Chicks Against Palin

I’ve been saying, since McCain announced Palin as his V.P. pick, that it was an irresponsible decision on McCain’s part that showed that he cares more about winning this election than he does about the country.  Read here for an editorial that explains why.  If you care about your country, you do not pick someone who is utterly unqualified to be your Vice President, particularly when you have a lengthy and recent history of serious health problems that could result in you having to undergo surgery and leave you V.P. pick temporarily in charge of the country’s nuclear arsenal.  Or, worse yet, get sick or die, leaving your V.P. pick in charge of the country for the remainder of your term.

If you care about the country, you pick someone to be your running mate that is smart, qualified, and ready to help you tackle the significant challenges facing the country like war, economic crisis, rising health care costs, social security, immigration, and a ballooning national budget.  Sarah Palin is not ready to assist McCain with anything other than cheerleading on his campaign and delivering peppy speeches read from a teleprompter.

Palin is not ready, and as the McCain campaign is forced to let her out more and more, it’s starting to show.  Without a teleprompter or a former Bush aid supplying her lines, Palin is an utter disaster.  In the interview with Katie Couric – that if you haven’t seen yet, you have to-  Palin was a disaster.  She reminded me of the fembots in Austin Powers who, when overridden with power started to malfunction, repeating the same nonsensical phrase over and over. 

Couric, while somehow keeping a straight face, asked Palin what relevance Alaska’s proximity to Russia had to Palin’s alleged “foreign policy credentials.”  Palin responded:

“It’s very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America. Where—where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to—to our state.”

WTF?  Her argument, that she has foreign policy experience because she lives in a state that’s next to a foreign country is absurd.  By her argument, all Alaskans have sufficient foreign policy experience to be the next leader of the free world.  Her answer is also completely nonsensical – when Putin “rears his head”?  What in god’s name is she talking about?

In her answer on the bailout, it was so clear that she was simply stringing together every soundbite ont the economy that the former Bush aides had stuffed her with during her crash course.  Couric asked her why it wasn’t better to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families directly instead of bailing out Wall Street.  Palin gave this completely nonsensical response:

“That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.”

If this doesn’t show the dangers of last-minute cramming, I don’t know what does.  There’s a reason people take college seriously – unlike Palin who haphazardly bounced around 5 colleges in 5 years, ending up with a journalism degree (a degree many journalists view as a joke) – and then go to graduate school for several more years to learn about foreign relations, public policy, law, health care, and economics.  These are complicated subjects and it takes time and commitment to become educated on them.  A crash course of soundbites might get your through a few cocktail parties, but it’s not going to keep the cracks in one’s knowledge from showing when asked serious questions by the media or when invited to debate these issues.

Until this point, Palin has demonstrated she’s a talented parrot, who can nail the lines fed her by Bush’s former aides and the McCain campaign.  Event the most talented parrot or the best programmed fembot is going to crack, eventually, under the pressure of trying to act like something that she is not.  In this case, despite Palin’s best efforts to read her lines the way the McCain camp wants her to, she can only fool herself and those watching for so long.  Sooner or later – say, this Thursday at the Vice Presidential debates – the facade’s going to crack, the fembot’s going to malfunction spectacularly, and we will all see exactly how unqualified Palin is.

For the sake of the country, I’d much rather that the Palinbot self-combust this Thursday than after she gets farther along in this farce on the nation.

Check out this great blog by Momocrats against McCani and Palin.  You can find it here.  There is a ton of information about the candidates, video clips, and great posts.