Sarah Palin the Diva is Now Sarah Palin the "Whack Job"

The name-calliing from the McCain camp is getting rather intense. Saying things like "redistributor" and "socialist" and "pal of terrorist" and "rogue" and "whack job," the McCain campaign has really started getting nasty with the labels. But wait. The last couple labels, "rogue" and "whack job" were not meant to be descriptive of the Obama- Biden ticket. No, they were directed at a far closer target - vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Just hours after news broke that McCain aides were saying that Governor Palin was "going rogue," another anonymous aide called her a "diva." And, now, a few more hours later, Politico.com tells us that a McCain aide called Sarah Palin a "whack job." Excactly what the description was in direct reference toward readers are left to ponder. Generally, however, the term is meant as a perjorative and means "mentally unbalanced."

Politico.com's Mike Allen reported in Tuesday's "Playbook" that:

"...In convo with Playbook, a top McCain adviser one-ups the priceless "diva" description, calling her 'a whack job.' "

Just a few minutes after that quote was posted, Senator John McCain announced to an audience Tuesday in Pennsylvania, "By the way, when two mavericks join up we don't agree on everything, but it's a lot of fun."

Palin has also refuted the accusations that she's gone "rogue," saying that she is committed to the McCain ticket.

But could the McCain adviser be right? Is Palin a "whack job"? Let's look at a few examples of why someone might refer to Palin as a "whack job":

Her obsession with getting her ex-brother-in-law fired led to Troopergate, where an Alaskan legislative committee found that she had abused the powers of her office as governor (an ethics violation), but she had broken no laws.

A video of Sarah Palin speaking at her old church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, shows her advocating prayer for the troops and the Iraq War which she says is "a task that is from God."

In her interview with Charles Gibson of ABC News, Sarah Palin seemed to get very animated when Gibson mentioned the possibility of going to war with Russia. She even insisted that the United States would have to go to war with Russia if they attacked a NATO country. This may be because of her Pentecostal Armageddonist beliefs that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ is preceded by wars against Israel by armies from the East (most often assumed to be Russia or China or both).

She attended a Jews for Jesus meeting at her new church, Wasilla Bible Church. Jews for Jesus is an organization known for their extreme political stances. Among their beliefs are that Jews have to be converted to Christianity in order for them to go to heaven. At the meeting Palin attended in August, the speaker, Jews for Jesus founder David Brickner, told the Wasilla congregants terrorist attacks on Israel were part of god's judgment against Jews for not embracing Christian views.

Palin also attended one church session where a a preacher prayed over her to protect her from witchcraft, a video of which can be seen on YouTube. Guest Pastor Thomas Muthee says in the video, "In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, every form of witchcraft is what you rebuke. In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, father make away now."

She told America in her vice presidential debate that, as vice president, she was head of the Senate. Her ignorance of the U. S. Constitution was astounding. When Gwen Ifill, the moderator, asked her to elaborate on whether or not she agreed with Vice President Dick Cheney's loose definition of his official duties, she said, "...Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation..."

Palin has made no attempts to hide her views on abortion. She is totally pro-life, even in cases of women becoming pregnant through rape and incest. As mayor of Wasilla, her administration billed rape victims for the rape kits used to prove they had been raped. Her only exception to a pro-life stance? If a mother's life is at stake.

She once asked Wasilla's public librarian how she could get books banned that she found objectionable.

Sarah Palin believes that dinosaurs coexisted with human beings, despite scientific evidence that proves otherwise. This is one viewpoint from a Creationist perspective, a philosophy Palin supposedly adheres to.

In her speech on special needs children Friday, October 24, she denounced the spending of money on research being done wih fruit flies "in Paris, France." Autism, which meets the special needs definition, is currently being studied through genetic research on fruit flies at the University of North Carolina. Thomas Hunt Morgan was awarded a Nobel prize in 1933 for his research on fruit flies that showed genetic inheritance through chromosomes.

Conservative columnist Christopher Hitchens summed up Sarah Palin and those like her in Slate magazine just after the "fruit fly" denouncement:

"This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity."

Whack job? Apparently she's not enough of one to keep at least 60 million people from voting for her on Election Day, because, regardless of the asinine remonstrations otherwise, a vote for John McCain is a vote for Sarah Palin - and the potentiality of her becoming president.

To most reasoned observers, Sarah Palin is a whack job, making the anonymous McCain adviser not only accurate but insightful in their observation. The problem remains, though, that this "whack job" could be the next vice president of the United States.

Sources:

TimesOnline.co.uk

Slate.com

Politico.com

TheTimes.co.za

Guardian.co.uk

Jezebel.com