Ask Brad and Janet, they're Republicans, they'll lie

I know, I haven't posted for DC or Norfolk, and it's been weeks. I'm sorry. But if I don't post when I feel the need to, I'll never come back to this blog. I caught very little of  last night's convention, and all of it was unpleasant. The Republicans were, as expected, mean spirited, intellectually dishonest ("drilling will lower gas prices"), and cynically hypocritical ("country first...and now the random governor who happens to lack a Y chromosome for VP"). But what I found most shocking was when Mike Huckabee (I believe, it's not in his script so he must have added it at the last minutes), said something like "I'm sick of hearing Sarah Palin called inexperienced. She got more votes in the election for mayor of Wasilla than Joe Biden got in the whole primary." 

The crowd went wild, which struck me as doubly odd, because it was perhaps the most absurd claim Huckabee has ever made, exceeding even Creationism and Supply-Side Economics. First of all, this is clearly untrue. A cursory search reveals that Biden got well over 60,000 votes in delegate primaries not counting Florida and Michigan, where he got over 17,000 more. By contrast, the city of Wasilla in a census just a year later, was found to have less than 6,000 people, and she received less than 1,000 votes in the election (which still constituted more than 70% of the vote).

Second, the claim that votes somehow equal experience is equally absurd. By that logic, David Cook (guy from American Idol) should be president, since he got some 54 million votes (more than Bush received in 2000).

This disregard for the truth is appropriate, in a way, as the Republicans seem to be the party of willful ignorance. Sarah Palin doesn't "believe" global warming is caused by humans, which is like not believing in Haley's Comet or the moon landing. The same is true with abstinence-only education. If kids don't learn about sex, they won't have sex. As for research that shows it doesn't work that's not important. The good kids won't have sex, statistics be damned.

Many before have observed the double standard that would be applied if the daughter of a democrat did you-know-what (I completely agree with Obama that families are off limits, so will not discuss this again). But the level of attack from Palin was really vicious and mean spirited and, again, hypocritical. You're attacking Obama for being a community organizer? Three public jobs ago Sarah Palin was a beauty queen (or PTA president, if you count that as a job). If this is really about putting country first, she should celebrate Obama's service. The undertone, of course, is that he was serving urban people, not real Americans.