Sen. John McCain Makes Arlington Heights Mayoral Race Endorsement

Imagine my surprise today when I opened up my Chicago Tribune (online) during lunch, while I was attempting to eat, and discovered that Senator John McCain (R-AZ) had endorsed a candidate in the upcoming Arlington Heights mayoral race.

If you imagine that I was unable to stomach my lunch, you'd be right.

You'll recall that I grew up in Arlington Heights. I lived there from 1974 through 1989 and then, again as an adult, from 2000 to 2011. That's 26 years. 26 of my almost 42 years of life have been spent in Arlington Heights. For the 11 years I lived there as an adult,  I worked and ran my business in Arlington Heights, and was a member of the Chamber of Commerce where I served on the Board of Directors for three years. Additionally, my mom still lives there, as do a number of my friends. I still have significant interests in the goings-on in Arlington Heights.

I'm not a fan of John McCain. Yes, he served his country nobly in Vietnam. He suffered horribly as a prisoner of war. He came home and decided to become a public servant. I don't deny that he has given the majority of his adult life in service of his country in one way or another. That is to be applauded.

The biggest thing that trips me up about John McCain is the legacy that I believe spoils the rest of what he's done in his career: Sarah Palin.

John McCain gave us Sarah Palin. John McCain's first presidential act as a candidate for the highest office in the land in 2008 was to select less than one-term governor of Alaska Sarah Palin as his running mate. He failed to vet her. Now I know, he relied on his staff to do that, but they failed to do it and the buck stops with him. Ultimately, it was his decision and he chose a woman who was horribly unqualified to hold the second highest office in the land and be a heartbeat away from running the country.

And now, John McCain wants to tell the people of Arlington Heights who to vote for on April 9th. He recommends a buddy of his who served as the mayor of an Arizona town from 2000 to 2006 and who has only lived in Arlington Heights since 2007.

Given John McCain's reputation for endorsing wholly unqualified candidates, I will tell my mom to vote for anyone but John McCain's buddy.

Tina Fey & Sarah Palin are Back on Saturday Night Live!

Did you see Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live last night? As always, Tina was brilliant!

First up, the Sarah Palin Network.


Saturday Night Live wouldn't be complete without Tina Fey making an appearance on Weekend Update. So I bring you Women's News.


Brownie Husband. So wrong, but so funny.


I honestly think Tina Fey is the funniest woman around.

Enjoy!

I've Been MIA on LMS

You may have heard . . . my Nana died. Almost 3 weeks ago. It seems like a lifetime ago right now. BND and AND . . . Before Nana Died and After Nana Died. The world kind of seems to have stopped.

Since her passing on July 12th, I've been to Florida, Texas, Mississippi, back to Texas, and finally home. I was in Florida and Mississippi for the Celebration of Life services and burial of Nana and I was in Texas (the first time) so I could go to Mississippi (more on that in another post) and the second time for the annual Mary Kay Seminar. I've been back in Chicago since Saturday night and am feeling like I'm just going through the motions.

I've started multiple blog posts, but none of the topics really excite me. I couldn't even write about Sarah Palin quitting on July 26th! I've started to write thank you notes, but writing them makes Nana's death entirely too real and permanent to me. I've worked some, but feel like I'm not really in a place where I can make other people feel pampered. I've gotten one really good night of sleep, but the rest have been hit or miss.

Yes, I've put on a pretty face when I've needed to this week. Last week it was easy - I didn't have one moment alone and believe me, Disneyland's got nothing in comparison to a Mary Kay Seminar when it comes to being the Happiest Place On Earth (TM). I've hung out with and talked to a couple friends and I've seemed okay.

Until today. Today I've pretty much been a mess of tears. I thought the tears were gone. I thought that when I left Batesville I was done crying. I thought I would get back to Chicago and easily jump right back into my routine with both feet. I thought that having a B.A. in Psychology and having read On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross would have prepared me. I thought that having already buried two grandparents and a cousin when we were kids would have made this easier.

Everyone keeps telling me I need to find a grief support group because I won't just magically be done grieving. I've actually done some searching, but all I've done is talked to voice mail and, in the one instance I spoke to someone, learned that I can't join a group until September. That seems strange to me. As I said to the woman on the phone, I didn't realize I had to schedule grief. I don't think she thought I was funny and I wasn't trying to be. I just didn't understand that these things were done in series and you couldn't just start going, but had to commit to an entire series and start when the series started. I'll keep searching because too many people have told me going to a grief counseling group will make it all better.

Maybe now that I've written about how difficult this is, it will get easier. Maybe it's like anything else: the first step is admitting I've got a problem. I hope so. I miss feeling like me and I hate feeling like I'm MIA in plain sight and on LMS.

Sarah Palin Screwed Women

Let me be clear: I do not like Sarah Palin. I don't agree with the positions she attempts to articulate. I believe she's a hypocrite (e.g., against premaritial sex and birth control as she paraded her pregnant, unmarried teenage daughter all around the country). I believe she was so far in over her head as John McCain's running mate that she had no idea she was in over her head. I believe she was condescending and disrespectful on the campaign trail. Mostly, I believe that she wasn't even close to being ready for the glare of national politics.

But for all the reasons I don't like her, she has also been a trailblazing woman. She's a member of an elite club of 31 women who have ever served as Governor. Can you believe that? In the almost 250 year history of the United States, only 31 women have ever been the CEO of their state. Although the list of female vice presidential candidates is longer, only two women have ever received the vice presidential nomination of a major party - Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin.

As everyone knows by now, she resigned last week as Governor of Alaska. Rumors had been swirling for weeks that she would not run again in 2010 because she wanted to focus on running for president in 2012. Okay. Maybe she'd use the time between November 2008 and early/mid 2011 when she might declare her candidacy to bone up on the issues and crystalize her positions on them, develop a platform that was more than soundbites and had actual substance, have a solid track record of performance, practice her public speaking skills, grow some thicker skin, and learn how not to make mountains out of mole hills.

And then she quit, which took me by surprise as it took many people around the country, including some of her closest advisors if the media reports are to be believed. According to her word salad resignation speech, one of the reasons for quitting the job she was elected to do for four years, could essentially be boiled down to "people picked on me." So what.

Any woman who has ever accomplished anything in life has been picked on. Does Sarah Palin think that Suffragettes were greated with open arms? They weren't. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was rumored to have been a lesbian. So what if she was. Rosa Parks was arrested and lost her job for not giving up a seat on a bus. Ask any of the handful of women running Fortune 500 companies if the red carpet was rolled out for them or if they had to worked harder and overcome more obstacles than their male counterparts. Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor has endured horrific comments including a statement by G. Gordon Liddy (of Watergate fame) hoping she doesn't have her period during her confirmation hearings (for the record, she's well past the age of menopause, so there's not much chance of that happening). And, of course, the woman Sarah Palin liked to compare herself to during the campaign, Hillary Clinton, has had a lifetime of people picking on her and her family. In fact, it was Sarah Palin who essentially said Hillary Clinton just needed to suck it up and get over that she had a tough road to hoe.

But it's not just women who publicly broke glass ceilings, but ordinary women who achieved any success in their lives who have faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles. We each have our own stories of when people tried to beat us down, but we kept going. Partly, we kept going for ourselves. But I'm sure that each woman who ever faced any sort of harassment or discrimination in her life and fought through it, did it not only for herself, but at some level, also for the daughters and granddaughters she had or may have and the millions of women who would come after her.

By quitting her job as the CEO of Alaska, and including Sarah Palin there are currently only 7 female Governors, Sarah Palin just added one more obstacle for any woman wanting to hold a position of significance. Who among us hasn't heard the words, "oh, don't mind her. She's just emotional because she's got her period" when we were appropriately outraged. It's not enough that we know that people wonder if we'll leave when we start to have babies or if we have thick enough skin, but now there is rock solid evidence that when the going get tough women leave. I mean, if Sarah Baracuda can't handle the stress, how can the rest of us?

Sarah likes to speak about how she took the difficult road and quit because she could have more impact outside of the state house. She claimed that hunkering down and getting to work in the face of great challenges was the easy way out. I can't imagine that Hillary Clinton ever thought the obstacles and humiliation she faced were "easy." Or that Rosa Parks thought being arrested and fired was "easy." Whether or not she knows it, Sarah Palin is a role model. And she just told countless girls across the country that when the going gets tough, the tough walk away.

Thanks Sarah.

I Don't Have to Apologize to Sarah Palin

It's no secret that I'm not exactly a fan of Sarah Palin. You can do a search for her on LMS and read some of what I had to say last fall.

That said, I have politely kept my mouth shut during the last week while she took offense at David Letterman's jokes about her and her family because I'm working on the whole "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything" philosophy. But I can't stay quiet anymore.

I'm not actually going to defend David Letterman here. You can decide for yourself whether or not he was out of line. I will say, however, that I don't think he should have given his "apology" last week and I truly can't believe he's giving a true one tonight (I just heard about it on the news). I hate that he was bullied into apologizing to her and her family.

No one ever apologized to President Clinton (the actual President, as opposed to the losing VP candidate who won't let go of her 15 minutes), Hillary Clinton or their daughter Chelsea when the Republicans were making fun of her looks. Every teenager goes through that awkward stage. Chelsea was younger than either Willow or Bristol Palin, the Clintons had taken careful steps to keep her out of the spotlight (unlike the way the Palins paraded their kids all over the country to every campaign stop), and Chelsea had not done anything that would warrant the "dog" or "Janet Reno is her father" comments by Rush Limbaugh and John McCain respectively (again, unlike Bristol who became pregnant as a teenager in spite of Sarah Palin's staunch pro-life anti-pre-marital sex stance). If kids should be off limits, then all children of politicians should be off-limits, not just select ones.

But that's not even my real beef. My real beef is that she should be consistent in her outrage. Where was Sarah Palin's rant about how jokes about sex with underage girls is what causes them to have low self-esteem last fall when the late night comedians were making fun of Bristol? To me, this "outrage" just comes off as Sarah Palin trying desperately to stay relevent and extend her 15 minutes of fame.

I could go on, but Shannyn Moore said it best in The Huffington Post today with her brilliant post "Top 10 Reasons Sarah Palin's 'Outrage' is Misplaced and A Little Late . . . "

10) Last September, a skit on Saturday Night Live suggested incest in the Palin family. "What about the husband?" asked a mock Times reporter. "You know he's doing those daughters. I mean, come on. It's Alaska!" No outrage. Sarah Palin appeared on the show one month later in late October.

9) Days after the announcement of Bristol's pregnancy, Conan O'Brien joked, "It's true, John McCain's running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, has revealed that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant. Palin said, 'We should never have introduced her to John Edwards.'" Where was the outrage? Was Conan promoting infidelity with an underage girl?

8 ) From two different Tonight Shows: "Governor Palin announced over the weekend that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant. Oh, boy, you thought John Edwards was in trouble before, now he's really done it!" AND..."All the Republicans are heaping praise on Governor Palin. Fred Thompson said, as an actor, he could see them making a movie about Sarah Palin and her family. Didn't they already make that movie? I think it was called 'Knocked Up!'"--Jay Leno

7) Craig Ferguson's skit of "Larry King vs Levi Johnston" asks about "kinky sex" with the drapes open. Craig Ferguson's honorary Alaska citizenship, granted by Governor Palin wasn't rescinded.

6) "According to expense reports, Sarah Palin charged the state of Alaska over $21,000 for her children to travel with her on official business. In fairness to Gov. Palin, when she leaves them home alone they get pregnant." --Seth Meyers (SNL). Sarah Palin was in a sketch with Meyers a week earlier.

5) On October 8, 2008, Sarah Palin walked out on the ice with six year old Piper and 13 year old Willow, before the game, Conan O'Brien said, "Saturday night, Sarah Palin is going to drop the first puck at the Philadelphia Flyers' hockey game. Then Palin will spend the rest of the game trying to keep the hockey players out of her daughter's penalty box."
Oh, yes he did. You get the outrage...but not a peep then. According to the new "logic", O'Brien was advocating for some really sick stuff.

4) Rush Limbaugh: "Everyone knows the Clintons have a cat. Socks is the White House cat. But did you know there is a White House dog?" Limbaugh put up a picture of Chelsea Clinton. At the time, Chelsea Clinton was 13 years old. Rush also said, "In last year's campaign, the most prominent, articulate voice for standard run-of-the-mill good old-fashioned American conservatism was Sarah Palin." Calling a young teenager a "dog" can't be helpful to her "self-esteem." Where is the apology from the leader of the GOP?

3) "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."--John McCain, Sarah Palin's running mate. Should McCain apologize to every young woman in America?

2) Palin's friend, political defender and informer of the David Letterman comments, John Ziegler, was fired from his radio show for using the "n-word" online and on air in 1997. In 2000, he was fired for spelling the "n-word" on the air. How much does that word affect the psychological health of America's youth, regardless of their race? Now he is pimping his film about how mean the "liberal media" was to Sarah Palin.

AND...The NUMBER 1 REASON Sarah Palin's Outrage is Misplaced and A Little Late...

1) The "candidate who must be obeyed" was talking about Palin's family when he said, "Kids are off limits." Jake Tapper of ABC News interviewed then Candidate Obama, and asked, "Governor Palin and her husband issued a statement today saying their 17-year-old daughter Bristol, who is unmarried, is five months pregnant. Do you have any reaction?"

OBAMA: "I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people's families are off-limits. And people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Governor Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know, my mother had me when she was 18. And, you know, how family deals with issues and -- and, you know, teenaged children, that shouldn't be the topic of -- of our politics."

The Palin children have been fodder for comedians since they were brought to the national stage. Incest isn't funny. Ugly kid jokes aren't funny. Many of the things said about public figures are just flat wrong. Being "knocked up" isn't much fun. Racist comments hurt all of us. I exhausted the top 10 list before I ran out of outrageous instances ignored by the Palins.

The National Organization for Women named David Letterman to their Hall of Shame. Will Letterman be joining Jay Leno? Conan O'Brien? Craig Ferguson? Seth Myers? Rush Limbaugh? Or John McCain? Of course not! I guess N.O.W. didn't bother checking Sarah Palin's "feminist" credentials. All across America, right wing radio and television talk show hosts feigned outrage in perfect synchronicity. The same people who back up Palin's high drama assertions against Letterman ignored the connections between Bill O'Reilly's irresponsible incitement and the murder of Dr. George Tiller. David Letterman, a late night entertainer, apologized. Fox New's Bill O'Reilly has not.

As a parent, I understand being defensive. I just wonder what took so long. Why now?

Funniest SNL Skit EVER! John & Cindy McCain & Sarah Palin on QVC (VIDEO)

I don't know when the SNL opening skit will be available, but trust me, it will knock your socks off. John AND Cindy McCain appeared along with Tina Fey's Sarah Palin. Because the McCain campaign can't afford to buy 30 minutes on the 3 major networks, they go on QVC! And of course, Sarah goes rogue. And makes fun of the $150,000 wardrobe.

Seriously this is the funniest skit SNL ever. Ever.

Of course, I'm still voting for Obama.

Here's the video!

What Could YOU Do With Sarah's Spending Money???

H/T to Americablog for this fun website!

Paper dolls for grown-ups!

Dress Like Sarah Palin

The Election is Between "The Hot Lady & The Tiger Woods Guy" (aka Sarah Palin & Barack Obama)

Will Ferrell is back as George W. Bush (almost 8 years later, I still can't call him "President") and Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on a special Thursday edition of Saturday Night Live!

Watch as Sarah meets W for the very first time!

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin: "I like to think I'm one part practiced folksy , one part sassy and a little dash of high school bitchy." HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

The REAL Sarah Palin on SNL (live blogging) (VIDEOS!)

Sarah Palin (the real one) is appearing on Saturday Night Live tonight. And I'm staying up to watch, because I'm hoping and praying it will be over the top hysterical.

10:36pm . . . The Opening Skit featuring Tina Fey as Sarah Palin giving a her first news conference, Sarah Palin (the real one), Mark Wahlberg, and Alec Baldwin just ended and I have to admit I was seriously disappointed. As soon as it's available, I'll post it and let you judge for yourself. Here's hoping Sarah appears later and it's funny.



10:39pm . . . SNL is hosted by Josh Brolin and there's Oliver Stone in the audience!

10:47pm . . . Can someone please explain to me how Kristen Wiig is funny? She seems exactly the same to me in every character. All of her voices are the same. And I simply do not find her funny.

10:56pm . . . Mark Wahlberg is back! Maybe Sarah Palin will reappear too. Fingers crossed.

11:15pm . . . Weekend Update . . . . Always funny. Lots of opportunity here to make fun of Sarah. Oh. My. God. Dan Quayle gave Sarah advice? Really?

11:24pm . . . WAHOO! She's BACK in the middle of Weekend Update! This will be GREAT! Wait, an about-to-pop pregnant Amy Poehler is doing the Sarah part rapping and dancing, while Sarah just bobs her head in her seat? WTF???



11:42pm . . . I gotta say, SNL is a huge disappointment tonight and I simply don't understand. They've had some great skits this year, mostly thanks to the election. Tina Fey's impersonations of Sarah Palin are spot-on. Fred Armisen could be a better Barack Obama, but the debate skits have been so good, it hasn't mattered much. Weekend Update has had the best material its had in years. And then there's tonight. What happened? It almost makes me wonder if the McCain/Palin campaign folks made SNL promise not to make fun of Sarah tonight. If her job was to show she could laugh at herself, I'd say Sarah Palin failed. A completely wasted opportunity.

My advice is to erase your TiVo without watching SNL. I watched so you don't have to.

TiVo Alert! Sarah Palin WILL be on SNL!

Sarah Palin will appear on Saturday Night Live this Saturday, October 18th! (Link)

No word on whether Tina Fey will also appear, but my money is on Tina showing up.

Saturday Night Live airs on NBC at 11:30/10:30 E/C.