A little bit more about Gov. Palin

I've had a few conversations with some people since it was apparent that Gov. Palin would be McCain's VP nominee.  Some of the main points that have been made...

- This is clearly an attempt to appeal to women who are mad that Hillary did not get the nomination.  No one knows how effective this will be, but there are surely some women out there that really like the idea of a woman being the next in line for president should something happen to the (really old dude) McCain.

- She doesn't have much experience, but she is the only one on either ticket with executive-level political experience.  All of the others have only served in statehouses and\or the Senate.  So it can said (and has been) that she has more experience than any of the folks on the tickets.  Also, her lack of experience and the fact that she is a hunter, mother of five, etc, etc makes her seem like a "normal" American.  She's not rich (I assume - at the very least she's not near as wealthy as the other candidates).  She's not a lifetime politician.  When is the last time we had anyone that we could really relate to as president or vice-president?  This could play in her favor also.

- This pick is very risky for McCain.  Even though the first point above is valid, asking some men to vote for a woman is gonna be a tough sell.  There are a lot of people that don't think women are qualified to handle the stresses of the oval office.

 

As I said earlier, I think it's a pretty good pick for McCain even with the risks.  The strategy here is clear.  With all indications of this being a really close election, she could have a pretty big impact.  Should be interesting...

Sarah Palin is RIGHT!

Back in February, I posted this entry about my predictions for the outcome of the election.  On the VP picks for each candidate, I said this about McCain:

McCain's VP will either be some old, crusty, white dude that he's been saying support him (like Jack Kemp) so that he can use the "experience" mantra to get support.  Or it will be some young, charismatic, white dude so that he can show that he's "willing to listen to new ideas".  And by "new" I mean "conservative".  He'll probably try to get someone that is a far right conservative, but I'm not sure if they will accept.  Don't be surprised if Mike Huckabee ends up being his VP in an attempt to woo Christians to vote.  It won't work.

And this about Obama:

I don't see it being Hillary or John Edwards.  Hillary would never accept and Obama would never offer after the way she and Bill have and will continue to treat him.  John Edwards was a disaster of a VP nominee in 2004.  Obama is too smart to try that again.  I figure he'll go for an older white dude to try to help with the race issue that he will continue to deal with, and with the 'inexperience" issue.  I don't expect his ticket to be a very liberal ticket.  His ticket will be fairly middle-of-the-road and will be full of energy and charisma.

So I guess I proved with Obama's pick that I kinda knew what I was talking about, eh?  :)

And with McCain I was kinda right.  I said he'd pick some young conservative dude.  Well, I was surely wrong about the "dude" part.  :)  But she is definitely young and definitely conservative.

In case you haven't heard, McCain named Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his VP choice.  Mrs. Palin has been gaining quite a bit of notoriety over the last few years in Alaska, and for all the RIGHT reasons!

For some history on her, check her wikipedia page.  Also, check this blog entry from some site I've never heard of about why McCain should choose her.  A few that I like:

REASON #9:  PALIN PUTS PRINCIPLE AND THE PEOPLE FIRST
After her initial, unsuccessful, run against him for the Governor’s office, former Alaska Governor Murkowski appointed Palin Ethics Commissioner of Alaska’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.  If Murkowski figured this appointment would pressure Palin into overlooking misbehavior by her fellow Republicans, he figured wrong.  Within a year, Palin resigned in a very public protest over the ethics displayed by Alaska’s Republican leadership, filing a formal complaint against Randy Ruedrich, who was not only a fellow Oil and Gas Commissioner, but also the chairman of Alaska’s Republican party.

If Senator McCain wants a running mate willing to be a maverick to Party, but never to Principle, he need look no further than Sarah Palin.

...

REASON #7:  PALIN IS A REFORM GOVERNOR WITH BIPARTISAN APPEAL
Palin doesn’t just criticize pork-barrel spending – she slashes it.  A few days after she assumed office as Governor, she put the Westwind II jet her predecessor had purchased up for sale, on eBay.  The jet eventually sold, in 2007, for $2.7 million, slightly above its 2005 purchase price. Palin canceled roads and construction projects designed to benefit friends of the prior administration.

REASON #6:  PALIN IS A FEMININE FEMINIST, WITH HOMETOWN, NOT HOLLYWOOD, VALUES
1960s feminists regarded men as oppressors, and considered marriage a state akin to slavery or rape. They struggled to convince each other, and often themselves, that “a woman needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle.” They treated with contempt women who married, had children, or violated their strict dress code (no heels, no makeup, no dresses, no color that mud doesn’t come in).

Palin’s is a feminism of a different, newer sort – call it ‘Feminism 2.0’ – a feminism that is not hostile to men, and that respects and honors women who work hard to balance a traditional home life with professional ambitions. Palin works hard to achieve such a balance:  three days after giving birth to her fifth child, for example, she conducted a meeting concerning a proposed natural gas pipeline.

Palin met her husband, Alaska’s First Gentleman Todd Palin, at Wasilla High School, where she was point guard for her basketball team, the year they won the championship.  A feminist who also enjoys being feminine, she ran for, and won, the “Miss Wasilla” beauty pageant, a race in which she also won “Miss Congeniality,” an award unlikely to be awarded to many feminists of earlier vintage.  She is, similarly, a member of Feminists for Life, an organization whose mission would have been inconceivable twenty years ago.

REASON #5:  PALIN IS UNAPOLOGETICALLY PRO-LIFE
As the mother of five children, ranging in age from 19 years to 4 months, Palin brings a kind of authority to her pro-life stance that will complement well Senator McCain’s pro-life position.

Palin has also risen courageously to the challenge of having a child diagnosed with Down Syndrome.  Her commitment to the sanctity and value of every human life helps highlight concerns regarding Obama’s position on late-term (actually, post-natal) abortion.

REASON #4:  PALIN IS COMFORTABLE WITH AND LOVED BY BLUE-COLLAR VOTERS
Though Joe Biden talks a great deal about his blue collar roots (and about pretty much every else), any claim he may have to being just one of the people fell away years ago. Biden’s been a Beltway insider since Nixon was President, having been first elected to office in 1972.

Palin, on the other hand, is blue collar to the core.  A life member of the NRA, she hunts and fishes, and the man she loves is an oil rig worker and commercial fisherman, who races snowmobiles for fun.

So I have to give McCain a bit of credit here.  He seems to have really chosen the best nominee.

(An aside - A lot of folks don't think the VP pick is all that important.  I really couldn't disagree more.  We need to remember that they are the president of the Senate, the next in line should something happen to the president, and that they really can have a big impact on the decisions the president makes.  So someone like Palin who seems to really stand by her convictions could be a major contributor to McCain's policy.)

I kinda wish the ticket could be reversed.  :)

Since everything is in full swing now as far as the presidential campaign goes, I'd like to start a series on characteristics\policy positions that I (and all conservatives IMO) should look for in a candidate for president.  I've made it clear that I don't think there is any real difference between the two candidates, and I'll have a really hard time voting for either of them.  But, do either have enough good characteristics to make them a "safe" candidate to put into the White House?  That's what I want to explore and I invite you along for the journey.  More soon...

Pat Buchanan is RIGHT...Again!

Wow, this is going to go down as one of my all-time favorites from Mr. Buchanan, especially if our involvement in the Russia\Georgia conflict continues to escalate.

Here is an excerpt from this article, which I highly recommend you read in its entirety.  I've bolded the first sentence because it's something I think we all need to chew on it a little bit...

 

Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them.

Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20 missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become subservient to Moscow.

How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?

Yep, must be about race

So this is a headline on the Drudge Report right now...

WHITES NO LONGER MAJORITY BY 2042...

A couple of thoughts....

1.  Why are we speculating what things are going to look like  34 YEARS FROM NOW anyway?!  We have no idea what groups might be moving in or out of the country within the next 10 years, much less the next 30.  What if companies like the one my good friend John Williams is employed at decide they want to continue to outsource some of their business to Mexico, which causes a huge boom in their economy, which causes many of them that are here now to decide to move back?  Heck, what if we buy Mexico (as I have proposed before) and Hispanics become the majority overnight?  What if some sort of famine\plague\act of war ends up wiping out a huge area of the country and thus turns our racial demographic upside down?  My point is - we have no idea what the future holds.  This study is not credible at all.

2.  This is actually just a copy of someone else's thoughts, but he is exactly RIGHT!  From this article:

The New York Times reports that "ethnic and racial minorities will comprise a majority of the nation's population in a little more than a generation." But ethnic and racial minorities already comprise a majority of the nation's population. The current U.S. population is about 300 million. There are roughly 46 million Hispanic Americans, 40 million African Americans, 35 million Irish Americans, 16 million Italian Americans,  15 million Asian Americans, 10 million Polish Americans, 3 million Greek Americans, and 3 million Russian Americans. That's a majority right there, and I've left out a bunch of ethnic groups.

What the Times really means, of course, is that "Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander will together outnumber non-Hispanic whites." We've become so accustomed to this arbitrary definition of "ethnic and racial minorities" that it's easy to lose sight of how bizarre it is. Is there a single objective criterion that unites these particular ethnic and racial minorities while distinguishing them from all the excluded groups? Is there any rational reason why a descendant of Spaniards, say, should count as a real minority, whether or not his ancestors spent time in Latin America, while a descendant of Italians does not? What is it, exactly, that makes Indians more ethnic than Albanians?

While some Americans view the arrival of the milestone heralded by the Times with horror, others see it as a sign of progress. I'd say obsessing about it one way or another indicates a lack of progress.

 

Love that last sentence.  :)

Attention Mr. Kristol, Russia != Iraq

In case any of you are confused by the title, the "!=" is a how some computer programming languages say that two things are not equal to each other.  So Russia "is not equal to" Iraq.  There, you all learned some programming.  :)

Now, for the purpose of this blog post.  I'm sure some of you have read or heard about the conflict between Georgia (the country, not the state) and Russia.  Well, Bill Kristol penned this article in the New York Times about it yesterday.  An excerpt:

But Georgia, a nation of about 4.6 million, has had the third-largest military presence — about 2,000 troops — fighting along with U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq. For this reason alone, we owe Georgia a serious effort to defend its sovereignty. Surely we cannot simply stand by as an autocratic aggressor gobbles up part of — and perhaps destabilizes all of — a friendly democratic nation that we were sponsoring for NATO membership a few months ago.

For that matter, consider the implications of our turning away from Georgia for other aspiring pro-Western governments in the neighborhood, like Ukraine’s. Shouldn’t we therefore now insist that normal relations with Russia are impossible as long as the aggression continues, strongly reiterate our commitment to the territorial integrity of Georgia and Ukraine, and offer emergency military aid to Georgia?

Ok, now I'm sure some of you have guessed by my support of Ron Paul's candidacy a few months ago that my perspective on foreign policy may have changed somewhat.  While that is definitely true and very likely something I should blog about at some point, I don't think the things I am about to say would have been any different before my perspective changed.

So let's just get it out....

WE CANNOT GET INVOLVED IN THIS CONFLICT

And restate the title...

BECAUSE RUSSIA != IRAQ

Attacking Iraq in 2004 or helping Kuwait fight Iraq off in the early 90s is completely different than helping Georgia in this situation.  No one doubted we could defeat Iraq.  But no one knows what would happen if we got into a major conflict with Russia, which to me is reason enough to STAY OUT OF this conflict.  Our military should not get involved in this.  We should not send military aid.  If Russia wants to attack Georgia, we should condemn it just as we are now, but that is it.

We are spread thin enough militarily as it is.  Messing around with a super-power like Russia (who might I mention probably could assembly some pretty darn powerful allies on its side) would get us into a conflict that would not be worth the time, money, and lives lost.

I feel bad for the people of Georgia, and yes I think Russia is probably being overly aggressive here.  But it's NOT OUR BUSINESS.  It's time to stop policing the world.  Starting now.

Argh!

Oh man, I just can't believe this.  It's really not that big a deal I suppose, but it still kinda burns me up.

I've never thought much about the J.D. Power and Associates automobile ratings.  Mainly because one of their major studies, the Initial Quality Survey, is used so often to try to make one manufacturer or another look good.  In that survey, they ask people if they are happy with their vehicle or have had any problems after a (whopping) 90 days and then try to say that is some sort of guage for "initial quality".  I'm sorry, but after 90 days quality simply can't be determined on any level.  The assumption here is that anything major that goes wrong is likely an anomaly.  Anyway, that's the side rant.  Now for the main one...

From this article...

The study also finds that five of the top 10 problems reported industry-wide in the 2008 Vehicle Dependability Study were also among the top 10 most frequently reported problems in the 2005 Initial Quality Study, suggesting that the problems are identified by owners during the initial ownership period, but have not been rectified by automakers during the three-year ownership period.
The problems include:

1. Excessive wind noise
2. Noisy brakes
3. Vehicle pulling to the left or right
4. Issues with the instrument panel/dashboard
5. Excessive window fogging

 

Chew on that top 5 problems list for a couple of seconds...

...

...

Now, think about the fact that those complaints are the most popular after 3 years of ownership...

...

...

OK, now HOW RIDICULOUS IS THAT??!!!

How can you say "excessive window fogging" is a quality issue?  Or "excessive wind noise"?  Um, what is the definition of "excessive"??  The only one that kinda makes since to me is the instrument panel issues.  And I guess maybe the "vehicle pulling to the left or right" issue if it is within the first 30 days.  After that, any number of factors can cause that type of behavior.  Hardly a quality issue in my opinion.

I'm glad J.D. Power gave a little bit more details on the problems that people are reporting, but they definitely didn't make me feel any more confident in their survey.  I'm sure that stuff like "excessive wind noise" or "excessive window fogging" or even "noisy brakes" bothers people, but unless there is an actual problem with the windows or the brakes, those are hardly quality issues that must be addressed by the manufacturer ASAP.

Just plain ridiculous....

Yep, must be about race

Been a while since I've had something in this series.  Frankly, I'm surprised the "players" in today's entry took so long.

So Barak Obama is mentioning his race more and more in his campaign.  And John McCain is trying to call him out on it.  Here is an article with some details.

As I said above, the only thing I'm surprised about is that it took this long to make race a real factor in the campaign.

So now there is something that really divides these candidates, since they don't differ much at all on policy.  Too bad it's something that neither have any control over, so there really isn't any reason for either of them to be talking about it.

These events probably mean things are about to get REALLY UGLY.  It can be stopped now of course, but I kinda think both campaigns will want to let it continue to see if it will help either of them.

Or another way to say that- both are willing to further divide our country in order to get elected.

Really sad.