From what I understand they also made quite a bit of money off their fishing business and may even have been millionaires before she became nationally famous. So at least someone in the family has a good head for business.
A million dollars may seem like a lot of money if you don’t have much. It’s pretty hard to look at retiring if you own your house, toys and only have a million bucks in the bank to live off of. Even if you’re able to get a low risk 5% yield off your million dollars - that’s $50k before taxes. It’s not dire poverty but it ain’t a lot of money if that is what you are living on.
I bought into him too. I used to say I would have voted for him over Kerry. I don’t know if he changed, or if he was never as advertized in the first place, but I can’t say I’d ever vote for him anymore.
I still respect him for what he went through as a POW, but no longer as a statesman.
Like I said, those women are all pro-choice. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Olympia Snowe, Christie Todd Whitman, Condie Rice, Susan Molinari – all in favor of baby killing. They had to go all the way down the ladder to Palin to find a pro-lifer.
Hey, that will be perfect! She can go on Dancing with the Stars with Palin!! What a ratings draw that will be!!
Tris
I have this creepy feeling that Sarah Palin combines the utter ruthlessness for power of Angela Lansbury’s character from The Manchurian Candidate, with the utter cluelessness of her Senator husband from the same movie. Think about it. I think she would do pretty much anything to get more power, money and face time on TV. I think she is truly dangerous if only for that reason. Call me paranoid; I hope I’m wrong. But she gives me chills.
Roddy
I agree. I think it really is that simple.
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Palin is a living example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
I’m surprised nobody here has yet pointed out that the Palin-Africa hoax was not the report that she thought Africa was a country; rather, it was the claim of credit for leaking that information.
The very same NYT article linked in the quote above, goes on to say,
Here is the hoax itself,
That’s all. The report which preceded this, the actual story about Palin, that wasn’t invented by “Eisenstadt.” Now, strictly speaking, I don’t know whether that report was based on legitimate information or not. But it was not the “hoax” that the New York Times “admitted.”
…
… I don’t know what to believe anymore, lol.
But yeah, I wouldn’t even call falsely claiming credit a hoax.
That reminds me of high school dropouts (even people on this board) describing some other high school dropout as “the smartest person they know” as an argument against higher education. They only seem so smart because that person has such a narrow range of intellectual experience.
That’s the secret of Sarah Palin. She just says things that confirm what idiots already “know”.
More than that, though. She makes them feel good about it, claiming that “common sense” is a virtue greater than knowledge and that by calling an expert a liar or a socialist or an idealist, you’ve somehow demonstrated superiority over the expert and thus license to be smug.
It’s certainly a seductive message, and it plays very well among a segment of the population. They can’t prove how smart they are, but they damn well feel good about how moral/pragmatic/grounded they are, as true Americans.
Well, a million dollars is more than I or pretty anyone else in my circle of family, friends, co-workers has.
Besides I can’t imagine they just had a million socked away somewhere and planned on just living off that their entire lives. They after all continued working their regular jobs and drawing regular incomes.
Sure they may not have been Warren Buffet rich, but they were certainly pretty well off.
Yeah, I could get a little tired of hearing that people with a million dollars are really the next thing to poor. Tell that to the folks making 8 or 12 dollars an hour working for McDonalds, or Barnes & Noble, or Joe’s Lawn Care.
Err, Kay Bailey Hutchison and Christine Todd Whitman were both arguably more qualified for the role of President than McCain himself. Hutchison, of course, is a moderate, relatively pro-choice Republican, and thus not palpable to McCain’s neo-con handlers, but she would have been an excellent choice. Whitman is a bit more problematic given her ties to energy lobbyists, but there wouldn’t be any genuine challenges to her basic experience at holding executive office.
Stranger
Neo-con handlers? Sounds more like paleo-cons.
I don’t think it necessarily has anything to do with “intelligence”, per se.
I suspect she is actually pretty intelligent, whether we base that on IQ score or on innate ability to respond creatively to her environment or both.
But the demographic she is appealing to are, on average, likely less so, and tend to be suspicious of intelligence and intelligent people overall. JMHO. Judging by the shit they tend to swallow whole and their overall contempt for “intellectuals” and others who see in shades other than black and white. :rolleyes:
Hence she hammers away on the “common sense”, “we don’t need a constitutional scholar”, “elite”, “liberal biased media”, “gotcha” angle.
She is smart ENOUGH to give the people what they want.
I don’t underestimate her intelligence; I think her persona is mostly an act. (it’s a shame she can’t play herself as well as Tina Fey can, though:))
FTR, I don’t think Bush was stupid either…most of his gaffes were, on close examination, the result of losing track of his line of thought or his brain getting ahead of his mouth (i.e. “The terrorists never stop looking for ways to hurt America, and neither do we.” Brilliant and hysterically funny, but not an example of stupidity given the context…more of ADD if anything)
He was, in my educated opinion as a 3rd generation Texan, putting on the cowboy act for the same reasons Palin puts on the good ol’ gal, common sense, anti-elitist act.
To add, I DO think she is often appallingly uniformed, and that her beliefs are astoundingly simple and primitive (see, there I go, just proving I am one of those damn “intellectual elites” she is always talking about:p)
But that doesn’t mean she is unintelligent, just ignorant. And yes, willfully so, since it fits perfectly into her attitudes regarding the relative value of intellectualism vs gut reaction.
What in her behavior would lead you to believe that she is more intelligent than she appears? Even as a manipulator, she’s weak and inconsistent; she’s not a Karl Rove or Bill O’Reilly, or even Glenn Beck in terms of her ability to sway an audience. Unless you regard this as being part of a deliberate ploy of engendering sympathy, she just appears borderline incompetent as a candidate.
Stranger
The fact that she’s managed to turn her appeal into a whole lot of cash is a pretty good sign. Candidate? she was smart enough to realize she would never be a credible one, she is in it for the money now.