Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, is John McCain's new choice for Vice President. Palin brings an interesting combination of political and personal characteristics to the McCain ticket. She fought vigorously against the widespread corruption in the Alaska political system, even to the detrment of her own party. She hunts, fishes, and won a beauty pageant in 1984. She has five children including an 18-year old son who deploys soon to Iraq and an infant with Down Syndrome, and calls herself a "hockey mom." She is strongly "pro-life", meaning she opposes abortion, but supports capital punishment. (I have to say, I have never understood how you can be pro-life in one breath and embrace the killing of a human being on death row in another. But I digress.)
For the McCain ticket, Palin brings credentials where McCain is lacking. She enhances his "maverick" status, which has waned in recent months as he waters down his personality for the presidential campaign. Unlike McCain, Palin is an active churchgoer (Pentecostal) and wants creationism to be taught in schools alongside evolution, bridging the mistrust the Religious Right holds against McCain.
Astrologically (born February 11, 1964) , she has at least four planets in Aquarius (Mercury, Sun, Mars and Saturn) and possibly the Moon as well, if she was born after noon. Aquarius is the sign of the activist, the renegade - the individualist who isn't afraid to buck the system. With no planets in water signs other than Chiron, Palin is not a very emotional person and this is heightened by the strong Aquarian influence which is more interested in rational thinking and ideas than emotional viewpoints.
That Aquarian individuality is tempered with a triple conjunction of Saturn and Mars to the Sun. Saturn is the ancient ruler of Aquarius, and lends its focus on solitude and a tendency towards rigidity which in the case of Palin may exacerbate the fixed nature of the Aquarian personality. Palin is conservative under the Saturn/Mars/Sun conjunction, but the Aquarian influence makes her quirkily so.
Neptune squares her Sun - the very same aspect in Obama's chart that has suspicious astrologers claiming Obama is deceptive. (See my earlier article.) Neptune/Sun aspects tend to show that the individual has experienced difficulty expressing herself as an individual, and that there is a tendency for others to be unable to see her clearly because she becomes a hook for their projections.
Palin's birthchart also shows that she has an exact opposition from Chiron to Pluto, and by association to Uranus as well. I would be surprised if she has not had painful experiences in her life - that Chiron/Pluto opposition indicates an indivdiual who must continually face her inner demons so that they can be vanquished.
This is an interesting time for Palin - transiting Saturn has been aspecting this opposition, coinciding with the birth of her son with Down Syndrome. Transiting Neptune is affecting her as well - passing over first her Sun, then Mars, then Saturn over the next several years. This Neptunian time shows that she is prone to overidealizing the realities in her life, and there is a danger of not seeing things as they really are.
Update: Depending upon the time Palin was born, her Moon was either in Capricorn (morning) or in Aquarius (afternoon). I'm going to go for Capricorn because without that earthiness and practicality at a deep emotional level her chart would not have the discipline and drive to achieve that Palin demonstrates. The Moon shows the way we respond when we're backed against the wall - our instinctive nature, and Palin's Troopergate scandal, where she fired a public safety commissioner for not firing her former brother-in-law during his messy divorce from her sister, demonstrates the ruthless side of Capricorn for which the ends justify the means.
She's an interesting choice for an already interesting election! Tomorrow I'll look at how she and McCain will likely get along.
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"Perhaps as a US citizen he would not have been eligible to attend the school, so his stepfather listed Indonesian citizenship."
Oh, that new controversy would be for the Catholic school, I think, where he spent two years.
Yeah, who knows. It doesn't seem determinative in and of itself what his stepfather wanted. If I were to declare a religious affiliation, I should hope that the beliefs I personally assert in adulthood counts for a lot more than which box my stepparent (if I had one) chose to check off on a school form decades ago. Religious freedom actually means something, after all, and I think most people would get that.
I tried several days ago to post a link that gave a glimpse into the internet's lively buzz about Palin's youngest child, Trig. This story within a story is now emerging onto the mainstream news sites. It was not an invention on my part that the blogs were lit up with this issue - and it has interest and significance as an event in this election that this news and the internet reaction to it are a major factor in the politics of the moment - or else Sarah Palin would not have offered her rebuttal, such as it was, today. No matter what one believes about the elements of the story, that the internet communications have played a role in shaping the experience is worth noting, strange as the nature of the news is.
Hmm, Bristol Palin is *currently* pregnant, and more than halfway through her pregnancy term according to some reports.
If true, then Sarah Palin's new baby can't be Bristol's baby. The timing is wrong. People should be able to count the remaining months until Bristol Palin gives birth, if they really want to.
Some of the evidence put forth in the original allegations appear now to be inaccurate, and I did see a news photo where Sarah Palin does look pregnant on camera while speaking to a CBS reporter. I think the weight of evidence is that Sarah did give birth to her new baby.
The good thing about the Internet is that it's much harder for politicians to manipulate public opinion or to behave badly without being called on it, and with care it can be used to sort out fact from fiction.
On the other hand, spoken conversations can be forgotten but message posts stay up indefinitely. Not sure it reflects well or constructively on either or any political group to indulge too enthusiastically without careful investigation, especially where children are part of the story.
Heh...it does remind me of the columnist who wrote that "[W]e don't get to vote: we can only watch in fascination. Indeed, starved of entertainment at home, British political junkies have seized on the US election like a new season of The West Wing." :-)
gaia and Nick,
2 things,
first I think often people miss the point of politics and these two issues. The death penalty is "we" the poeple executing a person for a conviction we feel is worthy of such punishement. Termination a pregnancy is one single woman making a choice to not take a conception to term. Here in lyes the real issue. I support a woman's right to choose, not because I personally think it is ok or that it is not "wrong" I support it because I don't want my govenment involved in such decisions any more than I want them telling women they have to terminate pregnancies as they do in other countries. As for the death penalty, I don't support it not because I don't think they may deserve to die for what they have done, but because I don't want anyone put to death in my, "we the poeple" name. Personally I think it is vengence not justice. which leads me to my last point. I understand that biblical literalist, see the connection between the old testement God commanding men to kill other men as proof that it is ok. My answer would be, that is the old testement in the age of Law. and I would say that we now living in the age of Grace, since Christ, it no longer applies. So, my advice to them would be....keep reading.
Hi,
a friend linked me up to this site and said that I have an astro twin here in Marianne. If you do get this email Marianne, I'd love to compare notes between our birthdays, to see how similar and dissimilar these aquarian manifestations can be, from Sarah Palin to us.
Thanks,,
Aquarian.
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