August 30, 2008- Another Surprise

   Last weekend, the entire world was atwitter with the anticipation of just who Barack Obama was going to name as his Vice-Presidential running mate. While this is no small announcement in a Presidential campaign, after all, the Vice-President is that one mythical heartbeat away from the Presidency, last week's speculation was something that America had never seen before, it was fever pitch allo the way. You had that shit about the text message that was supposed to announce who the choice was, but the media had other ideas and quickly camped out at every possible candidate's houses and waited to see what was up. The TV talk shows were all full of speculation as to just who Obama was going to pick, this dude and that dude were metioned and interviewed and staked out incessantly and the entire country seemed to be hinging on just who Obama would pick. There were many favorites and many dark horses, but in the end, Obama surprised the shit out of everyone when he picked Joe Biden to be his running mate, no one saw that shit coming, but keeping in line with the unequivocal support of Obama that his supporters demand, everyone accepted it and made Biden part of the magical express that Obama says he is the engineer of. Even though there are many questions as to why Obama picked Biden out of the blue like he did, no one is making too big a deal out of it all, because we all know that Barack Obama's campaign is above all reproach, and that means that no one can question anything that he says or does. However, it is true that the selection of Joe Biden was a surprise announcement, one of numerous surprises that Obama assures us all that he has up his sleeve. So that all brought us to this weekend, when it was John Mc Cain's turn to announce just who he wanted to have as the Vice-Presidential candidate on his party's ticket, and suffice it ti say that the anticipation and drama surrounding that announcement was considerably less than what we saw with Obama, mainly because everyone assumed that Mc Cain's decision was pretty much a no-brainer, there were only a few dudes on the short list, and people figured that Mc Cain was going to pick someone like the Repubicans always pick, meaning someone conservative and tied in with Mr. Businessman all the way. Every person that the media speculated on being Mc cain's VP was like that, typical Repubicans, and in the last few days, they have all been staked out, although with considerably less press following them than the Democrats had, and the media had figured out who it was by Thursday night, it was some Senator dude from Minnesota, I think, anyway, the dude abruptly cancelled all his appointments and appearances for the weekend on Thursday night, making everyone think that he was Mc Cain's choice. However, no one was following any potential candidates too closely, not too many houses were staked out this time, and the media seemed content to wait unti Mc Cain was scheduled to make the announcement himself over the weekend at some pep rally before the Republican convention starts next week. As with everything in this campaign, whatever Mc Cain does is treated as sort of ho-hum news, while everything that Obama says is treated like godly in the extreme. So no one much cared about who Mc Cain was going to choose, after all, according to the American media, the election is a done deal and Mc Cain stands zero chance of winning, so whoever he picked would just be a mere footnote in history, so it was no big deal as to who he chose.

   It seems as if John Mc Cain is the only person in America that thinks that he has a chance of winning this thing, because he did not look at the VP selection as a done deal at all. He kept everything very close to his vest as far as who he wanted to fil that position, and he was not just doing that to be some kind of foil to Obama, it was because the dude was really thinking seriously about it and weighing all optons. He really had to, because his VP selection is probably more important than Obama's, simply because John Mc Cain would become the oldest President ever if he is elected, and the dude has had a history of health problems, mainly melanomas, for a long time now. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the dude could become incapacitated or die while in office, as opposed to Obama, who is not even 50 yet, so Mc Cain had to think long and hard about just who he could entrust such a position to. He also had to try and counter the wild adoration and myth that Obama is creating about himself in some way, because he wants this election to be a close one, he does not want to be embarrassed Walter Mondale style and get smoked in it,so he needed to come up with a creative chice for VP, and not go with the traditional shit that everyone expected of him. So, Mc Cain had a big surprise up his sleeve for everyone, especially that dude that cancelled all his appointmnents and shit because he was sure that he was the choice, that cat found out that he may as well kept his schedule the way that it was, because he was not the winner. What Mc Cain did surprised everyone way more than Obama did with Biden, he picked someone even farther out of the blue than Obama did, he picked Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as  his VP choice. By doing so, he made history with the Republican ticket every bit as much as Obama makes history  on the Democratic side, because what he did was to pick the forst woman Vice-Presidential canddiate in Republican history, and only the second in history, as the Democrats picked Geraldine Ferraro back in 1984. So it had been a while since a woman had appeared on a major party ticket, much to Hillary Clinton's chagrin, but it was Mc Cain and the Republicans that made history by putting one on their ticket in 2008. That shit floored everyone, because there were about zero pundits that saw that coming, and that has given Mc Cain a much needed publicity boost right before the convention. No one expected him to pick a woman for the VP slot and that is exactly what he figured. This was not a choice made willy-nilly like at the last minute, this was a choice that Mc Cain thought about long and hard because he knows that he is the major underdog here and that no one much expects him to even compete in November, much less win. He knows that he cannot carry everything by himnself like Obama does, one , because he is too fucking old for that, and two, because he does not have a sycophant media turning him into a godlike Savior figure that rivals Jesus Christ himself in importance. So he really needs to run as a team, as a ticket, not just as himself and special guest star, and he has known that all along and he rseriously feels that Governor Palin is the person that can fill out that ticket and make the team run so that everyone can see that it is not just a foregone conclusion that Obama will win in November and make history, Mc Cain wants to show that he can make some history too and that is why he picked Palin as his VP, this is not just window dressing like Geraldine Ferraro was back in 1984.

   To begin with, the woman is young yet, she is only 44, a few years younger than Obama, so Mc Cain does not have a ticket featuring himself and some other oldtimer, making it look like the retirement home ticket, plus, he has taken care of the age and health factors, because he has someone young and hale and hearty that is that heartbeat away from the Presidency, so if does become incapacitated or die, it is not like the USSR was in the 1980's, when you had these old, sick men taking over after other old, sick men died, so there was almost a constant changing of the guard there for a few years. Mc Cain may turn out to be an old, sick man, but he had to make sure that if he did go the way of Konstantin Chernenko or Yuri Andropov and die while in office, you would have someone young and healthy taking over so the people would not freak. Palin is young and in good health, she just had a kid a little while ago, so she is as hale and hearty as they come, so if Mc Cain dies, you don't have some other old fart taking over. However, the biggest thing that Palin has going for her and why she got the position from Mc Cain, is the fact that outside of Alaska, no one in America knoiws who the fuck she is. Americans outside of Alaska don't know shit about that place, except that it is cold there, real cold, a lot and that polar bears life there and that there are a lot of oil fields underneath the land there and shit. Otherwise, they could not tell you jackshit about Alaska, like name one city in it, that it is the largest state in America, that it was the 49th state admitted to the Union, nothing. Many Americans do not even know exactly whwere Alaska is except that it is way the fuck up north, so no omne knows the Governor there except the residents, and although Alaska is the largest state in the Union, it is not that populated, so there are not that many consitiuents to know what an Alaskan Governor is doing anyway. So Palin is about as unknown as you get, many Americans probably think that she is some sort of kin to Michael Palin of Monty Python fame, that's how unknown the woman is. That gives Mc Cain the right to say that he is not all about Washington insiders like Obama says he is, because he picked someone that Washington does not know at all as his running mate. It also makes Obama look bad because there are many Democrats that really wanted him to pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate, after all, she got more popular votes than he did, just in the wrong states, and she has got at least as many supporters as Obama does. However, Obama hates Hillary Clinton really badly, despite what they may say publicly, the reality is that he wants as little to do with the bitch as he possibly can, and making her his VP choice was not a good way to accomplish that, so he left her hanging high and dry. So Mc Cain makes him look bad by chosing a woman that has never even run in a National Election before, let alone one that got over 18 million votes this year, giving the impression that he trusts a woman at the position more than Obama does. So Palin was indeed the best choice for Mc Cain this election, seeing what he is up against, he seems to be running for President against God Himself, so he has to go out on some limbs and make some surprising statements and choices, and he certainly did that yesterday when he said that he had chosen Palin to be his running mate. It  may have been a bigger surprise anouncement than the one Obama made the previous weekend, but many wonder if it was the right thing to do or not.

   Many people are not thrilled with Palin precisely because no one knows who the fuck she is, and that means that no one quite knows how she would react in certain situations. Even the people of Alaska are not of much help here, because Palin is still in her first term as Governor there, so she has not been around very long and has not dome much of anything memorable. That shit makes a lot of Republicans nervous, because the woman would be thrust right into the fire if Mc Cain wins, and  will be facing situation infinetly more complex and important than anything that you could ever possibly encounter as Governor of Alaska and she may very well not be up to the task. She has a problem at home in that her youngest child has Down's Syndrome, and many hysterics may feel that thsi would detract from her attentiveness to her duties as Vice-President, after all, it is not hard to govern Alaska no matter what is going on in your life, but being Vice-President is a whole other kettle of fish, and having a major distraction like a special needs kid could cut into that. She is also anti-abortion, so that would seemingly preclude the Hillary contingent switching over to the Mc Cain side just because of Palin, so many wonder just what Mc Cain may gain from having her on the ticket. The answer to that is that the dude simply has to do something spectacular like that to try and counter the Obama express, so he needed to take a chance, and he took one on Palin. The risks of doing so are low for Mc Cain, because if he loses in November, even if he gets his ass kicked, that was what everyone had prediected and expected anyway, so he has zero to lose there. If he wins, he makes history instead of Obama, and that has to help him as he would start his new job. His doctors have said that he is as  healthy as can be, and that there is no imminent risk of Mc Cain dropping over dead Harold Washington style in the next four years, so the risk of an unqualified person assuming the Presidentcy are low. Besides that, Palin is only unqualified now, she is going to have a serious crash course in everything should the Republicans win, so unless Mc Cain drops dead on the first day or so, she'll have some experiece should she have to assume the Presidency for real. Mc Cain loses nothing on this pick, so that was why she was the best choice, she has traditional Republican values, has been married for many years and has a family, refused to terminate a pregnancy even when she learned that the baby would be born with Down's Syndrome, so the average Republican should not have much of a problem with her as the VP choice. The problem is going to be with the fanatic wing of the party,the one that Bush and his people have courted for so long, they do not like Mc Cain as it is, and his choice of Palin as VP may have worsened that. That means that Mc Cain need this Palin choice too score big with the uncommited and unaffiliated Americans, the majority of the people that do not consider themselves to be a member of one party or the other, in this election, those are going to be the people that make the difference as to who wins, and Mc Cain is reaching out to them like never before with this Palin choice, and that is why it should not be seen as such a surprise like so many are making it out to be, this has been an election like no other ever before in American history, so people should not be surprised that the candidates are both making many unconventional moves to try and win in November because there is a lot at stake here and everyone wants it all to go their way and that was why Mc Cain chose Palin like he did, not simply to freak people out.

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