Sarah Palin knows her schtick, but it’s actually a national embarrassment that someone who was once a vice-presidential candidate actually goes to Breitbart to get published.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Sarah Palin being a vice-presidential candidate was a national embarrassment. Everything about her since then is just reinforcement.
Being reduced to appearing on the Breitbart forum could be embarrassing to her (if she had any credibility to lose which she doesn’t), but not for us. Embarrassing for us is that almost 45% of the national electorate voted for her as VP and she didn’t quickly after that drop down to the Breitbart forum where she belongs.
More embarrassing than >50% voting for Spiro T. Agnew?
Well, they didn’t know then that he was a crook. They didn’t have that excuse wrt to Nixon. But that FDR social Democrat that advocated for more peace and less war wasn’t anything that the landslide majority wanted anything to do with. And that’s the last time either party nominated a candidate that dared to suggest that US military might should be reconsidered and not used for political gain whenever and wherever expedient.
Hillary may be the most strident warhawk and pro-economic inequality that Democrats are prepared to nominate since 1972. And those like me that oppose her are labeled “Hillary haters” and “non-pragmatists.”
Well, I oppose her and I am a Hillary hater and a non-pragmatist. YMMV. I won’t put words in your mouth, but I accept the labels. They weren’t always true, but I’ve had a belly full in the last fifteen years. It’s all coming up as I see my family sinking back into serfdom and my own retirement in jeopardy from Democrats with means testing and chained CPI. What’s next? Cutting Federal pensions to appease the Right? Don’t say it can’t happen. It’s happening in Illinois with state pensions. If I were younger, I’d be marching in the street. Or climbing a tower with a rifle, I’m that angry. But action days are over. A 70 year old with bad eyes who hasn’t fired a rifle in forty five years isn’t going to do anything but click a link to send money. All I can do is send money to the Forlorn Hope.
Will Bernie’s defeat lead to another forty years of Right Wing domination? Or herald a massive change in the Party as Goldwater’s defeat did to the Republicans?
Or is this just a sign of the end of democracy? I see a greater chance than not of the Imperial Presidency leading to outright Caesarism. Remember, officially Augustus was only the “First Citizen”, the most important Senator, but the fiction was that the Senate still mattered.
The senate did still matter in as much as they provided an existing structure and agents through whom Octavian could work his will.
I’m actually a pragmatist, but pragmatism without principles is nothing but a cover for being weak.
One of Clinton’s biggest applause moments last night was when she restated her support for gun control. Those applauding her are principled but they’re also fools. A pragmatist recognizes that she isn’t going to do diddly squat on gun control/violence. A principled pragmatist recognizes that violence is woven into the fabric of the American psyche and nothing less then the Australian solution would significantly reduce gun violence and that can’t be done because guns/weapons are big business. I loathe guns and violence, but singling out guns while government violence continues unabated and is glorified in war, LEO SWAT teams, and entertainment won’t have much impact. Let’s not omit that alcohol fuels violence; so, legalizing pot might reduce violence more than the half-assed gun control proposals.
“Violence is as American as Apple Pie” – H. Rap Brown ?
Damn, you’re 70 years old? You talk like a young guy. I thought you were my age, which is barely 30.
Thanks. I feel old as the hills and often wonder if I’ll make it to November. Just hanging on wanting to that great-grandbaby. They don’t make young men like they used to. (well, contraceptives were hard to come by then).
IIRC TarHeelDem is a contemporary.
1960’s were a wild time and maybe Marie3 is right in that they only seemed good because I was young.
Nah, they really WERE good. Bad stuff (racism, really really RAMPANT sexism, VietNam, No EPA (the only thing you could catch in the Potomac was bubonic plague), Bilbo, Wallace, Strom) and a host of other things … but there was hope.
Hope for the present
Hope for change
Hope for the future
Hope for all time.
But was there hope only because we were young?
I don’t think so. Almost everything was simpler, easier to understand, and following basic rules of thumbs did lead to expected outcomes. A high school degree had value in the job market. For more technical skills, employer OJT existed. At that time young people could see that “work hard and set aside some money in a savings account” had been the path to a degree of financial security for those slightly and much older than ourselves. It took a long while to recognize that it didn’t work as well for as many, but in the interim expectations sufficed to retain personal hope, etc.
How we stretched our dollars was also different. I recall the time a new Stone’s album came out. Only one friend had enough cash to buy it. So, several of us gathered at another friend’s apartment, the only one with a decent sound system, on a Saturday evening and made the shared listening of it into a party. There might have been a bowl of popcorn and some juice or tea there as well, but it wouldn’t have been much and was incidental to the party. Games were also social entertainment and cost almost nothing.
OK. He was chief executive of Baltimore County and Governor of Maryland which is more impressive than Mayor of Wasilla and Governor of Alaska.
Not by much — both were in their second year as governor when nominated for VP. But Agnew was a lawyer; so, he did have something else on his resume.
I don’t know, Trailer-trash vs Lawyer – tough call.
Well, I meant Baltimore County is more diverse and larger than Wassilla, likewise for Maryland vs Alaska.
Well, it may have been Breitbart who originally published Palin’s vile and violent tripe, but it is getting reported over and over again by others. Here you link us to her horse hockey’s publication in a newspaper which is one of the very few distributed in Congressional offices.
Hey, it gets clicks and readers!!
That it does. It also hurts our country by debasing our discourse. It will also help ensure that we’ll see more physical attacks at Planned Parenthood clinics and mosques, and slightly increases the chance that members of Congress will be assaulted. And, in the end, it hurts the ability of the Congressional Caucuses to govern.
But why should The Hill and other publications worry their pretty little minds on these things? They’re happy to lend their pages to people who level attacks on their political enemies by calling them “un-American,” all while the publications conduct their business in un-American ways like this.
In other news — in the land of freedom and democracy presided over by the US friendly Sisi:
Egyptian law student, 22, jailed for three years after posting image of President Sisi wearing Mickey Mouse ears on Facebook
Am sure we’ll hear Obama and Clinton telling Sisi “to cut it out” and Nohan’s sentence may be reduced or suspended. But that does miss the larger point. Freedom of speech/expression is a bedrock of free societies.
Three years is too much. But what would happen if it was a US soldier posting Mickey Mouse ears on Obama? Not a prison sentence but there would be some sort of punishment and rightly so. Because he was a soldier.
You seriously think nobody in the military has posted disparaging, photo-shopped pictures of Obama? Or that those that have done so have been court-martialed? Hell, I’d be willing to bet that military officers have done worse than photo-shopping a mickey-mouse hat on Obama.
If they are caught, I would expect some sort of punishment ranging from a dressing down with orders to remove it, through company punishment (restriction, fine, note in the military record), to yes formal court-martial. Court-martial probably only for someone that someone wants to make an example of. Hell, my brother-in-law was court-martialed for reporting half an hour late to his post in peace time Germany. He lived off base and there was a traffic accident. Didn’t stick. A letter from Senator Dirksen put a stop to that. In the wikipedia article you will see much distasteful about Dirksen, but he was renowned in Illinois for supporting common soldiers and sailors against official stupidity, perhaps as a result of his WW I service. My brother-in-law had no political ties or wealth being the son of a Chicago Public School System janitor.
The Air Force today is so rightwing that wouldn’t be a stretch to consider that they not only would punish this sort of behavior but actively encourage it.
Your moral/ethical standards aren’t the same as what has and continues to exist in US governments. And you do seem somewhat blind as to how that has been used to manipulate and propagandize you and the public at large.
David Corn at Mother Jones: Pete Seeger’s FBI File Reveals How the Folk Legend First Became a Target of the Feds
Near thirty years of USG spying (how much did that cost?) on a folksinger who was FUCKING RIGHT about the proposal to deport US citizens (my — so little has changed hasn’t it? and most everything else.
Air Force, yes. I remember when Don’t ask, Don’t Tell was first proposed. I read issues in both Air Force magazine and the Naval Institute magazine. The Air Force magazine was actually rabid about the end of civilization. The Naval Institute was disapproving but a whole lot more rational. I remember particularly a letter from a man purporting to be a gay ex-Chief. “Anyone who thinks straight sailors are celibate has never been in a liberty port.”
And, of course, how often does this happen and not make the Western press? Probably 100’s of times as often.
Really? From the way Trump and Cruz treat Breitbart as the most important organization in right wing news, even paying out super PAC dollars to ensure favorable coverage, you’d think Palin is using the world’s greatest right wing news site, which boasts 19 million original views per month, to amplify her voice effectively.
“Sarah Palin knows her schtick…”
Yes and No. With all due respect, Palin didn’t write this red meat tossed to her slavering fan-base (and they exist). It’s not even written by Palin’s usual ghost writer. It’s typical rightwing talking points written by some “think” tank hack. Palin, grafter that she is, is more than willing to have her name credited with it. The woman could no more write something coherent (albeit stupid) like this than a 5 year old could.
That said, Still Dead Breitbart’s wingnut welfare “blog” has it’s place in the rightwingnut firmament of lying to the base.
Palin most definitely has her fans, and they’ll swoon to this whilst pretending that their “heroine” actually scrawled this for Still Dead Breitbart.
I am sick of these @ssholes claiming this all “Obama’s plans, etc.” As if it’s only Obama who is pushing these ideas, etc. For better or worse, Obama is doing what he’s doing on behalf of a large percentage of US citizens (well, including Wall ST, too) who elected him.
What this represents to me is the desires of the Koch brothers, Shelly Adelson, et al, to cover up what’s really going on, like with CISA being implanted in the budget bill. Duly noted that the rightwing hack who scrawled this nonsense doesn’t mention that.
HEY! Look over THERE!!! Obama in our WHITE House!!111!!!!! Aiyeeee!!!111!!! Terroriss!!!111!!!
Lather, rinse, repeat…
SarahPac has “researchers” and a speech writer on retainer.