More on Sarah Palin's lack of intellect.

[nolawitch58]

How could anyone graduate with a major in journalism and not be able to name even one publication that she has read in the past? Couldn't she have pulled the name of the closest city paper to Wasilla out of her bag of tricks? Does Wasilla have a newspaper, even a weekly? The Pennysaver? Wheels and Deals? Field and Stream? Copies of Parents magazine or Redbook that she sees in her pediatrician's office. Not even USA Today? Something, anything?

America, aren't you sick of stupid people being in charge yet? Do you really think we're better off with complex problems and simpletons trying to solve them? Does it make you feel better because you don't understand the problems either? Here's your out if that is your issue.

My IQ is above average; however, I can only dream of Mensa membership with longing and regret. I read widely, mostly on my pet subjects, but I can discuss a wide variety of topics with ease. I'm pretty smart, and I don't understand the problems facing this country. The brilliant, but evil, bastards who are profiting from these problems like it that way. I personally want brilliant, but good, bastards who will confront the evil ones and level the playing field.

Some talking head on CNN said that only Washington lawyers could name several Supreme Court cases. I'm not a lawyer, nor in Washington, but I can remember quite a few from high school history and government classes. I may not know what legal precedent Marbury vs. Madison established (judicial review of legislation and Madison was only Secretary of State), but it must have been important for someone to have sued the president at the time and for me to have remembered it for a test in high school. Plessy vs. Ferguson, if I recall correctly (and I did), gave the nod to the concept of separate but equal treatment of the races. Brown vs. Board of Education overturned that ruling and supported integration (again correct). Griswold vs. Connecticut affirmed that states don't have any business preventing people from getting birth control (correct again). I can't remember the name of it, but the recent poor decision that expanded eminent domain to throw people out of their homes in favor of corporations to expand tax bases sticks in my mind except for the name (Kelo vs. City of New London). Gore vs. Bush (Bush vs. Gore) was another crummy decision by the Supremes that gave us the current steaming pile of manure we're wading through.

All that from a memory full of trivia and no fact checking from the Internet (soon to be rectified in parentheses). Also, Roe vs. Wade is not the only Supreme Court decision that matters. Look at the ones I listed and tell me they weren't important to a great number of people too.

We don't need more dim bulbs from the bottom of their classes to lead this country. Larry the Cable Guy just can't "git 'er done" against men with prestigious Ivy League educations and huge bankrolls who game the system in favor of their own socioeconomic class. That's why we can't afford another Joe Six-Pack type of person at the helm of state.

As I said, I'm not smart enough to be in Mensa, but I'm above average and I do not trust anybody who isn't at least as smart as I am or smarter to take care of the situations that are going to affect our lives in the future. I'm also getting fed up with the media phoning in their jobs. Can't any of the reporters spend some time explaining exactly what's going on with the economy instead of the partisan fight that surrounds the fixing of it? It doesn't have to be detailed analysis; break it down into some charts and graphs. I miss Ross Perot for the way he explained things and didn't pander to people's base emotions.

Both Palin and McCain are mental lightweights. She doesn't seem to have even a tenuous grasp on anything besides her pet issues. She is an empty suit from an equally empty state, and her only bona fides are her antipathy towards women's rights and embracing of right-wing fundamentalist Christianity. She doesn't speak with passion about anything. (We'll see how she does in the debate.)

The media needs to shoulder some of the burden of simplistic thinking. Television news consists mostly of talking heads. There is so little substance in terms of real facts and analysis. All you hear is "I think" and "what do you think" about whatever topic. Where are the facts? Where is the substance? What passes for news is mostly "he-said she-said" and rarely rises above the level of gossip.

Take the current financial crisis. You hear huge numbers followed by billion and trillion, but what does that represent? $700 billion represents every citizen of the USA owing over $2,000 more in taxes. That's on top of your current tax burden per year, and that's also additional to the over $2,000 every citizen owes to pay for the war in Iraq. We're going to pay for our complicity in the current, bleak economic climate whether we supported the people who caused it or not. It's time we supported people who won't dig us further into the hole and maybe have some idea of how to get out of the hole.

Trust me, getting out of a hole isn't easy. We're not going to enjoy the process. There will be whining and anger. That anger will be directed at the ones who are solving the problems and not those who created the problems. In that way, Americans are childish; resenting the parents who make them clean their rooms and do their homework even though it makes them better people.

Now, I wait for the debate and wonder.

Comments

[kitten-goddess.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting for the debate, too. Palin can speak in complete sentences, as evidenced by her acceptance speech. I hope she really screws up, both so that Obama will be helped and so I can laugh my ass off at her again. Yes, I can be quite the evil middle-school bitch :D

I also hope that Biden is eloquent and passionate and logical, of course.

As for the current financial mess, much of that was caused by people's own stupidity. Too many people got too much house for their wallets to pay for. Then they whine because they can't afford it. Stupid palins, every last one of them. It's time we all went on a collective credit diet. Of course, this is easy for me to say because I'm a renter who neither has car nor credit card. I'm proud of myself for not having credit cards. I am living proof one can live without those nasty evil pieces of plastic.

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

Not all of it was due to individual people's stupidity. There were poor banking practices and predatory lending underlying the mess. The protections enacted after the Crash of 1929 were eroded by a clarion call to deregulate. We re-allowed some of the same bad practices that caused the Great Depression.

I agree with a credit diet. I'm disgusted that I'm almost maxed out, but it's difficult to keep a cushion when prices continue to escalate faster than my salary. Nobody can keep up if inflation hits at 10% every year and your pay raise is only 5%. Nobody who isn't wealthy to start with, that is. They can sit and take the hit and say that the economy isn't so bad. They can say that we're whining and our recession is mental. They can pay lip service to the middle class when they are in no danger of joining us in the struggle.

[ex-whitepho.livejournal.com]

This is an awesome marvelous post, and I think Mensa should have you with an honourary membership for these words alone. :P

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

Alas, Mensa goes by the numbers. I see you're adding the extra "u" in some of your words as per standard usage in the Great White North. Good show.

[ex-whitepho.livejournal.com]

Yes, but quantitative assessments be damned. :P

I've been using extra "u"s for years now, despite the mockery for my so-called pretentiousness. I'm tempted to add additional letters in words and claim it's Canadian - a "q" here and there, an extra "v" for flare - how many people would know, really?

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

Not many. Spelling is a lost art in the age of BRB, LOL and TTFN. I can only hope that people continue texting while walking in traffic and get Darwinated out of the gene pool.

[kitten-goddess.livejournal.com]

But think of the traumatized drivers and poor injured vehicles :P!!!

[polarbear1986.livejournal.com]

I'm with you. I have an above average IQ and am fairly well informed on a variety of topis and some of this stuff is over my head.

As for Palin, I saw a bumber sticker on an SUV here in Knoxville that said



There's a part of me that really wants to get a sticker that says "stupid" and add it to the car, lol. Juvenille, I know, but still funny.

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

Banking regulations and economics are intended to be above our heads. They don't want us to understand it so they can fuck us with it.

Hmph! Real women refuse to be reduced to the sum of their reproductive parts. I thought Ms. Bitch had a lot of nerve squeaking out the words "women's right" when she advocates curtailing some of those rights.

[polarbear1986.livejournal.com]

I know, right? People never cease to amaze me... o_O

[real-skeptic.livejournal.com]

OK, not being American, I am looking at this as a trivia challenge to be taken without resorting to google.

Let me guess: Roosevelt wasn't the president (because he the president during WWII, or at least in its beginning, and you can't be a president for more than 8 years in the USA) , and there wasn't television yet (Another reference to WWII - people were listening to the news on the radio then.)?

Did Palin really say that?

[sofiaviolet]

Roosevelt was indeed not the president. Teddy was already out of office, and FDR wouldn't be elected until 1933. (At the time, there was no limit on the number of terms a president served. That was enacted after FDR died; he was elected 4 consecutive times.)

[real-skeptic.livejournal.com]

Ah, well. I nearly got it right. At least I have the excuse that American History is not a mandatory school subject in my country. :-@

[slamlander.livejournal.com]

That's alright. It isn't a required subject in America either :)

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

It wasn't Palin who said that; it was Biden.

And I don't care. He gets enough of other things right, more so than the dimwit ticket of McCain/Palin, that I won't fault him. Besides, every time you see a documentary on FDR, some of his famous "Fireside Chats" have been filmed while he's doing his radio addresses. Joe saw that on TV, which colors so much of the rest of our consciousness.

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

Mensa's just a bunch of self-important jerkwads. It seemed to be more of a singles group for "smart people" and then something to brag about to make other people feel dumb. (I could have joined, but chose not to because of the high asshole count in the group).

NPR has been running some VERY good explanatory podcasts on "Fresh Air" about the financial crisis for the past couple of weeks.

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=09-23-2008&view=storyview
(this one was excellent in explaining what the hell is going on with our economy).

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=10-1-2008
(I'm in the middle of this one now, it's good historical perspective)

And there's this post on LJ, which explains something about international investment banking and why credit is drying up now:
http://kass-rants.livejournal.com/150744.html#cutid1

The New York Times has been running some decent articles for the past couple of weeks as well. It's easier to understand the NYT writing after listening to the podcasts. I don't have links to all the Times' articles, and I have to get back to work, so I can't look em up like I did for the podcasts.

ALl I have to say about the debates, is that I got Bingo, and if I was doing a drinking game and my word was "Maverick" I'd have died of alchohol poisoning last night. I think they should stop saying Maverick, and instead try "Matlock" or "McGyver"... (Biden also said the "M" word a zillion times, too).

I also want to know where Palin gets of pretending to still be working class when she's been pulling a mayoral and gubernatorial salary for years now. Who the fuck does she think she's kidding?

Re: your last paragraph

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that when the "First Dude" of Alaska WAS working, he was a union member. People in unions have better everything, including wages, benefits, protections, etc. than non-union workers. Union workers are not like the rest of us out here fighting the company we work for all alone for every scrap it gives us. They have collective bargaining that gives them real power not quite equal to the corporate adversary but close to it.

It kills me that people don't understand that concept, and as worker bees hate the unions as much as the corporations do. Must be the great PR job the corporate fascists have done over the past several decades.

Re: your last paragraph

[slamlander.livejournal.com]

I'm with voxwoman. Every Mensa member that I've met was a pretentious asshole. I passed the tests and declined the option. That club's all about lording it over the stupids and mundanes. It's a superiority license.

I think my last post defended Palin a bit but that was me giving her the benefit of the doubt. The debate clinched it for me. If that was her best then McCain is in serious trouble. I am convinced that Palin was a sop to the Religious Right.

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

America, aren't you sick of stupid people being in charge yet?

This is why democracy is a bad idea.

[slamlander.livejournal.com]

I've been getting most of that news on CNBC, which is better than CNN or BBC World (If you want to really see skewed and clueless American reportage).

I saw the debate (03:00h here, in CET land) and was much disappointed. At the end, I would have voted Biden for President, no problem. I think we have the wrong two asshols in the top slot.