Defining Martyrdom

Photo of Afghanistan policewoman Malalai Kakar in her burkha from Mother Jones.

As a Muslim, I have to admit that I am annoyed and appalled at what gets passed off as Islam. Yesterday in Afghanistan, Malalai Kakar, a 41 year old policewoman, was assassinated by two men on motorbikes. The newly resurgent Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

Kakar was a mother of six children and the most prominent policewoman in the Afghanistan police force. She followed her father and brother into law enforcement in 1982 but when the Taliban came to power, she was prevented from working. She returned to the police force when the Taliban was ousted by the U.S. and its allies in 2001.

The Taliban emerged as a political power during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1990s. Under the leadership of Mullah Omar, the Taliban instituted a strict interpretation of Islamic law (Shariah) and was aided along the way by the ultra conservative Wahhabi teachings of our ally and friend, Saudi Arabia. As we've seen, religion in the hands of the angry and uneducated becomes a very dangerous tool. If you think you know what Islam is, think again.

By murdering Kakar, the Taliban are attempting to intimidate the women of Afghanistan. The Taliban and those of the backward ilk who murder in the name of Islam want to deprive women, girls and just about everyone else of a future with their nihilistic death wish. Sadly, they are ones who have defined Islam for the rest of the world.

In Islam, a martyr is someone who dies as a witness for good against evil. Though her Taliban murderers would claim they are waging a war against infidels, it is people like Malalai Kakar who chose to stand against intimidation and violence who are the real martyrs.

About That Debate

I have to admit that I was not transfixed on the first Presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. With laptop in hand, I watched the debate on C-Span, which for me is a godsend; I don't like to listen to all of that mindless political chatter on the networks.

I didn't come away with the feeling that Obama was the resounding victor but I do think he came across as thoughtful and confident. McCain on the other hand, came across as rude and condescending. McCain was better than I thought he'd be but he didn't change my mind. I liked him back in 2000 when he was running against George W. Bush. Back then he could rightfully claim the maverick title but now he has become one the people he has criticized the most.

Here are some of the things I observed about the debate:

• McCain did not wear his flag pin
  If there is any indicator of patriotism and love of country, nothing symbolizes it more than the flag pin.
  
• Obama was wearing his flag pin
  Seems Obama got the memo, a flag pin is a visual symbol of one's patriotism.
  
• McCain appeared stiff and crotchety
  Don't get me wrong here, I was taught respect for elders but McCain appeared almost robotic. He was tense and wound up tighter than Cindy McCain's ponytail.
• Obama really is cool
  Obama gets major props for not letting McCain get to him. He is cool headed, thoughtful and gracious. I would not have been civil to someone who has lied on me, mocked me and treated me like a five year old.
  
• McCain repeats the same old lies
  Nothing is worse than someone who lies, gets called on it and continues to tell the same lies over and over again. This has become a trait of the McCain-Palin campaign; misrepresentations, outright lies and diversions.
• McCain said Pakistan was a "failed" state
  Oh, John, say it ain't so. Ever since strongman Pervez Musharraf came to power in a coup d'etat, he has been one of closest allies. You might call Pakistan failed, but our government has been an avid supporter of the undemocratic Musharraf. It wasn't until recently that Musharraf finally decided to step aside.
  

Politics can get down and dirty and politicians can be relied upon to tell the truth. McCain's campaign has taken the Karl Rove playbook and tweaked it and come up with a campaign that has nothing to do with the issues facing someone like me: the economy, high unemployment rate and health care. He just doesn't get it.

I can hardly wait for the Vice Presidential Debate. If interviews with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson are any indication of what to expect from Sarah Palin, I can see the McCain-Palin campaign sinking like a fat lady in a tub of Jello.

Jack Cafferty Goes Off On Sarah Palin

Running Scared: The John McCain Version

Poor John McCain, he wants to postpone his campaign so he can focus on the financial crisis facing Wall Street. If he postpones his campaign until next week, that means he also wants to postpone his upcoming debate with Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama. If he postpones Friday's debate then that also means the Vice Presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden will also be jettisoned. How convenient! Neither McCain nor Palin are ready for a debate about real issues so using the financial crisis as an excuse not to debate is another smokescreen by McCain to avoid any serious discussion about the issues facing this country.

After months of telling us that the economy is fundamentally sound and decrying regulation at every turn, McCain finds himself looking very unpresidential--flustered, detached and erratic.His running mate, Sarah Palin when grilled by CBS News anchor Katie Couric about specific instances of McCain's support for more regulation, summed it up best.

Haterade: The Bill & Hillary Version

Bill Clinton, originally uploaded by Mark from Cincinnati.

I see Bill Clinton is still salty about his wife Hillary losing the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama. Although the contest between the two got pretty heated when Clinton, campaigning on behalf of his wife Hillary, started questioning Obama's blackness during the South Carolina primary and it backfired and essentially pushed African American voters over to Obama's camp.

The next Clinton misstep was Hillary's attempt to play the race card and portray Obama as an elitist who is unable to appeal to blue collar and rural whites. Hillary took this even further by insinuating that she was the only Democratic candidate capable of winning in states like Kentucky and West Virginia. Even at the last moment when it was apparent that she didn't have enough delegates to win the nomination, she refused to drop out of the race.

I don't know what the Democratic National Committee promised the Clintons but their support of Obama has been lukewarm at best. Last week, Hillary made a half-hearted attempt to campaign for Obama but I wasn't convinced, girlfriend is still pissy and it shows. Then Bill had the nerve to show up on "The View" and talk about how he liked both John McCain and Barack Obama. Oh really Bill!? That certainly isn't saying very much.

One thing I can credit the Republicans for, at least they circled their wagons around John McCain's ill-fated choice of Sarah Palin as the Vice Presidential nominee. Few if any have come out and publicly expressed concerns about McCain's judgment or Palin's obvious lack of experience. Unfortunately, all the Clintons can manage to do is give Barack Obama lukewarm support. I don't know why but I imagine them secretly wishing that Obama loses the election to John McCain so they can say "I told you so."

P.S. Where in the heck is Joe Biden?

White Privilege

Here's another take on John Ridley's "Conservative Palinguage Guide"written by Tim Wise of the Red Room blog. Tim is a white writer who addresses the very touchy subject of white privilege and how it relates to our current political and social climate.

THIS IS YOUR NATION ON WHITE PRIVILEGE (UPDATED)

By Tim Wise

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”


White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while if you're black and believe in reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), you're a dangerous and mushy liberal who isn't fit to safeguard American institutions.


White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.


White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto is “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.


White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college and the fact that she lives near Russia, you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.


White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”


White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.


White privilege is when you can take nearly twenty-four hours to get to a hospital after beginning to leak amniotic fluid, and still be viewed as a great mom whose commitment to her children is unquestionable, and whose "next door neighbor" qualities make her ready to be VP, while if you're a black candidate for president and you let your children be interviewed for a few seconds on TV, you're irresponsibly exploiting them.

White privilege is being able to give a 36-minute speech in which you talk about lipstick and make fun of your opponent, while laying out no substantive policy positions on any issue at all, and still manage to be considered a legitimate candidate, while a black person who gives an hour speech the week before, in which he lays out specific policy proposals on several issues, is still criticized for being too vague about what he would do if elected.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.


White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.


White privilege is being able to go to a prestigious prep school, then to Yale and Harvard Business School (George W. Bush), and still be seen as an "average guy," while being black, going to a prestigious prep school, then Occidental College, then Columbia, and then Harvard Law, makes you "uppity" and a snob who probably looks down on regular folks.

White privilege is being able to graduate near the bottom of your college class (McCain), or graduate with a C average from Yale (W.), and that's OK, and you're still cut out to be president, but if you're black and you graduate near the top of your class from Harvard Law, you can't be trusted to make good decisions in office.

White privilege is being able to dump your first wife after she's disfigured in a car crash so you can take up with a multi-millionaire beauty queen (who you then go on to call the c-word in public) and still be thought of as a man of strong family values, while if you're black and married for nearly 20 years to the same woman, your family is viewed as un-American and your gestures of affection for each other are called "terrorist fist bumps."

White privilege is when you can develop a pain-killer addiction, having obtained your drug of choice illegally like Cindy McCain, go on to beat that addiction, and everyone praises you for being so strong, while being a black guy who smoked pot a few times in college and never became an addict means people will wonder if perhaps you still get high, and even ask whether or not you may have sold drugs at some point.

White privilege is being able to sing a song about bombing Iran and still be viewed as a sober and rational statesman, with the maturity to be president, while being black and suggesting that the U.S. should speak with other nations, even when we have disagreements with them, makes you dangerously naive and immature.

White privilege is being able to say that you hate "gooks" and "will always hate them," and yet, you aren't a racist because, ya know, you were a POW, so you're entitled to your hatred, while being black and noting that black anger about racism is understandable, given the history of your country, makes you a dangerous bigot.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism and an absent father is apparently among the "lesser adversities" faced by other politicians, as Sarah Palin explained in her convention speech.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain…


White privilege is, in short, the problem.

John Ridley Breaks It Down

I'm a John Ridley fan from way back. I stumbled upon his book "Everybody Smokes in Hell" and have voraciously read each and every one of his books since. Besides writing and directing, John is also an extremely insightful political and social commentator.

I'm posting his "Conservative Palinguage Guide, Volumes 1 - 2" here because there's no way in the world I can articulate the hypocrisy and duplicity of the people who wear Republican hats. Don't get me wrong, it just isn't Republicans who are hypocritical and duplicitous, we're all guilty of it from time to time.

The Conservative Palinguage Guide Vols. 1 and 2

If you’re a minority and you’re selected for a job over more qualified candidates you’re a “token hire.”

If you’re a conservative and you’re selected for a job over more qualified candidates you’re a “game changer.”

If you live in an Urban area and you get a girl pregnant you’re a “baby daddy.”

If you’re the same in Alaska you’re a “teen father.” (Actually, according to your own MySpace page you’re an F’n redneck that don’t want any kids, but that’s too long a phrase for the evil liberal media to take out of context and flog morning noon and night).

Black teen pregnancies? A “crisis” in black America.

White teen pregnancies? A “blessed event.”

If you grow up in Hawaii you’re “exotic.”

Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you’re the quintessential “American story.”

Similarly, if you name you kid Barack you’re “unpatriotic.”

Name your kid Track, you’re “colorful.”

If you’re a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fulling vetting the individual you’re “reckless.”

A Republican who doesn’t fully vet is a “maverick.”

If you say that for the “first time in my adult lifetime I’m really proud of my country” it makes you “unfit” to be First Lady.

If you are a registered member of a fringe political group that advocates secession that makes you “First Dude.”

A DUI from twenty years ago is “old news.”

A speech given without proper citation from twenty years ago is “relevant information.”

And, finally, if you’re a man and you decide to run for office despite your wife’s reoccurrence of cancer you’re a “questionable spouse.”

If you’re a woman and you decide to run for office despite having five kids including a newborn with Downs Syndrome… Well, we don’t know what that is ‘cause THAT’S NOT A FAIR QUESTION TO ASK!

Vol. 2

If you get 18 million people to vote for you in a national presidential primary, you’re a “phoney.”

Get 100,000+ people to vote you governor of the 47th most populous state in the Union, you’re “well loved.”

SoyAA says: If you are biracial and born in a state not connected to the lower 48, America needs darn near 2 years and 3 major speeches to “get to know you.”

If you’re white and from a state not connected to the lower 48, America needs 36 minutes and 38 seconds worth of an acceptance speech to know you’re “one of us.”

If you give your wife a dap on stage, it’s actually a “terrorist fist jab.”

If your daughter licks her palm so that she can slick down your youngest child’s hair on national TV it’s an “adorable moment.” (Seriously, forget about abstinence only, teach these folks some grooming skills).

DTD SAYS: If your pastor rails against inequality in the United States of America, you’re an “extremist.”

If your pastor welcomes a sermon by a member of Jews for Jesus who preaches that the killing of Jews by terrorists is a lesson to Jews that they must convert to Christianity, you’re a “fundamentalist.”

If you’re a black man and you use a scholarship to get into college, then work your way up to being the president of the Harvard Law Review, you’re “uppity.”

If you’re a conservative and your parents pay your way to Hawaii Pacific University . . . you only have four more schools to attend over the next five years before you somehow manage to graduate (it might be five more school over the next five years. No one has yet verified whether or not Palin was actually ever registered at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. But, you know how shady people are who ever attended any kind of school in Hawaii).

SeanOcali says: If you’re 18, white, and get a 16 year old girl pregnant “life happens.”

If you’re 18, black, and impregnate a 16 year old girl, you’re a “registered sex offender.”

If you spend 18 months building a campaign around the theme of “Change,” it’s just “empty rhetoric.”

If one week before your party’s national convention you SUDDENLY make your candidacy about “Change,” that’s “red meat.”

And your last lesson for the day:

If you are a Democrat, an Independent, or even a moderate Republican, if you’re female, male, white, black, Asian, Hispanic, bi-racial, multi-ethnic, or GLBT, if you’re a Jew, Gentile, Muslim, agnostic or atheist - “Yes, we can!”

If you’re a pitbull with lipstick from Alaska, “Yup, yup!”t

Source: That Minority Thing.com

For volume 3, click here.

There's No There There

John McCain, originally uploaded by lauren victoria burke.


I'm not a big fan of polls because I think they are inherently biased. One thing I learned from my statistics class is that by asking the right questions, you can always get the desired result. That's why I'm skeptical about another poll showing McCain and Obama in a dead heat. This time the poll was done by the New York Times.

With less than two months to go, this could still be a tight race mainly because of those niggling cultural differences some people feel so strongly about. No matter how bad off the economy is or how many people are lose their jobs, some people can't bring themselves to vote for Obama. The economy is arguably the biggest issue facing voters. Just yesterday, John McCain finally deviated from his "the economy is fundamentally sound" speech yesterday and finally acknowledged that the economy is in dire straits. Prior to this, he was more concerned about Obama's "sexist" remarks about lipstick. I still don't think he really gets it. It's that vacant look in his eyes that makes me think he abandoned us a long time ago.

My mother always said that if you dig a ditch for someone, you'd better dig two. For all the lies and mudslinging done by McCain and Palin, it hasn't made much of a difference in the recent polls. When you've surrounded yourself with former lobbyists as campaign advisors and you earn more than $5 million a year, I guess the economy for you is fundamentally sound. Now who's really the elitist here?

What little integrity McCain had has long since burned away. According to the same poll, 75% of the people polled believe McCain picked Palin to help him win the election not because she was qualified. The more Palin talks, the more trouble she gets herself into. The fact that I've listened to George Bush mispronounce the word "nuclear" for more than eight years and now Sarah Palin; it's not "nu-ku-lar"! The McCain people can dispatch a football team of lawyers up to Alaska to sweep her dust under the rug but they can't teach her the correct pronunciation of the word nuclear. We're doomed if this chick gets elected to anything more than a second term as governor of the frozen tundra.

Link of the Day: Straight - No Chase Her

From the pen of Jill Nelson comes the best commentary about the upcoming election and why some people are struggling with the choice between McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden. You can read it for yourself here.

Nigerian Twins Set New World Record in Mathematics

From my friend Adeola comes this great story about twins from Nigeria setting a world record in mathematics in the United Kingdom. It's doubtful that we'll ever see or hear about this story here in the U.S. but it's worth noting because of their age and also because their older sister, set a world record on the test a year earlier. To help other students, they've even written their own book to help other students with math. This is an amazing story:

How Nigerian twins set new world record in mathematics

Published: Sunday, 7 Sep 2008

AS the Standard Assessment Task results for seven, 11 and 14 year-old are being published, children as young as seven-years-old made examination history this year as the youngest candidates ever to write advanced level mathematics exams in Britain.

File

The twins

Black pupils as young as seven and eight, who are enrolled on the Excellence in Education Programme wrote the A-level and General Certificate of Secondary Education papers in mathematics. Most students across the country (Britain) sit their A-levels at 18 and GCSEs at 16, after studying the courses for two years.

All EIE students who wrote the SATs scored level 5s in all three students, indicating that they are working at least three years ahead of the government benchmark.

Two of them are black twins (from Nigeria), Peter and Paula Imafidon, who passed their GCSEs in mathematics at six and wrote A-level papers in mathematics at the age of seven, during this academic year. They attend a normal state primary school and currently in year three, but participate in sessions by the Excellence in Education, a non-profit alliance of charitable organisations, churches and other organisations, which run Saturday schools in inner cities.

Peter Imafidon was excited after the paper claiming that ”the first half of the paper was quite easy, but the last two questions were harder.”

Paula, Peter‘s twin sister said ”the exam question was very similar to the questions from previous years and were not as difficult as expected.”

Last year, the twins‘ elder sibling, Samantha, broke the world record by passing the Cambridge Advanced Mathematics paper with the highest grade at the tender age of nine.

She compiled her revision notes on calculus into a second book, Short cut to Calculus, to help the twins and other friends understand advanced mathematical concepts.

In order to help their mates, the twins have also jointly compiled a book on how they solve mathematical puzzles and problems.

According to a spokesperson for EIE, Ms. Hannah Christian-Rivers confirms that ”some kids would want to express their passion for a particular subject regardless of their age.”

Therefore, Peter, and Paula, have become the youngest A-level candidates ever.

Before now, the youngest girl was nine-year-old Ruth Lawrence, who wrote her mathematics paper at nine. Anne-Marie Imafidon, Peter‘s older sibling is the youngest girl ever to pass A-level computing and last year, Samantha Imafidon became the youngest pupil ever to pass the University of Cambridge‘s Foundations of Advanced Mathematics with the highest grade at the age of nine.

EIE has observed that there are keen and passionate children all over the country irrespective of post-codes, or social background.

These kids are not ”whiz kids” or geniuses, but normal kids who have been given the opportunity to express their enthusiasm in a subject.

EIE believes that children have an instinctive ability to be explorative, inquisitive, and learn intuitively, and so must be allowed to do so at their own pace.

Source: excellenceineducation.org.uk

A Noun, A Verb and a P.O.W.

"To see McCain resort to playing the POW card when answering legitimate questions, in my mind, cheapens that experience. And by cheapening his own experience in war, he degrades all of our experiences in war. He turns the horrific incidents we've all seen, touched, smelled, and felt into a lame excuse to earn political points. And it dishonors us all."
-- Brandon Friedman, a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan

I read the text of John McCain's speech and I can tell you, I wasn't impressed. There was little if anything about what he was going to do different from the current Republican president, George W. Bush. Yes, we all want change but it sounds like he's just hopping on the bandwagon with a "me too".

He's been in Washington for nearly 25 years and never felt compelled to seek a change until now!? He has long since relinquished his title as "maverick". I actually liked him back in 2000 and thought now that's a Republican I can vote for. So mch has changed in the past eight years, our military is bogged down in Iraq years after W. declared "Mission Accomplished". In addition, we are facing higher prices for gasoline, stagnant wages and a 6.6% unemployment rate. We're in bad shape.

While the Republicans are circling their wagons around McCain and Palin, they have yet to tell us how they're going to get us out of this mess. He's promised not to raise taxes but with the burdens of our military in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't see how that's possible. Instead McCain has resorted to his P.O.W. status as an excuse and a diversion from discussing real issues. According to the MotherJones Blog, he mentioned his P.O.W. status 43 times in his speech while only mentioning his 25 years experience in the House and Senate only 8 times. Other than fear-mongering, flag waving and attacking Obama, what are John McCain and Sarah Palin going to do for us?

John McCain - Nope

John McCain - Nope, originally uploaded by News Corpse.

Alaska Maverick -- (McCain ad)

To show you how desperate John McCain is, his campaign has put out an ad comparing Sarah Palin to Barack Obama. While there are no comparisons to speak of, the McCain people are clearly desperate. By disparaging Obama's charisma and community service, they are hoping to distract us from the fact that they have no plan. We've all heard about staying the course in Iraq and drilling for more oil, but what else is the McCain-Palin ticket offering?

I'm waiting to see Sarah Palin do interviews and appear on political shows like "Meet the Press", "Hardball" or even "Larry King". My guess is, she is going to bypass doing a real interview with a real journalist asking real questions because she's not prepared. This has nothing to do with her being an outsider, it's just that people know very little about her.

At this point it's easy for Palin to blast the media, but she should at least wait until she gives her first interview and gets misquoted to start complaining. The fact that people are questioning her credentials doesn't make it a media conspiracy, it just means that journalists are doing their job.

Want the real facts about this ad? Click here.

Sarah, Plain and Stupid

I'm not impressed with Sarah Palin. I didn't watch her speech but did read the transcript. This is another cheap attempt by the Republicans to woo the working class and women. Rather than go for a more suitable candidate, McCain took the low road and picked Palin out of desperation. While people like Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee sing Palin's praises, I'm certain they're somewhere grumbling about how unqualified she is and how she is a risky, but desperate pick. Of course they aren't going to tell us that, but notice how every Republican interviewed talks about how excited they are about Sarah Palin. No Republican wants to admit it that they've never heard of her and know nothing about her. By now, I'm certain all Republicans have received their Sarah Palin primers and are up to speed on her family and career. Prior to her being selected by Karl Rove John McCain, they knew as much about her as the rest of us and were just as surprised when she was plucked out of the Alaskan tundra to be McCain's running mate.

If I were a woman and Republican, I'd be upset about McCain's choice for Vice President. When I think qualified to lead, I think of Republican women like Olympia Snowe, Christine Todd Whitman, Kay Bailey Hutchison and Condoleeza Rice, not Sarah Palin. Republicans are adept at picking the least qualified candidate for important jobs especially when it comes to women and minorities. Don't believe me, look at the first President Bush's selection of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. Thomas' legal career was lackluster and bore no resemblance to the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who championed equal opportunity and civil rights. Like Thomas, Palin is a lightweight picked from obscurity for a job she is grossly unqualified for. Too bad she doesn't know it.

Palin has been duped into believing that her experience on the PTA has prepared her to be Vice President. And in true divisive and "down-in-the-gutter" Republican fashion, Palin is going after Barack Obama. Everyone's got a role a to play in this drama so while McCain smiles and waves at the camera, Palin will be bad-mouthing Obama and telling the American people how common she is. If her selection as Vice Presidential candidate was really about her political experience, she'd have something more to talk than Obama.

I'd love for her to tell us how she and John McCain are going to get us out of the mess their fellow Republicans got us into. While she had the opportunity to do so in her speech last night, she had more important things to talk about, namely men. She gushed over John McCain's service in the military, his political career and the widely held belief that he's still a maverick and Washington outsider (I think not). She also settled into the only job that she is truly qualified for, backbiting. Surely a married mother of five with a pregnant teenage daughter, a son who will be deploying to Iraq and a special needs child has more important things to talk about.