First, Mrs. S. wrote a comment to my last post that I thought people might see more readily if I put it up here:

I am sure some of you may be waiting for my husband’s post about his take on the big debate on Friday. You can blame me for his posting silence because I made him have a birthday party on Friday night so he did not get to watch the circus. Now that his birthday fun is over until next year I promise he will be back to being a slightly crazed political junkie. Thanks for reading One Stack Mind.

While we celebrated the birthday on Friday, today’s my actual birthday. No more 20-something for me, sadly. Now I’m officially starting my fourth decade of life. Honestly, I’m not really bothered by that fact, though I have jokingly whined about it some.

In case you’re not aware, that “thanks for reading” has a small subtext — if no one ever read or commented, she (probably) fears that I’d stop blogging and she’d have to listen to even more political rants than she does now. Regardless of her reasons for saying it, I do appreciate the readers (and commenters!) that I do get. Thanks for sticking around, even if I don’t post as often as I should.

Rachel Lucas put up a post last week about Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric. I’ll admit that my enthusiasm has waned somewhat because of her poor interviews, but I’m not convinced that such things have any real impact on her ability to do the job for which she’s applying. I know I probably wouldn’t interview much better, and I bet I’d be a better President than Obama (even though I’m not technically eligible for five more years).

Not interviewing well is not a dealbreaker for me on a Presidential candidate, much less on a VP candidate. On the other hand, Obama’s record (as opposed to his campaign promises) is a dealbreaker. Besides, anyone who says he won’t violate your right to self-defense (enumerated in the Constitution as the right to “keep and bear arms”) because he wouldn’t be able to get the votes to do so has no right being on a Presidential ballot.

I admit to not having read all of the comments at Rachel’s post (I’ve had a busy week/weekend), but here’s the best comment (among many good ones) I saw:

mightysamurai Says:

Honestly. If you saw any of the Palin clips, can you in good faith and true objectivity tell me that you wouldn’t rip her up if she was a Democrat, or even just someone you wanted to defeat for whatever reason?

Honestly? No, I wouldn’t. For several reasons.

1. This was (I believe) the first interview she’s done since the hit-piece concocted by Charlie Gibson. It’s understandable that she might be feeling self-conscious about what she says and that often tends to make a person look and sound like they’re nervous and don’t know what they’re talking about.

2. Palin supporters haven’t been touting her as some kind of intellectual ubermensch the way Obama supporters have been doing. Neither Palin nor her supporters ever claimed she was the greatest public speaker in politics today. But again, Obamanites cannot say the same.

3. I do not now nor have I ever questioned someone’s intelligence because “they don’t talk good”. I may whip out one of those “Obama Uh” YouTube clips when I find a lib crooning about what a great public speaker Obama is, but I don’t call him a moron because he fumbles his words when he’s away from a teleprompter. I have an entirely different set of reasons for calling Obama a moron, thank you very much.

4. I watched all the interview clips I could find and I didn’t hear Palin give any answers that were wrong. If she did make any factual errors then either they passed right by me or they weren’t in any of the clips I watched.

5. Remember Charlie Gibson.

Finally, in one of yesterday’s Sabbath posts (which is well worth the read overall), Steve H. writes:

I feel like we’re being offered a choice, here in the US. On the one hand, maturity, experience, time-tested ideas, and faith in God. On the other, an MTV messiah with no experience, discredited 1960s ideas, a tendency to self-worship, a thin skin, proven hostility to Caucasians, and a crush on Karl Marx. I don’t say we have a perfect candidate, but it’s a clear choice: the wisdom and morality of the old, versus the empty flash and arrogant stupidity of the young.

I’ve enjoyed Steve’s blog for longer than I’ve had my own, but since he’s been working on growing closer to God, he’s been better than ever in a lot of ways. It’s kind of weird, because what I used to really enjoy was the negative, mean, sarcastic attitude that he’s now trying to filter out of his life as well as his blog, and you’d think that less of that would mean less enjoyment of the blog from me, but it’s making his writing stronger, not weaker.

Maybe that’s just me, as I’ve been actively working on my walk with God for a little over a year now, and Steve’s recent posts really resonate with me as I see him going through some of the same sort of things I am, but his blog has just been getting better and better for me.

I’ll leave you with one closing thought that I’ve stolen from the end of Steve’s post:

We need a second bailout, and not the kind that comes from Man. That’s my opinion. Even if I’m wrong, correcting your own life is still the right choice, and you will be rewarded.

I’d apologize for not having posted much lately, but, really, I’m pretty sure no one’s reading anymore by this point. I’ve been off playing Spore, which is great, even if some of the individual stages seem kind of simplistic.

I have a couple of posts that I plan to write in the next couple of days if I can find the time, but in the meantime, I recommend that everyone go to read Dafydd ab Hugh’s explanation of Bush’s proposed bailout. It’s the best explanation of the bailout that I’ve seen, honestly.

Over at Q and O, Bryan Pick criticizes the “Bush Doctrine” question from Palin’s interview, and closes with this:

That said, Sarah Palin was very obviously not prepared to answer Gibson’s question. She wasn’t caught off guard because the Bush Doctrine is ill-defined or even ambiguous, but rather because she wasn’t familiar enough with the concepts involved to discuss them. In general, she allowed Gibson’s little exam to put her on the defensive and her answers were often meandering and even off-topic. Several times, when she answered a question, I had (what I think was) a better and more succinct answer in mind. I say this as someone who has been optimistic about Palin: she must improve her performance and display greater poise in the coming weeks. The sharks are circling, and they smell blood. They are prepared to be rankly biased and unfair — to misquote her to her face and to draw patently ridiculous conclusions from her statements. She will be held to a standard no one can meet, so to prevent the press from making her a liability, she must be better than good; she must be great.

I’m also still pretty optimistic about Palin — a bad interview does not mean a bad leader, after all — but she has to do better at things like this if she is going to be electable in any national campaign.

My wife often jokes that she became a Social Worker so she wouldn’t have to do math. Apparently, she could also have become a journalist:

Daily Kos up to no good again? Nah — this one comes from WaPo, doing the hard work of ignoring primary sources that are reproduced right in the piece. The boss, Laura W., and Anchor Rising did the heavy lifting so read them for the details; if you think expanding a program by $3.9 million instead of $5 million counts as cutting funds, you’re qualified to work for one of America’s most esteemed newspapers.

Emphasis Mine

Now, it’s true that Palin slashed the amount by which the program’s funding was to be increased, but that’s not what the article at the Washington Post says:

ST. PAUL — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.

After the legislature passed a spending bill in April, Palin went through the measure reducing and eliminating funds for programs she opposed. Inking her initials on the legislation — “SP” — Palin reduced funding for Covenant House Alaska by more than 20 percent, cutting funds from $5 million to $3.9 million. Covenant House is a mix of programs and shelters for troubled youths, including Passage House, which is a transitional home for teenage mothers.

[Update: Along the same lines, Soledad O'Brien accused Palin of cutting Special Needs Budget by 62% when the budget actually raised 175%.]

One of the things I’m really lax about is praying for other people. They’ll mention a need, and I’ll offer my sympathy and say that I’ll pray for them, and I do. Once, maybe twice, I’ll remember to offer up their names and their needs when I pray. Then, I forget. Not on purpose, not because I don’t care, but because I don’t maintain a good prayer list, and my memory is wholly unreliable. It’s something I need to work on.

Thankfully, though, God has a better memory than I do.

Venomous Kate has wonderful news:

The doctor said the scan results showed no remaining cancer. Considering how insidious stage 4 colon cancer is, this is nothing short of miraculous. I have no doubt that your prayers, good thoughts and kind wishes have quite a bit to do with that miracle, and I thank you.

She and her mother both know that this is likely to be a temporary reprieve, but it is a reprieve, and hopefully they’ll both make the best of the time God has given them.