Lay That Pistol Down, Babe, Lay That Pistol Down

John McCain’s choosing Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate proves that the American way to choose a backup president is broken.

Palin, as anyone with brain cells understands, would amount to a disaster were the actuary tables to kick in once McCain is elected president and suddenly he becomes a stiff eligible for a dandy funeral parade along Pennsylvania Avenue.

Ms. Palin has shown herself to be an unaccomplished liar (she had the hots for the Bridge to Nowhere until Congress severed the funding from it), vindictive (watch out former brother-in-law) and as ignorant about national affairs, international affairs and science as one can be and still admit to being an adult.

McCain and she claim that knowledge of Russian affairs steeps her since on a very rare clear day one can see Russia from the northwest tip of Alaska about 500 miles from where Palin lives and over 1,000 miles from where Palin is supposed to work as governor of Alaska. (Juneau is a place she avoids since she can’t draw state per diem for living in the governor’s mansion whereas she gets paid extra by the state for every night she snoozes at home in Wasilla, one of the suburban wonders of the Western World.)

Neither McCain nor Palin mention whether it takes only one glance across the Bering Strait at a distant form on the horizon to become expert on what’s happening in the Kremlin or whether constant exposure to the view increases one’s knowledge. In fact, Palin hasn’t yet admitted that she has ever seen the Russian mainland, apparently because no reporters have had the wit to ask. I lean to the constant-experience view, and believe that Native men, women and children living at Pt. Hope AK and looking across the strait toward Kamchatka are probably America’s leading experts on Russian affairs.

Palin has had a college education but as anyone knows who has endured the U.S. educational system, having a college education doesn’t mean you know anything about much, and probably means you know little at all about science.

Until the press spotlight hit her the other night, Palin pablumed to whoever would listen that humans have nothing to do with global warming, if global warming exists, and if it does exist and drowns all the polar bears, that’s OK with her because trying to save polar bears (or any other arctic creature dependent on ice) would irritate the Oil Boys, on whom her state depends for its socialistic economy of running on oil revenues (no state property, sales or income taxes anymore and most towns also have gotten rid of taxes, to depend on handouts from the state treasury).

She also touts creationism as something to be taught in schools, but has reserved saying a word yet in praise of astrology, palmistry or reading skull bumps for glimpses of the future.

She and McCain caterwaul about her using her persuasive skills as governor to get a pipeline underway to carry natural gas from the oil field at Prudhoe Bay down through Canada’s Yukon Territory, British Columbia and Alberta to markets in the U.S. Midwest.

The problem? Well, the Prudhoe Oil companies want a different pipeline and haven’t said whether they’ll peddle gas to such a competing pipeline that certainly will never be built without contracts in hand from the oil companies.

And again because no one seems to have brains enough to ask, the Canadian territorial, provincial and national governments so far haven’t even been invited to Palin’s pipeline party. Since her pipeline won’t travel one inch over Canadian territory without their permissions, the plain fact remains that Palin’s pipeline right now is a pipe dream.

By picking Palin, McCain got what he wanted: A public-relations coup and a small rocket up his political codpiece that he prays will boost him to the presidency.

By so choosing, McCain hollers that he doesn’t give a damn, he’ll do what it takes to get in the White House. And he shows that he doesn’t give a bucket of owl spit for whether, if he kicks off in the office he covets, his successor will have any talents at all for running not just this nation but for preserving the western democracies.

Ms. Palin, after all, says we’ll have to kick the Russian bear in the crotch if it gets uppity again about countries on its borders, like Georgia, run by a guy who has just found out the hard way what Palin, as an Alaskan, should know: Let sleeping bears lie if they have a den full of nuclear bombs.

Thanks to McCain’s cynical choice of Alaska's Pistol Packin’ Mama for his #2, it’s obvious the Constitution needs to be amended again on how to choose a vice president, so that another impetuous fool doesn't foist yet a worse fool on us and the world.