I thought it might be interesting to see what the press is saying about California’s Proposition 8, the voter initiative to change the state constitution to narrow the definition of marriage to exclude same-sex couples. Here are some samples (all but one from California):
Intrusion into marriage should be evenhanded
Preserving California’s Constitution
Proposition 8 would set a precedent for inequality
One of the seasonal treats shared by Portlanders is the gathering each fall evening of the Vaux’s (pronouced vox’s) swifts.
For decades, a large flock of Vaux’s swifts have roosted in the chimney of Chapman Elementary School on their southward migration in the late summer. The small birds feed on insects during the day and then about an hour before sunset they begin gathering from miles around, forming a swirling tornado-like funnel and dropping into the chimney for the night. There, they cling to the sides of the structure awaiting dawn.
The first time the swifts arrived, the children in their fall classes were rightfully worried that the birds weren’t safe with the furnace running. So for many, many years the kids chose to shiver at their desks in the fall chill rather than disturb the birds. When the birds finally left for their migration, the furnace was cranked up for the winter. In 2001, local donors joined the Audubon Society in a project to protect the Vaux’s swifts, raising money to buy and install a new furnace elsewhere in the building and dedicating the chimney as a permanent home for the little birds.
The evening ritual usually takes place in mid-September and can last for a couple of weeks. Portlanders gather their families and blankets, sitting on the gentle slope leading down to the school and marveling at the natural wonder of about 30,000 birds finding their way to Chapman Elementary, creating a swirl while awaiting their turn to dive into the chimney. Each night, more than one bird is picked off by a hawk or falcon for dinner. That, too, is a nature lesson for the kids. This kind of activity—focusing on the community and nature—is typical of Portland and one of the things I like most about the city. We had a great time watching the swifts and plan to make it an annual outing.
With Sarah Palin attacking Barack Obama so viciously lately, I find myself a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight:
1. If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re “exotic, different.”
Growing up in Alaska eating mooseburgers is the quintessential American story.
2. If your name is “Barack,” you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
If you name your kids “Willow,” “Trig,” and “Track,” you’re a maverick.
3. Graduate from Harvard Law School and you are unstable.
Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.
4. If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.
If your total resume is: beauty queen runner-up, local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with fewer than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, you are qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.
5. If you serve on the U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs committee you aren’t experienced in foreign policy.
If you can see Russia on a clear day from your tiniest and most remote island (which you haven’t really visited) you are qualified to represent the United States in foreign capitals throughout the world.
6. If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.
If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.
7. If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.
8. If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.
If your husband is nicknamed “First Dude,” with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your’s is America’s model family.
OK, now I understand.
As much as I’m a Barak Obama supporter, there are two things that have disappointed me.
First, because he is smarter and nicer than his opponents, he has been too reluctant to point out what liars and reactionary fools they are. And how his opponents treat us as if we were all stupid. (So, Buck, how do you really feel?)
Second, he didn’t select our grandson Robert to be his running mate. We gave him every opportunity. There were even campaign buttons, as you can see here. I guess I’ll have to let it go and resign myself to the fact that he chose Joseph Biden, a brilliant diplomat who knows how to get things done in Washington and who is respected the world around. Still, he isn’t as cute as Rob.
Rob says, “Not everyone in the world gets the opportunity to vote. So if you haven’t registered to vote yet, just do it now!” (Photo below by his mom, Olivia)
Attendees at the Value Voters Summit, meeting this weekend in Washington, DC, snapped up boxes of Obama Waffles.
Not only do they have a racial stereotype illustration on the box, they have a cartoon of Obama with an Arab headress on an inside flap. As if that were subtle.
Remember Aunt Jemima? What are these morons thinking? That we can’t recognize racism this blatant. These conservative people have no shame when it comes to assuring John McCain and Sarah Palin get elected. I guess bigotry is part of what “Value Voters” are all about. If you have no substance in your campaign, try appealing to the sewer mentality of your voting bloc.
The Summit is an annual event sponsored by the Family Research Council. You know, the ones out to save our families from feminists, gays, and foreigners who might attack us. They will stop at nothing, which is why we have to stop them.
Read the article here.
The following, from Deepak Chopra’s Web site (http://www.chopra.com/wordsfromdeepak), is so perfectly cogent I couldn’t have come close to stating it as well. The guy nails it.
Obama and the Palin Effect
by Deepak Chopra
Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial expertise in the complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure. Palin’s pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.
She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and turning negativity into a cause for pride. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of “the other.” For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don’t want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind. (Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact that Sen. Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his arrival on the scene.) I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin’s message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision
Look at what she stands for:
Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which has been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that minorities and immigrants, being different from “us” pure American types, can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is a foreign threat. The radical right marches under the banners of “I’m all right, Jack,” and “Why change? Everything’s OK as it is.” The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time. She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are voting against their own good. The Republicans have won multiple national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness
Obama’s call for higher ideals in politics can’t be seen in a vacuum. The shadow is real; it was bound to respond. Not just conservatives possess a shadow — we all do. So what comes next is a contest between the two forces of progress and inertia. Will the shadow win again, or has its furtive appeal become exhausted? No one can predict. The best thing about Gov. Palin is that she brought this conflict to light, which makes the upcoming debate honest. It would be a shame to elect another Reagan, whose smiling persona was a stalking horse for the reactionary forces that have brought us to the demoralized state we are in. We deserve to see what we are getting, without disguise.
A month after organizers canceled San Francisco’s Fashion Week over money troubles, Cindy McCain has put Fashion First.
The Arizona resident and wife of Republican presidential nominee John McCain took the stage last week at the Republican National Convention in an outfit totaling about $300,000, according to Vanity Fair’s fashion experts.
First Lady Laura Bush joined Cindy, the owner of Hensley & Co., one of the nation’s leading beer wholesalers. (Let them drink Anheuser-Busch!)
Check out the breakdown:
Laura Bush
Oscar de la Renta suit: $2,500
Stuart Weitzman heels: $325
Pearl stud earrings: $600 to $1,500
Total: Between $3,425 and $4,325
Cindy McCain
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000 to $25,000
Shoes, unknown designer: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100
Jacqueline Kennedy, with her signature pillbox hats, is thought to inspire the wardrobe of Michelle Obama, wife of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. In June, Michelle famously appeared on “The View” in a $148 off-the-rack frock, but also has been known to splurge on Oscar de la Renta.
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/chronstyle/detail?&entry_id=29960
Note: Cindy McCain will not release her tax return and has vowed never to do so.
I had to take Pepto and a long walk to recover from the lies of Sarah Palin’s speech tonight. Her smug assumption that women will flock to her just because she is a woman should insult any woman in America. Hockey mom or not, she is a hopelessly inexperienced candidate with no new ideas and a total party hack.
She has no substance and is dangerous. John McCain could drop dead any moment and she would be a sorrier president than the one we have had for the past eight years. Comparing her with the other past and present heads of state who happen to be women show how empty she is. She is no Golda Meir, Corazon Aquino, Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel, Violeta Chamorro, Benizir Bhutto,
Indira Gandhi, or Gro Harlem Brundtland.
And she sure is no Hillary Clinton. Women, don’t be fooled. Sarah Palin is for outlawing all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, and agrees with McCain that his Supreme Court nominees will be selected on the basis of their willingness to overturn Rowe v. Wade and take away your right to choose what to do with your own body. In her speech she spoke for drilling in Alaska but didn’t mention that the last time we opened Alaska for drilling was in response to the early 1970’s oil crisis, when our imports were a much smaller percentage than they are today. She has spoken out against full equality for gays and lesbians, agreeing with her presidential running mate that a consitutional amendment is fine. She believes that schools should teach creationism, in defiance of the courts. She is dangerous.
The Obama camp has been gracious enough to lay off her until now. I hope they have learned their lesson. This candidate it the least experienced of any in the history of the United States. If ever there was a reason to vote Democratic this year, Sarah Palin is it.
