Sarah Palin Was Even More Clueless Than We Thought

Did anyone think this was possible? Everyone thought that Sarah Palin was pretty much clueless about everything, but now that the election is over and people are speaking out a little more freely, it turns out that she was even worse than that.

Wow.

First there’s this Newsweek article with initial information from reporters embedded with the campaigns, which has mind boggling stuff like this:

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

McCain’s advisors also decided not to tell him about this, because they didn’t want to offend him.

(They also were trying to figure out whether to tell him the election was hopeless before the last debate happened, but decided not to. Was he not really able to figure that out on his own, when the rest of the country already knew it? That adds an extra level of patheticness to it, with only McCain not knowing that he couldn’t win. It’s like when Hillary Clinton was holding a rally after she had lost the nomination, but refused to tell her supporters at the rally that it was over. So everyone watching on television knew it was over, but her supporters were still intent on winning, and she just wouldn’t tell them about it. All very pathetic. Maybe McCain and Hillary can run together at some point.)

The article also reveals that Palin decided to attack Obama about William Ayers without the support of the rest of the campaign:

Palin launched her attack on Obama’s association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue. McCain’s advisers were working on a strategy that they hoped to unveil the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and top adviser Mark Salter was resisting.

Then there’s a Fox News report where they reveal even more astounding information about Palin. Apparently she couldn’t name the countries in North America, and I guess as a side effect of that, didn’t understand what countries made up NAFTA.

Palin also didn’t understand that Africa was a continent. She thought Africa was a country, and that, for example, South Africa just referred to the southern part of the country of Africa, and didn’t understand that it was a country.

I just don’t understand how someone doesn’t know such basic information about the world. It’s like a weird movie that gets bad reviews because they’ve created such a stupid character that nobody in the audience would believe that anybody could possibly be that ignorant. How do you get through middle school, let alone high school or college, without understanding the basic continents of the world?

Thank you fake America for overruling real America and keeping her out of the federal government. It’s a shameful black mark on the USA that the election was as close as it was, and that 30% of voters in exit polls actually thought Palin was qualified to be vice president. That’s a disgrace.

EDIT: Andrew Sullivan calls this Palinfreude. I like it!