We better learn from Palin

Sarah Palin, discussing Africa as country or continent:

My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars. Never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.

It might boost her cause if she said "Sudan" just once in there.

Snarky, you ask? Why, yes. Does it matter? (By it I mean the candidacy of Sarah Palin and whatever it is that she is doing now.) Yes. Andrew Sullivan says why very well.

McCain's nomination of Palin for VP, her candidacy and campaign crossed a line in American politics that shouldn't have been crossed. George W. Bush had dangerously low levels of knowledge and capability--and most of all, of introspection and decision-making based on reason rather than "gut." He was short on experience too--the governorship of Texas has a more limited role than other states. Sarah Palin busted even those low-bar barriers. Bush's presidency exceeded any expectations of disaster that could have been foretold. Yet so many Americans still exalt bravado and celebrate lack of intellectual ability, expertise and judgment, while allowing themselves to be manipulated by hot-button cultural issues like abortion and manufactured ones like elitism.

With the Bush/Cheney administration, we got cynical about being lied to, and accustomed to it, even if we knew how badly we were being treated. But Palin broke records for sheer chutzpah in telling lies. See The Daily Dish for a list of about 30 indisputable lies, large and small, uttered by Sarah Palin.

So much information was disseminated about the new candidate during the campaign that her corruption and cronyism in Alaskan government wasn't properly chewed and digested in popular discussion.

Charles Krauthammer, a conservative Palin realist, says she is smart, but if she wants to compete in 2012, she had better stay home for a couple years and "read."

The problem is, Palin doesn't know how much she doesn't know. And she doesn't seem to approach her deficits with humility. Can time cure that?

64% of Republicans pick Palin as top choice for their 2012 prez nominee, according to a Rasmussen poll taken last week. A majority of Americans may have thought that Palin was not qualified for the VP position, but she still ended the election with a 46-point favorable rating, in spite of a huge unfavorable rating. Palin should have been laughed off the stage. Instead, there is still a chunk of people apart from the rabid fans who think she's passable.

According to TPM: "Mike Wooten, the state trooper and former brother-in-law who Palin abused power over and lied about, is getting reassigned again because of continuing threats to his safety tied to Palin's nonsense."

Considering her vitriolic rhetoric and the wacko contingent she has fomented, I shouldn't have said "laughed off the stage." The vast majority of us should have been appalled enough to force her off the stage and left Alaskans to finish her off.