I sincerely hope that John McCain lives a very long life, but like the rest of us, he is subject to the odds associated with a man his age.  According to Vol. 54, No. 14 of the National Vital Statistics Reports available from the CDC at

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr54/nvsr54_14.pdf

the odds of a 72 year old white male American diying in the next four years are a bit over 16%.  You can calculate this using the table on Page 17.  Just add 1 to each of the probabilities for men from 72-73 through 75-76, take the product of those four numbers, and subtract 1 to get 16.1%.  Invert that percentage and you will see the the odds of VP Palin becoming POTUS Palin are only 1 out of 6.2.

Feeling lucky America?  No worries.  It turns out that the VP is sort of an internship or undergraduate program for one very lucky older student.  Perhaps we should let people compete for it on an American Idol-like program.

Earlier today, I heard Charles Black say that she did not need to know much about foreign affairs initially because she would spend the next four years learning at the feet of the master.  We should probably get a copy of the syllabus so we will all know exactly where she will be in her course of study if he dies before she earns her degree.

For those of you too young to remember the state of relations between Jews and Christians before Pope John explained that it was not Kosher.  Specifically, in the fall of 1965, in the fourth session of Vatican II, the Synod of Bishops finally approved "Nostra Aetate" which absolved living Jews of complicity in any role in Christ's passion.  From the following page in Wikipedia 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Council

"True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ. Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone."[19]

Jews, Catholics and many Protestants born before JFK became President will remember well how this act changed interfaith relations every bit as much as the Civil Rights Act changed racial relations in the US.  People born too late to have experienced that directly may not be familiar with a term well known prior to Vatican II: "Jew Baiting." 

The term may be obsolete, but the action is not, at least in Sarah Palin's Alaska.  On October 23, 2006, while she was running for Governor, the Anchorage Daily News reported that just after her election as Mayor of Wasilla a supportive cable TV broadcast had pronounced her Wasilla's first Christian mayor.  The man she had replaced, John Stein, was not Jewish but as we all know too well from this year's campaign a little guilt by association never hurts in Republican politics.  Here is the link.
http://dwb.adn.com/news/politics/story/8334949p-8231037c.html

McCain should be ashamed and the old Jews in Florida who were adults in 1965 should take note.