Encoded bigotry: Sarah Palin slams Obama's "background" as anti-American

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Honestly, dealing with Republican stupidity is exhausting. If you care to pay attention, Sarah Palin alone seems to suck every last joule of energy out of you.

And yet -- well, to those of who write about politics, she's just the gift that keeps on giving.

Here's her latest gem, via Think Progress:

Adding her heft to the GOP's debt ceiling debacle, the "undefeated" Sarah Palin graced Fox News Business last night to slam President Obama for suggesting that the wealthy should return to a higher tax rate. Blasting the White House and liberals for being "so addicted to that OPM, other people's money," Palin declared that Obama "is not capable of giving the right message" to the American people. Though a majority of Americans side with Obama's position, Fox asked Palin why he seems so disconnected from the public. Palin harped on the all-too-familiar right-wing refrain that American ideals "seem to be foreign to our President" because of "his background." She added, "His ideas are the antithesis of those things that created the prosperity in America."

His background. Ah, right. That's right-wing code for "being black, having an African father, being born in un-American Hawaii (or not born in America at all), living in dangerous foreign places like Indonesia, and probably being Muslim." In short, not being "one of us," that is, a white Christian xenophobic bigot.

Charming, as always.

Actually, though, isn't Obama in a way the personification of the American Dream? Born in America to modest beginnings, he made it all the way to the top.

Or is it that only white Christians can really ever live that dream? Sorry, I forgot.

And is he really the antithesis of America? Yeah, I guess someone who bails out American capitalism from its own implosive instincts, who proposes market solutions to America's catastrophic problems (health care, climate change, etc.), and who proposes budget deals that emphasize massive spending cuts while keeping taxes at historically low rates must, must, must be anti-American.

Palin is the gift that keeps on giving because she's a bottomless well of stupidity.

Hix nix Palin trix

By J. Thomas Duffy

(For more on the failure of Palin's The Undefeated, see my post at The Huffington Post, cross-posted from here. -- MJWS)

Well, maybe they can re-title it as The Defeated.

Palin doc headed for PPV as ticket sales plummet 

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap) - With its Sarah Palin documentary "The Undefeated" increasing its playdates by 40 percent this weekend, only to watch box office revenue decline by more than 63 percent, distributor Arc Entertainment announced Sunday that the film will soon be available on pay per view.

The movie played in 14 Tea Party-friendly locations this weekend -- up from the 10 in which it opened last week -- but grossed just $24,000.

Starting September 1, subscribers to DirecTV, Dish Network and Time Warner can see the true Horatio Alger story of an Alaska woman's rise from self-described "hockey mom" to gubernatorial dropout to conservative cable news bastion talking head, all in the comfort of their own home.

In addition, the film will launch on DVD October 4 with a shipment of 250,000 units.

Hard to say "ticket sales plummeted," when on opening night, in red-as-you-can-get Orange County, California, the theater was empty -- nobody showed up.

Why on earth didn't some Right Wing Flying Monkeys, or her own Mommy Moose PAC, buy up all the movie tickets, just like they did for her book, to make it a runaway success?

To tweak LBJ, if the Wasilla Whiz Kid has lost the Teabaggers, she's lost the country.

And so much for the juggernaut.

Highlights heading into the 2012 campaign are now a cancelled pre-campaign victory bus tour and a Susan-Alexander-Kanesque film that goes bust.

If Tina Fey has some smarts, she'll quickly punch out a Doppelganger spoof of The Undeafeated, with an opening night to eclipse all the revenue of the ex-governor with lipstick's box office.

Bonus Riffs

Andy Kroll:  New Sarah Palin Hagiography: Springboard for 2012 Presidential Run?

John Cole:  So Much Awesome In One Place

Ben Child:  Sarah Palin likened to Joan of Arc in two-hour documentary film

TBogg:  Sarah Palin Is The Culmination Of All Human Endeavors and Wars And Probably Evolution

David Weigel:  Palin's Coming Attractions - What the new Sarah Palin documentary gets right, and wrong, about her politics.

Alyssa Rosenberg: Sarah Palin Taken Aback by Hollywood’s Reaction To Her

(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)

Palin politics: Mistaking the little pond for the big pond

By Richard K. Barry

Although Sarah Palin is remaining coy about her intentions to run for the Republican presidential nomination, many of us continue to talk about her. I suppose that is a part of her grand strategy, which is, we must admit, working. I mean the part about us still talking about her.

Given the fact that she is doing none of the things a candidate conventionally needs to do to run a credible campaign, people who understand how it is typically done are raising questions.

Maybe this means she has no intention of running, but what if she does?

As evil as Karl Rove may be, no one disputes his experience as a campaigner. When asked if Palin could wage a non-conventional nomination campaign with any degree of success, his response was:

Her people think so.

They've talked with people about it, whom I talked to, and they've been explicit about it - that she doesn't need to go to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, press the flesh and go to all these local events in order to cultivate local leadership. She can talk to people over that. She doesn't need to cultivate the fundraisers and the bundlers, because her mere presence in the race will generate the cash needed for the campaign.

Rove added, rather ominously, that she was ignoring the "niceties" at "her own peril."

Scott Conroy, however, at Real Clear Politics takes issue with Rove on this, claiming that doing things the old-fashioned way in Iowa may not matter that much. Consider, he says, that Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty, and Newt Gingrich are getting praise for their organizational efforts there yet going nowhere in the polls. Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, and even Chris Christie, none of whom is even declared, are doing better.

This, he suggests, tells a different story.

First of all, if we are just talking about Iowa, Conroy might be right. Although I was always of the impression that Iowa was all about retail politics, that in smaller races like this it was all about meeting people and pressing the flesh, maybe Palin's brand is such that she can get away without all of that in Iowa. I might even cede the point.

But is there any way a candidate can run a credible campaign for the nomination across the country by running a top-down effort that does not rely on strong organization?

All of Karl Rove's experience tells him that it is not possible. There is just too much work involved, too many fundraising bundlers to organize and stroke, too many opinion leaders to lobby, too many volunteers to care for and feed, too much effort required for a successful "Get Out the Vote" campaign, and on and on.

Maybe that's Palin's problem. She has never been good at understanding the scale of things. Iowa may be an important race in the early days of the GOP nomination, and if she got in she might do well there, but America is a much bigger country and doing things the old-fashioned way in primary after primary is probably still necessary.

Relying on your brand alone to win in Iowa, where a lot of GOP voters may already love you, is different than winning over the long haul.

This is classic Sarah Palin politics: mistaking the little pond for the big pond.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - July 21, 1925: High school teacher John T. Scopes is found guilty of teaching evolution

By Richard K. Barry

In Dayton, Tennessee on this date a high school teacher was found guilty of teaching evolution. Yes, John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching science. (That's Darwin to the left, by the way, not Scopes).

So, where do the current crop of declared and potential GOP presidential hopefuls stand on teaching science in our schools?

Michele Bachmann has said that evolution is a theory that has never been proven one way or the other and that schools should teach intelligent design as an alternate explanation for the origins of life.

Tim Pawlenty thinks that creationism should be taught alongside evolution, which is Sarah Palin's view.

Rick Perry supports teaching creationism in Texas public schools.

Rick Santorum is a creationist, obviously.

To his credit, Newt Gingrich seems to have a more nuanced view (hell, let's give him credit for something).

Mitt Romney, also to his credit, once said that while he "believed that God designed the universe and created the universe," he also believed that "evolution is most likely the process he used to create human beings."

Even those who want to support science see the need to equivocate in order to keep a large segment of the conservative base happy.

All in all, things really haven't changed that much.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Box office bomb: Sarah Palin and the failure of The Undefeated

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sarah Palin's admirers and various other delusional conservatives are doing their utmost to try to convince us that The Undefeated, the hagiographic documentary about Palin, has been a rousing success thus far.

In the process, they're also attacking anyone who suggests otherwise. Take The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf, for example, a conservative civil libertarian (and hardly one of Palin's fiercer critics) who on opening night last week went to a midnight screening of the movie out in Orange County, California, and found the theater empty (save for two young women who didn't know what it was about and left after just 20 minutes, as well as a couple who came in near the end, made out in the back row, and quickly left). (The rest of the multiplex was jam-packed for Harry Potter.) Friedersdorf's anecdotal point was simply that the midnight first screening of the Palin documentary didn't attract an audience even in a conservative place like Orange Country. (Big deal. That's hardly much of a surprise. Surely Palin's fans would show up at a normal time.) Friedersdorf was just reporting the facts as he witnessed them.

Ah, but that was enough to put him in the crosshairs, and he has since been viciously attacked by Andrew Breitbart, conservative bloggers, and conspiracy theorists (who insanely claim he set the whole thing up), as well as by various right-wing trolls on the Internet. You know, the usual suspects, wallowing in dishonesty, hatred, and outright craziness.

What happened to Friedersdorf is instructive (and deeply troubling), if predictable, but the question remains, how has The Undefeated done so far?

Critically, it has been panned. As I write this, it has a 32 at Metacritic (which seems to be a tad high given the overwhelmingly negative reviews it has received) and a 0 (yes, zero) at Rotten Tomatoes.

To Palin's defenders, this hardly matters. They, like conservatives generally, write off film critics as liberal partisans who couldn't possibly review a film independently of their supposedly left-wing political views. (This is how they dismiss negative reviews of any "conservative" movie, like Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. If you didn't like that sadomasochistic turd, you had to be politically and/or theologically predisposed against it. There's no possible way you could just have disliked it, or thought it a terrible movie.)

So what they do is turn to box office figures. Critics may not like a "conservative" movie, but the public is another story. That's the real America, the "heartland" pushing back against the leftie elites. Surely the box office can prove that The Undefeated is an exceptionally popular, and hence exceptional, movie. This is the case that John Nolte (who also attacked Friedersdorf) makes at Breitbart's Big Hollywood: "Numbers Don't Lie: "The Undefeated" Had a Remarkable Box Office Debut.

Well, not so much. If there's anything remarkable about the movie's first-weekend haul it's how remarkably mediocre it was, well short of what some might have been expecting given the ongoing fascination with all things Palin.

The Undefeated grossed $65,132, or $6,513 per screen on its first weekend of release (as it played on ten screen total across the country). This put it in 40th place in terms of weekend gross but 5th in terms of screen average. Not too bad, though it's hard to compare a movie that played on ten screens (and for which people who wanted to see it had to search out those few screens) and a movie that played on thousands of screens, like Horrible Bosses, which averaged $5,672 on 3,134 screens. If a movie is playing on that many screens, attendance can be spread out more, reducing the per-screen average.

But, still, yes, $6,513 isn't bad. But it was the first weekend for The Undefeated, not for Horrible Bosses (which has a total gross of over $60 million to date), and one would expect the numbers to have been higher.

Not to worry, says Nolte. If you compare The Undefeated's numbers to the numbers of other political documentaries, it did very well. Its weekend gross puts it well back on the list, but its per-screen avergage makes it look much stronger. No, it wasn't Fahrenheit 9/11 ($27,558 average on 868 screens), Bowling for Columbine ($26,143 average on eight screens), or Roger and Me ($20,063 average on four screens), and certainly not An Inconvenient Truth ($70,332 average on four screens), but it stacks up fairly well against most of the other major political docs of the past 20 years.

Nolte takes this to mean that the movie was an unqualified success -- and then goes on, predictably, to slam Palin's critics.

Here's the thing, though: As Joshua Green notes at The Atlantic, The Undefeated's numbers really weren't that good, or at least aren't worth bragging about. Now, the movie could have some life as it opens elsewhere around the country, and perhaps the ongoing infatuation with Palin will attract solid audiences, but shouldn't it have done better? Maybe not at Michael Moore or Al Gore levels, but Palin is a major political celebrity with a huge following. Where was the excitement for this piece of hagiographic crapola? Maybe elsewhere, maybe in the Heartland (as opposed to right-wing Orange County?), maybe if somehow some buzz can be generated, maybe if people go merely out of curiosity, but it certainly wasn't there opening weekend.

Now, I would suggest that Palin's popularity, while certainly real given her devoted following, is a product of the media as much as anything else. Which is to say, she would have some popularity anyway, but it's all the attention she gets in the media that turns her into a cultural phenomenon. Which is further to say, much of her popularity is a mirage -- it isn't really there. Just think how poorly she polls even among Republicans. Yes, I'll include myself and this blog in here -- we overdo it, covering her with excessive attention, treating everything she does, every word she utters, as far more significant, far more interesting, than it really is. And so we build up these expectations around her, including that any movie about her must do extremely well simply because it's about her -- and of course we, and supposedly the public generally, just can't get enough of her. If this is all wrong, or at least grossly exaggerated, then it should actually come as no surprise at all that people haven't been flocking en masse to see The Undefeated. Why should they? She's not nearly as popular as we say she is.

Don't get me wrong... this isn't all the media's fault. Palin plays the media and makes it seem herself as if she's far more significant and far more interesting than she really is, worthy of all the attention she gets, worthy of her stardom.

But while she rakes in massive amounts of money, often by duping her gullible supporters, she hasn't actually been all that successful, has she, at least in entertainment terms?

Sure, many still love her, including a core (if small) GOP constituency, and she has her Facebook followers and her commentator gig on Fox News, but her TV show, Sarah Palin's Alaska, mostly a massive ego trip but also possibly part of a campaign to boost her political fortunes (as it was a kind of campaigning, if not actually preliminary campaigning for a possible 2012 run), saw a huge drop in viewership after the first episode and was not renewed for a second season. And, again, her poll numbers are incredibly weak, even among Republicans. So should we really have expected a shamelessly and gratuitously hagiographic documentary about her, a documentary with an obviously self-aggrandizing agenda, to be a hit?

Social media: yer doin' it rong

By Carl 

Did you know there was a Republican presidential debate last night?

Don't bother looking for repeats of it on CNN or video on YouTube. 

It was held on Twitter:

Now there's the @140townhall, hosted by the Tea Party, for a few hapless GOP 2012 candidates. 

I don't think enough attention has been paid to how terrible, asinine and embarrassing it was. It was almost funny. The only way it could possibly have been worse would have been if Romney had showed up.

To give you an idea of the level of discourse, which you can read in less time than it took the candidates to misstype, Bachmann's opening statement begins as follows: "TY for this forum. I'm running 4 POTUS 2 bring the voice of the people back to DC."

How... dignified.

Now, in truth, Twitter may be the best venue for the GOP to debate issues: 140 characters means you can't explain anything, you can't easily obfuscate, and you have to create bumper sticker answers on the fly.

Plus, as I often say, Twitter is for twits. This is perfect!

Except what's the point of having an exchange like that if no one knows about it? What's the point of having a debate if it's going to become a muddled mess of snappy answers that you can't even really be certain thread to the other participants?

You might as well ask Dickie Goodman to sample the candidates' position papers and create a "debate" that way.

This points up the contrast in how social media is used by both parties.

The blogosphere/Blogtopia (© Skippy, The Bush Kangaroo) is well-established and -- as conservatives are wont to do -- pretty bipartisanly effective well after the blog-world lost its uniqueness.

Facebook is similarly fairly familiar now, and conservatives have made inroads there as well. Sarah Palin's Facebook page is among the most popularly and most carefully watched pages on the site.

This is a far cry from not too long ago, when Rupert Murdoch purchased MySpace as an attempt to "Fox News" social media, thus abandoning hundreds of conservatives to a lonely outpost on the edges of the cybergalaxy.

Now we have Twitter. Twitter is great for alerting people: you need a quick fundraising hit, or an urgent policy announcement, you link to it on Twitter and it gets around. Twitter is great for a wiseass like me (even though I don't tweet) who can snap off one-liners.

Twitter is not great for a dialogue. And therein lies the problem for the Republicans. They bring a rubber band to a knife fight.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

The return of Sarah Palin

By Michael J.W. Stickings

She's back! Or maybe not. But Newsweek certainly treats her like she is, or else why waste the time and space on a long, uncritical, and darn near reverential piece like this one? And it's a cover story, as if there's nothing else in the world more important going on.

I won't quote any of it, nor even recommend it. If you follow U.S. politics at all, and are at all familiar with Palin, you'll know already exactly what's in it. (Palin calls it the "lamestream media." Well, if it's lame, it's because it publishes shit like this. Palin has no reason to complain.)

I would just note that she's still hinting at a presidential run. And Newsweek, standing in for pretty much the entirety of the Beltway media (and there have been many other similarly reverential pieces, including this one at The Atlantic last month), not only lets her get away with it but works to advance her cause.

And what is that cause? Self-glorification. Profiteering. Maximizing her brand.

She's not serious about politics and certainly not serious about a presidential run. But she has to tantalize both her supporters and the media, as well as much of the political establishment, with the prospect of a run in order to keep her name out there, to keep all of us talking about her, to be able to push that egotistical cause as far as possible.

But she's a quitter when it matters. She quit being governor of Alaska and she quit her bus tour, and there's no way she has what it takes, in many ways, to keep going through the long slog of a presidential campaign. And while she continues to tantalize, the also continues to give herself any number of outs, any number of excuses (like the popular one, family, as if she's ever let her family get in the way of her cause).

It's all quite ridiculous. But it seems the media haven't learned a thing.

(And no, Sarah, you can't win. It's as simple as that.)

Top Ten Cloves: Possible reasons Sarah Palin cancelled her bus tour

By J. Thomas Duffy 

News Item: Report: Sarah Palin quits bus tour halfway through, retreats to Alaska

10.  Looking to get in line early for the new iPhone

9.  Believed, since trademark of her name came through, if continued tour, would have to sue herself

8.  Just following history - didn't Paul Revere take a break during his ride?

7.  Couldn't miss another minute of the Casey Anthony trial

6.  The GPS in Palin's bus is on the same system as the one used by United Airlines

5.  Already quit the Governor's job - what else was left to quit?

4.  Took advice from LeGone James to just sit out the last quarter of the tour

3.  Wanted to get off the road in time to catch Keith Olbermann's debut on CurrentTV

2.  Has a new idea, to do, kind of, a "Winning" tour, like Charlie Sheen

1.  Lost the bus to Tobey Maguire in a poker game

 

Bonus Riffs 

Kirsten Boyd Johnson: Sarah Palin Follows Comedy Rules And Quits Bus Tour Halfway Through

Alex Pareene: Sarah Palin baffles and frustrates fans by quitting bus tour 

Dan Amira: Sarah Palin Was Supposed to Be Delighting Us All With Another Bus Tour by Now

Colby Hall: No Joke: Sarah Palin Reportedly Quits One Nation Bus Tour Halfway Through 

(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)

Sarah Palin cancels bus tour, America exhales

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sorry for my absence the past several days. I've been dealing with a nasty eye infection and spending as little time in front of the computer as possible.

Anyway... what did I miss?

Why, it's Sarah Palin in the news! But, actually, she's only in the news because she's not in the news. Which is to say, she's in the news even when she's not making news, or, rather, when she even isn't doing something newsworthy.

That's the power of Sarah Palin.

For example. Remember that bus tour? How could you forget? It was all over the news, her high-profile trip from historic site to historic site, trying to connect herself to America's grand history, and, ever so conveniently, to early-primary states like New Hampshire, where she upstaged Mitt Romney, who actually is running for president. And there was all that talk about how this must be a prelude to a presidential run, an unconventional way to launch a campaign.

Yeah, well.

That bus tour ended much like her governorship. She quit:

Less than a month after she appeared poised to shake up the Republican presidential campaign, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has once again receded from the 2012 limelight.

When Palin launched her "One Nation" bus tour on Memorial Day amid a swirl of media attention and excitement from her fervent fan base, many political observers who had once dismissed her were reminded of the jolt that her candidacy could provide to what has thus far been a relatively sleepy GOP nominating fight.

As Palin toured historical sites along the East Coast, she was clearly reveling in the tangible excitement she'd ginned up: She even eagerly answered questions -- from the denizens of the "lamestream" media -- ranging from matters of political process to an array of issues facing the nation.

In an apparent repudiation to those who dismissed her trip as a mere publicity stunt, Palin's openness with reporters about her intentions to visit Iowa and South Carolina -- in addition to her highly scrutinized stop in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire -- lent credence to her repeated assertions that she was indeed seriously considering a White House bid.

Though Palin and her staff never announced a timeline for the remaining legs of her trip, aides had drafted preliminary itineraries that would have taken her through the Midwest and Southeast at some point this month. But those travel blueprints are now in limbo, RCP has learned, as Palin and her family have reverted to the friendly confines of summertime Alaska, where the skies are currently alight for over 19 hours a day and the Bristol Bay salmon fishing season is nearing its peak.

As Palin enjoys her sojourn to the 49th state, she has not reconnected with key early-state figures like Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and she may have jeopardized whatever political momentum she gained from her recent reemergence in the 2012 discussion. Her political action committee's website still greets visitors with a stale banner, announcing the nationwide bus tour beginning "[t]his Sunday, May 29th."

Hilarious, no? And predictable. Oh. So. Very. Predictable.

Maybe it had to do with the fact that despite all the media attention, and despite her lingering stardome, she never really caught on with her own party, her poll numbers lagging even the insufficiently conservative Mitt Romney. Yes, even most Republicans have had enough of her, and many just don't take her seriously at all, on top of those who simply loathe her.

Or maybe it had to do with the fact that her bus tour was never a prelude to a presidential run -- because she isn't running for president and has never had any serious intention of running for president. She's been tantalizing us (or those who care to be tantalized) for a long time, but her quest for the limelight has always been more about boosting her brand and raking in as much dough as possible, including from her gullible supporters, whom she continues to dupe. (And about using her name so that her children can cash in as well.)

And her bus tour certainly allowed her to engage in some serious profiteering.

But what now? Oh, I'm sure she'll find some way to get back in the news, some way to get back into the limelight. What is she without it? It's like she'd evaporate without it, cease to exist. Which, in a way, is true. The woman would still exist, but the brand would not. Sarah Palin can go back to Alaska, but "Sarah Palin," which seems to be what Sarah Palin has become, not least because she craves the money and stardom, needs the attention.

I'm sure we won't have to wait too long. Hey, maybe we'll get more bus tour. Good times.

**********

Oh, and because I'm sure you were wondering about this, she's also cancelled her trip to the Sudan (with the likes of Franklin Graham and pal Greta Van Susteren).

Where she was going to tout her evangelical cred and play the ugly self-righteous American.

Because, of course, the horrific situation in that war-torn and ravaged country, including in the new South Sudan, is a wonderful opportunity for exploitation by the Christian right.

Not that Palin has a fucking clue about what's really been going on there.

Unless...

Wait.

Can you see the Sudan from Alaska?

(image)

Bachmann Palin Over Time

By Mustang Bobby.

In the last three years, Sarah Palin has become the Paris Hilton of politics; famous for being famous, and the pundits, the political equivalent of the paparazzi, have followed her and her family's antics with the faithful devotion of any fan magazine.  And Ms. Palin has that impressive ability to know how to work the media to her advantage and to get what she wants.

It's not political power.  She had that as the governor of Alaska and found that it's hard work with not a lot of benefits to it: comparatively low pay, long hours, and you don't always get what you want.  Contrast that with being a celebrity: the money rolls in, people hang on your every word, and you don't always have to be right; you just have to be out there.  She doesn't really care if the rest of America comes around to her points of view.  She just wants the attention they bring to her.

It's pretty clear that she will not run for president in 2012.  That would require a level of preparation and focus that she has proved she's neither capable of nor interested in.  It's not that she's not smart enough; it's that her nature and level of maturity isn't up to it.  She proved that when she ran for vice president, which is a job with few responsibilities except to have a pulse.  And besides, she would have to give up the book tours and the TV contracts, and the cost to the business end of her operation makes it impractical for the brand to go that way.

Michele Bachmann, on the other hand, is the real deal when it comes to running for president.  She is not only politically ambitious, she knows what she needs to do and will do the hard work it takes to get there.  She may be as uninformed about the nuances of the United States Constitution and as factually inaccurate about science as Ms. Palin, but she comes by it not out of ignorance but by believing the dogma of the evangelical Christian right wing that believes there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution or that you can be cured of being gay.  When it comes to extremism, be it political, religious or social, Ms. Bachmann is deadly serious about it, and as this article by Michelle Goldberg in The Daily Beast details, she is not afraid of sacrificing friendships and -- ironically -- destroying her relationship with her own family to achieve her vision of a Straight Christian America.

In the broader picture of American politics, the chances that Michele Bachmann will become the next Republican nominee for president are remote at best, and even if by some stunning fluke it happens, she will be blown away in a manner that makes the Goldwater and Mondale defeats look like squeakers.  America, even in times of extreme stress and partisan divides such as the Civil War and the Great Depression, does not elect extremists as president.  Instead, we put them in Congress where they can carry on but accomplish little more than getting on Hannity or Hardball.  But that doesn't mean we shouldn't take them seriously; if not as candidates for president, than as voices of hatred and intolerance that have always found a way to be heard.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Friday night political randomness: Palin, Weiner, and Perry

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sorry, I've been so busy all evening wading through Palin's e-mails. Such a glorious treasure of wonderment. (No, not really. There are people who can be bothered to read through, or even to skim through, the 24,000 pages. I'm not one of them.)

**********

So Weiner had online contact with a 17-year-old girl. Not good -- not good at all. A spokesman says that the contact was "neither explicit nor indecent," but I'm not sure it matters. Well, sure, it does, but his reputation, rightly or wrongly, has already been destroyed, and he's pretty much on his own now, with little to no support from his own party.

Perhaps it was only a matter of time before it came out that he had contact with a minor. He acted like an idiot and did idiotic things, especially for a public figure. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with having contact of an innocent nature with a near-adult, but given that he was using the Internet to chase women, the fact that his contacts included a minor only makes it all seem so much worse. Even if he wasn't sexual with this girl, the speculation that he might have been with some other minor is unavoidable.

I don't see how he escapes this. Pressure is mounting on him to resign. He says he won't, and his constituents apparently want him to stay, but he can't take much more. His thread is unravelling.

**********

The train wreck that is the Gingrich campaign (and that is The Newt himself) leaves an opening for Perry to jump into the Republican presidential race, as some of those ex-Gingrich staffers are close to the Texas governor. And it looks like Perry is very likely to run.

Given the weakness of the field, Perry could very well emerge as one of the frontrunners, perhaps even the favourite if he manages to bridge the divide between the establishment and the far right. Pawlenty looks to be that bridge right now, but Perry could easily surpass him. Republicans, after all, are looking for a savior. Why not Perry? Pawlenty hasn't been able to get much traction, others on the right, like Bachmann (and Palin), are far too crazy/extreme, and the Tea Party and the social conservative base will never approve someone like Romney or Giuliani.

Just keep in mind that Perry isn't exactly a sensible, moderate, old-school Republican, or even the sort of conservative with broad-based appeal. Check out ThinkProgress's "Top 10 Things Texas Gov. Rick Perry Doesn’t Want You To Know About Him."

**********

Oh, there was some good news today: The Obama Administration has extended Medicaid protections for same-sex couples.

That's some change we can believe in.

Cool Hand Barack

By Distributorcap

"What we got here is... failure to communicate."

-- Captain, Cool Hand Luke (1967)

It should come as no surprise that I, as a card-carrying member of the professional left (and like many others of the same progressive political persuasion) think President Obama has done a pretty lousy job since his inauguration in January 2009. Yes, there have been accomplishments (though I for one would hardly call the watered-down and insurance-friendly HR 3962 Affordable Care Act much of an accomplishment, the few positive aspects of that law would put it in the win column), but for the past 28 months, I feel like the presidency of Barack Obama has been more about preventing Republicans from completely destroying this country and turning it into a 21st-century aristocracy than turning the USS America around and setting it on some sort of course toward hope and recovery.

From broken promises (Gitmo, taxes) to capitulation on key policy initiatives, from an expanded war in Afghanistan to his continued tacit and blatant support of the greed in corporate America, Barack Obama has been at best disappointing and at worst a Republican lite in the way he has handled the job and his relationship with the progressives and others who put him in office.

Many, like myself, have completely given up on him. In my mind, the only thing Obama has going for him is the fact that he isn't as maniacal, nuts, immature, or deranged as every person on the right or in the Republican Party has become. Compared to such raving madmen and singing assholes as Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, T-Paw, and S-Pal, Obama looks like the only sane adult in the room. In other words, 2012 is shaping up to be another election where many of us will end up voting "not Republican."

No one (including me) expected Obama to follow through on all of his ideas, policies or goals -- not one politician ever has. Even doofuses like George W. Bush had to snub his nose at many of the people and constituents who supported him both financially and electorally. That is just the way politics works. What is maddening about the Obama presidency is how fast and how far many of failings have been, some in the name of keeping the Republicans at bay (aka compromise, a word the GOP has banished from the dictionary), but many as a direct result of Barack Obama's fear of imposing any sort of pressure or power on the legislators and leaders of the government. This from allegedly the most powerful man on the planet.

Barack Obama is letting the lunatics run the asylum. And they are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. If you think back to how demoralized the right was just after the 2008 election, in just 2 1/2 years they not only made a comeback but are actually at a point where the opposition (Democrats) is not only listening to their points but is about to incorporate and accept some of their most insane and destructive ideas.

Talk about failure to launch.

In my mind, the aspect of Obama's leadership that has proven to be the most disappointing is his complete and utter failure to communicate. I don't mean simply talk to America -- Obama has done plenty of that. I mean adapt to the fast-changing environment, manage the advent of instantaneous information, use the bully pulpit available to him, and take advantage of some of the greatest oratory skills ever gifted on an American leader. Obama's startling inability to grasp the concept of communication and engagement is (in my humble opinion) the biggest reason his presidency is falling into a sink hole of mediocrity or perhaps even failure.

We live in an age of instantaneous sound bites, wild statements to get attention, a 24/7 socially connected world, and a lot of polluted speech clogging up the media outlets. Both sides of the political spectrum are constantly fighting for the most valuable real estate to get their message across to the greatest amount of audience. This is Advertising 101. You need a lot of people to hear you (reach) and a lot of times (frequency) to influence behavior and choice (buy your product). Americans are bombarded with 50 thousand messages a day from 10 thousand sources. It is hard to stand out from the clutter, unless you are wildly insane, wildly good-looking, or wildly connected. Even media whores like the idiot Sarah Palin and the reprehensible Eric Cantor still have to fight with the likes of nincompoops like Marcia Blackburn and Louis Gohmert for a parking spot near the movie theater.

There is one person who does not have to fight for time. That is the President of the United States. He can readily command time (I mean command time, not speak at an arena and hope the major media outlets show up) at will and use that time to sell. Barack Obama has done so little of that. Obama has ceded control of the sound bites and media influence to lunatics and douchebags like Michele Bachmann and other assorted teahajdists. Frankly, Obama barely tries.

Obama cannot stop them, nor can he make them go away -- he shouldn't. But where this president fails is that he barely tries to counter them, he barely tries to call them out, and he barely makes an effort to truly sell his ideas and products. I am sure his "handlers" sit and fret about his "image," the possibility of over-exposure and the potential for mistakes or misstatements. But this is not 1956, when three news organizations dominated the airwaves and a few newspapers set the tone. This is not even 1984, when cable news was beginning to take root. And frankly it ain't even 1996, when a bunch of Al Gore-invented connected tubery called the internets were starting to shoot out 1s and 0s in micro-seconds. It is 2012 and you have 300 million people with TV sets, 200 million people with smart phones, 100 million people banging out 140 characters to 100 million followers (including pics of bulging underwear and stuffed bikini tops), and 1 billion people on Facebook. Hell, even the Queen of Media Whoring herself, Sarah Palin, isn't even concerned about being over-exposed. She loves every minute of it, and under this atmosphere of hate, change, and technological takeover, she is actually thriving off it.

Forget dignity of the office (I think the concept of a dignified president lost all meaning when we had a bumbling inarticulate former drunk, coke-addict rube with 30 brain cells in office from 2001 to 2009), forget playing it cautious to charm the media (that stopped with the morphing of news into gossip courtesy of Rupert Murdoch) and forget nuancing the public to death. The rules have changed -- in fact, the game has changed. Being in front especially when you can command the front row and having the best ideas with (sadly) the best message is what counts. Worrying about image, over-exposure, and mistakes has gotten Barack Obama stuck in the mud. And it has put the country even deeper in the cesspool started by Ronald Reagan.

Sadly, one of the greatest speakers of his generation who actually has the ability to win friends and influence people has not. He sure hasn't won me as a friend or even influenced me. Or at least his handlers have stopped him. Obama's failure to communicate is unfortunately pushing the country more and more down the river of no return.

Confessions of a political junkie: The Palin Appeal

By Nicholas Wilbur

In the absence of a Republican presidential candidate who provokes any emotion other than lethargy in the eyes of the voting public, the media has taken to filtering pretty much every politically relevant (and irrelevant) news story through the lens of the upcoming presidential election. Whether economic forecasts, the Libya conflict, the debt ceiling charades, or the recent housing market reports, all are taken as some sort of political Rorschach test foretelling the outcome of the 2012 election.

On a slow news day, don't be surprised to see headlines about the ominous planetary cycles of Jupiter and Venus in President Obama's Vedic horoscope. 

None of this is any more reliable than a five-year-old's claim that a kangaroo just hopped the fence in the backyard of your pacific Northwest home. But these hallow stories nonetheless are still required reading for politics junkies in need of a fix during a still-sputtering launch into the 2012 campaign season.

News agencies don't capture and maintain the attention of the masses by correcting rumors, debunking myths, and settling trumped up controversies. Political palm readers and fortune tellers attract viewers by clogging the air and ether waves with exclusive reports speculating the hypothetical forecasts of potentially conclusive odds and coincidental concurrences about what and how the ever-unpredictable political winds will blow throughout the remainder of 2011.

• "How will Libya affect 2012?" (The Washington Post)

• "Will unemployment sink Obama’s 2012 campaign?" (The Daily Beast)

• "Debt ceiling fight could decide 2012 election" (RealClearPolitics)

• "Parties see Obama’s Israel policy as wedge in 2012" (The New York Times)

• "Seniors may swing 2012 vote on Medicare revolt" (Reuters)

"Join us tomorrow for a special segment on one man's homemade time-travel device – made from his wife's collection of purple and pink rubber dildos, held together with earwax and fueled by root beer – and what effect it might have in re-electing President Obama."

There are only moments of hope – the political reporter's desperate attempt to meet his quota with a "historic perspective" on presidential odds during times of high unemployment. "No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent," The New York Times reported on June 1. But then, on June 2, some smartass bubble-bursting rationalist drowns the "historic perspective" in context: "The 7.2% threshold is largely irrelevant... The more relevant metric is directional – are things better or getting worse by the time voters head to the polls, and if worse, who gets the blame." Ronald Reagan won in '84 because the American public thought the economy was improving. George H.W. Bush lost because the public didn't think so.

In other words, you can't predict the second coming of Christ with a protractor, a deck of Tarot cards, and a map of ancient Mesopotamia. There are 17 months of economic forecasts before the election, any action on the debt ceiling is still months away, Libya won't ever become a splinter issue, abortion will continue to be one through 2016, the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be just as influential in 2012 as it will be in 3012, gay rights will take a back seat to immigration by the end of 2011, and Medicare will remain as is even as Republicans continue the suicidal quest to legitimize the Paul Ryan privatization plan.

In the meantime, as we wait for someone to enter the race who has more than the proverbial snowball's chance in hell of competing with Obama, we're left with the similarly speculative news reports about Weinergate, the long-in-coming and completely unsurprising news of John Edwards' indictment, and the 24/7 media circus surrounding former half-term governor Sarah Palin's donor-funded-but-allegedly-non-campaign-related mystery bus tour along the East Coast.

As a political junkie with a blog, you're forced to take the bait and add your own unoriginal observations to the three million other unoriginal observations already circulating the web. When Google says a reality show pop star is trending, a reality show pop star is what you write about. After two hours sulking in a lawn chair on the porch, a half-rack of empty beer cans scattered at your feet, and a handful of Somas fully dissolved and faithfully pumping through your bloodstream, you might be ready to take the plunge into TV-celebrity tabloid territory. It shouldn't be that difficult. You've done it before (more times than you care to recall), but descending into the gossip genre is the writer's equivalent of taking one for the team. It's made only slightly more bearable by the fact that much greater men, employed, syndicated, nationally-known, and respected journalists, have swallowed their pride as you must yours and given in to the public's yearning for useless tidbits about useless dimwits.

The irony is nauseating: You shower a publicity whore with the very attention you criticize her for seeking. And then, begrudgingly, you join the drudges of bottom-feeder news critics, drown out the delusions of one day contributing something more valuable to the world than snarky regurgitations of already clichéd talking points, forget about the months you've spent struggling to maintain any sort of presence in the already saturated blogosphere, and you write the fucking thing – a 1,000 word column that not all that many people will read. It will the your most popular post of the month...

The acolytes of Palin's brigade who troll the web for critics of their revolutionary hero inevitably will strike back. It's in the cards. As guaranteed as the sunrise on May 22nd. And you're ready for it. She deserves it, you say. She's clinging to her star power despite any rational expectation that she will break her record of contributing anything more than partisan vitriol and populist paranoia to the public discourse. She's touring the east in a bus funded by fans who will donate even more to her political action committee, only to realize they were duped when she announces that she won't run. It's no different than Newt Gingrich's "Entrepreneur of the Year Award" scheme or Glenn Beck's gold bullion marketing scam. 

People magazine

But the Palin army has grown wiser over the years, and when they accuse you of beating a dead horse, the guilt piles on. She's a failed vice presidential candidate, a failed governor, and a failed mother who totes her disabled son around the country as a prop and chops the double-chin off her chubby daughter in a plastic surgery procedure the family defended as a medically necessary "corrective surgery." She has a web page outlining (in bullet points) her stance on nearly 400 political issues, and yet the only domestic or foreign policy she could ever take credit for is "Drill, baby, drill." She stays in the limelight by baiting the media with constant hints of a presidential run despite having done nothing over the past three years to increase her credibility, beef up her policy positions, or even read up on history. If she thinks she deserves the publicity, she deserves the scrutiny, too. Right? Right? Either way, we're still talking about her – or mercilessly flogging what at this point is the rotting carcass of a barren hinny.

But fuck 'em. A Palinite can't wander into a discussion about Palin's potential 2012 candidacy and get pissed that we're talking about Palin's potential 2012 candidacy rather than talking about "issues" and "the future of our union" and "the principles of what really matter" and "the legacy we are leaving our younger generations," as if the discussion of PALIN'S POTENTIAL 2012 CANDIDACY isn't what EVERYBODY is talking about this week, and as if it's the only topic anyone has ever discussed on the web. That's like berating a friend for posting on Facebook that she's "impressed by a Texas rest area with granite counters and free internet" rather than talking about "issues" and "the future of our union" and "the principles of what really matter" and "the legacy we are leaving our younger generations."

The "issues" never get resolved. The pendulum swings every two years, politicians come in and out of power, voters think they've really got a good one who will push for this or that environmental or social issue, they don't, and we go back to the polls to elect a new batch of do-nothing leaders. The worse part is, it'll be another few weeks before we even get to pretend like the issues matter. Palin is in the news. Before her, it was Donald Trump. Next week, who knows? Maybe Michele Bachmann. And oh what a travesty it will be as the news media turn the American public's attention away from "the issues" as it chases another week's worth of sensational news reports about what impact Bachmann will have on the presidential race. The political junkies of the blogosphere will act like it's an abomination against their integrity to dedicate a few minutes of their precious time writing some snarky bullshit critique of her already well-known, impossible-to-overcome odds of winning the presidency.

And it will be their most popular post of the month.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)