The blogosphere reacted swiftly to the news. Czech blogger the reference frame thinks McCain's choice of Palin improves his prospects:

Sarah Palin (44), the governor of Alaska, and her life surely look fascinating and she will probably make McCain's GOP ticket much stronger (and certainly much younger! McCain is 72 today) but some of her attitudes make it slightly less clear what is she doing in the Republican Party (besides whistleblowing). ;-)

The Cuban author of
Babalu Blog is clearly pleased with McCain's choice. Referring to Palin, she says:

She is a conservative Republican, pro-life, a free-trade capitalist, an NRA member. Oh, and she's a woman, if you missed that.

This should re-define the Obama's CHANGE slogan. The Republicans have a little change of their own up their sleeves, huh?

Russian blogger Laurence Jarvik wonders about the role gender will play in the election, saying:

At least McCain picked a fresh face…although how many Democratic women would cross party lines to vote for Sarah Palin is unclear. Ironic that Obama seems to be targeting the bitter white working class clinging to their guns, while McCain appears to be going after feminists.

Meanwhile, Turkish blogger talkturkey is annoyed that Palin's nomination has raised the gender card again:

Palin is a Governor, with executive branch experience, and brings a non-legislative approach to the race, since all three remaining males are Senators. But I am not sure if having a white female (and a virtual unknown) is going to persuade white women (possibly Hillary supporters — or whatever is left of them) to vote Republican instead of a man. Since it will still be a man at the top job . . .

In Kuwait, Teach the Masses is more interested in the example Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin have set for young women:

So history will be made: for the first time either a) a black American will be in the white house as president or b) a woman as Vice president.

All in all this is a good lesson for the girls in our schools- they have seen through Hillary Clinton and now Sarah Palin what a woman with an education can do.

Finally, Egyptian Chronicles reminds us of the fact that no matter what happens, this year's election is making history:

She was the surprise of the day and the evidence that this race of the American elections 2008 is one of the most interesting races ever. All People expected after the huge of celebration of Obama in the NDC and choosing a foreign policies vet like Joe Biden as his Vice that the race was over and the republicans got nothing new to offer , even the expectations on who would McCain’s vice were not interesting.

But she's great.

There are all kinds of interesting things about her but because climate and energy policies are among the standard topics on this blog, I chose the video above. In this June 2008 Glenn Beck show, she talks about her lawsuit against the U.S. government that wanted to use the “endangered” polar bears as hostages to cripple her, Alaskan economy and to prevent them from tapping the resources. She appears at 4:30, after an entertaining anti-environmentalist rant by Glenn Beck.

Alaska's Governor Sarah Palin is the youngest Governor of Alaska. Now we have two people from the non-continental USA on the tickets vying for the White House. Obama (from Hawaii) and Palin (from Alaska).

Palin is a Governor, with executive branch experience, and brings a non-legislative approach to the race, since all three remaining males are Senators. But I am not sure if having a white female (and a virtual unknown) is going to persuade white women (possibly Hillary supporters — or whatever is left of them) to vote Republican instead of a man. Since it will still be a man at the top job . . .

I would've preferred Romney. But McCain was afraid of the same thing Obama was not. The upstaging issue . . . But why was Tom Ridge overlooked?

“Meet me in the parking garage in Brooklyn down the street from Yeshiva of Flatbush,” the caller said.

“You mean the place Isaac Mizrahi studied at?,” I replied.

“Yes,” said the caller, “that’s the place. And come alone”
I had seen the film “Ushpuzim” there in their segregated seating auditorium a few years ago, so I knew how to get there.
“Does this mean it’s going to be Senator Joe Lieberman?, I asked
“No,” he said gruffly, “Dont confuse me with such narishkeit.”

I ventured out to the wilds of Brooklyn, alone, and met this bearded man, in the shadows of a parking garage, which was having a weekend parking special for the upcoming Labor Day holiday. Make a note of that.

Here is what he told me.
“McCain is choosing a woman. She is a governor of a far-flung U.S. state. She hasn’t been in office long. She has a BA in Journalism.”

And that was it.
He disappeared. And all that was left was the faint smell of hummus, Abu Ghosh style.

I got on my cell phone and called my office on a secure line. I relayed the information, and we peed in our pants with glee. He would obviously select a Jewish woman as VP, to appease the disaffected and disinfected Clinton supporters. We had our scoop for Jewlicious. Hurray! Who else could it be, other than the Jewish governor of Hawaii, Linda Cutter Lingle. Lingle was a Governor, a journalism major, and in a far flung state of the union.

Can’t you envision it? Shabbat in the VP Mansion. Pineapples as garnishes. Macadamia nuts in her office.
OY! WE GOT IT WRONG. SORRY JEWLICIOUS READERS
It wasn’t Hawaii. It wasn’t tropical flowers and surfing. It is oil drilling and moose burgers. Oh well. That is the last time I venture to Brooklyn and make a snap judgement on good information. Or at least I hope it is.

Gov Sarah Palin (AK)

Gov Linda Lingle (HA)

From 1992 to 1996, Ms. Palin served two terms on the Wasilla City Council her native Alaska town. In 1996, She challenged the incumbent mayor, in 1906 criticizing wasteful spending and high taxes. She ran for reelection against the former mayor in 1999, winning by an even larger margin. Palin was also elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors. On becoming Mayor she kept her preelection promises by taking a major cut in salary and reducing property taxes by 60%.

Under Governor Murkowski she was appointed Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. She served from 2003 to 2004 until resigning in protest over what she called the “lack of ethics” of fellow Alaskan Republican leaders, who ignored her complaints of legal violations and conflicts of interest. Following her resignation, she went the state Republican party’s chairman, Randy Ruedrich, a fellow Oil & Gas commissioners, accusing him of doing work for the party on public time and supplying a lobbyist with a sensitive e-mail. Tireless in her efforts to root out corruption Palin filed formal complaints against both Ruedrich and former Alaska Attorney General Gregg Renkes. Both resigned as a result of her denunciations.

In spite of a lack of support by the party leadership, in spite of being vastly outspent by her Democrat opponent, she handily won the Governorship in 2006. True to her reputation as a reformer, true to her fighting spirit, she hit the ground running with a successful push for an ethics bill, she also attacked and shelved pork-barrel projects supported by fellow Republicans. In Governor Palin’s words, “Alaska needs to be self-sufficient, she says, instead of relying heavily on ‘federal dollars,’ as the state does today.” And so far she has kept her word, striving to reduce that dependency!

At the very outset of her administration, in efforts to reduce and cancel wasteful spending, Palin followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet purchased (on a state government credit account) by the former governor’s administration. In 2007, the jet was sold for $2.7 million.

She canceled an 11-mile gravel road outside of Juneau to a mine. In June 2007, the new Governor signed into law the largest operating budget in Alaska’s history ($6.6 billion). She used her veto power to make the second-largest cuts of the construction budget in state history and managed to reduce it to nearly $1.6 billion.

SOCIAL STANDS

Abortion - On April 18, 2008, Palin gave birth to her second son - out of 5 children - he was born with Down Syndrome. Palin refused to let the results of prenatal genetic testing change her decision to have the baby. “I’m looking at him right now, and I see perfection,” Palin said. “Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?” The sancity of life, in her view, far outweighs any considerations of false shame or personal convenience!

Gay Marriage - She opposes same-sex marriage, though she has gay friends and is receptive to gay and lesbian concerns about discrimination. Palin complied with a state Supreme Court order and signed them into law, though the previous administration had refused to do so. Palin’s sensitivity to her constituents was responsible for first veto used to block legislation that would have barred the state from granting benefits to the partners of gay state employees. Her veto granted State of Alaska benefits to same-sex couples. The veto occurred after Palin consulted with Alaska’s attorney general on the constitutionality of the legislation.

In short, while Sarah Palin is a staunch Conservative she has reached out and acted on behalf of groups that are traditionally outside the pale of Conservative politics. She has demonstrated no tolerance for wasteful projects. She fought against and reversed the cronyism inherent in the last administration. Unanimously, she has been hailed as a reformer with unusual ethics in politics. She has indefatigably fought to clean up government and shown she will stand for no nonsense.

Senator McCain’s choice was a bold, brilliant move. Though Obama’s minions will doubtlessly try to accuse her of having no national experience. Her stint as governor showed her as crusader against graft, graft, corruption, useless expenditures and very unlike Obama whose community activist experience was decried by his own constituents (as The Boston Globe, a liberal newspaper, reported. Unlike the good Senator from Illinois, Ms. Palin got results. Unlike the good Senator from Illinois who basked in the company of undesirables, Ms. Palin never hesitated in going after her own party, when necessary, to root out corruption, graft and wasteful spending. Unlike, Senator Obama who actually excelled in all three of those “arts”!

Ms. Palin’s no nonsense approach to government, her proven record, her youthfulness, her appeal to women voters, make mincemeat of the fallacious argument by the Obaminists that a McCain administration would be a third term of Bushism. The McCain/Palin has now shown us the true meaning of what Hope and Change really is. Even liberal NPR (National Public Radio) likes her!

Chaim

However, I’m unsure that someone who shares a surname with a Monty Python actor could make a purposeful Vice President.

And how can she possibly bring up 5 children properly and be governor of Alaska? Mind you looking at her husband, I’m surprised she has only five children………… I’d vote for him, in or out of a suit. And with her anti abortion policy and his good looks- how has she stayed not pregnant? Are there separate beds?

Looks like the Republicans are leading in the good looks stakes.

So history will be made: for the first time either a) a black American will be in the white house as president or b) a woman as Vice president.

All in all this is a good lesson for the girls in our schools- they have seen through Hillary Clinton and now Sarah Palin what a woman with an education can do.

Crude, I know, but I’m allowed these jokes. When you own a vagina, it allows you certain liberties:

Give it to us CNN:

Sen. John McCain on Friday announced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate, calling her “the running mate who can best help me shake up Washington.”

“She’s exactly who this country needs to help me fight the same old Washington politics of me first and country second,” the presumptive Republican nominee said at a Dayton, Ohio, rally of about 15,000 supporters, who welcomed the surprise pick of the relatively unknown politician with cheers and flags.

“She’s got the grit, integrity, good sense and fierce devotion to the common good that is exactly what we need in Washington today,” McCain said.

Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Palin

Palin, 44, told the crowd, “To have been chosen brings a great challenge. I know that it will demand the best that I have to give and I promise nothing less.”

Palin is a first-term governor who unseated incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in the Republican primary in 2006 and went on to defeat former Gov. Tony Knowles, a Democrat, in the general election.

She will be the first woman to be nominated for vice president as a Republican and only the second to run for vice president on a major party ticket, after Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.

Palin also will be the first Alaskan to be on the ticket for either party.
I was actually a bit shocked by the choice as such a blatant gimmick. I mean really, what better way to compete against the first black presidential candidate than to tag team with a woman? If America thought they had come to terms with their highly suppressed sexism and racism guilt, I can’t WAIT to see what level it’s taken to now!

Ironically, I think his choice will make feminists across the nation’s blood curl.

UPDATE: Bloomburg gives us more information about who this Sarah Palin chick is:

Palin has a strong anti-abortion record. She is a member of Feminists for Life, a group that works to make health-care and child-care resources available to “pregnant or parenting students,” according to the group’s Web site.

Palin, a former beauty queen, high school basketball star and television sportscaster, began her political career in the 1990s as a city councilwoman and then mayor in her home town of Wasilla. The town’s estimated population in 2007 was 9,780, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Earlier this year, Palin threatened to evict Exxon Mobil Corp. and its partners BP Plc, Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips from a state-owned gas field, winning a promise from them to boost Alaska’s natural-gas output by 17 percent.

Palin hasn’t been implicated in the four-year-old federal corruption investigation, which has resulted in convictions of or guilty pleas from three state legislators, Murkowski’s former chief of staff and two executives of an oil-services company, as well as the indictment of Senator Ted Stevens.

But today the big surprise from the Republicans came with no early warning that the first woman that could enter the White house as a Vice President was not a democratic as expected !!

John McCain announced Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his vice , no many Americans know Palin , Hala Gorani was speaking on CNN about how journalists were wondering how they would pronounce her name.

Sarah is 44 years old , born for a working class family , married and got five children , two boys , one of them is going to Iraq and the other was just born in last April 2008 and 3 girls. She is devoted Christian who refuses abortion .

It is strange thing that the GOP chose her while she does not have much of experience except local one , she was a mayor than the Governor of Alaska ,but if we are going to speak about experience here do not forget Obama is always accused by the same thing and he is not a VP Candidate but rather a Presidential candidate.

Compared to Joe Bidden and his long experience in Foreign policy and even in national politics ,Palin is novice , still I think it is unfair because in this race from experience point view John McCain is against Biden where Palin against Obama.

I think McCain is planning to get the more votes of the working white class also the feminists votes, the old Hilary supporters from hardcore feminists despite her total refusal to abortion , those ladies would vote for her and McCain just to get back from Obama who did not choose their idol as VP as if he were going to do it !!

I watched her speech in Ohio in TV from the start and till the end and frankly she got more charisma than McCain , I do not know if it is age of what .McCain looked her old father beside her.

Now to what matters us as Arabs and Muslims, this woman is real happy that her son is going to Iraq and mentioned Iran’s nuke !! She is a Republican after all !!

Well on the other hand Bidden is not great after all he is a proud Zionist and wants to divide Iraq.

Now here is some news info about Sarah , the first woman on the ticket like CNN described :

She loves fishing.
She loves hunting “Peta won’t like this”
She loves fur “Peta won’t endorse her”
She was the first woman elected as a Governor of Alaska.
She lost the Miss Alaska Pageant in 1984
She appeared in Vogue in 2007