Progressive Radio Blowing My Mind With Palin

I listen to a lot of political talk radio and as anyone should, I listen to both the conservative AND liberal stuff.

Now of course I'm biased, but the crux of what "progressive" radio's argument is:

Palin is a liar
Palin is a religious nutjob
Palin is irresponsible

I live in the Phoenix area so our local station is KPHX and it has some local guys and a syndicated obnoxious loudmouth from Florida. Besides the universal "progressive" schoolyard tactic of giving conservatives stoopid nicknames and making jokes about their intelligence or their faith or how they look, their shows are loaded with blind criticism without the substance of why and how their choise is better. Here's a few observations from the last few days:

Palin is a Liar
I've actually heard several hosts say that Palin lied about selling the governor's jet on ebay for a profit. As it turns out, it was only listed on ebay. It never sold. And when it did sell, it sold at a loss. Damn, they're right. She's a liar... But if you actually listen to the speech instead of these talk show hosts, you'll notice that all she actually said was "I put it on ebay" Go to minute 20:05 to see just that part- or back it up a few minutes if you don't believe me. And what's the problem with selling something at a loss? Don't things depreciate? Are they suggesting that if she kept it longer they would have got more for it? I didn't know that jets appreciated unlike everything else in the world. And, doesn't it actually cost money to even keep a jet? Maintenance, fuel, storage, crew, etc. So when you sell a non-performing asset, aren't you freeing up funds and at the same time saving money for the operation of that item? But of course that never gets mentioned. So who are the liars about this? And if these liberal talk show hosts fall back on the ignorance defense, is that really a good excuse for a person whose job is to supposedly educate and influence the public via the radio? Or if they fall back on the "I'm an entertainer" excuse, then that simply proves that their whole progressive radio concept is not serious- and logically, their whole liberal fight attitude. Perhaps they've seen the success of guys like Rush Limbaugh and figured there's a void on the other end of the spectrum so they could get a piece of the pie.

Another host was wondering out loud about Palin's jet from another perspective. She initiated the sale of a private jet because it was excessive. Yet now she flies a private VP candidate jet. How absurd! What a hypocrite! I've never run for vice president before, but I'd assume that candidates in general for president or vice president, actually travel around quite a bit. And I'm not sure how efficient it would be for Barack Obama or John McCain to fly first class on JetBlue wherever they go. That's just an opinion there.

Palin is a Religious Nutjob
Two guys today were talking about her christian religious beliefs with much disdain. The one this morning was generalizing about her beliefs and actually took a call from someone who said that she doesn't believe in medicine since she is pentecostal. Now to his credit, the host corrected the caller's misinformation, but his point was that she is ridiculous for her beliefs- oh yeah and made no mention that she left that church 6 years ago. Another guy today replayed bits of a speech that Palin gave in the last few days where she equated the Iraq war purpose with God's work. Also she said that the people needed to pray for Alaska's future. Reality is that this speech was given in June.

Now I'm a Christian so I know my beliefs, but I'm really not sure why so many liberals and specifically, certain talk show hosts are so anti-God. Basically they treat Christians like a minority whom it's OK to slam. Can I get a radio show and start bagging on the Pakistanis or Gays or Lesbians (they need several subcategories). Of course I can. But then I'll have Gloria Allred or some other freaky lawyer suing my ass or dragging me through the mud for my insensitive remarks. Even Jews have recourse. But you can say anything about Christians. Here's the reality- Christians and other creationism believers are still a pretty large number in our country. So I think that a lot of them actually appreciate her faith- both democrats AND republicans.

It seems like the democrats or liberal media are trying to make out their party as the Godless/AntiGod party. How "progressive" is it to resort to belittling the religious beliefs of others? Barack Obama himself has encouraged democrats to reach out to evangelicals and other religious groups. Is this considered reaching out?

Incidentally, Joe Biden is Roman Catholic (arguably one of the biggest reasons that so many people have lost their faith over the years). Barack Obama professes to be a Christian who has been friends with Jeremiah Wright for like 20 years and a member of his church for most of that time. Sure, Obama denounced the style and message of Wright and has since resigned his membership in 2008, but are "you" telling me that he spent the last 20 years as a member of a church where he disagreed with the message of the pastor? The guy who inspired one of Obama's books? So which is worse- a person who believes in speaking in tongues and the appocalypse or one who believes in the preachings of a traiterous, racist?

Perhaps if we had an atheist candidate, these "progressive" God-Haters would be appealing to a particular audience. But are they saying that their candidate is also just as much of a religious nutjob as Palin? The guy cut ties with his 20 year friend just in time to run for president. Palin is a devout Christian. Isn't that some pretty hardcore flip-flopping?

Palin is Irresponsible
Sarah Palin has 5 kids, with one who is "handicapable" (that's a shout out to all you liberal politically correct minded j-holes). She also has an unwed teenage daughter, and speculation is that the down's baby is actually her daughter's. Now she's running for VP of our country. How dare she leave her family behind to take on such a campaign! How dare she leave her crippled kid in his time of need! Who's going to take care of the kids?

Let me point something out to you. It's people like her who give democrats a bad name. In our conservative society, we believe in traditional nuclear family values. The woman needs to stay home and cook and clean. The husband needs to work and bring home the bacon (or moosemeat). Some jackass president passed a ridiculous law in 1993 that said that not just mothers, but fathers too have a right to stay home with their kids. This Sarah Palin character is exactly what is wrong with our country with her crazy liberal family values. She probably has a tattoo!

Oh wait a minute, I'm a bit confused. Sarah Palin's family embodies everything that liberals have been wanting for so long. And now that she's running for VP, she is the target of those same liberals! What is up with that? Are they for real? How can they fight for something for so long and then when they finally get it in a candidate, they slam her all to shreads. On top of that, Palin isn't some blueblood like Hillary. She didn't go to an Ivy League school, she wasn't raised in politics. And I don't know for sure, but I don't think she's worth $35 million. What is more attractive in a strong willed woman? How many Americans went to an Ivy League school? We've got a pure Americana candidate and she gets crapped on? Absolutely stoopid.

I'll say it again, give both sides a fair listen. You may still believe in Obama, but this isn't an exercise in the candidates' qualifications. I'm more concerned with the quality of the talking heads. I'm not a Rush Limbaugh fan, but check out the stations that he's on or Townhall.com for the conservative slant. Or check out Air America or Nova M Radio for the liberal views.

RNC Protesters- Who are These Idiots?

So I haven't been able to watch the RNC each night but I've been boning up via CNN.com and their video clips. There are several clips each day showing the protesters outside of the convention and a few that actually got into the convention to disrupt the speeches. You know the ones- anti war, anti establishment, etc. I don't remember much of this at the DNC so perhaps the liberal media is slanting this to show that there are more protesters agains republicans than democrats- and have you noticed that the media simply calls them protesters and they let us assume that they are protesting the republicans. That's what I thought til I looked into it a bit.

But who the hell are these people? I mean I wasn't there so I don't have personal photos, but here are a few snaps of these folks as "borrowed" from the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and some blog called Indystar. Whether they are democratic Obama supporters, anti-republicans, or anti establishment folks, I don't know...




I mean, are these people expecting to be taken seriously with some sort of course of action beyond their "peaceful" protests? I just heard a podcast this morning on the Adam Carolla Show (about minutes 9:00 through 11:00) and it sort of sums up the whole "hippy" movement of back then and the ongoing movement that is these types of people. In summary- these people are (for the most part) a bunch of losers with nothing better to do except complain.

And take a look at this video of some protester action. Simply absurd. It's like the movie Road Warrior- cheap shots at cops, lawlessness, looting or general mayhem- yeah that's effective- the two party system is pretty much done now that these folks have shown what they're all about.And what's up with all the photos of the riot police? They have full face shields, tear gas, semi-automatic weapons, body armor. It's very imposing. But I love how the protesters complain about abuse. The above video is proof enough that any force used by the officers is justified. Is the liberal media also playing into the huge anti republican protests and the need for such heavy firepower? Or are they trying to say that these abusive protecters of our peace are in fact part of the problem?

Whatever the motivation, it's not very effective in and of itself, but it's more fodder for the image of republicans to be dragged down even more.

The Lashing Out Palin Criticism

So John McCain chose little known Sarah Palin as his running mate. Who? Of course we don't know her. But he had to pick someone and he's had quite an uphill battle with the younger, more dynamic "wind of change" that is Barack Obama. ANY republican has been in for a hard struggle in the post Bush election of 2008.

McCain is 72, with physical issues. That alone is probably the biggest deterrent for fence sitters- the swing vote. True republican will already vote for McCain despite his moderate stances. True democrats are already voting for Obama, but the mass middle needs to be convinced. And unfortunately, it doesn't come down to the best team, but instead the best chance of winning. It's called strategy.

Obama is too young, too inexperienced and too ethnic. So he chose Biden- an older, white senior senator. Excellent move.

So, who should McCain have chosen? An old white guy? A younger white guy? A minority male? A minority woman? A white woman?

If he chose a white guy of any sort, he'd be done- period, and the rest of his campaign would be a complete waste of time. I don't care one bit about how great Huckabee or Romney are. Sure, there are plenty of capable, experienced white male candidates, but would any of them help McCain to win? The stoopid Americans who read headlines and choose by image or believe the tabloids or believe what they see on The View will continue to be stoopid or go along with the crowd.

If McCain he chose a minority male, then he'd be making a bold move, but it would be sort of a copycat move of the Obama team. Bobby Jindahl would have been unique, but not as much punch as other options.

So that leaves- a woman. There are disgruntled Clinton supporters, hardworking single mothers, and just plain wishy washy folks who could easily vote for Obama or McCain if given the right motivation.

Well then, which woman do you choose? Odds are that you need to pick someone who is already a leader in our country- perhaps a business leader or more likely, some elected official. Going back to the business leader idea- Meg Whitman? Too old and too white.

Try googling Women in the United States Senate and look at the republicans: one who was appointed to her position by her father, a critic of the Iraq war, one from a small state with no natural resources, one who's 72, and one who has some controversy regarding misappropriations. That's it. 5 female republican senators

How about the House of Representatives? 18 choices: 1- foreign born, 1 retiring, 5 old (65 or older), 1 wants to leave Iraq, 1 Sonny's wife, 1 pro choice, 3 with significant controversies, 1 really ugly, 1 very good but too young (under 40) and 2 that have served less than a year.

So that leaves the Governors. 3 republican choices: 1 who's not very attractive, 1 who assumed her position and Sarah Palin.

Now that's a quick survey of the more senior elected officials that they had to choose from- I didn't check state representatives or mayors so I'm sure I missed some good ones. Were there other females that I looked at who might have been good? Probably 2-3 total besides Palin. But you've got to remember, that it's about strategy now. Unfortunatley, McCain needs to stoop to the level of picking a strategy VP to appease the aforementioned View viewers or US Weekly readers.

Sarah Palin is very conservative in politics, very fearless about taking on government, a family person, easy on the eyes, well spoken (in prepared speech format so far), a very strong woman, and younger than McCain. Oh yeah, and her state has the biggest untapped oil resources in American which could open the door to drilling in ANWAR once McCain says "I trust my VP and she has convinced me that we need to drill there".

The problem with the liberals is that just like all their jibber jabber, they only complain. They whine about how bad Bush is. They whine about how bad the economy is. They complain about Palin as a choice. How dare a mother of an unwed pregnant girl even consider running- talk about flip flopping- her family IS what democrats stand for. She is not a nuclear republican family. She has a real American family. But have they really offered up any practical alternative solutions to their complaints? Or have they really thought about why Palin was chosen? For this last question, of course they've done their research. They know that good republican running mates are hard to find- ONES WHO CAN HELP MCCAIN BEAN OBAMA. But they still have to complain and throw mud and lie and exaggerate and blindly bash the Right while blindly following the Left. It's sad.

Sarah Palin IS the best choice for John McCain in 2008. She is NOT the best person to be VP, but she is exactly what John McCain needs in order to win this presidential election.

Just Vote Damn It!

When the election comes, there's the big issue of actual voting.
126 million people voted for president in 2004.
That's 64% of the eligible voting age citizens in America. 196,875,000
72% of eligible voters are actually registered. 141,750,000
So that means that 8% of registered voters did NOT vote in 2004- 55,125,000
Why didn't they vote? Well, they're either dead, dying, alone, hassled because they have some sort of discrepancy in their registration, or just plain cynical and lazy. I'd say that 80% of that 55
million falls into that last category- and that's just a guess.

What does 40 million votes get you (80% of 55M)?
Consider this (source- Wikipedia)

• Bush beat Kerry in 2004 by 3 million popular votes.
• Gore beat Bush in 2000 by less than 500,000 popular votes.
• Clinton beat Dole in 1996 by 8 million popular votes.
• Forget Ross Perot in 1992, Clinton beat Bush by 6 million votes.
• HW Bush beat Dukakis by 7 million votes in 1988.

Yes, I know that more people have voted in subsequent elections as our population has grown, but the point is that each of these elections could have swung the other way if enough people actually got off their registered voter duffs and pulled the lever. Isn't it a travesty that Bush actually won in 2000? Yes. But if even 500,000 more registered democrats would have gone out to cast their vote, then Gore would have been put in office. In fact the most recent election where it wouldn't have mattered was 1984 when Reagan beat Mondale by almost 18 million votes.

Will Obama get part of that cynical 40 million to actually vote this time? Will McCain? Apparently Obama has reignited political interest in the 18-25 demographic, but will they actually vote? If they do and they are all for Obama as is predicted, then it's a no brainer.

The Presidential Polls and the Fickle American

I'm no political pundit, but I have to laugh a little at the recent presidential candidate polls. As of today, McCain is suddenly the front-runner. Per the latest Reuters/Zogby poll, McCain now has a 7 point lead over Obama. This is quite a turn of events as the golden child is supposedly showing signs of weakness.

Now Obama is the "sexier" choice- hands down. I watched the Saddleback Church forum and although I'm not voting for him, I now see why Obama is so popular. But I'm still voting for McCain and he came off very well also during the same forum.

Obama has a huge youth movement behind him, along with most of our high profile members of society (Hollywood). He has "radical" yet basic ideals of how to bring our country back together again, and a history of actually doing that sort of thing. But while that might be great on a social front, I still don't believe that's enough for a president. McCain has him beat hands down on international issues as well as economic issues. But between you, me and the internet lamppost of a random blog, Obama will win regardless of this last poll.

But that's not even the point of this post. Each candidate has a huge fatal flaw that they need to rectify in order to become the clear front runner. Obama- has little credibility in the international/military front, and McCain is too old. So what does each one need to do to rectify that situation? Pick an appropriate veep.

The ideal choice for Obama is a slightly older gentleman with international clout and preferably a military background. And even if he doesn't pick someone with these credentials, he'll be ok.

The ideal choice for McCain is a younger and very dynamic black male or female. McCain is in more of a pickle. If he picks a white guy like Romney, then he'll most likely compound the image of the white male leadership of America- which is a bad thing considering his dynamic youthful minority opponent.

So while we all speculate on the meaning of the aforementioned poll, we all know that this will change- most likely after this weekend when supposedly both candidates will choose their candidates. I don't need to speculate- and I really can't. But we'll obviously see another swing or enforcement of current statistics.

Tea Tree Oil

So my son Cole is 3. He had this crazy rash that looked like water blisters- all down his back to his ass crack. Perhaps 10 of them. It didn't bother him. He didn't scratch at them. But whenever we saw them, we worried about how we'd get rid of them. On a visit to our pediatrician, his doctor took a glance from across the room and declared that they were warts or more specifically: Molluscum Contagiosum. He said that the best course of action was no course of action.

A few months later, he now had about 50 of them- same general region. We took him back and the doctor once again said that the best course of action was no action. But if we wanted to take action, we could try an over the counter medicine like Compound W. He said to use it on just a few warts. This would then aggravate those warts and cause the body to react and thus start fighting all the other ones.

We tried this and it was like bloody murder- very traumatic to Cole and Nadine. We did it one time and that was that.

So about 6 months later, there's no improvement but it's still bugging the crap out of us. Now we've had this little jar of Tea Tree Oil sitting in the medicine cabinet for years. I'm not into this herbal or alternative medicine, so I've never tried using it, but Nadine decided to give it a shot. She puts it on his warts- all of them. No physical pain at all, but I just see a bunch of oil on my boy's backside and figure it's all voodoo.

Well she put it on the next day and perhaps one more day- so like 3-5 total applications- just spreading it on with a cotton ball- real lightly.

You can guess the rest. Within 2 weeks, every single wart was gone. Just gone. Cured. Boom. Done.

So now I'm thinking that we've got some sort of elixir of life. The golden scarab that will get us into the cave of wonders. The book of secrets. I'm excited. I've got fungus toe. I'm folically challenged. Get me some!

We're all out. Turns out that the bottle fell over and drained onto the counter top. This was 6 months ago. I'm too lazy to go buy some more. So much for the holy grail. I'll just suffer in peace and write a blog entry about it.

Being a Tiger Fan

So I've always been an underdog sort of fan. Here's my favorites going back to childhood:

Montreal Expos- 1981 to present
California Angels- 1982 to 1986
Buffalo Bills- 1988 to 1997
Jimmy Carter- 1980

Alright, so they aren't all sports teams, but my point is that I HATE rooting for the favorite. I'm not sure why, but it's just not part of my genetic makeup. I HATE the Yankees. I HATE the Cowboys. I HATE Obama. I HATE the Patriots. I HATE the Lakers.

When my current favorite baseball player (Vladimir Guerrero) signed with the Angels, I was pretty excited. I lived 20 minutes from Angel Stadium. I grew up an Angels fan. But under current ownership, the Angels simply became the west coast Yankees. Sure it was nice to see them win, but I just wasn't excited about them. When my Expos were blown into oblivion by that prick Bud Selig and his cohorts (Loria, Sampson, et.al.) I figured I'd adopt a new team. But I haven't- not with the same passion as I had for my Expos.

I didn't give up on the Bills just because they lost a Super Bowl or two, or three, or four. Anyway, I've always been a sucker for the lame bird- and maybe I'm glad that my new teams aren't the Royals and the Texans and the Grizzlies.

But for the first time in my life, I have been rooting for a favorite- Tiger Woods. Yeah I'm sure there are a billion blogs of people who might have a similar attitude as me, but Tiger Woods is just so perfect. A model citizen. Disciplined. No controversy. Oh yeah, and he's pretty good at golf. I got to see Tiger close up in Carlsbad, California about 10 years ago. My wife got free tickets to the match play tournament down the street from my office so me and my fellow dotcom sports geeks ditched work and walked around in the Tiger Woods hive. We camped out at a par 3 green and Tiger up close with his college roommate fill-in caddy. I don't know his name, but the caddy was actually best friends with one of my spectator buddies. But the tickets my wife got had some extra event on the Monday after the tourney- and it said that it was a Tiger clinic. We were a little confused, but we decided to show up to see what was up. And if you know Tiger, you know that it was an actual golf clinic hosted by Amex, Mike Turico, Tiger and about 70 fans at the driving range of the course. He was giving some basic driving tips on how to hit it low and then they opened it up to questions. A little kid asked if Tiger could hit it over the back fence of the range. Tiger said "over the back fence?... with my driver?..." The kid sheepishly answers yes and Tiger quietly says "how about with my 3?" He then proceeded to launch that badboy to Encinitas to thunderous applause. It was pretty cool.

So I've never met Tiger and I probably never will,but like so many others in the world, I'm excited to watch Tiger. And I want him to win. And I want him to dominate. Sure I was rooting for Rocco when we all knew he had no chance against Sergio earlier this year, so I think I'll always root for the underdog, but Tiger wasn't in that tournament so it's ok. The bandwagon has lots of room. And perhaps I'll buy myself a Tiger headcover so I can profess my love for the favorite.