Let's start with Rossi wanting to lower or roll back the state minimum wage.
He explained why:

"Minimum wage was not meant to be a family wage; it's meant to be an entry level wage."

That's a curious statement.

Who profits most by an entry level wage?

We know that cheap labor is the basis upon which Wal-Mart has a price advantage in its competition with local businesses in communities all over. Aberdeen, Washington has had a seriously slowed down economy for years ... except at the Wal-Mart store.  

Wal-Mart doesn't put Real Estate Agents out of business however. In fact, a Real Estate Developer would be interested in big-box stores.

Can Mr. Rossi can tell me what percentage of families are surviving on that minimum wage he thinks is too high? What does he consider the non-entry-level wage upon which families should be able to make do?

I don't think he cares about that. He just needs a Republican talking point and the level of minimum wage is always a talkable point.

Do you remember how Mr. Bush, the head of Dino Rossi's Republican party who - guided by the likes of Cheney and Rove - tried to capitalize on unemployed victims of Hurricane Katrina by imposing a "prevailing wage" and suspending the minimum wage on the Gulf Coast?

That is the Rossi thought in this state. He needs this current economic disaster to sell his snake oil the same way Bush used Katrina to sell the same kind of nonsense.

I also understand that Rossi says the minimum wage in Washington is part of an overall "unfriendly business" environment in Washington, a state environment that causes employers to flee or not come here in the first place.

I used Google to learn that the number of other states who have raised the minimum wage with cost of living increments like what was done by our own  legislature is now up into double digits. 

I then ask Mr. Rossi to tell my why more, not less, states are doing it. Is it that his particular talking point has failed many times elsewhere?

Google "Rossi minimum wage" and read what Association of Washington Businesses president Don Brunell said about the state minimum wage:

"AWB is no longer fighting the minimum-wage law, which is adjusted every year in line with the consumer price index.

You don't see us screaming out loud about this," said Don Brunell, president of the trade group, which represents 6,300 members.

"... Washington's robust economy, which added nearly 90,000 jobs last year, is proof that even with the country's highest minimum wage, "this is a great place to do business,."

Dino Rossi does not have a valid minimum wage argument.

How about that Wall Street?

How about those Republican Economic Geniuses who were paid by those corporate Lobbyists all those years?

How about that deregulated free-market banking and loan system?

There's what used to be WAMU ...  

In Arlington 800 employees lost their job last week.

In my own county, this week a local wood products company laid off their entire production staff.

Is that what we want, someone trying to make hay out of our own suffering by blaming it on a governor who - like the rest of us - has to react after the fact and exerts little or no impact on the national Republican-destroyed economy?

Our kitchen table budgets are definitely not written by comfortable real-estate agents in King County.  However, if we put the Real Estate guy in charge, our budgets will get worse very quickly.

Think that running a real estate agency is representative of the small business environment where many hourly wage citizens are employed?

Think again. A real estate agent manages a budget based primarily on sales, commissions, facilities, supplies and clerical expenses. The most vulnerable employees in any real estate agency are hourly or salaried clerical staff at the bottom of the agency earning scale.

Commission-earners only lose their jobs if they cannot sell - or if the economy goes to hell and leaves not much to sell because Republicans took  us all to the landfill.

On the other hand, small businesses that employ a staff predominantly paid an hourly rate are much more representative of the type of business where the size of the minimum wage is critical.

For Rossi to imply that his small business experience is greater and wiser than that of the local mom and pop cannery, the bowling alley, the restaurant or independent seafood processor is laughable.

Both Dino Rossi and Chris Gregoire are asking for my vote. I don't live in Kansas and I'm not about to vote according to party affiliation nor philosophical bent.

I'm going to vote my health, well being ... and my wallet. I'm giving my vote to the sitting incumbent who has earned it and demonstrated her ability.

In every debate Rossi has responded to questions about health care with  some sort of thin gruel about free-market competition and allowing more insurance companies entry into Washington State.

That means Rossi constantly suggests that market competition in and of itself will drive health care premium costs down to the kitchen budget level.

That's a blatant con ... and an out and out bamboozle from someone who not only thinks we are stupid but that he can sneak one by us.

I'm voting what I think, not what Dino thinks. I'm sixty two and more than ready and willing to retire. I can't WAIT to retire - but in this current economic circumstance I flat out can't do it.

I can't retire while Mr. Rossi's free-market corporate capitalism remains part of America's health care package. I can't do it while too many incompetents act as if good health is a marketable commodity.

Bringing more insurance companies into Washington State or letting me shop insurance companies in other states is not going to work for me. If I retire right now, my monthly health care premium will be $900 and I have that in writing.

If Mr. Rossi is suggesting that more access to health care insurers will lower that monthly rate by even 50% isn't that still like spitting on a bonfire?

The resulting monthly cost would still be too much; the equivalent of paying an additional half my mortgage every 30 days.

Purchasing such a market-valued commodity would still result in my making the equivalent of a car payment on a vehicle I can not afford and still not being able to drive - unless I get catastrophically sick when I might not be able to drive at all.

The average state worker monthly retirement after twenty years is less than $2000. If married - in order to unsure that your spouse will continue getting your pension if she outlives you - that amount is reduced by at least 25%.

Therefore, as currently constituted, a retirement of $1500 will be reduced by $900 health care premium to $600 per month.

So for 20 years work, a retiree takes home approximately $600 per month plus medical.

Now isn't that just deregulated free-market delectable?

To put it in perspective, a Washington State TANF recipient with one child and who has shelter expense obligations receives $453 in monthly cash plus medical coverage.

I certainly am not declaring myself more worthy of a comfortable living than a single parent with one child.

But as a tax payer I am saying that a retiree who has worked all the way to retirement ought to have a right to expect more than an inflexible and irrational political party's lies about free-market treatment of health care as the only choice.

What's with these Republicans who are as tied to corporate capitalism as Ahab was to Moby Dick?

The only citizens who might justifiably vote for Rossi are those upper income Republicans or self-styled conservatives who can afford to be self-styled conservatives. Those are the folks who can talk the conservative talk as if they had intellectual depth and vote their philosophy and or social conservatism moral beliefs because they have much less skin in the game.

Republicans of lesser income who self-style themselves as conservatives or vote with Republicans because they have a moral-values social conservatism WILL vote against their own self interest if they vote for Mr. Rossi.

Among the rest of us - Seniors, single parents, young couples with children, middle-income and low-income voters, students - any tax-payer, consumer, and civic-minded voter will prove that Rossi isn't as smart as he assumes himself to be.

We will tell the former budget writer that we are not moving to Kansas.

Posted SwanDeer Project at 3:36 PM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 14 October 2008 3:39 PM PDT

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One Editor's View of the Rossi Candidacy Pt. II

The molded candidate? Has Mr. Rossi always been a

Conservative Without Conscience? 

Rossi's campaign promises are the promises of his  party and national sponsors who put him in this position. Dino talks about how his economic philosophy will serve him and us well.

However, when faced with unavoidable budget choices, a leader whose sole intellectual perception is a rigid and inflexible economic or political philosophy sees his judgment collide  head on with need, pragmatism, common sense and compassion.

The leader has to choose an alternative to his own slick promises that had no substance in the first place ... or he must fail.

If you do not believe me, ask Herbert Hoover. Better yet, ask George Bush about the socialized bail out of Republican cash cows.
With his blatant attempt to capitalize on this economic crash by tying it to Governor Gregoire's leadership - and despite Rossi's blatant attempt to ride the Obama coattails of change in Washington State - it seems that Mr. Rossi's campaign strategy and themes are right out of the Rove historical playbook.

Rossi attacks what he apparently considers to be Gregoire's strongest attributes. His campaign ads and sound bites are quite purely a "swift-boat" attack strategy.

Not this time.

When your party has been top-dumb-dog for 8 years, you'll throw your back out trying to place the blame on someone else.

Mr. Rossi still seems intent on running a Republican 2004-style attack campaign but without major big-time backup.

Dollars perhaps, but if there is any mentoring or support, it has had only limited usefulness. His campaign style in fact reveals his party's desperation. His own desperate party is reduced to praying only for significant and credible survival .

McCain can't come and help.
Bush coming to campaign would be nothing more than a powerful comparison to and confirmation of Dino's intellectual shallowness. Like Bush, it seems that Dino has learned everything he needed to know only in the recent Republican history.

Fact is, Dino is on his own. He doesn't seem to be receiving anything new from those old partisan coaches at the RNC. Gone is the mentoring by confident and cocky party partisans in high positions of national power.

As a force for positive change in this country and state - for cleaning out a soiled house - Republicans and Dino Rossi don't matter much right now except for ownership of responsibility.

Dino Rossi has not successfully communicated to Washington voters that he is anything more than a local surrogate for the  National Republican Party to put an agent in this blue state's governor's chair.

One thing about fiscal conservatism and its less-government talking points, legitimate conservatives are learned with self-acquired knowledge. (Read John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience)even self-taught. Rossi's  dialogues do not suggest a self-taught learned fiscal conservative with deep Adam Smith convictions.

He seems to have acquired his economic philosophy  in the same way McCainers are currently attempting  to educate Sarah Palin. Talking points remain shallow because sales persons have to keep prospects' perceptions in the shallow zone.

Otherwise, Mr. Rossi struggles to hide the fact that he is a pretend ideologue claiming affiliation to a discredited corporate deregulated free-market theory.

As I both watched and listened to the debate in Spokane I was struck by the consistent and rapidly-worded monotone in Rossi's speaking style.

That's the sort of fact-presentation and point-making that comes out of sales training and practice. It's how successful sales persons are trained.

It's how Rossi would attempt to govern by insincere salesmanship more focused on self than community.

I know about sales training ... I've been there.  Over the course of my 48-year working history I've been trained to sell vacuum cleaners, encyclopedias, life insurance, Shaklee, Amway - even as a proselyting missionary selling salvation door-to-door.

I've seen that peddler look on Rossi's face.

Rossi's look-you-occasionally-in-the-eye gaze is a look not sincerely invested in a business transaction where both sides win. It is more interested purely in making the sale.

It is also the gaze of someone always ready to move on and try to sell a product to a more pliable prospect.

It is a gaze a governor Rossi would hide behind in order to further his own importance in the scheme of being a governor and celebrity.

When someone insists that he has the best interest of families and individuals at heart we ought to know how he is managing his own affairs - what experiential success he has that relates to our own kitchen planning.

I'd also like to know - from anyone else who does know - just what the source of Mr. Rossi's personal funding is.

If he has been campaigning full time and supporting himself on his own income, what income is that? How is he meeting his own obligations ... you know, writing his own budget?

Is Rossi loaded?

If so does that make him empathetic to Washington's middle class families, fixed-income senior citizens and low-income vulnerable citizens?

Our experience with Republican promisers like McCain and Mitt Romney has made an honest revelation of a candidate's personal  financial circumstances highly relevant and significant.

Do we have with Dino Rossi a McCain-like image of multiple cars and houses?

Intimate open honesty and not snake-eyed stares from Mr. Rossi are what matter. Otherwise messages that imply strong empathy remain mere empty words.

Open honesty should include Rossi's willing acknowledgment that he is asking us to let him experiment with our lives.

He asks us to let him apply his own, his party's and his corporate support base's economic theory to state government.

It's just that simple.

Thomas Frank in his book, What's The Matter With Kansas?, examines the consequences in a state where voters made election choices that ran against their own best interests. Voters did so because they were gullible; because political propagandists lead by big business politicians and social conservative activists were overwhelmingly convincing.

Voters in Kansas voted their anger, not their own common sense. They voted for candidates and policies of a party whose heart and soul belong to big business and corporate lobbyists.

Their naive and trusting gullibility hurt their lives seriously.  Although  voting their outrage and resentment in those elections might have been personally satisfying, they have paid for that mistake in judgment.

Rossi is tempting us to do the same.

Is it our turn to succumb to his temptations out of our apathy and ignorance? Or will we be stampeded by anger and outrage fueled by campaign falsehoods?

Washingtonians, like Kansans before them, are being asked to vote against their own best  interest. We are asked to support a candidate whose principal promise is and remains detached cost-effectiveness and a de-regulated market across the board.

By this Rossi and his party support deregulated public utilities, de-regulated financial markets, and de-regulated transportation. Need I mention that the McCain Republicans were willing to propose deregulated health care as a way to mislead voters made angry by other issues.

Isn't Rossi's dumbed down suggestion of letting more insurance companies into the state a form of de-regulating health insurance and health care by waiting for market competition to bring health care costs down. Same old song, same old lyrics, and same old calliope.

There's a difference between concern and anger.
Rovian politicians like Dino Rossi know this.

Concern is not what made Rush Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Hannity rich and famous.

Misplaced and misguided anger was the formula.

Rossi wants voters to vote while they're mad.  That's a tactic much like stoking anger in someone who is about to go out and speed away on a rainy night driving a car with bald tires and faulty brakes.

We are being asked to vote against our own best interest by supporting a party whose financial political base is founded on cheap labor;

who push for corporate advantages rather than advantage to kitchen budgets,

who do not seek advantages to small businesses nor to those small family farms until the big businesses have had first dibs.

Next: Rossi, the Working Family and me.

Posted SwanDeer Project at 12:30 PM PDT

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It is biased because it reflects my personal opinion. My bias is based on my concerns and reasons for how I intend to vote next month.

It is about concern for family, for self and a willingness to speak up.

This writing is based on the positive or negative expectations engendered by candidates' records and presentations - sales pitches, if you will - in asking for my vote.

Those expectations have primarily to do with what  I see as my priorities:

my family's well being,

how we plan to cope with the imposing economic circumstances,

our personal health and the costs of maintaining adequate health coverage,

and finally, what I'd like to do on behalf of my children's and grandchildren's future.

Who am I to opine as an editor?

WashBlog.com is a liberal blog with an editorial  board that reflects a variety of progressive  points of view.  

Some of us are Democrats, others are not.

Along with founder, Brian Moran, we maintain an insistence that this blog is not an arm of the state Democratic Party or any party for that matter. No one gives us our talking points or article topics except by suggestion.

This has been a hard-won independence that is the historical result of having had to cope with attempts to insert party talking points and control of Washblog's overall message and themes to our readers.  

If we have an overall theme it is that of progressive advocacy much more than political liberalism.

The majority of our posts are political but our  writings include an assortment of issues beyond party politics i.e., economics, the environment, law and order/criminal justice issues, social justice, and religion in or outside of politics.

Another issue is vote integrity. One of our editors, Jason Osgood, has gotten involved in a major way. He is the Democratic candidate for Secretary of State this year.

As a WashBlog contributing editor and member of  its board, I remain an independent voter. I returned to being an independent voter officially the Wednesday following election Tuesday in 2006. That was when I resigned from the Democratic Party and notified my local precinct committee officer.

Although I flirted with rejoining the Democrats after participation in a single Democratic Party Caucus in Naselle this past March, I backed off and was content to support my wife, Lietta, who became an Obama delegate to the Pacific County Convention in April.

I want to write an opinion on the candidacy of Dino Rossi for governor that is based on my own experience and participation in state government at a level that Mr. Rossi has no personal first hand day-to-day experience.

In that regard, folks like me possess a view of citizen concerns from inside the very state agencies about which Mr. Rossi makes critical observation. We know more about some of those topics and issues and their importance to citizens than does the candidate himself.

This is also fair to a public who might believe Rossi has ground-level experience and therefor whose views are much more than merely based on his theory of government.

For example, if candidate Rossi can publish a video ad in which it is implied that the ad's star witness is someone with inside knowledge of the state's foster care system then that individual needs to have her own credentials as a knowledgeable insider questioned and confirmed.

I will write more on that ad another time.

The truth is, Rossi is an outsider, far removed from the daily nuts and bolts of the state social services delivery system.

Governor Gregoire - as the one who presides -  possesses a clearer picture but is still echelons-removed from where the rubber hit's the road.  She can speak anecdotally but not with contemporary authority in the same context as one who is there every day all day.

I can and will.

When candidate Rossi offers a statistic and includes his one-dimensional interpretation of what that number really means, it can be quite probable that he truly doesn't know what he is talking about

or he is deliberately playing with facts in the same way a fast-talking preacher is able to prove anything with a Bible quote or two.

As someone inside the system, as a professional at what I do and as a civic-minded and civically active citizen, I want to challenge Dino Rossi's campaign asssertions.

Now as a state worker I am prohibited from speaking as if I were an official representative of DSHS, state government or any state officer.

But I am a citizen and voter who is a professional  employed by the Washington DSHS as a  TANF/WorkFirst case worker. I am  tasked with administering the family cash assistance program (TANF), state General Assistance (GA) and Medicaid programs in this end of Pacific County.

I am a tax-payer, property-owner and voting consumer in the state of Washington who is entitled to his opinion and has the right to express it.  

To me that means much more than just having a state job. It also means that as someone authorized to spend state funds, approve food benefits or open medical coverage, I do so with knowledge that I am s pending my own tax dollars.

I deal with individuals young and old and families who come to us needing cash help, food assistance and/or medical coverage. Often that coverage is needed out of desperation to help cope with illnesses or injuries for which the cost of treatment and medications does not fit in their budgets.

As a tax-payer and case worker, I then have a personal fiduciary interest in a wise and effective management of my little corner of the state budget.

And as a citizen who will vote, I want to discuss Dino Rossi's vow to be a governor of fiscal and political conservatism.

This week I watched that last debate in Spokane on channel 9.

The essence of Mr. Rossi's argument seems to be two propositions:

(1) Dino Rossi wrote budgets.

(2) There are people who like Dino Rossi as revealed to him when he holds Republican rallies around the state.

There was little beyond those two talking points to recommend Rossi as a governor with leadership traits.

Writing budgets is not a leadership trait.

Rather, writing budgets is a legislative tasking for those who desire that kind of responsibility and are chosen to do so based on political popularity within one's party.

Consequently, "reaching across the aisle" to write budgets is a given - since a budget has to be approved by the legislature and not a mere committee chair person.

I hope Mr. Rossi was not trying to say that he personally wrote budgets that were approved solely by him, then forced out of committee and into the legislature's main floor by sheer force of his indomitable will.

Is writing budgets a greater leadership virtue for a governor than managing budgets?

I guess Mr. Rossi wants us to believe so.

I disagree.

The greater role and where leadership matters with budgets is not what group of politicians write a budget. The greater role is taken by the leader authorized, tasked and trusted to spend taxpayer funds wisely and efficiently.

Leadership is how that budget is managed. This of course includes choices to spend or not-spend that will have unavoidable consequences.

Mr. Rossi has never sat in that chair and therefore has never been required to choose when conflicts within a budget of that magnitude and importance arise.  

Mrs. Gregoire has sat in that chair.

Mr. Rossi has not made the case that she has done poorly.

Part II tomorrow.

Posted SwanDeer Project at 12:44 PM PDT

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Opinion:

Garrison Keillor, Tampa Bay Times

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Americans' B.S. detectors off charts with Palin

We are a stalwart and stouthearted people, and never more so than in hard times.

People weep in the dark and arise in the morning and go to work. The waves crash on your nest egg and a chunk is swept away and you put your salami sandwich in the brown bag and get on the bus.

In Philly, a woman earns $10.30/hour to care for a man brought down by cystic fibrosis. She bathes and dresses him in the morning, brings him meals, puts him to bed at night. It's hard work lifting him and she has suffered a painful hernia that, because she can't afford health insurance, she can't get fixed, but she still goes to work because he'd be helpless without her.

There are a lot of people like her. I know because I'm related to some of them.

Low dishonesty and craven cynicism sometimes win the day but not inevitably. The attempt to link Barack Obama to an old radical in his neighborhood has desperation and deceit written all over it.

Meanwhile, stunning acts of heroism stand out, such as the fidelity of military lawyers assigned to defend detainees at Guantanamo Bay ¿ uniformed officers faithful to their lawyerly duty to offer a vigorous defense even though it means exposing the injustice of military justice that is rigged for conviction and the mendacity of a commander in chief who commits war crimes. If your law school is looking for a name for its new library, instead of selling the honor to a fat cat alumnus, you should consider the names of Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, Lt. Col. Mark Bridges, Col. Steven David, Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer, Lt. Cmdr. Philip Sundel and Maj. Michael Mori.

It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone's mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged.

When she said,

"One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe Sixpack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars,"

people smelled gas.

Some Republicans adore her because they are pranksters at heart and love the consternation of grown-ups. The ne'er-do-well son of the old Republican family as president, the idea that you increase government revenue by cutting taxes, the idea that you cut social services and thereby drive the needy into the middle class, the idea that you overthrow a dictator with a show of force and achieve democracy at no cost to yourself

¿ one stink bomb after another,

and now Gov. Palin. She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her vacuity, and she was John McCain's first major decision as nominee. This troubles independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his candidacy.

She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career making personal appearances for 40 grand a pop, and she'll become a trivia question,

"What politician claimed foreign policy expertise based on being able to see Russia from her house?"

And the rest of us will have to pull ourselves out of the swamp of Republican economics.

Your broker kept saying, "Stay with the portfolio, don't jump ship," and you felt a strong urge to dump the stocks and get into the money market where at least you're not going to lose your shirt, but you didn't do it and didn't do it, and now you're holding a big bag of brown bananas.

Me, too. But at least I know enough not to believe desperate people who are talking trash. Anybody who got whacked last week and still thinks McCain-Palin is going to lead us out of the swamp and not into a war with Iran is beyond persuasion in the English language. They'll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in a cold hard rain before they connect the dots.

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Posted SwanDeer Project at 12:01 AM PDT

Updated: Sunday, 12 October 2008 8:42 AM PDT

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Guess who's not coming to dinner 

BY ROGER EBERT /suntimes.com
September 28, 2008 


I do not like you, John McCain. My feeling has nothing to do with issues. It has to do with common courtesy. During the debate, you refused to look Barack Obama in the eye. Indeed, you refused to look at him at all. Even when the two of you shook hands at the start, you used your eyes only to locate his hand, and then gazed past him as you shook it.

Obama is my guy. If you are rude to him, you are rude to me.

If you came to dinner at my house and refused to look at or speak with one of my guests, that would be bad manners and I would be offended. Same thing if I went to your house.

During the debate, you were America's guest.

What was your problem? Do you hold this man in such contempt that you cannot bear to gaze upon him?

Will you not even speak to him directly? 

Do you think he doesn't have the right to be running for President? 

Were you angry because after you said you wouldn't attend the debate, he said a President should be able to concern himself with two things at the same time?

He was right. The proof is, you were there.

Were you angry with him because he called your bluff?

During the debate, Jim Lehrer repeatedly called upon both candidates to speak directly to each other. Obama looked at you. He addressed you as "John," which as a fellow senator is his privilege. His body language was open.

You stared straight ahead, or at Lehrer, or into space. Your jaw was clinched. You had a tight little smile, or a grimace, or a little shake of your head.

I had to do two things at once while watching the debate. I had to listen to what was being said. And I had to process your rigid and contemptuous behavior.

If you were at a wedding and the father of the groom refused to look at or speak to the bride, how would that make you feel? Especially if you were the father of the bride?

You made a TV commercial showing the moments Obama agreed with you. Everybody knows he did. Did his agreement show honesty, or weakness? 

It is significant that you said it proved he was not ready to lead. 

What is the better leadership quality:

(1) Willingness to listen to your opponent, and keep an open mind?

(2) Rigidly ignoring him?

Which of the two of you better demonstrated the bipartisan spirit you say you represent? Was there anything he said that you agreed with?

Could you have brought yourself to say so?

I'm not the only one who noticed your odd, hostile behavior. Just about everybody did. I'm sure many of your supporters must have sensed the tension.

Before the debate, pundits were wondering if you might explode in a display of your famous temper. I think we saw that happen, all right, but it was an implosion.

I have instructed my wife to exclude you from any future dinner parties.

Posted SwanDeer Project at 9:13 PM PDT

Updated: Sunday, 28 September 2008 9:16 PM PDT

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-- "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" 

This could not be a more apt description of Candidate McCain. 

And from Mr. Will, a conservative icon.

McCain Loses His Head

George Will

New York Times   09/23/08

[Excerpts] 

 Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

... It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

Posted SwanDeer Project at 7:08 AM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 23 September 2008 7:13 AM PDT

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Palin situation glamorizes teen (unwed) pregnancy? 

So says my daughter, who has a sixteen year old daughter she desires does not get pregnant at this tender age.  My daughter is military spouse -her husband is deployed now in Iraq in his second deployment. A deployment, btw, that Sarah Palin thinks emanates from God's plan.  Not so much what that plan is or even that God by her definitions is the same God of my son-in-law's or daughter's or her children's definitions.  But I digress.  

My daughter calls herself a proud democrat - but most of her military spouse women friends tend towards the authoritarian, follow orders republican bent.  Military itself, being authoritarian, follow orders, patriarchal culture, it follows there would be a more dominance towards the 'supposed' republican tenets.  

Oddly, though, my daughters friends have acknowledged they are weary of Bush Adminstration, disappointed with the Republicans in office and sick of the Iraq war (where their spouses have been deployed once, twice or more).  Despite what they have told her, my daughter finds it astounding that after the history of this last six years with Republican Administration failures, her military spouse friends have suddenly converged into joining into a 'lockstep' mentality in support of Palin simply because she is the republican VP pick.

In her discussions with her friends, she has said she really doesn't like how the republican handling of the unfolding Sarah Palin situation is seeming to 'glamorize' teen pregnancy.  I'd say that word fits even more so, in light of Palin's support of abstinence taught in schools in lieu of birth control; Palin position against abortion even in cases of rape and incest!  Incest for God's sake - how can anyone force a young woman to carry a child to term given the conditions of that kind of conception.  Hideously cruel!  Both pychologically and physiologically dangerous.  

In her acceptance speech, Sarah Palin made reference to Hillary Clinton's 18 million cracks in the ceiling - the inference being Sarah Palin could springboard off Hillary Clinton's imprint.  NOT!! They are entirely different kinds of women.  

In as much as population cultures have similarities, they still remain individually unique even among their own populations.  Women are not universal in their qualities any more than men are universal in their qualities.

Women may have a sisterhood, born of intuitive understanding of womanhood.  Women also are still working to overcome too many generations of oppression, molding their personalities to fit into a male-dominated patriarchal order.  There is still work to do for women in learning how to fully and successfully embrace our own sisterhood without those 'sisterhood' rivalries that often can erupt.

Sarah Palin may have desireable qualities that work for her in  a religious Evangelist culture (a patriarchally ordered culture) that brand her a woman  as defined by Evangelical definitions.  That does not imbue in her universal qualities acceptable to other women who are working hard not to follow a patriarchally ordered culture of women.  Women are still trying to find the female to male balance and tipping the scales backwards is not progress for women anywhere.

I love my daughter's choice of description choosing the word 'glamorizing' of teen pregnancy.  It is at this point known that Palin's daughter has an unwed teen pregnancy, not known if it is an unwanted teen pregnancy, but surely it points to why abstinence education only doesn't work any better or worse than birth control education.  Rather than glamorize the fact of Sarah Palin's teen daughter's pregnancy by downplaying all the realities that attach to the facts of teen pregnancies, perhaps a  more authentic discussion - debate about the realities of teen pregnancies, conception, and women's choice or lack thereof regarding pregnancy outcomes.

A woman is confined to limited choices once she is pregnant; aborting the pregnancy, keeping the pregnancy and delivering the child; keeping and raising the child herself or offering the child up to a family who can care for it.  No matter the decision, the child (whether embryo or infant) and mother will be directly impacted for the rest of their lives.  For that matter, so will the man who fathered the child.  

One could say the Sarah Palin situation opens a dialogue that is not unique to her family but one every family raising children, boys and girls, must face.  I agree with the 'hands off' Sarah's daughter, but that doesn't mean at all hands off the discussion.  It has been ongoing through all generations and continues to be an ongoing and necessary discussion.  

Thank you to Carla Axtman for her thoughts in her blog, and thank you to Arthur for opening the discussion at Washblog.    
 
On the Surge in Iraq "--we have set the bar so low it's buried in the sand at this point." - Barack Obama
by Lietta Ruger on Sat Sep 06, 2008 

Posted SwanDeer Project at 11:09 AM PDT

Updated: Saturday, 6 September 2008 11:17 AM PDT

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