BlogHer - CONVENTIONS - Comments

Give Me a B!

judithL — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 11:36:45 -0500

For bullying (were you thinking of another B word? Come on, you know you were.)

The observation that her behavior doesn't fit with the party-line of family values is spot on. I too was unimpressed by her smug, "better than the rest of you" impression of herself. The facts are starting to leak out, and if verified, will show that she does have experience after all, in using the power of her office to eliminate people who disagree with or displease her. I know she was a great basketball star, but she sounds more like a spoiled, misdirected cheerleader to me.

Perhaps she should go back to that university where she studied journalism and political science and brush up on a few ethics courses. I studied art, but that doesn't mean my paintings should be hanging in the MOMA - or even stacked in the 50% off bin at the local gallery.

Remember, life is a journey, not a destination. Here's to Living Well! www.themadgoddess.blogspot.com & www.lwbms.blogspot.com

Sarah Palin comes across

IVF Friends — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 04:28:37 -0500

Sarah Palin comes across like a horrible woman to me but I keep hearing
on the news over and over that Sarah Palin gave an “AMAZING/GREAT”
speech as she accepted her nomination as the VP for the Republican
Party; I personally felt it to be just insulting and nothing else.

I could not believe all the hate, sarcasm and divisiveness she
delivered during her speech. Her mocking and bullying really got to me,
and as a mom of a 7 year old I could not believe that she was doing it
all in front of her kids and was being applauded for it. The chanting
of the delegates was even scarier. I teach my child that behavior like
this is not accepted and see a mom bullying on national television for
her kids to see and learn. Are those the values that the republicans
are so proud of (we definitely saw a lot of that attitude from the
republicans this week). Is that why Sarah Palin is now so popular with
them? What a scary way to energize anyone.

Why is the media so

IVF Friends — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 04:03:01 -0500

Why is the media so infatuated with Sarah Palin? She comes across
like a horrible woman to me but I keep hearing on the news over and
over that Sarah Palin gave an “AMAZING/GREAT” speech as she accepted
her
nomination as the VP for the Republican Party; I personally felt it to
be just insulting and nothing else.

digging deeper

US CITIZEN — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 03:07:14 -0500

Well...I am no supporter of either party, as I had said enough times already. Never had I said that either one was good for the job, as well.But if we are going to dig deeper here, then I am willing.

Sarah Palin may not be perfect, as it seems many on this blog expect her to be.

However, when Barack does something about the deplorable state of the 13th District, his OWN community, then I might consider that he has something to offer the REST of this nation. Until then....let's take a look at the facts again, shall we?

This is what you quoted.....

Obama And Lugar Passed Law Boosting U.S. Efforts To Keep WMDs And Other Dangerous Weapons Out Of The Hands Of Terrorists.
Republican Sen. Dick Lugar (IN) today said an Obama campaign ad which
features him is ‘accurate.’ The ad makes the point the Obama previously
‘reached out’ to Lugar to ‘help lock down loose nuclear weapons.’ This law was passed by Congress, not Lugar & Obama. An Enhancement to the current law concerning this matter. Furthermore, this is expected of him to support, or anyone else who is President of this country. It was in his best interest to do so in this. I believe in giving credit where credit is due.

This is what you quoted.....

Obama Proposals Providing Improvements In Health Care For
Recovering Soldiers Were Passed Into Law, Including Requirements For
Post-Deployment Mental Health Screenings And National Study On The
Needs Of Iraq War Veterans. H.R. 976, passed by the Senate on August 2, 2007.

The.....H.R. 976 is an act to amend title XXI of the Social Security Act to extend and improve the Children's Health Insurance Program, and not the enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act
for Fiscal Year 2008. which is H.R. 4986, the law you are actually speaking of. The only national law in Obama's ad is the one that "extended health
care for wounded troops," and it's dubious whether he can claim full
responsibility for that one. H.R. 4986, which became public law 110-181
in 2008, includes provisions from several Obama-sponsored bills. His
ideas made it into law, but Obama was not a sponsor OR cosponsor of
H.R. 4986 itself.

This is what you said;

Obama Helped Pass The 2007 Ethics Reform Law, Which Curbed The
Influence Of Lobbyists And Was Described As The “Most Sweeping Since
Watergate.” A bill to provide greater transparency in the legislative process is necessary. But we, by far, have BIGGER fish to fry at this current time.

In order to establish his bona fides as a politician who cares about
working families, Obama cites his success with three relevant bills.
But he doesn't mention that two of the three pieces of legislation were
actually passed by the Illinois Senate, not the U.S. Senate. Obama's
campaign tells us that when he says, "I passed laws moving people from
welfare to work," he is referring to the bill that created Illinois’
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in 1997. Obama was one
of five original sponsors of the bill, which set limits on public
assistance and required welfare recipients to outline plans for moving
into the workforce. The law that "cut taxes for working families" is a
2000 bill, on which Obama and 35 others were later added as cosponsors,
instituting an earned income-tax credit for the state. Both bills
affected only Illinois residents.

Chicago Sales Tax

10.25% Leads the Nation (ouch)

Lest we forget?....

CHICAGO (CBS) ― An estimated 123 people were shot and killed over
the summer. That’s nearly double the number of soldiers killed in Iraq
over the same time period.

In May, cbs2chicago.com began tracking city shootings and
posting them on Google maps. Information compiled from our reporters,
wire service reports and the Chicago Police Major Incidents log
indicated that 123 people were shot and killed throughout the city
between the start of Memorial Day weekend on May 26, and the end of
Labor Day on Sept. 1.

According to the Defense Department, 65 soldiers were killed in
combat in Iraq. About the same number were killed in Afghanistan over
that same period.

In the same time period, an estimated 245 people were shot and wounded in the city.

The 13th district, Obama’s district, is a sad place…a place that has
stayed the same for decades…..a place that money-bribed politicians
keep down, for their own benefit…..

The 13th disctrict, is unfortunately known for out of control gang
violence, drug warfare, school violence, hate churches, hate mosques,
Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, corrupt
alderman, and notorious slumlords……not to mention total urban decay.

If you start in Chicago's downtown Loop area, and drive south on the
Bishop Ford Expressway, you'll come to the 130th Street Exit amid an
almost surreal landscape. To the left, there is the massive Continental
Grain elevator complex, looming like a cluster of skyscrapers, with a
rusting tanker moored nearby in the Calumet River. Not far away are a
number of rotting, shut-down businesses. Farther south, there is the
Waste Management CID Landfill, a vast, and growing, mountain of
garbage. And to the right, there is the Calumet Water Reclamation
Plant, better known as the sludge plant, treating sewage from all
around the region. And in the middle of it all is Altgeld Gardens, a
sprawling brick low-rise housing project built in the 1940s in what is
probably the least people-friendly location one could ever imagine.

Chicago: The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense
neighbourhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state
senator, hold 504 apartments subsidised by the federal government for
people who can’t afford to live anywhere else.

About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by
unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper
through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into
kitchen sinks.

Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader
failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and
manage affordable housing an approach strongly backed by Obama as the
best replacement for public housing.

As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee
coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for
developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal
subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a
promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give
developers an estimated $500 million (Dh1.84 billion) a year.

But thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with
local, state, and federal subsidies including several hundred in
Obama’s former district deteriorated so completely that they were no
longer habitable.

Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and
managed by Obama’s close friends and political supporters. Those people
profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama’s constituents
suffered.

One of those
contributors, Cecil Butler, controlled Lawndale Restoration, the
largest subsidized complex in Chicago, which was seized by the
government in 2006 after city inspectors found more than 1,800 code
violations.

Some of the residents of Grove Parc say they are angry that Obama
did not notice their plight. The development straddles the boundary of
Obama’s state senate district. Many of the tenants have been his
constituents for more than a decade.

Obama’s campaign affirmed the candidate’s support of public-private
partnerships as an alternative to public housing, but did not respond
to questions about whether Obama was aware of the problems with
buildings in his district during his time as a state senator, nor did
it comment on the roles played by people connected to the senator.

Campaign finance records show that six prominent developers -
including Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko - collectively contributed more
than $175,000 to Obama's campaigns over the last decade and raised
hundreds of thousands more from other donors. Rezko alone raised at
least $200,000, by Obama's own accounting.

Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign
and a member of his finance committee. Jarrett is the chief executive
of Habitat Co, which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this
winter and co-managed an even larger subsidised complex in Chicago that
was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors
found widespread problems.

Allison Davis, a major fund-raiser for Obama’s US Senate campaign
and a former lead partner at Obama’s former law firm. Davis, a
developer, was involved in the creation of Grove Parc and has used
subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,500 units in Chicago, including a
North Side building cited by city inspectors last year after chronic
plumbing failures resulted in raw sewage spilling into several
apartments.

Antoin “Tony” Rezko, perhaps the most important fund-raiser for
Obama’s early political campaigns and a friend who helped the Obamas
buy a home in 2005. Rezko’s company used subsidies to rehabilitate more
than 1,000 apartments, mostly in and around Obama’s district, then
refused to manage the units, leaving the buildings to decay until many
no longer were habitable.

Why is Obama offering his three years of work as a “community
organizer” during 1985 to 1988 as an example of his “experience,” when
he has much more relevant, recent and more substantial experience on
his resume; his time as the President of Harvard Law Review, his twelve
years as a law professor at the University of Chicago, then as an
Illinois State Senator and, finally, his most recent, relevant,
high-powered experience, his almost three years as the Senator from
Illinois?

What about the details of Obama’s meteoric rise through the
extraordinarily corrupt world of Chicago machine politics to become a
State Senator? Surely this is an impressive accomplishment worthy of
note? Yet, of this, we hear not a word, because to explore this part of
the narrative--were it included-- would turn up all sorts of unsavory
things and people,like Tony Rezko, the Obama’s good friends, “ex-PLO
Operative” and radical academic Rashid Khalidi and his wife Mona,
Edward Said and--surprise, surprise--Bill Ayers again and the evidence
of the effects of the wealth, connections and influence of the Ayers
family in facilitating and fueling Obama’s career.

To scrutinize closely any one of Obama’s “accomplishments” is to
discover that they are mostly illusory, and this same scrutiny also
reveals Obama’s connections with various far left ideologies, figures
and organizations. To give such close up scrutiny to the whole
narrative of Obama’s life and accomplishments, is to discover a tissue
of half-truths, holes in the “narrative,” dubious associations and
generally little real accomplishment.

Closely examine his time as a “community organizer” and you discover
that Obama “organized” poor black residents of South Side Chicago using
the ruthless, amoral tactics of radical agitator Saul Alinsky, author
of “Rules for Radicals”: as an organizer Obama “rubbed raw the wounds
of discontent” and it was during this period of time that Obama began
his close, twenty year connection with the Reverend Jeremiah “God Damn
America” Wright, Trinity United Church of Christ and it’s Black
Liberation Theology. If Obama did so much good, where is the parade of
people coming forward to say “Obama got me a better place to live” or
“because of Obama I went to school or got a job.” If the Obama camp had
them, you know they would parade them in front of the cameras, but the
Obama camp has produced no such testimonials and a recent article says
the housing projects where Obama “organized” are now boarded up and
abandoned.

Why, does this not speak VOLUMES to many in here?

Look at Obama’s more recent “executive experience” during his four
years as Director of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, that was supposed
to revitalize Chicago’s abysmal public school system—a much more high
powered and very relevant “executive experience” and one never, ever
mentioned by the Obama camp—and you discover that the $110 million
dollar Annenberg Challenge of Chicago Obama administered was not lnly a
total failure, but also, that many of the grants went to far left
organizations that taught things like Black identity politics instead
of to projects focused on increasing educational achievement and, that,
most revealingly, Obama spent his four years of work working alongside
Challenge founder, unrepentant Weatherman and ex-urban terrorist and
radical educational theorist Bill Ayers, a man Obama told Americans
viewing one of his debates with Hillary that he didn’t really know
because Ayers was “just a man who lives in my neighborhood...who I
don’t share ideas with on a regular basis.” I guess that’s why Obama
& Co. never mentions this particular “executive experience” in the
public debate.

Examine closely all the other accomplishments that Obama has on his
resume, but never goes into great detail about, and you discover that,
as President of the Harvard Law Review, Obama wrote but one short
unsigned law review “note” in his entire time as President; that in his
twelve years as a law professor at the University of Chicago, Obama
never authored one single publication (and never received tenure) in
those twelve years; that in his years as an Illinois State Senator,
Obama voted “present” 130 times, but thought it important enough to
infamously vote against a bill that would have mandated the provision
of life support measures to babies born alive after botched abortions,
babies that were often left uncared for, alone--sometimes dumped in a
hospital or clinic closet to muffle their cries--to die; survey Obama’s
time as a Senator and you discover that, as chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations subcommittee on Europe, which has oversight over NATO
and the war in Afghanistan, Obama never held even one single hearing on
anything--much less Afghanistan--in three years (I guess he was too
busy campaigning) and that only one bill Obama proposed in those three
years ever became law and that was a minor bill that dealt with the
Republic of the Congo.

He may have "authored" many, but how many he has gotten passed, thus far, is few. Nor am I stating that he has NO recored of acheivement. It's just not one of Presidential Politics.

Obama supports Infanticide, yet introduces a bill to amend the Public Health Service Act to enhance public health
activities related to stillbirth and sudden unexpected infant death. S. 3142 Introduced June 17, 2008. So...what....one doesn't have any worth until they are born? This alone, is enough of a reason not to support him. Geez oh pete.

They were coming out alive. Born alive. Babies. Vulnerable human
beings Obama, in his detached pomposity, might otherwise include among
“the least of my brothers.”

But of course, an abortion extremist can’t
very well be invoking Saint Matthew, can he? So, for Obama, the
shunning of these least of our brothers and sisters — millions of them
— is somehow not among America’s greatest moral failings.

Infanticide is a bracing word. But in this context, it’s
the only word that fits. Obama heard the testimony of a nurse, Jill
Stanek. She recounted how she’d spent 45 minutes holding a living baby
left to die. The child had lacked the good
grace to expire as planned in an induced-labor abortion — one in which
an abortionist artificially induces labor with the expectation that the
underdeveloped “fetus, or child — however you want to describe it” will
not survive the delivery.

Stanek
encountered another nurse carrying the child to a “soiled utility room”
where it would be left to die. It wasn’t that unusual. The
induced-labor method was used for late-term abortions. Many of the
babies were strong enough to survive the delivery. At least for a time.
So something had to be done with them. They
couldn’t be left out in the open, struggling in the presence of fellow
human beings. After all, those fellow human beings — health-care providers
— would then be forced to confront the inconvenient question of why
they were standing idly by. That would hold a mirror up to the whole
grisly business. And better yet, to know this to be so, I am a former Operating Room nurse.

Anyway, better the utility room. Alone, out of sight and out of mind. Next case.

Stanek’s
account enraged the public and shamed into silence most of the
country’s staunchest pro-abortion activists. Most, not all. Not Barack
Obama.

The shocking extremism of that position — giving infanticide the nod
over compassion and life — is profoundly embarrassing to him now. So he
has lied about what he did. He has offered various conflicting
explanations, ranging from the assertion that he didn’t oppose the
anti-infanticide legislation (he did), to the assertion that he opposed
it because it didn’t contain a superfluous clause reaffirming abortion
rights (it did), to the assertion that it was unnecessary because
Illinois law already protected the children of botched abortions (it
didn’t — and even if it arguably did, why oppose a clarification?).

What Obama hasn’t offered, however, is the rationalization he vigorously posited during the 2002 Illinois senate debate.

When it got down to brass tacks, Barack Obama argued that protecting
abortion doctors from legal liability was more important than
protecting living infants from death.

Don’t take my word for it. There’s a transcript of a state senate
debate, which took place on April 4, 2002.
(the pertinent section runs from pages 31 to 34). After being recognized, Obama
challenged the Born-Alive bill’s sponsor as follows:

OBAMA:
Yeah. Just along the same lines. Obviously, this is an issue that we’ve
debated extensively both in committee an on the floor so I — you know,
I don’t want to belabor it. But I did want to point out, as I
understood it, during the course of the discussion in committee, one of
the things that we were concerned about, or at least I expressed some
concern about, was what impact this would have with respect to the
relationship between the doctor and the patient and what liabilities the doctor might have in this situation. So, can you just describe for me, under this legislation, what’s going to be required for a doctor to meet the requirements you’ve set forth?

SENATOR O’MALLEY: First of all, there is established, under this
legislation, that a child born under such circumstances would receive
all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, and
that’s as defined, of course, by the … practice of medicine in the
community where this would occur. It also requires, in two instances,
that … an attending physician be brought in to assist and advise with
respect to the issue of viability and, in particular, where … there’s a
suspicion on behalf of the physician that the child … may be [viable,]
… the attending physician would make that determination as to whether
that would be the case…. The other one is where the child is actually
born alive … in which case, then, the physician would call as soon as
practically possible for a second physician to come in and determine
the viability.

SENATOR OBAMA: So — and again, I’m — I’m not
going to prolong this, but I just want to be clear because I think this
was the source of the objections of the Medical Society. As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child — however way you want to describe it — is now outside the mother’s womb and the
doctor continues to think that it’s nonviable but there’s, let’s say,
movement or some indication that, in fact, they’re not just coming out
limp and dead, that, in fact, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved. Is that correct?

SENATOR
O’MALLEY: In the first instance, obviously the physician that is
performing the procedure would make the determination. The second
situation is where the child actually is born and is alive, and then
there’s an assessment — an independent assessment of viability by …
another physician at the soonest practical … time.

SENATOR
OBAMA: Let me just go to the bill, very quickly. Essentially, I think
as — as this emerged during debate and during committee, the only
plausible rationale, to my mind, for this legislation would be if you
had a suspicion that a doctor, the attending physician, who has made an assessment that this is a nonviable fetus
and that, let’s say for the purpose of the mother’s health, is being —
that — that — labor is being induced, that that physician (a) is going
to make the wrong assessment and (b) if the physician discovered, after
the labor had been induced, that, in fact, he made an error, or she
made an error, and, in fact, that this was not a nonviable fetus
but, in fact, a live child, that that physician, of his own accord or
her own accord, would not try to exercise the sort of medical measures
and practices that would be involved in saving that child. Now, it — if you think there are possibilities that doctors would not do that, then maybe this bill makes sense, but I — I suspect and my impression is, is that the Medical Society suspects as well that doctors feel that they would be under that obligation,
that they would already be making these determinations and that,
essentially, adding a — an additional doctor who then has to be called
in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.
Now, if that’s the case — and — and I know that some of us feel very
strongly one way or another on that issue — that’s fine, but I think it’s important to understand that this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births.
Because if these are children who are being born alive, I, at least,
have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure
that they’re looked after.

This is staggering. As Obama spoke these words, he well knew that children were being born alive but precisely not looked after by the abortion doctors whose water the senator was carrying. As Stanek put it, as many as one in five — twenty percent — were left to die. That was what prompted the legislation in the first place.

Through Obama’s radical prism, everything “is about abortion and not
live births.” But in reality, this had nothing to do with “burden[ing]
the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor
and perform an abortion.” It was about the legal and moral
responsibilities of doctors and nurses in circumstances where, despite
that decision, a living human being was delivered.

Obama
wasn’t worried about “the least of my brothers,” the child. He
agitated, instead, over “what liabilities the doctor might have in this
situation.” And what kind of doctor? A charlatan who would somehow “continue to think that it’s nonviable” notwithstanding that “there’s, let’s say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they’re not just coming out limp and dead.”

Given the choice between the charlatan and “that
fetus, or child — however you want to describe it,” Barack Obama went
with the charlatan. The baby would end up limp and dead, whether in the
operating room or the utility closet. It was, Obama insisted, about
abortion, not live births. — Do we just forget that he believes in this? Or that he even said it?

Well..that, is enough for now.

PEACE & LOVE TO ALL

This provides some context

miteegirl — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 23:25:18 -0500

This provides some context on Sarah Palin and her background that I think is extremely relevant. A personal letter from an Alaska Resident who has known Palin since 1992:

Fascinating read.

The writer is a homemaker and education advocate in Wasilla, Alaska. Late last week, Anne Kilkenny penned an e-mail for her friends about vice presidential
candidate Sarah Palin, whom she personally knows, that has since
circulated across comment forums and blogs nationwide. Here is her e-mail in its entirety, posted with her permission.

Here's a sample:

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 more than 33 percent. During those same six years, the amount of taxes collected by the city increased by 38 percent. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax, which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefitted large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

Request to seal divorce files denied?

forliving — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:21:51 -0500

According to Reddit.com and this is from their website:

1344

Interesting. The business partner that the National Enquirer alleges that Palin had an affair with? He filed an emergency request to seal his own divorce records on Wednesday. It was denied.

Does anyone have any thought on this? If you go the site they even show the court records from the Alaska Government website http://www.courtrecords.alaska.gov/pa/pa.urd/pamw2000.docket_lst?68762762

There is always something surprising about this woman coming out each day, too much uncertainty and suspicion around her.

Well, maybe she'll donate

miteegirl — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:17:06 -0500

Well, maybe she'll donate that outfit tomorrow and she'll be set on donations for another two years!

Or, you know, she could put her money where her mouth is since I keep hearing that if people were taxed less and had more disposable income that they would give to social causes more.

I don't think Cindy is proof of that.

I suspect many people who make that argument aren't proof of that either.

I tried to give her benefit of the doubt. Ah, well.

Sorry ...

PunditMom — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:12:28 -0500

...that's just not enough given hoe many hundreds of millions they are worth. They need to walk the walk.

Be fair to Cindy McCain,

miteegirl — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:05:30 -0500

Be fair to Cindy McCain, now.

She and John gave an estimated $340,000 to charity between 2006 and 2007. That's a lot.

It's less than 1% of their estimated net worth and it was to the John and Cindy McCain Foundation, but still. You know.

Thanks PunditMom

Jill — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:02:54 -0500

Nice post - I support your thoughts. :)

Jill
Writes Like She Talks

Ah yes, which brings me

miteegirl — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:51:55 -0500

Ah yes, which brings me to...why is the McCain campaign scared to let Palin talk to the media?

If she can't handle herself in front of mere journalists, she has no hope in hell against terrorists.

Lara-- No problem. You're

miteegirl — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:50:23 -0500

Lara--

No problem. You're welcome.

And, I just wanted to see this again.

John Bouman, president of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, said Obama's work helped make the program more consumer-friendly. He also said Obama was often willing to give up credit for the legislation if that helped win Republican support.

"It tells you something that as a relatively junior member in the minority party, he was an important negotiator," Bouman said.

-----------------------

Why did I think that this was worth repeating?

Because I want to point out to our sisters in support of McCalin/Palin that Obama does not have a "messiah complex". You try to paint him as egotistical and smug, when he is anything but. He has let the Left and the Right and the media dig into his record and grill him on the issues. (Most recently O'Reilly.) He has invited citizens in his campaign to give him ideas and feedback and -surprise!- he implments it. He doesn't stoop to petty nastiness and he gives credit where credit is due to others who have done great work.

The Obama supporters have projected that onto him.

Let me tell you the Webster's dictionary defintion of "messiah". It means "any expected deliverer."

We see Obama as someone who will deliver us from 8 long, painful years of Republicans creating a mess of our economy, our communities, our reputation in the world, and our Executive Branch of government.

So, do YOU want to call him the Democratic messiah? Or the American messiah?

Yeah. You're right. He will be. Bring it on.

I must say that I'm

miteegirl — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:47:17 -0500

I must say that I'm surprised that this is the ONLY post about McCain to be posted since yesterday at 1 pm, yet we continue to hear more about motherhood and Palin. I was under the impression from yesterday that the McCain/Palin supporters were eager to talk about the issues instead of the motherhood thing.

But haven't heard a word or read a thing. So, when are we going to do this?

Anyone from the McCain/Palin camp want to weigh in on McCain's speech?

Anyone from the McCain/Palin camp want to debate issues?

Thanks, SJ!

Kim Pearson — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:42:28 -0500

It's SO important to keep track of this story!

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

MMarquit - So True About Boys

traceesioux — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:34:25 -0500

Everything I say about how girls will interpret negative, objectifying, name-calling, comments about Sarah Palin goes double for boys.

Please, we've got to teach boys that it's okay for women to hold power, for women to participate, for women to be criticized for politics and not appearance, ideas and not clothes, etc.

This moment, and our reaction to it, will have a huge impact in shaping the gender roles and ideas about gender roles for our children's generation.

Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me

Blog Fabulous