What’s amazing about reading the transcript of the debate is how little of Sarah Palin I actually absorbed and remember. I have no idea what she said and when I read the transcript, it’s like I didn’t even see the debate. Or, not Palin’s half of it, anyway. Take her response on global warming.
IFILL: Governor, I’m happy to talk to you in this next section about energy issues. Let’s talk about climate change. What is true and what is false about what we have heard, read, discussed, debated about the causes of climate change?
PALIN: Yes. Well, as the nation’s only Arctic state and being the governor of that state, Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it’s real.
I’m not one to attribute every man — activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.
But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don’t want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?
We have got to clean up this planet. We have got to encourage other nations also to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that.
As governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change sub-cabinet to start dealing with the impacts. We’ve got to reduce emissions. John McCain is right there with an “all of the above” approach to deal with climate change impacts.
We’ve got to become energy independent for that reason. Also as we rely more and more on other countries that don’t care as much about the climate as we do, we’re allowing them to produce and to emit and even pollute more than America would ever stand for.
So even in dealing with climate change, it’s all the more reason that we have an “all of the above” approach, tapping into alternative sources of energy and conserving fuel, conserving our petroleum products and our hydrocarbons so that we can clean up this planet and deal with climate change.
I remembered that she refused to say that global warming is manmade, but I totally missed the part where she said she created a sub-cabinet to deal with the issue. My brain stopped functioning as soon as she got on her gerbil-wheel and started yammering. She spoke so fast and made so many logical switchbacks, that I simply could not understand what she was saying or why she might be saying it. There is so much wrong with her global warming answer that I don’t even know where to start (Kyoto, our consumption, the idea that we allow others to consume energy?). But her answers are so devoid of real meaning that they are hard to rebut.
She gave a stunning performance. I mean that literally. It’s not a compliment. She stunned me and made me stupid. I think I am still at least 5% more stupid this morning than I was last night before I watched the debate. How about you?
It’s still her Cheney Fourthbranch answers that bother me the most.
That made me ill thinking about what this woman would do in the office…she might actually make Cheney look like a saint.
But Biden’s answer on Darfur was unacceptable.
Screw that. That’s yet another war/occupation waiting to happen at a time where the ones we’re running right now are failing miserably. The fact Biden’s even considering another deployment is enough to piss me off.
Both of them are dangerous, frankly. Same goes with Obama and McSame. We’re not going to be able to do this intervention crap anymore…period.
How do you get “war/occupation” from that? He talked about a no-fly zone and getting the African Union some helicopters.
Are we supposed to leave Darfur to rot?
I think Darfur should become a test-case for a new world order. If the UN can intervene there without the use of a single U.S. soldier or piece of U.S. equipment then we might actually have reached a point of sanity in humanitarian intervention. Of course, the UN is totally incapable of doing anything without US equipment and cargo planes. We’re tapped out, and it’s up to people with resources to invest them and take over the burden. We’re done for now. Even the money should come from somewhere else. We’d be borrowing it anyway, so let’s save the interest.
in all kindness,
We already had our test case..in Bosnia/Serbia/Kosovo. Oh my, they were not color enhanced.
The UN doesn’t have a Military Defense arm. It relies on members – the same countries always doing the heavy lifting.
Maybe if we moved all that equipment from Afghanistan to Darfur it would be more useful and humanitarian. How many have died there? I’ve lost count.
How about a few drones and jets from Israel too.
And to be fair and balanced,
Throw in the Saudis, who are sitting on all that equipment…more than they need
We are excuses driven.
I was surprised to see that Biden’s answer on Darfur had the highest rating of the night on the CNN measure of independent Ohio voters.
Darfur is a major, major topic of discussion in pulpits all over the country, and Obama and Biden get big points whenever they discuss it.
If it’s African Union helicopters that’s one thing. I’m used to, oh, mission creep since ’69.
Better to not have done it at all. Should we leave them to rot? No.
But we have our own problems right now in Afghanistan/Iraq/Pakistan. Now we’ve got to save Darfur too?
Who’s saving us? Clintonian intervention is still Clintonian intervention.
When I hear a plan that doesn’t involve an open-ended commitment to stand there and referee, then I’ll listen. I have never heard of such a plan. Let someone else be the referee, and let them pay for it. There is no reason why the U.S. has to be the necessary ingredient in all humanitarian stew. That must change.
Absolutely.
The unitary VP shite scared the living shit out of me. This philosophy must be immediately test via legislation intended to spawn a court case. If the courts side with the Cheney/Palin model, the brain drain from this country will be an incredbile sight to see – but only if the dangers of this are fleshed out and discredited vehemently to the American people. Otherwise, we’ll stumble into an even more fascist/authoritarian form of govt.
If anyone is a clone of Bush, it’s this lady.
It’s about the only good follow up question Ifill had last night, and showed how damaging a more assertive moderator would have been.
I couldn’t get past 15 seconds of that.
Just as my stupid deflectors kept making me change the channel during the debate. There was something cool on the History channel. I forget what it was but it didn’t make me stupid.
Are you sure? Maybe your limited exposure to Palin destroyed the memory cells that should be telling you what was on the History Channel.
I remember the climate change sub-cabinet boast. Hubby and I don’t drink. Instead, we were paying very close attention to every word Palin said because we were playing “Catch the Lie!” Each of us tried to be the first person to yell “LIE!” when we heard one. This devolved into side discussions of how blatent the lie was and whether she knew she was lying. So we missed most of what Biden said.
She lied when she said she was the first governor to create a sub-cabinet on climate issues. I think 28 states did it before her.
Ugh, reading her words is even more stupid-inducing than hearing her deliver them pep rally style.
She is a talking points robot drone that is triggered by key words. When she heard Biden say something about Education, she went into her education mode.
I was struck about how she needed to look down at her notes to talk about the role of the VP. Can you imagine being in a job interview and having to read a paper to discuss the job you are applying for? Crazy.
You have to look at the debate with this handy Palin flowchart and then you’ll understand. A little bit.
three non-political people in my office have sent it to me. I consider that a good sign.
Sarah Palin proved beyond a doubt last night that she has a good memory for talking points and she knows how to steer away from questions she doesn’t have an answer for. Every voter in AMerica should have to watch the side by side comparisons of Sista Sarah and Tina Fey emoting the same exact words and getting huge laughs. When did “average” become so acceptable. Is this what we want our children to aspire to? George made being a C student and a fuckup acceptable.
That’s what I can’t figure out. You’d think that an 8-year reign of ignorance and gross stupidity, with its consequences raging all around us, would have been enough to end the fashion for dumbass. Did Palin claim to have been a teacher? That’s even scarier to me than the thought of her as VP.
No, her very diverse family that she has such a high tolerance for, has several teachers, such as her brother and father/grandfather.
Thanks. I’ll sleep a little easier now. Although she DID say as VP she’d be focusing a lot on education. That ain’t gonna happen, but just the fact that such a thought can be thought is enough to give a person the shivers.
Best tweet I saw on that last night was from a 16-year old white kid.
I don’t know if I’m more stupid this morning, but I’m definitely still a bit hungover from everything I had to drink to make it through that ridiculous 90 minutes.
As a co-worker pointed out today “If I had to take a sip every time she said ‘Alaska’ I’d have died from alcohol poisoning.”
Or how about ‘also’? I think she says it instead of ‘um’, and she must have said it a couple hundred times last night.
She said “also” 48 time according to Language Log
Thanks for that link! It saved me the time of going through the transcript.
Frankly, I would’ve taken a drink every time she said ‘nukaler’ — if I drank. Alas, I do not.
Not a big sin, no (I now tuck my northeast elitism back into my britches) — but it does add yet another shade of resemblance to the Current Occupant & the Cult of Sociopathic Personality that passes for GOP electoral politics.
In all honesty, I do keep wondering about how much lipstick she left on that firehose.
Stunning is the word. I think some of the impact was muted at first because her ignorant stupidity took a somewhat different expression from what we saw in the famous interviews. She was not quite the incoherent, defensive prom queen runnerup we had grown accustomed to. Instead she graduated to well-rehearsed evasiveness and aggressive regurgitation of a dozen or less talking points and key phrases.
I suppose some people, mostly those as incurious and self-absorbed as Palin, were impressed by her ability to throw big words around in interminable, meaningless pseudo-sentences. To those who have never really listened to anything that attempts to convey thought rather than “feeling”, her babble probably sounded just like what everything else sounds like that isn’t Glenn Beck or Hole in the Wall. What I can’t figure out about Palin is: Is she really the ignorant fool she plays, or is she a highly accomplished scammer who learned the craft of misdirection from sideshow barkers and tv preachers?
Gotta confess, I don’t care enough to pursue the matter. Tomorrow night we’re watching the DVD of Forgetting Sarah. Given the timing, I take that as advice to us all from whatever gods there be.
that climate change spit was all froth and blather. Made no sense. You can’t believe her performance was stunning.
We may as well elect Palin because she can skin a Moose…and she has a good wink.
The glow that she held her own, because people were expecting a Couric repeat, has lasted all of two hours.
Tony Blankley on NPR and via TPM Charles Krauthammer have both raised the white flag
TPM: “One thing to watch for: Prominent conservatives essentially conceding that the race is over.”
“We will do what is best for the American People in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president’s agenda in that position…uhm…yeah…so I do agree with him we have a lot of flexibility in there that we do have the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to…uh…to be attributed to my pick as Vice President.”
* Verbatim quote from Sarah Palin 10/2/2008
Huh?
Joe Biden is running for Vice-President, Sarah Palin is running for Homecoming Queen.
From a somewhat LESS than stunning…
Awwwww…YOU know!!!
Yup.
About Sarah Palin?
Awwwww…YOU know!!!
AG
she so reminds me of a monty python skit, but without the wit or intelligence.
I, for one, can hardly wait for this week’s SNL. Apparently Queen Latifa is going to play Gwen Ifil.
I though it was torture to hear Palin make a comment. It was clear she was tutored and there was no conviction or truth to the words. You could hear it in her voice.
Reading a script, doesn’t make Palin VP material.
Che: Instead of government, we had a stage. Instead of ideas, a prima donna’s rage. Instead of help, we were given a crowd. She didn’t say much, but she said it loud.
Yup, and purty, goshdarnit
Booman, why do you think I wear this silver hat? It protects the brain – I slept quite well, and woke up fine.
Out of morbid curiosity, I broke my “no Palin ever!” rule. I’ve seen train wrecks before and that was a real disappointment, think I better start watching McCain now. We’re getting there, but the show must go on.
Dusty Springfield
My noted enthusiasm for her looks was the only thing that prevented me from exploding into pure outrage when I watched what parts of the debate I could. The lies and distortions were irritating in the extreme, but I knew that was going to happen.
When she was going on about a two-state solution for Israel and other foreign policy issues, I zoned out because I know already that those weren’t her beliefs. They were her handlers’ beliefs.
In the end, with the cue cards and lack of mental agility, the debate only reinforced what I knew already: she’s not worth the nomination and no amount of preparation will make that so.
Come on! There are plenty of women out there her age and older who are better looking than she is, sexier than she is, who don’t have that stale beauty pageant runner-up look, AND who have a brain, AND who can construct not one, but TWO or even THREE coherent, grammatically correct sentences in a row, AND who are not addicted to lying. And they also don’t have that annoying kindergarten teacher voice with the hokey forced folksy accent.
What’s WRONG with you?! :o}
Name a politician with a better visual package, then.
I like her hair.
I like her height.
I like her glasses.
I like her age.
I like her motherhood.
I like most of her dress sense.
The visuals work for me. Anything else, including her “folksy” routine, forget it. She can jump into the Bering Sea for all I care.
So – ummmm – your lust is limited to politicians?
Oh yes, and take a look at her “dress sense” before the McCain campaign started paying for a personal stylist to dress her up in $3,000 couture jackets and the like! So, yeah, she looks good in what they are dressing her in – who wouldn’t?
As for the hair – HUH?! You LIKE that throwback to the ’80’s look?!
And then there’s the motherhood part. Well, as a generality, OK, but I gotta question the quality of her mothering given – you know, the delinquent first born who was forced to join the military in order to avoid going to jail, the – ahem – condition (and allegedly very “active” lifestyle) of her unmarried teenage daughter, and last but not least her willingness to undertake the most demanding job in the world during the most critical months and years of her brand new, oh, so willingly borne baby with potentially serious mental and physical needs. How can THAT be sexy?!
No, my lust is not limited to politicians. There are movie stars and other personalities that bypass her in a heartbeat. In the political world, though, I can’t name anyone better off the top of my head in terms of hitting my visual likes.
I love her hair color. I like the beehive look. Booman nailed it elsewhere when he said it was about seeing her when she lets it down.
As for her motherhood, it’s not what the kids have become, or her views on parenting, it’s that she’s had kids in the first place. I can’t put my finger on it, but I like that about her.
I look at her and I see a woman. Not a chick, not a girl, not a babe, not a honey, but a woman. That does things for me.
You bring to mind Shatner on Boston Legal. Sorry.
LOL. I admit that this is an unorthodox conversation, to say the least.
At this point, being shallow keeps things on a relatively light note because otherwise, the policies and positions of the McCain/Palin ticket inspire nothing but disgust and anger.
Funny, but I don’t think of her as a woman at all, but as a beauty pageant runner-up has-been who never quite got over it. Last night she reminded me of nothing more than a smug, self-satisfied cheerleader campaigning for homecoming queen. Not what I think of as womanly.