5000 Americans

Today, at precisely 1 pm Irish summer time, the special software installed on this site registered the 5000th individual visitor from the USA.

Ever since I began writing this weblog almost 17 months ago, Americans have provided the largest proportion of visitors and readers. This is probably not so surprising, as the internet began in the USA and a very large number of Americans use it on a daily basis.

But since most of my entries are about Ireland, it is perhaps a little exceptional that they find such interest in the USA. Although there are approximately 45-50 million Americans who have Irish ancestry, I am sure that not all my American readers have a direct personal connection with the Emerald Isle.

Maybe the fact that I look at the world as a whole from time to time, and comment extensively on global political developments - including the USA - is attracting so many American readers.

Especially last year, during the long presidential election campaign, I wrote many pieces about the candidates from both major parties, right from the start of the 'primaries' in January. And I take a little pride in the fact that - using my skills as a political analyst - I was able to predict the final candidates (Barack Obama & John McCain) as well as the correct election result at an early stage of the 'primaries'.

I also managed - after several weeks of intensive research - to establish that Sarah Palin was not a 'surprise candidate', pulled out of John McCain's hat just a few days before the Republican Convention. I documented in detail that she was quietly selected and built-up as a potential vice-presidential candidate by the right-wing neo-cons of the Republican Party even before John McCain declared his own intention to become a candidate for the White House. (see my entry of October 26th, 2008)

This was quite a scoop for me, a single blogger without staff or professional research facilities, and a number of major newspapers that did not find the truth about Sarah Palin by themselves (despite their staff and research facilities) were happy to take this exclusive story from me.

And to round up my coverage of the presidential election, I stayed up all night (from November 4th to November 5th) and live-blogged the development and incoming results, declaring Barack Obama's victory about an hour before the major US television networks did the same.

As I have a great interest in the USA and all American political developments, I will continue to write about them whenever it is appropriate and I find the time.

I like to take this opportunity to thank the 5000 Americans who have taken the time to visit this weblog and read my entries. I hope you find them interesting and informative, and I will do my best to keep up the standard I have established so far.
Please share the information you find here with your family, friends and colleagues, and always feel free to leave comments. They are as much appreciated as your visits to this site.

The Emerald Islander

The Making of Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin is not John McCain's 'spontaneous' choice for US Vice President and was not chosen by him.

She is a fundamentalist right-wing creature that was planted on him by party managers.
She was secretly groomed and prepared for her role by right-wing Republican 'spin doctors' for 18 months and originally meant to be the 'running mate' of Rudy Giuliani.

Read the whole story of the Making of Sarah Palin below in this

EXCLUSIVE REPORT

Sarah Palin, the right-wing creationist, 'hockey mom' and governor of Alaska, was sold to the Republican Party, the world's media and the general public as a 'spontaneous' choice of the presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, apparently showing his vigour and love for unconventional decisions.

That presentation was a lie.

I did not buy it right from the start and have been sceptical from the first moment I saw and heard Sarah Palin speak.

This woman, even though clearly inexperienced and a country bumpkin from the wilderness of Alaska, was too much groomed in certain ways, and uttered - almost like a parrot - just the kind of words the right-wing fundamentalists in her party wanted to hear. There was no spontaneity in her 'spontaneous' appearance, and I smelt a rat straight away.

However, between having a hunch and being able to establish that one is right there is a long stretch of thorough research. And not always does one find what one expects to be there.

But this time it is, and today I am happy to share with you the findings of my investigation into the making of Sarah Palin, who was neither a spontaneous choice, nor was she chosen by John McCain.

When Senator McCain presented Sarah Palin as his 'running mate', everyone was completely baffled. Sarah who? - people kept asking one time after the other. And she is the governor of what? (It was quite an interesting observation on the side that many Americans, including even some journalists, seemed not to know that Alaska is one of their 50 states...)

If John McCain had intented to surprise his party, America and the rest of the world and show once again what a great 'maverick' he is, pulling the name of this widely unknown and totally inexperienced backwoods politician out of a hat only two days before the party's convention would indeed qualify as a 'maverick' stunt.

But John McCain is as much a 'maverick' as my neighbour's little hamster. The Arizona Senator and former naval aviator likes the idea of a 'maverick', and he would really love to be one. But that's as far as it goes.
In his long political career - four years in the House of Representatives and 21 years in the US Senate - he has not left many impressions of independent behaviour. And during the nearly eight years of the current administration McCain voted in over 90% of all decisions with George W. Bush and supported his policies. Not really the behaviour of a 'maverick', is it?

In fact, the artificial image of John McCain as a 'maverick' has only been used by himself and his campaign team since he decided to be a candidate for this year's election and began to run in the 'primaries'. And the sole reason for applying this label to himself is his - later aborted - attempt to switch sides in 2004, when for a short time there was even the possibility of John McCain becoming the 'running mate' of the Democratic candidate John Kerry.

For a few months, during which he was very annoyed and angry with George W. Bush and his administration, he contemplated moving over to the Democrats (inspired and encouraged by his old friend and fellow Senator Joe Lieberman) or even setting up a third party under his own leadership. If he were a real 'maverick', he would have done one of these two things. But after many talks and proposals, nothing came of it and McCain stayed put and quiet as a Republican.

McCain's moves did not remain hidden from George W. Bush and his team, lead by Karl Rove. And after a face-to-face meeting in the White House in the late summer of 2004, the Senator from Arizona was a changed man. Forgotten was all his anger, forgotten were his ideas to make a bold move on his own.
From that time on he voted even more often with the Bush administration and supported it in almost everything.

We don't know exactly what was said during this meeting, of course, and what the two men agreed on, but it is very clear that on this day John McCain sold his soul, and all what was left of his independent mind, to George W. Bush and Karl Rove.
We can assume that Bush promised McCain a 'free run' for the presidency in 2008, when he himself could not stand again. He and Rove might even have promised McCain support from the fundamentalist 'Christian' right, which they both had used as power base for their own success.

It was therefore no great surprise that after John McCain's 2007 announcement to run for the presidency, no strong or serious candidate was nominated from the right wing of his party.
Only Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee threw their hats into the ring of the 'primary' circus, but neither of them had ever a real chance to become President, or even be nominated as the party's candidate. Romney is a prominent Mormon, and even a right-wing America is not (yet) ready for a Mormon in the White House.
And the fundamentalist 'Christian' and backwoodsman Mike Huckabee, though popular with the right-wing creationists, is a real 'maverick' who would never have mobilised enough voters from 'middle America'.

Thus the only serious opponent for McCain was former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (left), who made a real mess of his campaign and fell by the wayside after only one 'primary', the crucial vote in Florida.

It has always baffled me why an experienced and shrewd politician like Rudy Giuliani flatly refused to campaign in the smaller, but nevertheless important, east coast states and put all his hopes and money into Florida.
Could this have been just a diversion, a deliberate failure to leave McCain the open road to the nomination? We will probably never know, but it is quite possible.

After he secured the Republican nomination - long before the convention - many people wanted to know who John McCain's 'running mate' for the vice-presidential office was going to be. But despite repeated and ever more urgent questions, McCain remained silent and only said he would tell the world soon enough. Once again he wanted to play the 'maverick' and had a real surprise in stock for his party. He was going to take his old personal friend Joe Lieberman (above), 'independent Democrat' and Senator from Connecticut, with him to the White House.

When John McCain's chief adviser Steve Schmidt (left), who took complete control of the campaign in July, learned of this plan, he was shocked and outraged.
What the party needed was a staunch Republican as vice-presidential candidate, he argued, especially as McCain himself was still seen as "too soft and too liberal" by the strong right wing of the party.

Joe Lieberman would not be acceptable, Schmidt said, as he was not only a Democrat, but also an orthodox Jew from the east coast. What the party needed was "not Joe Lieberman, but an ordinary Joe" people could relate to. Better even a Josephine, as "a woman always brings extra attraction".

After lengthy arguments McCain gave in eventually and left the selection of the 'running mate' to the 38-year-old Steve Schmidt.
This was not a hard task for the right-wing campaign manager, as he had in fact made his selection already. For quite some time a small group of selected right-wing Republicans, led and organised by George W. Bush's former campaign manager and chief 'spin doctor' Karl Rove (above), had prepared and groomed Sarah Palin for this position. The whole operation was done with the utmost secrecy, and only a few people knew of the plan. John McCain was not among them.

The young female governor of Alaska, hardly known to anyone outside her own state, was just the kind of person Rove and Schmidt needed.
A mother, housewife and politician, who stands on the far right of the party, loves guns and shooting animals, and - most important of all elements - a strict fundamentalist evangelical 'Christian' and creationist, who is vehemently opposed to abortion. She ticks all the crucial right-wing boxes, and it could not have been better.
(That Palin's 17-year-old unmarried daughter would become pregnant at the politically most unsuitable time no-one expected...)

That Sarah Palin is less than two years in her current job as governor and has absolutely no experience with foreign affairs did not bother Schmidt or his mentor Rove. After all, George W. Bush was in the same situation in 2000, and he provided the right-wing war mongers under the leadership of Richard 'Dick' Cheney with two full-sized conflicts after he was briefed in the right way.

However, the 'discovery' of Sarah Palin as a potential vice-presidential candidate was neither made by Steve Schmidt nor by Karl Rove, who taught his associate all the dirty tricks while they both worked in the White House under George W. Bush and Richard 'Dick' Cheney (the latter being advised directly by Schmidt, before he was chosen as the campaign manager of Arnold Schwarzenegger for the gubernatorial election in Calaifornia in 2006).

The rather dubious 'honour' of having found Palin and recognised her potential must go to a young college student in Colorado named Adam Brickley (right), who - at the tender age of 20 - started a private one-man campaign for the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican candidate for Vice President of the USA.
Brickley, a youth and student activist on the fundamentalist far right of the Republican Party, was looking for new faces among Republican state governors, senators and members of the House of Representatives, with the idea to pick the most appealing for his self-ordained mission to find and promote the next Republican 'celebrity'.
It is not known how many political biographies Adam looked up on Wikipedia or other online sources, but sooner or later he came across Sarah Palin, and he liked what he saw and read.

Being a bit of a computer nerd, he decided to use the internet - and especially blogging - for his promotional purposes. So with his mind made up, Adam Brickley started a new weblog, which had the clear and unmistakeable name Draft Sarah Palin for Vice President.

The first text on this weblog was posted on February 26th, 2007, which was:

• less than three months after Sarah Palin was inaugurated as the newly elected (first time) governor of Alaska (on December 4th, 2006);
• two months before Senator John McCain announced (on April 25th, 2007) that he would be seeking the nomination of the Republican Party for the US Presidency;
• more than 18 months before John McCain presented Sarah Palin as his 'surprise running mate' at the Republican convention on August 29th, 2008 in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

In this first post Adam Brickley explains what he was doing, and why. He writes:
"This blog is the result of about a month worth of research on potential Republican Vice-Presidential candidates for the 2008 election. I had been considerably less than thrilled with all of the early speculation, mostly swirling around second-tier presidential candidates, so I decided to see if there was anyone better suited for the job that I hadn't been hearing about. So, I developed the following profile for the perfect VP candidate (using Rudy Giuliani as my presumptive presidential candidate):
1) A energetic, young, fresh face who will energize the electorate
2) Not connected to the current administration
3) Pro-Life
4) Pro-Gun
5) A woman or minority to counter Hillary or Obama and put to rest the idea that America only elects white males
One of the first names I found that fit these qualifications was that of Sarah Palin, the recently elected Governor of Alaska. I knew that I had stumbled upon a fantastic candidate for national office, but I kept looking in the hope that I could find other potentially viable choices. However, after looking at every GOP [Republican] governor, senator, and congressperson, I found that Palin had only become more appealing."

So, how did the weird idea of a college undergraduate from Colorado make it right into the frontline of the presidential election? It was a long and rather strange journey.

At first the whole 'Palin campaign' was indeed only Adam Brickley and his weblog. And it was not the Arizona Senator John McCain whom young Adam wanted to be the next Republican in the White House.
For the right wing of the party McCain always was - and still is - a suspect 'liberal' and not the man of their choice. (Most of them will still vote for him, now that he is the party's candidate, but there are hard-line fundamentalists who will not.)

Adam Brickley's preferred candidate for the highest office in the USA was Rudolph W. Giuliani, who for most of 2007 was the clear frontrunner in the Republican Party. The only child of an Italo-American Mafioso from New York and until the end of 2001 the Mayor of that city for eight years, Rudy Giuliani - the man who invented 'zero tolerance' - was the hope of most right-wing Republicans, until he totally mismanaged his campaign and had to quit the race after coming third in the Florida 'primary' election, the one he had expected to win with a substantial margin. (How much this was stage-managed by the White House to keep the promise made to John McCain in 2004 can only be guess work.)

So when Adam Brickley sat in front of his computer in Colorado and selected Sarah Palin as potential 'VP' candidate, he chose her as the 'running mate' of Rudy Giuliani, and not for John McCain.
But when events overtook his preference, even a right-wing hick like Adam was flexible enough to adjust his online campaign to the new political realities on the ground.

The blogging campaign for Sarah Palin was not the first time that Adam Brickley - online also known by his internet name 'ElephantMan' - had started a political weblog.
On July 29th, 2005 - a Friday evening with nothing else to do - the then 18-year-old created ConservaGlobe, which - as he described it himself - was a "right wing commentary on world politics from a man on a mission to prove that Conservatism transcends national boundaries".
(By the way, the name 'ElephantMan' has in Adam's case no connection with the famous John Merrick and is instead a verbal link to the mascot animal of the US Republican Party, which is - strangely enough - an elephant.)

For nearly two years 'ElephantMan' ran ConservaGlobe, featuring a large number of political news items and comments from around the world.
For an American living in one of the land-locked states, Adam showed an unusually strong interest in the rest of the world, and although his posts reflect clearly his right-wing political orientation, the ConservaGlobe weblog was maintained well and quite informative.
The last text there - with the rather strange title "Are Terrorists Targeting Gordon Brown?" - was posted on July 1st, 2007, when Adam's newly found obsession with Sarah Palin began to take all his attention.

Because within less than six months of Adam Brickley starting his strange campaign for a woman he had never met or spoken with, the Republican puppet masters had taken him and his idea under their shady wings.

To most outsiders this was not obvious, but behind the scenes the right-wing spin machine began to work for and on Sarah Palin, preparing and grooming her slowly but steadily for a position as 'running mate' for Rudy Giuliani.

The only visible change was the appearance of a second name on Adam Brickley's campaign weblog.
Draft Sarah Palin for Vice President had suddenly another writer, one Stephen R. Maloney, who shaped up the weblog and put more political spin onto it.
Most visitors to the site might not have noticed that and probably did not notice the significance of the new name either. But for political observers and analysts it meant a lot.

Stephen R. Maloney is a right-wing US writer (author of "Talk yourself to the Top") and political consultant, who - after many years in the conservative South - lives and works now in Ambridge, Pennsylvania (a state heavily targeted by the Republicans and one they need to win if they want to win the election).
Besides his work as a political consultant, Maloney has a long track record as a speech writer, working mainly for large US companies who support the Republican Party - and especially the Bush administration - with huge donations. Among them are Phillips Petroleum, Gulf Oil, USX (US Steel), Aetna, Merck, Lilly and many others.

This accomplished 'spin doctor' took now control of Adam Brickley's weblog, and worked closely with the masters of the Republican propaganda machine, Karl Rove and Steve Schmidt.

Maloney is a very prolific blogger and involved with at least 18 different right-wing political weblogs, most of which he controls himself. (This number includes at least five new weblogs which already project and promote Sarah Palin for the next presidential campaign in 2012!)

One of these 18 weblogs, called Campaign 2008 Victory A, was established by Stephen R. Maloney on June 25th, 2007, shortly after he had stepped in as Adam Brickley's political mentor, and more than 14 months before Sarah Palin was presented by John McCain as his 'surprise running mate'.
At that time McCain did not even know she existed, but she was already groomed secretly by right-wing manipulators as his potential vice-presidential partner.

In his first text, posted on this weblog on June 25th, 2007, Stephen R. Maloney wrote:
"I do like Sarah Palin - a lot... Sarah has the character, charisma, and communication skills necessary to appeal to the American people. She doesn’t come with the political history - and the high 'unfavorability ratings' - associated with most national figures. I’m prepared to burn a great deal of time in the effort to get Sarah on the ticket... I’ve invested at least 200 hours so far, and I’m ready to spend at least 2000 more. Why? Because I believe it’s essential to the country that there be a new dynamic - specifically, a dramatically different personality - in American politics. As I’ve said before, if our ticket is the usual one - two aging white males in gray suits, both carrying more baggage than an army of red caps - then we deserve to lose, and we will lose."

To remind you, this was 14 months before Sarah Palin's nomination, and about one year before the increasingly senile John McCain ever heard of her.

But while the Arizona Senator was preparing for his 'primary' campaign across all 50 US states, the right-wing spin doctors manufactured what was in their eyes the 'perfect vice-president' who would not have to run the gauntlet of the 'primaries' and could appear later like a rabbit from a magician's hat - Sarah Palin.

At this early stage none of them even contemplated that John McCain would be their party's nominee, and they were not interested in him at all. Their favourite at that stage was Rudy Giuliani, with actor and former Senator Fred Thompson a possible candidate. These two were the potential candidates Sarah Palin was groomed to assist, in an election they clearly expected to run against the Democratic Senator and former First Lady Hillary Clinton.

As Stephen R. Maloney writes on June 25th, 2007: "Admittedly, I may be wrong, but I don’t think Fred [Thompson] can defeat Rudy [Giuliani] in the Republican primary. And I don’t believe Giuliani alone can defeat Mrs. Clinton in the general election. Recent polls suggest my gloomy assessment is correct. Could Rudy running with Sarah defeat Hillary Clinton? Maybe. Could Fred Thompson running with Sarah defeat Mrs. Clinton? Possibly. I like some of the other Republican presidential candidates, but I see no evidence they could emerge as winners in November 2008."

And he continues: "We’ve never [had] anyone remotely similar in high office. For one thing, Sarah is the mother of four children. [By now she has five.] We’ve never had a high official from Alaska, a state blessedly free of many of our political obsessions in the 'lower-48'. We’ve never [had] a President or a Vice-President whose spouse has actually held what most of American regards as 'real jobs' - in Todd Palin’s case as a commercial fisherman and oil field production foreman."
"The idea of Sarah going to [Washington] D.C. as the nation’s first female vice-president makes me smile. It has a little of the quality of Jimmy Stewart’s old 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'. Imagine that: sending a real person - someone with whom a hundred million American[s] can immediately identify."

He goes on: "On critical issues like energy, faith, and family, Sarah might be the best-informed person we’ve ever sent to Washington, DC. She won’t have learned about those matters by reading books; she has lived them first-hand.
Sarah is good at running things. That traces back to her childhood, and especially to her role at a point guard on a state championship basketball team. The point guard brings the ball up the court and decides exactly how the offense will attack the defense.
In both life and politics, Sarah has almost always been a winner. The 'almost' qualification comes from the fact that she lost her race for Lieutenant Governor. She obviously learned a lot from that. She came back to defeat former Senator and then-Republican Governor Frank Murkowski in the primary. Then, she defeated Democrat and former Governor Tony Knowles in the general election."

Concluding the article, Maloney addressed Sarah Palin directly: "So Sarah, you may barely know I exist - at this point. But I’m going to devote every hour I can to making sure you have to relocate sooner rather than later from Wasilla, Alaska to Washington, DC."

And Stephen R. Maloney kept his promise. He and his collaborators ran a subtle campaign - making good use of the internet and blogging - to make Governor Sarah Palin the Republican vice-presidential candidate for - originally - Rudy Giuliani, and then, after he failed and dropped out, for the eventual nominee, John McCain.

He, the former navy pilot, war hero and long-time politician had nothing at all to do with the selection and the 'making' of Sarah Palin.

When the time came to nominate a 'running mate', he was told who it was to be.

His own long-term choice - Senator Joe Lieberman - had never a chance. The party machine, reluctantly accepting McCain - the man they least wanted - as presidential candidate, forced him to do what he was told.
Such is politics, and in particular Republican politics in the era of Karl Rove.

The rest, as people often say, is history.

Most analysts - myself included - expect a Democratic landslide win on November 4th. And one of the main reasons for that is Sarah Palin, the woman who - for a short time - energised the Republican core voters, but has quite the opposite effect on everyone else, including the crucial independent voters who are ever more the deciding factor in US elections.

Given the fanatic devotion some political activists like Stephen R. Maloney and Adam Brickley have for her, they will probably do everything in their power to keep her alive on national level, hoping to run her again in 2012.
But if the current investigations into her abuse of power as governor of Alaska are taking on their own momentum, such efforts - including the already existing five weblogs Maloney has created for a 'Sarah Palin 2012' campaign - might become irrelevant.

The Emerald Islander

This article is copyrighted.
© 2008 by the author & blog owner, and by
Mayfield Communications, Waterford / Ireland

If anyone - newspapers, magazines or fellow bloggers - wishes to copy
or republish this article, then please obtain first permission to do so.
You can do that by e-mailing me at inishtrahoull@yahoo.co.uk

Lipstick on Dogs and Pigs...!

No, this is not an endorsement of cosmetic products for animals. Not even a piece about the use of animals for the testing of new cosmetics. As an active member of the ISPCA (Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) I am against that, anyway...

This is about the ridiculous double-standards of certain American politicians, which come usually to their strongest flourish in the Republican Party during election campaigns. It is meanwhile already a tradition (even though a dishonourable one) that any candidate standing against a Republican in an election - regardless on what level - will be subjected to an orchestrated smear campaign, with lies, half-truths and twisting of facts until they creak.

So one should not be surprised to see this now happening to Barack Obama (left), the Democratic candidate for the White House. As it happens, this year there is no-one in the Republican Party who comes even near the intellect, brilliance, clarity and courage of Senator Obama. They know that, and that it would therefore be futile to mount an intellectual or serious political campaign against him.

Having no sharp swords at their disposal, the Republicans decided to select the bluntest weapons they could find, hoping that they can fool and deceive the American voters again (as they did so successfully in 2004).
And once again the evil schemer Karl Rove (right), supported by his adlatus Steve Schmidt (who is John McCain's campaign manager) rolls out his tricks in the backroom.

Having forced McCain to accept the naive and totally inexperienced, but absolutely right-wing fundamentalist and gun-toting 'Christian' Sarah Palin (left) as 'running mate', they are now re-writing the campaign script and the policy lines of their candiate. Perhaps it is his age of now 72 years that has changed the once independent and admirable maverick from Arizona, or maybe he is by now just sick and tired of it all and will agree to anything, as long as it gets him the presidency.
But the John McCain who is now the Republican candidate for President of the USA is not the same man who ran in the Republican primaries in the year 2000 against - among others - George W. Bush.

Among historians there circulates a theory that Adolf Hitler did not live until the end of the Second World War; that he was actually assassinated by dissident Wehrmacht officers in 1943. But instead of regime change or the collapse of National Socialism they expected, the show went on, because top Nazis put one of Hitler's doubles (he had and used at least two we know of) in his place. However, this double lacked certain of Hitler's abilities and thus mistakes were made from 1943 to 1945 that the real Hitler might not have made. This is a theory, as I said, and we have no positive proof for it (nor any real evidence against it). But there are plenty of elements that make it look very plausible.

John McCain (right) has also undergone a complete change, though I do not expect that he was replaced by a double. But four years ago, before the presidential election campaign of 2004, he sold his soul and political principles to the Bush clan. What exactly happened will probably be never known to the public, but I believe that McCain agreed to give up his hefty criticism of Bush and his abstruse policies in exchange for a promise by Bush and his cronies to give him a 'free run' in 2008. And like all those who sold their soul to the Devil, he is now paying the price for it. Thus a man once seen as 'liberal' - and some still think he is - now has to rub shoulders with a woman like Sarah Palin and almost play second fiddle to her egocentric ignorance!

The linguistic controversy created by Republican 'spin doctors' some days ago is quite typical for the way they fight election campaigns. Never mind substance or real issues, as long as you can grab a few headlines in right-wing papers, TV and radio stations for a day or two, it is worth a go.

The phrase "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it still remains a pig" is quite popular in the USA, widely used in all walks of life (and not just in politics). In fact, John McCain has used it several times in public, the last time referring to Hillary Clinton.
But now, that Barack Obama used it, reflecting on McCain's apparent plans to change things in Washington, even though he is the candidate of the incumbent party and has voted more than 90% in favour of Bush's policies, the Republican smear machine is trying to imply that it is an apparently "sexist" remark and aimed at Sarah Palin!

Well, only brainwashed hardline Republicans, who would vote even for a pig, as long as it stands for their party, will see it that way. Everyone with a working brain will see the reality instead.

But one should not forget what gave the Republican backroom boys the basis for their attack on Senator Obama. It was Sarah Palin herself who - at the Republican convention - declared that the only difference between a "hockey mom" (like herself) and a pit bull (terrier) was lipstick. It has been pointed out by various observers and commentators that thus she proclaimed herself to be a "bitch", without actually using the word.

There is an old saying, that those sitting in glass houses should avoid throwing stones. Well, this is such a case. Anyone with common sense will see that it was Sarah Palin who drew the slight analogy towards herself, with her own words, even though Barack Obama did not intend it.
It was the Republican Party, and not Obama, who created the image of Sarah Palin as a "pig with lipstick". And one cannot help but thinking that they actually might have a point...

Perhaps both parties should in future concentrate more on facts and the massive problems that the USA are struggling with. Regardless who will be elected in November (and I hope it will be Barack Obama), the new President will have a very difficult job on his hands. There will be no requirement for pigs, pit bull terriers or even lipstick.
Required is instead a strong character, imagination, intelligence and the will to make substantial changes to an ailing and failing country. These traits I can see only in one party: the Democrats.

The Emerald Islander

John McCain's unexpected Choice

Senator John McCain, candidate of the Republican Party in this year's US presidential election, has surprised most people with the choice of his so-called 'running mate'. However, as misleading as this word - used by American politicians and media - might be, it is not for a sporting event he chose his partner, but for the White House.
'Running mate' is a popular - even though daft - substitute for the word 'Vice President'. Whoever is chosen for this position will undergo the same media scrutiny and unfair attacks from opponents as the person chosen to 'run' for President. (It is rather telling that here in Europe people 'stand' for elections, while in the USA they are 'running', as if they have to get away from something...)

Well, this entry is not really about linguistic fineries, even though language always plays a role in politics, often in various and significant ways. (Maybe I will write about the use of language in the modern political landscape at another time...)

This is about a woman called Sarah Palin. Sarah who? Yes, I did ask myself exactly that, too, when I heard the news. Even as a rather active and well-informed political analyst I had never come across the woman before, nor heard her name mentioned at all. No surprise really, as Sarah Louise Heath Palin (right), to give her full name at least once for the record, became the governor of Alaska only in December 2006.

Even though Alaska is the largest of the fifty US states by size, it only has a population of about 683,000 (a little more than Dublin City and half of the Dublin Urban Area) and hardly anything important ever happens in this remote part of the world with its subarctic climate. Most of the state is a vastness of uninhabited forests, mountain ranges and island, covered in ice and snow for many months of each year. And as about 65% of the land belongs to the federal government and is managed through its agencies, the governor has real responsibility for only a third of the state.

So, without wanting to diminish the position of the governor of Alaska, it is certainly not the most important or challenging job one could find within the political landscape of the USA. And as such also not the one that would qualify its holder easily for the overall leadership of the nation, which includes more than ever huge international responsibilities.

One has therefore to wonder why John McCain, a very experienced politician and a truly 'old hand' in Washington, chose Sarah Palin, a virtually unknown woman with extremely limited experience, as his 'running mate'. Nobody really knows, and it is not even certain if McCain made the selection himself.
Anyone 'running' for political office in the USA is now surrounded and supported by large teams of advisers, consultants and pollsters, each of which has some influence on the decisions made. It is therefore all teamwork these days, no matter who the person in front is.

During the past two months various names have been circulated within the Republican Party for the position of presumptive Vice President. John McCain met all the potential candidates and a number of them spent a weekend with him at one of his houses in Arizona. Political observers in the USA - as they do - speculated over the person most likely to be selected, but not once did the name of Sarah Palin come up. In fact, McCain only met her once before announcing his surprising choice of 'running mate'.

So why is she now the second name on the Republican ticket? What qualifies her for such a high and difficult office? And what makes her more suitable than the about a dozen people previously mentioned, most of them Republican state governors with a lot more experience?

Well, nothing really. In fact, on the basis of education, personal clout and development, political stature and the real experience of legislation, administration and leadership she is about the least qualified person I could think of. All she achieved educationally before eloping with a blue-collar oil-rig worker and part-time fisherman is a Bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of Idaho (the state Sarah was born in before her parents moved to Alaska). She worked a short while as a sports reporter for local TV stations, but stopped that in favour of having four children and helping her husband on a fishing boat. And yes, of course, there were the beauty pageants. I almost forgot.

In 1984 the then 20-year-old Sarah Heath (pictured left) became 'Miss Wasilla', the beauty queen of her small, cold and boring home town, then a minor settlement with less than 2000 inhabitants. She moved on from that to become second in the state-wide Alaska beauty contest of the same year.
Not knowing the other contestants, it is hard to comment on this element of Sarah's career. True beauty is a rare commodity, and even more so in small communities. 'Among the blind the one-eyed is king' is a saying that comes to mind. And even the most remote places just want to have their bit of fun as well...
However, by becoming runner-up in the 'Miss Alaska' pageant, Sarah won her scholarship to the University of Idaho, also rather second-rate in the greater educational structure of the USA.

In 1992 Sarah Palin entered local politics for the Republican Party. She served four years on the town council of Wasilla, which had meanwhile doubled its size due to the oil boom. In 1996, when she was elected Mayor after a pushy and quite controversial campaign, Wasilla had almost 5000 inhabitants. (Currently the number of Wasillans is officially listed as 6715.)

After six years as Mayor, Sarah's ambitions grew and she wanted to leave small-town politics for the richer pickings of the state. In 2002 she 'ran' for the office of Lieutenant Governor of Alaska, but was beaten already in the Republican primary. Old party hands thought that she lacked the experience necessary for the job.
Four years later, after a couple of years on the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, Sarah came back with a vengeance and went right for the top job this time. In an unexpected and still controversial move she unseated the incumbent Republican governor (and ex-Senator) Frank Murowski and began to fight the massive corruption which her own party created over many years in Alaska and its rich oil and gas industry.

With less than two years in office, this work is far from finished. So if cleaning up Alaska and its corrupt and narrow-minded political landscape is really what Sarah Palin wants, she should have refused the offer made to her by John McCain. But - in all fairness - few would say 'no' to such an offer coming their way...

For the Republican Party the announcement came as much as a surprise as for the rest of us. It remains to be seen if it will do them any good in the main campaign and - more crucially - in the election in November.
So far a main argument of the McCain campaign was that their candidate was a vastly experienced and seasoned politician who could be trusted as leader and commander-in-chief. They portrayed Democratic candidate Barack Obama often as "too young and lacking experience", especially when it comes to foreign affairs.

Well, such argument will be a lot more difficult to use, now that McCain chose a "hockey mum" as his deputy and presumptive successor as head of state and commander-in-chief.
Compared with Sarah Palin the experience of Barack Obama is massive and clear for everyone to see. In contrast to her, he is also a highly educated man and has many years of practical work in a large and difficult community under his belt. And by choosing veteran Senator Joe Biden (of Delaware), the most experienced foreign affairs expert in Washington, as his 'running mate', Obama made up far more than necessary for his relative youth and lack of foreign experience.

Adding the fact that John McCain celebrated his 72nd birthday yesterday and would - if elected - be the oldest person ever to become President of the USA, the choice of Vice President is even more crucial than usually. Given that under the US Constitution the Vice President automatically succeeds the President on his death, anyone who would be Vice President to a President McCain would have to be able to step into his shoes at any time, should the situation arise.

John McCain had been looking for a proper second-in-command very carefully and for a long time. Before yesterday's surprise announcement, McCain's own personal preference was a man who is as much a maverick as he is himself. It was widely expected that the 'running mate' position might go to the veteran Senator Joseph Lieberman (right), a former Democrat and now - after being dropped by his own party for his support of the Iraq War - an 'Independent Democrat'. This could well have upset a number of staunch Republicans, many of which see McCain as a 'liberal' (whatever that means in an overall liberal country). But the two men are friends across the political divide for a long time and have in the US Senate worked together at various occasions with great success.

So why then the sudden change of mind and the surprise announcement Senator McCain made yesterday? Well, as mentioned above, nobody knows for sure. But what I hear from my personal contacts in the USA, the main reason is a man whose name you will not have heard before either.

He is Steve Schmidt, who on July 2nd, 2008 took over as the principal manager of the McCain campaign. Unknown to the general public, Schmidt is quite a familiar name in the fraternity of political consultants and analysts. He worked for years very closely with the demonic Republican spin doctor Karl Rove, who secured the White House for George W. Bush twice, the second time actually through a real election, which he won with massive lies and scare-mongering, shocking a large amount of right-wing 'Christian' fundamentalist with the prospect of 'gay marriages' if the Democrats would win the election. That was of course complete rubbish, but it scared enough of the rednecks and hill billies and made them vote for Bush.
Schmidt also worked as Counselor and spokesman for Bush's Vice President 'Dick' Cheney, who was - and still is - the most hard line war monger in the current administration and one of the main architects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (If things had gone Cheney's way, there would by now also be a war in Iran...)

It is pretty obvious that John McCain - back in 2004 - sold his political soul to the Bush camp. In exchange for stopping his maverick attacks against his own party and government, McCain was promised a free run for the presidency in 2008 (when Bush cannot 'run' any more himself). The likes of Cheney and Rove might have hoped that McCain - suffering from skin cancer and getting quite old - would probably never be able to go all the way, but now that he does, they made sure that the former free-thinker and maverick from Arizona, who was more than once on the brink of leaving the Republican Party (the last two times in 2001 and 2004), is surrounded by enough right-wing minders and advisers.

After they failed to push the Democrats to select Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate (which would have been a great bonus for the Republicans) and Barack Obama was wise enough not to choose her as 'running mate', the right-wing strategists panicked and forced John McCain to make a clear gesture towards the fundamentalist 'Christians', rednecks, hill billies and all the other people of little brain and education who secured the election of George W. Bush in 2004.

Instead of his old friend and colleague Joe Lieberman, who is an orthodox Jew from the Eastern seaboard, McCain was cajoled by Schmidt to go for the exact opposite: a redneck woman of little brain and experience, but one who fulfills most of the requirements to appeal to that particular part of the electorate. She has no academic clout, lives 'in the wild', loves shooting, is therefore a member of the ultra-reactionary National Rifle Association, eats 'mooseburgers' (made from the meat of the moose she kills) and has a son in the Army and on the way to serve in Iraq. This is the sort of people America's brain-dead morons just love. But wait, there is more. Sarah Palin "does not believe that global warming is the result of human activity" and has vetoed that the polar bear should be put on the list of endangered (and therefore protected) species. This alone, the unbelievable amount of arrogant ignorance when it comes to the important matters of the environment, makes her a female version of George W. Bush!
Sarah Palin is - of course - also a brainwashed right-wing 'Christian' and supports the teaching of the so-called 'Intelligent Design' theory, which denies the facts of evolution and is based on the literal interpretation of the Bible as the only acceptable source for everything, including science.

Steve Schmidt and his right-wing Republican strategists are pretty certain that a woman like Sarah Palin can gain them the moron votes that John McCain would not mobilise. They also hope that by choosing a woman they might scoop up some of the radical feminist vote that supported Hillary Clinton for the sole reason of being a woman, as well as some of the Democrat blue-collar support that is not quite happy with a non-white candidate. Yes, racism in the USA is alive and kicking, and nowhere more than in the very same party that started the Civil War 147 years ago, apparently to free the negroes...

In 1984, the year young Sarah Heath became 'Miss Wasilla', the first ever woman was nominated as the vice-presidential 'running mate' of any US presidential candidate. She was Geraldine Ferraro (right), a highly intelligent, educated and experienced lawyer and politician from New York.
Walter Mondale, the Democrats' nominee, made this inspired and courageous selection, but in November of that year they lost heavily to the incumbent President Ronald Reagan (and his Vice President, the ex-CIA director George H. W. Bush, father of the current incumbent).

Now Sarah Palin (nee Heath) is heralded by right-wing media as the second woman selected as a 'running mate'. They sing her praise - even though there is little to sing - and build her up to look like a giant, just because she is a woman, unknown and a right-wing trollop. Sarah Palin is no giant. With her ignorance and her aggressive and violent lifestyle she is rather unattractive as a woman, and she is certainly no second Geraldine Ferraro!
Portraying Sarah Palin as a positive role model for women is an insult to everyone's intelligence, and in particular an affront to every feminist who fought and fights for women's rights and true equality.

Well, I am obviously no American, and thus I have no vote in November. But of course one does have opinions and preferences, even from the outside. Eight years ago, in the year 2000, when John McCain 'ran' in the Republican primaries against George W. Bush and the incumbent Vice President Al Gore - long before his rebirth as an environmentalist - tried to succeed Bill Clinton as President, I would have supported John McCain and voted for him. He was then still the clear maverick for whom decency and common sense had priority over party politics and imperialistic attitudes.
In 2004 McCain was close to start a third party, or even defect to the Democrats. There was for a while even a chance he might become John Kerry's 'running mate' on the Democratic ticket. However, something happened around this time, and John McCain was never the same again. It looks to me that he sold his political soul to Bush (as I mentioned above) and ever since he drifts more and more towards the conservative right, even supporting now positions of Bush's policy he openly attacked between 2000 and 2004.

For me the selection of Sarah Palin as his 'running mate' shows that John McCain finally has lost his maverick spirit and his independence. He is now nothing more than a willing puppet, whose strings are pulled by Steve Schmidt, just as the strings of George W. Bush were pulled by Karl Rove. So if I were American, I could no longer support McCain or vote for him. Most certainly not now, after he has hitched his wagon to a woman like Sarah Palin.
I sincerely hope that the American voters will have the right answer to the short-sighted and in many ways idiotic selection of Sarah Palin. If not, then no 'God' or anything else will help America when the inevitable downfall and disintegration comes. Let the silly woman go back to her snow, ice and wilderness, where she can play the gun-totting dominatrix. But let the USA be once again governed by people with dignity, morals, education and common sense!

The Emerald Islander