We’re in for a show tonight

One needs to be wicked careful about calling someone stupid just because they put on a show about being common. Every now and again something creeps out of that Sarah Palin that makes you wonder, or should make you wonder, which part’s show and which part’s smarter than she’s letting on.

Like the time Katie was trying to find out about something mavericky McCain’d done and Palin said, “I’ll just get back to ya.”

What I saw was the voice change was a) she’d been embarassingly caught with no answer, or b) she’d just tweaked Couric’s and Olbermann’s chains real hard.

She did it again with the Supreme Court question. She’s from a state that is mostly hunters. There are 120, 611 registered Republicans and 73,446 registered Democrats as of Aug. 4 this year. Anybody betting she didn’t know about the Supremes making gun ownership legal couple months ago better be hanging onto their wallets.

She did it again about what newspapers she reads. She could easily have said the Anchorage Daily News or the Juneau Empire. She didn’t get to be governor, even of Alaska, without knowing at least a little about the Lower 48.

I think we’re in for a show tonight.

Of course, if it plays out that way, she’s even less qualified to be Prez than most folks already think.

These things I believe

I believe that every family has a right to a family doctor, and that as long as the employer will not provide it, in large part because the consumer does not want to pay for it, the taxpayer must expect to pick up the cost.

I believe that we need to know our enemies — how they live, what they believe — before we move in with guns, treasure and young people’s lives trying to force a way of life they will never accept.

I believe books about other cultures are written from the perspective of their authors, and the only way to really know another people is to live among them, to share their bread and drink.

I believe the American middle class is a special interest, and must have as much representation in the halls of government as the upper-level captains of industry and finance.

I believe there are wasteful earmarks such as bridges to nowhere, and valuable earmarks such as investments in a broad education for our children and entrepreneurial research into ways to provide sustainable and non-destructible energy.

I believe we need to put on our nation an international face that says we are accepting of people of varied race and ancestry; that our president must be welcomed by our allies and respected by our foes, not because we have the biggest guns, but because we have shown by example we are willing to share the planet with people who may not agree with some of the specifics of our lifestyle.

I believe that when hundreds of thousands of citizens of other nations gather to applaud our leaders, they will gather to convince their leaders to join with us in times of great stress, and when those citizens walk away from our leaders, their leaders will walk away from us

Those are the main measures by which I will chose the person to get my vote for president.

McCain’s the One

For years, the guy has been part of the marketplace crowd. Companies will survive or die on their own. They don’t need the government making their rules, governing their operations, and getting a piece of the action.

All of a sudden, John McCain’s had an epiphany. There needed to be more oversight (spelled r-e-g-u-l-a-t-i-o-n). And the companies need help from the taxpayers — the very folks they’ve been screwing all these years.

If anyone should know how to clean up this mess, it should be John McCain. He helped make it.

A maverick she ain’t, but man get a load of those eyes!

We’ve just had eight years of a vice president who operates in secret and isn’t embarrassed to say so. He started with the energy summit, when he refused to say who was at the meeting (mostly because when we found out, the answer was pretty ugly), and climaxed with setting himself up as a fourth branch of government, and declaring himself untouchable.

The Alaska legislature subpoenaed folks about Troopergate, wishing to investigate whether their governor misused her power and authority — only now she is candidate for vice president of the United States, and to prove her qualifications for the job, she told the legislature to kiss off. And it did!

By the way, Sarah Palin claims her foreign relations experience stems from being able to see Russia outside her window. With that kind of eyesight, maybe she should be elected. The closest point of Russia is nearly 1,300 miles from Juneau, Alaska’s capital.

She’s a little closer from her kitchen window in Wasilla. Only 700 miles to Siberia from there.

What can a president do?

He can influence our world neighbors and he can set the course of constitutional interpretation for the next several decades.

That’s it. The whole thing. Ask any of them.

It would be nice if the president could increase teachers’ salaries, as well as those of the single moms working at the local convenience store. I would like him (since the next one is going to be a “him” for at least a few months) to put fuel-efficient motors In high-priced luxury SUVs. I would like him to fully fund social services. I would like him to create at least a few hundred thousand jobs that pay more then $15 an hour. I would like him to cut corporate welfare so that Big Business would only build widgets on which they can make a profit. And I definitely would like him to prohibit CEOs from taking home mega-millions in severance packages when the taxpayers are forced to rescue failed corporations. My list could go on.

So when Barrack Obama drew huge crowds in Europe, we could get the idea those countries’ leaders would be more likely to stand with us than, say, the leaders of nations which did not accompany us into Iraq.

But chances are pretty good he won’t get some of his national service and alternative energy initiatives through unless we a) elect him in landslide or b) send a bunch of like-minded folks to Congress.

Unfortunately, the president is the only candidate we all get to select. Congress-folk only have to be concerned with a small number of local voters who sent them to Washington.

And for all the talk about earmarks, Sarah Palin was not opposed to $235 million for a bridge until enough folks in the Lower 48 raised Cain. And even then, she didn’t give the money back.

Something to think about when we’re in the booth Nov. 4.

What an act!

Every would be star needs a warm-up act. McCain’s got Palin. She cracks the jokes, tosses some sarcastic belittlement at her boss’s opponent …

I can see the McCain-Palin cabinet meetings.

Palin enters the room, cracks a few one-liners about Democrats, Russians and “Abuminijad, er, Ahmed in-Jihad, ah, oh heck, …

“Here’s John!”

Enter Pres. John McCain, who immediately declares war on — whoever we’re not fighting with already.

Do you believe in … ?

If one were a mite cynical, and old enough to remember the Iranian Hostage Crisis … when a peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter was unable to retrieve a some 70 American hostages from their Iranian captors for 444 days — and five minutes after Ronald Reagan took the oath of presidential office, the hostages boarded an airplane and came home.

Now the Russians have invaded Georgia, the way Hitler invaded Czekoslovakia, and a Quinnipiac University poll released today says 55 percent of the voters think McCain is more qualified to handle the Russians; only 27 percent think Obama can handle them.

Coincidence?

I doubt it.

©2008 by T. Samuel Emery

Changing face of the information control

Here’s an interesting thought: Apple has come out with a device that plays music, videos, and radio and TV shows, and makes telephone calls. It also will run a plethora of software. We know that because Apple says it’s true. The company says an upgrade to the operating system will allow all those hinted-at applications to run.

But Apple gets to decide what software will run, and when it will run, by mandating that all software must be obtained from the iTunes store and installed from the iTunes application. Presumedly, Apple could, if it later decided, turn off any software that once worked simply because, oh, say it allowed users to buy music, videos, or podcasts from Not-Apple.

One might point to hackers who already have figured out ways to run software on an iPhone, but how long will it be until Apple decides to shut down iPhones that do not operate approved software through the approved iTunes interface. It’s in the agreement with AT&T that Apple maintains control — AT&T merely sells the units and provides over-the-air service

With that much control, Steve Jobs can decide what information will be allowed to appear on the iPhone. Maybe it will come from only Google, or only Yahoo, or only some as yet unknown AppleSearch that will decide not do display certain search results. (Don’t laugh; companies already pay to be at the top of the list; eliminating “objectionable” content altogether would be easy.)

To use the device at all, the buyer already has to activate a two-year contract, at an exhorbitant price that includes charges for “features” many users may not ever use, often do not want, and at any rate may not have available where they hang out. One may not purchase an iPhone and opt out of the Wi-Fi or email, for instance, by not subscribing to the mandatory $30-a-month data package.

And yet people seem focused on complaining about the price as they stand in line to acquire the latest state-of-the art gadget, while the once dying Apple computer brand moves toward total control of what it hopes will be the new Microsoft-model of control by becoming the de facto standard.

But Microsoft has controlled only the tools by which we manipulate information. Apple is well on its way to controlling access to the information.

And that is, or should be, more worrisome than the size of the monthly bill.

Does it seem to you

that Bill Clinton is trying to set up that if Hillary isn’t the candidate, the Dems lose.
I’m listening to him ask Floridians how the Ds are going to ask them to support the Democratic candidate in November after they’ve “messed all over you in the primary.”
And the C’s latest counting method is to use the electoral college to determine whether BO or HC is ahead.

It’s beginning to sound like a guy killing his girlfriend because she decides she wants to go home with someone else.

Summer’s here?

Jake came home from the Supercenter mildly unhappy, and sat down in my kitchen to vent.

“They’re out of Ice Melt ,” he said.

We’ve had some snow and freezing rain the past few days — the temperature hasn’t been above freezing in a week — and walking was, let’s say, thrilling, so I could understand his frustration.

“They say they’re sold out of the stuff because it’s summer,” he said.

Sure enough, he said, there’s all manner of garden stuff, swimming suits, and other warm weather attire and implements, but no Ice Melt.

“I told them somebody needed to notify God,” he said, “because a couple of us were planning to go skinny-dipping at the quarry tonight, but the rocks are too dad-blamed icy for us to climb back up.”