Since Friday's surprise announcement that John McCain picked Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his VP, numerous unpleasant facts have emerged which may make McCain regret his hasty choice. And since she has not been officially nominated by the Republican convention, it's not too late for McCain to pick Karl Rove favorite Mitt Romney instead.

Here are some of the reasons that McCain should reconsider his decision:

• Hearbeat away. She has had very little experience governing and none with foreign policy. This would be fine if McCain was in robust good health. Unfortunately, that is not the case. She could actually become President and it is far from obvious that she has the most executive experience among all the potential VP candidates that might need to step in if McCain could no longer do the President's job.
• No longer a shoe-in for Evangelical vote. She was strongly supported by the Evangelical wing of the Republican party due to her religious beliefs and her decision to keep her fifth child after she learned it would have Down syndrome. But with her 17-year old daughter having a child, some might question how strongly Palin believes in abstention until marriage.
• Corruption concerns. It is not clear whether McCain knew that Palin was under investigation for firing a public safety commissioner who refused to fire her brother-in-law. And did he know that she denied involvement with lobbyists in an interview with Maria Bartiromo, even though a TransCanada lobbyist played a central role in getting a $500 million subsidy for that Canadian company to build a gas pipeline she was pushing?

Yesterday I speculated that McCain picked Sarah Palin as his VP over the objections of his advisers. I thought that McCain -- who prides himself on fighting corruption in politics -- somehow saw himself in her. But both politicians have experience with the very thing they pride themselves on fighting.

In the case of McCain, his efforts to rid politics of the corrupting influence of corporate money followed his protection of Charles Keating who was securing a real estate deal for his wife, Cindy. The bankruptcy of Keating's S&L cost taxpayers $3.4 billion. More recently former McCain Finance Chair Tom Loeffler, a lobbyist for French company EADS, parent of Airbus, helped it and Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) to prevail in a $35 billion competition for airborne refueling Tankers in February over Boeing Inc. (NYSE: BA) before the General Accounting Office (GAO) concluded that the process was flawed.

Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin, knows a thing or two about lobbyists. The New York Times reveals that she won that post after taking on bribery charges from the oil industry against politicians -- her attack against such corrupting influences helped her prevail over former Alaska governor, Frank Murkowski. That's why it came as a surprise to learn that as governor Palin employed a lobbyist for an energy company for which she procured $500 million in state subsidies so it could build a gas pipeline.

Shares of were trading near record highs when ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) started off the new year by announcing that it expected fourth quarter production results to exceed those of the third quarter. But it was good news/bad news for the company this past week.

The good news: The Wall Steet Journal reported that Conoco was now the front-runner to participate in a multiyear, $10 billion project to develop the Shah natural-gas field in Abu Dhabi, beating out such rivals as Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY) and Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS.A). Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. had been expected to name a partner for the project last year, and oil companies have become frustrated by the delays. Abu Dhabi is trying to meet rising demand for natural gas, which has surged with the building of gas-fired power stations and desalination plants.

The bad news: The company's donation of $5 million to a local cancer center apparently did not impress Alaska state officials sufficiently to allow Conoco to go forward with its nonconforming proposal for a natural gas pipeline project in that state's North Slope. Conoco's proposal had requested that state taxes be fixed on the project for decades, which prompted Governor Sarah Palin to send Conoco a rejection letter. The rejection left TransCanada Corp. (NYSE: TRP) as the sole finalist for the project.

Conoco shares have fallen 5.96% since the beginning of the year, and closed Friday at $83.04.

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• Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) was initiated at Bernstein with an Outperform rating and $46 target, citing a compelling diversification alternative for cable/CMCS investors. Goldman started Time Warner Cable with a Neutral rating and $44 target.

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• Pacific Growth initiated Ormat Technologies, Inc (NYSE: ORA) with a Buy rating.