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The more American voters find out about Sarah Palin, the less comfortable they are with the idea that she could, in the case of an elderly McCain’s illness or death, become President of the United States in as little as five months from now.

The Militant Moderate writes: “I want to vote for McCain, but he is working hard to convince me otherwise. The nomination of Sarah Palin is only the latest, most egregious, example.”

The McCain campaign says that Sarah Palin is not ready to hold a press conference or to be interviewed by journalists. The mystery on the minds of voters is how Palin could possibly be ready to succeed John McCain as President of the United States if she can’t even answer a reporter’s questions.

If the McCain-Palin campaign won’t give the Press the chance to find out more about Sarah Palin directly, then it’s up to the Press, and to the rest of us, to find out what we can on our own. A good place to start is the sixty six page summary of Sarah Palin’s time as mayor of Wasilla, created by Democrats in 2006. The summary is written by Democrats, but the information is from state and local newspapers and the public record.

Read. Inform yourself.

Then call the McCain-Palin press office at 703-650-5550 and tell them you expect Sarah Palin to start answering reporters’ unscripted questions today. Call the Washington Post ombudsman at 202-334-7582 too, and get ask the D.C. paper to put the pressure on McCain as well.

“You ask me my feelings on an issue and I’ll give it to you straight up, because that’s the only way a voter knows where his employee stands. Elected officials are exactly that—employees.” — Sarah Palin, September 30 1992.

9 days since Sarah Palin was announced as VP pick.
0 press conferences with Sarah Palin answering reporters’ questions.
58 days left until the election.

Sarah Palin is still not ready.

Go ahead, steal that little web badge. I want you to. I want you to stick it up on your blog and remind everybody who visits that Sarah Palin is still not ready to answer the questions a Vice President should answer. Remind your visitors that, should John McCain kick the bucket, Sarah Palin is still not ready to answer the questions a President must answer.

To point this out in even larger style, steal a larger graphic:

Once you hyperlink to one of these graphics, it will automatically update on your web page every day that Sarah Palin refuses to stand before a room full of reporters and answer their questions.

It’s time to apply pressure. Please help.

“I am so sorry I’m such a weasel.” — Sarah Palin, October 8 2000

Last Sunday, I was in the audience with my audio recorder rolling as I heard Ohio State University Associate Registrar Jack Miner explain why he could no longer call himself a member of the Republican Party. This is what he said:

Most of you know me because of Ohio State, but a lot of you also know me because I’ve been a lifelong Republican. I’ve been pretty active over the years for the Republican Party, enough said. In this election, my family, my community and the nation can’t afford four more years of the same thing.

So this is the year that I know I’m heading out of the party and I’m supporting Obama. That’s become even more clear the past couple of days where I’m almost embarrassed to say I that used to be a Republican based on the ticket they’ve put together. So if you think about not just a heartbeat, but — not a strong heartbeat away from the presidency, we can’t afford to have someone who’s not strong in foreign relations, who’s not strong with domestic policy, and really has no experience. We can’t afford the Republicans.

Lifelong Republicans have had enough.

If like me you’ve been wondering where the Sarah Palin press conferences are, now we have our answer: the Sarah Palin press conferences are nowhere. The Sarah Palin press conferences are not happening. Journalistic interviews with Sarah Palin are not happening either. They will not be happening for the foreseeable future, either.

Want to guess why?

The McCain campaign says Sarah Palin’s not ready.

Senator Sam Brownback gave an exceptional example of the incoherence that results from the mixing of religion and politics. Giving a speech to warm up the crowd for John McCain, Brownback tried to reconcile the belief that God has given America a destiny with the political assertion that the fate of America depends upon who we elect as President this year. Brownback said,

“I believe in American exceptionalism, that this is a special land and that to whom much is given much is required. We are blessed to be a blessing, but for America to fulfill its God-given destiny, we need leaders to help take us there…. John McCain is one of those leaders.”

So, on the one hand, Senator Brownback claims that America is a special nation that has been chosen by the Christian God to lead the world. He says this destiny is “God-given”. That’s past tense, which means the deal is already sealed. The destiny of world leadership has been given to us already.

Well, if that’s really true, and not just a lot of pretty meaningless God-talk babble, then we don’t need to do anything. It’s destiny, and destiny cannot be changed. If destiny can be changed, after all, it’s not destiny, but mere possibility. So, Sam Brownback is asserting, through the power of his religious faith, that the success of the United States of America is all wrapped up. It’s for sure, and nothing can stop us.

That’s in accordance with the religious belief of American exceptionalism that Sam Brownback claims to believe in, but it seems that as he was writing his speech, it occurred to Brownback that his religious pronouncement was giving Republicans permission to sit at home and do nothing - not even vote. You see, if God had guaranteed American leadership of the world as destiny, then it would mean that it wouldn’t matter if John McCain were elected or not. Whomever the titular President of the United States would be, God would be the real one in charge of the USA. So, why bother campaigning for John McCain?

That’s where Sam Brownback’s 180 degree turn begins, with the nonsense phrase “We are blessed to be a blessing,” which doesn’t mean anything except to express Senator Brownback’s feeling that he really has no idea what he’s talking about.

Then, Senator Brownback gives the internally inconsistent declaration that if we are to fulfill our God-given destiny, we need leaders to take us there, and that John McCain is one of those leaders. The clear implication is that if we do not choose John McCain as our President, America will not achieve its destiny. So, says Brownback, vote McCain!

That’s nonsense, of course. First of all, Senator Brownback never explained how he could tell that it was John McCain, and not Barack Obama, who would lead America toward the destiny already given to us by God. Did God come down out of the heavens and tell Senator Brownback? Did the angels send a memo to Senator Brownback’s office, or maybe, did Senator Brownback just make it all up and just pretend that he knows what the destiny of America is?

That’s the trouble with destiny. You can’t really know if something is destiny before it happens, because, well, there’s still a chance that it won’t happen. Even after something happens, you don’t really know if it was destiny for it to happen, or if there could have been another outcome. You don’t know, because you haven’t had the chance to try out that alternate reality, and you never will get the chance.

But, in spite of all the reasons he can’t possibly really know what America’s destiny is, Senator Brownback says that there is a destiny for America, and that it’s for America to be successful, and that God has made it a sure thing as a gift to us all.

So why was it that religious Americans need to elect John McCain again? Oh, yeah. It was because God has given us a destiny, but the destiny won’t ever take place unless we ourselves work to make it happen. It’s a tricky kind of destiny, see, kind of like a matching funds donation drive from God.

Only, where are God’s matching funds in this deal? According to Sam Brownback, God has told him that America has been given the gift of a destiny of successful world leadership, only it won’t take place unless we do the work ourselves.

Well, that’s not really a gift, is it? I mean, if I tell my nephew that I’m giving him the gift of a wooden sword, but he won’t get it unless he goes out into the forest and finds a big branch, and then carves the sword, then I haven’t really given my nephew the sword, have I? No. All I’ve done is tell my nephew what to do. I’ve just been a big talker. Talk, talk, talk.

So, according to the second half of Sam Brownback’s statement, God is a lazy, good-for-nothing spirit who won’t actually follow through on his promises. So, why bother paying attention to what God wants? Really? What’s God going to do about it if we ignore him? Will he doom us to Hell? Well, if God’s doom is like his destiny, then it’s all just a bunch of empty promises he’ll eventually forget about.

Neither version of Sam Brownback’s idea of God’s destiny makes sense. It’s ridiculous to claim that it doesn’t matter what Americans do, because God has America’s future all pre-arranged. It is equally ridiculous to assert that God is a great divine being who claims to direct the course of American history, but then lets the American people actually make the choices.

The sensible alternative that Senator Brownback never seems to have considered is that there is no God, and no destiny, and that the future course of history is not at all predetermined, but is created by our actions in the present. It’s a model of reality that gets rid of all the outrageous logical contradictions of Sam Brownback’s beliefs.

Unfortunately, the no-God model is not popular with voters. Apparently, the American people get rather nervous when they’re told that the future of their nation depends upon their choices today. They’d rather have a destiny that doesn’t make sense than a responsibility that does.

What’s most salient in the liberal zeitgeist? To get an idea, take a look at these, our top five selling bumper stickers from September 1 to September 5, 2008:

#1: Librarians Against Palin bumper sticker
#2: People With One House Against McCain bumper sticker
#3: Republicans for Barack Obama bumper sticker
#4: I Like Obama, But is America Ready for a President with Brains? bumper sticker
#5: Hope, Not Fear: Obama 2008 bumper sticker

This week, opposition to Sarah Palin and John McCain tops support for Barack Obama. And some Alaskan governor-type politicians apparently still need to learn their lesson: never mess with a librarian.

On Sunday August 31, I approached Ohio 15th District congressional candidate Mary Jo Kilroy at a campaign event and with her permission recorded the following conversation about the FISA Amendments Act, a law passed this year that enables wiretaps, searches and seizures without notification or a warrant. Kilroy has no written material on her campaign website regarding the FISA Amendments Act, so I asked her to comment on her position regarding that law:

Jim Cook: Regarding the FISA Amendments Act, if you were in the 110th Congress would you have voted for or against that bill?

Mary Jo Kilroy: Yeah, again, I’ve got to say that I don’t know the final form of the bill, but let me talk about some of the issues. I think that we can have a safe America without trampling on civil liberties, and I think that the FISA courts as constituted now provide the opportunity for immediate wiretaps but then go and get a warrant, and I think that’s important that we don’t have unlimited warrantless searches. The 48 hour period to get a warrant gives the administration time to get evidence and go to court and have that approved by an independent branch of government, which is one of the checks and balances in our constitution.

But the telecom immunity issue for retroactive telecom immunity, I would have opposed.

Cook: OK, if I told you there was a 7-day period in the FISA Amendments Act that passed and that was signed into law…

Kilroy: I can’t say.

Cook: If there’s a period of 7 days in which the president can search electronically and also engage in physical search, because there’s a physical search provision, if you were told that that was part of the FISA Amendments Act and then there was an additional 60 day period…

Kilroy: I’m going to have to take a look at it myself. I don’t really like having people say, “If I told you this…”

Cook: OK. Let’s imagine hypothetically that you found out that there was a bill. OK? I’m not going to say it’s this bill. It allows a 67 day period during which the president could search anyone anywhere without a warrant and then could keep the evidence afterward and use that information they obtained. Is that the kind of thing you’d support?

Kilroy: I’m a strong supporter of our Constitution and our Bill of Rights and I think that we can live within our Bill of Rights including the constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure of American homes, invading American zones of privacy, and I think that we can be secure in this country and protect our privacy as citizens.

Cook: OK, so if you found out that it was part of the federal law…

Kilroy: Let me take a look at what the federal law is, actually. I think that the FISA courts are appropriate and they’ve been in use and the FISA court provides for a way to have the administration immediately wiretap and then go to the FISA court and then get a warrant, and I think that is a good way to do it.

Cook: Thank you very much, Ms. Kilroy.

Kilroy: You’re welcome.

So what is Mary Jo Kilroy’s position as a congressional candidate regarding the FISA Amendments Act? It’s hard to say. Kilroy’s remarks about supporting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are general and include enough wiggle words like “unreasonable” to be compatible with almost any position. Kilroy’s characterization of the structure of the FISA court is actually a description of how the FISA court worked before the passage of the FISA Amendments Act, not how it works now. And when I tried to ask her specifically about her position regarding the FISA Amendments Act, she waved off the questions as hypothetical and said she’d have to read the Act before answering.

I came out of this conversation despite a few attempts still not knowing where Mary Jo Kilroy stands on the provisions of the FISA Amendments Act and her legislative plans regarding warrantless wiretapping. It was a frustrating experience, like trying to eat fog with a spoon.

Fortunately, Kilroy twice said she’d have to take a look at the FISA Amendments Act. This gives me an opportunity for a follow-up. I’m going to draft an annotated one-page summary with bullet point descriptions of the provisions of the FISA Amendments Act, then attach it to the text of the law. Then I’m going to try very, very hard to put that paper right in her hand.

When I’m done writing that one-page summary I’ll be sure to post it so that you can use it in conversations with your candidates, too.

Abarafi suggests a metaphor for the 2008 presidential election:

It is more than just a case of the devil you know versus the one you don’t. It’s more like having terminal cancer and one doctor says “you’re dying here’s some pain killers” and the other saying “you’re dying now but there’s this experimental medicine that may cure you.” Who in his right mind would not take the medicine on the chance - yes it’s a risk - that it might save you? We know the Republican treatment - we’ve had it for eight years, now, and the country is slowly dying. McCain’s speech amounts to a bottle of Tylenol.

Apt?

We just saw an emblem of what has been worst about the Republican rule of the White House. While John McCain gives his speech, people are being dragged off the floor of the Republican National Convention into the shadows, where they can no longer be seen.

Why? They dared to express dissent.

Dragging away dissidents is the Republican way.

I’ve been trying to make patient, careful, reasonable arguments to people about the problems with Sarah Palin’s claims that she knows the will of God, and that God supports her political agenda - on war and even on fossil fuel pipelines.

This afternoon, I was engaged in one such effort to persuade someone, with sedate logical argument, about the problem of Sarah Palin’s claim to know the will of God. I stopped midsentence, and I realized the absurdity of what I was doing.

For a politician like Sarah Palin to claim that her political agenda is the will of God is not just problematic. It’s absolutely insane.

Sarah Palin thinks that the creator of the entire universe, with its trillions of galaxies, each with billions of stars and planets, across countless light years, is a political supporter of her plan for the war in Iraq, and a booster for a fossil fuel pipeline in Alaska. That isn’t just mistaken. It isn’t just overconfident.

It’s nuts. Nuts. Nuts.

If Sarah Palin really believes that her political agenda is the will of God, she doesn’t need to go to the White House. She needs to go see a psychiatrist and get some medication for the treatment of schizophrenia.

If you believe in God, that’s your business. It’s your right to believe with what you want, and I don’t want to interfere with it. However, I am sick and tired of politicians getting up on stage and pretending that there is a cosmic consciousness behind the entire universe that has endorsed their personal ambitions.

Sarah Palin isn’t just using politics to promote her religion. She’s using religion to promote her politics.

That’s crude. That’s rude. That’s crazy.

You’d have to be insane yourself to vote to put someone like that in the position, as Vice President, to become President and have control over the nuclear arsenal of the United States of America.

What will happen if Sarah Palin hears a voice in her head that she thinks is God, and it tells her to push The Button?

I don’t want to spend the next four years of my life worrying about that question. Sarah Palin is too mentally unstable to be trusted with the power of the White House. Let her go back to Wasilla and inflict her prophecies there.

Sarah Palin Word of God video podcast

Sarah Palin is the Vice Presidental pick of John McCain. McCain is no spring chicken, and Palin is next in line, so the question we have to answer isn’t whether Sarah Palin is ready to be Vice President, but rather whether Sarah Palin is the kind of politician you want to be your president.

A great deal of information about Sarah Palin has emerged over the past few days, a great deal of it appalling. I’m trying to sum up, and here’s what I’ve got so far:

• Earlier this year, Sarah Palin cut finding for a food bank in half
• Sarah Palin used her line-item veto to cut $1.1 million in funding that would have given shelter to homeless teenaged mothers and their babies.
• Sarah Palin sincerely informed an assembled crowd that a natural gas pipeline through Alaska was part of God’s Plan
• Also God’s will: the war in Iraq
• Sarah Palin cites a two-hour layover in an airport in Ireland as part of her foreign policy experience
• Sarah Palin tried to ban books from her local library, then tried to fire the librarian who stood up to her.
• Sarah Palin advocated earmarks for the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska, then claimed in her convention speech that she opposed the Bridge
• Sarah Palin thinks the Founding Fathers put “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance (hint: think “20th Century”)
• Palin has a history of firing people who question her questionable behavior: trying to fire that librarian who dared to say “No” to her, firing police chief Irl Stambaugh after he angered her campaign contributors, and firing the Alaska Public Safety Commissioner after he refused to dismiss her former brother-in-law
• Sarah Palin wants to mandate abstinence-only education in public schools, despite studies that show they are 0% effective
• Sarah Palin denies that human activity is a cause of global warming
• Sarah Palin made Alaska uber Alles statements this summer after having joined an Alaska secessionist political party in the 1990s
• Palin worked hard to take polar bears off the endangered species list despite their clearly threatened status
• Sarah Palin wants to restrict the marriage rights of women and have her religion taught in public schools
• A few days before being selected as Vice President, Sarah Palin confessed she didn’t know what the Vice President does

That’s a lot of disturbing information. Got anything to add?

The backlash was inevitable.

Last week, the Democratic Party filled its quadrennial convention with references to gods, appeals to gods and even the claim that gods are working for the Democrats. Well, that’s not entirely accurate; actually, all of the many references to gods during the Democratic National Convention were references to one, single, provincial God: the Abrahamic God of the Bible. That involved a fair amount of exclusion of Americans whose religious identity just doesn’t fit within the concept of an Abrahamic God. Americans who’ve been told they no longer fit inside the shrinking Democratic Party tent are understandably upset.

But even within the Abrahamic religious boundaries squabbling has broken out as members of various religious traditions and sectarian denominations ask why their religious viewpoint hasn’t been represented, or why on earth those other chaplains got a chance to get up stage. Take the Catholic News Agency, which is outraged — outraged!! — on behalf of Archbishop Charles J. Chaput because he was not invited to bless the Democratic National Convention in a benediction of his very own:

Democratic Convention’s non-invitation of Archbishop Chaput an “insult,” Democrat says

…Raymond Flynn, former Democratic mayor of Boston and former ambassador to the Vatican during the Clinton administration, said not inviting the archbishop to pray or speak was “a serious oversight.”

“Chaput is one of the most respected leaders of the Catholic Church in America,” he said, according to the Washington Times. “His record is a strong commitment to social and economic justice and the principles of the Catholic faith. He’s also a strong patriot.

“Pro-life Democrats who are proud Catholics like myself feel this is an insult to our values… The party should be aware there are strong pro-life people who are politically successful,” Flynn continued.

Brian Stuckey of Denver followed up:

The fact that the bishop—an ardent pro-life Catholic—is committed to defending the unborn may not sit well with liberal Democrats who do not share his conservative views. As he put it, “I am trying to convince people that they should not be embarrassed at being Catholic and not buy the supposedly American notion that people should shelve their faith when they enter the public square.” In an era when moral absolutes have been relegated to a lesser role in society, the omission of Archbishop Chaput is an outrage to many conservative Christians—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—who do not embrace the moral relativism in our society.

Then there’s Peter S.’s response to a mushy-mouthed half-protest against humanist exclusion at the DNC by Greg Epstein:

This is a bunch of liberal horse-squeeze.

Religions differ radically from each other in their basic beliefs on God and the meaning of life and what comes after death. These beliefs govern to some extent the follower’s actions in this life. Some of these religions are subversive, violent, controlling, and militant. This is not acceptable.

If you want to be all-inclusive (which I think is a mistake) there should be at least some standards held by all in order to participate or the whole concept will break down. IE: denounce violence, freedom of speech, gender equality, no bondage/slavery, etc.

Well, I guess that would exclude all the religions based on the Old Testament then, Peter. But Peter and Brian and the Catholic News Agency are all following the same impulse: seeing that the Democratic Party decided to invite some religious sects into the political fold, they began a fight over which sects would garner the DNC stamp of approval and which would would be ostracized. The result was not a demonstration of religious inclusion, but rather a scuffle over the boundaries of religious exclusion.

The lesson from the DNC experience this year is clear. Want to start a religious civil war in America? Then by all means turn government into an instrument of religious proselytization. The mitres will be doffed and the crescents will be drawn before you can shout “Our Father who art in…”

Isn’t that Sarah Palin such a folksy ma? Real heartland type there. Woman of the people and all.

The kind of woman of the people who uses her line-item-veto to cut food bank funding in half.

Slashing funding to the food banks that help families without anything. Isn’t that the folksiest thing?