This Just in from Twitter/ Sarah Palin

@ICanStillSeeRussiaPalin

Lovers of Freedom, Big Honkin’ Firearms and Anyone Who Ever Played Football! Keep the faith! Radical Socialists have stolen another election from us! Terrible, pizza-eating pedophiles have seized offices meant for people like myself (mainly) but also other pretty much smokin’ hot gals like Kari Lake, who is so obviously way better looking than that frumpy liberal whose name I forget.

“Stolen”, I say! From qualified, tireless public servants. People who know how to apply mascara, have a keen hunter’s nose for where the camera is and always look hot in tight skirts whatever their age.

Right now, fake news stooges like The Wall Street Journal and that elitist socialist rag, The New York Post, are trying to convince you that this latest stolen, rigged election where so many people were allowed to vote for Democrats was all because of Donald Trump.

This is moosepucky, as we say when we’re out in the bush hunting grizzlies here in Wasilla. We owe everything we are today to Donald! Everything! (Although, you know, I did come first. Just sayin’.)

Which is why, while I wait for the recount here in the state that’s bigger than Texas, I am twitting today and urging every freedom-loving, concealin’ and carryin’, snow-machine ridin’ American to open their hearts and their checkbooks for the man who has brought the Republican party to the Mt. McKinley kinda heights we have achieved.

(BTW, I have launched a new Super PAC, called Grizzlies for Freedom. And with two simple clicks on your Google thingie you can send 20% or 30% of your Social Security check automatically to me each month, after which I’ll pass quite a bit of it on to President Trump to protect you and me from those awakey or wokey or whatever liberals. It’s so easy to give! And fun, too! (I have a limited number of autographed pictures of myself … with Todd cut out. So the first 200 of you who donate $100 or more can have one for only $20.)

But, back to President Trump, (the only legitimate President we’ve had since that old actor guy way back before I got my first L-Oreal Makeup Kit … which BTW is still available on Amazon for $99.99, just enter Gobs-O-Shadow/GrizMom-’24 for 5% off.)

Midterms elections 2022: Sarah Palin's last chance | USA | EL PAÍS English  Edition

Down at his beautiful home in Florida tomorrow, (which I visited once and have several pieces of silverware to prove it), President Trump will announce he is willing to return again to the White House, in Washington D.C., to finish up all the important work we started six short years ago.

It’s so easy to forget all that he accomplished (with NO HELP FROM LIBERALS!) what with all that’s going on in the world. You know like the next episode of “The Masked Singer”, or who’ll be on “Dancing With the Stars” next, and what those crazy cute Kardashian girls are doing today … oh! and “The Real Housewives” of wherever — let’s not forget that! Even though they should have a “Housewives of Wasilla'” show, if you know what I mean. Hint, hint.)

But people! Remember The Wall? And how beautiful it is? Well, we need just a few more thousand miles of it and no one will ever get in OUR country again. No one! And by “OUR” I mean yours and mine! Real Americans who don’t run leaf blowers at 7 in the morning! President Trump will complete the wall and we’ll all finally be safe from those scary, MDX-28 rappers with all those tattoos (ick!).

Oh, and how about that crazy COVID stuff? Under President Trump it was over by Easter so we could all go on vacation back down to Florida without those stupid “science” rules and not have to wear those liberal face diapers that Todd hated so much, not that I even think about Todd anymore.

And this whole Russia-YouCrane thing. It’s totally confusing. I know, because I live practically across the street from Russia, which is actually a lot like Alaska only with even less scary black gang people.

These people fighting President Putin are so weird. He’s very strong, y’know. (He even still looks pretty OK without his shirt on, although not as good as Todd before he let himself go … after I dumped him.) President Trump will stop all those crazy U-Crainians, or whatever you call them, from being so mean to the Russians. I mean remember how much they did for freedom right here in America by supporting President Trump in the two elections he actually won, (but one was stolen from him, don’t ever forget.)

Oh, oh and one more thing. Judges! Judges that will do what needs to be done to protect you and me. Think of it. Courts that’ll allow us to arm our kindergartners and grade school kids so we don’t have another of those Sandy Crook things — which I know, might have been fake, but … well … never mind. Judges in courts that’ll let us sue anyone who gives us a stink eye … and boy did I get one from some frumpy liberal-looking bitch (in sweat pants and no makeup at 9 in the morning!) when I was gassing up the F-350 Super Duty today.

More President Trump will mean more Super Top Notch judges on the Supremest Court!

And yes, I know what you’re thinking. I am available to serve. In fact you contribute now to my other SuperPAC, “RealJusticeInTightSkirts”. At the $50 a month level you get a souvenir tote bag from the 2008 campaign I did with that crabby old guy who was never nice to any of us, including Todd, who if you really want to know kind of deserved it after he drank all that tequila and said that stuff about Arizona women and their leathery neck wattles.

I’m Feeling Another Sarah Palin Payday

One-time vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is joined by "Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson during a tea party rally against the international nuclear agreement with Iran in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 9.

Purely as a distraction you understand, I’ve taken an interest in Sarah Palin’s defamation trial against The New York Times. A decision may come down today, and betting money says she’ll lose. But losing could likely mean yet another in a series of pop culture paydays for the ex-mayor, ex-governor, ex-vice presidential candidate and ex-Masked Singer.

If you haven’t followed this at all, the very short story is this: Palin is accusing the Times, its editorial department and its editor at the time, James Bennet, of sullying her reputation in 2017 when he referenced an ad her “team” ran in 2011. The ad, fairly typical of other rabble-rousing pro-Second Amendment fund raising appeals, used gunsight imagery — a collection of crosshairs — over 20 Democrat-held congressional districts. You know, “They’re in our sights.”

Truly clever stuff. But invariably effective in ginning up small dollar contributions from the right-wing base.

The issue is that one of the “targeted” districts belonged to Gabby Giffords, who not long after was seriously wounded by a lunatic in a Tucson rampage that killed six people, including a nine year-old girl. (After being shown the ad prior to the attack, Giffords herself said, “We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district, and when people do that, they’ve got to realize there are consequences to that action’.”

Sarah Palin vs. Ernie Chambers – Ricochet

Six years later Bennet added in a reference to the ad as he edited an opinion piece in the wake of the baseball field shooting — by a Bernie Sanders supporter — that seriously wounded Republican congressman Steve Scalise. His intended point, he says, being to draw attention to how violent rhetoric and imagery can lead to truly violent actions by the unstable.

Palin wasn’t having it. She had been sullied! And by god and mama grizzlies she was going to take the Times to court.

The truly ludicrous part of Palin’s claim is that the editorial — which Bennet and the Times corrected within hours — had “damaged” her in some way. Which way, she couldn’t say exactly, as Times’ lawyers pointed out that her standing in her political community and by extension her finances didn’t diminish much at all in the aftermath.

Put in another, less polite manner; being accused of anything by a citadel of godless, anti-freedom, elitist-liberal intolerance like The New York Times is — as everyone knows — like a monsoon of gold from the hillbilly firmament. In other words, mam, “Exactly what damage have you suffered?”

True to form, court room observers have noted that Palin hasn’t lost her touch when it comes to self-parody. At one point she declared that this editorial was just another example of how the Times had “lied” about her. The only problem with that being was that no one, not even her, could come up with that other, um, you know, example. Said Palin when pressed in court, “I don’t have the specific references in front of me.”

Right. Well, we understand you’ve only been preparing for this trial for five years. But you get back to us when you’ve done some more research.

Then you factor in Palin being a very high profile-to-notorious public figure and how difficult it is to make a case abut defaming any famous personality.

So how a jury possibly rules in her favor will be a fascinating thing to see.

But the behavior of Mr. Bennet does expose the Times to a standard criticism of bias, certainly in the eyes of the usual right-wing echo chamber suspects. I mean, he did reach back six years for an example of a conservative politician using violent imagery. That leaves him open to accusations of fixed bias.

However, as Bennet — who was later driven out of the Times by the Times itself after running an incendiary opinion piece by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton demanding troops be sent in to subdue George Floyd protestors — explained in court, he was unable to find even one example of a liberal politician using similar violent imagery. In other words, its kind of a PalinWorld thing, that “targeted”, “get ’em in our gun sights” money raising pitch.

If Palin loses today or tomorrow I do hope someone keeps tabs on the speaking circuit/cheesy singing show/reality TV/FoxNews appearance/fund-raising haul that comes her way in the wake of being treated so cruelly and predictably by … a jury of New Yorkers.

I tell you, there’s gold in being a perpetual victim of elitist liberals.

And the “Republican establishment” is who, again?

NEW BLOG PHOTO_edited- 3Frankly, I don’t know how anything, much less anyone, can survive the next five and a half months. After spending most of last summer, fall and winter assuming/hoping Donald Trump would slither back under his gilded rock, we now have accept that he not only isn’t going away, but he’s going to be louder, cruder and more reckless than ever … because he’s convinced that’s what “his” Republican party wants.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has to figure how to sell competent management (zzzzz) through news cycle after news cycle dominated by the next ludicrous-to-offensive thing Trump says and the herd media loves to cover pretty much to the exclusion of everything else. Personally, I’m confident Team Clinton, arguably the best-oiled political machine of the last generation, already knows how it’s going to play the game ahead. But that doesn’t mean the vulgar absurdity of Trump will abate in any way.

Among the innumerable ironies of the past month or so, as Trump achieved inevitability and “presumptiveness”, are the persistent eulogies for the Republican party. It’s as though the GOP “establishment”, which I’m not sure but I guess means the Bush Family, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Grover Norquist and the Wall Street Journal editorial board, was this cherished national treasure, a font of high-minded enlightenment guiding the masses with unimpeachable Socratic logic and rewarding the faithful with effective, far-sighted governance and benefits of indisputable value to the forever “hard-working” middle class.

What a colossal crock. After Romney augered in four years ago, I wasn’t the only one who said that if the “Grand” old party truly wanted to remain relevant in national elections it had to make a handful of serious changes. There was the “Hispanic problem”, which in truth is also a problem with pretty much every other minority group as well. There was also “the woman problem”, even though the Mittster did pretty well with white women. But most of all, IMHO, there was the need to be something more than a careerist messaging apparatus for anti-government “public servants” and actually, truly, genuinely do something for the middle class. Hell, the party itself said essentially the same thing, with the exception of, you know, that doing something part.

But because modern conservatives have been in the sales game and out of the doing something game for so long, bloviating about “freedoms” and “Constitutional rights” and “limited government” while incessantly licking the boots of the donor class that keeps them in office, they have no street cred with the crowd Trump tapped in to. Other than gun rights, Trump’s people have about as much of a focus on Constitutional freedoms as a diabetic bonobo. But damn! They know what they despise.

More to the point, the “messaging” they were getting injected with every day had nothing to do with the Bushes or even the Wall Street Journal. Their “establishment”, the real Republican establishment, was led by Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, a pack of self-serving entertainers pushing a much more digestible product. Namely, “Everything is [bleeped]. We are the ultimate authorities and the only people you can trust. And, you are the real victims of the DC con game.”

McCain’s top advisor in 2008, Steve Schmidt, recently went off on a rant about exactly this.

In small part he said, “[Mark Levin] is series-A round investor in the demise of the conservative movement in the Republican Party. He, very famously, a woman calls up his show and has the gall to just disagree with Mark Levin, who calls himself the great one. Talk about a narcissist. Talk about self-aggrandizers. Mark Levin asked, ‘Do you have a gun in the house? Go find it and blow your brains out’. This is the tone that has emanated from talk radio and this cancer has spread and that tone has infected the whole of the party. And so this moment that we’ve arrived at, where there’s been a severability now between issues and conservatism, and the test of who is the conservative in the race is who has the loudest voice of opposition.”

(As for bona fides, never forget that it was Schmidt in 2008 who signed off on Sarah Palin.)

A lot of liberals I listen to are smug in their belief that that kind cloddish rage has appeal only to the usual low-information, angry white (aging) male crowd. But the fact is Hillary Clinton’s high “unfavorable ratings” are directly connected to the same dynamic. The woman has been accused of one scandal after another since 1992. From Travelgate, to Whitewater, to Benghazi to this e-mail nonsense, all of it stoked and relentlessly marketed by the same entertainment “establishment”, (with the Bushes, McCains, Romneys and Wall Street Journals happily nodding along).

Point being, when I hear ardent progressives and marginally liberal people both talk about Clinton’s “untrustworthiness” I have to ask, “What do you mean, exactly?” And after valid stuff like her Iraq vote and coziness with Wall Street, the bulk of the examples are utter crap, like Whitewater and Benghazi. False reality, junk facts and manufactured outrage force fed by conservative entertainment “messaging” like milk to credulous veal calves. But so much of this “message” has been shoved down the public’s throats for so long, it has become a DNA marker in the body of the general public, conservatives, liberals and agnostics alike.

“There must be something to it. They always talk about it.”

So follow the dots: The cynical fecklessness of the Republican establishment class meant it kowtowed to its entertainment mouthpieces. Those mouthpieces cultivated an enormous audience of lazy-minded cynics. Those cynics, after 25 years, have now ridiculed and booed the “establishment” off the stage in favor of an actual TV performer-celebrity. That performer is, big surprise, another self-serving populist demagogue. A character who manifests, mainly, not any grand issues or policies, but rather the disposition the GOP’s target audience acquired from their regular habit of tuning in to be reassured they were right to feel sorry for themselves.

Well done, establishment conservatives.

Place Your Bets: Handicapping 2016

Lambert_to_the_Slaughter[Updated]. From the number of pieces I’ve read recently, handicapping the 2016 presidential race has become a click-bait hobby for plenty of allegedly reputable people. So let’s see how it works with a disreputable, unabashed, socialize-all-medicine, raise the tax and fix the damn roads, free community college for all, screw the F-35 and legalize pot liberal.

With Hillary Clinton a given for the Democrats — although god help them if she’s hit by a bus or caught in a love nest with Vladimir Putin, because there is no “Plan B” — I’ll assign a percentage value to the Republican field poised against her. 0% being the most serious candidate, someone likely to beat her, and 100% being a laugher, the equivalent of another Michele Bachmann delusion.

Jeb Bush: 5%. The Republican ruling class actually did a very good job sweeping the worst of the nut cases off their candidate slate last year. (Yes, Joni Ernst won in Iowa.) But there were no witches, no “legitimate rapes” and very little open Tea Bag pandering, at least compared with 2010. This suggests authority –spreading money to local Tea Party captains — is capable of getting Jeb through the primaries without forcing him to wear a tri-corner hat, leggings and ‘rassle snakes at prayer breakfasts. If that’s true, he’s bona fide serious opposition. He certainly more serious and intellectually engaged than his feckless brother. (I seriously doubt we’d have gone to Iraq with Jeb instead of W*, if only because he wouldn’t have laid the “detail stuff” off on Dick Cheney). But I still don’t think he could beat Her Regency. The Democrats have a profound electoral map advantage, the horror of another Bush is just too much for millions of active voters and while Hillary Clinton is hardly anyone’s idea of a “transformational candidate”, the stage is set and lit, with roses in place for a woman.

Scott Walker: 15%. In most ways a textbook example of the ideal Movement Conservative. He’s got that Tim Pawlenty careerist talent of rarely sounding like the pathological narcissist/cynic he is. Despite a Pawlenty-like mismanagement of his state’s economy, laying on massive multi-billion dollar deficit while Minnesota tries to decide what top do with giant surplus, his “go-big” brawl with public unions is all it takes to be hero to … the rubes who aren’t in unions and his industrialist, union-hating benefactors, most notably the Koch brothers. He’s no serious threat top defeat Hillary in a general election, but there’s no question he has the duplicitous wiles to survive a GOP primary campaign.

Rand Paul: 25%. He’s sort of this year’s version of Newt Gingrich. “What dumb people think a smart guy sounds like.” There are college-age wonkers who love his contrarian poses and think tankers who see a guy who’d go out play with their most batshit Ayn Randian theories. But he’s also a little like Joe Biden, in that he’s not big on filters. Over the course of the grind he’ll say at least 20 nutty things that will serve to remind fence-sitters that Hillary at least is a predictable commodity.

Mitt Romney: 40%. Face it. He’s the only Republican with the exception of Jeb, who doesn’t have bury his face in the laps of the Koch Brothers or Sheldon Adelson. He could pay for the race out of his mad money jar. Moreover, he might have learned something about pandering to the loonies in 2012. But, come on. Everywhere outside of a Palm Beach investment bankers luncheon Mitt is still the clueless rich guy, a cartoon who gives no indication that even he knows what he really believes.

Ted Cruz: 60%. Now this guy can do some damage. Not to Hillary. It’d be a landslide in her favor if he ever went mano a mano. But he’s the sort of wholly self-absorbed, unapologetic douche bag who’ll blow off any notion of collegiality and force the Jebs and Mitts to explain why they’re not sending in the Marines to block Obamacare. Frankly, I’m amazed that someone hasn’t dug up a juicy scandal on the Tedster. If ever someone looked like they’re hiding a closet full of perversions, its Cruz.

Marco Rubio: 75%. By now his reputation is locked in concrete. An empty suit. A cutey-pie shill for old money interests without the Clintonesque imagination to make a serviceable case for either pole of the same argument.

Rick Perry: 80%. An even emptier suit than Rubio, even with his new “I must read something because I’m now wearing glasses” look. Worse, for him, Jeb, though associated lately with Florida, is closer to the big, safe-bet Texas money. Still, in terms of pure entertainment, Perry was good stuff on the campaign trail, we’d all love to see him back

Rick Santorum. 90%. Say what you will, Santorum was the hardest working guy in a sweater vest Iowa and the Deep South primaries have ever seen. Lacking Bush and Romney-style money, he has no choice but to pander to the most medieval of the crazies, while reminding everyone else of the guy in high school who no other guy wanted to hang out with. He’s the Republicans’ Harold Stassen, unless Romney wants to fight him for it.

Mike Huckabee: 95%. He’s one of those sweaty, grasping characters who just refuses to go away, clinging to the belief, like Jim Carrey in “Dumber and Dumber”, that “there’s still a chance”. There isn’t. There never has been. Besides there’s more money in slinging stale meat to rubes from FoxNews.

Sarah Palin: 1000%. There’s nothing, short of a long weekend with Sofia Vergara, (sorry, dear), that would delight me more than a Hillary v. Sarah face-off. Michele Bachmann was an opportunistic nut-case sucking up $20 checks from embittered revivalists living on Social Security checks, but Palin is the gold standard for naked pandering, startling stupidity, rank incompetence and non-stop public buffoonery. We are already looking back on her as an icon of the age of celebrity worship. “Does she look good in a form fitting suit? Well then she can be president.” I think John McCain said that.