Bland Ambition

Christ, this broad has some balls on her. Are we sick of this vile person yet?

Mrs Palin described Mr Obama as someone who saw the US "as being so imperfect... he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country".

Mr Obama served on a charity board several years ago with Mr Ayers, who is now a professor at the University of Illinois.

The White House hopeful, who was a child when Weather Underground was active, has denounced Mr Ayers' radical activities.

Oh hey, doncha know, stupid li'l ol' facts have never stopped this pathological liar from just making shit up. That's all she's done since the day McCain crapped her into the punch bowl. Enough of this kid-glove treatment -- Obama and especially Biden need to start picking up their game, and stop taking shit from this blithering idiot and her senile grampa.

Of course, as Matt Taibbi points out in his scathing profile of Mooseolini, among other issues, she has her own Jeremiah Wright:

Palin belongs to a church whose pastor, Ed Kalnins, believes that all criticisms of George Bush "come from hell," and wondered aloud if people who voted for John Kerry could be saved. Kalnins, looming as the answer to Obama's Jeremiah Wright, claims that Alaska is going to be a "refuge state" for Christians in the last days, last days which he sometimes speaks of in the present tense. Palin herself has been captured on video mouthing the inevitable born-again idiocies, such as the idea that a recent oil-pipeline deal was "God's will." She also described the Iraq War as a "task that is from God" and part of a heavenly "plan." She supports teaching creationism and "abstinence only" in public schools, opposes abortion even for victims of rape, has denied the science behind global warming and attends a church that seeks to convert Jews and cure homosexuals.

All that and the crazy witch doctor thing. If this is the sort of person that Americans think reminds them of themselves or their neighbors, they really need to re-evaluate their lives. Hopefully at one intrepid media person gets the chance to ask her if she really thinks humans and dinosaurs coexisted.

Whatever core ideologies serious conservatives once at least pretended to espouse, are no longer bothered with much. As brazenly cynical as it was for them to dump Fredo on an unsuspecting public eight magical years ago, it's nothing compared to the serious dumbing down necessary for them to keep a straight face with putting Palin on the ticket.

Why should we give her a pass on the most important issues of the day? Supposedly sharing the fears and concerns of the average families who face the burdens of mortgages, healthcare and economic insecurity, Palin simply refused to discuss changes in bankruptcy law and proved that she didn't know the provisions of McCain's healthcare plan.

All the glaring defects so blatantly on display in her debate with Joe Biden -- and that make her candidacy so darkly comical -- would be the same if she were a hockey dad instead of a "hockey mom." In fact, the cynical attempt to foist Palin on the nation as a symbol of feminist progress is an insult to all women regardless of their political orientation.

There was a time when conservatives lamented the dumbing down of American culture. Preservation of basic standards in schools and workplaces compelled them -- or so they said -- to resist affirmative action for women and minorities. Qualifications mattered; merit mattered; and demagogic appeals for leveling were to be left to the Democrats.

Not anymore.

Cheap demagoguery aside, what's becoming clearer and clearer by the day is just how low Palin is willing to stoop. She tells flat-out lies as easily as she throws a wink at the braying morons panting for her. She is quickly overshadowing her partner on the ticket, rather eagerly in fact.

In the last of her Couric interview installments on Thursday, Palin was asked which vice president had most impressed her, and after paying tribute to Geraldine Ferraro, she chose “George Bush Sr.” Her criterion: she most admires vice presidents “who have gone on to the presidency.” Hours later, at the debate, she offered a discordant contrast to Biden when asked by Gwen Ifill how they would each govern “if the worst happened” and the president died in office. After Biden spoke of somber continuity, Palin was weirdly flip and chipper, eager to say that as a “maverick” she’d go her own way.

But the debate’s most telling passage arrived when Biden welled up in recounting his days as a single father after his first wife and one of his children were killed in a car crash. Palin’s perky response — she immediately started selling McCain as a “consummate maverick” again — was as emotionally disconnected as Michael Dukakis’s notoriously cerebral answer to the hypothetical 1988 debate question about his wife being “raped and murdered.” If, as some feel, Obama is cool, Palin is ice cold. She didn’t even acknowledge Biden’s devastating personal history.

Despicable. She is really turning out to be a creepy, borderline-personality type, where the words they say have no intrinsic meaning, and other people are merely obstacles to them getting what they want. Borderline personalities quite literally will do or say anything that furthers their goals, regardless of the moral implications. This has consistently been the case with her.

So far, she seems to still be spinning her wheels with her choir-preaching and clown-punching, rendering her own running mate less and less relevant. But Americans have proven they'll fall for pretty much anything at times, there's a month to go, and they clearly plan on pulling out all the stops to get their shot at finishing Fredo's agenda of ruining the country.

Should McPalin achieve the unthinkable and pull this one out, McCain may want to look over his shoulder, keep an eye on this one. Maybe hire a food-taster, or a bodyguard to make sure she doesn't smother him with a pillow. She may stop at something, but we haven't seen that thing yet.