she's a moron. plain and simple. how hard is it to remember to talk about a couple of topics. agree to disagree.

I'm in a class right now where the instructor has tought the course for 15 years....still every day he comes in and writes on the board 6 to 10 topics  and then lectures on one before looking back to get the next topic.   Is he a moron as well since he is doing the exact same thing?  That would seem kind of odd since once he looks over and has the topic he seems able to talk at length about it...sort of like what Palin did at this event.....

To me that is exactly what this is and it is exactly what people who are well-versed in issues do..they write down a list of important points they want to be sure to go over.  When I build a presentation for work or for a class I don't write a speach..I build a list of topics and I study the topics until I am comfortable talking about them at length.  Finally I build a topic list for the presentation and just refer to it as needed.  Am I a moron as well then?

It seems to me the only real issue with what Palin did is that she wrote it on her hand...had this been written on a notecard I doubt anyone would have really cared.  And to that point I would agree, it's silly to not just put it on a notecard but I would guess it was probably done last minute.  You can read a lot of things from all of this but the notion that it shows she can't remember detailed information or answers to questions is, if you want to make the argument, a pretty damning statement for other politicians who rely on the prompter like a crutch for each and every word.  So if you want to make that argument we have to make the comparison to other politicans and Palin comes out looking pretty damn good in that comparison.

The dumbest thing Palin did here was give another opportunity to the lunatics who have wet dreams about emberassing her.

edit: PS - Since I know you're a logically consistent kind of person I can only imagine that you must think Obama is a barely functioning retard, right?  I mean if needing a few topics as a primer makes someone a moron I can only imagine what kind of mental defficiency is implied by needing each and every word fed to you.  I guess we have to agree to disagree on that one though, I don't think Obama is mentally defficient.

You did and it was very tastefully done.

He'll probably just ignore your post or throw a bunch of half-facts at you (like he did to me), but try it and see.

Hmm.. you guys have:

Fox News

CNN

The Washington Times

National Review

New York Post

Wall Street Journal

etc.

etc.

We used to have Air America but it recently went off the air because.. well nobody listened to it and even I would agree it was very boring.

The Los Angeles Times has a liberal slant but I can't think of any other major news outlets that do. Yes, MSNBC has Keith Olbermann and Rachael Maddow but they also have Joe Scarbourough and Pat Buchanan.

@Sqrl

This person is running for president. A presidential candidate should be aware of a variety of issues without having to write his or her position on them on their hand!

That would be a great reply were it to include any sort of rationalization for Obama's constant use of a teleprompter. 

The problem is that using a teleprompter is a far bigger crutch to lean on than a few notes on a palm, a fact you simply cannot deny. And yet you'll notice that nobody reacts with scorn and dissaproval towards the use of a teleprompter by the elected President (as opposed to a former VP candidate).  You might consider that the reason is because using a prompter doesn't imply an inability to command the facts or remember positions (and by extention neither does a few topic notes) and that you're literally making something out of nothing.   The argument is further revealed as a nonsequitur by the fact that Palin has only done this once while Obama routinely relies on the prompter.  Of course Obama does it for the same reason Palin does, to make sure he covers the topics and points he wants to cover.  Is this proof of Obama's incompetence on the issues?  Maybe you're more rightwing than I thought.....

Finally, at the bolded bit in your quote I would point out that you keep trying to assert that she can't remember her positions.  Unfortunately for your imagined controversy however she didn't write on her hand "Taxes = bad", "Lift American Spirits = good", etc... She just wrote "Taxes", "Lift American Spirits", etc...  I realize this narrative doesn't make her sound as bad as you want but unfortunately it is reality.  So when you talk about this remember that there are facts that you cannot change and that one of them is that the list contains topics and not positions.

Again I find myself baffled that people who have serious and legitimate policy differences with Palin cannot help but go after these sorts of invented non-issues.  What makes it infinitely more absurd is that while pursuing these inventions of theirs they claim that she isn't a serious person, all while engaging in the kind of political silliness that makes the Truthers, Birthers, etc... be dismissed out of hand.

I have no idea what you used to discern that CNN was right leaning.....baffling....

Left Leaning Outlets

• CNN
• MSNBC
• ABC
• New York Times
• Washington Post (The editorial board does lean right, but the actual news reportage is left leaning)
• LA Times
• SF Chronicle
• Boston Globe
• Denver Post
• New York Daily News
• St. Petersburg Times
• Atlanta Constitution
• Miami Herald
• Kansas City Star
• Seattle Post-Intelligencer
• Oregonian
• And the vast majority of other regional and local newspaper outlets.....
• Newsweek
• Time
• And thats about as far as I can go off the top of my head right now (I don't follow magazines as much as I do papers)....

Of course if that doesn't do it for you, here is the press release of a 2005 study done by UCLA (itself a liberal institution) and performed by polisci college students (again notoriously liberal).  Here is the major takeaway from that study:

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Or if you prefer we can use polls - this one from Gallup last October (4 months ago):

Public opinion may not be good for settling disputes of subjective close calls, but when people say the media is "too liberal" VS "too conservative" by a 3:1 margin I think it becomes fairly obvious that it's not even a close call.

There is a rationalization for the use of the teleprompter, but the rationalization is not something that most Obama supporters are willing to give. The justification is George W. Bush ...

When a person regularly makes long speeches or presentations which are not carefully scripted they’re likely going to make mistakes; there are lots of reasons for this, and it is not (necessarily) a sign of stupidity or someone being ill informed, it is simply a "Feature" of being human. Now, people probably are wondering why this has to do with George W. Bush but I will explain. Every speech George W. Bush gave during his presidency was closely scrutinized by his opponents, and whenever he made a mistake on film it was taken out of context and used to argue that he was remarkably stupid.

Obama and his handlers are not stupid or naïve, and they all know that that when Obama goes off script he stops sounding like “The One”, starts "Um-ing" and "Ah-ing", and makes as many (if not more) mistakes that are as bad (or worse) than anything Bush did.

Wait what?  No.  That's not even remotley true... it's infact... the exact opposite.

Have you seen the political affiliations of journalists?