Last updated on April 2nd, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Our nation is facing real problems right now.
Climate change, two wars, global financial crisis, unsustainable healthcare costs, etc. And how does our press inform us about these issues?
Our media, and specifically Washington Post most recently, allows the puppet masters — entrenched Republican powerhouses like Malek and Cheney — behind Sarah Palin to use an op-ed to perpetrate scientifically proven lies and fears (in addition to pretending she wrote it), in a blatant attempt to politicize science. Palin wags the dog and the dogs roll over to assist.
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“Wednesday’s edition of the Washington Post features an op-ed by Sarah Palin, who reprises her call — first made in a Facebook post last week — for President Obama to “boycott” the major climate talks in Copenhagen due to the “Climate-gate” controversy (actually a non-controversy).
“Policy decisions require real science and real solutions,” Palin argued on Facebook, “not junk science and doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood that capitalizes on the public’s worry and makes them feel that owning an SUV is a ‘sin’ against the planet.””
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/08/sarah-palin-wapo-faces-he_n_385070.html
It’s absolutely unconscionable that this person has been allowed by the media to impact serious policy with no blow back. Palin has donned her tin foil hat to warn ominously of “Death Panels” and demand President Obama take her advice (via Facebook) regarding both Iraq and Afghanistan strategy when she didn’t even know the difference between Iraq and Iran months ago.
She claimed she didn’t pay attention to the war as Governor, because her mind was on other things. Her foreign policy cred resulted from her watching for Putin over the Alaskan airspace. But the media treats her as a viable policy maker. A voice to be heeded in these days of tabloid news.
She (and the GOP military industrial media complex aka known as the “news”) tout her as an energy expert, when in fact, her seat on the Oil and Gas Commission was a political appointment by then Gov Murkowski as the Citizen Chair, not as an energy expert. Palin was governor of Alaska for 2 years and a few months and yet the media perpetuates this notion that she is an energy expert by proxy. Is Gov Granholm an auto-manufacturing expert, as well? This coming from a woman whose much bragged about natural gas pipeline achievement will most likely not be built (never mind that she claimed it was built last year; it is not).
“She sought to burnish her executive credentials by telling how she had engineered the deal that jump-started a long-delayed gas pipeline project….
‘And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence,’ said Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee….
The reality, however, is far more ambiguous than the impression Ms. Palin has left at the convention and on the campaign trail. …
The pipeline exists only on paper. The first section has yet to be laid, federal approvals are years away and the pipeline will not be completed for at least a decade. In fact, although it is the centerpiece of Ms. Palin’s relatively brief record as governor, the pipeline might never be built, and under a worst-case scenario, the state could lose up to $500 million it committed to defray regulatory and other costs.”
Now she wants to insert herself into a scientific matter re climate change. A person who thinks we walked the earth with dinosaurs? Come on! Why is the media selling us this tripe?
Palin is a self-described birther conspiracy propagator. Apparently, she suffers from a willful inability to read FactCheck.org and other organizations that have stated, without a doubt, that our President’s birth certificate is legitimate. This is just another meme we can thank the press for, as they’ve by and large failed to counter such claims with the truth. We have serious issues to debate, yet we are trapped in the tabloid distractions manufactured by politicians like Palin who want to divert attention from their actual records. And so, we spend weeks discussing her conspiracy theories until someone gets the courage to pipe up and point out they are inaccurate.
A few weeks ago she was warning her flock about the Obama administration changing the gold coin. Of course, this delusion was debunked as soon as the words were out of her mouth (turns out it happened during the Bush administration but Palin got some right wing email and passed it on to the masses as a fact — just the sort of thing a good leader would do), but another news cycle was taken up discussing Palin’s “opinion”.
An opinion is a belief, not based on fact. When facts prove the opinion wrong, it is no longer an opinion, but a willful distortion of reality. She is entitled to her own opinion, but not her own facts.
Along this line of thought, Palin’s Gold Coin/God Gate made clear that she doesn’t understand the intentions of the Deist founding fathers, as this was most certainly not meant to be “Christian nation”. And I say that as a (no longer attending church) Christian, but one who loves my country and honors the rights of others to practice what they believe. An excellent write up on the history of our democracy can be read at God’s Own Party:
http://godsownparty.com/blog/2009/12/guest-post-mythical-america-by-hrafnkell/
WaPo has stooped so low as to offer it’s struggling pages to be used as talking-point-of-the-day toilet paper, courtesy of Palin. Never mind that Palin was against email hacking when it happened to her, but now she’s for it. No, the real issue is the willful distortion of the facts in an attempt to steal another media cycle away from reality and real problems. She’s actually congratulated herself for Obama “taking her advice” re Afghanistan. Really?
Is this what we need? Is this what the media is offering up as a viable contender as President in 2012? Certainly the media had no problem lying to all of us last year, pretending Palin was a legitimate candidate for VP, to the international embarrassment of this great country. Did the media ever do any due diligence on Palin?
Did they report on her AIP connections? A person whose record of pallin’ around with secessionists is running for VP with a 72 year old cancer survivor running at the top of the ticket, and the media fails to inform us of this rather salient point?
If this country ever has the poor judgment to elect this person to national office (after all of the corruption and lies), those outlets that gave legitimacy to this farce will be responsible for the devastation of this country. She’s doing enough damage issuing “policy” statements (aka; lies) from Facebook.
Palin’s lies have been established as empirical fact and her corruption (going back to Wasilla when they tried to recall her) has been reasonably established at this point. Maybe the media never read her record? Did they not bother researching the Wasilla papers and budgets?
Palin is no fiscal conservative. That very notion is an aberration for those of who truly embrace fiscal conservatism. She grew government, left Wasilla 20 million dollars in debt, and they had to hire a city manager because they feared she could not do her job.
Wasilla had 5,000+ residents at the time.
No one in the media has the courage to ask this woman anything, to investigate, to report. But they roll out the red carpet for what they can only surmise will be a lie based “opinion”. Or if they don’t know, they should — even if only from her “work of fiction”; aka, “memoir”, which has so many lies and libel in it, people are crawling out of the woodwork to object.
In Palin’s “memoir, “Going Rogue”, she used google to dredge up “Plato” quotes, in a transparent attempt to prove her intelligence. This quote is revealed to have come from the QuoteGarden web site, a Mitch Albom feel good for the moment, facts-be-damned sort of hang out. The attribution to Plato is incorrect. It was actually Philo she was quoting. QuoteGarden attributes the quote to Plato instead of Philo.
Sure, this could happen to anyone once. But so far, in attempting to review her book, I’m on quote number 4 that was mis-attributed. With that sort of careful attention to detail, I can’t imagine why we wouldn’t want her “opinion” on what Obama should do regarding climate change and the war. Aww heck, why not just let her run the country? We’re so close to the edge now; she could just push us over and get it done. A few witch-doctors and imprecatory prayers against other world leaders or American citizens who dared to question her and we’d be living the high life.
And of course, the real point is that a person should be able to discuss their thoughts about Plato and Aristotle’s writings, not just issue platitudes courtesy of quote of the day web gardens.
Our country is in real trouble. We don’t need a demagogue being elevated as equal to rational thought. It seems glaringly obvious that the press has been told to lay off Palin, lest they be accused of “mouth raping her children” or being “sexist” . When Clinton exaggerated the danger she had been in Bosnia, it was all over the press. Palin lies and lies and lies and the press is mute. But they sure bend over backwards to report on her Facebook musings and willfully ignorant, misinformed opinions.
A true feminist wants to be held to the same standards as a man. She doesn’t ask for special treatment, up to and including no questions, no pressers, and no Sunday AM round tables. Why didn’t the press report on her refusal to speak to them until they showed her “deference”? Is this a democracy? Where’s the transparency?
Why didn’t the press report her newly announced birther status, or the 250 people who died under her mismanaged state run Medicare program, that had to be shut down by the Feds? Didn’t anyone find that pertinent when she was nattering on about “Death Panels”?
The old Republican “publicly disdain the press and bring them to heel through humiliation and pre-emptive strikes” always works on the press. It’s just chilling to watch the press cower behind the Republicans, catering to their manufactured moral outrage and allowing them to spew lies without rebuttal.
This is the same kind of “reporting†that brought us WMD.
I love this country and nothing makes me sadder than to see it used and abused by someone who has no love for the real meaning of America and its heritage, as evidenced in the latest revelation courtesy of Palin’s father (in the book written by reporters Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe ) that she left Hawaii because the minorities made her uncomfortable and it wasn’t glamorous:
“According to Palin’s father, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: “They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home.” In any case, Palin reports that she much preferred her last stop, the University of Idaho, “because it was much like Alaska yet still ‘Outside.’ ”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/scavenger/detail?entry_id=53097&tsp=1#ixzz0ZDXH062B
This person has been called a “sociopath” and a “narcissist” by Republicans who worked with her closely in Alaska. On the record. As well as being called out over and over again for behaving as if she had been “coronated” instead of elected. Indeed, Palin’s tenure as Mayor of Wasilla was rocky.
“She became embroiled in personnel challenges, a thwarted attempt to pack the City Council and a standoff with her local newspaper. Her first months were so contentious and polarizing that critics started talking recall.
Her first months also exposed threads that would later become patterns — friends become enemies, enemies become friends and questions get raised about why she fired this person or that person….
Palin twice asked the librarian what she thought about banning books, to which the librarian responded it was a lousy idea she couldn’t go along with. Later, Palin told the local paper that any questions she’d raised about censorship were only “rhetorical.” Palin put in place what the local paper called a gag order, prohibiting top city employees from talking to reporters unless she cleared it first. Palin tried to fill two vacancies on the City Council herself, even though an ordinance said that wasn’t her prerogative. The city attorney stopped Palin.
The Frontiersman condemned Palin’s philosophy “that either we are with her or against her.” The newspaper accused Palin of mistaking the 616 votes she received as a “coronation.”
http://www.adn.com/sarah-palin/story/522556.html
While running for mayor, she decried the town’s “current tax-and-spend mentality . Sound familiar? And yet she left the city over 20,000 million in debt, having inherited no debt.
What a shame that the media has chosen to perpetuate the myth that she has something to say regarding policy. She is a celebrity, not a politician.
The press was supposed to act as an instrument against political power rather than an instrument of political power, but of course, being owned by the corporations who wield the most power within our government, we can no longer depend upon the American press to be honest.
Hence, the Myth of Palin as a fiscal conservative, honest, real person who isn’t a DC insider. This person who took the most pork per capita of any city in the entire country as mayor. Where’s the press? Just reporting what she SAYS she is. Never mind her record.
Never mind that Mrs Palin was against email hackers before she was for them. I guess when it happens to her, all the contents of said emails are sealed from public view but when it happens to anyone else, she’s determined it’s fair game to come to a conclusion about global climate change from a few leaked emails. Hmmm. And urge the President to boycott the U.N. Climate Change Conference. We’ve had enough of boycotting the UN, Mrs. Palin. Thanks, but no thanks.
George Orwell warned in his essay ‘The Prevention of Literature’ of the “dangerous proposition [by vested interests] that freedom is undesirable and that intellectual honesty is a form of anti-social selfishness”.
Gee, do you think we’re there, yet?
Edited to add that the LA Times did in fact just blast WaPo for Palin’s ridiculous climate change Op Ed. Score one for Reality and Honest Debate:
“Noting that the Post’s own reporting rebuts Palin’s arguments, Lambert added, “The Washington Post simply does not care about the accuracy of the columns it publishes,” he concluded.”
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/12/washington-post-booed-for-giving-palin-op-ed-platform.html
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