Morphing into a Praying Mantis

"Praying mantises can swivel their heads 300 degrees and can actually look over their shoulders and move in several directions.

"They walk on four legs and use the other two to snag prey, which can be one of their own-- praying mantises are cannibalistic.

"Davis advises people to buy an egg case and put it in a glass jar but separate the insects as soon as they hatch." from Capital Press (Northwest agricultural paper) on October 3 by Julia Hollister.

So how does this relate to my morphing into one? Well maybe not the cannibal part (I'm still thinking about that) but the going after anything in their paths, ready to zap the insects that a garden would just as soon not have, the insects that suck life from the plants.

Yep, that's how I woke up this morning feeling. Except praying mantises also eat honey bees, they eat anything in their way, I don't want to be like that. But I sure woke up mad enough.

I get it that that kind of attitude is not beneficial; but I don't think we can ignore the garbage that is coming out of the McCain/Palin camp this month. Lies not rebutted can end up believed. What ticked me off, to the level where I felt ready to go ballistic and had to work to write logically, was what I read on a Drudge headline last night.

Palin was doing one of her toadie interview with Fox where she can find a friendly ear to spout her jingoistic garbage. She will be at lots of meetings of like minds but it's when her words travel beyond that venue that it gets to me. She was in fine form with that interview as her ego put down Katie Couric as the one responsible for her own inability to answer questions intelligently.

She did not and will not address her real problem which is talking to the moderates and independents and explaining to them why she is adequate to be president. She was irked with Couric for not giving her a chance to attack Obama. Obama has been running a year now. People know his stands. They know the things being said against him. What they don't know is this woman who entered the race 5 weeks ago.

What Palin should do and what the McCain people don't want her to do is approach the country and through things like press conferences, through places like Meet the Press, she should address her own understanding of the problems this country faces.

Sarah Palin could be president January 22. Shouldn't she give the American people a chance to know if she is ready? How dare the McCain people keep someone who could be president from places where that could be fairly evaluated. Even in the debate she said she wouldn't answer questions that she didn't want to, and she didn't. She would twist her answers to something she had memorized.

By now, I expected that from her; but she went a step beyond and Drudge went even farther to give her a headline when she said Obama was not fit to be Commander-in-Chief. How dare she! This woman, who two years ago or less couldn't offer an opinion on Iraq, this woman who has no clue what is really going on in the world and doesn't believe she has to answer to the voters. She evidently feels she is fit but he's not and what makes her fit? We have to take that on trust!

Reading Drudge led to my deleting his link, something I had not done all through the Bush years but this was going too far. He repeated her words as though they had weight and logic. I suppose he's done it before on other things, but too much is at stake this time to tolerate him doing it again.

You ask what is at stake? Possible ulcers, high blood pressure and that's just about me! What about a president who believes man walked with dinosaurs, who has no clue about science regarding anything, who would believe in a religious person who could anoint her because he had driven out a witch from an African village.

By now, I do get it. Some votes will come purely because the person says or does believe in fundamental Christianity. Some will come out of fear of a black man as president. Some will come because of the fear tactics that have worked so well in the past and have been thrown out again.

Some are like Peggy Noonan, who I had seen on Daily Show earlier during the week and thought how shallow her responses were. Those aren't looking at real issues but only want a reason, any reason to vote right wing. It didn't matter if Palin answered questions with real answers or if she had a phony accent. Noonan was carried away with the idea she had another Reagan for whom to vote.

Some like Rich Lowry, of National Review, were swept away by a wink. A wink? That's all it takes?

Obama/Biden in '08

Get out the vote!