So, you think Sarah Palin is embarrassed by the crib-notes-on-the-palm incident?
You're kidding, right?
This woman, like national candidates of both parties, doesn't draw a breath without a team of political and image consultants vetting her choices. Wardrobe, hair, make-up, speaking style, text, context. This woman hasn't moved a muscle spontaneously since she was selected as McCain's running mate.
These gaffes represent a gamble by Palin and her handlers, a bet they are hedging. Republicans and economically weary, anti-Obama independents want W back again. You remember. George W Bush, who, as Ann Richards famously stated, was "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple." Bush, who stumbled through his eight years with an anti-intellectual, homespun style that embraced malapropisms and a legendarily incurious attitude toward issues and the world. Some celebrated him as honest and more real. That was all calculated, too.
Palin reads off the palm of her hand because she can't whittle or cast a fly rod or shoot a wild animal while giving a policy speech. (Then again, who knows?) She reads her palm in order to send a message to her anti-Eastern establishment, Obama-hating, OK-You've-Had-Your-Black-President-Experiment, Tea Party types. That message is, "I'm just one person, doing the best I can with what God gave me. Like all y'all out there."
And it was aimed right at that camera. Right at you and me.
I still believe in Barack Obama. Each new president since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 has been faced with an ever-growing mountain of problems that resist solutions, let alone solutions crafted with bipartisan support. Energy, America's dwindling role in the global economy, health care, terrorism and its impacts.
We may struggle for the remainder of our history to solve those problems and we may come up short. But we are doomed to failure if we choose another incurious, phony populist who pulls off some bad Will Rogers moves and calls that a presidency.
Stuart Whatley: The Tea Party Movement Is a National Embarrassment
The Tea Party movement is the latest installment in an old American tradition: the exploitation of mostly frustrated, desperate, and susceptible people by monied interests and profiteers.
popularity, and you are "easy on the eyes".
If you get time, please read this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-vognar/understanding-why-peacock_b_464881.html
It's related to your political and social concerns. It's about how arbitrary and unnecessary our political, economic and social suffering is. It's called "Understanding Why Peacocks Have Sex Can Change the World." Not about NBC. :) I'm a new Huff Post blogger, Northwestern grad summa cum laude. I think you're good on 30 Rock. I also understand your family problems. My family's so dysfunctional we don't have prescription meds--we have a pharmacy.
David
Forget that she has to write notes on her hand like a 5th grader cheating on a test. Focus on the fact that we now have a woman who finds dereliction of duty OK and she wants to run the country? I would not let her run my washing machine...if I had one.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99MGD4O0&show_article=1&catnum=0
Scott Brown is getting a lot of attention from Republicans also.
As all these Republicans who are more experienced and poised to run for any office come out, Sarah will be old news.
The only thing she can do is raise money for the Republicans. I doubt Romney, Brown or any others would ever have her speak at one of their fundraisers. They know she is an embarrassment and can only make them look like fools having her attend their functions.
She only donates a couple thousand to Republican candidates, she is keeping all the rest of money for herself.
Obama raised a couple thousand dollars in a minute.
She is only looking out for herself.
She will slowly fade into the night when Republicans with any brains hit the stages.
She is not speaking at CPAC because in my opinion, she will not be annointed queen, cannot stop the media from being there and no paycheck in her hand for her appearance.
Sadly it wasn't a ploy. Palin as Tancredo as Grassley as the Tea Party lynch mob was just demonstrating again that elevating ignorance to a virtue has worked. She is part of the empty suited cabal - proud of her stupidity. And somehow it's worked.
Stupidity as 'American' is certainly not new. The Know Nothing movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to U.S. values and controlled by the Pope in Rome.
Modern Know Nothings are in Sarah's minion: the Tea Party with their racist posters, their guns at ready, their mis-spelled signs are the lynch mobs of our era. Most of the group is on 'government run healthcare' but are some how ignorant of the fact, as ignorance is their badge of honor - so driven to vent their racist venom.
As a friend who lived in Alaska during her tenure says she was always a crook. I'm assured that she will grow fat on her new pay at Faux news - even the Pubs can't imagine her as the Pres!
The answers to those questions were the motivation for a lot of Americans to vote for President Obama. (Those of us who have not been disheartened by the phony "anger" and feigned "disappointment" performed by fair weather friends and pseudo-Democrats, we still are impressed by the President's thorough answers to that question, even when we do not fully agree.)
I note also that Palin's speech to the Tea Party's faithful paying customers contained no numbers. No math. Just one liners and platitudes. Cut taxes, she says. By how much and for whom? I ask. An energy policy must be more than "drill baby, drill."
She cannot fit the answers to those questions on her palms or the soles of her feet.
The point is, if you want to win these people, it will take real bipartisanship on real issue and credibility that it is not business as usual Washington. Otherwise they will vote out everyone, time and again they do not believe is listening and taking the appropriate action.
If Mass proved one thing, the safe seats are not really so safe after all. These people will never really go for Palin, unless they have a reason to. If there is another typical GOP and Dem to vote for, Palin would be the anti-Obama, so best that both sides we get someone in there that can defend their actions. But labeling all GOP mid termers as Palin hacks will backfire.
Actually, she didn't "do" much in Alaska. A careful reading of the e-mails shows that her "servants", including Todd, are the ones who "did" things. She was the up-front, going to functions, greeting folks, person.
She left Wasilla heavily in debt, and there is some question about her house having the same materials and being built at the same time as the Sports Complex.
She spent alot of time on getting free flights for the children and Todd, for faux "functions", and electricity for the tanning bed, etc. etc. If someone crossed her, she was pretty much abusive to them. There is alot in her personal life that would likely come out if she runs for Prez..
And that's just the tip of the iceberg, IMO. She's happy now, raking in money; and that's what they want the most IMO.
The real problem here is that the people of this country (and the world) should be angry, should be forming themselves into a populist movement ready to stop the system which has plundered their lives, taken their jobs, destroyed their communities. So why aren't the Democrats out organizing those same people? Because the Democrats are in the pockets of Wall Street. The Democrats don't want an angry, organized populist base demanding fundamental economic changes. The Democrats want their supporters to stay home, but send money.
The Republicans don't mind this populist uprising, because Republican populists think the solution lies in more prayer. That's not a threat to the power structure. Democratic populists believe the solution lies in redistribution of the wealth -- higher taxes on the rich, break up the monopolies, end the multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses, create good-paying jobs, national healthcare, and a fully-funded pension for all working people. Therein lies the threat.
Palin is not really a threat to the Democrats. But Democratic voters are. If they ever get organized, both parties will likely be thrown out of power. As they should.
Im just saying...