She’s announced that she’s resigning as governor. That was actually pretty bright. It’s obvious that she’s planning to run for President in 2012. And we already know all the stupid stuff she’s done so far. By stepping down from office, it means that she is eliminating the possibility of doing even more stupid stuff that could be used against her in a campaign.
Of course, it makes one wonder if there’s some scandal brewing that she’s trying to avoid by stepping down, but that’s merely speculation.
PAD
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It’s either or scandal or a health issue. Maybe she’s pregnant again and can’t face having to deal with Andrew Sullivan demanding her gynecology records.
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But given the track record of politicians these days you have to go with scandal. It would make no sense at all to do this to help run for president in 2012–looking around at the conservative pundits I can’t find a single one that thinks this would help her cause and a good number that insist this takes her out of serious contention.
Maybe she’s pregnant again and can’t face having to deal with Andrew Sullivan demanding her gynecology records.
Are you talking about the same Sarah Palin as everyone else? The Sarah Palin with whom I’m familiar jumps in front of a camera at a moment’s notice.
…and a good number that insist this takes her out of serious contention.
Wait… *this* runs her out of serious contention? Not her abysmal performance during the ’08 campaign that rightfully made her a laughinstock in the eyes of all but the most extreme right-wingers?
If she cant handle being Governor why should I vote to put her in the toughest job in the world?
Unless she’s avoiding a scandal, then it’s a dumb move.
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If she ever wants to run for office again, this will haunt her. She’s barely accomplished anything in Alaska and she’s already giving up. Everyone who ever runs against her can point this out, including any Republicans she runs against in primaries. She’s now the cut-and-run governor.
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On the other hand, if she really does stay out of running for public office, then she might as well start raking in the bucks. She can make lots of money from speaking engagements and book deals (ghost written, of course). She can raise tons of money for other candidates and use that as a way of continuing to be a star without having to be accountable for anything. I was going to say that she could use that power to get leverage for her agenda, but I don’t think she actually has one, other than getting attention.
Maybe it’s a sympathy resignation in support of Mark Sanford.
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MSNBC seems to think that Palin has indicated she is done with politics for good.
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And that would be a good thing.
I’m having a hard time believing that she’s out for good on a couple of levels.
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On whether or not she actually believes that right now, I doubt it. She’s gone this far, I have trouble believing that she’d just stop now. I can kinda see it though, since she’s also had a taste of how much attention (plus influence and money) she can get when she’s not in Alaska.
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Long term, however, it’s a big thing to say that she’s done with politics “for good.” She’s pretty young for a politician. Fifteen years from now she could easily change her mind, but all she’ll have is a very limp resume. I think they either haven’t thought that through or they don’t really mean it.
Is it me or did she look thin? But there was nothing in here speech that even hinted at an outside reason for resigning, other than a desire not to be a lame duck once the choice not to run for re-election was made. Strange.
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Mitt Romney has got to be happy. All the pieces are falling into place for him.
Bill Mulligan says:
July 4, 2009 at 12:46 am
I think referring to someone as a GILF–which, just so we’re clear, stands for Grandmother I’d Like To F***–could be construed as sexist.
Agreed, though for some reason I immediately assumed the “G” stood for governor. Color me unhip with the lingo
Governor I’d Like To F***….brrrrr, THERE’S a group that’s hurting for members…
Also (Because Palin loved to say also), notice that she made the announcement on a holiday weekend Friday. Friday’s are known as info dump days where news or information is dumped when the major media outlets do not have their A-list personalities available to chat about the news or info.
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And $20 says Limpburger blames in on Obama the way he has said Obama is responsible for Mark Sanford’s infidelity and Michael Jackson’s death.
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Keith Olbermann has taken to calling Limpburger a “bloated bagful of mashed up jáçkášš”.
Wait… Limbaugh is seriously hooking Obama to Jackson and Sanford?
Links, please. Not because I don’t believe you, but because I have to read this new level of insanity for myself.
As for Palin, it could be scandal brewing, it could be stupidity, or it could be she realized why Rudy Giuliani intentionally killed his presidential bid – because he and she are both at the level of appeal to their base that they’ll make more money with books and speaking tours than they ever will in public service, even with all the payoffs and dirty deals.
Rush blaming Obama for Jackson: http://www.politicususa.com/en/Rush-Michael-Jackson
Rush blaming Obama for Sanford: http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p=1314
I just got these links off google and I only read the Rush quotes, so I don’t know if the articles are good reads. They have the important bits, though. The “logic” from Rush is some of the worst stretches I’ve ever heard.
From the links Jason provided, I do not see how Limbaugh was blaming Obama for Sanford. He was merely speculating as to why Sanford did what he did. If it is to be seen as blaming Obama, it was in a most indirect, manner.
The Michael Jackson bit is another matter. In that piece, he clearly appears to be giving credit for Michael Jackson’s success and blame for his death to the respective parties and politicians in power at the time of each.
So the way to stop “politics as usual” is just stop politics altogether? Brilliant!
I mean, she said she doesn’t want to be a lame duck, so she resigns? Is that what she is going to do (god forbid) if she becomes a lame duck president? Just say “fûçk you guys, I don’t want to play anymore”? The fact that people consider this woman to be prime material for a presidential candidate is mind boggling.
So, if she’s stepping down because she doesn’t want to be a lame duck, would this mean she would step down shortly into her second presidential term because she wouldn’t want to be a lame duck? In fact, why bother standing for election that second time, if you are only going to be a lame duck?
Hang on, but if you don’t stand that second time, that means you spend your first term as a lame duck too.
*ponders*
You know, I think I’ve got it. She could just never stand at all! You know, I think that would work out great for just about everybody…
It’s particularly confusing for me to understand what she’d get out of this politically given that this is her first term as governor. Which means her whole significant political resume at this point is less than 3 years as governor with a coda of her bailing for no good reason (at least so far generally known).
However, I figure the odds of her ending up with a show on Fox News are about even money.
However, I figure the odds of her ending up with a show on Fox News are about even money.
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When I told Lisa earlier this afternoon about the news, that was her first reaction: “What, Fox News came through with the offer already?”
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If she really has higher political aims at this point, I think she’s going about them just as intelligently as she did the ’08 campaign. I know there are some reports that she’s said she’s done with politics, but I’ll believe that when I see significantly more evidence.
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Interesting news to start the holiday weekend, though!
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TWL
I know there are some reports that she’s said she’s done with politics, but I’ll believe that when I see significantly more evidence.
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Politics may be done with her before long, if she doesn’t get her act together.
Of course, it makes one wonder if there’s some scandal brewing that she’s trying to avoid by stepping down, but that’s merely speculation.
That was my first thought when I heard the news, actually.
Yes, but when has she *not* had some level of scandal brewing? She seems to love scandals because they give her a chance to blame the media for ganging up on her.
Yes, but when has she *not* had some level of scandal brewing?
Not all scandals are created equal.
She clearly got word from her incetoid alien overlords to prepare for the coming invasion and had to step down to facilitate the extraterrestrial takeover in 2012, and she can do it better out of the public spotlight.
It’s in Revelations, people!
Let’s see… she’s had to spend half a million dollars of her own money (and she’s NOT rich) to fight off ethics investigations, of which she’s 15 for 15 in being acquitted. She’s watched three of her children be hounded and harassed and attacked on a national stage by some of the most vile scum in politics today.
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Can ANYONE say they would blame her for saying “fûçk it, screw you all, I’m going home?”
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I sure as hëll don’t.
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J.
You are everywhere on the Internet.
You actually have a point, but the classy thing to do was at least see out your one and only term of office.
of which she’s 15 for 15 in being acquitted.
Incorrect.
http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/oct/14/sarah-palin/report-finds-palin-violated-ethics-laws/
Or if not “incorrect,” then at least a misleading oversimplification. She *was* found to have “abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Branch Ethics Act.”
According to a March 2008 report, the Palins EARNED over $250,000 a year. That’s rich.
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And if she weren’t trying to be so evil about her ways of getting things done, she wouldn’t have to face so many ethics complaints.
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Her net worth in 2007 or 2008 was over $1.2 million, putting her in the top 5% of the country.
That makes all the difference, Alan. Why, her legal bills were only double the entire family’s income, and about 40% of their entire net worth. Why, that’s almost nothing.
And the DNC was lining up more and more bogus allegations all the time.
J.
And the DNC was lining up more and more bogus allegations all the time.
You’re still waiting for the *real* Obama birth certificate, aren’t you?
Jau Tea —
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Some of those ethics charges came from her fellow Republicans.
She’s watched three of her children be hounded and harassed and attacked on a national stage by some of the most vile scum in politics today.
I don’t buy it. If Palin needed help fending off lawsuits she could’ve raised money through her upcoming book, among other things.
Oops, I was originally going to reply to Jay’s complaint about Palin’s treatment at the hands of the media, but changed my mind. I forgot to change the text in italics to reflect that change-of-mind, though.
And none of her children were “hounded”. Yes, their names came up, but that is because Palin shamelessly shoved them into the limelight. Some even say she whørëd them out for political gain.
Then the country is better off, Alaska is better off with someone who’s wimped out like this.
Consider me less than impressed with a resolve made of wet tissue paper.
Can ANYONE say they would blame her for saying “fûçk it, screw you all, I’m going home?”
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Well, she’s now officially a QUITTER.
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And people want THIS for vice president or president?
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The good news is that she’s officially DONE for 2012, and hopefully well beyond. Because if she ever tries to get back into politics, this will haunt her.
One could make the very same charge about Barack Obama.
The man couldn’t even be bothered to finish ONE term as a US Senator before jumping into the Presidential race. (And this was less than 3 years after going on record as having no plans to run for the White House in 2008. He was asked about that just a couple of months after winning the Senate seat in 2004.)
Not the same thing, Joseph. If Obama hadn’t won the election, he still would have been a Senator. He didn’t give up, he just sought a promotion.
Jay Tea: She’s watched three of her children be hounded and harassed and attacked on a national stage by some of the most vile scum in politics today.
Really? Which three children were these? The only one that became an even moderate point of contention was Bristol, and with good reason. And who were the “vile scum” who mentioned her? It sure wasn’t Obama, since he told his people that the kids were off-limits. Was it O’Reilly? Well no, because it was O’Reilly who, after vilifying Jamie-Lynn Spears for getting pregnant as a teen, ended up defending Bristol for the same thing.
Are you referring to the younger daugther? The only one who mentioned her was David Letterman. While I am not a fan of him, as I do not find him funny, he is not “in politics”, and apologized for his remark.
So who are the second and third of her children to have been “hounded and harassed and attacked on a national stage by some of the most vile scum in politics today”?
Bill Maher, though I can’t imagine anyone should expect any better from him at this point.
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I mentioned the Huffigton post “comedian” who wrote the idiocy about Trigg, but he would have to be considered an aberration and they took him off. The Huffington Post also gets a bit of mention for having each of her kids given an individual posting where, predictably, the internet jáçkáššëš came out to post stupid šhìŧ, like Track being either gay or the actual father of Trigg with his sister…I don’t blame websites for idiotic comments by posters (though The Huffington Post has shown in the past that they will sometimes eliminate the ability of people to post comments when they KNOW the results will reflect badly on their readership. This may have been a good time to use that policy)
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Hmmm, I may have to take back my good feelings about the HuffPo; here’s an entry into a now-forgotten bit of rumormongering–that Track Palin joined the army to avoid jail: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/archive/236/news/2008/09/05/were_going_with_the_rumor_trac_8767.html
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I’d say it’s pretty safe to say that most of the egregious attacks on Plain’s kids came from bloggers. And really, if you can’t take the slings and arrows of some doof in his mom’s basement…best not to be put in a position where you have to face down Putin.
In the case of Letterman v. Palin, Letterman didn’t know the daughter who was at the baseball game was Willow. He thought he was making a Bristol joke. (Bristol now being of legal age.)
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This goes to show that Letterman is merely reading some of the jokes written for him and doesn’t actually know what exactly he is joking about.
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And, no doubt about it, it is still his responsibility once he says them. That’s why he apologized several times. The last time was on a Monday after he had seen a report about it over the weekend.
He thought he was making a Bristol joke. (Bristol now being of legal age.)
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And it should be noted that there were plenty of jokes being made about Bristol last fall when she wasn’t legal age by all the late night comedians, and there wasn’t much in the way of eye-batting then.
And it should be noted that there were plenty of jokes being made about Bristol last fall when she wasn’t legal age by all the late night comedians, and there wasn’t much in the way of eye-batting then.
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Yeah, even I gasped at the incest joke on SNL when James Franco was hosting. That was so crass it was uncomfortable to watch, yet nothing was said of it even after it was rerun just a couple of weeks ago…AFTER the Letterman brouhaha.
Although, the incest joke was a mockery of the media-not the Palins…it was a specific attack on the way the media was publishing any story regardless of how insane it seemed. The joke was not that Palin’s husband was molesting their kids…it was that the editor clearly made it up and then wanted his reporter to find evidence.
As far as Bristol Palin jokes…she was willing to campaign for her mom and later became a political advocate for abstinence education…she was a fair and legit target for political satirists and late night talk show hosts.
Maybe she got so addicted to the national media spotlight that she was willing to do anything for one more fix.
You’re right Sheila! Nothing else could explain it. Her “career” as a politician is/was over months ago.Maybe people in Alaska need tupperware…
I got it! “Sarah Palin: Late Night GILF Nights” on Playboy TV.
Stay classy, Tallest. I’m certain your contempt for her is based on policy and positions, and not sexist in the least.
J.
Oh, please. Like you would have any qualms if it were Hillary.
Hillary as a GILF. Uh, I’m pretty sure not even her husband has sexual fantasies about Hillary. But to each his own.
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Hillary and Palin are as different as two women can be but the way that each was portrayed by their opposition reveals some pretty disturbing facts that will be faced by any woman seriously going for President or vice president. Crying about treatment or whining about treatment will not get the job done; if you want to win you probably have to go full-on Maggie Thatcher mode. Don’t give a rat’s ášš about the unfairness of it, or, at least, do not appear to give a rat’s ášš.
…but the way that each was portrayed by their opposition reveals some pretty disturbing facts that will be faced by any woman seriously going for President or vice president.
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Can we please stop chalking up every criticism of Sarah Palin to sexism? The idea that we can’t criticize a woman’s substance for fear of being labeled “sexists” isn’t progress. It’s patronizing to women.
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Yes, some of the attacks on Palin were rabidly sexist. Some of the attacks on Obama were rabidly racist. Last year’s election proved, however, that the old barriers are coming down, not the reverse.
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Palin is the architect of most of her own problems. She is divisive, she lacks a grasp of even the most basic national policy issues, she is intellectually uncurious, and she is terrible at speaking extemporaneously.
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Palin was the mayor of a small town who became the governor of a small state. In the grand scheme, she wouldn’t be worth remarking on by anyone outside of Alaska if McCain hadn’t chosen her as his running mate as part of an ill-advised stunt to inject some life into his flagging campaign. The two of them deserved what they got in the end.
Not to mention (this to Bill Myers) that Palin actively encouraged people to consider her sexuality, both in her choices of wardrobe and in actions like winking at the camera during the debate. I’m not saying “she was asking for it” by any means, but there is that old saying about sowing and reaping.
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I completely agree that we shouldn’t assume any attack on a female candidate is sexist, however.
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TWL
Can we please stop chalking up every criticism of Sarah Palin to sexism?
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Who did that?
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The idea that we can’t criticize a woman’s substance for fear of being labeled “sexists” isn’t progress. It’s patronizing to women.
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True enough. When was that idea expounded here?
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Palin was the mayor of a small town who became the governor of a small state.
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I assume by “small” you mean population. because by size it’s, well, big. I suppose one could argue that the population size of a state means a lot in looking at the quality of its politicians, assuming that one would rate Howard Dean (from Vermont, population my backyard)lower than George Bush (from Texas. population yee haw!)
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Anyway, I will still insist that both Hillary and Palin got treatment that was above and beyond awful on account of their sex. Did both make mistakes. yes, which is a non sequitur to my point. Yes, Obama got racist comments as well–but it’s significant to me that people who did that were looked down upon. It’s low class and regarded as low class. But look over the comments generated by the announcement today and you might think we were in Saudi Arabia. It’s cringe-worthy.
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I’ll give credit to one place I don’t often have reason to give credit to–The Huffington Post. One of their contributers, one Erik Sean Nelson, put up a posting joking about Plain running on the “more retardation ticket” and would “introduce a Pre-K lunch buffet that includes lead paint chips. Sort of a Large HEAD-START Program.” and “will then encourage women to hold off on pregnancies until their 40’s just to mix up some chromosomes.” among other thigh slappers.
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To Ms Huffington’s credit, she yanked the article.
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Is sexism more acceptable than racism? The question seems to me to be laughably obvious. Hillary nutcracker dolls and professionally produced Palin look-alike pørņø movies get little more than a tsk tsk if they don’t get a chuckle. Imagine–imagine!–if someone so much as tried something overtly racist on Obama. Career over. Good grief, a cartoonist got demonstrations and calls for his firing when he drew a dead chimp, just on the off chance he meant it as a reference to the president (despite ample evidence that nothing of the kind was meant.
Bill 1 –
Can we please stop chalking up every criticism of Sarah Palin to sexism?
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Bill 2 –
Who did that?
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Jay Tea said:
“Stay classy, Tallest. I’m certain your contempt for her is based on policy and positions, and not sexist in the least.”
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C’mon, Bill. Half the battle was that everybody was being sexist, as Jay Tea continues to use in a feeble attempt to defend Palin. Why he wants to defend her when she’s shown that her overall level of competency is maybe just a step above Bush II, I don’t know.
I think referring to someone as a GILF–which, just so we’re clear, stands for Grandmother I’d Like To F***–could be construed as sexist. It could get you fired if you tried it at work. (trust me on this folks, don’t try to prove me wrong. This is not a good time to be looking for a new job.)
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I have no problem with anyone disagreeing with her policies or competence or both. I simply maintain that she (and Hillary) were subjected to a lot of really creepy attacks from people who would have probably felt uncomfortable doing it on racial or ethnic grounds but had no problem when it came to sexism. The fact that both got it says that this is not strictly an ideological thing.
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This does not mean or imply that all or most or more than 10% of the criticisms against them were sexist in nature or driven by sexism.
Actually, you’re totally right. My contempt for her is based upon how much of a blithering, soundbite friendly, completely vacuous on the issues, ninny that she came across in every single interview. It doesn’t have to be with her being a woman at all. Also, I’m Canadian and we’ve had quite a few more female political leaders bouncing around here than y’all. One even ran the country for awhile. Go look it up.
But, Palin is totally a GILF. This fact is also true. These two can exist in the same spectrum. Love and hate. Ying and Yang. Utter contempt for a person with complete physical lust. That’s just the way things work.
Bill Mulligan, regarding my supposed “non-sequitur” to your point about the ’08 campaign revealing “disturbing” realities for women who want to run for public office, I don’t think what I wrote was a non-sequitur at all. Your post dwelled on the unfairness of sexism, and in my view you missed the bigger picture.
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Remember when the Democratic primaries were just beginning, and it looked like Hillary Clinton was unbeatable (hëll, even you thought so)? Something happened between then and now. Was it a torrent of sexism that had been held back by some unseen dam, only to be released at the exact moment necessary to provide Obama with an unexpected win in Iowa? I doubt it.
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Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic primary race because her strategy was flawed. She emphasized experience initially in what was a change election. Also, she should have imprisoned her husband in a locked closet until the primaries were over.
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The point is — despite the sexism that still exists in this country, a woman came very close to winning the Democratic presidential nomination. Had she succeeded, I think she would have had a very good chance of becoming president. The lesson of ’08 is that racism, sexism, and a number of other -isms are losing their grip on society.
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As for Sarah Palin, you’ve more than once defended her by citing sexist and supposedly liberally biased media coverage. If your thoughts about her are more nuanced than that, well, I can only read what you’ve written and not your mind.
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(Having been to your house, where I’ve seen the gory zombie special effects lab that takes up a whole room on your first floor, I’m rather glad I’m not telepathic. Lord knows what other craziness is rattling around inside that noggin of yours.)
Bill Myers, my point was that it doesn’t matter what mistakes Hillary and Palin made–and they both made plenty–in any discussion of whether or not they were treated fairly. yes they both lost and I freely accept that their losses were due far more to mistakes in their own campaigns than by sexism. That in no way mitigates any sexism that there was, any more than Obama’s victory mitigates racist attacks on him.
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Sexism in the 2008 campaign and mistakes made by the candidates are two separate discussions, yet if one states that they believe that sexism occurred it somehow gets conflated to a claim that it was the SOLE reason Hillary and Plain lost and that any criticism of them MUST be sexist in nature. Neither of which i said or believe.
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You’ll be glad to know, I’ve cleaned that room. Well, “clean” may be an overstatement…you could eat off the floor but that’s only because my blood formula uses corn syrup…
Bill, I don’t disagree that referring to her as a “GILF” has to do with her gender, but I think branding it sexism may be a bit much. If the implication was “she’s unqualified because she’s a woman, and a good looking woman to boot,” then THAT would be sexist. While without question some people DID make that connection during the campaign and now, I don’t get the impression that was the intent here.
Making a comment about her attractiveness is no more sexist than all those pictures of Obama in swim trunks frolicking in the waves in Hawaii are.
I’m just using the definition of sexism as it is currently legally used. Again, if you were to make the comment that a female member of your workforce should consider being on “Late Night GILF Nights” on Playboy TV, I have a strong suspicion that you might no longer be a member of said workforce, were she to overhear and take umbrage to it. And it’s interesting that Tallest Fan Ever did not initially dispute this characterization, only that Jay would have been JUST as sexist had it been Hillary we were mocking.
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Let me put it another way–would it possibly be considered racist if someone said that Obama should resign and stick to shooting hoops on BET?
Case in point–every politician since the invention of photography has been shown with their family. Politicians love to be photographed with the wife (or husband) and kids. Often, the family is on the road during the campaign. And yet, it wasn’t until this year that I saw people unashamedly refer to the politicians as having “whørëd them out for political gain” or “sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?”.
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What was the difference? Well, the politicians in question were women, you see.
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(This should NOT be construed as an invitation to treat male politicians as shabbily in the future. One would hope that people would rediscover their innate decency or, alternatively, be shunned by those who have some. At least Hillary did get an apology.)
Let me put it another way–would it possibly be considered racist if someone said that Obama should resign and stick to shooting hoops on BET?
Fair point, but Palin was a beauty queen contestant at one point, so she put her attractiveness out there on display. Had Obama been a pro basketball player at one point in his life, I’d say the hypothetical comment you posit couldn’t automatically be assumed to be racist. Since he never was, then the comment could probably only be interpreted as racist.
You make a fair point but I don’t think being in a beauty pageant strips you of any right to complain about gross objectification. I may be overly sensitive to this since my niece was in several Miss NY pageants and, all joking about beauty pageant contestants aside, you would be hard pressed to find a group of young women who were more talented and intelligent. Mind-blowingly so, in some cases.
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(Ironically I think you could have found a prettier group just by selecting women walking around in Manhattan. Not that they were not lovely but many did not have the traditional “beauty contest” good looks. All to the good in my view since I find women with some individual looks far more attractive than the one size fits all look of the covergirl industry but it was still a surprise.)
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(And just in case any of theme are reading this–I’m not saying they weren’t pretty! They just didn’t look like what I’ve seen when I had to watch the Miss America pageant, before I was able to successfully gnaw my arm off at the wrist and make my escape. Maybe at the national level they force them to be made up until you can’t tell one from another.)
You make a fair point but I don’t think being in a beauty pageant strips you of any right to complain about gross objectification.
I agree wholeheartedly, but as someone else here pointed out, she kept the idea going with her manner of dress and her flirting with the camera during the debates. To take it back to your hypothetical racism example, I don’t think it would be racism if someone made “gangsta” humorous comments about Obama if he was going around making statements like Michael Steele does. Steele lost most (certainly not all–there are still idiots who take things beyond the pale) ability to make a credible argument about racist comments by continually trying to talk “street.” (To his credit, though, I will state I’ve never heard him make such a claim.)
I will say for the record though, that “GILF” and “MILF” are fairly offensive, and sexist or not, their use lower the level of discourse.
And in fact, Obama DID make some vaguely “street”-ish statements when greeting Steele at the WH Correspondents’ Dinner. Nobody seemed to take it as an insult (Steele included) except for a few newsdrones trying to drum it into something.
What was the difference? Well, the politicians in question were women, you see.
I heard the same metaphors used to describe John Edwards when he would talk about his wife and her cancer, particularly after his affair was uncovered.
I don’t think it has to do with gender as much as the perceived insincerity of the act.
That’s a good point on Edwards…though there were some pretty sever extenuating circumstances there (evidently the ONLY people who didn’t think there was any truth to rumors about his affair were reporters for major media!).
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I also recall that those who accused Edwards of insincerity vis a vis his wife’s illness were castigated for doing so. And it could also be said that her illness was portrayed as a major factor in his running, while Clinton and Palin merely had to have their kids with them to be accused of whoring and pimping.
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But I think we are on the same page on the larger issue, which is that a lack of civility regarding the family of politicians does not reflect well on the one making the comments. Which is good because you are one of the people here I would most hope to agree with. 🙂
But I think we are on the same page on the larger issue, which is that a lack of civility regarding the family of politicians does not reflect well on the one making the comments. Which is good because you are one of the people here I would most hope to agree with.
Absolutely. We may not agree on the minutiae of the terminology, but we do seem to agree that a lot of what was said about several of the candidates was simply bad form in any event.
you are one of the people here I would most hope to agree with.
Oh, I should also mention that I take that as high praise indeed. 🙂
I think she’s got a media deal cooking somewhere – or will seek one out. As Alaska governor she can’t get exposure on national issues. She needs to be either in the Senate or on television. She cuts a deal for her own program, and she can keep her face (and politics) out there.
If she hasn’t talked to them already, I’m sure FOX News is trying to get her agent on the phone right now.
If she hasn’t talked to them already, I’m sure FOX News is trying to get her agent on the phone right now.
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This is basically what Todd said on NBC Nightly News a bit ago: she’ll spin this into book deals, tv, speech appearances etc. And people will be dumb enough to pay for all of it; she’ll make far more money than she had in the past.
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*sigh* Sometimes I wonder if we’d be better off having the Zombie Apocalypse.
Craig, of COURSE we would be better off with a zombie apocalypse. It took Sarah Palin to convince you of that?
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Now just suck it up, keep buying my thinly disguised documentaries (A FEW BRAINS MORE:SUMMER OF BLOOD begins shooting in August! If you’re ever in the Sanford NC area give me a call! Guaranteed memorable kill scene for the first 20 respondents!), stock up on non perishables and sharpen your machete.
You know what I love?
I love coming to the website of a writer whose work I really enjoy (the Hulk run was the best in the series, and X-Factor is the only comic I still look forward to reading each month), and being subjected to ideological nonsense.
Here’s a tip for ALL of you: each side is just as bad as the other. There’s really no difference people. For all of you who so enjoy talking about Palin’s idiocy and inexperience…Al “Stuart Smalley” Frankin is now representing you guys…come on, can’t you see the hypocrisy there? (Of course you’ll say Frankin wasn’t running for top office…).
Speaking of experience: Obama didn’t really have a lot either…breathe deep, be honest with yourself, you know it’s true. But so you don’t think I’m an undercover conservative: George Bush definitely wasn’t the brightest bulb out there, I’m pro-choice (as long as it’s not used as a contraceptive), and I don’t have a problem with gay-marriage.
I just find it funny that whatever side of the fence you fall on, you are so quick to drink the kool-aid, start pointing fingers, and cat-calling the other.
We need to start seeing beyond parties and start trying to do what’s right for our country for our children’s sake. Gulping kool-aid and running straight down a party line is killing us.
Start thinking for yourselves people…please? Really think about the things our “representatives” are trying to talk us into. Look past ideology and media coverage and really think about the issues. Cause you know what, if you would be honest with yourselves, I mean really honest, the stuff the Democrats are trying to pull right now is just as insane as the stuff GW and his cronies were doing….
ps. I don’t know why I bothered typing this, I’m just going to be flamed as a no-nothing, conservative,Palin/Bush loving redneck, but I thought I’d try. Our country is doomed….
For all of you who so enjoy talking about Palin’s idiocy and inexperience…Al “Stuart Smalley” Frankin is now representing you guys…come on, can’t you see the hypocrisy there? (Of course you’ll say Frankin wasn’t running for top office…).
Actually, I’ll say that Franken graduated çûm laude from Harvard with a degree in political science. He scored a perfect 800 on the SATs in math, and he’s shown a keen understanding of political issues past and present.
But maybe that’s just me.
I was actually hoping she would run for President in 2012… seems like a Democrat slam dunk… more of a landslide than Dole being offered up as the sacrificial lamb against Clinton.
What REALLY upsets me is that this has totally knocked off the the headline what should have been THE story of the week.
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529935,00.html?test=latestnews
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Two Mexican Midget Wrestlers Killed by Fake Prostitutes
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You could live many lives before you get a chance to write a story like that. Thouigh the headline lacks that New York Post punch–needs something more like Prostitutes Perish Pugilistic Pachucan Pygmies!
Some think women shouldn’t be in politics.
Eh?
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What’s that in response to.
In response to nothing, Jason, just a separate comment. Some think women shouldn’t be in politics. This will re-enforce that thought to them.
I guess so. Those people will see what they want to see. Meanwhile, the reality is that the number of women in politics is growing and that’s actually working out pretty well.
Why specify women? Some people should stay out of politics regardless of their gender.
I know–I’m certainly one of them. The trick is recognizing that fact about yourself. 🙂
Some think that zombies shouldn’t be in politics. Bill, what do you think? (Yes, I know the dead have gotten up and voted before but this is slightly different.)
Sanford’s a dead man walking. I’m not altogether certain that Robert Byrd isn’t actually a hollowed out gourd. But neither of them impress me much so, on the evidence, I think zombies should stick to what they do best. Shamble.
Some also think that women should be kept barefoot and pregnant. Perhaps these people should stop thinking or maybe we can ship them to the Arctic circle. 😉
I don’t think women should be kept barefoot and pregnant, but I do enjoy seeing nekkid feet once in a while. 🙂
As I’ve said before, I’m a Republican. I am not, however, a Palin fan. I do think she got hammered my the media. A good bit she deserved, some she didn’t. By resigning she’s confirming two things: that she was unfit even for the vice presidency (a minor role even after the beefing up it’s gotten in recent years) and that McCain (or whatever group might have forced his hand away from Lieberman) was a poor judge of character by choosing her.
The Republican establishment I think has moved on from Palin. Historically, the party elects the “runner up” for the presidency after the first primary winner loses/completes term. Reagen, Bush, Dole all came in second (if my memory serves right) in the primary only to get the chance later on.
And there’s no way she’s entertaining a presidency bid. The point, according to her, was that she couldn’t take the pressure and media scrutiny.
I don’t see her removing herself from media scrutiny. If anything, she’s leaving the governorship because it was making it harder for her to get the national spotlight.
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As for pressure, I think that’s true, in a way. Every governor is having a hard time right now. Tax revenues are down, but nobody likes cutting jobs from the budget. Faced with the choice of cutting programs or raising taxes, she decided to punt. I don’t think it is as much about buckling under the pressure as a calculated move to keep her record clear of both those unpopular decisions.
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Of course, time will tell if that move is transparent enough to work against her. If she actually tries to say something like, “I never raised taxes as governor,” that will give her opponents a wide open opportunity to say, “Yeah, because you quit before you had to make that decision.”
I watched that announcement twice just to try and figure out what she was saying and frankly, I still can’t figure it out, nor apparently can just about anybody else who watched it. But upon further reflection, I wonder if that’s not because we don’t know the answer but rather we’re not asking the right question. Frankly, I don’t think she resigned because of his scandal; if things were looking bad, there would be no shortage of right-wing pundits to shield her with their aggrieved accusations that everybody is picking on poor Sarah.
So there are really two ways to look at this. If she was going to run for president in 2012, there is no way around the fact that she’s pretty much committed political suicide. No matter what she does between now and 2012, SHE QUIT HER PREVIOUS JOB. Say she runs for Senate; her opponent simply points out that she quit as gov, so there’s no way she can be trusted not to quit again. Once a quitter, always a quitter. Ditto for president. You think flip-flopper is a tough label to overcome? Just imagine trying to convince people that you won’t quit again. It’s nearly impossible to to prove you’re NOT going to do something.
But what if we’re asking the wrong question, and Palin doesn’t want to be a senator or president? What if, as some folks have pointed out, she’s making a deal with Fox to become their next high-profile right-wing commentator? She’s already got a book deal in the works, no doubt followed by a cross-country tour; I could easily see Palin becoming a right-wing commentator, making jillions of dollars and drawing huge crowds. And she doesn’t ever have to run for political office again. No ethics investigations. No debates. No interviews she doesn’t want to do. And she can remake her image anyway she wants.
Don’t get me wrong; I would love to see Palin run for office again, because I would love to see her humiliated again, and maybe this time more people would actually start to realize what an ignorant self-important hypocrite she is (for those last few hold-outs, I would recommend the current Vanity Fair piece as must-read material!) It doesn’t matter how much knowledge or foreign policy experience she manages to accrue in the meantime; dumb is still dumb and I simply don’t think she has the mental capacity for processing huge amounts of knowledge. Sometimes you just can’t wink your way out of a situation where actual intelligence is required.
So in the end, I’m going for door #2: book tour, Fox News, commentator and pin-up girl for the ultra-right wing. One thing is certain, and that is that all of us will know sooner rather than later.
Oh I don’t know, Democrats can be mighty creative too.
Certainly. I think the difference though is that the Republicans (and I’m differentiating between Republicans and true conservatives here), make the claim that they are above such things, and they do make that claim. As someone pointed out, some Republican pundits will go so far as to blame their own excesses on the opposition. Besides Limbaugh blaming Obama for Sanford, I believe Peggy Noonan blamed Clinton for the same thing. It’s the disconnect between being the party of personal responsibility and their inability to be personally responsible that stirs up the dust.
There’s something to that, though I would never want to suggest that soliciting 15 year olds for sex is something that Democrats are NOT above!
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It is true that a Democrat is more likely to survive a scandel though I’m not sure that’s a good thing for the party. Marion Barry, to name one, seems to have more lives than Dracula, and lot less of Vlad the Impaler’s personal warmth.
I would never want to suggest that soliciting 15 year olds for sex is something that Democrats are NOT above!
Crikey, I would hope not!
To be more specific, then, I guess my hypothesis is that while some behavior is deplorable on both sides of the aisle, it’s more of a story when folks on one side are essentially saying, “that never would have happened if they were more like us in general, and me specifically” and then it becomes painfully obvious that their affiliation has not made them immune to the same foibles.
Oh yeah, no argument there.
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It’s a double edged sword for republicans. On the one hand, it eliminates some people who might otherwise be good candidates…on the other hand, it (hopefully) eliminates some people who would go down in flames if their issues came out. Consider what would have happened if John Edwards had won the nomination and the scandal had hit in October.
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One could argue that a politician’s private life is no reflection on his or her competence…there’s an argument to be made there. Though I would also argue that i don’t want anyone as reckless as Sanford anywhere near the red button.
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Are you serious? Sometimes I can’t tell. Because I don’t see any way this would help her win a GOP presidential nomination, much less the presidency. All this does is make her look like a quitter (unless there is later revealed to be something like a diagnosis of a major disease for herself or an immediate family member).
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While I don’t think she is the idiot some portray her to be, there is no arguing with the fact that her resume involves only being a mayor and a governor — and now for less than one full term. The next “Ronald Reagan” needs to be someone who can show some accomplishments. As VP, you could get away with a thin resume (or not, if that is what cost John McCain the election — though I doubt that was why he lost). But not in a run for the top seat.
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I really hope there is no scandal behind the scenes (and my first guess is there is not — as Sanford demonstrates, the person in the scandal tends to stick around and not resign). But at this point, I do think it is fair to say (at least based on what is known this far) that something was just revealed about Sarah Palin — and I don’t think it was something good. For true conservatism to recover in the political arena (i.e., win elections), it needs leaders who can whether the storm, clearly espouse conservative beliefs, and make a difference. One of those three (being a talking head) is not enough.
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Iowa Jim
I forgot to add to my post that while her resigning doesn’t help her, if it really was due to the ethical investigations, she would have a point — particularly when she has been cleared on virtually all of them.
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I couldn’t help but laugh at all of the concerns about Sanford supposedly misusing government funds while having an affair. Don’t remember hearing much with Clinton or with other Democrats who have affairs (other than from a few talk show hosts like Limbaugh).
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There is a double standard. Partially it is because conservatives “preach” a higher standard, so are crucified as hypocrites when they fail to live up to the standard (makes you wonder if it is worth having a standard at all). But partially it is because the media leans so far to the left, they don’t see their own bias.
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Bottom line, the old saying “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” does have some merit. If that is why Palin is leaving office, perhaps it is good to know now she can’t handle the heat — double standard or not, that is the reality of politics right now and it won’t be any easier if she were to try for the nomination and presidency.
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Iowa Jim
I couldn’t help but laugh at all of the concerns about Sanford supposedly misusing government fund
Running out on your duties isn’t a laughing matter, either for Sanford or for Palin. No double standard there.
There is a double standard.
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There is no double standard. There is simply the standard which Republicans have set for themselves. And since they often don’t measure up, they deserve the criticism and the label of hypocrite.
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But, as usual, you attempt to use the media as a scapegoat when somebody can’t keep it in their pants. Did this ‘liberal’ media give Clinton a free pass? No. Did Edwards get a pass? No. Remember the name Gary Condit and what the media did to him regarding Chandra Levy? Only 9/11 took him off the front pages. So will you politely STFU about the ‘liberal media’ already; it was old several election cycles ago, and it’s not improving with age.
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Besides, the GOP is generally far more creative with these things. Running off to Argentina. Soliciting Congressional pages. Being creepy in public bathrooms at airports. Classic stuff.
Besides, the GOP is generally far more creative with these things. Running off to Argentina. Soliciting Congressional pages. Being creepy in public bathrooms at airports. Classic stuff.
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Oh I don’t know, Democrats can be mighty creative too. 1- Driving off a bridge with a young woman who is not your wife. Calling your lawyer before calling anyone who might be able to save her life. 2- hiring a male prostitute who then runs a prostitution service from your house. 3- Prosecuting prostitutes as part of your law and order platform, then hiring prostitutes once said platform gets you to the governors house. 4- fondling a young female Peace Corps volunteer during a trip to Zaire in 1989. Attempting to rape her. Blaming the “racist” press which has “too many Jews” and are to be referred to as “fággøŧš”. He is defeated for re-elections by a guy who 5- is convicted of, among other things, soliciting child pornography during a phone sex session with his 16 year old lover, during which he expresses delight at the prospect of getting a 15 year old catholic schoolgirl to join them. “Jesus, a Catholic. […] Did I win the Lotto?”. He blames racism for his eventual resignation.
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While I don’t think she is the idiot some portray her to be, there is no arguing with the fact that her resume involves only being a mayor and a governor — and now for less than one full term.
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Versus, say, a guy who’s not even through a single term as Senator, and barely showed up for half that, and did almost nothing as a state legislator, and never held a job in the private sector in his entire life…
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The cognitive disconnect was always astonishing to me. So many of the people who criticized Palin’s shortcomings (such as this one) didn’t recognize that they applied even more to Obama — and still voted for him.
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J.
So many of the people who criticized Palin’s shortcomings (such as this one) didn’t recognize that they applied even more to Obama — and still voted for him.
I understand that you are more sympathetic to Palin’s ideology than Obama’s. While I think that makes you wrong-headed, that’s also agree-to-disagree territory. None of us have all the answers, after all.
Nevertheless, you are absolutely wrong that criticisms about Palin apply “even more to Obama.” Palin has yet to hold a national office. Regardless of how distinguished you feel he was or wasn’t, Obama was a U.S. Senator before becoming president. Like it or not, that’s an important distinction.
Moreoever, Obama’s track record is one of being elected to progressively higher public offices in rapid succession. Palin simply up and quit the governorship. The two are simply not the same.
As one who voted for Obama, I’ll admit I had to wrestle a bit with his track record, which was one of constantly running for a newer, higher office before accomplishing much where he was. Ultimately, this concern was outweighed in my mind by the character and leadership qualities he showed during the campaign, particular when the economic crisis came to a head. While McCain was lurching from ill-advised stunt to ill-advised stunt, Obama was steady and on-message. This wasn’t the only quality that persuaded me to vote for Obama, mind you, but it was an important one.
“And we already know all the stupid stuff she’s done so far.”
Do we? Do you really want to? I must admit it’d make for great story fodder, but ugh…
Palin is “IN”. Unfortunately. One thing about the bush yars (a very old lesson to be remembered): Don’t underestimate anything. Even the seemingly eternal fuel of the idiocy machine. Thanks for dragging me out of my corner, I’m going back to get caught up on all the important stories in the world -_-
Palin also quit her previous job, as Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. She made a big show of quitting for moral reasons, but people who know her said that she didn’t like the job.
She’s “Sarah The Quitter” now. No way around it.
Yeah, Jason, she quit, saying she was being stopped from doing her job by corrupt public officials — who were then exposed as corrupt and driven from office.
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In my book, that’s a plus in her column.
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Giving up when the going gets tough isn’t a “plus” in my view. Not for a politician, nor for anyone else in any profession.
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If the people going after her had been exposed as corrupt, then she was on the verge of winning her battle, was she not? Which then begs the question — why quit?
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Nothing about her resignation adds up, Jay Tea. Neither her explanations nor yours make a great deal of sense. I think there’s something else going on beneath the surface. Whether we’ll ever know what that is, I can’t say.
Yeah, Jason, she quit, saying she was being stopped from doing her job by corrupt public officials — who were then exposed as corrupt and driven from office.
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If those corrupt officials are gone, what does she have to run from? Can you even begin to answer that with common sense? Because Palin herself didn’t.
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If this is how she acts as governor, the world should be scared to death of any possibility of her becoming president.
Do you guys remember The Chevy Chase Show?
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I never actually saw it. I heard that it was bad, but it was cancelled before I ever saw it. This is despite the fact that Chevy has been a funny guy in the past, so it seems like he’d be a natural for a talk show.
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How about Pat Sajak’s talk show? Basically the same deal. A well know, successful personality who seems like a natural for a talk show, but it doesn’t work.
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If Palin ever does get a show on FOX News, that’s how I see it going. Sure, it seems obvious, but she’s so incapable of doing anything off script, she won’t be able to run a show. Writers can give her stuff to say, but she couldn’t conduct interviews that went at all badly. I don’t like Bill O’Reily and Sean Hannity, but they still stay more or less in control when they’re interviewing people who disagree with them.
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I’m not even sure Palin could read a script nightly. The videos of her from her sportscaster days weren’t very impressive. She can deliver a great speech, but I’m not sure about reciting an hour’s worth of new stuff five nights a week.
Magic Johnson’s talk show was a bomb. Even after several weeks, he couldn’t go to commercial without woodenly reading from a cue card. In a halting, nigh-monotone, “We’ll be right back after these messages.” It was painful.
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As you indicate, success in one field does not mean success in another. (And that’s giving more credit to Palin’s “success” than I should.)
Vote Ron Paul with the economy tanking over he’s the last hope for anything decent that will make a difference Palin
is just John McCain’s sex pot.
Maybe Vanna White is retiring and they need someone else to turn over the letters on Wheel Of Fortune.
You can’t predict what Sarah Palin will do next because any such predictions would be based on the assumption that the Alaska Governor is a thoughtful, rational and intelligent person. Not much on which to base such an assumption.
I feel embarassed for the people of Alaska that the person they chose to be their governor lacks even the rudimentary understanding of civics and issues of a middle school student.
At the risk of thread drift, has anybody else noticed they never go to close-up of Vanna these days? Not too often on Pat, either. His hairline is really high now.
Jason, I think you’re probably right about Palin not making a good commentator, but I still can’t help thinking that Fox might still give it a shot. No doubt it would be a huge mistake- Palin has a record for going off script, and yesterday’s speech is a glaring reminder that she has no more than a casual relationship with the English language- but it still seems to be the only scenario I can see at this point. Unless there’s a new Hooters opening up in Wasilla.
“…yesterday’s speech is a glaring reminder that she has no more than a casual relationship with the English language…”
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But, wait! Isn’t she a college graduate? Why, if I remember correctly, she attended (and also apparently quit) a large number of universities.
Her going for the Pres. nomination is a crazy idea. Hopefully her advisors will tell her not to, ’cause she ain’t got a snowball’s chance to get nominated, much less elected. Especially against the current officeholder!
I’m surprised nobody has used the “Don’t let the door hit ya where the moose shoulda bit ya.” line yet.
Anybody who truly believes that the “Media” is Liberal is either completely brainwashed, or something too impolite to say.
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The only one of the major cable networks that is Liberal is MSNBC. None of the major newspapers are Liberal.
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At best, all the others are center-right or right.
Anybody who truly believes that the “Media” is Liberal is either completely brainwashed, or something too impolite to say.
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You’re saying that anyone who disagrees with you on a particular issue either can’t think for themselves… or worse? That’s… staggering.
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None of the major newspapers are Liberal.
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While I believe the “liberal MSM” is a fiction born of conservative bias on the part of some, there are indeed major newspapers that lean to the left. The New York Times and The Washington Post come to mind.
2 people who have gotten way too much time in the public eye:
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Joe the Plumber
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Sarah the Quitter
Anybody who truly believes that the “Media” is Liberal is either completely brainwashed, or something too impolite to say.
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The only one of the major cable networks that is Liberal is MSNBC. None of the major newspapers are Liberal.
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At best, all the others are center-right or right.
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That would depend on one’s definition of “liberal” and “right”, wouldn’t you agree?
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Unless there is some objective standard of defining such terms it is pretty much a matter of personal opinion. That being the case, stating that any disagreement with one’s own opinion is evidence of brainwashing or something that must remain unspoken seems dubious at best.
Try looking at the guests they book. Generally, two to four Republicans/conservatives for every Democrat (which is not necessarily liberal) they book.
That kinda sets the terms of the debate.
Again, it would depend on who is doing the defining of “conservative” and “liberal”, wouldn’t it. We could both look at a guest list and come away with entirely different definitions of how many representatives of each ideology were present. Do you have an objective way to decide which one of us is correct?
I’m going to agree that this is an irrelevant argument. I’m fairly “conservative” on some issues and fairly “liberal” on others, so where does that put me? Arnold Schwarzenegger is a Republican, but from what I remember of him when he was running for Governor (he may have altered his beliefs some since. I don’t know), he was a fiscal conservative but moderately to fairly liberal on social issues.
People on either end of the spectrum who choose the beliefs they support solely on the label attached to them, liberal or conservative, are generally very shallow thinkers in my estimation.
Unless there is some objective standard of defining such terms…
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There is. It’s called doing a “content analysis.” Some analyses are better than others. The key is to define the variables you want to measure and to measure them accurately.
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I’ve seen a lot of studies claiming to support the idea that newsrooms at mainstream news outlets are dominated by liberals. I’ve seen no studies from credible sources that have shown a consistent liberal or conservative bias in the “mainstream media.”
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Having worked in the media, I’ve seen first-hand that the media’s true bias is toward sensationalism, and not to any one political ideology or party. I don’t think it’s coincidental that accusations of bias tend to come from those with very… strong… political leanings. If you’re a conservative, everything that doesn’t support your worldview looks like left-wing bias… and vice-versa.
I work with someone now who used to work in the Philadelphia Fox station. He’s told tales of how whenever anyone from the Bush administration said anything it was like hearing gospel from on high.
One of the interesting things about any conversation about “the media” is that it’s not one cohesive whole any more that liberals, conservatives, vegetarians, or people who like Elvis. The media is in fact made up of various mediUMs, which could be vastly different. Bill’s dead on, whatever perceived leaning a newsroom might have, the biggest interest is being seen. It’s not like there was some great Kubrick/Clarke monolithic notebook somewhere. If you don’t want “The Media” following you and reporting on you and picking apart everything you say, STOP HAVING PRESS CONFERENCES! Someone saying “The media’s out to get me” is like someone saying they’ve been attacked by a newspaper. Not by a reporter that works FOR the paper, but literally a newspaper got up and bit them. Case like that, I wonder what you’d hit it on the nose with?
Case like that, I wonder what you’d hit it on the nose with?
The internet.
yet one could easily find cases where the media seems to have backed off on truly sensational stories for reasons that SEEM, at least, to be political in nature. The John Edwards fiasco (until the frikkin National Enquirer made it impossible to ignore), Al Gore’s son arrested for drug dealing (would Palin’s kids have gotten ignored?), the truly truly ugly story here in North Carolina about a Duke University researcher who was apparently molesting his adopted child and inviting others to do the same…
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(The last story is getting SOME play, though only about 1/millionth as much as the previous Duke rape story…the one without the rape. There could be several factors at play here…but it’s hard to dismiss the idea that a story about a bunch of white boys raping a black woman is more appealing to a liberal press than a story about a gay adoptive father molesting his black son.)
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(And, in their defense, with gay rights being under attack in the country, it’s not the kind of story we really need…but then, that’s the whole point isn’t it? We want to see the stories that advance our own agendas in big blaring headlines and the ones that don’t, well, they deserve little more than a mention on page A-13.)
Al Gore’s son arrested for drug dealing (would Palin’s kids have gotten ignored?)
Possibly, but maybe for different reasons than you are indicating. Palin is still considered front page news, Gore hasn’t done anything even moderately sensational since his documentary. Timing is a key factor in what is considered newsworthy. Had the arrest happened when Gore was still the Vice President or when he was running for POTUS, I can say with some certainty that we would see it plastered all over the front pages of the country.
it’s hard to dismiss the idea that a story about a bunch of white boys raping a black woman is more appealing to a liberal press than a story about a gay adoptive father molesting his black son.
It’s more appealing to the press, regardless of political leaning. As appalling as it may be, it’s a sad truth that there’s a large section of the populace that find male on female rape titillating, and generally speaking, that same group would find gay male-on-male molestation revolting. A headline screaming out about a stripper who got raped will push more papers than the plight of a young male.
Liberal or conservative’s got nothing to do with it in my opinion.
Ditto what Rich Lane said.
Hmmm, but Al Gore III had, so far as I know, his first trouble with the law vis a vis drugs when he was suspended from school in 1996 for marijuana posession. It did not make much of a story–certainly no front page plasterings–despite his dad being the Vice President at the time.
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(There was a story printed in Spy magazine that claimed that Al Gore cut a deal with some reporters for some inside scoops in return for them not playing up the story. If it’s true, as a father I respect that, though the idea of our leaders cutting deals to suppress embarrassing but true stories gives one pause.
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As for not printing the baby rape story because male on male violence does not appeal to the masses…that did not stop the Matthew Wayne Shepard story from getting attention.
Hmmm, but Al Gore III had, so far as I know, his first trouble with the law vis a vis drugs when he was suspended from school in 1996 for marijuana posession. It did not make much of a story–certainly no front page plasterings–despite his dad being the Vice President at the time.
Then it sounds like it got as much play at the time as Palin Bristol’s almost-mother-in-law dealing meth. That is, it was a blip that faded rather quickly.
(There was a story printed in Spy magazine that claimed that Al Gore cut a deal with some reporters for some inside scoops in return for them not playing up the story. If it’s true, as a father I respect that, though the idea of our leaders cutting deals to suppress embarrassing but true stories gives one pause.
If so, that’s deplorable on the part of reporters, but it sounds like it was motivated more by quid pro quo than ideology.
As for not printing the baby rape story because male on male violence does not appeal to the masses…that did not stop the Matthew Wayne Shepard story from getting attention.
Not male on male violence…male on male sex. Violence sells no matter who’s involved, and while we’re talking about it, the rape involved both sex AND violence, so in the mind of a cynical publisher, it’s a twofer (and she was a stripper to boot, so in many on both sides, she had it coming, absolving them of any guilt for their voyeurism).
Ok, but we’ve moved the goalposts here…you said that it would have been front page news if Gore had been VP and his kid got in a drug bust. And, in point of fact, it did not even get as much attention as Palin’s daughter’s almost mother in law did.
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(I can’t think off the top of my head of any other cases where a politician’s almost but not quite in-law got so dragged into the narrative. Considering the number of politicians with actual spouses who are in ethical quandaries right now (many of them involving our tax dollars) it seems a curious choice. John Conyer’s wife deserves her own mini-series but you almost have to live in Detroit to enjoy every latest twist and turn.)
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(It does occur to me that young Al Gore III did have one advantage-timing. His dad had not quite fully taken the initiative in creating the Internet so there were far fewer media outlets than there are today. It’s doubtful that a story like that can be kept quiet, no matter what promises are made to the big gatekeepers. As has been shown again and again, if a story has enough bloggers behind it, it can break through any glass ceiling the major media imposes.)
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This, of course, can lead to amusing situations where a newspaper ends up having to write stories regarding the “controversy” of an old story they have never actually reported on, which would leave anyone foolish enough to rely solely on them in a state of some confusion.
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Lastly, I have to ask–if the media is solely driven by sensationalism why did they studiously ignore the John Edwards story. It was as sensational as they come and, at the time, Edwards was still considered to have some influence. Obama certainly wanted and got his support. There was talk, laughable now, of him being Attorney general. One could argue that the crack reporting teams from ABCCBSNBC and the Washington Post and NYTimes just were unable to find the corroborating evidence that they needed (somehow, the national Enquirer managed to do it). yet the New York times public editor admitted that the paper “never made a serious effort to investigate the story”. Again, why?
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(If the answer is that the major media did not think it worth investigating then why the attention given now to the latest chapters in the sordid tale? Edwards is far far less of significant force now than he was then. Or is that the reason?)
Ok, but we’ve moved the goalposts here…you said that it would have been front page news if Gore had been VP and his kid got in a drug bust. And, in point of fact, it did not even get as much attention as Palin’s daughter’s almost mother in law did.
No, in my opinion, I don’t think so. My point was that the in-laws story should have received MORE attention than it did, thus I’m equating it with the Gore story which you feel should have received more attention than it did. We may disagree on that, but I feel the goal posts have remained stationary. 🙂
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I can’t think off the top of my head of any other cases where a politician’s almost but not quite in-law got so dragged into the narrative.
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They are in-laws, but I’d equate it to Billy Carter and Roger Clinton. They only made the news in any way shape or form by accident of who they were related to, and both became sources of embarrassment to their respective famous relatives.
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Lastly, I have to ask–if the media is solely driven by sensationalism why did they studiously ignore the John Edwards story.
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I think they simply dropped the ball and didn’t do their jobs correctly. They didn’t do anything with the Edwards story until the idiot took his squeeze to a hotel that was hosting a frigging journalists convention, just like we didn’t hear of Sanford’s squeeze until the idiot up and disappeared from his job for days on end without telling anyone where he was going.
Bill Mulligan said:
“(It does occur to me that young Al Gore III did have one advantage-timing. His dad had not quite fully taken the initiative in creating the Internet…”
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Oh, come on, Bill. You don’t really want to keep repeating that old line, do you? I’s been nearly a decade. Get over it.
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You ain’t a Birther, is you?
Alan, I always try to be accurate, even when making a little joke. I half expected someone to take the bait but I didn’t think it would be you.
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Al Gore’s accurate quote is “I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”. Which is what I said. What you are probably thinking about is the urban legend that Gore claimed to have “invented” the internet. Which is what I didn’t say.
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So…anyone who disagrees with you on the bias of the media is either “brainwashed” or worse and anyone who quotes Al Gore accurately is potentially a “birther”. Nice reality you have there.
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(For the uninitiated, birthers are the crazy folks who think that Obama is hiding his birth certificate, not to be confused with the crazy folks who think that the pentagon was not hit by an airplane, Bush knew about 9/11 ahead of time, building 7 was a controlled demolition, heck, so were both Twin towers, a Navy missile blew up T.W.A. Flight 800, the CIA invented crack, also AIDS, or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.)
You know, it’s a shame, she was really starting to grow on me.
…
I’m kidding, of course.
I have little doubt Sarah Palin will get a job with Fox News (co-hosted by Joe the Plumber, possibly) where she joins the rest of the network in blaming Democrats for destroying America, creating bad weather, weakening America, losing wars, giving America the clap, becoming socialists, and (since it’s Palin) Tina Fey and David Letterman are attacking family values and showing the liberal elite media out to get the true patriots.
(BTW, two NY newspapers used the headling “Bailin’ Palin” on today’s front page. I don’t know how PAD thinks this can be good for her: Unless she single-handedly fixes the economy and cures cancer while out of office, she’ll be branded a quitter for the rest of her life.)
The thing that’s funny about the FOX News idea is that Huckabee is already there, and he’s *really* not a fan. I’m not sure if he quite hates her, but there’s enough enmity for some fun stories about backstage squabbles.
They could do a show together!!!!
They could do Point/Counterpoint. I can just see it:
“Sarah, you ignorant šlûŧ…”
PAD
I would agree on the surface that the differences between Obama and Palin are minor: two people with basic experience but not much nationally and then running for the two highest elected offices in the nation. In fact, that was my problem with Obama for the longest time: why ruin the chance of elected office when so many people can use the “no experience” card to vote racist against a black man when I was considering not voting for him and the color of skin wasn’t even a factor for me.
Here are some of the differences:
1. He did not resign his Senate seat to run for office. There is no indication that he wasn’t going to continue his term and in theory run again for Senate if he lost the race for the Presidency.
2. When asked a question about any matter of political discourse, he had an answer and at many times a better answer than most if not everyone running.
That’s why I voted for him. He had answers that made sense to me which he explained like he knew was he was talking about because he did.
Palin seemingly didn’t know answers to questions she should know the answer to and some of her answers didn’t make me want to vote for her. “I have experience in foreign affairs because Russians fly over Alaska” Don’t tell me she didn’t say it, she did.
We don’t take Alan Keyes seriously when he says the things he does. We don’t take Mike Gravel from Alaska seriously. We don’t take Dennis Kuchinch seriously. Her gender, Alan Keyes race and any of their political affiliations is not relevant.
Given her definition of lame duck, George W Bush was a lame duck on January 20, 2005 and at the point should have resigned because he wasn’t able to run for additional office. Every Senator, Congressman, Governor, or Mayor, or School Board President should resign the minute they decide to not run for another term.
She is the stereotypical beauty pageant winner. She expects her beauty to carry her through everything. Any opinion she has must be respected and if anyone disagrees or questions her on it, it is a direct insult to her and her ability to speak.
It sounds frankly like she wants to go all over the country and make money and try to run from President or at least continue as the GOP Darling. And after Gov Sanford, the sense of the people is that if you are a governor, you should stay in your state and be a governor. So she can’t go GOP Darling across the country and govern by Blackberry anymore, so she resigns.
Until later
John
It could be a good move for a 2012 election bid. Right now, her actions in the 2008 election put the spotlight on Alaska. However, without her in the picture, Alaska can go back to being that place above Canada, and she can disappear from the spotlight for the time being.
Furthermore, Americans have a notoriously short attention span. By 2012, the Consertive Media (hey, if others can call it the Liberal Media …) can put whatever spin on her political stance as they want and the voting majority won’t know the difference.
Theno
she can disappear from the spotlight for the time being.
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Being Governor of Alaska isn’t what was putting her in the spotlight. The national interview with her daughter about abstinence, the manufactured squabble with Letterman, and most of the other things keeping her in the media happened outside of Alaska.
True.
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But, it wasn’t only her actions that put the spotlight on her. Every trial in Alaska was her fault (just as every trail in America is Obama or Bush’s fault depending on which news program you watch).
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Now that she isn’t governor, she can choose whether or not to be in the media. As governor, she can only attempt to affect why she is in the news, and to increase media scrutiny but not decrease it.
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Theno
Except that her decision was *always* to increase her media presence. I see no reason to expect that to change, so I’d place the odds of a disappearing act at less than 1%.
Palin today predictably cast herself as a victim of that gosh darn liberal media. She also says that we’ll never understand. Well, no, we wouldn’t; after all, none of us want to live in her bubble of reality to try and understand.
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But she intends to stay in the media spotlight. After all, she’s already discussing legal options against a blogger who claims that Palin is being investigated for embezzlement, and the fact that everybody in that gosh darn liberal media picked up on the possibility.
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Gee golly what would we ever have done without her?
And Jay Tea is going to cry now. All signs point to SCANDAL:
http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpp/news/politics/dpgo_Is_Palin_Facing_Embezzlement_Charges_mb_07042009_2638488
No surprise.
I was going to make a joke about the source being FOX News, but it was just a local affiliate.
Kevin, that article uses Huffington Post as a source (which wouldn’t be my first, second, or third choice to use as a source to be honest), and HP was among the sites/outlets that Palin’s lawyer outright mentioned earlier today regarding a possible defamation suit.
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So how is Palin going to get a job with Fox News if local Fox affiliates are carrying this story? Perhaps with a wink, Palin can make this story disappear from this Fox affiliate’s website!
I think the connections between FOX News and a FOX affiliate are pretty distant. FOX News is a specific cable channel. A FOX affiliate is a local station with its own owner, licenses the FOX Network broadcast, and follows up it’s news segment with a syndicated rerun of The Simpsons.
Meh. The “threat” was a pre-emptive tactic. It might play among her base, but it rings hollow for someone who up and quit on her job.
Jason said:
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“I think the connections between FOX News and a FOX affiliate are pretty distant.”
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I happened to catch a Faux Noise broadcast from Detroit recently, and they were repeating talking points from the corporate Faux Noise.
And I’ve seen privately owned radio stations that were as right wing as could possibly be. So the question is whether or not that particular FOX affiliate is taking marching orders from FOX news because they want to or because they have to.
I think the connections between FOX News and a FOX affiliate are pretty distant.
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Since the discussion on this continues… I should point out that my mentioning the Palin wink was an attempt at sarcasm at the notion of her ability to make this story go away. It was apparently missed. 🙂
Actually, as someone from Chicago who usually watches Fox-Chicago and not the Fox Network, I’m always amused by the disparity between the Fox Network party line, and the local level reporting. I believe that it’s because we are governed by Boss Daley II, part of a Dem. dynasty, that our local reporting seems much more ‘fair and balanced’ than Rupert Murdoch would like.
Man you guys and gals can be really hilarious sometimes(and you know who you are)
Only here can someone who is so loathed for being a politician, get even more criticized for actually doing what many of you were hoping she would have done during the election.
Goes to show, you just cant please some folks.
I doubt anyone here is sorry she’ll no longer be governor. I think the reason she’s being criticized here for this action is that it is one more indicator of her inability to govern. In other words, people here are discussing how her current actions remain consistent with their already held views of her.
Goes to show, you just cant please some folks.
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It also goes to show that some people will go to the ends of the earth to find a way to defend somebody who isn’t worth the effort.
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Palin should have never been the VP candidate. After the election, she should’ve gone back to her little corner of the world, shut up, and finished her term. But no, she had to keep putting her name out there any way she could… and now she’s QUIT on the people of Alaska.
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Yeah, what a standard-bearer to defend, Pat.
It also goes to show that some people will go to the ends of the earth to find a way to defend somebody who isn’t worth the effort
(I guess you knew who you were) Craig, I’m not defending her at all, shes a big girl. The state of Alaska will do just fine without her. Because, you know she was a horrible Governer to begin with, remember?
Now Governer Sanford is someone who owes his state a stepping down (not to mention one great big apology) and passing of the torch to his Lt. Gov. and a quick and painless divorce to his poor wife, wait I’m a Conservative I’m supposed to blindly support my party.
Pat, if you’re a conservative, you could certainly be expected to support conservative politicians. What does that have to do with Sanford, Palin, or Republicans in general?
Craig, I’m not defending her at all, shes a big girl.
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Considering you have yet to give your own views of Palin and her quitting before her term is finished, I don’t see how else we are to interpret your criticism of us as anything but defense of Palin.
I hear you, Pat!
“She should quit!”
“I quit.”
“Quitter!”
When were people calling for her to quit her job as governor? You’re calling hypocrisy when it didn’t happen.
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Most people were not asking her to quit being governor. We were asking her to go back to Alaska and stay there. Quitting her job so she can move to the lower 48 and be a right wing star full time isn’t what *any* of her critics were asking for.
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Well, except for the ones who wanted her to be the 2012 Republican candidate, hoping for an easy Obama landslide. That’s hardly hypocrisy, though.
I must have missed a discussion, Pat. During the election I saw plenty of people hoping she wouldn’t win the vice presidency. I don’t remember a single person saying they wanted her to resign as governor. Speaking for myself, I honestly had no feelings about it one way or the other.
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PAD
Yeah…I was more than content for her to serve out her term. Never called for her to quit. I am not surprised she did…but I was hardly calling for it. And I never heard anyone else call for it either.
I think that Sarah is playing it smart. She is going to become the Republican version of Al Gore.
There is much more chance for her to turn her celebrity into fortune and glory outside of the political arena.
What form her enterprise will take is a mystery, but I suspect that it will be a success. She will be a big figure in the news again, which I am all for. Palin IS entertaining, if only in a scary way.
She attracts attention from news outlets looking for the sensational, because sensationalism sells. Unfortunately, she draws attention away from other, more intelligent and far more worthwhile Republican/conservatives.
“She is going to become the Republican version of Al Gore. ”
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She’s going to become fat and bloated?
“She’s going to become fat and bloated?”
Perhaps :).
She will turn a career that is unsure in politics into surefire celebrity spokesperson career.
Mark my words, Sarah Palin will be the Spokesperson for some cause important to her right leaning fanbase. In the short term this will make her a ton of money.The long term will give us much more fodder with which to bash or cherish her. It is a win/win.
Alan Coil says:
July 5, 2009 at 7:24 pm
“She is going to become the Republican version of Al Gore. ”
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“She’s going to become fat and bloated?”
and become a champion of Globel cooling
Pat,
It’s globAl, not globEl.
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See, this is why Republicans can’t do humer.
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😉
Alan Coil says:
July 6, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Pat,
It’s globAl, not globEl.
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See, this is why Republicans can’t do humer.
No it shows not all Republicans are wordsmiths. Sometimes my “Hooked on phonics”
comes through. ‘)
I thought she was taking herself completely from running in 2012 when I heard the news. I can’t see her running for President when her opponents both Republicans and Democrats can rightly say she can’t even finish a single term as governor.
I just want her to go away. At least Dan Quayle was decent enough to get out of the spotlight when his fifteen minutes of fame were up. Palin is like one of those horror movie franchises that just keep coming back for more sequels.
And thus we end on another zombie note….
After watching her entire speech the other day, I felt that she just tossed her hat in the “ring” for the presidency. She is probably going to end up spending the next couple of years raising money for herself and for other GOP candidates who will then owe her favors when she announces her bid.
The fact that even some GOP pundits attacked her for resigning does not make much of a difference to my view in that her support really does not come from them. Her supporters think that she can do no wrong (see comments made by Jay Tee). The ones that flooded her campaign rallies will believe the reasons that she gave.
Now this may be wishful thinking on my part as I suspect that if she is the actual candidate for the GOP in 2012, President Obama would be elected to his second term. –
Craig J. Ries says:
July 5, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Considering you have yet to give your own views of Palin and her quitting before her term is finished, I don’t see how else we are to interpret your criticism of us as anything but defense of Palin.
Sorry, I wasnt clear. I meant some here wanted here out of the Vice pres run and now shes taking herself completly out of politics and still some here are not happy.
I dont think she quit, she stepped down and handed over the Governorship. I know, I know “Whats the differance?” By way of comparison I think Norm Coleman from my state of MN quit and let Al Franken have the Senate seat, not that that wouldnt have been the outcome anyway after the US Supreme court ruled(?) which he could have went to next if he didnt quit.
My view is Palin was a tool as in I mean McCain wasnt cutting it. The RNC or GOP didnt think he was going to win
so they pushed Palin on McCain thinking they would have their own minority candidate. It backfired on them.
Palin, I think, figured “what the hëll, why not?”
The GOP then found out she was a “Reagan Republican” and for some reason the GOP is distancing themselves from Reagan. Bad, bad mistake. We could end up with a third party that will hurt both the DFL and GOP.
Palin for better or worse wasnt a “Yes, man or woman” and it ultimately didnt help at all. Which is why you now see former McCain people slamming Palin.
Sorry, I wasnt clear. I meant some here wanted here out of the Vice pres run and now shes taking herself completly out of politics and still some here are not happy.
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We wanted her out of the VP race because she’s a blathering idiot. The only reason McCain picked her was because she was a minority, and McCain wanted to try and steal away those Clinton voters who said they would never vote for Obama. IMO, it backfired.
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And no, I’m still not happy with Palin because she’s NOT going away. If anything, she’ll now take advantage of the chance to make an even bigger idiot of herself. She couldn’t give any coherent thoughts while on the campaign trail, but somebody will be dumb enough to pay for her to speak.
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By way of comparison I think Norm Coleman from my state of MN quit and let Al Franken have the Senate seat
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Really? That’s your best comparison? Somebody who took it all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court, where he was ruled unanimously against? Where after Florida in 2000 showed, there was no way the SCOTUS was going to override the state’s ruling? Coleman didn’t quit, he was out of options. And dámņ, he dragged this out for 6 months. Yet, he lost the election, so he was already out of a job. He didn’t walk away with a year left.
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Palin had a year left as governor, and was not restricted from running for another term afaik. She had no reason to step down; none of this “lame duck” bs that she was throwing out there. None of this ‘higher calling’, seeing as there’s no way she’ll ever be president, and she’s already failed once as a VP nominee. Governor of Alaska was her pinnacle, and she said “I quit”.
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She wanted all the attention as long as it was going her way, but now that everybody knows who she really is, she can’t handle it. Oh boo hoo. She quit on the people of Alaska, plain and simple.
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Palin for better or worse wasnt a “Yes, man or woman” and it ultimately didnt help at all.
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Which shows was a *great* job McCain did in his overnight-vetting process. See: Minority Wanted for 2008 Presidential Ticket ad above.
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Biden stumbles into stupidity often, but he didn’t go out of his way to contradict Obama on the campaign trail leaving some to wonder who was running for which office.
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But that also says a lot of Palin too, where she was given the VP job, but that wasn’t good enough. She didn’t seem to be happy just to be #2, and did more to sabotage the campaign than help it. And now she’s stumbled into another massive PR hit by quitting her job, the only one on her resume that would even begin to make people think she deserves to be anywhere near the White House. I can’t wait to see what tactical blunder she willingly steps into next.
Blah, can’t even type my own e-mail address correctly again. Sorry, PAD, but one is now stuck in the spam filter.
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Sorry, I wasnt clear. I meant some here wanted here out of the Vice pres run and now shes taking herself completly out of politics and still some here are not happy.
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We wanted her out of the VP race because she’s a blathering idiot. The only reason McCain picked her was because she was a minority, and McCain wanted to try and steal away those Clinton voters who said they would never vote for Obama. IMO, it backfired.
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And no, I’m still not happy with Palin because she’s NOT going away. If anything, she’ll now take advantage of the chance to make an even bigger idiot of herself. She couldn’t give any coherent thoughts while on the campaign trail, but somebody will be dumb enough to pay for her to speak.
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By way of comparison I think Norm Coleman from my state of MN quit and let Al Franken have the Senate seat
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Really? That’s your best comparison? Somebody who took it all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court, where he was ruled unanimously against? Where after Florida in 2000 showed, there was no way the SCOTUS was going to override the state’s ruling? Coleman didn’t quit, he was out of options. And dámņ, he dragged this out for 6 months. Yet, he lost the election, so he was already out of a job. He didn’t walk away with a year left.
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Palin had a year left as governor, and was not restricted from running for another term afaik. She had no reason to step down; none of this “lame duck” bs that she was throwing out there. None of this ‘higher calling’, seeing as there’s no way she’ll ever be president, and she’s already failed once as a VP nominee. Governor of Alaska was her pinnacle, and she said “I quit”.
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She wanted all the attention as long as it was going her way, but now that everybody knows who she really is, she can’t handle it. Oh boo hoo. She quit on the people of Alaska, plain and simple.
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Palin for better or worse wasnt a “Yes, man or woman” and it ultimately didnt help at all.
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Which shows was a *great* job McCain did in his overnight-vetting process. See: Minority Wanted for 2008 Presidential Ticket ad above.
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Biden stumbles into stupidity often, but he didn’t go out of his way to contradict Obama on the campaign trail leaving some to wonder who was running for which office.
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But that also says a lot of Palin too, where she was given the VP job, but that wasn’t good enough. She didn’t seem to be happy just to be #2, and did more to sabotage the campaign than help it. And now she’s stumbled into another massive PR hit by quitting her job, the only one on her resume that would even begin to make people think she deserves to be anywhere near the White House. I can’t wait to see what tactical blunder she willingly steps into next.
Craig, I have to disagree that Palin hurt McCain very much if at all. As far as I’m concerned, the campaign was over when he suspended it and then dithered over whether or not to attend the debate. Which he finally did and lost. It was mind boggling and confirmed his reputation as a loose cannon, which was not exactly what people were looking for with wars and economic collapse going on.
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I hardly heard any enthusiasm at all for the ticket until Palin joined. It might have been grasping at straws but seriously, what did McCain offer to fire up the base?
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Pat offers an intriguing thought–could this all be a prelude toward a third party? Gallup says that the country is becoming more conservative but less Republican..there are a lot of disaffected people out there who feel neither party offers much for them.
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Personally, I think the deck is stacked against any but the big 2 so a third party is likely to fail (They always seem to be little more than vanity movements around a single personality–Teddy Roosevelt, Ross Perot) but I suppose she could instead position herself as a significant mover and shaker within the republican party, raising beaucoup bucks for fiscal conservatives and forcing respect even from those who don’t like her (the equivalent of an Al Sharpton or Ron Paul, with more money than either.)
Craig J. Ries says:
July 6, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Sorry, I wasnt clear. I meant some here wanted here out of the Vice pres run and now shes taking herself completly out of politics and still some here are not happy.
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We wanted her out of the VP race because she’s a blathering idiot. The only reason McCain picked her was because she was a minority, and McCain wanted to try and steal away those Clinton voters who said they would never vote for Obama. IMO, it backfired.
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Ok, on this point we are in agreement, you wanted her out
of the race. that wasnt in question.
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And no, I’m still not happy with Palin because she’s NOT going away. If anything, she’ll now take advantage of the chance to make an even bigger idiot of herself. She couldn’t give any coherent thoughts while on the campaign trail, but somebody will be dumb enough to pay for her to speak.
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Last I checked, this is America. She can do what she
she wishes. If thats making a bigger idiot of herself
well so be it. Look Olbermann gets to do it nightly.
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By way of comparison I think Norm Coleman from my state of MN quit and let Al Franken have the Senate seat
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Really? That’s your best comparison? Somebody who took it all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court, where he was ruled unanimously against? Where after Florida in 2000 showed, there was no way the SCOTUS was going to override the state’s ruling? Coleman didn’t quit, he was out of options. And dámņ, he dragged this out for 6 months. Yet, he lost the election, so he was already out of a job. He didn’t walk away with a year left.
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Please Craig, show the whole qoute:
By way of comparison I think Norm Coleman from my state of MN quit and let Al Franken have the Senate seat, not that that wouldnt have been the outcome anyway after the US Supreme court ruled(?) which he could have went to next if he didnt quit.
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Had Colman been a Democrat and Al the Republican, we would have heard no end to the hand wringing from the right about holding up things. Back in 2000, Gore (who had a better argument than Coleman) was attacked for not just accepting that he lost and going the legal route. Coleman fought longer with no wins to encourage him, merely a desire to be the winner.
As someone who voted for Coleman? I was embarrassed by his behavior.
Particularly egregious was the a day or two after the election, Coleman publicly called upon Franken to concede and spare Minnesota the trouble of a lengthy recount.
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Um, yeah. About that, Norm…
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TWL
Please Craig, show the whole qoute:
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Well, the entire whole, part of the quote, it doesn’t matter, because the comparison is non-existent.
Governor I’d Like To F***….brrrrr, THERE’S a group that’s hurting for members…
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Not in Argentina, it would seem.
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And since we’re on the topic, I seem to be the only person I know who’s publicly hoped that Sanford’s love affair produced a child, so that after he resigns the two of them could go off and open a junk shop together…
Yeah, but it’s hard to imagine THIS Sanford being able to call anyone else a “dummy”.
Now that was funny.
Joe V.
And alas, neither his wife nor his mistress is named Elizabeth.
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On the other hand, it’s not like he’d be the first politician to go off and create his own reality…
Just for clarification, the above post is in reply to Bill’s Sanford line (currently two posts above me, but with the threading you never know).
My theory: She was approached by a bunch of wealthy Republicans and offered a huge wad of cash to resign and disappear into the ether so that she would no longer be the very public face of the GOP.
I’d say good riddance, but she’s too stupid to know when she’s in over her head, too clueless and unaware of her massive shortcomings and too addicted to be a national star to go away.
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She’ll be back in three months at best.
… and too addicted to being a national star to go away.
“I’d say good riddance, but she’s too stupid to know when she’s in over her head, too clueless and unaware of her massive shortcomings and too addicted to be a national star to go away.
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She’ll be back in three months at best.
Reply
*
Jerry Chandler says:
July 7, 2009 at 11:36 pm
… and too addicted to being a national star to go away.”
Jerry,
What classy, substantive quotes! Seriously, it seems the favorite line of attack on any Republican conservative is that he or she is stupid. This is the case with Reagan, Bush 43 and now Palin.
They couldn’t get away with calling Bush 41 stupid, so they chose to focus on the alleged dumbness of Dan Quayle.
Really, I don’t expect the MSM to all interview her like Sean Hannity did, except that Hillary Clinton has been the recipient of a bunch of softball interviews. And the infamous Katie Couric interview, which was obviously not palin’s finest hour – still made three things crystal clear:
1.) The MSM (mainstream media)is biased. Really, we get a question about her alleged sophistication by asking her what newspapers she reads. Where were the questions about what she had done in Alaska? Look at it on YouTube. Where is ANY question that would have put her in a positive light or that focused on her accomplishments as Governor.
Second, the MSM is the entity that’s actually uninformed.
Barbara Walters was asked why she didn’t like Sarah Palin.Walters said, “She’s uninformed.” When asked what she meant by uninformed, she said, “Well, she thinks that she can really see Russia from her house.”
GUESS WHAT? BARBARA ANDEVERYONE ELSE: SHE NEVER SAID THAT!
But the MSM didn’t perceive of her as intelligent, so they hated her. (Also, they didn’t know her and that meant the MSM had to do some investigation and work and talk about someone they had never had lunch with or seen on “Meet The Press”.
Couple that hatred with her conservative politics and the fact that she has five kids and liked guns, and you just knew they were going to destroy her.
And why? Why all the viciousness? Because they were jealous someone they perceived as unsophisticated became the most prominent woman in America and it wasn’t supposed to happen that way. One of THEIRS was supposed to be that. hey hated the fact that a prominent woman politician was pro-life. They hated and still hate the fact that she has five kids. They hate that she named her kids Trigg and Track and Willow and Piper. After all, “sophisticated” people don’t name their kids Trigg and Track! They hated the fact that she actually had a baby with Down Syndrome. Some actually asked why she didn’t have an abortion.
You know what they hate the most about her. She is, at heart, a real, ordinary, hardworking small-town American.
1.) The MSM
Who let this guy back in the clubhouse?
Peter David apparently. A diversity of opinion on a comic writer’s board is a refreshing change from… well you know.
Despite what most Democrats and some Republicans want, I don’t believe we’ve seen the last of Sarah Palin. The vicious, incessant and libelous attacks on her and her family immediately after her rise to the national scene last August, proved she was someone the established powers-that-be wanted to go away. I don’t think she’ll oblige them.
Shh! Listen! Can anybody else hear a broken record?
Yes, I can still hear it. Despite the fact that Jermome tried to interrupt it with some comments about Sarah Palin that actually made sense and contained something resembling reality, I can still hear the broken record of nonstop, nonsensical, vastly (if not completely) fictional attacks on the soon to be former governor of Alaska. I mean, HOLY CRAP! The viciousness is unreal. It’s gotten to the point where I can almost ignore the lies and the slander and just enjoy the apoplectic seizures her political enemies suffer every time Palin says or does anything. When you take a step back from it and just look at the big picture, it is pretty freakin’ humorous. And pretty sad and pathetic. But then, what else does the radical Left have to argue with except personal attacks, fear, lies, and slander all mixed up with an unhealthy dose of rage? It’s one reason I turned from liberalism in the early 90’s.
But then, what else does the radical Left have to argue with except personal attacks, fear, lies, and slander all mixed up with an unhealthy dose of rage?
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Great! Another broken record to throw on the pile!
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Hey, let’s just forget the rallies that Palin attended where she accused Obama of ‘pallin’ around with terrorists’. Talk about your fear, lies, and slander. But wait, Palin isn’t part of the left, is she?
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Or, going back a few more years, how about the post-9/11 “you’re with us or you’re against us” out of the White House?
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Shall I stop now about how the right uses fear and lies and slander, or do you prefer to continue to remain ignorant?
I agree with Timothy Butler that Sarah the Quitter is “pretty sad and pathetic”.
Timothy Butler: “But then, what else does the radical Left have to argue with except personal attacks, fear, lies, and slander all mixed up with an unhealthy dose of rage?”
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Yeah, those evil members of the Radical Left like George Will were just so mean to her by pointing out her shortcomings, failures and the nonsensical nature of her stunt last weekend. How dare that bášŧárd do that?
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As for the rest, Palin has shown herself to be clueless about even things she should know while trumpeting that thing as an accomplishment or a selling point for herself. How is it “hateful” to point that out?
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Palin claimed in the VP debate that troop levels in Iraq had returned to “pre-surge” levels. That was incorrect. That was pointed out to her. She still repeated the falsehood after being corrected on it. Stupidity or intentional lie?
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Palin constantly claimed on the campaign trail that Obama once voted in favor of higher taxes on “families” making as little as $42,000 a year. That was an outright lie and she was corrected on it. The bill in question called for an increase only on singles making that amount, but a family of four would not have been affected unless they made at least $90,000 a year. After several corrections she still told the lie.
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She billed herself as a reformer and pointed to her being against the “Bridge to Nowhere” as her credentials. Too bad that there was actually video of her campaigning in Alaska and being for the thing. Did she stop telling lies about her position on the bridge? Hëll no. She just kept on repeating the lie.
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She tried to hype her credentials as being an expert on US energy production and use one time. She told Charlie Gibson in an interview that Alaska produced nearly 20% of the U.S. domestic supply of energy and that she worked as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, overseeing the oil and gas development in our state to produce more for the United States. Problem there was that it’s completely off base. By the EIA’s numbers, Alaska produces around 3.5% of the US’s energy. But maybe she meant “oil” there and that would be right. Nope. Alaskan production accounted for only 4.8% of all the crude oil and petroleum products supplied to and consumed by the U.S. in 2007 and 2008. Didn’t stop her from continuing the lie and accusing the press of playing “gotcha” when they corrected her. She did, towards the end, change the statement to “a large percentage” rather than giving an actual number, but what kind of truth stretching is it to call less than 5% a large percentage?
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She tried to play up her national security credentials by pointing out that when Putin stuck his head up it was in Alaskan airspace that they sent their jets and played it up as though she was dealing with such issues. Too bad that we haven’t been getting Russian jets flying over Alaska, violating our airspace near Alaska as a matter of deliberate habit and that Alaskan government officials would by rather low on the “first people to know about it” list if it would happen. She couldn’t answer a question so she just made something up and threw it out there along with a bunch of rambling, confused and general pointless sentences made up of whatever random string of words she could get out of her mouth.
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That was a big issue that a lot of people had with her. If she was asked a question by someone not coaching her through an interview (Hannity) she made Miss South Carolina Teen sound coherent. She mentioned the Supreme Court making unpopular decisions and talked about all those bad decisions that activist judges have made. Must mean that she had a few in mind. Then Katie Couric asked her, besides the oft mentioned by Conservative Roe V Wade, what were some examples of the court cases she felt were wrong or bad decisions. The exchange that followed was priceless.
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COURIC: What other Supreme Court decisions do you disagree with?
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PALIN: Well, let’s see. There’s — of course — in the great history of America rulings there have been rulings, that’s never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are — those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know — going through the history of America, there would be others but —
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COURIC: Can you think of any?
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PALIN: Well, I could think of — of any again, that could be best dealt with on a more local level. Maybe I would take issue with. But you know, as mayor, and then as governor and even as a vice president, if I’m so privileged to serve, wouldn’t be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today.
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And that was typical of her answers when she wasn’t being coached by a Fox News interviewer. She was clueless about anything and everything and it showed in spades every time she opened her mouth. It’s not slander to point that out, it’s simply stating facts.
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Her “I’m A Fighter and That’s Why I Quit” speech was as rambling and senseless as anything else that she’s said. And so mindlessly stupid was much of what she said that she’s already playing spin control and reworking some of the whys of her quiting.
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And, again, it’s not just people on the left who are calling this a dumb move that was done in an embarrassingly poor way. Your “Radical Left” garbage is just a sure sign that you have no substantiative points and can only resort to flinging mud and name calling.
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And, further, you and Jerome picking my comments to launch your “they hate her” and the “Radical Left” hates and smears her rants is laughable. Take a walk through the site’s archives. I stated more than a few times before the election that I had strong misgivings about Obama and that I didn’t think he was yet ready to be POTUS. Once I actually defended John McCain when Peter claimed that his campaign was the new McCarthyism. In one thread (either Peter’s “The Sarah Palin Thread” thread or the “Can Sarah come out and play?” thread from Aug. and Sept. 2008) my first post in the thing after well over a hundred posts attacking her on every little rumor was a post filled with links to Factcheck.org’s debunking of many of the wild internet falsehoods about her that were being discussed about her in that thread.
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Hëll, once or twice I even defended “Joe the Plumber” from falsehoods and smears and before the election, as vile as I often found them, I even ended up defending Bush and Cheney once or twice on this site.
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I don’t pick who I like based on political affiliation. I also dislike using falsehoods and smears. That may be a really novel idea to you since, from what I can remember of your pre-election posts, almost no accusation no matter how baseless was below the par when it was aimed at Obama. Your habit of referencing editorials by partisan writers and insisting that they were fact based news stories was particularly funny.
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“But then, what else does the radical Left have to argue with except personal attacks, fear, lies, and slander all mixed up with an unhealthy dose of rage?”
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Hmmm… Lets see…
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Fox News (and Rush Limbaugh) promoted Jerome Corsi’s factually challenged work of fiction (Obama Nation)as a fact filled tome, they did and still do float the ‘Fake birth certificate’ theory and Fox News still has guests on from that crowd, Fox News was big on having guests on that liked to push the ‘Obama as Secret Muslim’ garbage whenever they could and they’ve been busted a few times now for reading Republican Party talking points (bullet points and all) as “news” and trying to pass them off as facts. Further, the popular writers, radio hosts and bloggers on the right like Coulter, Malkin, Ingraham, Beck and others use more insults, smears, distortions and outright falsehoods in their discourse than 99.9% of “The Mainstream Media” does.
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Me? I’m just calling it like I see it. Palin is clueless, clumsy, seemingly addicted to the spotlight, has a history of quiting when the going gets tough and would be the best gift that the Democrats could get in 1012.
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You? You fail. You fail in an epic way. Now go away and come back when you can sat something of intelligence and worth. Judging you history here that mean we’d likely never see you on another political thread ever again.
I should also note, just for the future That All You’ve Got” type of replies, that I could have made a post five times that size in documented Palin lies, distortions, spins, flubs, blunders and clueless nature, but then I remembered that I’m talking to Timothy “Facts? I See Only Smears” Butler. Your pre-election habit here of discounting news stories just because they said something about a candidate that you didn’t agree with while trying to pass off editorials by partisans as actual news stories kinda limits your worth as someone who can have an intelligent debate and really doesn’t make you worth that much extra effort.
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Sad but true.
I’m not going to address most of this, because it seems more of a rant than anything else. However, this point seemed worth responding to:
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Really, we get a question about her alleged sophistication by asking her what newspapers she reads.
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That’s not a question about sophistication. It’s a question about how, or if, she stays informed.
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And had she answered and then said, “but you know, I’m not sure how this is relevant” or something akin, you’d have a decent point. As it is, she got what should have been a softball question, and could not answer it.
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That doesn’t mean she’s hated. It means that she’s seen, rightly, as unqualified intellectually for the office to which she was nominated.
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I don’t hate her, Jerome — ’cause frankly, she’s not worth the effort to hate.
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Meanwhile, Timothy Butler has apparently decided that all liberals (oh, ‘scuse me, the “radical Left”) think exactly alike. Must be Wednesday.
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TWL
Jerome, I’ve discussed my issues with Sarah Palin in past threads that you were in and I documented and linked them all at least one time. You (unlike Butler) should remember that I’ve covered this ground in detail quite a bit, that I wasn’t a big fan of Obama and that I even defended Palin and McCain when posters posted comments that contained outright falsehoods about them or if I thought that the statements being made were so grossly exaggerated as to boarder on a falsehood.
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Jumping my backside because I didn’t repost all of those past grievances and only had the time to post a quick post is both laughable and insulting. We’ve not always agreed on things here, but I’ve never pulled that kind of garbage with your short posts. Since you (unlike Butler the Idiot) should know better; I’d appreciate you not doing it to me either.
Hey, let’s just forget the rallies that Palin attended where she accused Obama of ‘pallin’ around with terrorists’. Talk about your fear, lies, and slander.
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I think you could have come up with a better example. Fear, yes. Lies and slander, not so much, although it depends on whether or not you believe that Ayers was either a pal or a terrorist. Ayers says they were family friends and I, for one, have no problem labeling him as a terrorist. Well, former terrorist, although, much like the bridgebuilder who shagged just one sheep, it’s one of those things that kind of sticks to you, even if you go on to bigger and better things.
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And what was the reaction to her poor choice of words? Well, Keith Olbermann for one decided that no, SHE was the one who “palled around with terrorists” since her husband was a member of a party that advocated Alaska seceded from the USA. Apparently that makes you a terrorist in his eyes, even if no violence is advocated.
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My objection to here stement would be not that it isn’t true but that it’s misleading. As is often the case the truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.
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And I don’t really see that there has been much of a change on tactics since the Democrats gained control. One can now find claims of opposition being “traitors” or “terrorists” over nothing more than disagreements on economics spending packages or other policies that reasonable people can disagree on. There must have been a a lot of people scratching off their “Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism” bumper stickers last November.
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Me, I think that this sort of discourse cheapens the entire process but anyone who thinks this is limited to one side or the other is willfully ignoring the facts.
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Bill, I don’t see Liberals saying terrorist or traitors. Just merely saying “Well, you know, if the situation was reversed, you just know that the Republicans would be starting terrorist claims.” is calling Republicans terrorists or traitors, just pointing out what hypocrites they have become.
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If a Democrat falls from grace, he is a bad person and must be removed from office, but if a Republican falls from grace, he is a good man who made a bad choice and he will make it all better by praying and telling his loved one he is sorry.
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That’s being a hypocrite.
Was Bill talking about Sanford? Where did the “good man bad choice” verbiage come from?
And I assume you were attempting to be funny by taking Tim Butler’s description of Palin’s detractors as “sad and pathetic” and recasting it as if he were talking about Palin. Either that or your reading comprehension skills are lacking.
Bill, I don’t see Liberals saying terrorist or traitors.
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http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=11930
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What do you call a traitor who is not just betraying their country, but their entire species?
Simple: George Will. Fred Hiatt. Andy Alexander. Our species is in peril, and those who would blind us to that peril, those who would betray us all, have names. It is time to start naming them openly as traitors to humanity.
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Joy Behar on The View: He’s a terrorist. Rush Limbaugh is a terrorist. You heard it here ladies and gentlemen.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-morrisonbass27-2009jun27,0,4807376.story?page=1
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California assembly speaker karen Bass: The Republicans were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: “You vote for revenue and your career is over.” I don’t know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it’s about free speech, but it’s extremely unfair.
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Keith Olbermann: the leading terrorist group in this country right now is the Republican Party
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Possible Future Senate Candidate/Good fathering expert Alec Baldwin: Cheney is a terrorist. He terrorizes our enemies abroad and innocent citizens here at home indiscriminately.
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Bill Press on Todd Palin: What’s the difference between a secessionist and a terrorist? Isn’t a secessionist just another form of a terrorist? Ask Abraham Lincoln…Let’s find out what the “First Dude” was going to do in order to secede from the union. I tell you it wasn’t going to be peaceful.
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Robert Kennedy Jr at the Live Earth Concert at Giants Stadium: Get rid of all these rotten politicians that we have in Washington, who are nothing more than corporate toadies for companies like Exxon and Southern Company. These villainous companies that consistently put their private financial interest ahead of
American interest and ahead of the interest of all of humanity. This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/opinion/29krugman.html?ref=opinion
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Paul Krugman on the 212 congressmen who voted against the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill: And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.
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Radio Host Mike Malloy: They’re worse than useless. These are terrorists. These are domestic terrorists. They want the country to fail, for God’s sake. They want exactly what anyone who attacked this country on September 11, 2001 wanted. The real internal terrorists are the Republicans, I mean, isn’t that clear? Rush Limbaugh is a bigger threat to this country than Osama bin Laden. He’s a bigger threat than anybody that the CIA can invent. He’s a bigger threat than any terrorist that ever leveled its sights against the United States, Limbaugh is, so why isn’t he arrested and sentenced for treason?
Bill, I don’t see Liberals saying terrorist or traitors.
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from openleft.com
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What do you call a traitor who is not just betraying their country, but their entire species?
Simple: George Will. Fred Hiatt. Andy Alexander. Our species is in peril, and those who would blind us to that peril, those who would betray us all, have names. It is time to start naming them openly as traitors to humanity.
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Joy Behar on The View: He’s a terrorist. Rush Limbaugh is a terrorist. You heard it here ladies and gentlemen.
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from the LA Times
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California assembly speaker karen Bass: The Republicans were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: “You vote for revenue and your career is over.” I don’t know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it’s about free speech, but it’s extremely unfair.
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Keith Olbermann: the leading terrorist group in this country right now is the Republican Party
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Possible Future Senate Candidate/Good fathering expert Alec Baldwin: Cheney is a terrorist. He terrorizes our enemies abroad and innocent citizens here at home indiscriminately.
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Bill Press on Todd Palin: What’s the difference between a secessionist and a terrorist? Isn’t a secessionist just another form of a terrorist? Ask Abraham Lincoln…Let’s find out what the “First Dude” was going to do in order to secede from the union. I tell you it wasn’t going to be peaceful.
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Robert Kennedy Jr at the Live Earth Concert at Giants Stadium: Get rid of all these rotten politicians that we have in Washington, who are nothing more than corporate toadies for companies like Exxon and Southern Company. These villainous companies that consistently put their private financial interest ahead of
American interest and ahead of the interest of all of humanity. This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.
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Paul Krugman on the 212 congressmen who voted against the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill: And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.
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Radio Host Mike Malloy: They’re worse than useless. These are terrorists. These are domestic terrorists. They want the country to fail, for God’s sake. They want exactly what anyone who attacked this country on September 11, 2001 wanted. The real internal terrorists are the Republicans, I mean, isn’t that clear? Rush Limbaugh is a bigger threat to this country than Osama bin Laden. He’s a bigger threat than anybody that the CIA can invent. He’s a bigger threat than any terrorist that ever leveled its sights against the United States, Limbaugh is, so why isn’t he arrested and sentenced for treason?
“Bill, I don’t see Liberals saying terrorist or traitors.”
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Then you obviously haven’t been watching the news, reading the paper, listening to the radio or spending time on the net for the last five months, Alan.
[I hope this goes in the right place; I’m still figuring out the threading bit.]
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Bill (Mulligan),
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The only one of those statements I’d defend in the least is Krugman, and that only because “treason against the planet” is a very different sort of rhetoric than accusing someone of treason against a country, the latter being an actual crime.
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Now, when you have Mark Kirk telling the Chinese government in person that our current budget numbers should not be trustworthy, one can make an argument that you’re actively undermining your own country’s foreign policy — I’m not sure whether it’s treason, but it’s certainly something that I think might be actionable. Limbaugh? Not so much. (Idiot, yes; traitor, no.)
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TWL
I think we’re getting side tracked here. There are pundits on both side who have said ignorant, hyperbolic or just plain dumb things, and trying to say one side does it less than the other is just a pìššìņg match. For my part, I’ve never said, nor will I say now, that the left hasn’t jumped into the mud. They have. The point I’ve tried to make is that the mudslinging, sensationalism and hyperbole on the part of the media taken as a whole does not show a left wing bias. You can find individuals who lean slightly or ridiculously to one side or the other, but as as whole, the media does not favor one over other for political reasons.
If there was a left wing agenda, I believe that when the “palling with terrorists” crap was being spewed all over the place, we’d have seen a lot more coverage of McCain’s
connections to
G. Gordon Liddy.
I see your point on Krugman, though in light of even more extremist rhetoric from some in the environmental movement–comparing global warmer doubts to Holocaust denial, stating that anyone not going with their consensus be fired from whatever positions of authority they have, etc etc (and keep in mind that there is a small but dangerous element within the environmental movement that is willing to use violence)…I think it’s potentially a dangerous thing to say. I would not csesure him for saying it–I’m not one of the people who thinks that Bill ORielly has blood on his hands from the assassination of Dr. Tiller but anyone who does might want to ponder whether using the word “treason” in almost any context is advisable.
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And while you are correct that he is not calling anyone out for something that is genuinely illegal, one could argue that “treason against the planet” is a far far more evil thing than mere treason against a country, which might be little more than handing over some papers to another government. Treason against the planet would have to be something that explicitly endangers human lives and health.
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But again, you’re point is correct. I would only fault Krugman for making the overstatement that any opposition to Waxman-Markey must be the result of deliberate evil intent.
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I don’t know about the Mark Kirk thing, though from what you say it sounds like he may have merely been repeating the same thing one could read in the New York Times…I would be very cautious about calling a politician stating a fairly obvious truth (does anyone think the current budget predictions are going to get better? Anyone?) treasonous. I recall 3 anti-war congressmen went to Iraq before the war and spoke against the US policy. It later turned out that the trip was financed by Saddam (To my knowledge there was no evidence they knew this). If Kirk is guilty of treason I would think these guys would swing as well. Which is part of the problem with slinging the word around so much, it ends up being applied to anyone who happens to be on the wrong side of whoever has power at the time.
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Jerome–happy to see you back (Been following your excellent articles in the newspaper) but Jerry is correct about him being far from a blind ideologue.
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There are perfectly legitimate reasons to not be a fan of Palin. It’s also easy to ignore those reason in disgust at the unfair and just plain bizarre attacks. I don’t think there can be much doubt that she has some major flaws. What a lot of the people who dislike her miss is that she also has an undefinable something that far better politicians would kill for. If she were just the mediocrity that they think she is there would not be all these comments.
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The sad thing is, I think she really could improve her weak points, while the qualities she possesses are something you either have or don’t. McCain could not electrify a crowd if he turned on a Tesla Coil in a rainstorm. She can do it with a wave. But, like many, she is probably too blind to her faults and too proud of her abilities to do what she would need to do to reach that next level.
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(Of course, one way to do that would be to totally devote her time to study, money raising, research, money raising, travel, money raising, and raising money. Which some have suggested is why she quit the governorship. I don’t think that’s the reason but it probably won’t be too long before we see.)
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(And to anyone who wants to think she’s too dumb to win, yeah, bring it on, landslide fer sher….I well remember Ralph Nader speaking at Washington University before the 1980 election, rubbing his hands in glee at the prospect of helping to defeat Ronald Reagan. I am making no exaggeration–he rubbed his hands in glee. Told a few jokes about RR, got us all laughing, hëll, we almost felt sorry for what was going to happen to the poor, hapless old man. Yeah, how did THAT work out? Pride goeth before a fall…)
Rich, Liddy was certainly a criminal. And a nut. But was he a terrorist?
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I know he had all kinds of ideas about killing enemies of Nixon but they don’t seem to have ever happened…whereas Ayers was a genuine, if ineffectual, planter of explosives.
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and, just to play devil’s advocate here, I could counter with two arguments as to why even a genuinely liberal biased media would not want to play up the G Gordon Liddy argument. 1- Liddy has been used on many news talk shows as a guest. Often he was the supposed “conservative” voice. It would be embarrassing to have that same media now claim that the guy they brought on to represent a point of view was, in their estimation, an extremist terrorist. 2-trotting out the Liddy vs Ayers paralles might jut make the story last longer and force them to go into details that were deeper than the narrative they wanted to use–mean old Palin is accusing that nice guy Obama of being friends with a terrorist when he barely even knew the guy.
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Neither argument may be true but they can be made. Arguing that there is a genral bias in the media does NOT mean that there will never be instances where a story is told that hurts a liberal candidate or a story is ignored that hurts a conservative one.
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And I always feel obligated to point out to people like Bill Myers that while I give more credence to the idea of liberal bias than they do, this in no way is meant to reflect badly on those who work as journalists and have no bias toward anything other than a pursuit of the truth and let the chips fall where they may. Rest assured that if everyone in the business had Mr Myers ethical standards this particular argument would be not worth discussing.
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(Similarly, I have no problem if people complain about bad teachers or the general problems of public education. I don’t take it personally, I just assume they’re talking about some other teacher. I even know a few of the ones they might be talking about (though I hasten to add I have been blessed with the opportunity to work with people who have almost always been examples of the best in the profession. How much of that is due to the nature of science teachers I can’t say, though it’s my biased opinion that this may have a lot to do with it).
Bill Mulligan: “And to anyone who wants to think she’s too dumb to win, yeah, bring it on, landslide fer sher…”
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Right now and likely in 2012? Yes, yes she is. I know that a lot of the spin about her has been that she’s the second coming of Ronald Reagan, but, as someone who did somewhat like Reagan, I don’t think Palin is even a shadow of what Reagan was.
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Reagan was a lot more poised and had a far greater ability to take criticism and turn it into a self deprecating joke or a classic sound byte. Palin has what appears to be a growing history of not being able to take the heat in various situations not related to basketball, taking criticisms personal to the point of being thrown off of her game plan and taking critics’ barbs and playing poor-little-me-the-victim. Reagan’s style lead one (in most cases) to like him even if you disagreed with him 100% on an issue. Palin’s style tends to make people who would be indifferent one way or another to get tired of hearing her whining very quickly.
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I honestly don’t believe that Palin is anywhere near self aware enough when it comes to her own shortcomings and I don’t believe that she’ll be anywhere near truly ready for national prime time any time in the next few years. Her only hope at this point (outside of a supernatural level change in attitude and maturity) of that happening by the 2012 election is by getting some extremely good handlers.
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Even what she’s doing now shows that she’s too prone to stumbling. Had she the smarts to do this exit properly she would have focused only on the issue of the lawsuits and investigations becoming too much of an issue and interfering with her ability to properly run Alaska. She and those sympathetic to her could easily counter critics of that line of reasoning by pointing out that Bill Clinton’s defenders were the first to point out that the various harassing investigations (and the impeachment hearings) were getting in the way of his being able to properly fulfill his duties. Hëll, they even claimed later that he could have done more in regards to dealing with terrorist threats had these constant investigations not been going on and taking up so much of the White House’s time.
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That would have been infinitely better than what actually happened. But she went off the rails and did the rambling thing, the victim thing and threw out stuff that sounded stupid and made it look like she was just throwing anything and everything at the wall to see what would stick.
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She won’t stay on because she’s a lame duck and it would be unfair to Alaska to just draw a paycheck and be a lame duck. Except, what made her a lame duck? She can run again in Alaska. She’s not limited to one term as Governor if I remember correctly. So how is she a lame duck?
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That stupidity also works against her in the future. Why would we want to elect her as President when she won’t finish the job? We know that, because of how she’s wired, she’ll quite in the middle of a second term. That being the case there’s no reason to elect her to a first term since we know she’ll not take a second term seriously and she knows we know that. She’s therefore limited to one term as POTUS. But if she’s limited to one term that means that she’ll be a lame duck in her first term as POTUS. By her own statement about how she’s wired that means she’ll quit after being POTUS, as she’s done in Alaska as governor, in two or three years.
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No point in electing her at all then.
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The stuff about having her family attacked was also less than useful to her cause with anyone but the base. Some of it was garbage and some of it was stuff that she twisted into something it wasn’t and then magnified into a national spectacle. She made some nothing stories far, far bigger than they were and far more well known than they would have ever been if she had just had the brains to keep her big gob shut.
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It’s also nothing new. First families have been slandered and attacked in the past. Some have even had people wishing death upon them. What? No, I’m not talking about a little fringe blog, I’m talking about the oft sourced and cited by the Right National Review Online.
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Just before Chelsea Clinton turned 21, the NRO posted a column (still in its archives) titled Be Very Afraid. In it, the author stated that he had long hated Chelsea and that it was his opinion that Chelsea was damaged by having the “Clinton Taint.” He then went on to lament the fact that we don’t have the Nazis tradition of Sippenhaft (clan liability) or that we don’t the Imperial Chine thing where “enemies of the state were punished “to the ninth degree”: that is, everyone in the offender’s own generation would be killed, and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed.”
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Derbyshire ended his column by talking about how Chelsea will pick up the torch where her parents leave it because she’s been bred for it.
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Palin is not the first to have vile things directed at her children. She is in rare company in that she plays it up for victim status better than most though. And that habit, if not curtailed, will eventually tire even some of her stronger supporters and backfire on her greatly. We as a people don’t really go for electing as POTUS someone who has worked at creating the image of poor, picked on, whiny victim. Even Hillary toned down the victim thing when she realized where it would lead her.
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Palin also goofed on her one good point in her actions right after her “I Quit” press conference. She complained about the mounting costs to herself and her family of all of these “frivolous” investigations and lawsuits. So what did she do? She sent out frivolous legal papers threatening legal actions against news agencies that might cover stories about why she quit and libeling a radio personality and blogger.
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Shannyn Moore reported on her radio show that there were a number of rumors and speculation floating around out there about why Palin “really” quit and discussed some of them. But she did discuss them as rumors and speculation.
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For that Palin is threatening to start legal action.
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So her response to the costs and burdens of frivolous legal actions that she’s involved in is to threaten to start a frivolous and unfounded legal action that will cost her even more money? Yeah…
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Beyond all of that, this underscored a huge issue that she has. She cannot get a solid point across in a coherent manner. If she could, we wouldn’t have anywhere near the chatter about her quitting that we have now. Yeah, we’d still have the critics and the supporters going at it, but the topics covered would be a bit more narrow.
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When she finished talking and walked away, in the words of Fox News’s own Brian Kilmeade, every third person had a different idea about what she was trying to say. She was all over the map, rambling, incoherent and it hurt her. That can be fixed, but she has to be willing to have that fixed and, quite frankly, she too often comes off to me as a petulant child who wants to blame everyone else for any of her failings.
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Again, Ronald Reagan she ain’t.
And now even her one good point may be in question.
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Seems that her statement that the state of Alaska was spending all that cash on her legal needs was a, to be kind, half truth at best. Alan Colmes just a little bit aho referenced a story coming out that he’s linked from his site. Amanda Erickson for The Plum Line spoke with Alaskan officials and came away with this.
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“In response to our questions, the Governor’s office provided us with a detailed breakdown of the millions Palin has claimed has gone to defending against ethics complaints. It does list roughly $1.9 million in expenditures.
But Murrow, the spokesperson, acknowledged to our reporter, Amanda Erickson, that this total was arrived at by adding up attorney hours spent on fending off complaints — based on the fixed salaries of lawyers in the governor’s office and the Department of Law. The money would have gone to the lawyers no matter what they were doing. The complaints are “just distracting them from other duties,” Murrow said.
In other words, while these lawyers might have been free to do other legal work for the state, the ethics complaints have apparently not had the real world impact Palin has claimed, and didn’t drain money away from cops, teachers, roads and other things.”
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Again, she should have focused her points a bit better. Her tactic should have been to focus on the time being eaten up by the things keeping her from doing her job effectively.
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Of course, the response to that would be to bring up all those political stump stops from the last few months…
Oh I don’t think she’s any Ronald Reagan at all. My point was just that it’s very dangerous to believe someone is easily beatable. There were republicans who were glad that Obama got the nomination because they thought he couldn’t get elected. That didn’t work out so great.
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Depending on how the economy goes Obama may have an easy time or a very difficult time in 2012. I’ve heard some Democrats talking about how they hope Palin gets the republican nod because it would be a guaranteed win. I just wonder if they are prepared to deal with the possibility that the guarantee doesn’t hold.
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But yeah, she’s no Reagan. If she had his humor, his self depreciating good nature, dámņ, she’d be deadly. Reagan had Teflon, she’s got Velcro.
Then you obviously haven’t been watching the news, reading the paper, listening to the radio or spending time on the net for the last five months, Alan.
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I guess the question is: do I really need to find the worst of idiots (from either party) just to end up wasting my time reading the worst kind of crap, such as much of the stuff Bill quoted? 🙂
/putting on tinfoil hat
Sarah Palin was picked to be McCain’s running mate because the Republicans knew there was no way in hëll to fix America’s economy in 4 years, and that the winner of the 2008 election would be stuck in an economic “Kobiyashi Maru”.
So McCain was saddled with Palin to make sure that 4 years down the road the Repudlickins could point at Obama’s failure to fix the unfixable and say “See, the democrats screwed up!”…
/removes tinfoil hat