The kinda, sorta courage of her half-assed convictions

It's already everywhere that Sarah Palin — who now says she's open to running for president if it is “the right thing to do for our country and the Palin family” — has a serious hypocrisy problem.  When it was leaked to the Wall Street Journal that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had called some Democrats “f---ing retarded” in a closed-door meeting, Palin took to Facebook to criticize him and call for his resignation.  Yet when Rush Limbaugh used the phrase repeatedly — in his case to refer to advocates for the developmentally disabled who he said were having a “retard summit at the White House” — she defended him during an interview with Chris Matthews.

I've seen less written about how this is just par for the course for Palin, who seems to only care about anything for as long as it is politically expedient.  It's been well documented that she has consistently sought federal pork for Alaska, both before and after disingenuously claiming she had turned down money from earmarks, including the funds appropriated to the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere." She signed an executive order backing cap-and-trade emissions limits while governor of Alaska and told Gwen Ifill she supported this strategy for combating climate change during the vice-presidential debates, yet wrote a Washington Post op-ed opposing them when President Obama went to Copenhagen for an international environmental summit.  After very publicly announcing that she was going to reject nearly one-third of the federal economic stimulus money for Alaska on principle, she quietly vetoed only a token 3% of it.

Let's not forget her biggest abandonment: she wanted to be governor of Alaska, until it was no longer convenient and she resigned after serving just two-and-a-half years of her four year term.  I'm just completely baffled as to how anyone thinks that Sarah Palin has a chance of being elected President when she couldn't even stick it out for one term as governor.  It's clear from her actions that Sarah Palin doesn't really care about anything but Sarah Palin (and, to be fair, the members of her immediate family).  Is this kind of political opportunist really the person anyone — even teabaggers and birthers — really want running the country?

Did McCain just lose the election?

Wow. Sarah Palin. Wow. I'm a little floored. Actually, totally confused would be more accurate.

What was he thinking??? John McCain just chose as his running mate a woman whose entire political career consists of eight years as mayor of a town of 9,000 and two years as governor of one of the least populated states in the nation. Two years in which Palin has already courted controversy by pressuring the Alaska Department of Public Safety to fire her ex-brother-in-law, who is in the middle of a custody battle with her sister. A woman who has NO foreign policy experience and - if elected - would be one 72-year-old hearbeat away from the Presidency.

The entire tactic of painting Barack Obama as "too inexperienced" just got tossed out the window. For what? To have a woman on the ticket? The perplexing part is that there are MANY more experienced Republican women who could have more ably filled the role: Kay Bailey Hutchison and Elizabeth Dole, just to name two. I just can't even imagine why he went this route. Truly bizarre.