PhP’s observation that “Joe Biden is more qualified and capable than Sarah Palin” appears to you to be, first and foremost, proof that PhP is “liberal” and not “in the middle.”

But the only reason you think this is because your concept of political conversation is modeled on a lame model of useless categories that is promoted by ‘mainstream’ news media — Fox News and PBS alike. You’ve apparently never questioned whether or not these categories actually make sense or are useful in any way for describing anything that matters.

If you were less self-centered in your thinking (if you let go of your acceptance of those dumb categories that are only there out of the convenience of keeping stupid consumers stupid), you’d realize that you can think Biden is more qualified than Palin, and that doesn’t mean automatically that you love Biden (nor, indeed, that you hate Palin). It might just be that Biden’s superior qualifications are a matter of objective fact. In other words, nothing to get one’s undies bundled over. Sometimes facts are just inconvenient.

I know you’re unlikely to be reading this far down, but I may as well point out that PhP never claimed to be “in the middle.” Saying you’re “in the middle” is about the most meaningless political statement someone can make. Forget the categories that Rush Limbaugh uses everyday and look at politics with new eyes. It will be frightening at first, but it will be worth it.

This is precisely the tendency illustrated by the phenomenon of Sarah Palin: a brand of self-undermining pseudo-populism whose bedrock is self-centerdness.

Why do her fans like her? Because she reminds them of themselves. “She don’t talk like no kinda expert, smartypants know-it-all and, you know, she just got good, old-fashioned, home-grown horse sense and, uh, she cares about American Values.”

Yikes. You’d think that anyone interested in “American Values” would be interested in educating himself/herself as to the intellectual, historical, moral, political and jurisprudential basis of those values. Turns out that the Founding Fathers — although there were significant differences of opinion then as today — were unanimous in their respect for the centrality of the role of reason in undertaking their experiment of self-government.

As Thomas Jefferson said: “education is power” (he did say precisely that).

The Palin-esque tendency to celebrate what one already knows and to succumb to one’s inclination to feel threatened by and prejudicial toward all things unknown — even to education itself — could not be more opposed to patriotic participation in republican governance.

Of course the reporter was asking Americans, because Europeans know how fucking retarded Sarah Palin is.

That’s why you have to rock a riot shield and smash people in the face.

@OHHH – Let me hear just one of you asseating libs say Biden is more qualified and capable than Palin.

Go ahead, say it.

Ummm, alright. Joe Biden is more qualified and capable than Sarah Palin.

You do realize that even the whitehouse keeps this guy out of mainstream because every time this guy talks, unadulterated dumbass spews out of his gingivitis hole.

Let me hear just one of you asseating libs say Biden is more qualified and capable than Palin.

And please know that you would sound like captain denial to even hardcore libs. So go ahead, say it.

Go ahead, say it.

Shitheads, all you do is brownnose and parrot. Go ahead, speak love for Biden, I wanna know who the retardest of retards are.