Friday, September 4, 2009

“What? You’re still around?”

First off, hi. No, the site isn’t dead. I’ve had my reasons for not writing here.

For one thing, I’m working on a book. I’m hoping to finish it by the end of the year so that it can find an interested publisher and get on bookshelves before the 2010 elections. It’s a lot of work, and given the need for my full-time day job, and all the other projects on my plate, it’s something that has required quite a bit of concentration and research. Sadly, unlike many already-established authors, I have no research staff; I’m doing everything on my own. (But if you’d like to help, I have several things I have yet to put together. I’ll happily and specifically credit you in the acknowledgements, and we can work out some sort of financial arrangement if you like.)

For another thing, whenever I catch up on current events, I find that I spend quite a lot of time with my head in my hands, moaning. August, in particular, was mind-numbingly infuriating as we saw the GOP have a complete and utter mental and ethical meltdown.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m going to make a series of posts here in the next few days, and try to bring us into the present.

“Sarah Palin for President! 2012–2013½!”

Let’s start with this idiot, because I’d like to get that out of the way first.

Her rambling, Timothy-Learyesque resignation speech on July 3 was punctuated with self-righteousness, rampant hypocrisy, brain-wrenching justification, several outright lies, and one of the most bizarre basketball analogies I’ve ever heard, most of which was peripheral to what she was actually announcing: that she was bailing on her job with three weeks’ notice, and telling those who elected her that they could just suck it up.

Unbelievably, her raving nucleus of supporters were still fully supporting her, believing that she can do great work for God and country on the national level even sooner than she could if she fulfilled her obligations to the people who elected her to office.

I started putting together a point-by-point rebuttal of Palin’s resignation speech some time ago, but my brain melted halfway through. The flurry of falseness, the litany of lies (and the abundancy of alliteration I seem to be indulging in) was just too much. It’s so much easier to overwhelm your opponents with lies than it is to engage in rational debate, and nobody’s better at chirpily and casually lying than Sarah Palin. Even John McCain looks uncomfortable when he’s doing it, but not Ms Palin.

If anything, the idiocy of her resignation speech was topped and topped again by her farewell speech on July 26. It was parodied brilliantly by William Shatner on Conan O’Brien’s show within a few days, and frankly, Shatner’s performance was more believable. Palin simply added to the breathtaking hypocrisy, added more lies, and completely ignored the fact that she’d served less than half of what she promised the voters of Alaska, most of that time doing exactly the opposite of what she was advocating on the national level.

And yet, there are those who believe that she’d make a great President. To which I can only say that this might be an excellent diagnostic metric for determining the severity of advanced dementia.

Palin’s words, actions and rhetoric are dishonest to their very core, whether she’s claiming that she was cleared of all ethics violations, or that further investigations would have cost millions of dollars, or that the health plan proposed by the Democrats has “death panels” (the stupidest invention of the GOP so far this year—and I’ll be saying more about that in the next few days). She should be firmly branded as the liar that she has repeatedly shown herself to be; I cannot understand for the life of me why responsible news outlets haven’t taken her to task, examined her statements, explained why they’re so completely false, and dismissed her.