Catching Up To Sarah Palin; Shopping in Massachusetts

By Adrienne Ross - www.motivationtruth.com

A couple years ago a friend and I went to an outlet in Lee, Massachusetts to do some shopping. We went from store to store, each time being greeted by a salesperson asking, "How are you?" and then moving on to the business at hand: selling goods.

After about the tenth such question, I decided to have some fun. People ask, "How are you?" not because they care. In fact, most of the time they don't even wait around for an answer; they're just going through the motions. We all do it. "How are you?" is just something we say here in America. It's akin to people saying, "Have a nice day" at 11:00 at night--which annoys the snot out of me!

So I told my friend, "Sally, the next time someone asks me how I am, I'm going to tell them!" She looked like, "Oh goodness, here we go," because people who know me well know I might do anything for the sake of being funny or making a point.

So I decided to do something I'd seen in the movie Ground Hog Day.

So when the next unlucky salesman asked, "How are you today?" I responded, "Not too well. Can we go in the back and talk? Oh, did you really want to know how I'm doing, or were you just making conversation?"

I got a big kick out of that, and I am reminded of it when I think of what Sarah Palin wrote on Facebook yesterday.

Here's why:

I have heard the President and his administration state time and time again that those on the other side of the aisle have no interest in bipartisanship, have no real solutions to offer, and simply want to block true reform. You've heard it yourselves.

It's a lie.

I have heard the president say that if anyone has "legitimate" suggestions, he is ready to hear them. It sounds good, but he uses that word because he gets to define what's legitimate. If it doesn't follow his plan, it's not legitimate. How else can he justify ignoring the American people who have told lawmakers for months that they are uneasy--to put it mildly--with the Health Care Bill? How else can he and Nancy Pelosi ram it down our throats anyway? Apparently our concerns aren't legitimate enough.

In the same way the salesman asked how I was, without really giving a flying fig, so President Obama--forever the salesman--asked for suggestions yesterday. This time he replaced "legitimate" with the term "demonstrably good idea" when describing what kind of suggestion he's willing to consider. If his history tells us anything, he really isn't expecting to wait around long enough to get an answer. It's sort of like a drive-by "How are you?" where he just goes about the business of...well, selling goods, of course.

Enter Governor Palin who apparently thinks like I do and figured if he's asking, she might as well answer.

So, as I did with the salesman, she takes him at his word and offers a response. The only thing missing at the end of her response is, "Did you really want to know, Mr. President, or were you just making conversation?"

Below is the beginning of the governor's "demonstrably good idea," posted on Facebook yesterday. I wonder what the president will do with it.

I commend the president for acknowledging today that “there are limits to what government can and should do” to ease our 10.2% unemployment rate – the highest it’s been since 1983. I also applaud his call for suggestions and expression of openness to considering “any demonstrably good idea.” Taking him at his word, I’d like to suggest this one: let’s learn from history and follow the example of the man who occupied the White House in 1983 and was able to transform an even worse recession than the one we’re currently experiencing into the largest peacetime economic expansion in American history.

Read the entire Facebook note here.