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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
That is Grover Northquist's (whoever he is) concept of government, and it seems to have taken hold among Republicans.
One step up from anarchy. Adolescent in it's relation to authority. Chaos is an opportunity, as Condi Rice said about Lebanon, and as Naomi Klein said about Milton Freidman and the Chicago School of disaster economics.
Reagan started it with his pronouncement that govt is the problem not the solution. But since then the Republicans have twisted that thought around. Govt has become the cash cow of Republican politics, the more incompetent the better for those who profit at the taxpayers' expense.
So Sarah Palin is doing her job. She's a working class hero(ine)who confuses and distracts and will be unlikely to rock anyone's boat in dc.
Society today has been "dumbed down" due to a lack of personal responsibility. Today people are told what to think and how to act. Just look at any packaging that reads, "This bag is not a toy". There was a time when we knew that without having it printed on the bag. If your child put a bag on his head and suffocated, it was your fault for not watching him. You learned from it. But now it's someone else's fault for making the bag and you sue them and win. You don't learn anything from it. Others suffer because of it.
So now this brainwashed society is presented with Sarah Palin.
Someone with as little experience as Sarah Palin wouldn't have even been considered as a candidate thirty years ago. Not because she's a woman, but because she doesn't have the education that is needed for the job. She's a parrot. She will be an ideal person to be manipulated by people on Capitol Hill to do as they want and she'll do it because she thinks it's patriotic.
She isn't a Washington Insider, but neither is she a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington because she doesn't bring new ideas. She's a good-looking lemming thrust into the spotlight. People who are for her are misguidedly either feeling sorry for her or living vicariously through her.
The sad thing is, there are people who don't realize this and don't feel compelled to think about it at all. They've been molded not to think about it for years through mainstream television and advertising. They just see this perky folksy 'looker' whom they can watch shake up the realm of politics. It's scary on so many levels!
If elected, there will indeed be change with the GOP, but it won't be good change. But sadly, the people who bring that about will blame someone else because they're not responsible.
Whatever your grade or eval you give Sarah Palin, many people believe she has proven herself with qualities she has exhibited in her executive roles....honesty, integrity and a willingness to do what is right versus the easy and convenient path. These qualities seemed to have been off the table during the vetting of the Democratic candidate both for President but especially for Vice-President.
like Jumpstart.
I also see that this thread is blessed with America-loving citizens who see the sham that is Palin. As others have noted, folksy Bush has crippled America. We don't need folksier Palin.
I suspect these single posting "persons" are the First Dude or Palin's first cousin.
Joe Conason's piece is the best yet on the Palin condescension, which is above all insulting to women -- or at least the many who aren't moose hunters. He asks all the right questions. Here's hoping that he is right and that the American public has had it up to the keister with pseudo-populism and ready indeed to be told the truth about all our deferred problems. I fear, however, that television, now exponentially extended by the cable spectrum and its yowling and yapping heads, and seconded by the blogging echo chamber, will increasingly put the premium in American elections on such trivialities as seem to be Palin's stock in trade. She strikes me as an agreeable young woman whose talents were well suited to the mayoralty of a small Alaska town and perhaps even the Alaska governorship. The Quayle comparison is pertinent. Has it occurred to her that she is being cynically used? Alas, I don't think she is aware of her limitations -- including that one.
i think sara palen would make a good v.p.,wink ,wink,wink
It's difficult to imagine the conservative movement getting much dumber. It's always been based on ingorance, paranoia and any kind of intellectual progress. I think we should give Republicans their own country so they could run around bumping into each other and falling down like Monty Python's Upper Class Twits.
The seeding process truly began in earnest in the Reagan era, flowered in the Bush-Cheney era and has truly bore fruit with "Caribou Barbie" Palin.
I should have said: "a rejection of any kind of intellectual progress."
If marriage is between one man and one woman and McCain is one man who's had countless women, what word describes his relationship with Cindy?
Have you ever attended the "wedding" of someone who was previously married, aka a Biblical adulterer? Did you love those two sinners, but hate their sin? Did you give them a Bible with highlighted passages about how remarriage is adultery? Why or why not?
Do you believe, as the Bible asserts, that a sin contemplated is the same as a sin committed? Follow up: have you ever admired Brad Pitt?
If you ever see the tortured Jesus, are you going to share that you belonged to the Party of Torture?
Do you believe in Golden Rule? If so, since there's oil in Alaska, do you want some country to invade and occupy Alaska?
Bush W and Palin have two things in common: both have no intellectual curiosity about the world and both believe the Bible is the only book you need to read – hmm. The radical right has put the party in a small box that they have to stay in to get their votes. This is why Rove is my hero, he destroyed the party by making the party narrow(minded)and war-like.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
