Palin Resigning as Governor

Originally posted by badmoon
Yes I do find her attactive as well and that is indeed part of her current charm.

She had a great line that she used recently - only dead fish go with the flow -

........funny that coming from a fegilfte fish!.......😀

Originally posted by utherpendragon
I strongly disagree w/that statement. I would like to hear your reasons why you feel that way.

Really, the Couric interview. Ambush or no ambush, she showed an inability to think on her feet and to absorb and respond to questions. Even when she's charismatic and funny, she oversimplifies things. I watched the Biden debate. I think she did well, but she did well because she was folksy and cutesy, not because she was very good on substance. Also, Biden has this unfortunate tendency to say something stupid once every 5 or 6 times he opens his mouth. So, in an average debate, he's probably going to say 3 or 4 stupid things.

Her message is one-dimensional. Her positions are overly simplistic. Her raising that bridge to nowhere business when she knew perfectly well that she had initially agreed to take that money showed a lack of awareness and a lack of foresight. She speaks too much in cliches and doesn't seem very flexible in her opinions.

I don't dislike Palin. I really don't. I would definitely hire her to be a salesperson or company representative. I just don't know if she has the intellectual capacity that makes me confident that she's capable of running my country.

Originally posted by kmax87
........funny that coming from a fegilfte fish!.......😀

What's a fegilfte fish?

Originally posted by sh76
I just don't know if she has the intellectual capacity that makes me confident that she's capable of running my country.

Did Ronald Reagan have that capacity?

Originally posted by MacSwain
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=51610&print=on

If you are correct concerning Palin's "brightness", (but - as I remember she had the upper hand in her head to head debate with J. Biden - of course against him it was no test) what difference does it make?

I don't know what your congressmen do, but by Conyers conf e which is the most un-common sense of all. Her "brightness" yet remains to be seen.

If she were running for Congress, I would have no qualms about her intelligence. As the great Justice Scalia once said (and I'm paraphrasing):

"We need not inquire as to Congress' intents when they pass the bill, as Congress need have nothing in mind for its laws to be effective."

For President, that's a different story. A President needs to be intelligent.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Did Ronald Reagan have that capacity?

Yes

Originally posted by sh76
Yes

Right.

Actually, he was pretty thick.

"Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for "freedom." (The word is "svoboda"; it's quite well attested in Russian literature.) Ronald Reagan said that intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn't his fault) could be recalled once launched. Ronald Reagan said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R. Ronald Reagan professed to be annoyed when people called it "Star Wars," even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, "May the force be with you." Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars. Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible. In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.

There was more to Ronald Reagan than that. Reagan announced that apartheid South Africa had "stood beside us in every war we've ever fought," when the South African leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war. Reagan allowed Alexander Haig to greenlight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, fired him when that went too far and led to mayhem in Beirut, then ran away from Lebanon altogether when the Marine barracks were bombed, and then unbelievably accused Tip O'Neill and the Democrats of "scuttling." Reagan sold heavy weapons to the Iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn't sold them (and hadn't traded for hostages in any case) would, all the same, have fit on a small truck. Reagan then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an illegal war in Nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that, too. Reagan then modestly let his underlings maintain that he was too dense to understand the connection between the two impeachable crimes. He then switched without any apparent strain to a policy of backing Saddam Hussein against Iran. (If Margaret Thatcher's intelligence services had not bugged Oliver North in London and become infuriated because all European nations were boycotting Iran at Reagan's request, we might still not know about this.)" (Christopher Hitchens: http://www.slate.com/id/2101842/ )



If you can fall for Reagan, why not Palin?

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Right.

If you can fall for Reagan, why not Palin?

I'm not sure where your assumption that the two are comparable comes from.

I guess they were both Republican governors and they were both charismatic and likeable people.

I'm not sure why you assume that this means that their intelligence level were the same.


Edit: Regarding your added 2 paragraphs, many of those seems like jokes; and if these are the best examples one can come up with regarding Reagan's lack of intelligence after 8 years in the WH, that's pretty weak. Some of those are policy criticisms that have nothing to do with intelligence or lack thereof. Did you really need to devote 30% of the "proofs" that Reagan was "thick" to describing (in biased fashion) the Iran-Contra situation, which we all know about anyway?

Originally posted by sh76
I'm not sure where your assumption that the two are comparable comes from.

I guess they were both Republican governors and they were both charismatic and likeable people.

I'm not sure why you assume that this means that their intelligence level were the same.

It's not really about their intelligence level -- it's about yours. You and the rest of the voters. I applaud you for your nous in seeing through Palin, but your assessment of Reagan, that obvious 'phony and loon', as 'intelligent' is cause for concern.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
It's not really about their intelligence level -- it's about yours. You and the rest of the voters. I applaud you for your nous in seeing through Palin, but your assessment of Reagan, that obvious 'phony and loon', as 'intelligent' is cause for concern.

That, in a nut shell, is why the Democrats did so poorly for so long. This attitude that "you must be stupid if you vote for the guy we don't like."

Be concerned if you like.

Just for laughs, please tell me who was the last GOP Presidential candidate that you do consider intelligent.

Originally posted by sh76
If she were running for Congress, I would have no qualms about her intelligence. As the great Justice Scalia once said (and I'm paraphrasing):

"We need not inquire as to Congress' intents when they pass the bill, as Congress need have nothing in mind for its laws to be effective."

For President, that's a different story. A President needs to be intelligent.

I find your response extremely flippent for a serious question. You dismiss my point by claiming stupid in one branch is quite alright....stupid in the other is horrible.

Let's study your assumption: By your lights, the president (who can't institute a law, bill or any legislation without the vote of congress) must have intelligence of the highest order while stupidity can be the congressional norm.

Why is it I am shocked by your disingenuousness. What's wrong? Paradigm broken?

Originally posted by sh76
What's a fegilfte fish?

if you really must know, gefilte fish eaten by a former governor I(you/we) would like/love to (ahem) forget... (nudge! nudge! 😉😉 )

Originally posted by MacSwain
I find your response extremely flippent for a serious question. You dismiss my point by claiming stupid in one branch is quite alright....stupid in the other is horrible.

Let's study your assumption: By your lights, the president (who can't institute a law, bill or any legislation without the vote of congress) must have intelligence of the highes ...[text shortened]... onal norm.

Why is it I am shocked by your disingenuousness. What's wrong? Paradigm broken?

Okay; I'm sorry if I didn't take your question seriously enough.

What can I tell you? The idea of a less than intelligent President bothers me. The idea of a less than intelligent Senator doesn't. Am I inconsistent? Maybe. Senators are one in a hundred. House members are one in 435. Most of them simply vote how they think their constituencies want them to. They're not executives. They don't really make decisions. Their staffs probably do read the bills carefully and give them the Reader's Digest version.

I don't think I dismissed your point. I think I simply stated why I'm not bothered as much by Conyers not reading his bills than by having a President whom I don't think highly of his/her intelligence.

I assure you that I don't like John Conyers any more than you do.

Originally posted by kmax87
if you really must know, gefilte fish eaten by a former governor I(you/we) would like/love to (ahem) forget... (nudge! nudge! 😉😉 )

Ah; Jimbo from Joisy. Gotcha.

Originally posted by kmax87
if you really must know, gefilte fish eaten by a former governor I(you/we) would like/love to (ahem) forget... (nudge! nudge! 😉😉 )

I know! I know! Call on me! (while excitedly raising hand from desk)

gefilte (is gefilt in Yiddish) and the Mayor who ate this delicacy which you'd love to forget: Edward Koch

Gold Star by my name at end of class please!! 😉