John McCain's convention

Just a quick political rant because I don't have enough outlets:

The John McCain for President campaign has spent the entire time from primary season until last week saying that Barack Obama is too inexperienced and unqualified to be president. McCain himself has said on several occasions that the #1 qualification for his pick for vice president would be the ability to step in on day one and be president in the midst of a crisis (and the vice president having to step in for the president certainly qualifies as a "crisis", in no other circumstance would that happen). He even replays Hillary Clinton's primary commercials about the 3am phone call in the White House. In addition, he touts his himself as a man who puts his country first.

By all accounts, he wanted Joe Liebermann as his running mate. But the republican right wing balked at that idea, so McCain succumbed to right wing pressure and chose Sarah Palin.

What does this say about John McCain? Many things:
- he is willing to succumb to pressure from the far right wing, who oppose bi-partisanship of any kind.
- he is willing to put his campaign before his country by nominating someone who is deeply and obviously unqualified to be president, which contradicts his stated requirements.
- he is willing to roll the dice with a woman he only met one time, in the event that he cannot complete his term. Remember, he would be the oldest person to ever be elected to a first term, and he has had skin cancer recur four times.
- he is apt to panic and make rash, not-well-thought-out decisions based on his gut. Sarah Palin was not vetted by his team prior to her selection (how else to explain Palin's daughter's pregnancy announced on a random blog rather than by the candidate herself?). Only afterwards did a team of McCain's lawyer head to Alaska to begin the process.
- his rhetoric about Obama's experience was all for political gain. Palin can't hold a candle to Obama's experience, but she has no qualms about denigrating anyone who volunteers to serve their community as an organizer like Obama did at the age of 24, before he went to law school.
- he says the safety of American is the most pressing issue we face, yet would entrust that safety to someone with zero foreign policy experience.
- he chose Palin despite her saying that she didn't know what the vice president did, in an interview earlier this year.
- he doesn't care about completely contradicting himself.

Consider the last point:
- McCain says he values experience in governing: Palin was elected as a "city" council member and mayor of the "city" of Wasilla, Alaska: population 6,500, by attracting 900 votes. She was elected governor of Alaska in 2006 with 115,000 votes (less than 50% of the total). 20 months of governing one of the least-populous states does not qualify one to be president, male or female. The republican leader of the Alaskan state senate said that Palin isn't even qualified to be governor, much less vp or president.
- McCain says he is a moderate. Palin believes creationism should be taught in public schools, that abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest (the only exception being when the mother's life is in danger), and doesn't believe the earth is warming despite the northern part of her very own state melting away in to the Arctic Ocean.
- McCain says he is anti-pork. While mayor of the pop. 6,500 town of Wasilla, Palin secured $27 million(!) of funds for the town via pork in Washington DC. And while running for governor, she was for the so-called Bridge to Nowhere. She now says she has always been against it, but there are public statements from her that prove otherwise. In any event, when Alaska got the money for the project she canceled the bridge but kept our tax dollars for various other projects in Alaska.
- McCain voted against the 2001 Bush tax cuts saying they were unfairly slanted towards the wealthy. He was right: in the past 8 years the only Americans who have benefited economically are the rich, also known as the same people who received those tax breaks. Now, he not only supports those tax cuts despite the evidence but he supports making them permanent, and even advocates more tax cuts for the wealthy.
- McCain helped author campaign finance legislation, legislation that despite the fact he wrote it he no longer supports.
- McCain helped author the immigration compromise bill supported by democrats and even President Bush, but now says that he opposes that bill (again, even though he helped write it) and would not vote for it if it came to a vote in the US Senate.

Despite these examples, McCain calls himself a "straight-talker".

Instead of running a candidate, I think the republican party should just abstain from this election and apologize to America for the corruption and mind-blowing incompetence of the last 8 years. But alas, we'll just have to vote for Obama instead.