In his first major decision, John McCain insulted the country and his party when he chose former beauty queen Sarah "Baracuda" Palin as the Republican vice-presidential candidate. Is this a person we want to look into the eyes of Vladimir Putin? A person who counts her administrative talents as being the mayor of a town of just a few thousand?

Is this the person who might be the commander in chief of the greatest army in the world, and have a hand on the button that could destroy a good part of the world? A person who counts her military experience as having a son in the army and as commander of the Alaska National Guard for two years? A person who, the day after she was chosen as a candidate, was not out in the hustings but buying her daughter a cheerleader's uniform?

Female Republican congresswomen should be outraged at McCain's choice because many are hard-working, experienced legislators who have worked for years in the Republican interests, only to learn that a hockey mom usurped the possibility that they would be chosen.

This is a woman who is supposed to woo disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters with her ideology of anti-choice, anti-gay and anti-evolution, and who herself is under investigation for the firing of a county supervisor over her sister's divorce.

To paraphrase former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen's comment to vice-presidential candidate Dan Quayle, who tried to assume the mantle of JFK: "Gov. Palin, you are no Hillary Clinton!"