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Non te amo Sabide

I really do want to like Sarah Palin.  She is authentically blue collar, religious, and not overly corrupt, greedy, or ego-driven in the fashion of the politicians we have come to know and love over the past sixteen years.  I am not overly concerned with her lack of experience as we have seen a lot of senior […]

I really do want to like Sarah Palin.  She is authentically blue collar, religious, and not overly corrupt, greedy, or ego-driven in the fashion of the politicians we have come to know and love over the past sixteen years.  I am not overly concerned with her lack of experience as we have seen a lot of senior government officials over the past twenty years or so who have had brilliant resumes but who have lacked both good judgment and any kind of ethical mooring.  She might do better.  

But I do have a problem with the creationism thing as it suggests that she might be dismissive of any evidence that challenges her beliefs.  Evolution is not exactly voodoo science.  Also, God is fine, even in the White House, but I really would like to hear a lot more about the Christian message of love and compassion and less about Holy War.  More from the Sermon on the Mount and less about how many Philistines need to be smote.  But at the end of the day, I have two really big problems with her.  First, voting for her is voting for McCain and that is a vindication of Bushism and all the horrors we have lived through during the past seven years.  Second, her foreign policy resume is non-existent and she is already falling back onto soundbites.  Her apparent willingness to defend small “democracies” like Georgia even if it means nuclear war with Russia may play well with some Republicans but it is rooted in a profoundly ideological mindset and ignorance of just how horrific such a conflict would be.  So too her willingness to let or even encourage Israel to attack Iran ignores the fact that the US would be instantly sucked into the fighting, which just might not be in our national interest. The prospect of a new war in the Middle East is certainly deserving of a more nuanced response.  Or perhaps she knows that we would immediately be involved, which is perhaps her intention and even worse in that it would mean our nation’s going to war due to the action of a client state.  Her statements on both Georgia and Israel also suggest that the idea of making the world democratic is not dead, and if there was ever a concept that needs to disappear from political discourse it is democracy promotion.

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