It saddens me that while near the town I grew up in, you can’t drive down a road without seeing homes foreclosed upon, and businesses shuttered, yet you are still unwilling to talk to us about issues like the economy. Why? Why do you want to “turn the page” so desperately?

What is your plan to help my neighbors? I want to hear it, as I have heard nothing from you yet about our economy. Something needs to change, and if you are going to tell me that continuing the economic policy of the previous administration is the best course, I ain’t buying it. Try telling that to my community member whose house is for sale.

Instead of substantive debate on the issues, your side continues to engage in the derisive politics of yore. Instead of talking about the economy, you deride by turning a phrase used to talk about a policy into a slur when your own candidate has used the same phrase beforehand. You bring up old tired dirty politics, when you yourself had some questionable connections in the past — McCain as a member of the Keating Five, and Palin in her connection the the successionist Alaska Freedom Party (whom you’ve supported, and your husband was a member of), and to a preacher who deemed a woman a WITCH (!?) only a few years ago. In both cases, the “pig” is bad policy, and to politicize it otherwise is an affront to our country’s intelligence, plain and simple.

We are smarter than that. I’m not just talking about me. I’m talking about the whole of the US.

Instead of talking about how to fix our problems, your negative, divisive politics force us to spend time defending – starving the country of the discussion we need – about what it is we need to do to right this ship.

Don’t call us unpatriotic. It offends me that you would dare to claim we love our country less than anyone else. I for one love this country, as all democrats and Obama supporters do. Why would we spend so much time campaigning and trying to bring our message of change if we didn’t want to make the country we love better. We will defend our borders against attacks against the freedoms we hold dear to the bitter end… to preserve the rights our forefathers established for us, and to ensure the safety and well being of our fellow countrymen. Calling us unpatriotic is simply untrue, an unfortunate casualy in this war against those who have or may attack you.

Let’s bring this back to a discussion about issues and solutions and let the public decide.

30k for 30 well funded days

Now, having said that, take a look at the contrasting answers given by each VP candidate to Katie Couric this past week in regards to Row v Wade, quite possibly one of the most famous, and often argued Supreme Court case. It almost always comes up in major political debate and this is no exception. You’d think of ANY Supreme Court case that the McCain camp would have prepped Palin in, it would have been this one.

Watch for yourself and decide who seems to be more versed on the matter.

I’ve never been this excited for the first Vice Presidential debate. When was the last time that anyone cared THIS much about the VP debate? Sure, Gore/Cheney and Edwards/Cheney were somewhat entertaining. But this particular debate, I believe, will decide the elections. All those “hockey mom’s” that were so excited for Palin are finally going to realize what an idiot Palin really is. I want to like Palin, I really do.  She’s brash. The mom next door. She’d make a great PTO council member. But Vice President over the largest economy (as of now as least) and the greatest military army in the world? Palin and McCain aren’t even on the same page on foreign policy.

And when’s the last time you saw the Presidential candidate practically hold the VP hand during an interview? Um… is she 5, or 45?

Al I know is that there’s going to be many many more Tina Fey appearances after this Thursday.

“She doesn’t have any foreign policy credentials,” Hagel said in an interview published Thursday by the Omaha World-Herald. “You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don’t know what you can say. You can’t say anything.”

Could Palin lead the country if GOP presidential nominee John McCain could not?

“I think it’s a stretch to, in any way, to say that she’s got the experience to be president of the United States,” Hagel said.

McCain and other Republicans have defended Palin’s qualifications, citing Alaska’s proximity to Russia. Palin told ABC News, “They’re our next-door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.”

Hagel took issue with that argument. “I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, ‘I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia,”‘ he said. “That kind of thing is insulting to the American people.”

Hagel, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In July, Hagel traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Though he didn’t expect to be asked, Hagel had said he would have considered serving as Obama’s running mate.

Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population 6,500, before becoming Alaska’s governor in December 2006.

Palin visited soldiers in Kuwait and Germany last year and said in an interview with ABC News that her only other foreign travel had been to Mexico and Canada. She also said she had never met a foreign head of state.

Hagel told the newspaper that other governors have been elected to serve in the White House without experience in Washington. He said judgment and character were also important for the job.

“But I do think in a world that is so complicated, so interconnected and so combustible, you really got to have some people in charge that have some sense of the bigger scope of the world,” Hagel said. “I think that’s just a requirement.”

This, of course, has not stopped her from making the same claim dozens of times since it’s been discredited. But what’s even more interesting is that she apparently kept as much of the money as the federal government sent her. What happened to thanks, but no thanks?

Though the entire financing for the bridge did not pan out, the US government has set aside $73 million for the project. So far, a lot of money has been wasted building access roads to bridges that don’t exist and never will. Of course, people get rich off these projects, so they don’t give a damn where they lead as long as the money leads right back into their pockets.

So, I’d like to start a simple campaign called “Give the Money Back.” If Sarah Palin is going to claim how much she dislikes earmarks — despite the fact that she asked for over $250 million in earmarks this year for Alaska and asked for more earmarks per capita for Wasilla than any other city in the country — let her prove it. Why doesn’t she give back the $73 million set aside for this useless project?

Remember that’s our money. Republicans love to talk about how it’s the taxpayer’s money and they know how to spend it better than the government. In this case, I agree. I certainly know how to spend it better than the Alaskan government. So, give it back.

Pass this message on. Demand that Sarah Palin give back our money. That $73 million is now sitting in the bank account to nowhere. It’s time that it be returned to its rightful owners — us!

Over 1400 women came out in Anchorage protest against Palin.

Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn’t honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn’t happen here.

You should check it out.