W in a Dress

Things I'd rather post about other than Sarah Palin: hard-boiled private detectives, contemporary art, Seahawks victories (waiting...) , WWII, philosophy, science, dadaist criminals, biology, wit, love, fear of robots, fun things to do when you have a Large Hadron Collider, and of course adorable kittens.

But the nation calls.

Sarah Palin is lying about her sad excuse for a record, and the normally sedate liberal blog TPM is calling her on it.

And after a week of scrutiny, here are three key points of attack, in campaign lit form:


1. Palin is faking her history as a reformer.

1. Alaska's government has grown rich in the last two years because of the outrageous increases in the price of crude oil. It is so rich on Big oil's tax money, Palin sent an extra $1200 to every Alaskan this year whether they needed it or not. Yet she kept all the earmarked federal tax money we sent for the infamous Bridge to Nowhere, in spite of her lying again and again about doing this.
2. When she was mayor, she raised taxes on people's food and clothes so she could lower them on giant companies like Walmart. But she mismanaged it, and the city was left with a huge unpaid debt for a boondoggle hockey rink.
3. After promising again and again to support open government, she lied about her behavior in the troopergate affair, breaking all her lofty promises the moment her own ethics were questioned.
   

2. Palin is ambitious extremist who will divide the country just like Bush.

1. She wants all the credit for her daughter to decide to keep her pregnancy, but she would use the government to stop all women from having that choice, even if they were raped, even if they were victims of incest, even if they were 14. In an age of AIDs, she is delusional in her obsession with abstinence-only health education. And with the state coffers awash in oil money, she slashed funding for pregnant teen girls.
   
2. Even now, after tens of thousands of scientists have confirmed that humans are pumping so much pollution into the air that the warming earth is facing global catastrophe, Sarah Palin stubbornly refuses to believe it. The human race simply cannot afford such dangerous ignorance from people in power. You wonder what would happen if only 95% of scientists confirmed a giant meteor was headed for New York. Would she deny it, and go off to make moose burgers?
   
3. Like Bush, she uses religion and divisive issues to destroy her opponents. She attacked her first opponent in Wasilla's mayoral race as unchristian. She told her church that building another Alaska pipeline was a mission from God. As governor, she takes the support of a radical anti-American political party that has wants Alaska to leave the United States, a party her husband belonged to for years.
   

3. Sarah Palin is W in a Dress.

1. Ten days into the campaign, she has said almost nothing that wasn't written for her on a teleprompter by George W. Bush's speechwriter. She has virtually no record of positions, writings or even quotes about national and international issues, and is defiant and prideful about her ignorance of critical national and international issues. Sound familiar?
2. By most accounts from behind the scenes in Alaska, Palin is an intellectual lightweight- experts who are asked to explain things to her are commonly told to make it simple.
3. Governor for less than two years of a state dominated by Big Oil, the Palin was plucked from obscurity to serve as the lead cheerleader for the rich, privileged and powerful. Her political positions, what little record there is of them, are almost exactly the same as George W. Bush. Her attack on community organizing shows a contempt for the people who work tremendously hard to try to help the least fortunate among us. Say, like Jesus.