Brains Wide Shut.
Unless you’ve been trapped under something heavy for the past few days (or are sensible and have given up trying to follow the goings-on of Our Lady of Meese Hunting), you are likely aware that the “Rootin’ Tootin’ I Can See Putin” Sarah Palin Commemorative Family Vacation Slash Bus Tour is underway — and to hilarious effect.
But before we keep on bussin’, y’all, let’s get one thing clear: Sarah Palin is not running for President. I repeat: Sarah Palin is not running for President.
She’s smart enough to know how stupid she is. She’s smart enough to know that Obama would figuratively wipe the debate floor with her ass.
She’s also smart enough to know that she does not have the intellectual wherewithal to spend the time required to be able to answer such hard-hitting questions as: “Which newspapers do you read?”
Sarah is a grifter, and grifters gonna grift.
Sarah is also an attention hog, which means that she is going to be a thorn in the side of T-Paw or Mr. Kitten Mittens, or whomever ends up falling ass over elbow into the Republican nomination.
That said, let’s review the latest in “Sarah Palin Does the Darndest Things,” shall we?
Over the weekend, there was Sarah’s reliance on her primitive handeprompter:
And today there was the visit to the great “Statute” of Liberty —
— where Sarah said things — Very Serious Unintelligible Things:
“This Statue of Liberty was gifted to us by foreign leaders, really as a warning to us, it was a warning to us to stay unique and to stay exceptional from other countries. Certainly not to go down the path of other countries that adopted socialist policies,” Palin said to cheers from the crowd.
And this:
“Lady Liberty is the symbol of unity and friendship we have with other freedom-loving nations. It’s also a “warning” of sorts, as France encouraged us to keep democracy alive as the recipient of this gift… basically telling us not to blow it. Thank you for this reminder, France!”
Whaaaaa?!
Sweet Cheesus, won’t someone tell the Duchess von Winkington that speaking generally involves more than stringing random words together?
Come to think of it, has anyone considered that the reason she is so frequently pictured in the woods doing woodsy shit is that she’s some sort of modern-day Mowgli? Laugh if you must, but have you watched theThe Jungle Book lately?
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Brydon: [Kitty is teaching Mowgli how to talk] These are animals.
Mowgli: Theeze aur animals.
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Brydon: Animals are our friends.
Mowgli: Animals aur aur friend. What friend?
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Brydon: I’m your friend, and, uh, Doctor Plumford’s your friend.
Dr. Julien Plumford: Tongue depressor. Also friend.
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Brydon: Birds are beautiful.
Mowgli: Birds
[Doctor Plumford puts a tongue depressor in Mowgli’s mouth, and Mowgli can only mumble]
Mowgli: aur beautiful.
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Brydon: Doctor Plumford, please.
Dr. Julien Plumford: Kitty, I am trying to examine him.
[looks at Mowgli]
Dr. Julien Plumford: Kitty is pest.
Mowgli: Pest.
Dr. Julien Plumford: You see, he understands.
Mowgli: [to Kitty] You’s pest.
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Brydon: No, no. You are pest. You *are* pest. Are. Are.
Mowgli: Aur. Au
[Doctor Plumford puts the tongue depressor in Mowgli’s mouth]
Mowgli: Auaa, aaa, aaa.
Dr. Julien Plumford: Good.
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Brydon: Birds are beautiful.
Mowgli: Birds are beautiful. So is you.
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Brydon: So *are* you.
Mowgli: Yes. You are.
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Brydon: Thank you.
Dr. Julien Plumford: Picking up fast, isn’t he.
And —
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Brydon: So can you speak with the animals?
Mowgli: Yes, but they speak not as men speak. With animals, every move, every look, every sound, has a meaning.
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Brydon: Ahh.
Mowgli: The jungle speaks to me. Because I’ve learned how to listen.
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Brydon: If you could have spoken to me the first time in the jungle, what would you have said? Did you, uh… did you feel anything?
Mowgli: Fire.
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Brydon: Fire?
Mowgli: Great fire.
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Brydon: Oh… It’s late, we’d better go.
Mowgli: Please. Stay here. With me.
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Brydon: I can’t. There are conventions, formalities. Things that are just not done. I must do what is civilized.
Mowgli: What must I do?
Fire.
Great fire. Sarah should ceremoniously hurl herself into one, and then die in it.
[via Oliver Willis and Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog]
[cross-posted]
JCT
My g_d, we should be so fucking lucky at this point.
Her incoherence is truly awe-inspiring and depressing, all at the SAME TIME.
Damn you John McCain!!!!!
hilts
Earlier tonight, Lawrence O’Donnell aired a clip of John Oliver questioning the Mooseburger Queen during her NY dog and pony show. Can’t wait to see the full segment on The Daily Show.
As dumb as Palin is, at least she remembered that the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France and not a gift from Hungary or Brazil.
Ghanima Atreides
We have passed the knee of the exponential curve and are now approaching vertical slope. There is no order of transinfinity great enough to approximate Peak Wingnut, so we will simply warp into the full Wingularity…where the specific gravity of wingnuttery will deform the very fabric of reality. At the asymptote of this curve the distance between any two points becomes infinity and
matterreality ceases to exist.Sarah Palin will then become able to create reality.
The Wingularity is Near.
cynn
We deserve this.
Anya
@cynn: Yes, we do. Eight years of Bush and the 2010 midterm elections proves it.
mclaren
OMG! A STATUTE WAS VIOLATED!
JS
“This Statue of Liberty was gifted to us by foreign leaders,
France.
.. really as a warning to us, it was a warning to us to stay unique and to stay exceptional from other countries. Certainly not to go down the path of other countries that adopted socialist policies
Like France?
Montana
Run, Sarah run. Sarah Palin was so successful as a governor, she graduated early “Bitter Quitter”, she real is a “Dan Quayle” in heels. She clearly loves “dishing it out” but real can’t take it because she loves playing the victim card. Poor thing she fail as a VP candidate (her lie that her daughter was engaged was such a farce), her stand-up comic fiasco on the Jay Leno Show, please, her TV show canceled after declining rating, I guess her perpetual run for the White House is the only thing she can look forward to, but since she is a coward she will only throw small minded rocks, poor thing. Since we already had an idiot “W” that caused our current economic debacle, America knows not to trust the GOP fools who flaunt the idiocy.
You know what this current crowd of GOP liars want is to turn the United Sates into China, where only a few giant corporations run things, they own the factories, that apartments, the grocery stores, the gas stations, the newspaper and magazine publications, the radio stations, the television stations and you pay them and they get all the benefits, and if you do not like it go jump off cliff. Well some Chinese workers seeing that as individuals that they cannot progress have done just that by committing suicide. The current crowd of GOP liars want to abolish Medicare from the elderly, they want to abolish a woman’s right to choose and have control over her own body, they want to abolish collective bargaining rights, and on top of it all they want to blame the poor, the middle class and the public sector workers for a recession that the GOP created, while their beloved “Fat cats” continue to pay themselves exorbitant salaries, bonuses, fringe benefits. Yes this is the GOP “Radical Right-Wing Social Engineering” that they dream about. The win in New York was the beginning but the next will be Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and later the other states of our nation. So run, Sarah run.
Phil Perspective
I wouldn’t be so sure. According to Nate Silver, on the Twitter machine, Dick Morris has guaranteed that Snowbilly Snooki isn’t running. And you know what that means. I don’t know what TV Nate was watching, but apparently the hooker lover was on the TV in front of him.
Jason
I’ll bet you a steak dinner she is running for president. Like Trump, the woman clearly has narcissistic personality disorder, and such people do not think straight. As if Palin’s motorcycle at the Rolling Thunder event wasn’t enough of a clue: adorned with a Bush-face and the legend “Miss Me?”
JonF
Rolling Blunder.
Worst. Bus Tour. Since Ken Kesey stabbed Tom Wolfe over a bag of pork rinds in 1958.
cynn
@Montana: As I said, we deserve this.
baldheadeddork
She’s not running for the Republican nomination, that’s too much work. But if a “moderate/grownup” like Romney or Pawlenty wins the GOP nomination, I’ll bet you a really good dinner that Palin jumps in next summer as an independent.
Any takers?
allium
I remember learning in school how Joseph Wurlitzer convinced people to donate their patties and knuckles to build a pedagogue for the Statute.
gnomedad
A Statute of Limitations would come in handy.
Martin
Actually, given the impetus for the gift, the Statue of Liberty is also an affirmation of the benefit of a strong federal government to overcome a bunch of fucktard states insisting on fucktard ideas.
Waldo
I love a weak GOP candidate as much as the next guy, but can we at least get one with half a brain? You know, just in case the unthinkable does happen.
SiubhanDuinne
We go strolling through the park
Goosing statutes in the dark:
If Sherman’s horse can take it, why can’t you?
The Dangerman
It doesn’t matter a bit how smart she is or isn’t; she is:
1) White (or, at least, not of of “those”)
2) A Tea Partier that pisses off liberals (even better than a Republican that pisses of liberals)
3) Still the odds on favorite, methinks, to drop the N word on Obama (see #1)
She will run. She won’t debate Republicans. If nominated, she won’t debate Obama. She won’t ever do interviews beyond FOX and she’ll take her chances on a shitty economy, especially in the Swings, being enough to get her over the top.
Loneoak
I think she’s also smart enough to realize how fucking lazy she is. Why would she WANT that job? Campaigning is just about the hardest job in the world, except for actually running this shithole of a declining empire. She has unambiguously demonstrated how she feels about actual work.
hilts
@cynn: @Anya:
We deserve real journalists/commentators and not circus clowns like Chris Matthews pretending to be one.
Chris “Starbursts” Matthews:
Martin
@hilts: You know, I didn’t see the word ‘hooters’ in that quote, but by god, it’s just got to be in there somewhere…
The Dangerman
@Jason:
I’m with you; I think her chance of running is near 100%…
…and, with what should be a boatload (like U.S.S. Enterprise sized) of Citizens United money and voter suppression on a massive scale (not to mention Diebold), I would say she has a nonzero chance of winning. It isn’t a very high chance of winning, but it ain’t zero.
dr. bloor
I thought France was full of the cheese-eating socialist surrender monkey guys.
I’m so confused.
hilts
@Martin:
If Sarah Palin were truly a mama grizzly instead of a mama jellyfish and actually ran for president, Chris Matthews and many of his colleagues in the Washington Press Corps would have many erections lasting more than 4 hours.
beltane
@hilts: Come on, you can’t deny that Sarah’s voice is electrifying. She never fails to make my hair stand on end with that screeching cackling voice.
Donut
@the Dangerman
I think this is truly rhe only reason why Conservatives like this freak. They are nihilistic enough to not care one way or the other if she can win. It’s all about pissing off liberals. That’s all she does.
sdhays
@ABL: I think you’re being waaaay too generous in suggesting that Sarah Palin has the self-awareness to “know how stupid she is”. On the other hand, without a doubt, she is profoundly lazy, and running for President is a lot of hard work.
I just can’t decide which aspect of her personality will win: laziness or delusional narcissism. Maybe she’ll just pull a more high-powered Fred Thompson…
beltane
@hilts: Is there a shortage of available women in the Beltway bubble? Because men like Chris Matthews sound like they haven’t got laid in decades. Only in America can a menopausal, shrieking, religious fanatic grandmother be treated as the modern day embodiment of Aphrodite. If Mitt Romney decides to don the hooker boots Chris Matthews will be a spent man.
Mark S.
@hilts:
Huh? That’s not one of her strengths. I’d probably say her voice is one of her least attractive qualities. Well, and also that she’s dumb as shit, but I like smart women.
I’ve been working so much lately I’ve hardly paid any attention to the news. Good to see I haven’t missed much.
hilts
When Palin was a child, a computer chip was implanted in her brain that mashes the cut-up technique of William Burroughs with the stream of consciousness of James Joyce.
hilts
@beltane: @Mark S.:
I find Palin’s voice about as alluring as the sound of fingernails being dragged across a chalkboard. Matthews’ wife deserves a medal for staying married to him.
The Dangerman
@efgoldman:
I think she has a Messianic Complex that is truly dangerous; yes, she is lazy and greedy, but she may feel it’s her “calling”.
sloan
“Statute” of Liberty. Is that the one in Vegas?
ABL
@Montana: well-done. while reading this, i flashed back to college when i first read the sound and the fury. i’ve never hated faulkner so much as i did when i thought the whole fucking book was going to be brain ‘splodey stream-of-consciousness (or stream-of-conscientiousness as sarah would likely say).
Sarah is a Mowgli/Benjy hybrid.
Mnemosyne
@sdhays:
Yep. She’ll probably try to run, but there’s no way in hell she could make it through campaign season. Hell, she pretty much imploded in 2008 and she was only a candidate for, what, less than 2 months.
No way that Palin would be able to survive a full campaign. She’ll be sitting at home eating chips and watching “NCIS” long before the 2012 election.
beltane
@hilts: I’m convinced her speech is run through Google Translate. Maybe “Sarah Palin” is an elaborate hoax perpetrated by the Russians. She certainly does not appear to be fluent in English.
mclaren
@Jason:
There. Fixed that for you.
Martin
@Mnemosyne:
That’s because she kept getting shoved in front of that gotcha lamestream media. If she sticks to the cold reality-based Fox News, that won’t be a problem.
Vixen Strangely
She’s running like The Producers meant to put on a show. I don’t see how any person suspicious of any question ending in a “?” can be treated seriously by reporters–but that’s part of the fun in watching the media try to adapt itself to her. In the end, I think she’d have more fun playing the “sour grapes” role of deciding that being president isn’t worth it, anyway. (Crazy like a FOX news personality.)
When it comes to people hearing “The Call”–it’s Bachmann I’m a little more leery of. She isn’t about grift. That’s some wide-eyed, true-believing stuff she seems to be hooked on.
mclaren
@Vixen Strangely:
Evidently you slept through Ronald Reagan’s candidacy in 1980 and in 1984.
Davis X. Machina
@Mnemosyne:
Sarah Palin… Sarah Palin.
I can’t quite place it, but it sounds familiar. It’s the answer to a trivia question, right?
I just can’t come up with it… frustrating, but there it is. Part of getting old, I guess.
Jenny
She denounced the DREAM act at the Statue of Liberty
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/9070/dreamact.jpg
In her broken English:
She really thinks she’s a Queen. She wants to people standing (literally and figuratively) before her.
Violet
@sdhays:
I agree. She’s being pulled in both directions. And her greed feeds into it as well. I just don’t know which way she’ll go, although I’m leaning toward she’s going to run. And she could win the nomination.
mclaren
@Violet:
Does anyone else notice that this offers a precisely accurate description of all the winning Republican presidential candidates since 1968?
Violet
Sarah Palin doesn’t like being asked questions about how she’s paying for stuff. This could make a campaign fun!
Excellent stuff. Keep asking, lamestream media. It’s clear being asked questions about how she’s paying for stuff gets her a little defensive. I love the “I’m not asking you to pay for a penny of this trip” bit. Yeah…only the people who see the giant DONATE button on her website.
Random User Name
I just finished reading Frank Bailey’s book on Palin, and the thing that shocked me the most – and I truly didn’t think anything she did could shock me by now – was the fact that she regularly had her staff actively Freeping online opinion polls while she was governor.
He published email excerpts where they would have contests among themselves over how many times they voted, and then virtually high-fiving each other when they “won” the poll. Palin herself included.
It’s a pretty good book, mostly confirmed everything I’d already suspected about her, but the perspective of someone who’d been a real true believer was interesting. Bailey’s conclusion once his eyes were opened, seemed to be that she and Todd are both vile, egotistical creatures who are apparently motivated only by revenge, personal gain and $$$$.
Violet
@mclaren:
I don’t think George Bush the Elder was lazy. The Younger, certainly.
hilts
@mclaren:
Ronald Reagan was a Rhodes Scholar compared to this babbling buffoon from Alaska.
@sdhays:
@Violet:
Palin’s upcoming documentary should be titled The Whiner. Her laziness will beat her narcissism in a landslide.
Jenny
@Violet: the press is not smart enough to come up with even this simple question, which makes me think RNC operates frustrated with her are feeding them questions.
Vixen Strangely
@mclaren:
Well, I was a bit young during the Reagan years, actually. But I do remember he had that fabulous trick of simply pretending he did not hear questions. Whereas Palin hears them alright–
But what are they supposed TO MEAN!!??
I think her prickliness is a qualitative difference of some note. If Reagan wanted to bs, he bs’ed plenty. Palin either lacks the wit or the will to extemporize.
Cliff in NH
I invite comments on the Banksters thread:
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/06/01/banksters-caught-in-the-immigration-crossfire/#comment-2614235
ABL
@hilts: ha!
Gretchen
I think she’ll go third-party too. Competing for the actual Republican nomination would be too much work – debating and stuff, and she’d have to give up her Fox seat. But once Pawlenty or Romney has it, she can take Facebook and twitter shots at the nominee, refuse to debate, and just be a spoiler. She doesn’t really want the hard job, she just wants to be important.
Greyjoy
I don’t think Palin is running for President at all. She couldn’t even make it through an entire term as MAYOR. She wouldn’t last a week in the White House before throwing in the towel, because actual work is involved and people would expect things of her. What Palin is running for is ATTENTION. Oprah just quit, all the GOP candidates suck, Trump flamed out on his own bid for attention, and now there’s a big gaping hole just dying to be filled for all the people who need something to watch. Palin is filling it.
The Tim Channel
It seems the Republican party is sorely lacking in reality based reasoning. On top of that, at least half the field of Republican hopefuls are engaged with dog-piling on Jeebus. The other half are too busy trying to snatch Grandma’s medicare and social security that they don’t have time for proper genuflection.
There MUST be a poll somewhere showing the efficacy of embracing Jeebus while simultaneously throttling Granny that I overlooked. Where’s Nate Silver when you need him?
Enjoy.
Johannes
@Ghanima Atreides: So you’re telling me that Sarah Frickin’ Palin is the Bad Wolf?
Johannes
@Jenny: I would have thought she’d prefer them kneeling.
Jo
Best comment of the
dayyear:Bwahahahahahaha, indeed!
TreeBeard
“This Statue of Liberty was gifted to us by foreign leaders, really as a warning to us, it was a warning to us to stay unique and to stay exceptional from other countries. Certainly not to go down the path of other countries that adopted socialist policies,”
I’m not American, but I know enough about the US for that to make me really, really depressed.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
I really feel sorry for her kids. Manic Mom has decided we’re going on vacation – and WE’RE ALL GOING! You can not stay home at your friends house. What a reality creep show the media has created.
Jado
I think everyone may be forgetting one important thing – if she runs, she will have a VP candidate on her ticket.
W proved that a PRESIDENT doesn’t technically need to do ANYTHING, as long as a strong focused VP is there to make sure the government contracts go to the right contractors and the right laws are passed. If she gets a policy wonk for a VP, and they actually win the election, she will set a record for “clearing brush” on her ranch in Wasilla, while letting Grover Norquist and his Nazgul invade Iran and drill for oil thru baby harp seal carcasses.
If I were her, I would ask Cheney to be her VP. It worked for W. And we are stupid enough to go for it again, I think.
khead
You know who else saw America by bus while stringing random words together? Beavis and Butthead.
At first I wondered why the movie is running on Cinemax again… but after thinking about it a bit, I’m not sure it’s just a coincidence.
Pongo
KXB
@Jenny:
Apparently, she forgot that the early 20th century term WOP – With-Out Papers – was a slur thrown at Italians, because many, in fact, did not have papers.
In percentage terms, the immigration wave of the late 19th-early 20th century was much higher than now. Does anyone seriously think they had all their papers in order, given the technology at the time. Former NY governor Pataki has admitted his own grandmother was an illegal immigrant from Hungary.
Paul in KY
@hilts: Boy, he wants to do her sooooo bad!
AZmando
Seems like she should run as an independent. She knows she would have no chance of winning, but she could aqueeze her marks for more money, assure Obama’s election, and thereby assure herself of four more years of income from her anti-Obama screechings.
Aet
Its a Kingmaker ploy. She’s casting herself as a populist figure. She can then be in a position to ‘speak for the base’.
Its the best of both worlds. If Repubs win, she goes on the talkshow circuit, takes some cushy do-nothing position as leader of an astroturf-populist PAC, and makes millions on the wingnut welfare circuit. If they lose, she loses nothing while playing up the image of the perpetual outsider. It can’t fail because it risks nothing.
Its kind of clever and deliciously mercenary. It’s a wonderfully canny representation of the GOP: a profit-focused political organism that does nothing other than fleece rubes.