Sarah Palin Ain't Ready for Prime Time

Over the weekend, I got sidetracked because sitemeter took a powder. Well, plezWorld is back with my sights set on that FRAUD and FAKE Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. She's a liar. She's a charlatan. She's a separatist and a secessionist. She's left her family (young daughter, pregnant teenage daughter, and baby boy with Down syndrome who was probably birthed by her teenage daughter - check it out here, here, and here) to scratch her high aspirations itch. Don't forget about her strong arm tactics that led to the Troopergate investigation, that she no longer plans to cooperate with.

And to top it off, she wants to overturn Roe vs. Wade (the right of American women to have the choice to have an abortion to end an unwanted pregnancy). Well, I'm not the only one things ole girl is trying to "fake her way to the top."

On September 12, Bloomberg.com has an article that called Sarah Palin "clueless during her interview with ABC News's Charles Gibson, read full article here, excerpts follow:

ABC News anchor Charles Gibson got the get, the first mano- a-womano sit down with the Republican vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.

Palin may not have blinked when John McCain asked her to be his running mate. Last night, however, found her frozen in the Klieg lights as the dogged interlocutor set his sights on his visitor.

Peering down at Palin through reading glasses set at the tip of his nose, foot circling over knee ever more impatiently, Gibson, 65, wouldn't let her coast. Yes, she had mastered the pronunciation of Georgia president Mikhail Saakashvili's name, not to mention that of Iran's Mahmud Ahmadinejad. And maybe that would have been good enough on ``Good Morning America.''

But no-one had coached her in something called the Bush Doctrine. Doctrine? What doctrine would that be, Charlie?

Palin, 44, apparently never heard of the Bush Doctrine until yesterday. She flashed a smile nearly as frozen as her running- mate's and did that tenth-grader thing of tap-dancing around the question, skittishly ad libbing her way with gibberish about Bush's ``global vision.''

Gibson was having none of it, pressing her for specifics she didn't have at her command and finally -- his glare set to iceberg blue, foot circling like a lasso -- he impatiently explained what the doctrine is, when it was introduced, and gave her another chance to answer.

Few Overseas Trips

My sympathy for Palin lasted only as long as it took me to remember that it was Palin who had insisted, at the top of the interview, that she's ready to lead the country on a moment's notice. Asked whether she had ever been outside the U.S. before her recent trip to the Middle East, she answered, ``Canada. Mexico.'' Asked what heads of state she had dealt with, she referenced all those trade delegations that came to Alaska looking to do some business.

When the interview turned to Iraq and Iran, Palin's innocence of diplomatic nuance, not to mention global politics, was something she couldn't dance around. We're America, she said, we don't have to put up with those uppity Eye-ranians.

Does she believe we are doing God's will in Iraq? ``I wouldn't presume to know God's will, Charlie,'' she answered gamely. Gibson was ready with a clip of her sermonizing not long ago in church and she danced around that one, too.

Gibson didn't ask the candidate if she has any clue about the principle of separation of church and state on which her beloved United States was founded. I wish he had.

On September 12, an editorial in the New York Times discussed her lack of a world view, read the full article below and below:

As we watched Sarah Palin on TV the last couple of days, we kept wondering what on earth John McCain was thinking.

If he seriously thought this first-term governor — with less than two years in office — was qualified to be president, if necessary, at such a dangerous time, it raises profound questions about his judgment. If the choice was, as we suspect, a tactical move, then it was shockingly irresponsible.

It was bad enough that Ms. Palin’s performance in the first televised interviews she has done since she joined the Republican ticket was so visibly scripted and lacking in awareness.

What made it so much worse is the strategy for which the Republicans have made Ms. Palin the frontwoman: win the White House not on ideas, but by denigrating experience, judgment and qualifications.

The idea that Americans want leaders who have none of those things — who are so blindly certain of what Ms. Palin calls “the mission” that they won’t even pause for reflection — shows a contempt for voters and raises frightening questions about how Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin plan to run this country.

One of the many bizarre moments in the questioning by ABC News’s Charles Gibson was when Ms. Palin, the governor of Alaska, excused her lack of international experience by sneering that Americans don’t want “somebody’s big fat résumé maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment where, yes, they’ve had opportunities to meet heads of state.”

We know we were all supposed to think of Joe Biden. But it sure sounded like a good description of Mr. McCain. Those decades of experience earned the Arizona senator the admiration of people in both parties. They are why he was our preferred candidate in the Republican primaries.

The interviews made clear why Americans should worry about Ms. Palin’s thin résumé and lack of experience. Consider her befuddlement when Mr. Gibson referred to President Bush’s “doctrine” and her remark about having insight into Russia because she can see it from her state.

But that is not what troubled us most about her remarks — and, remember, if they were scripted, that just means that they reflect Mr. McCain’s views all the more closely. Rather, it was the sense that thoughtfulness, knowledge and experience are handicaps for a president in a world populated by Al Qaeda terrorists, a rising China, epidemics of AIDS, poverty and fratricidal war in the developing world and deep economic distress at home.

Ms. Palin talked repeatedly about never blinking. When Mr. McCain asked her to run for vice president? “You have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission,” she said, that “you can’t blink.”

Fighting terrorism? “We must do whatever it takes, and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.”

Her answers about why she had told her church that President Bush’s failed policy in Iraq was “God’s plan” did nothing to dispel our concerns about her confusion between faith and policy. Her claim that she was quoting a completely unrelated comment by Lincoln was absurd.

This nation has suffered through eight years of an ill-prepared and unblinkingly obstinate president. One who didn’t pause to think before he started a disastrous war of choice in Iraq. One who blithely looked the other way as the Taliban and Al Qaeda regrouped in Afghanistan. One who obstinately cut taxes and undercut all efforts at regulation, unleashing today’s profound economic crisis.

In a dangerous world, Americans need a president who knows that real strength requires serious thought and preparation.

On September 12, Bob Herbert's New York Times article simply reads "She's Not Ready," read the full article here and below:

While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.

How is it that this woman could have been selected to be the vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket? How is it that so much of the mainstream media has dropped all pretense of seriousness to hop aboard the bandwagon and go along for the giddy ride?

For those who haven’t noticed, we’re electing a president and vice president, not selecting a winner on “American Idol.”

Ms. Palin may be a perfectly competent and reasonably intelligent woman (however troubling her views on evolution and global warming may be), but she is not ready to be vice president.

With most candidates for high public office, the question is whether one agrees with them on the major issues of the day. With Ms. Palin, it’s not about agreeing or disagreeing. She doesn’t appear to understand some of the most important issues.

“Do you believe in the Bush doctrine?” Mr. Gibson asked during the interview. Ms. Palin looked like an unprepared student who wanted nothing so much as to escape this encounter with the school principal.

Clueless, she asked, “In what respect, Charlie?”

“Well, what do you interpret it to be?” said Mr. Gibson.

“His worldview?” asked Ms. Palin.

Later, in the spin zones of cable TV, commentators repeatedly made the point that there are probably very few voters — some specifically mentioned “hockey moms” — who could explain the Bush doctrine. But that’s exactly the reason we have such long and intense campaigns. You want to find the individuals who best understand these issues, who will address them in sophisticated and creative ways that enhance the well-being of the nation.

The Bush doctrine, which flung open the doors to the catastrophe in Iraq, was such a fundamental aspect of the administration’s foreign policy that it staggers the imagination that we could have someone no further than a whisper away from the White House who doesn’t even know what it is.

You can’t imagine that John McCain or Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or Joe Lieberman would not know what the Bush doctrine is. But Sarah Palin? Absolutely clueless.

Ms. Palin’s problem is not that she was mayor of a small town or has only been in the Alaska governor’s office a short while. Her problem (and now ours) is that she is not well versed on the critical matters confronting the country at one of the most crucial turning points in its history.

The economy is in a tailspin. The financial sector is lurching about on rubbery legs. We’re mired in self-defeating energy policies. We’re at war. And we are still vulnerable to the very real threat of international terrorism.

With all of that and more being the case, how can it be a good idea to set in motion the possibility that Americans might wake up one morning to find that Sarah Palin is president?

I feel for Ms. Palin’s son who has been shipped off to the war in Iraq. But at his deployment ceremony, which was on the same day as the Charlie Gibson interview, Sept. 11, she told the audience of soldiers that they would be fighting “the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

Was she deliberately falsifying history, or does she still not know that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?

To burnish the foreign policy credentials of a vice presidential candidate who never even had a passport until last year, the Republicans have been touting Alaska’s proximity to Russia. (Imagine the derisive laughter in conservative circles if the Democrats had tried such nonsense.) So Mr. Gibson asked Ms. Palin, “What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?”

She said, “They’re our next-door neighbors. And you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska. From an island in Alaska.”

Mr. Gibson tried again. “But what insight does that give you,” he asked, “into what they’re doing in Georgia?”

John McCain, who is shameless about promoting himself as America’s ultimate patriot, put the best interests of the nation aside in making his incredibly reckless choice of a running mate. But there is a profound double standard in this country. The likes of John McCain and George W. Bush can do the craziest, most irresponsible things imaginable, and it only seems to help them politically.

McCain's top economic advisor, Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of HP is quoted as saying that Sarah Palin is not ready to run a corporation. The CNN.com article reads "Palin not ready to run a corporation," read the full article here and excerpts below:

Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO turned top John McCain aide, said she doesn't think Sarah Palin is qualified to run a major corporation. For that matter, Fiorina said, McCain, Obama and Biden aren't capable of that kind of job either.

The Republican presidential candidate has been trying to portray himself as someone who can fix the country's economic woes. But that is a far different task than running a Fortune 500 corporation, Fiorina told MSNBC Tuesday.

Democratic candidate Barack Obama's camp immediately circulated copies of her words -- which didn't exactly paint their candidate in a soft light, either.

"Well, I don't think John McCain could run a major corporation, I don't think Barack Obama could run a major corporation, I don't think Joe Biden could run a major corporation," Fiorina said.

"It is a fallacy to suggest that the country is like a company. So, of course, to run a business, you have to have a lifetime of experience in business, but that's not what Sarah Palin, John McCain, Joe Biden or Barack Obama are doing."

Fiorina was president of Hewlett-Packard until her high-profile ousting in 2006 after the company's unfavorable performance.

"If John McCain's top economic adviser doesn't think he can run a corporation, how on Earth can he run the largest economy in the world in the midst of a financial crisis?" said Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor. "Apparently, even the people who run his campaign agree that the economy is an issue John McCain doesn't understand as well as he should."

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In a related story, the Palin camp has gone paranoid on the Alaska Legislative investigation as to whether her administration put undue pressure to have a state trooper fired... the state trooper who is the ex-husband of one of her sisters; they were enbroiled in an ugly divorce.

CNN.com reports that Palin allies are now suing the two Democrats on the five person commission (the other three are Republicans), calling the probe a "McCarthyistic" inquisition. Read the entire article below:

Allies of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin asked a judge Tuesday to halt the state Legislature's investigation into the firing of her public service commissioner, calling the probe a "McCarthyistic" inquisition.

The five Republican state lawmakers who filed suit said the two Democrats and the former Anchorage prosecutor leading the probe "are unable to hold the balance between vindicating their own political interests and the interests of those who are being investigated."

Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president, is battling allegations that she and her advisers pressured then-Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire a state trooper going through a bitter custody dispute with Palin's sister -- and that Monegan was terminated when he refused. Palin says she fired Monegan over budget issues, and denies any wrongdoing.

One of those named in the lawsuit, Sen. Kim Elton, declined comment Tuesday.

Elton, the Democratic chairman of the bipartisan Legislative Council that commissioned the probe, and state Sen. Hollis French -- another Democrat and the lawmaker overseeing the investigation -- were named as defendants. So was Stephen Branchflower, the former Anchorage prosecutor hired to investigate Monegan's firing.

The lawsuit alleges that Elton, French and Branchflower "are conducting a McCarthyistic investigation in an unlawful, biased, partial and partisan political manner in order to impact the upcoming Alaska general and national presidential elections."

Palin originally pledged to cooperate with the investigation that the Alaska Legislative Council commissioned in July. But since becoming Sen. John McCain's running mate, campaign spokesmen have lashed out at the probe as "tainted" and "partisan," and fought to get the state Personnel Board to launch its own probe.

"I think it's fair to say that the governor is not going to cooperate with that investigation so long as it remained tainted and run by partisan individuals who have a predetermined conclusion," McCain-Palin campaign spokesman Ed O'Callaghan said Monday.

In particular, campaign officials singled out comments French made to ABC News that they said suggested the investigation could yield criminal charges or an "October Surprise" for the GOP ticket. And they accuse the probe of being "hijacked" by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign -- a charge the Obama campaign dismissed as "complete paranoia."

Monegan said he was repeatedly pressured to take action against State Trooper Mike Wooten, Palin's ex-brother-in-law, before his July dismissal.

Monday, the McCain-Palin campaign released documents it said bolster its argument that Monegan was fired over budget disputes and "egregious insubordination."

Read the CNN.com article about how Palin refuses to cooperate with the "Troopergate" investigation in Alaska that she vowed to support before she became John McCain's running mate here and here and here.


plez sez: ok, i admit it... i stole a line from "Dreamgirls" in my opening. but tina fey (one of the "not ready for prime time" players on SNL) is more credible as sarah palin than sarah palin as herself!

Saturday Night Live on September 13, 2008

this woman is bad for america on so many levels. and the decision making process that dredged her up from the dregs of alaskan politics to aspire to the second highest office in the land makes plezWorld wonder about the grasp that mccain and his handlers have on reality.

and is plezWorld the only one who sees something Bush-like in palin's behavior around this whole troopergate investigation? suing the commission members. refusing to cooperate with the commission. attempting to halt the investigation at all costs. hasn't EVERYTHING that has come out of the Bush white house been clouded with secrecy and the taint of executive privilege to hide misdeeds.

and what is up with her creepy husband shadowing her at all of the campaign stops?!?