Posts Made By: Jim E. Gleason

Up to 84 of them now and counting, 8O

1.Yes, she is Governor of Alaska. No, she’s not the Lieutenant Governor. No, she’s not currently Mayor of Wasilla. Yes, she was Mayor of Wasilla, some years ago.

2.Yes, as Governor of Alaska, she’s the Commander in Chief of the Alaska National Guard. And yes, her professional military subordinate is quite impressed with her in that role.

3.And yes, the New York Times says the job of Governor of Alaska is one of the harder, and more powerful, jobs in state government.

4.Yes, there are people in Alaska who think she’s too liberal.

5.Yes, she did giggle when someone called Lyda Green a “bitch.” Yes, Lyda Green is a cancer survivor. Yes, it was the same Lyda Green who tried to force a scheduling conflict that would make Palin miss her son’s high school graduation. Yes, this would also be the Lyda Green who complained no one had asked her about Palin during the vetting process.

6.Yes, she did push for and approve the Wasilla Sports Center. Yes, it did cost a lot of money. (People keep saying $20 million, that article says $14.5 million, but then they also added a $1.2 million dollar food service/kitchen piece. This year, after Palin was out of office as Mayor.) Yes, the city went into debt to do it (how did you buy your house, bunkie?) and raised the city sales tax from 2 percent to 2.5 percent to pay for it. Yes, the city is paying it off early. Yes, there is an ongoing dispute about title (following a struggle with the Nature Conservancy and another buyer. And yes, at the time it was built, Wasilla had a Federal judge’s decision that they had title to the land.

7.Yes, she did want authority to have wolves culled from the air, because they were taking too many moose and caribou. Which people hunt for food in the back country in Alaska. No, she isn’t shooting them herself. I mean, not that she couldn’t, but I’m sure she doesn’t have time. (Thanks to bluemerlin in the comments.)

8.No, the Downs baby (Trig) isn’t Bristol’s kid, and no, the kid wasn’t born with Downs because (a) Palin flew on an airplane (b) went home to have the baby after an amniotic leak (c) because he was the result of incest between Todd Palin and Bristol.

9.No, Track (the kid who is leaving for Iraq) didn’t join the NG because he was a drug addict. He may have joined the NG because he was tired of people saying his Mom was getting him into the good hockey leagues. (Yes, that one was original reporting. I’ve got sources in Wasilla.)

10.No, Willow and Piper aren’t named for witches on TV. Among other things, Willow was born before Buffy came on TV, and Piper was born before Charmed.

11.Yes, Trig’s name may be misspelled. Isn’t it usually “Tryg” as in “Trygve”? In any case, I doubt he’s named for the Secretary General of the UN (1948-1952), either. But at least that was before he was born, unlike the others.(Thanks to Chris, via his blog

12.Yes, it appears that she has a Big Dipper tattooed on her ankle. She lost a bet.

Please click here for the other 72, 8O

http://explorations.chasrmartin.com/2008/09/06/palin-rumors/

The debunker will be interviewed about his work to get the Facts out on different cable networks this month.

Similar to what some have been saying here,

an excerpt,

"...Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama should do two things about GOP vice presidential pick Sarah Palin. The first is repeat: "I´m running against John McCain and I´m running for president not Vice President." He should keep repeating that as many times as it takes to get him to back off the distracting, pointless, and self-absorbing amount of time he´s spent knocking her. The strength of his appeal and campaign has always been that he´s taken the political and ethical high ground. He´s stuck to talking about the issues of tax cuts, the Iraq War, the economic meltdown, health care, the housing foreclosure scandal. He´s resisted the mighty temptation to take personal slaps at McCain and even Bush. At no point has he stooped to low brow non-issue character assassination.

That changed when he shouted to a crowd in Flint, Michigan, "I mean, you can't just make stuff up. You can't just re-create yourself. You can't just reinvent yourself." He bit hard on the Palin bait and that´s a bad thing. A candidate who spends inordinate time and energy trying to tar their opponent runs the same risk as an attorney or a prosecutor in a courtroom. They avoid at all costs being seen as too overly aggressive with a witness. It´s called witness badgering and that´s even more dangerous when the witness is a middle or working class mother. Bullying her can stir juror sympathy, even anger toward the attorney or the prosecutor, and it could cost them their case.

Palin is more than a GOP rival. To many she´s the epitome of the struggling American mother. Millions of working class mothers will identify with her no matter what their views on abortion, creationism, or her experience or lack thereof. In other words, the bogeyman Obama creates in Palin could be someone else´s bigger than life hero. One that´s not easily deconstructed later. That´s already happened. Packs of Hillary female supporters have expressed outrage at the Palin attacks. And polls show that more white women are shifting to McCain..."

Click here for the rest,

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/73693

The Alaska National Guard’s 49th Missile Defense Battalion is on duty ALL THE TIME!

an excerpt,

"...What Do You Know - Governing Alaska Does… Involve foreign policy. Not that Obama seems to know this, though. He claimed in an interview with George Stephanopoulos that being the governor of Alaska, with Russia as a next door neighbor, does NOT qualify as foreign relations experience.

Now, apparently going to Pakistan on a school break during college counts, or living in Indonesia for 4 years while a child counts, but not living next door to a major world power.

Alert No Quarter reader, BMC, presented information yesterday about the Alaska National Guard, and the responsibilities of the Governor of Alaska. I’ll bottom line it for you - since Alaska IS next to Russia (Obama does know that much - he said he saw it on a map - I kid you not, that’s what he said), the Alaska National Guard’s 49th Missile Defense Battalion is on duty ALL THE TIME:

Eleven ground-based interceptor missiles buried in underground silos here represent a key part of a multi-layered defense system designed to protect the United States from a ballistic missile attack. These interceptors, and two more at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., would destroy incoming missiles at the “midcourse phase,” outside the earth’s atmosphere.

In the event of an attack, members of the Alaska Army National Guard’s 49th Missile Defense Battalion based here would use sophisticated surveillance and radar systems to track the missile through its initial boost phase, explained Maj. Joe Miley, the unit’s operations officer. If the missile reached the mid course phase, the Alaska Guardsmen would await the order to engage it.

On order, they would fire an interceptor at the incoming missile. The force of the collision –the equivalent of two refrigerators slamming into each other at 15,000 mph — would destroy the target before it reentered the atmosphere, Miley said.

Miley noted that the National Guard is perfectly suited to perform such an important mission.

Wowie zowie. So, there is a battalion on full alert all the time, keeping its eye on Russia. But Governor Palin has no foreign policy experience. Yeah, okay, Obama. Just because YOU don’t doesn’t mean others don’t, either. Just sayin’.

“The National Guard has traditionally done homeland defense,” he said, citing National Guard history dating back 370 years to the Minutemen in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. “And this is the epitome of homeland defense.”

Here at what Miley called the “strategic sweet spot” for missile defense, almost 200 Alaska Guardsmen who came from around the country to serve in the 49th Missile Defense Battalion take that calling pretty seriously.

The unit is a cross-section of America, at one time representing 46 states and territories, and all its members applied for three-year, Active Guard and Reserve assignments with the program, Miley explained.

Getting accepted into the program is tough, but passing the extensive training required is even tougher, Miley said. Applicants go through nine to 14 weeks of air defense training at Fort Bliss, Texas; a nine-week Ground Missile Defense operator course in Colorado Springs, Colo., then four more weeks of unit training in Colorado Springs before taking a certification test.

“We hire the best and put them through a rigorous training program,” Miley said. To pass the GMD operator course, for example, students have to score 90 percent or better.

“You have to be an A student or you can’t do GMD,” Miley said. “The way we conduct our training, you basically have to get everything right to progress to the next level, so there’s no room for error. We have very high standards.”

That’s a good thing, he said, in light of the responsibility they shoulder every day. Whether they’re providing security at the 800-acre missile defense complex here or manning fire direction center in what Miley called “the tank turret of missile defense,” they’re on the front lines of homeland defense.

There is more to this interesting article, and if you can, take a look at it. For anyone to claim that Governor Palin, as Commander in Chief of the Alaska National Guard is merely serving as a figurehead is just plain inaccurate. I can sure see why Obama, who has not been an executive of ANYTHING would try to frame it that way, but - SURPRISE - he’s incorrect. (By the way, there is an email going around that speaks even more to Palin’s day-to-day oversight regarding the Alaska National Guard, but I have not been able to obtain independent verification of it beyond blogs, so I am not including it here.)..."

Please click here for the rest of the article and comments/responses.

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/09/09/what-do-you-know-governing-alaska-does/

http://www.hillaryclintonforum.net/discussion/showthread.php?t=28860

Even Biden is questioning the, 'One`s', judgment now...I`ll give him marks for honesty at least...Biden, today in Nashua, NH, in response to an inaudible question from an audience member:

“Make no mistake about it. Hillary Clinton is as qualified as or more qualified than I am” to be vice president, Biden said. “And quite frankly, she may have been a better pick than me.”

For more,

http://www.hillaryclintonforum.net/discussion/showthread.php?t=29072

http://www.hillaryclintonforum.net/discussion/showthread.php?t=28946

It`s a Dem. yr...and he`s apparently tanking?

An excerpt,

"...Yesterday, for the first time ever, Rasmussen Markets data gave McCain a better than 50% chance of winning the White House in November. These figures are updated on a 24/7 basis by market participants and currently give Obama a 47.7% chance of victory. Prior to this past weekend, expectations for a Democratic victory had generally been in the 60% range..."

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

And Hillary too...possibly to replace Biden,

http://nativeamericansagainstobama.wordpress.com/

Something tells me things are about to get real interesting fast! 8O

Charles Krauthammer is an extremely insightful political analyst. He's always worth reading.
And this is the most important article to read about Palin's interview, because Krauthammer actually coined the term "Bush Doctrine".

An Excerpt,

"...At times visibly nervous . . . Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of 'anticipatory self-defense.' " -- New York Times, Sept. 12

Informed her? Rubbish.

The New York Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong.

There is no single meaning of the Bush Doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration -- and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different.

He asked Palin, "Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?"

She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, "In what respect, Charlie?"

Sensing his "gotcha" moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, Gibson grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine "is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense."

Wrong.

I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush Doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, "The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism," I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush Doctrine.

Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to the joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush declared: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." This "with us or against us" policy regarding terror -- first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan -- became the essence of the Bush Doctrine.

Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq war was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of preemptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine.

It's not. It's the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy's pledge in his inaugural address that the United States "shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson's 14 points.

If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume -- unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise -- that he was speaking about the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration.

Not the Gibson doctrine of preemption..."

Please click here for the rest,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091202457.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

From Newsbusters...this includes all the missing Palin comments...Interesting: the bolded parts of Sarah Palin's comments are the part that ABC removed with their "edits":

"A transcript of the unedited interview of Sarah Palin by Charles Gibson clearly shows that ABC News edited out crucial portions of the interview that showed Palin as knowledgeable or presented her answers out of context. The sections edited out by ABC News are in bold. The first edit shows Palin responding about meeting with foreign leaders but this was actually in response to a question Gibson asked several questions earlier:

GIBSON: Have you ever met a foreign head of state?

PALIN: There in the state of Alaska, our international trade activities bring in many leaders of other countries.

GIBSON: And all governors deal with trade delegations.

PALIN: Right.

GIBSON: Who act at the behest of their governments.

PALIN: Right, right.

GIBSON: I’m talking about somebody who’s a head of state, who can negotiate for that country. Ever met one?

PALIN: I have not and I think if you go back in history and if you ask that question of many vice presidents, they may have the same answer that I just gave you. But, Charlie, again, we’ve got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time. It is for no more politics as usual and somebody’s big, fat resume maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment, where, yes, they’ve had opportunities to meet heads of state ... these last couple of weeks … it has been overwhelming to me that confirmation of the message that Americans are getting sick and tired of that self-dealing and kind of that closed door, good old boy network that has been the Washington elite.

Next we see that Palin was not nearly as hostile towards Russia as was presented in the edited interview:

GIBSON: Let me ask you about some specific national security situations.

PALIN: Sure.

GIBSON: Let’s start, because we are near Russia, let’s start with Russia and Georgia.

The administration has said we’ve got to maintain the territorial integrity of Georgia. Do you believe the United States should try to restore Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia?

PALIN: First off, we’re going to continue good relations with Saakashvili there. I was able to speak with him the other day and giving him my commitment, as John McCain’s running mate, that we will be committed to Georgia. And we’ve got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable and we have to keep…

GIBSON: You believe unprovoked.

PALIN: I do believe unprovoked and we have got to keep our eyes on Russia, under the leadership there. I think it was unfortunate. That manifestation that we saw with that invasion of Georgia shows us some steps backwards that Russia has recently taken away from the race toward a more democratic nation with democratic ideals. That’s why we have to keep an eye on Russia.

And, Charlie, you’re in Alaska. We have that very narrow maritime border between the United States, and the 49th state, Alaska, and Russia. They are our next door neighbors.We need to have a good relationship with them. They’re very, very important to us and they are our next door neighbor.

GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?

PALIN: They’re our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.

GIBSON: What insight does that give you into what they’re doing in Georgia?

PALIN: Well, I’m giving you that perspective of how small our world is and how important it is that we work with our allies to keep good relation with all of these countries, especially Russia. We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it’s in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

We also see from Palin's following remark, which was also edited out, that she is far from some sort of latter day Cold Warrior which the edited interview made her seem to be:


PALIN: We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. We’ve learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union.

We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it’s in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

Palin's extended remarks about defending our NATO allies were edited out to make it seem that she was ready to go to war with Russia.

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn’t we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help.

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to — especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn’t have to lead to war and it doesn’t have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that’s a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

That answer presented Palin as a bit too knowledgeable for the purposes of ABC News and was, of course, edited out. Palin's answers about a nuclear Iran were carefully edited to the point where she was even edited out in mid-sentence to make it seem that Palin favored unilateral action against that country:

GIBSON: Let me turn to Iran. Do you consider a nuclear Iran to be an existential threat to Israel?

PALIN: I believe that under the leadership of Ahmadinejad, nuclear weapons in the hands of his government are extremely dangerous to everyone on this globe, yes.

GIBSON: So what should we do about a nuclear Iran? John McCain said the only thing worse than a war with Iran would be a nuclear Iran. John Abizaid said we may have to live with a nuclear Iran. Who’s right?

PALIN: No, no. I agree with John McCain that nuclear weapons in the hands of those who would seek to destroy our allies, in this case, we’re talking about Israel, we’re talking about Ahmadinejad’s comment about Israel being the “stinking corpse, should be wiped off the face of the earth,” that’s atrocious. That’s unacceptable.

GIBSON: So what do you do about a nuclear Iran?

PALIN: We have got to make sure that these weapons of mass destruction, that nuclear weapons are not given to those hands of Ahmadinejad, not that he would use them, but that he would allow terrorists to be able to use them. So we have got to put the pressure on Iran and we have got to count on our allies to help us, diplomatic pressure.

GIBSON: But, Governor, we’ve threatened greater sanctions against Iran for a long time. It hasn’t done any good. It hasn’t stemmed their nuclear program.

PALIN: We need to pursue those and we need to implement those. We cannot back off. We cannot just concede that, oh, gee, maybe they’re going to have nuclear weapons, what can we do about it. No way, not Americans. We do not have to stand for that.

Laughably, a remark by Gibson that indicated he agreed with Palin was edited out:

PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln’s words when he said — first, he suggested never presume to know what God’s will is, and I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words.

But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that’s a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side.

That’s what that comment was all about, Charlie. And I do believe, though, that this war against extreme Islamic terrorists is the right thing. It’s an unfortunate thing, because war is hell and I hate war, and, Charlie, today is the day that I send my first born, my son, my teenage son overseas with his Stryker brigade, 4,000 other wonderful American men and women, to fight for our country, for democracy, for our freedoms.

Charlie, those are freedoms that too many of us just take for granted. I hate war and I want to see war ended. We end war when we see victory, and we do see victory in sight in Iraq.

GIBSON: I take your point about Lincoln’s words, but you went on and said, “There is a plan and it is God’s plan.”"

Gibson took her point about Lincoln's words but we wouldn't know that by watching the interview since it was left on the cutting room floor. I urge everybody to see just how the unedited version of the first interview compared to what we saw on television by checking out the full transcript. It is a fascinating look into media manipulation via skillful editing.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gla...alin-interview

And here is a link to the full transcript from Thursday. It`s from just one of the numerous sites this is being posted at all over the internet, etc., etc.:

http://marklevinshow.com/gibson-interview/

The article says it all...the author uses sarcasm and irony to make many of his points.

An Excerpt,

"Historians looking back on these tumultuous times will no doubt argue over the precise date on which the Age of Palin began. Her speech at the Republican National Convention on September 3 certainly catapulted her to national renown. But there is a good case to be made for her introductory appearance in Dayton, Ohio, five days before.

It's all there: You have the same poise and panache Palin exhibited at the convention. You have the self-assurance of a champion high-school athlete who went on to bigger and better things (unlike in the gloomy Democratic, Bruce Springsteen version of life, in which it's all downhill after your Glory Days). There's the ability to deliver a barb with a smile. And above all, that day inaugurated arguably the most incoherent and blubbering partisan response to a candidate in the history of American politics--against which the charms of the candidate stood out even more clearly.

Let's get this straight: Your party has just nominated for president a fellow who has been elected exactly once to the United States Senate, in an uncompetitive race, following a garden-variety stint in a state legislature. And your response to the GOP nominee's choice for vice president--someone who has been elected once as governor following a stint as a small town mayor--is to decry the lack of experience? Nobody ever said Barack Obama was unqualified for the No. 2 spot on the ticket.

Had Hillary Clinton won the nomination and selected Obama as her running mate--which, being a savvy politician, she would certainly have done, in order to fire up his 18 million primary supporters--Obama would have been perfectly positioned. Either he would be preparing himself as vice president for his run for the Oval Office eight years hence. Or he would be experienced and tested in a national campaign that he would never be held responsible for losing, with a fundraising base beyond the imagination of Croesus. Instead, it's McCain-Palin with the wind at their backs, and Palin who is being prepared as the outstanding future prospect for her party.

Now, you might think it hypocritical to criticize the inexperience of a vice presidential nominee who has similar experience to your presidential nominee, but that's just a failure of the imagination. Indeed, hypocrisy was the strange charge Democrats decided to make against McCain and Palin: Having run against Obama all summer for his lack of experience and accomplishment, how dare John McCain pick as his running mate someone with (ahem) experience comparable to that of the Democratic candidate for president McCain had been criticizing?

Well, maybe because it is not a sign of the strength of a candidate at the top of a ticket to need the experience of Joe Biden (or Dick Cheney) in order to allay concerns that he's not quite up to some aspects of the job. And, contrariwise, it is a sign of strength at the top when the nominee can look to the future and make a priority of party-building. Does anybody think that if Obama loses, he will have left his party in a stronger position by advancing the prospects of Joe Biden? Fortunately for Democrats, at least they've got Hillary in the wings.

But these weren't the only hypocrisies in the air. Remember reading the discussions of Vice President Al Gore's parenting skills in all the papers the day after his teenage son got busted for dope at high school? No? That would be because Gore called around to all the papers (including the Washington Times, where I was editorial page editor at the time) and asked us not to publish it, kids being kids and being owed some privacy. The newspapers didn't. That was then: Given a preposterous Internet rumor that Sarah Palin was never pregnant with her four-month-old baby but faked it to cover up for her daughter, Bristol was fair game. This was a judgment shared among Democrats and, coincidentally, the media (the same ones who were also all over the John Edwards love-child story, remember?).

And so Democrats started pointing at the stunning "hypocrisy" of McCain putting Palin on the ticket in spite of her pregnant daughter. Shouldn't all the GOP talk about family values and abstinence education have disqualified Palin? Because, after all, Bristol is getting married and keeping the baby, and if that isn't a sure disqualification for someone's mother for the vice presidency, what is?

Plus, Sarah Palin, we've been informed endlessly, is a hypocrite with a capital H. In all the obvious ways, such as being opposed to women's rights while still having a career. Democrats have been at the forefront of cheering women on to break supposed glass ceilings, but only the right kind of women, which you can be pretty sure a Republican woman isn't.

Then there's all the pro-life business: It just took one columnist in Salon to expose the hypocrisy there: Palin had her baby tested for Down syndrome, and then--had the baby! If she were really pro-life, there wouldn't have been any reason to have the test. As Rahul K. Parikh, M.D., explained:

We could ask, given that Palin had no doubts about seeing her pregnancy through, why she bothered to take a genetic test. Why not, as you might expect a woman in her position and with her outspoken beliefs to do, decline any testing or counseling? Of course, it seems very reasonable to want to know about the health of your baby and to have time to prepare (emotionally and otherwise) for a baby that may have a genetic disorder. But that doesn't negate the fact that by having a blood test, Palin was given a choice about what to do. Her supporters say that Trig signals that she practices what she preaches. Her decision to make her own choice but not grant it to others is a sign of her hypocrisy.

So let's see if the pro-lifers can get this straight for a change: If you are going to have the baby anyway, you are not entitled to information about its health (even though the desire for such information is "very reasonable"), because some people who are not pro-life use such information as a basis for deciding whether to terminate their pregnancies. Got it?

But the most stunning hypocrisy of all, from the point of view of most Democrats and, coincidentally, the media again, was that McCain had promised a vice presidential nominee qualified for the job and then undertook such a haphazard, last-minute, incompetent vetting process that he found out all the things that Democrats and the media are so exercised about. And he went ahead with Sarah Palin anyway!

And just look at the bitter fruit McCain has reaped for all his "hypocrisies": Palin has helped propel him ahead of Obama in national polls for the first time. Fifty-two percent of respondents in a Pew survey think she is ready to be president now. If people could vote only for vice president, they favor her over Biden 53-44 in a CNN poll. And the unknown governor of two weeks before is now the most popular Republican politician in the country."


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...n4449255.shtml