Sarah Doesn't Speak for Me

I'm so glad to see this campaign season end. So many utterly despicable things have occurred as candidates raged against one another that some days it was hard to even open the paper. Remember Bill's racist slurs in South Carolina? McCain's referring to Obama as "that one" and trying to equate him with terrorists because of his religion? Awful, sad, pathetic.

But what's offended me the most was John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for VP. Obama had just wrapped up an incredibly eye-opening convention that made me think true progress had been made in this country. Then, in an incredible slap across the face to women everywhere, John had the gall to say "Ladies, want to see a woman in the White House? I'll give you a woman.. Here: Caribou Barbie. Go play."

Come on! This woman can barely put one foot in front of the other, let alone read and carefully think through an issue of The Atlantic Monthly. She reads "all" the magazines, gazes out her window at Russia each morning, and most infuriatingly, claims to be a wonderful mom to her special needs infant! Lady, please. You want to stake your claim as Mama of the Year and put fragile babies back on the agenda? Then you'll have to actually walk the walk, by TAKING CARE OF YOUR CHILD instead of running around the country while someone else holds the babe. Special needs babies-- I know something about that. They require lots of active loving, constant holding, nursing, and nearly 24/7 attention. No one can replace Mama in doing that. I did it for 7 months straight. My son grew from 4 lbs to a healthy size, and thrived under my attention.

You can't tell me it's anti-feminist to say she should've been with her kid. No way. It's her right to choose her path, but she can't run for VP and claim to be standing up for special needs babies and their mamas everywhere. Not when she's neglecting hers. I had an 80 hour/week job where the tenure hinged on continuously working, and when my kid needed me I threw it into the wind. Guess what? Not all was lost-- in fact I'm far better off now than I was then. When I say I'm for better work/family policies, I've actually tried both sides--working, and at home-- and a mix of the two.

So no--Sarah doesn't stand for me. John-- whom I was ready to VOTE for until about 8 months ago when he lost his mind-- has completely alienated me. And Mamas everywhere-- you should be offended, pissed, and ready to VOTE AGAINST this hypocrite. Caribou Barbie-- go back to Alaska with your Ken doll. Good riddance!

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Palin's College Choices

Here's a quick post that follows up on Sara's recent post ("Palin Is A Swirling Student!") about Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin's college education.

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times ran a story ("Sarah Palin's college years left no lasting impression") that suggests that few professors and classmates can recall Palin from her college years. Even more interesting is the insight it provides into how Palin selected some of the colleges she attended. My guess is that Palin's is not an atypical approach. One of the reasons given in the article is that her family couldn't afford -- especially from Alaska -- to make the campus visits that often are a normal luxury available to students from wealthier families.

Palin's parents -- a high school science teacher and school secretary -- could not afford the college tours so common today. Their four children were expected to, and did, work their way through college.

"We didn't have the luxury of spending a week driving around visiting universities to see what they're like," said Kim "Tilly" Ketchum, a high school friend. "We were looking at pictures of campuses."

Palin and Ketchum picked the University of Hawaii at Hilo from a brochure.

Only after arriving in Hawaii did they realize that Hilo had rainfall approaching 100 inches a year. "The rain," Ketchum said, "was disturbing."

They attended orientation but never even enrolled.

The Wasilla girls soon moved to sunny Honolulu and enrolled in Hawaii Pacific University, a small private liberal arts school. They lived in an apartment in the Waikiki Banyan and took a bus to school.

Palin, a school spokeswoman said, attended full time as a business student.

The girls studied on the beach, tried surfing and pulled straight A's, Ketchum said. "We took the basic classes -- chemistry and biology, this and that."

But there was a problem. "When you're used to having some cooler weather, you get tired of the heat," Ketchum said. "We went one semester there before we realized we needed to go someplace else."

They transferred to tiny North Idaho College, on the shore of Lake Coeur d'Alene. Palin's older brother, Chuck Jr., had gone there before transferring to their father's alma mater, the University of Idaho in Moscow.

At North Idaho, Palin and Ketchum found what they had missed in Honolulu. They lived on campus before moving to separate apartments their second semester. "It was all very quaint," Ketchum said. "You kind of felt safe."

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(What) Does Palin Read?

What a bizarre exchange between Katie Couric of CBS News and veep wannabe Sarah Palin! I can only imagine the material that SNL will have to leave on the cutting-room floor this week. And this stuff writes itself.

Palin's answer to Couric's question about what publications she has read to stay informed about the news consists of her repeatedly saying "most of them ... all of them ... any of them that have been in front of me all these years." She doesn't specify a single publication, ending with: "I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news." Here's the full transcript, and here's the video.

Was Palin simply afraid to admit that Dog & Sled Magazine Russian Life Magazine USA Today is her only source of news? Or was she legitimately unable to recall the name of a single newspaper or news magazine that she may have read in the last 40 years? Yikes! I'm struggling to come up with a reasonable explanation that doesn't imply that Palin just isn't all that bright, curious or knowledgeable, let alone qualified to be vice president.

But, wait, there's more. Jonathan Martin of Politico reports that, in the same interview, she couldn't come up with a single Supreme Court case other than Roe v Wade.

On one hand, it's fun to find humor in all of this. But when I take a step back, this all makes me sad, frightened and even angry that someone so unqualified could potentially take the reins of our nation. I hold John McCain responsible for the fact that this even is a possibility. What does this say about his judgment? (Here's what the New York Times said on this issue.)

Last night on CNN, Bay Buchanan said that policy knowledge and intellect is not required of a presidential or vice-presidential candidate. All a candidate needs is a good story, she said. While technically true, what does this say about the average American voter if this really is the case? One could argue that George W. Bush gave rise to an era of anti-intellectualism -- and sociologist Todd Gitlin argued exactly that eight years ago in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Certainly, the McCain-Palin spin machine and its minions will continue to tap into this strain of anti-intellectualism to convince voters that Palin is "one of us" and distract from her lack of preparedness. The fact she's the veep candidate and not at the top of the ticket -- and the fact that the last eight years have resulted in the dismantling of the American economy and America's isolation in the world community -- hopefully should help voters avoid such distractions.

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Palin is a Swirling Student!

What a day! Today, the day before the VP Candidate faceoff (I can hardly wait!), the AP busts out with a fabulous story that Sarah Palin switched colleges 6 times in 6 years!

This makes Palin what I referred to in my U. Penn. doctoral dissertation as a "swirling student." Changing colleges is relatively common among today's college students, but as my research shows, it's especially common for students with poor college grades. Palin started at U. Hawaii-Hilo, a four-year school. She moved to Hawaii Pacific (another 4-year) then to North Idaho College (2 year), then to U. Idaho (4 year), then to Matanuska-Susitna College (4- year), and then back to U. Idaho.

What to make of this? Well, as the AP story indicates, her reasons are very unclear. Normally, I would caution anyone against assuming these are indicative of poor decisions (but I won't do that, since this woman is clearly not a maker of good decisions!). But one thing is very, very clear -- it is INCREDIBLY hard to get a coherent, rich college education when you're constantly changing schools. Congrats to Palin for eventually attaining a degree, but it's far from certain that she learned anything from the college experience.

"Aha", you say-- well, that explains her incredible lack of intellect or awareness of the world around her, interest in reading newspapers and so on. Maybe those things are associated with a college education, not a college degree.

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Geography: Love and Lies

I've had a love for geography ever since I was toddler. One of my earliest memories is of my paternal grandfather's haggard world map. To help me learn the location of nations and to have some fun, my grandfather wrote onto tiny strips of paper the names of the major countries of the world. Starting around age 3 or 4, I was able accurately to locate nations such as the U.S., U.S.S.R., China, Japan and Australia on this non-political world map, pleasing him to no end.

My grandfather was born on a farm in Ireland -- County Cavan to be specific -- and came "across the pond" as a teenager. Ten years ago, I had the pleasure of tracking down his sole surviving sibling, his youngest sister Teresa (who was a toddler when he left for America, never to return), who still lived in the same village where the family grew up. To date, that was my sole trip to the magical country of Ireland and I will never forget it.

Sarah Palin has been to Ireland, too. Or so she says. Or so her spokesperson says. This "visit" constituted a refueling stop at Shannon Airport in County Claire. This "visit" was offered by the campaign to defend her foreign policy experience. What compelling evidence. Wow.

But wait ... there's more.

Geography whiz and First Lady wannabe Cindy McCain undoubtedly shoots for that blue triangle from the get-go during games of Trivial Pursuit. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, McCain defends Palin's foreign policy experience by noting that "Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia." Take that, Joe Biden! (who must undoubtedly be an expert on Bermuda given Delaware's comparative proximity to that island).

Let me stipulate two things:

(1) A visit to an airport DOESN'T constitute a visit to a city or a country. I've been to the Detroit airport countless times (even slept on its floor once), but I've never actually visited the city of Detroit or the surrounding area in Michigan. Even with innocuous time-wasters such as TripAdvisor's Cities I've Visited on Facebook, I don't audaciously claim to have been to Detroit, to Cincinnati or Memphis--or other cities I've connected through. To base your qualifications to be vice-president on such a claim is downright pathetic. Frankly, it calls into question the judgment of the individual who invited you onto the Republican ticket and who wishes to be commander-in-chief.

(2) Proximity DOESN'T equal expertise. A math teacher who teaches in a classroom next to an English teacher isn't better equipped to teach English. A stock broker who lives next door to a mechanic doesn't necessarily know how to fix your carburetor. Living in the Madison, Wisconsin area doesn't make me qualified to lead walking tours of Rockford, Illinois.

What does this all have to do with education? Well, it seems to me that the McCain-Palin campaign doesn't think much of the intelligence of the American electorate by peddling this paltry defense of Palin's lack of foreign policy experience and nonexistent world view. On an intellectual level, I've got to believe that even Republican partisans can see through this flighty logic. If I'm wrong, then we're in some real trouble -- and not just from the potential results of this election.

I guess the moral of this blog post is that geographic literacy by itself isn't sufficient. Truth matters, too. Right, Cindy?

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BONUS: For those of you who haven't discovered PalinDrome yet, just like those MasterCard ads, it's priceless.

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...And It's Sarah Palin! Who?!?!

Word just leaked that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (NGA bio) has been tapped by John McCain to be his vice presidential running mate. Certainly his choice is not an attempt to nail down Alaska's vote in the Electoral College. It is an obvious attempt to appeal to independent women voters (and any Clinton supporters Obama didn't win over at the Democratic Convention) and to counter Obama's youth and dynamism. How Palin will face up to Joe Biden in the VP debate is another question.

Here is an initial look into Palin's education record in a year-and-a-half as Alaska Governor.

(1) In her 2008 State of the State Address she had this to say:

Victor Hugo said, “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” It's a privileged obligation we have to “open education doors.” ... Stepping through “the door” is about more than passing a standardized test. We need kids prepared to pass life's tests – like getting a job and valuing a strong work ethic. Our Three-year Education Plan invests more than a billion dollars each year. We must forward-fund education, letting schools plan ahead. We must stop pink-slipping teachers, and then struggle to recruit and retain them the next year.

We will enable schools to finally focus on innovation and accountability to see superior results. We're asking lawmakers to pass a new K-12 funding plan early this year. This is a significant investment that is needed to increase the base student allocation, district cost factors and intensive needs students. It includes $100 million in school construction and deferred maintenance. There is awesome potential to improve education, respect good teachers, and embrace choice for parents. This potential will prime Alaska to compete in a global economy that is so competitive it will blow us away if we are not prepared. Beyond high school, we will boost job training and University options. We are proposing more than $10 million in new funding for apprenticeship programs, expansion of construction, engineering and health care degrees to meet demands. But it must be about more than funds, it must be a change in philosophy. It is time to shift focus, from just dollars and cents to “caliyulriit,” which is Yupik for “people who want to work.” Work for pride in supporting our families, in and out of the home. Work for purpose and for action, and ultimately destiny fulfilled by being fruitful. It's about results and getting kids excited about their future – whether it is college, trade school or military.

(2) In her 2006 gubernatorial campaign, her education platform included:

A. Schools of Choice
B. Expanded Vocational Training Opportunities
C. Pre-Kindergarten
D. Competitive Teacher Salaries & Benefits

(3) Palin has been a strong supporter of the Alaska Statewide Mentor Project. The Alaska Department of Education & Early Development created the Project in partnership with the University of Alaska in support of their shared mission to improve academic achievement for students in Alaska. Through mentoring for beginning teachers, the goals of the program are to increase teacher retention and increase student achievement. The model is adapted from the New Teacher Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Prior to being elected Governor in 2006, Palin had served four years on a city council and six years as a mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a city of 6,000 people.

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