I put this up in reaction to the blame game that immediately followed the Tucson shootings. I was mortified at how Sarah Palin received the worst of it. One caller starting going on about how Palin issued a call to arms and demanded that Tea Partiers lay to waste the Democrats and liberals. When the host pressured the caller to site his source for this outrageous libel, he stuttered and then spurted out, “Well that’s just her M.O.”

It’s sick how we are letting hate get in the way of debate and how we use tragedies to try and silence opposing opinion. And it’s sick how innocent citizens, such as Sarah Palin, can have such vile and misinformation leveled against them. Speaking of misinformation, I find it funny how many will rattle off bad information to support their view of a particular person or issue. But when that information is exposed for what it is, they rarely will issue a retraction or apology. And I guess that’s what this toon is all about.

The point is, this is politics as usual and verbal sparring is nothing new. What grates me is how Obama continues to say he is “above” politics and “above” the tactics of partisanship, while he is in the middle of playing their game! I don’t care if you engage in name calling tactics, whether it is in reference to the person or their policies, but don’t sit and pretend you are above it all! McCain may be involved with negative campaigning (which has proven most effective among the general electorate) but at least he owns up to it. There’s no change in Obama’s campaign.

As always, we’ll put up with this for two more months and then the election. Anybody who thinks we will ever remove the attacks out of politics is grossly naïve.

The best thing Barack Obama did for us is choose Joe Biden for his running mate. I am fairly convinced that if he had chosen Hillary, as many Democrats wanted him to, the so-called “Dream Ticket” may have been more than the Republicans could have overcome. Instead, Barack went with the safe choice. This left the door wide open for McCain, who ended up creating a “Dream Ticket” of his own.

And after the hoopla that was the Democrat Party, the biggest news ever was… John McCain chooses Sarah Palin as his running mate. Sarah who? A female vice presidential candidate on the Republican ticket? Unheard of! What a way to upstage Obama!

After initially learning about who she is (and reading her Wikipedia page) the social conservative branch (a big branch at that) of the Republican party went nuts. Is she for real? Can this be too good to be true?

Some are accusing McCain of choosing her only because she is a woman. There may be some of that, but if that was the case, why not Condoleezza Rice? And don’t tell me the reverse isn’t true. I know of prolife Republicans who are voting Obama simply because he has African blood.

Truth is, she is a no nonsense, gun totin’, sports fanatic, business owning, middle American woman, beauty queen, someone hard working Americans feel they can relate to and trust. As this election heats up, we’ll learn more about her, for better or for worse. But for now, Republicans couldn’t be happier