Kneel Before Zod!

Cheer up, teachers of New Jersey...it could be worse. Your governor could be John Kasich:

Kasich also had a direct message for the teacher's union, who blasted him during the campaign for his stance on the merit pay and holding teachers accountable.

"I am waiting for the teachers union to take out full page ads in all of the newspapers apologizing for what they had to say about me during this campaign," said Kasich.

And if they do, he'll bitch that they're squandering money.

Oh, and by the way, he's also declared that "creating jobs, halting the statewide passenger rail project and reining in labor unions are his top priorities."

I guess the jobs he wants to create are maid, cook, gardener, and pool boy for himself. Because the statewide passenger rail project he just killed would have generated up to 8000 jobs. He must have a different definition of "jobs" than the rest of us do.

If I'd done this, I'd still be unemployed

An Americablog commenter makes a very good point:

The process of campaigning is, in essence, a job interview, no?

In what universe would does the applicant (candidate) get to choose what question(s) they will be asked or deign to answer and from whom they will be questioned? That is how disrespectful of the electorate (we are supposed to be the bosses last time I checked, no?) the McCain/Palin 08 campaign has been since he put Palin on the ticket.

I think that there should be a full page ad in every paper (on every channel and website) reminding EVERYONE of these simple facts and the GOP’s standard bearer’s jaw-dropping disregard for their (potential) future employers.

As ye campaign, so shall ye govern, no?

We’ve been down this road the last two elections/terms. By adopting their tactics they have more than proven they will be Bush/Cheney/Rove redux.

Would you hire anyone who so disrespected you during the interview process? Would anyone?

As someone who recently went through the job hunting process, I think this person makes a very good point. In the interview for the job I now have, I was asked a number of tough questions about what I've done and also "soft questions" about how I'd handle particular situations. I was even asked the "Where do you want to be in five years?" question.

My experience covers part of what this job entails, but there is a piece of this job that I've never done before. I know that there are some who advocate lying your way into a job, but that's not something I believe is a good idea, because unless one is more nimble than I am, it always comes back to bite you. I answered the questions honestly, and let the voters, or in this case, the interviewers, decide.

The "Where do you want to be....?" question is a "gotcha" question. I'm not sure there's a good answer to it. But if I had Sarah Palin's attitude, I would have either ignored the question or called it a "gotcha." Instead, I answered "Still alive, still healthy, and still employed."

I got the job.

People tend to forget that the government works for us, and that campaigning is, or ought to be, an interview process in which we, the voters, have the power. It's our chance to take a look at the candidates and see who best fits our requirements. When the candidate sees himself (or in Palin's case, herself) as being somehow above or exempt from the requirement to answer questions, that candidate ought to be automatically disqualified from the job.

Most of us are so unaccustomed to being in that powerful position of being the interviewer, rather than the interviewee, and we've so long confused "leadership" with "authoritarianism", that we've forgotten that we're the boss here.

John McCain might want to consider hiring a food taster

...since his running mate seems to think SHE's at the top of the ticket:

She really shouldn't be so obvious about it. Maybe she needs to take some lessons from Augustus' wife, Livia:

And spare me your cries of sexism against an ambitious woman. It's unseemly for the #2 on the ticket to so obviously crave the #1 spot, and always has been. It's all part of Sarah Palin's arrogance. If a male #2 behaved like this, I'd have put up a video of Brutus killing Julius Caesar.

And they claim OBAMA is arrogant?

This kind of cocksure certainty, this -- yes, let's call it what it is, ARROGANCE -- gave us George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. And here they are all rolled up into one little package with a perky smile:

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin took questions with her running mate Wednesday night, offering at one point to play "stump the candidate" with a mostly friendly Michigan crowd.

Asked for "specific skills" she could cite to rebut critics who question her grasp of international affairs, she replied, "I am prepared."

"I have that confidence. I have that readiness," Palin said. "And if you want specifics with specific policies or countries, you can go ahead and ask me. You can play 'stump the candidate' if you want to. But we are ready to serve."

GOP presidential nominee John McCain stepped in, pointing out that as governor of a state that is oil and gas plentiful, Palin was familiar with energy. She knows it to be "one of our great national security challenges," he said.

You know, I've done a fair number of job interviews over the last few weeks; interviews for jobs that are a lot less important than being one melanoma away from the presidency. And if I had answered questions about my specific skills with the response "I am prepared...I have that confidence, I have that readiness...you can play 'stump the candidate' if you want to...but [I] am ready to serve," I would have been laughed right out of every office in which I presented that as my qualification for the job.

It's not that I believe you need every qualification in a laundry list of hard skills in order to be able to do a job. What I ran into while plowing through ads for Web development jobs was lists of 20 or so skills all of which were mandatory and all of which are virtually impossible to find in one person. Many of these jobs, I believe, didn't actually exist but were posted for the sole purpose of not finding anyone qualified so the function could be outsourced. Because very few people are ace C# and J2EE programmers AND have a vast portfolio of creative web and print and logo designs.

But the two highest offices in the country aren't like that. Of course no one has experience in being President, and the "Executive" branch is different from the "executive" experience one has running a corporation, or even as governor.

But what IS required of a President or Vice-President, is the ability to think, to evaluate options and choose the best ones based on the available factual information. The mere fact that Sarah Palin is a Biblical literalist who thinks she knows the mind of God would disqualify her as far as I'm concerned.

But what's coming across the longer she is in the public eye is a ferociously ambitious person who doesn't care who she steps on as long as she gets what she wants. She's prepared to reward richly those who are loyal to her, who defer to her and who help her on that road -- and she's prepared to administer the tortures of the damned to those who don't. She's just like George W. Bush that way. But even more frightening is her casual dismissal of concerns about her ignorance and her incuriosity, so evident in her sneer and sigh when asked about the Bush Doctrine, before biting off the words, "In what respect, Charlie?" -- as if Charlie Gibson were the ignorant student and SHE was the all-wise teacher. It's the arrogance of the entitled -- of the football team captain, the head cheerleader, the beauty queen, the high school Mean Girl Alpha Dogs who believe it their right to torment those less blessed than they.

In the real world, when you're interviewing for a job, you have to provide answers to questions about things you've done, and the interviewers evaluate how well they translate to the position for which they're looking to hire. In the interview for the job I start later this month, I was asked a number of "Have you done...." questions where the true answer is "No." Where there was something I had done that was related, I would say "But in this situation, I did...." That's a far cry from claiming that you're a Russia expert because there are places in your home state where you can see Russia, or that you're prepared to handle Middle East policy becuase you're "confident" and that tough questions are simply an attempt to play "stump the candidate" instead of trying to get a handle on just how qualified the person is for the job.

I'm going to be just one person in a large company. Sarah Palin, if elected, is going to be one melanoma away from being the most powerful person in the world. Isn't she obligated to provide intelligent answers to some questions as she is interviewed for that job?

Golf: The Supreme Sacrifice of the Frat Boy

Keith:

There's something so Gilded Age about a child of Connecticut and Kennebunkport actually thinking that the sacrifice of a sport played in clubs that don't allow black people or women, clubs frequented by guys named Skip and Chip wearing plaid pants; on land that could be used to farm vegetables to feed poor people or shelter them; land that's artificially kept green as a carpet through pesticides that then get into the water supply and cause cancer, constitutes a way to express "solidarity" with the family of a kid from Flint, Michigan who died while serving in the Army because there was nothing else for him to do.

I think George Carlin had the right idea:

I wonder what all the people who voted for George W. Bush because he was "a guy you'd want to have a beer with"; the people who think Barack Obama is "arrogant" because he's a black guy in a pinstripe suit who dares to think, who's "arrogant" enough to think, who's "uppity" enough to think that he could EVER be President of the United States.

You want to talk about elitist? A guy who thinks giving up golf to express condolence for the kids HE sent to die is elitist. And so is the guy who wants to continue his policies so he too can resolve his issues with his father.