I am soooo... ANGRY About Sarah Palin!

This is a political rant. For those of you who are not into reading my unashamedly liberal political diatribes, and for those readers who live outside the boundaries of the United States, and really don't care, please feel free to skip this one.

John McCain, presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, celebrated his birthday on Friday with the nomination of Sarah Palin as his running mate. It was completely unexpected, and caught a lot of people off guard. Media moguls scrambled to figure out even something as basic as how to pronounce her name.

Like many others, I was surprised and curious at first, but by Friday evening, I was working myself up to a full-blown fury. How dare McCain hand us this appalling and awful choice for the one person who will spend the next four years just "one heartbeat away from the Oval Office?" Further, how insulting is it that he apparently believes that this woman is simply interchangeable with Hillary Clinton for those who would have voted for her, should she have gained the nomination of the Democratic party?

She tried to make that case, directly out of the chute, with her introductory speech. Here she is, in case you missed it, comparing herself to the woman who worked her heart out, and made the first creditable run for the nomination by any woman ever.
Hillary has worked and served and learned for years in public service, and I can't imagine that there is anyone, woman or man, who was ever a Hillary supporter, who could see this gal as a Hillary substitute. Are you kidding me?

Hillary is pro-woman, and this one is surely NOT that. Anti-abortion, radically conservative, against gay rights and gay marriage. She will push for oil drilling in the ANWR, and the Republicans will make the case that she "KNOWS" the pros and cons of that proposition, although I don't see any credentials in her resume that ought to offer any of us any reassurance that she understands the potential environmental impacts of drilling there. Sarah Palin is not, in any sense, anything like Hillary Clinton. Naming her is simply a calculated move to pull in a few votes from disappointed, would-be Clinton voters. McCain obviously believes that Hillary's supporters are so stupid that they would simply transfer their precious vote from one woman to another -- without a moment's hesitation or any question in their mind about whether it is "enough" that she is female. Oh please! I understand disappointment, and even anger, but the folks that worked so hard to see Hillary Clinton become president are smarter than that -- way smarter than John McCain. They will not be used so cavalierly, and they will not be duped! It may be that McCain subscribes to the OLD theory that one woman is just as good as another -- that we all are the same if you turn us upside down, that any pair of X-chromosomes will do, but we know better and we recognize his chauvinism for exactly what it is.

Of course, in naming a running mate with no national or foreign policy experience, McCain belies the argument he's been making about how important it is to have someone with experience in the office of the president. Clearly, John doesn't practice what he preaches. This one has no viable experience. None.

Oh I know that the Sunday morning talking heads gave the Republican operatives pretty free run to try to make the case that Ms. Palin has been governor of Alaska, and "commander in chief" of the Alaska national guard. Really? And what does that mean exactly? Don't you wonder about what that might actually entail? I did, and so I went and did some basic research. Here's what I found:

Palin has been governor of Alaska for not quite two years.
The area of Alaska is 663,267 SQ MI.
The Alaska national guard is comprised of 1,850 soldiers.
That is one soldier per 358.5 square miles.
The population of the state of Alaska is appoximately equal to that of the city of Raleigh, North Carolina. In 2006, the US Census Bureau listed Alaska's population as 670,053 while the total US population was 299,398,484. So, McCain's pick for vice president has less than two years governing a state with just over 2% of the population of the country she could end up leading. But, then, there is that term as mayor of the "city" of Wasilla. The numbers are fuzzy when it comes to knowing what the population of Wasilla might be. It seems most media types are settling for an approximation -- less than 10,000. Here's what I found with just a cursory Google search: In 2000, Census numbers revealed a population of 5,469. The bureau's 2007 population estimate, had the town at 9,780 residents. The difference between the two figures is huge, approximately 79% growth, but there is no disputing it's a small town, approximately one twentieth the size of Barack Obama's Illinois state senate district.

So. Experience is minimal to non-existent. She is a radical, right-wing, fundamentalist Christian crazy, who is determined to make abortion illegal, and set back the drive for equal treatment for people whose gender identity and lifestyle don't match up to her vision of "right." She is a self-declared "hockey mom," and the mother to five children, one of whom is off to try and get himself killed in Bush's little war (and they are awfully proud), and the little one is, as we've all been told, a child with Down's Syndrome. They are all lovely children. Still, I can't imagine that any of that qualifies this person to be vice president or president. She wouldn't be the first person to manage a household, and those are great skills, but not the sort of thing that earns anyone much stroke in the high-powered political arena of national and international politics.

I am furious with John McCain. I am insulted. I suppose there'll be some who won't feel the same way. I think that is sad. Maybe it is time to bring back those wild and wacky protests that blossomed out of the Reagan years: the indefatigable antics of Ladies Against Women. They were fond of street chants like this one:
MOMMIES, MOMMIES, DON'T BE COMMIES; STAY AT HOME AND FOLD PAJAMIES... WHAT DO WE WANT? NOTHING! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW! ... INTO THE KITCHENS AND OUT OF THE STREETS!

Honestly! Bad to even worse. I just can't stand it!

swan