Will Sarah Palin get a second chance at the presidency? – Part 10

Out of the cold and desolate Alaskan Tundra and into the bright national spot light, Sarah Palin wowed and stunned American’s at the same time. She was energetic and beautiful but who was she?

In one day Sarah Palin became a house hold name. She was a question mark for the political pundits. And while the national media scrambled around trying to dig up anything they could on Ms. Palin, her family and her career (nothing like the media getting caught with their pants down) tongues were wagging around the water coolers and at social events everywhere.

Everybody wanted to know who Sarah Palin was and what experience she had. Ironically, these were the same questions being asked about Senator Obama just a few short months before.

The Republican Party didn’t help Ms. Palins’ cause when they kept her from talking to the media. What were they trying to hide? Half of the country already thought Senator McCain had lost his marbles by selecting a running mate who was a beauty queen, has a pregnant unmarried teenager, and has no known experience and now she can’t speak? I mean if she could speak why wouldn’t they use her as a lethal weapon to shoot (not with her shot gun) down Obama’s lack of experience?

But hold the presses! When Ms. Palin was finally allowed to talk with reporters and the public she did just fine. During her debate with Joe Biden she was composed and gave intelligent and knowledgeable answers to questions on every issue including foreign policy. She was in fact an excellent orator who could whip a crowd into a frenzy as she hit the campaign trail for Senator McCain and herself.

Ms. Palin showed the American people something else. She showed them that a woman politician can be beautiful, intelligent, feminine and strong. Women politicians don’t have to dress in hideous pant suits and don’t have to act like a man to be strong and smart. Remind you of anyone? Sarah Palin is beautiful and is intelligent and can step into any federal office with confidence.

After seeing Ms. Palin in action on the national stage I don’t know how anybody could think that she would slip away into obscurity. Unless she goes back to Alaska for a moose hunt, Sarah Palin is here to stay.

Most likely Ms. Palins’ next step will be to run for a senate seat. Her star will rise rapidly just like that of Senator Obama. The American public has shown that they are ready for an African American man to run the country so why not a woman? Not only do I think that Sarah Palin has a chance of running for the office of the President, but I think that we may have just met the first woman who will be elected as The President of the United States of America.

Sarah Palin: Gifted communicator or eternal gaffer? – Part 2

Sarah Palin hit the country as hard and fast as an unexpected snowstorm in Alaska.

When John McCain chose her as his running mate for V.P. for 2008, did he or anyone else know the woman had the ability to resurrect the Republican base?

In her acceptance speech, Palin gave an oration worthy of the most eloquent speakers of our time. The potential was there!

But could the new American idol perform as well as she could read a prepared speech? That seemed to cause problems.

In an interview with Katie Couric, Katie asked Palin what magazines and newspapers she read. Palin’s moose-in-the-headlights-look equaled her answer: What? To paraphrase: In general, she reads what every other person in America reads; in fact, she reads all of them that cross her desk. Alaska is a microcosm of America; they aren’t foreigners up there.

Couric asked Palin, besides Roe v. Wade, what other Supreme Court decisions didn’t she agree with? Palin couldn’t think of anything, but she hoped to be in a position to change things in the future.

Throughout her campaign speeches, Palin insisted the media were sexist in covering her. The media faulted her for accepting $150,000 in Republican-paid-for-clothing for herself and her family, although some of that went for her hair and make-up. No male candidate had to explain himself; it was unfair, she pouted. But Edwards was criticized for his $400 haircuts, and Hillary got frequent comments about her pantsuits.

The U.S. is in a recession; set an example. How nave is she?

Saturday Night Live! created a satirical skit with Tina Fey using Palin’s exact words. It was hilarious. Even Palin thought so, although she said she had the sound turned off when she watched it.

How can you comment on a Palin impersonation without sound?

To show she was a good sport, Palin went on SNL! and played herself. She sat at a desk and moved her arms back and forth with the rest of the cast while they acted out someone shooting a moose. They danced in the background and Sarah smiled along. It was satire. It was funny! Plain may have found her calling after all.

Sarah, the maverick, even spoke about things that went against John McCain’s platform. Was Palin trying to upstage John? Surely, she is the better looking maverick!

In other interviews after Couric’s, Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent, not a country; she thought people lived alongside dinosaurs 6,000 years ago, although dinosaurs were extinct about 65 million years ago; Palin talked to a reporter on national TV while the nation watched turkeys being slaughtered in the background. With all the commotion behind her, Palin seemed oblivious to it.

If the U.S decides it needs a comedian rather than a serious V.P., Palin could fill the job.

But, Sarah, a wife and mother of five, Sarah, the moose hunter, and Sarah the governor of a low-population state that has been enamored of her, should probably stay home and watch TV, and avoid being on it.

Sarah Palin and Environment, Global Warming and Drilling in Protected Areas

It’s killing time; you know they’re going to leave us. It’s approaching the fall/winter season as I write this. The guys will go out in the woods with their guns dragged from back seats of trucks and head out for sport. That sport is killing.

That’s what they do in a small town called Natchitoches where I live now and in La Grande, Oregon where I grew up. It’s a celebrated annual event. The local grocery has big wooden racks to display the killed. You can even buy postcards to add your picture, with you and the dead deer beside. You don’t need den walls for display anymore, just props for the trucks on the road.

Now I was raised on deer meat, and I like it. It makes sense when you need to feed a family, as my folks did years ago. But sport? Like football for cheering?

Sarah Palin likes hunting wolves, which aren’t creatures we think of sympathetically. But in research on mass murder and war it has been found that people who enjoy killing animals don’t mind killing people some time. (True Crime) A smile from someone who talks about the sport of killing wolves (Detroit Free Press) that is then beamed on a political stage to celebrate the possible death of one’s son should make many of us worry. (KNVN 24) Because if someone likes killing animals from the air and finds that fun and smiles when a son goes to war, then will that same person protect or worry about our sons in a world where killing is a sport?

Certain types of creatures have been on the Palin hit list for some time. Still they have more in common than that; they help keep the rest of us safe. So we should probably think about protecting these characters, especially given all the other problems we have because they are directly involved in what’s going on. What happened to them might be the proverbial tip ofThe iceberg to what might happen to us.

Let’s talk about fish first. Let’s talk about salmon. I don’t know about you, but salmon is my favorite fish, anytime and any place. I was born and raised in Oregon, in salmon country. I grew up with salmon steak and went out with friends and family to catch a few now and then. So I love them and know them well enough to want to make sure they get the right treatment. By that I mean I want their waters to be clean enough to keep them healthy, and I want them to have an overall environment to breed, make babies and keep lots of us fed.

Sarah Palin doesn’t have the same opinions about salmon as I do. Oh, she likes to catch and eat them, that’s true. Protecting them is a whole other matter. Palin can look right out the door and see fish that are dying, even when the lake near her house is stocked as the fish continue to die. In order to get commercial interests into Wasilla Palin sacrificed the environment to do it. An example is right in her own backyard. Lake Lucille has been declared seriously impaired and really dead and has been since 1994 when Palin was Mayor of Wasilla. That was documented by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and remains like that today. (Talbot)

One Wasilla resident has said, as reported in Salon.com, “Sarah’s legacy as mayor was big-box stores and runaway growth,” said Patty Stoll, a retired Wasilla schoolteacher. Stoll, as reported, worked with Palin’s parents, Chuck and Sally Heath, at the same school. She continued, “The truth is, Wasilla is just plain ugly, it’s not a pleasant place to live. It’s not thought out. And that’s a shame.

“Sarah fouled her own nest, and I can’t understand why. I hate to think it was simply greed or ambition.”(Talbot)

But that’s not the only reason why salmon are grieving and leaving. If they want to die, they would likely want to do that proudly and not in polluted waters. One would think that watching a lake turn bad, and the fish flounder as a result, that some clean water regulation would be welcomed. However, Sarah Palin did the opposite: she spoke out against the Clean Water Act. Palin and her public want mineral mining more than food without tapeworms, which salmon from Alaska now have in abundance. (Summer Johnson) I wonder how many people who eat salmon grown in Alaska worry about how that affects them today. Palin, it appears, may not care.

If you thought it was only fish that should worry, you need to know about bears. Sarah Palin is against classifying polar bears as endangered species. Palin told the public that scientists had said that polar bears were not endangered at all. When questioned, secrecy measures immediately began, as anyone who asked for the emails from scientists were kept at bay with large sums of money asked for disclosing them. Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, was someone who had asked for them and was told that this request would be costly, as in $468,784. After going through federal records, Steiner found out that the scientists had indeed said that polar bears are an endangered species and worthy of protection. (Steiner)

Despite Steiner’s findings and the available knowledge about polar bears, Palin filed suit to keep the polar bears off the endangered list. Palin’s reason: she was worried that environmentalists are using the Endangered Species Act to block the extraction of oil and gas according to an interview she had earlier this year with Glenn Beck.

Palin also said that the population of polar bears is growing, but not according to the experts. One of them, Ian Stirling, who is a scientist who has studied polar bears for 37 years, says “Polar bear populations have not been increasing for the past 37 years, and that’s a well-known fact,” Stirling has studied polar bears more than anyone. So the issue is to lie, no matter the consequence to polar bears these days. That makes some people sad, just to think of how soft and cuddly they look, but who would feel sad for the wolves we’ll talk about next? (Stirland)

Most people don’t feel a sense of wonder and joy when they think about wolves. Actually most people get scared, but these days the wolves are. It’s one thing to keep wolves out of areas where people live and work, especially when they can eat not only livestock but people too if they are hungry enough. It’s another thing to make that a sport, just to kill for the fun of it. I’ve touched on that before, but it warrants inclusion with the fish and the bears.

Palin put a bounty on the heads of wolves, to encourage average citizens to load up their guns and go kill them, from the air, from everywhere. (Benjamin) That bounty was eventually stopped through legal action. Palin, however, wanted the practice to continue despite the ethical issues involved. All over the Internet there are pictures of Palin smiling over wolf carcasses as part of her campaign, so the practice continues certainly. Palin claims that humans killing wolves helps thin out the populations of predators that kill moose and elk which subsistence farmers in Alaska need to survive.

In defense of those wolves, not my friends surely, there’s not much scientific support for Palin’s position. In fact in 2007, 172 scientists wrote to Palin with their concerns about the lack of real science supporting killing the population of wolves. ( Benjamin) They are concerned about the balance of nature related to global warming taking place in the wilds of Alaska. (O’Brien) That didn’t influence Palin to change. The shooting continues and is applauded as well. In the wilderness of the gun, this is one more place people can practice sharp shooting. So what’s next for the propaganda machine that supports candidates like Palin who really don’t care about the effects of what they do on the rest of the world?

How someone thinks about life in any form, including protected animals, in relationship to the acquisition of material gain tells us something about how an individual might relate to victims of acts over which they have little control. Let’s learn about how Sarah Palin looks at certain social issues to try to figure out how she might respond to legislation surrounding such issues as domestic violence, sex abuse, and the rights of people with disabilities since these get to the core of her beliefs about life and how we should treat the least among us.

Will Sarah Palin get a second chance at the presidency? – Part 2

Will Sarah Palin Get a Second Chance at the Presidency?

I definitely believe Sarah Palin will get a second chance at becoming a United States President. While no one can argue that Sarah Palin brought a certain freshness to the Presidential Campaign, with it she also encountered much bias that men never encounter. Did anyone ask Obama how much his shoes cost or how often he went shopping? Maybe they should have asked how much time he spends playing basketball. That is as relevant to being President as the questions put to Sarah Palin.

When will women in politics be measured by their accomplishments rather than their wardrobe? After seeing how Sarah was raked across the coals for absurd things such as clothing and shopping, this is something that needs dire attention. Women need to receive the same respect and be held accountable for the same things.

I do not think that she will fade back into the background now that she has a taste of the big race. She has a lot of options now that she did not have prior to accepting the Republican Vice Presidential Nominee. For instance, just by signing with the Washington Speakers Bureau, Palin will be the most sought after speaker on the American lecture circuit overnight.

With that said, I do think that Sarah Palin will run for President of the United States. Depending on how happy the citizens of the United States are with the job that President Elect Obama does, the time may be ripe for Sarah Palin to run. The fact that a minority achieved Presidency, which in itself is an accomplishment, will be a benefit to a woman seeking the position of President. We tend to swing from one extreme to the other in the United States.

I think the main thing is that Sarah Palin will have to remain in sight and active within the lower 48 states. She will have to have some goals to achieve and show that she is able to meet those goals for the U.S. citizens. I think that it is a trust issue that people will have to actually see that she will do what she sets out to do. This will give her a big boost in seeking the Presidency.

As pointed out, she needs to really study up on U.S. politics and world geography. She is very smart and needs to know her stuff because they will constantly test her knowledge of these things. The more she knows the better off she will be.

Sarah Palin comes from a modest background and knows what it is like to have to work for what she has. She was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth. That really appeals to voters like myself.

I definitely think that Sarah Palin has a chance to become President of the United States. Timing is everything. She would take care of women’s rights, special needs children, keep a Christian perspective, and put the United States back on the map as a country not to be reckoned with. She appeals to political conservatism because she embraces Christian beliefs. Sarah Palin’s Christian background is something that Christians who hold the Bible to be the absolute truth are looking for. She is not afraid to speak out about her beliefs about God and Christian beliefs. I find that quality very appealing.