Usually, when someone is this confused, he/she doesn't flaunt it so blatantly.

Unless s/he is a Republican. In that case s/he buys a $200,000 sound system with which to make sure EVERYONE knows s/he is an idiot.

Is it me or has Mikey Reagan been bobbing up more often than a turd in a broken toilet of late?

Dear God, please let him run for office!

"It all really is so backwards and skewed as to sound like absolute nonsense when some of this economic policy is explained."

I see she's making progress in the ultra-compound sentence area. Or is that just a teleprompter.

"clownish, vindictive amateur"

Yeah, more and more the leading RepuGs do appear to emulate the scene from the circus, when a little Fiat drives in and clowns keep coming out of the doors. Of course, with their diminishing numbers, that Fiat should make a fine Convention Center in 2012. They are having problems finding an old Superman type phone booth in Northeast Georgia for their hooplas.

"Since when can you get out of huge national debt by creating trillions of dollars of new debt? It all really is so backwards and skewed as to sound like absolute nonsense when some of this economic policy is explained."

Wait... fixed it.

Since when can you get out of huge national debt by cutting taxes repeatedly? It all really is so backwards and skewed as to sound like absolute nonsense when some of this economic policy is explained.

And what makes her think the federal government wants to "control the people"?

It's a poorly concealed dog whistle to the more militant segments of the GOP, basically telling them, "Just because your paranoid doesn't mean the government isn't watching you and taking away your guns".

These people have no conscience. When some sociopath goes on a shooting rampage out of fear that the government will take over their house and steal their guns, lying shills like Palin will deny any responsibility.

I don't know what Gov. Palin's college transcript looks like, but it would be amusing if it does not include Economics 101.

I thought Bush II would remain the definitive answer to the GOP's question "Just how little can we give the American public in a candidate and still attract enough votes to be vialble?" (Or, God forbid, "...and still win."

Apparently there was some room for improvement left over the last iteration of the process.

"...some kind of secret lobotomy."

It's hard to think of it as a lobotomy if the patient was born that way. I can't recall a period when Palin did not put on the bimbo's "Golly-gee! Is it all so complicated?" attitude. All I hear is the Republican's appeal to anti-intellectualism. The only problem is, Palin never got the memo: If you're in charge of delivering the message, you can't drink the Kool-aid.

No Econ 101 in her background. Why, sir, Spokane Tech and U of I-Dee-Ho both have similar courses. One of their favorite trick questions is "If you cut down one Douglas Fir, but, only cut down half of another, how many trees do you have?" When St Sarah replied "Clear cut them all", she passed with flying colors.

Is it even worth pointing out to Madam Governor that NONE of this was anything Obama wanted? That Bush punted General Motors, AIG, banks-too-big-to-fail, and state budgets in epic shortfall to the next administration?

The sitcom is alive and well. . .

What's tiring is this was fine when Ronald Reagan (angelic singing in the background) did it, but not when a non-GOPer does it.

Of course, Econ 101 is Microeconomics, which doesn't cover macro topics like national debt, taxes, etc.

Relevant because most Republicans' understanding of economics ends about 5 or 6 weeks into Econ 101 -- at the point where they have the supply and demand curves and everybody is happy in the the world of perfect price information, no barriers to entry, and zero external effects.

Just try to talk to a Republican about the more difficult concepts like the tragedy of the commons, the prisoner's dilemma, or market failures and you'll get blank stares back. Let alone any talk of the LM/IS curves or anything related to macroeconomics.

Yet, despite their inability to understand complicated economics (and yes, that includes their elected critters in Congress) for some reason everyone of them understands the Laffer curve.

Relevant because most Republicans' understanding of economics ends about 5 or 6 weeks into Econ 101

Methinks you give them too much credit, Anonny.

The governor, for some inexplicable reasons, has chosen the wrong path.

I think you're over-analyzing here, or you bought into some of the BS that was shoveled during the campaign. What you see and hear now is pure, undiluted, unhandled Sarah Palin. This is the real deal, and I'm hoping everyone is paying attention.

Know what the difference is between Sarah Palin and Rod Blagojevich? Lipstick!

"for some reason everyone of them understands the Laffer curve"

so-named because when you first encounter it, you can't stop Laffing.

Guys, this woman could have been vice president.

Let's just think about that for a minute. Then let's cry.

First of all, how can you lobotomize what is not there?

The saga of Sarah Palin is of what goes wrong when one has a pretty face, a "Can Do" attitude and nothing else. What's worse for the Conservative "movement" is that a lot of their "brain" trust fell for her (starbursts etc.)

It makes for great political comedy, but also makes me shudder for what might have been.

Former Dan, I also had a "what if" shudder moment just the other day listening to Obama's speech. Except it didn't involve the Alaska Lipstick Queen. It was trying to imagine digging ourselves out of Shrub's mess with McCain in charge.

Dear Sarah -

Fiscal policy isn't usually discussed in any detail in Economics 101.

Signed, Reality

Palin let loose Wednesday on the Obama administration for enacting fiscal policies that "fly in the face of principles" and "defy Economics 101."

What I want to know is this; are these "fiscal policies" raising their heads and flying into Alaskan airspace?

She has made some interesting choices of opportunities for visibility. In recent months, we've had issues of national security (Korean missiles) and the Supreme Court. Palin has - AFAIK - remained silent on those issues. No bold pronouncements on those two very presidential

Instead she's chosen to speak up on a national level about her kid's sordid love life, the murder of Dr. Tiller (with a shout-out to the anti-choice crowd)and Miss California and gay marriage.

Now she's trotting out a ham-handed rehash of what Republicans were saying back two months ago.

Maybe she's just playing to the base. But her choices of what to run her yap about are very revealing. I think she just doesn't want to worry her pretty little head about Grown-Up topics like national security and justice.

I believe it's Ezra Klein who came up with permanent rebuttal to this: there's a reason they teach more economics than Econ 101.

"The governor, for some inexplicable reasons, has chosen the wrong path."

It's not inexplicable at all. Sarah Palin, like most Republicans, is an ignorant fool.

@Chopin,

Him too. I can't imagine how bad the economic situation would be if McCain ran the show. I'm guessing panic in the streets and missiles in the air.

Flying in the face of Econ 101 ... like following established tenets of Keynes's work. Fascinating.

And yesh that doesn't even get into Econ 102.

I think a lot of the right wing thinkers that pump stuff out of Cato, Heritage, and AEI, get their info from Friedman and Chicago, but they certainly dupe a lot of the yokels and rubes, including Palin, who have had a smattering of economics in high school and, before they drop out, college.

You really ought to read the whole speech, transcribed (almost) complete here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/akmuckraker/screw-political-correctne_b_211635.html

Palin knows exactly what she's doing. Her antics of the next few years will only be a way station en route to her eventual career as the female Limbaugh.

What is inexplicable? She just isn't very bright. All her ridiculous antics come back to not understanding policy, law, economics, etc. Nothing inexplicable about it at all.

She reminds me of a lady I know who tries to parrot GOP talking points, but doesn't understand them and makes comical mistakes. Like blaming the lack of any action on global warming on Al Gore.

Neither she nor the Republicans are interested in "facts" or reality. They see their role as keeping in place the alternative universe with its own laws of physics which do not require anything but what they say or think on any matter.

I would liken them and therefore Palin, to a kind of cancer. They have a glitch in their makeup that causes them to act in a way that damages the body as a whole but promotes its own survival imperative aggressively. Like cancer, they have no interest in the wellbeing of the body as a whole, only in advancing their own cell line.

Like cancer, they will never stop until either the body fights it off with the aid of chemotherapy or cutting it out, or the patient dies.

We are in just the first phases of treatment. The election "cut out" a bunch of them, "debulking" the tumor, but we will have to reapply that treatment as our disease was advanced. The chemotherapy (new policies, laws) are also being implemented but this will be a long fight.

"Whoever tried to "explain" this "economic policy" to her either didn't do a very good job, or the governor wasn't paying close enough attention to the explanation."

Steve, you know I love your blog and am a faithful reader. But for some reason you write as if you think the Republicans are actually "trying" to make sense. I think it's good that you expose their nonsense for what it is, but truthfully, they DON"T CARE. They are going the faux-populist, whatever-hits-'em-in-the-gut route. So pointing out that they are inane, their rhetoric has no particular attachment to reality, and their flailings might damage their party and their country is a Sisyphean task.

Or maybe the equivalent of an Augean stable -- if you think you might eventually succeed in shoveling out the filth.

I'm cynical enough to think that it won't take much to turn enough voters back into a mob swallowing whatever they're fed by conscienceless manipulators biding their time to return to power.

You and I certainly would wish it were otherwise, and I'm glad you're doing your part to shovel through the rhetoric. It's just so endless -- and deliberate.

In the wake of last year's presidential election, Palin had a real opportunity to position herself as a credible national figure and a leader in Republican politics. The governor, for some inexplicable reasons, has chosen the wrong path.

"Economics 101" says it all. Who needs Ph.D. economists when every republican has taken a basic freshman level economics course and therefore believes s/he has a really sophisticated understanding of economics! I wonder if they also prefer to have their medical decisions made by people who only took biology 101.

Now, now, Palin surely knows what "defies Economics 101", as she probably took it 3 or 4 times in her haphazard progress towards a bachelor's degree.

ABC News, September 15, 2008 11:59pm.
....Palin, herself, may not be the most authoritative spokesperson on such issues. In the past, when she ran for Alaska governor, she freely admitted to a reporter that she got a "D" in macroeconomics in college...

Am sure she failed Econ 101. She can not even run her state what makes her think she can run a country?

Will Alaskans ever get how badly they've been duped by this trailer trash honey. All anyone ever does is make excuses for her to the knuckle dragging mouth breathers drooling on her every breath. The rest of us are just amazed at how she ever got elected to anything.

"What economic books have you ever read Gov?"

"Oh, all of them Katie."

"As Gov. dealing with a government budget, do you know the difference between micro and macro economics Gov?"

"In what respect Charlie?"

Excellent analogy, Elie

In most states, Palin wouldn't rise above the level of county executive. (The DC area, where I live, has half-a-dozen counties with more population, and more political talent, than Alaska has.) She has no education to speak of, no understanding of any part of the US outside Alaska, and she's much too rigid to play politics at the national level. She made it onto the national scene only because GWB had so greatly lowered expectations about what you need to be on a national ticket.