Palin continues in her attempt to reinvent herself as a knowledgeable political pundit, sadly we know her all too well.

"Yes I did too write this editorial! See here is the original rough draft on my palm!"

This article showed up today in the Wall Street Journal, ostensibly written by Palin, and touting the new book by her "foreign-policy adviser Peter Schwiezer.  However you only have to examine a small sampling to quickly realize that virtually NONE of it originated from the grizzled brain of Palin.

The money-making opportunities for politicians are myriad, and Mr. Schweizer details the most lucrative methods: accepting sweetheart gifts of IPO stock from companies seeking to influence legislation, practicing insider trading with nonpublic government information, earmarking projects that benefit personal real estate holdings, and even subtly extorting campaign donations through the threat of legislation unfavorable to an industry. The list goes on and on, and it's sickening. 

Astonishingly, none of this is technically illegal, at least not for Congress. Members of Congress exempt themselves from the laws they apply to the rest of us. That includes laws that protect whistleblowers (nothing prevents members of Congress from retaliating against staffers who shine light on corruption) and Freedom of Information Act requests (it's easier to get classified documents from the CIA than from a congressional office). 

The corruption isn't confined to one political party or just a few bad apples. It's an endemic problem encompassing leadership on both sides of the aisle. It's an entire system of public servants feathering their own nests.

"Myriad?" "An endemic problem?" Please, none of that is reflective of how Palin thinks, or talks, or writes. (My belief is that Schweizer himself actually wrote that for her and then allowed her to sign her name to it.)

You only have to watch her stumble through one of her "interviews," clinging to a few talking points like a drowning woman trying to stay afloat in a sea of complicated information, to realize that she is the intellectual equivalent of a third grade child. (And don't forget, she uses a teleprompter to help with those interviews, and can STILL barely navigate them.)

Of course it makes sense for Palin to hide behind ghostwritten editorials as a way to pump up her political pundit street cred, because the written word does not always reveal the hand which wrote it. So of course that COULD work....except we actually DO know how Palin writes.  As revealed in this famous op-ed, which Palin fired of in response to a perceived slam against her father. (Though in fact it was a criticism of Lisa Murkowski that Palin conceitedly believed was aimed at her. After all, wasn't EVERYTHING about her?)

You can read the entire thing by clicking the link up above, but here is a small sampling just to give you an idea of what I am talking about:

‘Who’s Your Daddy?’ Great question! I see that I got a “thumbs down” on the Anchorage Daily News Sunday scoreboard with an accompanying insinuation that may not have the appropriate dad to allow me a particular public service role. Maybe the ADN should interview us wanna be’s (or has-beens!) and find out who are our daddies? Binkley’s, Hood’s and Palin’s. It may shed light on how we’ve come to do what we do. 

I’ve always said my parents are much too smart and way too nice to be in politics. My dad is not rich or famous or powerful. He’s more than that. My dad is Mr. Heath... schoolteacher extraordinaire. He came north in ‘64 to teach in Skagway. Forty years later he still subs in our district because his gift is connecting with Alaska’s young people. 

More often than not when people out here in the real world run into me they don’t say, “Oh, so you’re Alaska’s Oil and Gas Commissioner? Or, “Oh yeah, you ware that mayor.” Nope. They say, “So you’re Mr. Heath’s daughter? Cool! He’s my favorite teacher of all time!” I wouldn’t wish it any other way. 

Want more? Okey, dokey.

I’m thankful for all my dad taught me and allowed me to do. I’m glad he dragged my butt out of bed early, early autumn mornings to hunt ducks with him before cross-country running practice. He taught me to bag a caribou, fillet a fish, dig buckets of darns, and find the plumpest blueberries. He wouldn’t put up with my wimpy reasons why I couldn’t thaw frozen fish egg bait in my mouth, like he does, when ice fishing. But he did understand when I looked up at him quizzically once upon his request to “please hold those” while he searched for something to put our freshly butchered moose’s eyeballs in so his students could observe them later that day. He graciously understood, and I didn’t have to hold those ungulate’s warm parts that morning in the alders.

Do you want to know the REALLY pathetic part? I understand that Palin solicited help to write even that brain numbing opinion piece! 

Like I said, she can TRY to fool people into believing she is this wise stateswoman, with well researched opinions on a variety of topics, but WE know better.

Essentially she is doing what she has ALWAYS done, which is to find an issue or policy that is the creation or discovery of somebody else, and parasitically attach her name to it in order to leach off the reflected glory.

The sad thing about this is that Mr. Schweizer's book, and opinions, actually have merit, and deserve to be examined by serious journalists and read by the American public at large.  However by allowing Snowdrift Snooki to attach her name to his work, he is in danger of having it dismissed out of hand, or trivialized to the point that NOBODY will take it, or him, seriously.

And it certainly does not help that Palin herself is also guilty of the very same type of corruption, that Schweizer is pointedly addressing in his book. Remember this idea of Palin being a un-corruptable, and leaving office with clean hands, is purely a creation of Palin herself and not reflective of the facts.

Just when will people at long last learn that Sarah Palin essentially destroys everything that she touches?

(By the way for those wondering WHY this needs to be addressed, it is simply because Palin seems to be trying to gain credibility in order to inject herself into the 2012 political process. And considering the damage she did during the 2010 election cycle I think it behooves us to point out the falsity of her qualifications to be taken seriously by the media as often as the opportunity presents itself.)