Oh that wacky McCain.  Out of all the people he could of picked to be his running mate...Out of them all, who does he pick?  Out of the plethora of qualified (debatable) experienced politicians, which one does mcCain think will be best suited for the job?  well Gov. Sarah Palin, of coarse!  I mean, this was an obvious choice, right?  Who here among us didn't see this one coming?   No one.  No one could of seen this coming because no one expected McCain to chose a running mate based on gender and obscurity.  I doubt McCain had even ever heard of the woman before his "advisor's" chose her for him.  One thing we can count on about Palin is, she's probably extremely right wing, and she's probably extremely moldable.
 According to CNN , http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/29/palin.bio/?iref=hpmostpop  Palin , 44, is in her first term as governor of the 49th state and has little experience outside Alaska. She was mayor and a council member of the small town of Wasilla. She also was chairwoman of the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates Alaska's oil and gas resources, before defeating incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in the GOP primary and former two-term Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles in the 2006 general election.  Associated Press  http://news.yahoo.com/story//ap/20080829/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_palin_vulnerabilities  stated that members of her staff tried to have her former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, who is involved in a messy custody battle with her sister, fired from his job as an Alaska state trooper.
Not only that, but Alaska State lawmakers have launched a $100,000 investigation to determine if Palin dismissed Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan last month because Monegan wouldn't fire her former brother in law from his State Trooper job, under such grounds. Of coarse Wooten doesn't appear to be a shining example of Alaska State Trooper excellence, either.  In 2005, before Palin ran for office, the Palin family accused Wooten of drinking beer in his patrol car, illegally shooting a moose and firing a Taser at his 11-year-old stepson. The Palins also claimed Wooten threatened to kill Sarah Palin's father. Wooten was suspended over the allegations for five days in 2006 but still has his job. Boy, sounds like Palin and her family will fit right in out in Washington, doesn't it?
  Regardless of any pro's or con's, going from a city council member to vice president of the United States in a few short years may be a tad much for some to digest.  The implications all point to the McCain team choosing Palin not for her merits, but more for her possible ability to drag X Hillery-ites over to McCain's side of the fence.  Whatever their logic, It just doesn't add up properly.  Especially when one considers that theres a good chance that 72 year old McCain (happy belated b-day, yesterday) who doesn't look to be the picture of health, might posthumously hand Palin the Presidency.  Alert Guinness,because it would definitely be a new Worlds record.

Neue, you have it ass-backwards. McCain just trashed the whole debate about the importance of experience by picking a wildly inexperienced, untested running mate to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

What does this say about McCain's judgment? What does this say about his sense of responsibility to the country? What does this say about McCain's seriousness?

Apparently he doesn't even know her. As Steve Benen noted, "he spoke to her exactly twice before picking her. There's no personal relationship. There's no sense of how the two might work together running the executive branch. There's no way for McCain to know how she thinks, how she processes information, and how she responds when the pressures on. There's just nothing."

Oh, but the nation is supposed to trust her (and we're supposed to trust McCain's judgment on this and on all the other decisions involved with running a country). This just demonstrates how erratic and bizarre McCain is.

Looks to me like he picked someone to make a splash rather than someone who can govern. But then governing the country has never been the objective for Republicans. They just want to rule.

What does it say about the judgment of the Democrat party to nominate a man with less experience than McCain's #2?

 Don't Americans need to consider that McCains has now lived to an older age that his father and grandfather who dropped dead of sudden heart attacks? To be realistic he may well drop dead in office, and now he is asking us to accept his # 2 who is an evangelical with ZERO political experience on the international scene? Who in their right mind would elect her as leader of the free world?
 Oh yeah I guess she would try to pray away any threat to the US from international emergencies.
 That's comforting.

He picked her because she is a she. He read to much into the polls that said a percentage of Hillary voters would vote McCain rather than Obama.

That's old news but McCain's an old guy. An anti choice woman is not going to appeal to them. The anti-choice might appeal to the wing nuts. He is also compensating for his age.

Won't make a difference. He will lose.


More Than 40 Million Saw Obama Speech

"More people watched Obama speak from a packed stadium in Denver on Thursday than watched the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, the final "American Idol" or the Academy Awards this year, Nielsen Media Research said Friday. (Four playoff football games, including the Super Bowl between the Giants and Patriots, were seen by more than 40 million people.)

...No other convention — Republican or Democratic — had been seen in as many homes since Nielsen began keeping these records for the Kennedy-Nixon campaign in 1960. There weren't enough television sets in American homes to have possibly beaten this record in years before that.

The convention that comes closest in interest was the 1976 Republican gathering, which averaged 21.9 million homes.

http://news.aol.com/elections/article/more-than-40-million-saw-obama-speech/153570

17 y/o daughter pregnant. She can't run a family yet a lone a government. On the other side we have a guy that is all talk no action. God help this country.

McCain clearly just heard of this younger, female conservative governor and felt she would improve his image. Obama has more of a history with Biden than McCain to Palin.

Honestly, he didn't even look too comfortable around her.

  So what?  Well, we see what this type of match up did for Kennedy.  He lost his head over it.  But, the fact remains that 2 short years ago this woman was a City councilman up in some bum fuck Alaska town and, if McCain were to win the Presidency, the country would be one heart attack away from her becoming the ruler of the most powerful nation mankind has ever known....And she would of gotten there in record time.  So, tell me that your OK with this.  But, what the fuck....How much worse could she be then McCain, Obama or Biden...I'm not kidding....Really, How much worse could she possibly be?  This election is just so tragically absurd.  It's just a giant clusterfuck.