Sarah Palin: How I KNOW Her, as I Rebut a Comment

I am repeating the comment I received to my entry last night, because I think it deserves a larger response than I could give it in the "comment" section.  I did change one word of my original response, because in rereading the person's comment, I though there were some unfair shots that I did not fully appreciate the first time I read the comment (when the complimentary words about Palin registered more with me).  So I changed "mostly agree" to "partly agree".  Here is the comment, and my response (continued in next entry):

 

"The reason that Sarah Palin's speech was so effective was that the speech seemed to accurately reflect HER, and to effectively convey arguments.  "  Of course her speech seemed to reflect "her."  That is because we know nothing about her.  We found out about "her" as a person in her own words.  Such as how she's involved executively as first and foremost as a PTA and a soccer mom.  She was also a mayor of a town of 7,000 people in Alaska.  I am a college student from OH, coming from a town of 6,000 people.  The mayor of my town is a bus driver with more dui’s than anyone in this world should ever know about (yea we keep it that way where I’m from. (disagree) So I understand that things are run a little differently from small towns especially in Alaska. I do believe Palin did an amazing job giving her speech. She is already a much better speaker than our current president so applauds to that.  I agree with Obama; keeping the family private. Well Palin during her speech did not.  Let’s whore out my son going to Iraq while I’m on tv.Go war...(ugh) I don’t want tp get into the war.  What about health care?  I may get criticized for mentioning this but she definitely spoke and tried to appeal on the more emotional side of the USA (especially mothers) for her son with Down syndrome.   My only thought during this is, I am glad she is a concerned mother, and a caring person (I come from a family with a handicap father, who had polio as a child and has given me the best and happiest life) but what about health care.  Most families with a handicap person within that family (at least in my average normal MIDDLE CLASS family) as lots of issues with the health care system.   I need to get my wisdom teeth out and I can’t.   Why?  Because my parents can’t afford to pay insurance on me anymore since they are both retired in their 60s and my dad has health issues.   What about just income taxes."

 

I agree partly about Palin, except for the idea that we don't know anything about her except through her words.  Now the public was primarily introduced to her through her speech, although I knew something about her befre. But I don't think that means we knew nothing about her from the facts of her LIFE.  As I have said, I grew up in smaller towns before entering the army, including undergraduage college at NMSU in Las Cruces, New Mexico.   I did do a six month co-op program at Sandia Labs in Albuquerque while in college--the largest city in New Mexico.   I also used to spend my summers with my grandparents in the Upper Peninsual of Michigan (Escanaba).  I grew up among people like Sarah Palin.  I think I KNOW them.  I think I KNOW her.  She is REAL.  She has accomplished more than most, in a shorter time, but her values are KNOWN to me.  They are the values expressed in the books of Charlotte Armstrong ("A Dram of Poison", et. al.--as I have said before, I am damning her with extravagant praise, because her books are a pleasure to read, and not some sort of morality lesson).   To me, Palin made the  speech her own, even if a speechwriter wrote it. And she made it authentic.  Even the accent is sort of a combination of the Southwestern twang of New Mexico and the virtual Canadian accent of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  I REALLY like her.  You might call it love at first sight.   That does not mean there is no risk with her. There is a lot of risk, and McCain showed considerable bravery in the choice.  One thing you can never question abuot McCain is his courage.

 

My own mother had five children, all boys, and my father was often away.  Although a GP (physician), he was the type who just could never get along in any one place all that long.  He would be off in some new place--even Japan at one point--and my mother would be raising the children alone.  I KNOW what a mother with five children can do.  My GRANDMOTHER, my father's mother, in Mt. Ida, Arkansas, had NINE children, and she was widowed relatively early.  She raised many of those nine children by herself. I have discussed her in this blog in earlier entries.  My most vivid memory of her is how seh made her living.  She took in laundry, but NOT to wash in machines. She had these large, iron pots in which she washed (boiled) the clothes, heating the pots by burning WOOD.  You can see how a woman who had to be that tough might be a little hard to love, as she lived to a Calviniat, tough Presbyterian creed.  And she was.

 

HOwever, you can see why I call CNN and the rest of the mainstream media the EVIL, sexist people that they are. Sexist, sanctimonious hypocrites that they are, they tried to say, for POLITICAL PURPOSES, that Sarah Palin could not handle being both a mother of five--one a pregnant teenageer, albeit one who is going to get married--and the Vice Presidency.  They obviously have no CONCEPT of people like my grandmother, or else are LYING HYPOCRITES (as I have said, I vote for both).  My grandmother boiled clothes in iron pots for a living, and raised NINE children.  For her, the Vice Presidency would have been a piece of cake. 

 

As I have said, I am sexist in the sense that I believe men and women ARE diffreent (an absolute fact), and that there is no reason that men and women have to have the same ROLE in society (without any implication that one is inferior to the other).  But I have NEVER been so sexist as to DEMEAN women the way CNN and the rest of the mainstream media have tried to do, in an attempt to DESTROY Sarah Palin, over the past week.  These are EVIL people.  I have said some harsh things about them in this blog, in MULTIPLE entries totalling 5 to 10 thousand words, over the past week.  I stand by every single word.  I would be ASHAMED to be these people, and I am not that nice a person.  It has hurt my self image that I have been proved to be much NICER than any of these evil people.  I hope to see them all in Hell.

 

My grandfather in Escanaba, MIchigan, by the way, was an ore dock worker and staunch Democrat, as was my mother (although really apolitical)--primarily because of the Great Depression.   I never had it that tough, but I KNOW people who did, as I feel I KNOW Sarah Palin.

 

The reason I mention the last is because I also want to address the "health care" question, which I think Republicans have lost by default because they no longer are willing to fight for their principles--maybe because they no longer really know what they are.  But before getting to that large topic, let me address a few of the "drive-by" shots in the above comment.

 

Was the reference to DUI's above meant to reference the DUI arrest of Palin's HUSBAND 22 YEARS ago?  If so, it is a cheap shot worthy of US Weekly and CNN.  My roommate in college--in fact, a number of my college friends--was involved in DUI incidents.  We won't even go into the men who served with me in the army.  No, I have never been involved in a DUI, but that is because I have never wanted to lose CONTROL of my mind to the extent you do when you are really drunk.  However, I do drink on a moderate level, and I am sure that I have driven above the official DUI limit on rare occasions when I was young.  More fundamentally, his is the SPUUSE 22 years algo.  It was at the age the CANDIDATE, Barack "World" Obama, was using HARD DRUGS.  As I asked in a previous entry:  Which is worse?  If you say it is a DUI of a SPUSE, then yuou are a sanctimonious hypocrite worthy of CNN.

 

The most egregious cheap shot above is about the sone going to IRaq.  Contrary to the statement above, this is NOT a "private family matter."  It is a PUBLIC act.  You expose an AGENDA when you try to say otherwise.  More fundamentally, WHAT is one of the primary criticisms leftists often level at Republicans.  It is that Republicans send poor black men and women to fight for them, while their sons and duaghters are safe at home in cushy schools and cushy jobs.  I think a parent is entitled to be PROUD of her son serving his country.  But it is even more important for the public, including those leftist hypocrites, to see that sons and duaghters of "important" people are serving their country.  People SHOULD know that Sarah Palin has a son and nephew who will serve in Iraq.  They SHOULD know that John McCan has a son in the Naval Academy, and another son who is a lance corporal (ENLISTED MAN) in the marines.  When leftists tell African-Americans that white men start wars just because they are willing for the poor and African-Americans to be shot, that is EVIL, hypocritic stuff. It does not help African-Americans or the poor. It merely spreads hatred for no purpose, and based on something that is at least partly a lie.  This has nothing to do with opening up the "private" part of "private life" to scrutiny.  Leftists have an infinite number of exucuses to engage in the evil "politics of personal destruction".  None of them are valid.

 

Taxes.  What can you say about a person this ignorant.  Almost 50% of the people in this country pay little or NO income tax.  The top 10% of the wage earners are paying some 40 to 50% of the income taxes. Is that "fair"?  The rich are actually paying a LARGER share of the income taxes than at any time in our history.  MANY people are getinng PAID MONEY (earned income tax credit and things like the recent tax "rebate" evin for people who do not PAY taxes) through the tax system. When leftists say that income tax cuts "benefit the rich", they mainly mean that they apply only to people who PAY TAXES. Lefitsts want to GIVE more and more money to people who do NOT PAY INCOME TAXES.  McCain woulld further solidify the 50% who pay almost no income tax by doubling the personal exemption. Of course, this will not "benefit" the poor as mcuh as those PAYING TAXES, since the "poor" pay no income tax. Walter Williams, in a little bit of an overstatement, has called this the equivalent of ARMED ROBBERY--no different from a leftist holding up a "rich" man with a gun on the street, and then finding a homeless person to give the money to (the Robin Hood syndrome).  The idea that our income tax system is "unjust" is a leftist myth--at least in the sense they mean it.

 

Health care next.