6 posts tagged “america”

This video wonderfully illustrates that "It's America" by Rodney Atkins.

Ready to learn more about the root cause of the financial crisis?

Wasilla TEA Party

13 photos

Anchorage TEA Party

20 photos

Kyle Hopkins has a story on the homepage about the Anchorage protest against government spending (soon to be updated with reporting from the Wasilla event). It was one more than 750 such gatherings nationwide.

John McCain has created a monster. No, wait. Two. John McCain has created two monsters.

One, of course, is Sarah Palin. This cute 'n' sassy Alaskan cookie, this g-droppin', moose-shootin' regular gal, this soccer mom who talks like a teen (and whose teen will soon be a mom), this utterly fearless and thoroughly shameless liar who looks like a stripper playing a secretary and who, like many a confident ignoramus, talks to reporters as though they're the idiots she thinks she's putting one over on: Forget those big-boob hotties in bikinis menacingly wielding power tools on calendars in body shops. This is the pinup babe for All-American Power Porno.

It's all here, from the pious jerkwater Christianity that flaunts its ignorance and waits for applause, to the dimpling, sexy-winking speeches not only devoid of content but actively, preeningly demagogic. Poli-sci, acting, and psych majors are encouraged to monitor Palin's stump appearances; it's the closest they'll ever get (if we're lucky) to watching a natural demagogue at work live and in real time.

It may be too much to hope that national leaders bring out the best in us (although, with Obama, it threatens to be possible), but here is a woman who brings out the worst in people. The lies, the smears, the disingenuous innuendo and high school cafeteria sarcasm, the religion- and terrorism- and race-baiting: this is someone whom sane grownups would censure and condemn if she were running for president of the Student Council.

With Palin we encounter the purest example, in our lifetime, of a candidate whose mere presence on a national ticket demeans and pollutes the very process. To watch her being interviewed is to behold someone not only unwilling, but constitutionally unable, to give a lucid answer to a serious question. As a commenter on a different blog said, This is a woman who is incapable of passing a Turing test, let alone acting as a Vice-President.

(And you, Reader: You can give a clear answer to a question, can't you? So can I. And, like me, you shouldn't be Veep, let alone Prez, of the U.S.)

Palin may, for all we know, also be inherently unable to give an honest answer in addition to a comprehensible one. It's one thing to lie, in the sense that "all politicians lie," by saying they're going to do X and then, when in office, not doing it. Palin's lies have been those of the compulsive liar. She's repeatedly lied about matters of fact, easily refuted via the public record and then, when they've been shown to be untrue, she's kept reciting them.

Is it calculated or reflex? Is she evil, or merely crazy? We don't know and, you can bet, the "patriot" who has inflicted her on us doesn't know, either.

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