First Thoughts on Sarah Palin

I caught a bit of Bill Maher this morning and it got me to thinking about the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate.

Hey, I think it’s cool that a woman could hold the second-highest political office in this country. What scares, saddens and angers me is that it might be this woman. How did a woman who respects womanhood less than your local street pimp get in this position?

I’ll tell you my take on it - John McCain needed someone who would distract everyone from his laughable policies just long enough that he could get elected. She is going to give the media plenty to talk about, and keep them busy and out of McCain’s business until November. By then, Americans will be in such an uproar over the Republicans mudslinging and insinuations (none of which will ever be proven) that they will vote the way they’ve voted the last 2 elections. And we’ll be fucked for four more years.

Consider this...had Barack Obama chosen Hillary Clinton to be his running mate, the Palin door would have been shut forever. Check that - it would likely never have been opened. McCain’s choice would be some 50ish white guy with experience in DC. And then we’d be getting hit with quote after quote about the lack of “real” experience for both Obama and Clinton. Instead, Obama goes with an experienced white male by choosing Joe Biden - I can just imagine Karl Rove foaming at the mouth at the prospect of enticing all the “Hillary women” to the dark side. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Rove is only giving “informal” advice to the McCain election committee - “right”.

My thoughts are that Sarah Palin is a right wing reactionary anti-intellectual. She endorses and promotes censoring books. I can only imagine her saying that “Harry Potter” books aren’t allowed in her house because they promote the belief in witchcraft and lead children to Satanism. She is a creationist, which is fine by me - until her anti-science beliefs lead her to force her opinions on me and mine. She doesn’t believe that global warming has been worsened by man and our behaviours...and that’s when she even admits global warming is affecting us.

The fact that she’s a woman is of no importance to me. What matters is she wants to take all of us back 200 years to a time when we couldn’t make choices for ourselves, to a time when it wasn’t even imagined that we could make a choice if given one.

I hope that every person in America really thinks about what she and John McCain believe in, rather than being sucked in by the groups pandering to get their vote. Mavericks for change, my ass - we are looking at more of the same. I think our country will have a hard enough time recovering from the Bush years without adding an extra four of McCain and Palin.