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.