I watched Sarah Palin give her spech last night at the Republican National Convention. For the first time in a while, I think I’ve seen a real Washington, D.C. outsider. Forget about McCain, Obama and Biden who, despite their saying otherwise, still wear the badge of Washington or elite politician. Verbosity aside, when it comes down to it, the three men in this election campaign still represent the unwritten rule in D.C. politics that say men make better leaders. Even Obama, who has no more experience than 90% of Congress and less than 50 governors, still looks like the same old politician with flashy speeches promising the world but offering little.
Sarah Palin is a breath of fresh air in a stale and humid political climate. I watched with fascination as this hockey mom from Alaska delivered a near flawless speech that stirred and fired up her audience. Sure it was a Republican audience but even Democratic talking heads were giving her A’s and B’s (unheard of in partisan politics). Though quick to look and point out anything they find that is even the remotest bit negative, Democratic pundits still had a hard time saying anything short of, “She was brilliant.” But more than just a good speech, Palin seemed to offer some intangibles that none of the other three can.
Palin knows what it is to live in our world, in a commoner’s world, in a place where struggles really do occur in life, where moral decisions are made on a daily basis, where faith and family really do come first. Palin knows what it is to work and not have everything spoon-fed to her like a cute little panda baby in a zoo. She knows how to work to achieve her goals and not only to achieve her goals but to walk in those circumstancial steps of life that come our way, no matter what we do or say. She doesn’t appear to have set out to chart her course but rather she has taken the journey set before her head-on with all the strength and fortitude of which any man in Washington, D.C. ought to envy.
Brilliance is what we need in the Oval Office. We don’t need a flashy media male diva, we don’t need a grumpy old man, we don’t need a slicked-back smooth talking salesman. What we need is someone who will go to bat for the country and will stand by the little people. We need someone that’s not afraid to stand up to the big interests and someone firm enough to stand against our adversaries. More than anyone I’ve seen so far in this election cycle, Sarah Palin seems to embody that sort of leader. And before you say, “she’s a woman”, let me just say that someone of the toughest and firmest people I’ve known and seen are women (think of some of your old teachers.)
While she hasn’t been in D.C., she still has plenty of executive governmental leadership and communication skills to make her quite effective. Certainly, she has more executive governmental experience than Obama and probably more than McCain or Biden when it comes down to it. After all, Senators aren’t as much executive decision makers as much as representatives that vote what their constituency wants (supposedly). I have every confidence in her, after reading about her and after hearing her speak, that she can deliver in the executive leadership role.
When I first saw that McCain had named Palin as his running mate, I kind of thought he was crazy. She’s just a beauty queen. She’s just a mom. She’s got five kids to care for (as if her husband shouldn’t share in that responsibility). The whole world seemed to think so, too. But as I’ve seen and heard and learned more about Palin, I think Palin is not only a great pick for Vice-President, but even a better pick for President, at least among the three others in this year’s race. So, I say let’s forget about the others. Make McCain your veep and run for president. Sarah Palin for president!
Two Cookies a Day 
Im there on that one.
Well said. My wife and I watched a couple of the speeches last night, and were highly impressed with them.
I do believe she will work for us and not be overly influenced by Washington’s elite.
Go, Sarah!
I think she should advertise on my website.
I am going to donate a half million dollars to our troops!*
http://pixelsfortroops.com
Come check it out!
Dan
It’s a rare moment when someone running for office claims that they’ll go to Washington to serve the people and I actually believe them.
So far, she’s the only one I trust out of the 4
Palin’s stances on creationsim, global warming and literary censorship scare the bejeebus out of me. Even Bush and McCain, faced with the crushing weight of scientific evidence (and despite the Bush Administration’s attempts to censor its own administration), don’t deny anthropogenic global warming. Now, there may be substantial debate over what, if anything, to do about it, but to simply deny it . . . that is reflective of a lack of education, and in particular science education.
It is, however, consistent with the level of science education I would expect from someone who advocates teaching creationism alongside evolution.
As for the library issue, I am aware that there are two sides to the story, but it makes me extremely edgy nonetheless because it is consistent with (a) the stereotype of someone who takes the above two positions, and (b) someone with a very judgmental view about what adults should have the right to have access to in a public library.
Call me a skeptic when it comes to Mrs. Palin.
Welcome back HK. She may scare you but not me. I’ve had a pretty good bit of science education myself and I don’t have a problem exploring creation “theory”. The evolution issue/creation issue is far from resolved in many people’s minds with very educated people taking both sides of the issue.
I was thinking the other day about you with regard to this issue though. That is, as you know, there are those who are strict seven days as we know it creationists. Then there are those who believe in creation over long extended periods of time. Here’s the thought though.
I was reading the Bible the other night and reading about Paul being with Peter for 15 days. That immediately made me recall my time in Latin and South America. They are notorious for not really having much realization of the importance of time. At least not like most of America. That is, they may often come late to events with no regard to time. What’s important is the event, not the time. They are people and event oriented.
Going further, Latin Americans refer to periods of time more as generalizations. For example, they would frequently say at 8 a.m., “I’ll be there in an hour” which really means, “I’ll be there sometime this morning.” They might say “it’ll be done in two days” which really means “sometimes this week”. Frustratingly they’d say “I’ll have your car done in 8 days” which really meant, “not too soon but probably sooner than a month.” You get the picture. Well the majority of societies still function like that and I would think thousands of years ago even moreso. So when the writers wrote about time periods and we used that strict translated word phrase to be something like “eight days”, would that have meant 8 days in the way Latin Americans view 8 days or would that be 8 days in the way Americans view it.
Anyway, hope that made sense. BTW, did you read my lighter post about global warming here: https://twocookiesaday.wordpress.com/2008/08/20/forget-global-warming-were-entering-an-ice-age/
I was proud of it and thought you might get a kick out of it.
Apparently the word hasn’t gotten out that the National Academy of Sciences completely discredited the hockey-stick graph some years ago.
So much for the “crushing weight.”
AGW theory and evolution have one thing in common: they require a leap of faith — although AGW requires a leap as wide as the Grand Canyon now with temperatures spiraling downward over the past six years. None of the theory adds up anymore. People are finally figuring it out for themselves.
Evolution doesn’t require that great of a leap, but there is a considerable gap. Never mattered to me, though. I just accept that if I really did evolve from a monkey, God had his hand in it.
Faith is required in a lot of things, it’s just a matter of where you’re willing to put it. Science can be helpful but hasn’t figured it all out. Thanks for all the comments.
Wow, one graph is “discredited”. That must mean those stupid pro=anthropogenic global warming people must have nothing! Just leaps of faith!
Right?
Oh, wait, there is only every report released by the IPCC, aggregating information and studies from peer reviewed articles and scientific literature. You know, that big group of evil scientists who are just a bunch of liberal atheists.
Right?
Sure, you’ve got some outliers, but here you really are statistically getting into the “fringe” as far as scientific viewpoint. Just like when you see a group of “scientists” signing a petition on ID or creationism or “teaching the controversy”, when you look closely it is a list composed primarily of people whose specialty is not evolutionary biology, or even biology or life sciences, outside of just a handful of those on the fringe. I hate using the word fringe, because people so often use it these days just to dismissively marginalize a specific viewpoint, but here I can legitimately use it as descriptive of those very few minority voices who both have the relevant expertise in, say, atmospheric sciences but continue to deny anthropogenic global warming.
Because the large majority just has to be wrong. All bought and paid for, I’m sure. That’s not an insult at all to all the work they’ve put in, no sir. Just a buncha sellouts.
Cliff, if days referenced in the Bible don’t matter, did Jesus rise after three days? Or just “sometime that week”? Are there some time periods that a “real” time periods and some that are a bit . . . fuzzy? Or does it really just not matter. So maybe when they say men before the flood lived for hundreds of years, maybe they didn’t, that just meant “Man, he was old”. Of course, that would really go against a lot of how evangelicals interpret the Bible, and throws some things into kind of a tizzy, don’t it?
As for your prior post, it is one of the worst things to interpret regional, anecdotal data as evidence for or against global warming. Global warming will have a variety of different effects regionally, and those effects will vary by year. We’re talking about averages over the globe over years or decades. While again it is not smart to take one thing as evidence for or against, I’ll put up anyone’s “feelings” about how this summer or last summer felt up against the fact that you can now circumnavigate the North Pole by boat without an ice cutting boat.
Of course, maybe it’s just God giving us a message:
http://diatomaceousearth.blogspot.com/2008/09/its-not-co2-god-is-tilting-earth.html
Right? That sounds science-y, doesn’t it??
Just put all the conclusions in the world in a hat, pull one out, and you can surely find a Bible verse to support it.
Science hasn’t figured everything out, but the gaps get smaller and smaller every year. Maybe everything can’t be known, but that isn’t a reason to state that there is no scientific explanation, which is what you are doing when you attribute it to God rather than actually research into a physical or natural “why”.
btw thanks for the Welcome back.
I’m not getting into the global warming stuff, really not educated enough to argue intelligently with evidence. I do find it interesting the idea of solar phases and that the sun may be entering one – I’ve seen a few reports just this week on this and that we could be entering a mini-iceage. Let’s come back to this discussion in 50 years and see what really happened.
I still believe that there are lots of things that require at least some faith. Attributing something to God is an answer to “why” to many, many people, maybe not to you, but to others, yes. Does that make them wrong because they disagree with you or some debatable scientific evidence?
I hope you realize that prior post on global warming was supposed to be a completely humorous sarcastic post from the first to the last word, pointing out a lot of backwoods thinking/living stereotypes of Mississppi that people still hold (I’ve actually been asked by people if we still use horse and carts down here) and making a few other hopefully comical jabs (Florida ballots, stockpiling stuff, freezing toilet paper, burying money). It had nothing to do with a real discussion on the global warming issue. I even tried to make fun of the ice age link that Bush may have paid some Mexicans to come up with the theory/evidence. The “feelings” are not any basis for really saying we’re entering an ice age, just to get the ball rolling on what several friends have commented on as being a pretty funny post. Maybe you have to live in MS to understand. Have you ever heard of Jerry Clower?
As far as the days … . My understanding is that there are several words in the original language for the word “day” that is used throughout the Bible. Some of them mean a literal 24 hour period as we know it and some mean day in a different sense (one example, in my father’s “day”)
So I’m not saying the word “day” doesn’t matter, just what does the original language say and compare to what we say today? I believe Jesus rose after 3 days as we know them – we know from other writings outside of the Bible that the Christians of the day claimed that so I think at least the claim of literal days in that case is settled. As far as the first seven days of Creation, that is different and will probably be debated for as long as we’re here. That is a big difference that you just can’t lump all into one box.
I’m not sure that those gaps get smaller and smaller. It seems more to me that the more we know, the more questions we have and, yes, we do get closer to an answer on one question, but only to come up with a new question with that answer that thrusts us onward to search out another explanation.
Always stimulating conversation. Iron sharpens iron and discussing stuff has a way of doing that.
Just read your link HK. I have to admit that doesn’t sound real sciencey, sounds kind of hokey. But just because one person somewhere says something, doesn’t mean all of us say or believe the same thing. Cut me some slack, making generalizations about all of one group because of the statements of one person’s unsupported belief is neither scientific nor socially fair. If God exists and He is all powerful, sure he could do that. As for an explanation right now, I don’t think he’s holding the world in his hand tilting it back and forth trying to get the ice to line up or break up. But I think you’ve figured me out a little better than that – I understand your point though.
I think there are a lot of answers in the Bible. Ask Sir Isaac Newton. Wasn’t he a great theologian and in his own right a great scientist? From what I understand, c correct me if I’m wrong, he used the Bible quite a bit in helping him understand and investigate life and nature. Certainly several of his discoveries are priceless to this day – and that from a theologian (I admit I haven’t studied a lot about him and could be wrong here).
I thought she was amazing!!!!! I want to be just like her when I grow up. Yeah, she has my vote for President. …..[sigh] if only. Is it too late to ditch McCain and put her in? ;)
“I hope you realize that prior post on global warming was supposed to be a completely humorous sarcastic post from the first to the last word, pointing out a lot of backwoods thinking/living stereotypes of Mississppi that people still hold (I’ve actually been asked by people if we still use horse and carts down here) and making a few other hopefully comical jabs (Florida ballots, stockpiling stuff, freezing toilet paper, burying money).”
I apologize, my sarcasm detection meter must have been broken that day.
“Cut me some slack, making generalizations about all of one group because of the statements of one person’s unsupported belief is neither scientific nor socially fair.”
I guess my point is that until you can point to measured, physical evidence, it is all just everyone’s interpretation of a very old book in any way they want. That isn’t to say that there aren’t valuable lessons one can learn from the Bible, I just get very agitated when people try to use it to tell us things about the physical world that very dedicated scientists have spent decades of their lives carefully and painstakingly observing and measuring. The Earth is 6,000 years old–See, you measure the lives of people in the Book and there it is! No, it’s somewhere between 6,000 and 11,000 years old, because “days” and “years” meant “something” but aren’t “literal”. etc., etc. After a while that train of thought to me is nothing more than one person’s subjective interpretation vs. another, but they involve questions that are important and mean things to us. Questions that getting the answer right means more than just who gets to put “We’re RIGHT!” on the sign out front of their church. Getting geology right, as an example, helps us plan for earthquakes, and tell us about how the Earth has changed over time so we can help adjust our models as to what happens when, say, we go into a particular type of solar cycle, or the Earth suffers a catastrophic event. Or how often we can expect certain types of events to happen. But if carbon dating can’t be trusted, everything we’ve been doing in the geological sciences has been ass-backwards and, believe it or not, that really matters . . . a lot. Not just to scientists, but to everyone. That’s why the hypothesis and theories surrounding geology have been put to so many tests, and compared to so many models. Sorry to rant so much, but this just really gets in my craw.
Producing things that other people can also consistently observe and measure. We’ve gone over ground before about what I consider to be the rather random “results” of prayer (which tend to be how people “measure” faith, regardless of the outcome), but we can chew that one again if you’re inclined.
“Ask Sir Isaac Newton.”
I . . can’t? :) Maybe you know someone who can, but I doubt I would trust their word.
That isn’t a game I like to partake much of, because there are lots of smart people in history that were Christians, and lots of smart people that were Muslims, Hindu, atheists, agnostics, theists, pagans (of all varieties). In particular when you are dealing with historical figures the culture and knowledge base you were dealing with from the get-go is much different.
I hear your rants and understand where you’re coming from. There have certainly been some outrageous claims made by people that just comes off as utterly absurd.
We may never agree on the Bible, ha, even all the denominations and people who hold the Bible dearly don’t agree on the interpretations as you’ve said. I’d say that’s probably one of the discouraging things to people, to hear different interpretations.
While I think there are answers in the Bible, I do think God gave us a mind to investigate and learn about environment and our lives here on Earth. The problem though, just with people’s interpretation of the Bible, comes with the many interpretations of the scientific data. Like you say about the Bible, who does one believe relative to all the scientific data?
I’m sure there are many people who wouldn’t call themselves Christians who use “scientific evidence” to promote their view on any numbers of issues. I see the problem as not with the Bible or even scientific discoveries, but with humans.
Isaac Newton … I’m sure someone somewhere thinks they can channel him but like you say, I’d be pretty hesitant on that one. My point being with him was that people have used the Bible to aid them in their scientific studies.
Back to global warming. My bigger problem with that is not so much if it’s getting warmer. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. People will argue that point either way until their blue in the face.
My problem is that I think as humans we’ve been poor managers of Earth and even beyond Earth. We’re pretty self-centered in that we do what we want, when and how we want to do it and don’t really care about the mess we make(even the environmental guru Al Gore should change, he who really makes a much more negative environmental impact compared to 95% of the world). As managers of the Earth and beyond, we really ought to think about how badly we’re abusing the world and make some real changes. I certainly consume more than I should. Maybe that’s hooey to some people, but we’re definitely making an impact on the planet that is worse than it should be.
“My problem is that I think as humans we’ve been poor managers of Earth and even beyond Earth. We’re pretty self-centered in that we do what we want, when and how we want to do it and don’t really care about the mess we make”
I think that’s pretty true.