Is Sarah Palin the right choice to be vice president?

Everyone else around the world, including myself, has a keen interest in what is going to develop with respect to the presidential elections in the United States on November 4th. Why? Because, like it or not, the United States is a big brother to all the other nations worldwide, and if big brother farts, all of us worldwide will be downwind of it. If John McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin are elected as president and vice president respectively, the resulting odious aroma that will permeate ever square inch of our planet will in comparison, make rotten eggs smell like Chanel # 5.

Choosing a running mate for a presidential election is no different than choosing someone to be your spouse for the rest of your life. You do it like porcupines make love; very, very carefully.

This piece is going to be primarily about Sarah Palin, presidential hopeful, John McCain’s choice for vice president.

When a critic reminded Palin that she didn’t have 25 or 30 years of politics under her belt, she replied, “Thank goodness I don't. I believe that serves as kind of a disconnect from the people who you are to be serving.”

She was a member of the Wasilla, Alaska, city council from 1992 to 1996 and mayor from 1996 to 2002. She chaired the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from 2003 to 2004. She was elected governor of Alaska in November 2006 and currently holds that position. She has been in politics for the past 16 years. If she feels that being in politics 25 or more years would place her in a position where she is disconnected from the people she would be serving, then she must be disconnected from them since she has served them for 16 years.

What has she done for Alaskans while she sits as governor of that state? When running for the position of governor, she promised that she would build a bridge from Gravina Island to Ketchikan. Her promise to build that bridge was made despite her inaugural address on December 4, 2006, in which she pledged responsible spending.

The Gravina Island Bridge, also known as the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’, was a proposed bridge to replace the ferry that currently connects Ketchikan's 8,000 inhabitants to the Gravina Island's Ketchikan International Airport and the 50 residents of Gravina Island to the town of Ketchikan.

A ferry runs to Gravina Island every 30 minutes during most of the year, except during the May–September peak tourist season, when it runs every 15 minutes. It charges $5 per adult, with free same-day return, and $6 per automobile each way. Why can’t the Ketchikan inhabitants be happy with that arrangement?

According to USA Today, the bridge was to have been nearly as long as the Golden Gate Bridge and taller than the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge would cross over the Tongass Narrows, part of Alaska's Inside Passage, so the bridge was designed to be tall enough to accommodate ship traffic, including the cruise ships which frequent Alaskan waters during the summer months.

The bridge was projected to cost $398 million. Members of the Alaskan congressional delegation, particularly Representative Don Young and Senator Ted Stevens, were the bridge's biggest advocates in Congress, and helped push for federal funding. The project encountered fierce opposition outside of Alaska as a symbol of pork barrel spending. Meanwhile, Palin as governor of Alaska spent $25 million in federal funds on a Gravina Island access road to where the bridge would have gone without first ascertaining whether or not Congress would give its approval for the expenditure of money towards the building of the Gravina Island Bridge.

She originally endorsed the project while running for governor in 2006, and then later claimed to be an opponent of her own proposal only after Congress killed its funding the next year.

At a speech she gave at the 2008 Republican National Convention on September 3, 2008, she said in part with respect to the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ after learning that Congress didn’t approve of the bridge being built, “If our state wanted a bridge, we'd build it ourselves.” If that is so, then why did she ask Alaska’s Representative Don Young and Senator Ted Stevens to lobby Congress for the money?

Imagine what she would do if she was president of the United States and was running for re-election. She would ask Congress to build a bridge from San Diego to Hawaii so that people going to and from Hawaii wouldn’t have to use planes or ships as a means of transportation. Is that suggestion any more ridiculous than her proposal to build a huge bridge to an island so that the people living in Ketchikan wouldn’t have to use a ferry that runs all day?

Picture this scenario if you will. Palin becomes the president of the United States. Congress has denied her request for money to build a bridge from San Diego to Hawaii. She opens a bottle in her office that has a genie in it. The genie appears and asks, “What is your command, Madam President?” She replies, “I want you to build me a bridge from San Diego to Hawaii in my name so that the people of the United States will respect me.” The genie responds with, “Madam President. Do you have any idea just how complicated building that bridge will be? Millions of tons of concrete and steel will be needed. Thousands of pylons going thousands of feet into the ocean will also be needed. The cost will be horrendous. Can’t you give me something easier to do?” She will reply, “Then make me the most respected woman in the United States.” The genie will immediately reply, (here it comes) “Madam President. Do you by any chance have the plans of the bridge with you?”

Palin is already beginning to have a big credibility problem: 60 percent of Americans are now doubting her qualifications for office. The ABC poll also suggests that questions about Palin are reinforcing concerns about McCain's age. Almost half of voters, 48 percent, now say the senator's age is a concern to them. Maybe in his case, they think that he is too old to think properly anymore. His choice of his running mate gives credence to their collective concern. 85 percent of the poll says that Palin is not qualified to serve as President.

The question on the minds of those in that 85 percent that were polled must be asking themselves, “If she was running for president, would I vote in her favour?”

Obviously not. Has McCain figured it out yet? If 85 percent of the voters wouldn’t want Palin as president, then why would they vote for him knowing that if he dies, she would become what those voters don’t want her to be; the next president of the United States.

Suppose she was the president. Where would that leave the Americans on issues that concern them? Let’s first consider some of the issues that concern Palin.

According to an October 2006 profile in the Anchorage Daily News, Palin opposed stem cell research, physician-assisted suicide, and state health benefits for same-sex partners.

With respect to stem cell research, a poll in July of this year reported that 63 percent of Americans support stem-cell research.

With respect to physician-assisted suicide, more than two-thirds of Americans believe there are circumstances in which a patient should be allowed to die. In a poll in 2008, Physician-assisted suicide was supported by 39 percent of those polled.

Palin also said she supported Alaska's decision to amend its Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. She used her first veto as governor to block a bill that would have prohibited the state from granting health benefits to same-sex partners of public employees. Ms. Palin said she vetoed the bill because it was unconstitutional. Obviously, she wasn’t too happy with a 2005 decision that came down in the Alaska Supreme Court that dealt with that issue.

The Alaska Supreme Court ruled on October 28, 2005 that it is unconstitutional to deny benefits to the same-sex partners of public employees, a victory for gay rights advocates in one of the first states to pass a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Overturning a lower court ruling, the state high court said barring benefits for state and city employees' same-sex partners violates the Alaska Constitution's equal protection clause.

During the vice presidential debate between Palin and Biden held on October 3rd, Palin said in part;

“I would be anything but tolerant of adults in America choosing their partners, choosing relationships that they deem best for themselves. But in that tolerance also, no one would ever propose, not in a McCain-Palin administration, to do anything to prohibit, say, visitations in a hospital or contracts being signed, negotiated between parties.”

Unfortunately, her words, “….anything but tolerant….” means that she would not tolerate adults choosing their partners etc. It could have been a slip up but consider what she later said;

“….I will tell Americans straight up that I don't support defining marriage as anything but between one man and one woman.”

Clearly this must mean that she disapproves of gays living with gays and lesbians living with lesbians in a conjugal relationship of any kind. This also means that she would disapprove of gays and lesbians having custody of a child that is the child of one of them where the partnership is where one of them is of the same sex as the other partner.

However, when the moderator asked her about same sex benefits, she didn’t say anything about health benefits for same-sex partners at all. That means that she is still against health, pension and tax benefits for same-sex partners that normally are available to heterosexuals.

In a poll undertaken in May 21-25, 2008, only 38% approved of gay marriages but even that amount of those polled is a fair portion of the population of the United States who will not vote for McCain if Palin is his running mate.

The United States census in 2000 counted 601,209 same-sex unmarried partner households in the United States. That is a 314 percent increase from 1990 when the census counted only 145,130 same-sex unmarried partner households. It is conceivable that by November 4th, there can be as many as a million same-sex unmarried partner households in the United States. That means 2 million potential voters.

In 2006, it was estimated that there were as many as 15.3 million gays and lesbians in the United States. Now everyone knows that many people don’t bother to vote in elections but you can be sure that most if not all gays and lesbians will vote on November 4th if for no other reason but to make sure that Palin and her running mate don’t get elected to office because of their fear that if they are elected as vice president and president respectively, their interests will be flushed down the toilet.

As I see it, John McCain is probably going to lose a lot of votes from the millions of people who support what Palin opposes. He may lose enough votes to lose the race for the presidency to his presidential competitor, Obama.

Here is part of the text of Sarah Palin's speech to the Republican National Convention that was presented not too long ago.She said in part;

“Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities.”

That last comment is an insult to all those worthy organizations in thousands of communities in which the organizers definitely have actual responsibilities to make their organizations a success. Is this woman going to say that the people who operate many of these organizations that raise millions of dollars to help the poor, the jobless, the infirm and many others, don’t have actual responsibilities?

She also said;

“And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.” unquote

That’s not so. During the years 1974-1977 when Gerald Ford was the president, his running mate and vice president was Nelson Rockefeller who was previously a governor and he never served in office in Washington before he was chosen as Ford’s running mate. Theodore Roosevelt owed his nomination to the desire of New York state political bosses to get him out of the state's politics. He too had never served in the House of Representatives or the Senate.

And now back to Palin’s speech.

“…. we are expected to govern with integrity, good will, clear convictions, and ... a servant's heart. I came to office promising major ethics reform, to end the culture of self-dealing. And today, that ethics reform is the law.” unquote

When she was the mayor of Wasilla, a town of 5,000 citizens, Palin fired the Wasilla police chief for political reasons. Mayor Palin had stated on several occasions that the National Rifle Association encouraged her to fire Chief Stambaugh because of his stance against the concealed weapons legislation.

Palin, a first-term Alaska governor, is the focus of a legislative inquiry over her firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan a year after she, her husband and key advisers began questioning him about getting rid of a state trooper who had gone through a nasty divorce with her sister. Monegan says he was dismissed because he wouldn't fire the governor's former brother-in-law. Why was Palin's husband permitted to question a government official? He had no official status in the government.

Palin suspected commissioner (Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission) Randy Ruedrich of an ethics breach. How did she handle the alleged ethics breach? She hacked into Ruedrich’s computer, an ethical lapse in its own right, to obtain evidence of her colleague’s malfeasance instead of applying for a warrant signed by a judge to do so.

Sarah Palin, who had made a crackdown on gift-giving to state officials a centerpiece of her ethics reform agenda, has in the past, accepted gifts totaling in value, $25,367 from industry executives, municipalities and a cultural center whose board includes officials from some of the largest mining interests in the state, according to a review of state records.

It would appear that her sense of integrity has much to be desired. It is if she was standing next to a hot fire and saying that she doesn't feel the heat. A closer inspection would show that her pants are made of asbestos material.

Now, back to her speech.

“While I was at it, I got rid of a few things in the governor's office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for. That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay.”

McCain isn’t any better than Palin, his running mate. He said with respect to Palin’s statement re the selling of the jet during a campaign stop in Cedarburg, Wisconsin and I quote;

“You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was purchased by her predecessor and sold it on eBay — and made a profit.”

That’s not so. It turned out that the twin-engine Westwind II was a tough sell on the Web — and the state eventually pulled it offline and sold it through an ordinary brick-and-mortar brokerage firm, for a loss. The plane was originally bought at a price of $2.7 million and finally sold at a loss at 1.1 million.

During Palin’s first year in office, she distanced herself from the powerful old guard of the state Republican party, even calling on Senator Ted Stevens to explain to Alaskans why federal authorities were investigating him.

Since then, their relationship has warmed, and they have appeared together at several events despite the fact that Stevens went on trial on September 22nd in Washington, D.C., on charges he failed to disclose more than $250,000 in home renovations and gifts from executives at oil services contractor VECO Corp.

In an interview with CBS's Katie Couric on The Evening News Palin could not cite a Supreme Court decision she thought was wrongly decided besides Roe v. Wade. She would remember that decision because she is against abortion.

Here are a few examples she could have referred to and chose not to, either because she agreed with them or simple never knew of them in the first place: Dred Scott v Sanford 1857 which held that blacks--slaves or free--could not be or become U.S. citizens --Plessy v. Ferguson 1896 the court upheld racial segregation under the doctrine separate but equal --Korematsu v. United States 1944 upheld the internment orders for Americans of Japanese descent during World War II.

Obviously, she didn’t mention that her running mate, Senator John McCain, spoke about a decision of the Supreme Court in its previous term, in which the court overturned a Louisiana law allowing the death penalty for someone who rapes but does not kill a child. McCain said the decision was "an assault on law enforcement efforts to punish these heinous felons." He didn’t realize that if a child rapist isn’t executed for rape, then he will have less reason to kill his victim. If he on the other hand can be executed for raping a child, then he loses nothing by killing the child as a means of escaping detection. That is why the court many years earlier, made the decision that kidnappers who do not kill their victims cannot be executed solely for kidnapping.

McCain also said about the court’s last term's Boumediene decision which found that detainees held in Guantanamo Bay had a constitutional right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts, "It is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." He was in fact saying that accused persons in Guantanamo Bay should not have rights that are afforded to everyone be they citizens, visitors or prisoners as per the United States Constitution.

To paraphrase Sara Murray from the Wall Street Journal about Palin; speaking at the Palin/Bidden debate, “She will fall into a sinkhole of such incoherence that even some deep-red conservatives will abandoned their new savior.” She went on to say, “The bar has been set so low for Palin that, unless she faints or vomits on air, her team will rush to declare a victory–not just for her, but for all of Joe Six-Pack America.” I am inclined to suspect that Palin will fall into a black hole and drag John McCain into it also.

I watched the debate on TV and during the debate, I was convinced that Palin displayed an incredible ability to tap dance around questions she couldn’t or didn’t want to answer.

During the twentieth century, the focus of the vice-presidency has shifted dramatically from being mainly a legislative position to a predominately executive post. As modern-era presidents began playing an increasing role as legislative agenda setters, their vice presidents regularly attended cabinet meetings and received executive assignments. Vice presidents represented their presidents' administrations on Capitol Hill, served on the National Security Council, chaired special commissions, acted as high level representatives of the government to foreign heads of state, and assumed countless other chores — great and trivial — at the president's direction.

I don’t know if she would be the same kind of vice president that Sprio Agnew was when he served under President Nixon. That man used racial slurs on the trail, calling a photographer a “fat Jap’ and saying he didn’t need to campaign in U.S. slums because he had already seen one and they were all the same. He regularly attacked anti-war activists, the “nattering nabobs" of the media and the “effete snobs" who passed themselves off as intellectuals. Admittedly, Palin isn’t that gross. Agnew was the first vice-president to resign in a bribery and tax-evasion scandal. Considering the scandal that appears to be growing about Palin, I can't help but wonder if there is any similarity with respect to the integrity of her and Agnew.

Accordingly, I have concerns about Palin serving the people of the United States as vice president. But then, I also have concerns about McCain being elected as the president. If the McCain/Palin duo do get elected to the offices they are running for, I have a terrible feeling that the United States government will break wind to such a degree that its stench will encircle the earth, not once but many times and the rest of us will have to remain submerged below the surface of the sea until the malodorous gas this duo blows in our direction dissipates.

ADDENDUM # 1

On October 11, 2008, the news media published a news item with respect to Palin in which their reports were that the chief investigator of the Alaska legislative panel that conducted hearings with respect to Palin firing Alaska's public safety commissioner because he would not authorize the firing of a state trooper who was involved in a bitter divorce with Palin's sister, concluded that Palin abused her power as governor in trying to get the trooper fired and firing the public safety commissioner. John McCain, her co-running mate issued his own report saying that Palin did no wrong. I hardly think he would agree with the official inquiry's decision.