter i respect&#8230;..and margaret Thatcher is on her  way over their to whoop your ass for comparing her to Palin&#8230;.Thatcher  was one of the most intelligent and tough politicians in modern  times&#8230;.Palin doesn&#8217;t have a college education and she can&#8217;t even  stand up to KATIE M*^#ATHERF%*#KING COURIC&#8230;.stop comparing her to  Thatcher</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/53">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/53/Shooting-wolves-Copter">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-52"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-52">People Around You</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.Matt-Sanchez.com" rel="nofollow">Matt Sanchez</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:49.</div><div><p>Obama  will have the flag stomper and terrorist, Dick Ayres and the God D@*$  America Reverend Wright. Both these gentlemen have doctorates!</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/52">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/52/People-Around-You">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-51"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-51">People around you</a></div><div> Submitted by chemosapien (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:46.</div><div><p>it  is very important who the president brings into their admin&#8230;..I&#8217;m  certain Obama isn&#8217;t going to fill his cabinet from his high school  yearbook like little miss Palin</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/51">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/51/People-around-you">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-50"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-50">Obama Qualified</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.Matt-Sanchez.com" rel="nofollow">Matt Sanchez</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:46.</div><div><p>A one-term governor who is the most popular governor in the country.</p><p>Of course, that&#8217;s one more term than former &#8220;community organizer&#8221; and one-term senator.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/50">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/50/Obama-Qualified">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-49"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-49">Re: Pansies? then what&#8230;</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://americanandproud.net" rel="nofollow">Robert</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:46.</div><div><p>Obviously  you haven&#8217;t seen Sarah Palin in the real world, she hunts guts and eats  things that get in her way, I would imagine you are the type of idiot  that thought Margaret Thatcher was a bad choice too&#8230;.Russia would beg  for forgiveness from Palin and Putin would be licking Sarah&#8217;s boots in  red square&#8230;.</p><p>Moron.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/49">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/49/Re-Pansies-then-what">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-48"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-48">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://mrclm.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">Chris Meirose</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:45.</div><div><p>More  competent than Al Gore. More competent than Dick Cheney. More competent  than Dan Quayle. Palin would do just fine. Being president is as much  or more about who you have around you than anything else. You must be  able to make tough decisions, and know what you believe in, but at the  end of the day the experts you surround yourself with as President will  make or break your term in the modern context.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/48">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/48/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-47"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-47">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.pullinsreport.com" rel="nofollow">Scott Pullins</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:43.</div><div><p>She&#8217;s clearly not competent.</p><p><a
href="http://pullinsreport.com/2008/10/03/scott-pullins--online-poll--do-you-have-faith-in-palin-3.aspx" title="http://pullinsreport.com/2008/10/03/scott-pullins--online-poll--do-you-have-faith-in-palin-3.aspx">http://pullinsreport.com/2008/10/03/scott-pullins&#8211;online-poll&#8211;do-you-h&#8230;</a></p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/47">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/47/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-46"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-46">Pansies? then what&#8230;</a></div><div> Submitted by chemosapien (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:43.</div><div><p>russia  calls us a bunch of homos, and Putin slams his shoe on the desk?  &#8230;&#8230;if Palin were president Putin would literally rape her mouth on  live telivision then claim he thought she was the &#8220;entertainment&#8221;</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/46">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/46/Pansies-then-what">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-45"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-45">Re: Re: Palin isn&#8217;t competent to wipe my ass</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://americanandproud.net" rel="nofollow">Robert</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:42.</div><div><p>The  answer is YES, she has run something, SHE has more experience RUNNING a  government than ANY of the candidates&#8230; So yes she is Qualified.</p><p>Obama isn&#8217;t qualified to be elected dog catcher, McCain at least has  the experience in dealing with hostile forces, and for you libtards  there still are hostile forces at work oh and they are hoping for Obama  too&#8230;</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/45">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/45/Re-Palin-isnt-competent-wipe-my-ass">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-44"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-44">Re: Margaret, its me God</a></div><div> Submitted by Margaret (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:41.</div><div><p>I  didn&#8217;t say NO degree. I said not an &#8220;Ivy League Degree&#8221;. I was just  giving my opinion &#8211; &#8220;If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would  Sarah Palin be competent to be President?&#8221; My answer is yes.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/44">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/44/Re-Margaret-its-me-God">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-43">Palin</a></div><div> Submitted by Matt Jones (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:40.</div><div><p>Clinton&#8217;s  budget experience was a budget of Arkansas which was smaller than  cuyahoga county. Obama has ZERO budget experience. She can manage a  budget. She communicates and articulates the GOP positions more  effectively than McCain, Bush, Cheney and Dole to name some powerful  people.</p><p>go to Canada you commie bastages!</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/43">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/43/Palin">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-42"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-42">Re: Palin is a Disgrace Which Makes McCain a Fool</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://americanandproud.net" rel="nofollow">Robert</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:39.</div><div><p>and  an Obama/Biden victory will make us look like a bunch of pansies&#8230;I  would love for you to explain how a war veteran that went through what  McCain did would cause the world to look at us as a laughing stock? Mrs  Thatcher was looked at a little off by the owrkd but she did fine? is  it you are scared of women or hunting women?</p><p>Palin is the only candidate in the race I would vote for president  and be happy about it. I will vote McCain just to get Sarah Palin  closer to the Big Job.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/42">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/42/Re-Palin-Disgrace-Which-Makes-McCain-Fool">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-41"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-41">Re: Palin isn&#8217;t competent to wipe my ass</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:35.</div><div><p>The US is going to hell because McCain&#8217;s buddy George Bush set us on that course.  4 more years of that?</p><p>BTW, the question was if McCain kicks, is Palin qualified?  And the answer is no.</p><p>Instead of attacking Obama, how about telling why you think Palin is  qualified? Is it because even you know she isn&#8217;t? Typical Republican.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/41">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/41/Re-Palin-isnt-competent-wipe-my-ass">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-40"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-40">&#8220;College Education&#8221;</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.Matt-Sanchez.com" rel="nofollow">Matt Sanchez</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:35.</div><div><p>All  those &#8220;economic experts&#8221; have great post-grad degrees from high end  schools. Hopefully, that will help them as they look for a new job.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/40">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/40/College-Education">link</a></li><li><a
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id="comment-39"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-39">Palin is a Disgrace Which Makes McCain a Fool</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.taipaninvestor.info/blog" rel="nofollow">Gerald</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:34.</div><div><p>Palin  makes a big deal about her &#8220;six pack joe&#8221; ways and seems to be proud of  her ignorance. We have had almost eight years of a largely  disinterested in the world at large President and see where that has  taken us. American is on a slippery downward slope and it will be  difficult to avoid a hard crash and burn landing.</p><p>I for one don&#8217;t want someone as VP, who may well end up being  President, who is just another six pack Joe yahoo. America is the  laughing stock of the world just to have such a yahoo candidate.</p><p>If McCain and Palin are somehow elected American&#8217;s standing in the  world as a world leader, much less a super power, will be further  reduced to the vanishing point. We would be looked upon as a nation of  village idiots.</p><p>It&#8217;s not that I love Obama. Come to think of it with the choice down  to Obama or McCain perhaps we American have found the perfect means to  self destruct. The support given by McCain and Obama for the $700  billion bailout bill (before another $100 billion or so in pure pork  was added) is another giant step in that direction.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/39">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/39/Palin-Disgrace-Which-Makes-McCain-Fool">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-38"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-38">Re: Re: Palin isn&#8217;t competent to walk my dog</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://americanandproud.net" rel="nofollow">Robert</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:33.</div><div><p>&#8220;You  idiots care more about a donkey and an elephant than you do about the  stars and stripes. You get what you deserve.&#8221; The truest statement  since Reagan stated the most scary thing ever was &#8220;I&#8217;m from the  government and I&#8217;m here to help&#8221;</p><p>I wouldnt be so dead set against OBAMA if he were more Country  first, rather than Blame everyone else&#8230; HIS party has led congress  for the last 2 years and we have gone from solvency to bankruptcy and  BOTH parties are to blame, ONLY one party is used to responsibility,  the other is used to &#8220;Tolerance&#8221; and forgiveness of their own&#8230;.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/38">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/38/Re-Palin-isnt-competent-walk-my-dog">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-37"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-37">Re: Margaret, its me God</a></div><div> Submitted by chemosapien (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:31.</div><div><p>you  mean like the modern day general who doesn&#8217;t have a college degree? are  we suddenly recruiting presidents from third world countries? because  EVERY American General has a college degree&#8230;&#8230;lets not pretend we  live in the world of 2 centuries ago</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/37">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/37/Re-Margaret-its-me-God">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-36"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-36">Re: Palin isn&#8217;t competent to walk my dog</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:28.</div><div><p>Nothing  like partisanship. That&#8217;s right put the party before the country. No  wonder the US is going to hell in a rocketship. You idiots care more  about a donkey and an elephant than you do about the stars and stripes.  You get what you deserve.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/36">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/36/Re-Palin-isnt-competent-walk-my-dog">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-35"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-35">Re: Palin isn&#8217;t competent to walk my dog</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://americanandproud.net" rel="nofollow">Robert</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:28.</div><div><p>Oh  and I&#8217;m qualified because I am a black community organizer.. Don&#8217;t look  at the communities I organized or anything, just trust me for CHANGE&#8230;  BS, it is highway strong arm robbery, ACORN? Rev Wright? Ayers?  Phlegar? Farakhan? Ok Palin has what? A couple of LIES perpetrated by  the elitist media that have been debunked. Yeah Obama in 08 and the end  of our nation in 09&#8230;.good plan.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/35">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/35/Re-Palin-isnt-competent-walk-my-dog">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-34"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-34">Re: Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://experiencecurve.com" rel="nofollow">Karl</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:27.</div><div><p>It&#8217;s  ironic that if you guys had listened to Carter in the 70&#8242;s you would  not be as f**cked as you are now and you would probably have energy  independence.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/34">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/34/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-33"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-33">Palin isn&#8217;t competent to walk my dog</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:24.</div><div><p>Say  what you want about Obama, he&#8217;ll make a much better President than  either &#8220;I&#8217;m qualified because I can see Russia from my pooper, yah, you  betcha&#8221; or &#8220;I&#8217;m qualified because I was a POW a million years ago,  wait, what was the question again?&#8221;</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/33">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/33/Palin-isnt-competent-walk-my-dog">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-32"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-32">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.Matt-Sanchez.com" rel="nofollow">Matt Sanchez</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:19.</div><div><p>Palin  Derangement Syndrome is alive and well as the media blitzkrieg is  desperate to discredit the Palin/McCain presidential ticket.</p><p>Palin handily beat Biden down last night, and that causes severe swelling in the liberal frontal lobe.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/32">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/32/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-31"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-31">Competent&#8230;OBama?</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:19.</div><div><p>So  you say go back home hockey mom&#8230; Wow&#8230; your complete lack of what a  hockey mom is.. basically a communtity leader&#8230;hmmm Let&#8217;s see Omaa is  just that, he has not been a Governer, worked a state budger.. .his  short political careeer shows less tenure that Palin. Fair is Fair ,  your last paragraph shows your compete ignorance,,, go read a bit  yourself!</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/31">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/31/CompetentOBama">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-30"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-30">Re: Margaret, its me God</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.omarhamada.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">Anonymous</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:19.</div><div><p>You mean like George Washington?</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/30">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/30/Re-Margaret-its-me-God">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-29"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-29">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://republicaninthearts.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">Incognito</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:14.</div><div><p>and  how about looking at it this way&#8230; with all Biden&#8217;s asinine gaffes  would people be thrilled to have him as president, if Obama were to  die? I&#8217;d be much happier with a Palin presidency than either an Obama  or Biden presidency.</p><p>She&#8217;s done very well for Alaska&#8230;thank you very much.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/29">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/29/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-28"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-28">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.golfblogger.com" rel="nofollow">GolfBlogger</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:10.</div><div><p>It&#8217;s  not saying much, but I think Palin&#8217;s more qualified than Obama. The  problem is that if you vote Republican, an unqualified person MIGHT  become president. If you vote Democrat, an unqualified person WILL  become president.</p><p>The only logical ticket is Biden-McCain &#8212; one which, during the primaries, Joe Biden said he wouldn&#8217;t mind.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/28">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/28/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-27"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-27">Margaret, its me God</a></div><div> Submitted by chemosapien (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:09.</div><div><p>you  would not make a good president nor would anyone who doesn&#8217;t have an  University Degree&#8230;..watch that sassy little Katie Couric if you want  to know why Sara Palin is completely incompetent</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/27">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/27/Margaret-its-me-God">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-26"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-26">What the&#8230;?</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.soldiersperspective.us" rel="nofollow">CJ Grisham</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:07.</div><div><p>If Palin isn&#8217;t competent enough to be President, then Obama is even LESS competent to hold the position!!</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/26">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/26/What">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-25"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-25">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Margaret (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 16:03.</div><div><p>Why  won&#8217;t Sara Palin be a competent President? Is there anything about  Obama that makes him more intelligent than Palin? It offends me as a  person to think differently. I believe she would do as well, if not  better, than any other of the men or women who have made a run during  this election.</p><p>I didn&#8217;t go to an ivy league college. I haven&#8217;t served as a PTO  chairperson or any other office but I think I would make a darn good  president. I&#8217;m excited to think that maybe we might have something  fresh in the office. From Hillary to McCain it is the same old same old.</p><p>Margaret</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/25">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/25/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-24"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-24">experience or education ?</a></div><div> Submitted by James (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 15:57.</div><div><p>While  one could argue all day long about the experience factor between Obama  and Palin, one can&#8217;t argue much about the difference in education. I  would rather have someone educated in the highest office of the land.</p><p>Thanks, but no thanks for that sweet talkin&#8217;, well read gal from Alaska.</p><p>Don&#8217;t YA know?</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/24">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/24/experience-or-education">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-23"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-23">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://americanandproud.net" rel="nofollow">Robert</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 15:55.</div><div><p>I  am voting for McCain/Palin for precisely that reason, I would be WAY  more happy with Palin as President than I will be with McCain.<br
/> If Obama wins we ALL lose&#8230;.Oh and a preemptive dismiss to those that  say it&#8217;s because he is black&#8230;Its not because he is black its because  he is a communist/socialist libtard baby killing gun taking no  leadership other than &#8220;ACORN&#8221; type skills&#8230;. but vote how you want, I  cant wait till you liberal idiots get what you want, just like after  Carter, you came crying to the Conservatives to save you, Obama is a  black Carter maybe worse.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/23">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/23/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-22"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-22">NFW</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://twww.mahamatzav.org" rel="nofollow">rebaaron</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 15:54.</div><div><p>Sarah  Palin is a poser. She&#8217;s so enamored with Ronald Reagan I believe, in  part, because she&#8217;s just like him &#8211; an actor. Reagan wasn&#8217;t a president  as much as he was able to act like a president. The VP debates last  night showed this &#8211; Palin is all show and no substance. What&#8217;s really  scary is she believes that she&#8217;s capable. I think she really has no  idea and is not capable of getting it. I think some call this  sociopathic tendencies?!</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/22">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/22/NFW">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-21"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-21">Palin Did Better Than Expected</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://baconeatingatheistjew.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">The Atheist Jew</a> (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 15:53.</div><div><p>She proved to me that she doesn&#8217;t have an IQ of 75.  It is more like 90 or 95.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/21">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/21/Palin-Did-Better-Expected">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-20"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-20">National Level Experience (NLE)</a></div><div> Submitted by chemosapien (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 15:53.</div><div><p>Palin  is an order of magnitude more Podunk than any national political figure  in modern times. Case in point, 6 months ago, Palin said, flat out, she  is not INTERESTED in national policy, as in she doesn&#8217;t have the time  or will to keep up with what is going on in this country&#8230;when you use  NLE as the measure Obama is far ahead of Palin, exemplified by the fact  that the very first thing he did in the Senate was get a law passed to  help secure &#8220;loose nukes&#8221; in the former USSR&#8230;.compare that to Palin  who apparently could not even pass a seventh grade civics test (doesn&#8217;t  know any supreme court cases besides Roe v. Wade?)</p><p>All the PAlin supporters are the same , pardon my french, IDIOTS who  supported GW because he&#8217;s a guy they can drink a beer with&#8230;..Palin  sure is a regular joe&#8230;Joe Retard that is</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/20">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/20/National-Level-Experience-NLE">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-19"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-19">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by brad (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 15:53.</div><div><p>If  something happened to McCain on day one would Palin be ready? No, BUT  what makes you think Obama is? Lets talk about the TOP of the ticket.  Give me a break!!!</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/19">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/19/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-18"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-18">And Barack is Qualified? </a></div><div> Submitted by J (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 14:33.</div><div><p>I  love how people point out how Palin&#8217;s not qualified SHOULD something  happen to McCain. And what makes Barack qualified? He&#8217;s been in the  Senate for 2 years? And if he is elected, he&#8217;s it. At least with  McCain, we&#8217;re electing a very seasoned and proven person who has a  pretty good track record for change. Obama can talk about change but he  hasn&#8217;t walked it at all.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/18">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/18/And-Barack-Qualified">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-17"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-17">Re: Re: McCain&#8217;s &#8220;Cancer&#8221;</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 13:32.</div><div><p>Source please.  Media previously said superficial Basal cell.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/17">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/17/Re-McCains-Cancer">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-16"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-16">Re: McCain&#8217;s &#8220;Cancer&#8221;</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 13:15.</div><div><p>He has had MELANOMA. The deadliest form of skin cancer</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/16">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/16/Re-McCains-Cancer">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-15"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-15">Competent?</a></div><div> Submitted by rusmayse on Fri, 10/03/2008 &#8211; 00:48.</div><div><p>Poor  Palin. I commend her on the acceptance of such a difficult position in  such a tough time. It takes a really strong person to take on the role  she has. And I do agree with the fact that she may &#8220;catch on quickly&#8221;.  I&#8217;m just particularly concerned and unsure she has any idea what she is  doing. Period.<br
/> Go back home hockey mom. Gain experience over the next 8 years. Become  more involved on a national level. Listen to the cries of us people.  And then please, come back again :) Until then, keep reading all the  world&#8217;s magazines and Newspapers. They actually can teach you a lot.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/15">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/15/Competent">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-14"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-14">Not as a woman, or a man</a></div><div> Submitted by TomCollins2100 on Thu, 10/02/2008 &#8211; 23:33.</div><div><p>Are  you kidding? The notion that she&#8217;s being unfairly judged as unqualified  because she&#8217;s a woman is absurd. If she were a man, McCain would have  been laughed out of the country for picking a first-term governor with  no other applicable experience and zero national &#8211; let alone foreign  policy &#8211; qualifications.</p><p>Women with any brains at all should be insulted that McCain and the  Republicans think that they will vote for any woman they offer, or  belive this particular woman is remotely qualified to run any country,  forget about the United States.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/14">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/14/Not-woman-or-man">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-13"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-13">RELEASE THE MEDICAL RECORDS</a></div><div> Submitted by chemosapien (not verified) on Wed, 10/01/2008 &#8211; 16:02.</div><div><p>what  you say is partially true, superficial skin cancers are not fatal,  especially with decent healthcare, but WE DON&#8217;T KNOW THE EXTENT OF  MCCAIN&#8221;S CANCER because he won&#8217;t release ALL of his medical  records&#8230;&#8230;don&#8217;t sit here and defend him against this criticism, when  his campaign could put this completely to bed with a single phone call  to his doctor.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/13">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/13/RELEASE-MEDICAL-RECORDS">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-12"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-12"> Palin needs to read a American History Booko</a></div><div> Submitted by pat baker (not verified) on Wed, 10/01/2008 &#8211; 15:41.</div><div><p>I&#8217;m  sick of McCain calling Obama a on the job learner, community action  worker. Palin is is a affrimative action herself. Mrs Bush said she was  a &#8220;quick learner&#8221; Do I need a vp who is a quick learner? She&#8217;s just a  Gov for a few years, no national experience. She can&#8217;t answer straight  question. These photo opts with people from the MiddleEast aren&#8217;t  getting on my nerves, they are making me sick Who cares if she&#8217;s cute  while my 401 K might go down the tubes!. Hillary Clinton would run  rings around her. I don&#8217;t need a &#8221; on the job VP during these troubled  times..</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/12">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/12/Palin-needs-read-American-History-Booko">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-11"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-11">McCain&#8217;s &#8220;Cancer&#8221;</a></div><div> Submitted by <a
href="http://www.omarhamada.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">Omar Hamada</a> (not verified) on Wed, 10/01/2008 &#8211; 15:33.</div><div><p>Enough  of the cancer stuff!!! Talk about spin and/or ignorance! When&#8217;s the  last time someone actually died from superficial squamous or basal cell  skin cancer? Answer: NEVER. Now if it were actually melanoma or other  types of invasive squamous cell cancer, then it would be a different  story &#8211; BUT IT&#8217;S NOT!!!!!!</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/11">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/11/McCains-Cancer">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-9"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-9">but seriously, she reads ALL the newspapers</a></div><div> Submitted by Dave (not verified) on Wed, 10/01/2008 &#8211; 00:55.</div><div><p>Check  out her interview with Katie Couric. She shares that she reads ALL the  newspapers in the world. She must be really freakin smart. She also  graduated from the University of Idaho. I mean it doesnt get much more  prestigious than that. And besides, who is Biden to talk.</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/9">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/9/seriously-she-reads-ALL-newspapers">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-8"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-8">Don&#8217;t Fret</a></div><div> Submitted by Chris A (not verified) on Wed, 10/01/2008 &#8211; 00:48.</div><div><p>Don&#8217;t  worry about Palin. If you saw her interviews, you would know that  the&#8230; War in Iraq and reforms to our economy and importance in the  field of green energy under the umbrella of job creation and then  health care.<br
/> She knows what everyone needs&#8230;</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/8">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/8/Dont-Fret">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-7"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-7">Re: If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Pal</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 10/01/2008 &#8211; 00:45.</div><div><p>uh hu &#8230;..uh hu !!!</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/7">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/7/Re-If-John-McCain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-Sarah-Pal">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p><a
id="comment-6"></a></p><div><div> <a
href="http://ahpoll.com/content/if-john-mccain-died-or-became-incapacitated-would-sarah-palin-be-competent-be-president#comment-6">come on,  hes only had cancer</a></div><div> Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 09/30/2008 &#8211; 22:59.</div><div><p>come on,  hes only had cancer 3 times. plus,  its not like hes old or anything</p></p></div><div><ul><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/reply/4/6">reply</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/comment/6/come-hes-only-had-cancer">link</a></li><li><a
href="http://ahpoll.com/forward">Email this comment</a></li></ul></div></div><p>And, here&#8217;s an embed of the poll, if I&#8217;ve piqued your interest by now:</p><p><script type="text/javascript" src="http://widgetserver.com/syndication/subscriber/InsertWidget.js?appId=8eaed869-bb53-4d27-9b3b-d790184cb9c9"></script><noscript>Get the <a
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isPermaLink="false">http://chrisabraham.com/?p=3616</guid> <description><![CDATA[I must admit that my first exposure to Regina Spektor was in Regina Spektor&#8217;s Boundless Talent on CBS Sunday Morning this AM. I must also admit that my first reaction was visual and visceral: Regina Spektor is a monumentally beautiful and compelling young woman. Although I lost the first five minutes of the segment to [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div
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style="display:none">I must admit that my first exposure to Regina Spektor was in Regina Spektor&#8217;s Boundless Talent on CBS Sunday Morning this AM. I must also admit that my first reaction was visual and visceral: Regina Spektor is a monumentally beautiful and compelling young woman. Although I lost the first five minutes of the segment to [...]</span></a></div><p></p><div
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/> </a></div><p><center><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8Begin%20to%20Hopelocation=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FBegin-Hope-Regina-Spektor%2Fdp%2FB000FFJ80IBegin%20to%20Hopetag=chrisabrahamBegin%20to%20HopelinkCode=ur2Begin%20to%20Hopecamp=1789Begin%20to%20Hopecreative=9325" rel="nofollow"><img
src="http://www.chrisabraham.com/regina-Spektor.jpg" alt="regina Spektor Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" border="0" width="450" height="550" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" /></a><img
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/> I must admit that my first exposure to Regina Spektor was in <a
href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/18/sunday/main2371910.shtml" rel="nofollow">Regina Spektor&#8217;s Boundless Talent</a> on <a
href="http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/sunday/main3445.shtml" rel="nofollow">CBS Sunday Morning</a> this AM. I must also admit that my first reaction was visual and visceral: Regina Spektor is a monumentally beautiful and compelling young woman. Although I lost the first five minutes of the segment to Regina Spektor&#8217;s beauty, I lost the remaining minutes to Regina Spektor&#8217;s story of being a Russian immigrant, her talent as a classically-trained pianist, her experience as an anti-folk singer-songwriter, her modestly as just a tough girl from the Bronx, her whimsy as just a girl, and her playfulness as a wordsmith. I am <em>mesmerized</em> and <em>besotted</em>. Give Regina Spektor a look and listen and I guarantee that you, too, will be besotted, compelled, and mesmerized, be you man or woman, gay or straight.</p><p><strong><a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_Spektor" rel="nofollow">Regina Spektor entry on Wikipedia</a></strong></p><p>Regina Spektor (born February 18, 1980) is a Soviet-born American singer-songwriter and pianist. Her music is associated with the anti-folk scene centered on New York City&#8217;s East Village.</p><p><strong>Early life</strong><br
/> Spektor was born in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union to a musical family. Her father, a photographer, was also an amateur violinist, and her mother was a music professor in a Russian conservatoire; she now teaches at a public elementary school in Mount Vernon, New York.</p><p>Spektor studied classical piano from the age of six, and was also exposed to the music of rock and roll bands such as The Beatles, Queen, and The Moody Blues by her father, who obtained such recordings in Eastern Europe and traded cassettes with friends in the Soviet Union. The family left the Soviet Union in 1989, when Regina was nine, during the period of Perestroika when Jewish citizens were permitted to emigrate. The seriousness of her piano studies led her parents to consider not leaving Russia, but they finally decided to emigrate, for religious and political reasons.</p><p>Travelling first to Austria and then Italy, the family settled in the Bronx, New York, and eventually moved to Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where she finished the last three years of her high school career. Spektor has stated that she was originally interested only in classical music, but later became interested in hip hop, rock, and punk.</p><p><strong>Beginnings as a songwriter</strong><br
/> In New York, Spektor gained a firm grounding in classical music from her piano teacher, Sonia Vargas, a professor at the Manhattan School of Music. Spektor studied with Vargas—whom Spektor&#8217;s father had met through violinist Samuel Marder, Vargas&#8217;s husband—until she was 17.</p><p>Although she had always made up songs around the house, Spektor first became interested in songwriting during a visit to Israel with the Nesiya Institute in her teenage years. Attracting attention from the other children on the trip for the songs she made up while hiking, she realized she had an aptitude for songwriting. Following this trip, she was first exposed to the work of Joni Mitchell, Ani DiFranco, and other singer-songwriters, which gave her the idea that she could create her own songs. She began writing her first a cappella songs around age 16, and wrote her first songs for voice and piano when she was nearly 18.</p><p>Spektor completed the four-year studio composition program of the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College in Purchase, New York within three years, graduating with honors in 2001. She worked briefly at a butterfly farm in Luck, Wisconsin. She gradually achieved recognition through performances in the anti-folk scene in downtown New York City, most importantly at the East Village&#8217;s Sidewalk Cafe. During this period, she sold her self-produced CDs 11:11 (2001) and <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&#038;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSongs-Regina-Spektor%2Fdp%2FB000L6COZW%2Fsr%3D1-7%2Fqid%3D1169392444%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic&#038;tag=chrisabraham&#038;linkCode=ur2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325" rel="nofollow">Songs</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabraham&#038;l=ur2&#038;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" /> (2002) at such performances.</p><p><strong>Style</strong><br
/> Spektor&#8217;s songs rely on a mixture of styles and techniques, often starting with a piano riff but ending with moans, nonsense words, warblings, and other noises. Spektor has said that she has created 700 songs, but that she rarely writes any of them down. Spektor&#8217;s songs are not usually autobiographical, but rather are based on scenarios and characters drawn from her imagination. Her songs show influences from folk, Jewish, Russian, hip hop, jazz, and classical music. Spektor has said that she works hard to ensure that each of her songs has its own musical style, rather than trying to develop a distinctive style for her music as a whole.</p><p>Spektor possesses a broad vocal range and uses the full extent of it. She also explores a variety of different and somewhat unorthodox vocal techniques, such as verses composed entirely of buzzing noises made with the lips, beatbox-style flourishes in the middle of ballads, or the use of a drum stick to tap rhythms on the body of the piano or chair. Part of her style also results from the exaggeration of certain aspects of vocalization, most notably the glottal stop, which is prominent the single &#8220;Fidelity&#8221;. She also uses a strong New York accent on some words, which she has said is due to her love of New York and its culture.</p><p>Her lyrics are equally eclectic, often taking the form of abstract narratives or first-person character studies, similar to short stories or vignettes put to song. Spektor usually sings in English, though she sometimes includes a few words or verses of Latin, Russian, French, and other languages in her songs. Spektor&#8217;s music is further set apart from mainstream folk music by its frequent literary references, such as to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in &#8220;Poor Little Rich Boy&#8221;, The Little Prince in &#8220;Baobabs&#8221;, Virginia Woolf and Margaret Atwood in &#8220;Paris&#8221;, Ezra Pound and William Shakespeare in &#8220;Pound of Flesh&#8221;, Boris Pasternak in &#8220;Après Moi&#8221;, and Oedipus the King in &#8220;Oedipus&#8221;. Recurring themes and topics in Spektor&#8217;s lyrics include love, death, religion (particularly Biblical and Christian references), city life (particularly New York references), and certain key phrases have been known to recur in different songs by Spektor, such as references to gravediggers, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the name &#8220;Mary Ann.&#8221;</p><p>In Spektor&#8217;s early albums, many of her tracks had a very dry vocal production, with very little reverb or delay added. However, Spektor&#8217;s more recent albums, particularly <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8Begin%20to%20Hopelocation=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FBegin-Hope-Regina-Spektor%2Fdp%2FB000FFJ80IBegin%20to%20Hopetag=chrisabrahamBegin%20to%20HopelinkCode=ur2Begin%20to%20Hopecamp=1789Begin%20to%20Hopecreative=9325" rel="nofollow">Begin to Hope</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabrahamBegin%20to%20Hopeamp;l=ur2Begin%20to%20Hopeamp;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" />, have put more emphasis into song production and have relied more on traditional pop and rock instruments.</p><p><strong>Performances</strong><br
/> Since roughly January 2005, Spektor has performed on a bright red Baldwin baby grand piano. She opened for The Strokes in 2003, on her first North American tour. Subsequently, she appeared on Late Night with Conan O&#8217;Brien twice, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno twice, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and Last Call with Carson Daly twice. She has toured the United States and Europe. Although she generally only performs original material, she performed her first covers in 2005, of songs by Leonard Cohen and Madonna for the 2nd Annual Jewish Music &#038; Heritage Festival at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.</p><p>While with The Strokes on their 2003–2004 Room on Fire tour, Spektor performed &#8220;Modern Girls &#038; Old Fashion Men&#8221; alongside the band.</p><p>In 2006, Spektor embarked on a successful headlining tour of the United States and Europe, selling out numerous clubs and theaters.</p><p><strong>Media coverage</strong><br
/> Beginning in 2005, Spektor&#8217;s music has been used in various television programs and commercials. In late 2005 &#8220;Us&#8221; (from <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8Soviet%20Kitschlocation=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSoviet-Kitsch-Regina-Spektor%2Fdp%2FB0002XEDXU%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1169392386%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3DmusicSoviet%20Kitschtag=chrisabrahamSoviet%20KitschlinkCode=ur2Soviet%20Kitschcamp=1789Soviet%20Kitschcreative=9325" rel="nofollow">Soviet Kitsch</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabrahamSoviet%20Kitschamp;l=ur2Soviet%20Kitschamp;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" />) was used in a commercial as part of the What Do You Want To Watch? series for the United Kingdom&#8217;s Sky Television. The advert features a clip from a documentary on skateboarder Danny Way. In the summer of 2006, a clip from &#8220;Us&#8221; was used for the teaser website for Microsoft&#8217;s Zune project at ComingZune.com, as well as for a promotional campaign for MtvU. &#8220;Somedays&#8221; was used in a 2005 episode of CSI: NY and &#8220;Samson&#8221; was used in a 2006 episode of the same series. &#8220;On the Radio&#8221; was used in an episode of ABC&#8217;s popular Grey&#8217;s Anatomy. &#8220;Field Below&#8221; was used in a 2006 episode titled &#8220;The Last Word&#8221; of CBS&#8217;s Criminal Minds. &#8220;Fidelity&#8221; was also used in a recent episode of &#8220;Grey&#8217;s Anatomy&#8221; titled &#8220;Sometimes a Fantasy&#8221;, in an episode of Veronica Mars titled &#8220;Friday Night Sleights&#8221;, and in an episode of &#8220;Brothers &#038; Sisters&#8221; titled &#8220;Sexual Politics&#8221;. &#8220;Better&#8221; is currently being used in a commercial for XM Satellite Radio. Spektor also sang the title song &#8220;Little Boxes&#8221; of Showtime&#8217;s television series Weeds in the 2006 episode &#8220;Mile Deep and a Foot Wide&#8221; and her &#8220;Ghost of Corporate Future&#8221; was used both at the beginning and end of the episode.</p><p>Regina Spektor gained much media attention in 2006 when her video for &#8220;Fidelity&#8221; was viewed over 200,000 times in two days on the YouTube website. On SIRIUS Radio&#8217;s Left of Center channel, her single &#8220;Fidelity&#8221; was voted by listeners as the #1 song of 2006.</p><p>In Australia particularly, Spektor&#8217;s music has rapidly gained popularity in mainstream culture primarily due to Begin To Hope being played on the nation-wide radio station Triple J, where it eventually became a feature album. Prior to Begin To Hope, Regina Spektor had only a small following in Australia in comparison to the US and Europe.</p><p><strong>Discography</strong><br
/> Most of Spektor&#8217;s early albums have been released exclusively in the United States. Her compilation, <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8Mary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storieslocation=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FMeets-Gravediggers-Other-Stories-Region%2Fdp%2FB000BRBGIW%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1169392305%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3DmusicMary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storiestag=chrisabrahamMary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20StorieslinkCode=ur2Mary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storiescamp=1789Mary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storiescreative=9325" rel="nofollow">Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers and Other Short Stories</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabrahamMary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storiesamp;l=ur2Mary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storiesamp;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" />, has been released worldwide.</p><p><strong>Albums</strong><br
/> 2001 &#8211; 11:11 (Regina Spektor)<br
/> 2002 &#8211; <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&#038;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSongs-Regina-Spektor%2Fdp%2FB000L6COZW%2Fsr%3D1-7%2Fqid%3D1169392444%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic&#038;tag=chrisabraham&#038;linkCode=ur2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325" rel="nofollow">Songs</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabraham&#038;l=ur2&#038;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" /> (Regina Spektor)<br
/> 2004 &#8211; <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8Soviet%20Kitschlocation=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSoviet-Kitsch-Regina-Spektor%2Fdp%2FB0002XEDXU%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1169392386%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3DmusicSoviet%20Kitschtag=chrisabrahamSoviet%20KitschlinkCode=ur2Soviet%20Kitschcamp=1789Soviet%20Kitschcreative=9325" rel="nofollow">Soviet Kitsch</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabrahamSoviet%20Kitschamp;l=ur2Soviet%20Kitschamp;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" /> (Sire/London/Rhino)<br
/> 2005 &#8211; <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8Mary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storieslocation=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FMeets-Gravediggers-Other-Stories-Region%2Fdp%2FB000BRBGIW%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1169392305%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3DmusicMary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storiestag=chrisabrahamMary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20StorieslinkCode=ur2Mary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storiescamp=1789Mary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storiescreative=9325" rel="nofollow">Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers and Other Short Stories</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabrahamMary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storiesamp;l=ur2Mary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storiesamp;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" /> (Transgressive)<br
/> 2006 &#8211; <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8Begin%20to%20Hopelocation=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FBegin-Hope-Regina-Spektor%2Fdp%2FB000FFJ80IBegin%20to%20Hopetag=chrisabrahamBegin%20to%20HopelinkCode=ur2Begin%20to%20Hopecamp=1789Begin%20to%20Hopecreative=9325" rel="nofollow">Begin to Hope</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabrahamBegin%20to%20Hopeamp;l=ur2Begin%20to%20Hopeamp;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" /> (Sire) US sales 160,720</p><p><strong>Singles and EPs</strong><br
/> 2003 &#8211; Reptilia b/w Modern Girls &#038; Old Fashion Men by The Strokes (Rough Trade)<br
/> 2004 &#8211; Your Honor / The Flowers (Shoplifter)<br
/> 2005 &#8211; Live at Bull Moose EP (Sire)<br
/> 2005 &#8211; Carbon Monoxide (Transgressive)<br
/> 2006 &#8211; Us (Transgressive)<br
/> 2006 &#8211; On the Radio (Sire) UK #60<br
/> 2006 &#8211; Fidelity (Sire) US #84*</p><p><strong>Compilations</strong><br
/> 2006 &#8211; <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8Mary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storieslocation=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FMeets-Gravediggers-Other-Stories-Region%2Fdp%2FB000BRBGIW%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1169392305%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3DmusicMary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storiestag=chrisabrahamMary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20StorieslinkCode=ur2Mary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storiescamp=1789Mary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storiescreative=9325" rel="nofollow">Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers and Other Short Stories</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabrahamMary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storiesamp;l=ur2Mary%20Ann%20Meets%20the%20Gravediggers%20and%20Other%20Short%20Storiesamp;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" /> (Transgressive)</p><p><a
href="http://www.bighassle.com/publicity/a_regina_spektor.html#bio" rel="nofollow">REGINA SPEKTOR</a><br
/> Begin To Hope (SIRE)</p><p>A mere five years ago, Regina Spektor was hypnotizing small crowds at hole-in-the-wall venues on New York &#8216;s Lower East Side . After playing hundreds of shows in and around NYC, Spektor became the talk of the burgeoning music scene. Though she was selling many copies of CDs she had recorded and produced with friends ( 11:11 and <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&#038;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSongs-Regina-Spektor%2Fdp%2FB000L6COZW%2Fsr%3D1-7%2Fqid%3D1169392444%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic&#038;tag=chrisabraham&#038;linkCode=ur2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325" rel="nofollow">Songs</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabraham&#038;l=ur2&#038;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" />), it was her next album, “<a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8Soviet%20Kitschlocation=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSoviet-Kitsch-Regina-Spektor%2Fdp%2FB0002XEDXU%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1169392386%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3DmusicSoviet%20Kitschtag=chrisabrahamSoviet%20KitschlinkCode=ur2Soviet%20Kitschcamp=1789Soviet%20Kitschcreative=9325" rel="nofollow">Soviet Kitsch</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabrahamSoviet%20Kitschamp;l=ur2Soviet%20Kitschamp;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" />,??? that would become her calling card. Originally released as a CDR and handed out at shows, Spektor signed with Sire Records who re-released “<a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8Soviet%20Kitschlocation=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSoviet-Kitsch-Regina-Spektor%2Fdp%2FB0002XEDXU%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1169392386%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3DmusicSoviet%20Kitschtag=chrisabrahamSoviet%20KitschlinkCode=ur2Soviet%20Kitschcamp=1789Soviet%20Kitschcreative=9325" rel="nofollow">Soviet Kitsch</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabrahamSoviet%20Kitschamp;l=ur2Soviet%20Kitschamp;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" />??? in 2003. While touring nationally and abroad in support of “<a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8Soviet%20Kitschlocation=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSoviet-Kitsch-Regina-Spektor%2Fdp%2FB0002XEDXU%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1169392386%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3DmusicSoviet%20Kitschtag=chrisabrahamSoviet%20KitschlinkCode=ur2Soviet%20Kitschcamp=1789Soviet%20Kitschcreative=9325" rel="nofollow">Soviet Kitsch</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabrahamSoviet%20Kitschamp;l=ur2Soviet%20Kitschamp;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" />,??? Spektor began as an opening act but by year&#8217;s end was the main attraction. Going from 200-capacity venues to selling out 1,300 capacity-venues like New York &#8216;s Irving Plaza and London &#8216;s Shephard Bush Empire, this Russian-born chanteuse&#8217;s songs have gone from being burned in her bedroom to receiving a worldwide fanfare. Though in love with playing shows to her rapidly growing audience, Spektor had written hundreds of songs since “<a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8Soviet%20Kitschlocation=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSoviet-Kitsch-Regina-Spektor%2Fdp%2FB0002XEDXU%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1169392386%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3DmusicSoviet%20Kitschtag=chrisabrahamSoviet%20KitschlinkCode=ur2Soviet%20Kitschcamp=1789Soviet%20Kitschcreative=9325" rel="nofollow">Soviet Kitsch</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabrahamSoviet%20Kitschamp;l=ur2Soviet%20Kitschamp;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" />??? and was eager to get back into the studio.</p><p>Abandoning her usual method of production and opting for a new experience, Spektor holed herself up at New York Noise Studios in NYC&#8217;s Meatpacking District with seasoned producer David Kahne (Paul McCartney). Spending two months during the summer of 2005 working on her fourth release (this new album is also considered her major label debut), Spektor had the opportunity to experiment &#8220;until a little Frankenstein was born.&#8221; Taking two months to record was a huge amount of time by Spektor&#8217;s standards, since she had recorded her “<a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&#038;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSongs-Regina-Spektor%2Fdp%2FB000L6COZW%2Fsr%3D1-7%2Fqid%3D1169392444%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic&#038;tag=chrisabraham&#038;linkCode=ur2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325" rel="nofollow">Songs</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabraham&#038;l=ur2&#038;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" />??? record in 1 day and “<a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8Soviet%20Kitschlocation=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSoviet-Kitsch-Regina-Spektor%2Fdp%2FB0002XEDXU%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1169392386%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3DmusicSoviet%20Kitschtag=chrisabrahamSoviet%20KitschlinkCode=ur2Soviet%20Kitschcamp=1789Soviet%20Kitschcreative=9325" rel="nofollow">Soviet Kitsch</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabrahamSoviet%20Kitschamp;l=ur2Soviet%20Kitschamp;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" />??? in 10. “To work like this had been a dream of mine, but I thought it would be years before it happened. I definitely tried to put every aspect of myself into it. We played with wires and sounds, set the lab on fire a bunch of times, laughed and started again.???</p><p>&#8220;Before I even started I knew I was going to experiment with things I&#8217;ve only thought about, like beats and drums,&#8221; explains Spektor, a multi-instrumentalist. &#8220;I really wanted to play with electronic instruments and bigger arrangements. Still, on this record, there are some songs where it&#8217;s really sparse. You don&#8217;t want to arrange just for the sake of arranging. I had to be careful so the music wouldn&#8217;t be more fun to make than to listen to.&#8221;</p><p>Judging from the final product, we&#8217;d say mission accomplished. On “Begin To Hope??? Spektor took the lyrical vignettes and sparse instrumentation she crafted for “<a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8Soviet%20Kitschlocation=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSoviet-Kitsch-Regina-Spektor%2Fdp%2FB0002XEDXU%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1169392386%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3DmusicSoviet%20Kitschtag=chrisabrahamSoviet%20KitschlinkCode=ur2Soviet%20Kitschcamp=1789Soviet%20Kitschcreative=9325" rel="nofollow">Soviet Kitsch</a><img
src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=chrisabrahamSoviet%20Kitschamp;l=ur2Soviet%20Kitschamp;o=1" style="border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important" border="0" width="1" height="1" title="Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" alt=" Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow" />??? and pushed herself more in every direction—both lyrically and musically. From the staccato strings plucking the opening chords to the album&#8217;s first song, “Fidelity,??? to the blues-infused homage to Billie Holiday “Lady,??? Spektor isn&#8217;t able to pinpoint the exact inspiration behind her musical musings.</p><p>“You don&#8217;t ever know the true lineage of your songs,??? reveals Spektor. “Maybe I&#8217;m becoming less of a narrator and more of a character these days. I was always used to observing and writing third-person narrative stories about things I was seeing. Then, as time went on, I started placing myself in these scenes, more like an actor.???</p><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t fully understand the fascination of people wanting to know the &#8216;real&#8217; you after listening to your songs&#8221; says Spektor, who is still extremely careful when it comes to sharing her personal life with the public. “I understand the fascination of people to want to know you,??? admits Spektor but “ People always want to know which part of the song really happened, they want to know some sort of a &#8220;Truth.&#8221; For some reason they can see the same actor acting in 17 different movies, using 17 different hair colors, using fake props, changing their voice, changing their accent, being evil or being the victim, and they are okay with that. They understand that it&#8217;s just a movie, they understand that it&#8217;s an art. But with music they forget. Music, somehow, is life.&#8221;</p><p>Always willing to damn convention for the sake of creativity, Spektor is one of those rare talents who manage to outrun the trends and force the rest of the world to keep up. “The more I experience in this world, the more questions I seem to have about where this life is leading,??? reveals Spektor . Begin To Hope might still mark the beginning of her career, but Regina Spektor has been carving out her place in music history since she sang her first note.</p><script type="text/javascript">(function() {var s = document.createElement('SCRIPT'), s1 = document.getElementsByTagName('SCRIPT')[0];s.type = 'text/javascript';s.async = true;s.src = 'http://widgets.digg.com/buttons.js';s1.parentNode.insertBefore(s, s1);})();</script><a
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isPermaLink="false">http://chrisabraham.com/?p=3314</guid> <description><![CDATA[I worship Hill Holliday. They have their required Flash &#8220;brand presence&#8221; with all the fancy &#8220;interactive&#8221; requirements, and that takes up 800&#215;600. Were that all, I would blanch and spit on the ground. I hate Flash because I am highly textual. So, go to Hill &#124; Holliday and then&#8230; wait for it &#8230; scroll down. [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div
style="float:left;margin:10px 10px 0px 0px;"> <a
class="DiggThisButton DiggMedium" href="http://digg.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchrisabraham.com%2F2006%2F11%2F29%2Fhill-holliday-is-an-expert-at-textual-healing-flash-for-seo%2F&title=Hill+Holliday+is+an+Expert+at+Textual+Healing+Flash+for+SEO" rel="news, tech_news"><span
style="display:none">I worship Hill Holliday. They have their required Flash &#8220;brand presence&#8221; with all the fancy &#8220;interactive&#8221; requirements, and that takes up 800&#215;600. Were that all, I would blanch and spit on the ground. I hate Flash because I am highly textual. So, go to Hill | Holliday and then&#8230; wait for it &#8230; scroll down. [...]</span></a></div><p></p><div
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class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px;"> <a
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/> <img
src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchrisabraham.com%2F2006%2F11%2F29%2Fhill-holliday-is-an-expert-at-textual-healing-flash-for-seo%2F&amp;source=chrisabraham&amp;style=normal&amp;service=bit.ly&amp;service_api=R_fd087a8f486f224d453b4a84e0b4109f&amp;b=2" height="61" width="50" title="Hill Holliday is an Expert at Textual Healing Flash for SEO" alt=" Hill Holliday is an Expert at Textual Healing Flash for SEO" /><br
/> </a></div><p><a
href="http://www.hhcc.com/" rel="nofollow"><img
src="http://www.chrisabraham.com/Hill-Holliday.gif" alt="Hill Holliday Hill Holliday is an Expert at Textual Healing Flash for SEO" align="left" border="0" width="100" height="141" hspace="5" title="Hill Holliday is an Expert at Textual Healing Flash for SEO" /></a>I worship <a
href="http://www.hhcc.com/" rel="nofollow">Hill Holliday</a>. They have their required Flash <em>&#8220;brand presence&#8221;</em> with all the fancy <em>&#8220;interactive&#8221;</em> requirements, and that takes up 800&#215;600. Were that all, I would blanch and spit on the ground.</p><p><span
id="more-3314"></span><br
/> I hate Flash because I am highly textual. So, go to <a
href="http://www.hhcc.com/" rel="nofollow">Hill | Holliday</a> and then&#8230; wait for it &#8230; scroll down. Yes, the entire <a
href="http://www.hhcc.com/" rel="nofollow">Hill Holliday</a> corporate site is a simple header on the top of a powerful and admired blog. A powerful and admired vertical and industry blog. Brilliant! <em>Bravo</em>!</p><p>Here&#8217;s why this is all so important: Google and the other search engines don&#8217;t see Flash-based sites: they&#8217;re invisible.  Read this&#8230;<script type="text/javascript"><!-- google_ad_client = "pub-7310228388890295"; google_ad_output = "textlink"; google_ad_format = "ref_text"; google_cpa_choice = "CAAQhOSQ_QEaCJ0mn-838cQbKKjntoQB"; google_ad_channel = ""; //--> </script><br
/><script src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js" type="text/javascript"> </script></p><blockquote><p><strong>Make Your Invisible Graphics-Intensive or Flash Site Highy Visible to Google</strong></p><p>Chances are that your corporate website is beautiful and expensive. Beautiful websites tend to be rich in graphics, images, photos, and Flash content. They also tend to be shallow with few pages and very little copy. Sites like this are almost impossible for Google to find. If Google can&#8217;t find you then neither can your customer. Until now. This article helps you turn your invisible corporate website into a high-profile and highly-effective medium for communication.</p><p>This article is designed to help you turn your stealth website into a big, loud, impressive, bomber of a website with plenty of payload capacity, the payload being your company, your message, your products, your services, and your story.</p><p>Corporate websites that are highly graphics-intensive or are built using Macromedia Flash or Shockwave rich content are pretty much invisible to every search engine because search engines want nothing more than lots and lots of descriptive and rich content. In general, the prettier the site, the more impossible it is to actually find unless you know just where to look.</p><p>Websites are delivery vehicles and their payloads are your company message, your products, your services, your brand, your culture, and your story.  Is your company website an F-117 stealth fighter, only visible to people who know where to look and only carrying a small payload, or is your company a C-130 Hercules, filling the sky with its size and noise and carrying a massive payload.</p><p>There are some important things to consider when optimizing a web site for search engines, using Google as the gold standard. SEO requires three things, two of which most web developers and companies do good jobs: rich textual title content, rich textual metadata content (in the form of meta tag keywords and description), and rich body textual content.</p><p>Most websites suffers from a strong lack in rich body textual content because they are in general built like brochures: very shallow and very graphical. Sites that rely heavily on either image files or Flash content suffer disproportionately when it comes to search engine ranking. Why?</p><p>Because search engines can only index the content that web sites offer them and the only content that the search engines can use is plain text. Although handsome, graphically-rich sites don&#8217;t have either the diversity or the sheer volume of keyword phrases that text-rich sites have. In addition to pure volume, search engines also need to find all keyword variations of your service – all variations of the service that your potential clients might use.  Search engines also care about what is called “keyword density?? which means that the most readable of copy isn&#8217;t necessarily the most findable.</p><p><strong>Keep Pronouns to a Strict Minimum</strong></p><p>First, never use pronouns. Keyword density is essential to how Google ranks you. Second, use variations on search terms.  To illustrate the first two points, I will take a bit of copy and optimize it for search engines and their love for keyword density. Instead of this:</p><p>“Viral marketing is now an essential strategy for every firm. It has become as essential to small and large firms alike, both for its relative affordability and its potentially high effectivity. With the advent of the Internet, it has become amazingly efficient: all you need is a laptop and a compelling message.??</p><p>Try this:</p><p>“Viral marketing is now an essential marketing strategy for every marketing firm. Viral marketing, also known as relationship marketing, buzz marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, conversational marketing, and passion marketing, has become as essential to small and large marketing firms alike, both for its relative affordability and its potentially high effectivity. With the advent of the Internet, viral marketing has become amazingly efficient: all you need is a laptop and a compelling message.??</p><p>Yes, you&#8217;re appalled by its inefficiency and wordiness. Your boss would never approve, nor would your writing coach. Tough. This is not about winning the PEN/Faulkner, its about arousing Google’s algorithms.  Of course, I am exaggerating in order to make a point.  I removed all the pronouns and made sure that everything is completely contextualized – not for your visitors, but rather for the search engines.</p><p>For my example, I made sure that there was a broad diversity of all the ways people might search for this content.  In addition, I made sure that I also mentioned all the buzzwords and key terms that I could imagine.  Brainstorming with your sales and communication team or looking at the kind of words and wording your competitors use is always a great idea.</p><p><strong>The Controversial Image ALT Tag</strong></p><p>Although there is much debate over whether Google pays any attention to ALT tags for images, I always recommend adding ALT tags to all image files, even when the web page is made up of a “sliced image.??  The only ALT tags that exist are usually in the banner of the site.  No other parts of a highly graphical or flash-based main page are usually textualized using image ALT tags.</p><p>Your company slogan, tagline, phone number, guarantees, products, services, the menu choices (navigation) should be included in the image ALT tags.   Even if Google doesn&#8217;t care about ALT tags like the rumors say, the site will be way more navigable, especially to the blind and seeing impaired – and don&#8217;t they deserve a break?  don&#8217;t they need your services, too?</p><p><strong>Google&#8217;s &#8220;Eyes&#8221; Focus on Where Your Eyes Do</strong></p><p>Google give favor and weight to headers and emphasized text. No matter what anyone says, Google cares about formatting.  Strong, Bold, Emphasized, Italicized, and Hyperlinked text is favored by Google.  Also, Google looks at header tags, too.  Header 1, Header 2, Header 3, and Header 4 are important to use. This is especially important because when the same desigers who have you that &#8220;sliced&#8221; graphics-based site, they might have designer the CSS style sheet without concern for these thing.  CSS styles can change the look of regular HTML tags as easily as they can customized DIVs, SPANS, and STYLES.</p><p><strong>Corporate Blogs</strong></p><p>Corporate blogging is essential to the growth of online properties for a number of reasons, including access to the blogosphere and its interested and passionate community of bloggers and blog-readers. Blogs offer built-in useful tools such as RSS syndication, comments, outgoing links, blogrolls, trackbacks, a richness of text and textual content, and the ability to build celebrity and personality online through a first-person relationship with said blogosphere, current, and future customers.</p><p>Since potential and future clients are clueless as to how the company works, how you have grown the company, why you chose to go into this business, and what your vision is, this is a great opportunity to share yourself as the owner, as someone who has his finger on the pulse, and also to directly respond to the curious and the unconvinced.  It would also allow you to accept and then publish shameless testimonials from real fans like me.  It would also allow you to publish any and all positive or neutral mentions (testimonials or otherwise) about the blog or your official corporate website.</p><p><strong>Corporate Blog as SEO Strategy</strong></p><p>The Search Engine Optimization of your official corporate website will aid in the site’s “findability?? in Google, MSN, and Yahoo!. There are other things that Google and the other search engines consider in addition to the textual completeness of the entire web property.  The most important are the depth of the site (more pages are better), number of links and interlinks to and from the site (can be within the same site), and the frequency with which the site gets updated.  A traditional corporate web site is shallow, poorly-linked (especially to external sources) and can oftentimes go for months without being updated.  If Google can figure out that your site isn&#8217;t changing, it passes it over for constant indexing. It does this because Google has a finite number of resources and will revoke any resources it can in order to preserve them. Since the Internet is vast, Google give priority to web sites and web pages that are constantly-updated such as blogs.  Blogs are constantly-updated, deep, many-paged sites that are constantly being updated and constantly being spidered by search engine robots.</p><p><strong>Corporate Blog as Community Outreach</strong></p><p>No matter how many cool offers there might be online and no matter how much of a your company’s products and services might be, a real angle in the entire blogosphere and blog world is in not only letting your service speak for itself but also that people are even more attracted to story, personality, and the behind-the-scene experience of both the people who run companies and their clients than they are to the services themselves.  If you have the time, passion, and wherewithal to put the time and energy into really reaching out to the blogosphere and the community of readers and bloggers, you can get quite an amount of influence and sway – real impact and market penetration – by just building a relationship with the blogsavvy, wealthy, young, and the professional – people with money, in other words.  These types of people, 25-45, are the same sort of people who spend a lot of time reading blogs.</p><p><strong>Blog Community Outreach</strong></p><p>One powerful technique for building community on blogs is to first find a compelling item about your industry, products, and services then search for the blogs that are already talking about it on <a
href="http://Technorat.com" rel="nofollow">Technorat</a>i. It is much easier to message on blogs that are already having friendly conversation.</p><p><strong>Technorati as Strategic Tool</strong></p><p>Spread the word online:  People are already talking about how busy they are, how awful their places look, and so forth &#8212; tell them about your company, your culture, your history, your story, your products, and the services you offer – and do it openly and honestly and place your own name, your own email, and either the URL of your web site or the URL of the blog itself. Here&#8217;s how:</p><p>1) Go to <a
href="http://Technorati.com" rel="nofollow">Technorati.com</a>, a blog search engine.</p><p>2) Type in one or more of the keyword phrase in your Meta Tag keywords</p><p>3) Go to the blogs that are talking about your company, industry, products, and services</p><p>4) Where appropriate, leave a short note about your company or your corporate blog</p><p>5) Come back the next day (or as often as you can) and do the same thing but be sure to follow-up with the conversation because dropping a message without coming back is considered spam and in the blogosphere, an ounce or prevention is worth a pound of cure.</p><p><strong>Submit your Blog and Website to Search Engines</strong></p><p>I personally use <a
href="http://www.submission2000.com/products/ds7/index.html" rel="nofollow">Dynamic Submission</a>, but there are a bunch. <a
href="http://www.web-positiongold.com/pro-web-position-gold.html" rel="nofollow">Web Position Gold</a> is another fave. I choose Dynamic Submission because it allows me to spider my entire blog to within an inch of its life and then submit not just the site&#8217;s arteries but also all the way down to the site&#8217;s villi as well.  In my opinion, search engines are lazy. They have only so many resources and so many nanoseconds in the day.  They need to put first things first.  So what I do before I spider the blog is set the index page of the blog to view 365-days of posts, or maybe a bunch of weeks, so that I can spider most of the blog from one &#8220;Import from Web.&#8221;  When the import is complete, I change it back to showing only the last 7 days.  I even maintain a separate box on which to host the Dynamic Submission tool because it&#8217;s such a processor hog.  And then let it go.  Seems to work like a charm.  Why?  Well, not because I am doing anything unseamly but rather just because Google and the rest sometimes miss something and I want to make sure that all the engines get everything.  Every little dumbass link.</p><p><strong>The Services You Might Want to Employ</strong></p><p>Although I have not used the services, one respectable way of increasing your link popularity and prestige in Google is to use a service like <a
href="http://www.text-link-ads.com/?ref=14720" rel="nofollow">Text Link Ads</a>.  What <a
href="http://www.text-link-ads.com/?ref=14720" rel="nofollow">Text Link Ads</a>s offers is a link-buying service that does double-duty.  The double duty is as follows: in addition to creating clickable links on the popular sites that can choose and afford, it will also allow you to legally create Google bombs that will heighten the probability that your company website or your corporate blog will turn up when people search for your company, your industry, your market, your products, and your services.</p><p>Employing &#8220;localized&#8221; Google AdWords, content-based Google AdWords, and search-based Google AdWords is a no-brainer.  There are other advertising solutions available now, including finding the advertising networks that might be placed on some of the blogs you find the most focused or relevant, including <a
href="http://BlogAds.com" rel="nofollow">BlogAds</a>, etc.</p><p>Okay, I hope that helps.  I am tired of writing but if you have any more questions, please feel free to ask me questions below in the comment section and I will both answer them and also use your questions, comments, feedback, and suggestions to fuel future articles.</p></blockquote><script type="text/javascript">(function() {var s = document.createElement('SCRIPT'), s1 = document.getElementsByTagName('SCRIPT')[0];s.type = 'text/javascript';s.async = true;s.src = 'http://widgets.digg.com/buttons.js';s1.parentNode.insertBefore(s, s1);})();</script><a
class="DiggThisButton DiggCompact" href="http://digg.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchrisabraham.com%2F2006%2F11%2F29%2Fhill-holliday-is-an-expert-at-textual-healing-flash-for-seo%2F"></a>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://chrisabraham.com/2006/11/29/hill-holliday-is-an-expert-at-textual-healing-flash-for-seo/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Search Engine Optimization Works like a Champ</title><link>http://chrisabraham.com/2006/06/14/search-engine-optimization-works-like-a-champ/</link> <comments>http://chrisabraham.com/2006/06/14/search-engine-optimization-works-like-a-champ/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:40:09 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Chris Abraham</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Aggregation]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Blog Search]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Blogging]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Blogging Strategy]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Blogging 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isPermaLink="false">http://chrisabraham.com/?p=2629</guid> <description><![CDATA[I collected all of my personal blog articles to-date on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and have been handing them out to folks who still believe that SEO is snake oil and I thought I would share them with you, too, since most of you students of blogging actually want your words, your passion, and your [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div
style="float:left;margin:10px 10px 0px 0px;"> <a
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style="display:none">I collected all of my personal blog articles to-date on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and have been handing them out to folks who still believe that SEO is snake oil and I thought I would share them with you, too, since most of you students of blogging actually want your words, your passion, and your [...]</span></a></div><p></p><div
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/> </a></div><p>I collected all of <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/seo">my personal blog</a> articles to-date on <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/search_engines/"><em>Search Engine Optimization</em></a> (<a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/seo/">SEO</a>) and have been handing them out to folks who still believe that SEO is snake oil and I thought I would share them with you, too, since most of you students of blogging actually want your words, your passion, and your voice to be heard.</p><p><strong><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/04/make_your_invis.php">Make Your Invisible Graphics-Intensive or Flash Site Highly Visible to Google</a></strong></p><blockquote><p><em><span
style="font-family: Arial;">Until now</span></em>. This article helps you turn your invisible corporate website into a high-profile and highly-effective medium for communication.</p><p>This article is designed to help you turn your stealth website into a big, loud, impressive, bomber of a website with plenty of payload capacity, the payload being your company, your message, your products, your services, and your story.</p><p>Corporate websites that are highly graphics-intensive or are built using Macromedia Flash or Shockwave rich content are pretty much invisible to every search engine because search engines want nothing more than lots and lots of descriptive and rich content. In general, the prettier the site, the more impossible it is to actually find unless you know just where to look.</p><p>Websites are delivery vehicles and their payloads are your company message, your products, your services, your brand, your culture, and your story. Is your company website an F-117 stealth fighter, only visible to people who know where to look and only carrying a small payload, or is your company a C-130 Hercules, filling the sky with its size and noise and carrying a massive payload.There are some important things to consider when optimizing a web site for search engines, using Google as the gold standard. SEO requires three things, two of which most web developers and companies do good jobs: rich textual title content, rich textual metadata content (in the form of meta tag keywords and description), and rich body textual content.</p><p>Most websites suffers from a strong lack in rich body textual content because they are in general built like brochures: very shallow and very graphical. Sites that rely heavily on either image files or Flash content suffer disproportionately when it comes to search engine ranking. Why?</p><p>Because search engines can only index the content that web sites offer them and the only content that the search engines can use is plain text. Although handsome, graphically-rich sites don&#8217;t have either the diversity or the sheer volume of keyword phrases that text-rich sites have. In addition to pure volume, search engines also need to find all keyword variations of your service – all variations of the service that your potential clients might use. Search engines also care about what is called “keyword density??? which means that the most readable of copy isn&#8217;t necessarily the most findable.</p><p><strong>Keep Pronouns to a Strict Minimum</strong><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 150%; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p><p>First, never use pronouns. Keyword density is essential to how Google ranks you. Second, use variations on search terms. To illustrate the first two points, I will take a bit of copy and optimize it for search engines and their love for keyword density. Instead of this:</p><p><em>“Viral marketing is now an essential strategy for every firm. It has become as essential to small and large firms alike, both for its relative affordability and its potentially high effectivity. With the advent of the Internet, it has become amazingly efficient: all you need is a laptop and a compelling message.???</em><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 150%; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p><p>Try this:</p><p><em>“Viral marketing is now an essential marketing strategy for every marketing firm. Viral marketing, also known as relationship marketing, buzz marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, conversational marketing, and passion marketing, has become as essential to small and large marketing firms alike, both for its relative affordability and its potentially high effectivity. With the advent of the Internet, viral marketing has become amazingly efficient: all you need is a laptop and a compelling message.???</em><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 150%; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p><p>Yes, you&#8217;re appalled by its inefficiency and wordiness. Your boss would never approve, nor would your writing coach. Tough. This is not about winning the PEN/Faulkner, its about arousing Google’s algorithms. Of course, I am exaggerating in order to make a point. I removed all the pronouns and made sure that everything is completely contextualized – not for your visitors, but rather for the search engines.</p><p>For my example, I made sure that there was a broad diversity of all the ways people might search for this content. In addition, I made sure that I also mentioned all the buzzwords and key terms that I could imagine. Brainstorming with your sales and communication team or looking at the kind of words and wording your competitors use is always a great idea.</p><p><strong>The Controversial Image ALT Tag</strong><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 150%; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p><p>Although there is much debate over whether Google pays any attention to ALT tags for images, I always recommend adding ALT tags to all image files, even when the web page is made up of a “sliced image.??? The only ALT tags that exist are usually in the banner of the site. No other parts of a highly graphical or flash-based main page are usually textualized using image ALT tags.</p><p>Your company slogan, tagline, phone number, guarantees, products, services, the menu choices (navigation) should be included in the image ALT tags. Even if Google doesn&#8217;t care about ALT tags like the rumors say, the site will be way more navigable, especially to the blind and seeing impaired – and don&#8217;t they deserve a break? don&#8217;t they need your services, too?</p><p><strong>Google&#8217;s &#8220;Eyes&#8221; Focus on Where Your Eyes Do</strong><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 150%; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p><p>Google give favor and weight to headers and emphasized text. No matter what anyone says, Google cares about formatting. Strong, Bold, Emphasized, Italicized, and Hyperlinked text is favored by Google. Also, Google looks at header tags, too. Header 1, Header 2, Header 3, and Header 4 are important to use. This is especially important because when the same desigers who have you that &#8220;sliced&#8221; graphics-based site, they might have designer the CSS style sheet without concern for these thing. CSS styles can change the look of regular HTML tags as easily as they can customized DIVs, SPANS, and STYLES.</p><p><strong>Corporate Blogs</strong><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 150%; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p><p>Corporate blogging is essential to the growth of online properties for a number of reasons, including access to the blogosphere and its interested and passionate community of bloggers and blog-readers. Blogs offer built-in useful tools such as RSS syndication, comments, outgoing links, blogrolls, trackbacks, a richness of text and textual content, and the ability to build celebrity and personality online through a first-person relationship with said blogosphere, current, and future customers.Since potential and future clients are clueless as to how the company works, how you have grown the company, why you chose to go into this business, and what your vision is, this is a great opportunity to share yourself as the owner, as someone who has his finger on the pulse, and also to directly respond to the curious and the unconvinced. It would also allow you to accept and then publish shameless testimonials from real fans like me. It would also allow you to publish any and all positive or neutral mentions (testimonials or otherwise) about the blog or your official corporate website.</p><p><strong>Corporate Blog as SEO Strategy</strong><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 150%; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p><p>The Search Engine Optimization of your official corporate website will aid in the site’s “findability??? in Google, MSN, and Yahoo!. There are other things that Google and the other search engines consider in addition to the textual completeness of the entire web property. The most important are the depth of the site (more pages are better), number of links and interlinks to and from the site (can be within the same site), and the frequency with which the site gets updated. A traditional corporate web site is shallow, poorly-linked (especially to external sources) and can oftentimes go for months without being updated. If Google can figure out that your site isn&#8217;t changing, it passes it over for constant indexing. It does this because Google has a finite number of resources and will revoke any resources it can in order to preserve them. Since the Internet is vast, Google give priority to web sites and web pages that are constantly-updated such as blogs. Blogs are constantly-updated, deep, many-paged sites that are constantly being updated and constantly being spidered by search engine robots.</p><p><strong>Corporate Blog as Community Outreach</strong><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 150%; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p><p>No matter how many cool offers there might be online and no matter how much of a your company’s products and services might be, a real angle in the entire blogosphere and blog world is in not only letting your service speak for itself but also that people are even more attracted to story, personality, and the behind-the-scene experience of both the people who run companies and their clients than they are to the services themselves. If you have the time, passion, and wherewithal to put the time and energy into really reaching out to the blogosphere and the community of readers and bloggers, you can get quite an amount of influence and sway – real impact and market penetration – by just building a relationship with the blogsavvy, wealthy, young, and the professional – people with money, in other words. These types of people, 25-45, are the same sort of people who spend a lot of time reading blogs.</p><p><strong>Blog Community Outreach</strong></p><p>One powerful technique for building community on blogs is to first find a compelling item about your industry, products, and services then search for the blogs that are already talking about it on <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://technorat.com/">Technorat</a>i. It is much easier to message on blogs that are already having friendly conversation.</p><p><strong>Technorati as Strategic Tool</strong></p><p>Spread the word online: People are already talking about how busy they are, how awful their places look, and so forth &#8212; tell them about your company, your culture, your history, your story, your products, and the services you offer – and do it openly and honestly and place your own name, your own email, and either the URL of your web site or the URL of the blog itself. Here&#8217;s how:1) Go to <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://technorati.com/">Technorati.com</a>, a blog search engine.</p><p>2) Type in one or more of the keyword phrase in your Meta Tag keywords</p><p>3) Go to the blogs that are talking about your company, industry, products, and services</p><p>4) Where appropriate, leave a short note about your company or your corporate blog</p><p>5) Come back the next day (or as often as you can) and do the same thing but be sure to follow-up with the conversation because dropping a message without coming back is considered spam and in the blogosphere, an ounce or prevention is worth a pound of cure.</p><p><strong>Submit your Blog and Website to Search Engines</strong></p><p>I personally use <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.submission2000.com/products/ds7/index.html">Dynamic Submission</a>, but there are a bunch. <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.web-positiongold.com/pro-web-position-gold.html">Web Position Gold</a> is another fave. I choose Dynamic Submission because it allows me to spider my entire blog to within an inch of its life and then submit not just the site&#8217;s arteries but also all the way down to the site&#8217;s villi as well. In my opinion, search engines are lazy. They have only so many resources and so many nanoseconds in the day. They need to put first things first. So what I do before I spider the blog is set the index page of the blog to view 365-days of posts, or maybe a bunch of weeks, so that I can spider most of the blog from one &#8220;Import from Web.&#8221; When the import is complete, I change it back to showing only the last 7 days. I even maintain a separate box on which to host the Dynamic Submission tool because it&#8217;s such a processor hog. And then let it go. Seems to work like a charm. Why? Well, not because I am doing anything unseamly but rather just because Google and the rest sometimes miss something and I want to make sure that all the engines get everything. Every little dumbass link.<br
/> <strong></strong></p><p><strong><span
style="font-family: Arial;">The Services You Might Want to Employ</span></strong></p><p>Although I have not used the services, one respectable way of increasing your link popularity and prestige in Google is to use a service like <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.text-link-ads.com/?ref=14720">Text Link Ads</a>. What <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.text-link-ads.com/?ref=14720">Text Link Ads</a>s offers is a link-buying service that does double-duty. The double duty is as follows: in addition to creating clickable links on the popular sites that can choose and afford, it will also allow you to legally create Google bombs that will heighten the probability that your company website or your corporate blog will turn up when people search for your company, your industry, your market, your products, and your services.</p><p>Employing &#8220;localized&#8221; Google AdWords, content-based Google AdWords, and search-based Google AdWords is a no-brainer. There are other advertising solutions available now, including finding the advertising networks that might be placed on some of the blogs you find the most focused or relevant, including <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://blogads.com/">BlogAds</a>, etc.</p><p>Okay, I hope that helps. I am tired of writing but if you have any more questions, please feel free to ask me questions below in the comment section and I will both answer them and also use your questions, comments, feedback, and suggestions to fuel future articles.<span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: #cccccc; line-height: 150%; font-family: Arial;"><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/03/optimize_your_b.php"></a></span></p><p><strong><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: #ff6600; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;"><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/03/optimize_your_b.php">Control Your Google Listing</a></span></strong></p><p><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;">I control all the aspects of the following return &#8212; title <em><span
style="font-family: Arial;">and</span></em> description <em><span
style="font-family: Arial;">(and maybe even placement)</span></em>. <em><span
style="font-family: Arial;">You should too!</span></em></span></p><p>How did I do that? Well, I just wrote some code and pasted it into my blog template, above the opening tag, between the and tags. Simple but mightily effective!</p><p><em>Holler!</em></p><p>If you optimize your blog you can control the way Google shows your site to the world.</p><p>Be sure to add a &#8220;description&#8221; meta tag as Google uses it in search returns (and you can control Google&#8217;s description of your site). If you don&#8217;t want to top there, you can continue with the whole lots of meta tags.</p><p>If you want to see what meta tags I use, they&#8217;re listed at the bottom of this article. I will paste my tags at the end of here for you to enjoy. Also, make sure you give &#8220;alt&#8221; and &#8220;title&#8221; tags to all of your images and &#8220;title&#8221; tags to all of your links.</p><p><em>(For you newbies, the meta tags all go within the header tags in your blog template. So you will need to do some template editing.)</em></p><p><strong>Four</strong>, find a <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/11/google_sitemap_1.html">Google Sitemap plug-in</a> and use it.</p><p>Five, submit your blog as though it were a traditional website. I personally use <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.submission2000.com/products/ds7/index.html">Dynamic Submission</a>, but there are a bunch. <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.web-positiongold.com/pro-web-position-gold.html">Web Position Gold</a> is another fave. I choose Dynamic Submission because it allows me to spider my entire blog to within an inch of its life and then submit not just the site&#8217;s arteries but also all the way down to the site&#8217;s villi as well. In my opinion, search engines are lazy. They have only so many resources and so many nanoseconds in the day. They need to put first things first. So what I do before I spider the blog is set the index page of the blog to view 365-days of posts, or maybe a bunch of weeks, so that I can spider most of the blog from one &#8220;Import from Web.&#8221; When the import is complete, I change it back to showing only the last 7 days. I even maintain a separate box on which to host the Dynamic Submission tool because it&#8217;s such a processor hog. And then let it go. Seems to work like a charm. Why? Well, not because I am doing anything unseamly but rather just because Google and the rest sometimes miss something and I want to make sure that all the engines get everything. Every little dumbass link.</p><p><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: #cccccc; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;"><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/03/quick_blog_sear.php"></a></span><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/03/quick_blog_sear.php"></a><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/03/quick_blog_sear.php"><strong></strong></a><strong><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/03/quick_blog_sear.php">Quick Blog Search Engine Optimization Tips You Can Control</a></strong><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;">Google, Yahoo!, and MSN already love you, blogger, so just <em><span
style="font-family: Arial;">write, write, write</span></em>. If you have more time and an inclination you can continue reading.</span></p><p>Without doing anything to your blog, you have an advantage which is lots and lots of text that is generally topic-centric and frequently updated. You are already ahead of the game. Add to that that Google loves you and cares about keeping up with the blogosphere and you can safely stop reading now and be fine. Just make sure you write something twice a day.</p><p>Although the most important part of SEO is getting Very Important People to link to you, there is a lot you can do on your own that I will go into below (I also go over how I think Google works in <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/10/how_google_prob.html">How Google Probably Ranks Your Site in My Opinion</a>).</p><p><strong>First, </strong><em><strong>never use pronouns</strong></em>. Keyword density is essential to how Google ranks you. <strong><span
style="font-family: Arial;">Second</span></strong>, use variations on search terms. To illustrate the first two points, I will take a bit of copy and optimize it for search engines and their love for keyword density. Instead of this:</p><p><em>&#8220;Viral marketing is now an essential strategy for every firm. It has become as essential to small and large firms alike, both for its relative affordability and its potentially high effectivity. With the advent of the Internet, it has become amazingly efficient: all you need is a laptop and a compelling message.&#8221;</em></p><p>Try this:</p><p><em>&#8220;Viral marketing is now an essential marketing strategy for every marketing firm. Viral marketing, also known as relationship marketing, buzz marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, conversational marketing, and passion marketing, has become as essential to small and large marketing firms alike, both for its relative affordability and its potentially high effectivity. With the advent of the Internet, viral marketing has become amazingly efficient: all you need is a laptop and a compelling message.&#8221;</em></p><p>Yes, you&#8217;re appalled by its inefficiency and wordiness. Your boss would never approve, nor would your writing coach. Tough. This is not about winning the <em><span
style="font-family: Arial;">PEN/Faulkner</span></em>, its about arousing Google&#8217;s algorythms.</p><p><strong>Third, </strong><em><strong>optimize your blog as though it were a traditional website</strong></em>. Be sure to add a &#8220;description&#8221; meta tag as Google uses it in search returns (and you can control Google&#8217;s description of your site). If you don&#8217;t want to top there, you can continue with the whole lots of meta tags. I will paste my tags at the end of here for you to enjoy. Also, make sure you give &#8220;alt&#8221; and &#8220;title&#8221; tags to all of your images and &#8220;title&#8221; tags to all of your links.</p><p><strong>Four</strong>, find a <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/11/google_sitemap_1.html">Google Sitemap plug-in</a> and use it.</p><p>Five, submit your blog as though it were a traditional website. I personally use <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.submission2000.com/products/ds7/index.html">Dynamic Submission</a>, but there are a bunch. <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.web-positiongold.com/pro-web-position-gold.html">Web Position Gold</a> is another fave. I choose Dynamic Submission because it allows me to spider my entire blog to within an inch of its life and then submit not just the site&#8217;s arteries but also all the way down to the site&#8217;s villi as well. In my opinion, search engines are lazy. They have only so many resources and so many nanoseconds in the day. They need to put first things first. So what I do before I spider the blog is set the index page of the blog to view 365-days of posts, or maybe a bunch of weeks, so that I can spider most of the blog from one &#8220;Import from Web.&#8221; When the import is complete, I change it back to showing only the last 7 days. I even maintain a separate box on which to host the Dynamic Submission tool because it&#8217;s such a processor hog. And then let it go. Seems to work like a charm. Why? Well, not because I am doing anything unseamly but rather just because Google and the rest sometimes miss something and I want to make sure that all the engines get everything. Every little dumbass link.</p><p>Six, make sure you use a <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/02/what_is_a_ping.html">ping server</a>. If you don&#8217;t know a thing, start with filling out <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.pingomatic.com/">Pingomatic</a> as best you can. That should be good enough for now. Blogger and WordPress.com offer a checkbox you can use to send out the ping. You can probably build it into your submission using the WordPress &#8220;Update Services&#8221; under Options/Writing, then scroll down. On MT it&#8217;s in Settings/New Entry Defaults/Publicity/Remote Interfaces. I use a long list that I will post under the Meta Tags below:</p><p><strong>Ping Server List for ChrisAbraham.com</strong></p><p>http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php</p><p>http://api.feedster.com/ping</p><p>http://api.moreover.com/RPC2</p><p>http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2</p><p>http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC</p><p>http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc</p><p>http://coreblog.org/ping</p><p>http://effbot.org/rpc/ping.cgi</p><p>http://ping.bitacoras.com</p><p>http://ping.blo.gs</p><p>http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc</p><p>http://ping.feedburner.com</p><p>http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php</p><p>http://rpc.pingomatic.com</p><p>http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping</p><p>http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2</p><p>http://topicexchange.com/RPC2</p><p>http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b</p><p>http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2</p><p>http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates</p><p>http://xping.pubsub.com/ping<em>(I was Inspired by BBC&#8217;s <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/businessblogconsulting?m=137">More Blog Search Engine Optimization Tips and Tricks</a>)</em><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: #cccccc; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;"><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/02/what_is_a_ping.php"></a></span></p><p><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/02/what_is_a_ping.php"></a><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/02/what_is_a_ping.php"><strong></strong></a><strong><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/02/what_is_a_ping.php">What is a Ping Server?</a></strong></p><p><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;">Whenever you post a new entry to your blog I am pretty sure you tell all your friends. It is also important to tell blog search engines and news aggregators so that they too can check out all your new content. Telling them you have fresh content is called pinging them.</span></p><p>According to the definition on <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://developers.feedster.com/index.php/FeedsterPingServer">Feedster</a>, &#8220;A ping server is a bit of software infrastructure, a server program to be specific, which lets a feed tell us &#8216;I&#8217;ve just updated; please index me now.&#8217; What it receives is a small tidbit of information from a blogging or publishing tool which is called a &#8216;ping&#8217;. Hence the name.&#8221;</p><p>The simple solution is to make sure you visit <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.pingomatic.com/">Ping-o-Matic</a> every time you publish a new blog entry. I have already published a <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/02/essential_ping.html">comprehensive list</a> of available ping servers and I will discuss other solutions in future articles.</p><p>Depending on which blog service or which blog software you use, there are simple ways to automate the act of pinging all of the ping servers.</p><p>I plan to delve much more deeply into this very very soon.<span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: #cccccc; line-height: 150%; font-family: Arial;"><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/06/search_engines.php"></a></span></p><p><strong><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: #ff6600; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;"><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/06/search_engines.php">Search Engines Favor RSS Feed Supported Sites</a></span></strong></p><p><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;">To paraphrase <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://toprank.blogspot.com/2005/06/rss-for-increased-search-engine.html">Lee Odden</a>, <em><span
style="font-family: Arial;">&#8220;RSS feeds get blogroll, inclusion in RSS directories assist with link popularity, Updated RSS feeds are indexed more frequently, RSS output contributes to your freshness, The format of most RSS feeds provides content that&#8217;s easier for search engines to understand.&#8221;</span></em></span></p><p><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: #cccccc; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;"><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/07/basic_seo_for_b.php"></a></span></p><p><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/07/basic_seo_for_b.php"></a><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/07/basic_seo_for_b.php"><strong></strong></a><strong><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/07/basic_seo_for_b.php">Basic SEO for Bloggers Comes a Little Short</a></strong></p><p><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;">Thanks to <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney?m=692">Darren</a> for the link to <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.blogherald.com/2005/07/12/basic-seo-tactics-for-bloggers/">Basic SEO tactics for bloggers</a>. That said, it is <em><span
style="font-family: Arial;">too basic</span></em>.</span></p><p>It doesn&#8217;t talk much about SEOB (Search Engine Optimization for Blogs) so much as just how to architect your blog. There are so many other tips and tricks.</p><p>I am opening up a text page right now to start writing my own Basic SEO for Blogs because if I am going to tell you that this article is severely limited, I had better suggest something better, right?<span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: #cccccc; line-height: 150%; font-family: Arial;"><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/07/i_have_power_ov.php"></a></span></p><p><strong><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: #ff6600; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;"><br
style="page-break-before: always;" /></span></strong></p><p><strong><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: #ff6600; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;"><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/07/i_have_power_ov.php">I Have Power Over Algorithmic Search Engines</a></span></strong></p><p><em><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;">&#8220;Some time ago, I realized that I have power over google, yahoo and other algorithmic search engines. I can choose words and phrases. And then I can get top ranking for those words in search engine results.&#8221;</span></em><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;"> <em><span
style="font-family: Arial;">Me too</span></em>, and I <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://worcester.typepad.com/pc4media/2005/07/blog_pagerank_w.html">couldn&#8217;t say it better</a> myself. <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://worcester.typepad.com/pc4media/2005/07/blog_pagerank_w.html">PC4Media</a> via <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney?m=700">ProBlogger</a>.</span></p><p><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: #cccccc; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;"><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/10/how_google_prob.html"></a></span></p><p><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/10/how_google_prob.html"></a><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/10/how_google_prob.html"><strong></strong></a><strong><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/10/how_google_prob.html">How Google Probably Ranks Your Site in My Opinion</a></strong></p><p><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;">Google indexes web pages and then ranks them based on three distinct and equally-weighted aspects. </span></p><p>The first aspect is a trinity which is based on the content of each page: page title, page description and keywords (meta tag data), and page full-text content. A page that has similar content wording (and density) is considered to be legitimate. If a web page has all three components it generally a reliable resource.</p><p>The second aspect is that Google favors web sites that are continually-updated; therefore, a blog is always indexed more often and considered more timely than a static &#8220;brochure&#8221; web site.</p><p>The final and most-important aspect Google uses to favor (and thus rank higher) web pages is each page&#8217;s (and site&#8217;s) link popularity. Link popularity is basically how many other sites link back to a site; in addition, Google goes one step further and considers a number of things to insure that the link popularity isn&#8217;t abused: prestige.</p><p>If an old, high-prestige, high link-popularity web site (or sites) links to a site, it is more beneficial to the site&#8217;s link popularity than if a host of insignificant sites link to a site. Old, popular, and well-trafficked sites always lend their prestige to the site to which they link.</p><p>The three taken together result in the ranking of the site based on a typical Google keyword search.</p><p>You need the content (flash-based and highly graphical pages without well thought out meta tags are virtually invisible to Google), you need the link popularity, and when it comes to it, you need to have new content to show up in the top-ten on Google.</p><p>A popular upstart blog or message board can oftentimes achieve better ranking than a big corporate website, especially if that website is new or has changed the architecture of its website recently (Google considers the sudden and complete change of the architecture and file-structure of a web site really fishy).</p><p><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: #cccccc; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;"><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/03/never_use_prono.php"></a></span></p><p><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/03/never_use_prono.php"></a><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/03/never_use_prono.php"><strong></strong></a><strong><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/03/never_use_prono.php">Never Use Pronouns When You Blog</a></strong></p><p><strong><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;">First, </span></strong><em><strong><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;">never use pronouns</span></strong></em><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;">. <em><span
style="font-family: Arial;">Keyword density</span></em> is essential to how Google ranks you. <strong><span
style="font-family: Arial;">Second</span></strong>, use variations on search terms.</span></p><p>To illustrate the first two points, I will take a bit of copy and optimize it for search engines and their love for keyword density. Instead of this:</p><p><em>&#8220;Viral marketing is now an essential strategy for every firm. It has become as essential to small and large firms alike, both for its relative affordability and its potentially high effectivity. With the advent of the Internet, it has become amazingly efficient: all you need is a laptop and a compelling message.&#8221;</em></p><p>Try this:</p><p><em>&#8220;Viral marketing is now an essential marketing strategy for every marketing firm. Viral marketing, also known as relationship marketing, buzz marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, conversational marketing, and passion marketing, has become as essential to small and large marketing firms alike, both for its relative affordability and its potentially high effectivity. With the advent of the Internet, viral marketing has become amazingly efficient: all you need is a laptop and a compelling message.&#8221;</em></p><p>Yes, you&#8217;re appalled by its inefficiency and wordiness. Your boss would never approve, nor would your writing coach. Tough. This is not about winning the <em><span
style="font-family: Arial;">PEN/Faulkner</span></em>, its about arousing Google&#8217;s algorythms.<span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: #cccccc; line-height: 150%; font-family: Arial;"><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/02/invest_in_googl.php"></a></span></p><p><strong><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: #ff6600; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;"><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/02/invest_in_googl.php">Invest in Google Sitemap as a Tool for SEO Analysis</a></span></strong></p><p><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;">Investing in <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/11/google_sitemap.html">Google Sitemap</a> is worthwhile. For example, the top search query for chrisabraham.com is <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.google.com/search?q=ladder%20theory&amp;hl=en">ladder theory</a> and the top search query click is <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.google.com/search?q=nicole%20richie%20diet&amp;hl=en">nicole richie diet</a>.</span></p><p><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: #cccccc; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;"><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/01/brand_protectio.php"></a></span></p><p><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/01/brand_protectio.php"></a><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/01/brand_protectio.php"><strong></strong></a><strong><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/2006/01/brand_protectio.php">Brand Protection on Blogs</a></strong></p><p><span
style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 140%; font-family: Arial;"><a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/7780.asp">Andy Sernovitz</a> is spot on when it comes to how to control and manage brand online, especially when it comes to <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.newmediastrategies.net/">online brand protection</a>.</span></p><p>It boils down to this:</p><p><strong>Blog search engines such as Technorati, Feedster, and BlogPulse only really care about the last word.</strong> If you can reply to a negative, hurtful, brand hit, then you can dominate the conversation and win the debate, in most cases.</p><p><strong>Google cares about everything but the latest word isn&#8217;t always indexed yet</strong>, so therefore, in the world of Google, the better indexed site always wins. Learn about SEO and Google Sitemaps if you want to compete here.</p><p><strong>You can&#8217;t control online conversation unless you participate.</strong> The only way to get indexed by Google or to show up on Technorati, Feedster, and BlogPulse is to be an online opinion leader who has a site that has made it out of Technorati, Feedster, BlogPulse, Yahoo!, MSN, and Google&#8217;s sandbox, and has an SEO and a Blog Search Engine strategy.</p><p>You have to initiate membership, become part of the conversation, build street cred, have an SEO and blog strategy, and become a respect online opinion leader <em><strong><span
style="font-family: Arial;">before</span></strong></em> something goes awry.</p><p>To quote Mr. Sernovitz, , <em><span
style="font-family: Arial;">&#8220;you&#8217;ll never be able to control the blogosphere conversation. Don&#8217;t even try. You&#8217;ll never be able to manage your blog coverage like you manage the press. Don&#8217;t even try. </span></em><strong><em><span
style="font-family: Arial;">But what you can do is participate, earn respect, and tell your story. Jump in, join the conversation, and be a part of it.</span></em></strong><em><span
style="font-family: Arial;">&#8220;</span></em></p><p>This is my response to a very brilliant and spot-on article. I have nothing to say in contest to it, so stop reading me and go read <a
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/7780.asp">WOM Tactics: Blogs are Upside Down</a>.</p></blockquote><div
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class="zem-script more-related pretty-attribution"><script src="http://static.zemanta.com/readside/loader.js" type="text/javascript"></script></span></div><script type="text/javascript">(function() {var s = document.createElement('SCRIPT'), s1 = document.getElementsByTagName('SCRIPT')[0];s.type = 'text/javascript';s.async = true;s.src = 'http://widgets.digg.com/buttons.js';s1.parentNode.insertBefore(s, s1);})();</script><a
class="DiggThisButton DiggCompact" href="http://digg.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchrisabraham.com%2F2006%2F06%2F14%2Fsearch-engine-optimization-works-like-a-champ%2F"></a>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://chrisabraham.com/2006/06/14/search-engine-optimization-works-like-a-champ/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item><title>Richard Dawkins on The Selfish Gene</title><link>http://chrisabraham.com/2006/03/14/richard-dawkins-on-the-selfish-gene/</link> <comments>http://chrisabraham.com/2006/03/14/richard-dawkins-on-the-selfish-gene/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Mar 2006 14:55:39 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Chris Abraham</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Memetics]]></category> <category><![CDATA[1960s]]></category> <category><![CDATA[aj ayer]]></category> <category><![CDATA[audience]]></category> <category><![CDATA[audiences]]></category> <category><![CDATA[commentator]]></category> <category><![CDATA[dawkins]]></category> <category><![CDATA[exaggeration]]></category> <category><![CDATA[factual examples]]></category> <category><![CDATA[fullness of time]]></category> <category><![CDATA[half my life]]></category> <category><![CDATA[implication]]></category> <category><![CDATA[intelligent questions]]></category> <category><![CDATA[liverpool]]></category> <category><![CDATA[logic]]></category> <category><![CDATA[oxford]]></category> <category><![CDATA[parents]]></category> <category><![CDATA[point of view]]></category> <category><![CDATA[promoters]]></category> <category><![CDATA[publishers]]></category> <category><![CDATA[richard dawkins]]></category> <category><![CDATA[rush]]></category> <category><![CDATA[selfish gene]]></category> <category><![CDATA[tutors]]></category> <category><![CDATA[young man]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Zoology]]></category><guid
isPermaLink="false">http://chrisabraham.com/?p=1930</guid> <description><![CDATA[After 30 years, in my opinion, Richard Dawkins&#8217; book, The Selfish Gene, is just coming into its own. Via The Times Online and 3quarksdaily &#8220;It is sobering to realise that I have lived nearly half my life with The Selfish Gene — for better, for worse. Over the years, as each subsequent book has appeared, [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div
style="float:left;margin:10px 10px 0px 0px;"> <a
class="DiggThisButton DiggMedium" href="http://digg.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchrisabraham.com%2F2006%2F03%2F14%2Frichard-dawkins-on-the-selfish-gene%2F&title=Richard+Dawkins+on+The+Selfish+Gene" rel="news, tech_news"><span
style="display:none">After 30 years, in my opinion, Richard Dawkins&#8217; book, The Selfish Gene, is just coming into its own. Via The Times Online and 3quarksdaily &#8220;It is sobering to realise that I have lived nearly half my life with The Selfish Gene — for better, for worse. Over the years, as each subsequent book has appeared, [...]</span></a></div><p></p><div
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src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchrisabraham.com%2F2006%2F03%2F14%2Frichard-dawkins-on-the-selfish-gene%2F&amp;source=chrisabraham&amp;style=normal&amp;service=bit.ly&amp;service_api=R_fd087a8f486f224d453b4a84e0b4109f&amp;b=2" height="61" width="50" title="Richard Dawkins on The Selfish Gene" alt=" Richard Dawkins on The Selfish Gene" /><br
/> </a></div><p>After 30 years, in my opinion, Richard Dawkins&#8217; book, <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199291152/chrisabraham" rel="nofollow">The Selfish Gene</a>, is just coming into its own. Via <a
href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2075334,00.html" rel="nofollow">The Times Online</a> and <a
href="http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/03/dawkins_on_the_.html" rel="nofollow">3quarksdaily</a></p><p><span
id="more-1930"></span><br
/> <em>&#8220;It is sobering to realise that I have lived nearly half my life with <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199291152/chrisabraham" rel="nofollow">The Selfish Gene</a> — for better, for worse. Over the years, as each subsequent book has appeared, publishers have sent me on tour to promote it. Audiences respond to the new book with gratifying enthusiasm, applaud politely and ask intelligent questions. Then they line up to buy, and have me sign . . . <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199291152/chrisabraham" rel="nofollow">The Selfish Gene</a>. That is a bit of an exaggeration. Some do buy the new book and, for the rest, my wife consoles me by arguing that people who newly discover an author will naturally tend to go back to his first book: having read <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199291152/chrisabraham" rel="nofollow">The Selfish Gene</a>, surely they’ll work their way through to the latest and (to its fond parent) favourite baby?&#8221;</em></p><p><em>&#8220;I would mind more if I could claim that <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199291152/chrisabraham" rel="nofollow">The Selfish Gene</a> had become severely outmoded and superseded. Unfortunately (from one point of view) I cannot. Details have changed and factual examples burgeoned mightily. But there is little in it that I would rush to unwrite now, or apologise for. Arthur Cain, late professor of zoology at Liverpool and one of my inspiring tutors at Oxford in the 1960s, described <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199291152/chrisabraham" rel="nofollow">The Selfish Gene</a> in 1976 as a “young man’s book???. He was deliberately quoting a commentator on AJ Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic. I was flattered by the comparison, although I knew that Ayer had recanted much of his first book and I could hardly miss Cain’s pointed implication that I should, in the fullness of time, do the same.&#8221;</em></p><script type="text/javascript">(function() {var s = document.createElement('SCRIPT'), s1 = document.getElementsByTagName('SCRIPT')[0];s.type = 'text/javascript';s.async = true;s.src = 'http://widgets.digg.com/buttons.js';s1.parentNode.insertBefore(s, s1);})();</script><a
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