Is this presidential race truly Senator Barack Obama's to lose?  Has Senator Barack Obama's bid for the Whitehouse truly suffered its greatest loss due to Sarah Palin's entrance on the scene?  Perhaps, but I'm not so sure that her seemingly powerful, party-uniting charisma tells us the whole story.  Gov. Palin's "entrance" to the scene may not have done that much to change the popularity of Sen. Barack Obama.  While it certainly has had some effect in bringing Republicans, and apparantly even some moderates, out of the woodwork and back to paying attention, I'm not so sure Sen. Obama's popularity didn't simultaneously fall away all on its own.

Please, let's remember the recent history of the last few months.  Sen. Hillary Clinton was fast gaining ground in the primary campaign, taking several states away from Obama toward the end.  In fact, if the early caucuses in Michigan and Florida would have been admitted and polled properly, that is, with everyone's name on the ballot and with applicable campaigning having been done by all relevant parties, there's a good chance he wouldn't even be the Democratic nominee.  Not only is the U.S. nearly evenly divided between the right and the left, but the left was also nearly evenly divided between Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton as their choice.  In fact, most people expected and predicted the DNC to earn Sen. Obama's campaign a 10- to 15-point bounce, but even though the announcement of Gov. Palin wasn't made until the day after the DNC ended the campaign simply did not see numbers anywhere near what was expected.  It's just too easy to get lost in the emotions of the moment and make judgments regarding cause and affect, but if we consider the history of the Democratic primary, including Sen. Obama's numbers versus Sen. Clinton's and his numbers right through the DNC, you might just draw a slightly different conclusion.  Outside the pop-culture elites, such as Oprah and Matt Damon, Sen. Obama's popularity was already fading among the left before Sarah Palin was ever announced as Sen. McCain's Veep choice.

While the Sarah Palin factor may be piling more dificulty atop of the already struggling campaign, I can hardly credit that alone for Obama's current slipping in the polls.  Regardless of the cause, I think we can now more accurately say that this presidential race between McCain and Obama has suddenly somehow become Sarah Palin's race to lose.

With Hillary Clinton nearly winning the nomination for president of the United States, and so many progressive-thinkers insisting for so many years that a woman's place is not in the kitchen, is anyone else shocked by the fact that the strongest attacks against Gov. Sarah Palin are so tightly focused on the fact that she has children? 

The first strong objection released in the press was that Gov. Palin has a young child, just four months old, who, with Downs Syndrome, has "special needs", and this makes her unqualified to fill the position.  Six months ago if someone had told you that a woman was running for one of the top executive offices in the United States but was meeting strong opposition based on the fact that she is a mother of a special needs child, without knowing any other details would you assume that it was Democrats making such comments, or would you have assumed that the candidate was a democrat and, based on your own mindset's stereotypes, that the opposition was coming from the "religious right"?  Even I may have said the latter, but, being among them, I have some insight that those of the left just can't understand.

The second (non)substantial objection came when the public was informed that Gov. Palin's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant.  Her opponents in the media insist that this must disqualify Ms. Palin from filling office because a pregnant, teenage daughter must run completely against the values on which people like Ms. Palin stand.  Of course, Barack Obama himself immediately renounced the attacks and insisted that a candidate's family should not be used in this way, but I don't see that he had any choice since it only opens the door to question his own family since he himself was conceived in the womb of a teenage girl.  Still, the ridicule from that announcement is so entrenched that even today on C-Span it's still being discussed whether or not a woman with a pregnant teenage daughter is ready for the office of the vice president.  This one truly confuses me, because the same media insisted so adamantly that the sex life of the then-current Democratic president was none of our business.  His own adulterous affair was not a matter that should be dragged into the public forum because his personal character has no affect on how he manages his office as president.  Yet, now, it IS fair game to drag the sex life of the DAUGHTER of a candidate into public ridicule.  How is that in any way consistent?  It's not acceptable to question the sexual misgivings of the president, but it is right to condemn the sex life of a candidate's daughter?

Media airwaves and pages have been filled with comments suggesting that this "woman" should be at home with her children.  Even Sally Quinn posted the unbelievable words, "Her first priority has to be her children", along with a list of reasons Palin is not qualified including "She is the mother of five children", "a four-month-old with Down Syndrome", and "Not to mention the grandchild".

I have been shocked by the media and the hypocrisy of the left in this matter, but I can see the truth of the matter.  It's not a matter of whether a woman has children and still wants a career, or whether her daughter is less than perfect to her own standards.  No, it is, in fact, a matter of bigotry.  Webster.com defines a bigot as ": a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group with hatred and intolerance".  The reaction to Governor Palin's personal life by the left exposes an uncomfortable truth about their character; they aren't truly interested in empowering women, they aren't truly interested in equal rights for all, and they aren't in the least concerned with the well-being of the individual family.  If they were, they would have not brought up any of these points about Palin and her family other than to praise her for her perseverance during such real life events, but the evidence in this matter shows that they are not driven by the values they purport at all.  Instead, they seem to be driven primarily by their hatred for those whose values differ from their own, for those whose values they so obviously can't begin to understand.

Can someone explain in realistic, practical terms how raising gasoline taxes and further increasing the price of motor fuel will help my family and business survive the immediate future? While I would love to see every American family drive electric-powered vehicles and have solar and/or wind power plant(s) on their own property to keep the vehicle charged, the fact is that such alternatives are simply not currently affordable to the average family or small business. In fact, the current high gasoline prices make it even that much more difficult for families or businesses like mine to commit any resources toward such an alternative.

While the “we can’t drill our way out” crowd say’s increasing the price at the pump is the best solution to “curing my addiction”, unlike recreational drugs, gasoline is a necessity to the daily operation of both my family and my business. Intentionally increasing the cost will not lessen the need for the resource. I cannot simply decide tomorrow to pour water into my family cars' gas tanks instead of gasoline; the cars run on gasoline. I’m all for alternative energy, but you and I need something that can help our families today.  Raising taxes and further increasing the already overly-burdensome prices will do nothing to help in the short term and will probably devastate the possibility of being able to afford alternatives in the future. If there were viable, cost-comparative alternatives available today the situation would be different, but these people’s “financially punish the gasoline addicts until they quit using” “solution” will only break the back of every middle-class and low-income American family, as well as put a very high percentage of small businesses into bankruptcy. Until there is a viable, reliable, cost-comparative alternative to gasoline that I can use to fuel my vehicles without having to make a new five- or six-digit investment, there is no way the American family OR the American small business can afford such a ridiculous “solution”. If we can’t even afford the fuel, how are we expected to afford purchasing alternative-fueled substitutes that are currently available only in small quantities, are unrealizable, bear more than twice the cost of the vehicles my family currently drives, and have maintenance costs comparable to the total cost of our current vehicles?  I simply can't go out and spend or even borrow $40,000 for a new hybrid car that will only increase efficiency from the 28 mpg my '98 Avalon gets to the 45 mpg they promise, then have to come up with another $12,000 in two years to replace the fuel cell after it stops functioning.

Imagine the reality of such a hypothetical scenario. Obama has taken the Whitehouse, and such an energy plan has been implemented. Higher taxes and further-reduced supply have caused the average price of gasoline to increase to $8.00 per gallon. Since, like 287,000,000 other Americans, we don’t live in NYC, DC, or LA, the current availability of public transportation is not practical for our transportation needs (we just don't have an extra 2-4 hours a day to spend sitting on buses). With both of us working and our two children going to school, we are required to drive a combined 284 miles per week. With two family vehicles getting an average 28 mpg, we use an average of 10.12 gallons of gasoline per week, which would cost $81.14 each week or $4,219 per year. Obama’s solution is that if our “addiction” is punished this harshly it will motivate my family to replace our passenger vehicles with alternative-fuel vehicles, but now that the price of gasoline is so high, the resale value of our current vehicles will have plummeted. Furthermore, with the short supply of and increased demand for alternative-fuel vehicles, the price of those vehicles will have skyrocketed, while the cost savings will come nowhere close to covering the increased maintenance costs much less the initial investment.  With a budget already pressed beyond the breaking point and our investment in our current vehicles a complete loss, the money to purchase alternative replacements simply does not exist. It’s just not possible in any way, so our budget will naturally shift to focus only on the essential needs in order to continue being able to get ourselves to work. Being typical of most American families, this will cause retail numbers to plummet in double-digits each quarter. As retailers continue to lose money, their coffers will quickly dry up and retail stores will start closing their doors.  Shopping malls, as a result, will have more and more empty retail spaces, and will be forced to lower their rent, decreasing their revenues.  Once the property owners' revenues have fallen below their costs and the property owners’ coffers are depleted, the mall properties will become vacant, graffiti-covered eye sores on our land. Let your fingers walk through the yellow pages and look at what types of businesses are in your area.  Landscapers, for example, rely on fuel, and increased fuel costs will force them to raise their prices.  As families shift budgets to focus only on essential needs, they will no longer be able to afford to support such businesses, and the reduction of money spent by average Americans on products and services other than gasoline will cause other small and medium sized businesses to lose revenue, fall into bankruptcy and disappear, along with the jobs they provided. With nationwide revenues through the floor, businesses closing, and unemployment through the roof, tax revenues will plummet as well. Money simply won’t be there for social programs or “check-in-the-mail” relief programs, so deficits will increase and government programs will fail and disappear as their budgets are reduced. Within a very short period of time America would move from a slow economy to a full recession to a complete depression, and even the “almighty” government will no longer have the resources to help. The only possible endgame of this energy “plan” is a complete devastation of our economy, and a complete collapse of our society’s lifestyle. 

The only viable immediate answer is absolutely to increase the supply of the resource upon which our current infrastructure relies... oil.  The futures market will immediately respond based on the promise of increased supply, and the market price will drop. The only way to realistically accomplish that in the near future is to increase production. Then, once we’ve stabilized the market to a price point that leaves American families and businesses with surplus resources, we can use our surplus resources to develop and even reward alternatives to the point that they can be competitive with current products, and, over time, people will naturally switch to these alternatives.

I've read and heard the U.S. presence in Iraq referred to lately as an "occupation".  I have a huge problem with this use of the term, because nothing could be further from the truth.
I think those who use the term have a deep misunderstanding of the word's true meaning.  There is no current occupation, and there never really was.  Nazi Germany occupied Poland; the Nazis went in with force, overthrew the current government, and took control of the country.  Jews and anyone who spoke openly against the Nazi regime were arrested and hauled out of the country, losing their identity and every right as a human being.  The laws of Nazi Germany became the law of that region, and the population was expected to submit to that law or be punished.  Poland, like other occupied nations, remained under such German control until it was liberated and returned to local control by the allies.  That is a true example of "occupation", and, unless you consider a government elected by the people or the Baathist's coup in 1968 to be "occupation", it hasn't happened in Iraq in recent history.  Perhaps it would have been better if it had - Iraq, the 51st state - but it didn't go that way.

With regard to the "Iraq war", the U.S. was a part of a larger coalition, although they certainly were the leaders of the campaign.  The then-current government, Hussein's regime, was overthrown and the feared leader removed, but the U.S. did not take political control of the country.  Instead, the U.S., along with the rest of the coalition, immediately began working with local figures to build a new government put in place by the local populace.  It was even an all-Iraqi court and jury that tried Sadam Hussein.  Today Iraq has its own publicly-elected government in place, creating law, keeping law, and running the nation in earnest.  Iraq has its own armed forces, local police, emergency services, social systems and programs, etc.  The U.S. and coalition presence in Iraq today is nothing more than a peace-keeping force, in place to assist Iraqi forces in protecting its people and the government they elected.

In fact, the "Iraq war" was won 10 weeks after it began.  It then shifted completely to a peace-keeping presence to protect the local populace against radical terrorists who can't stand the idea of a self-governed populace.

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