After almost three months, poor Sarah still cannot define the job she is applying for.
The constitution of the United States clearly states the “limited” duties of a US Vice-President:
The Vice President of the United States is the first person in the presidential line of succession, becoming the new President of the United States upon the death, resignation, or removal of the president, should he or she accept the position. Every presidential term ends on January 20 of the year immediately after a presidential election. As designated by the Constitution of the United States, the vice president also serves as the President of the Senate, and may break tie votes in that chamber. He or she may be assigned additional duties by the president but, as the Constitution assigns no executive powers to the vice president, in performing such duties he or she acts only as an agent of the president.
Sarah Palin apparently doesn’t know so.
Sarah Thinks The VP is a “Majority Leader” OR a “Prime Minister”
McCain’s Palin Problem
New polls indicate that McCain’s biggest negative is his selection of Sarah Palin. McCain’s gamble to lure Hillary Clinton women voters is backfiring badly. Palin is not only viewed by a majority as un-qualified, but also as an unlikeable, negative and divisive. (In a newNBC/WSJ poll, 55 percentsaid Gov. Sarah Palin is not qualified to be vice president.)
What seemed to be a clever and exciting choice by John McCain, now looks like a disastrous display of poor judgment — a quagmire from which McCain will not be able to extricate himself.
Sarah seems to be incapable of operating in un-scripted mode, and seems deluded and confused when not reading from her handler’s notes, and when she speaks on the campaign trail, she engages in vicious demagoguery, which apparently many voters do not like.
The “Drilla From Wasilla” is a hopeless disaster. She is a rude and “Power Hungry” intellectual midget, unfit to be a heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States. Palin is the biggest joke on America since Indiana’s Dan Quayle in 1988. Anyone supporting her is glorifying willful ignorance.
That she is governor of Alaska — a huge wilderness of less than 700,000 human beings (fewer people than each of the20 largest cities in America), is irrelevant, because it is clear that her two year tenure as chief executive of the state of Alaska, really didn’t prepare her for the simplest of things — like reading-up the description of her potential job!
2.The Real Scandal — The real threat to democracy is the nonstop campaign by the G.O.P. and its supporters to disenfranchise American citizens who have every right to cast a ballot.
3.The Real Plumbers of Ohio — John McCain’s strategy, in this final stretch, is based on the belief that Republicans can still pursue plutocratic policies while claiming to be the party of regular guys.
“Palin has spent almost her whole life in a very small town in a sparsely populated and extremely isolated state. For reasons that remain obscure, she attended five colleges in six years where, if her public performance to date is any indication, she seems to have learned nothing.” — Paul Campos, The Rocky Mountain News
It is now pretty clear that Sarah Palin is unfit for the job of Vice-President. She is damaged goods.
The debate scheduled for tomorrow night will not vindicate her in anyway, no matter how much McCain’s ReTHUGlican handlers spin it.
There are no low or high debate expectations. Sarah is just a miserable mess.
Contrary to the “usually wrong” advice a cross-section of pundits have been dishing out in the air-waves, I think Joe Biden should zero in for the kill.
To hell with that sexism nonsense!
We are talking Alkaida, Osama Bin Laden and Putin here — there is no room for weakness, and if she wants to be a heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States, she must jump through ALL the hoops. She is not running for Miss Alaska!
Palin is a severely “Wounded Moose,” with broken arms and legs. All she can do now is stare hopelessly into the headlights beaming on her.
An old disease ridden 72 year old and a severely “Wounded Moose,” ….Oh please!
Sarah’s Greatest Hits
Top 10 Things Overheard At Sarah Palin’s Debate Camp
The gamble of selecting Palin in order to woo Clinton voters (which insulted scores of women), is going to prove to be the costliest blunder of McCain’s “Maverick Express” career.
Sarah Palin has become the bridge to the White House for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Paul Campos of The Rocky Mountain News Opinionates: “Palin has spent almost her whole life in a very small town in a sparsely populated and extremely isolated state. For reasons that remain obscure, she attended five colleges in six years where, if her public performance to date is any indication, she seems to have learned nothing.”
In typical capitalist fashion, everyone is milking “Sara-Mania” to the “Moose-Bones,” including an Ohio company that now offers the “Sarah-Cuda” hunting bow. Lakota Industries, the manufacturer, in a statement issued through their CEO Dick Williamson said:
“We are so pleased to introduce the “Sarah-Cuda” to the bow-hunting and archery community.” “In addition to honoring Ms. Palin’s historic achievement, we wanted to pay tribute to all the women who bear the responsibility of family and work while strengthening the moral fiber of society.”
Sorry Mr. Williamson, Sarah is a humongous political tragedy — worse than a sub-prime mortgage lent to a jobless home-owner wannabe.
Meanwhile, John McCain continued his insolent behavior last night on the Senate floor — “dissing” Obama as the Illinois senator tried to make nice with him:
Barack Obama approached John McCain on the senate floor — he walked over to where McCain was chatting with Republican Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida and Independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut. And he stretched out his arm and offered his hand to McCain. McCain shook it, but with a “go away” look that no one could miss. He tried his best not to even look at Obama. Finally, with a tight smile, McCain managed a greeting: “Good to see you.” — Reported Here.
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Also, the post debate polls [TIME poll] are out, and Obama is rolling — he has opened a formidable 7-point lead over John McCain, reaching the 50% threshold among likely voters for the first time in the general campaign for President. Obama now leads McCain 50%-43% overall, up from 46%-41% before the parties’ conventions a month ago. Obama’s support is not just broader but sturdier; 23% of McCain supporters said they might change their mind, while only 15% of Obama’s said they could be persuaded to switch.
Among the poll’s most dramatic findings: McCain is losing female voters faster than Sarah Palin attracted them after the Republican National Convention. Obama leads McCain by 17 points with women,55%-38%. Before the conventions, women preferred Obama by a margin of 10 points,49%-39%. After McCain picked Palin as his running mate, the gap narrowed to a virtual tie, with Obama holding a 1-point margin, 48%-47%…..[READ MORE]
The situation is getting bad for McCain, and the right-wing NUTBAGS, notably the Syphilitic Goons at Fox News who have been “moving mountains” to stop Obama. Short of uprooting their own teeth, these PROPAGANDA EXTORTIONISTS are “gnashing” at everything in their path, like starved “lactating Hyenas” in the wild.
They have attacked the beautiful “Obama Singing Kids.”
The Obama Singing Kids
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….And Gwen Ifill, the moderator of tomorrow’s Vice Presidential debate. Also busy “working the referee” were McCain and Palin — sowing seeds doubts about Ifill.
The vicious former mayor of New York, Mr. 911, Rudy Giuliani joined them saying: “If the moderator of this debate were someone who was writing a book that basically was ‘The Age of McCain,’ I have a feeling that a lot more of these publications would be saying that the person should not be doing it,” said Giuliani. “Now it might be totally unfair to do that. Just as I think it’s totally unfair to do this. But it’s just one more indication of how there is a double-standard in the way this campaign is treated.”
“But on the basic question,” he continued, ‘Should Gwen Ifill do the debate?’ Yes, she should. But the question, ‘If you put the shoe on the other foot what kind of outcry would there be?’” — Read More Here.
O’Wino and O’Hannity — the two resident NAZI “Piss-Throwers” at Fox News also attacked Gwen, claiming that she will not be impartial — because she has written a book entitled The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, set to be released on Inauguration Day.
I don’t think Gwen is about to loose her impeccable journalistic integrity over a hopless case like Sarah Palin.
Shut Up O’Reilly!, …..I have never witnessed Ms. Ifill “FIX” news they way you do on a daily basis. She is exactly what you are not — a faultless and honorable newscaster with an un-impeachable character.
“I’m still proud of Sarah,” “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.” — Laura Chase, who ran Sarah Palin’s campaign for mayor of Wasilla. [Book-banners are helping to keep America stupid] — “We are becoming the stupid giant of planet Earth: richer than Midas, mightier than Thor, dumber than rocks. Which makes us a danger to the planet – and to ourselves. This country cannot continue to prosper and to embrace stupidity. The two are fundamentally incompatible” — Leonard Pitts Jr.
Writes: Leonard Pitts Jr.
Of course, we all have questions for Sarah Palin:
Does she actually think living across the Bering Strait from Russia constitutes foreign policy expertise? Does she really take the parable of Adam and Eve as literal truth? How, exactly, does one field dress a moose? And why would one want to?
My first question, though, would not be one of those. I’d simply ask which books she wants to ban – and why.
Yes, there’s a list of titles floating around the Internet right now, but it’s a fake. It is, however, established fact that our would-be vice president has in the past tried to pull books off library shelves.
The New York Times reports that as a member of the City Council of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin complained to colleagues about a book called “Daddy’s Roommate,” described in promotional material as being “for and about the children of lesbian and gay parents.”
Laura Chase, who ran Palin’s campaign for mayor, explained that the book was harmless and suggested Palin read it.
Chase told the New York Times that Palin replied she “didn’t need to read that stuff. It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”
Later, as mayor, Palin reportedly asked the town’s librarian three times whether she would agree to remove controversial books from the shelves. Three times, the librarian refused. Palin fired her, but eventually bowed to public pressure and gave the woman her job back.
“I’m still proud of Sarah,” said Chase, “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”
And in that context, it seems apropos that next week is Banned Books Week. As you doubtless know, that’s the week set aside each year by the American Library Association to bring attention to attempts by some of us to regulate what others of us may read. The ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom reports that it has seen 9,700 “challenges” – a challenge is defined as a formal written request to remove a book from a library because the content offends or is deemed inappropriate – since 1990. Chillingly, the office suggests that’s probably an undercount. It says that for every challenge reported, four or five are not.
So Palin has company, to say the least.
Count among that number the woman from a Cuban exile group who bragged to a Miami Herald reporter how in 2006 she checked out and kept an elementary school library book she felt painted too rosy a picture of life on that Communist island. Like Palin, she thought she had good reason. Would-be book banners always do.
I’m reminded of how someone challenged me the other day on my contention that anti-intellectualism has overtaken this land. I mentioned by way of example Palin’s Bible literalism, but really, there’s so much more. There’s the “Jay Walking” segment on Leno. There’s this notion that “elite” is a four-letter word. There’s the White House’s censorship and politicization of science. There’s the recent survey that found that more people can name all five Simpsons than all five freedoms enumerated in the First Amendment.
And there’s this: as many as 50,000 incidents since 1990 in which a book was forced to justify its existence. We’re talking books like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” books like “The Color Purple,” books like “Harry Potter” and, yes, books like “Daddy’s Roommate,” books that offended because they expressed ideas that made someone uncomfortable. As if any other kind of idea was worth expressing.
We are becoming the stupid giant of planet Earth: richer than Midas, mightier than Thor, dumber than rocks. Which makes us a danger to the planet – and to ourselves. This country cannot continue to prosper and to embrace stupidity. The two are fundamentally incompatible.
So do us all a favor: Annoy Sarah Palin. For goodness’ sake, read.
[Enlarge] About The Author: Leonard Pitts, Jr. is a nationally-syndicated columnist and winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.
He was originally hired by the Miami Herald to critique music, but within a few years he received his own column in which he dealt extensively with race, politics, and culture. He lives in Bowie, Maryland.
He has won awards for his writing from the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and was first nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1993, eventually claiming the honor in 2004. He is also the author of the bestselling book Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood.
Pitts gained national recognition for his widely-circulated column of September 12, 2001, “We’ll Go Forward From This Moment,” in which he described the toughness of the American spirit even in the face of such a horrible attack.
In June 2007, Pitts was the subject of a campaign of death threats and harassment by neo-Nazis angry at a column he wrote about two whites raped and murdered in Knoxville, Tennessee. In his column addressing the murders, Pitts stated “for the crackpots, incendiaries and flat-out racists who have chosen this tragedy upon which to take an obscene and ludicrous stand. I have four words for them and any other white Americans who feel themselves similarly victimized. Cry me a river.”
McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, that is simply not true. In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. Two weeks ago I flew to Tokyo, crossing over the North Pole. Does that make me an expert on Santa Claus?…Fareed Zakaria, Editor – Newsweek International.
Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony? Is it too much to ask that she come to realize that she wants, in that wonderful phrase in American politics, “to spend more time with her family“? Having stayed in purdah for weeks, she finally agreed to a third interview. CBS’s Katie Couric questioned her in her trademark sympathetic style. It didn’t help. When asked how living in the state closest to Russia gave her foreign-policy experience, Palin responded thus:
“It’s very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America. Where–where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to–to our state.”
There is, of course, the sheer absurdity of the premise. Two weeks ago I flew to Tokyo, crossing over the North Pole. Does that make me an expert on Santa Claus? (Thanks, Jon Stewart.) But even beyond that, read the rest of her response. “It is from Alaska that we send out those …” What does this mean? This is not an isolated example. Palin has been given a set of talking points by campaign advisers, simple ideological mantras that she repeats and repeats as long as she can. (“We mustn’t blink.“) But if forced off those rehearsed lines, what she has to say is often, quite frankly, gibberish.
Couric asked her a smart question about the proposed $700 billion bailout of the American financial sector. It was designed to see if Palin understood that the problem in this crisis is that credit and liquidity in the financial system has dried up, and that that’s why, in the estimation of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, the government needs to step in to buy up Wall Street’s most toxic liabilities. Here’s the entire exchange:
COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?
PALIN: That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the–it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.
CNN’s Jack Cafferty: Sarah Palin Is NOT Qualified
This is nonsense–a vapid emptying out of every catchphrase about economics that came into her head. Some commentators, like CNN’s Campbell Brown, have argued that it’s sexist to keep Sarah Palin under wraps, as if she were a delicate flower who might wilt under the bright lights of the modern media. But the more Palin talks, the more we see that it may not be sexism but common sense that’s causing the McCain campaign to treat her like a time bomb.
Can we now admit the obvious?Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president.She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start. The next administration is going to face a set of challenges unlike any in recent memory. There is an ongoing military operation in Iraq that still costs $10 billion a month, a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan that is not going well and is not easily fixed. Iran, Russia and Venezuela present tough strategic challenges.
Domestically, the bailout and reform of the financial industry will take years and hundreds of billions of dollars. Health-care costs, unless curtailed, will bankrupt the federal government. Social Security, immigration, collapsing infrastructure and education are all going to get much worse if they are not handled soon.
And the American government is stretched to the limit. Between the Bush tax cuts, homeland-security needs, Iraq, Afghanistan and the bailout, the budget is looking bleak. Plus, within a few years, the retirement of the baby boomers begins with its massive and rising costs (in the trillions).
Obviously these are very serious challenges and constraints. In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true.
Fareed Zakaria was named editor of Newsweek International in October 2000, overseeing all Newsweek’s editions abroad. The magazine reaches an audience of 24 million worldwide. He also writes a regular column for Newsweek, which also appears in Newsweek International and fortnightly in the Washington Post.
Starting this year, Fareed has been hosting a new foreign affairs show on CNN Worldwide — Fareed Zakaria GPS, an hour-long program that takes a comprehensive look at foreign affairs and the policies shaping our world. Every week they bring you an in-depth interview with a world leader, as well as a panel of international analysts who examine the major global developments of the week. As always, Fareed’s emphasis is on new ideas and innovative approaches to solving the world’s toughest problems. Fareed Zakaria GPS airs each Sunday, at 1pm, on CNN.
She is damaged goods.
About The Author: 
