Gustav, Palin...and Missy's 5-Hour Ride

I hope everyone had a good holiday weekend. Missy did get home. It took her 5 hours to drive a 70-mile stretch of Interstate 10! One of the things that make people down here get upset about having to evacuate is the fear that the traffic will be like when Rita hit. And, I'd say poor Missy got a deja vu. She was livid, but what can you do? It's a stretch of straight road with cross roads that lead only to small hamlets and no real alternative routes, so she was stuck. Me, I'd have had to tinkle after the first hour...sigh.

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Well, Gustav ended up sparing us, although up until the very end after landfall, he was tracked to turn west and hug our coast. So, I almost wasn't believing it when he went north instead of west. I do not believe we even got one drop of rain. I'm grateful, but I still feel one of those storms has our number this season...

I have been trying to keep the good folks on the Florida, Georgia and Carolina coasts in my prayers. The one-two-and-maybe-three punch of this current string of storms in the Atlantic is just ridiculous-scary. Hope it's the only pattern of its kind, evah! Stay strong safe and tough, East coasters!

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Well, let us get to the real hurricane in front of us, shall we? LOL



No, I don't assert that the Palin women are storms, but they sure are causing one, or two, or three of them!

The chat out there in message board political threads and blogs is contentious. The Palin pick has brought out a lot of debate. Now, being someone who wanted to experience this and see for myself if it was hype or real, I immersed myself into 2 communities. I have been having problems with stiffness in my fingers and the doc told me to exercise them. Plus, I had the political urge. I had the urge to spread my (poly) ticks, as Yellow Dog Dems down South say. I can now say I've BTDT. Enough for me, at least in that high concentration. I've never seen anything like it in my lifetime, seriously.

I do believe that the Obama campers have the internet covered and the McCain campers are just too outnumbered online to give their oppo a real fight. (Voters who hang on message boards and blogs, though, are still in the clear minority of total voters, so that means nothing in the way of predicting an election outcome.) And, if the number of emails and private messages that were sent to me was any indication, a lot of women just do not want to enter the cyber fray but hold positions just as dear and passionate as the posted ones. I cannot tell you how often I was privately thanked for voicing others' opinions. No, doesn't make me right. I simply appreciate validation and connection, that's all, as well as being reminded that the hyena in front of my face is not as huge as it appears, LOL.

I think it's a great thing to say for our country that I never ran into even a hint of racism, although there were posters who, were they any quicker on the race-baiting trigger, they'd be in jail for discharging a firearm. Someone used the word "uppity" to describe the look Obama makes sometimes, and Lord, never mind that that's been a term to define "stuck up, conceited, self-absorbed" for my entire life. It was "did you mean to say .....", and you can finish the sentence on your own. Of course, it was sometimes a test for me to stifle my snarkiness, as with that example, I was dying to reply, "Wait, wouldn't that be "uppity wegro, he is half-white, ya know." LOL No, I saved that for here. Yeah. That kinda thing.

And I will say this: I never thought I'd ever see this or come to believe it, because as a lifelong Episcopalian I am used to tolerance and inclusiveness to the very point of nausea, but of all the poli-posters who waved their religiosity in front of my face, the most unkind one was Unitarian for goodness sakes. I would have at least guessed a religious denomination less connected with liberalism, but shows what I know.

Actually, I think it shows what we might need to know as concerns this election. I am going to assume that you, dear reader, knows by now that many of the Obama-supporting women out there are back-peddling on women's rights now. I'm gonna say right up front that I don't believe them for one second and that it's a pretty sad day when you have to abandon all that you believe to in order to make points for your candidate. (I'm talking about all the Dem women and some GOP women too who post that Palin shouldn't be running because of her kids, and all she has on her plate, etc).

I find that argument insulting, frankly. Not from the conservative women who truly feel that no matter what their candidate espouses, but the idea that it's ok to so hypocritically flip-flop as an argument against Palin by the Obama supporters. I will assert that this is just further proof that Obama has no real empathy or support for "women's issues". *He* (meaning his supporters and the media, who is in his tank) has already shown this in trashing Hillary, in trashing his 'typical white' grandmother and now in this. And it also shows me my opinion of the ruthlessness in some GenX women is very real. The Obama Boomer women have surprised me, though.

It shows me that you only get support as a woman from the Left if you support the politically correct candidate / platform. Wow. At least Gloria Steinem opposes Palin for her political views and for Steinem's opinion that she lacks experience, and has enough of a conscience to chastise those who are using sexist arguments about her family. At least someone worries about their legacy and record as well as obvious logic, lol.

As for Sally Quinn, what can I say? That woman has been a DC political whore for 30years, so her pitiful little WaPo essay is no surprise. (Click on the whore link for a great read in Salon that dishes the real dirt on Sally. Then tell me this women wouldn't sell herself to get Obama elected.) And, Earth to Sally: when her hubby is WaPo publisher Ben Bradlee, that kinda explains why you get to have published essays at all.

My low opinion of Quinn didn't stop me from emailing her, though, lol. Here's what I wrote her:

Ms. Quinn, I am a 52-y.o. married white woman with a daughter in college. I have voted Dem all my adult life, the first time in 1976. I was tutored in old-school feminism and abortion became legal the year before I became sexually active. My parents were equal partners in their marriage and still are, as I am in my 21-y.o. marriage. I am also a lifelong Episcopalian and have never been born again or fundamental about anything. I say all of that as background for my opinion of your essay about Palin, which is, as I was reading your arguments against her, it suddenly occurred to me I was reading a logic eerily similar to the arguments given my mother in 1959, when she unsuccessfully applied for a teaching position that she was well-qualified for, but it was before I was old enough for 1st grade (there was no daycare back in that day and the official line on working women with young children was almost identical to what Palin is getting thrown at her now, as I am sure you well remember since you are now elderly). By the way, the arguments my mother was given for refusing to hire her back then are illegal for an employer to espouse today.

I am filled with nausea that you are so, so filled with partisan hunger that you cannot see what glares at me. Your stance reminds me of the old withered feminist spinster, who is offered many proposals and career opportunities, but who turns them all down because none are perfect or pure enough in motive.

Out of Biden's lips today (in reference to Palin's red-meat criticism of Obama in her convention speech):

"What do you talk about when you have 8 years of failure? You talk about the other guy!"

Well, Joe, which ticket are you talking about, really? Think about it, hehe.

Yeah. There is sooo much I could point out, but make no mistake. One has only to read about how ruthless Obama was in his Chicago and Illinois election contests to know how ruthless he is now. He thinks nothing, nothing of creating chaos in our cobbled-together culture for the sake of his ascendency. We now have generational, racial and sexist divides so deep I think it might have set us back years. And that was all before he declared in June he had enough delegates. If you wonder what got into McCain, believe me, he didn't want to have to fight fire with fire, but nobody else has against Obama, and McCain, being the fighter and profile in courage that he really truly is, is not about to step back from this.

More tomorrow. I'll be regular from now on because there is just too much to write about and better to do it here than on a freakin message board! Stay tuned....