Interesting read from Maria Shriver regarding Sarah Palin, specifically her refusal to speak at Shriver's highly respected Women's Conference and her ability to avoid any interviews of substance: SFGate article

Obama and Biden that is. Why? Because the country (and now, as a result, damn near the whole planet) is in a financial quagmire. The things that need to be done aren't going to be fun for anyone. Let the people who deregulated everything take care of it. If the next administration does what needs to be done (cut spending, raise taxes), most of the country will be upset. Nobody wants to make the sacrifices in their personal life that are required to have fiscally sound federal, state and for that matter, household finances. Now their house is worth 50% of what they owe, they've got a pile of maxed out credit cards, Johnny needs a new pair of shoes, and the government needs a LOT more money to keep things afloat. Let McCain be the one who has to do the dirty work....I say it's time to punt.

In baseball, it's not uncommon for a team near the bottom of its division to essentially give up on the season. They may trade some of their better players away for a few prospects, they may put some of the veterans on the bench as to avoid injury and embarrassment, and then there are the September callups. These are minor league players who are brought up to play out the rest of the season. A few of them may have the talent to one day play in the big leagues, but essentially they are place-holders, filling a slot that has to be filled so the team can play the rest of its games and get on to the next season. 
Almost everyone questions why Sarah Palin would be tapped as a VP nominee. Look at it as a September callup. The GOP is essentially throwing in the towel and getting ready for next season. Wasting time pointing out her inexperience and insufficiencies give her much more credit than she deserves. It's really not worth wasting your time debating her merits. She's a minor leaguer called up to fill a spot until next season.

If you listen to the McCain interview with RCM, it's obvious he has a written list of countries, facts and party lines to espouse. When the interviewer throws out Zapatero's name, it's clear that Spain was not on his cheat sheet. Furthermore, it's obvious that Mexico is, as he takes off reading the printed word with respect to our southern neighbors without prompting from the interviewer. First Palin, and now McCain, give these interviews and speeches like they're dictating a WikiPedia entry. I guess as long as they have their iPhone handy with WikiPanion loaded, we'll all be OK......sigh

Why would the RNC nominate someone as glaringly under-qualified as Sarah Palin for the second most powerful job in the free world? I think they've found the secret to getting middle America's votes, and it may not be what you think.
There's one thing you can do to get a hard-working yet undereducated and underinformed person to turn against you in less than 10 seconds - tell them what to do, how to act, or what to think. The RNC no doubt realizes this and for the last 3 elections has trotted out candidates whose lack of common-sense, education and experience makes them a poor choice to run a softball team, much less the most powerful nation on the planet. 
In  2000, the RNC trotted out GWB as more of a sacrificial lamb, I estimate. How could anyone beat the VP of a 2-term administration with an amazing approval rating? So they throw 'ol W out there, not wanting to sully the reputation of a viable future candidate, and start planning for 04. But then a funny thing happens-the former alcohol and cocca-addict, the C student and draft-dodger, the silver-spooned beneficiary or daddy's bank accounts....draws so much ridicule from the opposition that it actually drives the "you can't tell me what to do" crowd to vote for him. The more times some liberal pundit wrote "you'd have to be an idiot to vote for this boob", the more people felt the urge to dig in their heels and prove that they weren't stupid.
Fast-forward to 2004 and you've got an incumbent president who proved that he was just as big a bone-head as predicted. More evidence that he's unfit for the office, right? Guess again - this makes W more appealing to those voters who refuse to be told "how to think", and he wins by a larger margin.
Along comes 2008. The legacy of the last 8 years and a sitting president with a lower approval rating than cancer might just derail the gravy train. McCain's looking for a VP. If they bring on a candidate with the background and disposition for the job, the election will come down to the issues and the swing voters could figure out that the RNC has been using religion, homophobia and xenophobia to maintain a system of government which benefits the top 1% at their expense.
The solution is obvious if you've been following our story - get a VP candidate so insanely under-qualified that you can repeat the patterns of 2000 and 2004. How better to combat a J.D. from Harvard and a J.D. from Syracuse than with a B.A. from Idaho. Now we watch the same pattern repeat itself. The more vehemently Obama supporters decry the insufficiencies of the hockey mom, the further the poll numbers will swing. It's a savvy approach and with the latest poll numbers, it would appear everything is going according to plan. 
What can be done to stem the tide? We'll address that in our next installment.
dUb