Sarah Palin: Mother. Wife. Moose-hunter. Our next VP?

By now, I'm sure you've heard about McCain's choice for Vice President: Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin. For someone who is for denying a woman her right to choose to have a baby, and who wants to make shooting wolves from a plane legal, Palin is surprisingly popular in the polls. I'm a girl, so don't accuse me of being sexist. Of course a woman can be President or Vice President of the United States. But when Hillary Clinton ran for President, the right-wing media was nothing but sexist. She was actually smart, and she was mocked by Republican and Democrat men while running for President. Now, when a woman with no original opinions and who has sought porkbarrel projects for the small town she used to be the mayor of might be he next VP, Obama's being accused of being sexist if he even remotely questions her backwards policies. She also has no experience and has never been out of the United States more than one time, when she visited troops in Kuwait. She was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska at one point, but Wasilla's a small town with only 6,000 residents. She served as Governor for only two terms, and graduated from the University of Idaho. Obama worked as a community organizer, and worked to help the homeless. He had also worked as a civil rights attourney, and had served in the Illinois senate from 1997 to 2004. He was also elected to the U.S. senate in 2004 as well. He has been outside of the country many times, and months ago, had gone to visit troops in Iraq. McCain's one strong point against Obama was that Obama "Lacked experience." Now, he goes and nominates someone with even less experience for his running mate. She is a better speaker than McCain, and she is a good debater, using smiles and a soft voice while interrupting the opponent and playing the gender card if Biden will interrupt her while she's speaking. However, think about it: John McCain's 72 yeas old. If he dies, then Palin will be the 45th president. Would you want Palin as President, despite all the hype over her?

The Protest (As told by the Winnetka Greaser)

Today, at New Trier West, Rev. Meeks and nearly 2,000 protesters came over, along with a few media trucks. In the parking lot across the street from the school early in the morning, FOX News had set up TV cameras by the road, and a blond-haired woman from FOX was getting ready to report. Their truck was parked alongside my motorcycle,* and right nearby was an ABC news truck. I found out that many students, when being hounded by FOX or ABC, (CBS would come later on in the day) would walk past the reporters without saying a word. Because of a story about a girl over at the Winnetka campus who told the reporters something that they ended up changing to make her sound more like the stereotypical "Winnetkan," Many students were afraid that by talking to reporters, they were vulnerable to be smeared by the news. Some students' parents, however, kept their kids home from school because of protesters, which I didn't think was rational because the protesters were just kids their age, some younger or older, but only by a few years. Just because they were from the city, do parents have the right to envision them as dangerous gangsters? Anyway, the kids and parents protesting went into the Cornhog auditorium and into the gym in the F building to try and register, which they knew they couldn't actually do, though registration tables were set up and administrative staff were running registration booths. The registrations were meant to be symbolic; they were meant to draw the attention that not everyone could go to New Trier, though it was a well-funded school. When walking outside to get to different classes in the buildings, students would occasionally see CPS (Chicago Public School) students that were protesting; students could tell who was a protester because most of the kids and adults wore orange shirts. The New Trier kids and the CPS kids, like with the reporters, didn't talk or stare at one another, but some New Trier kids would wave to the kids protesting, and some would wave back. Later on in the day, Meeks and the protesters left the Freshman campus to have their rally. Meanwhile, at New Trier West, students were back to talking about who was dating who and what kind of iphone everyone had. However, the protest was not completely forgotten. The freshman from Northfield campus still had had a normal day in spite of everything, yet, once again, students may not yet quite understand how much of a difference a bigger fund means to a school on the south side of Chicago, or in the city itself. If the fair funding issue was taken more seriously than it is at New Trier, and if students could get an even better understanding of how important equal education is, and if New Trier did more to get most students involved, than students would be able to help other schools, and see this as a big issue, like they would healthcare, or global warming. Look at how different a school like New Trier(Left of the page) is than a school like DuSable was (Right of the page). (DuSable spent only 7,000 per student.) I'm not saying that New Trier is this blessed place, or that it should be the only one supplying other poorly funded schools. The Illinois Government is the place that should be adressing the issue, which is what Rev. Meeks intended. Students at New Trier should help the Government realize this as well.

This Tuesday, Rev. Meeks is going to, with maybe three thousand people, protest the lack of funding for Chicago public schools at New Trier West. New Trier spends $16,000 per student, whereas in Chicago public schools, only $10,000 per student is spent, and in some schools on the south side of Chicago, only $7,000 per student. Rev. Meeks is a senator, who is trying to get two bills passed; one will create equal funding for all Illinois public schools, and the other, which will most likely not get passed, which Meeks knows will not get passed, will allow any student to go to any public school. Hyde Park, on the south side of Chicago is a rich neighborhood. However, it's an economically diverse place. Most upper middle class Hyde parkers, however, would send their children to private school rather than one of the three public grade schools, which are nice schools, but have more kids in each class, and aren't nearly as advanced as any of Winnetka's three public schools. ( When I moved from Hyde Park, though I went to the private school only because my dad taught there, I was surprised to hear that dance and service classes.) Also, even in the private school, there were no anti-bullying programs, or special education for kids with special needs. There are also neighborhoods on the south side that are far worse off than Hyde Park, with schools that don't have drama classes, or plays, or many different clubs to choose from. Schools with outdated books and few teachers and very few counselors to turn to if a student was having problems. Because of few supplies and teachers, students won't be as eager to learn or to get an education. I think that Winnetka should do more to help underfunded schools, because, and I'm not trying to send the "count your blessings" message, despite the stereotypical spoiled brats that people think of when Winnetka comes to mind, there are a lot of kids at New Trier who, if they could, would march with the protesters tomorrow.