Tag: president

from someone i’m connected to;

Dear classmates –
>
> As an Alaskan, I am writing to give all of you some information on
> Sarah Palin, Senator McCain’s choice for VP. As an Alaska voter, I
> know more than most of you about her and, frankly, I am horrified that
> he picked her.
>
> The most accurate description of her is red neck. Her husband works in
> the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay and races snow mobiles. She is a life
> time member of the NRA and has worked tirelessly to allow
> indiscriminate hunting of wildlife in Alaska, particularly wolves and
> bears. She has spent millions of Alaska state dollars on aerial
> hunting of these predators from helicopters and airplanes, dollars
> that should have been spent, for example, on Alaska’s failing school
> system.We have the lowest rate of high school graduation in the
> country. Not all of you may think aerial predator hunting is so bad,
> but how anyone (other than Alaska wolf-haters, of which there are
> many, most without teeth), could think this use of funds is
> appropriate is beyond me. If you want to know more about the aerial
> hunting travesty, let me know and I will send some links to
> informative web sites.
>
> She has been a strong supporter of increased use of fossil fuels, yet
> the McCain campaign has the nerve to say she has “green”
policies. The
> only thing green about Sarah Palin is her lack of experience. She has
> consistently supported drilling in ANWR, use of coal-burning power
> plants (as I write this, a new coal plant is being built in her home
> town of Wasilla), strip mining, and almost anything else that will
> unnecessarily exploit the diminishing resources of Alaska and destroy
> its environment.
>
> Prior to her one year as governor of Alaska, she was mayor of Wasilla,
> a small red neck town outside Anchorage.The average maximum education
> level of parents of junior high school kids in Wasilla is 10th grade.
> Unfortunately, I have to go to Wasilla every week to get groceries and
> other supplies, so I have continual contact with the people who put
> Palin in office in the first place. I know what I’m talking about.
> These people don’t have a concept of the world around them or of the
> serious issues facing the US. Furthermore, they don’t care. So long as
> they can go out and hunt their moose every fall, kill wolves and bears
> and drive their snow mobiles and ATVs through every corner of the
> wilderness, they’re happy. I wish I were exaggerating.
>
> Sarah Palin is currently involved in a political corruption scandal.
> She fired an individual in law enforcement here because she didn’t
> like how he treated one of her relatives during a divorce. The man’s
> performance and ability weren’t considered; it was a totally personal
> firing and is currently under investigation. While the issue isn’t
> close to the scandal of Ted Steven’s corruption, it shows that Palin
> isn’t “squeaky clean” and causes me to think there ay be
more issues
> that could come to light. Clearly McCain doesn’t care.
>
> When you line Palin up with Biden, the comparison would be laughable
> if it weren’t so serious. Sarah Palin knows nothing of economics
> (admittedly a weak area for McCain), or of international affairs,
> knows nothing of national government, Social Security, unemployment,
> health care systems – you name it. The idea of her meeting with heads
> of foreign governments around the world truly frightens me.
>
> In an increasingly dangerous world, with the economy in shambles in
> the US, Sarah Palin is uniquely UNqualified to be vice president. John
> McCain is not a young man. Should something happen to him such that
> the vice president had to step in, it would destroy our country and
> possibly the world to have someone as inexperienced and inappropriate
> as Sarah Palin. The choice of Palin is a cheap shot by McCain to try
> to get Hillary supporters to vote for him. when McCain introduced her
> today, Palin had the nerve to compare herself with Hillary and
> Geraldine Ferraro. Sarah Palin, you are no Hillary Clinton.
>
> To those of you who, like me, supported Hilary and were upset that she
> did not get the nomination, please don’t think that Sarah Palin is a
> worthy substitute. If you supported Hillary, regardless of what you
> think the media and the democratic party may have done to undermine
> her campaign, the person to support now is Obama, not Sarah Palin. To
> those of you who are independent or undecided, don’t let the choice of
> Palin sway you in favor of McCain. Choosing her shows how unqualified
> McCain is to be president. To those of you who are conservative, I
> guess you have no choice for president. But please try to see how the
> poor choice of Palin tells us a great deal about McCain’s judgment.
> While the political posturing inherent in the choice of Palin is
> obvious, the more serious issue is the fact that the VP is, literally,
> a heartbeat away from the presidency. Sarah Palin is totally and
> unequivocally unqualified to be vice president, let alone president.
>
> I know this is a lengthy and emotional email, but the stakes are high.
> I thought it might help for all of you, regardless of political
> affiliation, to know something about Palin from someone who has to
> live with her administration in Alaska on a daily basis.

=

If you’re blogging about process and there’s not a performance involved you should shoot yourself

Tonight nothing is more important than electing Barack Obama president in November.

However,
My current task is to present a clown piece on September 11 (leaving plenty of time before November to work for Barack Obama.)
My head now is filled with the momentous Obama speech…
“In the words of scripture hold firmly to the hope that we confess” Don’t know what that means but it sounds pretty.”
And I’m thinking of using a Billie Holiday song….
So
Today has not been particularly productive.
There was a nice e-mail in the morning from Lorraine about playing and being on the same page.
My kid got up late and was cranky when she did.
I said “Hey it’s almost lunch time” and “Do you want to go to zoo?”
She cried.
She didn’t have any words so I assumed existential angst about the end of summer and start of the school year.
So I felt guilty.
We made scrambled eggs together using two pans, the regular one and her tiny single serving one.
Catsup.
We made art with a new set of stamps.
We played Junior Scrabble.
We went swimming at the Y (though we weren’t there earlier in the afternoon when Michael Phelps was!)
We hooked up with The Husband/Daddy
We went out for Thai food.
We were late getting home and missed part of Obama’s speech.
Tears during what I did see.
After the speech–It’s so shocking as the parent of an 8-year-old to see how much Malia Obama (just tuned 10 in July) has grown since he first declared in 2007. He started the campaign with two little girls and now he has only one little girl and one tween!
The CNN silence after the speech cameras finding shots of streamers hanging by a thread.

Nancy Keenan

I noticed in the schedule of the Democratic National Convention that Nancy Keenan spoke yesterday as the president of NARAL.  I like her!  As a teacher and legislator, she was one of “our people” when I was a lobbyist intern for the Montana Federation of Teachers.

One day there was a call of the house, a motion which can be adopted by a deliberative assembly that has the authority to compel the attendance of its members in the absence of a quorum. The effect of the adoption of this motion is that the president of the assembly makes out arrest warrants which authorize the sergeant-at-arms to arrest any or all absent members and bring them to the meeting hall so that a quorum may be present. This motion is usually seen in houses of legislatures, such as the United States House of Representatives.

When the members realized that they were going to be forced to spend the night in the state house (because of the two absent members, one was undergoing a root canal and the other had flown to California to retrieve a wayward daughter) some of the Butte representatives sent out for liquor and broke out the cards.  

Nancy Keenan and one of the other female lesislators set up a free-standing tent in the aisle, unrolled sleeping bags, got in and went to sleep until the boys were done playing their games.

Michelle Obama

I suppose if my husband was running for president I would let professionals groom me.  As it is I’m ready to go to the salon of the mom of a kid who goes to my school and let her have at it, even though her six-year-old looked like she cut her own bangs.  (Her mom cuts hair for a job, what are the chances?…)

Watching the speech I kept trying to memorize phrases for later reference, but in the end, my favorite part came after the speech when Malia and Sasha came on stage and waved to the video feed of Obama and said “Hi Daddy!” into the microphone.  Tall stately Michelle Obama bent down to talk to her daughters. (Physical Theatre–stronger than words)

At the YMCA swimming pool we were getting ready to leave and I said to the other mother, “I think we’re missing Michelle Obama’s speech”  

“They work out a lot!” was her reply.

I was preoccupied with the visual.  That’s what a successful professional woman looks like.  

Once upon a time I wanted to be a successful woman like that.  I saw some of them when I interned at the DNC as a college student and returned after graduation to work for my congressman.  I thought maybe I should go to law school.  But, most women I met did not look like Michelle Obama.  Most women did not carry themselves that tall.  They wore suits to work, but their jobs were in reality sucky clerical jobs, or they had the titles but the job they got through connections (It was Washington, DC) was an uncomfortable fit.  I never found a role model like Michelle Obama was said to be in the pre-speech DNC film.  It would have been nice.  I wore suits and carried high heel pumps in my shoulder strapbriefcase while I commuted in running shoes with white socks over my nylons.  But, once I got do work, I didn’t know why I was there outside of a vague aspiration to do good work and be the kind of person who wore Anne Taylor suits to work every day.

Michelle Obama has a lot more going on.