Reading "Going Rogue"

I'm partway through reading Sarah Palin's book, Going Rogue. My husband bought it for me for Christmas, but got tired of hearing me talk about reading it (I knew he'd bought it for me) and finally broke down, gave it to me early .

Even though I have pages to go, I had to share a few thoughts on it.

With all the negative, with all the horrific things going on in the economy, with terrorism, with the choices being made in D.C., with the health care debacle, cap and tax... it is SO refreshing to read her book. It's like a breath of common sense fresh air. I find that I long for someone like her to take over the helm in Washington and across the country.

She just seems to have the ability to cut through the muck and get to the core of issues. I love her approach, her way of reasoning and how grounded she is in so many areas.

I hear the David Letterman's and others who trash her as they look down their noses and know that there was a time in my life when I would have been "on their side". I wouldn't have liked their nastiness, their belittling ways, their snobbery, but if I'd continued down the path I was on earlier in my life, I'd be over on that general side. Thank goodness I put my feet onto a different path!

I find it fascinating that all these people with millions of dollars, all these people who are so insulated from the real world, can judge someone based on their arbitrary criteria.

Ah well, not much I can do about their mean spirited-ness. It seems to me that those at the top end of the economic scale, those at the very bottom, and those with deep insecurities always have to find someone to look down upon. For those at the top I think it may be a combination of guilt, lack of purpose, a need to justify their existence in their own mind and a need to fit in with their friends.

I think if anyone reads Going Rogue with an open mind, without negative preconceived notions etched in stone, they will find a true American spirit inside the pages. Oh that our elected officials had a tenth of her convictions, patriotism, values, honesty and common sense.

Something interesting

I'm a member of the Read My Lipstick Network of bloggers (I think I may have mentioned that before ;-) Today I was glancing through some of the blog posts of other members and saw one promoting Ray McBerry for Governor of Georgia, 2010. I'd never heard of the guy before so I popped over to check him out. It was interesting reading, especially since I get emails from the Dixie Broadcasting Radio station he mentions (he's president of the station).

I had been deleting the emails as spam because they came to give different email addresses at the same time, thus I figured it had to be spam... And as it was spam, I didn't want to unsubscribe because that typically lets the spammer know that it's a valid email address and all of a sudden you're inundated with similar junk.

Now that mystery has been solved I'm going to unsubscribe from four of the emails and keep one so I can watch.

He's running on a Republican ticket but says up front he's voted all over the map in the past. I applaud his honesty, but that probably means the Republican Party isn't going to touch him with a ten mile long pole.

He also isn't afraid to talk about his views, his religious beliefs and kind of lay it all out on the table. I like that. Unfortunately, while most will say that's what they want, they still vote for the guy who gives the political double-speak answers that make everyone happy.

I'll let you take a look, see what you think: http://georgiafirst.org/SecondVersion/enter.shtml

Orson Scott Card Says It Like It Is!

Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite authors, despite the fact that he's a die-hard, card carrying Democrat . Seriously, he is one of my favorite authors and I have lots of friends who are Democrats. We have quite a bit of fun sparring on the issues.

One thing that is rather cool (for me) is that he never has his photo in his books (or at least not the ones I've purchased). I finally got to see what he looks like when I read the article on the Meridian Magazine site... I know I could have done a search at any time and found a photo probably, but I really didn't care that much and once I put the book down any curiosity got closed inside the pages of the book. If you haven't read Ender's Game and his many other books, go grab one. He really makes you think about things without realizing what you're doing! Fun read.

The article below is a great read, and definitely doesn't fall into the fiction category. It is a fabulous article that amazes me. I bet we don't hear much about it given the topic! - Janet

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
By Orson Scott Card

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans...
http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/081017light.html