Life is a Journey, Why Not Share it?

Guest Post by Emily Goll 

Sarah Palin has had a busy life since Senator John McCain plucked her out of obscurity during the 2008 election. Fortunately for us, the majority of this has been filmed and preserved as a now essential part of American history that we can relive over and over again on YouTube (thank you?). From interviews to speeches, here are the funniest, most outrageous and totally absurd Sarah Palin moments caught on tape thus far.

1. The Bush Doctrine

In her very first televised interview during the 2008 campaign, Charles Gibson asked Palin if she “agreed with the Bush Doctrine.” Uh oh. With obvious confusion, Sarah first tries to dodge the question and then when asked pointblank how she interprets the Bush Doctrine she responds (with obvious trepidation) that the Bush Doctrine is President Bush’s “world view.” Wrong. This interview was America’s first glimpse of why the governor of Alaska was simply not ready to be President of the United States.

2. Sarah Palin: “What does a VP do?”

In this clip, Sarah famously confesses on CNBC during the 2008 campaign that she has no idea what the vice president does. Yikes. The exact quote reads as follows: “As for that VP talk all the time, I tell ya, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me, what exactly is it that the VP does every day?”

3. Sarah Palin Prank Call

This Quebec comedy duo pranked Sarah during their radio show in 2008. Using nothing but French accents, they managed to convince the governor that she was speaking to France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy. Together, they discussed Nicolas’ beautiful wife, hunting, and promoting a special American advisor named Johnny Hallyday (a French singer). Sarah bought the prank up until they revealed themselves at the very end of the clip. An embarrassed Palin quickly got off the phone.

4. Interview Location Fail

Immediately following Sarah’s pardoning of a turkey on Thanksgiving in Alaska, Sarah proceeded to give an interview right outside of a turkey slaughter house. While discussing her career and “getting her message out,” we are given a clear view of turkey’s being killed directly behind her. Given the circumstances, you can’t help but laugh.

5. Palin: I Read All the News

Even Palin’s own camp admitted that her interview with Katie Couric went horribly, but this clip made headlines everywhere. When asked what newspapers specifically she read to keep informed, Palin responded, “Um…all of them.” Really, Palin? You read all the news? The media had a field day with this response and Palin ended up using it as an example of “gotcha media.” It was, after all, a pretty tricky question.

6. Palin on Foreign Policy

In this clip, Couric questions Sarah on citing Alaska’s proximity to Russia as part of her foreign policy experience. Trying to redeem herself, Palin speaks nonsensically for about a minute on how this affected her duties as governor: “We have trade missions back and forth…it’s from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there…they are right next to our state.” I’m sure Putin was shivering in his boots with Palin on watch!

7. Palin: Okay, I Didn’t Quite Say That

In September 12, 2008, Charles Gibson interviewed Sarah Palin and questioned her on her flip flopping stance on “The Bridge to Nowhere.” Gibson says, “It’s now pretty clearly documented that you were for that bridge before you opposed it.” Oops. This clip shows Sarah Palin trying to back pedal her way out the subject…and failing.

8. Stump the Candidate!

Apparently September 2008 was not a great month for Palin. Here is a clip (courtesy of CNN) showing Sarah trying to answer an audience question at a campaign rally on her foreign policy experience. She tells the audience that she “has that readiness and if you want specifics with specific policy or countries, go ahead and-and you can ask me. You can even play stump the candidate.” Yes! That’s great! We would love to play stump the candidate…but sadly, this is about where John McCain jumped in and took over the answering of questions. Lame.

9. Palin: No Second Guessing Israel’s “Security Efforts”

Here we see Palin’s interesting take on Israel. According to Palin, the United States should never “second guess” Israel, even if they choose to take action against Iran. She sums everything up very succinctly by saying that in a situation where Israel took action against Iran, “It seems obvious to me who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.” I had no idea foreign policy was so black and white!

10. Palin Declares War on Iran

When talking about what she and McCain will do in their first 100 days in office, Palin accidently said, “We’ll get this economy back on the right track and really sure up the strategies we need over in Iraq and Iran to win these wars.”What? We’re at war with Iran? Not Afghanistan? Better get to the nearest bomb shelter, stat!

Emily Goll is the editor of My Dog Ate My Blog and a writer on online courses for Guide to Online Schools.

[Source: Gawker]

Help Stop the Stoning of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani…

If you do nothing else. Please take a moment and sign the Petition.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/stop…
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/s…

Contact information for e-mailing the White house.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

And the President of Iran
http://cp.president.ir/en/
Currently there are only 427 signatures on the petition site. I am sure there are other Petitions out there. I think making people aware is the most important thing. That and voicing our condemnation of this sentence. Reason must prevail.

This woman needs to be released if anyone is ever to think reasonably of Islam.

It was 1977 in Miami (Dade County) when former beauty queen and singer Anita Bryant launched her infamous “Save Our Children” campaign to repeal a local anti-discrimination ordinance.

Her successful religious and political crusade against gays and lesbians led to repeal of Dade County’s non-discrimination provisions, and later that same year led to the Florida legislature’s passage of a ban on “homosexual” adoption.

Once her anti-gay campaign went national, Bryant helped set a nasty, narrow, prejudiced tone for the entire anti-equality backlash movement, which widely publicized quotes such as:

“As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduced children; therefore, they must recruit our children” and “If gays are granted rights, next we’ll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters.”

Her efforts were not without backlash as she famously took a pie in the face during a TV interview.

But she was also quite effective.  Her rhetoric and viewpoints are still cited today in political “debates” not only in Florida but nationwide. In fact, the roots of modern political homophobia and the foundations of the campaigns to ban same-sex marriage can all be traced back to Bryant.

And after years of self-imposed seclusion, Anita’s back on the national anti-gay stage – this time helping headline a “Reclaiming America for Christ” rally in Oklahoma with Focus on the Family, the Liberty Council and even former Colonel Oliver North.

Anita’s re-emergence as a icon of bigotry has prompted us to ask you – who would be the best national leader to refute the Anita Bryant types?

Despite the apparent deficit-cutting solidarity that emerged from the recent G-20 meeting in Toronto, it is clear that the great powers of the industrialized world have not been this philosophically estranged since the end of the Cold War. Ironically, in this new contest, the former belligerents have switched sides – the capitalists are now the socialists, and vice versa.

We now are witnessing a struggle between two new factions that some might call the “Stimulators” and the “Austerians.” Both seem warn that a worldwide depression will ensue if governments now make the wrong choices: the Stimulators say the danger lies in spending too little and the Austerians warn that the true danger lies in spending too much. Each side also has their own economic champion: the Stimulators follow the banner of Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, while the Austerians are forming up behind the recently reformed former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. (It is cold comfort to witness “The Maestro” belatedly returning to the hard-money positions that characterized his earlier years.)

In a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, Greenspan argued that the best economic stimulus would be for the world’s leading debtors (the United States, UK, Japan, Italy, et al.) to rein in their budget deficits, a strategy dubbed “austerity” by the press. Greenspan explains that because lower deficits will restore confidence, diminish the threat of inflation, and allow savings to flow to private-sector investment rather than public-sector consumption, the short-term pain will lead to gains both in the mid- and long-term. Rather than redistributing a shrinking pie, this approach allows the pie to grow. Greenspan’s Austereian view has been echoed loudly in the highest policy circles of Berlin, Ottawa, Moscow, Beijing, and Canberra.

Meanwhile, in several articles for his New York Times column, including one recently, Krugman has argued that those who push for austerity in the face of recession are either doing so for political expediency or out of a “crazy” fealty to archaic economic views. Krugman has apparently judged inadequate the trillions of dollars worth of deficit spending unleashed by the United States and European governments in the last 24 months. He believes our only remedy is to spend more – no matter how much debt results. Absent this, he claims, millions of workers “will never work again.” Unfortunately, Washington has clearly aligned itself with Krugman and the Stimulators.

Reading straight from the Keynesian playbook, Krugman argues that cutting government spending now will simply send the economy back into recession. He asserts that by flooding the economy with money, i.e. “stimulus,” governments can encourage consumers to spend. Once the spending creates better conditions, so the argument goes, the economy will be better positioned to withstand the spending cuts, tax hikes, and higher interest rates necessary to address the staggering deficits left behind.

Krugman proposes an enticing argument that is nevertheless built on rubbish. Economies do not grow because consumers spend; consumers spend because economies grow [for a detailed explanation of how this works, read the book: How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes]. Investment capital comes from savings, and when governments borrow, savings are diverted from private investment. While it is possible for governments to invest as well, it is much more likely that the money will be spent on entitlements or “invested” in projects that may be politically advantageous but economically useless.

Any money spent by governments is not available to the private sector to invest. The Stimulators don’t make this connection because they believe money grows on trees and that a printing press is a legitimate creator of wealth. However, printing money merely encourages people to spend their savings now rather than wait for it to lose value through inflation. This is okay to Stimulators, because stimulating “demand” by any means necessary is the only goal they can see.

What really grows an economy is not more demand, but more supply. The Austerian argument is that reductions in government spending will allow the private sector to generate the additional supply of goods and services. Europe seems to understand this; unfortunately, the US does not. Judging by the recent weakness of the dollar – not only against gold, but other fiat currencies, including the pound and the euro – the markets are coming to the same conclusion.

As sovereign-debt worries initially spread throughout Europe, the dollar benefitted. However, now that Europe has demonstrated a willingness to reduce its debts, while we have committed to make ours even larger, the sovereign-debt worries are moving west.

If Greenspan and the Austereians are correct, the stimulus will fail and leave us in a much deeper hole. As long as governments create bigger deficits, we will never have a sustainable recovery. Instead, we will be chasing our tail, and wearing ourselves out in the process. When we finally realize the folly of this approach, the austerity measures that we will then be forced to adopt will make those currently proposed by the Europeans seem relatively painless.

My guess is that before the end of Obama’s first term, our stimulus-induced recovery will falter, prompting Obama and Congress to administer even more stimulus. After all, the Stimulators have no other answer. However, given the adverse reaction this will produce in the currency and debt markets, this next jolt will likely vindicate the Austerians, as the world witnesses its greatest power careen into an inflationary depression.

Here is a quick compilation of 5 of our most popular, funniest, or most interesting posts that we think it’s important for you to have not missed, so take a moment and check them out…

1) Historical Perspective on Taxes [COMIC]

People seem to throw the “socialism” word around a lot lately. This comic shines a little light on the truth of the matter.

2) Top Ten Signs Your a Fundamentalist [LIST]

Top ten sure signs you are a fundamentalist Christian, these aren’t just your run-of-the-mill Christians, these are your hard core zealots…

3) Don’t Shave Your Ass Hair [STORY]

An important life lesson, teaching that all the parts of our bodies do , in fact, play an important function, even if that function is not immediately apparent. Absolutely hilarious, and you can learn from this poor bastard’s mistake. Possibly one of the funniest stories written.

4) Make it better… [INTROSPECTIVE]

An introspective article about the importance of listening and striving to make things better in the world around us.

5) “A Secret Letter from Iraq” [LETTER]

A Marine’s letter home, with its frank description of life in “Dante’s inferno,” has been circulating through generals’ in-boxes. We publish it here with the author’s approval.

Enjoy, and as always please feel free to leave comments and open discussion. Let us know what you think.

This year, the United States proudly celebrated 234 years of independence. I partook in that celebration in the birthplace of that independence, the great city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city where I grew up. As I sat there, I could not help but reflect upon how much our great nation has grown and changed in the last 234 years. I say I could not help it, not because I was in some deeply insightful, introspective mood, but rather because I was surrounded by ass-hats. The same sort of moronic people my beloved city, and indeed, our great nation, have become world famous for being the home to, I was surrounded by. Perhaps it was the two, unattended, nine year-old ghetto girls sitting behind me who would scream “green is for the mo-nay”  every time the color green flashed across the sky, or perhaps it was the two morons to my right who kept screaming “Happy birfday MER-CA! WOO! MER-CA!”

It was these same two morons, who after their own moment of quiet introspection stood up and decided to rally the crowd by giving the following rousing speech…

The Fireworks were beautiful, despite the ignorance all around.

“Hey ya’ll, aren’t you guys happy to be Americans? I mean think about it… We ain’t never been slaves, and we ain’t never been poor, because we are the greatest country on Earth! MER-CA!” Followed by more woots and incoherent semi-patriotic yelling.

It seems to me our country has become completely overwhelmed by the uneducated, and the stupid. It should have been a sign decades ago, when entertainment became our number one export that we’d become a global cancer managing to box up and ship our ridiculous “culture” en masse around the globe. Perhaps it is time we stop and ask ourselves if our founding fathers would be proud of what had become of the fruits of their labor? Perhaps it’s time we begin working on cleaning up our own mess here at home and stop worrying so much about spreading our wars for profit around the globe. We obviously need to work on our education system…

Happy Independence Day America… Let’s hope it hasn’t all been for naught.

The text below is an actual chat session from Omegle… Everything is written exactly as it appeared. Pardon the terrible grammar and spelling. There are some sick, sad, hilarious people in the world…

You’re now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!

Stranger: Asl

You: 17f florida

Stranger: 17 m new york

You: kewl

Stranger: Wat you doing?

You: surfin

Stranger: So wat you wearing?

You: i was checking out this site www.quixoticjourney.com, it pretty cool… i like the funny posters, except the naked chicks

You: i dunno… jeans and a tank top

You: why?

Stranger: Ohh are you tight??

You: How do you mean?

You: Like cool?

Stranger: No is ur vigina tight?

You: Oh… my vigina.

You: You mean my vagina?

You: Yes, it’s spectacular.

You: Thank you

Stranger: Ohh yummy I wanna taste it!!

You: Too bad your in NY then.

Stranger: I’m really hard!!

You: Oh yeah?

You: Check this out then…

You: http://www.quixoticjourney.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/0029.jpg

You: It might help you a bit

You: I want to scratch your skin as I scream No! Stop! Someone please Help me! Help! I’m being raped!

You: Then I will laugh at you when the police take you away

You: with my shit on your dick

Stranger: I’ll make you scream!!

You: Oh yeah?

You: Are you tight?

Stranger: I’m hard

You: I want to shove my dick up your ass.

Your conversational partner has disconnected.

We just added a whole new ‘posters‘ section (linked in upper right corner also) to the site to share the funniest, sexiest and most irreverent posters from around the web. Be sure to leave comments about what you think. There is a small collection posted right now, but there is more to come, and we’re always looking for more. We’ll be accepting user submissions. So if you have some funny de-motivational / motivational posters to share, please send them our way. Just use the contact form to get in touch.

We’ve got a lot more fun stuff in store, so keep checking back for the latest developments.