And now, some shocking news

[D-Dogg]

My question is why is Palin an issue?

 

She has a large following, but nothing that will get her elected.

 

She stepped down from being a Governor to an author/anchor.

 

She is of no threat. Zero. However the media has to attack her almost daily to knock her down a peg or two. Why?

Why do they feel threatened?

 

The US population has to gain some focus here and stop acting like the mob on the school yard.

 

BTW I am not a Palin fan but I do not hate her, I just pay no attention to her.

[bjorn_skurj]

NYT review:

 

 

Election Confidential

By JACOB HEILBRUNN Skip to next paragraph

GAME CHANGE

 

 

Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime

 

By John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

 

448 pp. Harper/HarperCollins Publishers. $27.99

 

In July 2006 Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, abruptly summoned Barack Obama, then a freshman senator, for a meeting. Obama, who had a cordial but not warm relationship with Reid, immediately headed for his office, remarking to his press secretary Robert Gibbs, “I wonder what we screwed up.” Upon Obama’s arrival, Reid didn’t mince words: “You’re not going to go anyplace here,” he said. “I know that you don’t like it, doing what you’re doing.” After the lecture, when Obama had returned, Gibbs asked if anything was amiss. Not at all, Obama replied. “Harry wants me to run for president.”

 

It was a telling moment. Hillary Clinton might have publicly appeared to be her party’s preferred candidate, but Reid, as John Heilemann and Mark Halperin report in “Game Change,” was part of a growing contingent of Democratic senators quietly urging Obama to challenge Clinton, who they worried was saddled with the vote she cast in 2002 authorizing the Iraq war, along with sky-high negative ratings, “especially outside the bluest states,” and, not least, rumors about her husband’s personal life: “the topic of tittering in every quadrant of the Democratic Establishment from New York to Boston to Los Angeles,” but above all in Washington, the authors write. Heilemann, a columnist for New York magazine, and Halperin, the senior political analyst for Time, have conducted hundreds of interviews to provide the inside story of the 2008 campaign, longer on vignettes and backstage gossip than on analysis. But if their racy account provides little context for Obama’s rise, it vividly shows how character flaws large and small caused his opponents to self-destruct. The narrative also reinforces the familiar argument that a presidential campaign provides one important test of a candidate’s ability to govern. Each successive election cycle seems to have increased the stakes, and it has been going on a long time. “Formerly a candidate, unless possessed of popular gifts, did but little speaking,” Lord Bryce observed in “The American Commonwealth,” published in 1888. “Latterly he has been expected to take the field and stay in it fighting all the time.” Hillary Clinton, however, anticipated no such ordeal, expecting instead to coast through the early primaries and build up an insurmountable lead. Unenthusiastic about the Iowa caucuses, the campaign’s first battleground, she tried to avoid overnight stays there. She complained about the scruffy hotels and resisted calling local politicos, even hanging up on one who said that she was wavering between Clinton and another candidate. As for the challenge posed by Obama, “Hillary could still barely fathom that he was in the race at all,” Heilemann and Halperin write. They note that in the fall of 2006, before a single vote had been cast, Clinton began contemplating possible running mates in the general election, and also asked Roger Altman, a deputy Treasury secretary in her husband’s administration, to initiate the planning for her transition to the White House.

 

There were other difficulties, too. Bill Clinton’s aides, Heilemann and Halperin report, had been startled to discover that within days of his settling into a new house in Chappaqua, N.Y., in 2001, he was hanging out at a local deli, “chatting up the stay-at-home mothers” who came in after their yoga sessions. Hillary deputized two advisers to form “a war room within a war room” that was “dedicated to managing the threat posed by Bill’s libido,” though it was actually his clumsy attempts during the primaries to depict Obama’s campaign as a “fairy tale” that would prove most damaging to his wife’s efforts.

 

John Edwards, the third leading contender, pulled off the feat of eclipsing the former president by embarking upon a clandestine affair with Rielle Hunter, a producer of Web videos who had been the model for the “sexually voracious” 20-year-old Alison Poole in Jay McInerney’s novel “Story of My Life,” published in 1988. Heilemann and Halperin attribute the implosion of Edwards’s campaign in part to the screaming matches he had with his wife, Elizabeth, whose cancer had been diagnosed in November 2004. She too was a difficult case, deeply admired for her valiant response to her illness, but to campaign insiders “an abusive, intrusive, paranoid, condescending crazy woman.” Not that her husband was any better. The authors depict him as a delusional megalomaniac.

 

Heilemann and Halperin are no less unsparing of the McCains, another warring couple: “The McCains fought in front of others, during small meetings and before large events, to the amazement and discomfort of the staff.” By the spring of 2007, reports were circulating that Cindy McCain had a long-term boyfriend who accompanied her publicly in Arizona. And there was speculation about the candidate’s relationship with Vicki Iseman, a Washington lobbyist. Heilemann and Halperin devote much attention to the story, noting that some of McCain’s “advisers were living in terror” because “at least a half-dozen new delvings into McCain’s personal life had been undertaken by news organizations,” including The New York Times. Its article, published Feb. 21, 2008, in fact helped McCain where he was weakest, among conservatives who had doubted his ideological bona fides. A perceived assault on him by The Times redounded to his benefit, exactly as McCain’s canny chief operative, Steve Schmidt, had predicted.

 

Even Schmidt, however, was unable to prevent McCain from impulsively choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate. “Unlike Obama and his methodical process, McCain was flying by the seat of his pants,” the authors observe. “In judging Palin, he was relying on a vetting so hasty and haphazard it barely merited the name.” Initially eager to bone up on foreign policy — a subject on which she betrayed thorough ignorance — Palin attentively sat for an all-day tutorial with McCain’s advisers that ran from the Spanish Civil War up to the present. But after her disastrous interview with Katie Couric, Palin told her handler, Nicolle Wallace, “I want to do what I want to do.” Palin was not an isolated example of McCain’s fecklessness. “Not today,” was his automatic response to being advised to practice for debates with Obama, who, by contrast, prepared extensively. Out of his depth on economic issues, McCain allowed Obama essentially to direct a special bipartisan White House meeting in September that McCain had himself insisted George W. Bush hold. Just before McCain entered the White House, he stared blankly at a young Treasury aide and inquired, “What do I need to know about this meeting?”

 

In “Game Change,” Obama emerges as the most incisive, most disciplined and, in important ways, most conservative of all the contenders. He assembled a crack team that did not engage in the internecine warfare that afflicted his opponents. And his evidently spotless personal history helped insulate him from the buffetings his counterparts suffered as their tumultuous lives came under forensic scrutiny. Even the crisis of his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright faded against the image of the faithful, even uxorious, husband and devoted father of two young daughters.

 

No doubt Obama, as Heilemann and Halperin emphasize, could also be a ruthless practitioner of political hardball and often benefited from a bedazzled press corps. But none of that fully explains his remarkable ascent. An incredulous Hillary Clinton, observing the political advantage Obama reaped from the financial meltdown in September 2008, was left to surmise, “God wants him to win.”

 

Jacob Heilbrunn is a regular contributor to the Book Review and a senior editor at The National Interest.

 

 

 

That shit about Bill hitting on Chappaqua MILFs is FANTASTIC.

[Dude]

She too was a difficult case, deeply admired for her valiant response to her illness, but to campaign insiders "an abusive, intrusive, paranoid, condescending crazy woman."

[Mr. Heartbreak]

My question is why is Palin an issue?

 

She has a large following, but nothing that will get her elected.

 

She stepped down from being a Governor to an author/anchor.

 

She is of no threat. Zero. However the media has to attack her almost daily to knock her down a peg or two. Why?

Why do they feel threatened?

 

The US population has to gain some focus here and stop acting like the mob on the school yard.

 

BTW I am not a Palin fan but I do not hate her, I just pay no attention to her.

 

I must disagree with this optimistic view. Palin is potentially a huge threat to our country. If the Obama presidency continues to go downhill, and people are angry and fed up enough by 2012, she could ... unbelievably enough ... win a general election.

 

I can still remember clearly, in 2000, thinking, No way are we stupid enough in America to elect George Dipshit Bush ... and I was wrong. And then in 2004, I remember thinking, Well, people can't possibly be stupid enough to reelect this jackass. And I was wrong again.

 

Palin is a female Nixon. And look where he ended up.

 

Remember what H.L. Mencken said: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. People can easily be persuaded to accept the most inferior ideas or useless products."

 

Hence, 8 long miserable years of Bush, and yet, after less than a year of Obama, people are already pining for the "good old days" under Dubya. Amazing, and sickening.

[bjorn_skurj]

I hate Nixon, who was a mean crazy paranoid SOB, but comparing him to Palin goes too far. Nixon was evil, but at least he was smart. Palin is just a shit-for-brains.

[D-Dogg]

I must disagree with this optimistic view. Palin is potentially a huge threat to our country. If the Obama presidency continues to go downhill, and people are angry and fed up enough by 2012, she could ... unbelievably enough ... win a general election.

 

I can still remember clearly, in 2000, thinking, No way are we stupid enough in America to elect George Dipshit Bush ... and I was wrong. And then in 2004, I remember thinking, Well, people can't possibly be stupid enough to reelect this jackass. And I was wrong again.

 

Palin is a female Nixon. And look where he ended up.

 

Remember what H.L. Mencken said: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. People can easily be persuaded to accept the most inferior ideas or useless products."

 

Hence, 8 long miserable years of Bush, and yet, after less than a year of Obama, people are already pining for the "good old days" under Dubya. Amazing, and sickening.

 

I don't think my view is optimistic. I think it is terribly pessimistic. The public is focusing on attacking a person that currently has zero effect on anyone's lives rather than really studying current issues that will dramatically effect our lives (for better or worse whatever). The reason Palin has all the attention is that the people that hate her keep giving attention to her. This is happening on print and television. I don't think (and hope) Palin can win an election, despite Obama's efforts to continually fuck things up.

Bush won because people did not want Gore and wanted to move on from Slick Willy, Bush also won on false pretenses (no not the election scandal but he promised so much during the campaign and then did the exact opposite - everything from nation building, larger government, and infringement on personal freedoms). Gore really had no panache (D. Miller once said that if Gore had as much enthusiasm during the election as he shown in "Truth" he would have won).

 

Despite the War and everything that went with the war, people don't like to change during a war, and again Kerry was not much to write home about. It was an uphill battle and Kerry did not help himself out.

 

Anyway, I don't think people are itching for the good old days, that is why McCain and his female counterpart lost. McCain ran and more importantly was advertised by the opponent as Bush round III.

[mountain bed]

I must disagree with this optimistic view. Palin is potentially a huge threat to our country. If the Obama presidency continues to go downhill, and people are angry and fed up enough by 2012, she could ... unbelievably enough ... win a general election.

 

I can still remember clearly, in 2000, thinking, No way are we stupid enough in America to elect George Dipshit Bush ... and I was wrong. And then in 2004, I remember thinking, Well, people can't possibly be stupid enough to reelect this jackass. And I was wrong again.

 

Palin is a female Nixon. And look where he ended up.

 

Remember what H.L. Mencken said: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. People can easily be persuaded to accept the most inferior ideas or useless products."

 

Hence, 8 long miserable years of Bush, and yet, after less than a year of Obama, people are already pining for the "good old days" under Dubya. Amazing, and sickening.

Mike, you almost had me there. I was right there with ya in '00 & '04. It still astounds me. The last decade was an unending shitrain of ugliness - and imo, other than 9/11, the '00 election was quite possibly the worst event for this country in my lifetime. Man, there should be TONS of books assessing that one! And the Mencken quote is one of my alltime favorites - it was in my sig forever!

 

But I'm somewhere between you & D-Dogg - although I don't see Palin as harmless she's WAAAY to polarizing of a figure to be much more than a Perot - throw a monkey wrench in an election between the two parties. But I will readily admit that the woman has the potential to 'sow seeds of discontent'. There is a definite unrest out there that is potentially a dangerous situation for anyone who is an incumbent.

 

I'll still eat my hat (and finally move to Amserdam ) if we ever have to say the words "Presibent Palin".

[Mr. Heartbreak]

Mike, you almost had me there. I was right there with ya in '00 & '04. It still astounds me. The last decade was an unending shitrain of ugliness - and imo, other than 9/11, the '00 election was quite possibly the worst event for this country in my lifetime. Man, there should be TONS of books assessing that one! And the Mencken quote is one of my alltime favorites - it was in my sig forever!

 

But I'm somewhere between you & D-Dogg - although I don't see Palin as harmless she's WAAAY to polarizing of a figure to be much more than a Perot - throw a monkey wrench in an election between the two parties. But I will readily admit that the woman has the potential to 'sow seeds of discontent'. There is a definite unrest out there that is potentially a dangerous situation for anyone who is an incumbent.

 

I'll still eat my hat (and finally move to Amserdam ) if we ever have to say the words "Presibent Palin".

 

"An unending shitrain of ugliness" indeed.

 

I agree that Nixon was much smarter than Palin ... however, as far as being a mean, vindictive, paranoid right-winger who feels a constant need to settle scores with the liberal media, she is practically Nixon's daughter.

 

While I agree she is a very polarizing figure, I also feel she still has a shot at the nomination in 2012 if she wants it. If she got the Republican vote and a fair amount of Independents, it could be ugly. If she ran as anything other than a Republican, she'd be another Perot, for sure.

 

I hope she just sells lots of books and settles in at Fix News. I really don't want to see or hear from her again.

[Guest Speed Racer]

While I agree she is a very polarizing figure, I also feel she still has a shot at the nomination in 2012 if she wants it. If she got the Republican vote and a fair amount of Independents, it could be ugly.

 

Exactly. I will believe that Palin is not the 2012 GOP Presidential candidate only when there is another GOP Presidential candidate in 2012. Until then, I will support every organization that does its best to discredit her and

 

No one is committing slander or defaming her character - at least, I don't support or agree with anyone who chooses those tactics; with Sarah Palin, you don't even need to. If she can't stand the criticism she draws - the kind of criticism D-Dogg thinks is unnecessary - then she can step out of the public sphere and, hmmm...maybe not be a commentator on cable television?

 

As long as she is a political figure that people believe in, I will support every step taken to keep her from assuming a position of power. Isn't that what politics is all about?

[HungryHippo]

The people who want her to run in the next election are nuts.

 

be careful, Analogman. you have just offended 1/3 of this country's population.

[Mr. Heartbreak]

Looks like I may have been wrong here. Whew!

 

http://www.sphere.com/politics/article/seven-in-10-americans-dont-want-palin-to-run-for-president/19322408

 

Most Americans Don't Want Sarah Palin to Run

 

(Jan. 19) -- Sarah Palin may be considering a bid for the White House in 2012, but it seems most Americans would rather that she not.

 

According to a CBS poll, 71 percent of Americans don't want the former Republican vice presidential nominee to run for president. Despite widespread speculation that Palin could be on the next GOP ticket, 56 percent of Republicans said they don't want the former Alaskan governor to run. Not surprisingly, Palin fared even worse among other voters: 65 percent of independents and 88 percent of Democrats said they didn't want to see her run for president.

 

The Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor/AP

A new CBS poll finds that 71 percent of Americans don't want Sarah Palin, the former vice presidential nominee who recently became a Fox News contributor, to run for president in 2012.

 

During her first week as a Fox News contributor, Palin was coy about the possibility of a 2012 presidential run. "You know, I'm not going to close any doors for my future, for my family's future -- don't know what's in the future, what it holds, but between now and whenever a big decision has to be made, I'm gonna do all that I can to help our country get back on the right track, and that's to get a message out there about solutions that I believe and a whole lot of Americans believe need to be plugged in," she told her audience.

 

The CBS poll found that conservatives are the only ideological group that hold a favorable view of Palin, and most of them -- 58 percent -- say they don't want her to run for president.

 

In the blogosphere, some conservatives expressed skepticism about the poll results. Hot Air's Allahpundit blogger, for example, wasn't buying it. "Does anyone seriously believe that only 43 percent of Republicans have a favorable view of Sarahcuda?" he asked Monday, citing a 2009 Gallup poll from July that found that 72 percent of Republicans and "Republican-leaning independents" held a favorable view of Palin.

 

Since then, a book tour and the new gig with Fox News have made Palin more visible than ever. But the CBS poll found that only 26 percent of Americans view her favorably today. And if that's accurate, it may mean that the more the public has gotten to know Palin, the less affinity it has for her.

 

At least one blogger was relieved. The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan, no fan of the ex-governor, seemed enormously comforted by the news. "Well: Here's One Reason Not to Give Up," he wrote, linking to the poll.

[LouieB]

Sadly enough people do want her to run that she is the front runner until someone else comes along to unseat her.

 

LouieB

[Analogman]

Tina Fey Unveils Palin's Next Career Move In Return To SNL (VIDEO)

 

I think it is quite something that she can be a spokesperson for The Tea Party and speak at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference.

[sonicshoulder]

I actually hope she does get the 2012 nomination, that should insure a GOP defeat. If McCain/Palin can't win surely Palin/anybody can't win...right. I'm really not blue of red but I campaigned hard anti-Palin, she scares the shit out of me. Seems anymore I can only bring myself to campaign against politicians and not for them. My guy or lady is usually the one in the primaries on the far end of the stage that gets cut off all night.

[Analogman]

Oklahoma tea parties and lawmakers envision militia

 

I wonder what she thinks about this deal.

[Good Old Neon]

Oklahoma tea parties and lawmakers envision militia

 

I wonder what she thinks about this deal.

 

All this energy spent fretting over imaginary concerns – it really is its own brand of insanity.

[bjorn_skurj]

Oklahoma tea parties and lawmakers envision militia

 

I wonder what she thinks about this deal.

I am sure the Okies will do a fine job holding off the other 49 states. Maybe they should all watch the Ken Burns thing again to see how it turned out the last time.

[Analogman]

I swear every time I read articles like that, I think of The Postman. I know some people who used to be one of those deals back in the 1990s.

[calvino]

Man, when you find your niche or "audience" you can really haul in the cash:

Since leaving office at the end of July 2009, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee has brought in at least 100 times her old salary – a haul now estimated at more than $12 million -- through television and book deals and a heavy schedule of speaking appearances worth five and six figures.

 

ABC link

I like that they put a picture of her with the writing on her hand.

[LouieB]

I am sure the Okies will do a fine job holding off the other 49 states. Maybe they should all watch the Ken Burns thing again to see how it turned out the last time.

I think it would be a bit quicker this time....nuke Oklahoma....(just kidding of course....)

 

LouieB

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

I am sure the Okies will do a fine job holding off the other 49 states. Maybe they should all watch the Ken Burns thing again to see how it turned out the last time.

 

I doubt we will ever see an American Chechnya played out in Oklahoma, but I imagine that The US would respond in the same fashion we have since the end of the Viet Nam war: when the body bags start flowing, the hand wringing will commence.

 

But seriously, I cannot fathom the mindset that seeks, desires or espouses the dissolution of the Union be it in Vermont or Oklahoma.

[Analogman]

This will make a good scene or two in the made for TV movie:

 

Angry Palin neighbor offered house to journalist

 

Sarah Palin furious as biographer moves in next door

 

Palin builds fence to block biographer neighbor

[LouieB]

This is a fairly bizarre story also. The writer next door is now freaked out about reporters coming to see him about his writing the book and has threated to call the police if the press and others step on the property which he is renting.

 

LouieB

[Analogman]

This is a fairly bizarre story also. The writer next door is now freaked out about reporters coming to see him about his writing the book and has threated to call the police if the press and others step on the property which he is renting.

 

LouieB

 

I am surprised she does not move away some where.

[bjorn_skurj]

I am surprised she does not move away some where.

Where on Earth would be safe for her? The North Pole? The Marianas Trench?