Election!

One of the most craw-sticking ideas in the Bible among believers is the doctrine of election. Most, sadly, find it repugnant.

If you have wrestled with election and God choosing whom he will, let me encourage you to invest 40 minutes to listen to a Bible-infused, Bible-laced message on the topic. You may not like the speaker; set aside your preconceptions and hear what he says. You may not be a fan of the web-site; open your Bible and compare what is being said with what God's word says.

Pause. Chew. Meditate. Think. Pray. And let the God of all bless your soul.

You'll find the message here.

Election 2008: A Christian response

I could write for weeks about how a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ should respond to what took place on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008, but I would heap words upon words and never cut so cleanly to the heart as my pastor did tonight.

Let me encourage you to take 25 minutes and 7 seconds to listen how the Christian should respond to our nation's election. You'll find the link here.

Don't vote, revisited

More folks are chawing on the idea that massive voter registrations of the uninformed and those who otherwise might not vote is not necessarily a great thing. If someone doesn't have the wherewithal to rise off their posterior and register to vote, do I want that person to vote anyway? Even if they'd vote for someone I favor?

Another good article on the topic (here), this one by William J. Watkins. An excerpt (parentheses mine):

Thus, elections should be viewed as bulwarks of our Republic ... But for elections to serve this lofty purpose, the people must be informed. In recognition of this, the First Amendment was added to the Constitution, in part, to ensure the free flow and availability of information regarding public concerns. Because an informed electorate is a prerequisite to an intelligent exercise of the franchise, the Founding Fathers, in the words of James Madison, viewed the dissemination of information as “the only effectual guardian of every other right.” An ignorant public exercising the franchise (right to vote) was seen as inimical (unfavorable) to a free society.

His conclusion portends our future:

An ignorant voter is more dangerous to the Republic than a non-voter. Unfortunately, the registration movement teaches citizens that an uneducated vote is better than no vote at all. Such a lesson is pernicious and could have lasting effects on the electorate.

Please don't vote Tuesday

I have often thought about who gets to vote in our country. Consider the qualifications:

• Citizen
• 18 years of age or older
• Non-felon

What a blessed people we are!

Still, when I consider who gets to vote, my stomach somersaults. Folks who don't understand our form of government get to vote. They have no idea why we have three branches of government or why we have two segments in our legislature. They haven't read our Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. They think the 3/5 vote for the slave was racist (au contraire!). They think we are a democracy (we are a republic) and have never heard that our Founders could have established a democracy but chose not to do so.

Folks who haven't considered the issues facing our nation get to vote. Should the government even be meddling in things like health care? the economy? education? fuel prices or bank bailouts? They have not considered the extreme weight of issues like life (born or unborn, aged or spry, quick-witted or feeble-minded), and what happens if you begin to diminish any life from conception to the last breath. What about war? Are there such things worth dying for? Is peace at any cost a great ideal or a foolish slogan?

How many folks outside those who read things like this know that the President gets to appoint those who sit on the Supreme Court? Can any of them name a Supreme Court Justice? Can they name their US Senators or Congressman? How about their State legislators? How about their governor?

How many knew who won American Idol this year? And last? And before that?

Who was on Letterman last night?

AAARRRGGGHHH!

John Stossel, reporter of 20/20 fame, had a skewering point in his column yesterday. He suggested that those who are uninformed, though they have every right to vote, would do our nation a great service by staying away from the polls on Tuesday (you can read it here).

Would that knowledge alone could solve our plight. Knowledge puffs up, but ah, wisdom! Oh, that America would become a wise and informed people. Instead, we are just people, like me, who don't have all the answers to all the questions.

Let's hear it for digging up the answers!

America Alone: The essay

Mark Steyn, Canadian columnist turned American, continues to appreciate and honor with his pen the principles that have made our nation great in a time when many Americans couldn't explain how it began. Nor could they explain what the problem was that nearly ripped it asunder in the 19th century.

I offer a few points from his concluding paragraph. Read it in its entirety to see how he gets to this point (here).

(One) Administration will pitch America toward EU domestic policy and UN foreign policy. Thomas Sowell is right: It would be a “point of no return”, the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America. For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence.

So do we become a neutered, Euro-west welfare state or do we continue to stand against the tide as a free people committed to sustaining freedom through personal responsibility and volitional sacrifice? Bueller? Anyone?

Who's your buddy? Who's your friend?

You can tell a lot about a person by their friends, with whom they associate, who they seek out for mentoring relationships. You can also tell a lot about a person by the people groups that admire them.

A couple of recent polls put our election into an interesting light. Our troops got to pitch in their two cents. Who would they pick? John McCain. Three-to-one! (You can tap the poll info here.)

Cross the oceans or cross the Rio Grande, pass through the gates in International Falls, Minnesota, and you will find a different picture. The world loves Barack Obama! Canadians opt for The One over McCain 67%-22%. Mexicans? Of those who knew who was running, the three-to-one for the Illinois senator. France? 64% to 4%! Yep, that's 16-to-1. Check out Gallup's results for yourself here.

The only nations sort of leaning McCain? Laos, the Phillipines, and (this one cracked me up) Georgia.

So who are you voting with? France or the Marines? Denmark or the Seals? Belgium or B-52 Airmen?

We are at a cross-roads. The world would like to see us become more like them, and Barack Obama would surely oblige. The US military, the defenders of freedom at home and abroad, ache for America to remain true to what has made her and continues to make her distinct. That road follows John McCain and Sarah Palin (by the way, anyone heard from Biden lately?).

What do Europeans think about Senator Obama? Read this interview of French author and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy. It'll curdle your milk. This is one path we can travel. Notice how he differentiates the left and the right, and take note near the end of his three reasons Euros love Obama and why McCain makes them shudder.

From a conservative vantage, Michael Medved lays out the dangers of traveling the road to the left in a meaty blog entry here.

Let me leave you with an impassioned plea from ACORN, but with my conservative emphasis:

Vote early! Vote often!

Change

It's been the buzzw0rd for the 2008 election. The word, though, is not synonymous with "good."

Last night we watched "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (pretty humorous that the three iconic monsters of the 30's and 40's would be spoofed in such a light-hearted film). In the film, Lawrence Talbot (aka the Wolfman) tries to stop the reanimation of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster while at the same time, dealing with own his nasty requirement to "change" every time the moon gets full (which unlike celestial norms, happens just about every day in the movies). For Larry Talbot and Bud & Lou, change is not good.

Come November, we're going to have served up to us a heaping helping of change. Should Barack Obama win the White House, he will secure a democratic helm to the executive branch for the next eight years. Nancy Pelosi predicts a 250-seat democratic majority in the House of Representatives (of the 435). Most predict the Senate to swing to a filibuster proof democratic majority, too. The legislative branch and the executive branch will steer our nation to the left.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board took a look at what change means to our nation in "A Liberal Supermajority" (here). It's a sobering prospect. Please give it a read.

But even the WSJ fails to address the enormity of the problem. It's not just the executive and legislative branches that will be affected. Considering two and possibly three Supreme Court seats will come open during an eight-year presidential run, a liberal SCOTUS would begin to adjudicate law with even less consideration given to the Constitution and its original intent than it currently receives. International law will become folded more and more into our jurisprudence, and the whims of other nations will begin to affect our land. The bench will no longer be blind.

It's not just the White House; all three branches of government will change. It makes Lawrence Talbot's dark side seem like nothing more than a frisky puppy.

Hanging chads...on steroids

Remember Bush-Gore in 2000? Remember the hue and cry over voting irregularities in Florida? Which party felt they had been wronged in that election? The hatred and bitterness over that one state in that one election still launches folks to the boiling point in seconds.

Leap forward eight years. Here we stand on the verge of another national election. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has begun to beat the bushes to get folks to register to vote. That sounds well and good until Mickey Mouse starts showing up among registered voters in Florida or that felons names start popping up or that hundreds and thousands of problems regarding identification and residence have cropped up in Ohio.

Ohio is uniquely troubling because a) folks have already begun voting, and b) the democratic attorney general has appealed to the Supreme Court (US version vice Ohio version) because she doesn't want to have to check out all of the suspect voter registrations. More problems: Justice John Paul Stevens, arguably the most liberal judge on the SCOTUS alongside R.B. Ginsberg, has jurisdiction over Ohio. If he agrees, than the suspect registrations will not be addressed.

This is going on in Florida (swing state), Pennsylvania, (swing state), Ohio (swing state). I don't think you have to go to Denmark to find something rotten. You can go to Google News web-site and type in ACORN and notice the news articles and the locations where registration "oddities" are cropping up (okay, just click here).

Conservatives are going nuts! At this time, something can be done. The election is just under three weeks off. They are not after-the-fact griping. You would think that both sides would want to ensure that the fiasco of 2000 is not revisited. That does not seem to be the case. The cry from the left? Any noise from the left? Hello?

I had heard of ballot -box stuffing growing up. You catch it from time to time on TV dramas...old ones. I thought it went out with Capone. Little did I suspect that it would be resurrected with another Chicagoan on the threshold of the Presidency.

Endowed by their Creator

You've got to hand it to William Wilberforce. So entrenched in British society was slavery that it seemed to many the Englishman was on a fool's errand. One man screaming into the void.

But Somebody heard that scream, and while Wilberforce ailed upon his deathbed, Parliament abolished slavery.

Due to a pitiful judicial decision in 1973, abortion entwined itself within America's heart. While the left dances to the tune of personal freedom, it continues to deny personal freedom to the most innocent of America's citizens, the unborn child.

In this election, one candidate, Barack Obama, has vowed to enact a federal statute called the Freedom of Choice Act which will make any abortion restrictions illegal, all by executive fiat. Doctors could not legally refuse to perform an abortion. My tax dollars will go to supporting the wholesale slaughter of American children.

And it gets worse. Please take a moment to read this essay, Obama's Abortion Extremism, by Dr. Robert P. George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

As it is, our nation will be judged by Almighty God. He has shown us great and unmerited patience, but that patience will not last forever. His justice will no doubt be swift. Pray that the fight for life will not suffer another gigantic setback in November.

And while the site where the article is found does not have a way to send the essay to a friend, you can e-mail the link by right clicking the link above and selecting "Copy Link Location." Then you can paste the link into an e-mail to a friend. Or you can e-mail this post to a friend by clicking the envelop beneath this post. Consider George's words:

What kind of America do we want our beloved nation to be? Barack Obama's America is one in which being human just isn't enough to warrant care and protection. It is an America where the unborn may legitimately be killed without legal restriction, even by the grisly practice of partial-birth abortion. It is an America where a baby who survives abortion is not even entitled to comfort care as she dies on a stainless steel table or in a soiled linen bin. It is a nation in which some members of the human family are regarded as inferior and others superior in fundamental dignity and rights. In Obama's America, public policy would make a mockery of the great constitutional principle of the equal protection of the law. In perhaps the most telling comment made by any candidate in either party in this election year, Senator Obama, when asked by Rick Warren when a baby gets human rights, replied: ''that question is above my pay grade.'' It was a profoundly disingenuous answer: For even at a state senator's pay grade, Obama presumed to answer that question with blind certainty. His unspoken answer then, as now, is chilling: human beings have no rights until infancy - and if they are unwanted survivors of attempted abortions, not even then.

Robert P. George, "Obama's Abortion Extemism"

E'08: Further distinctions...as if you needed any

Obama - favors abortion rights
McCain - favors life

Obama - favors homosexual marriage
McCain - stands for traditional marriage

Obama - government is the messiah
McCain - government isn't quite the messiah (okay, so that one's not the best)

In case you were still unclear about where the candidates stood on profound moral issues, here's another humdinger. In keeping with Bill Clinton's reinvention of the US military, Senator Obama would like to see women eligible for the draft, too (read it here).

Pick up your stones and take aim at my head. Many will consider me a caveman for the following, but for a nation to allow its women to face combat points to the demise of its society. We could get into male-female differences regarding strength. We could get into the innate instinct in man to protect a woman above other men. We could discuss the biblical roles of men and women and the fact that one of those two was designed to bear and have children.

The fact that government has buckled to a liberalized culture and allowed women to choose whether or not they want to serve is one thing. For the government to make our women sign up for military service should a draft become necessary is another thing altogether. That's my daughters. And your mothers. I'll serve at age 85 before I'll have the women in my family in some database for potential military service.

McCain? Opposed to this nonsense. Go figure.

E'08: Oxymoron

A full-fledged oxymoron should make your eyes refocus; the two subjects have no association or they are such opposites as to cramp your brain.

Imagine General George Patton heading up a pacifist's club. Consider Hugh Hefner as spokesman for the Catholic church. Maybe Dick Cheney as a card-carrying member of the ACLU. Madonna as an advocate for True Love Waits?

All of those are just plain silly.

This one is not. Like any good campaign, you dig for votes wherever you can find them. The Obama campaign is looking for them in pro-life corners. Pro-life! I can't help but laugh as I write it but it's true; check it out here.

Really, it's not funny. Obama is the greatest friend of Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and all aspects of abortion rights.

Asserting that the man is pro-life goes beyond irony. It's blatant deceit.

The debate & statistics

True confessions: I didn't watch the debate.

As I've mentioned earlier, if you don't know the fundamental positions of the candidates on the fundamental issues, you just haven't looked. If you are undecided because you don't know, I'd like to ask you to extract your head from the sand and do a bit of research. It won't take long before you figure out how these gentlemen align with your position.

The commonality between the two candidates? Male senators. Beyond that? Not much.

Which is why it isn't surprising to see a split in the polls as wide as a California freeway. The gap is not just between the candidates. It's between the candidates and between the web-sites.

For example, CNN polled its readers regarding who they thought won the debate. Any guesses? If you are undecided about the candidates, your probably in the dark as to how this poll tilted.

• Obama: 67%
• McCain: 26%

Likewise, you'll not be surprised to know that the similarly questioned poll at Townhall.com yielded:

• McCain: 70%
• Obama: 22%

Drudge:

• McCain: 67%
• Obama: 31%

The smallest gap? From one of the last places I would expect to see it, MSNBC:

• Obama: 51%
• McCain: 34%

Who knows? Maybe their readership isn't up yet.

What do the stats tell you? Conservatives thought McCain fared better; Liberals felt Obama handled himself better. Oooh. An epiphany? Not so much.

Polls and stats get skewed by the statisticians and pollsters. It's the nature of the beast. It's in the nature of the questions. So don't give much credence to the polls. Do your homework, now.

Debates had purpose in the day when you didn't have access to the internet through 17 different devices in your home, not to mention television and radio. Folks had to hear from the horse's mouth where he stood on issues because they had no other means of learning it apart from the occasional newspaper article.

Now debates are only opportunity to fail, to look bad ("You're no Jack Kennedy!"). Go to the Huffington Post and you'll read about McCain's gaffes with very little about his substance. You'll read about Obama's aura with very little about his worldview. The guy with the best one-liner, the best zinger is the guy who wins the debate. "I WANT TO BE ENTERTAINED!"

Back on planet earth, I'm awaiting Palin-Biden for the same reason most folks love NASCAR. Carnage. Pass the popcorn.

QotD: Experience & and the (vice) presidency

Sarah Palin has received arsenals of flak for her youth, "inexperience" and potential proximity to the presidency. Clifford May of National Review kicked off his recent column (here) with this gem:

Let’s be blunt: If John McCain wins the election and drops dead during his first year in office, someone not very experienced will become president. But the same is true if Barack Obama wins the election and doesn’t drop dead during his first year in office.

The same is summed nicely by this political cartoon:

Cartoon by Eric Allie

The looming race eruption

I have no doubt some folks will not vote for Barack Obama because of his heritage. It would be nice if we could shuffle such folks off to some isolated island north of the Arctic Circle, but such is life (those voters, not the Senator).

What you will not hear from any media source is that there are likely folks on both sides of the fence so bigoted that they will not vote for Obama. We don't have to look to far in the past to find bedsheets in political closets both blue and red.

Why, then, has there been the accusations and threats from the left that if Obama loses the election, it will be because of race?

I can give you more reasons than I have time to blog why the furthest left member of the US Senate would be a dire selection for our nation, and the amount of melanin in his skin is NOT one of them.

Jack Cafferty, a "progressive" pundit for CNN, muses here that the only reason the polls are so close is because Obama is darker than I am (and that's only because I didn't get near the sun that I've gotten in past summers). That's a wee bit insulting. Does he think that all of us on the right stepped out of "Deliverence" complete with our set of three teeth and an iPod full of "Dueling Banjoes" renditions? Could it be that we are actually thrilled beyond belief that John McCain made a solid "right" turn in selecting the conservative governor from Alaska? Nah! Even Whoopi Goldberg cast her racist stones at John McCain that his running mate is a strict Constitutionalist regarding Supreme Court nominees by feigning concern that she might be destined for slavery. Hollywood (sigh).

Also on the left side of left is Kansas governor, Kathleen Sibelius.

“Have any of you noticed that Barack Obama is part African-American?” Sebelius asked in response to a question about why the election is so close. “That may be a factor. All the code language, all that doesn’t show up in the polls. And that may be a factor for some people (in the evening of the polls).”

Um, Kathleen, it may be a factor on both sides! And it may be because the Democrats picked the most socialist member of the Senate to run for President!

What concerns me most about this assertion being made from left to right is what happens if McCain is elected president? Note this comment from Fatimah Ali in the Philadelphia Daily News (article linked here):

"If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness - and hopelessness!"

Wow. When folks start tossing language around like that, the Molotov cocktails aren't far behind. The left, the party that professes to be color-blind, has begun to inject the race card at such regular intervals that it seems they've become addicted. And when the drug gets cut off in favor of personal responsibility, then comes the backlash.

A couple of solid articles came to light today on race ("Barack Obama and White Privilege" here and "The High Cost of Racial Hype" here). It's sad that few on the blue side of the fence will ever read them.

Pray for the peace within our nation if John McCain is elected. I fear we may rip ourselves to pieces.

A good read: words vs. deeds

This commentary from across the waves, examines Barack Obama, the orator, and Barack Obama, the voting senator, and notes the wide disparity between the Kumbaya singer and the most liberal voter. A perceptive quote:

"This election is a struggle between the followers of American exceptionalism and the supporters of global universalism."

It doesn't get much clearer than that, even from a Brit.

As we continue to slog through the election process, I hope your waders are watertight.

Tip of the hat: Barack Obama

I came across the cartoon at the right by Glen McCoy yesterday. It highlights how deep many believe Sarah Palin has gotten inside the head of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

That said, Senator Obama has handled the situation with political grace. Even if his "lipstick on a pig" was meant to jab at Alaska's governor, he deserves a touche' instead of a rebuke. It's a common descriptor, and in light of Sarah's RNC speech, a great retort in the political realm.

It doesn't approach the toxic effluence that has flowed from the left. Therein Senator Obama has shown his grace or savvy, I don't know which. If he's hoping to make this an election about issues and not character assasination, he shows grace. If he sees those trying to destroy Palin as dashing themselves upon the rock of her character, he shows his savvy by distancing himself from them.

Regardless, good on him for speaking against those who have slandered Sarah Palin.

Life: The chasm between nominees

The protection of life in the womb delineates more than any other issue the difference between presidential choices this November. Yuval Levin examines the topic in this National Review article.

Within the article, he takes note of how science, like the Republican party, goes to bat on behalf the uni-celled, multi-celled, and barely formed child. Over and over, the more science learns about the mind-boggling machinations within the womb, the more they concede the humanity of the child from the moment of conception.

Levin noted that Senator Obama Houdini'ed around Pastor Rick Warren's question during the Saddleback Forum regarding the moment at which life begins. The candidate asserted that the answer was above his pay grade. In other words, who is he to know the mind of God.

Levin summed up the parties' position with this gem of a query:

"Now tell me again which party seeks refuge in theology when it doesn’t like the facts that science helps us know."

-----------------------------------
A number of other articles have surfaced on the strong stand the Republican party has taken regarding the sanctity of human life in its addition of Sarah Palin to the ticket. Some superb articles just today:

• Ken Blackwell, "Candidates Abortion Views Inform"
• Rich Lowry, "Choosing Trig"
• Paul Weyrich, "The Speaker's Unusual Description of Catholic Dogma"

This is about choice, the choice that we as a nation will make to speak out on behalf of the weak, the frail, those who cannot speak for themselves. Will we speak on behalf of the innocents?

A woman? A pitbull...with lipstick!

Our Sunday school class has recently gone through an extensive look at God's ordained roles for men and women especially focusing on what the Bible says regarding marriage.

Then comes Sarah.

One of my sons bounced the question off of another son that the media has yet to pick up on. If Christians (Bible-believing, Bible-adhering, born-agains) recognize the biblical direction for male leadership within the church, is Sarah Palin as the Veep verboten? The last post even had a couple of comments dancing on that topic.

The Biblical design, generally, is male leadership. Within the church, that is specific. Within the home, when the husband is present, that is specific. Outside those two God-ordained institutions, not so much.

Interesting that God raised up Esther to be the queen in a pagan land. So, also, as referenced in a recent comment, Deborah to lead Israel for a time. Would God's raising up a small-town wife and mother to the second highest position in the free world be contrary to His word and His nature? I don't think so. Non-standard, out of the ordinary, rattling our John 6 cage?

Could an immense God do something so odd, so unexpected, so confounding and surprising? So wonderful? Yes.

Senors Obama and Biden best lace up their skates and suit up with full-pads if they're going to skate with this inspired woman. She hits hard.

Cartoon by Brett Noel

E'08: Surface or substance?

Great ideas wrestled and wrangled birthed this great nation.

In November, our nation decides its future's path. Many times in our history, the two pathways separated very little, appearing to disappear in the distance at the same point. The end desired by all parties was the same, the means to that end nuanced.

Not so today. From the point of separation the vector of the two parties, while not 180 degrees, are as divergent as I have ever known them to be.

Here's what troubles me. I hear very little about the ideas and their implementation from Progressive America. Even the national media speaks little about the substance of the Democratic Party. The things that I have read from the left trouble my soul.

"But you only stew in conservative writings," I hear you say. Only is a powerful word. My news intake comes from all over. My prominent five sites: CNN, Fox, Drudge, Pravda, and the Jerusalem Post. Others dipped into: NY Times "International" site, Al-Jazeera. I do delight in the clear, cogent, mostly reasoned writing found at National Review, the Weekly Standard, and Townhall.com. I have not found such well-reasoned sites on the left. It's time to go looking.

The most neutral site, though, simply because he links you to other news sources is Drudge. From his site, you can go to the right of anarchy or to the left of dictatorships.

In recent days, while scanning current events, the liberal end of the political spectrum reared itself in shocking ugliness. Consider:

• Michael Moore considered it an act of God, even thanking Him, that hurricane Gustav distracted America from the Republican National Convention. I used to think that MM was considered a cartoon by the left, not really a mouthpiece of that for which they stand, but I have never read nor heard anyone from that side distance themself from the filmmaker.
• If you merely think that Balaam's ride had again begun to speak, not so. the National Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Don Fowler, joked about the same thing to a friend on a plane.
• Note the thick insults toward Sarah Palin from a columnist who finds her selection as the VP candidate insulting (here).
• Extremes. Hyperbole is a wonderful and artful tool...when used like salt. Too much and the entree becomes inedible. This piece from the Philadelphia Daily News illustrates much of my concern about what's coming out of the left (here).
• If that weren't bad enough, Pravda's work is slanderous (here, there are two pages to the article). "Yeah, but that's the sworn enemy of the United States." I might agree with you if it didn't echo the standard commentary found on MSNBC. Notice the author. It's not a Russian. David R. Hoffman is an American, an attorney and a college professor.

Dictatorship. Unjust. Unjust invasion. Stole the election. Empire building. Rich getting richer. Stepping on the poor. Racist. Economic havoc and devastation. Environmental cataclysm. These are the deceitful and incendiary comments regularly leveled by liberals against the current administration or its ideals, unsubstantiated and disproven all.

In deepest sincerity, would someone point me to a site where liberal ideas are clearly articulated? If you know some sites, please include them under comments and leave yourself "anonymous." The stuff I've been reading makes me want to take a bath...and that from the pens of the left.

Can anyone explain why America ought dive headlong into a socialist way of life? We need to wrestle these ideas. Some of them have been in the dark too long and need to be exposed to the scrutiny of the light.

Perhaps such scrutiny will reveal an ideological monster, and after wrestling, we might once again find our paths drawing closer to a common end and the monster defeated. Perhaps.

Sarah Palin

Only a week ago I wondered whether the liberal/liberal ticket of Obama/Biden would cause McCain, a moderate conservative if ever there was one, to vacillate more toward the left with the selection of a running mate or if he would stand upon a firm conservative foundation.

Wonder no longer. John McCain hammered a Josh Hamilton-sized homerun by selecting Alaskan governor, Sarah Palin, as his choice for vice president.

She is everything McCain is not.

• She is steadfastly, fiscally conservative.
• She is steadfastly, morally conservative.
• She is NOT a Washington insider.
• She's young.
• And, in case your ocularly challenged, she's a lassie.

While many will argue that her youth weighs against her, no moreso than Barack Obama's youth weighs against him. First of all, both Obama and Palin meet the age requirements for the job. Second, I prefer to look at qualifications and qualities vice age. That's why McCain's age should not count against him. That's why it didn't count against Reagan. Third, only one of the "youngsters" is running for President, and it's not Palin.

I suspect she'll handle Biden in their debate like David handled his bear, his lion, and his giant. Don't sell the petite outdoorslady from Alaska short. Names like Thatcher and Meir come to mind.