Republicans turn on Sarah Palin en masse after her disasterous political prick tease in Iowa.

After squeezing every last drop of her fifteen minutes of fame, like a milk-aholic at a cow's rapidly depleting udder, Sarah Palin seems to have FINALLY stepped over the invisible line from possible Presidential candidate to Republican laughingstock.

Courtesy of Meghan McCain:

Much of Sarah Palin’s allure seems to fade by each passing talking point of Michele Bachmann’s that goes viral. And with each passing day, Sarah Palin looks more and more like a confused woman who can’t decide which way to go. The last thing our country needs right now is a president who can’t make up her mind or make tough decisions. As Americans, we live in perilous times and what we need is real leadership. Republicans really have a chance to win the White House in 2012. We don’t need to be distracted by Sarah Palin’s attention-seeking antics anymore, unless of course she actually decides to stop flirting and finally make a move to announce her candidacy. Until then, the rest of the country is trying to decide between the candidates who are actually running.

Of course there was NEVER much love lost between the Palins and the daughter of the man responsible for plucking Caribou Barbie out of the wilds of Wasilla, but she is far from alone in her disgust with this endless charade.

As this biting opinion piece from Brad Schaeffer can attest:

So I must conclude that Sarah Palin has become a side-show who still clings to center stage. While rolling around in her tour bus crashing GOP events (while not a declared candidate for dog-catcher) she seems to be craving relevance that her fans in the media on both sides (the right loves her and the left loves to hate her) are more than happy to provide. Sarah sells. That cannot be denied. 

Her entertainment value aside, I cannot help but wonder if she is starting to do some damage to the GOP brand now that the hats are flying through the ring. Why was she in Iowa, for example, other than to steal the legitimate candidates’ thunder and continue to alienate the 58 percent of Americans who, according to Quinnipiac, would never vote for her under any circumstances — and thus reject the Republican ticket were she the nominee? Her Ames party crash has been labeled by some in the media as a “surprise trip to the Iowa state fair” (According to the Christian Science Monitor). A surprise to who exactly? The big unexpected would be if she turned down this chance to scoop up yet more of the limelight. 

Her attack on  conservative writer Alex Pappas over misunderstanding concerning a story that he wrote might have been the actual straw that broke the conservative camels' back.

In response many conservatives circled the wagons around Pappas and took aim at the woman they once adored.

Courtesy of FishBowl DC:

The American Spectator wasn’t alone in defending Pappas. A Daily Caller source who spoke anonymously told FishbowlDC, “If Sarah Palin wants to monitor the Caller that closely, but not so closely that she doesn’t take everything out of context, then maybe she could apply for a job at Media Matters. They’d get along famously.” 

Conservatives on Twitter, meanwhile, encircled the scribe and lashed out at Palin with a vengeance. Sonny Bunch, a former editor at The Weekly Standard , wrote, “Her refusal to personally apologize is just shitty.” But that was kind compared to what else he said. “That’s just a petty, dick move and, frankly, unpresidential,” he wrote. “What gets me about the @AlexPappasDC story is Palin’s refusal to apologize after calling him in front of a rival reporter to embarrass him.”

But perhaps the most telling example of the conservatives falling out of love with Klondike Kardashian, is this guy finally throwing up his hands in disgust.

By continuing to keep alive a tiny glimmering hope of her 2012 candidacy, long after the point when the whole “testing the waters” time-frame has passed its sell-by date, Palin is setting up her True Believers for a bitter disillusionment whenever the time comes for her to officially admit that she’s not running.

I would usually NEVER link to this disgusting excuse for a human being, and I certainly do not encourage any of you to visit the link this time. But because of the unique nature of his relationship with the Palins, and the terrible things he has done on their behalf,  I thought including him did much to prove the point of this post.

I am certainly no Nostradamus, but this has gone pretty much the way that I predicted it would over a year ago.

All you had to know to see this outcome on the horizon was to know WHO Sarah Palin was fundamentally.  And fundamentally she is a very immature, self aggrandizing, phony, who is completely addicted to the limelight and repulsed by hard work.

We Alaskans learned that hard truth about our half term Governor when she up and quit two years ago. We were just waiting for the rest of the country to get up to speed.

There was NEVER any doubt she would not REALLY campaign for the nomination.  The only question was how far could draw out this tease.

And I believe that question has now been answered.

By the way this does not mean that I don't believe that Palin will pop up again.

I have every confidence she will.

It just means that every new appearance is attracting less and less attention, and soon nobody will now, or care, where she turns up next.

I think it is very telling that Palin's next public appearance is alongside Glenn Beck, another disgraced ex-conservative superstar desperate to make a comeback.

Lawrence O'Donnell and Matt Damon take a courageous stand to defend our teachers against the unrelenting attacks coming from the Right Wing.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I am not ashamed to admit that I literally had tears streaming down my face as I watched this segment.

Lawrence O'Donnell's passion in bringing this, and other important, stories to our attention should earn him this country's undying gratitude, and Matt Damon? Well in my humble opinion from this day forward Matt Damon should be considered a national treasure.

He did his mother, his teachers, and his country proud.

Bedbugs At CPAC Host Hotel

¡Hola! Everybody...
My blogger compatriot, Joe.MY.God, passed along the following and I just had to re-post it!

-=[ Bedbugs At CPAC Host Hotel ]=-

The host hotel of this year's Republican CPAC convention has an extensive and documented record of complaints for bedbug infestation. Apparently the blood-suckers have attacked guests and apparently still there, waiting to pounce on Michelle "Bat Shit Crazy" Bachmann.

Wonkette reports:

The three-legged stool of conservatism is strong and united at CPAC! Yes, as intelligent and alive as a small piece of furniture. However, the stool may not last long, as the hotel they chose, the Marriott Wardham Park, seems to currently be infested with bedbugs. Yes, we knew that, but are there blood-sucking insects there too? Har har har. “I woke up seeing the bed bugs on the bed, on my shirt and even on the bed that I am not using. Unbelievable!!! The hotel staff wasn’t surprised with what happened at all. I will never stay here again,” one visitor wrote recently.

I couldn't write fiction/ satire this good!I'm fuckin dying here, cracking up like a fool, getting strange looks from my co-workers... LMAOOO!

One visitor to the hotel reported:

I attended the AWP Conference from February 2-6 and found a bed bug in my suitcase upon returning home. Had to throw out my suitcase and am now dealing with cleaning everything else I took with me. Don’t stay here.

I found a bed bug in my suitcase upon arriving at home. Today, I found live bugs in my bedroom and laundry room where my suitcase had been.
DO NOT STAY AT THIS HOTEL.

As noted on the other post, the jokes just write themselves.

Resources

Bed Bug Registry

The Snow, the Dog, and the Lion

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I finally took some vacation days (after not taking any time off for 18 months) and what do I do? I get sick! LOL I’m venturing outside for the first time since Sunday. Oh yeah… and it snowed after Christmas. What kind of fucking shit is that?!! Which brings me to today’s offering…

* * *

-=[ Michael Vick, Climate Deniers, and Quacks ]=-

Self-righteousness is the load din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.

-- Eric Hoffer

The Center of the Known Universe just got about 20 inches of snowfall the other day. An old-fashioned snowstorm. Two things jump out at me immediately: the mayor chastising New Yorkers for being quite vocal about their displeasure on how the storm was handled and the knee-jerk reaction from the conservative climate change deniers. The first item is quite strange. The mayor, last I looked, works for us. And… the response to the snowfall was sub par, to say the least. The mayor should be out there fucking shoveling snow, instead of whining about our critique of his management capability.

The second item is even more exasperating. The media whores, the front-line of the corporate-funded “libruhl bias,” would embarrass Pavlov’s dogs they salivate so much after a snowstorm. You see, it seems these dolts don’t know the difference between weather and climate. So, if it snows, it means that the overwhelming scientific consensus/ evidence on global warming caused by human activity (Anthropomorphic Global Warming -- AGW) is really a vast socialistic conspiracy to make us bow down to the treehugger agenda. Tragically, Americans for the most part buy this stupidity. this anti-science attitude helps explain why so many dismiss evolutionary science.

Have I mentioned my idea that anyone admitting they don’t believe in the science of evolution should be exempted from its benefits? Shit like vaccinations and life saving treatments against horrible diseases should not be wasted on these knuckle-dragging barbarians. We all would be better off without them. Oh, if you need to slap your goober brother-in-law or cousin from the South with some facts AGW, check this site for easily digested responses to some of the stupidest claims from climate change deniers (click here). It won’t change their minds (apparently, conservatives are less evolved), but at least you can enjoy the perverse please of the confused looks on their faces as cognitive dissonance settles in.

Next on my list is the mostly conservative (mostly feigned) moral condemnation of Michael Vick. Let me just note that just recently a police officer received less time for shooting a defenseless, prone black man, than Michael did for running a dog fighting ring. Let us also conveniently forget there is a current (white) quarterback who is, at the very least, a serial sexual harasser who is playing in the NFL with nary a yelp from the wingnuts. For the record, I abhor cruelty and inhumanity of all kinds and what Michael Vick did was reprehensible. However, he paid for his crimes and has tried to make amends for his past actions by becoming a spokesperson against animal cruelty and has used his talents to become an honest, tax paying, working citizen. Conservatives feel that people don’t deserve redemption. This focus on vengeance, a core conservative value, is in large part responsible for the fact that the U.S. incarcerates more people than any other nation in the world. In fact, incarceration measured as a percentage of the population is unprecedented in human history.

Luckily for Mr. Vick, he has a highly valued set of skills that demands a high salary from these corporate types, so he has an opportunity to pick up the pieces of his life. Shit, even PETA is saying to leave the motherfucker alone. I say that if your sins were writ on your forehead (as it is for people who have been incarcerated), you would be wearing your hat pretty low. Of course, there’s a double standard. If you’re a white collar criminal or conservative politician, no crime is too great not to deserve redemption. But may the full force of hell come down upon you if you’re black.

And speaking of quacks, allow me to leave with the following (true) story. I won’t name names here folks, but some of you might now…

Some time ago, a recently incarcerated man was going through “orientation” at a New York State prison. Orientation, from a penal perspective, resembles a brainwashing experience: your head is shaved, you are deloused, you are humiliated, your name is taken away and you’re given a number instead. You’re instructed that that number is now your name and must respond when it is called out. You’re also given a series of measures in order to gauge your academic attainment and personality.

As part of the psychological profiling, this individual was called into a psychiatrist’s office for an examination. As part of the questioning process the following took place:

Psychiatrist: What would you do if you were to suddenly discover that a lion was in your cell?

Inmate: well, I would reach for my gun under my pillow and shoo the lion!

Psychiatrist: (somewhat taken aback) Where would you get such a gun?

Inmate: From the same place you got the lion, you stupid bitch!

Of course, the man in question was beaten by the guards and immediately diagnosed as suffering from an anti-social personality disorder. The psychiatrist, on the other hand, is probably still “practicing.”

Love,

Eddie

Racism in America

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Editing is the hardest task in writing... I am afraid the following isn’t a shining example... I started this series a while back, so it would be better if you go to the real intro (click here) and its follow-up (click here). The second link is especially important because I define my terms there.

* * *

-=[ Racism in America, pt. III ]=-

DYSON: And if white guys were being mistreated this routinely and being murdered as they are, by policemen, this would not be acceptable. That‘s why President Obama needs to use his bully pulpit to explore race, not run from it, not avoid it, but to engage it.

MATTHEWS: I think he engaged it by getting elected last year.

DYSON: Not enough.

(cross talk)

MATTHEWS: You don’t know. He‘s off. He’s free.

DYSON: I got brothers in prison.

MATTHEWS: And they are -- well, tell them to get a good lawyer.

-- Chris Matthews and Michael Eric Dyson on Hardball discussing the arrest of Dr. Gates

* * *

What follows in the next few entries could be loosely termed a literature review on racism in America. Plugging through such literature can have an adverse effect on your state of mind. As much as you think you know, one still comes away shocked at the persistence of racism. Add to that the overwhelming effort -- on all levels -- to deny its existence and it can get pretty much gloomy. A friend claims she knows when I’m immersed in the literature because she says my mood changes. LOL

It’s a trip... I am reminded of Dante’s inferno: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here... ” LOL!

All kidding aside, what I hope to offer is a critical theory of racism not only to explain and better understand it, but also to envision possibilities for change. Since at least the time of Marx, critical theory has attempted to uncover the dialectical relationship between systems of oppression and human agency.

The core problem of the racial dialog in this country (if we can even claim one), is that too often many Americans, especially white Americans, see racism as an individual matter, as something only overt bigots engage in. In this way, the racist foundations of all our cultural institutions are ignored or dismissed. A case in point is the interchange quoted above. What isn’t understood or acknowledged by Chris Matthews is that the arrest of a prominent African American academic doesn’t take place in a vacuum. As I will show in later entries, racial profiling, the uneven implementation of criminal justice policies, and negative black stereotypes all combine to create what is in effect an apartheid structure impacting almost all facets of the black experience in America. One cannot drive, shop, hail a cab, and apparently enter ones home while black. It happens and many white people either simply don’t understand or are apathetic to the enormity of the problem. That’s why Matthews can smirk and say, “Tell them to get a good lawyer.” He doesn’t get it. There’s a phrase, “Driving while black,” used to describe one form of racial profiling. I would say there should be another catchall phrase: “living while black.”

But I digress... Racism is much more than an individual issue. It is both individual and systemic. An extensive social reproduction process that generates both patterns of discrimination within institutions and an alienating racist relationship enables systemic racism. On the one hand, you have the racially oppressed, and on the other, the racial oppressors. These two groups are a function of the racist system, and therefore they have different group interests. The oppressed seek to overthrow the system, while the oppressors seek to maintain the status quo. In this way, in typical dialectical fashion, social oppression contradictions that compel change. Great inequality of resources across the color line eventually leads to periodic eruptions of resistance by African Americans and other people of color.

At this juncture conservatives believe that a color-blind constitution means public solutions to end social inequality between racial groups are illegitimate, the equivalent of “reverse racism,” or “racial social engineering.” This view adheres rigidly to the notion that government should be held to a strict standard of racial neutrality and that any attempts at legal redress to rectify racial inequalities is wrong.

I reject this position. If America is to achieve its full potential, I think it is the government’s duty to use public policies to root out abiding racial inequality. I think it makes sense to consider carefully how labor market discrimination, private institutional practices, and public policies have contributed to the accumulation of economic and social advantage in white communities, and the concomitant disinvestment of social and economic capital in communities of color.

Most people assume that white racism cannot account for abiding black inequality. Conservatives attribute persistent gaps in poverty rates and income between blacks and white to African Americans’ socially irresponsible choices regarding education, marriage, work, and crime, rather than to labor market discrimination. What accounts for labor market disparities, conservatives say, cannot be discrimination since they submit that discrimination has all but disappeared. What accounts for wage inequality is the differences between blacks and whites in pre-market factors such as schooling, work habits, life and job skills. According to conservative scholars, what may look like persistent employment discrimination is better described as employers rewarding “workers [who have] relatively strong cognitive skills.’

In the coming entries, I will show that the analyses of conservative scholars suffer from a myopic insistence on disregarding sets of data while focusing on data that girds their arguments. In other words, their work is seriously flawed.

In the coming days I will show racism impacts criminal justice, health, employment, education, and yeah, sports.

Eddie