I’m sorry that I just can’t make myself get upset over Charlie Gibson’s interview with Gov. Palin. She muffed the question about the Bush Doctrine? I’ll bet 95% of the people watching couldn’t correctly identify the Bush Doctrine. She looked good, didn’t have two heads and didn’t breathe fire and therefore was a success.

Likewise, the media — in particular the AP and Paul Krugman in the NYT — is starting to say that the McCain campaign is lying; not just exaggerating or distorting, but lying. O rly? No shit, Sherlock.

Anyway, every internet site I visit, whether “straight news” or left blog or right blog and even the polling sites are just hyperventilating. It’s all just too much and most of it is unreadable and over the top.

Well, I’ve had some “wake up” calls this week that have given me some perspective.

MCARP lost his buddy, Beasley the cat. If you read his blog, you can tell it hurts. My cat, Sinatra, is my friend, my companion, my solace and entertainment. Our pets mean something very personal to us. For him, it’s testing his fundamental non-attachment faiths and amounts to an internal emotional and spiritual crisis. We cannot judge. It’s his jihad, his struggle, his lonely path. MCARP, my friend, there are a great many of us who care about you and support you and finding out that you are not alone is a gift. For me personally, I am grateful that I do not face MCARP’s test because I’m not so sure I could do so with his grace.

Some of you know that I still go to AA meetings after 13 years of sobriety; I consider the two things inextricably tied, I’ve been abstinant because I still go to meetings. I learned this week that one of my friends in “the program”, someone who had 16 years of sobriety, someone who has had a liver transplant, is using again. I cannot judge. I understand. And, I’m so sad. I have my problems and they sometimes overwhelm me and I have drinking thoughts from time to time. So far, it has always seemed to me that I can remind myself that whatever my problems of the day, they will only get worse if I go back to drinking. I’m grateful that I don’t face that test because I know I could drink again but I don’t know that I could stop again.

My favorite aunt and uncle have recently faced the loss of their daughter to cancer. A mother of three, she was only in her 30s. It puts my problems of romance and finance into perspective — I can’t imagine their pain. By comparison, I read my daughter’s blog about her children and their activities and teacher and got in a good visit with my son, Jack, while he was here riding out Gustav. I have my problems, no doubt, but my problems are my size and that’s a blessing because I am not so sure I could face the problem of a parent whose child dies so young.

So, I take a pause from politics. How important is it compared to the real problems real people in my life are facing? Seems to me that politics is not important enough to get my knickers in a twist. I’ll try to remember that when I post again.

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I know that people are talking about how much they admire Gov. Palin on a personal level and I’m not talking about just evangelicals agog that she’s “walking the talk” about abortion. I hear people talking about her being a supermom that balances a big family with a big job.

I call BS.

I don’t admire her choices at all. Not in the least.

And, I don’t think I’m being sexist because I wouldn’t admire such choices in a man.

It’s one thing to have a high powered job and a big family if one of the parents is a “stay at home” parent. That’s not this situation. Gov. Palin’s husband has a full time job as a steelworker and then does commercial fishing in the summers.

Even if he’s the one who stays with the kids more than she does, how great a parent is she really? From my teaching days at a private school, I knew many kids who had a parent with high power and income jobs, mostly fathers.

Sure, those fathers provided for the kids in every way, including private school and cars and wardrobes.

But being a parent isn’t about money and power and glamour. It’s about time. Time spent with the kids is critical and workaholic parents don’t have the time to be super-parents.

Yes, I admire women who try to “have it all,” women who work and nuture run through our society nowadays, but most of those “have it all” women aren’t making that choice — they are forced into that precarious balancing act because they are single mothers.

I’m not talking about Gov. Palin’s youngest child, Trig, who has Down’s Syndrome. Making the choice to get pregnant at age 44 when you already have four kids is, to me, nuts. Just crazy. I can’t imagine it. But, I’m no judge of that and having a fifth child was Gov. Palin’s choice to make and not mine. Deciding to have a fifth child while trying to be the governor of a state, I think is a place where I can start to make a judgment because it’s a public choice when the parent is in the public eye by the parent’s choice. I think it’s crazy. Deciding to carry to term a special needs fifth child while trying to run a state is to me getting into the territory of very questionable judgment.

Gov. Palin has really tried hard to be a good mom. She brings her youngest two to the office with her. Good for her. That, I admire.

But, something’s gotta give. And, it did. What “gave” was Bristol. A 17 year old that had unprotected sex with the local high school jock who did not want children or marriage. I know how that goes. My parents, both working, had four children. My girlfriend and I married after she became pregnant. I know all about young marriages and being a child raising children. I don’t think my ex-wife and I did too badly, even though we both had to work. However, neither of us tried to do all this in the public eye of Washington, D.C., while Mom ran for vice president of the U.S.

At some point, it’s only being a grown up to recognize that you really can’t have it all. Compromises have to be made. The more children you have and the higher profile the parents’ jobs and the more compromises have to be made until you don’t have it all after all. Even the most brilliant and energetic have some limits.

Not only do I think Gov. Palin made a foolhardy choice, I also don’t admire her blaming it all on God. My own take is that hormones and unthinking irresponsibility had much more to do with the situation than God, unless you’ve reduced the notion of the Almighty Creator to mere random luck.

Something about the abstinence only, take the kids to church as much as possible parenting choice made by Gov. Palin didn’t work the way it was supposed to. Yes, I can relate, but that doesn’t make it a good choice.

Something about the decision making of the Gov. in her own life doesn’t add up for me when she decided to have Trig and the fact that she kept it a secret from even her own children for so long tells me that she’s not so sure about the “rightness” of the decision even within her own family.

And so, seriously, Sarah, if your appeal is your biography, I’ve got serious questions about your ability to lead the country and the United States Senate. I wonder what kind of ambassador you’ll make to countries like India and China and some African nations where birth rates are a big problem. Seriously, Sarah, it must be fun to come from out of nowhere to the pinnacle of fame and get to play in the big leagues and be sarcastic to wild applause, but is this really the best choice you could make for your family, for your party and for your country? Seriously, Sarah, you ambitious little slut puppy, you should have just said “NO!”.

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You might want to kinda keep this under your hat because Sen. McCain hates to talk about it and would never never NEVER use it for political advantage, but did you know that 40 years ago he was a POW?

This morning’s news is that unemployment has gone over 6%. Sen. McCain has a plan: abolish unemployment insurance and let community colleges do their job.

In other economic news this morning, foreclosures hit a record high. Sen. McCain has a plan: he knows a couple from podunk who lost all their speculative investments in real estate and he’s going to care about them and “reach across the aisle” or something.

Republican are to blame for letting Washington corrupt them and that’s how we got into this mess, McCain said, and the obvious solution is to elect Republicans to fix that.

He’s mavericky, you know.

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P.S. Gov. Palin doesn’t have to talk to the press if she doesn’t want to and she doesn’t want to, so there.

P.P.S. A Georgia Republican congressman, Lynn Westmoreland, says his problem with the Democratic Party ticket is that Sen. Obama is “uppity”, but he meant that in a completely non-racist way, don’t ya know, because he thinks Sen. Biden is uppity as well. Even though he’s from the Old Confederacy, he says he had NO IDEA that the word “uppity” had any kind of historically negative connotation because, well, he’s the only white male from the Deep South who just didn’t know that. So there again.

Just some quickies about stuff on the edges:

1. The Code Pink protesters were idiots who pissed off this anti-war voter who wanted to hear what Sen. McCain had to say.

2. I was stunned by how bad Cindy McCain’s hair looked.

3. Only 36 out of 2,800 delegates were black, but we got a TV visual of all three dozen.

4. There were some medical malpractice face lifts in that crowd. OMFG!

5. Although the on-the-floor reporter for NBC said there were tears on faces in the crowd, I didn’t see it like you did in Denver when no one had to tell you because it was so obvious people were moved.

6. I laughed when the screen behind the senator was green because I remember that awful episode in Louisiana earlier in the campaign. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, try “green screen” as a YouTube or Google search.

7. In the 24 hours since Palin’s speech, $10 million was raised — by Obama.

8. It’s now official that both candidates are running on the same platform: “I’m not Bush”.

9. It looked like maybe a third of the crowd was just too old and feeble to “stand up and fight!”

10. It used to be, when I heard a Republican speak, I thought “what an ass!”, but now that Gov. Palin’s on the ticket … nevermind.

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I’m a guy who likes a witty line, enjoys the perfect bon mot and lives for lively debate and ripostes. Last night’s GOP convention, however, degraded into just petty nastiness. And, yes, I include Gov. Palin’s speech. Of course, it was their job to compare and contrast to the Dem ticket. I expected Obama to take some hits, fair and unfair. But, I got nothin’ but nasty sarcasm that got more and more tiresome as the night wore on.

Talk about running away from reality, I don’t think I heard President Bush named more than a half dozen times. Most of the time, you couldn’t tell the Republicans had controlled all branches of government for most of the past decade. Somehow, it was the fault of the Democrats that we’re in this mess. Huh?

And, did you hear what the Republicans are going to do to get us out of our economic pain?

Me, neither.

Meanwhile, I may not be the guy to make this observation (cf., my last two posts) but to hear Republicans talk about the sexism faced by Sarah Palin (and Hillary) gives me a great big pain in the butt. Not only has that party rejected each, every and all attempts to level the playing field for women in the workplace but the consistent position of the party has been to deny that such a thing as sexism even exists. Where were all those people now crying sexism when Clarence Thomas was nominated and Anita Hill was eviscerated?

The GOP has a problem with the press coverage of the vice presidential nominee because part of the media frenzy over this relative unknown has focussed on her last pregnancy — something they proudly displayed as part of her pro-life bona fides — and the current pregnancy of her 17 year old unmarried daughter. Gee, I don’t know that any of that has any effect on my assessment of Gov. Palin as a nominee, but I was sure as heck curious about her family life since I knew almost nothing about her before she was the nominee and I’m pretty plugged in politically. I wanted to know about John Edwards’ wife Elizabeth and their dead child, her illness and ultimately his affair. The GOP certainly put President Clinton’s sex life on public display and even John McCain told a joke that implied a lesbian affair between Hillary and Janet Reno. So, to me, dragging Bristol Palin into the mix is just turn about’s fair play. Just sayin’.

My fellow blogger Flibbertigibbit! translates the body language of McCain and Sarah Palin today. Back when Mayor Palin was running for governor, she and her husband had a private bet. The stakes were that if she lost she’d get the Big Dipper tattooed on her ankle and if he lost he’d have to tattoo a wedding ring on his left hand. I’m hoping Flibbi will interpret that, but it sounds to me like Todd might be a married guy who thinks of himself as a player when he’s off being a steelworker. He wouldn’t be the first and only blue collar husband who liked himself a fine lapdance now and again.

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OK, maybe Gov. Palin’s daughter is unmarried and pregnant. Maybe she used the governor’s office to interfere in her little sister’s messy custody battle. Maybe she was a member of an Alaska secessionist movement back in the late 90s. Maybe she doesn’t know c’mere from sic’em about foreign policy or any other policy. BUT WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT GREAT ASS!

Sure hope Flibbertigibbit reads this.

MONDAY, Sept. 1 (HealthDay News) — Whether a man has one type of gene versus another could help decide whether he’s good “husband material,” a new study suggests.

A study of Swedish twin brothers found that differences in a gene modulating the hormone vasopressin were strongly tied to how well each man fared in marriage.

“Our main finding was an association between a variant of the vasopressin receptor 1a gene and how strong bonds men reported they had to their partners,” said lead researcher Hasse Walum, of the department of medical epidemiology and biostatistics at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. “Men carrying this variant scored on average lower on a scale measuring the strength of the bond compared to men not carrying this variant.”

Women married to men carrying the “poorer bonding” form of the gene also reported “lower scores on levels of marital quality than women married to men not carrying this variant,” Walum noted.

His team published its findings in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

Read the whole story in the Washington Post.

OK, here’s my take on the politics of the last week:

Sarah Palin

A presidential candidate has his/her first opportunity to show how the candidate will govern when he/she chooses a vice presidential nominee. Essentially, the nominee chooses someone who can help govern or someone who helps get elected. Obama’s choice was a governing choice, a partner to help with foreign policy and to manipulate the levers of power, in Sen. Biden. McCain’s choice was an electoral choice and not a governing choice, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Sen. McCain’s choice essentially brushes aside any concerns voters may have about his age and health: clearly, Gov. Palin is not prepared to step into the presidency. However, asking the question of her preparedness totally misses the point. McCain is not concerned about that. Her selection is about getting elected. How can that be? She’s from a 3 electoral vote state that is pretty reliably Republican! That also misses the point, IMO. Sen. McCain has not had the enthusiastic support of the evangelicals who massed to the polls and volunteered to help President Bush. James Dodson, for example, was prominently on the sidelines. Sen. McCain has pandered all he could and still didn’t have them on his side. He does now. Gov. Palin isn’t just talk about abortion, she walks the walk with her newborn Downs Syndrome child. She’s an Assembly of God churchgoer: not just an evangelical, but also pentecostal (if you thought Rev. Wright’s church was weird, wait until you see people speaking in tongues). James Dodson is now enthusiastically on board. With Gov. Palin, there’s no transparent bull about guns like there was with Sen. Clinton: this woman really does hunt and fish and is a lifetime National Rifle Association member. Another group of the far right climbs aboard the Straight Talk Express. If you go down the checklist of the 28% of voters who still stand by President Bush (66% of GOP voters), she is golden

to them.

Much of presidential politics, I’m sorry to say, is image: how does it look on television? She’s as photogenic as they come, personable and easy to identify with for many mothers. You might snark about her Univ. of Idaho journalism degree, but it would be a mistake to underestimate her or consider her stupid. A great many of her social conservative views are not at all about “smart”, they are about “faith”.

I do wonder about making a choice of a vice presidential candidate on the basis of one quick meeting at a governors’ conference in February followed by a couple of quick phone calls. Is shooting from the hip straight talk maverick governing, as McCain has demonstrated here, a good or a bad thing? Don’t know, but it makes me uneasy. I wonder why Olympia Snow, Kay Bailey Hutchison or Elizabeth Dole were passed over if Hillary PUMAs were the target. When her fellow Alaska Republican, the head of the GOP in the state legislature, says “prepared to lead the nation? she isn’t prepared to be governor!” — hmmmm. There’s a special prosecutor in Alaska looking into Gov. Palin’s actions with respect to trying to get her ex brother in law fired (her ex bro.n law, btw, is a prick who probably should have been fired IMHO) and an indictment or report is due right before the November elections. That can’t be good. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, is prepared to go from Alaska to the kind of scrutiny one gets as a vice presidential nominee; she will make mistakes, as all humans would, and they will be amplified if her mistake fits one of the media narratives the way Quayles’ misspellings did. That didn’t prevent Bush I from beating Dukakis, though, did it?

So, was Gov. Palin a good pick or not? The answer really is that she will either shine or fail with nothing in between and time will tell the tale. She’ll have a honeymoon during the convention and that will give the GOP a chance to define her before Obama’s campaign can do so. Obama needs to be very, very careful not to go overboard and not to be sexist. The answer to the question also lies with the Democrats, in my view: an unforced error and she’s a hero.

Obama’s speech

More people — 38-40 million — watched his speech on TV; more than saw the Academy Awards or watched the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. Wow.

The visuals: compare and contrast the tee-shirted crowd of blacks, whites and Latinos at Invesco Field with the stickuptheass all white GOP convention we’re about to see in the twin cities. How many shots of the crowd did you see with people who had tears running down their cheeks? I can’t imagine that at the convention we’re about to see.

The speech: not his best in terms of “tingle up the leg”, but everything it should have been and more. A home run and A+ without doubt. Very very strong on standing up to the quivering cavils by McCain of “celebrity” and “inexperience”. This is not Kerry or Dukakis, this guy from Chicago has steel. A frontal attack on McCain’s “temperament” to be president gobsmacked me: I didn’t expect it and think it’s wonderful but how will that play among those in the reliably vote every time over 65 crowd? I don’t know. I preferred the policy contrasts to the character stuff. Finally, it really is the economy, stupid, and you either buy what the Dems or selling or you don’t. I think you may see the last 8 years as economic disaster, but still think Obama’s prescriptions are even worse. Nevertheless, I think the “are you better off than you were 8 years ago?” Reagan question is a real problem for the GOP and McCain is the least likely Republican to be able to shore up the party on that score; further, Gov. Palin doesn’t much help despite her reputation as a cost cutter and fighter of the so-called Bridge to Nowhere. So far, we’ve seen a campaign of numbers: how many in this demographic and how many in that blahblahblah polls more blahblahblah. The numbers that count are: number of first time unemployed; number of bankruptcies; number of bank failures; number of foreclosures; third quarter reports on retirement accounts; price of gasoline, houses, food. The worse those numbers are for ordinary Americans, the more likely a Dem landslide than an eked out win. On foreign policy, President Bush has hurt McCain far more than anyone else possibly could. Obama’s mention that McCain stands alone in support of continued occupation of Iraq puts the GOP nominee in what I see as a very deep hole. All of which is to say that I thought Obama’s “framing” of the issues was brilliant and that I wanted this to be a substantive speech and not another 2004 keynote address and I think Obama did everything he could possibly do to win in November.

Bill’s speech

President Clinton’s speech was masterful from a political point of view and from a personal point of view, he reminded me what it was like to have an intelligent president who can speak the King’s English. He rehabilitated his “legacy” and shored up Obama’s credentials and put the final nail in the Unity pony.

Hillary’s speech

This was the best speech I have heard her give. After the Ohio and Texas primaries, she slowly gained my admiration for her grit and toughness and after this speech, I’m sure I would have enthusiastically voted for her had the outcome of the primary been different. She unified the party further after her surprise “acclimation” motion and I don’t think I can be one of those who says it’s Hillary’s fault if Obama loses. She did everything she could and more as far as I’m concerned.

Michelle’s speech

Just terrific. Pitch perfect. Nothing but praise.

The convention overall

I thought the Dems did a very good job of building up the excitement and enthusiasm of the party faithful as they watched over the four nights. Lots of minor stars got to shine, like Kucinich, Kerry, Gov. Schweitzer of Montana, Bob Casey. Some good lines: “that’s not a maverick, that’s a sidekick”. I thought the convention overall made the media, hunting too hard for controversy in the Hillary Harridan meme, look putrid and the viewership of CSPAN probably swelled considerably as time went on and we got tired of the talking heads, even the ones like Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann who we supposedly like because they are closet Dems in the tank for Obama.

The polls

Gallup shows Obama +8. Ignore the polls. They are stupid.

on a personal note

Son Jack has decided to watch Gustav from an Oklahoma City television rather than in person in New Orleans. He was near Dallas midafternoon Saturday on his way here. His father is delighted and relieved.

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Happy Birthday, RebL. Your daddy loves you.
It’s summertime, your momma’s rich and your daddy’s good looking.
Don’t let those 18 million shards of the glass ceiling shred your dreams.

OK, it’s 11:30 p.m. Thursday night and I don’t have an email from Obama. Here’s my last guess on his vice presidential nominee: Robert Rubin. Independent, world traveled, economics genius who presided over the last economic expansion this country had, pro-Israel Jew, off the map and has some “Wow!” and he was close to the Clintons until the very last of the primaries. He changes the Florida electoral map. Not likely a successor or a threat, but someone who would be cool under fire if he should become president during Obama’s term, a really smart guy who isn’t going to make the big mistake.

It’s my wild ass guess.

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UPDATE: Shortly after midnight Friday night, AP is reporting that it’s Joe Biden