On vacation from Bloggerland

Sorry folks, I have been on a little vacation from Bloggerland. Though it's hard to call it a "vacation" the way my nerves are all up in a knot. But still, I must admit I've been rendevousing in another place lately and it's severely cut into my blog time. I've been in Election World. Last week we made a stop off at the DNC. It was a very feel good place to visit. But this week we are at RNC and of course, you know, I have to say this feels alot more like home! So, sorry if you tuned in hoping for an adoption update and all you're getting is my take on how freakin' amazing the GOP ticket is this time... I mean, this is the dream team! But it's history in the making and I want to record it for my daughter. I mean, think of this, if McCain/Palin win this election, PALIN will be the incumbent presidential candidate in either four or eight years. A WOMAN on the top of the ticket, almost by default. That is something that I would love to see in my lifetime! This is your fair warning... it's getting ready to get seriously one sided in here and if you can't take the heat or don't care about my opinion... PLEASE stop reading now before your image of me plummets!
So, excuse me while I get all fired up here, but I just got booted off the TV and now all these psyched up emotions have to go somewhere.... here are the top five reasons I'm voting for McCain/Palin:
1) Most important, in my opinion, is that the next president will most likely appoint at least one (probably two) supreme court justices. If you ever were serious about being pro-life, this is your chance to really put your money where your mouth is. It's most likely my generation's last shot at righting the wrong of Roe v. Wade. Think about it, once these two justices are replaced, the court is fairly young (it's a lifetime appointment) and the scales will tip liberal or conservative with THIS presidency. There is no turning back from the coming appointments and this is our shot! Imagine a world where it's not a Constitutional RIGHT to kill an unborn baby, but rather a decision that each state can make for it's own residents. (And don't give me all the BS scenarios about days when abortion was illegal and women were forced into back allies. You could make that argument about every criminal in the history of time being forced to commit their crime in secrecy because their chosen evil was illegal. How 'bout we go ahead and legalize heroine so addicts don't have to hang in crack houses with dirty needles. K? K!) And also don't give me the one about there being some things worse than death. If you're going to use that standard to support abortion, I can pretty much guarantee you would have chosen death for three of my four children, after all, they were born into a struggling country, to parents who were less than ideal in the parenting field, and left in institutions that couldn't fulfill their most basic needs. Their chances at a "normal" life were VERY slim statistically and the chance that they would escape the cycle that put them there in the first place was even more grim... so by the "some things are worse than death" scenario, my kiddos wouldn't be here and that is pretty much saying God is limited in how far down He can redeem someone. Now that we're clear on my pro-life stance, let's move on before I get militant.
2) Fred Thompson nailed it when he summed up the Obama tax plan. Obama keeps saying he's not going to tax the average American, just the wealthy and businesses. As Thompson said, "Okay, this will only affect you if you happen to buy something from a business like gas, clothes or groceries." Come on people, Democrats are supposed to be the "enlightened ones" (you know you all say it behind our backs) but this is very simple economics! You can do the math... stay with me here!
3) McCain is an American hero. When's the last time we had one of those in the White House? Seriously, when did you ever, in our time, see a guy that you could just get fired up about how much he gave for our country? This guys spent YEARS in a POW camp and when he was coming back from being tortured by the Vietnamese, he would give the thumbs up to the other POWs as he passed their cells to encourage them on their way too. Talk about moral character... tested, proven! McCain speaks from conviction and there are plenty of things he's said that are less than popular with Republicans. This is why I loved him in 2000, why I loved him in the primaries and why I'm diverting adoption blog space to talk about him now. You may not agree with him, but you have to respect his moral character.
4) Obama scares me. I know that there are alot of people who don't want to answer or don't know how to answer the question about Obama sitting under a pastor like Jeremiah Wright for 20 years. I have yet to hear an intelligible argument for why he thought that was a good idea, unless he agrees with his radical views. Here you have a guy that believes the AIDS virus was created by the government to implant in the black population and he is fervently convicted that we brought 9/11 on ourselves and went so far as to damn our country. People want to say that maybe these are just a few and infrequent sermon series and that on an average Sunday, he was a "normal" pastor. Folks, you aren't that on fire about something and not be spewing it all the time. When you are passionately convicted about something, you LIVE it, you BREATHE it, and you better believe you're talking about it if you have a captive audience. A very very dear friend of mine pointed out to me that if Obama really embraced Wright's teachings, he would undoubtedly show signs of the same level of crazed thinking. However, I also really believe that when you are as smooth and polished as the past few Dem candidates we've seen, you rarely make a misstep. I leave you with Bill and Hill for prime examples, everything they do (down to the last tear and hand-hold) or say is calculated for dramatic affect. Obama is no less a politician than the HillBills and no less eloquent and driven, and I firmly believe anti-American thinking could be well smothered under the layers. At the very least, he's been exposed to dangerously radical thinking from someone he considers a mentor.
5) COME ON.... WHERE is the adoption community here? People, RISE UP! An International Adoptee in the White House? Do you really think we would need to spread around these e-mails asking people to call their Senators to support making the tax credit permanent if the first daughter was an international adoptee? Just as Sarah Palin promised that every family with a special needs child would have a friend in the White House, so will every International Adoptee!

And here's a bonus #6 reason to vote for the McCain/Palin ticket... because I'm one of those "small town" people who "bitterly cling to my guns and my religion"!

Okay, now, Meg Update.... breaking news! I'm NOT taking her back to MDO. I spent the last two days trying to undo the affects of the classroom environment and that was with me sitting with her. To the average eye, this would not probably even look like a problem. She hasn't been scratching or hitting or any of that, but she has been more sensitive and more clingy and she has been just generally sorting things out. I think it's spooked her. Today we were at the Y playing in Kids Gym with Connor and a well-meaning staffer picked her up to show her something and she just about totally lost it! So, I'm taking my mom's advice. I'm hiring a housekeeper, spending the time with Meg, and cob-webs be darned... hopefully the social worker will not bring her white gloves when she comes to do our post placement visit. :)

I'm reading a book right now called "The Lost Daughters of China." It's fascinating! And it has me thinking ALOT about Meg's birth mother, wherever she is in Russia or Uzbekistan. I am saving it for a separate post, but wanted to share the book title because it's a very thought-provoking look at the abandonment of children, especially in China, and the circumstances that surround it and how some parents are left with very little choice. I'll start to recommend it to all those well-meaning folks who judge my kids' birthmoms and say, "I could never abandon my child." We live such a life of unparalelled choices and freedoms and wealth that most of us really can't imagine situations where we would abandon a child, but that's because fortune smiled on us and bore us into the Land of the Free!

Deuteronomy 11:19
"Teach these things to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."