First things first. Sarah Palin is a puppet. Former sports newsreader, she makes Ronnie Reagan's actor skills look solid. At least old Ronnie had to his memorise lines. So Palin's speech at the Republican National Convention was just pitch perfect for the audience. Sarah Palin is good at reading with feeling.
At least with Dick Cheney, we knew where he stood. One foot in the grave, the other in oil, with his gun shooting off in his friends' faces. The president-elect for eight years, Cheney fiddled with the government while George Bush slummed out at Crawford, Texas ( W broke the record for the most days off work (879) back in March. The previous holder was Ronald Reagan). And if anyone was going to shuffle off this mortal coil sooner, it would have been Dick before Bush.
McCain will not have the same relationship with Sarah Palin. Sure, she will be in charge of government while McCain is on holiday or having chemotherapy. She's a fan of big oil, and polar bears are fair game. But one could only wish that Halliburton were in the same league as Palin's backers.
John McCain is old. Really old. The oldest presidential candidate in US history. Yes, his Mum is still alive, but I'm unconvinced that a gibbering unpredictable dementia case is a quality of life to induce confidence. These things are hereditary after all. Thank Dagg Margaret Thatcher is no longer in power.
McCain is three years shy of the Average American Male lifespan. Going on the law of averages, Sarah Palin could be President of the Free World in 2012. Not scared yet? Perhaps it is that clean sweep through DC you think she's going to do. Yet her record demonstrates that her solution to cronyism is nepotism.
And what a family. Straight out of a My Name is Earl spin-off; Alaska, the Deep South of the Far North. Unlike Earl, which stars Scientology groupies, this sitcom has much more devoted following. The Assemblies of God is an evangelical group which is founded on the Sixteen Fundamental Truths. Loving thy neighbour is not one of them. The last two "truths" are particularly worrying. They involve the Second Coming of Jesus and the Final Judgement.
This is the big problem with fundamentalists. You could take all the books from all the libraries from all of history and put them on a scale with a bible or a Koran in the balance, and a fundy will still say that their bible contains the one and only truth. In most cases, it's not even the full book, just selected verses.
Sarah Palin reckons she has a destined part to play in all this. She's too young and inexperienced to be VP nominee, after all. God must therefore favour her. Whether it's banning books, having a Downs Syndrome baby or a knocked-up teenager, Palin will bear these trifling burdens. Her self-proclaimed destiny is to hasten the apocalypse, and she has the scripture to back it up. That's the confidence you saw during her speech. She is God's Honeybunny.
I'm not having a go at Palin just because she's Republican. Although there's not a Republican president in living memory whom I've actually liked, I've had the good manners to tolerate them. Even McCain is a relatively nice bloke. It's not because Palin is a Republican woman. You only have to read of Cindy McCain's lonely and painful poor little rich girl life to have some sympathy there (I only hope that Laura Bush has sustained herself with some Ibogaine-like prescription all these years, and doesn't have to steal her meds like Cindy did).
So I'm glad that NotPC, usually one of the louder barkers for the Republican party, is posting his doubts over Palin. Good on him drawing attention to Palin's spiritual guidance and "God's will be done" mantra. If Obama's preacher was considered extreme, Pastor Ed Kalnins of the Wassila Assembly of God is just off the planet:
Pastor Kalnins has also preached that critics of President Bush will be banished to hell; questioned whether people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would be accepted to heaven; charged that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and war in Iraq were part of a war "contending for your faith;" and said that Jesus "operated from that position of war mode."This is serious. This is Third Temple in Jerusalem-grade serious. This is World War serious. It's so serious, I'm just glad Hunter S Thompson isn't around to witness this. Guns are for fun, not fundamentalist crusades.
Sarah Palin is on a mission from God, and we should all be fearful. The current administration has already introduced the US equivalent of Saddam's Republican National Guard in the form of Christian mercenary outfit Blackwater. This Praetorian Guard, separate from the US military, provides the fulcrum for Palin's plans.
These plans are not tempered with experience. Palin only got her passport last year, and has travelled precisely once outside the US. Most of her travel up til then had been domestic, a narrow migratory circuit between Alaska and DC for federal funding grants. If travel broadens the mind, Palin's travels could be written on one side of a Eucharist wafer.
Palin's acceptance speech dripped hatred and xenophobia unseen in US history. Palin favours the oil pipepline as it reduces the reliance on "dangerous foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart." Vicious codewords litter the speech; caliber, faith, catastrophic, bulldog and lipstick. A servant's heart. This is undiluted fear and loathing.
These plans are not tempered with knowledge. Indeed, this is seen as a very big selling point against the Obama ticket, that elitist bookworm. General ignorance of history, politics, and evolution has never been in such high demand. Why be well read when all the answers are in just one book?
So I'm crossing my fingers that Obama is made president. Or at least, if McCain is president, he suffers no Gerald Ford type stunts. That could very well prove fatal for millions.
