Today in Sarah Palin News

By now you probably know that Sarah Palin's 3-year gig at FOX News is over.   Seems she's now been consigned to GlennBeckistan.

But luminaries like Palin don't "just fade away" like old generals.  No, their passing is the subject of much observation and reflection.

For example, AlterNet did a retrospective on Palin's FOX gig that tallied everything she said on air and divided that into her million dollar annual salary.   The result?   Sarah earned $15.85 a word.   It didn't make any difference whether they were wacky, goofy or bore only the faintest resemblance to the English language.   If it came out of her mouth it was worth $15.85 in her pocket.

If she managed to string a hundred words together it was worth an ounce of gold to Sarah and Todd and Trigger and Bolt and Musket and all the rest of her brood.

Over the three years, Fox spent $158.50 for Palin to say “Right on!” and $1,759.35 for her to say “Amen.” It also spent $729.10 for her to utter the almost swear words of “darn,” “hell,” “damn,” and (most often) “heck!”


The network spent by far the most money paying for Palin’s thoughts on the sitting president: Fox dished out a staggering $24,916.20 (an entire annual salary for millions of working Americans) for her to say the two words “President Obama” over her three-year contract. 


None of this money, however, was able to imbue these words with one iota of intrinsic value--yet another example of the widening gap between a commodity’s market rate and its real value to society. 

Sarah Palin - As Dumb As Dog Dirt - Part Deux

If there's someone Sarah Palin could be expected to revere, it would surely be, why, Paul Revere.  So what does the former, half-term governor, recall about Revere?  You might be amazed.  Nah, this is Sarah Palin after all.

Oh This Is Good. Palin Calls Rick Santorum a "Knuckle-Dragging Neanderthal"

And the race to the bottom is on.  So far Sarah Palin has a clear lead.   Do up your belts, this is going to be a wild ride.

Sarah Palin, possibly the most inept, inarticulate and ignorant contender to ever vie for the Republican presidential nomination, has come out swinging.  The GOP's annual Conservative Political Action Conference is underway in Washington and all the likely candidates are there except two - Sarah Palin and that Huckabee guy.

Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum took a swipe at Palin's absence.  He hinted she wasn't there because CPAC couldn't come up with Palin's standard appearance fee and because she was too busy just being a "mom."

 " I have a feeling she has some demands on her time. And a lot of them have financial benefits attached to them. So I'm sure that she's doing what's best for her and her family."

Palin quickly got up on her perch at Fox News to fire back.  " I will not call him the knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. I'll let his wife call him that instead."

I suppose Palin isn't really worried about attending the Conservative conference.  Those who would vote for her can't spell Washington much less find their way there.

Sarah Palin - Shrewd Opportunism or The Height of Conceit?

Sarah Palin and her spawn, Bristol, are applying to trade mark their names.  Really.

In the last several months, Politics Daily has learned that the Palin family lawyer, Alaska attorney Thomas Van Flein, has filed applications to the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark "  Sarah Palin®"   and "  Bristol Palin®."

Update - Both applications, Sarah's and Bristol's, were summarily rejected (temporarily) because neither of them managed to sign the forms.

Douchebag of the Year

Palin Slams Obamas as Unpatriotic and Racist

Unbelievable.  The Weasel of Wassila, Sarah Palin, is about to release a new book in which she slams Barack and Michelle Obama.   From The Sydney Morning Herald:

Sarah Palin has accused Barack and Michelle Obama of being unpatriotic and has suggested they are racist.
 
In leaked extracts of her new book, America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate argues that the first black US president is among those who regarded the Tea Party movement as racially prejudiced and who thinks ''America is a fundamentally unjust and unequal country''.

As proof, she quoted a 2008 campaign speech in which Mrs Obama said ''for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country''. Mrs Palin went on: ''I guess this shouldn't surprise us, since both of them spent almost two decades in the pews of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church listening to his rants against America and white people.''

Mrs Palin's second book is regarded as a launch pad for a bid for the 2012 Republican nomination, which she admitted this week she was ''seriously considering''.

The book criticises talent show contestants and the ''cult of self-esteem'', which she blames partly on Mr Obama: ''No one they have encountered in their lives - from their parents to their teachers to their president - wanted them to feel bad by hearing the truth. So they grew up convinced that they could become big pop stars like Michael Jackson.''

Mrs Palin has begun a reality show in which she talks about her family life and home state of Alaska.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden was asked what he thought of Palin's claim that she could defeat Barack Obama:

Palin Believes She Can Defeat Obama

" I believe so."  That was Sarah Palin's response when asked by Barbara Walters if she could beat Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

Could she be right?   Well, it is remotely conceivable that America's median IQ could slip into the low double digits, just not very likely.   By all accounts, chances are she'll be taken out by her own team, the Republicans.   Her performance in the mid-terms was less than inspirational.   Palin backed a number of Tea Party candidates who went down in flames.   In her home state of Alaska, the right winger she backed lost to a "write in" candidate.  Ouch, that burns!

Palin's potential Republican presidential rivals are honing their skinning knives.  If she files her nomination papers she'll be like a bull moose on opening day of hunting season.

In a way I'd like to see her seek her party's presidential nomination.  It would be the Republicans admitting they still have room for the village idiot and I suspect her very presence would be toxic to whichever candidate does get the Republican nod.

Republicans' Best Chance to Beat Obama? Destroy Palin.

It sounds as though Wednesday morning, Republican 2012 nomination candidates will be waging war - on Sarah Palin.   According to Politico, Republican insiders worry that Palin could actually drum up enough support to win the Republican nomination and that would all but guarantee Barack Obama a second term in the White House.

"Interviews with advisers to the main 2012 presidential contenders and with other veteran Republican operatives make clear they see themselves on a common, if uncoordinated, mission of halting the momentum and credibility Palin gained with conservative activists by plunging so aggressively into this year’s midterm campaigns.

"

There is a determined, focused establishment effort … to find a candidate we can coalesce around who can beat Sarah Palin," said one prominent and longtime Washington Republican. "We believe she could get the nomination, but Barack Obama would crush her."

 

...Top Republicans, from presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty to highly influential advisers such as Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, are said to be concerned she will run, and could win, according to the officials. 

The idea of a pre-ordained, "Anyone But Palin" nomination candidate is fascinating.  Then again, not nearly as fascinating as an Obama-Palin presidential election.

Sarah Palin - You Knew She Wouldn't Be Out of Work Very Long

And there it is, the new Sarah Palin unveiled in her latest job - small animal proctologist.

Butt, instead of doing something even moderately useful, the Lizard Queen is busy spewing the most contemptible lies about Obama's healthcare proposals. From Truthout:

...The debate has trailed off into loon tune land, and it's the media's fault.

The lunacy was most clearly in evidence in former Gov. Sarah Palin's claim that President Obama's plan would force her to stand in front of a "death panel" to argue for the life of her baby with Down Syndrome. This "death panel" is a complete invention by Governor Palin. There is no twist or turn or contorted permutation of President Obama's plan that would prevent Ms. Palin from providing as much health care as she wants to her baby.

It would have made as much sense to claim that the transportation bill will deny medical care to her baby. After all, if the roads in front of her home are not properly maintained, and her baby has a medical emergency, then the transportation bill would have effectively sentenced her baby to death because she won't be able to get medical attention in a timely manner.

Break Out the Ritalin

And the dog ate her homework. I only just watched the Palin resignation announcement. If you haven't watched it, you really should. This is a woman in full blown panic.

As Shannyn Moore put it on Huffington Post, "Sarah Palin's political ambition combined with her intellect is like putting a jet engine on a golf cart; lots of horse power and no steering capabilities. Today she proved it."



Meanwhile, never one to leave a turd unvarnished, the Weekly Standard's clown prince William Kristol showed just how hard he can spin this one:

If Palin wants to run in 2012, why not do exactly what she announced today? It's an enormous gamble - but it could be a shrewd one.

After all, she's freeing herself from the duties of the governorship. Now she can do her book, give speeches, travel the country and the world, campaign for others, meet people, get more educated on the issues - and without being criticized for neglecting her duties in Alaska. I suppose she'll take a hit for leaving the governorship early - but how much of one? She's probably accomplished most of what she was going to get done as governor, and is leaving a sympatico lieutenant governor in charge.

And haven't conservatives been lamenting the lack of a national leader? Well, now she'll try to be that. She may not succeed. Everything rests on her talents, and on her performance. She'll be under intense and hostile scrutiny, and she'll have to perform well.

Bill, go sit down in the corner and give you brain a rest.

Sarah Palin to Resign

The New York Times is reporting that Sarah Palin has announced she'll resign as governor of Alaska before the month is out.

At a press conference in her home town of Wasilla said she'll not seek another term as governor because - wait for it - “We know we can effect positive change outside of government.”

Observers believe Ms. Palin's idea of "positive change" means trying to get the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 2012.

Grampa Ditches BGFF Sarah

Back in the day - all of six weeks ago - she was prime, Grade A, presidential material. In public at least, John McCain couldn't say enough good things about Sarah Palin. So you would think Grampa would jump at the chance to endorse his understudy for her own presidential bid in 2012, right? Not so much.

One Last Time Before She Returns to Obscurity

For all her malevolent slime, Sarah Palin did provide a lot of comedy in her campaign. A quick stroll down Memory Lane:

Brit Ambassador Steps In It Again

It's a safe bet that Britain's ambassador to the United States will soon get his travelling papers.

Sir Nigel Sheinwald has had not one, but two of his confidential memos about the US presidential candidates leaked. The first dealt with Barack Obama who Sheinwald described as "decidedly liberal." That might not ruffle too many feathers but the second memo, which focused on John McCain, might. From The Guardian:

"An exasperated McCain has been telling friends in recent weeks that Palin is even more trouble than a pitbull.

"In one joke doing the rounds, the Republican presidential candidate has been asking friends: what the difference is between Sarah Palin and a pitbull? The friendly canine eventually lets go, is the McCain punchline.

"The jaws of senior mandarins dropped when they read Sheinwald's account of McCain's thoughts on Palin which the ambassador reportedly picked up from a military friend of McCain's. The telegram was restricted to an even smaller group of people than usual for fear of another embarrassing leak. "We took one look at this and hid it away," one Whitehall source said."

McCain and Palin Go For the Throat - Each Other's

The giveaway was the morning after the vice-presidential debate when Sarah Palin let slip that she had learned of the McCain campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan when she read it that morning in a newspaper. To quell any doubts, she then proceeded to criticize McCain's decision and said she and Todd could have worked the state if McCain wasn't up to it.

It was obvious that McCain hadn't consulted Palin about the Michigan decision. He hadn't even informed her. She had to find out about it from a newspaper well after his campaign had announced it to the press. Her response put McCain's wisdom, even courage into question. Ouch, ouch, ouch and ouch.

Since then, Palin hasn't minced any words about what she sees as McCain's weakness in going after Obama. She has repeatedly criticized McCain's refusal to go after the Reverend Wright issue.


Now, as reported by Canadian Press, it's come to open warfare among McCain's and Palin's insiders:

"The tattered remains of their ticket were everywhere Sunday, with both McCain and Palin insiders publicly on the attack to hold the other side responsible for their candidate's woes on the campaign trail.

"She is a diva - she takes no advice from anyone," an unnamed McCain adviser told CNN over the weekend.

"She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else ... also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

It was their decision to limit Palin's media contact to interviews with ABC's Charlie Gibson and a series of chats with CBS's Katie Couric parcelled out over several cringe-worthy days. They proved to be disastrous for both the Alaska governor personally and McCain's campaign.Wallace sent an emailed response to several news organizations over the weekend: "If people want to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the most honourable thing to do is to lie there," she wrote.

In recent weeks, Palin has publicly parted ways with the McCain campaign on various fronts, leading many to speculate she is attempting to distinguish herself from the flailing Arizona senator and forge her own identity in preparation for a run for the White House in 2012."

Your Daily Giggle

McCains Brain - video powered by Metacafe

Who Said Racism Isn't Alive & Well in America?

I realize this is from al Jazeera but you can find plenty of similar stuff from concerned Americans on the web. This one shows a segment of the crowd that's flocking to Sarah Palin.

There Are Terrorists and There Are Terrorists

McCain and his supposed sidekick Palin are, in a word, unscrupulous.

With their inability to get any traction on the issues troubling American voters, they've decided to "change the subject" to smearing Obama.

Palin, whose integrity has never been questioned if only because no one can find a sign of it, is now accusing Obama of "palling around with terrorists." There's something you had better worry about, no? She's referring to one Bill Ayers, who had been a member of the radical Weather Underground during the 60's - and an education professor at the University of Illinois for two decades afterwards.

Harold Meyerson, writing in today's Washington Post, puts that despicable smear under a spotlight:

The story of Obama's interaction with Ayers is drenched in irony, since it is basically a tale of Obama being co-opted into Chicago's civic establishment. In 1995, Obama, then a young lawyer with political ambitions but as yet no office, was recruited to chair the board of a school reform organization funded and established by the Annenberg Foundation -- a group that distributes the wealth of the estate of Walter Annenberg, Richard Nixon's ambassador to Britain. It was only then that Obama met Ayers, who already was a board member and a figure in Chicago's education-policy elite. (Mayor Richard Daley, that known radical, told the Times that he had consulted Ayers on education issues for years.)

But, Meyerson notes, if we want to examine the candidates' relationship with scurrilous types who've caused great damage to America, we could always start with McCain's close pal and onetime campaign advisor, Phil Gramm:

"Gramm was always Wall Street's man in the Senate. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee during the Clinton administration, he consistently underfunded the Securities and Exchange Commission and kept it from stopping accounting firms from auditing corporations with which they had conflicts of interest. Gramm's piece de resistance came on Dec. 15, 2000, when he slipped into an omnibus spending bill a provision called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), which prohibited any governmental regulation of credit default swaps, those insurance policies covering losses on securities in the event they went belly up. As the housing bubble ballooned, the face value of those swaps rose to a tidy $62 trillion. And as the housing bubble burst, those swaps became a massive pile of worthless paper, because no government agency had required the banks to set aside money to back them up.

The CFMA also prohibited government regulation of the energy-trading market, which enabled Enron to nearly bankrupt the state of California before bankrupting itself. "

As Steve Croft showed on 60 Minutes, it was those very Credit Default Swaps - deviously unregulated insurance policies - that brought down Wall Street because the outfits that sold them - remember Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG - never had the resources to make good on them, never, ever.

Thanks to McCain's close pals - and he and Gramm were tight, very tight - the American taxpayers for generations to come will be paying off the trillion dollar Wall Street bailout.

If clowns as disreputable as McCain and Palin can take over America's executive branch, that country is screwed beyond redemption.

Sarah Palin Didn't Debate

Sarah Palin didn't show up to debate on Thursday night. Despite all the coaching prep she received from the McCain campaign, they threw in the towel and sent her out with a stack of cue cards.

The toughest thing Sarah Palin had to do was to riffle through the cards, find one roughly on topic, and then read from it. When she didn't have a card for the question, she simply ignored the question and changed the subject.

Palin's Hidden Agenda

Eureka! There it is, Sarah Palin's secret agenda.

No question that the Beauty Queen and the Old Geezer don't see eye to eye on a bunch of policies, they don't. Strangely enough, she hasn't backed down one inch to bring herself into line with the Geezer's thinking either.

So, what gives? I figured it out. Michigan is the dead giveaway.

McCain decided to cut his losses and drop Michigan from his campaign, write the whole thing off. Did he confer with his running mate on this fundamental shift? Not a chance.

Palin learned about it - get this - when she read it in a newspaper (see, she reads more than diner menus). From Associated Press:

In an interview with Fox News Channel Friday, the Alaska governor said she was disappointed that the McCain campaign decided to stop competing in Michigan. In an indication that the vice presidential candidate had not been part of the decision, she said she had "read that this morning and I fired off a quick e-mail" questioning the move.

Yeah, that's right, she fired off a quickie questioning the decision. No, she apparently didn't raise holy hell that she hadn't been consulted or even informed. You might have thought Johnny Boy would have remembered to give Palin the skinny before he spilled the beans to the press.

No she didn't complain about being kept out of the loop, she questioned the move and then - worst of all - told Fox News that she and Todd were ready and willing to carry on the campaign in Michigan that McCain had already shut down.

It doesn't get better than this folks. Sarah Palin just became Sarah Pain to her supposed boss, John McSame.

First, she admitted that he didn't even mention this change to her, showing just how much the Old Geezer values her input and - cough - partnership. Then she told Fox News that the guy who is her supposed boss, to whom she owes her fealty, was wrong, as in just plain nuts. And then she puts McCain even deeper in the dung by saying she and Todd would be happy to do what McCain can't, try to pull out a victory in Michigan.

I got it figured out. She's hoping that McCain wins. Then she consults a couple of shrinks expert on geriatric malfunction and gets the Old Bugger declared incompetent (as in "batshit crazy"). Out goes Johnny, slick as crap through a goose, and in comes Madam President Sarah and Vice-Regent Todd. They live happily ever after until she goes for the nukes and brings on the Rapture.

John, you crazy bastard, there's still time. Go for your guns! What were you thinking? Isn't this the same way she became mayor of Wasilla in the first place - by turning on the mayor who used his organization to get her on the council just a year before? She turned on the guy and turfed him out, running against the "Old Boy" network. Then she got to be governor of Alaska running against the "Old Boy" network. Now you've brought the Black Widow into your camp and, you dumb hump, who's the "Old Boy" now?

Postscript - It's bad enough that the Republican presidential nominee thinks his cynically-chosen running mate is such a Bimbo that he doesn't consult her - or even inform her - that he's abandoning the field in Michigan. It's ten times worse that he doesn't feed her a spin on it. Breathtaking, utterly breathtaking. She's left to admit - on their electronic media of choice no less, Fixed News, that she discovered it from reading a newspaper. Apparently not even one reporter could be bothered to ask her about it until the following day.

What possible reason could McCain have had to keep her in the dark? Res ipsa loquitor - the thing speaks for itself. He was afraid she'd blurt it out and bungle his already hapless explanation. He doesn't trust her. She sure as hell doesn't trust him. A marriage made in - what does she call that "special" place anyway?