Been busy working since we got back from lunch today. I got a bunch of things caught up that I ignored this weekend to get the house done. Other then payroll and keeping an eye out on major things, I don’t do much work on the weekend anymore. It is nice to be able to take a break.
Unfortunately, the Colts lost this weekend. =( The Saints won! Purdue won, but it was against a bad division 2 team….sad.
I did replace a lot of our smaller wedding pictures (it have been almost 10yrs) with new prints. It is nice to change it up. =)
My arms are sore from the workout today. It was my last one with my trainer for a few weeks. I need to make sure that I keep it up so not to lose what I’ve gained.  Never got to my walking this weekend, too busy getting our placed settled in…..so I’m not complaining.
GOP Insults Anger Community Organizers
(AP) Angry community organizers defended their work, and that of former organizer Barack Obama, as they fought back Thursday against a series of insulting remarks by speakers at the Republican National Convention.
Organizers described themselves as the antidote to big-money lobbyists who wield so much influence. They talked about helping powerless people join forces to demand better schools and safer streets, often by working through churches.
“If people in office were doing their jobs, perhaps we wouldn’t need community organizers,” said John Baumann, executive director of PICO National Network, whose name derives from “people improving communities through organizing.”
“I don’t like seeing the really hard work that goes on in really poor communities being demeaned by cheap politicians,” said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “Community organizing is as American as democracy. It believes that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.”
**Community organizers do what people in office can not and will not do!
Can You Say ‘Sexist’?
The Republican Party has undergone a surprising metamorphosis since Sarah Palin was chosen as its vice presidential candidate. In Palin I recognize a fellow traveler, a woman whose life would have been impossible just a few decades ago. If she had been born 30 years earlier, the PTA would likely have been her last stop, not her first. Her political ascendancy is a direct result of the women’s movement, which has changed the world utterly for women of all persuasions. It is therefore notable that Palin has found her home in a party, and in a wing of that party, that for many years has reviled, repelled and sought to roll back the very changes that led her to the Alaska Statehouse.
But expediency is an astonishing thing, and conservative Republicans have suddenly embraced the assertion that women can do it all, even those conservative Republicans who have made careers out of trashing that notion. James Dobson of Focus on the Family once had staffers on his hot line saying, “Dr. Dobson recommends that mothers of young children stay at home as much as possible.” He now applauds a woman who was back at work three days after her son, who has Down syndrome, was born.
Even to state that simple fact resulted in outrage among those at the convention, who screamed double standard. But the double standard was mainly theirs. The governor was aggressively marketed in terms of her maternity, yet questions about how she managed to mother five and lead the state were dismissed as sexist. The governor’s two years leading Alaska, which in terms of citizens served is the equivalent of being mayor of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., was said to be the linchpin of her appointment, but questions about her breadth of experience were dismissed as sexist. Her surrogates wanted the press to write about mooseburgers and ignore how the governor had once pursued the kind of earmarked federal funds she now insists are anathema to her. Conservatives have probably used the word “sexist” more in the past week than they have in the past 50 years.
This would all have been entertaining if it were not such rank hypocrisy. These are people who have inveighed against affirmative action, a version of which undoubtedly played a part in this selection. These are people who inveighed against personal attacks on their new nominee when the wingnuts of their own party elevated such attacks to a fine art by accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of fictitious misdeeds ranging from treason to murder. To try to suggest Sarah Palin might garner the Hillary Clinton vote, that one woman is just the same as another, that biology trumps ideology, is the ultimate evidence of true sexism, and I hope Senator Clinton will travel the country and say so.
**It is about time some one made this observations. It has been totally ignored in the mainstream media and it drives me nuts.
ABOUT SARAH PALIN
Example From Letter 1 :
During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings, which had given rise to a recall campaign.
Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative.” During her six years as mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same six years, the amount of taxes collected by the city increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax, which even taxed food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.
The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though. Borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? Or a new library? No. $1 million for a park. $15 million-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex, which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the city didn’t even have clear title to. That was still in litigation seven years later — to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5 million for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 years without any borrowing.
**There are 3 other letters posted on Snopes.com a couple of them positive about her….
The Politics of the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’
That said, the most interesting thing about today’s give-and-take is not that Palin and McCain are misleading the public. In politics, that happens all the time. It’s that the Internet–and, through the Internet, the Obama campaign–is forcing major media outlets to repeatedly reject the Bridge to Nowhere deception. In the past, Time and NEWSWEEK and the Times and the Post would’ve run a thorough fact-check the first time the falsehood surfaced. But then they would’ve ignored subsequent repetitions. We’ve already covered that, they’d say. It’s old news. Meanwhile, the McCain camp would keep airing the same ads in swing states across the country–reaching millions of credulous voters who’d never read the original fact-checks. But now sites like TPM are (in their own words) forcing “the same news orgs that debunked the original Bridge to Nowhere falsehood” to “aggressively stay on McCain and hold him accountable every time he and his campaign repeat it.” That’s a certain kind of progress.
**Thankfully we have the internet to keep pushing these old news organizations not to let this lies keep getting played.
Rice Offers Less-Than-Hearty Palin Endorsement
ABC News’ Jonathan Karl Reports: In a weekend interview, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice passed up an opportunity to defend Sarah Palin from allegations that she does not have the foreign policy experience to be vice president.
In a less-than-hearty endorsement, Rice declined to say anything more positive about Palin than “she gave a terrific speech” and “she’s a governor of a state here in the United States” during her interview with Zain Verjee of CNN.
Asked point-blank if Palin has enough experience, Rice said, “These are decisions that Senator McCain has made. I have great confidence in him.” Confidence in Palin? Rice didn’t say.
**I think that is pretty damn revealing…..lol
Rice praises Biden as “true patriot”
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday praised Sen. Joe Biden, the newly named Democratic vice presidential candidate, as a statesman and a “true patriot.”
“I am not going to comment on the politics of it. I will just say that Sen. Biden is obviously a very fine statesman,” Rice told reporters as she flew to Israel for talks on Israeli-Palestinian peace. “He’s a true patriot.”
The warm words were unusual from Rice, who generally steers away from commenting on the U.S. presidential election pitting Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona against Democrat Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.
**That must drive the GOP nuts……..lol
Rice Laments Lack of Black Diplomats
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today lamented the dearth of blacks serving as diplomats in the Foreign Service.
“I want to see a Foreign Service that looks as if black Americans are a part of this great country,” Rice told an assembly of professors and administrators during her keynote address to the Annual Conference of the White House Initiative on National Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Washington. “I have lamented that I can go into a meeting at the Department of State and, as a matter of fact, I can go into a whole day of meetings at the Department of State and actually rarely see somebody who looks like me. And that’s just not acceptable.”
**This does not surprise me. To me it it is shameful that we don’t have more women and more people of color representing the US. We are a variety of cultures and colors and we should be showing that to the world. It would show that even with our flaws, that we try hard to live up to our ideals….which is what makes the US special. We do try, it just takes time and sometimes a political movement to get there.
