Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Second rate reporter says what?

You cannot shame the shameless.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Let’s finish the job.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

You are here: Home / Politics / Oh, the Palinites

Oh, the Palinites

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I am down near the Borders where the Palin book signing takes place later today. Quite a crowd, the line is close to a quarter mile long. This is to get wristbands that entitle you to get a book signed. There is one news crew there following it too.

The crowd is in good spirits and they aren’t really teabaggers per se by and large. I saw one Don’t Tread On Me flag and a couple weird bumperstickers, but other than that, not much. I wouldn’t have known it was political. It could easily have been a Kenny Chesney concert crowd or something like that. Except that the crowd is a little old for that. There are lots of families but it is probably a quarter retirees.

Everbody looks like someone you would meet at the Appleby’s salad bar so don’t be surprised if Bobo changes his tune about Palin at some point.

Update A couple thoughts: (a) a lot of people (EDIT: at the coffee shop where I’ve taken refuge) really hate Palin — lots of whispering about that here (b) I cannot believe how inconsiderate the whole thing is for Palinites — most will probably be in line at least three hours today.

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50Comments

  1. 1.

    JK

    Bookstore gives new meaning to the notion that Sarah Palin is a nutjob

    Bookshop Santa Cruz is offering an essential item as a companion to the new Sarah Palin book Going Rogue – with every book we will give you a free bag of nuts, Sarah Palin’s Just Plain Nutz to be exact…”Our bag of nuts is an honest one ounce, is also good for you, and won’t cause you to feel compelled to go out and shoot a moose. Sarah’s new book of fictions is none of those things,” says Bookshop owner Casey Coonerty Protti. “We felt we needed to strike a balance.”

    h/t http://www.bookshopsantacruz.com/sarah-palins-just-plain-nutz

  3. 3.

    Victory

    http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/70162272.html

    An article about some linguistics profs dissecting Palin’s dialect. There is some irony in there too…

    “The UW researchers said people living in Alaska’s Matanuska and Susitna valleys, where Wasilla is located, are largely descendants of farmers who moved there in the 1930s from the Upper Midwest. More than 200 farm families moved to the Wasilla area in 1935 as part of a government program to start a new farming community.”

    So, while rallying during the presidential campaign, and still so, about the evils of pork barrel spending here it is, she owes her existence in Alaska to a pork barrel program.

    How unfortunate for her.

  4. 4.

    WyldPiratd

    I’m sorry, but anyone that thinks Sarah Palin is either a role model, leader or potential presidential material is simply a fucking moran that isn’t paying attention.

    It doesn’t matter what they look or where they may dine–these Palin-worshipers are dangerously stupid.

  7. 7.

    Cat Lady

    “Get up in the morning, slaving for bread sir” Desmond Dekker reference DougJ?

    Wait until she quits in the middle of the thing. Retirees don’t like to be yanked around, and they’ve got nothing else to do but complain.

  11. 11.

    Robin G.

    My friends and I did our performance art/drinking game Going Rogue reading last night. The deal is, if you were reading and reached a point where you were too thrown by the text to continue, you took a drink and passed the book to the next person.

    It took nine swaps to get through the first two pages.

    Frankly, I think the whole thing would have been a lot better if there had been zombies.

  12. 12.

    Violet

    DougJ, can people go into the Borders to shop for other books? I’ve been wondering if the book signings have cut into the stores’ profits for the day.

  15. 15.

    RSA

    I cannot believe how inconsiderate the whole thing is for Palinites—most will probably be in line at least three hours today.

    On the “greater good” front, this may be the first time many Palinites have set foot in a bookstore…

  16. 16.

    Brick Oven Bill

    One difference between Obama and Hitler is that Hitler wrote his own book. Sarah at least acknowledges the use of a co-author. Sarah’s co-author’s name is Lynn Vincent, who is properly given credit.

    Christian Science Monitor: Lynn Vincent.

    In this manner, Sarah shows Character.

  18. 18.

    Capri

    The signing in my home state was a disaster. She stopped at a Borders in Noblesville and left after exactly 3 hours and not a second later. That left about 400 people with wristbands who were told “Thanks, but no thanks” after waiting 4 hours. Palin’s bus was boo’ed as it pulled out of the parking lot.

  20. 20.

    Church Lady

    Doug, I have only two questions concerning your surveillance operation:

    1. Is everyone in line white?
    2. Is anyone packing heat?

  21. 21.

    kth

    Some people like to go to book events and get autographs. And this is probably the biggest celebrity book event Rochester has ever had. Though they are no doubt all admirers of Sarah Palin, you really can’t infer that they are full-bore Tea Party movement types. Perhaps that’s what Doug was getting at.

  22. 22.

    Jim

    I think I’m getting punch-drunk from all the Palin stuff out there. When I read “Palinite” in a headline, my eyes convey it to me as “Pantyline.” Is there any hope for me?

  23. 23.

    maya

    I cannot believe how inconsiderate the whole thing is for Palinites—most will probably be in line at least three hours today.

    It’s good practice for those Death Panel lines they’ll have to get on later.

  25. 25.

    sloan

    I’m curious about these people. They stand in line for hours to get a wrist band and then they come back the next day and stand in line for hours to get an autograph and say “I love you Sarah!” (if she doesn’t change her mind and leave early). The bookstore requires them to purchase a book, probably at full price, and many of her fans purchase the 2 book limit.

    So you’ve got people giving up at least 5 – 10 hours of their time and $25 – $50 of their money, not including lost wages, babysitters, parking etc. What I’d like to know is how many of these people gave $10 or even one hour of their time trying to help her win last year.

    I saw this during the Presidential campaign when my neighbors took the day off work, drove halfway across the state and sat in the blazing sun all day long just to see her from a distance for a few minutes. They returned with bumper stickers and t-shirts and some crappy pictures they took on their cell phone. The whole thing cost them well over $500, mostly in lost wages, and consumed a good 24 man hours of their time. Neither of them gave money or time to help Sarah the Politician win the actual election, but they paid a high price to see Sarah the Celebrity make a live appearance.

    So when it comes right down to it how many of her fans are going to sit on a little plastic chair at some lonely campaign office 2 years from now and do hours of hard, boring, unglamorous work like phonebanking or data entry to help her win a primary?

  27. 27.

    Chat Noir

    @sloan: Spot on. I’m reading David Plouffe’s book “The Audacity to Win” and campaigning sure isn’t glamorous. The way he describes it, it is long, hard work where a lot of folks (the candidate included) give up anything resembling a normal life — and this is several months prior to the Iowa Caucuses.

    There’s no frigging way Palin would do one quarter of the work required to run a half way decent campaign.

  28. 28.

    DougJ

    1. Is everyone in line white? 2. Is anyone packing heat?

    There are a few Asians. Maybe 10. I saw two black people at the very back of the line.

    I didn’t see any guns. They seemed like fairly peaceable people, overall.

  29. 29.

    DougJ

    “Get up in the morning, slaving for bread sir” Desmond Dekker reference DougJ?

    Yes.

    I agree with you that these people will end up pissed off at her, one way or another.

  30. 30.

    New Yorker

    One difference between Obama and Hitler is that Hitler wrote his own book.

    Another one, Bill, is that Hitler was a mass-murdering tyrant bent on conquering Europe.

    I saw two black people at the very back of the line.

    I’m trying to come up with something witty to say about ironic symbolism and Palin’s appeal to voters who think the 1964 Civil Rights Act was tyranny, but I’m drawing blanks…..

  31. 31.

    kay

    @sloan:

    I just think it’s amazingly generous of the media to give her hundreds of hours of free campaign advertising, and she’s not even in any elected office, so there’s not even the thin veneer of covering Sarah Palin on policy.
    It’s essentially a straight-up campaign contribution.
    I thought about it and I don’t know that any prospective candidate in my memory has been given this sort of an unearned advantage. These are campaign events. She gets wall to wall coverage.
    They’re suckers, and they got suckered by Sarah Palin, which makes it all the more embarrassing.

  33. 33.

    sloan

    @Chat Noir: The guys at 538.com had a damn fine series of reports from the ground during the campaign last year. They tried in earnest to find McCain/Palin campaign offices overflowing with volunteers but usually found offices that were closed or nearly empty. This was at a time during which we were being told that Sarah Palin had “electrified the base” and that she was the GOP’s Barack Obama.

    I lived in San Diego at the time and I called around to some of the McCain/Palin “Victory Offices” in McCain’s home away from home on Coronado Island – a very conservative Navy town. All I got was the answering machine, even during the day, because nobody could be bothered to show up and answer the phone! And it was closed on weekends! Many of his Victory Offices in the area were only open M-W-F from 9-5 or some weird hours like that.

    And this is in San Diego County, a fairly conservative area with something like a million registered Republicans. Palin could fill a 10,000 seat stadium but couldn’t fill 3 card tables with phonebank volunteers. Somehow our national media missed that part of the story.

  34. 34.

    Chat Noir

    @sloan:

    Somehow our national media missed that part of the story.

    You know, sloan, this seems to be another common theme in Plouffe’s book, at least with regards to the primaries. The media underestimated the local nature of the Iowa Caucuses and what the Obama campaign was trying to achieve there. As I was reading it yesterday, I was thinking how the media continues to underestimate Obama.

    It will be interesting to see Plouffe’s take on the media during general.

  35. 35.

    spudvol

    Can we rename “Palinites” to “Palindrones” in honor of their robotic dedication to espousing a worldview that makes no sense regardless of which way you read it?

  37. 37.

    Liberty60

    @pk:

    How many non-whites do you see?

    They have that same black guy from the Tea Party video. I think he is carving out a lucrative life for himself as the Designated Minority to prove how inclusive they are.

  38. 38.

    gwangung

    @Chat Noir:

    You know, sloan, this seems to be another common theme in Plouffe’s book, at least with regards to the primaries. The media underestimated the local nature of the Iowa Caucuses and what the Obama campaign was trying to achieve there. As I was reading it yesterday, I was thinking how the media continues to underestimate Obama.

    Agreed. The small stuff, done many, many times, escapes the grasp of the media. They’re out of touch with that.

    Wonder, though, if Obama can repeat this for other Dems in 2010 and for himself in 2012.

  40. 40.

    sloan

    @gwangung:

    The small stuff, done many, many times, escapes the grasp of the media. They’re out of touch with that.

    Here’s the only real reporting I saw of the the McCain campaign. It was done by Sean Quinn of 538.com in his On The Road series.

    (Scroll to the bottom of that first link to see McCain/Palin Victory Offices overflowing with volunteers. This is during the height of Sarah Mania.)

  41. 41.

    Pasquinade

    Just like in Columbus, Rochester NY fans waiting all night for Sarah Palin found out there were only 500 wristbands available, instead of the 1000 promised. There were people who drove hundreds of miles and waiting all night just to get a change to meet Sarah. But over 500 people who thought they had gotten there early enough got shortchanged – again.
    …
    We’re pretty sure it’s the bookstores that are behind this but in the end, it’ll be Palin who looks bad if she doesn’t get a handle on this. There were some VERY upset people. Some demanded a refund for their books. Just FYI folks – especially people waiting in other cities right now.

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2391608/posts

    COLUMBUS, Ohio — Former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin spent more than three hours signing her book, Going Rogue, at a northwest side bookstore on Friday night.
    …
    On the third day of Palin’s book-signing tour, the Borders bookstore on Sawmill Road announced that the first 1,000 in line by the store’s 10 a.m. opening would be guaranteed to get their books signed. But Palin’s staff called the store and told the managers to cut back to 500 wristbands, causing hundreds to be turned away, 10TV’s Kurt Ludlow reported.

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2391608/posts?page=9#9

    Kristinn is RimJob’s righthand man in DC.

  42. 42.

    Yutsano

    @DougJ: Just out of curiosity, is one of the black guys Nate from the Tea Party movie? I’m still not sold that that’s legit.

  43. 43.

    MNPundit

    I don’t get the update. Do you mean the people just there to shop hate Palin, or the people in line hate her and are still in line?

  44. 44.

    DougJ

    I don’t get the update.

    Sorry — it was from iPhone. I meant to add that I was a nearby coffee place.

  47. 47.

    Woodrowfan

    I wonder how many are getting the book autographed just to sell it on eBay. There are about 150 copies on there now.

  49. 49.

    oh really

    How empty must a person’s life be to want (or need) to fill even a minute second of it with drivel from the Queen of Self-Pity?

  50. 50.

    morzer

    Brick Oven Bill

    One difference between Obama and Hitler is that Hitler wrote his own book. Sarah at least acknowledges the use of a co-author. Sarah’s co-author’s name is Lynn Vincent, who is properly given credit.
    Christian Science Monitor: Lynn Vincent.
    In this manner, Sarah shows Character.

    Yes. her character is clear. She’s a chaotic evil half-orc assassin. I’ll ignore your fevered gibberish, and recommend tylenol and a high school education to help you back to normality.

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