Let's Not Forget Who She Is

Let's not forget who she is. She is the person who in a very few months, or perhaps a couple of years, may be the next President of the United States. She is the one while mayor of a small town whose administration charged rape victims for rape crime kits, i.e. about $1200. From a personal standpoint, that little tidbit is all I need to know about her. But there is more. She is the one who lives and sleeps with a person who for at least a dozen years was a member of a political group that advocates secession of the state of Alaska from the Union. The last time that States sought to secede from the Union resulted in the Civil War. I would expect that any person might consider the threat of secession an act of terror and any person who advocated such an act a potential terrorist. Would it be reasonable, therefore, to suggest that she sleeps with a potential terrorist? Others would say such a charge is ridiculous, right? Such a contention might be considered a stretch, but hardly as much as inferring that one is a terrorist because of casual association with a neighbor who committed illegal acts of terrorism when one was eight years old and who was never charged by the United States government for those acts.

I learned some very difficult lessons as a trial lawyer. The first was to avoid any possible situation which gave the opposition the opportunity to throw mud at your case. My early tendency, unfortunately, was to simply blow off these efforts and assume that clear thinking and right minded people (i.e. the jury) would disregard such efforts as nothing but obvious desperate attempts to obscure truth. Some of the mud, totally unjustified, always sticks. People looking for an excuse to not do the right thing would always take the mud and run with it as an excuse or justification to do other than the right thing. Lawyers realize the process. Some politicians realize the process. What's the old adage? You can fool some of the people all of the time?

Who is she? She is not "that one." That designation is already taken. Her name is Sarah Palin and she is in the process of demoniziing the presidential campaign with snide, snotty, untrue inferences against Barack Obama with one aim in mind; To fool some of the people into making a decision based on fear rather than reason and common sense. I have often characterized John McCain as a good man and I have respected and admired the sense of values that he brought to the table. However, he should be ashamed of what he has permitted to be done in his name. The one legitimate fear that I have is that her inexcusable conduct carries the day for McCain and puts her a heart beat from the presidency, just behind this 72 year old man with a history of recurrent malignant melanoma. I had a very dear friend who died recently of this malady which recurred after six years of quiescence. It was an ugly and slow descent into a horrible lingering death. John McCain is not my enemy and I would not wish this potential to occur with him or my enemies. With specific regard to McCain, if such an unfortunate event were to occur while he was President, the consequences for the entire world would be disastrous because of this piece of ignorant, intolerant and arrogant white trash he has selected as his running mate. To complete the thought of a dreaded malignancy's potential impact on the Presidency, the respected conservative columnist, David Brooks declared yesterday that "Sarah Palin represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party."