Sarah Palin

09/01/08 | by dan

| Categories: culture/news

Since John McCain announced last week that his running mate would be Sarah Palin, the obscure first-term governor of Alaska, we have learned a few more interesting facts about her. None of them have made her look like a good choice.

Palin is presented as a reformer of the corrupt political system in Alaska. There is some truth to this, but that may be overshadowed by her ties with recently indicted Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. Palin served as the director of the 527 group that raised money to support Stevens. McCain is on record as saying that 527s are disgraceful and illegal. Though in her debut speech Palin criticized the "bridge to nowhere" that Ted Stevens tried to have built in Alaska, she previously supported it. In this video, which the campaign would like to disappear, Ted Stevens (and his vest) endorses Palin during her 2006 gubernatorial campaign.

Palin is in favor of more domestic drilling and seems uninterested in reducing our dependence on oil. In fact, she said "I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can't drill our way out of our problem." Her husband works for an oil company and she has publicly supported drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which McCain has opposed. Palin's oil policy will not bring down prices, but it will enrich the oil companies. We have seen the results of electing champions for big oil to the highest offices in the government.

Palin is currently under investigation for allegedly putting pressure on the public safety commissioner to fire a state trooper who happened to be her sister's ex-husband. When the commissioner didn't comply, he was fired. This investigation will continue to unfold over these last two months of the campaign.

Palin supports the teaching of creationism in public school classrooms. Several court cases have shown that creationism is religion and not science and therefore has no place in our public schools.

I agree with Barack Obama when he says that the recently disclosed pregnancy of Palin's 17-year-old daughter should be off-limits to political attack. However, it serves as a poignant reminder that abstinence-only sex education, which Palin emphatically supports, does not work.

Palin was asked if she was offended by the words "under God" in our Pledge of Allegiance. Her answer shows a startling ignorance of history: "Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance." The pledge wasn't written until 1892 and "under God" wasn't added until 1954, so all of the founding fathers were long dead before the pledge was written and could never have recited it.

Religious radicals like James Dobson may be thrilled with the selection of Sarah Palin for Vice President, but I think that her inexperience and her misguided opinions make her a terrible choice.

4 comments

Well written Danny.
From way down here in Aus, I get the feeling that this ‘running mate’ selection says more about McCain’s knee jerk driven lack of good judgment than it does about Palin.
Was it a chase for the votes of those angry Hillary chicks?
If this is ‘maverick’ stuff then I wonder what else he comes up with before election day.

Off topic but related…
Zeldman just linked to a new poll tracking site that is informative and looks good.
http://www.polltrack.com/
Ceers
John

John [Visitor] • http://wow-factor.com• 09/02/08 @ 15:39

Good entry.

Palin was a Hail Mary in a way. Bold move, but after the uniting, and very excellent Dem convention, McCain needed to do something.

A couple of things, though.

First off, there’s no doubt that McCain vetted her. There’s no doubt that the first thing he wanted to know about was the Highway Trooper Scandal, and Bristol’s pregnancy. McCain decided to go forward anyway. If he’s smart, he knows something we don’t. If he’s not smart, we’ll know pretty quick.

As for Stevens, he’s done something for everyone in Washington over the last 40 years, so that’s not surprising. He is poison…you gotta be careful around him.

As for Under God in the Pledge, she was referring to various speeches by John Adams and George Washington that used the phrase Under God (which were used in 1954 as support to add it to the Pledge.)

As for sex ed….There are three kinds of Sex Ed

1. Abstinence Only (30% of schools)
2. Abstinence Plus (50%)
3. Abstinence not the most important thing (20%)

Unfortunately for those wishing to use Bristol’s pregnancy for to argue against pure abstinence only education, it doesn’t work. In fact, it backfires. The education at Bristol’s high school is somewhere in between #2 and #3….it’s definitely not #1.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1622610

As for experience, the Republican talking points have been that Palin has more experience than Obama. The Democratic talking points have been Obama has more experience than Palin.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, this is lose-lose for them. Either way, it demonstrates that Obama is very inexperienced against McCain, who is is actual opponent. I’m actually surprised that they keep going with the argument. In fact, the entire conversation that is occurring right now, debating the Dem. Presidential candidate vs. the Repubs VP Candidate is a winner for the GOP.

So here’s where we are, will there be more things that come out, or are we done? If we’re done, it shouldn’t be too big. If we’re not done, then it could get problematic.

I do agree that it could be a huge Geraldine-esque disaster.

We’ll definitely know in 6 days, after the RNC convention

greg [Visitor]• 09/02/08 @ 16:09