{"id":975,"date":"2008-11-06T09:34:59","date_gmt":"2008-11-06T13:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=975"},"modified":"2008-11-06T09:47:54","modified_gmt":"2008-11-06T13:47:54","slug":"end-of-stupid-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=975","title":{"rendered":"End of stupid questions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After eight years of grunting and chanting instead of reasoning and discussing, this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/id\/167582\/output\/print\">excerpt<\/a> from a tape of Obama discussing a May 2007 debate performance is refreshing. <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Obama continues: &quot;When you have to be cheerful all the time and try to perform and act like [<em>the tape is unclear; Obama appears to be poking fun at his opponents<\/em>], I&#39;m sure that some of it has to do with nerves or anxiety and not having done this before, I&#39;m sure. And in my own head, you know, there&#39;s&mdash;I don&#39;t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. When you&#39;re going into something thinking, &#39;This is not my best &hellip;&#39; <strong>I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, &#39;You know, this is a stupid question, but let me &hellip; answer it.&#39;<\/strong> Instead of being appropriately [<em>the tape is garbled<\/em>]. So when Brian Williams is asking me about what&#39;s a personal thing that you&#39;ve done [that&#39;s green], and I say, you know,<strong> &#39;Well, I planted a bunch of trees.&#39; And he says, &#39;I&#39;m talking about <em>personal<\/em>.&#39; What I&#39;m thinking in my head is, &#39;Well, the truth is, Brian, we can&#39;t solve global warming because I f&ndash;&ndash;&ndash;ing changed light bulbs in my house. It&#39;s because of something collective&#39;.&quot;<\/strong> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>While this may not be the end of stupid media questions&#8211;boxers or briefs Brian?&nbsp; How much do you pay for your haircut?&#8211;it is at least an end <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2008\/11\/05\/palin-didnt-know-africa-i_n_141653.html\">one particularly awful instantiation of stupidity<\/a> (see the video at the link as well):<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>However, perhaps one of the most astounding and previously unknown tidbits about Sarah Palin has to do with her <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2008\/10\/01\/cnn-sarah-palin-has-never_n_130752.html\">already dubious<\/a> grasp of geography. According to Fox News Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron, there was great concern within the McCain campaign that Palin lacked &quot;a degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate, a vice president, a heartbeat away from the presidency,&quot; <strong>in part because she didn&#39;t know which countries were in NAFTA, and <\/strong><em><strong>she &quot;didn&#39;t understand that Africa was a continent,<\/strong> rather than a series, a country just in itself.&quot;<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Now give those third graders&#8211;wink wink wink&#8211;some extra credit!  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After eight years of grunting and chanting instead of reasoning and discussing, this excerpt from a tape of Obama discussing a May 2007 debate performance is refreshing. Obama continues: &quot;When you have to be cheerful all the time and try to perform and act like [the tape is unclear; Obama appears to be poking fun &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=975\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">End of stupid questions<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[246,174],"class_list":["post-975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-barack-obama","tag-global-warming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}