Body Parts

Palin Warmly Endorsed and Supported By Alaska's Jewish Community

The Jerusalem Post interviewed a number of Jewish leaders in Alaska, all of whom had warm support for Palin as a friend of their community and a friend of Israel.

Sarah Palin Draws Historic Comparisons, 2

Palin compares well to Theodore Roosevelt. Before he was nominated to be vice president under McKinley in 1900, his governmental posts were New York State Assembly, 1881-1884[?], service on the United States Civil Service Commission, 1889[?]-1895, President of the Board of Police Commissioners of New York City (1895-1897), Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1897-1898. He became a reformer in the Assembly and that was his political reputation. He fought political corruption. He modernized the New York City police department and prepared the US Navy for the war with Spain. Between his terms in the New York State Assembly and later appointive positions, dealing with family losses, TR moved to the West, where he was a businessman and cowboy. He was a hunter and advocate of the strenuous, outdoor life. He was a best-selling voluminous writer. In other words, he had a larger life than politics. He had experience in business as a businessman. He had physical courage, tested well before his exploits in Cuba. He was a patriot. He was a conservative believer in the family. He was a Republican.

McCain admires Theodore Roosevelt as a political model. I'd say, in Sarah Palin, we have found our Theodore Roosevelt.

Will Obama Jet Off To Europe Again?

I remember reading a while ago that, after the Democratic Party Convention, Obama was to fly to Switzerland to raise campaign funds. He was to speak at a very expensive fee dinner. It will be interesting to see if he goes now. Gustav hits and he's won't be in the US. The press will be focussed on the GOP Convention and McCain and Palin. McCain and Palin will do something dramatic (I'm betting--you watch) to make a  Gustav emergency into a lesson of how Republicans care about the difficulties of Americans, that they "get it".

Sarah Palin Draws Historic Comparisons

"My first impression is that we have found our Margaret Thatcher." Dick McDonald via Astute Blogger.

McCain's Pick of Palin Changed the Game

Astute Blogger is right on.

Sarah Palin, Poised, Knowledgeable in Maria Bartiromo Interview

In this interview on the issue of drilling for oil and gas at ANWR, Palin, speaking as Governor of Alaska, is poised, acknowledgeable, clear, smooth, articulate in unrehearsed discussion of a topic about which she knows a lot. She has a calm, middle-range, well modulated voice. Her voice doesn't grate or sound strained like Hillary Clinton's. No repetitive 'um', 'ah', stumbling, as with Obama in his interviews.  It would have been an impressive audition for the VP candidacy. She is really a winner, as a politician, a woman, and a reformer, with her depth showing in every glimpse we now get of her.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=836304396

12 minutes. On CNBC. (Thanks to Powerline.)

McCain Wins In a Air War Dog Fight

Several conservative commentators are comparing McCain's choice of Palin to "top gun" tactics in an aerial "dog fight". Here is Charlie Martin and here is Richard Fernandez. Seems apt.

If Gustav Hits US During GOP Convention, This Is What McCain Should Do

If hurricane Gustav hits New Orleans or the Gulf coast, devastating populations, McCain and Palin should go to New Orleans, in the midst of the storm, and accept the nominations for President and Vice President there, video link to Minneapolis/St. Paul, while working to assist those areas. They should be there, offering comfort and aid, assuring the Americans hurt by the hurricane that they care. There will be more MSM coverage of the hurricane than the convention and they would be well covered by news. Such a heroic visit to the scene of the hurricane would be more dramatic than Obama's moment, fireworks and confetti and all, in the Denver stadium. Gustav could be, tragically, the opportunity to demonstrate to America that McCain and Palin would be a new kind of Republican team, in action, boots on the ground, helping. If God wants McCain to be president, then Gustav's landfall could be a gift from God.

Update. August 31, 2008. McCain and Palin go to Gulf Coast Sunday. Told you so.

Walk and Weight

New Park/Bridge loop: 4.1 miles, with 8 intervals; 5th interval up the lower half of new park hill (to the chain link fence)

My weight is down to 138.25 lbs. I'm sure some of this is just water, but at least four pounds are from my diet. After my last lipid profile and PSA tests in early August, I decided to go back on my four-day rotational diet with its greatly restricted foods--no cane sugar, red meat only once every four days, low fat, lots of fish, fruit, vegetables. I knew that I would start to lose weight again, though that is not my objective. My wife is adamant that I not lose any more weight; but it is inevitable on this diet. My naturopathic doctor says that the diet will drop my cholesterol back to 180 (from 196 to which it had risen by early August) and will drop my PSA (up to 452) as both are sensitive to red meats. That is, indeed, what happened in August 2005 when I first went onto the 4-day rotational diet. Then my Cholesterol dropped from 240 or so to 135 and my PSA from 560 or so to 395. My naturopath does not want my cholesterol to drop that low again, wants it to settle about 180.

Sarah Palin and the Foreign Affairs Experience Issue

To start, we don't know yet much about whether she has any foreign affairs experience as a politician. Alaska is a noncontiguous state with Russia and Canada on its borders. Alaska fronts the Arctic, which has become, as Arctic ice recedes (temporarily) the new frontier for black gold and other resources. While it is the business of the national government to deal with international relations, it is likely that Sarah Palin has had to address such issues in some way. Not solving the Berlin blockade, to be sure, but foreign affairs could not be out of her consciousness.

As Governor, Palin has been working with two large oil companies to build a $40billion natural gas pipeline from Alaska's north slope across Alaska to Canada and thence across Canada to Chicago. These discussions and plans certainly involve negotiations with Canada and considerations of laws and regulations regarding such commerce. This is not an uncomplicated project or issue. She mentioned the pipeline in her first speech, after McCain's announcement of her selection as VP candidate. She's a quick study. She'll do well--you just watch her. (Update, August 30, 2008.)

There are two issues, not one, involving foreign affairs. Having knowledge of foreign nations and affairs is always, no matter how knowledgeable the president, an issue of having advisors and consulting experts in the president's appointive inner circle, as well as having the executive departments of state and defense and justice, and others, to draw upon. Judgment will be obtained in the consulting process of foreign policy and crisis deliberation. Palin would drawn upon this cafeteria of advice just as would Obama and McCain, if she is suddenly thrust into the Oval Office.

The position of vice president is not that of secretary of state; it is not a primer for being secretary of state. The guys over at Volokh Conspiracy are concerned that Palin could not step into the Oval Office, if McCain were to keel over, God forbid, and deliberate about thirty foreign policy and international crises as if she were a senior professor and analyst from Yale. Well, I have news for them; there is no one who could do that. What the president needs, in such situations, is an understanding of her/his instincts for people, who can be trusted as a advisor, who is to be doubted, and a fundamental vision of how the world works. She was a professional journalist. I bet that she got a good instinct for who is grinding an agenda, who is forthright, who is on your side, and so on. As for a world vision, I don't know that she has one, but I'm guessing that as Governor she has accumulated large bits and pieces of such a philosophy. She'll get more as an understudy to McCain. She obviously has political instincts about people; those instincts will guide her through the treacheries of the professional staffs at State, CIA, FBI, Defense, and other federal agencies.

The other issue is decision making. Here we have reason to believe Palin has strength. The President has to make "the buck stops here" decisions. All by him/her self. McCain has clearly deep wells of experience in making existential decisions of this sort. Neither Obama nor Biden have, at least in their public biography, ever made an existential decision of great import. Obama has, nearly his entire career, avoided such decisions. I do not consider opposing the Iraq War while having no responsibility for it, as he was sitting in the Illinois legislature at the time, an existential decision. It was a freebie that reveals nothing about Obama's ability to make decisions. Obama's mind is, further, so confused by ideology and verbal nuance that he is incapable of having a clear vision of any decision he might have to make in a complicated crisis.  Biden has never made an executive decision in foreign affairs; period. He is a prevaricating, waffling blow-hard politician, who has had a few good moments in committee and on the stump, but otherwise provides no evidence that he has the balls to make the calls.

As Governor, Palin has had to make executive decisions. She has done so, in a variety of venues on a variety of issues, with bold fortitude and willingness to take the political flack. Read her Wikipedia entry. I'd say that puts her in the win column on this issue of foreign affairs readiness to occupy the Oval Office, should she (and we hope she would not) have to do so if McCain were incapacitated. Truman could do it, in not too dissimilar circumstances; I'm prepared to believe she could, too.

Revised.

Update. August 30, 2008. Palin is not intimidated by attacks that she is "inexperienced". See her response, while shopping!, to reporters.