Of course, I’m talking about McCain’s pick.  I told one of my favorite dem’s about it, and you could clearly hear the disappointment and worry in their voice.  About the fact that McCain picked a woman and Obama did not pick Hillary.

But let’s be honest.  Those on the far left and even some single-issue moderate lefties would probably never vote for a pro-life president…well, unless he was Reagan and even then they would do it but not like it.  I don’t think McCain was too worried about the most radical pro-choice people out there when he made his pick.  Here are some reasons why I like Governor Palin:

1.  She knows how to fire a rifle and she’s not afraid to take the shot.

2.  She grew up in a union household and is married to a union worker – she knows what it’s like to live in a household where people work for a living and have all the normal worries that the rest of us do with regard to paying the bills.

3.  She’s a working mom who shares all the same concerns that other working moms do for their kids.

4.  Her oldest son is shipping off to Iraq next month.  She can identify with the silent burden military moms take on when their children are in harm’s way.

5.  She walks the walk.  She is pro-life and her beliefs were carried through when she chose to give birth to a mentally disabled baby last April…the choice was offered to end that life but her beliefs would not allow it.

6.  She got rid of corruption throughout her state’s government.

7.  She sold the learjet provided to her as governor on eBay and used that money to help fund Alaska’s budget.

8.  She said no to “The Road to Nowhere”…standing firm in her belief that the people’s money should be spent on the people and not on useless earmarks that only help the political careers of those that sponsor them (I think The One has racked up millions in ear marks during his short time in the senate…I’m just sayin’…).

9.  By the time The One was elected to the Senate, she already had five years of executive leadership experience under her belt.

10.  She has 13 years of executive experience in positions of increasing responsibility within her State (mayor of a small town where she carried through on all her election promises, duties as Chairman of Alaska’s Conservation Commission, ridding the state of corruption by Oil companies, and most recently as Alaska’s governor ).

11.  She makes decisions on a daily basis as governor.  She is also the commander in chief of Alaska’s national guard.  Senators don’t make decisions and they don’t handle budgets, unless they are on a spending committee and even then it’s all about the deal and not what the people who pay taxes really need or want-and those decisions still have to be ratified by a vote, for which they have to grant earmarks.  None of them are honest, at least none of them that go for earmarks, as far as I’m concerned.  All they do is try and persuade other senators that they should spend the people’s money on this project or that (side note – McCain has never asked for an earmark.  Ever.).

12.  She clearly is a very good public speaker.  She would represent America well.

13.  She’s not afraid to tell it like it is or stand up to corruption wherever she finds it.

14.  She does not come off as a very angry post-menapausal woman.  This is a good thing.

Of course, all of my reasons for liking her are reasons why pro-choice (hey, wait a minute – I’m pro-choice in a way because even though I would never do it it’s not my business to decide that for someone else and it would not decide my vote; oh, well…moving on), anti-gun, anti-war, pro-income re-distribution, vegetarian, compost-keeping, judgemental recycling, Prius-driving, guilt-ridden, very angry lefties will hate her.

But McCain did not make his choice to please them.  He made his choice to energize his base, which is exactly what he will do.  And also, some perhaps moderately liberal or independent voters who would like to see a woman achieve the veep position.

I can’t WAIT to see her go toe-to-toe with Biden.  I don’t think she’ll make or break McCain, but nevertheless I am happy with his choice and it certainly stole the news cycle from you-know-who.

P.S.  I wonder if those people that would like to see a woman in the white house realize that if they vote for McCain, he will probably only serve one term due to his age which means Palin would run in 2012.  If McCain wins, Hillary would likely run in 2012.  Which would lead to our nations’s first female president in 2012.  Baby steps, people.  Just think about it……

Yes, I’ve been watching as much of the DNC as I can stomach.  I always think it’s better to actually see first-hand what people are talking about vs. believing one side or the other about what was said.

The reason why I haven’t posted about any of it is my mother taught me if you have nothing good to say, say nothing at all.

I will say this.  I really do actually think that Hillary got robbed.  She clearly is more qualified, and even though I might not like her or agree with most of her positions, I would much rather have her running things than The One.

Here’s an article giving me seven more.  Wonderful….

The Boy picked up his preliminary schedule last week during orientation, and I couldn’t believe what was printed on the page.

Get this….HE HAS ONLY FOUR CLASSES PER SEMESTER! That’s right….the bell will ring for only four classes each semester in high school (each class is about an hour and a half, plus lunch). Which means…..his higher level math class? Doesn’t happen until second semester. P.E.? Only half of the second semester – the other half is Health. And the list goes on. It seems the only class he attends for the whole year is his Gifted English/Reading/World Geo combo.

Since when did they move to this college-esque type of schedule? What happened to having P.E. all year instead of just half of a semester? I remember having at least six classes all year, every year. And I only got out of P.E. because I was on the Varsity Pom-Pon squad. Hey…waving those poms around and doing all those routines is VERY hard work! Oh, shut up. It IS.

Geez…talk about college prep. And more pressure to do well since most classes only last for one semester….nowhere near enough time to make up for very many bad grades.

Textbook pick-up is tomorrow. School starts on Monday. And The Boy seems completely unphased by the prospect of attending his first day of high school.

I, however…am a nervous wreck. I think I need a drink.

Okay, so….keep in mind I had half a bottle of a very fine Argentinian Malbec tonight while watching the proceedings at Saddleback hosted by Ricky. I will paraphrase my impressions with this caveat.

On Abortion (At what point does a human life have rights – or something like that):

Obama: “Well, this is a very difficult issue and of course we want to do everything we can do decrease the number of abortions……..this is a difficult decision….) etc.

McCan: “At conception.”

On a time when they made a decision that went against their party:

Obama: “Well….it was when I worked with John McCain and others on campaign finance reform…I think neither party was happy with this..in fact I had some people whisper to me…’Where are we gonna eat? McDonald’s?’…..” Okay this was funny I have to admit.

McCain” “It was the time when some wanted to move a peace-keeping force into Beirut and I thought there was no way it would end well having a small number of American troops in that region…and it was hard to go against Ronald Reagan for whom I worked and deeply respected and also my party…and I voted against it….and then the Marine barracks was bombed and we lost over 100 brave soles…..”

On evil in the world:

Obma: “Yes there is evil in the world and we must confront it….it’s in all of us..it’s on the streets and it’s in the world….”

McCain: “We must defeat it….I will hunt Usama Bin Laden to the gates of hell and I will get him…..I know how to do it and I will.”

On Supreme Court Justices (which ones would you not have nominated and why):

Obama: Clarence Thomas. Scalia. And Roberts. He said something about how Thomas didn’t have the experience or knowledge necessary to be on the The Supreme Court.

McCain: Ginsburg. Stevens. Souter. Breyer. Because he thinks presidents should choose justices that follow the Consitution and do not legislate from the bench.

On the most gut-wrenching decision they’ve made in their lives:

Obama: The vote against going to war with Iraq.

McCain: The decision to not go home early from the prison in Vietman…first in, first out. That was the code and he stood by it. And…he was glad that when he made that decision he did not know the war would last another three years.

On three people that would pay key roles in advising their administrations:

Obama: Mom, Grandmother, Wife.  Verious senators.  Veaious points of view where his assumptions would be challenged…..etc.

McCain: General Petraeus, The founder of eBAY and one other guy theyr’e saying is an African-American and a civil rights leader (sorry…the buzz will not allow me to remember his name – I’m sure you can find links later).

On Merit Pay for teachers:

Obama: “Yes, I think merit pay is a good idea and we should work with teachers to be sure they agree with the parameters set down and it should not be decided on one test……”

McCain: “Yes to merit pay and we should work hard to find bad teachers another profession……yes to vouchers, yes to choice, yes to competition….everyone gets the opportunity for an education but what kind of education is that if we send them to a failing school?”

On adoptions and whether or not they would commit to a similar program that Bush has done for AIDS that contains emergency measures:

Obama: “Adoption is good…” okay, I confess I didn’t listen to much else about his answer because seriously…his answers were long and hard to understand.

McCain: “I strongly support adoption…my wife brought home a dying infant from Mother Theresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh which we adopted and she is now 17 and we love her dearly (or something like that)…”

Note: Neither one of them would commit to an emergency program that would address the 148 million orphans in the world.

On faith in their lives:

Obama: “……various phrases about Jesus being his savior, etc.”

McCain: “One time in Vietman…a guy came in and loosened my bonds for a few hours, hushing me so as not to warn the others…and another time on Christmas a guard came by while I had a few minutes outside my cell, drew a cross in the sand with his sandal, and for a moment we stood together, just two christians worshiping the lord…then he scrubbed out the cross and moved on…I will never forget that day or what that guard did, and Christianity is in every day of my life….”

On “What IS rich?”

Obama: Basically, he said $250,000.00.

McCain: He said he wants everyone to be rich and promised not to raise taxes on anyone and he does NOT believe in redistribution of wealth and then threw out an arbitrary number of five million, which I’m sure the left will have a field day with. But I did like the idea of no new taxes for anyone.

On what it would take for you decide to take American troops to war:

Um….neither one of them answered this. Except both of them said if American blood was spilled that would be a reason…and McCain talked about the situation in Georgia with experience and context (I know…I’m in the bag for McCain but what can I say? I’m “in the bag” for fighter pilots…hell, I married one).

Conclusions:

While I think Obama was smooth, if anyone bothered to look under the hood on his answers I think they would be as frustrated as I am in that I STILL don’t know what his experience really is or what he would do as president…except that he would go for a hard left and seek to redistribute as much of our nation’s wealth as possible to those who for some reason think they are entitled to the hard earnings of others.

McCain has a very strong moral compass. He is a war-hardened, decisive veteran who has made hard choices for the good of the country – not himself. He has gone against his party on many issues, and is not afraid to speak his mind and tell you who he is.

Seriously, why should I care that John Edwards had an affair and lied about it?  Because really….I don’t.  Care about that.  That’s his and his wife’s deal.  And they have to live with it.

However…I DO care about the fact that a story that clearly was pointing to actual facts in the matter was basically buried by the mainstream media until they just couldn’t ignore it anymore because party leaders were urging Edwards to admit the affair before the convention.  And so….Edwards did an interview with ABC admitting (supposedly) to all.

Fine.  Done.  It’s out there.  Now the dem’s can concentrate on getting “The One” elected.  I guess what bothers me about the whole thing is that when there were mere unsubstantiated rumors about McCain supposedly having an affair with some lobbyist…IT WAS ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES WITH “UNNAMED SOURCES” quoted in the article.  If they’d had a story, they would have named names.  Of course, the story was proved not to be true, but that aspect of the story got little to no coverage of the mainstream media.

I know this is probably going to be seen as more whining by someone on the right, but how much more of this stuff has to happen before those on the left get sick and tired of having their news censored in favor of one position or another?  The other day when Obama was making his energy speech, CNN covered the whole thing.  McCain’s immediate response?  They didn’t show it.  Instead they had some human interest story.  When I talk to my friends and family that are for Obama about anything negative about Obama (like HE was the one that voted for that bill giving big oil huge tax breaks and McCain voted against it) – the standard response is “Oh, I didn’t hear that.”

Of COURSE they didn’t hear it.  They truly believe news outlets that cover stories on the right are biased and cannot be believed.  They have been told this by their news outlets on the left.

And so, all the mainstream media sources remain confident in their non-coverage of anything negative on Obama and anything positive on McCain.

It’s my hope that people who actually plan to vote will look to other sources or the candidate sites for information so they can make an informed decision….even if it is the same decision.

And that they remember that a vote for a dem is a vote for Nancy Pelosi, who adjourned Congress without a vote one way or the other on drilling so she could go promote her new book.  Because really, what could be more important than that?

I have to say I kind of agree with that guy who said we are a nation of whiners.  And we have a good life here near Dallas…but still….

WTF?!  110 friggin’ degrees?!  Isn’t that a LITTLE excessive?  Yeah…um….the A/C is at full blast 24/7 (it is, after all, still 100 here and it’s 9:15 P.M.) and the house is at a relatively comfortable 78.

So really, I don’t have anything to whine about considering that a 20 degree differential between outside and inside is pretty reasonable.

So…am I frustrated that I can’t even bitch that I am sitting in a “comfortable” 78 degree house while it is 100 degrees outside?  Hell, yes!

But I will not complain, I will not complain, I will not complain, I will not complain.

Because The Spouse went into the 125 degree attic yesterday and hooked up our new attic fan and mowed the lawn during a pollution alert today in 106 degree heat.

So I will paste a smile on my face, drink some wine (which makes me sweat but what’s the difference at this point) and try not to complain because there’s really nothing anyone can do.

I’m sure all my relatives up north are laughing at this.  But I will be the one laughing in September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May, and (probably) June.

Damn, it’s hot!

So…what’s the temperature where you are?  If it’s double digits, I am VERY jealous.  And also, if it is double digits, you suck.