Religious Right Picks McCain a Running Mate

What's the old horndog looking at, anyway? Bet he had no idea what she was going to say. James Dobson did, though.

John McCain has thrown caution, and judgment, and good sense to the wind and chosen first term Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Well, I use the word "chose" and that may be taking it too far; it is pretty obvious that Palin was chosen by the evangelical Christian wing of the Republican party, by James Dobson and his ilk. The secretive Council for National Policy vetted Palin last week. Who are they?:

...[A]n ultra-secretive cabal that networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy.

CNP members have included Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Grover Norquist, Tim LaHaye and Paul Weyrich. At a secret 2000 meeting of the CNP, George W. Bush promised to nominate only pro-life judges; in 2004, then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told the group, "The destiny of the nation is on the shoulders of the conservative movement." This year, thanks to Sarah Palin's selection, the movement may have finally aligned itself behind the campaign of John McCain....

...while Dobson once said he could "never" vote for McCain, he issued a statement last week hailing Palin as an "outstanding" choice.

Palin has been governor of Alaska for 20 months. Before that she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town with a population of less than 8,500.

Wasilla City Hall

Her duties as mayor were gargantuan, for sure, for according to their municipal code she had to be prepared on day one to:

1. Preside at council meetings. The mayor may take part in the discussion of matters before the council, but may not vote, except that the mayor may vote in the case of a tie;
2. Act as ceremonial head of the city;

Now that's quality experience for being a heartbeat away from leading the country!

She has no foreign policy experience, though comically both Fox Noise and [fellow former beauty queen] Cindy McCain claim she has foreign policy experience because Alaska is next to Russia. I grew up in New York, and that's next to Canada, so I have foreign policy experience, too! She only got a passport last year, and is listed as having visited Kuwait and Ireland, though I think her visit to Ireland is the dreaded Shannon layover. Maybe she got some duty-free hooch.

She's being investigated in her own state for a scandal Alaska calls "troopergate"; Palin has been using the power of her office and her staff, trying to get her former brother-in-law fired from his job as a state trooper.

She left the tiny town of Wasilla $20,000,000 in debt.

She doesn't believe in global warming, favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and is suing the federal government to get the polar bear taken off the endangered species list.

She's an extreme social conservative: anti-abortion even in cases of rape or incest; against sex education; in favor of teaching creationism in public schools.

She has five children, and her fifth was just born in April. He was premature and diagnosed with Down's syndrome; despite this, when her water broke when she was at a political event in Dallas, Texas, she went ahead with her speech, then flew back to Anchorage and drove to Wasilla to have the baby half a day later. Talk about risky behavior! (And the British press is reporting that there are internet rumors that the baby is actually Palin's oldest daughter's baby. Whew.)

She (or someone close to her) made 30 changes to her Wikipedia entry the day before McCain announced her selection.

Since I started writing this post, the Palin campaign has issued a press release stating that Palin's 17-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant and that she has chosen to have the baby and will marry the father. (And I wonder, how could she choose to have the baby if the family is anti-abortion? Did she really have a choice? If she did, why doesn't Sarah Palin support other children having the same choice? And you know what? The kid would have benefitted from sex education, and a lesson on contraception.)

And just now it has been reported that Palin's husband has a DUI arrest in his background.

She claims to be a reformer, but she was actually the head of indicted Senator Ted Stevens 527 group.

McCain appears not to have vetted Palin; it is reported that his vetting staff arrived in Wasilla yesterday and have taken 8 hotel rooms. Also that his campaign never asked to see the archives of the local newspaper.

Not that any of this will matter to the fundies. She is an extreme social conservative and that is all that matters to them.

Personally, I think I had better put this post up fast before Sarah Palin resigns from the McCain campaign to spend more time with her expanding family.

If she does resign, perhaps McCain can blame the 21-year-old who has been advocating for Palin to be VP for over a year.

I can't decide which prior failed nomination this pick is more like: Spiro Agnew, Harriet Miers, Clarence Thomas, or Thomas Eagleton. What do you think?

I'm going to call McCain's campaign Palin/Tired '08, from the good Roger Ailes.

More funny: PHILOSORAPTOR: Ham Sandwich McCain's Actual Choice for Veep

2006 Predictions

Jeanne Dixon I am not, but here goes:

1. Karl Rove indicted, resigns, gets job with Hudson Institute.

2. After spending the last quarter of 2005 vilifying John Murtha for suggesting that U.S. forces be drawn down and deployed to the borders of Iraq, BushCo will do just that in 2006. Prediction of numbers of American troops in Iraq, end of 2006: 80,000.

3. Liverpool wins Premier League in shocking upset over Chelsea. (Prediction or hope? You make the call.)

4. Argentina wins World Cup.

5. Neocons will begin sabre rattling about attacking Iran. Can you say, Mushroom cloud?

6. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and James Dobson will each say something incredibly stupid and offensive.

7. Red Sox finish in second place in American League East behind MFY.

8. BushCo's vast data-mining operation will be exposed. Forget Christiane Amanpour. We've all been caught up.

9. When Fitzgerald's investigation begins to focus on Cheney, he resigns for health reasons. Condi appointed Vice President, Stephen Hadley appointed National Security Advisor.

10. Democrats sweep to victory in midterm elections, but electoral gerrymandering has been so successful that Republicans retain control of House of Representatives.

SCOTUS Writes

Documents Show Roberts Influence In Reagan Era

Roberts presented a defense of bills in Congress that would have stripped the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over abortion, busing and school prayer cases; he argued for a narrow interpretation of Title IX, the landmark law that bars sex discrimination in intercollegiate athletic programs; and he even counseled his boss on how to tell the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow that the administration was cutting off federal funding for the Atlanta center that bears his name.

No wonder James Dobson likes him so much.

Bush Taps White Man

So it's John Roberts for the SCOTUS job. James Dobson of Focus on the Family is happy, so we know he's baaaaaaaad. (Steve Gilliard calls Dobson "Focus on the Fuhrer", hehehe)

One Partisan Hack for Another tells us that Roberts worked for the RNC on the 2000 Florida recount (makes him a friend of John Bolton), was one of Ken Starr's deputies under HWBush, and was one of Reagan's White House counsels.

The New York Times, Scrutinizing John Roberts, says we don't know enough about the guy & the Senate must question him closely. Hah, good joke, as that's snowball in hell unlikely. Who on the Judiciary Committee will do the questioning? Those jamokes couldn't cross-examine a mynah bird that could only say yes.


And, obviously, the timing of the nomination is meant to take the heat off Traitor Karl Rove. Looks like Karl could be looking at his own Camp Cupcake as it appears he lied to FBI investigators when he was first interviewed:

An Unlikely Story
Karl Rove's alibi would be easier to believe if he hadn't hidden it from FBI investigators in 2003.

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove did not disclose that he had ever discussed CIA officer Valerie Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper during Rove’s first interview with the FBI, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The omission by Rove created doubt for federal investigators, almost from the inception of their criminal probe into who leaked Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak, as to whether Rove was withholding crucial information from them, and perhaps even misleading or lying to them, the sources said.

Also leading to the early skepticism of Rove's accounts was the claim that although he first heard that Plame worked for the CIA from a journalist, he said could not recall the name of the journalist. Later, the sources said, Rove wavered even further, saying he was not sure at all where he first heard the information.

How many crimes does Traitor Karl have to commit for Commander Codpiece to fire him? Let's see, treason and lying to federal investigators seem serious enough to me.

Rove must go.

Creepy

I caught an ESPN Classic program on the life of Pete Maravich the other day. I know I must have seen the program before, but the significance of Pete's final day eluded me.

Pete Maravich was to appear on the radio show of Dr. James Dobson on January 5, 1988, the day he died at the age of 40. Before the program, he was playing a pick-up game with Dobson & his son.

Yes, we're talking about Focus on the Family's Dr. James Dobson, the man who pushed Bill Frist to use the nuclear option, the man who says Spongebob Squarepants is pushing homosexuality on children, the man who favors spanking children until they cry, and spanking them again if they won't stop crying.

Now, I know the autopsy showed the Pete Maravich's death at the age of 40 was caused by his rare condition of having been born with only one coronary artery. Still, now, forever more will I think of Dobson as The Man Who Killed Pistol Pete.

Ewwww.