Debate prep

As we anticipate a likely freakshow of a debate tonight, I think it's a good time to run through some of Sarah Palin's greatest hits:





Oops, sorry, that was actually Tina Fey doing a satirical impersonation of Sarah Palin on SNL. No, here are Palin's real greatest hits (see if you can tell the difference):



I especially like her answer about where she gets her news. She reads ALL newspapers! But is she aware of all internet traditions?

And it turns out that she cannot name a single Supreme Court decision other than Roe V Wade:



Is anyone really surprised?

But let's not get too excited. Palin is actually a pretty good debater:

When he faces off against Sarah Palin Thursday night, Joe Biden will have his hands full.

I should know. I've debated Governor Palin more than two dozen times. And she's a master, not of facts, figures, or insightful policy recommendations, but at the fine art of the nonanswer, the glittering generality. Against such charms there is little Senator Biden, or anyone, can do.

Maybe. But if she's the master of the BS answer, it sure hasn't shown in her interviews with Gibson and Couric. She wasn't able to get through those with glittering generalities. And if the debate is the least bit substantive, she's going to be in a lot of trouble.

And in the general spirit of Palin-bashing, here's a simply brutal Rolling Stone article by Matt Taibbi:

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

Read it. It is good.