In what respect, Charlie?

You gotta hand it to the Moose hunter in chief, she’s got pluck. With everybody but me watching her interview with Charlie Gibson, the little lady leaned on her chair arm, looked him straight in the eye and said (under her breath) “Bush has a doctrine? You gotta be shittin’ me?” Then, she said to the question: “In what respect Charlie?”

Pretty slick, but… It showed that she had the hubris that she told Charlie she had in order to be the next veep and if necessary (Gah fo’bid) the 45th POTUS. And yet who without hubris would even consider running for the lowliest office? Her no nonsense style is really nonsensical. She’s kinda like: "I’m just gonna stick to my guns and back down all these dubbers until I have proven the Peter principal beyond the shadow of a doubt that my highest level of expertise is to be governor of a state with less people than there are cows in Vermont. I’ll make them see that I am no more prepared for this position than Mike Huckabee. In fact I’ll take a page from his book, and separation of church and state be damned, I’ll ask for god’s help to do it."

I saw her ask, in front of a huge churchy audience, for god’s help to build a natural gas pipeline. That’s some whacky stuff. Combined with her dogmatic refusal to deal with abortion and birth control by just saying no leads me to think that her simplistic black and white approach to policy is a from-the-gut decision making process that anyone can make. She is ready to write a blank check to Israel which does not help with Middle East tensions, and which she did not address for reasons best left to the people who prepared her for the debate. But her answer already speaks for a possible McCain administration and that cannot be encouraging for the people in that very region we are trying to foster better relations with.

Clearly the same debate coaches had not read The Smoking Jacket on the question of who threw the first rock in Georgia. And even though it is now widely known that Saaskasvili tempted the fate he got, the Gov just spouted the McCain line showing what? Loyalty or ignorance. Likely both. I believe the average Joe or JoJo on the street, in this pastoral rurality in which I live, would be able to answer Charlie’s questions as well as she did without any coaching. I’m sure many of them also think that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. I have a hard time thinking she knows what the initials in NATO stand for never mind why we should tout the admission of two Russian antagonists by pushing for their acceptance in it.

Chuck Todd, who is seldom fallible in things political, sees her best quality as “being the campaigner in chief.” I don’t think you have to be Chuckie T to figure that out but what’s not being said by any of the Morning Joe carnival barkers (which is where I get most of my opinionatedness) is the feeling I have that she will stumble just at the right time and fa’ down; go boom. John Heileman summed up the essence of her ABC prime time debut (which I have only seen in clips) that she was “very unimpressive but said nothing disqualifying.” The best news is that newsies are still talking about her and they will continue to do so because, I think, it’s no longer just about two old boring white guys. And that’s a step up.

In local news: What is up over at Ossipee Lake Marina where they tried to secure a special permission to violate a standing ordinance to have access that they are not supposed to have? They wanted to know: If we can’t have the necessary permission, how much will the fine be?

These guys have been flouting the law over in Freedom for years. The first time I saw Kevin Price the owner, he was so obviously lying to the Ossipee Planning Board about cleaning up his off site boat storage on route 16 that I had to chuckle. They had given him five years to fix the place or shut down and back then they reminded him he only had one year left. Gee shock! Times up.

But a bigger question than why the special treatment for a guy from away is why the Selectmen (actually they are not all men, one is the wife of the marina’s manager) have, time and again, allowed the shenanigans. What’s in it for them? They have made arbitrary decisions that have cost the Freedom citizenry unnecessary legal funds climbing into the tens of thousands. It’s a boondoggle that appears to have to do with some personal animosity between the Town Fathers (and one Mother) and the Ossipee Lake Alliance who has fought the shifty daring-do Derry man from the first violation.