I laughed when I heard Sarah Palin was selected by John McCain to be his running mate. I was driving on Interstate 10 in Los Angeles listening to the radio when the news came in. That John McCain had picked someone as incredibly inexperienced to step in and fill his shoes seemed like political suicide.
But as I have pondered this more, my bemusement has slowly turned into something more akin to bewilderment and ultimately fear. McCain, with a very legitimate shot at claiming the highest office, will be one of the oldest presidents in the history of the county, and has a history of potentially fatal cancer. In fact, this physician predicts McCain he has a 44% chance of dying of Melanoma, a 38% chance of dying of natural causes, and a 27% chance of a cardiac problem such as heart attack in the next eight years. Combining these figures, it's reasonable to estimate there is over a 50% chance of McCain dying in the next 8 years. And judging from past history, just being president at any age isn't exactly safe due to the evil lunatics out there scheming to do harm to any president. So it is actually quite likely that McCain could die or become incapacitated in office, leaving Palin to lead this country.
So what's the big deal with Palin? Well, just a couple years ago, she was a self proclaimed "hockey mom" with absolutely no relevant experience whatsoever. Since then, she's been mayor of a very, very ,very, very, very tiny little town which happens to be the crystal meth capital of Alaska . Again, nearly irrelevant experience. About 1.5 year ago she took over as governor of Alaska. OK, now we're finally talking. But 1.5 years of experience qualifies her to be the President of the United States? This is a stunningly irresponsible move of McCain to put her in that position. But let's look at the woman herself.
She's wrong on the issues:
She believes abortions should be illegal even in cases of incest and rape.
She believes in abstinence only sex education in schools. This drives me crazy about the religious right. They want to decrease the number of abortions, but the single best way to do that is through an aggressive and comprehensive sex education program. By preaching abstinence only, they are in fact ENSURING MORE ABORTIONS. Abortions aside, ask Sarah Palin how effective she thinks it is. Her own 17 year old unmarried daughter is pregnant. If the governor herself can't effectively teach abstinence only education, how can this be an effective national policy? Here is a much more sensible abortion policy .
She believes creationism should be taught in public schools .The first amendment to the constitution specifically calls for the separation of church and state. The public schools are instruments of the state. This is plainly unconstitutional. And who is to say that Sarah's religion is the RIGHT religion? This country was largely founded on the premise of the free exercise of religion, whichever religion you practiced. Should we also teach re-incarnation (part of the Hindu belief system)?
Sarah Palin obtained her first passport in 2007. I can tell you from personal experience that you really have NO CLUE about international relations unless you've done a lot of first hand on-the-ground traveling to understand different cultures and different perspectives. Any 22 year old backpacker traveling around the world in early 2003 could have told you invading Iraq was going to destroy our moral position in the world and strengthen those organizations recruiting terrorists against us.
Sarah Palin does not believe in man-made global warming , even though there is no serious scientist left on the planet that disputes it.
So let me get this straight. We have a person with almost no experience whatsoever with ideas dramatically out of the mainstream who will be the likely next president of the United States?
What do you think? I'm terrified. Tell me I'm wrong. Please.
