President Barack Obama is a trained constitutional lawyer. Sarah Palin went through four colleges before fluking a degree in communication and Journalism. (Note: Some of these small colleges in America produce completely useless graduates). Obama is a Harvard graduate — and has clearly demonstrated his keen intellect — in the 2008 campaign leading to several grueling debates with Hillary Clinton and old-man McCain. On the other hand, Cartoon Combatant, Sarah Palin, has demonstrated, thoroughly well — that she is nothing but a two-bit opportunist — feasting on the extremist-racist emotions of one third of this country — who are still drowning in the hot “hyena” juices of White Supremacist Militancy

Obama uses a teleprompter as a productivity tool,…heck — one of the greatest teleprompter users was Ronald Reagan — who without the venerable machine, was frequently lost and wobbly. As age and alzheimer’s disease ate away his mind, Reagan could not operate without a teleprompter or cue cards.

The teleprompter was invented in the 1950’s Fred Barton, Jr., Hubert J. (Hub) Schlafly, and Irving Berlin Kahn. Barton was an actor who suggested the concept of the teleprompter as a means of assisting television performers who had to memorize large amounts of material in a short time. The first “teleprompters” were simply mechanical devices located near the camera. The script was printed on a paper scroll, which was advanced as the performer read. Later, computers took over. Here is a picture of President Lyndon Johnson using a teleprompter while announcing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Here is a list all the presidents who have used teleprompters.

•    George W. Bush

•    Bill Clinton

•    George H.W. Bush

•    Ronald Reagan

•    Jimmy Carter

•    Gerald Ford (his teleprompter frequently contained cues telling him what physical actions to use along with the words!)

•    Lyndon B. Johnson

•    John F. Kennedy

•    Dwight D. Eisenhower

•    Harry S. Truman

In fact, every single President since the invention of the teleprompter, including Republican heroes like Reagan…except for Richard Nixon, who used notecards and memorization, but he also was not a natural extemporaneous speaker, and prepared painstakingly for every event.

So, unless Republican idiots like Sarah Palin, want to say every President since Truman (except Nixon) was some sort of cheater for not memorizing every word they said, there’s absolutely no merit in calling out Obama for using a highly useful tool for public speakers.

On the other hand, Sarah Palin has demonstrated over and over, that she is blithering idiot…a shallow, conniving STUNT-WOMAN, who makes George W. Bush look like a Nobel Prize winning Physicist.

Yet, throngs of rabidly racist right-wing NUT-BAGS still look-up to this goofball as their savior. Palin is no intellectual match to Obama, and has neither the capacity(brain power) nor the authority(credentials) to demean the president Obama’s intelligence!

Stupid Palin’s antics and the die-hard approval she gets from right-wing nut-jobs, totally justifies John Stuart Mill’s quote: “Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.”

Palin’s followers are nothing but twisted idiots intoxicated with excruciating racism and bigotry, …and who will never change.

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Palin on The Trail: Andrea Mitchell Mocks Sarah Palin

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Palin’s tea party speech full of false and misleading national security claims

MediaMatters: During her address before the National Tea Party Convention, Fox News contributor Sarah Palin made numerous false and misleading claims about national security and foreign policy, including suggesting that the Obama administration doesn’t use the word “war,” that interrogators didn’t ask alleged Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab about his training and future al Qaeda plots, and that Abdulmutallab has not provided information since he “lawyered up and invoked our U.S. constitutional right to remain silent.” [ READ MORE ]

Elsewhere, during an interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, Fox News contributor Sarah Palin falsely claimed that “20 percent of the US domestic supply of energy” comes from Alaska. In fact, according to the most recent data available from the Energy Information Administration, Alaska accounts for no more than 2.9 percent of total domestic energy production. [ READ MORE ]

Palin repeats falsehood that Alaska produces “20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy“

Republican Psychopaths Defend Sarah Palin | Rush Limbaugh Orders Republicans

MediaMatters: Right-wing media jump to defend Palin after “crib note” criticism — Right-wing media figures have rushed to defend Sarah Palin from criticism that she apparently wrote “crib notes” on her hand during her Tea Party Convention appearances by claiming, among other things, that it’s a “non-issue” and that having notes on her hand was “folksy,” “down to earth,” and “just like busy moms.” [ READ MORE ]

The “Fox and Friends” IDIOTS Defend Palin — LOL!

Hannity, Morris join other right-wing media in defending Palin’s use of “crib notes” on her hand

“Starbursts“: Lowry says Palin can overcome lack of “substance” because “it’s not rocket science“

Lowry previously wrote of Palin:

A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It’s one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O’Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat. Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can’t be learned; it’s either something you have or you don’t, and man, she’s got it.

Rush Limbaugh Defends Sarah Palin

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Limbaugh attacks “whiny little r-words” who criticize Palin

GOP leader Limbaugh advises his party: “Wear ‘the party of no‘ … as a badge of honor”

Rush Limbaugh orders Republicans: “This is no time for bipartisanship” on health care reform

References:

1. Media Matters: The politically motivated selective-victimhood of Sarah Palin

2. Did We Just Witness the Beginning of Sarah Palin’s Presidential Campaign? — Palin is now moving front and center as a potential challenger to Obama. That may scare Republicans who worry about their party’s prospects in 2012.

3. Sarah Palin Aims to Bust Up the Republican Party — And the Tea Party Movement — Palin’s speech was her boilerplate of non sequiturs and cognitive disconnections, but in the interview that followed, she revealed her hand in a game for the presidency.

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   [ By: Melissa Harris-Lacewell ]
Joe Biden once remarked that Barack Obama was “clean” and “articulate.” He is now Vice President. During the Democratic primaries Hillary Clinton invoked Robert Kennedy in a way that implied Barack Obama’s assassination was imminent. She is now the Secretary of State. It is foolish to suggest Senator Harry Reid should step down as Senate majority leader because of his 2008 assessment that Barack Obama’s election was more likely because he is “light-skinned” and free from “Negro dialect.”

If President Obama has demonstrated anything at all, it is that he unperturbed by the racially awkward outbursts of his fellow Democrats.

Republicans hope that reports of Reid’s old gaffe might derail his leadership of the health care reform package. But watching Michael Steele go after Reid is more bizarre than convincing. Steele seems to pride himself on the liberal use of black discursive patterns. It’s hard to take seriously the moral outrage of a self-professed “hip-hop Republican” who explains his tenure as GOP chairman saying “brother still here.”

President Obama may be unconcerned and the GOP may be transparently race baiting, but Reid’s comments did create a legitimate queasiness among many Americans that is worth exploring.

President Obama is a forgiving, beer summit kind of leader, but I am less likely to give Democrats a free pass on issues of racial bias. As I wrote a few months ago here on The Notion, any implication that racism is the sole purview of the Right obscures the continuing and troubling realities of racism within the Democratic Party and progressive political movements.

Still, I remain entirely uninterested in a racial McCarthyism that plays “gotcha politics” with elected officials public utterances. Yes, public officials should be particularly careful when talking about race to media (on or off the record). The opportunities for misunderstanding, divisiveness and assumption of ill intent are heightened in this area of political discussion.

But let’s be honest, if we weeded out every public official guilty of racial insensitivity, the halls of Congress would echo with utter emptiness. The point is not so much public gaffes as it is the creation, support, and maintenance of systemic and structural inequalities. This is why Trent Lott’s wistfulness about a Strom Thurmond presidency is in a different class than Reid’s comments. Lott was longing for a bygone era when structural barriers and entrenched inequality were the norm. Reid was enthusiastic that the same barriers were lessening and that America was ready, albeit with caveats, for a new racial reality.

Rather than being worked up about Reid’s awkward assessment of these barriers, we should be asking whether these structural biases actually make academic and political accomplishments easier for light-skinned African Americans. NC State University historian Blair LM Kelley makes this argument in her piece on Salon.com. She points out skin color bias in the 21st century should alarm us. It shouldn’t be a matter of breezy acceptance, as many Sunday morning pundits seemed to suggest. “Accepting this as a matter of course degrades the quality of our democracy.”

Reid’s assertions about “Negro dialect” also should raise structural justice questions far more important than his offensive use of an antiquated term for black Americans. Because of generations of lower class status and legal barriers to quality education, black children are far more likely than their white counterparts to be raised by parents with inadequate literacy skills. But rather than acting as a leveling ground, many public schools only reinforce these disadvantages. These are the same children relegated to schools with fewer expert teachers, larger classroom sizes, fewer educational resources, and fewer literacy support tools.

This is the racism that should worry us: millions of black American children attend and graduate from public schools that leave them utterly unqualified for public office for their entire lives. As adults these children will always be second-class citizens, unable to participate as rule makers rather than simply rule followers in their own country. Not only does this deprive whole group from full participation in government, it also deprives our country of the skills, talents, and ideas that these citizens might have offered, had we not initially deprived them of the capacity to communicate their ideas effectively in the public realm.

Political theorist Nancy Fraser’s describes imagines justice as “a difference-friendly world, where assimilation to majority or dominant cultural norms is no longer the price for equal respect.” Creating that world is an important task for combating racism.

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“According to a new survey released by USA Today and the Gallup Poll, Hillary Clinton, 62, barely beat out Sarah Palin, 45, as the most admired female – 16% to 15% in a poll of 1,025 American adults.

However, because the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, it’s statistically a draw. The survey was open-ended, meaning male and female respondents had to provide the names.” [ READ MORE ]

Hillary Clinton is respected because of her education (graduate of Yale Law School), accomplishments (US Senator, Secretary of State), and decades long struggle to enact health care reform.

Hillary is a polarizing figure, and even many liberals can’t stand her, but nobody can deny that she’s a woman of substance and accomplishment.

Sarah Palin is adored by the far right in spite of her lack of quality education (she attended a gazillion colleges before finally graduating), and her dearth of accomplishments.

Sarah Palin is a polarizing figure, and even her most strident fans can’t say with a straight face that she’s a woman of substance and accomplishment.

Welcome to the politics of the New Millennium: A telegenic face and hot sound bites trump intelligence and a resume. Palin will remain a force in American politics as long as she frequently updates her Twitter page, and preserves her good looks with plastic surgery.

In a perfect world Sarah Palin wouldn’t even make the list of most admired women, but this world is a long way from perfect, and scary as it may be, the hick from Wasilla may one day be President of the United States.

Hillary had her chance, but time has passed her by, and she will never achieve her dream of sitting in the Oval Office. Hillary will curse the gods, like the rest of us, when President Palin’s lack of common sense and foreign policy experience leads this nation into disaster

Follow Robert Paul Reyes on Twitter: http://twitter.com/robertpaulreyes

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MediaMatters: On his radio program, Fox News’ Sean Hannity claimed that The Washington Post is trying to “smear, besmirch, [and] demonize” Virginia gubernatorial candidate Robert McDonnell (R) by going through “the great effort to dig up a graduate school thesis that he wrote,” adding that a thesis “by design is supposed to be provocative” and that McDonnell wrote his “20 years ago.” But during the 2008 presidential campaign, Hannity aggressively attacked Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton for college theses they wrote more than 20 years ago.

Hannity was referring to an August 30 Post article about controversial views McDonnell expressed in his 1989 master’s thesis at CBN University, which was founded by Pat Robertson and named after his evangelical Christian Broadcasting Network; the university has since been renamed Regent University. [ READ MORE ]

Here is Sean Hannity Smearing Michelle Obama During The 2008 Elections: In several broadcasts of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, Sean Hannity repeatedly distorted a passage from Michelle Obama’s 1985 Princeton senior thesis to suggest that Obama was asserting her own views when she wrote that “[i]t is possible that Black individuals either chose to or felt pressure to come together with other Blacks on campus because of the belief that Blacks must join in solidarity to combat a White oppressor.” [ READ MORE ]

The Fox is Always Wrong!

…..and these diabolical G.O.P. attacks on Michelle Obama NEVER WORKED! Michelle Obama’s detractors had very thin gruel to fuel their outrage: a happy remark in Wisconsin in February that “for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country;” a relatively downbeat primary-season stump speech that stressed the struggles of working-class and middle-class Americans; her imputed blame for the past and recent antics of the Obama’s long-time pastor, Jeremiah Wright; and a Princeton senior thesis written more than two decades ago that was been ignorantly described as an endorsement of racial separatism.

But this limited material generated endless hostile conservative blog posts, a series of tirades by pundits ranging from Bill O’Reilly to Christopher Hitchens, a cover article for National Review calling her “Mrs. Grievance,” and a racially tinged internet ad sponsored by the Tennessee Republican Party.

And where there was no “evidence” to distort of Michelle Obama’s supposed anti-American bitterness, radicalism, and racialism, was invented, as shown by the viral rumor, completely unfounded, that there was some video floating around showing her ranting about “whitey“–in some versions, in the company of Louis Farrakhan. [ More on Why The Blistering G.O.P. Attacks On Michelle Obama Never Worked ]

Reference: Media Matters offered an admirably comprehensive look at Fox News dog-man Sean Hannity’s most wet-brained (but creative!) Obama smears of the entire 2008 campaign. Here are the five cleverest

Hypocrite Sean Hannity

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By MUGUMO MUNENE, Nation Newspapers

A group of terrorists operating from Somalia had planned three bomb attacks in Nairobi during the visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month, the Sunday Nation can reveal.

A senior counter-terrorism official has recounted how the terrorists planned to stage simultaneous attacks at the Hotel InterContinental, the Kencom Bus Stage and the adjacent Hilton Hotel. Mrs Clinton stayed at the Hotel InterContinental during her visit.

The plan was hatched in Somalia and thwarted by Kenyan security officials who intercepted communication between the plotters and their accomplices in Nairobi.

   President Kibaki (right) and Prime Minister Raila Odinga (left) receive US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (centre) at the
   Agoa forum during her visit to Kenya in August.

The security official — whose identity cannot be revealed without compromising antiterrorism operations — said that the terrorists linked to the Al Shabaab group had wanted to embarrass Kenyan and US governments but their plans were thwarted before the attackers could cross the border.

“The threats were neutralised a week to the Agoa meeting in combined efforts by the military and other security agencies,” the official said. “The operation in Nairobi netted five crucial suspects, one of whom carries Danish identification documents but is believed to be a Somali national. The other four, one of whom is a woman, hold Kenyan identification documents believed to be fake. Investigations into their identity and plan are on.”

The official added: “While in the past the real target of the attacks has been Western interests, the Al Qaeda leadership has since made Kenya a new target. So serious is the threat that during the Agoa meeting, the Al Qaeda intended to strike at the heart of Nairobi during the rush hour.”

According to the security official, the masterminds of the attack were in contact with Mr Saleh Nabhan, one of the most wanted men by the FBI, and whose personal assistant, a man identified as Anas, is believed to have been coordinating the plan.

Mrs Clinton was in Nairobi in August to officiate at trade talks between her government and African countries courtesy of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, an American law that seeks to promote trade between the US and Africa. While in Nairobi, Mrs Clinton and her entourage were booked at Hotel InterContinetal. She arrived in the country on August 4 and left on August 7.

To reassure themselves, Kenyan security officials detailed officers from the elite presidential guard to her entourage. The streets around the hotel and those adjacent to the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, the venue of the meeting, had been closed to normal traffic as part of the security measures.

The information about the threat and what Kenyan security officials did to stop the deadly plans was shared with US security officials and has also been captured in a security dossier prepared for circulation in top security echelons.

The presence of Al Shabaab operatives in the country, the Sunday Nation learnt, is facilitated by helpers living mainly in Mombasa and Nairobi’s Eastleigh, South B, South C and Komarock estates.

Last month, Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka, Defence minister Yusuf Haji and Internal Security minister George Saitoti launched a public education programme in which political and religious leaders teamed up to discourage young men from North Eastern Province from recruiting into Al Shabaab.

Kenya has been in terrorism news since August 7, 1998 when bombers struck in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam killing close to 250 people and injuring close to 5,000. Later on November 29, 2002, terrorists struck in Mombasa, this time delivering a truckload of explosives to the Kikambala Paradise Hotel where they left 15 people dead. An attempt to bring down an Israeli jetliner which was taking off from the Moi International Airport failed.

Counter-terrorism officials are now investigating how Somali nationals are bribing their way into government offices and acquiring Kenyan identification documents.

“This has made Kenyan travel documents to be subjected to serious scrutiny by foreign governments,” says a government security brief seen by the Sunday Nation. “More recently, the Al Shabaab/Al Qaeda operatives have sought to penetrate the Kenyan justice system by going to court to bar deportation of their associates.”

The dossier talks of judges and court clerks who have previously been bribed by operatives but does not name them. During her visit, one of Mrs Clinton’s concerns that she raised with Kenyan leaders was about Somalia and the threat of extremism posed by al Shabaab. While in Kenya, Mrs Clinton met with Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.

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