from one of my favorite lefties, Alexander Cockburn, from one of my guiltiest leftwing pleasures, Counterpunch.  He actually likes her as a VP pick, kinda.



The Boadicea of the Backwoods

You want drowsy Sarah Palin getting that 3am phone call from the Situation Room, in charming décolleté, her hair down, snuggled under the soft mounds of grizzly pelt? Or you want Joe Biden, still talking even in his sleep? Who would not wish to take off Sarah’s spectacles and liberate those rich, heaped-up tresses? It’s that librarian look so reminiscent of  Laura Bush in happier days, back among the stacks in the Midland Public Library  which I made visited in 2001, mostly to view the crossroads where 17-year Laura broadsided her boyfriend in that so-tragic “accident”. (The  police report says that Laura ran a stop sign in her Chevy and struck the Corvair of 17-year old Michael Douglas. He was thrown from the car and broke his neck. Some accounts have claimed Michael and Laura had been dating. Laura was with a 17-year old girl friend at the time. It was a clear night, with unobstructed views,  shortly after 8 p.m. on Nov. 6, 1963. )

If Todd Palin ever plays her false I assume Sarah will blow him away with her AK-47. Todd, incidentally, is one quarter Yup’ik, a native heritage that doesn’t seem to have had much impact on his wife’s posture on native rights. The Yup’ik have an interesting culture, not least with their fall Bladder Festivals, returning the bladders of seals they have killed to the sea so the seals’ souls can be reborn. Biden would probably wish the same destination for his bladder, so all those endless speeches in the US senate can be recycled down the aeons.

Palin and Obama seem to have more or less identical posture towards the environment, though Palin has been tougher on oil companies than the Democratic nominee. McCain, so my coeditor Jeffrey points, out, had somewhat better positions on the environment than Obama, but has now thrown that edge away with Palin, who favors shooting bears from the air and backs the Pebble Mine project, a terrible proposal by Northern Dynasty Minerals to build one of the largest gold and copper mines in the world, in southwest Alaska, near Lake Iliamna. She only mentioned Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton in her introductory speech in Ohio on Friday, but Palin, who was born in Sandpoint, Idaho, and went to the University of Idaho in Moscow, should have paid proper homage to that Boadicea of the Backwoods, the late Helen Chenoweth, who famously  said the way she liked to see endangered salmon was on the slab in Albertson’s.

Pundits murmur that McCain has blown the “inexperience” argument against Obama by picking a young Alaskan governor, not so long ago the mayor of Wasila. I don’t think Americans have much patience with that kind of talk. Who needs experience in foreign affairs in the White House, since the major decisions are taken in Jerusalem and relayed through AIPAC? And anyway, Palin does have experience dealing with oil companies, the other major lobby dictating America’s foreign policies. No chord in populism reverberates more strongly than the notion that the robust common sense of an unstained outsider is the best medicine for an ailing polity. Caligula doubtless got big cheers from the plebs when he installed his horse as proconsul.

It’s obvious too that Palin is both wily and bold. You only have to study her daring success in outmaneuvering Alaska’s triarchy of  Murkowski, Stevens and Young to see that. Unless Palin makes some Jerry Ford-type blooper, Joe Biden shouldn’t expect to have an easy time of it with Palin in their debates. Reagan performed moderately against Mondale in their second debate in 1984, but he won the headlines with one second-rate crack:

REPORTER: Mr. President, I want to raise an issue that I think has been lurking out there for two or three weeks, and cast it specifically in national security terms. You already are the oldest President in history, and some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale. I recall, yes, that President Kennedy, who had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuba missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?

REAGAN: Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt and I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience. If I still have time, I might add, Mr. Trewhitt, I might add that it was Seneca or it was Cicero, I don't know which, that said if it was not for the elders correcting the mistakes of the young, there would be no state.

And as for Palin’s absolute views on abortion, what can Biden throw against Palin’s simple statement apropos her having a baby identified in the womb as having Down syndrome, “I chose life”.

Of course, the choice could blow up in McCain’s face, but between the two presidential nominees’ performance in Veep selection, I prefer McCain’s. From him we get Palin, who is already making the race a lot more fun. From Obama we got Biden. Already, when Biden flashes that grin I want to throw a shoe through the tv set. Palin only looks a bit like the dead DC Madam. Biden is a seasoned, living madam in the DC brothel.




[If you go to the link you'll have to scroll down past a lengthly anlysis of BHO's acceptance speech:  http://www.counterpunch.org/   I'm guessing mostly will scroll past].