Why Sarah Palin Must NOT Become Vice President

First order of business: Confiscate that passport. :)

I think it's pretty clear from the Charlie Gibson interview why she isn't ready for prime time.

After watching the interview Palin did with Charlie Gibson I was absolutely horrified at how much she didn't know. She's right. She is a hockey mom. I've no doubt she is good at a lot of things. But as far as knowing her politics, the state of world affairs at present and having good common sense necessary to effect our country, no, it is clear she does not have that at all. This is utterably frightening.

Worse, if McCain were to die, who is going to be telling Sarah Palin what to do?

I thought her interview really gave us some insight into her inability to lead.

She is all the more dangerous because she is so pretty and has such a lovely smile as she expounds on her beliefs.

Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist, best known for "The Vagina Monologues", wrote the following about Sarah Palin:

DRILL, DRILL, DRILL

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares.

I dreamt last night that she
was a member of a club where they rode
snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned
and starved polar bears around their necks.

I have a particular thing for Polar Bears.

Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness
or the fact that they live in the arctic
or that I have never seen one in person
or touched one.

Maybe it is the fact that they live
so comfortably on ice.

Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women.

I am a Feminist and have spent my life
trying to build community,
help empower women
and stop violence against them.

It is hard to write about Sarah Palin.
This is why the Sarah Palin choice
was all the more insidious and cynical.

The people who made this choice
count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in
and practices is antithetical to Feminism
which for me is part of one story --
connected to saving the earth,
ending racism, empowering women,
giving young girls options, opening our minds,
deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one
of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime,
and should this country choose those candidates
the fall-out may be so great,
the destruction so vast in so many areas
that America may never recover.

But what is equally disturbing is the impact
that duo would have on the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, this is not a joke.

In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept,
the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution.

I take this as a metaphor.
In her world and the world of Fundamentalists
nothing changes or gets better or evolves.

She does not believe in global warming.
The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying
our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers,
are all part of God's plan.

She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered
species list.
The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and
plundered.
The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and
plundered.
The oil is here to be taken and plundered.
Iraq is here to be taken and plundered.
As she said herself of the Iraqi war,
"It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion.

She does not believe women who are raped
and incested and ripped open against their will
should have a right to determine whether they have their
rapist's baby or not.
She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth
control.
I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence
and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking.
From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the
library,
has a tendency to dispense with people who think
independently.
She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and
difference.

This is a woman who could and might very well
be the next president of the United States.

She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the
earth.

Sarah believes in guns.
She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle.
She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip.
She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God.
That is of course her right, her private right.

But when God and Guns come together in the public sector,
when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of
women are
denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church
and
state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried
to be.

I write to my sisters.

I write because I believe we hold this election in our
hands.

This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just
of the U.S., but of the planet.

It will determine whether we create policies to save the
earth or make it forever
uninhabitable for humans.

It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and
diplomacy in the world
or whether we escalate violence through invasion,
undermining and attack.

It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining,
coal burning
or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from
dependency and destruction.

It will determine if money gets spent on education and
healthcare
or whether we build more and more methods of killing.

It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant
society
or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go
and do everything in your power
to get Obama elected,
then consider the chant that filled the hall
after Palin spoke at the RNC,
"Drill Drill Drill."

I think of teeth when I think of drills.

I think of rape.

I think of destruction.

I think of domination.

I think of military exercises
that force mindless repetition,
emptying the brain of analysis,
doubt, ambiguity or dissent.

I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling?

More holes in the ozone,
in the floor of the sea,
more holes in our thinking,
in the trust between nations and peoples,
more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call
life?

Eve Ensler

September 5, 2008

Very powerful, Libramoon, thank you for posting her words.

Carla - indeed. The list of reasons seems to just keep growing, and they're all important. Thank you.

Carla, I am afraid that Palin's fans are not going to be dissauded by this. I live in an area that "wildly ecstactic" is not too mild a description of how they feel about this woman. It is scary, and I am scared!

Your views are warped, George.

"Worse, if McCain were to die, who is going to be telling Sarah Palin what to do?"
Why, Satan masquerading as Jehova of course.

Libramoon, thanks for sharing this. I read it and thought it was very perceptive.

It's becoming a cult, Mugg. And of course the great brainwasher Fox News is working to indoctrinate the followers. God help us!

Did anyone use the link and watch the video?

1) She is opposed to abortion even in cases of rape and incest (even if victims are children)

GOOD! WE ARE NOT GOD, SHOULDN'T BE PLAYING GOD AND LET GOD BE GOD! What gives us the right to choose who lives or dies?

2) She offered a bounty of $150 for each right front leg of freshly killed wolves

Have you ever lived in Alaska? Don't you realize how over populated the wolves have been? Don't prejudge until you live there and have had to deal with the problems of their state.

3) She is presently under investigation in Alaska for abuse of power

An attack from Obama supporters. I am sure she will be exonerated.

4) She strongly supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Which is a mostly barren land and no one lives there, not even a lizard.

5) She promotes aerial hunting of wolves and bears even though Alaskans voted twice to ban the practice (VIDEO)

I think it is done because not enough people will actually HUNT to help feed themselves or to keep populations under control. If they didn't how many people would have been victims of attacks? How many children would it take to be harmed before they have to do something like this?

6) She supports the Alaskan Independence Party which seeks independence from the United States

Well, if the federal government gets corrupt, takes too much power away from the states, then yes, all of us should be considering supporting something like that. Texas is only a state by treaty. Treaties can be broken and Texas would easily become separate from the United States in the blink of an eye.

7) She is a champion for big oil and her campaign slogan has become "Drill, baby, drill!"

Sorry, but that wasn't anything she started. I watched her speech and she was humored by the first chanting of that phrase. She stated, "What are you saying? Drill, baby drill?" And then chuckled.

8) She believes creationism should be taught in public schools

Actually she believes that the children should have the right to question evolution by also exploring creationism. And why not? She didn't try to mandate that creationism be required but brought up so that children can have more than one view. And if she did, what's so wrong with that? Afterall, evolution is a theory and all theories should be proven or disproven. I was never given the chance to debate this theory when I was in school and because I was taught it was a theory, I didn't believe in it. And it sure would have been nice to have another point of view to discuss.

9) She believes man-made global warming is a farce

I also believe that MAN MADE global warming is a farce. Where have you been? There has been more than many scientists that have defunct that belief by trying to educate people that our 1 degree rise in temperature has been caused by the SUN and not man. It is the global warming alarmists that have been fighting to keep the information from coming out. They don't want to look stupid and there is a hidden agenda in it that they are trying so very hard to keep from being exposed. Man-made global warming is a false religion and Al Gore is the "priest".

10) She is opposed to listing the polar bear as an endangered species because it might limit oil exploitation

Maybe it is because the polar bear isn't in danger of being endangered? The polar bears or any other species, will not be hurt by oil exploration and extraction. If you actually looked at ANWR, you would see it is unpopulated and only briefly visited for a small period of time during the warmer months by animals. Open your eyes.

11) While mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire the city librarian because the librarian refused to censor books

She did not, this is a lie. You like believing lies as long as it is telling you what you want to hear. She never did try to censor books.

12) She used $400,000 of state money to fund a propaganda campaign in support of aerial hunting

If people were not allowed to hunt, even aerial hunting, and there weren't any hunting seasons, then the government would be forced to kill them with poisons. Or the animals would become overpopulated and they would end up starving because there isn't enough food supply. They would also start attacking people, look at California with their lion and bear problems lately. Which is more humane, instant death with hunting or a slow agonizing death by poison or starvation?


13) As mayor of Wasilla, she made rape victims pay for their own forensic evidence kits

So? The hospitals charge victims in other states and if there is an arrest and conviction, victims make a medical claim against the criminal and the criminal actually ends up paying for any medical costs. I think victims could do that in Alaska by submitting a claim to the courts.


14) She obtained her first passport just last year (2007)

So? I have never had a passport and I am in same age range as her.

I too thought you were giving us reasons not to vote for her. I am even in more support of her thanks to your article.

Add this reason to your list

Governor Palin's Reading List

by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
September 15, 2008
Huffington Post

Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies."

It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list.

Thanks, PD.

And as far as Palin being exonerated...we'll see. McCain has his high-priced attorneys working on it. They'll probably try to pay a few people off. But the truth will come out.

And the passport, Steph....come on, you're not running for VP. And the fact that she didn't even know that she needed one--well that is pure ignorance.

Polar bears are endangered, Steph. That is a fact.

And as far as abortions for rape and incest victims. Well, until God makes an appearance and says that women should be punished for being raped and must bear the child of that crime, well abortion should be the woman's perogative.

By the way, this list comes from a group in Alaska that is trying to get the truth out about Palin. I didn't make it up.

SP doesn't care about what she can do for this country, only what this country can do for her.

Might I add additional proof of her poor judgment?

How Sarah Palin’s “joke” about bulldogs and hockey mom’s get so much media coverage as an example of her political abilities without anyone mentioning that she’s proudly announcing that she engages in one of the worst types of parenting; namely becoming overly aggressive and competitive in sports league of children. This type of behavior shows lack of judgment, poor emotional control, and inability to view things in proportion.

We should remember that in 2000 Thomas Junta beat Michael Costin to death at a hockey practice in front of the 12-year-old sons of both men in Reading, Massachusetts.

For the harm done by overly aggressive parents at kids’ sporting events read the article here:
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/story/2001/06/02/parents010602.html or any of the many others like it.

Pardon me if I'm really stupid.
Republicans stand for family values. They enshrine the stay at home mom.
How can they go gaga for a woman with a 3 mo. old Downs baby who is NOT getting the early physical therapy and other therapies specialists say these children need? Who's going to get such therapy for the child? Her dad may well be tied up with the other four children. He may also be busy planning a wedding and supporting his teenage daughter through the birth of her child.
Republicans and Sarah seem attached to the literal word of the Bible. I guess her response to the billions of people not so enlightened will be interesting. Literalist readers of the Bible are famously unread. As my daughter says to those folk, "Fine, which creation story do you believe.?" We've still to find one who knows there are two accounts in Genisis
It's all too clear they have not read the Bible, not even the first chapter.
The point about the passport has nothing to do with the book. It has to do with general knowlege of other people and places.
As for the rape kit, go get 'em Sarah! Just because a woman's raped she shouldn't be on the public's tit. We reserve the milk of kindness for the really, really rich guys who need a bail out. (Wall St. you know)
Her nomination is a cynical, cheap Republican move.
Republicans harp on deregulation and cry for help when the results are a possible world wide depression.
There's a lot more I'd like to say, but I've got to go cook supper.
Yours
Nancy

Great post Carla! Can you imagine Palin as President? She's just as corrupt as the rest of them.

Worse than corrupt. Check out her connections to the huge pseudo-christian cult of DOMINIONISM.

Carla I agree with all you said. I wanted to add a few more but lost my train of thought if I remember I will come back and post them.

Add me to your chorus of "Good jobs". I saw a comment that this will not convince her fans. Her fans will not be deciding this election. The people deciding this election are those who are having a new-found appreciation for how disastrous it can be to oppose all forms of government regulation.

Both McCain and Palen have been struggling lately with sounding competent, or more likely they are under instructions to keep all statements vague because the issues are not on their side right now. No, I don't mean the "issues" as defined by Sarah Palin fans; did I mention they will not be deciding this election?