Defenders of Wildlife Go After Palin

Animal groups, needless to say, think Palin borders on savage. We already know that she thinks polar bears are just swimming. This is pretty gross. 

Salon: In early 2007, Palin's administration approved an initiative to pay a $150 bounty to hunters who killed a wolf from an airplane in certain areas, hacked off the left foreleg, and brought in the appendage. Ruling that the Palin administration didn't have the authority to offer payments, a state judge quickly put a halt to them but not to the shooting of wolves from aircraft.

Detractors consider the airborne shootings a savage business, conducted under the euphemism "predator control." The airplanes appear in the winter, so the wolves show up like targets in a video game, sprinting across the white canvas below. Critics believe the practice violates the ethics of hunting, while supporters say the process is not hunting at all, but a deliberate cull.

Palin has argued that she is worried about Alaska's hunters, locked in perennial competition with the canine carnivores for the state's prodigious ungulate population. A hunter herself, Palin has battled critics of aerial wolf hunting with the support of the Alaska Outdoor Council, a powerhouse advocacy and lobbying organization for hunting, fishing and recreation groups. In addition to so-called urban hunters, who shoot moose mostly for fun, Alaska is home to a significant number of subsistence hunters, including some of the Native population. Subsistence hunters rely on an occasional moose to make ends meet. The wolves, Palin has said, are stealing food from their tables.

"Palin acts like she has never met an animal she didn't want shot," says Priscilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals, based in Connecticut.

This is fairly graphic.

McCain: Media on a Mission to Destroy Palin

Ain't no moose large enough. 

No. The media, for the sake of the American people, is vetting Palin, since McCain didn't do the job. After all, making moose into mooseburgers is no qualification for vice president. Oh, I know, I've heard she's a "reformer."

She wants to reform education so that it teaches creationism and abstinence only. She wants to reform America's energy policy into a drill here drill now, even in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She probably knows more about oil than anything else. Sound familiar?

She wants to reform science and put away all that nonsense about drowning polar bears and global warming. They're just swimming! Anyway, animals are for shooting and making into Mooseburgers or Polar Bear burgers. Never mind those endangered species lists. 

She wants to reform libraries, banning books that don't have the right language in them.

She's a reformer all right.

NPR: Monday we found out about Palin's unwed teenage daughter. Republican allies argue, as Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota did Tuesday on MSNBC, "It just seems that's unfair and out of bounds" to pin the blame for the teenager's pregnancy on Palin — who is McCain's running mate.

Now the press is turning its attention to all other aspects of her record. For example, McCain aides claimed the new governor's credentials in foreign policy came from her role as titular head of the Alaska National Guard.

The campaign felt CNN's Campbell Brown was deeply unfair Monday night by persistently challenging McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds with variations of this question: "Can you just tell me one decision that she made as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard, just one?"

Viewers waited in vain for a direct reply. McCain's response was to cancel an interview scheduled on Tuesday evening on CNN's Larry King Live. But the network isn't apologizing.

McCain Shows Judgment Lapse

Listening to McCain's Ohio event this morning, Sarah Palin was audibly nervous and spoke little of her own experience (she has little) and instead cheered for McCain and pandered to Hillary. 

The way she spoke was cheerleader-ish in content and tone (maybe it's just her high-pitched voice). As a woman, what an insult. What an insult to think that women just want a woman in high office. She has to be qualified. She has to be even more qualified, given that McCain hammered Obama on experience. The audacity. 

The choice shows McCain lacks judgment in choosing a vice president, someone to take over in case he gets sick or otherwise, who's lacking. Alaskans say: it's like one of your friends was chosen for one of the highest offices in the nation. They're shocked.

Alaska? I could run Alaska. 

She has five children, so she obviously doesn't believe in birth control. I admire her not aborting her baby with down syndrome but she's not a special case. I'd argue most women wouldn't have an abortion if they were carrying a downs syndrome baby. But even still, that does not make a vice president or a president. Abortion is not the single most important issue to this nation, contrary to what conservatives preach. 

She's also accused of using her power to benefit her sister, in the middle of a custody battle. 

She's against putting the polar bears on the endangered list. It would hurt oil business, she said. She doesn't believe the ice is melting, contrary to scientific evidence. She wants to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I'm so sick of oil. 

Let's not forget she was Miss Alaska runner up.

She likes to hunt and fish and eat moose burgers. She was called Sarah Barracuda. Who cares. 

McCain chose Palin purely for politics. He did NOT choose someone to help him govern. This was an effort to shock, gain attention, sway a few Appalachian women voters (PUMAs). He's out of touch, no doubt.