John, stop fucking around.
It was bin Laden, obviously.
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah - TV Series | Comedy Central US Palin and Fox have little familiarity with the truth. They have no shame and pay no attention to the facts.
Well, bless her heart; she means well.
It’s incredibly telling that many consider John Paul Stevens to be the most liberal of the Supreme Court Justices. He’s a registered Republican and considers himself conservative. He has often said publicly that over these last 30 years he hasn’t grown more liberal the Court has just grown more conservative.
You overestimate her intelligence by at least two orders of magnitude.
That’s nothing compared to “North” and “South” Dakota. Really, can’t we reduce it all down to, like, five states?
Stranger
Well, that’s a nice sound byte, but doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. Whatever the shift in the court, his views have grown more “liberal” over the years, especially in the area of Affirmative Action.
Oh god, she is Bush!
Nukular.
Y’know, the more I witness the current idiocy of Republican/conservative politics, politicians, and populace, the more I actually don’t think this is true (the “moving” part, not the “casting” part). That is, it’s not so much that the right has moved more to the radically right (though they have moved somewhat) – it’s that politics trumps policy. Thus, one is able to spout invective, inanity, and ignorance as the primary method to achieve power/success.
And Sarah set the paradigm. $DEITY help us all if it continues.
Actually, that one wasn’t true. While there are many many examples of Sarah Palin running her mouth and saying idiotic things, the “she thought Africa was a country” meme was actually a hoax. Even the New York Times admitted it.
http://www.randomjottings.net/archives/003631.html
Still, this doesn’t change the fact that she is still either A) amazingly stupid, or B) willing to say things she knows are clearly un-true in order to score political points. Take your pick.
I’m right on board with agreeing that SP is font of stupidity. But she raises such ire among many on the left here, that is virtually impossible to have a rational discussion about her on this MB.
A progressive naturally seeks to accelerate change, on the presumption that change, for the most part, is a positive good. Of course, any reasonable and intelligent person will agree. But allowances must be made. The rational conservative agrees, yes, of course, change is not only needful, it is inevitable, and since it must happen anyway, let us approach the matter with caution. So that change is not too abrupt and destructive, and so that those who most benefit from the status quo are not tempted to release the hounds.
When Lil’ Billy Buckley said he wished to stand athwart of of History/Progress crying “Stop!”, he was being cheeky, I think, because such a stance is not conservative, it is reactionary, and thus intellectually bankrupt. None but a crabby old coot wishes to turn back the clock to a bygone era. (Nothing personal, crabby old coots, but gone is gone…) You may not wish to go forward, but you just can’t go back, so what’s left?
The Palin position, if that is not too fine a word for a mish-mash of slogans and slanders, is neither. It is not strictly reactionary, it does not pine for the fjords of Ozzie and Harriet, and it is not really conservative, either. It doesn’t seek to cautiously improve the motion of history and change, it seeks to stop it in its tracks right here, right now, and simply stay as we are, like the cartoon character who screeches to halt with a cloud of smoke rising from his feet. Like Dr Festus and the Memphis Staffer, when he bargained to stop time here, at this moment, this acme of perfection.
She assures her people that they need not change, neither forward nor back. They don’t need to concern themselves with optimizing change, as no such change is needful, and they don’t need to go back, because that too is change, and change is suspicious, and fraught with unknown perils.
And, of course, that anyone who insists otherwise is likely an intellectual elite wimp, who has never even skinned a neighborhood pet, much less an actual moose! And lacks the good old fashioned common sense native to Real Americans, who already know just as much as they need to, thank you very much!
??? If she is (in your words) “a font of stupidity”, and if that opinion is based not merely on “i don’t agree with her” but on objective evidence of analyzing the words she’s saying, then what is left to rationally discuss? If someone repeatedly blathers thing that are provably false, then how can we have a rational discussion that doesn’t end with all sides agreeing “yup, she’s either stupid or lying”?
Case in point – her statement that kicked off the OP’s question was:
But of course nothing, absolutely nothing, in the treaty with Russia, said anything about not retaliating. Just that we wouldn’t retaliate with nuclear weapons (unless the other country also had nuclear weapons, OR unless the other country used biological weapons, OR unless the other country withdrew from the NPT treaty). Her statement just had absolutely nothing to do with reality.
How can you have a rational discussion about someone who isn’t rational herself?
Anyway, since we’re all in agreement on the OP’s question about the original issue…changing the subject, here is a video of Sarah Palin in the swimsuit competition part of the famous 1984 Miss Alaska beauty pagent. Seriously, not a joke.
http://www.break.com/index/sarah-palin-1984-beauty-pageant.html
How are the discussions irrational?
Sound bite nothing, it speaks volumes about our current political polarity that you cannot have an independent mind and still be conservative.
This mornings news programs included a discussion of whether Obama would retaliate if a country used nukes on the US. The Repubs actually pretended that they were convinced he would not, therefore he is some kinda hippy liberal that just isn’t tough enough. This treaty that would make it possible for us to incinerate the world 8 times over instead of 12 has put us at risk. The Repubs are pulling all the stops out .
Actually, Obama has been focussed on nuclear arms reduction for a long time, and teamed up in the Senate with Richard Lugar to work towards nonproliferation.
That, by the way, is a press release from Senator Lugar’s office.
Nice post, I was set for a 9.5, until I came to this. I mean, did anybody ever truly pine for Harriet’s fjords? Just asking.