Jack Meyers wrote:I'm not really sure why you're listing all of the different colleges she attended other than to make her seem flighty and unstable. She did her undergrad between the ages of 18 and 23. I don't think anyone cares that she decided to travel a bit as a young woman; some people would see it as a plus. I moved to Alaska as an infant and spent the first ten years of my life there, and I'm pretty sure that if I'd lived my entire childhood there, I'd have wanted to travel by the time I was an adult, too. As entertaining as it is to be kept from getting off your school bus because there's a moose at your stop, Alaska is pretty much boring as hell.
I am not out to make her
seem flighty and unstable. I am presenting the evidence that would allow you to draw that conclusion. You may use the evidence as you wish. I had neither the time, nor the inclination, to go through all of the educational bios of past presidents and vice-presidents to see whether any of them switched schools once a year too. If you choose to look at that as "traveling a bit as a young woman," then that is how you choose to see it. Point taken. She was not a trust-fund brat with a ticket to Europe in her pocket, so she switched schools constantly to get what travel she could. It is one possibility, I suppose. It is certainly not the only possibility, nor, I think, the most likely.
Jack Meyers wrote:Also, it's incorrect to say that she has zero military experience. She's been
the head of the Alaska National Guard since she became governor. I understand that's thin military experience, but there's a difference between thin and zero. Zero is what Barack Obama and Joe Biden have put together.
Here are some quotes from the article you cited:
"But foreign deployments of Guard units and the operation of national defense assets like the Ft. Greely missile interceptors are not the responsibility of state governors. Those functions come under the regular U.S. military chain of command."
"During Palin's 21 months in office, there has been one declared disaster: widespread flooding in June and July this year. Palin quickly signed a disaster declaration, officials said. The Guard's role was limited to providing two water tanks and 30,000 sandbags to local authorities."
Wow. Had Alaskan troops load up supplies and equipment and deliver them.
Jack Meyers wrote:But this one-heartbeat-away Sarah-Palin-lacks-experience excuse is paper thin. Besides, no matter what happens this election, Nancy Pelosi looks set to remain one plane crash away from the Presidency. That seems to scare the hell out of everyone left and right, and I don't see anyone trying to fix that.
So what are the odds of that plane crash compared to the odds that someone with McCain's health will die? My guess is that it is
far less likely that Air Force One will crash.
Perhaps Pelosi's constituents will try to fix our problem with her, especially after that boneheaded speech.
According to your judgment, this is an excuse. I judge things differently. Yes, we can talk for hours about Palin being the governor for a little over 1.5 years, and how she was the commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard (her experience being that she commanded the Guard to deliver things). I can counter with Obama's experience in the Senate, which is undervalued specifically because people have bought into to the "argument" that simply being an executive of anything better qualifies you to be president than someone who has served a decade in legislatures.
We can go the rounds on this forever. I am quickly running out of the desire to do so. In what I think is a bad situation, with no real good options, a decision still needs to be made. I have made my decision. Based on what I have seen of John McCain in his campaign, I do not want him as the chief executive of the United States of America. His performance this past week alone is evidence enough for me that his suitability for that responsibility is highly questionable. Over the weekend he claimed that he had played a key role in saving the country from financial disaster. When the vote came, his success evaporated. His solution to this problem: blame Obama.
I stick by the fact that his
conscious decision to pick Palin as his running mate was ill advised. Even today I am finding out that I, Kathleen Parker, and Chuck Hagel are not the lone loonies out there that others around here would have everyone believe. From the New York Times:
A month after Gov. Sarah Palin joined Senator John McCain’s ticket to a burst of excitement and anticipation among Republicans, she heads into a critical debate facing challenges from conservatives about her credentials, signs that her popularity is slipping and evidence that Republicans are worried about how much help she will be for Mr. McCain in November.
“I think she has pretty thoroughly — and probably irretrievably — proven that she is not up to the job of being president of the United States,” David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush who is now a conservative columnist, said in an interview. “If she doesn’t perform well, then people see it.
“And this is a moment of real high anxiety, a little bit like 9/11, when people look to Washington for comfort and leadership and want to know that people in charge know what they are doing.”
But Mike Murphy, who used to work as a senior adviser to Mr. McCain, said Ms. Palin’s performance in the campaign had underlined his argument that she was a bad choice for Mr. McCain. Mr. Murphy said he was skeptical that she could turn it around in one debate.
“She has the opportunity to undo some of the damage with a very strong debate performance,” he said. “That’s plausible. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Let's take Barack Obama out of this for a second. To come to the conclusion that Palin was a bad choice for VP is reasonable and fair. I know that there are many people in America who disdain education and experience, and who sincerely believe that with the right philosophy, the right Spirit, and the right morality, all other things will simply fall into place. I don't fail to understand them or where they are coming from. I simply disagree. People may believe that they have already run this experiment in the post-WWII era, but they really haven't. I am not prepared to vote in support of it now.
“I was hooked from the start,” Snoop Dogg said. “We talked about the purpose of life, played Mousetrap, and ate brownies. The kids thought it was off the hook, for real.”
