The Palin Spin

What an inspired choice! As we discussed at work today, Gov. Palin has lots of experience dealing with junior hockey referees as a Hockey Mom, which is perfect preparation for dealing with Putin. Even better, I now learn that she has never thought much about Iran or Iraq (despite the impending deployment of her son), so she can look at it with fresh eyes right after getting brainwashed by Cheney's team.

But that's not why I'm blogging. I'm blogging because Dan Barlett, now paid by CBS to act as a mouthpiece for George Bush and the Republican party, said tonight that Sen. Biden will have to be careful to not be too tough on Gov. Palin in the VP debate because she is a woman.

Apart from being positively insulting to women in general, does Bartlett think that Putin would "play nice" just because our President was a former beauty queen, should she have to take over in January if something happened to McCain's health due to the stress of the coming campaign?

She has a ways to go to prove that she is anything more than an older Paris Hilton with a good campaign slogan, a big hairdo, and an assault rifle. She is certainly no Golda Meir (who was active in national government for decades before becoming Prime Minister) or Margaret Thatcher (ditto), and I can already hear Sen Biden saying "I know Hillary Clinton, and you are no Hillary Clinton".

It was also clear that Bartlett was already concerned about her limited knowledge of world affairs in the way he compared, unfavorably, preparing her for the VP debate to preparing then Gov Bush for his Presidential debates in 2000.

McCain looks as desperate now as Mondale did in 1984.

Notes Added:

Apparently the way she cut taxes on Alaskan citizens was to increase the price of oil to the rest of us by raising the oil extraction tax collected by Alaska. According to this article, Gov Palin's plan transferred SIX BILLION DOLLARS from our gas tanks to Alaskan citizens in just the past year.

Unlike Obama or McCain, she took a publicity photographer along with her when she visited wounded troops overseas: see this photo from the Wiki commons obtained from the state department of military affairs while it is still there.