http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-01-20-security_N.htm
http://www.ble.org/pr/news/headline.asp?id=24831
"This is the day which the LORD has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it." ~ Psalm 118:24
I knew I would get emotional last night and I finally did. When I finally realised it wasn't a dream. It was a dream coming true. Still, maybe I expected more from myself emotionally. I saw plenty of other people crying. I was teary-eyed throughout Obama's acceptance speech in Chicago. It wasn't until this morning that I forgave myself for my less-than-over-the-top reaction. For I realised that I've been believing this shit all along. I was completely in the tank from the first time I ever heard him speak. For the past four years I've watched him, listened to him, believed in him. I have also learned from him. I've watched him exude a dauntless spirit in the face of adversity. And at times when things would look the blackest (no pun intended), when I was exposing, with the help of the FactChecker and Snopes, the lies upon lies sent with the viral vileness with which they were intended from many of those most dear to me. When Barack Obama said "I can take four more weeks of this but the American people can't take four more years of Bush policies." I was breathed fresh life giving air. I was uplifted. I know I gained strength from him. I hope he gained strength from us.
Frankly, after the Democratic Convention I was completely fired up. And when McCain chose then unknown Palin, I thought he'd conceded right then and there and yet I thought I sounded arrogant to say that out loud. But really, what was he thinking? That was a very careless and dangerous decision. And she may have brought out the worst in his supporters. I thought McCain was gracious in his concession speech last night. I still believe many of his supporters are cretins. And they are probably proud of the fact that I do. The death rattle of an ugly beast can be a terrible thing to witness.
I have believed in this possibility for all of my life. From the time I was six years old and my mother, my little brother and I had to be escorted by police out of our home in the middle of the night when the riots from DC in '68 spilled into my neighborhood in Alexandria. My mother was naturally afraid being a white woman home alone with two children. I was more afraid of having to leave our dog Freckles behind. I grew up keenly aware of the racial divides all around me. But I always believed we could rise above it. And last night I believe I watched that happen. So I felt more of a sigh of relief than anything else. Believe me the tears have been shed for many years. Last night I saw my brothers and sisters come together. Young, old, black, white, brown. Rich and poor and middle class. Men and women. All coming together for a common purpose to become a voice for CHANGE. Now.
Today I feel quietly grateful. I will revel but I will not gloat. For there is much work to be done still. But what a glorious day it is.
All said and done, today is like no any other day in the history of this country and behold I am happy to be part of the generation that forever shall be remembered for rescuing the country and help reclaimed its values of freedom and as the abode of humanity.
God bless USA
God bless Obama & Biden
There are just too numerous challenges that will face the next president of the United States of America and with due respect Senator McCain does not have the capacity to deal with them in the kind of fashion that will bring about the succur we all are anticipating.
For sure it is not going to be, nevertheless if we walk with Obama and give him our support then better days are indeed ahead of us and in fact with his articulate, calculated, authentic, humble and compassionate characteristic we are in for a transformational government that will be an epitome of humane the symbiosis between the authority and the people.
Retrospectively watching the 30 minutes info- commercial in which some pundits have tagged as the closing remark by Sen. Obama in his quest for the White House, I am left speechless and at the same time exceedingly satisfied with his handling of the current presidential campaign, coupled with the inevitable, ups and downs and in large part the campaign of acrimony, denigration and distortions perpetuated by Sen. McCain’s campaign.
The fact that Obama is an epitome of the America idealism of unity in diversity, the dogma of ‘be your brothers and sisters keeper’ and above all the exponential recognition of the indispensability of the necessity to promote humanity and at every time and opportunity defend the later was adequately and conspicuously demonstrated in the TV commercial yesterday being October 29th 2008.
I did listen to the lame, dogmatic, myopic and pathetic attack that Sen. McCain raised on the commercial trying relentlessly to claim that Obama chose to forgo public financing otherwise it could not have been possible for his campaign and in short the movement for hope and change in the country to sermon the capacity to run the advertisement on about seven different network which later cut into the live campaign broadcast from Florida. This is a historic event and must be complemented irrespective of party affiliation.
Obama is a child of necessity!
Obama is the epitome of America idealism!
Obama is the personification of unity in diversity!
Obama represents one United States of America and not a blue or red faction!
Obama is real and thanks be to God for him!
It is indeed a great thing that we are bless to see the anticipated transition and transformation of America and by implication the entire world as we all gravitate towards unity in diversity, tolerance, humanity and above all patriotism that is not limited by racism, discriminations, diabolism, partisanship and other forms of man inhumanty to man.
Behold the biblical Joshua is here and thanks to the many Moses of our country and world; for the sacrifices made by our ancestors is no longer in vain!
Likely voters nationwide:
Obama: 53 percentMcCain: 45 percent
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (CNN) – A new national poll suggests Barack Obama is widening his edge over John McCain in the race for the White House.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll out Monday afternoon suggests that the country's financial crisis, record low approval ratings for President Bush, and a drop in the public's perception of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin all appear to be contributing factors in Obama’s gains among voters.
Fifty-three percent of likely voters questioned in the poll say they are backing Obama for president, with 45 percent supporting McCain. That 8 point edge is double the 4 point margin Obama held in the last CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, taken in mid-September.
Until recently the current political dispensation has been saturated with too many nonentities and inconsequentialities that issues such as lipstick on a big becomes a record heat in terms of the insatiability of the media to further the campaign of fantasy rather than the reality of a gigantic country that is more or less facing extinction from the egocentrism and myopia of its self professed leaders.
My dad always tell me to make sure that I deal gently, patiently and honestly with situations while at the same time being very pragmatic and authentic to myself about the prevailing realities that may relate to such scenarios. The present economic woes confronting the country is not any different from my father’s postulation that care and meticulousness needed to be adhered to especially at this very crucial stage in the country’s history.
I dare to challenge any who want to doubt me that this situation as a matter of fact may amount to blessing in disguise for this country and may as well provide the recipe needed to reawaken in us the necessity of authentic patriotism and dealing with our issues rather than procrastinating and hoping that some how it may just disappear and we will all wake to live in a country that was not built by us!
BY RFK, Jr. http://airamerica.com/ringoffire/blog/2008/sep/22/rfk-j...
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: There are about 30 scams the Republicans are deliberately using, particularly in the swing states to get Democratic voters off the rolls. These scams originate in the so-called Help America Vote Act, which was passed after the Florida debacle in the year 2000. It was originally suggested by Democrats and Republicans, but it was passed by a Republican Congress with a Republican senate and a Republican president. And instead of reforming what happened in Florida it basically institutionalized all the problems that happened in Florida. And institutionalized a series of impediments that make it very difficult for Democrats to register, for Democrats to vote and then for Democrats to have their votes counted.
One of these requirements under HAVA is called 'the perfect match,' and what that does is little known but it is devastating. A quarter of the voters in Colorado have just been removed from the rolls because of this--[and] just this one scam. And what it does is, they use a computer system to compare your registration application to all [your] other government records in the state. So they'll look at your Social Security records, your Motor Vehicle records, and any time you've had any interaction with the government, and if there is any information on your voter registration that is different than the information on another government record that they find, they remove you from the voting rolls.
For example, if I registered as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and yet my motor vehicle license said Robert Frances Kennedy Jr., I'd be removed from the rolls. If your initial is different, if you leave an initial out, if you leave a "Jr." out, if you leave a hyphen out in your name. And what they've done is a study in New York that said 80% of the errors are errors by state clerks taking down this information. And particularly [in] immigrant communities, [where] people tend to vote Democratic, people have names�spell Muhammad with an "o" instead of a "u"
In New Jersey, which is a swing state, 300,000 voters in New Jersey were just sent letters saying that they are now ineligible to vote. New Jersey is nice enough to actually notify them--most states will not even notify them. And New Jersey intends to send out 870,000 letters so that is three quarters of a million people off the voting rolls in a state that could decide this vote by 50,000 votes. And these are Democrats that are being pushed off the rolls.
Let me tell you about one of other scams people should know about. If you're a newly registered voter--and of course the Democrats have done these gigantic registration drives--12 million people on registration--if you're a new voter, you MUST include your license or some other state I.D. when you come to vote. What that means is that if you're a college kid--and college kids now, they're sending in absentee ballots, they're not going to the voting place, they do everything online or they do everything remotely. They don't dream of going to the precinct house voting on election day and waiting in a long line. So if they send in the absentee ballot, and they don't include a color copy of their [driver's] license, their vote is going to be thrown into a trash can. And none of these people know this, because you had to have to read the law in order to know it. There is no notification [of this requirement] when you fill out your registration form, so all of those 12 million people that the Democrats have registered--those ballots are going to be just thrown out.
Papantonio: I'm involved with this kind of thing every day--I didn't know that until you just told me. The media is not talking about it. How in the hell is somebody gonna find this out? It's just incredible.
RFK, Jr.: Hopefully--Obama is getting $66 million a month--hopefully somebody in the Democratic organization is going to pay some attention to this before Election Day.more at:http://airamerica.com/ringoffire/blog/2008/sep/22/rfk-j...
The selection of Sen. Biden as his Vice Presidential running mate by Sen. Obama may as well go down in history as a choice that was based on pragmatic and realistic principles and practices that actually set aside personality differences and put country first.
With due respect to the other Democratic Party presidential aspirants and given the fact that as a matter of authenticity they are all capable of being the commander in chief of the United States of America, the coming on board of Biden conspicuously reminded me of the kind of informed, articulate and measured decision that Sen. Obama has exemplified throughout and especially in the current political dispensation.
A thorough reflection of his team of experts and advisers have left many people that know little or nothing about him at all to be positively spellbound and mesmerized by the pragmatism and realism behind every meditation and contemplation, decision and articulation he made and especially as a presidential candidate. These teams are made up of highly skilled, passionate and patriotic Americans of diverge background but sharing in the commonality of wanting America to be better than yesterday.
Michael Moore has decided to skip commercial release of his new film, “Slacker Uprising,” and make it available on the web for free downloads and streaming.
http://www.sefermpost.com/sefermpost/2008/09/michael-moore-p.html
One of the download sites:
http://slackeruprising.com/
Let’s download it, hold pizza parties and potlucks, then get more volunteers on the phones and canvassing. 11 states have already begun early voting. The time to act is now.
CHICAGO (AFP) - Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama said Monday the United States will overcome the financial crisis that has sent shockwaves through Wall Street but acknowledged that Americans are "anxious."
US Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama said Monday the United States will overcome the financial crisis that has sent shockwaves through Wall Street but acknowledged that Americans are "anxious."(AFP/File/Emmanuel Dunand)
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080923/ts_alt_afp/usvoteeconomyobama_080923140904;_ylt=Ajj8rLIHb53seFYmLxfpf6Bh24cA)
"But we're not going to chart a new course with the same pilot," he said.
"We are going through one of the most difficult times that we've seen certainly in our lifetimes. We're in the midst of two wars. Terrorist attacks are still occurring. We now have the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and it's not over yet."
"In past we fought through slavery and discrimination, women won the right to vote.... Each time we found a way and found the leadership to move us toward that more perfect union. The same thing will happen this time."
What more or how can a president to be represent the interest of the people than Obama is currently doing? We have the duty and obligation to help him bring about the change that the country need.
I have the opportunity to watch the both presidential candidates on CBS 60 Minutes edition dated September 21st 2008 in which the analysts try to enunciate their different path to the present dispensation. It was nice informative and notwithstanding the limitation of time help to unlock some of the life experiences that have molded them into what they are today.
McCain talks about his upbringing and the influence of his military family on him as a young-adult and his ultimate decision to join the military. It is recognized by all that as he puts it in his own words “I am not the brightest in my class and actually came last academically” nevertheless he has the enviable opportunity of once more asking the people for their vote to lead them in the White House.
On the other side is the narration and almost near fairy tale or miraculous story of Obama which in short words exemplified the true America hope and dreams. From a little known background and very lean financial status, this young senator from Illinois was molded as a man of substance, principle, and benevolence and unforgettably bi-racial in composition. He rely on the peoples understanding that issues are more of a necessity than any form or kind of subjective element such as racism in convincing them of the importance of making him the next commander in chief, with Biden as his running mate.
I encountered a video showing a portion of an excellent speech delivered at the Democratic National Convention by Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO. The video can be found on Jonathan Tasini's blog in a post titled Race, Labor, and the Election. Mr. Trumka bluntly describes his conversation with a fellow union member who is unable to see past Senator Obama's race. Mr. Trumka encourages everyone to acknowledge that racism exists among union members and that it must be fought by spreading the truth about who Senator Obama is and what policies he will promote as President.
Sam HarrisNEWSWEEKFrom the magazine issue dated Sep 29, 2008Let me confess that I was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin's performance at the Republican convention. Given her audience and the needs of the moment, I believe Governor Palin's speech was the most effective political communication I have ever witnessed. Here, finally, was a performer whoâ€"being maternal, wounded, righteous and sexy could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant a three-inch heel directly on that limbic circuit that ceaselessly intones "God and country." If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could. Then came Palin's first television interview with Charles Gibson. I was relieved to discover, as many were, that Palin's luster can be much diminished by the absence of a teleprompter. Still, the problem she poses to our political process is now much bigger than she is. Her fans seem inclined to forgive her any indiscretion short of cannibalism. However badly she may stumble during the remaining weeks of this campaign, her supporters will focus their outrage upon the journalist who caused her to break stride, upon the camera operator who happened to capture her fall, upon the television network that broadcast the good lady's misfortuneâ€"and, above all, upon the "liberal elites" with their highfalutin assumption that, in the 21st century, only a reasonably well-educated person should be given command of our nuclear arsenal. The point to be lamented is not that Sarah Palin comes from outside Washington, or that she has glimpsed so little of the earth's surface (she didn't have a passport until last year), or that she's never met a foreign head of state. The point is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her. There is nothing to suggest that she even sees a role for careful analysis or a deep understanding of world events when it comes to deciding the fate of a nation. In her interview with Gibson, Palin managed to turn a joke about seeing Russia from her window into a straight-faced claim that Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia gave her some essential foreign-policy experience. Palin may be a perfectly wonderful person, a loving mother and a great American success story but she is a beauty queen/sports reporter who stumbled into small-town politics, and who is now on the verge of stumbling into, or upon, world history. The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. "They think they're better than you!" is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. "Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!" Yes, all too ordinary. We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter's microphone, saying things like, "I'm voting for Sarah because she's a mom. She knows what it's like to be a mom." Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security ... the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them. Palin's most conspicuous gaffe in her interview with Gibson has been widely discussed. The truth is, I didn't much care that she did not know the meaning of the phrase "Bush doctrine." And I am quite sure that her supporters didn't care, either. Most people view such an ambush as a journalistic gimmick. What I do care about are all the other things Palin is guaranteed not to knowâ€"or will be glossing only under the frenzied tutelage of John McCain's advisers. What doesn't she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin's ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth. I care even more about the many things Palin thinks she knows but doesn't: like her conviction that the Biblical God consciously directs world events. Needless to say, she shares this belief with mil-lions of Americansâ€"but we shouldn't be eager to give these people our nuclear codes, either. There is no question that if President McCain chokes on a spare rib and Palin becomes the first woman president, she and her supporters will believe that God, in all his majesty and wisdom, has brought it to pass. Why would God give Sarah Palin a job she isn't ready for? He wouldn't. Everything happens for a reason. Palin seems perfectly willing to stake the welfare of our country even the welfare of our species as collateral in her own personal journey of faith. Of course, McCain has made the same unconscionable wager on his personal journey to the White House. In speaking before her church about her son going to war in Iraq, Palin urged the congregation to pray "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God; that's what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan." When asked about these remarks in her interview with Gibson, Palin successfully dodged the issue of her religious beliefs by claiming that she had been merely echoing the words of Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times later dubbed her response "absurd." It was worse than absurd; it was a lie calculated to conceal the true character of her religious infatuations. Every detail that has emerged about Palin's life in Alaska suggests that she is as devout and literal-minded in her Christian dogmatism as any man or woman in the land. Given her long affiliation with the Assemblies of God church, Palin very likely believes that Biblical prophecy is an infallible guide to future events and that we are living in the "end times." Which is to say she very likely thinks that human history will soon unravel in a foreordained cataclysm of war and bad weather. Undoubtedly Palin believes that this will be a good thing as all true Christians will be lifted bodily into the sky to make merry with Jesus, while all nonbelievers, Jews, Methodists and other rabble will be punished for eternity in a lake of fire. Like many Pentecostals, Palin may even imagine that she and her fellow parishioners enjoy the power of prophecy themselves. Otherwise, what could she have meant when declaring to her congregation that "God's going to tell you what is going on, and what is going to go on, and you guys are going to have that within you"? You can learn something about a person by the company she keeps. In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy "baptism in the Holy Spirit," "miraculous healings" and "the gift of tongues." Invariably, they offer astonishingly irrational accounts of this behavior and of its significance for the entire cosmos. Palin's spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of "the final generation," engaged in "spiritual warfare" to purge the earth of "demonic strongholds." Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? Do we actually want our leaders thinking about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy when it comes time to say to the Iranians, or to the North Koreans, or to the Pakistanis, or to the Russians or to the Chinese: "All options remain on the table"? It is easy to see what many people, women especially, admire about Sarah Palin. Here is a mother of five who can see the bright side of having a child with Down syndrome and still find the time and energy to govern the state of Alaska. But we cannot ignore the fact that Palin's impressive family further testifies to her dogmatic religious beliefs. Many writers have noted the many shades of conservative hypocrisy on view here: when Jamie Lynn Spears gets pregnant, it is considered a symptom of liberal decadence and the breakdown of family values; in the case of one of Palin's daughters, however, teen pregnancy gets reinterpreted as a sign of immaculate, small-town fecundity. And just imagine if, instead of the Palins, the Obama family had a pregnant, underage daughter on display at their convention, flanked by her black boyfriend who "intends" to marry her. Who among conservatives would have resisted the temptation to speak of "the dysfunction in the black community"?Teen pregnancy is a misfortune, plain and simple. At best, it represents bad luck (both for the mother and for the child); at worst, as in the Palins' case, it is a symptom of religious dogmatism. Governor Palin opposes sex education in schools on religious grounds. She has also fought vigorously for a "parental consent law" in the state of Alaska, seeking full parental dominion over the reproductive decisions of minors. We know, therefore, that Palin believes that she should be the one to decide whether her daughter carries her baby to term. Based on her stated position, we know that she would deny her daughter an abortion even if she had been raped. One can be forgiven for doubting whether Bristol Palin had all the advantages of 21st-century family planningâ€"or, indeed, of the 21st century.We have endured eight years of an administration that seemed touched by religious ideology. Bush's claim to Bob Woodward that he consulted a "higher Father" before going to war in Iraq got many of us sitting upright, before our attention wandered again to less ethereal signs of his incompetence. For all my concern about Bush's religious beliefs, and about his merely average grasp of terrestrial reality, I have never once thought that he was an over-the-brink, Rapture-ready extremist. Palin seems as though she might be the real McCoy. With the McCain team leading her around like a pet pony between now and Election Day, she can be expected to conceal her religious extremism until it is too late to do anything about it. Her supporters know that while she cannot afford to "talk the talk" between now and Nov. 4, if elected, she can be trusted to "walk the walk" until the Day of Judgment.What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she representsâ€"and her supporters celebrateâ€"the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world's only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth: "Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child's brain?""Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I'm an avid hunter.""But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind.""That's just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink."The prospects of a Palin administration are far more frightening, in fact, than those of a Palin Institute for Pediatric Neurosurgery. Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earthâ€"in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated. I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex and dangerous with each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us. When asked why she is qualified to shoulder more responsibility than any person has held in human history, Palin cites her refusal to hesitate. "You can't blink," she told Gibson repeatedly, as though this were a primordial truth of wise governance. Let us hope that a President Palin would blink, again and again, while more thoughtful people decide the fate of civilization. Harris is a founder of The Reason Project and author of The New York Times best sellers
Let me confess that I was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin's performance at the Republican convention. Given her audience and the needs of the moment, I believe Governor Palin's speech was the most effective political communication I have ever witnessed. Here, finally, was a performer whoâ€"being maternal, wounded, righteous and sexy could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant a three-inch heel directly on that limbic circuit that ceaselessly intones "God and country." If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could.
Then came Palin's first television interview with Charles Gibson. I was relieved to discover, as many were, that Palin's luster can be much diminished by the absence of a teleprompter. Still, the problem she poses to our political process is now much bigger than she is. Her fans seem inclined to forgive her any indiscretion short of cannibalism. However badly she may stumble during the remaining weeks of this campaign, her supporters will focus their outrage upon the journalist who caused her to break stride, upon the camera operator who happened to capture her fall, upon the television network that broadcast the good lady's misfortuneâ€"and, above all, upon the "liberal elites" with their highfalutin assumption that, in the 21st century, only a reasonably well-educated person should be given command of our nuclear arsenal.
The point to be lamented is not that Sarah Palin comes from outside Washington, or that she has glimpsed so little of the earth's surface (she didn't have a passport until last year), or that she's never met a foreign head of state. The point is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her. There is nothing to suggest that she even sees a role for careful analysis or a deep understanding of world events when it comes to deciding the fate of a nation. In her interview with Gibson, Palin managed to turn a joke about seeing Russia from her window into a straight-faced claim that Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia gave her some essential foreign-policy experience. Palin may be a perfectly wonderful person, a loving mother and a great American success story but she is a beauty queen/sports reporter who stumbled into small-town politics, and who is now on the verge of stumbling into, or upon, world history.
The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. "They think they're better than you!" is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. "Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!" Yes, all too ordinary.
We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter's microphone, saying things like, "I'm voting for Sarah because she's a mom. She knows what it's like to be a mom." Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security ... the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them.
Palin's most conspicuous gaffe in her interview with Gibson has been widely discussed. The truth is, I didn't much care that she did not know the meaning of the phrase "Bush doctrine." And I am quite sure that her supporters didn't care, either. Most people view such an ambush as a journalistic gimmick. What I do care about are all the other things Palin is guaranteed not to knowâ€"or will be glossing only under the frenzied tutelage of John McCain's advisers. What doesn't she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin's ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth.
I care even more about the many things Palin thinks she knows but doesn't: like her conviction that the Biblical God consciously directs world events. Needless to say, she shares this belief with mil-lions of Americansâ€"but we shouldn't be eager to give these people our nuclear codes, either. There is no question that if President McCain chokes on a spare rib and Palin becomes the first woman president, she and her supporters will believe that God, in all his majesty and wisdom, has brought it to pass. Why would God give Sarah Palin a job she isn't ready for? He wouldn't. Everything happens for a reason. Palin seems perfectly willing to stake the welfare of our country even the welfare of our species as collateral in her own personal journey of faith. Of course, McCain has made the same unconscionable wager on his personal journey to the White House.
In speaking before her church about her son going to war in Iraq, Palin urged the congregation to pray "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God; that's what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan." When asked about these remarks in her interview with Gibson, Palin successfully dodged the issue of her religious beliefs by claiming that she had been merely echoing the words of Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times later dubbed her response "absurd." It was worse than absurd; it was a lie calculated to conceal the true character of her religious infatuations. Every detail that has emerged about Palin's life in Alaska suggests that she is as devout and literal-minded in her Christian dogmatism as any man or woman in the land. Given her long affiliation with the Assemblies of God church, Palin very likely believes that Biblical prophecy is an infallible guide to future events and that we are living in the "end times." Which is to say she very likely thinks that human history will soon unravel in a foreordained cataclysm of war and bad weather. Undoubtedly Palin believes that this will be a good thing as all true Christians will be lifted bodily into the sky to make merry with Jesus, while all nonbelievers, Jews, Methodists and other rabble will be punished for eternity in a lake of fire. Like many Pentecostals, Palin may even imagine that she and her fellow parishioners enjoy the power of prophecy themselves. Otherwise, what could she have meant when declaring to her congregation that "God's going to tell you what is going on, and what is going to go on, and you guys are going to have that within you"?
You can learn something about a person by the company she keeps. In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy "baptism in the Holy Spirit," "miraculous healings" and "the gift of tongues." Invariably, they offer astonishingly irrational accounts of this behavior and of its significance for the entire cosmos. Palin's spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of "the final generation," engaged in "spiritual warfare" to purge the earth of "demonic strongholds." Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? Do we actually want our leaders thinking about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy when it comes time to say to the Iranians, or to the North Koreans, or to the Pakistanis, or to the Russians or to the Chinese: "All options remain on the table"?
It is easy to see what many people, women especially, admire about Sarah Palin. Here is a mother of five who can see the bright side of having a child with Down syndrome and still find the time and energy to govern the state of Alaska. But we cannot ignore the fact that Palin's impressive family further testifies to her dogmatic religious beliefs. Many writers have noted the many shades of conservative hypocrisy on view here: when Jamie Lynn Spears gets pregnant, it is considered a symptom of liberal decadence and the breakdown of family values; in the case of one of Palin's daughters, however, teen pregnancy gets reinterpreted as a sign of immaculate, small-town fecundity. And just imagine if, instead of the Palins, the Obama family had a pregnant, underage daughter on display at their convention, flanked by her black boyfriend who "intends" to marry her. Who among conservatives would have resisted the temptation to speak of "the dysfunction in the black community"?
Teen pregnancy is a misfortune, plain and simple. At best, it represents bad luck (both for the mother and for the child); at worst, as in the Palins' case, it is a symptom of religious dogmatism. Governor Palin opposes sex education in schools on religious grounds. She has also fought vigorously for a "parental consent law" in the state of Alaska, seeking full parental dominion over the reproductive decisions of minors. We know, therefore, that Palin believes that she should be the one to decide whether her daughter carries her baby to term. Based on her stated position, we know that she would deny her daughter an abortion even if she had been raped. One can be forgiven for doubting whether Bristol Palin had all the advantages of 21st-century family planningâ€"or, indeed, of the 21st century.
We have endured eight years of an administration that seemed touched by religious ideology. Bush's claim to Bob Woodward that he consulted a "higher Father" before going to war in Iraq got many of us sitting upright, before our attention wandered again to less ethereal signs of his incompetence. For all my concern about Bush's religious beliefs, and about his merely average grasp of terrestrial reality, I have never once thought that he was an over-the-brink, Rapture-ready extremist. Palin seems as though she might be the real McCoy. With the McCain team leading her around like a pet pony between now and Election Day, she can be expected to conceal her religious extremism until it is too late to do anything about it. Her supporters know that while she cannot afford to "talk the talk" between now and Nov. 4, if elected, she can be trusted to "walk the walk" until the Day of Judgment.
What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she representsâ€"and her supporters celebrateâ€"the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world's only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth:
"Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child's brain?"
"Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I'm an avid hunter."
"But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind."
"That's just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink."
The prospects of a Palin administration are far more frightening, in fact, than those of a Palin Institute for Pediatric Neurosurgery.
Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earthâ€"in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated.
I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex and dangerous with each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us. When asked why she is qualified to shoulder more responsibility than any person has held in human history, Palin cites her refusal to hesitate. "You can't blink," she told Gibson repeatedly, as though this were a primordial truth of wise governance. Let us hope that a President Palin would blink, again and again, while more thoughtful people decide the fate of civilization.
Harris is a founder of The Reason Project and author of The New York Times best sellers
The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation
His Web site is samharris.org.
