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.
Olliander
You mean a politician is engaging in party politics? Who’d of thunk it? This is political maneuvering and partisanship at the most. This is hardly something to get worked up over.
Wait—I think the President is appointing some partisans to fill in the slots at the Treasury! Let’s impeach him!!
stacie
Contrast this with a certain other ’08 contender, who busily stocked his cabinet with opponents who called him unready, and has reached out repeatedly to Palin’s former running mate.
One = classy. One = pissy. Happy I voted as I did.
Laura W
Ha! There she is, asking us for money for her PAC.
This is some sort of wacky instant karma ad program with Teh Great Gizoogle you got goin’ on. Say someone’s name in print and next thing you know they are smirking at you from the sidebar. Genius.
JL
John McCain selected her as his running mate just because of her personality.
Now he blames her for his loss. lol
Did anyone read this article at Think Progress?
IMO, McCain holds a grudge.
DougJ
That about sums it up.
Brick Oven Bill
Re: Hero Worship, Bad Governance, and Dogma
Perhaps she is keeping score, brother. Ha ha. But the bloom comes off all roses, even those roses which are immune from criticism.
Keith
Shades of the John Bolton nomination.
Lola
This is what scares me about Palin. She thinks her petty feelings should be nurtured and acted upon. I want her to run in ’12 so we can decimate her and be done with it.
Lola
@ BOB
Find me a case where Obama hurts someone else’s career out of revenge and then we will talk.
Ramalamadingdong
What I find interesting is her desire, or intent, to escalate family issues through her office and into the media. Generally politicians take pains to hide the crazy in the family. Not Miss Sarah. I rather think she revels in it.
To any rational observer, the only course of action would be to lay low and retool the image before the next run. Not Miss Sarah. Its crazy stupid revenge all the way to 2012.
OhSuzanna
You should wander over to Mudflats blog and take a gander at the letter sent on behalf of Palin stating that the process (of having only Democratic Senators vote for the replacement) is unconstitutional and demanding that the entire Senate (Republicans and Democrats) vote for Sarah’s designee. It’s just outrageous.
Dennis-SGMM
From one of the linked articles:
Governor Palin is obviously not troubled by consistency. She can be counted on to make decisions based solely on what will get her the maximum publicity while discomfiting the Democrats. She is either unaware or oblivious to the fact that her decision in this instance may affect sitting Republican legislators because it’s all about Sarah.
cmorenc
We are pissing into the wind if we think ranting about Sarah Palin in a more-or-less progressive-leaning forum will change her nature or mode of thinking/operation (or that of her supporters who think she’s the cat’s pajamas, just what the country needs more of).
OTOH, it does usefully reinforce to us the importance of prevailing over these idiots for reasons beyond the particular sort of policy agenda we may be inclined to favor. We need rational, competent people in government office who are able to get along with one another with civility and honesty, who think and behave like adults and treat the citizenry as such. We’re not likely to get that sort of person, regardless of their ideology, with the likes of Sarah Palin in office, and too much of the electorate comprised of the sort of folks who think the country would be much better if Palin and more folks like her were in office.
WereBear
Wingnuts like power. The more overtly displayed and baldly egregious, the better.
If you are all about who has the bigger boot, and what it stomps, Palin is your philosophy in action. They think the Other Side does the same thing; and belittle the Other Side for passing up opportunities to do so.
If the whole political process is just another version of WWF, why not?
SGEW
Barack Obama consigned Joe Biden to the dustbin of history by choosing him to be his powerless V.P. in revenge for the "articulate and clean" remark. Eight years of cutting ribbons, attending funerals, acting as a comedic foil during press conferences, and furtively lurking in the background while idly wondering about the President’s cholesterol levels: that’s just a mean thing to do to a guy. Devious.
joe from Lowell
It must be very liberating for a politician not to care how well the government operates. You can indulge all sorts of partisan and personal grudges using the powers of your office, once liberated from the belief that you need to govern responsibly.
Brick Oven Bill
Alice Palmer. Forrest Claypool. Blair Hull. And not the careers, but the the innocence of the children of the Ryans, by making an issue of the divorce custody records to be opened ahead of the Senate vote. These names perhaps not out of revenge, but out of ambition, which is probably more worrisome.
This is OK though. Old taboos are being abandoned, which is healthy in a democracy.
The question is: how will he handle his introduction to criticism? My guess is not well. Rasmussen’s Index is down to +3, the lowest score to date, for the second day in a row.
Incertus
@SGEW: Even so, Joe will get more attention now than he would have had he stayed the senior Senator from Delaware. He’s getting something out of the deal–closer to the Presidency than he ever expected to be.
Hoya
No smart Republican will run for the nomination in 2012. It would take a least 1 billion in fundraising in order to beat the President(who likely raise that and more). Better to keep the powder dry for 2016. The economy will hopefully fully recovered by 2016, making "Time for a Change!" GOP mantra more palatable.
Comrade Darkness
@Brick Oven Bill, Hey, just for giggles I went to Claypool’s wikipedia page. It must have been written by his personal assistant or him on a bender, because it reads like a pimped up high school resume, and now it can conveniently go in my file of self-aggrandized wiki entries useful as examples for my clients of: do not make this mistake since you can easily see how much it makes you look like a wanker.
So, thanks for that.
WereBear
I don’t believe we’ve yet discussed any.
Throwin Stones
OT – Are you hearing anything on the cops shot in Pittsburgh?
Edit: this just came up on Yahoo:
A man opened fire on officers during a domestic disturbance call Saturday morning, killing three of them, a police official said. Friends said he feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.
Iowa Housewife
@Laura W: You, on the other hand, have a very nice ad.
AnneW
@joe from Lowell:
Yeah, Blagojevich ran the same way.
SGEW
@Incertus: I still hold that Joey made a big personal sacrifice by agreeing to become th’ veep, as his liberty to freely bloviate at the drop of a hat to anyone who would listen is severely curtailed. I suspect that the sum total amount of national attention he can receive matters less to him than the freedom to ramble on about anything that happens to cross his mind at that particular moment, at length, discursively, and with profanity. I mean, th’ man can’t even crack jokes anymore without getting the evil eye from his boss (and he has a boss now: anathema for the Champ!). He probably has a sign on the back of his office door now that reads: "Think Before Speaking, Or Else" (even worse, this sign was put there by Rahm, who gave him a dirty look when he did it). Pretty soon his own press secretary won’t allow him to take calls from the media and phone numbers will start disappearing from his iPhone’s contacts list ("I coulda sworn I had Stephanopoulos’ number in here"). By the end of the second term he won’t have been seen in public for 23 months, and the most media attention he’ll get will be a conspiracy theory that holds that he is, in fact, dead, until a foreign leader dies and he is seen at the funeral (NYT: "Biden Spotted at Funeral, Ending Greatly Exaggerated Rumors").
I’m telling you, it’s a dirty trick by Barack in a grand scheme of long-term petty revenge. They’ll laugh about it in 2017. It’s the only possible explanation. And makes as much sense as anything B.O.B.’s been saying.
Also: I, too, rather like Laura’s ads.
gwangung
And they said irony was dead in America…
Nellcote
I hope Ted Stevens runs against Palin for gov. in 2010.
Mojotron
I can’t find it now but there was a quote from Tim Grussendorf where he said that he never meant to register as a republican and that it was a "mistake". Now to convince the rest of them….
Tax Analyst
Well, this is more or less standard GOP behavior in many places. Some are a little more subtle than others, but it’s just what they do. GW Bush (think nominating John Bolton as our UN rep, just as one example), Norm Coleman (has no problem denying MN residents one of their Senatorial seats), most of the R’s in the CA Assembly and CA Senate (willing to let the state melt down to score some posturing points), just to name a few off the top of my head. I think disrespect for opponents, opposing points of view, and the public in general may be part of their party platform, or perhaps just some ingrained personality trait. Because everything is about getting power and retaining it. Whatever each individual Republican Senator might say when posturing for the media, as a group they have joined to block our economic recovery, even though they have no serious or substantial alternative plans to heal it.
The public good? That’s for sissies.
Is there a polite way to respond to this? No. Fuck them.
Laura W
@Iowa Housewife: Uh oh. Now I am compelled to smirk at you from the sidebar.
You too, SGEW
How about a wink instead? A wink is as good as a smirk to a….a….something.
;-)
A Blind Bat
@Laura W: Good enough for me, anyway. ;-)
Tax Analyst
…an Iowa Housewife?
Iowa Housewife
@Tax Analyst: Hey…..what does that mean anyway?
Corner Stone
Talk about damning by faint praise…
Although, I do have to admit my foily hat is in 100% agreement with SGEW.
Fuck you Joe Biden! Fuck you up your stupid ass!
MikeJ
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/33/messages/964.html
Dennis-SGMM
@SGEW:
LOL! I hear that Cheney’s "undisclosed location" is being redecorated as we speak.
SGEW
@Corner Stone: Hey, don’t get me wrong: I love Joe "Bloviator" Biden. I am truly saddened by the fact that I can no longer rely on him to call bullshit on Republican policy (i.e., when he could actually literally say "bullshit," on tape, and smile about it). Now he’s all hampered and constrained by the repressive Obama administration. Free Joe Biden!
If V.P. Cheney could say "go fuck yourself" to Patrick Leahy, can’t V.P. Biden go up to Bachmann and say she’s "a fucking retard"? Now that’s Vice Presidential behavior.
[note: I am joking, of course, but I always did kinda like Biden’s style when he was a Senator]
Corner Stone
@SGEW
I got your underlying thread of mancrush for JB. I can’t say I really dig him too much as "The Senator from MBNA" is way too close to the truth for comfort for me.
But I always did enjoy him piping up, and like you will miss it.
Lola
@ BOB
So your answer is no, Obama has never done anything similar out of revenge. Thanks for trying to hide that admission.
gnomedad
In other Palin news
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Quel surprise.
Update: got moderated. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. What was the magic word this time?
Jason
Any idea how much healthier Alaskan newspapers are than the rest of the country’s? Because it would seem to me that they have a pretty good thing going up there. I imagine investigative reporters up there have to feel pretty conflicted about their successes (or competence, even).
Tax Analyst
You mean it was supposed to mean something? I THINK the original line that Laura was transfiguring was something like, "A wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse" (corrections accepted, I’m winging it from memory here), so it appears her revised take was that "a wink was as good as a smirk to…" and it appeared to me from the context that this was sort of a mild jab tossed back at "Iowa Housewife" for her (your) remark referencing "your ad", and since I’m not allergic to occasionally putting my foot in my mouth I said it.
There…that wasn’t very hard and only a little convoluted – aren’t you sorry you asked?
Jamey
Sarah Palin is, in poetical terms, a "whispering eye."