In these perilous times, as America spirals into recession, John McCain picks an ex-beauty queen for his vice presidential running mate.

We have environmental degradation, and wars raging around the globe, McCain picks a soccer mom.

McCain is 72, one foot in the grave, with a history of skin cancers, so he picks a 44-year-old with little experience, in anything, other than popping out five babies and governing a sparsely populated state, rich in big oil money, for less than two years.

She is as far right as you can get, advocating anti-abortion with no exceptions, not for the life of the mother or incest and rape. Standing against environmental conservation, believing global warming has nothing to do with our polluting the earth, Palin is Bush, Cheney, and McCain in female form, with a pitch fork in her hand.

McCain has to be the most arrogant man I have seen to choose someone so not prepared to be vice president, as his next in line. I am shocked by his choice, and concerned about his judgment.

If as a gimmick, on a lark, he just wanted a woman to shatter glass ceilings like Hillary Clinton, he could have picked a more experienced woman, with more knowledge, who would be able to really step into the office of commander and chief if he should become unable to continue his duty’s.

Palin’s lack of knowledge would put her in the position, if she had to lead this country, of being advised by the same corporate lobbyists and neo-cons as Bush, those who have led this country into the darkest times I can remember.

Palin, like McCain, promises to cut out government waste, but to them, the waste amounts to social programs and everything that would help out the American people.

They promise nothing new, more of the same. This seems to me, a joke, but the joke is on America, and especially on the experienced Republicans he crushed with this shocking choice.

Patricia Littlejohn

Kitts Hill