The fact that Russia is close to Alaska was not an answer to the question. Saying it’s important to maintain good relations with Russia is not an answer to the question. She was deflecting and giving a completely retarded, non-responsiove answer. She is a dim bulb. She thinks that people and dinosaurs lived at the same time. She thinks that a Dutch boy could have swum down to the bottom of the ocean and stuck his finger in an oil leak. It is impossible to recomcile those beliefs with even an average intellect. She really is fucking dumb. Sorry.
Why? I’d be happy, because most history teachers can’t figure out that they can’t teach all they want to teach and start at the beginning. I didn’t learn anything past the second World War until I got to college.
I’d’ve loved to have had an American History I that made it to the Civil War, and an American History II that went from the Civil War to modern times. If I were you, I’d be more worried that the teacher still won’t get through. The more recent the history, the more stuff that happens that is important in understanding the here and now.
You’re mistaking poor interviewing skills with her having supposed “beliefs” on those matters. As I stated, she was nervous and did not take time to make a thoughtful answer, and she should have clarified rather than just answered off the cuff. One problem, was the lightning speed with which they decided to select her for the running mate.
I have not heard the interview in which she states dinos and humans coexisted. As to the dutch boy comment JEEz, be real.
I’m not defending her or trying to say they need to turn back the clock and run her for office again. As I’ve said, I’m seriously disappointed in her behaviour. I think a lot of people see “stated something dumb in an interview” and immediately equate it with “that means that person IS dumb”.
None of the current administration are immune from having said just as many VERY stupid things. They just haven’t been run in the media.
From their own mouths, when they originally stated them in their speeches. For one, just off the top of my head, from Obama’s own speech. The whole “I’ve been in 57 states now” (and on youtube, which is not “The media”). Then there are the several speeches in which had a broken teleprompter and hemmed and hawed and “uuuhm uuh uh, huhhhhh, uh uuuuhmmmmm’d” us all to death.
In an interview he did just prior to the elections where he stated (paraphrased) that one of his ideas was that all young people would get free secondary education, and in exchange they would spend the next 4 years after getting their degrees, in volunteer service to the country paying off their debt. Volunteer service that would be just like a fulltime job, or the military, only unpaid. And not even the rightie radios picked up on that one. Gee, and they’re going to eat, pay the light bill and raise their kids on the shining adoration and appreciation of the American people? But Gibbs (or whichever tingly-legged journalist it was) never even batted an eye, he thought that was a WONDERFUL idea. Not one of the news organizations said a word about it.
We as Americans listening to the speeches and debates heard the stupid statements of he and Biden ONCE, at that time, but the news did not run it over and over in a “SEEE??? SEE how stupid?” the way they did the opposition’s missteps. I could google other ones, but I"m just stating the ones I can remember, but they only exist in youtube or other “what did he say”? websites, and never in the news.
You really can’t see the difference between a harried man speaking off the cuff and being corrected in midsentence from saying ‘50’ to ‘47’, and someone in a carefully prepared interview dropping the insinuation that she has special insights into the Russia-Georgia conflict because Alaska has a narrow maritime border with Siberia? If you don’t, you need to read that interview. The reason nobody seized on Obama was that he was speaking on a trivial matter, and wasn’t trying to slyly convince us there are more than 50 states, whereas Palin was clearly trying to inflate her foreign policy credentials. Palin’s wasn’t a verbal gaffe, it was a gaffe in logic that blossomed (rightfully) into a rich source of satire.
(Bolding mine) That’s actually a way of looking at it that hadn’t occurred to me. You make a solid point. I think I’m disappointed because I adore early American history, and I was looking forward to helping her with it. (She’s dyslexic, so I often help by reading homework aloud with her.)
A slight hijack: what were you doing at the radar sites? The airstrips and the sites themselves have restricted access, so either you were prior (or current) Air Force, are a contracted pilot, or worked directly for the ARS contract. Just curious.
Actually, if we take the apologists’ view of her VP statement, this too must be considered evidence of her policy skills. Is it factual that you can see parts of Russia from parts of Alaska? As long as she was merely factually correct, then that completely defeats any analysis of whether or not she was speaking from ignorance!
You can just about see a couple of uninhabited Russian-held islands and about a three-inch stretch of Chukotka, a district of the Russian mainland which is technically inhabited but is really just a couple of weather research stations and a bitumen mine.
I think Canvas’ point is that you can see lots of Russia from Alaska by radar, which is pretty much grasping at straws.
She said that it can be seen from an island in Alaska. The island she is referring to is Little Diomede Island. From there, one can see Big Diomede Island, which is a Russian possession and about 2.5 miles away. In the technical sense, she is correct. In the sense in which she meant it, she was grasping at straws.
That slip was on the cab;e news shows. It was played endlessly on Fox.
That was a slip of the tongue by an exhausted candidate, by the way. Not an actual belief.
The "um’s is not indicative of anything either except that he tries to think about what he’s saying before he says it. It’s rather desperate to try to call that evidence of “stupidity.” It’s just the opposite.
He never said unpaid. You are misinformed.
You saw those speeches in the media, and every one of Biden’s gaffes gets covered more than Palin’s moronic babblings.
Obama actually doesn’t have any comparable examples at all.
Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of righty apologists who appear to think that people think the “I can see Russia” comment was ridiculed because they think it isn’t true, but that was never the point and never in doubt. What was stupid was that she thought that made her an expert on foreign policy.
BTW, in the book I referred to upthread, Obama comes off, imho, best of all. He does seem a little arrogant, but he appears to be genuinely extremely intelligent and curious about the world around him. As the economy worsened during the campaign, he had nightly conference calls with Ben Bernanke to quiz him about the workings of the economy, since he didn’t know much about it. Obama saw gap in his knowledge and worked his ass off to close it. I came away really impressed by his intelligence and even more glad than I had previously been that he’s the president.
Worse than the “you can see Russia from Alaska” statement is, I think, the implication that the McCain campaign made that Palin knows about national security because she was nominally in command of the Alaska National Guard. That was ridiculous.
But who really gives a damn if you could see Russia, through binoculars or radar or whatever? It doesn’t alter the fact that Palin is dumber than shit. And yet other stupids continue to hang on her every word.
The “refudiate” thing, but not (mainly) for the initial error of conflating “refute” and “repudiate”. When she tried to correct herself, she incorrectly chose “refute”, instead of the correct “repudiate”.
If you were derided nationally for bad English usage, wouldn’t you crack open a dictionary and make sure you got the correction right? IMHO, that’s far worse than the original mistake of conflating the two words.