I am not Joe the Plumber

I only have a minute to blog this morning, but I have to say that every time McCain and Obama addressed their debate responses directly to "Joe The Plumber," any relevance their responses had for me fell away.

It was a canny strategy on McCain's part because it seemed folksy and jovial but actually framed the responses withing the perspective of senior, older male business owners. Employees, women, young families, twentysomethings just starting out--we were left in the cold. And then Obama was forced to adopt the frame as well.

I thought Obama did a good job but if he had steered the conversation to women's issues more often (as he did with McCain's vote against Equal Pay legislation) McCains glaring deficencies on the issues I care about most would have been more evident. I just want Election Day to arrive. But I think we Moms should find a way to shout from the mountain tops I AM NOT JOE THE PLUMBER.

Obama's momentum in North Carolina

I wish I could blog daily right now but I think I need to cut myself a little slack. In addition to my Mojo Mom book revisions, I am still recovering from my being sick, and a large part of my brain is obsessed with the election.

I am a proud Obama supporter and visiting the prediction site FiveThirtyEight.com has gotten better every day this month, as Obama has caught a new wave of support. North Carolina is a major swing state, and it has recently trended from light pink to light blue.

(Does anyone else remember those old-fashioned weather teller postcards that would turn blue for sunny weather and pink for rain? My visits to FiveThirtyEight.com are starting to remind me of that!)

We are a true swing state, with a Democratic-majority state government, but the state hasn't voted for a Democrat for President since 1976. I moved here right before the election of 2000. The state has changed a great deal even since then.

One metric I haven't heard anyone discuss is the strength of volunteer commitment and passion for each candidate. I can tell you that the grassroots Democratic action here in North Carolina has been amazing, ever since it turned out that our May primary was going to matter after all. I've encountered volunteers registering voters at least four times in the past month. We may be waging an uphill battle but we are giving it our best shot.

Internet engagement a key tool for grassroots engagement. Let's check out the number of volunteer hosted events that anyone can join by logging into the candidate's web sites:

Upcoming Obama events within 25 miles of Chapel Hill, NC: 106

Upcoming McCain events within 25 miles: 1

(Listed by the search results as 2, but it's the same event posted twice)

106 to 1, that is a margin Obama volunteers can be proud of! And by the way, if you go out farther into the red areas of our state, 100 miles from Chapel Hill, Obama still commands an impressive lead in events, 203 to 6.

Four weeks to go, and early voting starts here on October 16!

Was McCain punk'd by the mansion slide?

I am watching McCain's acceptance speech on TiVO. Quasi-live, about 12 minutes behind real time. When he first came out, the huge background video screen had the image of a stately mansion with a green lawn. On the close-ups all you could see was the green, but the house looked like a random mansion, not anything I recognized. Elsewhere I saw it identified as the White House, but I don't think so.

My question: was McCain punk'd? Did someone slip the slide in to revive the "How many houses do you own?" controversy. Either way, worked for me. (I bet it was, because now the screen is blank blue.)

Earlier today I saw reports that Cindy McCain wore an outfit that could cost $300,000 if her three-carat diamond earrings are real. Quote of the day from Vanity Fair's reporting, "Wow! No wonder McCain has so many houses: his wife has the price of a Scottsdale split-level hanging from her ears."

Then come the anti-war protesters, and McCain shooes them off saying, "Please don't be diverted by the ground noise and the static."

That is an instant classic quote. Wow, maybe the title of Noam Chomsky or Gore Vidal's next book?

All right, signing off...I am not going to blog the whole speech. It seems disjointed, like Republican Mad-Libs. But then again my attention is divided. If anyone hears about the mansion screen please leave a comment.

Give me a Constitutional law prof any day

Sarah Palin sure knows how to deliver a speech, but are we willing to look at the content embedded in her rousing delivery?

Palin may be no Dick Cheney in that she's less likely to be a behind-the-scenes puppetmaster than he has been for the past eight years, but Palin does pull McCain toward the dark side in several ways.

I focused in on two things Palin said. First, she mocked Barack Obama for wanting to read terror detainees their rights. She had quite a lighthearted take on the fact that Bush-Cheney have been willing to make an unconstitutional grab for power, and have wanted to deny detainees basic legal rights including habeas corpus, a foundation of English Common Law even older than the U. S. Constitution. Palin may be eager to dehumanize detainees, but what would she say to the more than 400 men who were released from Guantanamo without being charged, often after years of detention?

Habeas corpus may sound like an arcane legal principle, but I encourage you to listen to the award-winning episode of This American Life, "Habeas Schmabeas 2007," that explains it really skillfully--what it is and why it matters to all of us.

Palin's attitude in her speech last night ties in with disturbing recent development of McCain voting in favor of waterboarding, the interrogation procedure that most people agree is torture. McCain was the last person most people thought would approve the use of torture, but it looks like we can't count on that.

(Another show to listen to: the Fresh Air interview with investigative journalist Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side who explains that the U. S. harsh interrogation techniques were derived from outdated tortuous interrogation methods originally designed primarily to extract FALSE confessions from prisoners.)

Second, Palin slammed Obama for not using the word "victory" when talking about the Iraq War. You know who else doesn't use the word victory when talking about the war? General David Petraus, who is in charge of the whole U. S. military action. Personally, I respect Petraeus, whom I believe is doing his best to find resolution to the tragic, incredibly complex situation that has resulted from the U. S. invasion of Iraq. Steve Coll discusses "The General's Dilemma" in his profile of Petraus in the September 8 issue of The New Yorker.

I would hope that most thinking people would realize by now that ending the conflict in Iraq is not about declaring victory. You can't win an occupation.

I happen to think that Barack Obama is an extraordinary candidate, but even if he was just okay, I'd support him because of his expertise as a Constitutional Law professor. After the past eight years, it would be a welcome relief to have a President who respects the Constitution, rather than constantly trying to find ways to undermine it.

NY Times on Mommy Wars: Special Campaign Edition

I went away for the weekend for a much-needed break with a group of girlfriends. Even if we had traveled over the summer, for most of us, this was our first time in a long time to have two or three days to put down our daily responsibilities and truly unwind.

And in those three days the news went wild! Sarah Palin was chosen by McCain, and the campaign storyline continued to sound more and more like an episode of Desperate Housewives (and yes, John Edwards, I am talking about you, too). And then came hurricane Gustav, too. It was all too much -- if this were a screenplay they'd say there was way too much crammed into one act.

Thankfully the hurricane appears to have been somewhat manageable for the residents of the Gulf Coast.

I have many thoughts about Sarah Palin swirling in my head, but I am behind the curve on a lot of my own Mojo Mom writing. So as I collect my thoughts, I will refer you to two thought-provoking articles:

The New York Times has "A New Twist in the Long-Running Debate on Mothers." Can Sarah Palin juggle 5 kids including an infant with special needs, a daughter becoming a new Mom herself, and joining a national campaign/possibly servicng as Vice President/potentially stepping into the Presidency? Strangely enough, it's conservatives who are saying Yes while some working Moms say No.

Also check out Rebecca Traister's piece "Palin, pregnancy and the presidency" on Salon's Broadsheet blog. She details the way that Palin/McCain are actually using the language of choice to describe their views on family situations. I don't want to see Sarah Palin's daughter's private life dragged into the campaign, but it is valid to examine the consistency of the public policies that McCain/Palin advocate and their thought processes about their personal situations. For example, what does it say about abstinence-only education if the curriculum does not even work for the Governor's high-school aged child?