In the Roman Senate, Cicero denounces Catiline.

Sarah Palin just appeared on Sean Hannity’s stream of propaganda show to ‘splain things, again.

hannity-palin-talks

And Sarah Palin failed, miserably.

And there is really one reason she failed and this has to do with the art of rhetoric.

First we must look at what good rhetoric is in order to validly attack bad rhetoric.

Howard Dean is one of my heroes.

He shows up on Keith O and Rachel and Ed Shultz and O’Donnell (The West Wing guy not the witch) all the time.

The former Governor of Vermont, the former head of the DNC, and the guy who said in 2004 ENOUGH IS ENOUGH as far as our double war offensive. I really like this guy and I know people will simply say that I am a lefty and I like lefties but this is different.

Dean told us we were going to be in these goddamn wars for decades.

And guess what? He was right.

Sometimes we should just look back a few years and see who predicted what!

All these folks went to Kerry and I know Kerry was everything us lefties like also. I mean we like a guy who is a war hero and a Massachusetts liberal.

But damn, we were wrong and Dean, as far as I can tell is more to the right than Kerry.

He had to balance budgets like all governors and he knew how to balance empathy with reality.

I just like the guy.

You ever just listen to some guy or gal and think: I like him; I like her?

I do not care what the question is, Dean can answer it. He will give specific examples to a general question without an um, without a guffaw, without hesitation.

I was watching Debbie Wasserman Shultz, today.

I like her. She may even be more left than me (which may seem impossible as far as I am concerned) but she smiles, she tears up, SHE IS REAL. Debbie knows how to answer a general question with specific examples. She is one bright Congresswoman.

If you wish to know my choice for a Dem Vice-Presidential candidate in 2016 (long after I’m dead) it would be Shultz or Dean.

Watch Palin with Hannity sometime in this most recent interview. (I know, you will need some Milanta or something to ease your pain):

Palin added, "I receive a lot of death threats. My children do."

The former governor said she supported calls for civility in politics but added, "we should not use an event like that in Arizona to stifle debate."

Asked what she thought of Obama's speech at a memorial for the victims, Palin said, "I thought there were parts of it that really hit home that all of us can hold onto and live out."

Palin received lower marks for her handling of the tragedy from more Americans than President Barack Obama did, a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday found.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/17/sarah-palin-crosshairs-us_n_810118.html

You see what she is doing here?

I mentioned before that Socrates at one point is recorded as saying:

I know nothing.

But if you attach the rest of his recorded statement, it makes more sense because it pertains to the general concept of Justice, and this concept changes from person to person and from context to context.  There is no dispositive definition of Justice!

And Socrates would argue the point if we could bring him back to modern times. (By the by I think that is who Noam Chomsky is, Noam is the reincarnation of Socrates but that is a subject for another day)

Sarah Palin cannot reason. Palin has no handle on an art called Rhetoric.

If Representative Anthony Weiner is confronted with some general fact from the right, like continued unemployment and such, he will quote you reams of information, Weiner will go back to 2002 and 2004 and 2006 and 2008; Weiner will shove facts down the throat of his accuser like the fact that Bush put foxes in charge of the hen houses, how bush cut regulations of large business enterprises, etc. etc. etc……

Weiner would not stop; anymore than Shultz or Dean would.

But Palin is like one of those Alaskan Elk caught in the spray of headlights.

Palin would never cite some particular statements made by our President that she agrees with.

That is not because it would be imprudent.

Palin is not capable of doing so.

Bachmann would not even try. I do not think she would know enough about the art of rhetoric to even attempt to play that game.

Haley Barbour could. Huckleberry could.

And you know, to be fair to repub women, Guiliani cannot perform this task either.

I just watched a video with Rudy and he sounds like an idiot. Now this man knows rhetoric, he just is spent. I mean his spirit is spent and he does not have the time to play with these matters anymore and he has not the energy to do so. He lost his soul somewhere along the line prosecuting mob bosses and attempting to keep NYC together.

Newt is mentally deranged and has reached real dementia and he has lost the art of rhetoric.

If you ask Newt how to restore educational standards in this country, he will just meander for hours. He cannot help himself.

What would you do to restore our budget Mr. Speaker?

Well America is about values and values are what are needed in order to restore a sense of balance…..

BULLSHITE.

I dare you to listen to some panel discussion where Newt is present and where he is presented with some general question. And then I would ask you to translate what he just stated in some 10 minute statement. You cannot because no one could.

Now Christopher Hitchens knows the art of rhetoric. I don’t care if he had a pint of burgundy or a quart of whiskey prior to his comments, he knows and applies the art of rhetoric. And I have seen this man debate idiots from the Christian Right concerning the age of the universe and such and he never, never calls the opposition idiots. He will call concepts idiotic. The subjunctive phrase always works. Ha! He knows exactly how to make his arguments and how to take home a paycheck from these silly debate sponsors.

Let me give you an example of the proper use of rhetoric.

Steve King from Iowa was on this committee as a minority member and the committee was examining some issue concerning race. This has to be at least five years ago.

And his interrogation of an aggrieved Black Woman was masterful. He started off admitting all of the horrible things ever done to black people in this country.

He then went ahead and voiced his disapproval of such actions on behalf of certain forces in this nation.

This is the first time I ever saw this prick. And I was initially convinced that he was representing some Northern Republicanism of yesteryear.

And then he went for the throat.

I mean he just attempted to gut this witness, although he did not get the result he had hoped for, at least in my mind.

Right then and there I knew he was a racist prick repub.

But he knew how to do it.

Sarah Palin does not have a clue.

She cannot help herself and no one could ever teach her how to properly act rhetorically.

If I were Palin, I would have gone on and on about how our President had underlined the importance of sympathizing with the victims of these terrible shootings.

I would have underlined how we all wish that we could come together during the time of mourning and that I certainly wish for the swift recovery of the wounded including Representative Gabby.

See, you would call her Gabby. That makes everyone feel so much better.

I would have continued to quote the President exactly and demonstrate my agreement with him that this country must eschew violence and such.

And after citing specific portions of the President’s speech, I would then go for the jugular.

But the President also implied that:

(pick your poison; all gun owners are bad people, all right wing radio hosts are pricks, all repubs are repugnant)

AND THIS WAS WRONG.

See?

Then I would go on and on about how the media, citing specific examples of course, is out to cut my tits off.

There is an art to all of this.

Palin is an idiot.

Oh I know, we call all these right wing fascist corporate oligarchists idiots, but that is stupid of us to do so.

Rush Limbaugh is not an idiot but he is no master of rhetoric either.

Rush is simply playing to his constituency and he does not give a rip what mediamatters thinks. Mediamatters just makes him more money. Chris Matthews just makes Rush more money. Rush knows how to make money.

Palin is just a plain idiot. She says some things on Hannity like:

Oh I liked parts of that speech but….

I mean, what parts? What sentences? What phrases? What sentiments?

We don’t know and the reason that we don’t know is because Palin does not know.

Huckleberry would know. Haley Barbour would know.

See?

It was the same when Katy Couric asked Palin what newspapers she liked to read.

Palin does not have the capacity to answer the general question with specific answers.

For one thing, Palin cannot hold that many ideas at once in her head.

Newt can hold many ideas in his head at once, he just cannot figure out which ones to let loose at the proper time. Hahahaha!

Now Palin thinks that this rhetoric bullshit is just that, bullshit.

Palin does not think that there is some basic truth out there any more than rush does.

But Palin does not know how to take a general question and then cite specific examples in response to a general question in the main stream media setting. William Buckley would go nuts!!

So Palin has decided that she will eschew the Main Stream Media and stick with Fox. That is exactly what she admonished Bachmann to do. But here she is on Hannity sounding like a moron.

And I think that it is this specific ineptitude that will keep Palin from ever reaching a high office ever again.

Palin has already made her twenty or thirty million anyway and she can have some idiot ghost write another book and she can make her speeches to NRA audiences and racist audiences and probably collect a pretty good cache as far as treasure over the next few decades, but she is an idiot.

And that is why I am no longer worried about Sarah Palin.

The end.