and if you don't like c&p's, never ever read 'em, don't look at this one, save yourself the stomach acid...

Juicing up the ticket

Dishonest, cynical men put forward Sarah Palin for national office, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about.

By Garrison Keillor

Oct. 08, 2008 | We are a stalwart and stouthearted people, and never more so than in hard times. People weep in the dark and arise in the morning and go to work. The waves crash on your nest egg and a chunk is swept away and you put your salami sandwich in the brown bag and get on the bus. In Philly, a woman earns $10.30/hour to care for a man brought down by cystic fibrosis. She bathes and dresses him in the morning, brings him meals, puts him to bed at night. It's hard work lifting him and she has suffered a painful hernia that, because she can't afford health insurance, she can't get fixed, but she still goes to work because he'd be helpless without her. There are a lot of people like her. I know because I'm related to some of them.

Low dishonesty and craven cynicism sometimes win the day but not inevitably. The attempt to link Barack Obama to an old radical in his neighborhood has desperation and deceit written all over it. Meanwhile, stunning acts of heroism stand out, such as the fidelity of military lawyers assigned to defend detainees at Guantánamo Bay -- uniformed officers faithful to their lawyerly duty to offer a vigorous defense even though it means exposing the injustice of military justice that is rigged for conviction and the mendacity of a commander in chief who commits war crimes. If your law school is looking for a name for its new library, instead of selling the honor to a fat cat alumnus, you should consider the names of Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, Lt. Col. Mark Bridges, Col. Steven David, Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer, Lt. Cmdr. Philip Sundel and Maj. Michael Mori.

It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone's mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged. When she said, "One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars," people smelled gas.

Some Republicans adore her because they are pranksters at heart and love the consternation of grown-ups. The ne'er-do-well son of the old Republican family as president, the idea that you increase government revenue by cutting taxes, the idea that you cut social services and thereby drive the needy into the middle class, the idea that you overthrow a dictator with a show of force and achieve democracy at no cost to yourself -- one stink bomb after another, and now Gov. Palin.

She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her vacuity, and she was Mr. McCain's first major decision as nominee. This troubles independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his candidacy. She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career making personal appearances for 40 grand a pop, and she'll become a trivia question, "What politician claimed foreign-policy expertise based on being able to see Russia from her house?" And the rest of us will have to pull ourselves out of the swamp of Republican economics.

Your broker kept saying, "Stay with the portfolio, don't jump ship," and you felt a strong urge to dump the stocks and get into the money market where at least you're not going to lose your shirt, but you didn't do it and didn't do it, and now you're holding a big bag of brown bananas. Me, too. But at least I know enough not to believe desperate people who are talking trash. Anybody who got whacked last week and still thinks McCain-Palin is going to lead us out of the swamp and not into a war with Iran is beyond persuasion in the English language. They'll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in a cold hard rain before they connect the dots.

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Incredible. Thank you. Maybe the best commentary I've read anywhere this entire election.

StandardDeviation:

They'll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in a cold hard rain before they connect the dots.

that's a really optimistic view.

&

Makes you wonder why he withheld this for so long....

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first, that column was more about brooks than about obama or palin or republicans.

so you probably know where i'm going here, about no/guy/unable/to/resist/etc ..

Thanks for that, topazz. I hadn't seen it.

Agreed, especially with the self-serving Reinhold Niebuhr reference. It was like, hey, this guy is actually up to my level

Regardless, it was an endorsement of sorts, albeit begrudging admiration.

Thank you for this, I'll be glad to share it.

My husband recently saw G. Keillor give a talk at a bookstore in the Chicago area .... said he liked him very much ... said he sounded just like he does on his radio shews.

Wasn't it he who said that his summers as a child in Minnesota were spent watching the grass grow?
I guess I can say not all of the time, of course ...

He is really amazing. Thanks!

His new book - "Liberty" - is a wonderful and funny read. I recommend it. He has a way with characters. :)

Along the same lines is this from Radley Balko:

This growing anti-intellectualism on the right is alarming. It isn’t that Palin is dumb. I don’t think she is. It’s that she has no interest in learning, no interest in reading or experiencing anything that might challenge what she already knows she believes. She thinks with her gut, as Steven Colbert might put it. She’s a female W. And they seem to love her for it. The GOP has gone populist. Knowledge, worldliness, and learning are to be shunned, swept aside as East Coast elitism. It’s all about insularity, earthy values, and simpleness. Remember the beating John Kerry took in 2004 for daring to use the word “nuance?” There’s no room for complexity on the right anymore. It’s good and evil. Black and white. Us and them.

Here's Bush expressing disdain for expertise:

After some more give and ake, Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, presents a five-page list of 192 economists and business school professors who oppose the plan. Bush isn't impressed. "I don't care what somebody on some college campus says," Bush says.

McCain is smarter than Bush or Palin, but his crusades against planetariums and studies of bear DNA aren't endearing him to me.

If McCain loses, I hope the result is that the Republican party has its time in the political wilderness and jettisons social conservatism, national greatness conservatism*, and muscular foreign policy**.

The Democrats didn't turn into a better party after their time in the wilderness; instead, they got back into power (in Congress) because the Bush administration imploded. So if the Democrats make a mess of things, it's possible that the Party of Rove will find its way back into power, which would suck.

* i.e., big government conservatism or borrow and spend conservatism

** i.e., bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran

in the same way I like Keillor is Sarah Vowell.
She has a new book out "The Wordy Shipmates" ..... she fun to watch on tv too.
Although she doesn't care for him much, one thing they have very much in common are unusual speaking voices.

Well, S.D., you clearly do NOT "get it."

1. Sarah Palin's resume is a tad more impressive than Barack Obama's.

2. Sarah Palin never had a "mentor" who said "God **** America, the U.S. KKK of America.

3. Sarah Palin has no campaign advisor who destroyed the economy, as Obama's chief financial advisor, Mr. Raines, did.

4. Sarah Palin's husband never ever said "I've never been proud of America."

5. Sarah Palin IS NOT RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT!

John McCain is. Get a clue, lad.

6. Sarah Palin did not have her first political housewarming at the home of radical terrorist, William Ayers. That was Barack Hussein Obama.

7. Sarah Palin did not get into college by using the money and prestige of a radical Muslim. That was Obama who did that.

I could go on at great length about how much better Sarah Palin would be IF she were candidate for president, but as usual, your exploding cigar blew up in your face.