I don't understand. Can anyone explain how she is a thing?

"Below average" in the US equals about 150 million people, which explains why Jerry Springer has had a show for so long, why for so many, the answer to 'the shortest distance between 2 points' mathematical question is "gun", more problems are just left to "Jay-sus" to solve, and why valid scientific answers to everyday questions are routinely viewed with suspicion and contempt.

In short, people relate to politicians that resemble them in some way.

The right wing media has been making us stupider with their one-line mantras and simple answers to complex problems, for years, in order to prepare us for this. (e.g. "Drill baby, drill","Our country was founded by Christians, on Christian values","Liberals are evil socialists","Climate change is nonsense","We are fighting a war on terror","We are winning the war on drugs","Illegal immigrants are the source of all our woes","Giving rights to homosexuals will threaten the sanctity of your marriage","Taking god out of our schools has caused the downfall of the country","Obama is responsible for the economic crisis and high gas prices",...)

At one time, you had to back up your arguments with facts. Now you just shout a catchy slogan that puts the blame on someone else and the masses will follow you. You can even rewrite history, if you can come up with a version that people like better.

During WWII and in the decades after, we built our economic prosperity on blood, sweat, and sacrifice. Now we want it back and we're not willing to bleed, sweat or sacrifice, so we're looking for a savior. We will elect one false prophet after another until we wake up. All the while, the banks are robbing us blind.

In this case, a large proportion of the population will support Sarah Palin because they value the ability to hunt and kill a moose over the ability to think rationally, listen to reasoned evidence, have a reasonable level of education, and run a country.

DISCUSS

When the country goes bankrupt, hunting and fishing could be our only hope of survival!

Now I don’t know much about economics (particularly American, as I am in the UK). However, there is a very basic problem here, with pretty much ALL economic polices the world over.

All businesses want to grow, produce more money, and in doing so consume more resources. All countries want better quality of life for their citizens, meaning people will live longer, and the population grows as more adults reach reproductive age, and more children survive.

Global population has been increasing exponentially, and sooner or later we will run out space. It is INEVITABLE that we will eventually need an economic policy that is not geared towards growth, but towards maintaining a steady consumption of renewable resources and a population that is no longer increasing.

No idea what the solution to that is, or when it’ll be needed. But just putting it out there – there’s only so much room on the planet, and population growth simply can’t continue forever. Sorry if that feels like it’s going off topic, but if we’re going to start talking about economic policy then I think this should be mentioned!

I did not start us on economic policy! My comment was tongue in cheek (humor?). I thought you Brits were good at detecting dry humor. Regarding population and resources, it has been calculated that the planet can support only 2 billion people with current energy (e.g. no consuming fossil fuels which will get harder and harder to find). We have a long way to go to achieve a sustainable lifestyle, and obviously a policy of continued economic growth is not going to get us there. However, we can't get started on this topic, because I could go on for days, and I just don't want to get into it, here.

Sorry muddoug, I wasn’t sure if you were just joking, or whether you were trying to make a point underneath the humour! My bad. I quite agree that this topic could go into runaway if we let it, so I’m not going to press the point any further......just an interesting observation, that’s all!

You might find this interesting Doug concerning the banks in the US, apparently there is no actual law requireing US citizens to pay income tax

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYNEwsRohi4&feature=youtu.be

I've been down that road, Yamtree. Some of their assertions are valid, but the one about the 16th amendment not being ratified is essentially an urban legend. Many people have gone to jail or lost their ass[ets] for tax evasion. You can fight it all day long, but I'm not sure that anyone has actually won ... although "they" say some have.

The part about the Federal Reserve act is absolutely true, and the bankers really have taken control of the US. I think this video is a bit more rational and to the point ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nelGtSOimwQ&feature=player_embedded#at

As comedian Christopher Titus said- "If you're normal, the crowd will accept you. If you're deranged, the crowd will make you their leader!"

Personally, I'd love to see her make a presidential run and succeed. Perhaps 4 years of Palin fumbling around would be a good wake up call to the nation. Or at least release a little anarchy into the system.

Sarah Palin would just be another puppet to the banks and industry, like big oil companies. Ralph Nader has some ideas about how we can take back our "representative" government, but my opinion is that Americans aren't quite ready to make the necessary sacrifices. They are still pretty fat and comfortable.

Of course it would be good if an American President was actually hostile to the methods advocates of "the ownership society" use to keep making life harder and harder on people who do honest work while making returns bigger and better for people who simply control capital. However, there is a world of difference between a competent leader unwilling to topple the established power structure and an ignorant buffoon with that same lack of will. If Al Qaeda were to strike during a Palin Presidency, forget about the random invasion of a single unrelated Middle Eastern nation -- her military response would likely have our bravest dying in numerous irrelevant foreign lands, perhaps including a few attempted deployments to places that do not actually exist. The only silver lining would be the surreal experience of wandering through a rally of her followers with their "INVADE NARNIA NOW" signs.

Sarah Palin has traction for two reasons. One is that most stupid people do not understand that having a stupid national leader is not actually in their best interest. They want "someone like me" in charge, never thinking through how much they would actually suffer as a result of having someone like them making decisions that shape the fate of us all. The other reason for her popularity is that the reflexive anti-Obama behavior of the Republican Party is not actually a coherent body of thought -- it is an unthinking reaction like the kicking of a leg that has just been struck below the knee with a rubber mallet. When your best ideas amount to things like "let's never pass a new business regulation again" and "the best way to create jobs is to have the lowest possible taxes on the highest possible incomes," it really doesn't matter whether your spokesperson is a genius or a world class idiot -- both sorts will be obliged by the party line to keep parroting idiotic statements. Heck, Newt Gingrich is one of the most overrated minds in our country today, but look what happened to him for having an isolated moment of integrity during which he suggested it might be unwise to privatize and underfund Medicare.

Regards,
messydom

Since I moved to the U.S Palin has fascinated me, in the same way you can't help but watch a car crash as it happens in front of you.

But it simply baffles me that someone must appreciate her.

There are people out there that think she makes sense and stands for them.

Yet, she is not even well read in what she preaches.

At least most nut cases have read and retained the information they are forming their interpretation and opinion on. She doesn't even seem to have done that and proves it week in and week out. Yet she is employed and receives donations based on that!

It would be easy to throw out some lazy America bashing based on the high profile of the Palin thing, but I just do not see it. I have met gun nuts, religious nuts... I have met brain dead Orange County house wives, a rocket scientist, computer programers, artists, musicians, Texan cowboys, a plethora of ex and serving military, beer drinking fun timers... old timers and youth... and all of them across many states but not once have I met someone saying "That Sarah Palin, she should be our next president, she speaks for me!". I have met normal, I have met weird and everyone in between but not a Palin supporter.

The only conclusion I can come up with is she is being financed by the left to make the right look stupid through the media... but I can't explain FOX. Even FOX can't think she is anything but a liability, right?


Amazing.

Damn you all for making me click this link thinking a I could find a video of a Sarah Palin lookalike getting slimed.

There is a movie of a Sarah Palin lookalike being pied (Kym/Piefightgirls)...apologies for the digression...from an off topic discussion.

Digressions are good. Especially in this case.

It's actually pretty good as well going by the pictures!

As fatuous as it may sound, I tend to wonder if the SP appeal is very much that a lot of men simply want to fuck her - what with her ‘soccer mom’ looks and her outward bound weekends a-la Davy Crockett. This ‘thoughtless man’s’ ‘pin-up’ image gets her a lot of exposure on TV in the first place.

I do wonder, too, if there is often a big difference between what people (voters) say in public about what they believe, and what they actually do when they’re alone with that pencil in the voting booth…

It certainly explains a lot of other democratic decisions that have been made all over the world.

I can explain it.

This is a country that is obsessed with celebrity. Just like a girl will go to a Britney spears concert where she doesn't even fucking sing, and love every minute of it because of the choreography and the presentation and, well, it's Britney! Singing be damned! Palin is to presidential credibility what Britney Spears is to singing.

People are intellectually lazy, and they don't want to take the time to weigh all the facts of what's going on and formulate their own opinions. They just want to see somebody who they like the personality of, or who they can identify with, and vote them in. Once they've made up their minds, any logical arguments about the actual worthiness of the person will fall on deaf ears.