Letter to Financial Times on Sarah Palin

Chicago, Illinois USA
Wednesday PM, September 10, 2008

Editors, UK Financial Times

Gentlepeople:

In his Wednesday, September 10 FT OpEd James Carville says Sarah Palin's "experience includes a mixed mayoral record in Wasilla, a town with a population of 7,000, and a half-term gubernatorial record in a state with the population of Memphis." The 2008 World Almanac says Wasilla had 9,236 people in 2006. The same reference does indeed show Memphis, at the 2006 estimated population of 670,902 leading Alaska, 670,053, by a whopping 849 people. Could Carville have deliberately chosen Memphis as the landmark because it is the smallest of the nation's 100 largest cities to still be larger than Alaska?

If so, had he studied these two entities a little more, he would have found: Using 1990, 2000 and estimated 2006 census figures, Alaska population increased 20 people per day, Memphis increased for the same period 10 people per day. Extrapolating from the 2000/2006 Almanac figures, Alaska would have caught up with Memphis on August 27, 2006, and by the time by Palin was nominated on August 29, 2008, would have led Memphis by 7200 people. With that half hour of additional study, Carville would not appear quite so foolish.

Carville mentions 5 actual or theoretical Democrat candidates ("Insert name of Democrat", "Democratic candidates", "a reform-oriented state senator from a Midwestern state" and "Tim Kaine, Virginia governor",) but strangely, not a single mention of either of the Democrat candidates. Not a mention of The Dem VP candidate’s 30 years of Senate presence on the foreign relations committee, the high point of which was his plagiarizing of a British left wing politician. And how about The Dem presidential candidate's experience "outside of North America": Four crucial pre-teen years of slogging thru the mud of Indonesia. Beyond that the high point is eight years in the Illinois State Senate, equal in experience to that of a third string Chicago Bears jock strap attendant, but none of the responsibility.

This guy is the most inexperienced, unprepared, candidate for either President or Vice president in history. He cannot say a coherent complete sentence not presented to him on a teleprompter. Since her nomination 10 days ago, Sarah Palin has been speaking publicly non-stop. Has anyone heard her say "um" or "unh" - she didn't even stutter when the teleprompter operator goofed. After ten days of being accused of everything short of running a male prostitution ring out of her governor's office or molesting a House page (with nothing proved), she keeps getting stronger. On the other hand, Biden is a disaster waiting to happen. The way things are going they will replace him before the election, as a drowning man would grasp at a razor blade.

Carville closes: "If the Republicans wanted a vice-pre­sident who favours teaching creationism in public schools, who denies the science of global warming...." James, the earth is 4.5 billion years old, the thermometer was invented 500 years ago. A little simple arithmetic shows that the last 500 years of 4.5 billion years is equivalent to the last 100 seconds of a 40-year-old human's lifetime. Yet the 'science' of global warming is making all sorts of predictions based on the earth 'warming'? Global warming has no more business being taught in schools than creationism.

Arnold H. Nelson
5056 North Marine DriveChicago, IL USA
ah_nelson@yahoo.com