VPILF

[Brokenbone]

http://www.palinaspresident.us/

This is cute.

[fluffmonster]

Palin going rogue? Going off-script?

I actually have to give her at least meagre props for this, telling her handlers to sod off. There is at least a smidgen of integrity there, even if she's still an idiot.

[MorbidKate]

Integrity?? More like a rat off a sinking ship to save her own political skin. The finger pointing within the campaign about "Bush advisors" not "McCain advisors" handling her is pretty funny. Playing the oblivious card to dodge her continuous mistakes, even the $150,000 on clothing is friggin hilarious.

Kate

[fluffmonster]

Though her motives may be entirely selfish, it still remains that the path that she has chosen is to be truer to herself (unappealing as her self might be).

[ç i p h é r]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- ... rainiac/1/

The former editor in chief of Ms. magazine (and a Democrat) on what she learned on a campaign plane with the would-be VP.

It's difficult not to froth when one reads, as I did again and again this week, doubts about Sarah Palin's “intelligence,” coming especially from women such as PBS's Bonnie Erbe, who, as near as I recall, has not herself heretofore been burdened with the Susan Sontag of Journalism moniker. As Fred Barnes—God help me, I'm agreeing with Fred Barnes—suggests in the Weekly Standard, these high toned and authoritative dismissals come from people who have never met or spoken with Sarah Palin. Those who know her, love her or hate her, offer no such criticism. They know what I know, and I learned it from spending just a little time traveling on the cramped campaign plane this week: Sarah Palin is very smart.

I'm a Democrat, but I've worked as a consultant with the McCain campaign since shortly after Palin's nomination. Last week, there was the thought that as a former editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine as well as a feminist activist in my pre-journalism days, I might be helpful in contributing to a speech that Palin had long wanted to give on women's rights.

Now by “smart,” I don't refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don't really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I'd heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.

Palin's Glass Ceiling Speech

For all those old enough to remember Senator Sam Ervin, the brilliant strict constitutional constructionist and chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee whose patois included “I'm just a country lawyer"...Yup, Palin is that smart.

So no simple task then, this speech on women's rights. For the sin of being a Christian personally opposed to abortion, Palin is being pilloried by the inside-the-Beltway Democrat feminist establishment. (Yes, she is anti-abortion. And yes, instead of buying organic New Zealand lamb at Whole Foods, she joins other Alaskans in hunting for food. That's it. She is not a right-wing nut, and all the rest of the Internet drivel—the book banning at the Library, the rape kits decision—is nonsense. I digress.) Palin's role in this campaign was to energize “the Republican base,” which she has inarguably done. She also was expected to reach out to Hillary Clinton “moderates.” (Right. Only a woman would get both those jobs in either party.) Look, I am obviously personally pro-choice, and I disagree with McCain and Palin on that and a few other issues. But like many other Democrats, including Lynn Rothschild, I'm tired of the Democratic Party taking women for granted. I also happen to believe Sarah Palin supports women's rights, deeply and passionately.

Many of those—not all—who decried the sexist media treatment of Hillary Clinton have been silent as Palin has been skewered in the old ways that female public figures are skewered, as well as a host of sexualized new ways as well. Some feminists have weighed in; “Even the reportedly clear glasses she wears to play down her beauty queen credential and enhance her gravitas can't make up for experience,” writes my heroine Suzanne Braun Levine, former editor of Ms. Oppose her on policy? Fine. But how sad for feminist leaders to sink this low, especially when Palin has worn glasses since she was 10 years old.

Last month a prominent feminist blogger, echoing that sensibility, declared that the media was wrongly buying into the false idea that Palin was a feminist. Why? Well, just because she said she was a feminist, because she supported women's rights and opportunities, equal pay, Title IV—that was just “empty rhetoric,” they said. At least the blogger didn't go as far as NOW's Kim Gandy and declare that Palin was not a woman. Bottom line: you are not a feminist until we say you are. And there you have the formula for diminishing what was once a great and important mass social change movement to an exclusionary club that rejects women who sincerely want to join and, God forbid, grow to lead.

But here is the good news: women, citizens of America's high and low culture, the Economist and People magazine readers, will get it. They got it with Hillary even when feminist leaders were not supporting her or doing so half-heartedly. Yes, Palin is a harder sell, she looks and sounds different, and one can rightfully oppose her based on abortion policies. If you only vote on how a person personally feels about abortion, you will never want her to darken your door. If you care about anything else, she will continue to intrigue you. As Time's Nancy Gibbs noted a few weeks ago, quoting bioethicist Tom Murray, “Sympathy and subtlety are seasonings rarely applied to political red meat.” Will Palin's time come next week? I don't know. But her time will come.

[Brokenbone]

I am glad a paid consultant to the McCain campaign was able to provide an opinion!

[Mulu]

Yeah, that article has already been highly debunked Cipher. That author left Ms. Magazine under a storm cloud due to her anti-feminist views, and she presents zero evidence that Palin is smart, other than her own opinion so apparently we just have to ignore everything we've seen on TV and just take her word for it. BTW, it's Title IX, not Title IV as this less than brainiac author stated in her article. Title IV is about school financial aid programs.

[Dorn]

... she presents zero evidence that Palin is smart....

Can someone please supply me with hard evidence that Mulu is 'smart'?

[Mulu]

I've got the paper to prove it baby!

[Brokenbone]

Well, Palin went to five colleges in six years... that has to count for something right?

Bachelors in something like journalism/communications, not that she was even on the school newspapers or anything. PS I can see Russia through my rifle scope. You betcha.

[fluffmonster]

maybe she's smart or smart-ish or just not dumb, but yet incredibly ignorant. Seriously, you can't be a total idiot and still be able to play a crowd like she can.

[Mulu]

I thought that was charisma based?

Apparently her charm is wearing thin on the McCain peeps.

In convo with Playbook, a top McCain adviser one-ups the priceless “diva” description, calling her “a whack job.”

Well, breaking up is hard to do.

"Sarah Oh-Twelve!" bellowed a man in field coat and jeans, one of several thousand at the Leesburg rally, when Palin spoke about her tax policies yesterday.

The oh-twelve message, if mathematically flawed, seemed to capture the crowd's sentiment. There were "I [Heart] Palin" bumper stickers on cars, "Team Sarah" T-shirts in pink, "Sarah!" pins and countless signs: "You Go Girl." "You're in Palin Country." "Maverick Barracuda." One of the souvenir vendors said his most popular offering was a pin showing Palin next to a pit bull and the usual "McCain-Palin" logo reversed, with her name first and in larger letters.

Palin is positioning herself very aggressively, not even waiting for McCain to bite the dust. She'll likely be the Republican nominee in 3 1/2 years. Watch her perform a centrist make-over during that time, courtesy of the conservative press.

[danielmn]

"Bachelors in something like journalism/communications, not that she was even on the school newspapers or anything."

--She was being A MAVERICK, doncha know!

[Kest]

prank call to sarah palin http://www.tindeck.com/audio/filestore/ ... hPalin.mp3

it's done by a quebecois comedy duo dubbed the masked avengers

E: For some reason it didn't copy the right link??

[Mulu]

Here's a link that doesn't require registration, and a great article on it.

I think like a lot of Americans she has a really hard time understanding anyone with an accent. Many of her responses sounded like she didn't know what was being said.