The Paradox of Vision

Via Minister Faust, guest blogging on Ecstatic Days...

I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight…..

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re “exotic” and “different.”

Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you’re a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

Attend five different small colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.

If you:

• Spend three years as a brilliant community organiser
• Become the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review
• Create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters
• Spend twelve years as a Constitutional Law professor
• Spend eight years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people
• Become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, and
• Spend four years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees

…you don’t have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is:

• Local weather girl
• Four years on the city council and six years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, and
• Twenty months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people…

Then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you’re very responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.

If you’re husband is nicknamed ‘First Dude’, with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

From Senator Barbara Boxer of California, some comments on John McCain's GOP Convention acceptance speech:

For Immediate Release
September 5, 2008

Last night at the Republican National Convention, John McCain used the word "fight" more than 40 times in his speech.

In the 16 years that we have served together in the Senate, I have seen John McCain fight.

I have seen him fight against raising the federal minimum wage 14 times.

I have seen him fight against making sure that women earn equal pay for equal work.

I have seen him fight against a women's right to choose so consistently that he received a zero percent vote rating from pro-choice organizations.

I have seen him fight against helping families gain access to birth control.

I have seen him fight against Social Security, even going so far as to call its current funding system "an absolute disgrace."

And I saw him fight against the new GI Bill of Rights until it became politically untenable for him to do so.

John McCain voted with President Bush 95 percent of the time in 2007 and 100 percent of the time in 2008 -- that's no maverick.

We do have two real fighters for change in this election -- their names are Barack Obama and Joe Biden.