On Being the Change I Wish to See

I have been wracking my brain for weeks trying to figure out why in the world John McCain would choose Sarah Palin as his running mate.

• She’s basically ignorant of most issues, though don’t underestimate her, she’s smart.
• She’s ignorant of a great deal of American history and politics that a lot of us have come to expect most people to know.
• She has practically no experience.
• She’s clearly not ready to step up and be President should, God forbid, something happen to John McCain early in his term of office.

She is a social conservative and she is young, two things McCain had to deal with on his ticket. Some also see Palin as a maverick, something McCain hasn’t been much lately.

So why pick Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska as a running mate?

Thoughts about Palin, the VP debate last Thursday, what Palin said about wanting to emulate current VP Richard Cheney, and John McCain’s very pro-Bush voting record have been buzzing around in my head. I’ve been trying to make sense of all this and it’s been beyond me. I was out working in the yard just now, letting my thoughts flow freely, and it came to me.

Sarah Palin is from one of the states in the Union that has some of America’s biggest untapped oil reserves. I looked it up and Governor Palin has some strong connections to big oil. She is not much of an environmentalist so taking protections away that currently keep big oil from drilling in many parts of Alaska would be something she would work toward.

McCain is another George W. Bush, but to pull it off, who does he get to play the part of Dick Cheney? The governor of a big oil state.

McCain-Palin aren’t just more of the same, they are exactly the same as Bush-Cheney. McCain will continue the policies of the George W. Bush administration and groom a young, healthy version of Dick Cheney for the Presidency in the 2012 election.

Any talk of alternative energy research and development from this proposed administration, I believe, is just that, talk. There will be drilling and nothing else. The big oil companies will have the opportunity to rape the pristine areas of Alaska that have been protected. Big oil will continue to run the country at just the time in American history when we need to stop investing in oil and start working on lots of alternatives to our energy needs. Their profits will skyrocket, and middle-class America will go broke paying higher and higher gas prices.

It would be a second Halliburton administration designed to continue what Bush-Cheney started.

Now I’m really scared…

Technorati Tags: big oil, Bush-Cheney, Halliburton, John McCain, Sarah Palin

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written by joubess \\ tags: big oil, Bush-Cheney, Halliburton, John McCain, Sarah Palin

I’m a liberal Republican, an oxymoron I know. I plan to switch to the Democratic party as soon as this election cycle is over.

But even if I were a conservative Republican, I could not vote for John McCain because of his choice of running mate, Sarah Palin, the first-term governor of Alaska, a state that has a smaller population than Barack Obama’s Congressional District in Illinois.

Her abysmal lack of knowledge of foreign policy, domestic policy, the economy, landmark Supreme Court cases, American history, and the U.S. Constitution has become blatantly apparent over the last 5 weeks and is truly frightening. Palin’s interviews with Katie Couric (scroll to the bottom of the page to see all the videos) show she is clearly not ready to assume the Presidency. Every time someone asks her a question, she can’t answer it in a meaningful way. She isn’t ready for the game show “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader” let alone the Presidency.

During the VP debate on October 2 against Senator Joe Biden, she didn’t answer Gwen Ifill’s questions. Gwen Ifill was the debate moderator. Palin stuck to her talking points. She didn’t stick her foot in her mouth, which was quite a success for her. She even bluntly said she wasn’t going to answer questions the way anyone wanted her to. It scares me that someone asking for that much power won’t give straight answers about how his or her ticket plans to lead the country.

What really scares me is her desire to emulate Dick Cheney and expand on his actions if she becomes Vice-President. In the debate she spoke of the “flexibility” in the U.S. Constitution of the role of the VP in the Legislative branch as well as the Executive branch of the U.S. Federal Government.

The Vice-President has two powers according to the Constitution, and I quote:

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.
– U.S. Constitution Article 1, Section 3

The Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President.
– U.S. Constitution, 12th Amendment.

The VP is available for advice and counsel to the President and members of Congress. The VP can certainly work in unison with the President to carry out his or her policies. But the VP has no power of his or her own except as quoted above.

Joe Biden rightly said at the debate that Dick Cheney is the most dangerous Vice-President this country has ever had.

Dick Cheney hasn’t gotten away with most of his shenanigans. He’s ended up in court more than any VP in history for overstepping his Constitutional boundaries. Cheney has still managed to use his private industry connections to intimidate many inside and outside of the government, and he has gotten big government contracts for some of his private industry friends.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want another Dick Cheney as VP, especially not one who thinks the powers of the VP should be expanded further than Cheney tried to push them!

To me, John McCain showed extremely poor judgement by choosing such an inexperienced and ignorant VP running mate. Because of this horrible lack of judgement, he is showing he is not fit to be the President of the United States.

Technorati Tags: 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, Barack Obama, being the change i wish to see, Joe Biden, John McCain, Sarah Palin, VP debate 2008

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written by joubess \\ tags: 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, Barack Obama, being the change i wish to see, Joe Biden, John McCain, Sarah Palin, VP debate 2008