However, in real life, the main thing a National Merit Scholarship means is getting out of school with a bit less debt than your fellow grads, not an unimportant consequence. As for the geek saint thing, I’ll plead guilty to the geek part for sure. Or the “not the popular crowd” part anyway. But that was long ago and far away, and I had actually forgotten about it until this thread. At least I don’t have to be mad at SP for spoiling that distinction like she has spoiled amateur flute playing and the Far Northern Plains dialect.

If by chance, he got called on one of them, he would stand behind his lie saying that what he said may not be specifically true, but it was something Clinton would do.

I think it funny how thin-skinned the repubs get when hit with their own tactics.

First we survey the deep levels of Palin Derangement Syndrome that have possessed everyone on the left since her entrance on the national scene.

Yes, generally, I do have reactions to extreme stupidity in politics.

YMMV.

Why, yes, they are, as a matter of fact, as the large number of people who died in Indonesia and London and Madrid since the invasion of Iraq could testify to, if they were alive.

Oh, I’m sorry, did you mean to only count American deaths as meaningful. That’s very Christian, indeed.

Then it turns out that this Africa item came from a fabricated source.

It’s not that complicated.

1. Fox News runs “Africa is a country” story.
2. MSNBC runs stories claiming source for #1 is Martin Eisenstadt
3. Eisenstadt turns out not to exist.
4. MSNBC retracts 2.
5. Fox DOES NOT retract 1 as they had never claimed that Eisenstadt was the source.

(Unless I’ve missed them retracting it?)

#1 has exactly the same truth value as it did before MSNBC came along.

No, but since most people don’t have cancer, and he had the depressive history you cite, the hypothesis dependent on the smallest degree of unsupported assumption is that he did not have cancer.

It also doesn’t mean that Sarah Palin isn’t smart if there is no mention of her having been a National Merit Scholar. I was also a semi-finalist, and I can’t even find me on the internet!

You’re not a public figure. As for SP, the hypothesis dependent on the smallest degree of unsupported assumption is that she was not a National Merit Scholar.

As for her not being smart, that’s hard to tell, really, from the available evidence. It seems to me inescapable to conclude that she’s either rather stupid or appallingly and willfully ignorant (or, of course, both). Hard to know which is worse, but we’ve had one of those in office for the past 8 years, and I for one don’t want another, ever.

Ah the clarity of the child.

And to the “false but accurate” crowd, remember how far that got Dan Rather.