To address Michael Lonnie:

Would you care to support that outlandish claim with some facts? Short answer: “No you can’t.” Why? Because it’s not true. Many, many smart people disagree with you including two former Treasury Secretaries (O’Neil, Rubin), Chairman of the Fed under Reagan (Volker), Former Labor Secretary (Reisch), 71 Nobel Laureats, and, I’m sure, many others far smarter than you. Unsupported claims are no substitute for facts, Michael – even when you call those of us who have bothered to do independent research “ignorant.” Please don’t try to portray Joe the blue collar plumber as some economic genius. #1 – he’s been opposed to any taxes for a long time, and is behind in his own tax bill. #2 – He does not own a business, he “hopes” to own one, which, from what I’ve seen, is unlikely, #3 – He will benefit on his taxes now that Obama was elected (and that IS a fact). Joe was a head fake by McCain to distract from a simple fact: Obama’s tax policy would have returned more money to middle class people like Joe than would McCain’s. Now I could easily argue that tax cuts applied long term make a bad deficit situation ($10.7T and growing) even worse, but in the short term, they will help those who need it most right now. The McCain tax cut would have delivered a $1100 per year tax break to a family of 4 making $2,000,000 annually. In what universe does that make sense?

The non-partisan Tax Foundation supports my claims: http://www.taxfoundation.org.

To address Michael Lonnie

http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2008/11/yet-more-evidence-that-right-wing.html

Palin has accomplished more in less than two years as governor of Alaska than Obama has in his entire political career, including his time as a “Community Organizer”. She challengd her own party to fight corruption on the Oil and Gas Consevation Commission, and succeeded. Do you people really believe that someone who can do that is stupid?

But Obama speaks sooooo beautifully, at any rate when he uses a teleprompter. What more do you want, accomplishments? That’s RACISM!!!!

Deleted.

However, I must admit that I fully expected that this story is bullshit.

She may be incurious, much like W., but she’s not stupid. I have no doubt she knew full well that Africa is a continent and not a country.

Regarding another stinging criticism, Stapleton claims that the Fox News report Thursday — that quoted unnamed sources inside the now defunct McCain campaign, saying Palin didn’t know Africa is a continent — was taken out of context.

Stapleton says that during a briefing session, someone asked Palin to explain the McCain-Palin stance on an issue, and as she was responding, “in the middle, she said, ‘country of Africa’ and somebody instantly wrote it down, and said, ‘Oh, my God, she thinks it’s a country.’”

But Stapleton insists, “She knows it’s a continent. It was just a human mistake, just like Obama saying 57 states. I don’t think anyone ever doubted that Obama knows there are 50 states.”

By all means, keep on ignoring the facts and insisting that Palin is a moron, though. It really says a lot more about you than it does about her.

Chris Matthews called Africa a country when he was talking about this very issue. Think he’s so stupid he doesn’t know the difference, either? Or maybe he just misspoke. Duh.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/us/politics/08palin.html

I think by now we’ve seen enough context to know what her foreign affairs expertise consists of.