It just never stops:
Sarah Palin’s not a quitter, she wants the public to know.
“I am not a quitter. I am a fighter,” Palin told CNN on Monday while on a family fishing trip, on the heels of her Friday bombshell announcement that she was resigning as Alaska’s governor.
Resign does come from Middle French origins, so it is possible she, as a “real” American, has no clue what it means. Also:
“I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we’ve been charged with and automatically throw them out,” she said.
There is no “Department of Law” at the White House.
How long does this have to go on before people stop speculating about her super-secret strategy and just come to terms with the fact that she is an idiot? Also. Ya’ know.
blogenfreude
The MSM is ever willing to have other idiots on to claim she’s a genius. It will never end.
David Hunt
Seriously? I no longer think there’s anything that she can do that would shift the opinions of any of the people that still think well of her. Nothing believable, anyway. I suppose she could announce that she’s going to have an affair with a gay black man for the sole purpose of being able to have a gay abortion. Barring that…
geg6
Bailin’ Palin lives in Opposite World, John. That’s the only explanation I have for the fact that everything she says really just means the exact opposite.
She makes my head hurt. More Al Franken, please. Even sober and boring Al is more entertaining than this woman. Hell, Harry Reid’s terrified face at the thought of Al Franken is more entertaining.
SGEW
8:27 a.m., today:
You have a lot of rope.
Common Sense
You know, every time a point guard resigns with his team, he makes a lot more money for doing the same work. Maybe she just confused the terms?
Crashman06
What worries me is that no amount of crazy behavior or continued nonsense spewed out by Palin or her surrogates will ever convince her supporters that she’s anything but a tireless crusader for real ‘Merican values. The more she fails, the more they love her.
joe from Lowell
Real Americans invent new federal departments all the time.
Not that you’d know, swilling your chardonnay-latte as you drive your Prius while listening to Joan Baez music in your coastal-elite, West Virginia metropolis.
over_educated
The “Sarah PAC” advertisement I see everytime I come to this sight gives me a delicious laugh.
MattF
So. I’ve been reading Robert Paxton’s “The Anatomy of Fascism”. An interesting book. Most of the book is a meditation on and interpretation of the history of actual European fascist movements– Paxton declines to try to define fascism until the last chapter, at which point reader has been educated about what actually happened, what fascist movements actually have done, and where they finally ended up. Recommended.
GRreynoldsCT00
you forgot the *wink* *wink*
GRreynoldsCT00
Ad Block Plus, it’s a good thing
geg6
OT, but WTF? Mail-order brides for religious nuts? Seriously? Jeebus.
Jason
How do you milk a lame duck?
MikeJ
It amuses me to no end that John posts about what a whack job she is and they pay him for it.
Woodrowfan
yesh, but does he have a happy smile Hitler on the cover?
Seriously, I will add it to my “must read” list, thanks.
Bill E Pilgrim
Great
newsmoveforbyMcCainPalin!GReynoldsCT00
Re the other one we are not supposed to talk about, my friend in L.A. they are offering tax deductions for any donations to help pay for the funeral… major credit cards accepted…. cripes whatta world
ppcli
I dunno. Kristol’s latest in the WashPost sure sounded like a guy who’s looking around to see where the lifeboats are. When even the head fappeur is backing away slowly, the tide seems to be turning.
.
Though I note that Kristol stuck in the phrase “wear their scorn as a badge of honor”. I thought I remembered that from Kristol’s former charge Dan Quayle, and sure enough:
I was right!
.
I smell a campaign slogan:
“Palin/Quayle 2012! Because your scorn is our badge of honor.”
Rey
As sick as I am of the daily Jackson coverage, watching this memorial service begin, it’s finally hitting me that Michael Jackson will be buried today and that really does make me somewhat sad.
Bill E Pilgrim
@geg6:
Yeah they seem hot to some guys but I’ve heard that often in the end the cultural adjustment is too much and they end up taking half your stuff and moving back to Heaven.
SGEW
Kate Snow at ABC News is my new hero.
Dog Is My Copilot
It’s painful to watch her speak. I can’t do it – I have to look away or change the channel. Much the same as I did whenever W spoke.
Crashman06
@ppcli:
Kristol is a hack and a fraud, though. I don’t think he REALLY believes in Palin’s; he’s just doing his best to pander to the base. That’s his job, even if he doesn’t believe in it with his heart. Maybe he’s trying to cut ties with her and look around for the next new wingnut.
On the other hand, I think David was referring to the true believers, though; the unhinged people who donate to her PAC or attended her rallies during the election. Those people will never lose faith in her.
jenniebee
@GRreynoldsCT00: then you aren’t aware that BJ now provides ad space for mail-order xtian filipino
bridessoul mates?JK
Sarah Palin is the undisputed biggest dumbass in American politics today.
If Palin ever won the Republican nomination it would be a crime against reason, rationality, logic, sanity, and civilization.
Sadly, Palin missed her one true calling in life. She would have been perfect as a cast member on Hee Haw.
JenJen
Deep Thought: If Sarah Palin thinks the purpose of that “Department of Law there in the White House” is to defend the Chief Executive against ethics complaints, is it any wonder that Sarah Palin is essentially resigning her office due to ethics complaints?
And also too, I realize I’m constantly bitching about Mika Brzezinski, and should probably just stop watching “Morning Joe,” but WTF is up with her and her Palin-Love? She’s practically mental over this loon. Am I in the minority to disagree with Mika, when she says that having five children is a great achievement and shows leadership? You know, I really don’t think so. But that’s probably because I am a Fake Obama-Voting American.
ppcli
Who would have imagined, when we were complaining about Pam Anderson’s Peta Ad, that we’d get Sarapac and weirdo submissive-asian fantasy pron instead.
.
Answered prayers worse than unanswered ones, be careful what you wish for, etc.
HRA
The truth is I fear for the rate at which my jaw drops every time I hear or read of another Palin stupidity. I am afraid there are a lot more on the horizon.
I am trying to reason our whether Bachmann saw Palin make the news with these horrific stupidities and decided to go that route for her own news cycles or if the both of them are really lacking in intelligence.
On the other hand since they are both brunettes, we blondes are happy to see them out there.
media browksi
There’s no Department of Law?! Then who did I apply for that internship with?
Damn you Sarah Palin! You’ve blown my internship opportunity!
GReynoldsCT00
@jenniebee:
Nope, missed that! Mostly I was just sick and tired of looking at Pam’s disgusting hooters…
shortstop
Maybe I’ll live to be amused another day, but this individual’s bottomless fucking stupidity is actually becoming painful to me now. And I love a good GOP train wreck as much as the next girl.
jcricket
She’s burnishing her maverickiness, dontchaknow, by doing unusual (some might say idiotic) things. Everything she does that’s the opposite of what a normal person might do just makes her that much more mavericky. In fact, that’s what makes her more of a “real” American than the rest of us pointy-haired liberal elitistist coastal types (AK’s coast doesn’t count as a coast in this example, because it’s craggy, and rough, like a macho American, not sandy and smooth, like a homo’s butt) – her willingness to defend the most insane of actions as well thought out and planned. To infinity and beyond!
But seriously
Remember, legalizing gay marriage and affirmative action forced her to have that gay affair with the black guy – and the forced abortion was part of Obama’s “Healthy Americans” health care savings plan.
How about we re-appropriate AK’s oil wealth and use it to pay for national health care, instead of subsidizing the lifestyles of people too dumb to realize AK is basically uninhabitable?
media browksi
@JK: I’m kinda counting on her winning the GOP Primary through fundraising prowess, wingnut asshattery, and lizard people sex appeal
I’ve got a sushi dinner bet with a friend on it!
Face
Clearly a liberal gotcha girl who’s jealous of Palin’s looks and popularity.
lotus
Okay, read the whole Kate Snow story. We’re on notice:
“I don’t need a title to be the one to usher in what it is that needs to be done in our state or our country.”
All the crazy we’ve seen so far ain’t nuttin’ to what she’s got planned.
Ugh
Well, I’m not sure, watchya there, John, mean ’cause, gosh, I just sit and think to Todd and Bristol, “Gee, who’s sayin’ all that things” and we just laugh and gone fishin’ for the future of our dear state, that is Alaska, and Alaskins’, in general, are a tough sort of breed dogs and what you should know is that, as a former point guard and runner enthusiastistist, I’m not a quitter but will run and run and run until I stop dribbling or get called for traveling or whatever them there guys are doin’ these days out on the basketball field of life, so ya’ see, that’s why I am going to be resignin’ as Governor of our dear Alaskansans to go out and lead to better days for our country and also.
jenniebee
The full quote is a lot more disturbing:
It isn’t just that there isn’t a “Department of Law,” it’s that she thinks that if she was President, she’d be able to have any ethics complaints dismissed out of hand.
I for one think it’s time for National Lampoon to step up and publish Palin’s high school Civics notebook. Or, Palin herself could dig out her old notes and tests and publish them. Either way – comedy gold.
Napoleon
@JenJen:
Since my one grandmother had 10 maybe she should have been made Pope or something.
Da Bomb
The incompetent crackJaw strikes again!
What the hell is the “Department of Law”? She makes me want to kick someone randomly in the back of the throat.
jcricket
@media browksi: If Toomey can basically doom Specter before the primary even begins, people like Palin have an outside chance of winning the Republican nomination in 2012.
Of course everyone was afraid of that actor guy, Fred, something, and the thrice-married serial adulterer dude (I know, that could be anyone, but I’m referring to Rudy). Instead we ended up with McCain. So I think it’s a bit premature to assume the players will even be the same, let alone the motivations of the voters.
Of course if the GOP loses in 2010, I presume they will change course and moderate, bwahahahahahaha! No, seriously, they will then all unify behind the Palin/Jindal ticket (having a woman and a darkie on our ticket is sure to get us all those extra votes we lost last time, right?) for 2012.
media browksi
My actual take on her recent behaviour is that this is what comes of surrounding yourself with sycophants and high school chums. She’s getting advice from people of limited scope and no real political experience. They truly believe the path they’ve set out, from the tawdry trailerpark feuds to the July 3 WTF?! Resignation Speech are good ideas. That’s why she’s on a media defensive now: this is not going according to the best laid plans of wingnuts and secessionist snowmobile racers.
Paul W
@SGEW: To her (slight) defense, Alaska’s DOJ is called the Department of Law. Still scary that someone who could have been one feeble heartbeat from the presidency would mix those up. All other charges about her being an unethical power-tripping looney seem to stand.
ironranger
What about Michele Duggar? Don’t they have about 18 kids now? I wonder how Mika rates their accomplishments & leadership.
LD50
And Ann Coulter’s dead eyes, don’t forget.
media browksi
@jcricket: I think she has more than an outside chance. She’s a hero with the kind of wingnuts that will turn out in force for a primary, plus she has real $$ making power, fundy cred more than sufficient to trample any DC candidates, and serious name recognition.
The fact that she’s also an absurd candidate for POTUS is beside the point; her constituents don’t live in that world.
JK
@jenniebee:
Unfortunately, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Bill Maher are all on vacation this week. These guys would have a field day with Palin’s latest demonstration of breathtaking buffoonery.
jenniebee
@JenJen: omg, I loathe Mika. I want to put together a You Tube clip show with Hasselbeck, Mika, etc. doing their “oh, well don’t we know a lot” reactions like Mika did when Chuck Todd described Ricci as “legislating from the bench” and close the clips with Paul Begala’s response to Meghan McCain’s “well I wasn’t born during the Reagan administration” excuse and Meghan’s “wow, Paul, you just know everything!” little snide response. Mika and her ilk are the patron saints of the Know Nothings.
But since I don’t have a clue how to get the footage or assemble the clips, and since I don’t own a TIVO, I’m going to have to settle for scanning youtube for stuff like this.
kay
Such a liar. You won’t hear it on the news, but the per diem issue is legit. She had to pay the money back.
She’ll have to pay per diem money back on the latest ethics charge, too.
She’s charging the state for living expenses, and she’s not supposed to be doing that. She knows it.
The complete bullshit surrounding this person is all but a fortress. The truth never breaks through her barrage of babble.
I like how she’s spending time with her family. Tweeting and giving interviews. Unless Andrea Mitchell is a member of her family, she’s lying about that, too.
ET
What I want to know is when the supposedly “serious” media stop paying attention to anything she says and does. Just because she opens her mouth doesn’t mean it has to be covered. Just because she was a VP candidate doesn’t mean that everything she does has to be newsworthy once she is no longer governor and no longer running for public office (at least officially).
BenA
Is it wrong that I want to make a Sanford/Palin 2012 bumper sticker for my car?
Michael
@geg 6
How else are fat, loathesome 50-something 4 time Big “C” Conservative divorcees going to hook up with sweet young things that their sleazebag buddies who served briefly overseas describe as “LBFMs”? The Eastern European mail order brides are onto their schtick and know their promises are so much bullshit, so that leaves Asia and a confusing language barrier, as none of the purchasers of these services would ever bother to speak or be anything other than Real ‘Murkans.
John Hamilton Farr
@ET:
When we stop paying attention to the supposedly “serious” media and let them die on the vine! :-)
Michael
@JenJen
Mika would totally “do” Palin, given an empty green room and a few drinks. It could be some outstanding MILF on MILF action.
Napoleon
Palin definitely has an outside chance to win the Rep primary in 12 because the Republican primaries are nearly all winner take all, which is why McCain won the nomination without winning a majority of the votes cast in the Republican primaries. All she needs is a few people in the race that hang on forever that cut into each others voter base and not her own and she could be home free with 40% of the vote or less.
jenniebee
@JK: Seriously, I have to wonder, if we ripped the test from the 11th grade Standards of Learning for US Govt and asked her to respond to the questions on it, or to write a three-hundred word essay on Checks and Balances in the US Government, if she’d respond with
A. something she read on a refrigerator magnet
B. a declaration that she’s not going to answer the way that maybe we want her to, but she’s going to talk straight to the American people
C. “In what respect, Charlie?”
D. the most important check on the government is lowering taxes!
E. “you know, I don’t play that ‘gotcha journalism’ game!”
F. All of the above
G. All of the above, and then tell you that she did answer the question and if you don’t understand what was perfectly clear it’s because you’re ironical and cynical and not like Real Americans who “get it”
Redhand
Un-effing-believable. I’m in awe.
Michael
@lotus
Glenn Beck, exponentiated. Remember, she’s a secessionist Bircher nut. The stuff she’ll say will be comedy gold, and will make her VP candidacy look even more pathetic in hindsight.
Calouste
It’s pretty clear that Palin doesn’t plan on being elected President, she plans on being annointed President.
Although wether she thinks it is going to be by God, the GOP or a coup is not clear.
Alan
You’ve got to respect her spending the last couple weeks in office going fishing instead of the next year and a half traveling the world as a lame duck.
Legalize
Knowing stuff and pointing out that others do not know stuff is elitist and unfair to poor Sarah! who will never quit [giving interviews even while supposedly on vacation].
kay
@Napoleon:
Great point and probably true.
Svensker
@jenniebee:
That’s pretty much Sarah’s World. Stupid and entitled.
kay
@Alan:
It’s amazing that they get away with it.
Mark Sanford, according to published reports, spent his first day back at work lobbying the SC GOP not to vote that he should step down.
The vote has no real effect. It matters not at all to any South Carolinian who is not 1. Mark Sanford, or 2. a County GOP chair.
That was Job One. Him first, the GOP second, his state duties didn’t even make the cut.
jamie
There would be a riot at the convention that would make Chicago ’68 look like a county zoning meeting. No Republican ranking above Dog Catcher will stick their neck out for her.
I’m not sure how the primary schedule in 2012 works, but around the time she won South Carolina, some careful soul on the red team would post the Sarah Palin whitey video to Youtube.
Or at least, I hope they would.
Comrade Dread
Sarah Palin is a celebrity, nothing more. She has a legion of core devoted fans who have completely lost touch with reality and automatically think of anything she does as something that is the bestest, more brillientest, awesomest thing evar!
Reading some of the posts these past four days have been truly enlightening as to how utterly insane humanity has become/is.
This, people, is why I am a cynical old fart.
gnomedad
@Michael:
Updated:
1. War is Peace
2. Freedom is Slavery
3. Ignorance is Strength
4. Quitting is Persistance
5. Secession is Patriotism
6. … ?
LD50
I’m not sure how the primary schedule in 2012 works, but around the time she won South Carolina, [s]some careful soul on the red team[/s]Steve Schmidt would post the Sarah Palin whitey [s]darkie[/s] video to Youtube.
Fixed.
slag
This is the same person who thought that states could enact and uphold laws that violate the Constitution. And we expect her to know that the DOJ doesn’t exactly represent the President? Or that the Office of Legal Counsel can’t just automatically throw out ethics charges? (I’m guessing that’s what she’s insinuating here, but who the hell knows?)
Let’s just give her a show on some ecclesiastical channel (or maybe QVC) and be done with her. Also.
shelley matheis
If McCain had won last November.
Inauguration Day, 2009
Palin: What do you mean the Vice President doesn’t live in the White House?
Bubblegum Tate
I do believe her legal advisor is Lionel Hutz.
“Your honor, I move for a bad court thingy.”
“A mistrial?”
“You’re the law-talkin’ guy!”
JK
@jenniebee:
If, God forbid, Sarah Palin were ever elected president, would Republicans introduce a bill proclaiming Palinese as the official language of the United States?
Resources for learning the grammar and syntax of Palinese
Sentences to Nowhere – Readers ponder the speech of Sarah Palin.
http://www.slate.com/id/2201751
Diagramming Sarah – Can Palin’s sentences stand up to a grammarian?
http://www.slate.com/id/2201158
Dr. Word tries to analyze Sarah’s syntax
http://arizona.typepad.com/blog/2008/11/dr-word-tries-to-analyze-sarahs-syntax—-and-fails.html
Blurt and babble
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=841
Verbage
The Republican war on words
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/13/081013fa_fact_wood?currentPage=all
Palinese? Sarah-phonics? What Is This?
http://blow.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/palinese-sarah-phonics-what-is-this
Columns on Palin’s religious extremism
Palin un-American?: Why Dominionists must be Kept from Power
http://www.necessaryprose.com/dominionism.htm
Sarah Palin’s Blasphemy
http://www.necessaryprose.com/palinsblasphemy.htm
Palin is a living, breathing abomination and a walking punchline. It’s amazing that someone demonstrating as much ignorance as Palin hasn’t simply been laughed out of the country.
Ash Can
I laughed about this in the open thread, where I wasn’t supposed to post about Palin, so I’ll re-post it here where it’s kosher, because it’s just too good. From the same “department of law” ABC news item:
Because, don’tcha know, those situations were exactly the same as hers. Also.
See? Exactly the same.
Jeebus. Whoever put her on the GOP ticket with McCain needs to be beaten with a stick. First thing in the morning, every day. Until sundown.
Ash Can
@shelley matheis:
I couldn’t resist completing that.
Svensker
@Ash Can:
Since it apparently was Bill Kristol’s brilliant idea, I am totally down with that.
matoko_chan
Well, shez done for 2012.
And by 2016 she will be post-menopausal.
Either she will start to get the wrinklies or she will be botoxing and hormone therapying, which should amp up teh visible badcrazy by an order of magnitude.
Its ovah, anyway you look at it.
The chimpanzee is nevah going to get to fly the passenger jet.
And thass a good thing.
IndieTarheel
@lotus: You beat me to it. If there is such a thing as a Wingut Horizon, we ain’t there yet.
JK
If Palin wins the Republican nomination in 2012, John McCain should burn in Hell.
Speaking of Sarah Palin’s overuse of “also”, can Charlie Rose ever get through one goddamn interview without saying to a guest “Then there’s this”, just ask the fucking question Charlie.
e.c.
The “Department of Law” remark is stupid/horrifying in so many ways.
Most importantly I think it tells you all you need to know about her sense of power/entitlement in that she thinks that there is some special deparment devoted to legally protecting the President for anything he or she might want to do. And I’m sure she assumes she get to appoint whoever heads that department (preferably someone unqualified she went to high school with) which would make it much easier to make those silly charges just “go away”.
If she thinks the White House doesn’t have to deal with ethics issues, she might want to go back and take a look at how much time (and money) Clinton’s staff had to spend in front of Congress answering questions about important matters like Christmas card list.
JenJen
@jenniebee: Exactly. It’s maddening. Like yesterday, when she insisted her anecdotal conversations she had with four people at a barbecue meant that “real Americans” support Sarah Palin. Mika is a damned fool. And by the way, Mika? Obama won Pennsylvania by 11 points, so you’re dead wrong about that part of your anecdote.
And today, she was defensive over her comments and truly could not believe why anyone would be offended at having their authenticity as an American challenged by her. In a way, it was funny watching Joe Scarborough laugh at her, because he really does get why people were angry, but pretty much refused to share it with his cohost.
Chinn Romney
I don’t care what you all say, Sarah has nice Tits. The White House has been won with less (Beer with the codpiece anyone?).
JK
@JenJen:
Mika is morphing into a hybrid of Elizabeth Hasselbeck and Greta “The Scientologist” Van Susteren. Mika’s dad, Zbigniew, should write her out of his will.
Napoleon
I think if it looks like she has any type of chance to win the nomination that the establishment of the Republican party will do everything just short of having her hit (and then they may even try that) to take her out. It will be the dirtiest Republican primary season of all time.
inkadu
@Ugh: Bravo! Also, encore. Or was that computer generated?
The only thing I know about boat building is that it is really damn difficult work; and for it to last twenty years would be a real accomplishment. Or do you think he bought an aluminum shell and put a motor in it?
Also, Todd has a lot of handy buddies.
Comrade Darkness
@geg6, are you kidding. My loser cousin finally realized that mail order was the way to get the bride his church told him he was supposed to have. That ad is right on the mark, audience wise.
She’s cute, tho.
Cat Lady
@JenJen:
I think you’re right that Joe was really amused at Mika’s reaction to the criticism of her. I think it was a surprised amusement – Joe knows that cons in the media just say stuff that pisses off liberals whether they believe it or not, and Mika seemed to believe what she said, as if it really couldn’t be argued otherwise that people in cities weren’t to be considered Real Americans (TM). Mika is just a parrot. I’m surprised she doesn’t ask for a cracker now and again. I won’t watch it anymore, it’s so predictable.
JK
Sarah Palin’s most trusted economic advisers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omyUncKI7oU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLprXHbn19I&feature=related
flukebucket
@Ugh:
That was a thing of absolute beauty.
Joe and Mika are just trying to show the GOP the way back. I don’t see how in the hell anybody watches that show that early in the morning. Or any other time.
A la lanterne les aristos!
I still get that surreal (but good) ‘living in an alternate timeline’ feeling when I see Obama on television.
Which in the past few days has made me imagine the parallel universe where right now Palin is quitting as VP instead and Prez McCain is having an embolism.
…
I have very little to do at work all day.
Napoleon
@inkadu:
If he really did build it himself I would think that the most likely thing he did was lay up the fiberglass himself. I use to race open wheel race cars and there were some people I would race against that make their own fiberglass bodies that looked real good. Scale it up and there is no reason to think they couldn’t make a boat.
Comrade Kevin
Ok, let me try that again
Comrade Kevin
Quitter’s World!
LD50
Agreed. Steve Schmidt can do more damage to Palin with one afternoon on the phone than a hundred liberal bloggers. And Steve Schmidt clearly hates her fucking guts.
(I suspect SS thinks that if it weren’t for Palin, he’d have Rahm Emanuel’s job now.)
Dr. Loveless
Several of my Aussie friends are absolutely convinced that Palin and Pauline Hanson are the same person. Has anyone ever seen the two of them together?
Napoleon
@LD50:
I forget where I saw it yesterday or perhaps Sunday, so I don’t have a link, but I read where Huckabee said, in sum and substance, that Palin doesn’t need to worry about the Dems bringing up stuff in a general because if she gets into the primaries there is no way that she is not going to get blasted by her own side. And he said that out loud with everyone knowing there is a pretty good chance he will be a candidate.
I can’t wait, it will be the most entertaining political theater ever.
Sebastian Dangerfield
A-a-a-and, the question that she’s endeavoring to answer is: How on earth can she possibly contemplate a run at the presidency, since the process of running for president would surely involve the kind of meanness that she says has driven her out of office? Her answer — roughly, “as president, I’ll get to appoint people to make complaints about me go away”– was wildly unresponsive.
So, it’s not just that there’s no “Department of Law” in the White House.
It’s not just that there is no public agency devoted to dismissing ethics charges against a president.
It’s also that she doesn’t even seem to get that there’s this step before becoming president that’s called running for president, which involves precisely what she calls the “political bloodsport” that led to her quitting. She’s too dumb to realize that that was the quesiton or too dumb to realize that her feeble answer was not a good way to skirt what was a very good question.
wag
From Jesus’ General, where, miracle of miracles, Sarah has a post –
The General rocks….
inkadu
@Napoleon: Fiberglass would explain the longevity. I used to go visit a maritime museum where they built traditional boats with traditional tools. It’s insane. I had forgotten about fiberglass boats. I guess fiberglass is the wood of the real America.
geg6
@JenJen:
Even more maddening is the idea that Mika fucking Bzrezinski actually thinks she’s some sort of average American. Her damn father has been a presidential advisor since the Kennedy administration, the National Security Advisor to Carter, a faculty member at Harvard, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins, wrote some of the most influential works on totalitarianism in all of political science, and is still a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. And her damn brothers? One was an attorney for Clinton’s NSC and the other worked for John McCain.
She wouldn’t know a goddam average American if she got punched in the mouth by one. Which is what will happen should she ever come within arm’s length of me.
JenJen
@Cat Lady: Very true. Joe Scarborough drives me nuts, but he knows Sarah Palin is an idiot, he really does. Not that he wouldn’t sing her praises if she were the nominee, but he knows.
All this talk about 2012 is crazy. Look, if Sarah couldn’t handle the pressure of a few annoying ethics complaints, do you think she could handle a GOP Primary? Maybe she could ask her BFF John McCain how much fun GOP Primaries can be. Mittens and Haley will make mincemeat of this woman before Iowa even knows what hit it. One of the things Sarah constantly gets wrong is this: Democrats are the last people in the world she needs to concern herself with, because we sure as hell aren’t gonna stand in her way.
Calouste
People think that Palin made a mistake when she said “Department of Law”. She didn’t. Under Palin, the department formerly known as the Department of Justice would not be tasked with administring Justice, it would be tasked with laying down the Law. Sarah’s Law.
The same with the use of “your” in “your department of Law”. Combined with the regular recent references Palin makes to the governorship as a title, we cna safely conclude she is the representative of “l’etat c’est moi” in the 21st century.
BethanyAnne
Comrade Kev, I think you meant this.
IndieTarheel
@JenJen:
In the order of your questions and/or statements:
1.Yes, but it’s more than justified.
2.Yes.
3.See #4 below.
4.She’s actually mental, PERIOD.
Mika’s taken on the new role of liberal feminist, where both “liberal” and “feminist” mean the exact opposite of what you think they do.
It’s worth mentioning that when she went on her “Real Murkan” screed the other day, even Joke Scareblow looked at her like she had lost her mind, and called her out on her upbringing when they came back from the break.
inkadu
@Sebastian Dangerfield: And even if she can brush off ethics complaint, there is still the nasty media out there to destroy her and make spurilious accusations. I am sure Sarah also believes, but is too smart to say, that the President can jail an unlimited number of journalists for being unAmerican. It’s all right there in the first amendment.
JK
h/t h/t http://www.adn.com/palin/story/855907.html
Jess
Think there’s any truth to the rumor that Palin whacked Michael Jackson, and that’s why she was forced to resign?
Pasquinade
@Chinn Romney
Palin, being 45 years old, and having had 5 kids, I doubt seriously that she has perky breasts.
Gravity* takes a toll.
*or, as the Intelligent (sic) Design people prefer, Intelligent Falling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_falling
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512
Blue Neponset
Why the hell is she taking vacation time to go on a family fishing trip? Get to work damn it! You have three weeks left.
is this what she meant by lame ducks milking it?
Origuy
Oh, I disagree. She was on the path to running in 2012 anyway. McCain just gave the country four extra years to get to know her.
I never watch Morning Joe, so the only things I know about Mika are from here. Her father is on Rachel Maddow all the time; I’m waiting for Rachel to ask him what’s up with his daughter.
jenniebee
@JenJen:
Oh, now that I’m sorry I missed.
Laura W
@geg6:
Getting mugged by one was probably a good start, dontcha think?
JK
Scarborough, along with Chris Matthews, and Pat Buchannan shamelessly mocked Obama for several news cycles over his low bowling score and practically implied that he was a sissy because he didn’t know how to bowl.
inkadu
@JenJen:
Clappity-clap-clap.
They confuse scorn with fear.
JK
I’m waiting for him to disown his daughter. Prolonged exposure to Joe Scarborough has turned Mika into a moron.
Waingro
Charlie Rose is just an awful windbag- the worst interviewer on TV who for some reason is purported to be a good interviewer. He’ll have interesting guests and will unfailingly interrupt them whenever they’re about to make an cogent point. I want to give the man an IV drip of Ritalin.
Olbermann has a similar annoying tendency- his fucking questions are longer and more meandering than his guest’s answers. I feel sorry for his guests- if that were me I’d probably zone out halfway through his questions.
Richard Stanczak
The ABC News translation;
of Sarah Palin’s actual quote;
Now, I would quibble with ABC’s inclusion of the word baseless since I do not believe that would enter into Ms. Palin’s thinking at all.
I have difficulty imagining a reality where she could have been a deranged old man’s heartbeat away from President of the US with the care and control of the worlds largest nuclear weapon stockpile.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
In Palin’s defense (the first, last and only time I will ever write these words), if almost everything she knew about the Office of the Vice Presidency came from studying Dick Cheney’s tenure in that office and the way the OLC and DOJ were run during that time, then this would be an entirely reasonable and logical conclusion.
slag
@BenA: Here you go.
r€nato
gotcha question from the libruhl media!
slag
@JenJen:
Problem is that Scarborough has an inherent advantage in this case because he automatically thinks every woman is an idiot.
Napoleon
@inkadu:
If it was a wood boat don’t you have to steam the wood or something so that you could bend it around a frame, etc. That seems to me to be something you really would have to know how to do well to undertake it.
Aluminum is plausable if you had a buddy that was, say, and HVAC contractor and had all the brakes and other tools to bend metal then maybe that is what they did (though I would think the ribs are a custom made, maybe even cast part).
ChrisB
@Blue Neponset:
Nah, she’s got it all figured out. She probably has three weeks of paid vacation left. That’s how she figured out her resignation date.
And I have to weigh in on Mika, whom I now detest almost as much as Joe Scarborough himself. It’s been obvious for years that she’s not that smart and it must be difficult to sit next to Scarborough and be too meek and shallow to defend yourself against his snide and condescending putdowns but she’s really prostituted herself to adopt her persona on Morning Joe.
Who do Mika and her handlers think she appeals to? Oh yeah, people who like to listen to Joe Scarborough.
Face
@Michael: sign me up for the pay-per-view.
Original Lee
Could Scientology have something to do with Sarah’s resignation? It just occurred to me that handing over cash to the group is almost a sacrament, and Sarah’s not making enough money as governor to reach the levels that the Movers and Shakers hang out on.
Ms. Stapleton, I hope you noticed I just called soon-to-be-ex Gov. Palin a Scientologist.
JK
@Waingro:
Tribute to Charlie Rose by Samuel Beckett
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFE2CCfAP1o
I agree with you on Charlie Rose’s overall ineptitude, but I continue to watch him because his guests are generally articulate and informative enough to compensate for his shortcomings.
I’ve seen several obits on Chicago tv journalist John Callaway who recently died. Not living in Chicago, I only saw him once or twice on my PBS station, but he had a reputation as the one of the best tv interviewers in the business.
Cat Lady
What woman on TV with a regular gig besides Rachel Maddow can make a progressive woman proud nowadays? All of the other women both on networks and cable are either irrelevant sidekicks (Mika) or bobbleheads like Noron. Joan Walsh gets it, but she’s always on those ridiculous split screens with Buchanan or some other hack. I know I’m howling at the moon, but why aren’t the executives willing to have that point of view espoused by a woman regularly without it involving a screech fest?
Tony J
On the brighter side, if the GOP keeps on hacking away like crazy at the entangling creepers of electoral reality in their ceaseless quest for Wingnut Utopia, there’s a better than 50/50 chance that popcorn production alone will lift the global economy out of recession.
Paul W
@Richard Stanczak: Does no one else see this? Really? She means that the DOJ (which in Alaska is called the Department of Law), if it chose to investigate any of the ethical charges that have already been aimed at her while governor of Alaska, would find those existing charges frivolous. She’s not saying a legal arm of her hypothetical executive branch would unilaterally throw out any ethics complaints against her. “Some of the things WE HAVE BEEN charged with”
There’s a lot that’s real to tear down here, and that can be torn down in a way that’s intellectually honest.
Persia
@Tony J: I’m on a knitting website with some conservative forums, and they started going off on the birth certificate today. Even they can’t focus on the Sarah Palin narrative any longer.
passerby
Hey, I came across this David Brooks NYT article in which he does a pretty good job of waxing philosophical. I appreciated his view. An excerpt:
Then there was Sarah Palin’s press conference. Here was a woman who aspires to a high public role but is unfamiliar with the traits of equipoise and constancy, which are the sources of authority and trust.
In each of these events, one sees people who simply have no social norms to guide them as they try to navigate the currents of their own passions.
Americans still admire dignity. But the word has become unmoored from any larger set of rules or ethical system.
But it’s not right to end on a note of cultural pessimism because there is the fact of President Obama. Whatever policy differences people may have with him, we can all agree that he exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity.
Proof that David has a level-headed aspect after all.
Tony J
@Persia:
It’s been what, eight months since your election? Every time I think to myself “These people are fucked in the head, they can’t be saying this if they want to win over anyone outside of the 28% who still loved them some Bush” they blindside me with something even crazier and more unbelievable.
It’s way past official, the GOP as it stands has nobody manning the controls, and the engines are heating up something chronic. The question isn’t “Will she blow?”, it’s “Will she last long enough to contest another election?”
It’s entertaining viewing, but the risk to innocent bystanders from shrapnel and noxious fumes must be driving the Health and Safety people absolutely beserk.
Waingro
@JK:
Nice link, but I think Rose should have interrupted himself more in order to add more realism.
John PM
@A la lanterne les aristos!: #88
If Palin had quit first and then McCain had an embolism, we would be welcoming President Nancy Pelosi to the White House.
Chinn Romney
Gasp, shut your mouth! A pox on thee! The only photoshopping going on in the blogosphere was on that flight suit.
She’s mighty fine, mighty fine. And it might’ve been 6 kids, the jury’s still out on that, innit?
handy
@Paul W:
Your interpretation of her words is legitimate and rationally defensible. Having said that, I can’t really blame ABC News for their “translation” of Palin’s words on two grounds.
1) As has already been pointed out to death, Palin is not a particularly articulate person; she often fails to be precise in her thoughts.
2) Bush kinda set the bar with respect to politicizing the Justice Dept. What Palin speaks about isn’t exactly without precedent.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Actually, I think this is proof of something else which has little to do with Brooks. Obama is the most small-c conservative President we’ve had in 50 years. Not in policy, but in demeanor, personal conduct, and attitude. We haven’t had his like in the WH since Eisenhower. Everything since then has been a circus freak show, with the exception of Carter, who failed miserably because if you are going to be a small-c conservative President then you’d better figure out how to get along well with the egos in Congress, which Carter never did.
I think this is one of the major reasons why Obama drives the GOPers batshit insane – because he has the personal qualities of prudence, thrift, caution and dignity that people used to associate primarily with old-school Republicans (and which were a big cultural reason why people trusted them) – and that reminds them of how far they’ve fallen.
JK
@Cat Lady:
Unfortunately, they don’t have regular gigs on tv, but a few names come to mind – Amy Goodman, Laura Flanders, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Naomi Klein, Susan Jacoby, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Jeralyn Merritt. Don’t Blink Your Eyes, otherwise you’ll miss them.
Lindsay Beyerstein has never been on tv to my knowledge but she has a great blog
http://majikthise.typepad.com
Richard Stanczak
Paul W, I agree with you that I took a great deal of liberty in “quibbling” with baseless being included as part of her meaning.
But that was part of my point. Why does a political figure need to have their words translated or interpreted by a news organization?
If they wanted to be fair and balanced maybe they should have included a less flattering rendering of her answer. Or even include a disclaimer that ‘we think she means this, but it is possible we are full of shit’.
Why not mention in the article that Alaska calls its DOJ the Department of Law?
This interview was embarrassing on so many levels for her and for the press as well.
Brachiator
@JK:
No. Hee Haw starred a cast of professionals who pretended to be dumb. Sarah Parah is an amateur who is actually dumb.
media browksi — Damn you Sarah Palin! You’ve blown my internship opportunity!
You should never use “blown” and “internship” in the same sentence when referring to politicians.
Calouste — People think that Palin made a mistake when she said “Department of Law”. She didn’t. Under Palin, the department formerly known as the Department of Justice would not be tasked with administring Justice, it would be tasked with laying down the Law. Sarah’s Law.
That’s it! Palin should star in Sarah’s Law, an alternative to The People’s Court. She could have “Real American” people with their “Real American” problems come before her and render “Real American” judgment. Of course, you would have to have an announcer explain just what they hell she said when she delivered her opinions. Also, too.
Michael
In a perfect wingnut fantasy, McCain has the embolism. Palin succeeds him, then nominates Limbaugh to be her VP.
The nomination is confirmed by a combination of lockstep Republicans, blue dogs, Joe Lieberman, Harry Reid and a couple of other milksops……
JK
@handy:
This may qualify as the understatement of the millennium. Not particularly articulate? The more I see Palin making Herculean efforts to arrange nouns, verbs, and adjectives into a semi-coherent order that approximates English, the more George W. Bush sounds like William F. Buckley.
Ash
@JK: Seriously, I just can’t even comprehend how she speaks. How did she learn to sound to stupid? I couldn’t even put together a sentence that awkward if it TRIED. Even the most basic English speakers know simple sentence structure.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
@Brachiator:
Lord, I thought they already had all the most annoying Gomers they could find playing judges on TV! Why someone hasn’t taken a tire iron to Judge Judy yet is beyond me. But Judge Sarah would be worse. Much worse.
Elie
Relax and enjoy the continueing fall…
Just think of the ever spiral downwards for her since the election. Nothing but trouble and her continuing babbling craziness.
I agree with what someone upstring said…the Republicans will not only want her shut up but will take steps to make that a reality. She will get nowhere near the nomination but stands in a strong position to ruin what small chances that remain for the Republicans..
Sarah Palin, the gift that keeps on giving. She will take the Republican Party right down with her, sucked into that endless black hole of need that represents her reality. She will never stop, never go away until she has completely and so entirely discredited herself, that people will run from her when they see her…
Sick, sick, sick but fascinating to watch…
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
When W was in office, even old-time libs started missing Nixon. Tricky Dick may have been an evil SOB, but at least he knew something about the world and was semi-competent and appointed competent people who didn’t wreck everything they touched to at least some of the positions in the Executive Branch. And the domestic legislation he signed into law was more liberal than anything we’ve seen since.
Now Palin comes along and already we’re missing W.
I detect a trend here; it doesn’t bode well for 2016-2020. What could possibly be worse, that by then will having us sighing for the good-old-days of Governor Word Salad? Devolution in action is not a pretty sight.
gopher2b
Um, she can have a super secret strategy and be an idiot. In fact, she probably has a double super secrety strategy
Elie
I have to add this…
Our culture of celebrity is in part responsible for exacerbating her tenure and power over our attention. Her need for attention, even if negative, will continue to stimulate her behavior to get more attention. We then feed it by giving it to her — (me included) — through attention on blogs, on teevee, the papers…it all serves her deep need for this attention.
It is cancer, however — eating up time and attention off of what does matter. She.does.not.matter. We should stop giving her that feed, that energy and put it back on OUR needs and the things that we value.
Cancer — out of control cell/s spreading, invading healthy tissue (of our public discourse) and making it dysfunctional and ultimely killing it. We have to cut off its blood supply and starting right now, I will no longer read or post about this person.
HRA
Why do I watch Morning Joe?
I found out I can no longer drink coffee according to my MD. I sip the weak tea to no avail. I thirst for the Mika moment to release my eyes from sleep and it works nicely every time.
I raised 6 children chiefly by myself. Do I harbor allusions of grandeur by having done it? No, I am more than thankful I survived it. Oh and BTW I am a real American as are others who voted for Obama.
Wile E. Quixote
@SGEW
On the one hand I agree with you about Kate Snow, the placement of that one sentence after the Palin quote was absolutely brilliant. On the other hand I’m kind of depressed because I think that many Americans would be surprised to find out that there isn’t a “Department of Law” at the White House.
JK
@Ash:
I understand the need for privacy regarding academic records, but I would love to see what grades Palin received in the english and journalism classes she took in college.
What makes Palin’s horrible command of english truly astounding is that she a holds a degree in communications-journalism. It reminds me of a Robert Klein joke. He’s met at an airport by a student who’s driving him to the college where he’s performing that night. On the ride over to the college, Klein engages the student in smalltalk. The student gives 1 or 2 sentence responses to everything Klein says. Finally, Klein asks the student “what’s your major”? The student responds “communications”. The student in the joke thankfully doesn’t suffer from Palin’s problem, but I form certain expectations about a person when I hear that he/she is a communications or journalism major. In both examples, the reality is a far cry from my expectations.
Wile E. Quixote
Palin then went on to say that if getting the “department of law” to protect her from baseless ethical allegations didn’t work that she would call upon “the department of people who blow shit up” to protect her from baseless ethical allegations.
JK
@Brachiator: @The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge:
I want Palin to appear in the next season of Celebrity Apprentice so that I can watch Donald Trump tell her “You’re Fired”.
jcricket
It’s a long-bet, but if Sarah Palin does end up the nominee, I predict Obama winning 40+ states, and the GOP going down to crushing defeat in every other contested race. She will elevate the most unhinged Goopers to the forefront of the Republican party, encouraging Limbaugh, Savage, Malkin & Coulter to spout off unchallenged – perhaps even inviting them directly into campaign rallies.
This will super-charge the wingnuts to a point where the 2-minute-hate rallies we saw last time will feel like a church bingo social. Which will super-agitates the Independents and us Liberals and get reported in the press (which she will also complain about).
The recipe adds up to a, dare I say, Thunderdome-like finish (two parties enter, one party leaves) to the 2012 election.
So honestly, whether she fades into even greater irrelevancy or somehow clings to some kind of national “leadership” role in the GOP doesn’t matter. She’s fucked over the GOP in the short-term, and represents their doom in the long term. There’s no downside for us. None.
Wile E. Quixote
@Paul W.
No, what’s intellectually honest, as opposed to your pathetic pedantry and bullshit contrarianism is that Sarah Palin is deeply and profoundly stupid. Anyone who doesn’t understand that the Department of Justice is called “The Department of Justice” and that the Alaska Department of Law is called “The Department of Law” and gets the two of them confused is so incredibly unfit for public office that they shouldn’t even be allowed to go on a White House tour, much less be in line for the presidency.
Brachiator
@JK:
Or even the irreverent Lord Buckley:
Elie — I agree with what someone upstring said…the Republicans will not only want her shut up but will take steps to make that a reality. She will get nowhere near the nomination but stands in a strong position to ruin what small chances that remain for the Republicans.
I’m not too sure about that. Palin seems to be a force that the Republicans neither understand or know how to control, and who stirs evangelicals and the wingnut fringe in a way no other current GOP figure knows how to do (OK, I admit there are some Dark Knight Joker comparisons embedded in this critique).
For example, listening to the radio this morning, a talk radio host who had previously knocked Palin as being unprepared and an intellectual lightweight read a blistering email from a wingnut who declared that the only reason he voted for McCain was because Palin was on the ticket, and went on to declare that anyone who mocked her resignation speech was obviously some kind of lying liberal traitor.
And for some reason, pipsqueak Machiavellis, educated elitists like Bill Kristol and Ross Douthat, keep trying to push Palin as some kind of Snowbilly Messiah who will bring a rebirth of America founded in the principle that only incurious dumbasses should inherit the Real ‘Murican earth. These would-be kingmakers are pushing hard against not only moderates, but realists. I don’t think they seriously believe that Palin could ever help them see a re-birth of their neo-con fantasies, but I think that they intend to keep the Republican party firmly rooted in the hard right, and hope that they can latch onto a more viable candidate with Palinesque credentials.
If Fox News and Limbaugh, the official propaganda organs of the GOP, do not cut Palin loose, the Republican Party has to continue to humor her populist ambitions, no matter what they think of her.
The Barracuda bit them in the butt and she will not let go.
jcricket
I saw this post and immediately thought it perfectly illustrated why we have nothing to fear from Palin. Basically her political instincts suck. She won in AK because it’s a ass-backwards socialist-fueled oil-state and she gobsmacked people the same way Bush did.
Unfortunately for her, our gob-smacking by George Bush has worn off, and we see what his type does to the country. She’s even worse than Bush because she (as the post above points out) cannot help but to add fuel to the fire, and doesn’t have a “Cheney” to do the smart things she needs.
I do not weep for the GOP. They reap what they sow.
JK
@Brachiator:
I’m a huge fan of Lord Buckley. If you haven’t seen it, you need to check out this clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw1eSo8-Zns of him with Groucho Marx on You Bet Your Life. It’s hilarious.
Not a fan of William F. Buckley’s politics, but I appreciated his ability to speak clearly. I would love to have seen him interview Palin. That would have been one for the ages.
ethan salto
@JK:
Jeralyn Merritt?
Really?
Sebastian Dangerfield
@Paul W:
To which @Wile E. Coyote rejoinds:
Word. It is no defense that she might have meant “The Department of Justice” when she said “your Department of Law there in the White House.”
First, as M. Coyote points out, one has a right to expect a former Vice-Presidential candidate and would-be future something-or-other-when-she-figures-it-out in national politics to have the most basic knowledge of the major departments within the executive branch of the federal government, such as, you know, the names of the major cabinet-level agencies–especially the ones that the former vice-presidential candidate is opining about.
Second, one has a right to expect that she would know something of the structure and functioning of such departments–oh, for instance, the fact that the Department of Justice is not “there in the White House.” The Dpertment of justice is, to be sure, an executive agency whose head is a political appointee, but it is not in any sense “in the White House.” It has an independent institutional role that is–notwithstanding the efforts fo the Bushies–not to be the personal attorney-in-fact to the president.
Third, the premise of your attempt at a less-than-ignorant-and-loony interpretation of her comment is itself bonkers. You seem to suggest that when she said, in a response to how she could handle the heat of a presidential race,
she actually meant something like
I fail to see how what is set forth immediately above is not batshit insane and pigshit ignorant on every level.
JK
@Sebastian Dangerfield:
Well stated.
Many thanks for giving me another line to use for a bumpersticker.
Palin/Bachmann 2012
Batshit Insane and Pigshit Ignorant
@ethan salto:
Jeralyn Merritt? Really?
Can you amplify your response? I’m unable to divine your objection to my mention of her.
Svensker
@Sebastian Dangerfield:
Yes.
binzinerator
@jenniebee:
That’s what I got out of that too. She really believes as president you can use whatever means at your disposal to silence critics and sic lawyers and cops after anyone else who displeases her. This should be no surprise as that is essentially what she did as Gov.
I have no doubt too that had President Palin discovered there wasn’t a Department of Law for her direct against her critics, she would have created one.
What I find disturbing is how many people still voted for the McCain/Palin ticket. Like what, 45% of the voters?
I’m still processing what it means to be living in a nation where so many people are so profoundly ignorant or so blinded by religious fervor or so driven their bigotry, or so wrapped up in their victimhood, or so consumed by their hatred of people perceived to be more educated, sophisticated, articulate or urbane than themselves they they would want such a person like Palin so close to the levers of power.
What does it mean that so many of us cannot or will not grasp what it would mean to have a President Palin?
Supporting Palin and exulting in Palinism is a level of idiocy where the idiots becomes dangerous even to themselves.
Cat G
@Richard Stanczak: I don’t think it is the media’s business to say “this is what she meant..” If she didn’t mean Department of Law, she can “clarify” her comments later. And it is responsible to point out that there is no Department of Law. She wants to be president, she can darn well raise her game. Every reader doesn’t understand the structure of the DOJ, OLC, or White House Counsel so it’s good journalism to point out that there isn’t a Dept of Law…but then again, Jane Q Public isn’t planning a run for the presidency. But the important issue is that she seems to think that the President can dismiss complaints. She does have a pattern of believing that she can do whatever she wants ’cause she’s the mayor, the governor, or the VP nominee. Clearly she’s a Republican.
Maus
Exactly, just like Bush’s incompetence made them side with him the more things were revealed. There’s nothing we can do to convince everything frightening about her because those aspects are all positives in the eyes of “everyday” idiots.
PurpleGirl
There may not be a Department of Law in the White House, but there is the Office of White House Counsel. But I’m not sure Palin was referring to the White House Counsel and not the DOJ. From Wikipedia:
Role
The Counsel’s role is to advise the President on all legal issues concerning the President and the White House. The current White House Counsel is Greg Craig.
Responsibilities
The Office of Counsel to the President was created in 1943, and is responsible for advising on all legal aspects of policy questions, legal issues arising in connection with the President’s decision to sign or veto legislation, ethical questions, financial disclosures, and conflicts of interest during employment and post employment. The Counsel’s Office also helps define the line between official and political activities, oversees executive appointments and judicial selection, handles Presidential pardons, reviews legislation and Presidential statements, and handles lawsuits against the President in his role as President, as well as serving as the White House contact for the Department of Justice.
Limitations
Although the White House Counsel offers legal advice to the President, the Counsel does so in the President’s official capacity, and does not serve as the President’s personal attorney. Therefore, controversy has emerged over the scope of the attorney-client privilege between the Counsel and the President. It is clear, however, that the privilege does not apply in personal matters, such as impeachment proceedings; thus, in such situations the President relies on a personal attorney for confidential legal advice.
Pasquinade
@JK
To reach the Hispanic voters:
Palin/Bachmann 2012
Guano Loco
Zuzu's Petals
Sorry if someone else posted this, but …
Has anyone seen anything, anywhere, where Palin has actually used the word “resign”?
July 3d announcement, July 7 interview:
“Not running for second term…handing the reins over.”
Governor’s website, home page:
Palin Announces No Second Term
Lt. Gov. Parnell to be Sworn in July 26, 2009
Governor’s office press release :
“GOVERNOR PALIN ANNOUNCES NO SECOND TERM NO LAME DUCK SESSION EITHER
July 3, 2009, Anchorage, Alaska – Governor Sarah Palin announced today that she will not seek a second term as Governor of the State of Alaska and will relegate the power of governor to Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell in order to serve Alaska’s best interests. Lieutenant General Craig Campbell will move into Parnell’s current role.”
(Same headline appears at “executive column,” same website.)
Palin’s Tweets:
“We’ll soon attach info on decision to not seek re-election…”
“Critics are spinning, so hang in there as they feed false info on the right decision made as I enter last yr in office to not run again….”
The dissembling is really almost pathological.
PurpleGirl
I think she wants to invoke the Nixonian idea “that if the President does it, it’s not illegal.”
Unfortunately for us, since GWB also seemed to work under this idea and he hasn’t yet been brought up on charges, it may become precedent. Grrrrr!
Zuzu's Petals
@kay:
I noticed that she completely ignored the CNN guy’s question about her “lame duck” status … why not just wait to announce her decision until after the next legislative session ends?
Uh, money wasted on friviolous complaints and lawsuits…millions!… not progressing the state!
Mr Furious
I finally figured it out… all the point guard stuff? Palin thinks she’s Stephan Marbury. Quit on the team, sit on the sidelines, collect a fat check…
“Waitasec… what do you mean I don’t get paid?”
Michael Scott
Palin’s gone from “Sarah Barracuda” to “Sarah Barely Coulda” in only ten months, eh?
Nice!
Zuzu's Petals
@Blue Neponset:
Well to be fair, it’s their commercial fishing business, and it’s a short season…like one month. Plus I think she was only there for a day or so.
inkadu
Purple Girl: This is why Palin is such blog fodder; it’s a sport just trying to figure out what she means. If she meant the WH Counsel it’s even a WORSER fail because people’s lawyers, business or personal, don’t get to dismiss complaints.
@Napoleon: I find your boat-building plausible. What I don’t find plausible is that someone with the interests in the outdoors and success that the Palins would have would be tooling around in what must be a crappy 20-year-old boat. The Palin’s don’t strike me as the kind of humble people that would keep the same boat for twenty years. WAKE UP PEOPLE! There’s BOATGATE right in front of your eyes, and you’re obsessing over the Dept of Law there in the White House.
…
WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THE TEXT EDITOR ON THIS BLOG? I like to use the “reply” to and “blockquote” tags, but I often have to get rid of them because entire paragraphs get EATED in preview if I use them. Sometimes blockquotes come through in bold, sometimes no. Sometimes adding bold inside blockquotes does nothing. It’s a mess.
Wile E. Quixote
@inkadu
The clowns who coded WordPress are a bunch of incompetent fucking hacks. When I’m president I’m going to have them investigated by the Department of Law and then thrown in jail. Then I’ll have the Department of Internet fix the WP code.
inkadu
@Wile E. Quixote: It’s bizzare. I would think in these days of GNU Public License and drop-in code something like a functioning text editor would be simple. It’s like it’s the 80’s and I have the beta version of OPUS.
Bill
The fact is she is a decent person and you are the idiot
Zuzu's Petals
Oh, gag me with a spoon.
Zuzu's Petals
Blockquote fail.
Sebastian Dangerfield
Has anyone else noticed a marked similarity between the career of Sarah Palin and that of the Nicole Kidman character in ‘To Die For’?