I usually hate talking politics, but I can't help it this one time. Feel free to ignore this post if you don't want to hear it.

One sentiment I hear a lot is the idea of the "liberal mainstream media". But if that's true, why is this story not the front page topic on all of the news sites? I stumbled across it last night on Yahoo news, but this morning it was nowhere to be found until I googled it. If you go to the CNN or MSNBS home pages, there are no links to it at all. You have to search specifically for it. (I searched "Palin travel children" to find it).

Why is this not front page news? She charged the state of Alaska $17,000 in per diems for days where she stayed in her own home, and expensed $21, 012 for plane tickets for her children and claimed they were on official business. And then, just before she was selected to be the VP nominee and after Alaska reporters asked for the records, Palin ordered changes to previously filed expense reports for her daughters' travel. So, she stuck the state will the bill to take her kids along with her on 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights, then altered the documents after the fact to lie about it and cover her ass. And she and McCain have spent the last 2 months talking about how moral they are, and how un-patriotic, un-American and un-Christian Obama is, and in fact how un-patriotic, un-American and un-Christian you are if you support Obama.

If this came out that Obama or Biden had done this, I have to believe it would be in screaming headlines everywhere. But at the time of this writing, there is no reference to it on the home page of cnn.com or msnbc.com. (To be fair, at the bottom of abcnews.go.com there is a text-only link for it in the "Other stories" box. It is between the "When in Kenya, trust the locals" link and the "Britney Spears' Driving Case Dismissed" link.) What is the main focus on CNN? "McCain in Sit Room: He's behind with less than 2 weeks to go, so what's McCain's strategy for the homestretch? He joins Wolf in "The Situation Room".

Hmmm. Liberal bias, eh?

Suspenders

For years we have had a car top carrier that is constantly in the way in our garage when it's not attached to the van. So when I do put it on the van for a trip, I tend to leave it attached for several weeks afterward, so I don't have to have it underfoot all the time. But that looks pretty dorky, and messes with the gas mileage, so eventually I take it off and try to figure out where to put it in the garage.

But no more! I went to the hardware store a few weeks ago and bought some rope, a few pulleys and some eye bolts, and now it lives safely on the ceiling of the garage.

I'll let you know and post some pictures if (when?) the whole thing crashes down onto the car some night!