stop listening to sarah palin
I promised myself I would avoid political posts, but sometimes things get so dumb that you can’t help but start screaming.
The McCain campaign is right. Stop questioning Sarah Palin. Stop trying to force her to give press conferences and evening news interviews. Stop forcing her to say things, because the things she says are fucking worthless.
In an interview with Katie Couric, Palin was asked whether America could find itself in another Great Depression. Palin’s response was, “Unfortunately, that is the road that America may find itself on.”
First off, Couric should be slapped for asking a question with such an obvious answer. That answer, by the way, is “No.” It is fundamentally impossible for the United States of America to ever find itself in a situation similar to the Great Depression. Yes, life can get a lot worse for a lot of people. That’s certainly possible. But bread lines? No, not going to happen. A quarter of the country unemployed? Not going to happen. The difference between today and 1929 is that back then they didn’t have supermarkets and globalization. Most importantly, we didn’t have the FDIC, which ensures that money you’ve deposited at the bank can’t vanish overnight. You know that scene in It’s a Wonderful Life where everyone’s racing to pull their money out of Bailey Savings and Loan? That’s a bank run, where people literally try to outrun a financial collapse by withdrawing their money from the bank. The FDIC was created precisely because of that banking crisis during the Great Depression. It doesn’t insure Lehman Brothers, but it does take care of you. It’s not a perfect system, but it has done much to ensure the country’s financial stability. No one’s heard the words “bank panic” since my grandparents’ day.
So, no, we will never live in an America where “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?” is a Top 40 hit. The content of Palin’s answer displays a profound ignorance of basic financial security systems that have been in place for generations. But let’s take this one step further. Let’s also examine the style of her answer. Palin submits:
“Unfortunately, that is the road that America may find itself on.”
I certainly wouldn’t expect a straight yes or no from a politician, but I would expect a “Yes/No, but…” You know, something with supporting details, or facts, or theory, or anything that would indicate you have something resembling an opinion or a hunch on the matter. Instead, we get the equivalent of “Maybe, maybe not.” To make matters worse, it’s dressed up in an overlong metaphor about a road. This is the worst of freshman writing mistakes, lengthening what should be a five word response with an orgy of prepositions and useless turns of phrase.
Not only is Sarah Palin dead wrong about our supposed financial crisis, her responses to it are superficial and vacuous. She has no opinions, knowledge, or substance. Tina Fey’s impersonation of her is so spookily accurate because Palin, the real woman, is as shallow as the caricature. Stop listening to her. She has nothing to say.
Perhaps her answer was wishful thinking. Republicans would love to deregulate everything in this country to the point where we would go through the Great Depression again, and a lot of Democrats seem to be perfectly happy to go along.
Sorry, but the new look doesn’t do it for me.
For one thing, you’ll need to fix all the images: jon22 (green dot) net, older, and newer links to remove references to the previous color scheme. Then there’s also the matter that the virulent shade of orange you’ve chosen is … well, yuck. A color like that needs balance: in this case, this means lots of blue.
But most of all, none of your readers are ever going to suspect you of supporting McCain. The Obama logo, even faded and distressed, is just a little over the top for its front-and-center placement here. If you’re truly becoming a campaign site, though, more power to you.
I disagree. ALL things are better with the Obama logo on them, including, but not limited to, the Obama logo itself.
I like the Obama logo. It’s like a blog bumper-sticker. Electing him president is probably the most important thing in the country … or in the world. So, the more visibility the better. As far as Sarah Palin goes, if I can see money does that make me an economist … ? That’s kind of her ‘thinking.’ Or should I say, that’s the ‘script’ someone wrote for her.
Much better on the colors. I’m still not sold on the logo, but then again, neither am I a huge fan.
The red definitely works better with the Obama logo. Red, blue, orange and green was too many colors, but I liked the way the orange looked with the distressed green Older/Newer links. The particular shades of orange and green reminded me of pumpkins, which gave the theme a warm, early autumn feeling.