Why is Sarah Palin resigning as Governor of Alaska? GOP leaders are spinning this as her desire to become a national reactionary leader.
I guess she misses her base, and we’ll probably see a resumption of the old Palin “hate” rallies, this time without McCain around to moderate the hate.
It’s too soon to tell whether the theme song for Sarah Palin’s sudden resignation as governor of Alaska is “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm?” or “Before They Make Me Run.”
On the one hand, as bmaz @ Emptywheel has noted, “Her term was up in 2010; [leaving Palin] plenty of time to honor her duties and still run for national office in 2012.”And Josh Marshall adds that “this clearly happened so quickly that Palin hasn’t even had a chance to come up with a coherent cover story for her resignation.” There’s even vague speculation about a possible indictment forthcoming.
I wouldn’t rule that out. In the Age of Sanford, who knows if we’re about to find she’s hiked an Appalachian Trail or two in her time (either morally, or in terms of more mundane political/financial corruption)?
But then again, it could easily be the other way around — perhaps Palin realized that as long as she’s stuck doing a job she couldn’t care less about, the only possible developments would be unwanted controversies (issue-related, scandals, or otherwise). In that sense, not having an official position is the best possible preventive measure.
And remember, we’re dealing with someone who’s infamous for narcissism and having a short attention span. I was struck by this bit of pre-resignation spin reported stenographed by CNN: “She thinks she has accomplished goals she has set forward.” In other words, she’s nationally famous now — even in a “famous for being famous” way, a post-millenium equivalent of Charo or Kato Kaelin — so why waste a moment more in a remote backwater state, and being expected to work on top of it?
And to those who count her out as a presidential contender in 2012, or even hint that she’s “out of politics for good,” all I can say is that six years after Richard Nixon made a similar statement that the press wouldn’t have him to kick around any more, he was elected President. And if there’s one thing we know about Sarah Palin, it’s that she’s a runner.
Who cares if even conservatives like Charles Krauthammer suggest that Palin ““is not a serious candidate for the presidency…. You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you’re running for the presidency.” Just goes to show that Krauthammer is always wrong — George Bush got away with it for eight years even after he got the job!
(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)
More depressing news regarding our campaign to eradicate other life forms;
“The new analysis shows 869 species became extinct or extinct in the wild since the year 1500 while 290 more species are considered critically endangered and possibly extinct.
At least 16,928 species are threatened with extinction, including nearly one-third of amphibians, more than one in eight birds and nearly a quarter of mammals.”
I no longer support the search for extraterrestrial life – if we found any, we’d just have to go out there and kill it.
Although Obama seems to be having some trouble getting unity among his own party in Congress, there is some good news – 8 Republican Representatives crossed party lines to vote with the Dems on the recent climate change legislation.
Although I’ve occasionally decried the leadership of Pelosi and Reid, the looming GOP attacks on these 8 Representatives could give Pelosi something to work with in the form of a small group of ‘quislings’ to give the appearance of bi-partisan support to legislation and offset the more disloyal and conservative Democratic Representatives. Definitely 8 Reps to keep an eye on!
In related and joyful news, Al Franken is now Senator Al Franken, because “he’s good enough, and smart enough, and doggone it, Minnesotans like him!”
Juan Cole marks today as a critical milestone in the Iraq War, the beginning of the end of the conflict. He points out a number of issues and potential actions that could bedevil the withdrawal, from a potential uptick in car bombings to Iranian meddling.
I was concerned as far back as November 2003 that there were elements within Iraq that would like to keep us around and might carry out actions that would make it difficult or impossible for us to leave.
So far it seems that most of the continuing internecine bloodbath is focused around the Kurdistan/Islamic Republic of Iraq divide in ’swing’ cities Mosul and Kirkuk. I think the Shi’ites and Kurds will find common cause at some point and that won’t be an impediment to withdrawal.
I don’t think Iranian meddling will be as much of an issue – if the Mullah government doesn’t fall to the Green Revolution, it will certainly be bloodied, and much less inclined to meddle in Iraqi affairs.
So the real question I think will be the Sunni/Shi’ite divide and how soon and to what extent it intensifies.
I few weeks ago I was getting a cheap laugh at the citizens of Tennessee and their desire to legally mix moonshine with handguns. But I figured it was a freak hillbilly thing, and we wouldn’t see other Red States rushing to recreate the Old West.
But I’ll be danged – here I am sitting in a bar in Phoenix reading the paper and guess what? The folks in McCain Country will shortly follow suit, creating a toxic mix of booze, rednecks and firearms.
I better git outta Dodge pronto!
Obama’s tough talk with rogue leaders is worse than Shrubya’s tough talk about rogue leaders that accomplished nothing.
Who is stupider, Victor Davis Hanson or Deborah Saunders? And why does the SF Chronicle run their columns?
In the very beginning of the Judeo-Christian bible, God allegedly grants humanity
“…dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
And so it came to pass. And speaking of creeping things that doth creepeth, it seems the creeps have inherited the Earth, creeps that seem intent to stomp every creeping thing over which they have dominion into extinction (and don’t forget the permanent snuffing the fowl of the air).
You’re probably wondering why I’ve decided to bum you out tonight. I’m blue because of these new bummer tidbits, the massive die-off and looming extinction of nine species of shark due to the charming practice of ‘finning’ the poor critters for shark-fin soup while tossing the still alive but mutilated shark back into the ocean to effectively die slowly from blood loss and asphyxiation.
I can’t tell you how depressed I get knowing that over the course of my lifetime I’ve watched the biggest species die-off since the disappearance of the dinosaurs. Except for a few modest successes (think a few species of whales, wolves, American bison), people world-wide seem driven to destroy as many habitats and species as rapidly as possible, whether through global warming, deforestation, desertification, strip mining, urban sprawl, polluting and increasing the acidity of fresh and salt water, overfishing, poaching and just polluting the air and land in general. Is the game to see how many of them we can take with us before our fossil fuel runs out and civilization collapses?
In the case of creatures like pelagic sharks or other deepsea fish, we’re looking at the classic tragedy of the commons writ large. Unless some modern day, environmentally-motivated Captain Nemo decides to take matters into his own hands, it’s pretty much all she wrote for these poor creatures. Wouldn’t hurt to have some more (and less gentle) Bruno Mansers on land as well.
There might be a bit more hope for the poor vaquita which recently lost funds for protection due to the economic downturn. Rather than watch it follow the Yangtse River Dolphin, perhaps a campaign funded by private donations run by a group such as the WWF could make up the shortfall?
The only thing that depresses me more than the actual mass extinction event underway is how people seem to care so little about it.
The 2,000-plus miles of the Appalachian Trail might be considered a brisk stroll in comparison to the long verbal road South Carolina governor Mark Sanford took in today’s press conference, before finally admitting that his mysterious 7-day disappearance from the state was related to an extramarital affair with a woman in Argentina.
He didn’t have much choice. Once he was surprised by a local reporter at the Atlanta airport (where he’d hoped to evade notice), there was no way to keep the media from dissecting clues about where he’d been, and no plausible cover story he could tell to end the speculation (especially since the real story was already leaking out).
It’s amusing, though, that Sanford implied in the press conference that he was down in Buenos Aires putting an end to the affair. Seven days seems like an awfully long time to spend breaking up, y’know?
Depressing news, a new world record – there are now 1 billion hungry people in the world, about 1 out of every 7 people. Lester Brown of the WorldWatch Institute warns how food shortages are leading to failed states and a threat to the overall world order.
Venal senators from the Midwest just don’t get it – they insist on porking out the current energy bill with subsidies for corn farmers, diverting food from the plates of the world poor into the gas tanks of the rich’s SUVs.
