Sarah Palin: Why Is She Still Important?

February 11, 2010 at 2:22 am (Uncategorized) (, , , , , , , , , , , , , )

It seems that some politicians are given a free-pass when it comes to even the most basic knowledge. Take Sarah Palin. If you look at the list of statements that this woman has made over the last 3 years, it is mind boggling that anybody would ever want her as the leader of the free world. Let’s review her history here:

This is the same woman who told Charlie Gibson of ABC in a nationally televised interview that her foreign policy expertise included the fact that Russia could be seen from an island off the coast of Alaska. This, I might add, is an island that Palin had never once set foot upon. “You never know when ole Mr. Putin is gonna come flyin’ over here…”. Yep. She actually said that.

When asked which periodicals and publications she has been reading to keep up on national and world affairs, Palin told Katie Couric that she reads “them all”. Whenever Palin is baffled by a question she uses her standard “I like ’em all” answer, and that’s what she did. To this day, we still do not know what Palin reads to keep informed about national issues. Until four years ago, she never even had a passport and had never left the United States.

Sarah Palin has stated publicly that she does not accept the theory of evolution, not even understanding the meaning of the term “theory”, and that she believes in a literal translation of the Bible. This means Palin believes mankind walked alongside living dinosaurs and that the world is only 6,000 years old. Of course, when asked which book of the Bible she likes most, she would no doubt say, “I like ’em all.” Certainly, people are free to believe whatever they like, but Palin’s rejection of the scientific method hardly makes her the ideal leader of a nation of 300 million people which share a variety of beliefs.

When asked by Glenn Beck who her favorite Founding Father was, Palin stumbled with the question, then said– you guessed it– “I like ’em all.” When pressed by Beck, Palin said she liked George Washington the most, not knowing that Washington was a general and not one of the Founding Fathers. Furthermore, in her stone ignorance, she chose a man who actually favored a strong central government as well as the formation of a national bank. In other words, George Washington stood for everything that Palin says she is against. More recently, when asked what notable role Paul Revere played in the Revolution, she said he “warned the British” that they couldn’t just “come over here and take our guns…” by “ringing bells” and repeatedly firing his muzzle-loaded flint-lock rifle.

Probably one of Ms. Palin’s most hysterical misstatements occurred during the campaign when she referred to “the great country of Africa”. More recently, she didn’t seem to know why there was a North and South Korea. One has to wonder if she can’t figure out who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb.

During a Tea Party convention, Palin made several insulting remarks about President Obama, one of which accused him of being “a law professor lecturing the American people behind a lecturn using a teleprompter.” Of course, she failed to realize that she was doing precisely the same thing, only she was using the palm of her hand instead of a teleprompter.

What Palin is best known for is her bald-faced lie about “death panels” during and after the health care reform debate. Despite the fact that every fact checking organization had debunked that outrageous lie, Palin has stuck to her guns. Of course, she would never admit that private insurance companies already utilize de facto death panels by denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and canceling the policies of people who become ill.

Palin has referred to President Obama on numerous occasions as a socialist, but refuses to provide her definition of the term, no doubt because she doesn’t have it written on the palm of her hand. She doesn’t care that Obama hasn’t nationalized a single business, nor has he put any government employees into the boardrooms. Of course, Palin believes that Obama should have just let the auto companies fail, even though doing so would have caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to lose their jobs and essentially turned over that industry to foreign manufacturers. In recent weeks, we have learned of the remarkable rebound of the US auto industry and the fact that they have repaid most of the funds that the Obama administration LOANED to them. Not surprisingly, you won’t hear Sarah Palin talking about that.

In a closed meeting at the White House, Rahm Emanuel told a group of liberal activists that their idea to air attack ads targeting conservative Democrats who were against the health care reform bill was “f’ing retarded”. Palin, who has inserted her special needs child into the political arena before, demanded that Emanuel immediately resign. Then, when Rush Limbaugh said on national radio that all Democrats are retards, Palin went on FOX News and defended Limbaugh’s use of the word and his characterization of all Democrats. While his use of the term was insensitive and inappropriate, Emanuel said that an idea was “f’ing retarded”, while Limbaugh was using the term to describe a group of people he doesn’t like. But, according to Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh should get a pass. This could be a blatant case of hypocrisy, but it could also be that Palin is just too dim to understand the difference between what Emanuel and Limbaugh said.

Sarah Palin never speaks in specifics and is always on the attack, never offering a single constructive alternative. Why? Because she doesn’t know what the specifics are. It is far easier to make insinuations, and attack with empty-headed sarcasm than it is to develop your own well thought out ideas and articulate them in a comprehensible manner. We all get a good laugh about Sarah’s gaffes, but the time to stop laughing has come. This is a person who is building a political movement on the cult of her personality. She is a classic fascist masquerading as a populist who has managed to win the hearts and minds of far too many Americans. Even if she never ran for president, her influence on our political process and election outcomes could do great damage to the country.

Elia Kazan, the Academy Award-winning film director, said many years ago that the greatest danger to our democracy would be having person of no ability or intellect elected to high office based solely on their personal charm.

13 Comments

  1. bmaryland said,

    Well done! I read this on CNN, and was so impressed I wanted to find your blog. Nice to read a blog of substance. Thanks!

  2. ladd hinton said,

    Great article John. Clear ,concise and totally accurate. I believe Sarah Palin should broker the oil deal and help rape the last frontier and the North slope, which has been her intent to begin with. Hopefully there will be positions open to her family as well in this venture. Respectfully Ladd

  3. Shayne Cameron said,

    Frankly, where I don’t agree with everything in this article, I do agree that Palin is ignorant, and has little substance beyond her personal charm. I also question that personal charm, myself. The idea of her in charge of the US scares me. However, even though she is a talking head, not everything she says is wrong. As they say down south, even a blind hog finds an acorn every now and then.

    As a republocrat (heavier on the republ than the ocrat), I have to say I wouldn’t support Palin for anything more complex than motherhood. She may be a good person (never met her, can’t judge) but imho would make a lousy president.

    • johnrj08 said,

      Put a monkey on a typewriter and he has as much chance of being right as Sarah Palin. She’s the most ignorant, uneducated vice presidential candidate since Andrew Johnson and, compared to her, he looks like a white-haired German physicist. There is no slack here for Palin. She presents herself as an authority on a wide range of subjects and is, in reality, an authority on nothing, including parenthood.

  4. johnrj08 said,

    George Washington was not a Founding Father and anybody who knows anything about US history knows that. He was a general who served at the will of the state representatives. Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and Madison were Founding Fathers, not Washington. Washington signed the Declaration of Independence, but he was not involved in the writing of the Constitution.

  5. Shayne Cameron said,

    Personally, I don’t think she could reproduce the works of Shakespeare in a thousand years even if she was copying.

    On the Founding Father thing, did you read the wiki? Looks like some people with more notable intelligence than our girl Sarah considered him a founding father.

    • johnrj08 said,

      Washington was not a Founding Father. That title is reserved for those who participated in the writing of the Constitution, which Washington did not do. He was a General until he became president. The fact that some people make the same mistake that Palin made is understandable given the condition of our educational system. It doesn’t take “intelligence” to understand that Washington wasn’t a Founding Father. It just takes an understanding of what the term means.

  6. Denis said,

    “shot heard ’round the world’, was fired in New Hampshire, not Lexington and Concord – that was Bachmann – loved the article though

    • JohnRJohnson said,

      You’re right. Bachmann’s comment was so Palinesque that I confused the two. Thanks for pointing that out.

  7. Denis said,

    Anytime – Bachmann… It is sad that these two are at the forefront of our national political stage – I can only imagine how ridiculous either one of them would be if they had to debate Obama, while sticking to their talking points and scare words.

    • JohnRJohnson said,

      When Palin debated Joe Biden in 2008, she basically refused to conform to the debate format and ignored the moderator. Instead of responding with specifics, she pontificated with generalities and chose to throw some of the things Biden had said about Obama during the primaries in his face. If she manages to get the GOP nomination (which she won’t), she may not even agree to a televised debate, using her “gotchya questions” excuse. If she was stupid enough to agree to a debate with Obama, which she may very well be, I’m sure she would handle it just like the debate with Biden. The people who adore her would claim she won the debate, while everybody else would be clutching their sides and laughing until they got the hiccups.

  8. Shayne Cameron said,

    Did Obama ever visit that 58th state? C’mon guys, they all say pretty stupid things at times. Don’t just pick on the repubs. There are as many Bidenisms as Palinisms.

    • JohnRJohnson said,

      Of course, we’ve heard this one a few times and it’s just as silly now as it was 2 1/2 years ago. Obama said “states” instead of “stops” and Republicans started whining that he didn’t even know how many states there were. How could he know, not being born in America and all? Obama was obviously exhausted when he made that goof, and any reasonable person would know that. Joe Biden has a well-known tendency to talk too much and his reputation for gaffes has been in the news for years. But Biden, who is not stupid, has 35 years of Senate experience and his knowledge of foreign affairs was well-respected on both sides of the aisle in Congress. Suggesting that there is any equivalency between either of these men’s occasional mistakes and Sarah Palin’s routine displays of gross ignorance is ridiculous. The whole point of my blog on this subject was to present the rather large, steaming pile of evidence which supports the assertion that Palin is an ignoramus. You provide one laughable example as counter point.

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