Palin all along?
I tend to give too much credit to the Republican/NeoCon Machinery. I know this. I regularly break the tried and true axiom of not attributing to Malice that which can be easily attributed to Incompetence.
All the same . . .
As I look at Palin's relatively meteoric rise to power, her creepy totalitarian world view, her terrifying fundamentalism, her dangerous ties to big oil and the media frenzy that is surrounding her, I can't help but wonder if she was the plan all along.
Consider the media smokescreen that is brushing the Police Actions in Minneapolis under the carpet. This whole tired soap opera is allowing the government to flex new and dangerous muscle when it comes to muzzling dissent with barely a hint of media attention. What little time and resources the media can focus are only sufficient to swallow the official line about the "anarchists" who are there to fuck shit up.
Meanwhile, legitimate organizations get raided and intimidated, have their video equipment, computers and files confiscated etc.
We can thank Palin and the Media Circus for a lot of this.
Now consider what she will do in office. She likes a firm totalitarian government but only has eyes for social issues and the borrow and spend nuts and bolts of domestic policy. She loves brandishing an AK-47 but would clearly defer to more experienced hands on military matters and foreign affairs.
Hell, she sounds like a dream President for the Neo-Cons in power. McCain sold his soul, but may still have some glowing embers in his gut that could one day become the proverbial fire in the belly for which he was once known. Do the Neo-Cons trust him?
Who do they trust more?
Who will be tasting President McCain's soup if he manages to bring this Fundamentalist NutJob to the White House? We need to vet her, not only for small time state level corruption and cronyism. We need to see whose crony she is.
Her narrative tells us that she just rose up from her kitchen table one day and took on the "old-boys establishment" in Alaska. I call shenanigans. Who was her mentor? Her sponsor? Who taught her the secret handshake, and taught her about the creepy Autocratic tactics that marked her first taste of "executive experience"
She seems a nonsense choice until you remember that the Neo-Cons want someone sympathetic to their lunacy (and anyone who thinks the Iraq war is a "Mission from God" fits that description all too well) who is also malleable and easily controlled.
Unless McCain is a legit Manchurian Candidate and the Neo-Cons have been handed his keycodes, Sarah Palin seems far more useful to the men behind the curtains.
-- EMStoveken
Like this poster commenting on a Glenn Greenwald piece at Salon.com, I tend to attribute malice aforethought to Republican political moves, rather than incompetence.