The Sugar Daddy Has Run Out of Sugar; Now We Need New Leaders by Sarah Palin

[Selene]

The remarkable Ms. Palin explained here that reality exists and we, as rational human beings, shall deal with it as a concrete.

Wow, what a dumb bitch!

I mean, listen to this, she actually stated:

As a governor, I had to deal with facts, even unpleasant ones. I dealt with the world as it is, not as I wished it to be. The “elite” political class in this country with their heads in the sand had better face some unpleasant facts about the world as it is. They’ve run out of money and no amount of accounting gimmicks or happy talk will change this reality. Those of us who live in the real world could see this day coming.

Stupid woman, doesn't she understand that you can consume more than you produce? She should go back to a real college, like Harvard where she could learn about economics!

As we approach 2012, there are important lessons we can learn from all of this. First, we should never entrust the White House to a far-left ideologue who has no appreciation or even understanding of the free market and limited government principles that made this country economically strong. Second, the office of the presidency is too important for on-the-job training. It requires a strong chief executive who has been entrusted with real authority in the past and has achieved a proven track record of positive measurable accomplishments. Leaders are expected to give good speeches, but leadership is so much more than oratory. Real leadership requires deeds even more than words. It means taking on the problems no one else wants to tackle. It means providing vision and guidance, inspiring people to action, bringing everyone to the table, and with a servant's heart dedicating oneself to striking agreements that keep faith with our Constitution and with the ordinary citizens who entrusted you with power. It means bucking the status quo, fighting the corrupt powers that be, serving the common good, and leaving the country better than you found it. Most of us don’t see a lot of that real leadership in D.C., and it’s profoundly disappointing.

Her ignorance completely astounds me!

I am sure you agree with me because she does believe in God and that clearly disqualifies her as being intelligent!

We are so much better off with effete orators like O'biwan who really know the truth.

Stupid woman!

Adam

see Rand was right about women Presidents - men Presidents are soooo much better

[Greybird]

Your apparent assumption that Palin actually wrote this herself (regardless of its content, and the same applies to "her" two books) is what astonishes me.

[Brant Gaede]

Your apparent assumption that Palin actually wrote this herself (regardless of its content, and the same applies to "her" two books) is what astonishes me.

I don't know anything about her books, but a professional wouldn't write this stuff. I have read other material under her name elsewhere that could very likely be by someone else. There is a certain level of slickness I'm sensitive about in writing that turns me off and when I encounter it, I stop reading.

--Brant

she may have an amateur turning the above out

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

There's nothing wrong with politicians having speechwriters and ghostwriters for books (including a research staff). That's a longstanding tradition in the USA.

That doesn't mean the politician doesn't read the stuff, correct it, change it, etc., before it goes public. And it doesn't mean that the speechwriter and/or and ghostwriter presents information contrary to the politician's beliefs and understanding of things. On the contrary, the writer better reflect the views of the politician or he/she will be out of a job quickly.

And... that also doesn't mean that politicians who use writers never do it all themselves. Or even never wing it. (Sarah Palin wings it a lot in TV interviews, for instance.)

Some politicians are lazy and get surprised by what is in the stuff others help them with. I seriously doubt Sarah Palin is one of those.

She is one of the smartest publicists I know of who is involved in issues touched by radical polarization.

The left went crazy looking through her emails and all they found was an honest, hard-working, concerned and idealistic person who's writing style was much higher than average--including higher than the hostile person examining it. (This is all documented.)

Michael

[Selene]

Michael:

Admit it. You are on Sarah's payroll!

Remember she is just as stupid as Reagan who was also dumb. Next thing you are going to say is that someone wrote the line, "Mr. Gorbachov, tear down that wall!"

Surely Reagan, a movie actor, had someone write in his handwriting all those letters that were "discovered" about Constitutionalism, the rights of man, the fundamentals of liberty and all that economic freedom stuff.

Dumb actor, just like that dumb woman Palin.

Obiwan is much cleaner, much more articulate and knows everything about economics. Remember, it is George Bush's fault.

Adam

mantras are better than facts division

[Greybird]

Ghostwritten works provide no general or reliable insight into the mental processes of those who put their name on them. Neither about their soundness of logic, nor their breadth of knowledge, nor their scope of operation.

They may very well testify to organizational skills in juggling tasks at once, duplicitous behavior in misleading the general public, or the creativity and loyalty of one's employees or contractors. What they cannot genuinely show is the full workings of the nominal author's own mind.

This also applies to those of whom one approves, of course. Ron Paul no more wrote Liberty Defined himself than Sarah Palin wrote America by Heart, or Barack Obama "his" two books. That they put their imprimatur on such works does, of course, give considerable evidence as to what they agree with.

Yet it doesn't provide anything reliable about their own, personal, unique mental processes. Selene, to me, was suggesting that it does. If we go down that route, we might as well admit openly that we're ruled by who has the best publicist. That is probably true already, but it's too sleazy a reality to endure thinking about for very long.

In the meantime, I'll take as indicative the vacant cavity Palin showed she had between her ears when she couldn't cite one media source for her knowledge about the world, such as it is. That Couric interview (if it even rose to that on Palin's part) three years ago was far more revealing than any piece of prose patently written to order for her, shorter or longer.

Edited July 11, 2011 by Greybird

[Selene]

. That Couric interview (if it even rose to that on Palin's part) three years ago was far more revealing than any piece of prose written to order for her, shorter or longer.

Yep Steve.

Ms. Couric is clearly a superior intellect and we should all acknowledge that she is a brilliant woman.

She should be the standard for judging all female intelligence by.

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Adam,

A couple of nuggets:

Sarah Palin's Emails Written At 8th Grade Level -- Better Than Some CEOs

Michael McLaughlin

June 13, 2011

AOL Weird News

From the article (my bold):

AOL Weird News brought samples to two writing analysts who independently evaluated 24,000 pages of the former governor's emails. They came back in agreement that Palin composed her messages at an eighth-grade level, an excellent score for a chief executive, they said.

"I'm a centrist Democrat, and would have loved to support my hunch that Ms. Palin is illiterate," said 2tor Chief Executive Officer John Katzman.

"However, the emails say something else. Ms. Palin writes emails on her Blackberry at a grade level of 8.5.

"If she were a student and showing me her work, I'd say 'It's fine, clear writing,'" he said, admitting that emails he wrote scored lower than Palin's on the widely used Flesch-Kincaid readability test.

"She came in as a solid communicator," said Paul J.J. Payack, president of the Global Language Monitor. The emails registered as an 8.2 on his version of the test. "That's typical for a corporate executive."

Here's another:

Book Review: The Notes: Ronald Reagan's Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom (edited Douglas Brinkley)

By Christopher Buckley

Bloomberg Businessweek

May 26, 2011

From the article (my bold):

In recent years a profusion of books has sought to make hash of the idea that our 40th President was an "amiable dunce," as the late Clark Clifford, the Democratic presidential horse whisperer and disgraced bank scandal figure, once proclaimed him to be.

. . .

As Brinkley explains in his introduction, The Notes consists of the collection of 4-by-6-inch index cards that Reagan kept in his desk—his chrestomathy, or commonplace book of wit and wisdom—all of which were written in his own "impeccable" scrawl. Brinkley speculates that Reagan began these jottings sometime between 1954 and 1962, when he was a spokesman for General Electric (GE), and kept on amassing them after he became the most powerful man in the world.

. . .

... they languished for years in a cardboard box at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif. They were only recently discovered during a renovation leading up to this year's centennial. The library staff calls them "the Rosetta Stone," but their discovery puts me more in mind of archeologist Howard Carter's utterance, in 1922, upon first peering into King Tut's tomb and being asked what he saw. "Wonderful things," he said. Indeed, these notes—which make up Reagan's own private Bartlett's Familiar Quotations—are wonderful things. Witticisms, observations, apothegms, newspaper cuttings, statistics, bons mots—and indeed, some pretty mals mots—from Aristophanes to Zedong, Mao. In between is a lot of Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, and a French politician of the 1840s whom I'd never heard of named Claude-Frédéric Bastiat. Along the way is Hilaire Belloc, Whittaker Chambers, Abba Eban, Ho Chi Minh, Ibn Khaldoun (about whom, more in a moment), Lenin, Ortega y Gasset, Pascal, Seneca, and Sun Tzu. For a dummy, Reagan was a voracious pack rat of wisdom—especially in the days before Google.

These notes provide a portal into the—dare one say, fertile?—mind of one of the late 20th century's great leaders. Two big themes run through them: a) the imperilment of individual liberty by growth of state power; and b) the oppressive taxation that the leviathan demands.

Of course, just like with hard core conspiracy theorists, haters of these politicians will look at these facts, cough, ignore them, and, after a small time for the dust to settle, go back to the theme that they are dummies and otherwise inferior minds.

I, for one, try to look at facts instead of absorbing the vibes from the mainstream media.

Michael

EDIT: Just in case some people think that 8.5/8.2 (8th grade) is a low score, they should be aware that, in professional writing courses, this range is encouraged for CEOs and leaders--i.e., they explicitly teach that clarity of style for a leader is far more important than expressing high-level erudition.

[Selene]

Thanks Michael:

I knew about the notes that Reagan kept because I was involved in creating position papers in the New York campaigns for him.

Additionally, i heard about the discovery listening to several interviews with Brinkley in anticipation of his releasing the book.

The Palin info is a great piece of evidence which I will use.

Adam

As to your addition: The rule of thumb is keep it simple stupid [kiss] in sales, memos, directives and orders.

When I was in city government, I held my writing "level" down in order to communicate clearly to subordinates and other laterally equal folks in inter agency communications.

When communicating up the power structure to Commissioners and Administrators, I kept it even lower because they 1) are not to bright and 2) have limited time to scan memos.

Edited July 11, 2011 by Selene

[Brant Gaede]

Ronald Reagan really was his own best speechwriter.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

Ghostwritten works provide no general or reliable insight into the mental processes of those who put their name on them. Neither about their soundness of logic, nor their breadth of knowledge, nor their scope of operation.

This isn't necessarily true; it depends on the ghostwriting process.

In 1976, I ghostwrote around three-quarters of None of the Above for Sy Leon (a former associate of Robert Lefevre). I recorded hours of interviews with Sy and based most of my chapters on those interviews. When it turned out that more was needed, I wrote a few chapters entirely on my own, but most of the chapters reflected Sy's thinking as much as my own.

Ghs

[Selene]

George and Michael are correct Steve and they are grounded in the practical applications of "speech writing" and/or "ghost writing."

I have also been a professional speech writer for political and non political entities. In most cases, you tend to take the job for someone, or something, that you fundamentally are in agreement with.

There is a certain leeway that you have in shaping the words to effect the sense of the individual or organization you are working for where you can add a subtext of your own values and hopes, but essentially, a professional works to artfully and passionately express the ideas and values of the person or organization that they work for.

In most cases, it is a labor of love, but sometimes you can be torn by writing something that you are not in agreement with and at that point, you need to look inward and decide whether to quit or stay.

Adam

[syrakusos]

The remarkable Ms. Palin explained here that reality exists and we, as rational human beings, shall deal with it as a concrete.

Oh, I did not know that she is an atheist. I missed that. Thanks for the information. I am a bit confused, though. By "concrete" does that mean as opposed to an abstraction? If reality is a concrete, what would be the next item with which to find a common differentiator to form an abstraction? Does she mean that reality is a concrete composed of concretes? Maybe she is not an atheist after all. Or maybe she is and doesn't know it.

As for ghostwriters, we are more realistic - and cyncical. John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage won him a Pulitzer Prize, but we all now accept that it was the work of Theodore Sorenson. At the time, the rumor was a scandal. Now, it is accepted that politicians have ghostwriters.

Way back when, if a famous person such as Lee Iacocca did not really write his Autobiography, the editorial engine was credited on the cover, as for example, "With William Novak." The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley is another such work. Clevelanders know Veeck as in Wreck by Bill Veeck with Ed Linn (University of Chicago Press, 1962). Maybe Malcolm X and Lee Iacocca were more honest than Sarah Palin and Barack Obama or maybe each is only a product of their times - and we no more expect the President of the United States to be the author of their ideas than we expect to find the real Ronald McDonald at the cash register.

Edited July 12, 2011 by Michael E. Marotta

[Selene]

The remarkable Ms. Palin explained here that reality exists and we, as rational human beings, shall deal with it as a concrete.

Oh, I did not know that she is an atheist. I missed that. Thanks for the information. I am a bit confused, though. By "concrete" does that mean as opposed to an abstraction? If reality is a concrete, what would be the next item with which to find a common differentiator to form an abstraction? Does she mean that reality is a concrete composed of concretes? Maybe she is not an atheist after all. Or maybe she is and doesn't know it.

Michael:

Clever twisting of words. As you well know she is not an atheist. You would have to ask her what she means. You can post a question on her Facebook page or wall or whatever techno method that medium uses.

Additionally, I know scientists that are practicing Christians that would have no problem with the statement that reality exists and that we as rational human beings shall deal with reality as a concrete,

As Ole Ayn posited - reality exists.

Adam

[syrakusos]

Clever twisting of words. As you well know she is not an atheist. ... Additionally, I know scientists that are practicing Christians ...

Well, that's their contradiction to deal with. What about the other issue, more consequential, or perhaps rooted in the same error, the problem of ghostwriters?

In many ways John Galt was more mature than Howard Roark because the author had lived through more. What is the moral status of a person who puts their name on someone else's work? What is the moral status of the creator who sells his work for other people to put their name on?