Sarah Palin a good choice for Republican ticket

Dear Editor,

(In response to Tuesday’s editorial, “Palin: a political ploy”) You have mistaken a brilliant pick by Sen. John McCain as a political ploy! Gov. Sarah Palin is exactly a person that might be able to shake up the inner-belt of Washington by being an outsider.

She has more experience than Sen. Obama in managing budgets and people. She is very mindful of what the real world is like.

Palin can rely on others to get her up to speed internationally much as Sen. Obama will rely on Sen. Biden.

There are many people in the electorate who feel disenfranchised, and because Sen. McCain chose a woman you chose as an editorial staff to diss him.

President George W. Bush has named more women to top-level positions than any president in history and all he gets is criticism – because they are Republican and they are not of the liberal press’ liking.

She has shown herself to be very independent, intelligent and not afraid to take on the corruption inherent in politics and she is great to look at. What’s not to like?

Steve Brown

Sen. Obama’s nomination ‘ominous’ not ‘auspicious’

Dear Editor,

Austin McCoy wrote in his guest column Wednesday that the nomination of Barack Obama for president of the United States is “auspicious” for all Americans. “Ominous” is the more appropriate term. I have ten questions for Senator Obama and his followers, and depending on his answers I will cast my vote.

1. Will you, as president, eliminate the U.S. military bases and facilities located in 151 countries around the world?

2. Will you set a date for the withdrawal of all American forces, and not just combat troops, from Iraq and Afghanistan?

3. Will you dismantle what Amnesty International has called the U.S. global gulag of secret detention centers and torture chambers, starting with Guantanamo Bay?

4. Will you free America’s foremost political prisoners, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier?

5. Will you abolish the racist death penalty, which according to the NAACP is applied almost exclusively to African Americans and other minorities?

6. Will you stop using food as a weapon in international diplomacy by lifting the embargo that starves my family in Cuba and my brethren in Gaza?

7. Will you end the biggest pork project in government, namely the two billion dollars a year the American taxpayer is forced to fork over to Israel?

8. Will you stop the deportations of immigrants to this country, estimated at twenty million, whose only crime is that they sought a better life for their children?

9. Will you pardon the 50 percent of state and federal prisoners in this country who are black – proportionally and in absolute terms, a figure greater than for South Africa – who obviously were not tried by juries of their peers?

10. Will you restore even a portion of all lands stolen by the European conquerors of America to their rightful owners, from the Native Americans to the Mexicans to the Cubans (Guantanamo Bay, again)?

If you answer “yes” to just one of these questions, Senator, I will vote for you. Otherwise, I’ll be happy to settle for another four years of a white zombie occupying the White House.

Julio Pino

Associate professor of history