President Obama,

We all know how important the environment is to you and your administration.  No sacrifice is too great.   Gas prices can continue to skyrocket– who cares?– as long as you save an almost endangered lizard.   And the trade-off between getting that plague, carbon, out of the air or having a growing economy — not even a tough decision.

But here’s a tip that you may not be familiar with.  Those of us who drive ourselves around and pay for our own gas have a little trick that we do called combining errands.  We keep a list of anything we need to pick up or errands we need to run and then when we are going one direction we make sure we pick up anything we need or do any errands from that part of town all at the same time.  This way we save gas by not having to take so many trips.  It isn’t much, but if we all pitch in we can make the world a cleaner place.  Here’s an example for how it could work for you–  if you are running for president and people keep asking about your birth certificate, and you realize that at some point you may want to show it to them, the next time you are in Hawaii on business or, say, a vacation you have someone pick that up for you.  It won’t save any almost endangered lizard, but you could save over 10,000 gallons of jet fuel.  (Not to even mention all those billable hours your attorney charged you when you sent him to Hawaii to pick the birth certificate up for you.)

We’re all in this together… shared sacrifice, you know.  So, I’ll keep my to-do list so I can combine grocery trips, and you stop sending your private attorney to Hawaii.  If you need any more environment saving tips you can talk to a man who’s just as committed to saving the environment as you, Al Gore (err… maybe not). Look, here’s a list I found for you online 50 Ways to Conserve Energy | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/way_5465152_ways-conserve-energy.html#ixzz1Kp7dImcK.  Hopefully I’ve been helpful.

Ann

Cool night, maybe the start of something really good!  Not so much in my state, but we can enjoy other people’s good fortune.

Meanwhile… Erik has already been talking about Sarah P. before the election and I’m going to jump in before I wake up and discover that the Republican nominee has been chosen for me while I sleep.  I’ve tried to find things that we can agree on because these Palin discussions can get so petty sometimes.  And we agree on 98% of issues.

Can even some dedicated Palinites agree with these?

1. When the media starts whipping up an issue they sometimes have ulterior motives.  They may not just be happening to uncover this Republican “old boys club” plotting against Sarah P. right now.  There may be a reason for all the attention.
2. As the Journolist comments indicate, reporters believe they know what buttons to push to manipulate conservatives.  Remember the race card plotting and, “This makes them sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.”  Could they possibly be trying to choose our nominee?
3. The press sometimes creates a drumbeat trying to speed up narrowing the field of candidates because it’s easier to caricature one person instead of covering and discussing issues.  Was I the only one who wanted to hear more from Kasich and Forbes in 2000 before discovering that I could only choose between McCain, Bush and Keyes?  I remember hearing over and over again that Mr. Bush was the favorite and it would be very hard for anyone to touch his fundraising before I even knew who all the candidates were.
4. Sometimes choosing someone based on star power is not the best choice for getting someone to govern well.  The Republican party and the Conservative movement is supposed to be for grown ups.  Let’s hear what everyone has to say.  In a wide open year, we are possibly deciding the president for 12-16 years.   Let’s give this decision the thought that it requires, there are many very interesting Republican leaders with good track records.
5. Star power cuts two ways, someone who is well-known may be frozen in public opinion because people think they already know them.  High unfavorables may be hard to turn around.
6. We can dislike the Republican party “old boys club” and despise the media attack dogs that continue to go after Mrs. Palin without immediately jumping in to make her the nominee of the party.

This being said– I don’t hate Mrs. Palin.  She would obviously be MANY times better than Mr. Obama.    I think she has improved in many areas since she was first thrown out onto the national stage.  It’s very fun to see a strong conservative woman really bothering the media the way she does.  Let’s just take our time– let’s make sure we don’t miss out on having the very best person for the very hard job of belt tightening and nation securing that will be ahead of the person who wins in 2012.

I hope there is some common ground to be found, because we all want the same thing.

Not too much of a surprise–  although a few political writers have noted that with the Obama’s selection criteria would have made Paula Abdul an equally good a choice.

Sotomayor’s New Haven firefighters decision is so scary, and in my mind it mostly speaks to conservatives’ inability to communicate ideas to the masses effectively.  Any educated person would realize that it is unconstitutional to favor one group over another, yet people see that some groups really are disadvantaged in this country.  The disgusting irony is that the liberals contribute to minorities lack of educational opportunity by not allowing competition to improve education (especially in areas where many minorities lack opportunities), then they get the credit for bailing them out with affirmative action.

Other areas they do this:  Healthcare– out of control malpractice suits, low medical reimbursements for government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and insurance co.’s being forced to cover more and more conditions that their customers did not contract for cause prices to spiral up; then government is going to come in and save us with nationalized healthcare.   Welfare– they break down the family structure with welfare payments, then rescue the disadvantaged kids with more welfare.  Gas–  they jack the price of gas up with taxes and by not letting us use the US’s oil reserves then grill the evil oil company executives to show American’s they are helping them with high gas prices.   And it works well in reverse too–  Katrina– the liberal city and state governments in LA had been squandering federal money instead of fixing up levies and creating effective disaster plans and yet George Bush got the bulk of the fallout from the ineffective response because he wasn’t able to get in there and send buses street by street and and distribute the aid supplies that the local governments should have been doing.

All right all you conservative politicians, we don’t have access to media in order to publish the message, but you have to make the case that the point would be to solve the underlying problems instead of letting politicians create more problems that require mortgaging our futures to pay knights in shining armor to rescue us.  Let’s hear an active platform of solutions——  Schoool choice, health care accounts that encourage people to shop around and use health care dollars wisely, roll back the recent roll back of the effective welfare roll back of the Clinton years (sorry it gets confusing),  use of America’s own oil and gas resources, etc. etc. etc.  We need some one to make this case for us!!