Bush came to Greensboro to honor a local volunteer and mentoring program today. Which was very nice of him to do. However, I couldn’t help but notice how many police had to be involved for Bush’s visit. That’s a lot of tax payer dollars at work.

Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to fly a group of the honored volunteers up to D.C in first class, with five star rating hotels to stay in, than have the entire Greensboro police force out there? They had to block every driveway, every intersection for the route the President took. Seems like a frivolous waste of taxpayer dollars in a time when our economy is sliding deeper into recession and corporate bailouts are the norm…

Why am I surprised George W. Bush would waste tax payer dollars?

These photos are were taken at the intersection of Benjamin Parkway and Westover Terrace:

Palin’s Wikipedia page was edited shortly before John McCain announced her as his VP. The Wikipedia results were a much more favorable perspective on the candidate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin

Infectious Greed has an article on this, but I first heard of it from NPR earlier today on the radio (Palin’s Wikipedia Entry Gets Overhaul, by NPR).

This type of favorable, or strategic editing of public information is not new. Diebold was caught in the act, altering their records and those of their competitors. Wikipedia is no novice to this tactic and replaced the edited content in Diebold’s case. (Corporations, politicians alter their, and their competitors Wikipedia entries? Noooooo! by Writes Like She Talks, also see Who’s Editing Wikipedia? by Plunderbund)

This is uncouth at best, but inappropriate is a good word for it too. Spin doctors at work, the Republicans are already weaving their magic web around Sarah Palin to cast her in the best light possible.

The media is of course run by liberals, right? Riiiiggggghhhhhtttttt…. I’m sure the liberals were lining up to give Palin the good word on Wikipedia.

Pandering. Artifice. Is this what we should expect of 21st Century politics?
Now I see why cynicism is so popular.

Interestingly, at the time I wrote this (08-29-08 - 6:45PM EST) I had a hard time finding the official website for Sarah Palin. I have a website, and I am not running for Vice President. What happened to her website? I found the Alaska governor’s website on the US Government website: http://gov.state.ak.us/ But my question is, why doesn’t she have a personal website outside the government? I’m ready to start checking facts.

We achieve greater awareness of possible leaders by having a white woman in the race and a black man on the ticket. Regardless of outcome, and I refer to what either party will do with the presidency (be he Democrat or Republican), our society now sees (in a VERY public theater) minority people stepping into leadership roles.

Let me state it one more time, in the simplest of terms I can:
Regardless of outcome, our society now sees minority people stepping into leadership roles.

This is a great thing for the advancement of equality in America. Moving forward perhaps we will see more options across the entire political spectrum.