The Moose Hunting "Barracuda"



Everybody and his dog can see that McCain's VP nomination is a brilliant grab for all the disgruntled Hillary supporters. You can almost hear the election ads already: "There's no glass ceiling in the Republican Party". She is much more than just a woman, however -- as Dick McDonald notes below:

Sarah Palin was the point-guard on the state's winning basketball team. The team members nicknamed her "Barracuda". She and her father are big "moose hunters". Her son will be fighting in Iraq soon. She opted to keep her new baby son with "Down's Syndrome" at the same time as the woman was the Governor of Alaska. Her first act as Governor was to sell the Governor's private jet. She won the race promising to clean up the corruption, including destroying Republican Senator Ted Stevens and his "Bridge to Nowhere". Today John McCain has chosen her to be the nominee for Vice-President of the United States.

She must be something special she has five kids and was runner-up in the Miss Alaska contest in 1984. She has the toughest job in America - a mother. She is married to her high school sweetheart and they celebrate their 20th anniversary today. Right at this moment she is speaking for the first time and she is one powerful speaker who will make mincemeat out of many of her detractors. She is a reformer with a record and she has all those attributes men celebrate - and sometime wither under - a phenomenal memory and an ability to make us toe that line we so often want to cross.

I am learning more about her as the minutes pass. My first impression is that we may have found our Margaret Thatcher. Her spirit shines through her face and the visage is much more attractive than Margaret's. The 2008 race has become a lot more interesting just when you thought it couldn't get any more interesting than Obama's love fest at Mile High. She will be the pit bull for McCain and boy she sounds as if she will be effective. As a woman she will be a softening influence on his administration - she was Miss Congeniality in 1984.

She is a hockey mom and the wife of a commercial fisherman, a member of the NRA and a pro-life advocate. Can this election be more different? Her approval rating in Alaska is above 80% which is totally phenomenal in any state. Apparently her reputation with the people is that the countryside is littered with the bodies of those who challenged her. Wow! McCain you did it again. You found an attractive and effective women - I can't wait to for this to all play out. The first call I got on this pick was from one very strong Republican woman who said she was in tears - of joy - after hearing Sarah talk

Source.

John McCain's introduction of her and her acceptance speech are on video here. It is a "Don't miss" video. McCain is not as good as The Gipper but he has The Gipper's straightforward sincerity. Details on how McCain came to pick Palin here

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What Palin Does

1. Steps on the story of Obama's speech (and convention), and possibly the bounce coming from them, and wipes them off the news cycle. The Sunday news shows will be all-Palin, all of the time.

2. Sends Republicans into their convention on a huge head of steam.

3. Wipes out the image of McCain as the crotchety elder and brings back that of the fly-boy and gambler, which is much more appealing, and the genuine person.

4. Revs up the base AND excites independents, which no one else in the party, or perhaps in the world, could have accomplished.

5. Puts youth, change, and history on both of the tickets.

6. May detach some young people, especially women.

7. May attach some women pissed off about Hillary.

8. As a pro-life super-achiever, puts feminists in a tizzy.

9. Revives some of the double-edged nature of the Democratic primary, which featured a black vs. a
female trail-blazer, and put both sides on notice on sensitivity issues. Democrats used to raising charges of racism against Obama's critics may face charges of sexism and/or condescension if they try to diss her.

10. Steps on Obama's claims to have been a reformer, as he reformed nothing (much less the corrupt mare's nest of Chicago arrangements), while she was a dragon-slayer up in Alaska.

11. As a mother of five, one a Down Syndrome baby, helps her side take on the Democrats on abortion extremism and the Born Alive bill.

12. Reignites the deep and unhealed stresses inside the Democrats, some of whom will now wonder more loudly than ever why they didn't pick Hillary.

13. Counters Michelle in a way Cindy couldn't.

14. Counter-intuitively, makes the issue of Obama's light resume more potent than ever. Her lack of experience is no more than his is. And he's--to use a term from Alaska, and the Iditarod--their lead dog.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Obama: No Mathlete : "In last night's speech Barack Obama claimed that, "we import triple the amount of oil as the day that Senator McCain took office." So what? Senator McCain has been in office for 26 years. That's an average increase of 4.2% per year (with compounding). Second, and more importantly, what does that have to do with anything? John McCain is one senator out of 100. His biography is full of amazing stories of courage, sacrifice and accomplishment. Surely, though, Senator Obama is not saying the John McCain has been single-handedly responsible for US energy policy for the last 25 years. What else can we put on his shoulders? US GDP has increased by 200% since McCain took office. Hamburger sales have skyrocketed. Shark attacks have been almost eliminated since McCain was elected. Maybe he's an oil importing, GDP raising, hamburger eating, shark killing leviathan. If so, he has my vote."

The strange Veep choice: "Joe Biden wasn't even on Barack Obama's short list until August 7, when Russia suddenly invaded the neighboring country of Georgia. That's the word from key Democrats meeting here in Denver who say the Obama campaign's need to shore up its foreign policy bona fides helped push the Delaware senator to the top of the pack. `We didn't pick our nominee. Vladimir Putin did,' is how one Democrat, who professes to be pleased with the Biden choice, put it."

The prophets of doom never give up: "The US economy expanded at a 3.3 per cent rate from April through June, far faster than first thought, but analysts are warning that the outlook for the remainder of the year remains grim. Even as investors celebrated with a rally in the stockmarket, pushing the Dow up more than 200 points, economists cautioned that consumer spending and foreign demand would probably dry up in the months ahead. With layoffs on the rise, corporate profits falling, and the housing slump still in full swing, the report was seen by many analysts as something of a last gasp. "Don't lull yourself into complacency looking in the rearview mirror," Joshua Shapiro, chief US economist at the research firm MFR, said. "The view out of the windshield is a lot scarier."

No good economic news in socialist-run Britain: "Britain's Treasury chief has told a newspaper that the country is suffering its worst economic crisis for 60 years, and more pain is yet to come. The Guardian newspaper has quoted Alistair Darling as saying the slump is ``going to be more profound and long-lasting than people thought''. In an interview for the paper's weekend edition, Darling said the economic conditions faced by Britain and the world ``are arguably the worst they have been in 60 years''. Darling also acknowledged that voters were angry with the governing Labour Party, which has been in power for 11 years."

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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