From The New York Times:
Now comes Ms. Palin, a smiling, bubbly vice-presidential candidate who travels in an alternate language universe. For Ms. Palin, such things as context, syntax and the proximity of answers to questions have no meaning.
In her closing remarks at the vice-presidential debate Thursday night, Ms. Palin referred earnestly, if loosely, to a quote from Ronald Reagan. He had warned that if Americans weren’t vigilant in protecting their freedom, they would find themselves spending their “sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.”
What Ms. Palin didn’t say was that the menace to freedom that Reagan was talking about was Medicare. As the historian Robert Dallek has pointed out, Reagan “saw Medicare as the advance wave of socialism, which would ‘invade every area of freedom in this country.’ ”
Does Ms. Palin agree with that Looney Tunes notion?
From Andrew Sullivan:
She really does just make things up. In last night's debate she said:
"When I and others in the legislature found out that we had some millions of dollars [of Permanent Fund investments] in Sudan, we called for divestment through legislation of those dollars."
Yep: you guessed it:
A search of news clips and transcripts from the time do not turn up an instance in which Palin mentioned the Sudanese crisis or concerns about Alaska's investments tied to the ruling regime. Moreover, Palin's administration openly opposed the bill, and stated its opposition in a public hearing on the measure.
The racism in this presidential election has less to do with Obama than with Palin. No black woman (or man) in America could get so far in politics with so little. If Palin were black, she would not be qualified to be a community organizer.
One more note: In an essay on the movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, James Baldwin points out this to be one of the problems with the black character played by Sidney Poitier, Dr. John Wade Prentice: he is overqualified. But in the situation of the movie, his great achievements in science, and the fact he is moving to Europe (the land of the liberals), is what allows him to obtain the hand of an ordinary white woman. Like Prentice, Obama is overqualified. But in post-Carter presidential politics, this is not a plus but a minus. Obama won the debate against McCain by not appearing to be what he actually is: overqualified. In both debates, it was the Democrats who had to show restraint, who had to hide the extent of their know-how. The Republicans, on the other hand, were free from restraint.
