Michele Bachmann is a "Sarah Palin with a brain"?!?

[JollyRoger]

Plus, the founders and framers didn't even agree with each other. The Constitution was a power grab.

 

[Askthepizzaguy]

I'm not quite so hostile towards references to the nation's history or founding myself. It is an inspiring story, and many of the founding fathers were exceptional people. What's more, it's all part of the ritual glue that holds our country together. Countries need their own mythology of sorts. The United States doesn't have the kind of unified ethnic background that Germany or China does, so it can't just use stories about the great accomplishments of it's ethnic people to inspire it's citizens. Instead, we've had to make ourselves a story based on the accomplishments of the nation's citizens over the last two hundred odd years. Like all young things, it comes on a little strong sometimes, but it's effective in promoting essential national unity.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for patriotism and knowing history. I myself consider history a worthy enough endeavor that I wanted to teach it for a living, so our future generations understand our role in the world and the struggles we went through to become free, and what freedom really means.

That said, I am sick to death of politicians associating themselves with greatness by merely referring to history, instead of discussing how they will make the country better and sticking to the issues at hand. It reeks of insincerity, especially when they don't even understand the basic facts involved or the underlying concepts. It's a cheap trick, like mentioning the name of your home town during a speech to get a cheer.

Way to be uncontroversial and pander to the base, instead of have a spine or substance, politicians. Don't even get me started on the "he's not wearing a flag pin!" while they are also not wearing a flag pin nonsense. It makes me want to retch.

 

[Lord of Elves]

Plus, the founders and framers didn't even agre with each other. The Constitution was a power grab.

Don't be silly. Everyone knows George Washington wrote the Constitution in the blood of British soldiers while riding a dragon through Philadelphia.

That's what I learned in Christian Tea Party History Class

 

[Ajidica]

You forgot Jesus dictating to Washington the text of the Constitution.
It looks like you need a remedial lesson in Tea Party History.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Palin kowtows to India and claims that China is an evil menace bent on aggression. At the same time, she is challenging world peace herself by threatening to run for president.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...na-other-topics/2011/03/19/ABTREYx_story.html

New Delhi — On her first trip to India, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin said she is still thinking about running for president, voiced concerns about China’s military rise, criticized green investment and vowed to see the Taj Mahal during her next trip.

Speaking to a hand-picked, elite audience of Indian business tycoons, lawmakers, Bollywood stars, lobbyists and socialites at a packed media conference in New Delhi, Palin deftly handled the question on everyone’s minds: whether she would throw her hat in the ring in 2012.

“I am thinking about it,” said Palin, who fielded at least three questions on the subject. “I don’t think there needs to be a rush . . . I want to find out who else is going to put their name forward in service.

But Palin was not so cautious when she spoke of China and surprised everybody by her unexpected candor about India’s neighbor to the north.

In fact, she encouraged her questioner to ask her about China.

“I personally have huge military concerns about what is going on in China,” she said. ”What’s with the buildup? You don’t see a tangible outside threat . . . to that country. Is that just for a defensive posture? How can that be? Stockpiling ballistic missiles, submarines, new-age ultramodern fighter aircrafts. It certainly means America needs to be vigilant looking at what China is doing.”

Palin, who flew to New Delhi from Taiwan, added that America’s economic reliance on China constituted “a dangerous place to be.”

Palin’s speech, titled “My Vision of America,” was the gala event at the end of a two-day conference organized by an Indian weekly magazine. Other international speakers included the feminist writer Germaine Greer, hacker Josh Klein, Pakistani politician Aitzaz Ahsan, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei.

“I am surprised at her openness when speaking about the Chinese threat, especially when she is on Indian soil,” said Kanwal Sibal, a former diplomat and a foreign policy columnist. “China will not fail to notice this.”

Palin’s two-day trip to India came about five months after President Obama’s state visit. While Obama and his wife, Michelle, danced and charmed their way into Indian hearts, Palin impressed her audience with strong views on energy security, terrorism, free trade, bailouts and the India-U.S. partnership.

“Sarah Palin held her own very well,” said Sachin Pilot, India’s deputy minister for communications and information technology. “She came out as an independent thinker. She answered all complicated questions reasonably well,”“Anybody who is looking to perform a major role in American politics today does need to engage with India.”

But many in the audience felt her lengthy written speech, with its remarks about free markets, small governments and the “beautiful,” “vibrant” tea party movement, was directed more at a domestic audience back home than at Indians.

After Palin finished her speech, she sat down to answer a host of questions to laughter, cheers and applause from the audience.

Palin criticized the emphasis on green jobs as a “false, utopian fairy tale” said it is not necessary to put troops on the ground in Libya, advocated more decisiveness on American foreign policy, and compared Mahatma Gandhi’s agitation against the salt tax to the American movement against the British tea tax.

On her next visit, she promised, she and husband Todd would visit the Taj Mahal to “reinforce our teamwork and commitment before that monument of eternal love.”

Palin got the most applause when she spoke of her relationship with the mainstream American media.

“You can’t necessarily trust the mainstream media to accurately report. You can’t rely anymore on mainstream media to set the record straight, not in the U.S.,” she said to loud cheers.

“Women who choose to enter public life unfairly often become target of the media. She has been a victim too,” said Ranjana Kumari, who trains women for political leadership in India. “The way Sarah Palin spelled out her position on crucial issues today, I feel she will throw her hat in the ring.”

Soon after arriving in New Delhi, the Palins were taken to a luxury mall called Emporio, which generally sells costly international brands.

At least she and her speechwriters knew the Taj Mahal is in India and that China is nearby.

 

[Lord of Elves]

Why all the Chinese-directed sabre-rattling? I thought she made it pretty clear that in this brave new world America's enemy continues to be Russia, trying to take away tundra islands from Alaska.

 

[Askthepizzaguy]

She recognizes that China's huge military buildup is unwarranted. It sort of makes our own military spending and aggressive posture, which greatly greatly outpaces the Chinese, seem inconsistent.

Maybe Palin wants to slash the size of our military.

C'mon, it's like shooting fish in a barrel with this woman. Or wolves from a helicopter.

 

[JollyRoger]

What’s with the buildup? You don’t see a tangible outside threat . . . to that country. Is that just for a defensive posture? How can that be? Stockpiling ballistic missiles, submarines, new-age ultramodern fighter aircrafts.

Just keeping up with the Joneses.

 

[Scratch]

We're being far too harsh on someone who won't let facts and reality get in the way of dreams. Where would we be if we always let facts and reality get in the way of our dreams?

She is truly an inspiration to the reality-challenged.

 

[Aegis]

She recognizes that China's huge military buildup is unwarranted. It sort of makes our own military spending and aggressive posture, which greatly greatly outpaces the Chinese, seem inconsistent.

Maybe Palin wants to slash the size of our military.

No, of course she wouldn't, because that would be Unameracun. I can't believe that she keeps zinging out these moronic statements.

C'mon, it's like shooting fish in a barrel with this woman. Or wolves from a helicopter.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Palin: Are we in the midst of a squirmish in Libya?

Madam Malaprop, thy name is Sarah Palin. Whether by design or accident, she never fails to drop some tidbit that sends the idiocy scale off the charts. Called in by Fox News to deconstruct President Obama's speech, she wonders aloud whether the Libya action is a war, an intervention or a "squirmish".

The balance of her "opinion" is to be expected, but at the end, just after the "squirmish" drop, she goes on some weird tangent about the North Star and how it's a guide.

Just imagine this woman as your President. What a nightmare.

 

[MobBoss]

Palin: Are we in the midst of a squirmish in Libya?

She was obviously referring to 'skirmish'.....so liberal media has to stoop so low as to take people to task for their pronunciation as opposed to addressing their actual point?

 

[CaptainF]

She was obviously referring to 'skirmish'.....so liberal media has to stoop so low as to take people to task for their pronunciation as opposed to addressing their actual point?

"Squirmish" isn't even a word. It's not a matter of pronunciation.

 

[MobBoss]

"Squirmish" isn't even a word. It's not a matter of pronunciation.

She was speaking, so of course it is a matter of pronunciation....even in looking this up around the net, most of the blogs about it are at least that honest to indicate that as well. At least they are honest enough to realize she meant to say 'skirmish'. She isnt the first politician to mis-pronounce a word while speaking, nor will she be the last.

Give it a rest already.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Too bad Palin isn't here to personally refudiate all the comments about her. She is probably too busy reading all the newspapers and magazines ever published, or at least looking at the pictures.

 

[Smellincoffee]

She was obviously referring to 'skirmish'.....so liberal media has to stoop so low as to take people to task for their pronunciation as opposed to addressing their actual point?

"Liberal Media"? Do you get your ideas from Bill O'Reilly talking points? He linked to a BLOG.

 

[shortguy]

From language log (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3058):

But is it likely that Ms. Palin intended this witty coinage? or that this was really a clasical malapropism, meaning that she has lexicalized skirmish in error as "squirmish"? I doubt it. A more likely theory, I think, is that this is a speech error of the type know as perseveration: the repetition of an onset segment from an earlier word in a later one.

She offer three possible terms, "war", "intervention", "skirmish". And as evidence that the initial /w/ of "war" has not been adequately inhibited, note that she starts to insert /w/ into the onset of "use". In that case, she catches herself and suppresses it quickly, perhaps because neither /yw/ nor /wy/ is a possible English syllable-beginning. But it immediately pops up again in the onset of "skirmish", slotted into the syllable-initial consonant sequence in the only place English phonotactics allow it to go.

I'm no Palin fan, but this is really dumb.

 

[JollyRoger]

By this standard, Bill Maher was calling a twit, so she should really tone down her imitation of the librul media.

 

[MobBoss]

"Liberal Media"? Do you get your ideas from Bill O'Reilly talking points? He linked to a BLOG.

You dont consider blogs from such websites (crooksandlairs, huffpost, salon.com, etc?) part of the media? If not, you would be one of the very few.

 

[SuperJay]

I know Sarah's entertaining, but really, who cares? She's not even a real conservative.

That said, I don't think the "liberal media" has anything to do with any of this.