Hockey Mom?

She said it, "What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? ... lipstick!"

The Repubs have their attack dog, and hats off to them for picking a vicious human being with a smile on her face, and because she's a woman, a mom, with a special needs child, and a pregnant teen, she's the most well-protected candidate to ever hit the stump.

The Repubs sling the mud ... they do it with uncompromising skill ... and now with a "hottie from the coolest state," (they said it, not me), they've got a spokesperson who's essentially untouchable. Any question raised about her will be rebutted with charges of sexism or some pretended violation of the sacred role of motherhood.

I'm sick to my stomach.

Her right-wing agenda is clear.

How about:
Creationism in our schools ... pseudo-science ... religious ideology over truth.

How about:
No abortion, ever ... even in the case of rape and incest.

How about:
Free-market health care ... and more folks outside the medical safety net?

How about:
"It's God's will for our troops to be in Iraq" - check out this YouTube video from her church.

How about:
Abstinence as a social policy. Yeah, right. Apparently both mother and daughter have some difficulty with this as a personal value.

How about:
Lower taxes for the wealth and growing federal deficits, as we continue to borrow from the Chinese to buy Saudi oil. And have you noticed lower oil prices? Hey, did this just happen by coincidence? The oil companies are eating some of their profits to lower prices right now, because more than anything else, they want another Repub administration - a president who will promote their international projects and who knows what drilling in America's shrinking wilderness. Why, they've made so much money in the last three years, they could give gas away for the next two years and still have money in the bank.

How about:
More war, because war has apparently become God's will to protect our national interests around the globe, and pity the nation that doesn't have our interests at heart.

On and on it goes ... beneath the smile and the rhetoric, Dick Cheney in drag, adding to it a James Dobson/Mike Huckabee overlay of Jesus-talk - smug, self-assured, and oh so right.

What most sickens me is that I'm a follower of Jesus, too, but the Jesus I know and love, the Jesus I worship and follow, is vastly different than the Jesus offered up by the religious right.

Hockey Mom?

Mayor of a small town.
Governor for 22 months of a state whose population is smaller than a couple of square blocks in Chicago's south side.
Qualified?

Someone said to me today, excited about Sarah Palin, "She's a regular person."

I don't want a regular person, nor does this nation need one. We had "a regular person" for the last eight years.

We need greatness ... heck, even Reagan, of whom I'm no fan, was certainly no regular person. Neither was Richard Nixon, and neither were John F. Kennedy or FDR. We need folks of vision and courage, experience and depth.

One of Palin's introductions included her high school basketball record: she was captain of a team that won the state championship. Who the hell even remembers what they did in high school, and if being a beauty queen and a runner-up in Miss Alaska qualify her for the highest office in the land, then good golly Miss Molly, about 100 million folks are qualified, too.

Well, the Repubs have what they needed: an attack dog, and it wears a skirt. Hats off to the Repubs - they've pulled a fast one, and a lot of Americans are gullible enough to fall for it.