Have you heard the complaining about Sarah Palin’s expenses on clothes, makeup and hair? $150K on her and her family.

“The clothing purchases have raised questions about the propriety of using party money for such expenses. The Republican National Committee said the clothes belong to the committee, while John McCain’s campaign said the clothing would go to a “charitable purpose” after the campaign. It also sought to deflect the issue by criticizing the media attention.”

To me, it’s such a silly and desperate thing to whine about. Oh, boo-hoo, she tries to look nice. She’s in the public eye! What’s she supposed to do, shop at Goodwill and get her hair done at SuperCuts?? Even if she shopped at moderate places and spent less, there would be people criticizing that and others saying if she had the money, why not.

It’s not the Dems that donated money to the party’s finances, so why are they complaining?

But it’s not just her…”If Palin’s $2,500 Valentino jacket seems expensive, consider that Barack Obama wears Hart Schaffner Marx suits that retail for about $1,500. John McCain consistently wears $520 Salvatore Ferragamo loafers, while Vanity Fair editors estimated that one outfit worn by Cindy McCain cost $313,100, including diamond earrings and pearl necklace.”

I think it’s all just a bunch of nit-picking. It’s really absurd. I don’t give a rat’s rear how much our future president/vp’s shoes cost. If I had their money I’d buy the same stuff!!

We got a letter in the mail from one of the political parties asking for support. The opening line was, “To say this is a critically important election year would surely be an understatement.”

When was the last election that wasn’t important? And this one is really “critical?” Hmmm…I can think of 4 right off the top of my head that were probably more critical to this country than this one.

Let’s start with our first President…Wasn’t putting a strong, well-known, well-loved man critical to the strong foundation of our country?

How about the election between Lincoln and McClellan during the Civil War? McClellan was against emancipation of the slaves.

Great Depression ring a bell? It was Roosevelt against an Alfred Smith. But Hoover wanted to stay in the White House to work through the Depression. He said Roosevelt was an extremist and would ruin the country.

Then there was 1944 during WWII between Dewey and Roosevelt. Once again, an election in the middle of a war.

I’m sure if I did a little research I could come up with a couple more that I would deem more critical than this one. Yeah, I know this one’s big…major companies have just filed bankruptcy. The government bailed out one (another story!) and the stock market is not exactly pretty at the moment. We’ve got troops that need to come home.  But this is a far cry from Civil War, the Great Depression and World War 2!

So now in the political realm there’s a big stink about Sarah Palin running because she has kids.

Since when did the Democrats think women should stay at home all the time??  They’ve held a strong point of women being able to work and raise a family. It’s typically Repubs that have the conservative view of women staying home with kids.

One example they’re using is with her 17 year old daughter getting pregnant.  (I guess my mom would be a terrible mom, too, since I got pregnant at 18!) They say she can’t be an effective VP with all the troubles of motherhood.

Democrats are worried. They thought they had the edge with a woman running for president, and now it’s obvious that Hillary’s flopped. So they have to go sling some mud at the Republicans. It can’t be both ways, but somehow they (D) want it to be. Talk about flip-flop.  “We can do it, but you can’t!”

She IS married. There’s plenty of stay-at-home dads. I’m sure her husband would take a huge share. How could he not? He’s going to be under the spotlight as much as she is. People (I for one) are curious what he’ll be doing to support his wife and what he thinks about the whole thing.

Holy smokes! I predicted Leiberman, but I’m glad I’m wrong.

She’s Sarah Palin, 44 years old, the governor of Alaska, a mom of 5…the oldest in the military and the youngest a baby with Down’s. I could go on, but I’m sure you’ll hear about her if you haven’t already. This is huge.

I’m thrilled. I love many of the things she stands for (anti-abortion, anti-big government) and I think it was a great move of McCain. Hillary has pretty much no chance of taking office anymore, so people that would vote for her just because she’s a woman may vote for McCain/Palin. Yeah, not a good reason to vote for someone, but as I say IRL, “People are sheep.”

No, she doesn’t have a lot of experience, but what does Obama have? IMO, Obama’s as popular as he is because he’s incredibly charismatic, young, and half-black. I think having a half-black president would be great for the country as far as racial divide goes, but that’s no reason to vote for someone. Just like the female issue. He doesn’t have experience like McCain does and his head is in the clouds. I don’t think he’d get as many things done as he thinks he could…he’s a little overly optimistic.  Anyway, I digress…

She’s the first female runningmate for the presidency…and if they win, or Obama wins, this is hugely historical. Especially if McCain doesn’t make it full term, which a lot of people are worried about. She could actually be the first female VP and then President.

I’m very excited. I’m really looking forward to seeing her more and hearing more of what she stands for. And I can’t wait to go vote!

This could really be big to the local communities if drillers find enough natural gas. It is one of the three largest potential onshore resources of natural gas in the United States, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Marcellus shale, named after the town in New York where it was found, is mostly in western New York and Pennsylvania and much of West Virginia. The area also dips down into Maryland’s Garrett and Allegany counties, as well as a few others. There’s reports of small towns’ hotels filling with drillers and speculators hoping to dip into this. It was originally found 25 years ago, but set aside as the gas crisis the US had passed.

Even if no very large discoveries are found in this region, drilling activity here could have a great impact on our local economy, as well as to those to the east of us. It would produce many jobs, raise paychecks of workers, tighten labor supplies, and hopefully result in lower energy costs. And since our energy cost has gone up so much in January, I’d love to see drilling. It’s rumored that drillers are paying local farmers $1500-2500 an acre for drilling rights, then royalty on top of that if gas is found.

So we’re really going to keep an eye on this, seeing that it’s our area!

We’ve been watching a lot of the Olympics in our house since it started. I’ve been surprised how much our family has been sucked into the games! I’ve been watching sports I never thought I’d watch (table tennis, archery, fencing, dressage, etc).

I’ve kept a close eye on the Chinese teams in particular (after the US teams, of course). They have the most gold medals by far and are clearly doing well. Yesterday I watched the men’s volleyball, China vs. Japan. The stand was full of Chinese who came to support their team. They won the first 2 rounds, lost the next 2, then played a tie-breaker game and won. What was interesting to me was to see the people in the stands.  Their support and enthusiasm for their team was deafening.

But it also made me think. China and Japan have had such bad blood for so many hundreds of years. Their history is bloody, brutal, and cruel. I couldn’t help but wonder how much of the cheer was simply that China was beating Japan and not just in a game. It’s sad to think there would be so much animosity still deep-rooted between the 2 countries (justified or not). I hope I am wrong.

One controversy that has popped up is about the little girl that sang in the opening ceremonies. During the auditions for her part, they were looking for a girl that was cute, could sing well, and was “flawless in character”. They found a little girl, but she wasn’t cute enough, so they had her sing behind the scenes while they had a cuter little girl sing out front (the one we saw).

Of course the media has gone nuts with this, saying how awful it is. And it’s not good. But China is putting their best face out there. They want to look good to the world. They want everything to appear perfect, because we all know it’s not. So they cut a couple corners. And they admitted it; the behind-the-scenes girl’s picture is all over the media. They invited the world in to their home and are serving the best. We all do the same.

Another controversy is that the youngest gymnast girl is 13, instead of the required 16 during the Olympic year. That’s still to be found out entirely.

Like I said in an earlier post, it will still be interesting to see how the games continue to go.

I really, really find something I read today amusing.

Barack Obama’s new book, “Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama‘s Plan to Renew America’s Promise”, is coming out Sept. 9th. This is a policy book! Hah!

I find this amusing because now we have a book to pull out when a Dem flip-flops on a topic–we can go back and see what his POV was 2 weeks ago.

Of course, many will see this as a great thing, and I can see why. People that love Obama will enjoy reading some of his speeches that are in the book and can get a better understanding on where he wants to go as future president. Back in 1992, Clinton and Gore released “Putting People First,” a book of their plans that actually did very well and stayed that way for awhile even after they were elected into office. So I’m guessing that Obama’s will do well, too. So much of the world’s eyes are on him right now.

I guess I’m just not the type to buy a policy book. However, if Rice wrote one, I could see myself reading it.

There’s much speculation about China around these Olympics. China is notoriously closed-minded to the outside world in many ways. They have magnificent technology, as we all know…think back to the opening ceremonies on the 8th with that huge LED screen on the ground. And they’re open to tourism…I definitely would LOVE to go to China. But the government is strong against change. Tienanmen Square in 1989 was an example of that. Sure, that was a long time ago and they got dirty looks and “what the heck!?!”‘s from the rest of the world. But they still didn’t open up much.

So with the games going on, many people, including myself, are wondering, “What’s next?” How is this going to change our views on China? How is this going to change the Chinese government’s attitude/behavior to the rest of the non-communist world?

I thought it was interesting how much cheer Cuba got in the opening ceremonies from the Chinese. No country was boo-ed, but it was palpable when a favored country appeared. The US got cheered quite a bit, too, another interesting note. China is doing well, as far as golds go. And I think that’s a good thing in some ways. It may elevate the “outside’s” opinion of the people and country. But I also wonder if the govt. will say, “See? Told ya we were right.”

During the opening ceremonies, there were also quite a few bold statements. A large group of children presented their flag to soldiers, who, in strong military style, stiff-stepped it and hoisted it up the flagpole. A woman, beautifully dressed and dancing, stood on a platform carried by many men. In the very beginning, a couple thousand men in total unison banged on drums. The messages were quite clear in each instance. Paul and I just looked at each other and our jaws dropped!

But, overall, I’m very excited. I hope things open up and attitudes become more positive.