SARAH PALIN SURVIVES THE VP DEBATE TO BABBLE ANOTHER DAY!

Palin looked like the student who crammed to memorize the test and eked out a C.

Biden looked like the professor who wrote the book, and taught the class.


Some highlights of Sarah's talking-points answers and more of her gobbledigook to serious questions:

"Asked about Israel, Palin reeled off her support for “a two-state solution, building our embassy also in Jerusalem, those things that we look forward to being able to accomplish with this peace-seeking nation.”

Asked about the possible use of nuclear weapons, she declared “nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people and too many parts of our planet.”

Palin’s primary tactic was simply to repeat the same thing over and over:

John McCain is a maverick. So is she.

To stay on that course, she had to indulge in some wildly circular logic: America does not want another Washington insider. They want Mr. McCain (who has been in Congress for nearly 26 years).

Palin condemned Wall Street greed and said she and Mr. McCain would “demand” strict oversight. In virtually the next breath, she said government should “get out of the way” of American business." --NYTimes

Here's her answer on education:

PALIN: Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again.

You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. (What does "preferenced your whole comment mean?"--this is babbling.)

Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I'm glad you did. (Well, doggone it! let's look ahead!)

I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. (Holy crap. She sounds like Bush only not as articulate. She's not comfortable in her own language.)

I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. (More mush from a muddled mind.)

Education credit in American has been in some sense in some of our states just accepted to be a little bit lax and we have got to increase the standards. (I need a translation here. What the hell does this mean?)

No Child Left Behind was implemented. It's not doing the job though. We need flexibility in No Child Left Behind. We need to put more of an emphasis on the profession of teaching. We need to make sure that education in either one of our agendas, I think, absolute top of the line. My kids as public school participants right now, it's near and dear to my heart. I'm very, very concerned about where we're going with education and we have got to ramp it up and put more attention in that arena. (Yes, let's definitely put our attention in that arena--and please take your own advice, Sarah.)

IFILL: Everybody gets extra credit tonight. We're going to move on to the next question. Governor, you said in July that someone would have to explain to you exactly what it is the vice president does every day. You, senator, said, you would not be vice president under any circumstances. Now maybe this was just what was going on at the time. But tell us now, looking forward, what it is you think the vice presidency is worth now.

PALIN: No, no. Of course, we know what a vice president does. And that's not only to preside over the Senate and will take that position very seriously also. (?????)

I'm thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president's policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are. (She believes MORE authority should be given to the vice president? More? Dear Darwin!--And she expresses this in a convoluted blithering way again!)

Sarah Palin put in a good performance during the debate last night. But performance is not the same as expressing her own ideas with clarity, knowledge and depth. She didn't do that. Just read the above answers and you'll see she's as confused and clueless about major issues as she was in the Gibson and Couric interviews. Those are Palin's jumbled babbled answers to serious questions.

There were no follow-up questions in this debate--a format the McCain campaign insisted on for Palin. And we can see why.

She smiled, looked perky, and made the base happy. She's still uninformed, confused, and a potential disaster for this country should it be dumb and elect the McCain/Palin ticket.

Despite repeatedly criticizing Biden for looking backward during the debate, Palin closed the night with a quote from dead President Reagan.