Tuesday, September 2, 2008

September 2, 2008 - Reality Check



I guess we've laughed enough over Sarah Palin--it's been a raucous couple of days and a bit of hilarity is always welcome during a Presidential campaign but now its time to get serious.

Has Sarah Palin proved herself in the international political community? Not yet.

Has Sarah Palin prepared herself for 4 (possibly 8) years in the international political community? No. It's always nice to think about the little person from nowhere rising up to challenge the Big Boys but does that usually happen? It's another great American Dream--but its a dream nontheless.
Gomer Pyle and the Clampetts are the stuff sitcoms are made of and down the road the whole McCain/Palin situation may be good as a television show.

But this is Reality. http://gov.state.ak.us/bio.html (Alaska office of the Gov.)

I stole this from Wikipedia:

Palin was born Sarah Louise Heath in Sandpoint, Idaho, the daughter and third of four children of Sarah Heath (nee Sheeran), a school secretary, and Charles R. Heath, a science teacher and track coach.[7] Her family moved to Alaska when she was an infant.[7] As a child, she would sometimes go moose hunting with her father before school, and the family regularly ran 5K and 10K races.[7]
Palin attended Wasilla High School in Wasilla, Alaska, where she was the head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter at the school and the point guard and captain of the school's basketball team.[7] She helped the team win the Alaska small-school basketball championship in 1982, hitting a critical free throw in the last seconds of the game, despite having an ankle stress fracture at the time.[7] She earned the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" because of her intense play and was the leader of team prayer before games.[7]
In 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla beauty contest (according to most but not all sources, playing the flute and winning the "Miss Congeniality" award as well),[8][9] then finished second in the Miss Alaska pageant,[10] at which she won a college scholarship.[7] Palin attended Hawaii Pacific College in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1982 for a semester, where she majored in Business Administration, and transferred in 1983 to North Idaho College.[11] In 1987,[12] Palin received a Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho, where she also minored in political science.[13][14]
In 1988, she worked briefly as a sports reporter for KTUU-TV in Anchorage, Alaska,[15] and also helped out in her husband’s family commercial fishing business.[16]

I got this from the US Congressional Directory:

OBAMA, Barack, a Senator from Illinois; born in Honolulu, Hawaii, August 4, 1961; obtained early education in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Hawaii; continued education at Occidental College, Los Angeles, Calif.; received a B.A. in 1983 from Columbia University, New York City; worked as a community organizer in Chicago, Ill.; studied law at Harvard University, where he became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review, and received J.D. in 1991; lecturer on constitutional law, University of Chicago; member, Illinois State senate 1997-2004; elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2004 for term beginning January 3, 2005.


Bibliography
Obama, Barack. Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. New York: Times Books, 1995. Reprint 2004; Obama, Barack. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006.


From where I'm standing I'm liking the fellow who's been preparing for the international public office for most of his life.

Mrs. Palin was dropped into this presidential campaign as a ploy. Ploys are good if they're backed up by a solid long term strategy. I don't see that here.

My fellow Americans, do we dare drop Ms. Palin, and the Republicans who dreamed this bit of caprice up, onto the international stage?




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