Late last week, John McCain picked his running mate, the relatively unknown Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska. Aesthetically for McCain, it was a great choice. The grumpy, ugly old man tapped a smiling, attractive young woman as his potential Vice President. The excitement over the first woman Republican VP nominee in history also probably blunted Obama’s poll bounce after his rousing convention speech on Thursday.

But while McCain’s pick got relatively good press over the weekend (and made him some money: the campaign has raised over $10 mil since Friday), it’s about to explode in his face, and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if she is off the ticket for good by the end of September. I had to make this a bulleted list because it is extremely long and probably will need to be updated almost hourly because right now, there is an army of progressive bloggers vetting her much more thoroughly than the McCain campaign ever did.

EXPERIENCE

• According to Presidential scholars, she is the most inexperienced Vice Presidential candidate IN MODERN TIMES. This comes after the McCain campaign has been bashing Obama’s experience for the last four months.

• She has been Governor of Alaska for a total of 20 months (population 600,000), and before that she was mayor of a town of 8,000 people (where apparently, she was almost recalled). And prior to that rigorous trial for the second highest office in the land, she was a member of the PTA. Admirable, no doubt, but in no way a litmus  for being a heart beat away from the Presidency.

• As little as a month ago, she did not know what the Vice President did. And no, that’s not a joke, she actually said so on in a television interview with Ludlow and Company.

• She also thinks the founding fathers wrote the Pledge of Allegance and included the phrase “Under God.” The Pledge was actually written in 1892 and that phrase was added in 1954.

ISSUES

• She thinks man-made global warming is a hoax

• She is for teaching Creationism in public schools

• She is against teaching sex education in public schools (this will be getting big play in the next couple days, as she just announced her 17 year old unmarried daughter is pregnant)

• She is against all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest (she has previously stated if that same daughter was raped, she would be against getting her an abortion)

• She sued the federal government to make sure polar bears did not make the Endangered Species List

Now, a lot of these issues are the religious right’s wet dream, but for normal, rational non-idiots, this list is a scientific nightmare.

SCANDALS

• She is currently under federal investigation for allegedly improperly firing a Alaskan State Trooper that used to be married to her sister.

• She used to run Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens’ 527 group. Stevens is under federal indictment right now for corruption charges.

• She used to be a member of the Alaskan Independence Party. Their main goal is to secede from the Union.

The fact is, John McCain picked her without properly vetting record and her past. Before he chose her, he had only met her once, in February, and talked to her on the phone once more, last week. In fact, he made the pick so hastily, the campaign just sent a team of lawyers to Alaska today to make sure there’s nothing else in her closet.

But it might be the case that McCain knew all of this, and that he picked her solely on the basis that she was a woman and could grab disaffected Hillary Clinton voters. If that’s the case, then his decision is even more deplorable. While women might have showed some interest over the weekend, that will not last. As one Republican woman emailed me the other day, John McCain is assuming women are stupid, that they will blindly follow one of their own no matter what it means:

The choice of Sarah Palin implies that he thinks all women are stupid. Women don’t want to see someone inexperienced and completely unprepared to be vice president. The US male life expectancy suggests that John McCain may not out live his term; great respect and care needs to be given to the choice of vp. John McCain has pulled a rabbit out of his hat; he surprised everyone and the future of the US could be put into the hands of a presumably nice woman who will look great on the cover of People. The joke is on all of us if this woman ends up in office.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Trevor Timm is a Blast Magazine staff writer