The Palinosaur is back and eyeing up 2012

[H.R. Haldeman]

His poll rating dropped again since so it wasn't the stunning victory his supporters were told it was.

That was not the point the poster was taking you up on TradCat. You said Obama couldn't order lunch without a teleprompter, the poster responded by citing the Baltimore Q&A, the video to which is posted earlier in this thread. That video disproves you point in grand fashion. I don't understand this teleprompter thing because it is so self-evidently nonsense and for people to insist on using it just shows their limitations.

She spoke well for 45 minutes with a few words on her hand.

She really didn't. Have you watched the whole speech TradCat or have you just read the reviews of it? Because the reviews were good and I was sure it would be a decent speech. So I watched it. It is absolutely terrible, even on its own terms. Here it is:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7gVp3diPbI"]YouTube- Sarah Palin Keynote Speech at National Tea Party Convention[/ame]

Most striking of all: her tone. It is patronising and condescending beyond belief. That's when she's not using her sarcastic teenager voice, which is so grating it's painful. I tell you, it would take 5 minutes of a national campaign before this would turn voters off in their droves (which is exactly what happened on the campaign). It is also clear from the emphasises she puts on certain words and the flow of the speech that she really does not understand a word that she is saying.

Anyway, if you want to speak up for this moron, be my guest. Anyone that sees a future in her is so misguided it's not true.

[dalywise]

The real joke is if you think there is a genuine difference between those two parties.

That's exactly right. Apart from a few extreme religious issues, these are two capitalist parties, running a country that dominates world politics and runs its own affairs and the affairs of many other countries for the self-interest of America. Any differences are superficial.

[imokyrok]

I've a lot of sympathy for Obama on the poll numbers though.

August 2008
"And if you vote for me, we're going to go to Washington and reform healthcare!!!"
"Yaaaaaaaaay!"

December 2009
"Ok we're in Washington, let's reform healthcare!"
"Boooooooooooo"

A doctor writes about a patient , one among many:

The last year has been really tough as a primary care doctor. More of my patients are losing their health insurance every week. Some hard-pressed employers have dropped all coverage; others have pushed so much of the insurance premium cost increases onto the workers that the workers have to drop their own coverage to pay the rent and utility bills.
But this past week has been the worst. It's no longer just the people being forced to drop their medical coverage, or those being dropped by their employers. Now increasingly it's the folks who supposedly have "good" coverage who are in tears.

One of my patients is a former maintenance worker who was disabled in his 40s by a succession of medical calamities, ranging from cancer to an autoimmune disease to spinal injuries, none of them his fault. As a union worker he had the good fortune to have ongoing coverage of his medical insurance. But this week he called in tears because he can't make it any more. He's paying more than $400 a month out of pocket just for his drug co-pays. That's after insurance. He's paying a rising monthly premium from his paltry disability income to maintain his insurance. Now one of his drugs has abruptly become unavailable as a generic, due to the greedy machinations of BigPharma, increasing his monthly cost by another $120. Without it he'll lose his feet. "What am I gonna do, doc? What can I do?" A tough, stoic, macho guy crying in front of me because he has to choose between keeping the heat on, or keeping his feet.

Frankly I'm starting to think the US deserve what they've got. And Democrat politicians are a law onto themselves! No cohesion on display whatsoever and without cohesion the US is ungovernable.

[imokyrok]

BTW I was at a medical conference a couple of weeks ago where the most prominent speaker was a US consultant describing the benefits and side effects of specific drugs for a particular purpose. Again and again he'd mention a drug - usually a recent enough breakthrough - and he'd say that he hasn't had an opportunity to see it in action as the insurers won't pay for it. That is not a position we have here. Ok we have to pay the first €120 a month for a family and that is very hard for those with permanent illness but after that we get what we need no questions asked as far as I can tell.

[bogmanjoe]

American politics dropped about 50 IQ points overnight with the announcement by Sarah Palin that she's interested in 2012

Right her IQ would be nowhere near that of Joey the clown Biden.
Btw where are they hiden Biden I guess he is probably busy with
Al Gore inventing something spectacular like the internet.

[Sierra]

. . . and she is still making a farce of everything.

Critics mock Palin's 'helping hand' at Tea Party speech

[bogmanjoe]

Sierra looks like you,ve made a farce of yourself
by posting a video that has already been posted
on this thread at least twice.

[Pauli]

BTW I was at a medical conference a couple of weeks ago where the most prominent speaker was a US consultant describing the benefits and side effects of specific drugs for a particular purpose. Again and again he'd mention a drug - usually a recent enough breakthrough - and he'd say that he hasn't had an opportunity to see it in action as the insurers won't pay for it. That is not a position we have here. Ok we have to pay the first €120 a month for a family and that is very hard for those with permanent illness but after that we get what we need no questions asked as far as I can tell.

You are right. That is the current position.

[East Coast Elitist]

She spoke well for 45 minutes with a few words on her hand. Obama can't order lunch without a prompter. However the republicans need the center that Obama has deserted. They are the people who backed Hillary in the primaries but voted for Obama against McCain. Scott Brown showed how to capture that vote. Palin is a bit like Heseltine was for the Tories. A popular warm up act for the base but not the main man. The question is not do conservatives like her but what do independents think.

She didn't use her hand for her speech--she read it, like most people who are speaking for more than just a few minutes tend to do. Give up on the teleprompter. Most people in public life use them.

Instead, she used the hand notes for the Q&A, for the love of god. Which means she knew the Qs ahead of time, and she couldn't even trust herself to remember the basics. (Stephen Colbert the other night: "Note to self: buy milk, pick up dry cleaning, write core beliefs on hand.")

[imokyrok]

When giving presentations we use slides and notes to ensure we get our point across. In fact for two decades now any professional who is not well prepared and rehearsed for a presentation lets himself/herself down big time in front of the audience who attend. A teleprompter is simply a tool to ensure the free flow of ideas and those who think otherwise have probably never been in the position of coherently presenting ideas and facts to a crowd. The Q and A demonstrated clearly that Obama has the intellect to thoroughly grasp a wide variety of governmental policies and the ability to make mincemeat of Republican memes. But then most of us already knew that lack of intelligence was never likely to be a problem for a man who was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year, and president of the journal in his second year and who graduated with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude.

Now it wouldn't surprise me if some on here come back with that other republican meme on affirmative action - probably lifted straight from college dropout Limbaugh who doesn't appear to believe any black person can achieve anything without a significant helping hand. But that is simply not true and that is a fact that has been confirmed by Harvard college lecturers.