The McCain campaign has more or less most all it’s eggs in one basket: Obama is too inexperienced to be the president. That’s been the dominant message of the whole campaign. But there is no stronger endorsement for the presidency that a presidential candidate can give than to select someone as their VP. By selecting her as his VP, McCain is saying, “If I can’t be President you are the person, out of the entire nation, I think would do the best job as President.” That’s a much stronger endorsement than any voter (who must select from available choices) can give a given candidate. Either McCain is knowingly not putting the best interest of country first, or he is giving an unsurpassed vote of confidence to Palin’s ability to be President (and not just to be a president, but to be the best president possible other than himself).

That means that, in McCain’s view, experience is not a necessary qualification for the presidency. Yet that’s the polar opposite of the assertion he’s based his entire campaign on up to this point. When he’s reiterated over and over that experience is an integral qualification for the presidency, then suggests that the best candidate for the job (other than himself) is a politician who has none, who is really being the hypocrite?

I don’t really know much about the Alaskan governor, but from a demographic standpoint, I think she stands to help McCain out a bit. The biggest plus for McCain is that she’s a female. There’s still alot of Hillary supporters (though a minority of them) who have made it clear that they have no problem abandoning their liberal principles and ideals if going conservative would put a woman in the White House. Even the blind can see that these votes are the primary reason McCain made this selection, and the impact of it will not be small, as I have little doubt a good number will not object to McCain using them that way. The fact that Palin is young enough to be McCain’s daughter (in fact she is years younger than McCain’s oldest child), could be a double-edged sword for him. On one hand, bringing on somebody even younger than Obama onto the ticket could help reduce the criticism that McCain is too old to understand what’s going on in the modern world. On the other hand, when your VP pick cold be your daughter (and isn’t to far of from a granddaughter’s age), it certainly doesn’t make McCain himself look any younger.

As far as the issues go, I don’t know, and haven’t been able to find too much on her. She’s strongly pro-life which will help McCain with the social conservatives he’s had trouble with. On the other hand, while she opposes gay marriage and supported the state’s constitutional amendment to ban it, she also used her very first veto to block a law that would have taken away benefits from the partners of the state’s gay and lesbian employees, and she *gasp* admits to having gay and lesbian friends. That’s gonna take a huge chunk out of her social conservative street cred, while (with the exception of the self-hating Log Cabin crowd) not buy her any votes from gays and lesbians. In my opinion, one of the biggest issues of this election is the energy crisis. Palin seems to toe the GOP party line on energy with her “let’s drill everywhere” viewpoint. That shouldn’t be a surprise though when you find out that her husband is an oil exec with BP. The solution to the oil problem is not “more oil.” Bringing on such an obvious connection to “Big Oil” could potentially hurt.

Then last night, on my way to jiu-jitsu, I noticed a big truck full of Toyotas heading in the direction on the highway to get to the dealership. I caught enough of a glance to notice they were all Toyotas without seeing it well enough to look over each car in search of a magnetic gray Corolla S. I’ll never know for certain whether my car rode past me last night or not, but I got a call first thing this morning informing me that my car was on the lot and I needed to schedule a time to pick it up. The salesman suggested after I got off work. Right, I’ve been waiting a month for this thing, I’m not waiting til after work. I asked him what time it would be ready and I’d plan my lunch around. So at 1 o’clock, I arrived to the dealer to pick up my new car, 2 hours (!!!!) later, it’s mine.

I’m not complaining too much about the MUCH needed rain, but it would have been nice if the first feature I could have tested was the moonroof, NOT the windshield wipers. Oh well.

While the Colquille are the first Native American tribe to legalize same-sex marriage in the modern sense of the word, marriages between members of the same-sex were fairly common among nearly all Native American tribes prior to the arrival of westerners. Western explorers documented meeting “Two-Spirits” in their early explorations. Two-Spirits in Native American culture were men or women considered to possess both male and female spirits within their body (regardless of their anatomical gender). What interesting, from a westerner’s perspective, is that these Two-Spirits were not only accepted and welcomed into Native American society, but they were often honored and celebrated, taking on mystical professions such as medicine men. More relevantly to modern gays and lesbians, the spouses of Two-Spirits were often of the same anatomical gender. Two-Spirits started to lose their status when Western anti-gay bigotry began to influence the Native Americans, and eventually became virtually unheard of. It will be interesting to see if the growing acceptance of gays and lesbians in Western culture might bring back the cultural significance of the Two-Spirit in Native American culture.