It's been quite a whirlwind the past couple of weeks, watching Donald Trump wow the Republican world with his dazzling mixture of aggressive ignorance and utter crassness. He's like Sarah Palin on steroids.

But Palin herself remains a potent spokesperson for the forces of ignorance. And while a lot of her apologists and defenders like to claim that Palin is unfairly victimized by quick sound bites, she really makes a much bigger impression -- as someone so utterly clueless they should never be permitted near any public office again -- in longer formats, such as her wide-ranging and rambling interview yesterday with Fox News' Bret Baier.

It produced little exchanges like this one, on increasing the debt ceiling:

PALIN: Hells no. I would not vote to increase that debt ceiling. Otherwise it just shows the American public we're not serious yet. We're still gonna incur more debt. No. And we don't have to increase the debt ceiling here in the next few weeks. It turns my stomach to hear this assumption articulated that, well, we have to despite the fact that we're raking in, the federal government, six billion dollars a day.

Take that money and service our debt first! And pay down some of that debt. Make sure that we're showing the international financial markets and our lenders that we're serious about getting our debt and our deficit problems under control.

BAIER: So, what would you say to the Republicans who do vote for it, on the advice of some experts on Wall Street and around the country who believe that not increasing it would really hurt the economy and create a disaster?

PALIN: I would say, before you seriously think about voting to increase the debt limit and incur more unsustainable, immoral, unethical debt that is really going to ruin our country, to continue down this path -- prioritize, service the debt first, pay for the very essential services that are constitutionally mandated.

Let the states take care of a whole lot of these services and projects, and if a state wants to do something a little bit special, like some extra roads or some extra museums and monuments and cowboy poetry, let that state figure out how they're gonna pay for it.

Palin also sort of weighed in on the other presidential candidates, though you'll notice she actually says nothing at all about any of them, other than that she respects them because they're good Republicans and by golly she loves to see them running; and then remains firmly noncommittal about her own prospects for running.

Then she wraps it all up by suggesting that President Obama had foreign money flowing into his campaign accounts in the 2008 election -- which would, of course, be a crime. Baier asks her:

BAIER: Before I let you go, are you suggesting that the FEC may find that foreign money got into the Obama campaign in 2008?

PALIN: Am I wrong to bring up the fact -- and maybe, Bret, at this point you have more information than I do on where a lot of those dollars were that were unaccounted for. Remember that we saw much proof of a lot of the donations to Obama's campaign -- credit-card contributions under fake names, addresses that perhaps weren't even real addresses in the U.S.

You know, I hope that we don't just give up on making sure that we have free and fair elections -- not just Obama's! Heck, some on the GOP too! Uh, on the GOP side. Let's make sure that rules are being followed. We are a land of laws.

Methinks she's been dipping into Pam "Atlas Wanks" Geller's beandip again.