Saturday, September 13, 2008

Not One Little Bit

We've now had 2 full weeks to get to know Sarah Palin, the person that will be a 72 year old of not great health heart beat away from the Presidency. So what have we learned over the past two weeks?

Sarah billed the state almost $17,000 in per diem charges while having dinner at home. Not the least bit illegal, but also of very questionable ethics.

Sarah's husband was a member of the Alaskan Independence party which advocate secession from the United States. Think this isn't a big deal? How would the right react if it were Michelle Obama or Jill Biden.

Sarah Palin used her influence as a Governor to put pressure on the Public Safety Commisioner to fire her brother in law. While her brother in law may have been involved in questionable activities, Sarah's pressure and ultimate firing of the Commisioner denied him his right of innocence until proven guilty. She was advised by her ethics adviser to back off only to continue the pressure.

Shortly after being elected Mayor of the stiving metropolis of 5000 people of Wasilla, she was nearly recalled for unjustly firing the Police Chief for questioning the value of providing weekly updates when he was already providing daily updates.

Those are the work oriented questionable ethics stuff. While some of the other stuff out there is disputeable (book banning, son's drug problems, affairs, etc) none of them are proven so should be discounted unless there is a little more evidence. But 4 fairly legitimate ethics questions in a short tenure in public service is disturbing. It would be a little easier to dismiss this questionable stuff if she had a record to stand on.

What we've heard for positives about her when her selection was announced have mostly turned out to be false. She isn't a reformer against earmarks (which is a ridiculous issue anyway), she didn't sell the plane on eBay for profit (she lost $600k), and really there isn't much else for accomplishments in her year and a half as a Governor.

The only thing she can hang her hat on is her Christian conservativism. If that is what you stand for then by all means you should vote for that ticket. If it isn't then what we have seen so far should scare the ever living shit out of you from voting for McCain. He is old. He has had melanoma 4 times. His body was subjected to torture for 2 years. And she is the second in command.

I don't get the enthusiasm to her, no one little bit.

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