The Saint Valentine's Day language massacre

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“And nobody yet has, nobody yet has explained to the American public what they know, and surely they know more than the rest of us know who it is who will be taking the place of Mubarak and no, not, not real enthused about what it is that that’s being done on a national level and from DC in regards to understanding all the situation there in Egypt. And, in these areas that are so volatile right now, because obviously it’s not just Egypt but the other countries too where we are seeing uprisings, we know that now more than ever, we need strength and sound mind there in the White House. We need to know what it is that America stands for so we know who it is that America will stand with. And, we do not have all that information yet.”

Why do I bother finding the best and brightest experts closest to the scene to analyze in depth what is going on in the world when we have Sarah Palin to do it for us? Clearly a handler wrote the sound bite line that was supposed to be “we need to know what America stands for so we know ‘whom’ America stands with” but she managed to massacre it along with the rest.

And you don’t think she’s qualified to be our next president? You don’t think our game show American Democracy would elect her over a smart and talented black man? You don’t think our bankrupt public education combined with the loss of high-paying manufacturing jobs that are being replaced by low-paying jobs in service industries has created an ill-educated underclass? And when times get tough, as the smart black man said, people cling to their guns and their religion.

Maybe you believe that when more people vote our politics move to the Left? But I think the opposite is true and when you add the pain of the recession to the fear of the demographic marginalization of poor white America, you get President Palin, who is just like us.

With the neocons filling her empty head with talking points and the Koch brothers stuffing her purse with money, who will show up at the polls? 140 million voted in the 2008 election that Obama won. Only 75 million voted in the 2010 elections that the Republicans won by default. Will the young first time voters and pissed-off and petulant progressives show up in 2012? Will anger win over hope?

Back in the real world I was impressed by what NPR’s Middle East correspondent Deborah Amos had to say to me yesterday about the secular social network of young tech-savvy Arabs strategizing across the Middle East for political reform. The New York Times has a lead article about it today and it is something we need to dig into. In the meantime have a happy Valentine’s Day.