Experience

Fred Kaplan, blowing a gasket about those who think that Sarah Palin is somehow more qualified to be President than Barack Obama:

In an uproarious essay, Gaffney wrote that Palin had learned more about foreign policy than Obama and Biden "by osmosis," because Alaska lies "along the trajectory of ballistic missiles launched eastward out of Stalinist North Korea."

This strikes me as unlikely. I live under the flight path of nearly every domestic flight that lands at LaGuardia and JFK. Yet that random fact doesn't supply me with the slightest wisdom, by osmosis or some other mystical means, about the operations of the airline industry.

As for the equally bizarre claim that Palin knows about foreign policy because Alaska borders Russia, via the Bering Strait, again, I don't get the connection. Has she ever dealt with a Russian? Do the Russians plan to invade Alaska? Or is this another case of learning through osmosis?

Only right-wing Republicans are stupid enough to believe-or think that someone else will believe-that merely living in Alaska qualifies you to deal with Russia. McCain, by picking Palin, has killed his ability to strongly attack Obama on the matter of experience because no matter how many times pundits and their knock-offs in the right-wing blogosphere repeat this sort of nonsense, nobody except them is really going to buy it. Though, watching them try is awfully amusing.