The Former Half-Term Governor

Sarah Palin went on a diatribe today comparing gun violence to abortion.  The former half-term governor (R-AK-1/2) explained that...

Well, honestly, I don't know what she said beyond the headline.  I gave up caring what Ms. Palin said long ago.  The only reason I still will occasionally read her Great Thoughts is because she's given me so much material to write about.  She really has no clue what she's talking about, and I don't mean that as hyperbole.  To this day, she's still whining about the "gotcha" question Katie Couric asked her, which was "What newspapers and magazines do you read?  This isn't even a "gotcha" question to an eight-year-old child, who will happily tell you, if only because it proves they can read.  To most politicians ("most," in this case, being defined as every politician in the world except Sarah Palin), this is not only not a "gotcha" question but such a softball that they would pray to get it, so that they use it as a jumping off point to talk about literally anything.  It's worth noting that, to this very day, she's still never answered it.

And the examples of her not knowing what she's talking about is breathtaking and wide, from her first appearance on the public stage when she asked what it was that a Vice President does -- to her thinking that living near Russia qualified as foreign policy experience -- to not knowing who the Founding Fathers actually were (forcing her to answer that her favorite one was "All of them" -- to not knowing the story of Paul Revere and oh-so-much more -- to not being able to name a single Supreme Court case in the history of the United States she disagreed with -- to writing crib notes on her hand so that she'll remember her three, main talking points to...well, it just goes on and on.  Longer than the first The Hobbit movie.

Now, everyone might not have an answer to all that either, but then you're not running for Vice President of the United States, a heartbeat from being the most powerful person in the world.

And this is just the surface stuff, things she doesn't have an answer for.  It doesn't even get to things she thinks she can talk about. 

This is a person who uses her children like circus props.  When she ran for Vice President, one of her big claims to fame as an elected official to was put forth to qualify her to become next in lie to be Commander-in-Chief was that she had been Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.  Do you know how many people voted for her in her first election for mayor (which is basically a ceremonial position with few governing responsibilities)?  Take a minute and think before you guess.  Okay, the correct answer is 616 people.  That's about half the number of people as in my high school graduating class.

One of the articles I'm most pleased to have written -- in part because it's time-dated, so I can prove that I was ahead of the curve -- was called "The Worst Vice-Presidential Nominee in U.S. History."  It was posted on the Huffington Post on August 29, 2008, at 4:30 PM.  But that's East Coast time.  When I wrote it in Los Angeles, she's only been named by John McCain about three hours earlier.  The only reason it took three hours to post is because I had write it first.

Oh, sorry, back to Ms. Palin and her comparing gun violence to abortions.  (Hey, I told you she's good for copy.)  Here's all I'll say, without having read her Great Thoughts.  The day that a doctor can walk into a crowd and perform 20 abortions in 15 seconds against the women's will, then we can start to discuss the issue.