On Friday of convention week they asked if I wanted to go camping in the Rocky Mountains for two days. Of course I said “yes” and had a very relaxing time away from cable, internet, phone, etc. It was a great way to end the experience.

Thanks to all who read this blog … I hope it was fun to read and gave the audience some taste of what it was like to attend. Feel free to leave a comment on the blog if you wish.

In restrospect, I am very glad I went, felt I was not only part of history but helped to make it. And I’m still optimistic despite the recent turn of events in the election. Despite Rick Davis’ (McCain’s campaign manager) statement that “this will be a campaign of personalities, not issues” I think the electorate is too engaged in this election to let dueling biographies determine our next President.

An interesting article by an Alaskan blogger. Not definitive by any means, but provides details on Troopergate so far and other comments about her experience. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s a picture of Wasilla, the city of 5000 where she was mayor

[ click this link to see downtown Wassila ]

And another interesting entry from the same blogger with a “Twilight Zone” banner :

I, like all Alaskans, have been glued to the news media today, watching with amazement as Sarah Palin was tagged as McCain’s vice presidential running mate. Local radio talk shows are all a-buzz. The progressive station has a mixture of callers who are amused, horrified, and bewildered. The conservative station has a mixture of callers who are amused, enthusiastic, horrified and bewildered. No one is really sure how this happened, or what to make of it. Citing the fact that she was the mayor of Wasilla 2 years ago in her list of “executive experience” doesn’t even pass the giggle test in Alaska.

[ click link to full article here ]

Well I have some answers already. Here’s a piece by Ed Rollins, political strategist for Reagan (click here).

But even more importantly, I just happened to catch a CNBC interview with Maria Bartiromo with Sarah Palin. (I’ve always been impressed with Maria B in a financial context, but hadn’t watched her enough to see her as political reporter as well. She’s just as good in that capacity).

Click here to see the interview.

Anyway, the video interview is impressive, both from the standpoint Maria’s questions and Palin’s answers. She’s no lightweight, folks.

She is very strong on oil and energy and the effect of drilling in Alaska (after all, this is the land she’s the governor of!) and is quite articulate. If she’s this good at addressing the energy issue(s), I bet she’s as good on other domestic issues and I would guess that she’ll defer to McCain on foreign policy.

Now I don’t agree with her on some points, and there are massive gaps in what she’s saying, but she is so good at knowing the issues that the Democrats had better not underestimate her.

A Hillary supporter friend of mine just mentioned that the Republicans must be *crazy* to think that Hillary supporters (in particular) will vote for a strong pro-life candidate. But we’ll see … this campaign is really heating up, and I’m glad to say that I’m so deep into this stuff that I’m working on a new level now.

I was wondering what the other side would criticize, and sure enough, here it is: she didn’t explicitly say that Barack was “ready to be commander in chief”.  Sigh.  I wish we could deal with the issues instead of personality.

And while I’m on that particular thread: enough with the McCain house count already. Point made and beaten to death, and IMHO the Democrats are showing blatant hypocrisy in trying to “hit the rich” as a major talking point.

As all of you know, I am a Progressive and understand the underlying rationale … but the pounding on house count and personal attacks is not helping to solve the problem(s) we have to face.

“It’s like an LSAT question: if bloggers W, X, Y and Z from publications A, B, C, D, and E apply for passes 1, 2, and 3, the bloggers to receive the three passes must have Technorati stats equal to the circumference of the sun divided by pi times .003 (or some other formula nobody knows) and only those bloggers with more than 120 political posts on their blogs combined with TwitterIDs that match handles shorter than their domain names and Facebook friends above the square root of the size of the stadium, then they can attend the Democratic National Convention (except it’s the Democratic National Committee Convention, abbreviated as DNCC) part of the general blogger pool or state blogger corps, trading arena passes for floor passes along the way.”