GENIUS!

This is basically the only word I could sputter out when people asked me (the chief politico) what I thought about her. I consider myself pretty knowing when it comes to American politics, but I really did not know who the governor of Alaska was, who Sarah Palin was, or that McCain was considering either of them -- let alone the fact that they were one and the same!

I thought this plan was good because it would get the enraged Fem-Nazis who just want to see a woman in the White House to vote for McCain. It would also harbor support from those people who are voting for the black guy to reassure themselves that they are a good person. I would bet this type makes up a fair sized part of the voting mass.

Republicans? The stogy traditional party wants a woman in the White House? Diversity from the GOP? It can't be! Yes, people thought this was a monumental election... a woman and a black guy. Well, Hillary got knocked out and here another woman crops up. 2008 is a year for the record books.

Sarah Palin is the first woman on the GOP's chief ticket. She's also likely the only candidate except Teddy Roosevelt that knows how to field dress a moose. This woman is exceptional. She knows how to disassemble, clean, and reassemble an M16. She's got five kids, one with Down syndrome and one in the military. She comes from Alaska (where ANWR is, sillies!) and she advocates drilling! Granted, it pays to align with McCain's message and current trends, but if it were really as disastrous as the greenies would have us think, Palin wouldn't be advocating destroying her home state.

Speaking of remarkable women... Cindy Hensley McCain owns a beer distributorship and she's in an automobile drift-racing team with one of her sons! The Republican ticket has a war Veteran/Veteran Senator, a beautiful First Lady who owns a beer company and races cars, a gorgeous woman Governor who fishes and hunts with a second-man who is a professional snowmobile racer.

The Democratic ticket has a freshman Senator lawyer with a grumpy, unpatriotic lawyer wife. Anyone up for a quick poll?

Remember how Democrats would attack Bush for 'sending our boys into harm without offspring in the military', to paraphrase? John McCain has one son in the service and one in the Naval Academy while Sarah Palin has one that just left for Iraq. I think that if they think the mission is important enough to risk their own children, well, the Democrats have little room to squirm.

I was watching Newt Gingrich give a small talk on C-SPAN during the RNC. He was talking about a variety of things, but when he got to Sarah Palin he said that a reporter came up to him and said, "What about the experience problem?" Newt replied, "I think Senator Obama has a huge problem to overcome." That captures the essence of it right now -- though Alaska has the population of San Diego, though Wasilla AK has only 8,000 residents, VP Sarah Palin has more executive experience than would-be Prez Obama.

Does that scare you?

This is a big election. Obama's "lead" over John McCain is less than the margin of error in most polls, which means they are essentially tied. Obama's lead is maintained because young people think it's cool to vote for the black guy, if for no other reason. While they're voting uninformed, it's their American right.

Oh, and another thing -- during the DNC Obama was repeatedly touted as the first black Presidential candidate. No, that's wrong. Obama is just as black as he is white. Remember, he's biracial. Using that logic, he's also the X-hundredth white candidate nominated for the White House.

Obama's other big lead comes from his excitement: Yeah, Barack! Whoo-whoo! Fancy catchphrases! Empty words! Let's cheer! Well, I think he can expect that lead to shrink, even to transform into a deficit because of Palin/Biden. Everyone was pumped about Obama's veep. Who was it going to be? It'll be exciting! He's the candidate for change, remember? Well, you could hear the media and idiot-America let out its collective breath when he picked Joe Biden.

John McCain has been painted by Obama as a representative of Old Washington, that is, what he's been meaning to reform. John McCain took office in 1987. He's been a Senator for 21 years! Who could be more fresh than Obama, who is fresh in Washington he doesn't know where the men's room is in the Capitol building?

Not Joe Biden! He took office in 1973! That's right -- 35 years in Washington. He took office when Barack Obama was 12. How can that be a representative of change? Obama popped his own balloon filled with "FRESHNESS & EXCITEMENT!" by picking this thorough Washington insider.

John McCain isn't integrated into the Washington machine -- he doesn't even feel compelled by duty to his party, as noted multiple times during the RNC to my confused state. Why tout his maverick, voting-against-party style in a room filled with Republicans?! Sarah Palin surely is the freshest of all four. I doubt she's even vacationed to Washington!

I checked out a magazine rack today. A quick glance at the 20 or so magazines (not all political) showed Obama on one, McCain on two, and Palin on at least half a dozen. While they weren't all feature stories on the candidates, and while they all weren't necessarily good reflections of them, the key to getting these votes is the spotlight. Sarah has stole it from Obama.

Sarah Palin is supposed to be this conservative god that will be there weighing on McCain's decisions and ready to take office should anything happen to McCain (who's 90+ y/o mother attended the RNC). Bristol, her seventeen year old daughter is five months pregnant by her eighteen year old fiancee. Granted, pre-marital sex and teenage sex are sort of big no-no's in the conservative movement, but these attacks that paint Sarah Palin as irresponsible are terribly wrong. We're electing the mother, not her teenage daughter's poor decisions!

The liberal media loves nothing more than to point out conservative hypocrisies on the topic, sometimes by comparing the comments denouncing 17-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears' pregnancy with the support for Bristol and Sarah Palin. I would hardly consider it hypocritical. Jamie Lynn Spears is a celebrity. Young girls, preteens and teens look up to her. She has a show on a children's channel. She's a role model, whether America and the parents of the kids who watch her show want her to be or not. A girl who is going to have no impact on anyone else's life getting pregnant is a bad thing, sure, but it will not have an effect like Ms. Spears' pregnancy did.

People also like to point out how Sarah Palin fired Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan for refusing to fire a trooper who had a bitter divorce and custody battle with her sister. "That's abuse of power!" screams the liberal media. Oops, I guess they forgot to mention that the trooper Tasered his own stepson and threatened to kill his ex-wife's (and Sarah's) father.

Well, those facts aren't important anyway, are they? Just so long as we can sling mud at the conservatives for Savior Obama.

Someone asked me what would be the best strategy for Barack Obama to get elected. I told them, "He should have changed his name to Brock O'Bama and passed himself off as an Irishman."

Thinking back, it might have been more advantageous for him to just become a Republican.

-Ze Baron

McCain may be a good Republican (not necessarily a good conservative) but he needs to pass himself off as a moderate Republican so that the misguided Democrats who are in a fret from having a strong Democrat drop out and having one actually have a flying chance at winning. Bush may be trying to shore up support among Republicans, but all he's doing is tying McCain to himself, even though McCain made the first move.

Which brings me to another point -- is Big Media full of idiots? Well... yes. I think, much like Big Oil and Big Pharma, we shall start calling it Big Media. I like that. Anyway, as stated above, McCain came out with it first, not GDUBS. Besides, no matter how much they like to associate McCain with Bush, they are separate people. In fact, they ought to lighten up on McCain a bit -- remember the McCain-Feingold Immigration Bill? That was not the conservative thing to do, and hardly what Bush would've done (though he is weak in that area.)

Back to Big Oil... after McCain and Bush (here embodying the Republican train of thought, and hopefully that of all sane Americans) pushed for a end to the ban on offshore drilling, the Democrats struck back.

[Let me interject here that ending the ban on offshore drilling wouldn't make it a free-for-all. It would just end the federal ban on it so that coastal states could decide for themselves. That way, eco-nut Calis who don't have any oil could rail against the man while reasonable Gulf Coast states could boost their economies and help lower fuel costs by keeping it in America.]

The Democrats, whom I was beginning to give the benefit of the doubt, never ceased to amaze me. They called for nationalizing the nation's oil refineries!

I could not believe it. I was dumbfounded.

They propose acquiring private property and running it? It's beginning to look like the Dems actually believe in a mommy state that'll always take care of them. Aside from Welfare and Medicare and this proposed socialized health care, now they want to take over a service to which there is no alternatives?

The government can't do anything right. Take the passport thing where you have to have one to come into the US from Canada or those other assorted countries. Do you know how long it took me to get my passport? Well, neither do I, because I still haven't gotten mine back!

If they can't get me a passport in a reasonable amount of time, how are they going to maintain enough gas at a cheap price when they aren't allowing hardly any to be produced domestically? We pay a large tax on gas to keep our roads nice. I can assure you that PA's roads suck.

I'll pay $4.00 a gallon to keep it out of the government's hands. This was not in the Constitution, which provided for a small government in which all powers not specifically delegated to the feds goes to the states. That's been conveniently overlooked, eh?

These Democrat monsters, these idiots, want to slap windfall taxes on oil companies. You tell me how taking away more profits from them will make our prices go down? It's always been shown that the taxes get passed on to the consumer. Americans want to stick the oil companies in the eye, but taxing them (which will be passed back to the consumer) is not the way to do it. You have to stop buying their product. I'm not going to prospect on what should be done there in this blog.
 
Oil companies are making record profits this year. That's terrible, especially when they are raping Americans. Know what? I want to remove taxes from Big Oil. Let's give 'em a tax break. I believe Exxon Mobil pays near 41% in taxes. That means that 41% of the money they take in goes straight to the government -- they don't even see it. On top of that, they have to take out for overhead and $1xx-a-barrel crude. They still manage to turn record profits. That's how to run a company.

Exxon Mobil pays $27 billion dollars in taxes (on $67.4 billion in taxable income at 41%).  They pay as much taxes at the bottom 50% of individual taxpayers... that's 65,000,000 people. They pay 3% of their adjusted gross income, which is taxes of $27.4 of $922 billion. That's right -- Exxon Mobil pays as much as taxes as half of American taxpayers. You want to give them more, and expect to see gas prices go down?

Look, I'm willing to give the Democrats the benefit of the doubt. The problem is there is nothing left to doubt.

-Ze Baron

I think this video demonstrates why I like Dick Cheney so much.