Too Close for Comfort

Obama and the Third Way

"To me, a good politician should be like a good designer: someone who will not force a constituency or a client into making a choice between the lesser of two evils but who can put the energy into discovering a third, obviously better way to solve a problem. I would like to see more politicians who, like Barack Obama, show this kind of creative thinking."

- Innovative Architect and Designer Erin Moore who's firm FLOAT Architecture Research and Design was located in Tucson AZ until recently when moved to Williamette Valley, Oregon

McCain: What it means to be a Maverick

I guess one can be comforted with the fact that the RNC did return in its final night to the feeling of a morticians convention. You have to admire John McCain's heroic suffering in Vietnam but I was afraid not that I'd fall asleep during his speech but that HE would. Clearly, this man's time was 8 or 12 years ago but he's way past his prime.

Obviously, the rabid and extremists among us will never change their views on this political campaign. Those who seek government mandated creationism and prayer in the schools, the repeal of Roe vs. Wade, 50 more years of war for peace, and oil drilling and taxpayer subsidization of oil companies everywhere will not suddenly join the euphony of hopeful agreeableness and jump on the Obama train for change.

Likewise, women who have spent three and four decades fight for equal pay for equal work, the right of women to control their own bodies and choices of all kinds for women are not going to suddenly embrace the Phyllis Schlafly-styled Sarah Palin as their goddess Sophia arriving to elevate all women in history. Palin may have brought women's fertility into the political field of play but she ain't a 21st century crusader for the rights of women.

One thing that is clear from the RNC is John McCain is a maverick. All week long I wanted to know what being a maverick meant for the Senator from Arizona, a military-man from a long line of military men, and how it manifest itself in modern day Republican politics. Is being a maverick a good thing or bad thing? Being a maverick is not necessarily being an advocate for change or for better policies.

Apparently, being a maverick means being willing to stir things up, make rash and erratic decisions and having an all-be-damned attitude about it. It means getting angry and accusatory toward anyone who questions your vetting processes and finally the decisions the maverick makes. It means being willing, for the sake of winning and election, to drive wedge politics between urban and rural voters that will divid the nation rather than unite us to make America a better country.

I admire McCain service to country, however, it is time for McCain to put country first and go home to retirement with benefits. Enjoy one of your seven or eight or nine houses - you deserve it. You've made your sacrifice John, spending all of your life on the government payroll and we will not ask you to do more.

And more pointedly, I appreciate McCain's sacrifice for his men and country as a captured American soldier in Vietnam but I do not think we need the same old solutions of the past eight years to the issues we need solved today. We need change in America, not the old wars to fight and past battles with fixed terms of reference that have no relevance.

Sexism and Sarah Palin

Who "...retreats behind the apron strings." - Dick Morris