Question of the day

So now that it's become painfully apparent that Sarah Palin is a complete moron, what is the GOP going to do?

Survey says...

I saw this series of questions on my friend Lindsay's blog. Here are my answers.
Because everyone wants to know all about me.

1. What time did you get up this morning? 6:47. Almost on time.

2. Diamonds or pearls? Pearls for day, diamonds for evening. Sapphires anytime.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Star Wars – the Clone Wars. For the 2nd time. Gotta love little boys.

4. What is your favorite TV show? Friday Night Lights and The Closer. I do not like reality shows.

5. What do you usually have for breakfast? Nature Valley oats & honey granola bar and Diet Sunkist

6. What is your middle name? Catherine – 4th generation Catherine in my father’s family. And they’re all bitches.

7. What food do you dislike? Indian. Curry makes me ill.

8. What is your favorite CD at the moment? Disney’s Greatest Hits. Buys me peace in the car.

9. What kind of car do you drive? Dodge Grand Caravan minivan. I always swore I’d never drive a minivan… now I wouldn’t drive anything else. It’s just so easy.

10. Favorite sandwich? Potbelly Sandwich Works roast beef & cheese

11. What characteristic do you despise? Taking oneself too seriously. And bragging.

12. Favorite item of clothing? jeans

13. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go? Greek islands

14. Are you an organized person? No I am a complete mess

15. Where would you retire to? Lake Travis. Or the Greek islands

16. What was your most recent memorable birthday? 29th. Had a stomach virus. Lost 8 pounds in 12 hours.

17. What are you going to do when you finish this? Make my daughter take a nap

18. When is your birthday? July 13th

19. Morning person or a night person? Night

20. What is your shoe size? 7.5 - 8

21. Pets? Yes – black Lab named Lucy

22. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with us? The cafeteria and library need more volunteers and my husband is buying a Jeep. Again.

23. What did you want to be when you were little? A Lawyer

24. How are you today? Dragging – long week. And my abs are sore, but that’s good.

25. What is your favorite flower? tulips

26. What is a day on the calendar you are looking forward to? Election day – can’t wait to see what happens

27. What are you listening to right now? Lucy’s collar jingling

28. What was the last thing you ate? Mini Snickers

29. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Cerulean

30. How is the weather right now? Gorgeous. I think God’s apologizing for the hurricane.

31. Last person you spoke to on the phone? My husband

32. Favorite soft drink? Cherry Coke

33. Favorite restaurant? Fleming’s in The Woodlands, Clear Springs in Nacogdoches

34. Hair color? Today? Golden Cappucino. For real? Gray & brown

35. What was your favorite toy as a child? Barbies

36. Summer or Winter? Winter – more forgiving clothes & don’t have to shave

37. Chocolate or Vanilla? Chocolate.

38. Coffee or tea? Both. But not at the same time.

39. When was the last time you cried? Watching Army Wives Sunday evening.

40. What is under your bed? Rubbermaid box w/ sheets & blankets

41. What did you do last night? Watched the season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy. The Army medic guy was smokin’.

42. What are you afraid of? Carjackers & armed robbers & child molesters. And snakes.

43. How many keys on your key ring? 3 – house, car, mailbox. And about 12 member tags – Kroger, Randalls, Sephora, PetSmart, etc.

44. How many years at your current job? 6yrs 2 months as a mom

45. Favorite day of the week? Saturday – sleep late and eat a lot

Palin Part Two

Follow-up: Sarah Palin really knocked it out of the park with her speech at the RNC Wednesday evening. Even the opposition conceded that she came of very well. I liked her joke about the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom: lipstick. I did not watch the entire speech but have seen some excerpts. She looked great and came off as smart, funny, and tough. The speech was a little mean-spirited at times, but that's kind of the role of the VP candidate - to be the "attack dog" so the presidential candidate can look noble and dignified. But - there's a big difference between giving a speech at the party convention, where one can "get a standing ovation if he got up there and burped the alphabet" (to quote my husband)", and managing the campaign trail, with its minefields of hostile reporters and tough questions. There's so much opportunity to mess up - I think her lack of experience could hurt her there. And I still don't like her willingness to exploit her kids for her image. "I can't wait to send my son off to Iraq to get shot at! Look at my mentally handicapped baby! And here's my husband what's-his-name!"
But my favorite moment was little Piper Palin, who looks about eight, "grooming" her baby brother by licking her hand and smoothing it across his head.

The media has been surprisingly gentle to Bristol and her boyfriend, and I am very pleased by Obama's refusal to capitalize on the situation. He made an offhand comment that his mother had him when she was 18 and he turned out okay.
I have noticed that Barack Obama seems to be a really decent guy. He has consistently refused to sling mud or say nasty things to or about people. When the Reverend Wright thing (nutty preacher claiming the US government created AIDS to "keep down" black people and other absurd things) broke, he said that this guy had been his pastor for many years, had married him and his wife and baptized his children, and he wasn't going to throw him under the bus. Then, unfortunately, the Reverend used his media attention to say a bunch more nutty things and Obama had to cut ties.
I'm really torn about Obama - I don't agree with a lot of his views and I don't trust his background as a "community organizer" and lack of experience in either a "real world" profession or the political arena. I think he's a lot more liberal than he's presented himself to be in this campaign. But I like the guy and I think he's someone around whom America - and the rest of the world - could really come together.
So we'll just see what happens next.

He should have called Elizabeth Dole...

So John McCain has chosen for a running mate one Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska. Here's my theory on how that conversation went:
Senator McCain: "Wow, all those Democrat ladies sure are mad that Hillary's not on the ticket. "
Campaign Guy: "Yep. They wanted to cast a vote for a woman"
SM " (light bulb over his head) SAY! We should put a woman on our ticket!"
CG: "That's a great idea sir! Like who?"
SM: "I dunno - a Republican. Maybe a Senator?"
CG: "Yeah, like Kay Bailey Hutchison from Texas?"
SM: "No, she's real smart. You know how I feel about smart women. Pick another one"
CG: "Actually, all the women senators know what a jerk you are, sir. They won't want to sign up"
SM: "Oh yeah... maybe a governor?"
CG: "Are there any lady Republican governors? I'll look it up... here we are! Alaska!"
SM: "Alaska! She won't know me at all! I don't even know her name! Let's call her up."

And so after 36 hours of frantic and obviously incomplete vetting, we have a Republican Vice-Presidential candidate. I had never heard of Sarah Palin before this week and I don't know much about her now. Here's what I've learned so far - all of this from other sources than the lady herself.
- She has been governor of Alaska for two years. Before that she was the mayor of a fairly small town (in all fairness, it's big for Alaska ) of about 6000 people.
- She refers to herself as a "hockey mom" and enjoys the outdoors, hunting, fishing, and that sort of stuff.
- She has five children, the youngest a boy of less than one year - I think he was born in April. So we know she can multi-task.
- Her husband works for an oil company on Alaska's North Shore and is away from home for very long stretches of time. Again with the multi-tasking.
- She understands oil and oil companies. Alaska produces more oil than any state other than The Great State of Texas and exports much of it across the Pacific to Russia, China and Japan.
- She is under investigation by her state's legislature for illegal actions relating to a supposed "private vendetta" against her brother-in-law, a former law enforcement officer (I think Sheriff but don't know for sure). No idea on the details about this - it may be fact-based and it may be political flailing.
- She is a former beauty pageant contestant and news anchor.
- She is extremely conservative socially - pro-life, anti-stem cell research, pro-marriage amendment, etc. etc.
So all of this sounds okay, right? The choice of a woman for VP is pretty clever - there are enough angry bitches out there who will vote for a woman even if her political ideas are diametrically opposed to those of the typical angry-bitch mindset. And she actually sounds like a great story - a mom of five from Nowhere, Alaska ending up as the Vice President (and considering McCain's age and state of health, quite possibly as commander-in-chief someday). Haven't we all been saying for years, "Send a Mom to the White House! She'll have everything fixed in two months". I was kind of excited about it myself, and eager to learn more about this woman.

But yesterday a story broke about Bristol Palin, her 17-year-old daughter, who is five months pregnant. I feel awful for this girl, whose private business is now front-page news, especially as I watch her being paraded in front of the camera along with her boyfriend, who wears the dazed expression of a kid who realizes that he prefers the frying pan to the fire after all.
First of all, I have to assume that there is no way that McCain knew about this or he would never have chosen Palin, which really makes me wonder about why and how that decision was made. Was she really the only woman they could think of?
But what I really don't get is Sarah Palin agreeing to be on the ticket, considering her daughter. There are two possible explanations: First - she didn't know her daughter was pregnant, even though she's a skinny teenager in her second trimester. I'm just not sure how that could be if Palin was making any effort at all to pay attention to her daughter. I'm not saying it's not possible but it sure doesn't reflect well on her. But it's certainly preferable to the second possibility: that she knew her daughter was pregnant and decided to go ahead and run, fully aware of the kind of horrible, vituperative things that would be said about her little girl. "Sure, I'll toss my daughter to the wolves, allow her to be branded a slut, make this difficult situation she's in fuel for every talking head on TV, and claim her out-of wedlock teen pregnancy really reflects my "family values" because she didn't have an abortion. I'm willing to put my child through hell for the sake of my political ambitions." I just can't get my brain around that one.

Oh, there she is on TV now, wagging her kids at the camera. I wonder if she will still be on the ticket in two weeks. For her daughter's sake, I hope not.

Politics and Religion. Can't talk about them at parties...

So there's an election coming up. Now, I have a political science degree and consider myself knowledgeable about such things as why we have an electoral college (basically, to keep certain votes from counting as much as others) and the two-part Democratic primary in Texas (Democrats in Texas had no opposition for about a hundred years and got real bored) and whether or not it's racist to expect people to have a photo ID and be able to read in order to vote (answer depends on whether or not you can read and/or have a photo ID).
So as sort of an expert I can comfortably say that there's not much new under the sun when it comes to presidential politics. Generally, carefully groomed and scripted candidates slog it out in the primaries and the guy with the best hair and the richest wife wins, then it's on to the national elections in which the one who can scare voters the most comes away with the victory.
But this election is pretty interesting. Of course much of it is politics as usual - candidates trying to reassure centrists and moderates that they are not wild-eyed radicals, while at the same time assuring their party base (whether that's the Religious Right Against Curing Disease or Gays and Lesbians Against Drilling in ANWR) that they are just wild-eyed and radical enough. The exception here is that the two candidates are guys that I .. actually... like.
I think John McCain is an American hero. Even though he's using it as a shield-all against character questions now, the guy spent five years as a POW in Viet Nam. He was abused and tortured. And he had a chance to get out (his father was an Admiral) and didn't because he wouldn't abandon his comrades. Yeah the guy went nuts when he got home, ran around on his wife, and married a young rich woman. And he has that thing on his neck I can't stop staring at. But the guy has a pair of brass cojones that you have to respect. He knows what's important, he knows what war is about, and he's actually pretty funny - watch him on Letterman, he's on like every week. On the downside, I think he's pigheaded, hot-tempered, and perfectly comfortable with the "Lone Ranger" foreign policy decisions that have been so disastrous for the current administration.
Barack Obama I don't know so well. There's no denying he's handsome, smart, and tremendously charismatic. How else could a one-term senator from Illinois end up as a presidential candidate? I've liked what I've seen and read in interviews - I think he could truly be called a "Man of the World" in that he has lived all over the world, is bi-racial, and understands the cultures and perspectives of many different races and religions. He understands that we will never - NEVER - get the Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq to hold hands and sing Kum Ba Ya and it's stupid to try. He seems to have common sense - a quality that it is impossible to rate too highly - and a willingness to learn and listen. I think the reason that he's the first viable candidate of color is that he's not just a "candidate of color", like Jesse Jackson, for whom everything begins and ends with White People Should Apologize and Give Us Money. He's truly a man for the 21st Century, in which lines of race and color have become so blurred that most intelligent people give them little to no consideration at all. Now for the downside - an almost laughable lack of knowledge or experience of national, much less international, politics.
And - my uncomfortable suspicion that his charisma and likability are about all there is. It's easy to trumpet for change but much harder to make it happen, and he has yet to really enumerate how all this glamorous reform is going to happen.
I am not willing to make an endorsement in this election (sorry, all of y'all who are just waiting for me to tell you what to do). My personal political views are Libertarian - I think the government should stay the hell out of things that are not its business and that people should be able to live their lives as they want as long as they are not hurting anybody, and that people who work hard to earn a living should not have to give part of their incomes to support people who choose not to. I think it is the responsibility of the government to protect citizens from each other, but not from themselves. So to my mind, McCain is way too conservative socially - anti-choice, anti-stem cell research, anti-telling teenagers that condoms will keep them from getting pregnant. And Obama is way too liberal fiscally - every time he opens his mouth I can hear my taxes go up, to finance more help for people who refuse to help themselves. But the truth is that the President does not have all that much influence on government policy - that has a lot more to do with who's the majority in Congress - but there are a few things the president affects directly - military actions and Supreme Court justices.
I have voted a straight Republican ticket in every state and national election since 1996, but this year I am probably going to vote for Obama because of two important issues. One - Iraq. We never should have gone in and we should get out. It turns out that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator because that was the only way to maintain order in that backwards hellhole, and nobody can drag them out of the Dark Ages before they're ready to go. So unless we're going to carpet bomb the whole miserable country and then take their oil, we should just get out before one more American son dies for no damned reason at all. Two - the Religious Right. We could be looking at as many as four new Supreme Court justices in the next eight years, and I do not want anachronistic fundamentalist judges taking away what's left of our Constitutional freedom of religion - or from religion, in our case. In a perfect world abortion would never happen but in this world it's a sad necessity, especially for rape and incest victims and certain medical cases. It is an absurdity and a crime that in the year 2008 public schools' only approved sex education curriculum is "keep your pants on". And the very idea that public schools have to remind 12th-grade AP Biology students that "evolution is just a theory". The stranglehold that people like James Dobson and Pat Buchanan have on American public policy is absolutely ludicrous, and it's only getting worse and more dangerous. As the world gets smaller and more connected, religious tolerance is more necessary and we must all take our blinders off and realize that being an American means understanding that you can't legislate truth or morality.
So... there's my two cents. I have a lot more to say about religion, prejudice, and why sensible people are so eager to be misled, but it's after midnight and I have to get up early. More soon on vice-presidential selections and whether McCain's desperate bid for "Female-Americans" will work or not.

You had me at six-pack

I just read a hysterically funny blog called "June Cleaver After A Six-Pack". It's as funny as the name implied. Go check it out.