(Updated) Wiseacre from Wasilla

Update: I wanted to point you to an excellent piece by Marjorie Childress that discusses Palin's mockery of community organizers. She hits the nail on the head.
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VP candidate Sarah Pallin sarcastically mocked a lot of things last night, including community organizing:

“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities,” Ms. Palin said, a slash of the sword at Senator Barack Obama’s job as young man working on antipoverty programs in Chicago.

Maybe she doesn't really know what a community organizer does. There are many things she apparently doesn't know about, so she's being tutored by a squad of Washington insiders connected to McCain and Bush. You know how right-wing "mavericks" are -- they're entwined with all the forces they suggest they're against when they're posing as populists for the little people during election cycles. Did you get the message last night that McCain-Palin is against Washington lobbyists and business as usual? Well, except for the massive cadre of DC lobbyists who constitute the McCain-Palin campaign apparatus, and other lobbyists who have already had to flee the campaign when they got caught in the headlights with their hands in the cookie jar.

No doubt about it, Palin can mock. I hope she gets some mocking in return. She's wide open to that on many fronts. Remember, Palin believes the Iraq war is a mission from god, as is the giant natural gas pipeline she's been pushing in Alaska. Want instant support for a course of action from the uninformed? Assert it's part of god's plan implying that opposing it would be unholy. Bingo!

Right-wingers have always been good at offering bread and circuses to the masses while their wealthy cronies pick their pockets. And I can see that Palin will be a big champion to the ignorance is bliss crowd. For example, she's an advocate for keeping polar bears off the endangered species list at a time when global warming is just warming up. Oh wait, she denies the human role in global warming so she doesn't have to bother with that issue. Everything will be fixed if we drill for more oil! Well, except that the U.S. has only 3 percent of the world's reserves and a massive per capita consumption rate.

Did anyone else find it odd that almost all of the Repub speakers last night were complaining about Washington doing them wrong? I guess they forgot that their own party has dominated Congress and/or the executive branch for a decade or more -- setting all the priorities and making all the decisions. I found it especially confusing when Mitty Romney went on about LIBERALS ruining everything in DC. I'm trying to remember when LIBERALS last had any significant power nationally. Can you recall?

Denial coupled with sarcastic dissembling is a useful tool for those like Palin who will say anything her elite, insider Washington speechwriter trains her to say over a week of closed-door sessions. Palin was reciting the words of none other than Matthew Scully, former longtime Bush speechwriter. How maverick-ish!

Well we all know how hard it can be to effectively knock elitists when your party is full of them, all protecting their property, position, wealth, tax breaks and unearned advantages. Solution? Find a tough talking neophyte from the hinterlands and train her to train her mouth on all the usual manufactured targets of the right. Hope that folks won't notice she's an ambitious, to the right of Atila the Hun politician who's against increased education spending, expanded health care coverage for children, programs to help poor young pregnant girls, early childhood education, support for the disabled, anything but abstinence-only sex education, equal pay for equal work, child care assistance and many other initiatives that help ordinary people cope with life.

She's got hers, including a bunch of previous campaign donations from the same power brokers who propped up the discredited Rep. Don Young-Sen. Ted Stevens machine in Alaska. As for her self-proclaimed expertise in fiscal matters, Palin cut taxes as Mayor of Wasilla while simultaneously expanding the town’s operating budget by almost $2 million. She ended her term in 2002 with Wasilla $20 million in debt. Oops. Lot's of similiarities to BushCo.

Maybe having Palin talk about common sense and her "typical" American family will work. Maybe it will mask the fact that she's an extremist oddity linked in cozily with the "dominionist" movement dedicated to returning government to the Christians, mixed up with a political group that wants Alaska to secede from the union, is a big supporter of "creationist science" being taught in the schools and backed right-wing crazy man Pat Buchanan when he ran for president. Palin actually believes our Founding Fathers created the Pledge of Allegiance (which was written in 1892). She's a strong supporter of shooting wolves and bears from airplanes. She's against a woman's right to choose even in cases of rape or incest. Just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill mom, ain't she?

If you want to get a better idea of what Palin is really about on the issues, check out the Sarah Palin Digest assembed by Think Progress. Also see Alternet's coverage on the real Sarah Palin. And the AP debunks some of the dishonest assertions of McCain-Palin, including this one:

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

Then there's this little tidbit dug up by the Washington Independent that has Palin bragging about the pork she got for Wasilla in her own handwriting. At the time, McCain wasn't pleased with Palin's penchant for pork.

I can't wait until Palin opens herself up to media questions, can you? Or will the GOP insiders controlling this thing keep her sequestered for anything except scripted events? More will be revealed. In the meantime, let's dedicate ourselves to taking the lipstick off the hockey mom so voters can clearly see the deep-seated dangers of the pit bull lurking underneath (to use some of Sarah's own terminology). She can pose and pretend, but she can't hide entirely from now until Election Day.

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