Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Most people have heard by now of the findings of a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life that American atheists know more about religion than religious believers do. The story that they didn’t hear coming out of that survey is that Christians have a more general ignorance as well, when compared to non-Christian Americans.

One of the particular manifestations of Christians’ ignorance is in the realm of politics. When I speak of the political ignorance of Christians in America, I’m not using the term “ignorance” to describe merely having opinions that I disagree with. I’m talking about ignorance of basic political facts. In the Pew Forum study, Christians demonstrated a much greater political ignorance than atheists did.

One of the political facts that the survey tested respondents on was the identity of the Vice President. An astonishing 42 percent of American Christians surveyed had no idea that Joseph Biden is Vice President of the United States. Only 17 percent of American atheists were ignorant of this fact.

The political implications of this finding are not reassuring. The rate of Christian identity in the United States is in decline, but Christians still make up the majority of voters in the nation. If so many of them can’t even remember who the Vice President of the United States is, then how can this large bloc of voters be expected to make intelligent choices in this year’s congressional elections, when less well-known facts are at stake?

The Republicans say that Sarah Palin should be elected Governor because she has executive experience – although it’s in very small communities. Sarah Palin has had experience running a business, however. She was the partial owner of a car wash in Anchorage, Alaska. Together with her husband, she held 40 percent of the car wash’s ownership.

And how did Sarah Palin do with the executive experience of running a small business? Lousy. She ran the business into the ground because she couldn’t be bothered to keep up with paperwork. Sarah Palin failed to file legally required reports or to pay the state licensing fees for the business, and so the car wash was shut down.

In addition to the car wash, Sarah Palin was the owner and operator of a marketing consultancy with the odd name of Rouge Cou. Rouge Cou is a rough translation into French of the American phrase redneck. Actually, the French translation should have been Cou Rouge. Sarah Palin couldn’t even get that right, and the consulting business closed after it failed to get even one client.

With this record of executive failure, why should Sarah Palin be given the position of Vice President under the elderly and most-likely-to-die-in-office President in American history, John McCain?

Sarah Palin is no friend of small towns in America.

How many small town main streets across the USA have died when Wal-Mart parked its trucks on the outskirts of town and built a big box store, stealing all the customers that small business relied upon? Those big box stores can offer low, low prices because they sell stuff made in sweatshop factories in countries like China and India, and because they have powerful lobbyists working for them in Washington D.C.

Big box stores ruin small towns.

So, what did Sarah Palin do as mayor of the village of Wasilla? She welcomed the big box stores to set up shop on the edge of town. Practically rolled out the red carpet for them.

Wasilla resident Anne Kilkenny says of that when she was mayor, Sarah Palin, “turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots.”

If you want America to turn into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots, then Sarah Palin is your kind of politician. If not, then you need to take a stand now and join with those Americans working to make sure that Sarah Palin is never placed within a heartbeat of being President of the United States.

“We have attempted diplomacy without effect. We have attempted economic sanctions to no effect. Regrettably, my colleagues and I have concluded the President needs the authorization to use force to protect our country from this sort of eventuality.” – Evan Bayh, October 8, 2002.

The statement above was given by Evan Bayh on the floor of the Senate as a justification for rushing into war against Iraq. In this statement, Senator Bayh states that diplomatic and economic efforts to eliminate Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had not worked, and so, war was absolutely necessary.

Those with a little memory will remember that, actually, Evan Bayh was quite wrong. Back in 2002, when Evan Bayh gave his speech, Iraq didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction to eliminate.

Why didn’t Iraq have any weapons of mass destruction any more? Because diplomacy and economic sanctions had worked. Diplomatic reality was, in fact, the direct opposite of what Evan Bayh thought it was.

This incident exposed Evan Bayh as a shockingly unprepared diplomatic thinker. But, now many Democratic Party insiders are pushing to get Evan Bayh chosen to be the Vice President of the United States. Traditionally, one of the few important roles of a Vice President is international diplomacy.

Evan Bayh just isn’t qualified to be Vice President. As his ignorant claims surrounding the invasion of Iraq prove, Evan Bayh lacks the diplomatic skills necessary in a good Vice President.

My wife says that Randi Rhodes says that the Washington Post says that some anonymous insiders in the Clinton and Obama campaigns say that there are secret meetings to figure out how to introduce Hillary Clinton as Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate!

Yeah, or maybe not. Notice how this story line sounds an awful lot like that of the urban legends, in which someone’s cousin knows someone who knows someone…

The Hillary Clinton campaign is kicking its public relations efforts into high gear, desperately trying to manipulate the media to buying into their hype about Hillary Clinton being chosen as VP by Obama. After all, it’s Clinton’s last chance to get her White House back.

The truth is obvious – there is no way that Barack Obama could have Hillary Clinton as a Vice Presidential running mate. She has become poison to both Democrats and Republicans. She would only drag Obama down.

That, and there’s no way that Barack Obama could ever trust Hillary Clinton, or her loose lips husband. He could not operate effectively as President with those two trying to mess him up at every step.

The Hillary Clinton for VP talk is just desperate talk from Washington D.C. insiders who once thought that their power was inevitable, and now find themselves on the outside, just like everyone else.

There is no story.