Palin is Dumb: Even O'Reilly Concedes

So many have heard by now that this year was an election year, and in the U.S. we had a presidential election between an old guy and a black guy.

I'll save you the suspense: the black guy won.

I voted for the black guy, and I hope the best comes from it, but I'm not getting my hopes up. More on that later. One of the biggest reasons that I voted Obama this year was due to the extremely poor decision made by the McCain campaign in selecting their VP nomination. It's no secret that I'm not a big fan of Gov. Palin. McCain's choice of her demonstrates, to me, that he failed at one of his biggest decisions of the campaign, and was not ready for the "big show" of the presidency.

I've gotten some feedback that my assessment of Palin may have not been "balanced". I think I backed up my inquiry of her intellectual capacity pretty well, but I guess those documents could be "doctored". So for those people needing a more "balanced" source revealing Palin's ignorance, I present to you Mr. Bill O'Reilly:



For those that can't/won't watch this clip, let me sum it up for you:

- There was plenty of in-fighting in the McCain camp about Palin. McCain's campaign manager was initially against it and thought it was a "hail Mary" play.

- Palin's knowledge base was "limited" in the following areas: government civics, basic government responsible at the municipal/state/federal level, U.S. and world geography, didn't know the nations involved in NAFTA (U.S., Mexico, Canada), didn't know that Africa was a continent and not a country, and basic tenants of U.S. foreign policy.

- She refused interview preparations for the Katie Couric interview. When the interview turned south, due to her complete and utter failure to answer softball-sized questions ("what magazines do you read?"), she turned on her staff and "suggested that she [Palin] was mishandled."

- Staffers went to meet Palin at her hotel room on the campaign trail and she greeted them "in her bath towel" after just stepping out of the shower. They were taken aback by this "rather uncommon" practice from the vice presidential nominee.

It goes on, but I think I'm going to get nauseous if I have to type any more.

So for all you "fair and balanced" types, there's Bill-O sharing the truth about Palin on your beloved Fox News. But of course, no one will concede that they made a mistake with their candidate, and we continue down the road of political gridlock that's entrenched this country for so long. So it goes.

Earlier in this post I said that I'm not getting my hopes up with the Obama presidency. I know that "hope" and "change" were themes of his campaign, but I guess I'll believe it when I see it. Why my pessimism? Because I know that the government is financially broken. I posted about it earlier. We spend an outrageous percentage (over 50%) of our national budget on defense. We spend more on defense than any other country in the world. Not just that, but we outspend the number two spender (China) nearly 10:1!!! U.S.=$623B, China=$65B. So the argument that Obama is going to "raise taxes" to pay for all his "social programs" a little bit without merit. Even if he started $20B in social programs in his first year, that's only 3% of what we spend on defense.

Unfortunately, I don't think Obama can get away from defense spending enough to make a difference in our overall economic picture. Although he has pledged to get us out of Iraq in 16 months (which at $9B a month will still cost us $144B), Obama has insisted on pursuing the war in Afghanistan. Unless he has a change of heart on this matter, I'm afraid we're going to be facing the same crippling financial situation in the coming years.

Of course, it would have been worse with McCain. How do you propose to continue our level of military operations overseas in both Afghanistan AND Iraq, while cutting taxes for everyone? It doesn't take an economist to realize that high levels of military spending + tax cuts + trillion dollar bank bailouts = poor national economy. I don't see how that made sense to anyone.

Political Linebacker

If you don't think this is funny, then you have no soul.



When I was in the "Advance Course" (and those quotes are intentional), our small group really got a kick out of the Terry Tate "Office Linebacker" videos that were on the interwebs. As soon as I saw this gem, I knew that I needed to post it up here.

"Hey Katie!"

Cafferty did it, Cafferty did it

Well, after my rant yesterday about Palin, I found this clip from Jack Cafferty on CNN.



Jack Cafferty, hats off to you sir. Crotchety old dudes are usually going on and on about "these kids today" and "high gas prices", but Cafferty treats that Palin clip with the visible contempt that it so richly deserves. I just wish that I had posted before he made his commentary.

Fun fact: as old and crotchety as Cafferty appears, he's only 65 (born '42). McCain is 6 years his senior (born '36). Damn it. That's old.

I heart Sarah Palin

Ok, not really. I have to admit that the whole election was really set for me when Palin was named as the vice-presidential candidate. It's unconscionable that this dummy would be the #2 elected official in the nation. If that idea doesn't worry you, then you should seriously consider not voting this year. You may not, in fact, be qualified to be a citizen of the US.

Now this isn't anything groundbreaking. There's been plenty of press on how poorly qualified she is. Not to mention that ridiculous Katie Couric interview. PS - when you're running for VP, it would probably help to #1. know some reputable national newspapers, #2. know a little something about your running mate, and #3. maybe have a more than cursory knowledge of the branches federal government, like the Supreme Court for example. I don't think that interview could have had more softball questions, and Palin whiffed most of them.

"Hold on Joel," some of you might say, "everyone knows that these journalist aren't entirely objective in their covering of the news. There's all kinds of spin that they can place on her answers to make her appear less than qualifies." I will concede your point. After all, O'Reilly does his own share of news interpretation in his "No Spin Zone". So how do we measure the qualifications of Palin? Well, I think that standardized testing gives us a good starting point. A document was published that contains many publicly available documents all about Palin.

Here's Palin's SAT scores from 1982:

To sum it up, she scored a 841 (425V/416M). That places her in the 38-39% nationwide for high school students. Wow. That means that about 6 out of 10 kids scored better than she did. For a reference, I scored a 1420. I consider myself a pretty bright guy, but I don't think I'm presidential material. But apparently Palin does.

Hey, maybe the SAT was a little difficult for her. Maybe she was out flying her airplane hunting wolves the night before? What about her IQ? How does she stand up with the rest of the country?



An 83. Sweet Jesus. Let me be absolutely clear: I'm not saying that someone with an 83 IQ can't be a fully productive and happy member of society. Absolutely not. I do firmly believe that "all men are created equal" and everyone should be afforded the same rights and privileges under the Constitution. That being said, I think that the person holding the 2nd highest office in the land should be held to a little bit higher standard. If you look at the bell curve, the two segments of the graph on either side of the 100 mark represent one "standard deviation" from the national mean. This is where the bulk of the population will score. You can see that Palin's score falls outside that section. From the test info, it shows that her "National WIQ percentile (1982)" is 12.8357%. This means that roughly 87% of people scored higher than she did. Think about that. If you're reading this, odds are your IQ is higher than Palin's. Do you want to have her handling complex national issues and dealing with foriegn head's of state? BTW, she's rarely been outside the US except briefly to Canada and Mexico, and a trip to Iraq, Kuwait, Germany, and Ireland as part of a 2007 visit to the Alaskan National Guard troops over there. And the Ireland visit wasn't so much a visit as it was a refuel stop.

"But Joel," you may still ask, "she's just going to be the vice president. McCain brings plenty of experience to the ticket." While I'm not going to discuss the merits of McCain's experience in this post, I would like to point out that McCain's health is less than stellar. He's currently 72, and would be 76 at the end of his presidency if elected. FYI, the average life expectancy in the US is 77.8. That's the average. Now consider that McCain did undergo years of torture and has already had malignant melanoma removed. Would that have an effect on his life expectancy? What about the stress associated with the office of President? Would that contribute to lessening his life expectancy? Here's a study that connect stress to premature aging, and is there a more stressful job than president? McCain's doctor maybe?

So here's Palin, a documented dullard with no foreign policy experience who doesn't know "what exactly it is that the VP does everyday." If elected, this dummy is one 72 year old's heartbeat away from being the president of the US.

Are you worried now?