Is Sarah Palin dumb as a pile of bricks or smart like a fox?

[Palin with Ross on left. Photo here.]

She must be dumber than a pile of bricks! Or not.

Last month she nominated one Wayne Anthony Ross to be the attorney general of Alaska.

Bad move. Ross is, according to Max Blumenthal at The Daily Beast, "a colorful far-right lawyer and longtime Palin ally who sports his initials, W.A.R. on his Hummer's vanity plates..."

But he more's than that. It appears, from what he has said, that he has problems understanding things like human rights, human dignity, fairness, and it also appears that maybe his brain is wired weirdly.

"...his nomination was thrown into grave peril when his opponents presented evidence that he called homosexuals 'degenerates,' hailed the 'courage' of a student who lionized the Ku Klux Klan, vowed to undermine the sovereignty of Native American tribes, and allegedly defended men who rape their wives."

Here are a few quotations and other miscellany from Mr. Ross:

1. "If a guy can't rape his wife, who's he gonna rape?" (Ross denied saying this.)

2. "If a woman would keep her mouth shut, there wouldn't be an issue with domestic violence."

3. He wrote "several manifestos attacking [Martin Luther] King as a communist subversive.

4. He has "routinely appeared at public events beside his friend, Don Tanner, a while nationalist who moved to South Africa for a period during the 1980s to support is apartheid government, and who reveled crowds of conservatives with anti-black 'South African jokes' upon his return to Alaska."


Well, there's much more. But here's Blumenthal's take:

"If Palin withdraws Ross' nomination, she could end another embarrassing political spectacle before it registers on the national press corps' radar. Alternatively, if she manages to ram his appointment through, Palin can begin implementing a hard-right legal agenda that will appeal to the elements she is cultivating as the base of her likely 2012 presidential campaign..."


I think a major question arises with this appointment that should become fodder for a national conversation (just in case Palin the prevaricator should become convinced she needs to be president in 2012): Why would anyone with a modicum of common sense and common decency be involved with someone like Ross?

What the hell is wrong with Sarah Palin? Is she dumb as a pile of bricks or smart like a fox?


There's more here.

Palin - so dumb it hurts

The wingnuts on the right are crying that the media is being too hard on poor Sarah Palin. The media has actually dared to criticize her!

Palin herself claims that the First Amendment may be in danger when the media takes her to task for her nefarious and false attacks on Barack Obama.

As Glen Greenwald put it: "This is actually so dumb it hurts."

"Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.

"'If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,' Palin told host Chris Plante, 'then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.'"


To repeat: "This is actually so dumb that it hurts."

What is truly frightening is that, not only is this ignoramus a governor of one of our states, but is running for vice president of the United States of America, and she does not understand one of the most, (if not THE MOST), vital amendments to our Constitution.

As Greenwald says, Palin has it backwards. What the First Amendment does is guarantee a free press. "Thus, when the press criticizes a political candidate and a Governor such as Palin, that is a classic example of First Amendment rights being exercised, not abridged."

Maybe we need an amendment to the Constitution barring anyone from running for public office who cannot demonstrate a thorough knowledge of that document.

Again, from Greenwald: "It it even possible to imagine more breathtaking ignorance from someone holding high office and running for even higher office?"

The answer to that is "No!"


John Stuart Mill got it right: "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."