Washington speak

It was less than a week ago that everybody’s favourite Republican, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, said during the Vice-presidential “debate” that she doesn’t understand how things are done in Washington D.C. It looks to me like this statement put the Republican Election Committee into über-teach mode and they clamped the sleep teaching bolts to the Governor and cranked it up to ten, toasting her with Washington-speak 101. Well it’s all good now and the proof is in the pudding.

Governor Palin came busting out of the gates with the usual Washingtonian contempt for the voters. She has, in an apparent follow-up to the Fox “news” services comments on Democratic presidential candidate Senator Obama and the “terrorist fist jab” incident, accused that same Senator Obama with “… palling around with terrorists.” Not a good start “Washington-speak-wise” for Governor Palin. The intent it seems was for Mister and Missus Average Voter to immediately imagine Senator Obama spending his downtime “palling around” with his good buddy Osama Bin Laden or perhaps the King of Spain (the good Governor’s running mate, Senator John McCain has some sort of problem with the King of Spain, or somebody in Spain anyway).This is an ugly image in anybody’s book, but unfortunately for the Governor, the US voting public in general is brighter than the voters she is used to dealing with (although I find it hard to believe that the voters in Alaska would have been taken in by such crass political BS either.)

In any event, it looks like Governor Palin has taken her first faltering step into the larger arena of ‘Washington-speak’ (and you can’t scrape this stuff off of your shoe all that easily.) It’s too bad that she or her “people” couldn’t have been bothered to check into the allegations she was fed before she passed them along. For the record the “terrorist” Senator Obama has been “palling around” with is William Ayers, a co-founder of the radical group The Weathermen from the 1960s and 1970s. At that time he took part in bombings in the United States. Any and all charges were dropped against him by 1977. Ayers has said that he regrets that he hadn’t done more against the Viet Nam war (maybe this is the bee up Governor Palin’s bonnet, that whole “white flag of surrender” thing.) He is a teacher now and he and Senator Obama met in 1995 when Ayers hosted a “meet-and-greet” for the Senator. Since they have both served on a couple of non-profit groups at the same time. In Governor Palin’s view this is “palling around”. Well done, Governor. Now yank that foot out of your mouth and get on with it.

Anyway… Humouroceros

PS: On the Canadian election front, it’s still boring. The Prime Minister, big Steve Harper, has said that Canadians have nothing to fear about the mess going on South of the 49^th since our markets are different from theirs. Oh good. That’s a load off. Thanks Steve.