Deli encounters

I went to dinner tonight with my family to a little Austin-based delicatessen that happens to have a shop in La Mesa, California. For those not familiar this Southern California, La Mesa is a small suburb of San Diego. As I was sitting there, enjoying my Turkey, Bacon Club on Sourdough (quite delicious), I noticed some folks wearing a lot of Texas Longhorns emblematics. "How quaint," I thought. The older woman in front of the family also happened to be wearing a Longhorns jacket. As all of us began talking, sensing that we were all from the Central Texas region, and it did eventually come out the I am a die-hard Aggie Fan, we discussed briefly the many changes in our beloved home state. That's when the Lib-Bomb hit. The older woman blind-sided me in a casual conversation with the classic "and that's why I hate Karl Rove!" Huh? I was talking about Kerby Lane Cafe. As she explained herself, she kept the finger pointing tactics up with the famous "you people" comments dropped here and there, and everywhere. I feel less on the defense when I talk with Bryan. This woman was in attack mode. And, of course she brought up the Supreme Court "handing over" of the presidency to our current President Bush. Not fair. Let's recap that little debacle. Al Gore lost the whole state of Florida with three heavily democratic counties, Miami-Dade county being one of them. Huge populous. Yes, he may have had those, in turn he did. However, what actually happened with the Florida Recount, was that Al Gore only wanted those three counties to be the recount, not the rest of Florida, which as it turns out is quite conservative. Not only that, but it's part of Florida's State Constitution. After the first state-wide recount, the votes still didn't fall into Al's favor, and he pouted. And, like hoping the scary shadow will go away if you just close your eyes and open them, he demanded another recount, which he lost again, and again. It finally got so ridiculous that the Supreme Court had to step in and tell Al Gore that enough is enough. But, unfortunately all the Dems tend to conveniently forget this. Good for America, though, John Kerry had a sudden flashback the morning of Nov. 5th and ceded his bid instead of wasting countless taxpayer dollars in another useless recount. Finally, she had to leave, and that was that. I could only shake my head and hope that her misguided beliefs could one day be brought to her attention as ill-informed.
Now, on to the many happenings over the course of this week. Governor Sarah Palin went on tv with Charlie Gibson. This was a moment of triumph for all of us conservatives. When you go back to the moment when he kept asking her the same question about Israel and Iran, she stuck to her guns, and just would not let him put words in her mouth. She kept giving him the same answer like a broken record to make sure he understand that her stance was exactly what it was, and no matter how many times he asked the same question with different words, he was not going to make a fool of her, and she would remain steadfast.
You can see it in each of her responses to each time he asked, check it out.
GIBSON: "What if Israel decided it felt threatened and needed to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?"
PALIN: I don't think that we should second guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves, and for their security.
GIBSON: So if we wouldn't second guess it and if they decided they needed to do it, because Iran was an existential threat, we would be cooperative or agree with that?
PALIN: I don't think we can second guess what Israel has to do to secure its nation.
GIBSON: So if it felt necessary, if it felt the need to defend itself by taking out Iranian nuclear facilities, that would be all right?
PALIN: We cannot second guess the steps that Israel has to take to defend itself.
That was a beautiful moment. She told Charlie Gibson to screw off with her answers. All he was looking for was one slip up that the left could use to spray all over the headlines of the next morning's news papers. And, of course, she didn't fall for it. I was giddy.
Charlie Gibson, on the other hand, ended up looking like he was unprepared for anything substantial,a s he should have been, and was obviously under-prepared.
Later, on a CNN round-table discussion, in which Lou Dobbs was sitting, Governor Palin was defended by none other than Mr. Dobbs himself. I was in shock when I heard it. Could it be that he's a supporter? Dunno. We'll find out when the time comes. For now, as I understand it, he's in the Obama camp. There was an exchange between Jeffrey Toobin, Wolf Blitzer and Lou Dobbs all about the question that Sarah Palin was asked about the crisis in Georgia with Russia's invasion and absolute refusal to leave. Check this exchange out.
BLITZER: On the Georgia thing and what Palin basically said was that if Georgia were to be a member of NATO the US, of course, would be obliged to come to the defense of Georgia or Ukraine or any other NATO ally under those circumstances, so she had that little nuance in there.
TOOBIN: Well, yes, but we went through 50 years of a Cold War without going to war with Russia over things a lot more important frankly than Georgia, so I mean I just thought it was a somewhat odd answer, but we'll parse them very carefully.
BLITZER: First of all, what do you think about this latest sort of twist and turn in the presidential contest?
DOBBS: If you're sitting there listening to Obama, who's run the slickest, smartest, shrewdest campaign right up until Russia invaded Georgia, the man cannot find his tempo again. His campaign is like they're still on vacation. You just heard the man talking there with Letterman. He's boring, just as Palin comes in to give excitement to the Republicans. He talks about exciting the base -- 62 percent of men in this country have a favorable view of Governor Palin. And I heard our colleague Jeff Toobin say, "Well, he's got some questions or he's got to think about that answer of hers on whether or not, as a member of NATO, the United States would have to defend Georgia had Russia invaded it." Let me help you out, Jeff Toobin. No nuance required. We would be required to do so, as would all of the members of NATO.
BLITZER: So I hear you saying that Obama seems to have lost his momentum, his mojo, if you will, but McCain's gained it, is that what you're thinking, Lou?"
DOBBS: This woman has turned feminism on its head. You're watching women in this country trying to figure what in the heck, on the left, what in the heck this woman is doing to them. Women on the right are sitting there saying, you know, wow she's talking sensibly because she's first, pragmatic, who is trying to be painted as an ideologue of course by the Democrats, but she's coming across very pragmatic, she's strong, and, man, you gotta love the fact that this woman knows how to shoot.
Did anyone else have to read that over? I had to hit rewind to believe it. Later, in the same interview with Charlie Gibson, he ask Governor Palin what she thought about the Bush Doctrine. After goading her for a minute, he finally described what he THOUGHT it to be. Palin came back with yet another solid answer.
GIBSON: The Bush Doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right tie preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?
PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country.
This is right in line with the answer she grave previously with Israel and Iran. She remains consistent and with tons of confidence she rolls out her answers and just shuts him down every time he tried to derail her. I was in awe.
Did anyone else notice the hurricane in Texas? I also noticed that Michael Moore didn't have any sarcastic comments this time around. Was it because people that have a different view point from his weren't having a convention? I noticed he hates people that think differently than he does. Maybe that's why he likes Cuba so much.
However, to the police, paramedics, fire-rescue crews in Louisiana and Texas, I sincerely hope that all of you are able to accomplish all the things you wish to accomplish without any incidents. You have a tough job ahead of you, and not enough time to do it in. our thoughts and prayers are with you.