Dangerously Ignorant

Speaking in Colorado this weekend, Gov. Sarah Palin tried to explain the recent federal bailout by claiming that lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.” The companies, however, “aren’t taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization,” McClatchy noted. Palin’s satement “is somewhat nonsensical because up until yesterday there was sort of no public funding there,” said Andrew Jakobovics of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “The ‘too expensive to tax payers,’ I don’t know where that comes from.”

She is a pure ideologue: If something is broken, it must be because government is too big (and/or because society fails to obey Evangelical Christian faith to the letter). Facts are meaningless and knowledge is meaningless; Sarah Palin creates her own reality in the names of Ronald Reagan and Jesus.

The Republicans actually pulled a bit of a switch on us. They have nominated not another Bush/Cheney, but something far worse: Cheney/Bush. John McCain has every ounce, if not more, of Cheney’s bellicose desire to fight everyone and anyone who might challenge him. Sarah Palin is the willfully ignorant zealot hiding behind a screen of false compassion. Unfortunately for us, this time Cheney will be running the show while W serves as an almost literal figurehead… Unless something happens to the elderly president, in which case we’re left with yet another George Bush, only this time without daddy’s friends to provide at least an illusion of competence.

The possibility of their election is positively terrifying.