This woman is just insane. Just listen to this rambling nonsense from Palin on the O’Reilly Factor:
PALIN: Of course they’re sinking. It was just a matter of time before more of that reflection of the people’s uncomfortableness that they feel towards this administration is manifesting in these poll numbers. There is an obvious disconnect between President Obama and the White House, what they are doing to our economy and what they are doing in terms of not allowing Americans to feel as safe as we had felt and people finally saying, “You know, this is not the representative form of government that we thought that we had voted in.” After a year of time, people are saying, “No, we want the White House, we want President Obama to hear from us. We want these common sense solutions with health care, with jobs, with the economy, with the war on terror to be implemented so we can get back on the right track.”
It just makes no damned sense. Obama isn’t allowing people to be safe? We changed the kind of representative democracy somehow? What common sense solutions does she want to implement.
Listening to her speak is like Free Republic Mad Libs.
Bubblegum Tate
Oh, ya know…all of ’em.
flukebucket
My first guess would be tax cuts and deregulation.
schrodinger's cat
Sullivan has some posts about Palin’s interview with Beck. The woman scares me
me
There’s a disconnect between Obama and the White House? That’s … odd.
valdivia
Her tick seems to be to say common sense solution so that she does not have to say *what* these policies are. Is there *anyone* out there who will ask her, pin her down to give specifics about what common sense policies are, cause this tag line is just a way of not ever saying anything concrete and passing as some sort of salt of the earth visionary.
In the meantime Andrew is having a major freak out over her and envisioning the fascist Fox News-Palin presidency. Two really really long posts worth reading even if the tone is a bit hysterical.
Tom Hilton
He isn’t allowing us to feel safe. The Republicans, with their alarmist hysteria, are of course letting us feel just as safe as we want to feel.
Origuy
This isn’t helping you get better, John.
SpotWeld
It’s not supposed to make sense.
It’s supposed to be a vaugely worded speel of platitudes that mirrors without specificly repeating the rhetoric of the tea-party-ers. (Goerment doesn’t represent us, not feeling safe, not on the right track, etc…)
It’s a mewling weak minded whine that honestly sounds like a highschooler trying to complain loudy about thier homework assignement in hopes daddy will come finish it for her, while still giving her the cover to save face by not actually being so uncool as to ask for her parents for help (’cause cool kids really don’t care.)
Yossarian
I’m really starting to wonder if Sarah Palin’s whole existence isn’t some sort of elaborate piece of Dadaist performance art.
Notorious P.A.T.
and what? Between the president and what? Complete sentences, please.
This is why it aggravates me when people insist on writing like idiots: because there is such a fine line between sounding like one and being one.
Joe Lisboa
After a year of time
Shoot. me. now.
hilzoy
Well, at least she made it clear that she’s talking about what has happened “After a year of time”, as opposed to a year of space, or something.
Jay in Oregon
This is the kind of high-quality insight that Fox News is paying for?
hilzoy
Darn, Joe Lisboa beat me to it. ;(
Stefan
What common sense solutions does she want to implement.
The ones that work to bring together the American people in a way of common sense to help all us and all of them with these problems that we’re havin’ here. Also.
catclub
John C.
You promised to stop for a while and then went crazy posting for the next 36 hours. At least put up more pictures of Tunch.
licensed to kill time
There’s an obvious disconnect between Palin’s brain and her mouth..well, on reflection – maybe not.
Srsly, she just babbles.
Midnight Marauder
You mean there is a disconnect between President Obama and the entire executive branch? I think those folks he’s been coordinating the Haiti relief effort with are going to be surprised to hear about this. But I guess all this proves is that words like “obvious” and “is” have different meanings in Real America.
Like, the opposite of what they actually mean in reality.
Chat Noir
Steve Benen has the clip of her and Beck talking about the Founding Fathers.
That anyone takes this dipshit seriously is mind boggling. I like how Benen always refers to her as the half-term governor.
flukebucket
Well hell. It ain’t hurtin’. Don’t encourage him to go Galt. What will we do without him? We will lose the god damn PLOT!
CaseyL
Hilzoy! Good to see ya! What got you out of lurker mode: Cole’s injury, or Palin’s word salad?
The title – “The lunatic is on the grass” – is that a title of something else, some song or book I should recognize?
Because if it’s just a statement, I have to say I think Palin would be even more entertaining than she already is if she actually were “on the grass” – that is, stoned. Hell, maybe being gassed on grass would make her more coherent…
valdivia
@Stefan:
Some respect here for the rigorous linguistics of Palinese. It has to read:
Also.Too.
carlos the dwarf
@valdivia:
We are all Andrew Sullivan now?
Emma
Good Lord. English is my second language and I make more sense than she does even when I’m pickled in dark Jamaican rum…
valdivia
@hilzoy:
yes hilzoy. *so* good to see you!
Notorious P.A.T.
Jesus John, I just read what happened to you. I sure hope you feel better soon!
John PM
I have said it before and I will say it again, Palin is the Anti-Christ. She is literally against everything that Jesus Christ stood for. Millions of Americans are going to follow Palin into the Pit of Fire, after she has finished destroying the planet.
Mike G
Makes as much sense as anyone else on Faux Noise.
Tom Hilton
There is an obvious disconnect between these common-sense solutions.
L. Ron Obama
Ferris Bueller, I mean John Cole, you are my hero. You are a fucking machine, man.
me
@CaseyL: Pink Floyd, Brain Damage.
valdivia
@carlos the dwarf:
well I definitely don’t like her and think she is pretty horrid but Andrew is existentially terrified of her. I think her pull with a sector of the population is real and strong but I think Sulli is over estimating her and the size of the numbers of people who buy this.
Bubblegum Tate
@Chat Noir:
I’m shocked that she didn’t list Lincoln as being among her favorite founding fathers.
Ash Can
No, no, no, John. You’re supposed to take enough Vicodin that Palin’s babblings make sense.
Drugs — ur doin m rong.
Chat Noir
@CaseyL:
Pink Floyd
Stefan
There’s an episode in the last season of “Cheers” where Frasier runs across a city councilman named Kevin Fogerty, played by Philip Baker Hall, who stops into Cheers to campaign for re-election:
City Councilman Kevin Fogerty: Kevin Fogarty, City Council. I hope I have your vote on election day.
Dr. Frasier Crane: And why exactly should I vote for you, Mr. Fogerty?
Fogerty: Well, because I’m a hard worker, and I take a stand.
Frasier: On what, exactly?
Fogerty: The issues of the day.
Frasier: Which are?
Fogerty: The things that concern you and your family… the most.
When Frasier then confronts Fogerty with the fact that his campaign consists entirely of meaningless platitudes, Fogerty answers:
Fogerty: Maybe we need someone to blame. Maybe if we pick some faceless person at city hall to be responsible for all our problems then we won’t have to accept any responsibility at all. Well, people, I say now is the time to start looking in the mirror. Because… if this thing is going to work, we are all going to have to make it work. The way a bunch of people made something work at Lexington and Concord. You may remember it… it’s called AMERICA.
(The bar patrons applaud & cheer; Fogerty leaves)
Frasier: But he didn’t SAY anything!
I don’t know why that just popped into my head…..
Gus
@Origuy: True, but heavily sedated is the best way to be when reading/listening to what Palin is saying.
Chat Noir
@Bubblegum Tate: Or Teddy Roosevelt.
licensed to kill time
@CaseyL: It’s from Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” which I think is where Palin is from. Or should go. Also, too.
Notorious P.A.T.
Good catch. It’s a lyric from Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”.
Laertes
You’re tuned to the wrong frequency. You’re analyzing the words because you’re an outsider. If you were a member of the cult you’d instead be reacting to the emotions.
She’s stroking her base. Her message is simple: THEY are out of touch. WE represent the common people. My people, my wingnuts, my teabaggers, know this: the masses have come to their senses and they’re once again our our side. These usurpers are on their way out. They don’t understand that this is OUR country, but soon we’ll show them.
Her syntax may be garbled, but that just doesn’t matter. She’s delivering clear, forceful messages down in the emotional band. The higher bands are a mess, but that’s not where the real payload is.
Don K
@CaseyL:
“Brain Damage”, from “Dark Side of the Moon”, by Pink Floyd.
Damn kids anyway.
Notice too how the song’s title fits into the Palin persona.
pharniel
1) blog owner, get well.
2) sarah palin is 100% fucking scary.
but so is the rest of faux news.
If she makes me have to break my own father she’s next.
grump
matoko_chan
How can Palin ever be president when she can’t answer a follow-up question?
If she gets the nom she can’t debate Obama….she can’t even let non-FOX reporters cover her teabagger speeches.
mistersnrub
“Common Sense Conservatism” is the new “Compassionate Conservatism.” Mark my words.
pharniel
@Laertes: So you’re saying she’s working for the Extistensial Powers and we need to send and EsoTerrorists team after her?
Memewars, in my lifetime.
sadness.
Notorious P.A.T.
Jesus came not to bring peace, but a sword. Palin is following that program just fine.
Chat Noir
@Emma: Your post made me laugh. Her fractured syntax is a complete mystery to me. It doesn’t matter if you listen to her speak or if you read something she said — her quotes simply do not make sense.
inthewoods
@Jay in Oregon: “This is the kind of high-quality insight that Fox News is paying for?”
Sadly they are getting their money’s worth.
The Nielsen ratings are in and former V.P. hopeful Sarah Palin hit the nearly 4 million viewer jackpot last night for her debut appearance on Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor” as a Fox News contributor. The count: 3,954,000 people tuned in to watch Palin last night.
That number is up 42 percent from the same night last year, and up 26 percent compared to every other day of the show in January.
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlDC/networks/palin_fnc_ratings_sky_high__148876.asp
Morbo
She wants the final common sense solutions. There was that Jennifer Rubin article, after all… /Godwinned
@John PM:
She’s probably also on Team Leno.
@valdivia:
QFT
matoko_chan
You knew it was coming.
Erikk the Red says Palin is just Jesus in drag.
Col. Klink
What if Marx got it wrong?
Maybe history doesn’t repeat itself, first as tragedy, and then as farce. Maybe history can do both at the same time? It sure goes a long way toward explaining Palin.
Ash
I don’t understand how she does this. For fuck’s sakes, she has a degree in journalism!
I don’t think I could even talk that much nonsense if I was trying to. It’s almost like there’s some secret hidden pattern in her speech that only she can decode.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
Does anyone else get fearful, while reading Palin’s words, that if you read too much of it you’ll start talking like her? That, in the effort to give her gibberish meaning, you’ll end up speaking gibberish yourself? That maybe it’s contagious?
No? Just me then?
Damn.
.
Jules
When the hell did God fearin’ Conservatives become such a bunch of wussies? It must suck to be afraid all the time.
I guess Palin needs a Daddy President like MoDow to feel safe.
Chat Noir
@matoko_chan: Bingo! I think it was Olbermann (or someone on his show) who pointed out that she hasn’t had a formal press conference since she came onto the national scene. I seem to recall she chatted informally with the press when she got back to Alaska after the ’08 election but I don’t think she’s had a presser in the same manner that most elected public officals have.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Col. Klink
What about adding a “We’re all Sully now” tag to anything related to Palin’s house o’ crazy?
slag
Pain killers, Pink Floyd, and Palin. One of these things doesn’t belong here. I’m just not sure which one.
Annie
@hilzoy: @hilzoy:
Or a year of common sense understanding and common sense solutions for real Americans and their real American problems…as first proposed by George Washington.
Senyordave
That’s it, I want my hand held by the president every time I feel threatened.
She is basically saying that people want all style and no substance.
The more I read about Obama’s behavior at cabinet meetings, the more I realize that he is a highly competent, very intelligent decision-maker who doesn’t panic, and hires people who give good advice.
We wouldn’t want that, would we?
Shell
Her pronouncements always sound like they started as English, were translated into, say, Portugeuse, then into Japanese, Swahili and then back into English.
Stefan
Does anyone else get fearful, while reading Palin’s words, that if you read too much of it you’ll start talking like her? That, in the effort to give her gibberish meaning, you’ll end up speaking gibberish yourself? That maybe it’s contagious?
Speaking for myself, no, I don’t think so and I’ve never had the fearfulness of that perhaps I’d be startin’ to adopt her syntax of speaking, because I’ve always believed in myself and resisting outside influences and just, you know, listenin’ to myself and knowin’ what I believe and how I’m speakin’ for myself for what I’m sayin’.
Also. Too.
kay
FOX did us all a favor. Palin is boring. This is dull, recycled campaign-speak. It’s not even rabidly right wing or identifiably ideological.
“Common sense solutions”? How may times have you heard that, from a politician?
She’s interesting only when she’s launching some ridiculous one-line bomb and then running away.
The McCain staffers she abused had it right: limit her opportunity to speak unscripted and hope they can run out the clock.
slag
@hilzoy: Have you noticed that our discourse has disintegrated once again since you went away? Let that be a lesson to you.
New Yorker
I’m beginning to think that all Palin posts should have the tag “We are all Andrew Sullivan now”.
When I read his recent posts on the Palin-Back-Ailes axis, my thought was (in a Jeff Bridges voice), “you’re not wrong, Andrew, you’re just hysterical.”
This country has seen demagogic frauds pop up like dandelions every time the economy goes into crisis mode. We survived Charles Coughlin, we’ll survive Palin and Beck. Sully really, really overestimates the percentage of the populace who buys her crap. For more sanity on her, one of the better places to look is (believe it or not) David Frum’s place, where he consistently shoots down the idea that this woman is a path to anything but disaster for the GOP.
ckelly
What common sense solutions does she want to implement.
Why, all the common sense ones silly.
YellowJournalism
I get annoyed when people attribute racism to too many of the criticisms against Obama, but doesn’t the phrase “people’s uncomfortableness” just scream, “They’re afraid of the black man in the White House!” to any of you?
Morbo
@Jules: Speaking of which, happy 58th, Maureen! Judging from the writing in your columns you still have all the youthfulness of a sixteen-year-old.
CaseyL
@inthewoods: I think we need to face the reality that the fissure between people who have a clue and people who work strenuously to avoid ever having a clue has become an abyss.
It used to be people like Palin were isolated within very small communities, getting together for KKK or John Bircher or American Nazi enclaves, which themselves were usually pretty localized. But now they have their own news channel – a wildly successful news channel – which simultaneously strengthens their groupthink and distills their craziness to ever-higher levels.
I honestly don’t know how long a representative democracy can last when fully one-third of its population has deliberately checked out of Realityland and is consciously, willingly devoted to destroying the shared fabric of the country it lives in. Other civilized nations have fallen apart with an even smaller cadre of willful saboteurs, and that was in the days when mobilizing and arming the lunatics was a lot harder to do.
Tsulagi
Or kinda like listening to Rev. Pat if he spoke in word salad tongues.
At least with Pat you know what loony thing he’s trying to convey. With Bible Spice, it’s a pure roll with the roulette wheel.
Punchy
Uh……what?
In other news, there’s some disconnect between my right arm and the appendage on the upper torso of my right side.
The Grand Panjandrum
But, can Palin see the dark side of the moon from her house?
jl
Sorry to hear that John Cole hurt his shoulder. But, he seems to make somewhat more sense on heavy duty medication than Palin does while she is (I would suppose) sober on national TV. I know that is faint praise, but figured Cole should get whatever encouragement he can right now.
BTW, where was Tunch when Cole slipped, and was he doing? Just concerned about Cole’s welfare. Cole has convinced himself that Tunch will kill him in his sleep in the middle of some very peaceful night and eat him. But that might be clever ruse.
Andy
Instead of waterboarding, maybe we can force terror suspects to diagram Palin’s sentences.
Naw, even David Addington wouldn’t sign off on that.
JenJen
A year ago this time, I was certain Palin would be the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question 20 years down the road.
I guess I had that wrong. I don’t mean that in a “oh well, that’s OK” way.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
We know what the Republicans’ commons sense solution is to healthcare. Either get a job with great coverage, or don’t get sick. If you get sick, die quietly so as not to disturb anybody.
It’s not really that bad a model, it’s just that the compliance thing is whack. People just can’t figure out how to die without first getting sick and inconveniencing the good people who didn’t get sick for a long time.
That rapture deal is looking better every day.
licensed to kill time
@inthewoods:
This is really what it’s all about for the media. For whatever reason, Palin draws huge numbers of eyeballs which equals ratings so every brain dead thing she utters gets replayed ad nauseum. It’s what I particularly dread about her Fox (cough) job, because even if you never watch Fox you will see her on ALL the other channels.
You will not be able to escape the PalinBorg. Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated…..
Sanka
This is standard politicking fare. Replace the words “Obama” with “Bush” and you have your typical stump speech for every Democratic nominee for president in 2007-2008 and the election before that. And on and on and on.
Nothing more unusual than your typical politician would say.
kommrade reproductive vigor
G.O.P. S.O.P.
Christ, that woman must have some powerful lungs. She can utter some long-assed sentences without once coming up for air.
Katie5
@Tom Hilton: Taking off your shoes, your belts; stepping into body scanners–it’s all security theater. It’s all about allowing us to feel safe. Palin, the others, they don’t want to actually address these issues. Otherwise, they’d advocate for human intel, going into Saudi Arabia. It’s all about appearances. They say ‘war on terror’ enough times and, voila, we’re safe (or in Kansas…).
GregB
Common sense solutions like barring the media from public events and not answering questions that are asked and claiming that even the slightest amount of accountability for ones recored is an unprecedented attack on your womanhood, family and way of life.
-G
kay
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
“Not when there are commonsense solutions to meeting health care challenges in our country… So lots of commonsense solutions that need to be plugged in before ever considering federal government taking it over.”
Actual Palin quote from her visit with Rush Limbaugh.
AnotherBruce
Not too many centuries ago, common sense told us that the sun was revolving around the earth. Somehow, I think this is what Sarah means when she talks about “the right track”.
Comrade Mary
I cannot click on any of those videos or leave the sound on the tv whenever she is on. I simply cannot. Because when I hear that woman gulp and shriek her way through her word jello salad, my shoulders risk becoming permanently clamped to my ears.
New Yorker
Um, no. Your typical politician makes fucking sense when he or she speaks. Palin doesn’t have a thought in that empty head of hers, so she just spews gibberish. She makes George W. Bush look like Cicero.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@hilzoy:
Found that blurb out there today. I still think you are the best blogger I got to read on a regular basis.
WaMo is still good, but it ain’t the same :(
bemused
Sarah, obvious disconnect does not mean what you & your groupies think it means.
matoko_chan
@Chat Noir: but….who seriously thinks there can be 2012 presidential election without a presidential debate?
She still can’t hold a freakin’ press conference.
She won’t debate Obama unless she can get the coveted “no-follow-up-questions” rule.
Like that is ever going to happen again.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@matoko_chan: Brave, brave, brave Sir Erick…
JGabriel
Sarah Palin:
This is not my beautiful house!
Letting the days go by
Let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by
There is water undground
Into the blue again
After the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime
Water flowing underground
Same as it ever was!
.
matoko_chan
hilzoy? hilzoy is back?
slag
@The Grand Panjandrum: Don’t be ridiculous. Palin’s house was built on the dark side of the moon.
Otis Criblecoblis
This is “Being There” coming true to life. She is getting to be like Chauncey Gardiner every day. “If you water the garden, the garden will grow.”
kay
“It’s all about Americans who are hurting right now and what those solutions are that are so obvious, so commonsense that need to be plugged in.”
I honestly don’t know how many more ways she can combine those words/phases, and it’s only been two interviews.
Col. Klink
How is it that such great minds at @57 and @65 can think alike?
R. Johnston
This has to be made a new post tag.
burnspbesq
And yet, if there were a Presidential election next Tuesday and it was Obama vs. Palin, Palin would get at least 55 million votes.
NickM
You’re lucky, John – you get to listen to this crap through the haze of pain-killers.
I heard two teabaggers on an NPR show last night – Talk of the Nation? – one was a laid-off UAW autoworker who thought that teabagging would bring back jobs and revive the unions. The other was a Dallas housewife, who explained her platform as “pro-freedom” and “pro-liberty” about a half-dozen times but was never pressed to explain.
The only time she showed saavy, before I turned the thing off, was when she gracefully avoided questions about the Nazi and racist posters held up at their rallies.
The teabaggers are crazy. I’m not sure I can see any kind of confrontation with reality that can cure them.
Demo Woman
@matoko_chan: Real Americans don’t bother with debates.
Sarah deserves credit for saying uncomfortableness. That’s a mighty big word that would be difficult to say after a few drinks.
Ash
@burnspbesq: Say what now?
matoko_chan
for you Dr. Cole…courtesy of aa milne and my excellent catholic girls school education in the classics (well….excellent except for the sex part)…
JGabriel
Emma:
Clearly, Palin is pickled in something far more hallucinogenic.
.
Notorious P.A.T.
@Sanka:
That is idiotic.
AnotherBruce
@matoko_chan:
I made the mistake of reading that, and my brain instantly filled up with a big black ball of stupid that’s going to take some shots of clear alcohol to clear out.
My god that post is so stupid that it needs it’s own thread. Fortunately for me, I don’t blog.
licensed to kill time
@kay:
Those solutions that are so obvious I cannot articulate them nor locate the plug to plug them into using my commonsense and all even though it hurts like all Americans right now, that commonsense obvious solution is nowhere to be found oh how hard I have tried but I had to quit because the disconnect, it’s too strong! but at least I am here to tell you about it, in a commonsense way here on Fox where it’s at least fair and balanced to me and they don’t ask any of those hi-falutin’ followup fact things there.
Notorious P.A.T.
Link
aimai
Laertes way upthread has it exactly right–I can’t link because my *&^% new computer doesn’t let me cut and paste the way I’m used to. Basically what she says makes absolute sense if the entire of your political argument is emotional and the role of politics itself is to soothe, or inflame, people’s emotions. Obviously we have the same democratic system we had before, but for Palin’s team it no longer feels the same because it doesn’t respond, instinctively, to the way they feel. Under Bush they knew, or thought they knew, that all decisions were made from their particular vantage point: kind of like some kind of plankton that felt secure floating in a comfortable, traditional, current of water. They never thought Bush did what he was supposed to do because of electoral politics–they always thought he did what he was supposed to do because he was one of them, and his gut was their gut and his god was their god.
Under Obama that implicit tie based on notions of shared history, ethnicity, race, religion and just general comity–all the more felt because its totally incoherent and ahistorical–has been broken. And Palin’s people feel that viscerally and they do feel scared. That’s their main complaint. They woke up one day and the strong daddy had left and mommy had moved in some black guy who was just posing as daddy. But just like a stepfather doesn’t have your real interests at heart this step president doesn’t either. And boy are they looking for mommy and blankie about right now.
Palin’s statement speaks their language, and speaks to their deeper understanding of what the change in the white house really meant. If I may translate it for the rest of you she is saying
“Wahhhhh wahhhhh wahhhhh…binky binky binky….now.”
aimai
MikeJ
@Notorious P.A.T.: I was just thinking how happy I was that both last night and today nobody had engaged with our 3rd string troll and you had to go and blow it.
Fergus Wooster
For the target audience, I don’t think she’s required to make sense. She gives the emotional cues, prattles off her Mad Libs and they sit transfixed nodding their heads. I just saw some of them watching her at lunch – fixated, googly-eyed.
She’s the wingnut equivalent of the Hypnotoad.
John PM
@matoko_chan: #51
Curse you for making me look at Red State, but given my earlier pronouncement (Sarah Palin is the Anti-Christ), I felt I had no choice.
That being said, the post made no sense. Erickkson made a comparison to Sarah Palin and Jesus in the first paragraph, and that was it. His comparison was that Palin and Jesus both upset the secular factions of the world. I think that this comparison will come as a surprise to the Jews, who apparently were secular back in the time of Jesus. Who knew?
Fergus Wooster
@aimai:
This made my day.
bemused
@matoko_chan:
This Erik person believes feminists fear Palin because she can carry a baby & think at the same time. Sarah & think don’t belong in the same sentence. Erik is a Palin fan because they think alike…with difficulty.
burnspbesq
@Ash:
I wish I could convince myself that the American people are smarter than that, but I can’t.
I had lunch on Monday in the employee cafeteria of the brand-spanking-new headquarters of a Fortune 500 company. Room full of mostly college-educated, reasonably smart people. What was on all four big-screen TVs in all four corners? Fox News.
Sanity is losing the propaganda war, just as badly as North Carolina lost to Clemson last night.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Ur ideaz, dey ntrigue me. I kan haz newzletter naow?
Edited to add: Wingnut Hypnotoad MUST the new tag for all Palin posts.
Bubblegum Tate
@NickM:
Wait…what?!?. He thought teabaggers want to help unions?
kay
@licensed to kill time:
I think the garbling makes it sound more interesting than it is, and works in her favor.
Try this: “Americans are hurting and we need common sense solutions”.
She’s a bore. You’d fly right by that boilerplate politician statement from anyone else but in her case it’s so garbled and incoherent you spend 40 seconds trying to parse it, because you’ve been told she’s some phenom with mavericky ideas. But how many times are you going to bother doing that? There’s no reward. She doesn’t even have a pleasant speaking voice.
JGabriel
@The Grand Panjandrum:
No. But in her mind’s eye, it’s the whole fucking landscape.
.
burnspbesq
@kay:
That is actually an entirely correct statement, when you lift it out of context and set it there all by itself.
It’s just that there is no way we’re going to get common sense solutions – or common sense anything – from Sarah Palin or the Republican Party.
jibeaux
Well, I think the commonsense solutions probably start with sitting down with the Congress and telling them to cut the bullshit. Ah, hell, that was the other moron, the old one.
The Populist
She’s idiotic. Cowards like her believe this tripe. This is the party of the patriot act. If freedom is the cost of “being safer” no thanks.
These morons do not get it. You are not guaranteed 100% safety. Free speech, sure…obviously in her case. The right to vote, uh huh. Privacy….uh not really and safety…no way.
This is not a world with the ability to stop crimes before the happen. All one can do is be vigilant and stay aware. I guess that is hard for morons who think Bush = great, Obama = second coming of Hitler, Marx and Stalin.
Citizen_X
Oh, Christ’s nipples, you moron, the word is discomfort.
Or “lack of comfort.” Or “the people don’t feel comfortable,” or something.
0whole1
@The Grand Panjandrum:
> But, can Palin see the dark side of the moon from her house?
No, but she occasionally sneaks peeks at the dark side of the *moron*.
…
Maybe more than peeks.
Ash
@The Populist:
Tom Cruise and his pre-cogs say whatchu talkin’ bout Populist?
jibeaux
@burnspbesq:
I kind of disagree with that, actually. There are commonsense solutions to improving your household budget. I’m not sure there are strictly commonsense solutions to improving the economy of a $14-trillion-a-year-GDP country.
JGabriel
Shorter Erick “Goldilocks” Erickson:
.
GregL
@Stefan:
You are on FIRE today, my friend!
General Winfield Stuck
@hilzoy:
Sarah’s rabbit hole is just deeper than most, is all.
nice to hear from you Hilzoy! Hope you are doing well./
Stooleo
Learn to speak Teabagger
valdivia
She worries about the windows and the crown in the Statue of Liberty but she cant be bothered with policy things? Huh? What a maroon.
kay
@burnspbesq:
Oh, I agree. Who can object to that? Common sense solutions. Entirely non-controversial. Part of the appeal, once you strip out all the extra words, is she’s saying it’s easy. But anyone who still believes that, after the last ten years, is 12 years old or a moron.
It’s not easy, or we would have done it, unless Republicans are somehow hinting they withheld all these common sense solutions from us because they were waiting to pull them out of a hat when it got really bad.
Writing self-aggrandizing (loosely) biographical fiction is probably easy, but governing is really hard, which is why she quit.
Fergus Wooster
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
If I coin an eventual tag, am I officially a Juicer?
scav
ah, but if we could only put her out to pasture.
licensed to kill time
@kay:
Kay, I think you are right that we spend time trying to parse out her garbled statements, but I think the true believers just hear the catchphrases and discard the rest. Like the dog in the Far Side cartoon who only hears his name among the “blah blah blahs” as his owner speaks.
aimai is right that Palin connects on an emotional level to certain people, and they don’t really care if what she says makes any sense.
I also find her speaking voice grating, though not quite as bad as Michelle Bachmann’s, whose nasal whine is like fingernails on a blackboard IMHO.
General Winfield Stuck
But then, the comedy would die :(
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Fergus Wooster: Yes and that’s a huge step up from Minion status. No more scooping out Tunch’s cat box!
The downside is you’d have to wipe Cole’s ass until his arm heals.
Fergus Wooster
@kommrade reproductive vigor: He’s got a spare arm. I’ll stick with the cat box.
Redhand
Hearing this fucking lunatic speak always reminds me of the line in Crash Test Dummies’ “Superman Song”:
Tarzan was king of the jungle and Lord over all the apes
But he could hardly string together four words: “I Tarzan, You Jane.”
Hearing Palin speak is like darning needles in my eardrums: My Ears, My Ears!
It is incredible that this imbecile has gotten as far as she has. Even H.L. Mencken must be rotating in his grave.
Michael
Think “puppet, with only a few attached strings”, and the string pullers keep shifting.
She’s dangerous in a way that I can’t say without invoking Godwin – the distillation of all that is wrong in American right populism, just as that, um, other guy
Comrade Kevin
I was looking in a bookstore this morning, and happened to see a book with this title:
“THE PERSECUTION OF SARAH PALIN”
Incredible.
scav
@General Winfield Stuck: nah, we’d just be making them work a tiny little bit harder. :) back
tamied
@Comrade Mary: I used to do this whenever GWB was on. Now that he’s gone from the spotlight isn’t it great that we have her to take over the airwaves? Bleah.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Citizen_X: sorry, but ‘uncomfortableness’ is a perfectly good word. Almost all her words are perfectly good words, the problem is that she uses a random-number generator to put her sentences together, like the old perl scripts that wrote one-line .sigs: “My paradigms absolutely deliver uncomfortable picnics”.
fraught
I’m all for commonsense diction. “uncomfortableness” could in some distant Alaskan vernacular mean “discomfort” but it doesn’t mean we have to hear it in the lower 48.
After reading that clip my right scapula spontaneously shattered.
NickM
@Bubblegum Tate
You can Listen here: http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/01/tea-party-politics
I didn’t listen all the way through, though – he might have wound up in a different place than the conversation started.
JGabriel
Fergus Wooster:
That, or get a definition in the lexicon. And fill out the application.
And, of course, survive the hazing! Mwahahaha!
.
freelancer
@valdivia:
I just saw that in my RSS feed. Head. Fucking. Desk.
The half-term wingnut word-salad-shooter is the gift that keeps us snarking the whole year round.
Rick Taylor
I had thought my opinion of the Republican party had hit rock bottom. Then McCain chose Palin to be his running mate, and Republicans rallied round her, just like in the tale of the king with no clothes, declaring being on the PTA constituted executive experience, and living in Alaska gave her foreign policy credibility. It turned out I hadn’t been nearly cynical enough.
__
Since then, my opinion of the Republican party has yet to hit a new low, but I’m no longer confident they don’t have further to drop.
__
John, shouldn’t you be resting?
valdivia
@freelancer:
I know. Note the paranoia. Also. Too.
kay
@licensed to kill time:
I don’t make any connection with her at all, so I clearly don’t get it, but she absolutely has a devoted following. To me, it just sounds like the same set of bland, conservative politician catch-phrases I’ve been hearing my whole adult life.
I don’t even dislike her, really. She just bores the hell out of me.
The EPA are getting ready to designate the aquifer under the town I live in as “sole source”. It’s a complicated issue, locally, and I don’t know a thing about it. I went to a town hall meeting last night and every conservative in attendance stood up and recited some variation of “increased regulation kills jobs”. You know, using 50,000 words. I learned not one thing, because they dominated the floor with this boilerplate bullshit, speaker after speaker. I learned they can fill a room and waste my time. That’s what I learned.
danimal
OMG, I so wish I had time to put together a Free Republic Mad Lib. It would be so fun to create a Mad Lib and then compare it to an actual Palin speech. We could play “Mad Lib or Palin Speech” for hours. The word salad would be mighty tasty.
Also, Hilzoy made an appearance! Woohoo.
Fergus Wooster
@JGabriel:
Excellent. . . . I can take it. We Woosters came over with the Conqueror, after all.
Matt Mangels
My first thought upon seeing this post? “Going Galt Fail”
TruthOfAngels
@JGabriel:
Excellent.
arguingwithsignposts
I am definitely interested in some of the “Common Sense” solutions to our problems. Maybe Sarah Spice could read some of the author’s works.
BTW, I am especially irked by her choice of Washington as her favorite founding father, right after “all of them.” Washington was not the brains of the independence movement, but the muscle. It makes perfect sense that she and Bleck cite him as their favorite.
Brachiator
@Chat Noir:
Palin is stupid in exactly the same way that many in her base are stupid. This is good for the Republicans because it allows for a core of perpetually unhappy citizens who never have to offer any coherent explanation for their opposition to Obama and the Democrats even if their lives improve.
And remember, it’s the common sense of Real Americans vs the aristocratic soziul ist elitism of our Kenyan president.
The whole Fox Sarah “Real American” Palin crap is to keep simmering the Big Lie that Obama just is not really one of the people and to hope that it has enough traction to help the GOP in 2010 and 2012.
Anne Laurie
@Chat Noir: Teddy Roosevelt is not on Palin’s Real Murkans(tm) list. He was okay on the killing brown people and helpless animals metric, but all that trust-busting talk about “malefactors of great wealth” gives Sarah’s corporatist sponsors a rash.
arguingwithsignposts
@John PM:
Excellent point. It was the Pharisees, who were the Jewish equivalent of today’s fundamentalist evangelicals, who were most offended by Jesus’ teachings.
Erickson is an idiot. Sometimes I wonder if this Internet thing that allows anyone to have a printing press is really such a good thing. As Maddow says, one of the unintended consequences of free speech.
ETA: I can see that Smudge’s back leg salute is going to get a lot of use, cause she’s giving it to Erick son of Erick and Bible Spice and Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly all at the same time today.
kay
@arguingwithsignposts:
Well. Washington is a safe pick, that’s for sure. Is Jesus her favorite philosopher? Does her family come first, or….47th?
I think she’s running for President and I think she’s going to run out of material because she doesn’t have a job, during this period between campaigns.
Notorious P.A.T.
Doesn’t common sense dictate that if every single country in the world with a better health care system than ours has a government health care program, we should adopt a government health care program too?
Also, doesn’t common sense say that a person who thinks living in Alaska means they are an expert on Russia is full to the brim with bullshit?
Notorious P.A.T.
@Fergus Wooster:
Hehe ) Look out for Aunt Agatha.
twiffer
well, i agree with her. we need a common sense solution for health care. and commons sense tells me that my ability to recieve quality health care should not be tied to whether or not i’m employed. nor should i be denied coverage if i have a condition that is considered “pre-existing” because i had a coverage gap. common sense tells me that no one should have to wait to hit the emergency room because they can’t afford preventative care. common sense tells me that health care, like education, is one of those basic services that a civilized nation should insure is available to all its citizenry.
who know palin was for universal coverage? i mean, that’s the common sense solution, right?
bcinaz
Sullivan posted this letter from one of his readers, and it just haunts me.
I don’t understand the effect Palin has a certain brain types, however, it’s like putting whole populations into a mindnumbing, brainsucking trance.
Read the letter then think about multiplying this by the majority of teabaggers…We’re gonna need a lot more O-bots than we have now.
Tonal Crow
@Ash:
It’s nonsense only in rational terms. It makes perfect sense in emotional terms. It says, “We’re defying the evil liberals who are subjugating us, and we’re gonna rule America again soon, as God intended.”
Like it or not (and I loathe it), emotional appeals — and not rational arguments — win elections. And the wingnuts far outstrip us in crafting emotional appeals.
licensed to kill time
@kay:
Oddly enough, this is what basically what Sanka said here:
@Sanka:
I guess it’s true but it sounds different to me coming from her because of the prominence given to her every inane utterance and the knowledge that she is utterly unqualified to lead a Girl Scout troop, let alone a state or a country. It’s maddening.
I should be honest and admit it feels different to me, in that visceral kind of way W affected me every time I saw him on the teevee (and even now). It’s like an insult to one’s intelligence.
Your town hall meeting experience must have been frustrating. I guess you should be thankful they weren’t screaming and waving Obama/Hitler signs, anyway.
JGabriel
Fergus Wooster:
You’ll never make it without Jeeves, Wooster!
You’ll … shit, that’s all I’ve got. I should really go out for some coffee.
Our hazings are kind of pathetic.
.
Alex Milstein
In Palin’s mind – and the GOP mind in general – representative democracy only works when your side wins. Or when the courts intervene on your behalf.
valdivia
@bcinaz:
disagree. we have enough Obots and enough people who are NOT buying her bs. Again, making the tea baggers out to be a majority of the country is an over estimation of her people and her ability to expand her appeal. with her 27% she wont win anything.
Stooleo
Listening to Palin speak is like having a 6 year screwdriver commonsensically plummeted into my earsocket.
arguingwithsignposts
I should mention here that Palin’s word salad speech makes perfect sense if you’ve spent any time at all in a fundamentalist or evangelical Christian community. There’s a lot of talk about “Jesus spoke to me,” and “God opened a door” and “opening your heart to Jesus” and “spirit-led,” with very little precision about WTF those terms mean. “God opened a door, eh?” How the f**k did you know that was a door He opened and not a door the devil opened to trick you?
Evangelicalism is the same sort of word salad. She’s just ported it over to politics.
Anne Laurie
@Punchy:
“There is an obvious disconnect between President Obama and the White
HouseSupremacists who refuse to believe that their God-given Right(tm) to boss the rest of the world around has been stolen! ! !”schrodinger's cat
@Notorious P.A.T.:
I thought that was Bertie Wooster, is Fergus a long lost cousin?
Tax Analyst
“Common Sense Solutions”? You mean like blocking every effort to do anything about these problems?
I guess that makes a lotta sense…if you’re a completely clueless moran.
Davis X. Machina
Richard Nixon + Zippy the Pinhead = Sarah Palin.
That is all.
freelancer
@Joe Lisboa:
You have no chance to survive, make your time!
JGabriel
@schrodinger’s cat:
We’re assuming yes, since the reference to coming over with the Conqueror is a Bertie Wooster line.
.
Davis X. Machina
Fergus is Bertie’s evil-parallel-universe twin. Like Spock with a beard.
Frank L
“uncomfortableness” – apparently it’s a perfectly cromulent word
Notorious P.A.T.
@schrodinger’s cat:
I think so.
Anne Laurie
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Nah, Aunt Agatha is just tedious. It’s Aunt Dahlia you want to be careful of — that woman is full of ideas, every last one of them guaranteed to bring endless pain and embarrassment to other people. Much like certain Alaska-based politicians, for that matter.
Redshirt
@burnspbesq: Re: Fox news on in offices, bars, etc.
My Fortune 500 company also had Fox News on a variety of TV’s – I’m sure it’s because a division formerly based in Nashville moved to Boston, and voila! Fox News appears.
Your mileage may vary, of course, but I would not stand for it, so I got the lay of the land, found out who I could talk to about the TV’s, and convinced them to change them to a split of CNN and CNBC – not the best news orgs, either, of course, but leagues better than Fox.
And while of course this is no earth shaking action, if we all did this — fought back in whatever ways we can – perhaps eventually a difference would be made.
Emma
“God opened a door, eh?” How the f**k did you know that was a door He opened and not a door the devil opened to trick you?
Silly, silly, Signposts: If they want it, no matter how stupid, venal, or immoral, it means it comes from God.
Chuck Butcher
If Palin subsituted something concrete for “common sense solutions” she’d hand ammunition to anyone with a different idea – and that could easily include her coterie. It is seriously dangerous to give concrete policy to people whose entire cohesion is based on “I’m unhappy.”
There are things demogogues don’t dare say. It is similar to Erickerick going on about secularists hating Jesus. WTF? I doubt you can find much of anybody in this nation that would cop to hating Jesus, hating Erickerick’s version maybe, hating theocracy maybe – but hating Jesus? The club doesn’t dare be narrowly defined in what it wants, just in what it hates.
Amy
Common sense solutions?
She’s going find some and get ’em to you!
jacy
@arguingwithsignposts:
Which reminds me of my favorite quote from BBC’s “Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace”:
We had opened doors that were hard to close.
Because they were metaphorical doors, and had no handles.
The Populist
@Ash:
Hehe Ash, I was thinking that when I wrote the line. I wanted to say the world is not Minority Report but I was afraid some may not get the nod.
Good one!
David Hunt
Unfortunately, it’s unreliable. “No man knows the hour and the day.” I have almost certainly mucked up the precise wording of that bit of scripture, but the sentiment is correct. You simply can’t rely on the Rapture to come along and solve all your problems. Case in point: Iraq. In my darker moments, I sometimes believe that the Rapture was GWB’s real exit strategy. At other times, it still makes for good bit of snark to use in posts at Balloon Juice…
On the other hand, if an even half-way decent source told me that the Rapture being imminent was explicitly part of Sarah Palin’s plans, I’d accept it with little doubt. “There’s no need to worry about alternative energy. Jesus is going to show up any day now to gather up the Real Americans and make sure they don’t have to deal with shortages.”
The Populist
What cracks me up about these right wing pundits like Palin, Limpbaugh and Beck? They look every bit like your stereotyped Republican in any schlocky action/horror/end of world film.
THAT IS SAD.
Seanly
@CaseyL:
The lunatic is on the grass is a line in one of the songs from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Someone else probably already posted this, but I’m too lazy to look through all of them.
I can’t wait to have me some Preznint Palin and all of her common sense solutions.
EDIT: re: talk of rapture above – I like the idea that if there is to be a Rapture, all the Christians would have to suffer through the 7 years of horrible luck with the rest of us rather than them all becoming
Stargate Atlantiansangels and then the bad stuff happens.Or of course, it’s all a load of hogwash and none of us are going anywhere soon…
freelancer
@The Populist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flBpsyFbEOs
The Populist
@Alex Milstein:
Otherwise they act like children who don’t get their way. Crying loudly, taking their toys and going home or intentionally destroying things to piss off rivals and feel superior. Even the know it all who when proven wrong, keeps trying to argue, is another childish antic they display.
Seanly
The Clemson game was so fun to watch last night. It topped off my birthday very nicely. I attended graduate school at Clemson, my Mom is a Tar Heel alum and my brother dropped out of UNC and usually gets to gloat over me during basketball season. Well, gloat in a nice way…
Comrade Dread
I’ve heard if you use the words “war on terror” as your mantra and chant it until your mind is as blank as the Alaskan snow and you have achieved a state of oneness with Beckiverse, the above will make some sense to you.
Dennis-SGMM
Palin: a noun, a verb, and commonsense.
WaterGirl
@bcinaz: The link didn’t work for me. My first thought was to be grateful, wondering why I was clicking on something you said had haunted you…
Fergus Wooster
@Anne Laurie: Yes yes yes. Whereas Aunt Agatha is superficially frightening, what with her eating broken glass and wearing barbed wire against the skin, the worst she can do is arrange a bad engagement. It’s sweet Aunt Dahlia who land you in jail.
@Davis X. Machina: Or like Flexo. Think all the pretensions and amiable hedonism of Bertie Wooster, but with fouler language and a fixation on butchering, preserving,and preparing the forgotten bits of hogs. Without a Jeeves one can quickly fall short of the gentleman’s ideal.
PanAmerican
and if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes,
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon
Comrade Dread
I’ve spent plenty of time in evangelical churches, and I can honestly say I still have no idea what that woman is talking about 90% of the time.
It would be nice to have a genuine real reporter who would stand up and say,
“If the Obama poll numbers are a reflection of public approval of his policies, don’t your low numbers and the low approval ratings of Republicans say that Americans hate your policies even more?”
or
“As to Obama not letting us feel safe, he’s escalated in Afghanistan, has continued strikes in Pakistan, is continuing the war in Iraq, Gitmo is still open, etc. Thus far the only policy Republicans seem to disagree with him on is that he’s not saying “Terrorism” enough. What concrete steps, if any, would you have the president take to make us feel safer? And for that matter, is it healthy for America to look to one man to keep them safe? Or, more succinctly, where in the constitution you claim to venerate is it stated that the President has a duty to keep individual citizens safe from all harm? And are you willing to apply that principle to other realms of life, like health care?”
I mean, seriously, one smart reporter who didn’t give a flying fig about access, could expose this woman (and many other politicians) for the gibbering idiots they are.
Mike in NC
Having finally seen “Idiocracy”, I can no longer mock this deranged woman and her legions of worshippers. We are so screwed.
Think living in a cardboard box under a freeway overpass, and eating canned cat food while waiting for the Rapture to arrive. Good times ahead!
Redshirt
Hell, if the Rapture would effectively silence these Fundie nutjobs cuz they’d all be up in Heaven, laughing at us Sinners, I must say then, I’m Rapture Ready!
Boston Yankee
She babbles, says nothing of import, yet…time is spent pondering her babbles. How can this profit anyone?
matoko_chan
It is all part of the whole butthurt victimology ressentiment that is the main theme of the teabaggers, WECs, birfers and white supremacists that make up the conservative base.
It goes like this…..we are just as smart as you snobby elites, scientists, and intellectuals…..we are smart in a different way….a BETTER way.
We are godsmart.
Origuy
Michele Bachmann is not to be outdone in the crazy sweepstakes. From TPM:
She said this on the floor of the House.
Fergus Wooster
@matoko_chan:
This. Absolutely.
We don’t need no stinkin’ book learnin’ to know Jesus is Lord and created Amurka to eradicate non-believers and brown people.
slightly_peeved
Nope. Check elections all over the world. After a political party gets soundly beaten after a while in power, they go back to their base. They use emotional appeals to their core party values. Then, after they get soundly beaten a couple more times, they wise up and move back to the centre.
Look at British politics. The British Labor party finally got back into power after Thatcher with the safe, centrist candidate Blair – not a fire-breathing lefty. The Tories only became a credible threat once they appointed David Cameron, who has presented himself as a relative centrist. Famed British Impressionist Rory Bremner once commented that he had trouble impersonating David Cameron, because David Cameron was doing a better Blair impression than he could. Heck, look at the US in 2008. Obama’s whole focus on changing the tone of Washington was an appeal to centrists. Appointing Palin drove a bunch of prominent conservatives to support him, or at least to stop supporting the Republicans.
It’s right to be scared of the consequences of Palin winning, but not the likelihood. There’s no shortage of ammunition against her if she does run in 2012.
SiubhanDuinne
@catclub:
I don’t think that’s gonna happen for a while. It takes two strong arms to hoist even a picture of the Tunchster.
keestadoll
I think Edvard Munch was a seer, and The Scream was a result of a Palin vision.
asiangrrlMN
@SiubhanDuinne: Tee-hee. Tunch is gonna smother you in your sleep for this one.
As for Palin, I used to follow the Mudflats blog daily–until I just couldn’t take it any longer. I actually once tried to parse a Palin speech. Let me tell you, no good can come from that.
ilsita
Listening to her is like reading beginning expository writing papers by students who are trying to meet their word-count by cramming sentences full garbage: “it is the___ that is the ____ that the people there in the United States of America, which is our country, founded on principles, that we live in…”
But, all those nuts know she sounds like that, and their response is always, always, “I don’t care. I like her.”
Steeplejack
@Stefan:
LOL.
TomCat
@CaseyL: “The lunatic is on the grass”: Artist – Pink Floyd. Album – Dark Side of the Moon. Song – Brain Damage.