"Why the Press Disparages Sarah Palin

By now everyone has become aware of the effort that ABC's snooty and supercilious Charles Gibson..."

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Yeah! Goddamn effette impudent snob! What a nattering nabob of negativism!!!

...will go hungry because of Bush voters and Palin voters, who believed that being folksy merits office.

Bush and Palin haven't even mastered this:

Subject.

Verb.

Predicate.

Electing Palin is madness and will mutiply the suffering.

I think that they are dumb because they choose to be ignorant and to celebrate ignorance.

It is one thing for a politician to say that he/she has a great solution for medical insurance or that he/she supports a tax solution that benefits everyone. But statements at this level are just marketing slogans. Insurance proposals and tax solutions are actually implemented through policies. A reasonably competent politician should be able to explain how the policies that they propose support the marketing statements that they make.

And a reasonably intelligent citizen should be able to understand a discussion that looks at whether the proposed policies support the marketing statement or whether the proposed policies actually contradict the marketing statement.

The Republican base dismisses anyone who does this as an intellectual elite and refuse to look at any analysis of facts. In my opinion, this is choosing to be ignorant. And the result of this ignorance is that Republican politicians (or their puppetmasters) tell their base one thing and then they implement policies that do not support the marketing statements at all.

We have way more limits on truth in advertising for MacDonald's and for drug companies than we do for politicians.

When anyone in the media does any analysis of policies, it is dismissed by the Republican base as the bias of the liberal media and intellectual elitism. The reality is, it isn't either. It is basic common sense and what any reasonably educated citizen has a responsibility to do.

Refusing to look at the simplest analysis, putting politicians like Palin on a pedestal despite her inability to grasp policy at its most elementary level, is celebrating ignorance.

I can respect an honest difference with someone when they hold a position and can explain the merits of that position in some reasonably coherent way. I have no respect at all for someone who chooses to be ignorant and has no idea of what he/she is really supporting.

So when Palin spouts off with her folksy marketing slogans but is completely incapable of explaining how McCain/Palin policies support those positions, I not only disagree with her, I think she is dumb.

He's likely that husband.

LUMINESCE (wink wink) was right on the money. I don't understand why this election is even close. Do we really want another republican in office. After 12yrs. of Regan/Bush1, (who ran up a hugh debt, and the S&L Scandle). Kind of sounds like today... And where not even going to get started on the first Gulf War! Are we that CRAZY!

p.s. Most Americans want to work, we want to pay our bill, buy gas, shop, and yes even eat a meal....

CAN WE RALLY TAKE 4 MORE YEARS? (Really?)

The same reason that Democrats aren't disgusted that their party nominated a man that authored the precursor to the Patriot Act under the Clinton Administration or that pushed through drug laws that made crack 100 times more punishable than coke. (Biden) Or a presidential candidate that wants to INCREASE the size of the military by 60,000 army and 27,000 marines and pull the army from Iraq just to send them to Afghanistan to fight another horrible war. Or who has no intention of closing JUST ONE of the 700+ military bases in over 130 countries. The Democrats are JUST AS PATHETIC as the Republicans. Boobus Americanus FTW!

Last May in Kansas Obama claimed that tornadoes killed 10,000 people. The actual death toll was 12. Your master continued to make this claim in all 58 states he was campaigning in. The deceased service personnel he was addressing didn't believe him. "Words, just words," they said. (Incidentally,neither did 9,988 Kansans).

He was a govenor too.

The outside is different.

The ideas are the same.

They don't work.

Outer packaging doesn't matter.

Conason: “As Biden showed quite convincingly when he spoke about his modest background and his continuing connection with Main Street, perceptive, intelligent discourse is in no way identical with elitism. Palin's phony populism is as insulting to working- and middle-class Americans as it is to American women. Why are basic diction and intellectual coherence presumed to be out of reach for "real people"?”

Mr. Conason,

Before you disparage Palin by calling her phoney and hold up Biden as an example of “perceptive, intelligent discourse” you might want to get your facts straight. Obviously you are as dumbed down as you claim conservatives are. Let me instruct you.

Biden: “When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it.”

WRONG - What on earth is Biden talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in some alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one. Nobody – nobody – has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Not France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody. Joe Biden literally has no idea what he’s talking about. And you think this is an example of “perceptive, intelligent discourse” and call conservatives dumb? Biden is about as dumb as it gets.

But, wait, there is more.

BIDEN: “Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.”

WRONG - If you or Biden had bothered to read it, you would know that Article I of the Constitution is about the Legislative branch, and that section 3 defines the role of the vice-president as president of the Senate. Again, that’s the Legislative branch. The vice-president also presides over all impeachments, which are tried solely by the Senate, unless the President is impeached, in which case the Chief Justice presides. This is all within the Legislative branch, NOT the executive. This man has served in the Senate for 36 years and yet has never read the Constitution? No “perceptive, intelligent discourse” here.

Here’s another example.

BIDEN: “And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.”

WRONG - The Constitution is, indeed, explicit and it says explicitly that the vice-president is the president of the Senate ALL THE TIME. The vice-president VOTES only in the event of a tie, but he is ALWAYS the president of the Senate. The Constitution says NOTHING about the VP giving the President any advice or support. Again, still no “perceptive, intelligent discourse” here.

Time for just one more.

BIDEN: “The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.”

WRONG - The vice-president is always the president of the Senate; that’s why Article I, section 3, provides for the election of a president pro tempore to run the Senate in the absence of the vice-president. The vice-president VOTES only in event of a tie, but he is ALWAYS the president of the Senate. He has the constitutional authority to direct the day to day activities of the Senate, if he so desires, as did Adams, Jefferson, etc. in the early days of our republic. In recent years the VP has chosen to leave this duty to the president pro tempore, but the VP has the constitutional authority to run the Senate any time he wants.

Please, if you want to see someone who have been “dumbed down” just look in the mirror, or at a picture of Senator Biden.

I’ll take Governor Palin’s executive experience over Biden’s decades of ignorance any day.