Not-entirely-snarky political thought

[redbird]

Has anyone asked Sarah Palin when she was last on either Attu or Little Diomede?

Not that "we can see Russia out the window" is foreign policy experience, but even if it was, seeing Russia from Wasilla or Juneau is about as plausible as seeing it from Manhattan.

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

She knows where Attu and Little Diomede are . . . right?

[redbird]

It would be more amusing if she didn't.

[ckd]

I can see MIT's campus from here. I guess that makes me an engineer.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Aren't you?

[ckd]

Only by job title; I'm still really a sysadmin. (They also don't let me drive the train, no matter what my job title is.)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

To be fair -- I thought her statement was that she was governor of places where you could see Russia -- not that she, personally, could see it, or ever had seen it.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Nevertheless, since she raised the point, it's a legitimate question whether she has. It seems to be unanswered, as far as I've been able to check, whether Sarah Palin has ever been to Little Diomede - but Michael Palin has.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Looking at a map suggests difficulty seeing Russia from Attu as well.

[redbird]

Little Diomede is the "see Russia from here" island, for values of "Russia" consisting of Big Diomede Island [which I learned from trashy literature]. I thought of throwing in Attu partly because it is sometimes counted as the westernmost part of the 50 states, but because it may be a more familiar name to older voters.

"Sometimes counted": I had some fun with Wikipedia last night, after looking up Little Diomede to refresh my memory: what count as the westernmost and easternmost parts of the US depends in part on whether you think in terms of traveling from somewhere clearly central (let's say Gateway Arch in St. Louis) or on numbered lines of latitude and longitude, in which case you can wind up with "easternmost" and "westernmost" points that are quite close to each other. And if you say "in U.S. territory" and travel distance, the farthest west you can go from any reasonably central U.S. location puts you in Guam gets you Guam.

Wikipedia being like that, I found lists of farthest north, south, east, and west that not only talked about the 48 contiguous states, but went on to distinguish the farthest west, south, north, and east points in said 48 states from the mainland of same, with a side note about southernmost island as distinct from southernmost place sometimes above water at low tide. Similar extremes for North America are less complicated; that's just a matter of whether to count islands (in which case Greenland has the northernmost and easternmost places in North America; if not, they're in Nunavut and Newfoundland-Labrador, respectively).

But I digress. A reporter might in fact do better to phrase it as "Governor Palin, you keep telling us that you live someplace where you can see Russia. When were you last on Little Diomede, and what did you learn about foreign policy from being there?" and possibly follow up with asking about Attu, or about how many Russians turn up on the streets of Juneau and Wasilla.

Also, again from Wikipedia: Wasilla is actively trying for the small town image: the town's stated population is significantly less than the Census Bureau number.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I love how you think.