If they go after her like they went after Hillary Clinton, Obama risks alienating women all over again. If they don’t go after her like they went after Hillary, he risks alienating Hillary supporters, who will see this as a sign of disrespect for Hillary. “
VOILA!
Wise choice!
From someone on the PUMA site:
Sarah Heath Palin (born February 11, 1964) is the current Governor of Alaska, and a member of the Republican Party. She is the youngest and first female governor of Alaska. Brought to statewide attention because of her whistleblowing on ethical violations by state Republican Party leaders,[1] she won election in 2006 by first defeating the incumbent governor in the Republican primary, then a former Democratic Alaskan governor in the general election. On August 29, the Associated Press reported that “speculation [has] moved to [Palin as a] darkhorse” pick for the vice president running mate slot by presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.[2] The CNBC news service is now reporting that Palin will in fact be the GOP vice-presidential nominee.[3]
She is reported to be a possible choice for the Republican Party’s nomination as Vice President of the United States in the 2008 election. Formal announcement of the presumptive nominee will be made in Dayton, Ohio on August 29, 2008, by Presidential candidate John McCain.
Palin was born as Sarah Louise Heath in Sandpoint, Idaho, the daughter of Charles and Sally (Sheeran) Heath.[4] Her family moved to Alaska when she was an infant.[5] Charles Heath was a popular science teacher and coached track.[5] The Heaths were avid outdoors enthusiasts; Sarah and her father would sometimes wake at 3 a.m. to hunt moose before school, and the family would regularly run 5k and 10k races.[5]
Palin was the point guard and captain for the Wasilla High School Warriors, in Wasilla, Alaska, when they won the Alaska small-school basketball championship in 1982; she earned the nickname “Sarah Barracuda” because of her intense play.[5] She played the championship game despite a stress fracture in her ankle, hitting a critical free throw in the last seconds.[5] Palin, who was also the head of the school Fellowship of Christian Athletes, would lead the team in prayer before games.[5]
In 1984, Palin was second-place in the Miss Alaska beauty pageant after winning the Miss Wasilla contest earlier that year, winning a scholarship to help pay her way through college.[5] In the Wasilla pageant, she played the flute and also won Miss Congeniality.
Details of Palin’s personal life have contributed to her political image. She hunts, eats moose burgers, ice fishes, rides snowmobiles, and owns a float plane.[6][7] Palin holds a lifetime membership with the National Rifle Association. She admits that she used marijuana when it was legal in Alaska, but says that she did not like it.[8]
Palin holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Idaho where she also minored in politics. She briefly worked as a sports reporter for local Anchorage television stations while also working as a commercial fisherman with her husband, Todd, her high school sweetheart.[5] One summer when she was working on Todd’s fishing boat, the boat collided with a tender while she was holding onto the railing; Palin broke several fingers.[5] Outside the fishing season, Todd works for BP at an oil field on the North Slope[9] and is a champion snowmobiler, winning the 2000-mile “Iron Dog” race four times.[5] The two eloped shortly after Palin graduated college; when they learned they needed witnesses for the civil ceremony, they recruited two residents from the old-age home down the street.[5] Todd is a Native Yup’ik Eskimo.[5] The Palin family lives in Wasilla, about 40 miles (64 km) north of Anchorage.[10]
On September 11, 2007, the Palins’ son Track joined the Army. Eighteen years old at the time, he is the eldest of Palin’s five children.[10] Track now serves in an infantry brigade and will be deployed to Iraq in September. She also has three daughters: Bristol, 17, Willow, 13, and Piper, 7.[11] On April 18, 2008, Palin gave birth to her second son, Trig Paxson Van Palin, who has Down syndrome.[12] She returned to the office three days after giving birth.[13] Palin refused to let the results of prenatal genetic testing change her decision to have the baby. “I’m looking at him right now, and I see perfection,” Palin said. “Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?”[13]
Palin served two terms on the Wasilla City Council from 1992 to 1996. In 1996, she challenged the incumbent mayor, criticizing wasteful spending and high taxes.[5] The ex-mayor and sheriff tried to organize a recall campaign, but failed.[5] Palin kept her campaign promises, reducing her own salary, as well as reducing property taxes 60%.[5] She ran for reelection against the former mayor in 1999, winning by an even larger margin.[5][14] Palin was also elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors.[11]
In 2002, Palin made an unsuccessful bid for Lieutenant Governor, coming in second to Loren Leman in a four-way race. After Frank Murkowski resigned from his long-held U.S. Senate seat in mid-term to become governor, Palin interviewed to be his possible successor. Instead, Murkowski appointed his daughter, then-Alaska State Representative Lisa Murkowski.[5]
Governor Murkowski appointed Palin Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission[15], where she served from 2003 to 2004 until resigning in protest over what she called the “lack of ethics” of fellow Alaskan Republican leaders, who ignored her whistleblowing complaints of legal violations and conflicts of interest.[5] After she resigned, she exposed the state Republican party’s chairman, Randy Ruedrich, one of her fellow Oil & Gas commissioners, who was accused of doing work for the party on public time, and supplying a lobbyist with a sensitive e-mail.[16] Palin filed formal complaints against both Ruedrich and former Alaska Attorney General Gregg Renkes, who both resigned; Ruedrich paid a record $12,000 fine.[5]
In 2006, Palin, running on a clean-government campaign, executed an upset victory over then-Gov. Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary.[5] Despite the lack of support from party leaders and being outspent by her Democratic opponent, she went on to win the general election in November 2006, defeating former Governor Tony Knowles.[5] Palin said in 2006 that education, public safety, and transportation would be three cornerstones of her administration.[8]
When elected, Palin became the first woman to be Alaska’s governor, and the youngest governor in Alaskan history at 42 years old upon taking office. Palin was also the first Alaskan governor born after Alaska achieved U.S. statehood. She was also the first Alaskan governor not to be inaugurated in Juneau, instead choosing to hold her inauguration ceremony in Fairbanks. She took office on December 4, 2006.
Highlights of Governor Palin’s tenure include a successful push for an ethics bill, and also shelving pork-barrel projects supported by fellow Republicans. Palin successfully killed the Bridge to Nowhere project that had become a nationwide symbol of wasteful earmark spending.[13][17] “Alaska needs to be self-sufficient, she says, instead of relying heavily on ‘federal dollars,’ as the state does today.”[6]
She has challenged the state’s Republican leaders, helping to launch a campaign by Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell to unseat U.S. Congressman Don Young[18] and publicly challenging Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the federal investigation into his financial dealings.[13] Palin supports holding occasional legislative sessions outside the state capital, and municipal revenue sharing to help local governments.[citation needed]
Palin’s tenure is noted for her independence from big oil companies, while still promoting resource development.[6][13] Palin has announced plans to create a new sub-cabinet group of advisors, to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions within Alaska. [19]
Shortly after taking office, Palin rescinded an appointment by Murkowski of his former chief of staff Jim Clark to the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority, one of thirty-five appointments made by Murkowski in the last hour of his administration that she reversed. [20][21] Clark later pled guilty to conspiring with a defunct oil-field-services company to channel money into Frank Murkowski’s re-election campaign. [22]
In March 2007, Palin presented the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA) as the new legal vehicle for building a natural gas pipeline from the state’s North Slope.[23] Only one legislator, Representative Ralph Samuels, voted against the measure,[24] and in June Palin signed it into law.[25][26] On January 5, 2008, Palin announced that a Canadian company, Transcanada, was the sole AGIA-compliant applicant.[27][28]
In response to high oil and gas prices, and in response to the resulting state government budget surplus, Palin proposed giving Alaskans $100-a-month energy debit cards. She also proposed providing grants to electrical utilities so that they would reduce customers’ rates.[29] She subsequently dropped the debit card proposal, and in its place she proposed to send Alaskans $1,200 directly and eliminate the gas tax.[30][31]
SOCIAL ISSUES
Palin is strongly pro-life and belongs to Feminists for Life.[8] She opposes same-sex marriage, but she has stated that she has gay friends and is receptive to gay and lesbian concerns about discrimination.[8] While the previous administration did not implement same-sex benefits, Palin complied with a state Supreme Court order and signed them into law. [32]
She supported a democratic advisory vote from the public on whether there should be a constitutional amendment on the matter.[33] Alaska was one of the first U.S. states to pass a constitutional ban on gay marriage, in 1998, along with Hawaii.[34]
Palin’s first veto was used to block legislation that would have barred the state from granting benefits to gay state employees and their partners. In effect, her veto granted State of Alaska benefits to same-sex couples. The veto occurred after Palin consulted with Alaska’s attorney general on the constitutionality of the legislation.[35]
Works for me!
With regard to her experience; she is running for the number 2 spot, not the number 1 spot. She has more experience than POS BO in the number 1 spot on the party of traitors ticket.
At first I thought I would only relunctantly have to vote for McCain. But the way McCain has run this campaign and with this outstanding choice, I am actually going to happily vote for McCain, and not just against the commie.
She really is a great choice. Saying I’m surprised would be something like,
“Other than the interruption, how’d you like the play Mrs. Lincoln?”
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
More importantly, Mrs. Palin can grow into the office of President when McCain (finally!) retires.
I hope the lady is ready to live at a Washington, DC address for a long time to come...
Damn...McCain’s election team is good. They have all but done the impossible, they have out-negroed Obama Inc. Check!
Hillary just has to be pissed.
Watch out Sarah. Sen. McCain likes them young. Lol.
A very smart, gutsy pick. We’ll see how she responds to the stresses of the campaign and her debate with Biden, but for now it looks like a great move to me. McCain is obviously not running the kind of safe, take-no-risks-and-get-the-concession-speech-ready campaign that I feared.
and while she’s out hunting moose her opponent is still whining about his childhood stutter. BWAAA HAAA HAAAA
Sarah Heath Palin goes to town.
I’m imagining a telephone conversation Gov. Palin had late last night, while Obama was paying lip-service to equal pay and opportunity for women, and droning on-and-on about his sainted grandma, mother, wife, daughters, etc.—and I’ll guess the conversation went a lot like this:
“Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.......”
Sarah Palin’s few shortfalls far outshine the noncomplishments of Barack Obama. Her confidence and clear sightedness completely puts to shame Biden’s bite.
Because of John McCain’s brilliant choice for vp, today I am sending him a healthy check with the footnote that he listen to this fine lady. She may well be America’s answer to England’s Lady Margaret Thatcher! God bless America!
As an Alaskan, I am proud. And stunned. And sad. She is SOOOOOOOOO cool.
Ok, I’m convinced. I had made up my mind last month that my family and I were going to sit out our first presidential election since 1976. I’ve changed my mind! What changed it was not John McCain but a combination of anger after listening to the media’s verbal mastubation over B.O.s mediocre speech last night and the selection of Sarah Palin as McCain VP pick.
Count 2 more votes for the Republican presidential ticket