Last week was another eventful one in the Conservative world. Despite my busy work life, I managed to catch a few fleeting glimpses of the activity. Today, with the office officially closed due to yet another slug of global warming (we're still waiting for an Al Gore sighting!), I am taking a short break from work activity to reflect.
The so-called Tea Party Convention went on in Nashville. Here's a memo to those on the Left: not everyone using the convention as a mouthpiece really reflects the values of our nation's founders, which represent the real underpinning of the authentic Tea Party movement. And, conversely, not everyone espousing the Founders' values was in Nashville. In some cases, their status as sitting members of the House of Representatives prevented them from participating.
Of course, the focus of the LSM was on Sarah Palin's keynote speech. Strangely but not unexpectedly, the buzz revolved not around the content of Palin's speech but on her memory-jogging device. How ironic! Sarah gets blasted for writing a few words on her palm with a pen, to make sure she keeps hitting the main message points consistently and authentically; meanwhile, free pass for the very visible guy who hauls his multiple teleprompters to every possible public speaking setting, even into a sixth grade classoom! And despite the crutches (or maybe because of them!), he manages to mispronounce words like "corpsman" incorrectly multiple times and doesn't even seem to realize it. Sad.
Changing gears. It's interesting that I, along with many fellow professional nurses I know, have also been known to jot a reminder or two on my palm in the midst of frenetic activity. Another nurse who has been in the news recently, though not with much mention of her nursing background, is Texas gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina. No, I don't know if she writes notes on her palm too. If she did, that would probably constitute another reason for burying Debra's candidacy, right? In any event, it couldn't be any more noteworthy than the kerfuffle over Medina's radio interview on Glenn Beck's program last week.
Now there's a hatchet job for you! Medina comes prepared to tell a national audience how she plans to better govern the great state of Texas, and she ends up getting questions about whether she's a 9/11 truther, which doesn't speak one iota to the issues facing Texans. Admittedly her response to the off-topic query played right into Beck's hand, which was no doubt dealt to him under the table by one or more of Medina's opponents. Now, listen to it carefully. She does say she does not believe the government was complicit in the 9/11 attacks. Her point is, it's imperative that we as citizens of a republic have a duty to question the pronouncements made by those who represent us. All those legislators and bureaucrats and judges — THEY WORK FOR US, not the other way around. It is up to us as concerned citizens to insist that they be accountable. And that, dear readers, is entirely consistent with the view of our nation's Founders — and of the spirit of the present day Tea Party movement.
Back to Governor Palin's speech for a moment, and its substance which most seem to have overlooked. She called for the debate on the issues to be carried on enthusiastically in the primary elections this year, where party nominees for all 435 House seats, many senators and governors, etc. will be selected. It's not enough for a candidate to say he or she is a Tea Party supporter; the need is to have the candidates' positions on crucial issues around the size and scope of federal government debated openly, with the voters determining who will be the best choice to take a chunk out of Leviathan. I anticipate that in the Lone Star State, Debra Medina will continue to take her case to the voters in the Republican primary, and that her case will resonate with those who are Taxed Enough Already.
One last question. Why have we heard nothing from the American Nurses Association, or any other national organization of nurses, supporting or even mentioning nurse Medina?
Critical Condition 
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