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Blogs Eric Reads
Explaining Sarah Palin’s Surprise Resignation, Or Not
Okay, unless you have been legally dead for the past few hours, you know that Sarah Palin is resigning as Governor of Alaska. The real question is, why?
…
Yeah, nobody really knows. If you watch Palin’s resignation speech, you probably won’t know either, because gosh darnit you betcha! But just because we have absolutely no idea why Sarah Palin is resigning doesn’t mean we can’t guess!
- NBC’s Andrea Mitchell: She is quitting politics forever.
- Palin spokeswoman Megan Stapleton: Ummm no she is not, but don’t ask me what she is doing because I have no clue.
- CNN’s Rick Sanchez: Maybe she is preggers with her 27th child, Stick?
- Palin’s brother: She is always having to defend herself, when she says stupid things.
- WaPo’s Dan Balz: Sarah Palin is straight-up crazy.
- Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol: Yeah, crazy like a fox!
So in short, nobody has any idea what the heck Sarah Palin is doing, ever.
Shorter Bill Kristol
- Sarah Palin’s practically unintelligible resignation is excellent news for Sarah Palin’s presidential campaign.
Palin for President… Ends?
[5:41 pm]: TPM’s Best of Sarah Palin needs some updating!
[5:40 pm]: I’m done with this freakshow, since clearly nobody has any idea what’s going on or why. Here’s the transcript of her speech. Good luck making sense of it!
[5:36 pm]: Somehow, this is David Letterman’s fault, I guess.
[5:35 pm]: Oh good, we’re at the part where the ducks start quacking over her.
[5:33 pm]: Here’s the “point guard” analogy. Still doesn’t make much sense the second time. This isn’t “passing the ball”–she’s forfeiting the match!
[5:32 pm]: “I promised efficiencies and effectiveness.” How do you fulfill either of thse by resigning? Also, how is serving the full term she was elected to “politics as usual?”
[5:30 pm]: MSNBC replaying resignation speech now.
[5:28 pm]: RGA statement… looks like they were caught off-guard too.
[5:26 pm]: Apparently no one in Sarah Palin’s administration knew this was happening. Neither did Sen. Mark Begich, who spoke to her two days ago.
[5:23 pm]: Palin: “Don’t explain. Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe you anyway.”
[5:22 pm]: It’s fun to watch MSNBC’s entire political staff completely unable to explain what’s going on.
[5:20 pm]: They are now explaining Palin’s “basketball point guard” metaphor in great detail. What is this, ESPN?
[5:18 pm]: “Only two-and-a-half years as governor.” That’s who I want answering the phone at 3am.
[5:17 pm]: CNN Headline News is reporting on… Michael Jackson’s funeral?! WTF?
[5:16 pm]: Via DKos, missed this from the beginning of the speech:
As I thought about this announcement that I wouldn’t run for re-election, and what that means for Alaska, I thought about how, well, how much fun some Governors have as lame ducks. They maybe travel around their state, travel to other states, maybe take their overseas international trade missions.
[5:14 pm]: I’m glad David Gregory Shuster (woops) isn’t buying this “getting out of the spotlight” nonsense when Palin clearly intends to stay on the conservative speaking circuit.
[5:12 pm]: Haha, TPM calls Palin’s resignation speech a modern-day Checkers speech.
[5:11 pm]: Why is Politico’s Mike Allen going on about how Palin could recover from this in about two years? She wasn’t even governor for two years.
[5:10 pm]: My mom wonders if maybe Palin wasn’t “hiking” in Denali National Park?
[5:07 pm]: MSNBC’s crawl at the bottom of the screen: “Sources tell NBC’s Andrea Mitchell Palin is out of politics for good.” No confirmation of what this means from David Gregory.
Update 4: Now liveblogging MSNBC (Hardball w/ David Gregory) coverage.
Update 3: The DNC responds to Sarah Palin’s surprise resignation:
“Either Sarah Palin is leaving the people of Alaska high and dry to pursue her long shot national political ambitions or she simply can’t handle the job now that her popularity has dimmed and oil revenues are down. Either way – her decision to abandon her post and the people of Alaska who elected her continues a pattern of bizarre behavior that more than anything else may explain the decision she made today.”
Update 2: Here’s the video of what has apparently become Sarah Palin’s resignation announcement. See if you can figure out why she’s stepping down, because I can’t. At least, not through all the rambling about her family, and her son, and the troops, and Alaska, and basketball, and everything else.
Update: Wait, what?
At an 11:00 a.m. press conference today, Governor Sarah Palin announced that she would not seek a second term as governor. The governor continued, saying that by the end of the month she would resign from the governorship.
Her decision to not even stay in office until 2010 makes this a whole new ballgame.
Original Post: Sarah Palin will not run for re-election, i.e. she is almost certainly running for president. Let the games begin.
For your viewing pleasure, Sarah Palin’s greatest hits:
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Shorter POLITICO
Barack Obama, a stickler for pronunciation, by Carol E. Lee
- Dat Pres’dent done talk good.
(via)
Why Is Mark Sanford Leaving the State of South Carolina Again?
Granted, he did tell somebody he was leaving this time:
Gov. Mark Sanford has left the governor’s mansion and is on his way to visit his family in Florida, his office said Friday.
Sanford departed the mansion, where he has spent much of the last 48 hours, in the passenger seat of a state vehicle.
Sanford will spend the holiday weekend with his wife and their four boys.
And next week we will probably find out that “Florida” actually means “the Appalachian Trail.”
Racists to Recruit at Tea Parties
White supremacists and neo-Nazi hate groups plan to take advantage of the anti-tax “Tea Parties” set to occur in more than 1,000 cities and localities over the July 4 holiday weekend to disseminate racist fliers and other materials and attempt to recruit others to their cause, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
ADL’s Center on Extremism, which monitors extremist groups and provides information to law enforcement and the public, has released information on its Web site describing the attempt by white supremacists to co-opt the anti-tax message of the events as a means to spread racism and anti-Semitism.
On Stormfront, the most popular white supremacist Internet forum, members have discussed becoming local organizers of the “Tea Parties” and finding ways to involve themselves in the events. Many racists have voiced their intent to attend these rallies for the purpose of cultivating an “organized grassroots White mass movement,” with some suggesting that they would do so without openly identifying themselves as racists.
You only have to watch a couple videos from Sarah Palin’s rallies last fall to understand why this is happening.
Theft We Can Believe In
Happy July 3rd, America! Today is the day where we proudly take off work, because what’s the point of independence anyway if we don’t get a day off, right?- This Les Otten character, who is running for Governor of Maine, stole Barack Obama’s internets basically wholesale. Otten may deny that he copied Obama’s logo and website design (bullshit!) but he won’t deny all the press coverage his campaign’s gotten because of it. (Les Otten/Barack Obama/Google News)
- Jon Stewart does not care for America’s Governor™ Mark Sanford. Specifically, why does this Sanford character not just shut up about his affairs and let us mourn Michael Jackson in peace?? (TPMtv)
- Researchers at Britain’s National Archives have discovered an original printing of the Declaration of Independence. Apparently Her Majesty’s Government has just been taking our word on the whole “independence” thing for the past couple hundred years, so it’s nice to know they finally have it on paper. (AP)
- Your Vatican is investigating its nuns for… not being nun-ny enough? It’s not really clear, not even to the nuns, why this investigation is taking place, other than because the male-dominated Catholic Church is bored. Or possibly becuase the nuns don’t hate the gays hard enough. Anyway, keep up the good work, I guess. (New York Times/Pandagon)
- Next time you go to Disney World, check out the Obamatron 9000, Disney’s new Barack Obama robot, in their “Hall of Presidents” exhibit, according to this report from CNN’s Rob Marciano, the world’s most obviously bored television reporter. (CNN)
Mark Sanford’s Fiscally Conservative Romance Novel is No More
As previously mentioned, Mark Sanford was supposed to write a big fancy book about “fiscal conservatism,” tentatively entitled 101 Sexual Favors to Perform on Ronald Reagan. But now that Sanford has crossed “the sex line” with Maria Chapur, suddenly nobody is interested in his book:
“Sentinel has agreed to release Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina from his contract to write a book about fiscal conservatism, which was to be called WITHIN OUR MEANS and was scheduled for publication in March 2010,” said Adrian Zackheim, president and publisher of Sentinel, in a statement released Thursday. “This is a mutual decision. We wish Governor Sanford the best.”
…
Sentinel, a conservative imprint of Penguin Group, had included the Sanford book in their Spring 2010 catalogue. It was described by the publisher as “a manifesto about fiscal conservatism – why the government needs to spend less and fix the deficit ASAP.”
Really, Sentinel, a conservative imprint of Penguin Group? Just going to drop him like that? I mean, as exhilarating as fiscal conservatism is, don’t you think people might be more inclined to buy One Night in Buenos Aires: The Mark Sanford Story? Please, Sentinel, as a public service, won’t you please publish Mark Sanford’s torrid sex novel?
Quote of the Day
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs:
When a White House correspondent for The Washington Post asked a question about health care at the daily press briefing, Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, laughed and said, “I seem to have forgotten my Amex card.”
Real World Cast, Apocolypse Arrive in DC
Oh for fuck’s sake, your Real World DC cast is here. Cower under your love sacks in fear, people, because just breathing in the general vicinity of 20th & S NW will give you the herpes, starting now.