from Solicitr
What is characteristic of Palin's terms as mayor and governor has been a decided lack of action on the Christian Right agenda. But that didn't stop the Kossacks from depicting her as the new Cotton Mather.
The thing that decided it for me was the morning her name was leaked as McCain's VP selection, I went to Wikpedia and read her bio. I remarked minutes later to someone that it read like the script for a Frank Capra movie. I thought she was either one truly amazing person or this was simply too good to be true.
Over the next 48 hours, her actual true record- a far more complete record - came out. The contrast between the wikipedia entry of Palin and the reality of Palin was jarring and unsettling.
Within days we found out why. The 48 hours before her name was leaked, several people went into the wikipedia bio and drastically rewrote it. It read like a Frank Capra script because that was the intention of the Republican political operatives who rewrote it to sound exactly that way. If we want to throw bricks at at a lack of objectivity, we can start with that crew. In fact, when others attempted to put back missing information or add other information after her announcement,a huge back and froth rewriting donnybrook erupted and wikipedia froze the page for a period of time and would not allow anyone to make changes.
We were being sold a bill of goods that was a very attractive package with something very different actually inside. We were getting the worst possible combination of Republican Party characteristics - a small government libertarian and a social issues conservative.
The whole librarian situation was just part of that. A bigger part of that for me was what I saw as terrible decisions as governor of her state on behalf of the people of Alaska. Palin was elected on a plank of protecting the public through public safety programs and taking on a host of other problems that she cited in the campaign. Any check of where Alaska stands compared to other states on problem like crime, alcoholism, drug abuse, unemployment and education completion shows that they have many serious problems.
Other governors can claim that in this time of decreasing state budgets, there is not much they can do. Not true for Governor Palin. The State of Alaska is reaping billions of dollars in royalties and taxes from Big Oil in their state. There is no lack of revenue to tackle the problems she pledge to attack. Instead, she adopted the philosophy of the small government crowd and decided to simply give the money of Big Oil directly to the people of Alaska in a huge socialistic income redistribution scheme.
I see that as a perfect example of failure of leadership.
That is what did it for me.
Charles Gibsons interview, Katie Courics interview, the endless run-on sentences, the obvious lack of knowledge on many vital issues, the emerging pattern of getting all you can at the expense of others, the $150 thousand from fancy department stores, the demagougic speeches at the rallies, the refusal to answer questions during the debate .... all that and more just confirmed the conclusion I came to after week one of Sarah Palin.
And I have not seen one thing to tell me I misjudged her.
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.... John Rogers
