Politics

You are currently browsing the archive for the Politics category.

Was The Birth Of America An Immaculate Conception?

February 13, 2010 in Politics | Permalink

From Shorto's article: "Jefferson said it was not the place of the President to involve himself in religion."

The author and New York Times Magazine writer Russell Shorto is one of those blessed media people who quietly and consistently does excellent work. His 2005 New York history, The Island at the Center of the World is a brilliant book.

Shorto has an insightful piece, How Christian Were the Founders?, in this week’ Sunday Times Magazine. It looks at how Christian Conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education have used the purchasing power of a $22 billion education fund to pressure publishing companies into altering the language and ideas of the nation’s textbooks. Shorto also takes a balanced look at whether our Founding Fathers did indeed intend America as a Christian nation. An excerpt from the piece about one instance where the Board prevailed in changing textbook language:

“To give an illustration simultaneously of the power of ideology and Texas’ influence, [textbook publishing veteran] Tom Barber told me that when he led the social-studies division at Prentice Hall, one conservative member of the board told him that the 12th-grade book, ‘Magruder’s American Government,’ would not be approved because it repeatedly referred to the U.S. Constitution as a ‘living’ document. ‘That book is probably the most famous textbook in American history,’ Barber says. ‘It’s been around since World War I, is updated every year and it had invented the term ‘living Constitution,’ which has been there since the 1950s. But the social conservatives didn’t like its sense of flexibility. They insisted at the last minute that the wording change to ‘enduring.’ Prentice Hall agreed to the change, and ever since the book–which Barber estimates controlled 60 or 65 percent of the market nationally–calls it the ‘enduring Constitution.'”

Tags: , ,

Decoder: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Boasts About Iran’s Growing Nuclear Prowess

February 13, 2010 in Humor, Politics | Permalink

I got this blazer on sale at Korvette's. Such savings you would not believe!

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: With the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., one was just as bad as the other. Both contributed to the destruction of world values. They talked about prosperity and wealth, but they killed more than 120 million individuals in the last 120 years and made many more homeless and injured.

Decoder: I’m the only person on the planet annoying enough to make Russia agree with Obama on anything. I mean, the Russians side with North Fucking Korea over the U.S. And Kim Jong-il is one suspicious Happy Meal from being Idi Amin.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: I am proudly announcing today that our scientists have gotten laser technology and will be manufacturing and providing the Iranian nation with new equipment.

Decoder: Lazer Zeppelin is upon us, and we will have the technology to produce Lazer Floyd within six months.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Today many of our cities enjoy electricity, schools, health, activities in villages that were on the verge of destruction. I do not want to offer figures and statistics; you are all aware of them.

Decoder: You’re not all aware of them? Let me see if I have them on me. Oh, I know, I must have left them in the pocket of my other Members Only jacket. But they are so very awesome, I swear.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: I want to proudly announce that in the next few days we will have celebrations for electricity being transferred to all villages with more than 20 households.

Decoder: 1934, here we come!

The Tehran planetarium will be rocking. (Image by Dina Regine.)

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Due to the blessings of God Almighty, today the convoy of the Iranian nation’s progress and prosperity is moving forward more swiftly and no power can resist the power of the Iranian nation.

Decoder: I am not going to stop talking until I get this whole fucking country blown up.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: With no doubt, the future belongs to the Iranian nation. Its enemies have no chance for victory.

Decoder: My penis, it is very small, so I talk really big. You should hear me in clubs and bars.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Liberalism is trying to turn all nations into laborers to fill the pockets of capitalists. They want to make a modern slavery.

Decoder: Though Casual Fridays are really fun. And that new lady in HR doesn’t seem bad. I think her name is “Carol.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The Allies’ victory in WWII was due to plundering the energy resources of the Middle East.

Decoder: I know even less about history than Sarah Palin.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: They want us to be kept weak and under the domination of atrocious dictators.

Decoder: No, not me, Mr. Funnypants. The other atrocious dictators.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Hopefully, the Western wing of the hegemonic system has come to its end and this malicious system will hopefully collapse.

Decoder: Actually, it kind of already has, but they seem to still be way richer than us, which has me baffled.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: From a scientific view we have made the swiftest signs of progress in the world.

Decoder: Did I mention only six months to Lazer Floyd?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: I am proud to announce that, the day before yesterday, we began to enrich the 20% fuel. The first convoy of 20%-enriched fuel was produced.

Decoder: It was very likely not produced, but again: little penis = big talk.

Thinks he's agreed to host an Aziz Ansari roast. (Image by Scott LaPierre.)

Mahmoud Ahmajinedad: They should know that our nation is so courageous that if we make a nuclear bomb, we will openly announce it.

Decoder: And Charles Barkley has agreed to do color commentary. No, seriously, he actually agreed to do it. He’s apparently crazy.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: We will never allow the West to dominate this region.

Decoder: And by oppressing my own people and creating such a sick society, I will make sure we never dominate this region, either.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The Iranian youth have a right to seek justice and truth. They have a right to build their own future on the foundations of love, compassion and tranquility.

Decoder: And when they finally do, I am so totally fucked.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Excerpted: Oriana Fallaci Interviews Golda Meir (1972)

February 10, 2010 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

No, I don't have gold in my ear. Please stop asking me that.

Before I reluctantly return Oriana Fallaci’s out-of-print 1976 book, Interview with History, to my shelves, I bring you one more excerpt. I’ve previously presented segments of her tête-à-têtes with Henry Kissinger and Indira Gandhi, and now we look at her meeting with Golda Meir, who was then Israel’s Prime Minister.

Even though Fallaci differed politically with Meir on crucial issues, the journalist acknowledged a sort of love for the politician, who physically resembled her mother. The interview actually took place twice because the first set of microcassettes were stolen from Fallaci’s Jerusalem hotel room. (Fallaci believed that Muammar al-Qaddafi was behind the thievery.) An excerpt from the women’s exchange on the topic of feminism:

“Oriana Fallaci: Shall we talk about the woman Ben-Gurion called ‘the ablest man in my cabinet?’

Golda Meir: That’s one of the legends that have grown up around me. It’s also a legend I’ve always found irritating, though men use it as a great compliment. Is it? I wouldn’t say so. Because what does it really mean? That it’s better to be a man than a woman, a principle on which I don’t agree at all. So here’s what I’d like to say to those who make me such a compliment. And what if Ben-Gurion had said, ‘The men in my cabinet are as able as a woman’? Men always feel so superior. I’ll never forget what happened at a congress of my party in New York in the 1930s. I made a speech and in the audience there was a writer friend of mine. An honest person, a man of great culture and refinement. When it was over he came up to me and exclaimed, ‘Congratulations! You’ve made a wonderful speech! And to think you’re only a woman!’ That’s just what he said in such a spontaneous, instinctive way. It’s a good thing I have a sense of humor….

Oriana Fallaci: The Women’s Liberation Movement will like that, Mrs. Meir.

Golda Meir: Do you mean those crazy women who burn their bras and go around all disheveled and hate men? They’re crazy. Crazy. But how can one accept such crazy women who think that it’s a misfortune to get pregnant and a disaster to bring children into the world? And when it’s the greatest privilege we women have over men.”

Tags: ,

“A North Korean Is On Average Six Inches Shorter Than A South Korean”

February 8, 2010 in Books, Politics | Permalink

Christopher Hitchens has used some space on Slate to put a spotlight on an interesting new book about the blighted nation of North Korea, run by the ridiculous and brutal overlord Kim Jong-il. In his article, “A Nation of Racist Dwarfs,” Hitchens shares ideas from B.R. Myers’ book, The Cleanest Race: How North Americans See Themselves and Why It Matters. Myers looks not only at how arrogant delusions about racial superiority drive North Koreans but how it has stunted their growth–figuratively and literally. An excerpt from the Slate article:

Here are the two most shattering facts about North Korea. First, when viewed by satellite photography at night, it is an area of unrelieved darkness. Barely a scintilla of light is visible even in the capital city. Second, a North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean. You may care to imagine how much surplus value has been wrung out of such a slave, and for how long, in order to feed and sustain the militarized crime family that completely owns both the country and its people.

But this is what proves Myers right. Unlike previous racist dictatorships, the North Korean one has actually succeeded in producing a sort of new species. Starving and stunted dwarves, living in the dark, kept in perpetual ignorance and fear, brainwashed into the hatred of others, regimented and coerced and inculcated with a death cult: This horror show is in our future, and is so ghastly that our own darling leaders dare not face it and can only peep through their fingers at what is coming.•

Tags: , , ,

“I Don’t Waste Time With Flowery Small Talk”

February 8, 2010 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Nixon and Gandhi, together in 1971, despised one another. He referred to her behind the scenes as an “old witch.”

 

I brought you an excerpt of Oriana Fallaci’s spellbinding 1972 session with Henry Kissinger from the journalist’s great out-of-print book, Interview with History. I’m returning for passage of Fallaci’s 1972 Q&A with Indira Gandhi, one of the most complex and thorniest political leaders of that era.

By the time Fallaci had published her book in 1976, she had renounced her admiration for Gandhi, who had been India’s tough-as-nails Prime Minister and a feminist icon. In 1975, Gandhi, rather than resign as Prime Minister after being convicted of election fraud, declared the Indian version of martial law, had her political opponents imprisoned and repealed many of the citizens’ freedoms. She had, in effect, become a dictator.

Fallaci wrote a new introduction to the four-year-old interview that expressed bitter disappointment in the fallen idol. (“I didn’t hide my regret and shame at having portrayed her in the past as a woman to love and respect.”) Here’s a portentous excerpt from the interview that was conducted in New Delhi:

Oriana Fallaci:

Mrs. Gandhi, I have so many questions to ask you, both personal and political. The personal ones, however, I’ll leave for later–once I’ve understood why many people are afraid of you and call you cold, indeed icy, hard…

Indira Gandhi:

They say that because I’m sincere. Even too sincere. And because I don’t waste time with flowery small talk, as people do in India, where the first half hour is spent in compliments: ‘How are you, how are your children, how are your grandchildren and so forth.’ I refuse to indulge in small talk. And compliments, if at all, I save for after the job is done. But in India people can’t stomach this attitude of mine, and when I say, ‘Hurry up, let’s get to the point,’ they feel hurt. And think I’m cold, indeed, icy, hard. Then there’s another reason, one that goes with my frankness: I don’t put on an act. I don’t know how to put on an act; I always show myself for what I am, in whatever mood I’m in. If I’m happy, I look happy; if I’m angry, I show it. Without worrying about how others may react. When one has had a life as difficult as mine, one doesn’t worry about how others will react.•

Tags: , ,

Decoder: Sarah Palin’s Keynote Address At The Tea Party Convention

February 7, 2010 in Humor, Politics | Permalink

This is a party of the people--working-class people who will pay me $100k for a speech. Ka-ching!

Sarah Palin: I look forward to attending more Tea Party events in the near future. It is just so inspiring to see real people.

Decoder: Real white people, that is. Real racist white people who aren’t really good spellers and who are resentful about having an African-American President.

Sarah Palin: Now, in many ways, Scott Brown represents what this beautiful movement is all about. You know, he was just a guy with a truck and a passion to serve our country.

Decoder: A guy without pants. A guy who did bottomless stuff. A guy who let it flap in the breeze. Also: Pointing out that he owned a truck makes it look like I’m connecting to working-class people, when I’m collecting $100K for a speech.

Sarah Palin: The Tea Party movement is not a top-down operation. This is about the people, and it’s bigger than any king or queen of a Tea Party. And it’s a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a Teleprompter.

Decoder: But not bigger than a charismatic woman with notes scribbled on her hand.

Sarah Palin: The stakes are too high right now, and your voice is too important. So work hard for these candidates, but put your faith in ideas.

Decoder: Or vague buzzwords and catchphrases that have no real meaning.

Sarah Palin: Because that’s not how radical Islamic extremists are looking at this. They know we’re at war. And to win that war, we need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at the lecturn!

Decoder: I don’t like professors, with their gotcha questions. They were always giving me bad grades at all five of the colleges I attended.

Sarah Palin: And you know, it’s no wonder that our President only spent about nine percent of his State of the Union Address discussing national security and foreign policy, because there aren’t a whole lot of victories that he could talk about that night.

Decoder: He hasn’t started any cool wars yet.

Sarah Palin: Just like you…probably just so tired of hearing the talk talk talk…Tired of hearing the talk!

Decoder: Although I can’t shut my resentful piehole for five minutes.

Sarah Palin: We need clear foreign policy that stands with the people and for democracy—one that reflects both our values and our interests, and it is in our best interest, because democracies—they don’t go to war with each other. They can settle their differences peacefully.

Decoder: Actually, democracies do go to war with each other. I am a complete fucking idiot–a complete fucking idiot with a $100K check in my pocket!

Tags: , ,

Wanted Poster: The Assassination Of Thomas D’Arcy McGee

February 5, 2010 in Misc., Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

McGee, one month before his assassination: "There is no danger of my being converted into a political martyr. If I were ever murdered, it would be by some wretch who would shoot me from behind."

United States history is sadly awash in the blood of political assassination, but only one Canadian elected official at the federal level has ever been murdered. That unlucky soul would be Thomas D’Arcy McGee, an Irish-Canadian member of the House of Commons who was gunned down on April 7, 1868.

McGee, a radical activist who campaigned for the separation by any means necessary of Ireland and England, took refuge from arrest warrants by emigrating first to the United States and then Canada. McGee renounced his violent nationalist views by the time he called Montreal home and was allegedly gunned down for being a traitor to the cause by a radical nationalist named Patrick J. Whelan. Whelan was tried, convicted and hanged, but his guilt has been disputed ever since. An excerpt from the poster’s plea:

“A member of the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada was FOULLY ASSASSINATED in this city on the MORNING of the SEVENTH DAY of April, 1868, in accordance with a Resolution of the CORPORATION, I, Henry James Friel, Mayor of the City of Ottawa, do hereby offer a REWARD OF $2000, For the Apprehension and Prosecution to Conviction of the Assassin.”

Tags:

Excerpted: “Classic Boom–Minerva’s Temple In Guatemala Is Blown Up For Baseball Fans,” Life, (1953)

February 2, 2010 in Excerpts, Politics, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Minerva: Totally into wisdom and check out that great rack. Not too shabby.

Came across this strange article in a 1953 issue of Life magazine. “Classic Boom: Minerva’s Temple in Guatemala is Blown Up for Baseball Fans” chronicles a Central American temple being exploded to extend the stands of a baseball stadium. Minerva was the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Athena, so she was quite the A-list deity. Baseball is still played in Guatemala City today at the Enrique “Trapo” Torrebiarte Stadium–same site?–but I don’t believe there are any current MLB players from Guatemala. The opening of the article:

“Fierce Don Manuel Estrada Cabrera, dictator of Guatemala from 1898 to 1920, was a man of many quirks. To get elected president he used to draft all males into the army on election day, decorate them with campaign buttons and march them into the polls to vote for him. To encourage education he built temples to Minerva, Goddess of Learning, and called out the citizenry to hold fiestas around the shrines. In due time Don Manuel was forced out of office by an angry electorate which had come into possession of a few cannons. But his monuments remained. A baseball park grew up near the one in Guatemala City and as the game grew more popular more room was needed for grandstands. So one day last month Minerva’s temple came tumbling down, victim of ‘beisbol’ and large charges of dynamite.”

Tags: , ,

“But Don’t You Find, Dr. Kissinger, That It’s Been A Useless War?”

January 28, 2010 in Books, Excerpts, Misc., Politics | Permalink

The late journalist Oriana Fallaci had a dubious final chapter to her life when in the wake of 9/11, she lived in fear a Muslim planet. But in her younger days, she was one of the greatest interrogators in all of journalism. It’s not likely in this self-conscious age that many of today’s bigwigs would suffer her substance and style, but it’s not like too many interviewers are even trying.

In 1972, as the war in Vietnam raged, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sat down for an interview with Fallaci and regretted it almost immediately, ultimately dubbing it “the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press.” The piece was published in the New Republic and anthologized in Interview with History. Here’s an excerpt:

Oriana Fallaci:

And what do you have to say about the war in Vietnam, Dr. Kissinger? You’ve never been against the war in Vietnam, it seems to me.

Henry Kissinger:

How could I have been? Not even before holding the position I have today…No, I’ve never been against the war in Vietnam.

Oriana Fallaci:

But don’t you find that [Arthur] Schlesinger is right when he says that the war in Vietnam has succeeded only in proving that a million Americans with all their technology have been incapable of defeating poorly armed men dressed in black pajamas?

Henry Kissinger:

That’s another question. If it is a question about whether the war in Vietnam was necessary, a just war, rather than…Judgments of that kind depend on the position that one takes when the country is already involved in the war and the only thing left is to conceive a way to get out of it. After all, my role, our role, has been to reduce more and more the degree to which America is involved in the war, so as then to end the war. In the final analysis, history will say who did more: those who operated by criticizing and nothing else, or we who tried to reduce the war and then ended it. Yes, the verdict is up to history. When a country is involved in a war, it’s not enough to say it most be ended. It must be ended in accordance with some principle. And this is quite different from saying that it was right to enter the war.

Oriana Fallaci: 

But don’t you find, Dr. Kissinger, that it’s been a useless war?

Henry Kissinger:

On this I can agree.•

Fallaci was among Dick Cavett’s guests on January 22, 1973 when news broke that former President Lyndon Johnson had died.

 

 

Tags: ,

Wanted Poster: John Wilkes Booth (1865)

January 26, 2010 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

America has suffered numerous shocks to the system in its history, but the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 12, 1865 is still probably as calamitous as any. I came across the “Wanted” poster for Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth, which was circulated in wake of the shocking crime at Ford’s Theatre, when Booth and his accomplices were still at large. “Wanted For The Murder of our late beloved President, Abraham Lincoln,” the poster declares, offering large sums of money for information leading to capture. An excerpt from the more poetic potions of the poster

“Let the stain of innocent blood be removed from the land by the arrest and punishment of the murderers. All good citizens are exhorted to aid public justice on this occasion. Every man should consider his own conscience charged with this solemn duty, and rest neither night nor day until it is accomplished.”

Booth was fatally wounded two weeks later by U.S. soldiers on a Virginia farm.

 

Tags: , ,

Excerpted: Hazel Scott, Ebony, 1960

January 13, 2010 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

A screen shot from "Rhapsody in Blue" (1945).

Long before Oprah ruled the airwaves, the jazz and classical pianist and singer Hazel Scott was the first woman of color to have her own TV show, which aired in 1950 on the DuMont network. Scott’s show was quickly cancelled, likely because of her outspoken opposition to McCarthyism and segregation. The entertainer was married to Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., but she was her own strong-willed person. In 1960, she wrote an article for Ebony magazine, explaining why she had spent the past three years living in Paris, during which time she was seriously ill and rumored to be estranged from her husband. An excerpt:

“I learned a lot in Paris about people and about myself. One does not look into the face of death, as I have, and come away worrying about pettiness and cattiness and gossip and conforming. It seems every time I am near death, someone or something is asking me over and over: How stupid can you get? How many changes will you need before you find out what’s important? This last time, when I spent a month or so in bed, I got the message. I am not likely to ever forget it. Love is important. Love. Some people go their whole lives without learning that very simple lesson. My three years out of America were three years of much needed rest not from work but from racial tension.”

Scott and Powell eventually divorced. She passed away from pancreatic cancer in New York on October 2, 1981.

Tags: , , ,

Featured Video: President Theodore Roosevelt In Manhattan, 1918

January 12, 2010 in Politics, Videos | Permalink

This brief 1918 clip of Theodore Roosevelt comes to us courtesy of the Library of Congress channel on YouTube. The former President was in Manhattan to be an honorary pallbearer at the funeral of onetime New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchell. I’m pretty sure you could have baked some beans in Roosevelt’s hat.

According to nyc.gov, Mitchell, known as the “Boy Mayor” because he was elected to the post in 1914 at the mere age of 35, was a crusader against corruption and the drafter of the city’s first comprehensive budget. The city won acclaim for his waste-cutting and proper management, but Mitchell was not reelected. He subsequently enlisted in the Army Air Service to fight in WWI and died in a plane crash while doing his military training in Louisiana.

Tags: ,

Urban Studies: Help Wanted In The U.S. Prison System

January 8, 2010 in Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Investing in the stock system.

There isn’t an abundance of jobs in the country right now, but the Federal Bureau of Prisons is hiring. The department’s website lists numerous positions available in a system that incarcerates millions and employs tens of thousands. Included on the site are informational videos that explain what it takes to work in chaplaincy or food services.

At some point and soon, we need to rethink our entire penal system. What are the systemic problems leading to our being the nation with the highest per-capita level of incarceration? Should we be putting anyone in prison for drug use? What type of incarceration will lead to lower rates of recidivism? We have plenty of talented minds in socioeconomics and they need to be marshaled by Washington to troubleshoot a situation that is bad for us economically and just bad for us, period. It’s a bipartisan problem and their should be a bipartisan solution.

Urban (And Rural) Studies: Smalltown America And Brain Drain

January 3, 2010 in Misc., Politics | Permalink

I am angry because my people, the whites, have been oppressed for too long!

Soft-headed demagogues like Sarah Palin try to draw a divide between American small towns and urban centers during election season, but similar problems plague both segments of our society: education, drugs, poverty, health care, etc. I came across The Rural Brain Drain, a smart article by married sociologists Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas in a September Chronicle Review that articulately addresses how both the city mouse and the country mouse often end up in the same trap.–though, yes, the problems are more dire in small towns. They also offer some common-sense solutions. An excerpt:

“The Harvard University sociologist William Julius Wilson famously describes how deindustrialization, joblessness, middle-class flight, depopulation, and global market shifts gave rise to the urban hyper-ghettos of the 1970s, and the same forces are now afflicting the nation’s countryside. The differences are just in the details. In urban centers, young men with NBA jerseys sling dime bags from vacant buildings, while in small towns, drug dealers wearing Nascar T-shirts, living in trailer parks, sell and use meth. Young girls in the countryside who become mothers before finishing high school share stories of lost adolescence and despair that differ little from the ones their urban sisters might tell.”

Read the full article.

Tags: , ,

David Gelernter Is Very Brilliant And Has Many Bizarre Opinions

December 11, 2009 in Books, Misc., Politics | Permalink

Evan R. Goldstein has a really interesting article in The Chronicle of Higher Education about computer-science genius, conservative polemicist, Jewish scholar, Yale professor, artist and Unabomber target David Gelernter. In one passage, Gelernter addresses his odd-duck assortment of ideas and interests:

“‘I’m a misfit,’ he said. ‘Most people fit in a groove and focus on one thing, but I cut across the grain of different areas.’ In conversation, the eclecticism of Gelernter’s mind is immediately apparent. An opinionated raconteur, he seamlessly transitions from literary criticism (‘Deconstructionists destroy texts’), to trends in the art world (‘Modern museums are devoted to diversity as opposed to greatness’), gender roles (‘Women mainly work because of male greed’), contemporary politics (‘Anti-Semitism in Europe is so intense that, I think, Hitler would have an easier time today then he did in 1933’), and earthier topics (‘I am obsessed with sex and sexuality as much as anyone I have ever met’).” Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , ,

Sarah Palin May Finally Be Wrong About Something

December 3, 2009 in Misc., Politics | Permalink

ME WANT PIZZA!

ME WANT PIZZA!

Everyone hates a know-it-all. The kind of person who has the answer for everything and makes the rest of us feel like baboons. Sarah Palin is such a person. She excelled at all 12 colleges she attended, continually moving on in pursuit of greater intellectual challenges. Brainiac. But I think I finally caught her at something less than 100 percent accuracy. No, I swear.

On a recent Fox News appearance, Palin said the following to into the petrified rock that is Greta Van Susteren’s head:

“There’s been a lack of acknowledgment by our president in understanding what it is that the American military provides in terms of, obviously, the safety, the security of our country. I want him to acknowledge the sacrifices that these individual men and women — our sons, our daughters, our moms, our dads, our brothers and sisters — are providing this country to keep us safe.”

Well, smarty pants, you may have whiffed on this one.

  • Obama praises troops for progress in Iraq.
  • Obama praises troops during surprise visit to Iraq.
  • Obama visits wounded U.S. troops in Germany.
  • Obama praises troops bravery after base attack.
  • Obama visits wounded soldiers at Walter Reed.
  • Obama honors fallen soldiers.
  • Obama praises military during visit to a Florida naval base.

    • Tags: , ,

    Newer entries »