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The Quitter is back. I knew she couldn’t stay away long. That heady trip she took courtesy of John McCain last fall really got to her. It got to her so much that she started believing her own hype and the hype of radical right entertainment outlets like ClusterFox News and now she wants to capitalize on it. She quit her day job and now she’s out making money to support her family. I guess Todd’s day job at IHOP in Wasilla wasn’t cutting the mustard for Little Miss Sarah.
Her first attempt at a post-governorship money making scheme was a speech she gave to a group of investors in Hong Kong the other day. At a gathering of some of the most astute investors in the Chinese economy, they choose to invite one of the least astute American politicians of the last half century. I mean, could she have picked a more unfamiliar audience than this to have her coming out party with? Probably not.
She banned the media from the speech and denied the speechgoers an opportunity to ask questions. It sounds more like what the Chimpster George Bush would do for a speech than anything else. But she gave the speech anyway, all 80 minutes of it. Personally, given it was Sarah Palin and that it was her attempt to show folks that she had something on the ball besides her looks, I think the speech was 70 minutes too long. I’m pretty sure that the entirety of what Sarah needs to tell us on ALL subjects could be dealt with in under ten minutes, don’t you?
Think about it: she’s only been out of the country twice and neither time was for broadening her horizons in a political way, her foreign policy credentials were summarized by Tina Fey in one sentence (I can see Russia from my house), nothing she said on the campaign trail with regards to the rest of the world is even being quoted today one year later much less being remembered as being wise or savvy, and, with all due respect, her name is this decade’s version of a political joke. Dan Quayle thanks her in his prayers nightly for lifting the mantle from his shoulders.
From all reports, Palin used her speech to these investors, in a conference hosted by Chinese Communists in Hong Kong, to bash the current domestic policy of the United States, not only in trade issues but in military issues as well. If a Democrat dared to do this, the rightwing sound machine would have been screaming bloody murder and been all over it like stink on shit. These same hypocrites said nothing about Sarah’s critical remarks made on foreign soil but that’s not surprising, to tell you the truth.
The speech itself was a bust. A number of invitees walked out and those who stayed were tepid in their comments about her performance afterwards. I’m not sure if they themselves had to pay to hear her speak but I’m pretty sure they did not get their money’s worth. Warmed over rightwing rhetoric barely plays well at home. It doesn’t play at all well in the rest of the world. A failed politician like Sarah doesn’t really have the standing to offer the Chinese government (or a thousand of the world’s wisest investors) any policy advice or geo-political advice but Sarah gave it to them anyway.
I got a nickel here that says she won’t be invited back. Any takers?
About once in a generation comes a politician that wraps up the entirety of the political essence of the times. For me, that politician was Richard Milhouse Nixon. He combined a lying, ass-covering attitude with deceit and political intrigue. He was the encapsulation of what the republican party was in the late 1960s and 1970s. In short, he lied, got caught and then quit politics before he had to pay the piper.
For this generation, that example is Sarah Palin. She does not have the gravitas that Nixon did, nor are her lies of the magnitude that his were but then she never really had the chance to be any bigger than what she was. She ran for Vice-President but on a ticket that was doomed to failure in the shadow of the George Bush years. Like I said, she never had a chance. But that never stopped her from lying out of her ass at every available opportunity and, when the going got to be tough because of her behavior in office, she up and quit. Unlike Nixon who sought obscurity for a long time afterwards, Palin has made it clear that her quitting just means she is a fighter (whatever the hell that means) and that she will be speaking up on issues as she deems it appropriate to do so. In other wqrds, she’s not really going away – she’s just getting out of the line of fire by giving up her governorship.
She had a big ride in the two and a half years she was in the limelight. She managed to rack up a body of lies that is quite impressive. I was stunned when I read an account of them. I knew about them all but to read them back-to-back was astonishing. Among the lies that Sarah whipped on her adoring fans were these:
Sarah lied about so many things of small and big importance that it became almost a full time job to keep track of them all. She does Richard Nixon proud. Her quitting, in my opinion, is the perfect tribute to Nixon and the body of lies that he told in his many years of public office holding. Te say that she will be missed is, well, a lie I won’t be telling.
Mark Sanford, Bobby Jindal, and Sarah Palin are all gearing up for the 2012 election. How do I know that? All of them have announced plans to refuse parts of the stimulus package. Appealing to their NeoCon base voters (who are in an ever shrinking minority of voters in the country as a whole) they see the act of refusing money allocated by Washington to bolster their particular state economy as running contrary to their desire to hold down spending and programs even if it means that the citizens of their states suffer more because of their actions. That’s NeoCon logic for you… in other words, it’s not logical at all.
All three of these rightwingers hail from red states and, as such, do well in the polls if they are seen standing up to Washington. The fact that real people are being hurt by their actions means nothing at all to them. Ideology is more important than the effect that ideology has on their populace. They are counting on voters to remember that they are republicans and not much else come election time. They will spin their refusal to accept some of the stimulus as “state’s rights” and garner the remnant of the racist vote that is crucial for their continued re-elections. But mostly, they are counting on the furor to die down by the time election day rolls around, throw up the boogyman scenario of electing a Democrat, and another trumped up issue or two to escape responsibility for not looking after the needs of the electorate by turning down this money.
I seem to recall Ms Palin remarking during the most recent campaign that if she was elected VP that parents of disadvantaged children would have a friend in the White House. If that’s the case, wouldn’t it logically follow that she would be a friend while still in the statehouse as well? Well, we are not asserting that NeoCons like Palin are ever being logical because it appears that a lot of the money she is turning down would help put additional money into the state’s paltry education budget and some of that is going to help those same disadvantaged children she claims to hold so dear. Since it means that some more people would be employed (and therefore increase the size of government) Palin is refusing to take the money. That’s NeoCon logic for you.
She is also going to refuse millions for other parts of the Alaskan economy and government functions on these same bogus principles. In addition to the $160 million for education that she is tossing back to DC there is $17 million for the Alaska Department of Labor which would help fund additional vocational rehabilitation services and unemployment services among other things, $9 million for Health and Social Services and about $7 million for Public Safety. Only in the convoluted mind of a person running for the presidency who wants to make sure that her conservative NeoCon base understands she will stand up to Washington bureaucrats would turn down money designed to help the people of her state and put her ideology ahead of the needs of the state.
Bobby Jindal uses similar NeoCon logic (meaning no real logic at all) in turning down stimulus money that would have helped the unemployed in his state. Even though the state could phase out the new program when the money runs out in three years, Jindal won’t even start the program up even though his state isn’t paying for it, the feds are. The unemployed in Louisiana suffer thanks to the brilliant NeoCon logic of prospective presidential candidates.
Mark Sanford is willing to let more than 4,000 teachers get the axe in South Carolina rather than take the stimulus money. He wants to pay down South Carolina’s debt or pay off school bonds before he will look to the needs of real people in his bass ackward state: elementary school teachers. That’s some real NeoCon logic for you.
I think that the most sense about all of this crap was made by another republican governor who legally has no ambition to be president. Arnold Schwartenegger said that if those other governors don’t want stimulus money that he would take it to help California. There is the difference between a NeoCon running for president and a republican who understands what it means to look out for his people when it is crunch time. There is no overlap between the two unfortunately.
links: http://community.adn.com/adn/node/139409
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/20/jindal-unemployed/
http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20090317/NEWS01/
303170003/1001/NEWS01
Black & White and Cardinal Red All Over 