Waxing Quickly Political...

Because I likes a little politics with my breakfast... (which, this morning, consists of the kids' leftover scrambled eggs and an english muffin plus a liter of coffee, if anyone's interested.)

... here is what Peggy Noonan (of all people) had to say about Sarah Palin in her column Friday: (excerpted):

She doesn’t think aloud. She just … says things.

Her supporters accuse her critics of snobbery: Maybe she’s not a big “egghead” but she has brilliant instincts and inner toughness. But what instincts? “I’m Joe Six-Pack”? She does not speak seriously but attempts to excite sensation — “palling around with terrorists.” If the Ayers case is a serious issue, treat it seriously. She is not as thoughtful or persuasive as Joe the Plumber, who in an extended cable interview Thursday made a better case for the Republican ticket than the Republican ticket has made. In the past two weeks she has spent her time throwing out tinny lines to crowds she doesn’t, really, understand. This is not a leader, this is a follower, and she follows what she imagines is the base, which is in fact a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine. She could reinspire and reinspirit; she chooses merely to excite. She doesn’t seem to understand the implications of her own thoughts.

So, uh, yeah.  Let's just leave it at that.  

Doom and Gloom - Courtesy Guest Poster: Big Daddy.

Oh how I love you Uncle Sam!

No sooner had I read of AIG possibly being toast...it did, in fact, happen.  Feds are going to gobble it up.  80% ownership for the feds and an 85 billion dollar loan.  How kind. 

So not that I want to shake the tree of oddities and doom but when does one throw their arms up and say, "Welp, it's been great but this whole FREE MARKET ECONOMY thing is done."  Not that I BELIEVE that but the past year, especially these past few days, have certainly been a signal that it's not all it's cracked up to be.  

And to make a turn for "are we really having this conversation?" territory..  What American companies actually still remain?  GM?  Rumor is they're asking for a 50 billion dollar government-backed loan since their stock is in junk status.  Not that there is enough liquidity out there for them anyways.  So what then?  America's one and only company that can break the addiction to oil goes the way of the dodo?  I mean, what are we talking about here?  Will this country become a nation with a state-controlled economy?  By the time this is all cleared I'd wager that more than a good bit of America's private financing institutions will be gov-owned, gov-funded, or in some obligated stance with the government.  

So to follow my slippery logic to it's dubious end: Could we be seeing a situation where the US Government owns US Companies and fills these companies not with regular hard-working Americans but overpaid contractors (ZING!) and outsourced talent?  Will there be large swaths of the population working to pay taxes on takeover costs of companies the Government now directs - to become profit engines who lay off Americans and hire full working divisions overseas?   All the while continuing to squeeze the middle class and profitable tax base until we're left with a depleted middle class, further disillusioned with a government who runs all the financial institutions, has GM on the dole, and spends over 30% of its money on the military industrial complex instead of health care, education, and infrastructure projects?  

.... oh wait...  that's already happening.

I hate being chicken little but if you asked me 8 years ago... 4 years ago... hell... even TWO years ago if we'd be where we are today (hell, even 10 miles from where we are today) I'd not have believed you.  WHY would I?  Oh well... I heard McCain invented the Blackberry so there's clearly important debates now to be had.  Toodles!

On Experience.

Good to know even Karl Rove agrees with me on the experience issue.

I'd like nothing better than to elect a woman (and, bonus, a mother!) to either of the high offices of this country. A qualified, reasoned, experienced woman. One who understands foreign policy, one with credentials of impact beyond "Raging Social Conservative", who doesn't claim to want to cut pork after securing over $20 million in federal earmarks for her town as mayor of Wasilla - a town of less than ten thousand people.

I look forward to the day I can vote for a woman - when the label "woman" is meaningless, because she will be simply the most qualified and well-suited person for the job. This is not that woman. To be fair, her social views would keep me from voting for the ticket regardless of her qualifications, but at least if she was suited for the position I could understand and support the desire for people I respect to see her in office. As it stands, I am at a loss.

And I think that's all I have to say on Sarah Palin.

Or "Words I Never Expected To Utter..."

Thank you, Bill O'Reilly.  

Thank you for the laugh. I really needed it today.

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Broadcast

I'm sure you'd love to hear all about how my husband threw away the kids snow pants this morning, because THEY WERE IN HIS WAY in our cramped, cluttered laundry room. Or about how the Jack is bouncing off the walls with anticipation for his Tee Ball game this afternoon and the possibility that his grandparents may be in attendance.

I could regale you with tales of how the dog and the kids have finally seemed to accept each other as part of the same litter and now Jack is regularly content to prostrate himself across the dog's butt and watch television.

But, instead, just for today, I'm going to go back to Politics.

On Thursday I participated in early voting in my state for the Democratic primary.

I walked into an historic courthouse, the one where abolitionist John Brown was tried and convicted for his Harper's Ferry uprising and just a few blocks from the tree where they hung him for his actions.

Into THAT courthouse did I walk, and I cast my vote for Barack Obama.

It was not until days later, when Big Daddy had cast his vote at that building, that he pointed out the irony to me.

I consider myself a modern feminist - ultimately, I am a humanist who thinks women still need to fight for respect and equal consideration. I look forward to the day I can cast my vote for the first woman president - one I can get behind and support with a clear conscience. For me, Hillary Clinton is not that woman. My decision to vote for Obama has nothing to do with his race or with her gender, it has to do with who they are and what they stand for.

Today, I found myself reading along on MOMocrats and nodding my head vigorously. I might have even shouted a "HELL YES!" a few times. CityMama has hit it on the head for me; that beyond all of the reasons I supported Obama in the beginning, there are a lot of very good reasons why my support has continued through what some people have tried to construe as his recent "scandals", his so-called "elitism".

Finding out that Hillary Clinton operatives have been sending messages to Obama mailing lists under false pretenses ( "I'm rethinking my support of Obama in the wake of the Reverend Wright scandal..." etc) in an effort to demoralize his supporters - to make it seem that those of us who believe in the MESSAGE should begin to doubt the man - the man who lives and breathes the message and has not waivered - when the message itself remains unchanged and, if anything, more timely and true than ever...... well, that wasn't even a surprise, but I am still shaking my head in sad disbelief.

I think the statements Reverend Wright made are reprehensible. I also find certain statements made by leaders in my former church reprehensible, but those statements are not the reason I finally left. I also find it true that everyone I have ever known with a strong attachment to their religion clings to it more completely in times of distress. I don't see anything incorrect in the statement that Obama made about people clinging to certain issues or belief systems all the more tightly because they are angry at their circumstances. He never said they only picked up those causes to begin with out of bitterness, only that they invest them with disproportionate importance when they are desperate. I agree with that sentiment.

I think that Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope", is the most insightful, unpretentious and honest looks at politics from the inside that I have ever come across. I don't think that's a mantle you assume in order to fool people; for that, you can go read Chris Matthews' "Life's a Campaign". The works are antithetical in philosophy, as far as I am concerned.

So whether or not you like Obama, or agree with me politically or otherwise, I highly recommend reading the MOMocrats column and giving it sincere consideration. There is some serious truth up in there.

Thursday Roundup

* No. I can't talk about IT yet... but I promise to talk about it tomorrow. Then? I promise to talk about IT ad nauseaum thereafter. Mucho mysterioso, no?

* Happy Chinese New Year, and welcome to The Year of The Rat (also known by its former name of Wu Zi). I don't really know much about the holiday, except that in elementary school there was usually a kid from China in my class who would bring little red envelopes with celophane fish in them. Obviously, I am a wealth of cultural knowledge....

* If anyone really, REALLY loved me they would buy this for me. I'd ask for the one from the official site, but they are sold out. Plus, the baseball jersey style will work for cold-weather wear as well as into the summer - once he wins the nomination, of course. *cough* Oh, and then again when he is President Of The Galactic Alliance.

* What the hell is going on in Washington? Do they think that because it's an election year we aren't paying attention? And then of course there's this. Which makes me wonder -- if the the really bad guys are all at this secret camp, doesn't that mean that we know that the guys we're holding in Gitmo GenPop are probably not the really bad guys? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller???