The year in Sarah Palin faux pas

From Alaska Dispatch. Not sure if this is a serious newspaper or what, but they clearly don't like Sarah Palin and of course mockery is the order of the day, both for them and for Comedy Central.


Alaska Dispatch: The year in Sarah Palin faux pas

Did you know physicians have concluded that Sarah Palin's advice may cause cancer? That's just one of many nuggets of wisdom in 2012's "worst moments with Mama Grizzly." And even though she's got a few days left yet to make Alaska proud, Comedy Central was first out the gate to recognize Palin's contributions to America's civic discourse.
Here's a glimpse:

• In response to the mass shooting in Newtown, Palin delivers a "crappy joke" about the president.
• No comment from Mamma Grizzly after son Track files for divorce, leaving only Piper or Trigg to resurrect the "family values" in the Palin family.
• Alaska's Joan of Arc accuses President Obama of being addicted to "hope-ium"

Want more? Of course you do -- read the zingers until your eyes bleed at Comedy Central (or below)

If you thought Sarah Palin peaked in 2008, you haven't been paying attention to her in 2012 (not that we blame you). So we're pleased to present an exclusive analysis we're calling The Worst Sarah Palin Moments of 2012 (So Far).
8. Palin calls Time magazine irrelevant for naming President Obama its Person of the Year, when really it's irrelevant for still trying to be in the print media.
7. In response to the mass shooting in Newtown, Palin sums up this horrific tragedy with a Cee Lo song and a crappy joke about the president.
6. Palin's son Trog (or something) gets a divorce after 18 months of marriage, and his family-values-having mom has no comment, because… family values.

5. Palin apologizes after telling Republicans not to stop being "wusses" during fiscal cliff discussions. Yet she still hasn't apologized for her crimes against grammar and logic.
4. This terrible pun.
3. Palin mocks President Obama's Christmas card for featuring Bo, instead of baby Jesus coming down from heaven to give the Constitution to Paul Revere or whatever.
2. As the battle for Chick-Fil-A/America's greasy soul rages, Palin jumps into the fray to prove that a) she has no idea how the First Amendment works and b) she still hates the gays.
1. Despite raising hundreds of thousands of dollars through her Super PAC, Palin gives Mitt Romney nothing except a half-hearted endorsement wrapped in a long screed about Barack Obama.
So there you have it, the worst Sarah Palin moments of 2012. And to those of you wondering who cares about Sarah Palin any more, the answer is: not even Sarah Palin.

 

 

Sarah Palin Mocks Time Magazine, Self

this is from Dec 20

HuffPost Politics:  Sarah Palin Mocks Time Magazine, Self 

Fox News contributor and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) on Wednesday evening mocked Time magazine's decision to name President Barack Obama the person of the year. After all, this is the same magazine that once said Palin was important.
"Time magazine, I think there’s some irrelevancy there, to tell you the truth," Palin said on Fox News. "I mean, consider their list of the most influential people in the country and in the world, consider some who made that list: yours truly! That ought to tell you something right there regarding the credence we should give Time magazine and their list of people.”
Fox's Greta Van Susteren laughed. "That’s an interesting concept," she said.
Time named Palin one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2010.
The magazine's person-of-the-year story this year digs Palin for mocking Obama's 2008 campaign themes of hope and change:
"Ever since the campaign computers started raising the odds of victory from near even to something like surefire, Obama had been thinking a lot about what it meant to win without the lightning-in-a-bottle quality of that first national campaign," Time's Michael Scherer wrote. "The Obama effect was not ephemeral anymore, no longer reducible to what had once been mocked as 'that hopey-changey stuff.'

 

New posting schedule

Now that I've got this new full-time job, I'll be posting in this blog twice a week - on Monday's and Wednesdays.

So the next post for this blog will be on Monday.

Thanks for your patience.

Sarah Palin: 'Barack Obama Is A Socialist,' Communism Could Be Coming

From HuffPost:  Sarah Palin: 'Barack Obama Is A Socialist,' Communism Could Be Coming

"Barack Obama is a socialist," former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), claimed on Fox News Monday night, speaking about her concerns regarding a fiscal cliff deal, growing American debt and a president who, she said, could even be leading the nation on a slow march toward communism.
Talking with Sean Hannity, Palin said that the opening offer Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner presented to Republicans last week to avert the fiscal cliff was a dangerous proposition.
“A very scary proposal was recently revealed by Geithner essentially saying, ‘Let the president have free rein on raising the debt ceiling to whatever level he wants it.' That’s a very scary thought," she said, pointing to Obama's supposedly "socialist" views.
"He believes in socialism, in redistributing, in confiscating hard-earned dollars of our small businessmen and women so that they cannot re-invest their dollars and hire more people and grow and expand," Palin continued. "Instead he believes in these failed socialist policies. And I say that not to personally condemn our president, but I say it because I face reality, and I see what's going on, and I see the path that we are on and the fact that Barack Obama has not had a budget in the four years that he's been in office and not been worried about it and continues to spend recklessly other people's money. And that is a sign of that idea of loving socialism."
Pressed by Hannity on her recent warning to Republican "wusses" who might agree to a fiscal cliff deal without massive spending cuts and sweeping entitlement reforms, Palin apologized for name-calling, but encouraged conservative lawmakers to combat a supposed tide of socialism, or perhaps worse, which she appeared to suggest would be brought forth by a fiscal cliff.
“So I say, Republicans, go back to what the planks in your platform represent,” Palin said. “It represents reining in government, putting back the power and the responsibility in the individual, not in the state, not in government. Again, that gets us towards socialism. What goes beyond socialism, Sean, is communism. I know I’m going to get slammed for speaking so bluntly about what’s going on here, but that is exactly what is going on.”
On Monday, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) put forth a counteroffer to Obama's initial proposal, calling for $2.2 trillion in deficit reduction through deep spending cuts, entitlement reforms and $800 billion in new tax revenues. Conservative groups quickly attacked the plan for its new revenues, which they saw as a cave to Obama and Democrats on taxes.

 

Bedbugs Blamed for Sarah Palin Stalker's Disappearance From Halfway House

Not a lot of news about Sarah Palin so I thought I'd share this...

From  Hispanic Business Daily:  Bedbugs Blamed for Sarah Palin Stalker's Disappearance From Halfway House

Bedbug bites helped drive a 21-year-old McAdoo man from a halfway house where he had been ordered to stay for harassing former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, his father said Thursday.

Shawn Christy walked out of the Scranton Catholic Charity Center on Nov. 20 because he received more than 300 bedbug bites, his father, Craig Christy, said when explaining the family's version of events that led U.S. Marshals to arrest their son Wednesday.

"They just blew the story out of proportion," Craig Christy said.

The U.S. Marshals Service said in a statement that Christy fled his home and possessed a knife when deputies ran him down Wednesday morning. Deputies found him after they received a lead from authorities in Alaska.

The warrant issued for Christy said he abused a worker verbally and damaged property at the halfway house.

His father agrees partly with the statement from the Marshal's Office and the description of events in the warrant: His son had a knife, which his father said was a "tool" he was allowed to have. He also threw a soda bottle during an argument with a worker at the halfway house.

Craig Christy, however, said his son was worn out from working at a bakery and the bedbug bites when the argument began. He notified probation officers in Pennsylvania and Alaska that his son was home, and said the judge who issued the warrant also knew where the young man was.

Asked about Craig Christy's remarks, U.S. Marshal Martin J. Pane said authorities knew where Shawn Christy was, but a probation officer outlined the reasons for his apprehension in an affidavit.

The affidavit says Christy became belligerent when a search uncovered contraband -- the soda and a cellphone -- in his backpack. He ran to his room, kicked a hole in the wall and left the premises without permission, the affidavit says.

When Shawn Christy appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Blewitt on Wednesday afternoon, he suffered a seizure triggered by Lyme disease, his father said. The judge ordered Shawn Christy to be detained until he can be sent to Alaska for further proceedings.

Craig Christy, who said marshals expelled him and his wife from the courtroom when he told them to roll his son off his back during the seizure, did not know whether his son was in a hospital Thursday.

Earlier this year, Shawn and Craig Christy pleaded guilty to making harassing telephone calls to Palin and were placed on probation. As a condition of probation, Shawn Christy was ordered in mid-July to spend six months in a halfway house. His father was allowed to live at home.

About a month ago, one of the Christys visited the Department of Licensing, Inspections and Permits in Scranton to report bedbugs in the halfway house, department Director Mark Seitzinger said.

The manager of the halfway house told the department that workers sprayed for bedbugs twice and would spray a third time to complete the extermination, Seitzinger said. Staff members at the halfway house also put pads between the box springs and mattresses as a precaution against bugs, he said.

While staying at the halfway house, Shawn Christy worked regularly, first through temporary agencies and later at a bakery, his father said.

He also obtained a high school equivalency degree and took an online psychology course because he wants to work as a counselor someday.

But the sentencing judge in Alaska never transferred Shawn Christy's probation to Pennsylvania, nor was Shawn Christy allowed early release from the halfway house or a pass to go home for Thanksgiving.

"Basically, he's been a political prisoner because of the high-profile person involved," Craig Christy said.

Since sentencing, neither he nor his son has contacted Palin, he said.

Sarah Palin: Susan Rice Attacks Aren't Racist, Sexist

From HuffPost:  Sarah Palin: Susan Rice Attacks Aren't Racist, Sexist

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (R) said the criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice over the September 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya has nothing to do with racism or sexism.
"What the heck does this have to do with gender, or skin color, or anything else? This has to do with competency, and Susan Rice's handling of Libya has been part and parcel of the Obama Administration's handling of Libya, which has been appalling," Palin said Friday on "On the Record" with Greta Van Susteren. "It's been atrocious, and it's really indicative of a lack of competency and truthfulness, and certainly transparency, in the entire Obama Administration. It has nothing to do with her gender."
Rice, considered to be a top candidate to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, has battled critics since the Benghazi attacks, especially Republican Senators John McCain (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) After meeting with Rice about the attack, Graham said he was even "more disturbed" about Rice's explanation of the incident.
"Bottom line, I'm more disturbed now than I was before that the 16th of September explanation about how Americans died in Benghazi, Libya, by Ambassador Rice I think does not do justice to the reality at the time and, in hindsight, clearly was completely wrong," Graham said.
Some Republicans are coming to Rice's defense, including former U.S. ambassador to China and former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman.
"When you're in a wartime setting and you have an attack like that -- let's face it. No one is prepared for an attack like that. There is, as Robert McNamara used to say, there is a fog of war. And it takes awhile to sort through the details," Huntsman told The Huffington Post's Sam Stein. "And it doesn't do a whole lot of good for the political class to point fingers before you even know what was behind it. And you're not going to know that [immediately]."

Why Sarah Palin should be the 2016 GOP nominee -- seriously

From the Baltimore Sun:  Why Sarah Palin should be the 2016 GOP nominee -- seriously

The Republican Party has been doing a lot of hand-wringing and finger-pointing since the presidential election. Half the conservative columnists and bloggers say the GOP lost because it overemphasized social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. The other half says the party didn't emphasize them enough. And everyone denounces Project ORCA, the campaign's attempt to turn out voters via technology.
But I've got a suggestion for cutting short the GOP angst: Sarah Palin for president in 2016.
You think I'm joking? Think again

In 2008, Ms. Palin, running as my party's vice presidential candidate, was widely supposed to have cost John McCain the election. But that wasn't so. A national exit poll conducted by CNN asked voters whether Ms. Palin was a factor in their voting. Of those who said yes, 56 percent voted for McCain versus 43 percent for Barack Obama.
Furthermore, Mitt Romney, the GOP's anointed contender this year, got almost a million fewer votes than Senator McCain did in 2008. (Meanwhile, President Obama, although winning reelection, lost far more voters than the Republicans, with nearly 7 million fewer voters checking his name on their ballots than did in 2008).
Millions of Americans didn't much care for Mr. Obama and his Obamacare spending blowout, but they didn't feel like voting for Mr. Romney either. Some said that Mr. Romney didn't resonate with recession-hit blue-collar folks in swing states because he "looked like the boss who outsourced their jobs," as one blog commenter quipped.
Gabriel Malor, writing for the New York Daily News' blog, pinpointed another reason: By focusing his campaign mostly on serious economic and political issues such as the national debt and tax incentives, Mr. Romney failed to take into account the fact that large segments of the electorate neither know nor care much about serious economic and political issues. What they — a group sometimes euphemistically called "uninformed voters" — do know and care about are the tugs on their emotions, fears, revulsions and heart strings provided by hours and hours of uninterrupted television watching.
The Democrats understood how to reach that constituency. When a barrage of Obama campaign TV ads told them that the GOP wanted to take away their contraceptives or that Bain Capital killed someone's wife, they took notice. When Mr. Obama strolled the hurricane-stricken beaches of New Jersey in his bomber jacket, they were snowed. As Mr. Malor put it, Mr. Obama won on "binders, Big Bird, birth control and blame Bush."
Ms. Palin can more than keep up with the Democrats in appealing to voters' emotions. Hardly anyone could be more blue collar than Ms. Palin, out on the fishing boat with her hunky blue-collar husband, Todd. Ms. Palin is "View"-ready, she's "Ellen"-ready, she's Kelly-and-Michael-ready.
A Palin "war against women"? Hah! Not only is she a woman, she's got a single-mom daughter, Bristol, to help with the swelling single-mom demographic. On social issues, Ms. Palin, unlike Mr. Romney, has been absolutely consistent. And let's remember that most Americans, whatever their view of choice, disapprove of most abortions.
Gay marriage? Ms. Palin opposes it. But she is also a strong advocate of states' rights, and I'm betting she'd be fine with letting states and their voters grapple with the issue on their own. Remember that all of America didn't swing toward approval of gay marriage on Nov. 6. The voters of Maryland and two other reliably blue states did. If she were smart, Ms. Palin would recruit a member of her impressive gay fanboy base — yes, she has one — to help run her campaign. I nominate Kevin DuJan of the widely read gay conservative blog HillBuzz, a Palin stalwart since 2008.
Ms. Palin's son Track is an Iraq war veteran, so she can be proudly patriotic without being labeled another George W. Bush, looking to do aggressive nation-building. She seems aware there is only one nation in need of building right now: America.
Furthermore, looks count in politics, and Ms. Palin at age 48, has it all over her possible competition, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will be 69 by election day 2016 and who let someone talk her into adopting the flowing blond locks of a college student, making her look like Brunnhilde in a small-town Wagner production. Men love Sarah Palin, and she loves men.
She's tough as nails too. After Election 2008, she was supposed to have been through. This year, eight of the 14 GOP candidates Ms. Palin endorsed for Congress won election or reelection, including tea party favorite Ted Cruz for a Senate seat in Texas.
Sure, there is going to be never-ending nastiness from the left, but she's already lived through that once. Katie Couric? A has-been. Tina Fey? Her shtick was already wearing thin in 2008.
There are also the snooty, East Coast Republican intellectual types, such as Peggy Noonan, who look down their noses at a woman who doesn't shop at Neiman Marcus and didn't attend an Ivy League university. But Peggy made a fool of herself calling the election for Mitt Romney on Nov. 5. Who's going to care what she and her ilk have to say next time?
Some Republicans will say Ms. Palin has too much baggage from 2008, and we need to look for a new Sarah Palin. But I don't see what's wrong with the one we've got. Ever since the 1990s, Republicans have been looking for the next Ronald Reagan. Reagan is now revered in bipartisan circles, but during his presidency he was, like Ms. Palin, ridiculed by liberals. They cited "Bedtime for Bonzo" and sneered at his no-name college degree.
Sarah Palin is the new Ronald Reagan: charming and affable and unwilling to back down if she's right. I can't see what's wrong with that.

 

The great Sarah Palin-for-president joke

The media, which a great many folks think is non-partisaned, non-biased, presenting just the facts, clearly is'n't.

There's a rash of stuff trashing Sarah Palin for 2016, apparently because a lot of conservatives have already started touting her as the new candidate. But really, Sarah Palin simply is not presidential material. No one who has a reality show is! OR who seeks to trademark their name, etc.

Los Angels Times, Opinion:  The great Sarah Palin-for-president joke 

Caught “Game Change” on cable the other night.
Read Charlotte Allen’s Op-Ed article, “Hey, GOP, take the Palin cure,” in The Times on Sunday.
And what did I learn? Well, something doesn’t add up. Or, to paraphrase “I Love Lucy”: “Charlotte, you got some ’splainin’ to do.”
In her Op-Ed, Allen serves up equal parts lemonade and venomade in making her case that Sarah Palin should be the Republican presidential candidate in 2016. In Allen’s view, Palin has it all: She has blue-collar appeal, she’s “tough as nails,” and best of all, she’s a woman, which, in Allen’s world, gives her this advantage: “Men love Sarah Palin, and she loves men.”
Yep, just what the GOP needs: a Marilyn Monroe who hunts moose too.
Now, Allen also likes men, but there are some women she’s not too keen about. Take Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom she describes as looking “like Brunnhilde in a small-town Wagner production.” Or even fellow Republican Peggy Noonan, whom Allen lumps in with those “snooty East Coast Republican intellectual types … who look down their noses at a woman who doesn't shop at Neiman Marcus and didn't attend an Ivy League university.”
Anyway, you get the picture. But for good measure, Allen takes this plunge into mythology at the end:

Some Republicans will say Palin has too much baggage from 2008, and we need to look for a new Sarah Palin. But I don't see what's wrong with the one we've got. Ever since the 1990s, Republicans have been looking for the next Ronald Reagan. Reagan is now revered in bipartisan circles, but during his presidency he was, like Palin, ridiculed by liberals. They cited "Bedtime for Bonzo" and sneered at his no-name college degree.

Sarah Palin is the new Ronald Reagan: charming and affable and unwilling to back down if she's right. I can't see what's wrong with that.

Which is just silly, of course. Heck, if you want a Republican with common-man appeal, there’s a real governor in New Jersey right now who fits that bill.
So, how does one square Allen’s image of this Republican Party Joan of Arc with the petulant, ill-informed, diva-like Palin depicted in “Game Change”?  (In an homage to Palin, I didn’t actually read the book; I settled for the shallow experience of watching the movie, though in true Palin style, I didn’t watch the whole thing.)
Many Times letter writers wondered the same thing, with most thinking that perhaps Allen’s piece was satire.
And really, that’s close to the truth. Though what Allen does isn’t satire; it’s more like “set a fire.”
Commentators like Allen are all over the blogs, opinion sections and the TV and radio “news” and talk shows these days.  Their aim is to provoke, to inflame -- to hit the hornet’s nest and see how many angry people come out. It drives Web traffic; it drives ratings; it drives careers (see: Ann Coulter). But it doesn’t really give you any insight into what the people talking or writing actually believe. And it certainly doesn’t  inform.
So does Allen really think Palin is the GOP’s best choice in 2016?  I doubt it.
But a lot of people read her Op-Ed. And a lot of people commented on it. (Yes, you’re right, including me!)
And that’s the point. Because for Charlotte Allen, the best thing about Sarah Palin is that she’s good for Charlotte Allen.

Sarah Palin And The Greatest Turkey-Related Disaster In The History Of Politics

From HuffPost:  Sarah Palin And The Greatest Turkey-Related Disaster In The History Of Politics

For one day each year, the turkey gets its time to shine. While most of that shining is done quite literally, as the glazed centerpiece of Thanksgiving feasts around the nation, a few fortunate fowl are granted pardons and given a chance to live out their not-so-long lives in greener pastures, awkwardly bobbing their heads, crying gobble-gobble and whatever else it is that turkeys do.
Those symbolic pardons may make the turkey eaters among us feel somewhat better about stuffing our faces with coma-inducing amounts of gravy-smothered poultry, yet during one such event in 2008, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) managed to tear the mask (or head?) off the whole charade. We'll call it the greatest turkey-related disaster in the history of politics.
Fresh off a defeat in the 2008 presidential election, Palin headed to a turkey farm in her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, to pardon a local bird -- a common practice among governors.
Palin delivered her prepared remarks over frequent interruptions from clucking birds not as fortunate as the turkey getting the reprieve. She even touted herself as a "friend to all creatures great and small" before posing for a photo op.
What happened next was entirely unexpected. While many had recently learned that Palin could be unpredictable -- even a maverick, perhaps -- Americans couldn't have foreseen her conducting a lengthy on-camera interview while live birds were being fed into a machine of mass turkey murder mere feet behind her.
Palin seemed to unwittingly nail her remarks, commenting on the need to find "levity" in her job as turkey after turkey was decapitated by the metal cone of death in the background. The man shoving the struggling birds into the device even looked up toward Palin and the camera as the governor presciently predicted that the spectacle would invite skepticism.
(The goriest moments have been censored in the video above.)
Although her office later denied that she'd known what was playing out behind her, Palin was reportedly asked if she wanted that particular backdrop for her interview, to which she replied, "No worries."

 

 

Hey GOP, take the Palin cure

Still no actual news about what Palin is doing, just gossip.

From LATimes: Hey GOP, take the Palin cure

The Republican Party has been doing a lot of hand-wringing and finger-pointing since the presidential election. Half the conservative columnists and bloggers say the GOP lost because it overemphasized social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. The other half says the party didn't emphasize them enough. And everyone denounces Project ORCA, the campaign's attempt to turn out voters via technology.
But I've got a suggestion for cutting short the GOP angst: Sarah Palin for president in 2016.
You think I'm joking? Think again.

In 2008, Palin, running as my party's vice presidential candidate, was widely supposed to have cost John McCain the election. But that wasn't so. A national exit poll conducted by CNN asked voters whether Palin was a factor in their voting. Of those who said yes, 56% voted for McCain versus 43% for Barack Obama.
Furthermore, Mitt Romney, the GOP's anointed contender this year, got almost a million fewer votes than McCain did in 2008. (Meanwhile, President Obama, although winning reelection, lost far more voters than the Republicans, with nearly 7 million fewer voters checking his name on their ballots than did in 2008).
Millions of Americans didn't much care for Obama and his Obamacare spending blowout, but they didn't feel like voting for Romney either. Some said that Romney didn't resonate with recession-hit blue-collar folks in swing states because he "looked like the boss who outsourced their jobs," as one blog commenter quipped.
Gabriel Malor, writing for the New York Daily News' blog, pinpointed another reason: By focusing his campaign mostly on serious economic and political issues such as the national debt and tax incentives, Romney failed to take into account the fact that large segments of the electorate neither know nor care much about serious economic and political issues. What they — a group sometimes euphemistically called "uninformed voters" — do know and care about are the tugs on their emotions, fears, revulsions and heart strings provided by hours and hours of uninterrupted television watching .
The Democrats understood how to reach that constituency. When a barrage of Obama campaign TV ads told them that the GOP wanted to take away their contraceptives or that Bain Capital killed someone's wife, they took notice. When Obama strolled the hurricane-stricken beaches of New Jersey in his bomber jacket, they were snowed. As Malor put it, Obama won on "binders, Big Bird, birth control and blame Bush."
Palin can more than keep up with the Democrats in appealing to voters' emotions. Hardly anyone could be more blue collar than Palin, out on the fishing boat with her hunky blue-collar husband, Todd. Palin is "View"-ready, she's "Ellen"-ready, she's Kelly-and-Michael-ready.
A Palin "war against women"? Hah! Not only is she a woman, she's got a single-mom daughter, Bristol, to help with the swelling single-mom demographic. On social issues, Palin, unlike Romney, has been absolutely consistent. And let's remember that most Americans, whatever their view of choice, disapprove of most abortions.
Gay marriage? Palin opposes it. But she is also a strong advocate of states' rights, and I'm betting she'd be fine with letting states and their voters grapple with the issue on their own. Remember that all of America didn't swing toward approval of gay marriage on Nov. 6. Three reliably blue states and their voters did. If she were smart, Palin would recruit a member of her impressive gay fanboy base — yes, she has one — to help run her campaign. I nominate Kevin DuJan of the widely read gay conservative blog HillBuzz, a Palin stalwart since 2008.
Palin's son Track is an Iraq war veteran, so she can be proudly patriotic without being labeled another George W. Bush, looking to do aggressive nation-building. She seems aware there is only one nation in need of building right now: America.
Furthermore, looks count in politics, and Palin at age 48, has it all over her possible competition, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will be 69 by election day 2016 and who let someone talk her into adopting the flowing blond locks of a college student, making her look like Brunnhilde in a small-town Wagner production. Men love Sarah Palin, and she loves men.
She's tough as nails too. After Election 2008, she was supposed to have been through. This year eight of the 14 GOP candidates Palin endorsed for Congress won election or reelection, including tea party favorite Ted Cruz for a Senate seat in Texas.
Sure, there is going to be never-ending nastiness from the left, but she's already lived through that once. Katie Couric? A has-been. Tina Fey? Her shtick was already wearing thin in 2008.
There are also the snooty East Coast Republican intellectual types, such as Peggy Noonan, who look down their noses at a woman who doesn't shop at Neiman Marcus and didn't attend an Ivy League university. But Peggy made a fool of herself calling the election for Romney on Nov. 5. Who's going to care what she and her ilk have to say next time?
Some Republicans will say Palin has too much baggage from 2008, and we need to look for a new Sarah Palin. But I don't see what's wrong with the one we've got. Ever since the 1990s, Republicans have been looking for the next Ronald Reagan. Reagan is now revered in bipartisan circles, but during his presidency he was, like Palin, ridiculed by liberals. They cited "Bedtime for Bonzo" and sneered at his no-name college degree.
Sarah Palin is the new Ronald Reagan: charming and affable and unwilling to back down if she's right. I can't see what's wrong with that.
Charlotte Allen writes frequently about feminism, politics and religion.

 

 

No news from Sarah Palin?

Just did a Google News Search on Sarah Palin and there are no new headlines...

There's one that compares an actress as "the next Sarah Palin" i.e. here today and gone tomorrow, but no news about her.

Sarah Palin finds comfort in Corinthians

Palin cited the Bible verse in a Facebook post to her supporters. | AP Photo

By KEVIN CIRILLI | 11/7/12 12:13 PM EST 

 

 

Sarah Palin urged her supporters in a Facebook message on Wednesday not to “lose heart” now that President Barack Obama has defeated Mitt Romney, but she warned the president’s “socialist policies” will hurt the middle class.

Sarah Palin urged her supporters in a Facebook message on Wednesday not to “lose heart” now that President Barack Obama has defeated Mitt Romney, but she warned the president’s “socialist policies” will hurt the middle class.

“America, don’t lose heart. This election is not an ‘Obama mandate,’ nor is it a rejection of conservatism,” wrote Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee. “As I personally have witnessed, once a bell is rung by a biased media, it’s impossible to un-ring it. Ironically, it’s Obama’s socialist policies that will destroy America’s working class as he outsources opportunities.”

She continued: “Hang in there, America. Fight for what is right. Don’t look to government or any politician to solve your problems. Government can’t make you happy, healthy, wealthy or wise. Obama is a master at reading the right “soaring” words fed into his teleprompter, but actions speak louder than words. So, hold tight to 2 Corinthians 4:8 because we’re in for a wild ride. We must survive. United. One nation under God.”
She then cited the Bible verse in her Facebook post: “We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed.”

Bristol Palin Bar Heckler Lawsuit Tossed

From ABC News:  Bristol Palin Bar Heckler Lawsuit Tossed

A defamation lawsuit filed by a man who made headlines for heckling Bristol Palin in a California bar has been tossed out, her attorney John Tiemessen told ABC News.
In September 2011, Palin was heckled at a West Hollywood bar and restaurant by a man who called her mom, 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, a “whore” and made a crude reference about Bristol’s former relationship with Levi Johnston, the father of her 3-year-old son, Tripp .
Stephen Hanks’ lawsuit noted that Palin suggested he is a homosexual during their exchange, which occurred while she was shooting a segment for her Lifetime series, “Bristol Palin: Life’s a Tripp.” Hanks claims he’s been featured in ads for the show despite the fact that he never signed a waiver.
Hanks also states that Palin falsely claimed to a magazine that the incident was the reason why she moved from Los Angeles back to her native Alaska. He argues that Palin bought a home in Alaska two months before the incident.
Hanks has been ordered to pay Palin’s attorney’s fees.

 

Sarah Palin’s Facebook endorsement

From Washington Post blog, Compost:  Sarah Palin’s Facebook endorsement

Well, Sarah Palin has finally declared her full-throated support of Mitt Romney.
On Facebook.
Less than two days before the election.
But hey, it’s the thought that counts.
And frankly, this is the endorsement equivalent of an e-card.
As a friend of mine once quipped, “Nothing says, ‘I completely and entirely forgot’ like an e-card.”
On her Facebook page, the former Alaska governor wrote: “This Tuesday our country’s future is in our hands. What’s past is prologue. We know what we will get from a second Obama term because we’ve all endured his first term. We know how well he kept his 2008 campaign promises. Do we really believe he’ll keep his 2012 promises?”
She continues in this vein for some time, finally making it to Mitt Romney five paragraphs before the end, noting, “Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have offered a credible alternative to Barack Obama’s failed policies. Governor Romney understands how the free market works. His pro-growth economic policies will benefit all Americans. He has promised to move us toward energy independence, deficit reduction, and responsible entitlement reform that honors our commitment to our seniors and keeps faith with future generations. Governor Romney deserves a chance to lead. President Obama had his chance. He’s failed, and we can’t afford to go backwards.”
If this were any more lukewarm, you could take uncomfortable baths in it.
This endorsement has a clear message, and that message is: “Wait, the election is tomorrow?”

 

‘General Hospital’s Nancy Lee Grahn calls Sarah Palin dangerous but loves shoes

From Examiner.com:  ‘General Hospital’s Nancy Lee Grahn calls Sarah Palin dangerous but loves shoes

Nancy Lee Grahn is known to be outspoken, especially on the political scene. She has also made it known that she gets all riled up about Sarah Palin and her conservative views. In an interview with TV Guide’s Michael Logan posted on Oct, 29, 2012, the “General Hospital” star was pretty tough on how she feels about the former Vice Presidential candidate.

Grahn has been supporting her on-screen daughter, Kelly Monaco during her time on “Dancing with the Stars.” Logan asked her how it was to sit in the same studio as Palin during the dance competition while Bristol Palin was still in it. She called it a true test, especially when the two were seated closer to each other every week.
The 54-year-old actress said that she doesn’t like what Palin stands for. “I think she's a very divisive and dangerous person. The fact that she actually thought she was qualified to run for vice president — that she had the self-serving gumption to put our nation at risk that way — is something I still find unforgivable,” Grahn said. Ouch! But she did have something nice to say about the former Governor of Alaska. She loves her shoes! Grahn said that she was quite envious of the fabulous shoes Palin wore to the “Dancing with the Stars” studio. At least they can agree on something.

Cute shoes seem to the only thing these two ladies can agree on. They are on opposite sides of the political fence with Grahn clearly supporting Obama and Palin in the Romney camp. The soap star has been tweeting up a storm on her Twitter account as she makes no bones about her feelings on women’s issues. She makes extremely strong statements such as, “Any mother who votes for Romney is voting against my daughter, and I take that very personally. Not sure I can forgive that. #truth,” which was posted on her Twitter on Oct. 25.

Does this mean that Nancy Lee Grahn would never forgive her “General Hospital” fans for voting against her own views? This talented actress has many fans out there that love her but may not share the same views as she does. Hopefully all can be forgiven between the major soap star and her "GH" fans.

How do you feel about Grahn's statements about Sarah Palin?

 

Sarah Palin defends ‘shuck and jive’

From the Politico:  Sarah Palin defends ‘shuck and jive’

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is blasting critics who considered her use of the phrase “shuck and jive” about President Barack Obama to racially inflammatory.
“I would have used the exact same expression if I had been writing about President Carter, whose foreign policy rivaled Obama’s in its ineptitude, or about the Nixon administration, which was also famously rocked by a cover-up,” Palin wrote on Facebook on Wednesday night.

Palin said that Chris Matthews, White House Press Secretary and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had all also used the phrase previously.

“I’ve been known to use the phrase most often when chastising my daughter Piper to stop procrastinating and do her homework. As she is part Yup’ik Eskimo, I’m not sure if this term would be deemed offensive when it’s directed at her or if it would be considered benign as in the case of Chris Matthews’ use of it in reference to Rachel Maddow,” Palin wrote. “Just to be careful, from now on I’ll avoid using it with Piper, and I would appreciate it if the media refrained from using words and phrases like igloo, Eskimo Pie, and “when hell freezes over,” as they might be considered offensive by my extended Alaska Native family.”

Todd Palin’s grandmother was half Yup’ik Eskimo.

Earlier Wednesday, the 2008 vice presidential candidate wrote: “Why the lies? Why the cover up? Why the dissembling about the cause of the murder of our ambassador on the anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil? We deserve answers to this. President Obama’s shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end,”

Palin joined other conservatives who have slammed the Obama administration’s handling of the attacks at U.S. posts overseas, saying the administration blamed the attacks on an anti-Islam video trailer instead of terrorism. Tuesday, Reuters reported that members of the Obama administration and State Department officials knew two hours after the attacks that an Islamic militant group took credit for the attack.

CNN contributor Roland Martin said in 2008 after the phrase was used by then-New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that it was a “negative assessment” of African-Americans, writing: “’Shucking and jiving’ have long been words used as a negative assessment of African Americans, along the lines of a ‘foot shufflin’ Negro.’ In fact, I don’t recall ever hearing the phrase used in reference to anyone white.”

According to Urban Dictionary: “To shuck and jive originally referred to the intentionally misleading words and actions that African-Americans would employ in order to deceive racist Euro-Americans in power, both during the period of slavery and afterwards. The expression was documented as being in wide usage in the 1920s, but may have originated much earlier.”



White House press secretary Carney used the term during a Sept. 7, 2011, press briefing after he brought out the wrong notebook, Real Clear Politics reported. “Sorry, I’m going to shuck and jive,” Carney said. “Time to shuck and jive.”

Sarah Palin, faux populist

From Illinois Times:  Sarah Palin, faux populist

"Perfect populist pitch," beamed CBS analyst Jeff Greenfield right after Sarah Palin's big speech at the GOP fawnfest in St. Paul, Minn. "She's a populist," echoed Karl Rove over at Fox TV.
Excuse me? Palin is to populism what near beer is to beer, only not as close.
You want a taste of the real thing? Try this from another woman who hailed from a small town and was renowned for her political oratory:
"Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street and for Wall Street. ...Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. ...The people are at bay, let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware."
That, my media friends, is populism! It comes from Mary Ellen Lease's speech to the national convention of the Populist Party in 1890. Lease spoke all across the land, rallying a fast-spreading grass-roots revolt against the corporate predators of her day. "Raise less corn and more hell," she urged farmers.
Populists don't support opening our national parks and coastlines to allow the ExxonMobils to take publicly owned oil and sell it to China. Palin does. Populists don't hire corporate lobbyists to deliver a boatload of earmarked federal funds, then turn around and claim to be a heroic opponent of earmarks. Palin did. Populists don't favor giving yet another huge tax break to corporations. Palin does.
Another thing populists don't do is sneer at community organizers, as Palin did. Indeed, populists of old were community organizers, as are today's, helping empower ordinary folks who are besieged by the avarice and arrogance of many of the corporations backing Palin. Working for such needs as clean elections, environmental justice and fair wages, community organizers embody the vitality of modern populism, doing the essential grunt-level work of democracy. What gives Palin any legitimacy to denigrate that?

 

Jon Stewart Skewers Fox News VP Debate Response, Tells Sarah Palin 'Settle Down Eskimo Annie Oakley'

There's video of this, but you'll have to go to the link via a computer to see it.

But... an "eskimo annie oakley?"  Isn't that racist toward First Nation people, since Palin isn't an eskimo and they don't even like to be called that - they're Inuit?

From HuffPost:  Jon Stewart Skewers Fox News VP Debate Response, Tells Sarah Palin 'Settle Down Eskimo Annie Oakley'

When "the ghost of Barack Obama" showed up at the first presidential debate, supporters and pundits alike acknowledged the failure. Chris Matthews and the rest of MSNBC were visibly disturbed by the president's weak showing, speculating at length on what went wrong. So when Joe Biden wiped the floor with Paul Ryan in the VP debate, it was Fox News' turn to admit their guy's failure, right? Nope.
As Jon Stewart outlined on Monday night's "Daily Show," the fair and balanced (between right and far-right) network went out of its way to decry the Vice President as a crazy, drunk, mean-spirited coot. Or as Sarah Palin put it, a musk ox or something.

 

“The difference between Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan? Lipstick”

From American Blog:  “The difference between Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan? Lipstick”

Paul Ryan came to Congress about the time Newt Gingrich left.
But while Ryan was a few Congress’ late for the infamous Class of 94, to this day he still reeks of the same arrogance, elitism and entitlement that initially was the hallmark of House Republicans, then polluted the Senate, and now infects the GOP nationwide.
Paul Ryan is more than a Gingrich Republican, he’s a Fox Republican.  He’s part of the new generation of liars.  The Sean Hannity pretty-boys who pretend to play the everyman by putting lipstick on extremism.
Charles Pierce writes in Esquire about Paul Ryan’s debate performance last night. It’s masterful writing.  Here’s an excerpt.

There is a deeply held Beltway myth of Paul Ryan, Man of Big Ideas, and it dies hard. But, if there is a just god in the universe, on Thursday night, it died a bloody death, was hurled into a pit, doused with quicklime, buried without ceremony, and the ground above it salted andstrewn with garlic so that it never rises again. On foreign policy, Ryan occasionally rose, gasping, to the level of obvious neophyte. (He was more lost in Afghanistan than the Russian army ever was.) On domestic policy, his alleged wheelhouse, he was vague, untruthful, and he walked right into a haymaker he should have seen coming from a mile off, when he started bloviating about Biden’s role in the “failed” stimulus program, only to have Biden slap him around with Ryan’s own requests for stimulus money for his home district back in Wisconsin. He also made it quite clear that a Romney-Ryan White House will do everything it can to eliminate a woman’s right to choose. This should make for some fine television commercials over the next few weeks.

He stammered. He vanished into his syntax. He gave Biden the chance to ask him if he preferred that American soldiers carry the fighting in the worst parts of the country rather than Afghan troops, a devastating comeback for which Ryan had no answer. He kept rambling about maintaining the country’s “credibility” until, if you closed your eyes, he started to sound like Robert McNamara in 1965. And when Raddatz asked him, deftly, what would be worse, another war in the Middle East or Iran with a nuclear bomb, he leaped in precipitously with the latter, while about 75 percent of the country, including the two other people on stage with him, looked at Ryan as though he’d lost his mind. He did, however, demonstrate a certain talent for pronouncing long foreign words that his briefers had taught him on Tuesday. Also, he explained winter.
For years, Paul Ryan has been the shining champion of some really terrible ideas, and of a dystopian vision of the political commonwealth in which the poor starve and the elderly die ghastly, impoverished deaths, while all the essential elements of a permanent American oligarchy were put in place. This has garnered him loving notices from a lot of people who should have known better. The ideas he could explain were bad enough, but the profound ignorance he displayed on Thursday night on a number of important questions, including when and where the United States might wind up going to war next, and his blithe dismissal of any demand that he be specific about where he and his running mate are planning to take the country generally, was so positively terrifying that it calls into question Romney’s judgment for putting this unqualified greenhorn on the ticket at all. Joe Biden laughed at him? Of course, he did. The only other option was to hand him a participation ribbon and take him to Burger King for lunch.
You know what’s the difference between Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan?
Lipstick.

 

Sarah Palin revealed by dad, brother in “Our Sarah: Made in Alaska” memoir

From Washington Post:  Sarah Palin revealed by dad, brother in “Our Sarah: Made in Alaska” memoir

Just in time for Thursday’s vice-presidential debate: “Our Sarah: Made in Alaska” a new book by Sarah Palin’s father and brother. Will we ever get enough of our lady of Wasilla? Apparently not.
Chuck Heath Senior and Junior penned a family memoir about the future conservative heroine who, in this telling, never did anything wrong — and anyone who says she did is mistaken. A few tidbits:
• “When Sarah was born she was round and pink with a shock of black hair. Dad commented that she looked like a bulldog.”
●• She did read papers: “When she was in elementary school, Dad would bring in the newspaper and take out the sports section. . . Sarah was busy reading the front-page articles about world events.”
• Her years playing basketball revealed the future politician: “Her aggressive style of play more than made up for her lack of size and shooting ability. She simply outhustled her opponents and wore them down”
• She competed in the Miss Wasilla pageant when Geraldine Ferraro was on the ticket: “Yes, I think a woman could be vice president,” she said. “I think a woman could be president.”
• At the debate against Joe Biden, campaign aides tried to “micromanage her responses” and threw Palin off her game — the same Republican aides who later blamed her for the election loss. “All those times they mismanaged Sarah in the campaign were twisted afterward into evidence that she was indifferent, uninformed and disinterested. . . They couldn’t bear the thought of acknowledging that she had political instincts at least equal to their own.”
Palin clearly approved of this message because she wrote the forward: “Having written books of my own, I know how exhausting producing a manuscript can be. . .I hope you’ll be inspired by their stories and by the warm Alaskan spirit they reflect.”

 

 

Sarah Palin Defends Daughter Bristol Against Death Threats On 'Dancing With The Stars'

From Huffington Post:  Sarah Palin Defends Daughter Bristol Against Death Threats On 'Dancing With The Stars'

Sarah Palin is anything but "an average hockey mom," but the former vice presidential candidate is quick to go into protective-mother mode when she's defending her children.
On Monday, Palin took to her Facebook page to defend daughter Bristol after the "Dancing With The Stars: All-Stars" contestant received death threats. Palin addressed "the haters" in a Facebook message:

I’m in California today to support Bristol. I’m sorry to see that she’s again getting those annoying death threats and more “mysterious white powder” sent to her while on DWTS this All-Star season. These threats sure waste a lot of time, production and public resources; but do the haters really think this will stop Bristol and Mark and the show’s producers from keepin' on keepin' on? Silly critics -- after all these years of goofy antics like this we find these efforts are actually quite motivating! Bristol’s not letting this get her down. Anyway, tonight is a “double elimination” night, so hopefully everyone who has supported her so far will do so again! I'll be sure to post the call in number and voting instructions later today before the event. Thank you again to everyone. It means a great deal during this fun and highly competitive event, and it's sure appreciated! As Bristol shares with anyone targeted by the naysayers in life: “Hey, the haters will hate anyway; the critics will criticize, so you might as well dance!”

The death threat came in the form of a suspicious package sent to the CBS Studio set of the ABC dancing competition, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed on Monday. The package contained a white powder and a note, CBS sources told TMZ. The attached note read: "This is what will happen to you if Bristol Palin stays on [the show]." The powder was later deemed harmless.
The Hollywood Reporter notes that Bristol previously received a similar package containing white powder when she first joined "DWTS" in 2010. That particular package had been sent to the Los Angeles studio where the live show films Mondays and Tuesdays.
On Tuesday, Bristol was spared elimination despite her mediocre performance with partner Mark Ballas. She moves onto the following round next week.

 

Sarah Palin writing diet and fitness book

From Entertainment Weekly:  Sarah Palin writing diet and fitness book

Sarah Palin is writing a diet and fitness book. On Tuesday, the former vice-presidential candidate sent an e-mail to People, announcing: “Our family is writing a book on fitness and self-discipline focusing on where we get our energy and balance as we still eat our beloved homemade comfort foods!”
The Palins are known for their love of heavy foods (People writes that the family often serves their guests “chocolate cream pies, pecan pies and lemon meringue pies”), but Palin claimed she’s found an equilibrium between her pie intake and eating healthily. ”We promise you what we do works and allows a fulfilling quality of life and sustenance anyone can enjoy,” she went on to say.
There’s no word on whether Palin has secured a deal for this book or when it will be published. Still, let’s assume it eventually makes its way onto shelves — will you be buying a copy?

 

Sarah Palin: 'I Almost Felt Sorry For' Obama During Presidential Debate

From HuffPost:  Sarah Palin: 'I Almost Felt Sorry For' Obama During Presidential Debate

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) was quick to declare GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney the winner of Wednesday's presidential debate in Denver. She also feigned a little sympathy for President Barack Obama, who she said performed poorly throughout the first of three head-to-head encounters.
“It was a struggle to watch some parts of this, as you considered President Obama with his lack of enthusiasm for his own policies and his lack of conviction in trying to articulate why is it he believes that government will make you healthy, wealthy and wise and happy when the vast majority of Americans know that government isn’t the answer," Palin said in an interview on Fox Business Network. "I almost felt sorry for him in his role as president trying to explain why we need to repeat four more years of failed policies. I thought this was Romney’s night. Romney did very well and he was able to articulate well why it is that someone with great business experience is what we need to turn this economy around.”
The early reviews from voters and pundits suggested that many agreed with Palin's general contention that Romney had won the debate.
Palin also offered a little insight on her own experience with the debate circuit in 2008, when she faced off against Joe Biden.
“You know, I had no idea four years ago what was going on behind the scenes or in headquarters," she admitted. "In fact, we used to have a running joke, the JV squad, those of us on the vice presidential side of the ticket. We used to talk about where is this mysterious headquarters and what are they doing to this campaign. So I didn’t know back then how it worked, I still don’t know this inside baseball stuff.”
Inside baseball knowledge or not, Palin has offered advice to the Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), in the past, urging them to "go rogue" and tell "the American people the true state of our economy and national security." In her interview Wednesday, she argued that Romney didn't fully succeed in doing this. Palin said both candidates failed to adequately articulate "the gravity of the situation," but that Romney had emerged the clear victor anyways.

 

Palins yet to claim Exxon Valdez oil spill compensation money

From Reutrers:   Palins yet to claim Exxon Valdez oil spill compensation money


Oct 2 (Reuters) - Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is not shy about voicing her opinions to national audiences, headlining big-ticket political events and exposing her family and personal life on reality TV.
But so far the former Alaska governor and her husband Todd Palin have not come forward to claim their share of a settlement fund established for victims of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.
The pair was among the nearly 1,000 plaintiffs who have not claimed their payouts on a list released last week by managers of the settlement fund.
Some on the list are dead. Some are missing. But some, said the attorney managing the payouts, are simply lacking paperwork needed to process their payments.
The latter could include the famous as well as the obscure, said Lynn Sarko, the Seattle attorney administering the Exxon Qualified Settlement Fund.
"If Barack Obama were on the list, I know where he is, but I don't necessarily have all of his paperwork," Sarko said on Monday.
Sarko said he was not permitted to give specific information about the Palins' claims but he confirmed that most people were generally owed hundreds of dollars.
As the reality TV show "Sarah Palin's Alaska" documented, the Palins fish commercially in southwestern Alaska's Bristol Bay, far from the Prince William Sound and Gulf of Alaska sites fouled with oil.
Such fishermen are members of the "unoiled fisheries" classes and are entitled to shares of spill funds, based on a finding that fears of oil tainting had depressed Alaska salmon prices in general, Sarko said.
"There was a tremendous price drop, especially in southeast Alaska," he said, adding that of the $1 billion settlement Exxon paid to private plaintiffs in compensation, punitive fines and interest, only about $1 million is left to be doled out.
An Alaska-based lawyer who represents the Palins in other matters, John Tiemessen, said he was not involved in the case and did not know the status of the claims.
Any remaining unclaimed payments will eventually revert to the plaintiffs' last known home states and be put into government unclaimed-asset funds, he said.

 

No free-speech issue: Judge tosses lawsuit targeting Sarah Palin

From Los Angeles Times:  No free-speech issue: Judge tosses lawsuit targeting Sarah Palin

It was a case of turning lemonade into lemons -- Sarah Palin-style, contends a self-described citizen lobbyist.
Chip Thoma, a longtime Alaska activist, said the former Alaska governor ordered her staff to destroy his reputation after he complained about the large number of tour buses driving by for a peek at the governor’s mansion.
Palin, he said in a federal court lawsuit, saw an opportunity to portray herself as a victim of his traffic complaints. She directed her staff to put out the word that Thoma was not only trying to drive her out of the governor’s mansion, the lawsuit contended, but had stooped to criticizing her daughter Piper’s lemonade stand -- a dagger Thoma insists he never threw.
The former governor’s real motive, he said, was to use him to explain why she was spending so much time away from Juneau; critics had suggested she shouldn’t be collecting per diem pay for living at her home in Wasilla, Alaska.
Though Thoma cited quotes purporting to be from Palin’s own emails to back up his story, a federal judge threw out his lawsuit on Thursday, ruling that the quotes weren’t admissible, and that Thoma’s 1st Amendment rights to free speech weren’t violated.
“Thoma chose to engage on a public issue, and although Thoma believes that he was insulted in response, this does not necessarily rise to the level of a constitutional violation,” U.S. District Judge Timothy M. Burgess said in his order. “Thoma remained free to express his opinion on the traffic issue -- he simply decided not to.”
Thoma, well-known in Juneau for helping lead the campaign to impose greater regulations on the cruise ship industry, decided in 2009 — the year after Palin had shot to fame by running for vice president — to pass out fliers complaining about the tour buses driving past Palin’s official residence.
Thoma’s information on what happened next came via a book, “Blind Allegiance,” co-written by former Palin aide Frank Bailey. The book contains a large number of emails Bailey said he took with him after leaving the job, and several of them, Thoma asserts, suggest that Palin saw Thoma’s anti-bus campaign as a way to turn around the spin on her frequent travels outside of Juneau.
At first, according to court documents that quote the book, Palin was amazed that Thoma, whom she’d never met, was even raising the issue: “Really? Is this a joke? I don’t even know how to take it … except we’ll hear that somehow this is my fault that I let the neighborhood go to hell in a handbasket. Kinda funny!” she supposedly wrote.
But Thoma’s court memorandum says Bailey went on to reveal that Palin and her staff decided to “push this story to the broader media.” They added “made-up speculation” that Thoma was also protesting about Palin’s children playing outside and running lemonade stands, his lawsuit said.
“That [tour bus controversy] is a good issue for us, so … please get it out there,” Palin supposedly ordered her staff.
The staff went to work, Bailey related in his book: “We managed to have published a nasty spin on what started out as bus congestion and pollution and turn this into Sarah’s Juneau crucifixion.”
The governor’s staff is said to have provided “talking points” on the issue to a Palin-friendly blog, Conservatives4Palin, which subsequently published a post, “Juneau Resident Attempts to Close Down Piper Palin’s Lemonade Stand.”
“It seems that Mr. Thoma doesn’t enjoy the Palin children very much,” the post said. Commentators weighed in on conservative blogs, referring to Thoma as “unhinged,” “drug-addicted,” and “sick.”
Palin herself appeared to love it, according to the book’s account cited in court papers: “This is hilarious! And [Piper’s] planning this [lemonade] stand again for the next sunny day.”
She was reportedly critical of her staff for not having gone even further to push the story in the mainstream media. “See, I wanted to get out ahead of this and provide another reason why I need to get out of Juneau more often, instead, Chip got to spin the story his way. I hope we didn’t blow an opportunity,” she complained in one excerpt quoted in the lawsuit.
From a legal standpoint, the purported emails amounted to nothing.
Burgess said he couldn’t consider Bailey’s book as evidence; merely quoting from it in court papers was no more than unsubstantiated hearsay, he concluded. “Thoma provides no evidence to demonstrate that Palin made these comments concerning Thoma or directed others to do so,” the judge said.
Palin denied even knowing Thoma. When she heard about his anti-tour-bus campaign, she told the court, she concluded it was an issue for the city of Juneau to deal with, not state government.
“I recall that I was at the time receiving some criticism for being away from the state capitol in Juneau. I recall commenting that in light of Mr. Thoma’s campaign, it seemed I was also being criticized for my presence in Juneau,” Palin wrote in her affidavit filed with the court.
She said she felt Thoma’s campaign was “ill-considered,” given the money that tourism generates in Alaska, but said she never took action to silence or discredit him.
“I have never said or done anything with the intent of preventing Mr. Thoma from exercising his 1st Amendment rights,” she said.

 

Sarah Palin’s advice to Mitt Romney: 'Go rogue'

From Christian Science Monitir:  Sarah Palin’s advice to Mitt Romney: 'Go rogue'

 Mitt Romney has been getting lots of gratuitous advice from fellow Republicans and conservatives worried about what they see as a presidential campaign that’s slipping toward defeat.

As usual, Sarah Palin is the most direct and colorful. In a statement to the Weekly Standard on Saturday, she put it this way:
"With so much at stake in this election, both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan should 'go rogue' and not hold back from telling the American people the true state of our economy and national security. They need to continue to find ways to break through the filter of the liberal media to communicate their message of reform."
 "America desperately needs to have a 'come to Jesus' moment in discussing our big dysfunctional, disconnected, and debt-ridden federal government," the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate told the conservative magazine.
Are you more (or less) conservative than Mitt Romney? Take our quiz!
To some Republican kibitzers, “going rogue” means unleashing Rep. Paul Ryan, Mr. Romney’s running mate and a relative youngster who seemed to bring some pizzazz to an otherwise staid ticket.
“They not only need to use [Ryan] out on the trail more effectively, they need to have more of him rub off on Mitt because I think Mitt thinks that way but he’s gotta be able to articulate that…. I think too many people are restraining him from telling [his vision],” Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker told a radio interviewer Friday.
Where’s the evidence of Romney’s so-called “bold choice” in picking Ryan? others ask.
“Even in Wisconsin, I think he’s being underused,” Charlie Sykes, the radio host who interviewed Gov. Walker, told Politico. “I guess what’s frustrating is especially now that we’re embroiled in this conversation about the makers versus the takers, where is Paul Ryan? He is eloquent, he knows the numbers, he can frame this in a very compelling way. The fact that he is not front and center on some of this is, I think, a lost opportunity.”
Even in Wisconsin – Ryan’s home state – an NBC poll shows Obama leading Romney by 5 percentage points, and that’s just part of recent polling news the Romney campaign must find troubling

As the Monitor’s Mark Trumbull reported this week, Obama leads Romney in eight out of nine swing states where the two are in tight contests: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin. North Carolina is the only one where Mr. Romney currently has an edge.

Unleashing Ryan may not be the answer, of course. As House Budget Committee chairman, he authored a plan that was controversial – particularly for what it portended for Medicare, the health care program for seniors. He tried to explain it at an AARP meeting this week, but was booed by many in the audience.
Apparently, that wasn’t just a one-time deal in a room full of retirees. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll this week shows Obama leading Romney by 10 points (47-37) in dealing with Medicare.
It’s a law of all organizations – including (maybe especially) political campaigns – that when things are tough, infighting and finger-pointing will ensue. Politico’s must-read scoop last Sunday – “Inside the campaign: How Mitt Romney stumbled” – set off something similar among conservative pundits.
Weekly Standard editor William Kristol called Romney’s comments about “the 47 percent” who presumably would never vote for him because they pay no federal income taxes “stupid and arrogant.” Rush Limbaugh complained that “every Democrat under the sun's retweeting that all over the place,” that too many conservative fellow travelers who once supported Romney “have bailed on him.”
Over at the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, columnist and former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan wrote, “It’s time to admit the Romney campaign is an incompetent one.”
Then she revised her estimation: “This week I called it incompetent, but only because I was being polite,” she wrote. “I really meant ‘rolling calamity.’"

 That left Chris Wallace at Fox News questioning Ms. Noonan’s “conservative bona fides.”
“Sometimes they’re New York City’s idea of conservatives,” Mr. Wallace said of Noonan and others similarly critical of the Romney campaign. Ouch. And here we thought such intramural squabbles were principally the province of Democrats.

Sarah Palin may not be thrilled as 'Game Change' wins Emmys

From Los Angeles Times, Commentary:  Sarah Palin may not be thrilled as 'Game Change' wins Emmys

Sarah Palin will likely have more complaints to lodge about the biographical drama based on her vice presidential run, but the Hollywood community rendered its verdict Sunday night with multiple Emmy awards for “Game Change.”

The HBO film won television’s top award for miniseries or movie, as well as awards for writer Danny Strong, director Jay Roach and actress Julianne Moore, who portrayed the one-time Alaska governor.

“I feel so validated because Sarah Palin gave me a big thumbs down," Moore told the audience after receiving her best actress statuette at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles.

Palin’s rebuttal to the TV movie has been going on for at least half a year. She has even used the film — based on a book by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann — to raise money for her political action committee.

“Fight back against HBO and their liberal fiction ‘Game Change’ by donating to SarahPAC today,” says an appeal on Palin’s website. It also includes a video in which commentators offer praise for Palin and the work she did as Sen. John McCain’s 2008 running mate.

The film, on the other hand, portrays the one-time Alaska governor and reality TV star as overwhelmed by her star turn.  It shows a Palin performing at times but crumbling under pressure and becoming virtually unresponsive to the McCain operatives as the campaign started to go south.

The film received the endorsement of Steve Schmidt, the McCain campaign’s top strategist, and of Nicolle Wallace, a McCain campaign aide who was assigned to help Palin navigate her first national campaign.

The Hollywood filmmakers said they did not intend “Game Change” to be an endorsement of one party so much as they hoped it would get voters to pay closer attention to the candidates and how messages are crafted during a political race. But it was pretty clear that the television industry had no trouble accepting a portrait of Palin as dangerously out of touch.

It remains to be seen if Palin will respond to the film again, as she did when it aired on HBO last spring. Earlier in the Emmy telecast Sunday, Jimmy Kimmel asked how many in the crowd at the Nokia Theatre supported Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

After a smattering of applause, the comedian said: “See, there are 40 Republicans and the rest godless, liberal homosexuals.”

 

Sarah Palin has a question for Obama

From Politico:  Sarah Palin has a question for Obama

Sarah Palin slammed Barack Obama’s foreign policy in a Fox News interview Thursday night, directing a pointed question to the president.
“So how is that U.S. apology tour working out for ya, Mr. President?” she asked in an appearance on “Hannity.”

Palin bashed the administration over ads airing in Pakistan. The spots feature Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton distancing the United States from an anti-Muslim film made in America, a video administration officials have said played some part in sparking demonstrations across the Middle East that resulted in the death of America’s ambassador to Libya.

“Look, if our fearless leaders insist on waving the white flag like this, then they need to bring our troops home from the Middle East, no more blood, no more U.S. treasure spent, not one drop, if those in control of our troops’ lives and our tax dollars going into things like this are going to capitulate — wait, apologize, for a First Amendment right of ours, freedom of speech, that our troops are over there fighting for,” Palin told Sean Hannity. “Sean, our commander-in-chief is contradicting what we believe our troop’s mission is and that is to protect freedom.”
On Friday morning, anti-Western protests broke out across Pakistan, following attempts Thursday by rioters to access the U.S. embassy there. That capped off what The Associated Press called “nearly a week of violent rallies against the film.”

 

Sarah Palin praises new Errol Morris book

From NY Daily News:  Sarah Palin praises new Errol Morris book

One did not get the sense, from the 2008 presidential campaign, that Sarah Palin was much of a reader. Imagine our surprise, then, to find her ebullient review of Errol Morris' new book, "A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald," which the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate posted on the conservative website breitbart.com earlier this week.
"Wilderness" is the noted documentarian's rebuttal to Joe McGinniss' "Fatal Vision," which argued persuasively that MacDonald, a Princeton-educated Army doctor, killed his wife and two daughters on Feb. 17, 1970 in Fort Bragg, N.C. MacDonald claimed that hippies had committed the crime.
After a tortuous legal battle that, at one point, had him bantering about the case on "The Dick Cavett Show," MacDonald was found guilty in 1979 and remains in prison to this day, emphatic about his own innocence.
Palin begins her review of "Wilderness" by noting that "I don’t normally read 'true crime' books, and I’ve certainly never written a review of one." And though she effusively praises Morris' meticulously reasoned explanation of why he thinks MacDonald did not commit the crime for which he has been imprisoned, she has here a motive of her own: to take a couple of swings at McGinniss, who authored 2011's "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin." He researched that book by moving next door to the Palins' home in Wasilla, Ak.
McGinniss famously wrote 1983's "Fatal Vision" with MacDonald's full complicity – the two even lived together during the murder trial. Little did MacDonald suspect that McGinniss would turn against him, portraying him as an unfaithful egomaniac who may have been strung out on diet pills at the time of the murders.
Palin gleefully repeats Morris' charge that McGinniss is "a craven and sloppy journalist who confabulated, lied, and betrayed while ostensibly telling a story about a man who confabulated, lied, and betrayed.” She says that his pursuit of gossip about her own life in Alaska was "sick and vicious."
Writes Palin:

I sympathize with MacDonald and his defense team because I saw firsthand the twisted way McGinniss operates. Before he moved in right next door to spy on us, he stalked us for months, making creepy unwelcomed “visits” to our house, as he tried to manipulatively win our trust the same way he won the trust of MacDonald and his defense team – all so that he could betray us just as he betrayed them.

Among the rumors McGinniss proffered in his book on Palin is that she had a fetish for African-American men, snorted cocaine off an oil drum with her husband Todd and did not really give birth to her youngest son, Trig.
Palin concludes her review by hoping that McGinniss "will understand justice someday, in this life or the next."
Morris, meanwhile, continues his quest to have MacDonald retried. Currently, a Delaware federal judge is in the midst of hearing evidence that MacDonald maintains should earn him a new trial. He has always said that intruders resembling the Manson Family killed his wife and daughters, though material evidence for that claim has been, it must be admitted, rather scant.