Best Wishes

I hope that Sarah Palin gets the time off she deserves. I hope that the media vultures leaveher family alone. I hope that John McCain’s staffers offer no opinions. I hope that the Leftie blogs don’t go as full-blown crazy as I suspect they will. I hope that if she decides to run for office again, it’ll be in a venue where I may vote for her (again), though I think that “President Palin” is out for 2012 at the very least.

And if she decides to stay out of politics, I hope she makes gobs and gobs of money in the private sector.

The Redemption of Palin

I admit. When I learned that Sarah Palin was in favor of the stimulus bill, I was concerned. Was it true? Was Sarah really in favor of that behemoth?

Well, it seems that her support wasn’t for the bill that passed, but more for the general idea of a stimulus bill. In fact, she’s pretty critical of the one passed. I’m relieved.

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Apparently not.

At least, Alec Baldwin is upset at all the acrimony and bitterness:

“If John McBush and Bible Spice win, we have to find a way to come together as a country, because we can’t let it be the way it’s been the last 8 years where there’s been this acrimony and this bitterness. We have to find a way somehow to do that.”

Had he actually, you know, used McCain’s and Palin’s names instead of the ridiculous nicknames he thought up, I might be more inclined to think he was serious about wanting more peace ‘n luv in in the US.

And really, as so many people have pointed out, comparing Bush to McCain is laughable and really only serves to stir up that certain segment of the population infected with Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Purveyor of Political Paraphernalia

I’ve been trying to find a Palin t-shirt. But I haven’t been able to find one I liked. Sure, there were shirts that were about being a hockey mom and about guns and such, but I couldn’t really find one that covered those elements and more in one tidy package. So I decided to make my own. I created one, and I like it a lot.

So, being the philanthropic woman that I am (and, being the poor woman that I am, desperate for money), I’ve decided to sell it at CafePress on different products. Here’s the image, scaled down and pixilated because the original image that’s on the CafePress products is at a high resolution and large to fit t-shirt dimensions:

Click on the image for a slightly larger size.

So, because I’ve shrunk it, I’ll need to explain it.

The little red squares are all the different elements of Palin that I wanted to represent on the t-shirt. They are, in order: the symbol of a woman (the kind you see on bathroom doors), an eagle head surrounded by stars, a fishing rod, a dancing elephant, a rifle, a hockey player, a moose, and a sexy high heeled shoe. I thought about adding a tiara or a lipstick or a pig, but there wasn’t enough room and it looked a little crowded with an extra row.

I really liked the whole creative process. It’s been a while since I was creative with my blog, or anything else for that matter. I like it so much that I’m going to do different images for t-shirts, signs, etc., too. Some of them will be political.

I don’t think I’m going to make a ton of money by doing this. Let’s face it, I’m not all that good with graphics. But I like it, and it makes me feel productive whilst being an unemployed slob looking for a job.

Anyway, if you want a t-shirt, sweatshirt, BBQ apron, or bag with the Palin ’08 image on it above, here’s my CafePress shop, Political Prudie.

102 Minutes, More

So, I’ve just finished writing my previous post on the History Channel documentary, 102 Minutes That Changed America. (You might want to read that one first, to get an idea of what brought about this post.)

Watching the documentary brings back all the fear and anxiety I felt back in 2001. It brings back all the resolve I felt back in 2002. And I can’t help but wonder, after that, who can question Afghanistan or Iraq? Who can question the worth of establishing firm democratic republic ideals in Afghanistan or Iraq? Is there anyone who can still question why we are there? 

I’ve railed against people who say that the events of 9/11 are our fault. We were clearly the victims on that day. But just because we were the victim doesn’t mean that we couldn’t have avoided it. Had we taken our heads out of our collective dot com asses and looked at what was happening in the Middle East with Muslim extremism/fascism, could 9/11 have been avoided? I don’t know. (Though at this point, I suppose the argument is, at best, academic. At worst, it is partisan hackery. Oy. So let’s skip that minefield altogether and move on to the present and the future.)

What I do know is that we can’t afford to take our attention away now. It’s clear, it’s been made very clear, what will happen if we let our guard down, if we don’t take control of the people who would harm us, if we don’t establish some sort of pro-American democratic republic somewhere in the Middle East.

Have we made mistakes? I’m sure we have. Somewhere. But I don’t think that the decision to go into Afghanistan or Iraq was one of them. Debate on that issue is mostly pointless rhetoric anyway (which is why I avoided it above), used by political hacks to avoid the real issue: we’re there now, so where do we go from here?

What we need now is decisive leadership that will give us security from the same extremism that harmed us on 9/11/2001. What we need now is leadership with a vision to establish that democratic republic or two in the Middle East. What we need now is leadership that will take us forward, not look back and whine about unchangeable past events.

What we need now is leadership with imagination, with honor, with plans, and with balls. Which is why I’m voting for Palin this November. So I guess that means I’ll vote for McCain, too, by default.

[And gawd, did I ever not mean to take this post into a McCain/Palin pitch. But I did. Dammit. I hate it when people turn 9/11 into a political tennis ball, praising one candidate or another, supporting one side or another. But there you have it. My praise of a 9/11 documentary turned into a political pitch. Oy. My inner muse, she is a capricious bitch who likes to take sharp turns without warning me.]