Congratulations, Barack Obama!

Congratulations are in order...Barack Obama is America's first non-white President and that, all by itself, is a reason to celebrate.

This election had shaped up to be noteworthy in more ways than one as many of the presidential hopefuls were "firsts." Hillary was the first woman for stump for the highest office, McCain was the first man of his age to run for a presidential first term, and the Republicans fielded their first female candidate for a shot at the top job. Obama, of course, hit more than one first: the first African-American, the first non-white, the first person of Muslim heritage to even apply for the top job, let alone win it.

But the closeness of the popular vote is troubling, indicating that while some people who are losing their jobs and their homes and the lives of their brothers and sons are wanting a change, others in the same situation are putting political ideology ahead of the welfare of the country and their fellow countrymen.

I think Hillary was a better candidate all around: more experienced, more savvy, and with her husband, the architect of the most prosperous administration of the entire 20th century, at her side should she need an advisor with a proven track record. But the American people went for a pair of amateurs, ignoring the most experienced candidate. Fortunately for America, Bush's fiscal debacle combined with McCain's unfathomable choice of a person with no political acumen or ethical standards as his running mate, combined to taint his candidacy, giving Obama the win.

I hope Obama can pull off his vision for America. But as Bill Clinton can tell him, just winning the election isn't enough...when the other party is out for your blood, they will stop at nothing to find it, even if they have to spill it themselves.

Barack Obama, watch your back...the Republicans certainly are!

When it comes to elections, it pays to be informed...

I received the following letter in my email from someone who has been my friend for more than 30 years. I have checked with Snopes.com (http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/sarahpalin.asp) to verify if this is a hoax or a real letter from a real person: the folks at Snopes actually called the author and obtained verification.

The following is a letter about Sarah Palin by someone who has known her personally for more than 15 years:

ABOUT SARAH PALIN
I am a resident of Wasilla , Alaska . I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis.

Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child's favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she's like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and won't vote for her can't quit smiling when talking about her because she is a "babe".

It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months.

She is "pro-life". She recently gave birth to a baby with Down syndrome. There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby.

She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.

She is savvy. She doesn't take positions; she just "puts things out there" and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.

Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin's kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anything like that of native Alaskans.

Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters.

She's smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents.

During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a "fiscal conservative". During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren't enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn't even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later--to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once. These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska . Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today's surplus, borrow for needs.

She's not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren't generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren't evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin's attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Sarah complained about the "old boy's club" when she first ran for Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of "old boys". Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal-loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the State's top cop (see below).

As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla's Police Chief because he "intimidated" her, she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska 's top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it's pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn't fire her sister's ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than 2 dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal City Administrator; even people who didn't like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.

Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.

When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job which paid $122 400/yr, she was criticizing her pay as too high in the press. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this Commission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the "old boys' club" when she dramatically quit, exposing this man's ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the "bridge to nowhere" after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.

As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects--which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance--but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as "anti-pork".

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.

Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah's mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as "AGIA" that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum.

Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned "as a private citizen" against a state initiative that would have either a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the State's lawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior's decision to list polar bears as threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being President.

There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she.

However, there's a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.

CLAIM VS FACT
§ "Hockey mom": true for a few years
§ "PTA mom": true years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since
§ "NRA supporter": absolutely true
§ social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, BUT vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she did this because it was unconstitutional).
§ pro-creationism: mixed. Supports it, BUT did nothing as Governor to promote it.
§ "Pro-life": mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby BUT declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life legislation
§ "Experienced": Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.
§ Political maverick: not at all
§ Gutsy: absolutely!
§ open & transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.
§ has a developed philosophy of public policy: no
§ "a Greenie": no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR
§ fiscal conservative: not by my definition!
§ pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards
§ pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on residents
§ pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla's history
§ pro-labor/pro-union. No. Just because her husband works union doesn't make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is pro-labor/pro-union.

WHY AM I WRITING THIS?

First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting programs in the schools. If you google my name (Anne Kilkenny + Alaska ), you will find references to my participation in local government, education, and PTA/parent organizations.

Secondly, I've always operated in the belief that "Bad things happen when good people stay silent". Few people know as much as I do because few have gone to as many City Council meetings.

Third, I am just a housewife. I don't have a job she can bump me out of. I don't belong to any organization that she can hurt. But, I am no fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow in the future: that's life.

Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah's attempt at censorship.

Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say anything because they were somehow vulnerable.

CAVEATS
I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in spending & taxation 2 years ago (when Palin was running for Governor) from information supplied to me by the Finance Director of the City of Wasilla , and I can't recall exactly what I adjusted for: did I adjust for inflation? For population increases? Right now, it is impossible for a private person to get any info out of City Hall--they are swamped. So I can't verify my numbers.

You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for the population of Wasilla, ranging from my "about 5,000", up to 9,000. The day Palin's selection was announced a city official told me that the current population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was 5,460. I have used about 5,000 because Palin was Mayor from 1996 to 2002, and the city was growing rapidly in the mid-90's.

Anne Kilkenny
annekilkenny@hotmail.com
August 31, 2008

Just a Huckin' an' a Jivin'

I thought that America could not be more shamed than when Richard Nixon’s dirty tricks came to light and he was forced to resign. Next, I watched the entire Republican Party and their sycophants turn a private, non-political act into a scandal, spending more than a billion tax dollars…money that could have fed hungry children or increased the meagre Social Security stipend to our elderly…and dragging the office of the presidency through the mud because of a brief marital affair…I didn’t think it could get worse than that! Then, the GOP fielded a complete moron whose history was one of profligacy, alcohol abuse, cheating the government, and who displayed the intellect of an amoeba, the compassion of a rock and the ethics of a starving lion. I never believed, especially after the outcry over Clinton’s non-political moral shenanigans, that someone so morally challenged and ethically bankrupt as George W. Bush could be elected to the presidency, but thanks to as little help from his friends…and most especially the friends and appointees of his brother (governor of Florida, the state that decided the election), a brainless, clueless, bumbling moron ended up in the White House.

At that point, I didn’t think it could get worse, but the Idiot Child’s handlers fooled me: They got the moron to lie to the electorate, start a war, and then engage in some sleight-of-mouth to make the citizens believe that the war, which had swiftly become a jungle-free Vietnam, was over despite increasing casualties. Surely, the Greedy Old Party could not top this!

Well, it seems they can. After eight years of being manipulated, lied to, and having their best interests ignored by the absolute worst president ever to tarnish America’s image in the eyes of the world, Americans are finally able to vote for a replacement. Unfortunately, one of the frontrunners in the GOP appears to be an even worse version of the brain dead moron who has been sitting in the White House for the last seven years: Mike Huckabee.

From everything I have read, Huckabee is a rigid right winger who not only believes that his personal set of beliefs and prejudices should be the moral compass of the country, he believes that the individual rights of the citizens should be subordinate to those prejudices and beliefs. Herewith a recent news article about Huckabee and my thoughts on the points highlighted:

Now that he's a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, he's being asked anew about some of the views and comments he expressed in the survey by The Associated Press. Over the weekend, he said he wouldn't retract answers in which he advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased funding for finding a cure and said homosexuality could pose a public health risk — though he said today he might phrase his answers "a little differently."

So, he would soft-peddle his delivery without changing his position, a position that has no basis in fact and violates the very freedoms guaranteed by the US Constitution. How does homosexuality pose a public health risk? If I sit next to a person on a bus who has active tuberculosis, I stand a chance of catching the disease…that’s a public health risk. But homosexuality? HIV/AIDS? Not a chance.

What the man wants to do is create ghettos into which HIV+ people and homosexuals, regardless of their HIV status, thrown. Then, he opposes funding for a cure for AIDS. So, in the plainest language possible, he wants to put everyone who is HIV…babies who were born with it, women who contracted the disease from their husbands, homosexuals, people who were infected through a blood transfusion…in a place isolated from the rest of the citizens. Then, because homosexuals might pose a health risk (how? does he think homosexuality is contagious or that being homosexual automatically predisposes one to AIDS?), they get to be unwilling guests of government as well. And then, to top it all off, after all these people are isolated from the rest of the population because of either their sexual orientation or their disease status, Huckabee doesn’t want to spend any money on finding a cure for the disease.

OK…so how are these people to live? Who will care for them as their untreated disease takes them inexorably towards death? And as the disease continues to spread in the general population (you can’t identify them all, HIV doesn’t give you pus-filled vesicles on your face or purple buboes by which you can be easily identified), more and more people will be forced to leave productive jobs and enter the isolation camps, who is going to pay for their upkeep?

Wouldn’t the burden to the tax payer ultimately be less if the homosexuals and HIV+ citizens were left as they are and the government devoted serious funds to finding a cure for the scourge? But, why would a presidential candidate want to think that far ahead? Let’s just throw the faggots, diseased or not, into a ghetto and let them die of their affliction! Oh, and anybody else who contracted “their” disease, regardless of how. Moron.

Some of the words in his answers to the questionnaire are indeed strong.

Asked about gays in the military, for example, he didn't just reject the idea but added: "I believe to try to legitimize that which is inherently illegitimate would be a disgraceful act of government. I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk."

We don’t know any such thing. First of all, the fastest growing HIV+ segment of the US population are heterosexual teens. Secondly, here in sub-Saharan Africa, we know that HIV/AIDS is not a homosexual disease. If you look at the education campaigns, you find that they are universally directed to young heterosexual couples. In fact, in many of the black communities, extremely thin women are shunned as possibly being AIDS victims! Homosexuality poses no public health risk until and unless it can be proven that homosexuals can passively infect people…with anything.

Secondly, one would think that a homophobe of Huckabee’s magnitude would welcome gays in the military…even conscript them. Instead of spending boatloads of money on safety gear and expensive technological toys, just send the gay guys out to find the mines, the bombs, the sniper nests. Huckie could get them out of the general population permanently that way, save a few heterosexual soldiers lives, and a bunch of government money in the bargain.

But the reality is, why shouldn’t homosexuals serve in the military? Is there something inherent in homosexuality that causes the inaccurate aiming of a rifle? An inability to drive a tank? Or perhaps Huck fears that a gay contingent in the military would bitch and moan about the drabness of the uniforms, causing discontent among the troops? It can’t be the fear of the gay men being sexually available to the other men, could it? I mean, there are female soldiers available to the men (and getting pregnant, for crying out loud!), so it can’t be sex between the troops that has him all cranked up, can it?

It’s just his homophobia talking…and he’s so punitive in his viewpoints, so draconian in his beliefs as to what to do with homosexuals (lock them in a ghetto with HIV patients), as to make me wonder just what it is he really fears. Maybe he has these urges…

Called for the elimination of political action committees and campaign contributions from lobbyists. He also said candidates should not be allowed to receive contributions until one year before an election and said there should be limits on the amount of out-of-state money they could accept…As Arkansas governor, Huckabee formed a political action committee based in Virginia to raise money for non-federal candidates that allowed him to travel and raise his profile for a potential presidential run. The Hope for America PAC shut down earlier this year as Huckabee entered the White House race.

OK…so he can have a PAC to make himself visible enough to be able to float his name as a presidential candidate, but nobody else can. Can anybody pronounce H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E?

Said he would not support any tax increases if elected to the Senate. Huckabee's record of raising some taxes as Arkansas' governor has drawn fire from fiscal conservatives in the presidential race.

Well, he can follow Georgie’s footsteps and float the biggest budget deficit in the history of the world. You can reduce taxes to nothing as long as you are willing to increase the deficit. But it would seem Huck’s even more traditional than that…with a history of raising taxes during his governorship, he now asks us to believe that the Huckabee leopard has changed its spots. Either way, it’s a bad deal…either he is lying or he’s looking to increase Georgie’s record-breaking deficit. Perfect presidential material…a profligate or a prevaricator…or both.

When asked whether the U.S. should take any action to kill Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Huckabee replied: "The U.S. should not kill Saddam Hussein or anyone else."

Except HIV/AIDS patients, who should be quarantined and no attempts be made to find a cure for their disease.

Rejected the idea of women in combat "because of my strong traditional view that women should be treated with respect and dignity and not subject to the kinds of abuses that could occur in combat."

His strong traditional view trumps a woman’s constitutional right to self-determination? OK, so what other traditional views about women does he thinks he has a right to impose on the female half of the population? Send them home to stay barefoot, pregnant, and tied to the kitchen sink? Restrict them to “traditional” female occupations like nursing and teaching? Rescind their right to vote? One man’s “treated with respect and dignity and not subject to…abuses…” may well be seen as patronizing paternalism by the object of his “respect.” I’m flesh and bone and have a fully functioning brain…how about letting me make my own choices, Mikey?

Said living together out of wedlock "is demeaning to the highest expression of human love and commitment. I reject it as an alternate lifestyle, because it robs people of the highest possible relationship one can experience: marriage."

Huh? In a country that sees half of its marriages end in divorce, (and nobody with more than two brain cells believes that the other half are blissful), marriage is “the highest possible relationship one can experience”? Not bloody likely. People cohabit for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is a mock-marriage. Who knows why couples live together, sometimes for decades, without formalization? Whose business is it but theirs?

Said he believed no one has a constitutional right to an abortion and supported requiring minors to obtain parental consent. Huckabee also said he supported requiring doctors to discuss abortion alternatives and a waiting period...Huckabee's vocal opposition to gay marriage and abortion have attracted evangelical Christians' support and vaulted him to the top of the field in Iowa.

One of the most precious of American freedoms is the right to freely choose you own religion. But some people seem to think that, hand-in-hand with that right to choose comes a right to impose one’s own religious sensibilities on others. This is the crux of the abortion issue, believe it or not. You see, if your religion believes that personhood is bestowed at conception because the soul is infused at that moment, then you believe the product of conception, regardless of its state of development, is a person and killing it is murder. If, on the other hand, you don’t believe the soul is infused until a later time…or you don’t believe the soul even exists…then abortion is simply a medical procedure. Either way, one’s religious convictions drives the opinion, and none of us have the right to impose our religious convictions…or prohibitions…on others as it violates their religious rights.

Notifying parents of a teen’s abortion? For something that seems so right and so simple on the surface, this really is a knotty issue. The argument goes that if a parent has to be notified and consent taken for something like an appendectomy, why does an invasive surgical procedure like an abortion not require parental consent?

Well, the simple fact is, many teens don’t live in benevolent, understanding, compassionate families ala TV sitcom households. And if you have never been a teen who was legitimately afraid of her parents, then it may be difficult to wrap your mind around the fact that there really are kids out there whose safety…even lives…could be endangered by the revelation of a pregnancy. And, until a reliable crystal ball is on the marketplace, we simply have no way of knowing which teens are just exaggerating the presumed reaction of their parents and which teens literally face terrifying consequences if they tell. http://noon43.com/dearabby So, until that crystal ball is in hand, the safe choice is to allow the person who got pregnant to decide what to do about it…including whether or not to tell her parents.

Now, the subject of gay marriage is another of Mikey’s issues. Absent any intelligent debate on the matter, Americans have been herded towards the notion that there is something inherently wrong with same-gender marriages. The reason they have been fed it that it somehow threatens marriage which, in and of itself, is a ludicrous notion. If anything, gay marriage strengthens the whole concept of marriage in a time when many heterosexual couples find no reason to enter the institution. Same sex couples who marry are proclaiming to the world that the institution is desirable, not something to be shunned. Of course, Mike Homophobee may just be wanting to punish gay people by robbing gay “people of the highest possible relationship one can experience: marriage.” http://www.bidstrup.com/marriage.htm

But some of his earlier comments offer a harder-edged presentation of those stances than he has presented as he's tried to portray himself as a conservative who won't "scare the living daylights" out of moderates and independents…I think the model he saw that had been successful in other Southern states was this very hard right message and that's what seemed to be the most natural for him," … “He's become much smarter about successfully using language that expresses views without being hard-edged”…

Can we say “shuck and jive”? Or should that be “Huck and jive”? Cloak the truth in dissembling language but step not back from the punitive, paternalistic platform. Let’s try another applicable phrase: “control freak.”

Huckabee's 1992 comments on isolating AIDS patients run counter to a statement he released last month calling for increased federal funds to find a cure. Huckabee says the earlier remarks came at a time when there was confusion about how AIDS could be transmitted.

If I roll my eyes one more time, I’m afraid they are gonna get stuck up there. Gimme a break here…the man cannot admit he was wrong and make appropriate apologies? I was around in 1992, in fact I was working at a company that was doing research into HIV. Even then we knew that you didn’t get AIDS by sitting next to an HIV positive person on a bus!!

Can’t he just say “I was ignorant, I said stupid things in my ignorance, and I’m sorry. I’ll try to be more enlightened in the future.”? No, the gasbag has to try to rationalize and justify what he said rather than just admit he was wrong and apologize for it.

Said he had never smoked marijuana or "experimented with any illegal drug." In fact, he said he had never used any tobacco products because of "a very sensitive allergy" and would support a smoking ban in public places.

And this is important because?? I also duly note that he is careful to say he has not experimented with any illegal drug. Is this some clever dissembling to hedge against someone alleging he may have abused legal drugs? Otherwise, why bother to make such a clear distinction?

Opposed passing a law that would give workers time off to care for an ailing family member.

So, if your child is dying of leukaemia, or your wife is confined to bed rest during the last weeks of her pregnancy or your father is gasping his last from a brain tumour, tough nougies, buddy, get your nose back to that corporate grindstone or you’ll be unemployed on top of all your other troubles, right? Gee, this shows some serious compassion for the individual American, eh?

When asked about the nomination hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Huckabee said: "I watched or listened to many hours of the Thomas hearings and was firmly convinced that the preponderance of testimony backed up Clarence Thomas."

The analytical portion of his brain must have been on holiday in Thailand when Anita Hill was testifying…

Called the federal welfare system "disgraceful" and said the burden should be shifted from the federal government to local communities.

Oh, that makes all kinds of sense. So, GM or Ford pulls out of a region, taking the majority of the local jobs away. Or a major manufacturing facility sends the work overseas, closing the main source of work in an area. Or a mine is closed or some natural disaster occurs, sending the local economies into a tail spin, leaving the people hungry and unemployed and needing government assistance just to survive. Exactly where is the tax base that is supposed to fund that welfare burden?

The whole concept of a federal system is to allow richer communities to help the poorer ones, a burden which may remain constant in some areas, but inevitably fluctuates with changes in the economy and natural phenomenon. To cast such a burden back onto the local economies, which may have been flattened by a series of tornadoes or desiccated by the jobs being shipped offshore, is to further stratify the society, creating increasing layers of poor and marginalized people while allowing richer communities to increase their wealth. The milk of human kindness clearly does not flow in Mike Huckabee’s breast.

So, the question becomes, does America need another Dubya, this one with a brain and agenda of his own? And will Americans actually elect a rigid, inflexible, unfeeling control freak who will be their friend and supporter only as long as they can continue flowing tax dollars into his government? Will the Republican Party find some ethics and try to field a candidate who will actually be good for America…or will they pick the guy they think will win the presidency by fair mean of foul. I mean, it worked with Shrub, didn’t it?

Since we don’t have those crystal balls yet, only time will tell.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071212/ap_on_el_pr/huckabee_survey