Tuesday, September 2, 2008

PALIN AS V.P.?

Thanks to those of you who sent me numerous stats on Palin and Alaska, including the following:


Her “executive” experience consists of less than two years as governor of a state which ranks 47th in population, among the 50 states (about the same amount of people as Columbus, Ohio).

Before that, as McCain proudly pointed out in an interview on NBC the other night, her “executive” experience was as the mayor of Wasilia, an Alaskan town that has a smaller population than my Jersey suburban neighborhood, and before that her membership on that same tiny village’s council, and before that president of the local, even tinier PTA!

She has no foreign policy experience, but as Cindy McCain pointed out in an interview—as other Republicans have, making it clear this was a proposed Republican talking point—Alaska is our closest state to Russia. (Which implies that the governor of Florida has foreign policy experience because Florida is the closest state to Cuba, and of course Maine and every Northern state bordering on Canada, which means they are even closer and therefore their governors even more experienced in foreign policy, and not even mentioning states that border on Mexico, look how well that has served former governor Junior, etc.)

She believes that abortion should never be a choice, even in cases of rape and incest. And she believes that the only “sex education” teenagers should receive in school is classes promoting abstinence (even though statistics show that teenage pregnancy is much higher among those who have only been exposed to abstinence education against those who had actual “sex education”).

She supported Pat Buchanan in the 2000 presidential race.

She believes in “creationism”—an unscientific theory based on one interpretation of religious faith—and that it should be taught in schools as an alternative to evolution, a scientific reality without which there would be no modern medicine, among other benefits of modern science, most of which is based on the proven reality of evolution.

She doesn’t believe in climate change, or the impact of humans on climate.

She has pushed to have polar bears taken off the endangered species list so that big oil can drill in protected Alaskan areas (she is actually right of Junior’s administration on this and sued it for keeping polar bears on the list). She pushed to have a ban on hunting bears and wolves from helicopters (she spent 400,000 dollars of state money on media to support a proposition to remove the ban), and for allowing bears to be hunted in areas where tourists come to watch them and they have become human habituated (a tourist industry that provides much of Alaska’s income, after big oil).

She has pushed for all limits to be taken off big oil so that they can drill anywhere in the USA or off our coasts.

She is under investigation for “abuse of power” after she fired the head of Alaska’s Department of Public Safety because he wouldn’t fire her ex-brother-in-law, who she was angry at over the custody battle he waged with her sister.

She supports Pebble Mine, one of the possibly most environmentally damaging open pit mining projects in the world, which will destroy, among other living things, one of the richest salmon runs left in the world.

There’s plenty more, but that’s a good start.

PS: Do you think if an African-American candidate had an underage daughter who got pregnant out of wedlock that the rightwing Christian “family” organizations would be bellowing how proud they are of the teenager’s parents? Just asking.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Going with my gut, but aside from pandering to the far right on every issue, McCain may have tried, in his choice of Palin, to add an element of sexiness to a glacially unsexy ticket. Call me sexist, but even Rush L. called her a babe. This choice, in McCain's mind, is perhaps to counter what every woman I've talked to who's met Obama says is his electrifying sexiness. Kennedy had that and used it--as discussed brilliantly in Mailer's 1959 convention piece for Esquire, "Superman Comes to the Supermart." (In The Presidential Papers.) If sex-without-substance is being used by the Republicans as a marketing tool here, it should be discussed.

JIm said...

Keep it up boys and girls. This could be the most entertaing VP debate ever. Wouldn't be funny if, Sarah takes Biden apart on his consistently wrong positions (Reagen and the cold war, The Surge, US energy exploration as the way to curtail bad guys like:Putin, Ahmadineajad, all the other middle east folks who have oil and hate us, Chavez).

Anonymous said...

Will she survive?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2008/sep/02/uselections2008.republicans2008?gusrc=rss&feed=commentisfree

Harryn Studios said...

yeah, great - at this rate mccain would be having paris hilton secretary of state since her family has connections in nearly all foreign countries - though i doubt she'd do much worse than condy ...

Anonymous said...

Go to wonkette.com and click open link with Juno photo. The Wasilla City Hall is in a mall next to a KFC and a check cashing place.

Anonymous said...

Right on Mike! The number one reason McCain chose such an obviously poor VP:
"She has pushed for all limits to be taken off big oil so that they can drill anywhere in the USA or off our coasts." I believe that was her sole qualification for the GOP, and that McCain discounted everything else that made her a rotten choice for this one reason.

And your PS says it well (I asked the same question today); it highlights the hypocrisy of the [fundamentalist] Right, to embrace a white, "out of wedlock" child (although I haven't heard any approving, embracing sentiment from anyone other than her parents (or their press people)) and condemn any non-white, teenage pregnancy.

I'd also consider my teenage daughter's unplanned pregnancy to be, in the least, a family crisis (but not a tragedy) and might consider taking a leave of absence from my job to deal with things. I certainly wouldn't consider taking on any new, and in this case enormously new and critically important, responsibilities at the same time.

Another Lally said...

I would think that Palin's views are shaped by her first hand knowledge of Alaska and its resources and climate.

On climate. she has seen erupting and smoldering volcanoes spewing what we would consider pollution into the air by the ton. She has marveled at the constant melting of the glaciers (something going on since the end of the last ice age). She understands the impact that mining and development would have on the environment and salmon in particular (being involved in commercial fishing).

Her views on gays seem to be far left of the GOP. She is against calling a union of a same sex couple 'marriage' yet is for full rights for the partnership. Giulliani was rejected for a similar view.

Her views seem to be shaped in a world that is more real than most Americans' artificial city life styles.

Considering that her daughter is of the 'age of consent' in Alaska, her being pregnant is really a non-issue. How can we chant for women's rights yet decry a woman for exercising those rights? The age of consent in Alaska is 16. One may be surprised that in a state like Connecticut that the age is a lower 15 and in some others 14. This is counter to the views of other states but we are supposed to be a tolerant people of each other's differring opinions on such things.

There is irony concerning the Evolution and Creation issues. Physicists in all their pondering and experimentation only have theories of the origin of the universe. Wouldn't it be a hoot if some Force, Power or Being actually said, "Let there be light." to cause the Big Bang. There is still no reasonable explanation for the rise of Cro-magnon Man over the Neandethal. We have only theories or hypothesis based on an understanding of available information. Our theories may be as strange as some religions' time table of the universe. Science and Religion have one shortcoming in common, they believe that Man has some super import5ant place in the scheme of existence. For all we know, the dinosaurs may have had the same belief.

I'd like to get to know her better before I believe that smears with investigations paid for by political oponents have validity.

But these are just my views.

Another Lally said...

Just a thought.

How badly can the media and smear mongers berate the Palins for this pregnancy without casting the same aspertions on Obama's mother and grand parents?