Further thoughts on Sarah Who??

I have been very amused watching the right-wing talking heads turn themselves into pretzels trying to make a case for this woman. I heard one actually say that she has more experience than Obama. I've heard others say Obama has no experience at all.

Let's get this straight: Obama has been a United States Senator for four years -- during which time he has had some notable accomplishments (see his website if you want the details), including a law to allow every citizen in America the ability to go online and see where all their taxes dollars are being spent, as well as ethics reform, expanded benefits for veterans, and alternative energy legislation. In the Illinois State Senate he helped create legislation to cut taxes and expand early childhood education, among other things. He has a Harvard law degree (vs a Bachelor's in journalism for Gov. Palin), has taught constitutional law, and I can guarantee you he has five times the knowledge of foreign affairs that Palin does. But then, he probably has five times the knowledge that McCain himself does, considering McCain still thinks there's a country called Czechoslovakia:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/14/mccain-references-non-exi_n_112650.html

and continues to get the Sunnis and the Shiites mixed up:

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/04/08/869803.aspx

But I digress... let's look at the two tickets. Obama is a healthy 47-year old, whose backup is THE foreign relations expert in the Senate and a man infinitely qualified to be President should something happen to him. McCain is a 72-year old with four bouts of melanoma, whose backup is a governor who's been in office for less than two years, has no foreign policy experience whatsoever, and who 20 months ago was the mayor of a town of less than 9,000 people.

Give me a break, people. This is such an obvious pander to women that it's insulting. It's also downright dangerous. If Sarah Palin had any integrity at all she would have told McCain she was in no way, shape or form qualified to be Vice President and asked him to look at other, more qualified candidates. I think both she and McCain are riding their egos for all they're worth.

Sarah who??

OK, one of the things I love about this Republican veep choice is that the pundits are left with egg on their faces! Of course, who could have guessed that John McCain, whose biggest argument against Obama was a lack of experience (see all his recent ads), picks for his veep a governor of a red-red state who has less than two years in office. I love it!! I think we're going to have to tell Biden to go easy on her in the veep debate, or he could just look like he's beating up on a woman. :-)

I have to say I don't get this choice at all. Alaska is never going to vote for a Democrat for President, so she's not bringing a toss-up state. She is very conservative, supporting the teaching of creationism in schools (separation of church and state? Does anybody on the right side remember that? Anybody at all??). She is in the middle of what appears to be a pretty minor ethics investigation, so McCain is taking the chance that that is not going to blow up in his face.

Does McCain really think disaffected Democratic women are going to vote for her in any substantial number? She's a lifetime NRA member, she eats mooseburgers, and hunts. I don't think many women can connect with that. Not to mention that she is anti-choice, not a popular view among most women. I think frankly that this choice is an insult to women -- this is an obvious pander that he thinks is going to automatically get him the female vote. This sounds like a Harriet Miers to me... he was just looking for a woman, any woman that was pro-life, and whomsoever was the first one he could get to join him on the ticket would be it.

I think she could also cost him some votes with extreme conservatives, some of whom won't vote for a woman, no matter how good a shot she is with a rifle. Also, she is a mother of five, the littlest of which is only a few months old and has Down Syndrome. I would think that some of the far-right conservatives would think she has no business running for Vice President or spending that much time away from her kids. It would be interesting to get a poll from the home-schooling crowd.

But hey, McCain picked an ex-beauty queen. He seems to like to have pretty young women around, doesn't he? Just hope he'll resist the urge to call her a trollop. She might just give him a good right cross if he does!

Obama to McCain: Bring it!

What a great speech that was! When I had heard that Obama warned the press his speech would be "workman-like" rather than the soaring, feel-good rhetoric he has been known for, I was worried. Would it be too boring? Was one of Obama's best asssets, his ability to fire people up, get lost? Would the speech fall flat?

I guess I shouldn't have worried. He took every criticism the right has of him and refuted them all. He went through every major issue facing this country today and laid out what he intended to do to fix it. And if anyone thought he wasn't tough enough to take McCain on on his home turf, they shouldn't have doubts any longer. He told McCain that if he wanted to talk about foreign policy, about national security, or any other topic, he could bring it on. Just because you've been a POW doesn't mean you are the best person to be President. Just because you've been a POW doesn't mean you have the best ideas or the best judgement. Whereas Giuliani, as Biden so amusingly pointed out, couldn't answer a question without using a noun, a verb, and 9/11, McCain has become the candidate that can't answer a question without working in Vietnam, POW and the Hanoi Hilton.

Barack Obama did exactly what he needed to do, and he delivered a speech that I thought was as perfect as I could have hoped for. Congratulations to Obama, to Biden, and to their lovely families!

History has been made!

Last night the Democrats had a night that will go down in the history books as one of the seminal nights in political history and in the history of this nation. We nominated a person of African-American descent for the highest office in the land. Not only that, but the person who came in just behind him, the first woman to seriously have a shot at the nomination for the Democratic party, cut off the roll call vote and had Obama nominated by acclamation.

It's been a long time coming, but I am very glad that the Democrats were the first to break that glass ceiling. Congratulations, Barack Obama!

Bill, Joe and some anchor musings

Well, Bill managed to hide his aggravation pretty well and gave us a rousing speech like the Bill of the old days. Let's hope we don't see whiny Bill for the remainder of this campaign! Joe is not the orator that Bill and Obama are, but he damn well speaks the truth, and what a compelling personal story. I can't wait until the vice presidential debate. There is NO ONE McCain could pick for veep that Biden won't take apart piece by piece. [Rubs hands together] This will be fun!

Now, I have some musings about these anchors and talking heads. What is up with this Republican chick Leslie Sanchez? How much KoolAid has this woman drank? In critiquing Bill's speech she says that Barack Obama doesn't have enough experience, and neither did Bill Clinton. Now wait a minute... let me hit Wikipedia here... yep, I do believe ol' Bill was governor of Arkansas for about 12 years, in a state where the governor has traditional duties, such as balancing a budget. He was Arkansas's Attorney General. A Rhodes scholar. Now, compare and contrast that with George W. Bush -- he served six years as governor of Texas (during which he declared a Jesus Day, by the way... so much for separation of church and state), but Texas is a state where being governor is pretty much a ceremonial position. The heavy lifting is done by the state legislature. So, Miz Sanchez, I'll stack my Bill Clinton up against your George W. Bush any damn day of the week. Oh, and by the way, I'll stack Clinton's surplus against Bush's mega-deficit, too.

There's been a lot of squabbling amongst the MSNBC anchors. Generally I prefer to watch MSNBC over CNN; but I have found it just impossible to watch these guys this time around. For one thing, who's bright idea was it to set up shop outside a train station? I like trains as much as the next guy, but Breaking News!! -- trains are noisy! Then there's Chris Matthews' hair, which is constantly being blown around (interesting, since Olbermann's appears to be able to withstand a hurricane),.... it's just rather odd. Speaking of Olbermann, he needs to quit throwing his weight around at MSNBC. I think he had something to do with Dan Abrams' show being cancelled in favor of putting Rachel Maddow in that slot, and Dan was my favorite to watch on that channel. I think they should put Dan's show back on, maybe after Rachel's (how about doing the After Hours thing on a permanent basis? Or maybe in place of the first slot for Hardball? And why DOES Hardball have two slots, anyway??) Now I hear Olbermann is trying to get Tom Brokaw banned (Tom Brokaw, for crying out loud!) because Tom admonished him on air . Keith, I know you have the biggest ratings on MSNBC, but Tom Brokaw is an icon who, as far as I'm concerned, had every right to tell you you were going way over the top. The man is a legend in the news business. Shut up and sit down.

Hillary's speech

Well, I must say that was one of the better speeches I've heard her give, and considering I think some of the problems Obama has faced are due to her and Bill, I think it was what she should have done and what she needed to do, with one exception - I hate to say this, but the Republican analysts are right ... she didn't say anything about feeling that Obama had the judgment to lead (if not the experience), a big theme from her campaign and something she has given the Dark Side plenty of video clips to use in their own ads. I hope she got through to those more rabid supporters of hers toying with the idea of voting for McCain, though. We'll find out in November.

The Best Show on TV

If you're not watching Burn Notice (USA, Thursdays, 10 p.m. Eastern, 9 p.m. Central) you're missing the best show on TV. Season 2 is going on, 9 eppys began 7/10. There will be a short break for the U.S. Open, then Burn Notice new eppys begin again on 9/11.

Picture a kick-ass spy show, add in some "here's how to McGyver a little C-4 if you don't have any handy" spy tips, and mix it up with an awesome cast in Jeffrey Donovan, cult fave Bruce Campbell, Gabrielle Anwar and comic relief Sharon Gless.

Just about perfect.

If you want to catch up with season 1, it's out on DVD.

It's not the Clinton show

If Barack Obama loses this election, Bill and Hillary Clinton will share a large chunk of the blame. Hillary drug her campaign out too long; when we finally got through the last primary she didn't want to concede. She reamed Obama for 15 months, giving the Republicans great video for the attack ads they are now running.

Some Clinton supporters, women in particular (and I was a Clinton supporter myself after Biden dropped out), got too emotionally involved in the process and they are now unable or unwilling to turn into Obama supporters. Bill inexplicably turned from one of the best orators in the Democratic Party into something of a whiner (although I do think that he was unfairly critized and taken out of context at times). Both of them carried around a sense of entitlement to this nomination. Now they're more or less forcing Obama to give them too much time in his nominating convention. What is this about negotiations regarding when and how Hillary is going to tell her supporters to get over it and vote for Obama? I can't ever recall in history that one of the losers in the primary got this much consideration in the convention.

I find it funny that these voters who are threatening to vote for McCain are citing how "badly" Obama treated Clinton during the primary. Huh??? From what I understand she didn't want to be vetted and told him so. But frankly, why would he put her on the VP short list when she went after him like a dog goes after steak, stayed in the race until long after she had a reasonable chance of winning, refused to concede until forced to, and then demanded a large role in the convention, complete with putting her name into nomination?

Of course people are free to vote for whoever they want. But I find it unlikely that someone who calls themself a Democrat would want to vote for a pro-life, pro-war misogynist like McCain. Voting for him just for revenge for imagined wrongs is... well -- just wrong.

Why women (or anyone) shouldn't be voting McCain...

Man, where to start with this one? First, I think there are a lot of people out there who only know two things about John McCain: 1) he was a POW in Vietnam; and 2) he's supposed to be a maverick. The first is indisputable; the second I highly doubt.

First of all, as we know, he has pretty much toed the party line. His record says that he has voted with Bush 95% of the time. Yeah, that's really being a maverick, there! Second, let's review what happened in South Carolina in 2000 during the Republican primary, why don't we?

Just before the primary in S.C. there were phone calls made to registered Republicans asking whether the voters in the household knew that McCain "had a black child." The inference was clear - that McCain had had a child out of wedlock with a black woman. The truth was that the black child that McCain indeed did have was a Bangladeshi child that he and Cindy had adopted from an orphanage. A very magnanimous thing to do, wouldn't you say?

George Bush won the South Carolina primary, in part because of those phone calls and other equally dirty, underhanded tactics used by his campaign.

My question is -- why didn't McCain call a news conference the next day? Why didn't he ream the Bush campaign for using these tactics? He could have given a rousing speech about how wonderful it was to have his daughter in his life, how he and Cindy just fell in love with her at the orphanage, yadda yadda yadda... and had the country in the palm of his hand. In other words, he could have stood up for Cindy and his daughter, even if it meant he lost the support of the RNC. THAT would have been the moral thing to do. THAT would have been the RIGHT thing to do. But instead he shut up and let Bush take the nomination. Why? Did he think Bush wasn't going to win the election anyway? Or did he just not want to rock the boat because it would tick off TPTB? Was his political career was more important to him than standing up for his family?

To this day I haven't seen this child with the McCains, except for one very brief shot of her with her mother getting on the campaign plane weeks ago. They refuse to allow her to be interviewed. Why is that? She's around 16 now, I believe, definitely not a small child... could it just be that they don't want certain voters in the Republican base to know she exists? Facing a mixed race opponent, one would think that McCain would find it advantageous to him to mention her now and again... I just point these things out, readers, make up your own mind.

What are my other issues with McCain? Well, I disagree with him on several political issues and I could go on for pages about that... but in particular I want to point out his attitude toward women. Let's take his treatment of his current wife, Cindy, in public, for instance. In front of dozens of people he called her a trollop and another word that even I won't use (and I can cuss like a sailor when the situation calls for it). Look up the circumstances around his divorce from his first wife, something he called his biggest moral failure at the Faith Forum with Rick Warren -- a statement I noted Warren did not follow up on. I think you will find that someone most people think of as a beloved political figure is really just as much of a political animal as anyone could be. Oh, and while you're at it, look up the Keating Five scandal, in case you're too young to remember it. It almost cost him his entire political career. The MSM has not been mentioning these things, yet they've reported ad nauseum on every aspect of Barack Obama's past. So much for the "liberal" media, eh?

I also find it disconcerting, to say the least, that some women who are evidently angry at Hillary not getting the Democratic nomination (that's why it's called a democracy, ladies, look it up) are backing McCain for that reason. Not only is that short-sighted, it's downright ridiculous. But some of these ladies have neglected to even do the most basic homework about his stances. Case in point: one of the members of a group called Latinas for McCain is a former Clinton supporter who did an interview on NPR. In that interview she said she thought McCain was not strictly pro-life. If you're not going to bother to even look up his basic views, then do everybody a favor and stay home on Election Day!

I don't think McCain has the temperment to be president, and frankly I think he's mostly on an ego trip. His treatment of women has at times been deplorable. Ladies, you have to give thought to this before you decide you're going to vote for him, no matter how disappointed you are that Hillary did not win the Democratic nomination. Your disappointment is nothing compared to the mistakes the entire country will suffer should this man be elected.

OK, now I'm ticked at Hillary...

As I said in my previous blog post, I would have voted for Joe Biden in the primary had he still been in the race when they got around to my lovely state. However, I voted for Hillary instead... not that I didn't like Obama, but I was in the "we'll get Bill, too" camp, and damn but wouldn't we rather be back in 1999 than where we are now?

I was all for Hillary staying in the race as long as she had a reasonable chance of winning. Then that chance got slimmer... and slimmer... and pretty soon it's looking like a New York supermodel. And Hillary's still there. Still there through Hawaii. Still there through Puerto Rico. Still there till the bitter end. Long past the point where she has any money to run a campaign on. Long past the point where Obama had it pretty much wrapped up. I still can't figure out if she was just in denial, or she really thought Obama would be such a horrible candidate. I guess only she really knows what was in her head. But did she really think she could raise $30 mil after she had lost the race? Really??

But what kind of consideration for the VP post did she reasonably think she would have when she just refused to get the heck out already??

I can kind of understand Hillary still being upset about losing, after all, for months everyone thought she was a shoo-in (hey, I'm still mourning for what could have been in a Howard Dean administration). But I don't get why so many female Hillary supporters are still upset, or are going to vote for McCain (any self-respecting woman should NOT be voting for McCain, but that's for another post). Obama won fair and square. No Karl Rove-ian tactics. No dangling chads. He won. Period. Put yer big girl panties on and suck it up. Enough people voted for him to put him over the top, which as I recall is the way democracy works. Deal with it already.

Welcome to the fray, Joe Biden!

Ahhh, I love Joe. I would have voted for him in the primary had he still been on the ballot when they got around to my state. I voted for Hillary, but I'm kind of upset with her for not conceding when she should have... but it came out all right now that Joe is on the team.

Go get 'em, Joe, we're countin' on ya.

PROPERLY inflate those tires!!

Recently Barack Obama responded to a simple question asking what a person could do in the short-term to help save gas in their car. He correctly answered that an easy thing you could do is make sure your tires are inflated.

Properly inflating your tires will indeed save you somewhere around 3-4% in your gas mileage, or about 3 to 4 times as much oil as we have available in ANWR, if we were to wait the 10 years it would take to get it out of there.

McCain and his campaign staff, as well as others on the right, however, pounced, thinking Obama had made a big campaign goof. They bought tire gauges and had "Obama's Energy Plan" printed on them and passed them out. They made fun in the press, despite the fact that McCain later admitted Obama was correct. Rush Limbaugh got on his show and in his usual bloated, misinformed and self-important way declared that Obama wanted people to OVERinflate their tires.

Ummm... you know I'm here to help, but really!! Doesn't everyone know that PROPERLY inflating your tires does indeed help save gas? Doesn't everybody with a brain know that?? And more importantly, doesn't everybody know that OVERinflating your tires is not only not going to save you gas, but is downright dangerous? Do I really have to explain this?? Apparently McCain and his staffers who ordered the ridiculous tire gauges in the first place didn't know. Could they not have called AAA? A tire store? Google'd it, for crying out loud??!! And does this not show once and for all that Rush Limbaugh is, in fact, an idiot? As if we needed further proof.

Welcome to Soapy's Soapbox!

Welcome to my soapbox. In this blog I will be ranting, raving, venting, and occasionally just musing about anything that comes to my mind -- mostly politics, but other topics could include animals and animal rights, the environment, television, movies, and anything else for which I feel the need to climb up on my personal soapbox and let fly.

You are welcome to read this blog, but currently I am not allowing any postings in reply. Mostly I don't have time to review and remove offensive postings, but it could also be that I'm doing this blog more to let off steam than to give other people the opportunity to disagree with me. OK, I'll be honest... that IS why I'm not allowing postings!

Enjoy. :-)