Category Archives: News & Politics

I should be adding things to the store, which is what I was hoping to do today.  But I had a ton of support things coming through and a few other things that I’ve neglected and really, really needed to get to.  So fingers crossed, that I get to adding more product.  There is a lot that I need to do on that.  I’m not looking forward to it, because I’m tired of sitting in the office….but it has the best set up.  Maybe I’ll set up on the patio tomorrow.

We finally watched Knocked Up that we’ve had on dvr for awhile.   It was much funnier and better then we thought it would be.

I did do good on the tread mill today.  But I need to do more on weights tomorrow.

I’m just totally unmotivated right now, I worked hard on focusing today.  Other then payroll, I really haven’t focused on things like I really need todo.  I just haven’t had it the last few weeks.  ……actually more like a month. Between moving and the vacation, I haven’t been able to focus like I’ve needed to.  That has got to change, especially when it comes to the store.

It hasn’t help that it an election year and I’m addicted to surfing for more news.  And with settling in and all the maintenance and pest issues, it really has put a wench into me actually getting things done like I need to do.

Alaska Women Cool to Palin

Carol Thompson, a primary school teacher in Sarah Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, has been galled by the mainstream media’s infatuation with the governor’s rugged yet glamorous Danielle Boone persona. “What amazes me is the fascination with her back story, when Alaska is filled with women who have much more interesting stories than she does,” she said. “She’s one of hundreds of thousands of very fascinating Alaskan women who hunt and fish and ski and build their own houses. I was living in a tent when I had my child!” 

Thompson pointed to the woman next to her, who lives in Palmer, a town about thirteen miles from Wasilla. “Bridgette was hiking on a glacier two days before she had her child, and picking blueberries a week after she had her baby. And that does not qualify us for being Vice President.”

**It is great to see that some of the media reports that not everyone in Alaska loves her and some of it is very reveling.

I know, I know…most of my entries are politics/news related lately.  But I’m like this at every election time and this one has me going even more then 2004/2000 did….and I ended up in depression for 2 weeks after those.  Sometimes I still think it was nightmare.

But our elections also really brings up a lot of social & political issues that are normally ignored and swept under the rug.

I know that the dems are no better then the reps, they are both corrupt and messed up…I’m an independent and have voted for rep in the past.  But the GOP of the past is no longer there….Reagen destroyed that, it just became a party of bigger hypocrites…..Bush/Cheney/Rove really, really destroyed it.  Not all GOP are radical right wing extremists trying to get into your business.  True reps believe that government should stay out of our lives and be smaller.

I think what really pisses me off, is how obviously the lies are with today’s internet and available information, yet people STILL fall for it.  It is like they drank the kool-aid….So that is why I keep posting news stories.

I also think what has really being bothering me is the that McCain is just pandering and has totally sold out with this Palin.  In a lot of ways, she is true Alaskan and I like that part, but in others she is just lying mouth piece that hasn’t got a clue.

When Charles Gibson asked her about the Bush Doctrine, she had no FUCKING clue what it was and they want her the next inline if McCain dies?!?!  How messed up is that?  Then she wouldn’t answer the questions, just nothing but sound bites…..she is a puppet, with out a clue.  And don’t give me that shit that Gibson was being patronizing or condensending…hell, he was too soft on her.  Every one wants to treat her with kid gloves because she is a woman, bullshit…she is a politiction and deservers the same hardball questions that Hillary got and the men get.  THAT is a sign that we have come a long way in a man’s world….when you are treated no differently.
Commentary: Race, age, gender are taboo in election

(CNN) — One of the most intriguing conversations I had at either the Democratic or Republican convention was with a white labor leader from Ohio.

I can’t remember his name, but he made it clear that he is going all around the Rust Belt state looking his white union brothers and sisters in the eye and essentially shaming them into supporting Sen. Barack Obama for president.

No, he’s not saying vote for the black man for president because he’s black.

He said he’s telling them that it’s shameful that as Democrats, they agree with him on various political issues, but because of his skin color, they are refusing to cast ballots for him.

“We have gone to our black brothers and sisters for years to support our [white] candidates, and it’s wrong for us to stand here and not support one of their own, even though we’re Democrats,” he barked.

There is nothing more in-your-face than to hear someone speak truthfully to the inherent racism that is at play in this election.

**I thought this was an excellent article on the issue of race, because it is so true.  We’ve lived in the midwest and there are still bunches of people that will not vote for Obama just because of his race….if it was a white man, it would’ve been a whole different story.
‘Lipstick on a pig’: Attack on Palin or common line?

McCain’s campaign said Obama’s remarks were offensive and a slap at Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin — despite the fact that the Arizona senator himself used the phrase last year to describe a policy proposal of Hillary Clinton’s.

Obama shot back Wednesday and accused the McCain campaign of engaging in “lies” and “swift boat politics.”

“I don’t care what they say about me. But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift boat politics,” he said in Norfolk, Virginia. “Enough is enough.”

**Anyone with half a brain (which leaves out 70% of the GOP) knows it meant nothing to do with Palin.  No one accuse McCain of sexism when he referred to Clinton’s policies.
A Brief History of “Putting Lipstick on a Pig” 

� One of the oldest published quotes using the entire phrase appeared in The Washington Post in November 1985. Asked by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to put his station’s $20,000 fundraiser earnings toward the renovation of Candlestick Park, KNBR personality Ron Lyons scoffed, “That would be like putting lipstick on a pig.”

� While on the campaign trail with John Kerry in September 2004, then-vice presidential nominee John Edwards derided the Republicans’ attempt to make lackluster job-creation numbers into a shining moment for the Bush administration. “They’re going to try every way they know to put lipstick on this pig,” he said. “But you know when you put lipstick on a pig, at the end of the day, it’s still a pig.”

Ad on sex education distorts Obama policy

In referring to the sex-education bill, the McCain campaign is largely recycling old and discredited accusations made against Mr. Obama by Alan Keyes in their 2004 Senate race. At that time, Mr. Obama stated that he understood the main objective of the legislation, as it pertained to kindergarteners, to be to teach them how to defend themselves against sexual predators.

“I have a 6-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old daughter, and one of the things my wife and I talked to our daughter about is the possibility of somebody touching them inappropriately, and what that might mean,” Mr. Obama said in 2004. “And that was included specifically in the law, so that kindergarteners are able to exercise some possible protection against abuse, because I have family members as well as friends who suffered abuse at that age.”

**Another sick and disgusting spin that the McBush camp has put on Obama….

Ad Hawk: McCain’s Fact-Free ‘Fact Check’

Earlier this afternoon, Team McCain released “Fact Check” (video above). The title must be ironic. Over images of bloodthirsty wolves prowling a shadowy forest, a female announcer gravely intones that “The [Wall Street] Journal reports Obama ‘air-dropped a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers’ into Alaska to dig dirt on Governor Palin.” Meanwhile, a banner over Obama’s grim visage claims that “the attacks” on Palin have been called  “completely false” and “misleading” by the nonpartisan researchers at FactCheck.org. “As Obama drops in the polls, he’ll try to destroy her,” concludes the announcer. “Obama’s ‘politics of hope’? Empty words.”

So what’s the problem? Where to begin. First of all, there’s no evidence the “Obama” sent anyone to Alaska to “dig dirt” on Palin. Originally published by conservative writer John Fund in a Wall Street Journal opinion article–not a “report,” as the ad alleges–the charge, which Fund attributes to unnamed “sources,” has been denied by both the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee. “I sent no lawyers, no investigators and exactly zero researchers to Alaska to research Sarah Palin,” said DNC research director Mike Gehrke; Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor added that the charge is “fiction,” “made up” and “absolutely, unequivocally false.” What’s more, the McCain campaign misquoted Fund, who actually wrote that “Democrats” (not “Obama,” as the ad claims) have dispatched a “mini-army” to Alaska “dig into [Palin’s] record and background”–not to “dig dirt.” As FactCheck.org said this afternoon, “Maybe the McCain-Palin campaign knows something we don’t about what’s in Palin’s record and background.”

Which brings us to the ad’s most insidious conflation. By flashing those quotes about the “completely false” and “misleading” attacks on Palin over an image of Obama’s face–as the announcer warns that “they’ve just begun,” no less–McCain is suggesting that FactCheck.org attributed the attacks to Obama himself. But as the organization noted earlier today, “there is no evidence that the Obama campaign is behind any of the wild accusations that we critiqued.” They continue: “there is no more basis for attributing these viral attacks to the Obama campaign than there is for blaming the McCain campaign for chain e-mail attacks falsely claiming that Obama is a Muslim, or a “racist,” or that he is proposing to tax water. The anti-Palin messages, like the anti-Obama messages, have every appearance of being home-grown.” Earlier this year, McCain spoke out against the Obama rumors; recently, Obama has denounced the Palin smears, as well. For Crystal City to suddenly imply that Obama is behind this stuff is completely disingenuous.

Obama to Palin: ‘Don’t Mock the Constitution’

But Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for more than a decade, said captured suspects deserve to file writs of habeus corpus.

Calling it “the foundation of Anglo-American law,” he said the principle “says very simply: If the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, ‘Why was I grabbed?’ And say, ‘Maybe you’ve got the wrong person.'”

The safeguard is essential, Obama continued, “because we don’t always have the right person.”

“We don’t always catch the right person,” he said. “We may think it’s Mohammed the terrorist, but it might be Mohammed the cab driver. You might think it’s Barack the bomb-thrower, but it might be Barack the guy running for president.”

Obama turned back to Palin’s comment, although he said he was not sure whether Palin or Rudy Giuliani said it.

“The reason that you have this principle is not to be soft on terrorism. It’s because that’s who we are. That’s what we’re protecting,” Obama said, his voice growing louder and the crowd rising to its feet to cheer. “Don’t mock the Constitution. Don’t make fun of it. Don’t suggest that it’s not American to abide by what the founding fathers set up. It’s worked pretty well for over 200 years.”

**This is what I don’t get about the GOPers….they say they are for the Constitution and our founding fathers, but yet are the first to undo the work that they did.  I don’t see many of them belonging to the ACLU……which it’s purpose to do DEFEND the Constitution and what our country was founded on.
McCain, Palin Stress Biography Over Issues

When John McCain’s campaign manager said last week that this presidential election “is not about issues,” it wasn’t a Freudian slip. It was an unvarnished preview of McCain’s new campaign plan.

In the past week, McCain – with new running mate Sarah Palin always close by his side – has transformed the Republican campaign narrative into what amounts to a running biography of this new political odd couple.

In McCain’s new stump speech and first post-convention ad, the impression his strategists hope to leave is unmistakable. McCain is the war hero. Palin is the Every­mom. And together, they will rattle Washington.

Considering the big challenges the country faces – two wars and a wobbly economy, for starters – the focus on personal narratives might strike some as jarringly superficial for the times.

There is also significant danger for a campaign that emphasizes the personal over policy: The allure of even the most compelling – or unorthodox – life story can fade, begging the question: Where’s the beef? For McCain, the answer comes largely in policy positions that mirror those of an unpopular president, and for Palin, her brief time as a public figure prompts many more questions than answers.  

Meanwhile, the McCain-Palin team will crow about riding into Washington with six-guns blazing to clean up a dirty town. But beyond clamping down on congressional spending – something Palin didn’t make a priority as governor of a state that is legendary for its take from the federal treasury – they offer precious few specifics of how they’ll do the deed or how their maverick personas would actually fix rising unemployment levels, energy dependence or hobbled education and health care systems. Still, the campaigning-by-biography plan seem to be working – for now. McCain and Palin are drawing bigger-than-ever crowds and leading in the polls, and even the Republican Party as a whole is seeing an uptick in popularity. 

***The following articles and just showing the lies behind the stump speeches.   They speak for themselves.
Palin: Government Can Fix Social Ills

During Palin’s recent convention speech she sharply criticized Senator Barack Obama for wanting to end Bush’s tax cuts. She pointed to her sister and husband who are new small business owners in Alaska, “How are they going to be any better off if taxes go up?”

But in fact, the way the hockey rink was built was by raising taxes. Palin funded the project by pushing a special referendum that raised the sales tax by 25 percent. City hall records show the referendum was passed by twenty votes.

One Wasilla resident who voted for the complex is Mike Edwards. He says he spends about an hour a day at the facility watching his son play. He says he’s glad government stepped in to build the new ice because privately run rinks are much more expensive, costing teams as much as $300 an hour to practice compared to $185 at the public rink.

CBS News obtained 86 pages of city council documents that show Palin sought to justify the tax increase to fund the sports complex in part because the private sector had not stepped in to fill the gap. She noted the strong support in the community as a reason to move ahead.

But her most striking argument for raising taxes is one you might not expect from a fiscal conservative. She writes that the rink offers an opportunity for government to stop a social ill like drug abuse or juvenile delinquency before it starts.

Setting The Record: Palin’s Earmarks

Palin’s record on earmarks is mixed. Compared to the previous governor, Palin’s earmarks are down 44 percent, but stills totals more than $450 million over two years.

By repeating the claim she said no thanks to the bridge, the implication is that she confronted a spendthrift Congress recklessly wasting money.

The record shows she wanted that bridge until the end and kept the money. 

Palin Billed State For Nights At Home

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a “per diem” allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd, has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.

Palin, who earns $125,000 a year, claimed and received $16,951 as her allowance, which officials say was permitted because her official “duty station” is Juneau, according to an analysis of her travel documents by The Washington Post.

Did Sarah Palin Try to Ban Library Books?

Palin has acknowledged she twice raised the issue in 1996 of how books could be removed from the shelves, but said it was only a “rhetorical question” and that she did not ask for any books to be banned.

Palin’s church at the time, the Assembly of God, had been pushing for the removal a book called “Pastor I Am Gay” from local bookstores, according to the book’s author Pastor Howard Bess, of the Church of the Covenant in nearby Palmer, Alaska.

“And she was one of them,” said Bess, “this whole thing of controlling information, censorship, that’s part of the scene,” said Bess.

Warned by the Court

Court records obtained by NEWSWEEK show that during the course of divorce hearings three years ago, Judge John Suddock heard testimony from an official of the Alaska State Troopers’ union about how Sarah Palin—then a private citizen—and members of her family, including her father and daughter, lodged up to a dozen complaints against Wooten with the state police. The union official told the judge that he had never before been asked to appear as a divorce-case witness, that the union believed family complaints against Wooten were “not job-related,” and that Wooten was being “harassed” by Palin and other family members.

Court documents show that Judge Suddock was disturbed by the alleged attacks by Palin and her family members on Wooten’s behavior and character. “Disparaging will not be tolerated—it is a form of child abuse,” the judge told a settlement hearing in October 2005, according to typed notes of the proceedings. The judge added: “Relatives cannot disparage either. If occurs [sic] the parent needs to set boundaries for their relatives.”

Been busy working since we got back from lunch today.  I got a bunch of things caught up that I ignored this weekend to get the house done.  Other then payroll and keeping an eye out on major things, I don’t do much work on the weekend anymore.  It is nice to be able to take a break.

Unfortunately, the Colts lost this weekend.  =(  The Saints won!  Purdue won, but it was against a bad division 2 team….sad.

I did replace a lot of our smaller wedding pictures (it have been almost 10yrs) with new prints.  It is nice to change it up.  =)

My arms are sore from the workout today. It was my last one with my trainer for a few weeks.  I need to make sure that I keep it up so not to lose what I’ve gained.  Never got to my walking this weekend, too busy getting our placed settled in…..so I’m not complaining.

GOP Insults Anger Community Organizers

(AP) Angry community organizers defended their work, and that of former organizer Barack Obama, as they fought back Thursday against a series of insulting remarks by speakers at the Republican National Convention.

Organizers described themselves as the antidote to big-money lobbyists who wield so much influence. They talked about helping powerless people join forces to demand better schools and safer streets, often by working through churches.

“If people in office were doing their jobs, perhaps we wouldn’t need community organizers,” said John Baumann, executive director of PICO National Network, whose name derives from “people improving communities through organizing.”

“I don’t like seeing the really hard work that goes on in really poor communities being demeaned by cheap politicians,” said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “Community organizing is as American as democracy. It believes that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.”

**Community organizers do what people in office can not and will not do!
Can You Say ‘Sexist’?

The Republican Party has undergone a surprising metamorphosis since Sarah Palin was chosen as its vice presidential candidate. In Palin I recognize a fellow traveler, a woman whose life would have been impossible just a few decades ago. If she had been born 30 years earlier, the PTA would likely have been her last stop, not her first. Her political ascendancy is a direct result of the women’s movement, which has changed the world utterly for women of all persuasions. It is therefore notable that Palin has found her home in a party, and in a wing of that party, that for many years has reviled, repelled and sought to roll back the very changes that led her to the Alaska Statehouse.

But expediency is an astonishing thing, and conservative Republicans have suddenly embraced the assertion that women can do it all, even those conservative Republicans who have made careers out of trashing that notion. James Dobson of Focus on the Family once had staffers on his hot line saying, “Dr. Dobson recommends that mothers of young children stay at home as much as possible.” He now applauds a woman who was back at work three days after her son, who has Down syndrome, was born.

Even to state that simple fact resulted in outrage among those at the convention, who screamed double standard. But the double standard was mainly theirs. The governor was aggressively marketed in terms of her maternity, yet questions about how she managed to mother five and lead the state were dismissed as sexist. The governor’s two years leading Alaska, which in terms of citizens served is the equivalent of being mayor of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., was said to be the linchpin of her appointment, but questions about her breadth of experience were dismissed as sexist. Her surrogates wanted the press to write about mooseburgers and ignore how the governor had once pursued the kind of earmarked federal funds she now insists are anathema to her. Conservatives have probably used the word “sexist” more in the past week than they have in the past 50 years.

This would all have been entertaining if it were not such rank hypocrisy. These are people who have inveighed against affirmative action, a version of which undoubtedly played a part in this selection. These are people who inveighed against personal attacks on their new nominee when the wingnuts of their own party elevated such attacks to a fine art by accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of fictitious misdeeds ranging from treason to murder. To try to suggest Sarah Palin might garner the Hillary Clinton vote, that one woman is just the same as another, that biology trumps ideology, is the ultimate evidence of true sexism, and I hope Senator Clinton will travel the country and say so.

**It is about time some one made this observations.  It has been totally ignored in the mainstream media and it drives me nuts.
ABOUT SARAH PALIN

Example From Letter 1 :

During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings, which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative.” During her six years as mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same six years, the amount of taxes collected by the city increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax, which even taxed food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though. Borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? Or a new library? No. $1 million for a park. $15 million-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex, which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the city didn’t even have clear title to. That was still in litigation seven years later — to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5 million for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 years without any borrowing.

**There are 3 other letters posted on Snopes.com a couple of them positive about her….

The Politics of the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’

That said, the most interesting thing about today’s give-and-take is not that Palin and McCain are misleading the public. In politics, that happens all the time. It’s that the Internet–and, through the Internet, the Obama campaign–is forcing major media outlets to repeatedly reject the Bridge to Nowhere deception. In the past, Time and NEWSWEEK and the Times and the Post would’ve run a thorough fact-check the first time the falsehood surfaced. But then they would’ve ignored subsequent repetitions. We’ve already covered that, they’d say. It’s old news. Meanwhile, the McCain camp would keep airing the same ads in swing states across the country–reaching millions of credulous voters who’d never read the original fact-checks. But now sites like TPM are (in their own words) forcing “the same news orgs that debunked the original Bridge to Nowhere falsehood” to “aggressively stay on McCain and hold him accountable every time he and his campaign repeat it.” That’s a certain kind of progress.

**Thankfully we have the internet to keep pushing these old news organizations not to let this lies keep getting played.

Rice Offers Less-Than-Hearty Palin Endorsement

ABC News’ Jonathan Karl Reports: In a weekend interview, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice passed up an opportunity to defend Sarah Palin from allegations that she does not have the foreign policy experience to be vice president.

In a less-than-hearty endorsement, Rice declined to say anything more positive about Palin than “she gave a terrific speech” and “she’s a governor of a state here in the United States” during her interview with Zain Verjee of CNN.

Asked point-blank if Palin has enough experience, Rice said, “These are decisions that Senator McCain has made. I have great confidence in him.”  Confidence in Palin?  Rice didn’t say.

**I think that is pretty damn revealing…..lol
Rice praises Biden as “true patriot”

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday praised Sen. Joe Biden, the newly named Democratic vice presidential candidate, as a statesman and a “true patriot.”

“I am not going to comment on the politics of it. I will just say that Sen. Biden is obviously a very fine statesman,” Rice told reporters as she flew to Israel for talks on Israeli-Palestinian peace. “He’s a true patriot.”

The warm words were unusual from Rice, who generally steers away from commenting on the U.S. presidential election pitting Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona against Democrat Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

**That must drive the GOP nuts……..lol
Rice Laments Lack of Black Diplomats

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today lamented the dearth of blacks serving as diplomats in the Foreign Service.

“I want to see a Foreign Service that looks as if black Americans are a part of this great country,” Rice told an assembly of professors and administrators during her keynote address to the Annual Conference of the White House Initiative on National Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Washington. “I have lamented that I can go into a meeting at the Department of State and, as a matter of fact, I can go into a whole day of meetings at the Department of State and actually rarely see somebody who looks like me. And that’s just not acceptable.”

**This does not surprise me.  To me it it is shameful that we don’t have more women and more people of color representing the US.  We are a variety of cultures and colors and we should be showing that to the world.  It would show that even with our flaws, that we try hard to live up to our ideals….which is what makes the US special.  We do try, it just takes time and sometimes a political movement to get there.