Sarah Palin & Fox News: Who didn’t see this coming?

In a move that should shock absolutely no one, Fox News has signed Sarah Palin as an ‘occasional commentator.’ Palin joins former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former White House aide Karl Rove, giving Fox the trifecta for malicious fearmongering and blatant misinformation.

Any previous laughable attempt to call the network ‘fair and balanced’ pretty much meets its death with this deal. Asking Sarah Palin to provide creditable political commentary is like asking Slobodan Milosevic for an objective opinion on Albanian citizenship.

Sarah Palin to Resign

I must admit, I’m stunned. Without any true reasoning behind the move, Sarah Palin announced today that she will be resigning as governor of the state of Alaska in a few weeks and hand the reins of state government over to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell on July 25th.

Speculation is sure to be rampant; all Mrs. Palin would say is that she feels she can “affect change from outside government.” I’m sure we’ll hear what that means after July 25th.

Personal thoughts? There is no way this woman would have been able to finish out her first term without another major scandal and any hopes she may have once had to become POTUS were dashed by finding out just what the job entailed. She has given us an entertaining year…with likely more to come…but any presidential hopes she may have been harboring are pure fantasy. This woman cannot lead.

Sarah Palin is the New Paris Hilton.

I wish I was joking. The very last thing our country needs right now is another famous for being famous cult of personality that’s as vapid and clueless as Sarah Hilt..er, Palin, but the fact of the matter is the woman simply. Will not. Go. Away.

When I woke up on Wednesday, November 5th, I rather foolishly comforted myself with the naive thought that it was all over and Caribou Barbie would sink back into the obscurity from whence she came. Okay, there’s no need to look at me like that, I see I was being stupid. Clearly, national attention is like heroin to the woman; why else would she have started her own PAC less than a week after Obama took office? Or announce that she’ll be having dinner with the President? Or, FSM save us all, write a book? The last one is so deliciously ironic the jokes just write themselves. “I thought she only read magazines and newspapers.” “A book? Will it have a soft cover and cardboard pages?” My biggest concern is that no matter who they get to ghost it, it’s going to be so obviously doctored, there’s simply no WAY anyone will fall for the fiction that it’s in her own words. How can it be? I mean, you could probably get a FEW pages out of soundbites, but eventually you have to develop plot and characters, no? And the syllables! The poor tortured syllables! It ain’t right to do that to unsuspecting words.

I was SO angry when John McCain compared Obama to Paris Hilton. I thought unleashing that human STD back on an unsuspecting populace was one of the worst things he could do during his campaign. Ohhh, but that was before Sarah Palin. Infecting us with Paris as opposed to infecting us with Sarah? Sadly, there is no Vancomycin for television.

What I Want For Christmas: A Very Palin Wish

If I were suddenly confronted with the ghost of Christmas Present (always loved the implicit pun) and granted three wishes….wait, is that just for genies?… as soon as I convinced myself that I was not hallucinating, I’d tell him that I have only one wish: MAKE SARAH PALIN GO AWAY!!!

The only thing more distressing than putting up with Caribou Barbie is putting up with her frothing racist homophobe fundie fans. The Huff has a story up today about the new website erected in her honor. It isn’t just worrisome, it’s downright disgusting. This is the new face of conservativism? Some choice quotes from posters include:

When a blogger named James asks if anybody has bought the new Obama coins, SavantNoir responds: “[Y]es James, and i melted it down to see the look of agnoy on his face, made it a BB pellet and shot it into a pile of shit.”On one blog Heather describes Election Day as the “most terrible” in history and asks “how long until obama is shot??????” Josie responds: “There are plenty of people that would like to see Obama end that way.”

And about our new first lady?

Ava M: I have never actually HATED anyone in politics before now….She is stupid, mean, power hungry, manipulative, corrupt, essentially ignorant–a poster girl for Institutionalized Black Racism and Agression, a take-no-prisoners warrior for Political Correctnes aka Socialist Realism and a racially driven Communist fellow traveller. Let her go run an African country. She doesn’t fit in here with the American People.

I’m speechless. These are Christians, then? Christian sentiments? Michelle Obama IS American. She was born and raised here. She worked hard to get where she is. What is WRONG with you people? If anything, Michelle Obama has exhibited every trait Republicans insist Americans SHOULD exhibit: Hard work, dedication to her family and support of her husband. But because there’s a D after that husband’s name, she must be a “racially driven Communist”?

Conservatives, moderates, Fiscal Republicans, I have said it before, and I will say it again: It is time you took your party back. The nation needs the conservative party like a car needs a good set of brakes, to rein in the excesses of Dems. If you do not do this and do it soon, your party is doomed to be no longer the Grand Old Party, but God’s Own Party, fueled by hate and ignorance and directed by extremists like Sarah Palin. For the sake of all you hold dear… drop her and drop her now.

In Which Clarity is Restored

Okay. I feel better now. Yesterday, as many of you may have seen, I was more than a little miffed with John McCain for bowing out of the presidential debate this Friday evening. I was stunned. How could a man running for the most powerful position in the world show such, if you’ll forgive the expression, a streak of yellow?

Well, silly me. I knew it was politics, I just didn’t know to what degree. Or angle, as the case may be. Y’see… well, here, I’ll just link CNN’s political ticker right here on WP.

McCain supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham tells CNN the McCain campaign is proposing to the Presidential Debate Commission and the Obama camp that if there’s no bailout deal by Friday, the first presidential debate should take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday, October 2 in St. Louis.

In this scenario, the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin would be rescheduled for a date yet to be determined, and take place in Oxford, Mississippi, currently slated to be the site of the first presidential faceoff this Friday.

So there you have it. Last night’s suspension of the campaign and refusal to debate had less to do with not wanting to debate Obama than it did not wanting Gov. Palin to debate Joe Biden. Small wonder; he’s going to chop her up into itty bitty peices, chew her up and spit her out.

Sen. McCain, if you are this afraid for Gov. Palin, why on earth did you choose her as a running mate?

Around the World in 40 Days or: Sarah Palin’s World Leaders Photojournal

So with about 40 days left til the general, some brilliant individual over at the McCain campaign finally figured out that being able to “see Russia from [her] back yard” isn’t really the same thing as foriegn policy experience. Enter the Magical Diplomacy Tour idea.

Premise: parade Sarah, as photographed by the press corps, in front of as many world leaders as is humanly possible in four days. Ordinarily I would write this off as a cheap stunt, but let’s face it…after her cringeworthy interview with Katie Couric and how “mean” the press is being to her by reporting the facts about her, the woman can use all the good press she can get.

Maureen Dowd, for one, remains unimpressed:

I don’t agree with those muttering darkly that the picture of Gov. Sarah Palin with a perky smile and shapely gams posing with a pleased Henry Kissinger, famous for calling power the ultimate aphrodisiac, is a sign of the apocalypse.

It isn’t even a sign of the apocalipstick.

Gotta love the woman.

To be fair, Ms. Palin is playing a game of catch-up against a competitor who has had years to build his foreign policy resume. However; I’m not sure parading her in front of the press and some pervy Pakistanis telling her what a babe she is is any more of an endorsement than Laura Bush saying she catches on real quick. This is the same woman who says history will vindicate her husband.

In addition, it seems Ms. Palin isn’t discussing much with these world leaders once the obligatory photo ops are out of the way. The fact that the press still insists on following her on her It’s-A-Small-World-Express even while it’s made quite clear they’re little more than accomplices as a means to her end is more than a bit mystifying. Kate Snow in particular wasn’t pleased:

SNOW: Outside, a clear shot of her exit. Until, a patrol car and Secret Service SUV just happened to pull up right in front of our cameras. Next up, Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe. They reportedly talked trade. The pool camera got 15 seconds. With Henry Kissinger, even less.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE TO CAMERA MAN: Would you please turn around and walk out the door? Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, guys. Please. Thank you.

SNOW: Outside, a quick good-bye. And even quicker exit.

MATTHEW DOWD (ABC News analyst): The campaign is trying to protect themselves and Governor Palin, from putting her in a position where a mistake can be made.

SNOW: While Governor Palin played diplomat, husband Todd and the kids were secretly sight-seeing, taking pictures in front of the Statue of Liberty, visiting Ground Zero, eating hot dogs in Central Park. And trying on princess dresses at FAO Schwartz. Constantly in motion, Palin side-stepped questions and fans as she was whisked from one meeting to the next.

So quit encouraging her! This is obviously a publicity stunt. Take the cameras and go find another story. Heaven knows we have enough going on with the economy to keep everyone busy. Bloody hell, to think a few weeks ago I was annoyed at McCain for invoking Paris Hilton. I didn’t think, then, that he was going to put someone equally vacuous on the ticket. In fact, Palin’s worse than Hilton. At least Hilton knows she’s nothing more than a vapid heiress. Palin actually thinks she’s relevant.

John “Moody” McCain and the Very Bad, No Good Week.

I have an intense girl-crush on Rachel Maddow. I’m woman enough to admit this publicly. She’s smart, she gets politics better than quite a few of her male counterparts, she does irony very well…all these things add up to one savvy, sexy lady. Last Friday night, she summed up Sen. McCain’s bad week very succinctly:

From “The fundamentals of our economy are strong,” to Carla Fiorino, to asserting he would fire the SEC chairman if he were president (Constitutionally impossible), to Sarah Palin calling it a Palin/McCain administration to his handlers saying John McCain invented the Blackberry …. the John McCain camp just couldn’t seem to open their mouths without their feet jumping up into them.

This has to be frustrating for the senator from Arizona. He was FINALLY getting some love from the evangelicals, Barack Obama was finally on the defensive, and the base was PUMPED, BABY! Republican bloggers were claiming victory, life was sweet. And then….

What happened, John? Can ya tell us? “Stupid economy. Stupid George f*%$in’ Bush. Stupid congress. Can’t keep the damn country running til November. Now I have to actually talk ISSUES, instead of just pointing at my babe-alicious running mate and calling liberals stupid. This election may actually be work.” John failed to grumble, but was probably thinking.

Poor guy. Gotta feel for him. On the other hand….I’m not an heiress. I don’t own 7 houses. And I work for a living. For now.

See, the thing is…no matter WHO ends up in the White House come January 23rd 2009…we’re in trouble. We better stop caring about the distractions and start caring about what’s really important fairly soon. And from what I’ve seen so far this past week? John McCain isn’t prepared to deal with it. This past week is what our next president will be dealing with for probably their entire administration. How can we trust a man whose first response is not “how do we fix it?” but “who can I fire for it?”

Michelle Obama and the Separatist Movement of Illinois

It’s interesting how certain things affect our consciousness, isn’t it? The wife of a prominent politician of the Democratic party, and a separatist organization bent on political and physical secession of their state from the union. Chances are, if you’re thinking about this and you support Obama, you don’t believe the two have any relationship whatsoever. Chances are, if you support “anyone BUT” Obama, you’re now desperately hoping they do.

Let me relieve you all of your suspense. There is no such relationship. To my knowledge, there is no such group in Illinois. Why did I bring up such an inflammatory subject? As a thought experiment. Allow me to explain.

In another blog entry, I explained that we are all, whether we like it or not, in some small way…bigoted. We all harbor negative feelings of “the other.” Whether it’s racism, sexism, homophobia, nationalism, religion…. we all have those feelings and thoughts, and we all respond to them either consciously or unconsciously. It’s an evolutionary tool called “tribalism.” Anyone not of our tribe is initially feared, rejected. Recognizing that, questioning it and being honest with ourselves about its existence goes a long way toward eliminating it. But people KNOW racism/sexism/etc. are bad, so their first knee jerk reaction is “NOT ME!!” To which I reply: “everyone.”

Sorry. I’m keeping you waiting. I have been flummoxed of late. People who claim to love this country to the point of fighting for it, waving flags for it, sacrificing for it, and loathing those who say a word against it….are embracing a candidate whose spouse was, until very recently, part of a fringe political organization whose purpose was the physical secession of their state from the union. No, it was not Michelle Obama. Nor was it Cindy McCain. It was Todd Palin, and up until 2002, he belonged to Alaska’s separatist movement. You are now having a reaction to that. Depending on several things, you are outraged, chagrined, defensive, or exasperated (because you’ve heard it to death).

And if you’re exasperated because you’ve heard it to death… can you then explain to me why…back up there when you so hopefully clicked open this blog entry…you WANTED to believe the same about Michelle Obama? And why it would not, regardless of reasons, been okay for her to have done the same? If it isn’t racism…so be it. But it’s at the very least “other,” under the header “liberal.” And that’s at least as bad, because you just torpedoed your own ethics and principles and justified them away for a candidate you know next to nothing about. All to make sure a “liberal” doesn’t win.

Ethics and personal principles shouldn’t be that easily sold to any political party.

Letting go of Palin

The time has come, the Walrus said, to speak of many things….

For a couple weeks now, the neocon faithful have been giggling like school girls on meth that Karl Rove’s tactic to use Sarah Palin as the GOP poster child has worked. And it has, brilliantly. Dems have been completely thrown off message by John McCain’s running mate.

Fortunately, Sen. Obama has recovered fairly quickly. Whether the rest of the party responds is yet to be seen, but it cannot be stressed enough: Sarah Palin is not important. No, really. She isn’t. Slimy she may be, and Dick Cheney in a skirt…but she isn’t important. John McCain is the candidate on whom we should be focusing. He’s so desperate to keep us from focusing on him, he’s giving us this shiny thing (Sarah Palin) to look at…and we’re doing it. Why?! We need to knock it off. It’s time to let it go.

Repeat after me: Sarah Palin is not important. Yeah, I know, but it’s true. She isn’t. The only thing Sarah Palin represents is John McCain’s total cluelessness when it comes to female voters. Time we went back to what this election is supposed to be about: beating John McCain. That’s easily doable.

Why Palin is All You Hear About, or Is That You, Karl?

Has anyone noticed that we’re not really hearing from or about John McCain anymore? Just his “handlers.” We don’t really know what his campaign is about; everyone is too wrapped up in all the juicy details and lies about his supposedly “fiscally conservative” running mate. Can it be you’re not wondering why yet?

The answer is fairly simple. Karl “Fart Blossom” Rove, Machiavellian slimeball extraordinaire, is playing no small part in the McCain campaign. As I predicted back when he “retired”, there was simply no way the man would be able to stop himself from returning for the presidential race. Rove is many things; stupid is not one of them. He’s well aware that the best way to lose this election would be to allow John McCain to run on the issues. What he needed was a running mate. One who could capture the heart of the American conservative base (aka: sheeple) while reeling in some of the disenfranchised middle. Enter Sarah Palin.

Really, it was a stroke of brilliance on Rove’s part, one which woke me up to the fact that McCain has now completely abandoned his core principles. There is no way John McCain would have harped about Barack Obama’s lack of experience for months and months and then turned around and chosen someone so completely lacking themselves. But John McCain is no longer calling the shots. In desperation, he swallowed what was left of his pride and turned to the man who, with lies and distortions, torpedoed his 2000 presidential run.

In return, Rove has delivered. I’ll say this for the man, he knows what people want. An uplifting, heartwarming story. A pretty, plucky small town girl working her way up from beauty queen to reporter to politician, all while raising a family (the Down’s Syndrome kid must’ve been what sold it). Make sure she’s an outsider, so the “maverick” label will stick. Any character flaws or issues can be waved away as “sexism,” thanks to Hillary, or “elitism” thanks to Pat Robertson.

As a result, we have been concentrating on Sarah Palin. Who won’t even be president, should she and McCain be elected. John McCain has sold out every standard and principle he once held for himself and himself alone. He has aligned himself with the people he once denounced, although those people have not changed.

Let us be clear. Karl Rove does not care about the country, about the people his candidates claim to want to help, or about ethics, responsible government or transparency. Karl Rove couldn’t bring himself to care about anything but winning.The fact that the evangelical base has forgotten all about the false promises of Rove of 2000 and 2004 (remember way back to 2006? Y’all weren’t all that happy with the man.) and have duped themselves into believing it all over again. Fool me once, shame on you…fool me 200 or so times, just shoot me, I’m too stupid to live. The fact that these same people are actually lining up to be fooled says something about the American right that I don’t even like to look at too long for fear it’ll rub off.

If Barack Obama has been paying attention at all for the past eight years (and I have to assume he has, although you never know), he will NOT underestimate the depths to which Karl Rove will sink. And he’s going to have to do something that, thus far, he has tried to stay above. He’s going to have to fight fire with fire. It’s going to be ugly, it’s going to get very, VERY dirty. But no less than the fate of our country hangs in the balance. And in the end…Karl Rove needs to be tried for treason.