This Anonymous Liberal post is too good to pick any specific part.
So just go read the whole thing.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.
They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.
Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?
Not all heroes wear capes.
Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.
JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?
Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!
Ah, the different things are different argument.
The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.
It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!
Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.
My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.
Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.
Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.
The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.
Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.
It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.
Glad to see john eastman going through some things.
If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!
We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.
‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’
“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”
If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.
Bark louder, little dog.
eldorado
that didn’t take long
Zifnab
You fool! You blew it up! You blew it all up! You bastards! Why?!
— Site’s better now.
Comrade Stuck
I’ve been saying this for years. Not only for certain parts of the media and their efforts to keep an interesting player in the game, but a large chunk of Greater Wingnuttia as well. Or, if it weren’t for liberals making sense, we wouldn’t have to be insane to draw a contrast. Of course, it is also true that many of the nutters really are insane.
Zifnab
@Comrade Stuck: But are you really being contrarian if we can virtually predict what you’re going to say next? This is the party of “Drill, Baby, Drill!” Of course they’re going to mindlessly cheer lead their girl. They’ve only got one note and it’s “Be More Conservative!”
By the time we’re done, I look forward to hearing about how Sarah Palin wasn’t right-wing enough for the party, and they had to drop her. But she would have been more right wing if it wasn’t for that evil liberal media. And ACORN. And William Ayers.
Cat Lady
We all here have already come to the same conclusion as AL days ago. She’s an incoherent lying attention whore who has influential backers, enabled by a sycophantic press wired for Republicanism and GOP hacks looking for a reason to live and to keep collecting wingnut welfare paychecks.
RandomChick
Apparently its not just the pundits admiring the slick threads and shiny buttons.
That means that 43% are backing her to some degree RIGHT NOW. After the resignation.
The same poll shows that her resignation didn’t change the perception of 70% of those polled.
Is it too much to hope that Gallup just happened to get the same group that keep appearing in the comment threads of stories about her?
I kept hoping it was just a small vocal minority spitting invectives on the intertubes at anyone who questioned her suitability / ability / sanity.
Perhaps not.
truculentandunreliable
I’m so glad that blogs exist, otherwise I might think I was totally fucking nuts, especially since I live in a (barely) red state.
passerby
It is a great article, John. My favorite clip would be this:
The Emperor has no clothes, people. It’s well past time to put an end to this delusion. Sarah Palin is transparently, manifestly unqualified to be in any position of power and this is obvious to anyone who cares to look.
Straight shootin’.
RandomChick
What are the magic moderation-inducing words around here? Just so I can avoid tripping over them in the future.
Redshirt
Yeah, but she’s a hot emperor with no clothes. I find that makes all the difference.
Demo Woman
@RandomChick: S-h-o-e-s, I have no idea why and C-i-a-l-is which appears in the word so-c-i-a-l-i-s-m. I’m not sure about v-i-a-gra but the first two are the most commonly used.
RandomChick
Taking this to the literal extreme might not be a bad idea.
I wish she’d do Playboy. That would remove the mystery for the starburst crowd and allow them to move on to saner pastures.
If they had the centerfold, maybe seeing her in the oval office wouldn’t be necessary.
Demo Woman
Sarah wants to be a rock star. She preaches her dislike of MSM but is constantly in front of the cameras. Personally I find her rambling boring.
Pasquinade
FReepers are upset that Rich Lowry is no longer seeing starbursts when he looks at Palin…
In all the speculation about why Sarah Palin quit the Alaska governorship, no one — right or left, supportive or critical, rational or conspiratorial — has credited her stated reason that she had to do it for the sake of Alaska.
It’s just too absurd. Palin mentioned Alaska or Alaskans 34 times in a 17-minute statement that must be a new record in the history of protesting too much. Palin says she hates politics as usual, and true to her word, on July 3 she staged a spectacle in politics as unusual. But she still proved adept at the traditional political art of extreme disingenuousness.
Sarah Palin’s words served only to throw a tissue of rationalization over a calculated choice made in her personal self-interest. In all likelihood, Palin is going to embrace her political celebrity with gusto, freed from the burdens of the geographic isolation of the Alaska governorship and its (relative to national politics) petty distractions. Her decision wasn’t particularly public-spirited, but neither was it crazy. She has seen her opportunities, and she’s going to take them.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Nzc0MzY3MWRjMjE1OTE0NmI1ZjYzYzQwMWY1ZTE5Njk=
Napoleon
@RandomChick:
Mystery Pollster or Nate Silver looked at recent numbers on her and although she polls good with the base she is poison in the rest of the electorate. I think if she ran she almost certainly would get 40-45%, but the rub is that it may be close to impossible for her to get, say, 48%. The Republicans maybe in the electoral equivelant of one of those Chinese finger traps.
Joe
I would guess s h o e s gets kicked out for containing h o e s. Anyway that Sarah Palin walking around naked thing was just what I was daydreaming about. Really though she is a complete crackpot, and I just can’t understand how anyone can think positively of her. But I do plan to ask several people I know who just love her to pieces. One thinks Sean Hannity is so HOT!
Comrade Stuck
@Zifnab:
This is the current GOP, or whats left of the space ship that has jettisoned everything but the crazy nosecone. It is rocketing about like a deflating balloon, and soon will crash and burn. We will know this when Glenn Beck is found in his closet sucking his thumb and muttering about little green communist men.
Sarah Serendipity, will have, by that time, made her fortune fleecing the wingnut flock and done a D.B Cooper over greatter wingnuttia never to be heard from again.
And in the meantime, the GOP will be down to two Senators from Oklahoma who will have to be stopped daily from hanging themselves as martyrs from the Capitol Rotunda.
Then a small group of sane conservatives will gather in an undisclosed location and burn the foul planks of bigotry in the GOP platform and slowly regain some respect from the American people. The teabaggers will revolt and form a third Party of God and burn effigy’s of the Larison’s, Brooks et al, until they choke on there own bile and die a painful political death.
The first blocks of a new conservative movement will have been born. One that is actually, you know conservative, and for civil rights, sensible economic policy that is EEGADS, practical to the needs of average Americans. And thus the road to a viable GOP will have arrived.
John Cole will tell his liberal friends, it’s been real guys and gals, I love you, but go away. And George Bush will have become a bad dream and the world will spin the way it should.
JK
Nobel laureate Saul Bellow must be spinning in his grave knowing this his son Adam is the editor of Sarah Palin’s forthcoming book.
Also coming soon to a bookstore near you, Weekly Standard douchebag Matthew Continenti’s book “The Persecution of Sarah Palin” .
Joe
hoes. nope I was wrong
Dusty
@ RandomChick
In that same poll, 13% of voters were not likely and 41% were not at all likely. So almost as many voters are very unlikely to not vote for Palin as are somewhat/very likely to. There’s only 2% undecided in that poll, so throw in the unlikely leaners and that’s 54%, which is a landslide defeat in a general election.
In addition, I assume the question was asked in isolation. So it’s not Palin vs. Romney in a primary, where they’re pretty neck-and-neck in polling, IIRC, or Palin vs. Obama in a general. It’s probably a comparable number to generic Republican vs. Obama at this point.
I don’t know what these numbers will be when it matters, but, for all the positive spin being put on them, it looks to me as if she’s not a viable candidate for the presidency in a general election. Voters have made up their minds about Sarah Palin and they’re not impressed.
gopher2b
Yes, totally agree…BUT….
1/2 of the Republican Party loves this woman. Loves, loves, loves this woman. In a Republican primary, she has a very good shot. This is especially true if she learns how to bullshit better in the next 2 years.
I would find the whole Obama v. Palin thing incredibly entertaining (imagine the debate, oh what fun!). But to say that she is finished just because the chattering class (that would be us) says so…well, its a tad arrogant (and optimistic).
Polish the Guillotines
@Demo Woman:
I’m guessing “ho.”
Edit: And it appears I guessed wrong.
How about hoes.
Edit #2: Also wrong.
truculentandunreliable
@RandomChick: Another benefit would be that the starburst crowd would no longer leave their houses. In fact, posing as a Playboy centerfold would probably be the most patriotic thing that Sarah Palin has ever done for her country.
RandomChick
@ Joe
Huh, I always thought it was properly spelled “ho’s” w/o the e. Potatoe / Patatoe I guess.
The math still does not add up for me though. If only 28% self-identify as (R) and she only does it for half of them . . .
Why aren’t her numbers more around 14%?
truculentandunreliable
@gopher2b: Right? I would shit my pants in delight to see a debate between Obama and Palin. Biden v. Palin was awesome enough. This would be BRILLIANT.
Dusty
Which makes her a problem for the Republican Party, if she continues to piss off moderates and independents. Now, I’d rather the Republicans nominate someone more palatable and, as a woman, I’d rather the first major-party nominee not be Sarah Palin, but, assuming Obama has an easy path to reelection, a Palin nomination would continue to erode the Republican Party.
Honestly, if Obama’s got an easy path, it might be Palin. Anybody who really thinks they have a shot at winning should hold out to 2016 if they can.
RandomChick
@ truculentandunreliable
If we could only get Hef to time it so the publication arrives on election day – just imagine!
truculentandunreliable
@RandomChick: Well, I think a more accurate representation of the “base” are people who identify as conservative. There are a lot of “independents” out there who are actually crazier than people who identify as republican. In fact, when I hear someone who I would likely identify as republican say “Oh, I’m an independent! Both parties are corrupt,” I run the other fucking way.
JK
h/t Jonathan Allen http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/notepad/2009/07/why-sarah-palin-is-no-richard.html
John PM
@JK: #18
What?! Well, I guess that serves Bellow right for leaving the University of Chicago, not that I am bitter about that or anything.
Polish the Guillotines
Palin and her devotees live in cloud-cuckoo-land. Therefore, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if short-sheeting AK is just the first step in becoming the leader of a “socially conservative” third-party.
I can only imagine, but I’m sure she’s been getting plenty of rah-rah to do something like that.
Surreal American
@Pasquinade:
I don’t think the starbursts are entirely gone from Lowery’s eyes. Just sayin’
RandomChick
Maybe that’s why she quit. Could there already be a centerfold out there that’s either being held over her head, or about to come out?
She wouldn’t be the first beauty queen with some questionable pix in her past.
Maybe that’s the real reason why she jumped in the Miss California debate.
Edit: SUE ME TOO!
truculentandunreliable
@Polish the Guillotines: I agree. In fact, if she didn’t resign due to a scandal, I think this might be what she will attempt to do.
JK
More Proof that Sarah Palin is Full of Shit
“A detailed breakdown of the millions Palin has claimed has gone to defending against ethics complaints.
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/records-costs-attachment-2.pdf
It does list roughly $1.9 million in expenditures.
But David Murrow, a spokesperson for Palin acknowledged to our reporter, Amanda Erickson, that this total was arrived at by adding up attorney hours spent on fending off complaints — based on the fixed salaries of lawyers in the governor’s office and the Department of Law. The money would have gone to the lawyers no matter what they were doing. The complaints are “just distracting them from other duties,” Murrow said.
In other words, while these lawyers might have been free to do other legal work for the state, the ethics complaints have apparently not had the real world impact Palin has claimed, and didn’t drain money away from cops, teachers, roads and other things.”
h/t http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/republican-party/key-reason-palin-gave-for-quitting-appears-to-be-false/
Dusty
What I find odd is that 70% of those surveyed didn’t view Palin any more favorably or any less favorably as a result of her resignation. That’s a pretty high number of people. You’d think more people would be affected by Palin quitting her job for no discernible reason. Again, it seems to me as if voters have made up their minds about Sarah Palin and the numbers aren’t there for her to win in a general election. Given that she’ll presumably spend a couple years being a partisan pitbull for Republican candidates and anti-abortion outfits, giving incomprehensible interviews and not studying up on policy, I don’t see how those numbers are going to move.
Punchy
@RandomChick: I’ve been saying this for months. Get her in Hustler, quickly by stock in hand lotion and paper towel companies, and then watch the mystery and love affair dissappear.
Hell, Jen McCarthy (sp?) was a hot piece of tail, until she showed up in P-boy at least 6 times….at that point, she stops becoming a sex symbol and just starts becoming another shaved beaver.
Polish the Guillotines
@truculentandunreliable:
I’m not sure even scandal would prevent this from happening. Her following is willfully delusional and would simply rationalize away any scandal. About the only things I could imagine that would utterly do her in with those folks are that she’s either secretly Jewish or Muslim (and even then, a showy conversion would probably work), or that she’s actually a lesbian — which none of her followers would believe (“Then explain all the children?”).
Nope, with her fans, she’s unassailable.
kay
Well, 70% of Republicans polled say they’ll vote for her for President.
And, as Napoleon noted (correctly) here, Republicans have winner take all primaries, so that probably makes Palin the front-runner.
Okay by me. I say she should be the nominee. I look forward to that.
RandomChick
I was flabbergasted by the 70% too. Maybe it is just that its just not a game-changer because the folks who already hate find it to be in-line with what they already know about her character. And the folks who love her feel the same way.
It confirms “nutso” for the former and “mavericky”(TM) for the latter.
D-Chance.
Not a good day for The Corner‘s Andy McCarthy.
First, taken to task by Will over at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.
Then, (via Sully) by Radley Balko.
Some days, it’s just better to throw up an open thread and walk away…
Redshirt
I would LOVE for Palin to be the nominee. C’mon Billy Kristol, you can make it happen – you’ve got Rupert on your side.
binzinerator
AL’s post was magnificent.
And from the comments there was a link to the hilarious octogenarian duo, Margaret and Helen, who had their own words to say about Palin. I liked this part:
Priceless.
Zifnab
@Comrade Stuck:
That party never existed, and it never will. There’s no money in being a “true conservative”. Ask Trent Lott or Tom DeLay. You talk a good game to the rubes, but when the rubber hits the road, you turn the American Tax Machine into a feeding trough for your corporate sponsors.
Convincing people they don’t need government is just a sly way of picking their pockets. They continue to pay into the government trust, but get nothing in return. That’s all the GOP has ever done. Social issues – civil rights, religious pandering, morals police – are all just cover for the big economic fleecing. A “new” GOP won’t change its tune.
At best, the party will shrivel to the roots until it gets it’s act together, then come roaring back on the same platforms Nixon and Reagen ran on for the last sixty years.
Calouste
That’s as far in that article as male wingnuts and mainstream journalists (but I repeat myself) will be able to manage without taking a break.
LD50
Well, before I read that article (the letters section), I had never heard of the acronym RILF. A quick googling, and I am now a better person for having this new word in my vocabulary.
LD50
Well, before I read that article (the letters section), I had never heard of the acronym RILF. A quick googling, and I am now a better person for having this new word in my vocabulary.
Comrade Stuck
@Zifnab:
Well, you could well be right. Though I believe we are in politically transformative times and new rules and expectations of the public are in flux. And being in those times, makes it nigh on impossible to now what is really going on, until a ways down the road when we can look back to see what happened.
patrick
Sarah Palin is George Bush with boobs and without the establishment backers.
Same weird theology, same proud ignorance, same intransient stubbornness, same unfathomable appeal to their respective true believers.
Remember, Dubya was just a rube from Texas who was embraced by a core of Republican insiders who propelled him past McCain in the GOP Primaries.
It has always been my belief that those early establishment folks that signed on to the Bush bandwagon in 1998, saw in him, a person who would play by their rules and do their bidding. I’ve not seen anything in the ensuing years that has convinced me otherwise.
If anything, the Palinites are even more enthusiastic about her than the Bush people were.
If she manages to get her foot in the door with a loyal group of experienced GOP insiders and establishment types, she’s got as good a shot as Dubya had – which I would have rated at about 12% in 1998 when his name first started turning up as a potential candidate.
Zuzu's Petals
I notice all her unofficial advisors who are saying this was a “shrewd” move for 2012 (cough, Kristol, cough) were taken completely by surprise. Which means, of course, she hasn’t bothered to set up a strategy with anyone who knows anything.
Santiago
@Dusty
They won’t cuz they’re part of Kilmeade Nation
http://gawker.com/5310208/brian-kilmeade-would-like-species-and-ethnics-to-remain-pure
Molly
During the election, I consciously decided I couldn’t be friends with people who were Palin supporters. Lost me a couple of friends. Bothered me, thought I was being intolerant of other people’s views.
Now that time has past, I have changed my mind about being bothered. I was being intolerant of stupidity and blind adherence to the most clearly ridiculous political figure on the national stage. And she has proven me right about her sheer ridiculousness over and over.
If that means losing a few friends over that refusal to see anything redeeming in her, no problem. I’ll take that sacrifice. :)
Redshirt
@Patrick: I remember those days in 1998 when the name W. first came to my attention. I hate to sound all Cassandra on ya, but I instantly knew what we were in store for — well, not this bad, actually, but of the same gist. Son of Royalty is never auspicious.
@Molly: I’ve lost some friends at work over political alliances. I cannot frankly understand a rabid Palin supporter — they’re alien to me. I kinda get it, but only abstractly, not in the gut, as these folks get it. They’re scary.
Phoebe
The best part was the last two paragraphs and the best part of that was this:
Palin stands for a very different proposition, that if you have the right backers, anyone, no matter how unqualified or unsuited for the job, can potentially become president.