What seemed obvious to me from two hours after Palin’s acceptance of McCain’s invitation to run with him in the VP slot, is now being shouted from the roof-tops. Well maybe only from the sidewalks, but it’s being shouted. She was not vetted!

The McCain campaign has gone to great lengths to present the selection of Sarah Palin as one made after a careful, meticulous vetting process. But evidence continues to suggest that the Arizona Republican made his VP choice with surprising haste.

On Saturday, a Democrat tasked with opposition research contacted the Huffington Post with this piece of information: as of this weekend, the McCain campaign had not gone through old newspaper articles from the Valley Frontiersman, Palin’s hometown newspaper.

No Search of Hometown Papers

There is an active investigation of Governor Palin, and her husband, for pressuring and then firing the Commissioner of Public Safety, Walt Monegan, for not doing their bidding and firing a state trooper. Palin was being contacted by the Alaska legislature’s investigator to take her deposition just days before the McCain announcement.

Palin claimed in her acceptance speech that she was against the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere.” The facts, as any vettor would have found out, are that she repeatedly supported it, and getting the money from the feds to build it.

From the Ketchikan Daily News

“People across the nation struggle with the idea of building a bridge because they’ve been under these misperceptions about the bridge and the purpose,’ said Palin, who described the link as the Ketchikan area’s potential for expansion and growth.

Palin said Alaska’s congressional delegation worked hard to obtain funding for the bridge and that she ‘would not stand in the way of the progress toward that bridge’.
8-8-06

‘We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative,’ Palin said.”
Ketchikan Daily News 9-28-06

From Mudflats, an Alaskan Blog

More of the famous McCain recklessness…

More from Mudflat:

…a scant two days after the nomination, the “gates” are already starting to swing open: Troopergate, Bridgegate, and now Babygate. Babygate? I’ve stayed away from this one because, frankly, I don’t know anything for sure, and I don’t want to speculate about the smarmiest of ‘gates’ yet. I’ll leave that to the professionals at the National Enquirer. The rumors, though, say one of two things: either Sarah’s new baby is actually NOT her baby at all, but her 17-year old daughter Bristol’s baby, or the new baby is hers, but Bristol, a senior in high school is now pregnant. Ugh, either way.

If the first case is true, then the grandma governor has been perpetrating a blatant lie on her constituents, and now the world. If the second is true, then what 44-year old woman in her right mind would have travelled so late in her pregnancy and after her water broke and labor had begun, delivered a speech in Texas, boarded an Alaska Airlines flight with a stop-over in Seattle and bypassed the two main Anchorage Hospitals that are minutes from the airport to deliver in the local hospital near her home, almost an hour away by car. In either case, bad judgement.

But now the cleanup crew has started. Palin’s praise of the Obama energy plan that was on her website? Scrubbed. Photos on the website during the time period she was supposedly to have been pregnant? Allegedly scrubbed too. John McCain’s organized vetting team? Supposedly on their way to Alaska right now. (Note to McCain staffers: Vet FIRST…it works out better that way.) The National Enquirer? Supposedly all over this already. Photos of the pregnant (or not) Palin are circulating everywhere. One thing is certain, the rumor mill has started, and there’s no getting this toothpaste back in the tube.

And if it’s true that Palin did not undergo a vetting process, then what are we all to think of a presidential candidate, the oldest ever, with a history of cancer, choosing a running mate he had spoken to only once before offering her the nomination, and not even vetting this candidate? If this is true, then the choice was not ‘bold’ or ‘exciting’ or ‘a maverick choosing a maverick’. It demonstrates not just poor judgement, but recklessness.

Then there’s the question of her support of Pat Buchanan for President in 2000 — with all his well known anti-foreigner beliefs, called anti-Israel and even pro-Nazi by some.

It turns out that the vettors are only now arriving in Alaska. WTF?!