Palin is in the challenge for Vice President,by demand not by being
popular.She really did not ask for this.This is a good ride for her
and something to remember for her life time achievements.She will have no real living concerns in the future fore ahe will always be a
popular woman,regardless of what other people think.She is doing no
thing other than what anyone else would do.Take the Ball and run with
it.

When invited to join the ticket she accepted "in a heartbeat". This self-described hocky-mum, summoned from obscurity in a backwater town in a remote state had no second thoughts, no doubts, just full of self-confidence she could lead the most powerful nation on the planet through a quagmire of foreign policy stuff-ups and domestic scandals, re-align the executive with the constitution and rule of law, overcome deep-seated angst with the economy, earning respect among the international community...all this seemed do-able. No matter she had all the experience of the mayor of an outback Australian town.

She'd learn on the job, by jove!

Palin becomes more of a caricature by the day. Doing what anyone else would do? I don't think so.

"...no doubts, just full of self-confidence she could lead the most powerful nation on the planet through a quagmire of foreign policy stuff-ups..."

Yes, well she's evangelical, with god on their side, they can do no wrong! Same for 'Mr. 2% of the vote' Fundies First, Steve Fielding, the fact that his vote is extremely disproportionate to that of Labor, doesn't stop him from blocking the will of the popularly elected Australian Govt. There's gotta be something wrong with that situation! We can blame government pandering to Mr. Fielding for our internet censorship plan whereby all Australians will have the net censored because some people have children and refuse to monitor their computer usage, they believe that everyone should be reduced to the level of a child. The opt-out provision apparently is not really opt out, the state is still going to block what they consider to be 'illegal' sites - the great Australian internet crawl is upon us.

I don't think Palin was McCain's choice as VP, it has cost him a lot of credibility with the more 'intellectual' or shall we say reasonable and moderate conservatives, who are incensed enough to vote Democrat. Maybe having a crazy evangelical as VP has cost him the election, after all, the country has had enough of George Bush's evangelical leadership. Palin was put there purely to please the extreme wing nuts, the crazy for jeebus crowd who love their god and their guns. Now McCain will lose the votes of conservative feminists who will never let the religious decide their fertility and rule over their bodies.

Romany-“Sharkfin is Brendon O’connor”

Did you read the part where I said I disagree strongly,(THAT IS STRONGLY) with the soft-hearted idealist world views of a lot of the intellectuals. Their inventions and medical cures I applaud them for. Although it was the fighting men who gave them the wealth and territorial resources and learning from the Greeks etc. that enabled them to invent.

Brendan O’Connor is seeking to promote the usual so called intellectual political ideas here, and I quote “BEING FROM THE FRONTIER HAS TOO OFTEN BEEN AN EXCUSE FOR AMERICAN INSULARITY AND IGNORANCE TOWARDS THE REST OF THE WORLD.”

Tell me what country or race in the world does not have this insularity and ignorance towards the rest of the world? This is just the usual big guilt stick to beat the West over the head with to make them pander to what every other race and country in the world can get or take from them. It is a manipulative tool dressed up as promoting love and tolerance. The love and tolerance usually has to be 98% coming only from the Western side.

What Brendan O’Connor is mainly against here is not so much Sara Palin’s religious fundamentalism (which I don’t think has any place in positions of power either)but her down home American loyalty . Her favouring and defence of Americans against what the rest of the world wants.
Loyalists instinctively know that you need to defend and fight for your own to survive.

The intellectuals have this idea of holding hands and talking love and peace and we’ll all live happily everafter . This flawed idea has been a disaster for Europe, America and the Western world and it’s the down home died in the wool loyalists who are reading it right. Why?

Because they are not using their intellect and what they’ve been taught at university to override their natural survival instincts and pretending to feel otherwise like the intellectuals. Listen to your gut instinct it is usually reading the situation right, don’t try to rationalise it away.

"...Tell me what country or race in the world does not have this insularity and ignorance towards the rest of the world?..."

Only the Americans believe that they are so superior to the rest of the world that everybody else is irrelevant. When you are brought up on a constant diet of 'superpower' and 'the US rules the world' you look down upon everybody else as inferior.

"...Loyalists instinctively know that you need to defend and fight for your own to survive..."

Except the fights and defence are often in the wrong directions and for the wrong causes. Whose fight and whose defence? The public can be sold a lie and the govt. rallies a nationalistic and patriotic fervour amongst the people, but if it based on a flawed premise (war for Iraqi oil whilst Al Quaeda is in another country) then it is neither right nor just.

The 'gut instinct' is also acting upon the worst of basic human instincts - anger, jealousy, prejudice, racism and xenophobia...we should try to rationalise and understand these instincts, they are often a product of upbringing, ignorance, bigotry and lack of education. Sarah Palin would be a leader of the country and her policy and decisions should be reasoned and rational, every political decision is not made in an atmosphere of defending your country and fighting for it's survival (especially when your country is actually the aggressor nation).

I would think more of a political leader who does the hard yards, works toward solutions and peace rather than a state of perpetual war.

Good on you, Human Interest, though not necessarily religous, you have brought out something still true of the Sermon of the Mount which is said does not express - thou shalts - but does express the need for reason to balance - thou shalts.

It could thus be said that it is about time the - thou shalts - of the American Way should be altered with not so much about war, but with thoughts about politically sharing the blame, and being more politically apologetic even to the followers of Islam.

Certainly much more wisdom and understanding, which surely sound more Socratic and Aristotelian rather than Christian, just as St Thomas Aquinas and later Immanuel Kant would have surmised.

Regards, BB, WA.