I just realized that I haven’t updated. I’ve been working on this and that, writing school stuff and writing for other places, so I guess I just felt like I’d updated more recently than I have.
It’s a busy, busy week this week. My sister’s birthday is today, so I’m taking her out for dinner tonight, and then getting a good night’s sleep because it’ll be my last until Sunday.
Most importantly, tomorrow night is DEBATE NIGHT. I will be purchasing more cheap champagne and live-twittering. Going to see if I can change my Twitter widget to update in the main blog area instead of in my sidebar, so those of you who don’t stay up to watch the hilarity can read it all the next day.
Apparently, the format of the debate is going to favor Palin–no follow-up questions. I’ve elaborated several times as to why I think that this will also help Biden–he’s got to answer the damn question, and won’t have much time to snark at Palin. She, on the other hand, will be able to make her own self look, well, clueless.
I stood up for the woman in the beginning–certainly not for her policies, but at least for her not being as dumb as people wanted to think. But as time has gone on, while I still don’t think she’s dumb, she certainly has proven herself to be willfully uninformed. I still won’t compare her to the much-maligned Dan Quayle. We’ve got another one much closer: George W. Bush.
Remember Bush sneering at a journalist translating languages for him? Or his many mispronunciations or confusions of foreign officials (I seem to remember a story about Prime Minister Poutine? Oh, ye gods.) Remember Bush defining the word “Sovereignty” as “it’s sovereign”?
This kind of arrogant, oppressive ignorance seems to be fading from popularity, as Obama’s poll numbers seem to indicate. One of the things I do like about Obama is his tendency, from all reports, to sit back and listen when other people are talking, and to be willing to learn. Now, since by all accounts Palin is cramming for her debate like a high schooler for the SATs, one would assume that she’ll have learned something by then. After all, I spent 3 hours Monday morning boning up on my economic policy and all I had was Google and a friendly debate through IM. (I don’t have a solution to the problem, but I like the one Bernie Sanders proposed–surprise, surprise.)
Point being, if she wanted to learn this stuff, it’s out there. She’s clearly not a stupid woman–she managed to get elected governor of Alaska without a dynasty behind her to shoehorn her into the seat. But she certainly didn’t count on being quizzed on federal-level policy this soon into her career, and it is pretty sad that even as a governor of a state she didn’t find it necessary to learn it.
Anyway, I’m honing my snark for tomorrow night. Until then, if you miss me, you can check out my Paul Newman piece, my first debate piece, my bailout piece, etc. at GlobalComment (plus read Renee’s stuff there, she’s excellent) and a bit of lighter fare: Janes in Love review at BUST and Black Summer review at Newsarama. And a bunch of junk on Tumblr.
Posted: October 1st, 2008 under Economy, Politics, Shameless self-promotion, comics.
Comments: 2
