Half Past Noon

Davey and Chris have weighed in on the Palin / Couric interview. Davey has also called me out because of my Palin enthusiasm. This is a response to all that… and more. This blog post comes with a guarantee: Everyone who reaches the end of this post will be transformed into an ardent Palin supporter. » Read the rest of this entry «

It was pretty embarrassing when Palin didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine was, but John Mark Reynolds has a good article arguing that sounding smart in politics is about BS. He uses this Obama quote as an example:

SIEGEL: Senator Obama, the short version of the Obama Doctrine.

SEN. OBAMA: Well, I think one of the things about the Obama Doctrine is it’s not going to be as doctrinaire as the Bush Doctrine because the world is complicated. And I think part of the problem we’ve had is that ideology has overridden facts and reality.

But I think that the basic concept — and I’ve heard it from some of the other folks — is that, increasingly, we have to view our security in terms of a common security and a common prosperity with other peoples and other countries. And that means that if there are children in the Middle East who cannot read, that is a potential long-term danger to us. If China is polluting, then eventually that is going to reach our shores. We have to — and work with them cooperatively to solve their problems as well as ours.

Ben Stein on Palin. I know my posts the last couple of days have made me look like an outright Palin Basher, but honestly, it’s Ben Stein talking about Politics. No matter what he says, I just can’t resist.

In response to my post from yesterday (since somebody has to do it), I offer the following from our local listserv. The author used to live in Moscow, but now lives in Alaska and checks in on us every onceinawho.
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Of course, we should all be expecting something like this following Palin’s speech. Factcheck.org hasn’t published anything about Palin’s speech yet – though Obama’s check is on the front page of the site – so I guess we’ll have to settle for this right now.

I’ll freely admit that Palin makes me feel threatened, because her crisp conservative halo is certainly outshining the messianic liberal glow of Obama’s aura. Still, people jumped so quickly on the Palin wagon (while knowing virtually nothing about her), and it made me a little uncomfortable.

We’ve now known about her existence for six days, and we have 2 major speeches (a couple other minor ones), a year and a half of executive public service, and so many scandals that I’m losing track.

Now she’s taking lines from GOP speech writers and while I haven’t examined the claims in depth, it looks like she’s bending the truth just like everybody else.

The Bridge to Nowhere Scandal is by far my favorite. I think I’ll study that one first.