I suspect good progressives are too hip ever to have watched Judging Amy, but the new infotainment-friendly Sarah Palin strikes me as the runaway offspring that Tyne Daly was too embarrassed to tell Amy Brenneman and her siblings about…

Andrew Sullivan complains “She wants to be a celebrity, not a politician. And if she could get to be a politician using the prerogatives of a celebrity – and a propaganda channel like Fox News – she would be happy. That’s what’s at stake here – beneath this farce.” Which is a pretty good summary, assuming that the nouns in the second sentence got swapped in the heat of live-blogging: Palin wants to be a celebrity, and was willing to act out what she understood to be a politician’s role to get the prerogatives of celebrity. When Bill Kristol’s Cruise Ship of Fools Neocons breezed into Juneau, Palin had aged out of the beauty-queen pageantry competitions that seem to have been her formative social training, her unwillingness or inability to handle the tedium of actual governance had her underlings trembling on the edge of revolt, and her attempts to reclaim Modern Supermom status on her own or by proxy weren’t going so well. It was… providential!... that Someone should send unto her a Messenger, trailing clouds of astroturfing calculation, proclaiming that Sarah Palin could be chosen to stand among the Elect. For lo, all her life she had been journaling, recording both the firewood-stacking and the prayers that were the Aleph and Omega of her Real American™ small-town red-state life—and at last her determined piety was rewarded! Prosperity Gospel, unbelievers!

(more…)

Via The Mudflats, the blog that did so much to bring attention to Sarah Palin’s less-than-starburstacular career before William ‘Wrong Again’ Kristol cruised Juneau:

To anticipate your next question, no this is not a joke, or some fabulous Photoshop creation by the Mudflats Art Department (flyinureye). It is in fact the real cover and the real title of a real book that will be in bookstores on November 17, also too.

“Going Rouge is compiled by Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, two top editors of the left-leaning weekly The Nation, and includes essays by Nation regulars like Katrina vanden Heuvel, Naomi Klein, and Katha Pollitt. It’s the first release from OR Books, a fledgling outfit founded earlier this year by publishing veterans John Oakes and Colin Robinson that “embraces progressive change in politics, culture and the way we do business,” according to its website.”

But wait, there’s more! In addition to those listed above, Mudflatters will be able to enjoy essays by Max Blumenthal, Shannyn Moore, and yes,…. yours truly! I was quite honored to be asked to write a piece for the book.

It is a deep, deep disappointment to me that Amazon not only has failed to make this thrilling tome available for pre-order, but when I typed GOING ROUGE into the search bar, they suggested I “meant” that other book, the unintentional parody. I may be dyslexic, Amazon, but I’m not a godsdamned idiot!

EDIT: Meant to credit Valdivia for bringing this to my attention.

And unfortunately WordPress (FYWP) won’t let me ‘fix’ the link:
http:www.themudflats.net/2009/10/21/going-rogue-vs-going-rouge/

Pareene at Gawker  has a rather interesting (okay, fairly hilarious) essay, including a number of videos, concerning Sarah Palin’s Gradual Descent into Incoherency: 

What was your favorite line from Sarah Palin’s second resignation speech? Was it:

“So, how ‘bout in honor of the American soldier, ya quite makin’ things up?”

Or maybe this amazing bit:

“Let me tell you, Alaskans really need to stick together on this with new leadership in this area especially, encouraging new leadership… got to stiffen your spine to do what’s right for Alaska when the pressure mounts, because you’re going to see anti-hunting, anti-second amendment circuses from Hollywood and here’s how they do it. They use these delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets, they use Alaska as a fundraising tool for their anti-second amendment causes.”

Actually, this is our favorite line:

“In the winter time it’s the frozen road that is competing with the view of ice fogged frigid beauty, the cold though, doesn’t it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs?”

It’s like Peggy Noonan, Jack London, and William Faulkner wandered into the woods with three buttons of peyote and one typewriter, and only this speech emerged.

And she wrote this speech! In advance, on paper! What does any of it mean? It is amazing. Twenty years ago she could competently descibe a dog race, three years ago she could articulate a position on the abortion issue, and this weekend she composed a resignation speech by throwing culture war stock phrases into a hat and dumping it upside down on a copy of The Paranoid Style in American Politics.

John’s PUMA doppleganger is up to his old tricks:

In an unusual attempt to forge an alliance between two of the most prominent families in American politics, John Coale, a Washington-area Democratic donor and onetime adviser to Sarah Palin, urged the conservative Alaska governor to use her political action committee to help retire the presidential campaign debt of Hillary Clinton.

[....]

An outspoken Clinton supporter during the Democratic primary who switched his allegiance to the GOP ticket for the general election, Coale made his case to Palin at the Iron Dog snowmachine competition in Fairbanks, where Todd Palin was competing over Valentine’s Day weekend. His broader aim, say Palin camp insiders, was to help Palin develop a relationship with the former first family that he thought could bolster the polarizing governor’s standing with Democrats and independents.

I think it may be time to start thinking about a single name for the whole Palin-Coale-Van Sustern industrial complex. Something like Bennifer or Tomkat. I realize it’s complicated by the fact that there are four people and three last names involved, but I think it’s doable.

Speaking of Palin, here is what she is up to:

Meantime, Palin is engaged in a less nationally-visible effort to deny a state senate appointment to a highly popular and competent state house member—Juneau Democrat Beth Kerttula—who happened to voice the uncontroversial view last August that Palin was “not ready” to be Vice President. When state Sen. Kim Elton resigned last month to take a job with the US Department of the Interior, Palin was obligated by state law to name a registered Democrat to replace him; the local party organization forwarded Kerttula’s name to Palin as its sole recommendation—a decision that was reasonable, given Kerttula’s surpassing qualifications for the job and given the near-certainty that she’ll win the seat outright next year during the fall elections. Palin, however, opted instead to nominate a conservative legislative aide, Tim Grussendorf, who had actually switched his party affiliation to qualify for the job. Palin wasn’t required by law to accept the local party’s recommendation; by the same token, the senate Democrats weren’t required to accept her choice. And so yesterday, the senate Democrats rejected Grussendorf by a majority vote in closed session.

Now to you and me, this is why she is unfit for office. But to the Palin crowd, this is why she is their hero. What motivates her is not the public good, but petty revenge and pissing off the side with a different colored foam finger.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg in in the liberal New York Times pimps the marsh mouse myth:

Mr. Gingrich sees the stimulus bill as his party’s ticket to a revival in 2010, as Republicans decry what they see as pork-barrel spending for projects like marsh-mouse preservation.

Update: I’m late to the party, I see. Greg Sargent has more:

It turns out, however, that earlier drafts of the story did describe the claim as “misleading” — but Times editors removed that description from the copy, leaving the assertion to stand on its own. An email from the author of the story to a reader confirms this.

Palin “reflects”:

Q. What misinformation are you talking about?

A. Some of the goofy things like who was Trig’s mom. Well, I’m Trig’s mom (raises her hand) and do you want to see my medical records to prove that? ... And banning books. That was a ridiculous thing also that could have so easily been corrected just by a reporter taking an extra step and not basing a report on gossip or speculation. But just looking into the record. It was reported that I tried to ban Harry Potter when it hadn’t even been written when I was the mayor. So, gosh, we have so many examples, I mean every day, especially the first few weeks, every day something that was thrown out there.

Did any reporters actually ever make a big deal about Trig Palin? The only person I remember ever even talking about that nonsense was Andrew Sullivan, and he isn’t even a liberal, let alone a liberal blogger. In fact, I think this is as close to the issue as I have ever come, because it is just stupid and tawdry and unseemly to suggest someone is not the mother of their child. And additionally, I love the part about her medical records, since she refused the entire campaign to release them. She never released them in any way shape or form, just a two-page letter from her Doctor on election day (which, by the way, she got the idea from Obama, who never released his medical records, either). Saying people can see her medical records when she knows she was the one keeping people from seeing them is just more of her never-ending bullshit.

This, too, was funny:

Q. Why do you think your campaign lost?

A. I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a 10 trillion dollar debt in a Republican administration? How have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration?

Sarah- you only ran up 5 trillion under this Republican administration. Does she know anything? Seriously? Anything? And is it not a smear against God, country, and the troops to admit their were blunders in the war? Does this mean you do not look at America like the rest of us? Why does Sarah Palin hate the troops?

I read this yesterday, but forgot to comment about it until I saw a reminder in the comments:

The day of the third debate, Palin refused to go onstage with New Hampshire GOP Sen. John Sununu and Jeb Bradley, a New Hampshire congressman running for the Senate, because they were pro-choice and because Bradley opposed drilling in Alaska. The McCain campaign ordered her onstage at the next campaign stop, but she refused to acknowledge the two Republican candidates standing behind her.

Not that this should be a problem in the future. Both Sununu and Bradley lost, and with the defeat of Chris Shays, I believe you can count the number of Republicans from New England in the House or Senate using one finger- Susan Collins from Maine.

*** Update ***

Oops. Forgot Olympia Snowe. Every time I think of her, I think of the movie Moonstruck, for obvious reasons. Forgot Gregg, too. So three Senators, no Representatives. Impressive.

According to our fierce leader on the Alaska/Soviet frontline, holding back Putin from the lower 48, raising the top marginal tax rates from 36 to 39% will usher in a new era of socialism, but this is not socialist at all:

Ms. Palin, in an interview in her office on Friday, said she was ready to work.

“Now we kick in that fiscal conservativeness that needs to be engaged, and we progress this state with $57-a-barrel oil,” Ms. Palin said. She said the state would have to “be prudent with public dollars and provide services more efficiently than have ever been provided in the state of Alaska before.”

The price and production of oil determines state finances: taxes on oil bring in about 85 percent of state revenue. To balance the budget for the 2008-9 fiscal year, the price of oil needs to average $74 over the 12 months, said Karen J. Rehfeld, director of the state office of management and budget. If it falls below that average, the state could have to make emergency cuts or dip into a reserve account that contains several billion dollars. High prices early in the fiscal year may help keep the average up this year, but next year is another matter.

That is right. Taxes Alaska takes from oil and gas companies balance their budget, and that only happens if oil costs more than 74 bucks a barrel. In other words, in order for Gov. Palin to be that reforming mavericky fiscal conservative, you and I and every other American, real or not, needs to pay through the teeth for gas. If we don’t have high gas prices, Alaska doesn’t have a balanced budget. In a sense, Alaska is taxing YOU to pay for their budget. A nice gig if you can get it.

Also, while clearly not socialism, either, Gov. Palin gets to mail out big checks to every Alaska resident. In 2008, that was about $3300.00 big ones. That buys a fair bit of moose hunting ammo.

In addition to all this, Alaska is one of the largest recipients of federal aid to state and local government per capita. In 2006, it was 3600 per person, making them #2 in the nation. Only Dick Cheney’s Wyoming ranked higher. This fiscal conservatism is fricking awesome, and you almost have to wonder how she managed to get Wasilla 20 million dollars in debt.

This socialism thing is so hard to figure out these days. It is almost like the rules keep changing. And WTF was that sentence in the beginning of what I quoted (“now we kick in that fiscal…”)? That was worse than Bush.

I made the mistake of turning on CNN the day before the election, and the Wasilla wingnut is in all her glory, telling us wonderful things like:

“It is not negative campaigning to talk about your opponent’s record.”

Well, actually, it is. And, attacking your opponent’s record is a perfectly legitimate line of attack, completely within ethical bounds, and to be expected.

The problem is that what you are getting tagged for are your bs smears, which are, by definition, also negative campaigning, but not deemed legitimate. For example- your “palling around with terrorists” crap. Or, as another example, Joe the plumber you touted just a second ago as the model of America, stated the following yesterday:

“McCain has fought and bled for our country, loves our country,” said Joe Wurzelbacher, aka “Joe the Plumber,” who has campaigned throughout Ohio with and on behalf of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “There’s too many questions with Barack Obama and his loyalty to our country. And I question that greatly.”

Fox News’ Neil Cavuto tried to clarify: “You’re not doubting that he’s a good American. Or you are?”

“His ideology is completely different from what democracy stands for,” said Wurzelbacher.

Got it, Sarah? No one would complain if you were just looking at Obama’s plan or record and saying he is too liberal or has the wrong ideas. But when you and your buddies run around smearing him as a traitor, a friend of terrorists, or not sufficiently loyal, then you cross the line. This woman is either incredibly stupid, incredibly dishonest, or a toxic combination of both. John McCain’s career should be forever marred for his having elevated her to the national platform.

If the definition of a gaffe is a politician accidentally telling the truth, this is absolutely, positively, one hundred percent gaffetastic:

Asked by the host whether Palin could step in during a time of crisis, Eagleburger reverted to sarcasm before leveling the harsh blow.

“It is a very good question,” he said, pausing a few seconds, then adding with a chuckle: “I’m being facetious here. Look, of course not.”

Eagleburger explained: “I don’t think at the moment she is prepared to take over the reins of the presidency. I can name for you any number of other vice presidents who were not particularly up to it either. So the question, I think, is can she learn and would she be tough enough under the circumstances if she were asked to become president, heaven forbid that that ever takes place?

“Give her some time in the office and I think the answer would be, she will be [pause] adequate. I can’t say that she would be a genius in the job. But I think she would be enough to get us through a four year… well I hope not… get us through whatever period of time was necessary. And I devoutly hope that it would never be tested.”

The most appalling aspect of the groupthink on the right has been the need for many of them to pretend that this this train wreck in heels is somehow fit to be commander-in-chief. BTW- I eagerly await the Eagleburger walkback on this one. Good luck, Larry.

This is awesome:

In an interview with ABC News’ Elizabeth Vargas, the Republican vice-presidential nominee was asked about 2012, whether she was discouraged by the daily attacks on the campaign trail, and would instead pack it in and return to her home state of Alaska.

“I think that, if I were to give up and wave a white flag of surrender against some of the political shots that we’ve taken, that would bring this whole … I’m not doing this for naught,” Palin said.

Palin said she believed in the current GOP ticket and that she was “thinking that it’s going to go our way on Tuesday, Nov. 4. I truly believe that the wisdom of the people will be revealed on that day,” she said.

Maverick! After all, she has said she has nothing to lose.

I hope the ever-narrowing frothing right base rushes to embrace their new Queen.

(Graphic mailed in from a reader)

The first rule of what will become the new Christian Nationalist party, should the Republicans be exiled in disgrace in a few days, will be that no one ever takes responsibility:

“She’s lost confidence in most of the people on the plane,” said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to “go rogue” in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.

“I think she’d like to go more rogue,” he said.

The emergence of a Palin faction comes as Republicans gird for a battle over the future of their party: Some see her as a charismatic, hawkish conservative leader with the potential, still unrealized, to cross over to attract moderate voters. Anger among Republicans who see Palin as a star and as a potential future leader has boiled over because, they say, they see other senior McCain aides preparing to blame her in the event he is defeated.

“These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves,” a McCain insider said, referring to McCain’s chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, and to Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush aide who has taken a lead role in Palin’s campaign. Palin’s partisans blame Wallace, in particular, for Palin’s avoiding of the media for days and then giving a high-stakes interview to CBS News’ Katie Couric, whose sometimes painful content the campaign allowed to be parceled out over a week.

“A number of Gov. Palin’s staff have not had her best interests at heart, and they have not had the campaign’s best interests at heart,” the McCain insider fumed, noting that Wallace left an executive job at CBS to join the campaign.

Got it? The vapid moron made a total fool of herself, got completely humiliated by Katie Couric because she couldn’t answer even the most basic questions, and it is all the fault of… the person who scheduled the interview.

Well, it isn’t all Nicole Wallace’s fault. It is also partially the fault of the liberal gotcha media. And the viewers, who unfairly judged her a moron. They share some blame, too. But the one person who is most definitely not to blame, and, as you can see from this story, is really the big victim- that would be our mavericky maverick from Alaska, Sarah Palin.

Someone should ask her if maybe her disastrous performance was just God’s will.

The best thing about the upcoming circular firing squad is that once former true-believers like Nicole Wallace are screwed over royally by the wingnut fringe of the party, they will start to go all Scott McClellan. Take it from my experience- nothing hardens your resolve like being called a traitor after watching the Mayberry Machiavellis destroy your party. If you missed McClellan last night on Larry King, you really missed a treat. I personally don’t care much for the guy, but it is clear that he is done with the GOP for a good long while:

Now, I consider myself a centrist. When I went to work for then Governor Bush, I did so because I believed he was someone who was committed to working across the aisle to get things done, as he had done as governor of Texas. I thought we could bring that same sort of bipartisan spirit to Washington and change the tone. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.

I’m supporting Barack Obama for two primary reasons. First, I believe that he can change the way Washington works for the better.

They never should have lied to him and used him to lie. Now you can laugh at McClellan if you want- I take him at his word that he really thought he was doing the right thing going to work for Bush. I thought I was doing the right thing, too, when I voted for him. But I really understand to some extent where he is right now- he is pissed. He feels used. He feels betrayed. He feels angry. And he knows who did it, and he is not going to fall for the same bullshit again.

I don’t think McClellan will ever be a Democrat, but I do think that the narrowing of the Republican party down to the vicious, ignorant, bitter core of Palin acolytes and Rovian hacks is a good thing, and the Christian Nationalists that will take over the party will be more than willing to throw aside the McClellans, the Powells, the Buckleys, and everyone who who they deem has shown insufficient fealty to the cause.

We should support that. The more we can marginalize the rancid remains of the GOP into a discredited Palin wing, the neo-cons with their hillbilly yokel Christian right front, the better.

Sarah Palin, ever the moron, in her big “policy speech” yesterday:

Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? […] You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

Take it away, PZ Myers:

This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work? — and countries like France and Germany and England and Canada and China and India and others are all respected participants in these efforts.

Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of the most powerful tools in genetics and molecular biology are available in fruit flies, and these are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. Molecular genetics has revealed that humans share key molecules, the basic developmental toolkit, with all other animals, thanks to our shared evolutionary heritage (something else the wackaloon from Wasilla denies), and that we can use these other organisms to probe the fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in the formation of the nervous system — precisely the phenomena Palin claims are so important.

This is the type of ignorant Christian Nationalism, where hillbilly gut instincts and religious edicts trump knowledge and reason, that corrupt Republicanism has devolved into. This is what is meant to be “conservative” these days. It has nothing to do with the conservatism of years past, and everything to do with nativism (notice how Paris, France was included in the mocking- those god damned furriners!), reflexive hatred of the other, suspicion and derision towards those who know something, and cronyism. This woman embodies everything that is wrong with the current Republican party; there is a reason the know-nothings embrace her.

The only thing missing from the speech the bumbling and ignorant fool delivered yesterday was an attack on Michael J. Fox and stem cell research. Or maybe she could have attacked Arlen Specter as being a baby killer for embracing stem-cell research. That would have served as a poignant wingnut tribute to her predecessors.

These people must be absolutely destroyed on November 4th. It is a national imperative. This is more important than anything that happens in Iraq and Afghanistan. And why is it that the people who claim to adhere to the culture of life are so filled with hate for… people?

Post your comments. Personally, I have to compliment Sarah Palin. She has a great ability to use a lot of words to say absolutely nothing. That’s unique.