Governor Palin to visit Seoul in October

CNN and AP are reporting that former Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin will be going to Korea in mid-October to attend the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul [insert joke here].

She will be discussing "U.S. leadership perspective on how to lead the world out of the latest crisis."

I have no comment except to say I just hope she ends up going to the right Korea.

...

SNL on OBL

It's been a busy semester, so I haven't caught SNL as many times as I'd've liked. In fact, I usually only tune in on Hulu if Saturday Night Live makes the news (as in when Betty White was the oldest host ever).

This past Saturday's show was "hosted" by Tina Fey, she formerly of SNL's "Weekend Update" and currently of 30 Rock. The one-time head writer reprised her impersonation of Sarah Palin (something I hope she'll continue to do from time to time if Sarah Palin remains in the national spotlight)...



... and she played a not-Ariel in a not-The Little Mermaid skit:



Not the most hilarious sketch I've ever seen, but it was a pretty innovative way to address the death of Osama bin Laden.

Yeah, you go stand next to them, Governor.

It was obviously a slip, but Sarah Palin, who could easily gain her party's nomination in 2012, said when asked what we should do about the situation on the Korean peninsula that "we've gotta stand with our North Korean allies."



Now if I'm going to give President Obama a pass for thinking he visited fifty-seven states* then I'll cut Palin some slack on this one. After all, actor John Cusack made the same mistake, while in South Korea even... so I'll give Sarah Palin a pass since she can only see the Koreas from her house**.

But the pass is just for this one. Rack up too many slips like this and I start to wonder if you really know about the stuff you're supposed to know about.

My real beef is with the bogus image of President Obama she's putting forth with this quote in the same interview:

... We're not having a lot of faith that the White House is coming out with a strong enough policy to sanction what it is that North Korea is gonna do, so this speaks to a bigger picture that certainly scares me.

That is nothing but mindless pandering to an old idea that the Democrats look weak to our enemies (while the Republicans inspire fear, I guess). Clearly Sarah Palin is unfamiliar with One Free Korea's Joshua Stanton and his Plan B, a get-tough set of sanctions and actions with real teeth to them that even he admits Obama is clearly implementing, unlike his Republican predecessor or President Clinton.

Sarah Palin simply does not know what she's talking about. She is a good candidate, demographics-wise, and she is being coached and fed policy memos to turn her into less of a paper tiger. Surely the Republicans have someone better to offer than that.

*Which he doesn't. It's clear from the video that a groggy Senator Obama was thinking "fifty" in his head — our total number of states — when he started counting backwards to arrive at the answer "forty-seven," which came out "fifty-seven." I cannot excuse him, however, for mispronouncing espouse.

**Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house. She said it was possible to see Russia from an island in Alaska (which is true), but the "I can see Russia from my house" was a line from Tina Fey's impression of her. And while we're at it, Al Gore never said he invented the Internet.

Democrats want more, more, more negotiations on KORUS FTA

More FTA news. It looks like Democratic members of Congress are taking advantage of the post-G20 lull in negotiations to twist President Obama's arm in order to get him to demand more changes to the KORUS FTA, beyond the beefs about cows and cars. And Obama says he'll listen, then think about it, and then maybe say "Screw it, I've got Republican votes now."

From Reuters:

President Barack Obama told congressional critics of a free trade deal with South Korea he would consider asking Seoul for changes to labor, investment and financial provisions of the pact to help win approval of the deal in Congress, a lawmaker said on Thursday.

"He wanted us to give him a list of what our other concerns were," Representative Michael Michaud, a Maine Democrat, told Reuters after he and eight other lawmakers met with Obama.

Obama said he "is willing to go over that list and see which ones they agree with, and the ones that they do (agree with) they'll try (to pursue) when they continue the negotiations with the Koreans," the Maine Democrat said.

But Michaud, who is chairman of the House of Representatives Trade Working Group, said also Obama made clear finalizing the trade deal was a priority and "he definitely does not want to start from scratch" to get that done.

There is still a lot of upbeat talk about the FTA:

Despite the setback at the G20, U.S. business have tried to remain optimistic that a deal is still possible and could be sent to Congress for approval early next year.

Tami Overby, president of the U.S.-Korea Business Council, said Deputy Trade Representative Demeterios Marantis told her on Wednesday he still believes it is "matter of days and weeks" before a deal is sealed.

Obama knows he has to fix his screw-up, and I think that means he'll go it alone (party-wise) if he has to. After all, he's got the Mama Grizzly on his side, and she's working on the Tea Party wing of the GOP.

Oh, and speaking of the the Republicans... Remember all those disgruntled voters who were out of work or underemployed or had lost their homes, and so they voted out the Democrats en masse because President Obama couldn't fix in two years what it took the Republicans eight years to muck up? Well, the GOP gave them a big fat thank you by blocking the extension of jobless benefits for 2 million Americans beyond November 30.

Grizzly bears don't have tariffs on berries and salmon, so why should we?

Courtesy of Ben Muse's Korea-US FTA blog (which has produced a flurry of activity lately), here's news that Sarah Palin is pushing new Republican members of Congress to support the KORUS-FTA:

You will also have the opportunity to push job-creating free trade agreements with allies like Colombia and South Korea. You can stand with allies like Israel, not criticize them.

Wait... what the? We're not supposed to criticize Israel? What if they do something wrong? Like continuing to build settlements that further erode what little chance there is for a peaceful two-state solution? What do we do then?

Anyway, she may have a bit of a tough time with this, since Tea Party supporters seem to be anti-free trade, believing it to be a sign of the New World Order   another example of Obama trying to socialize America   I am extremely terrified of Chinese people somehow bad (according to polls).

Oh, and they should also kill Obamacare:

Obamacare is a job-killer, a regulatory nightmare, and an enormous unfunded mandate. The American people don’t want it and we can’t afford it. We ask, with all due respect, that you remember your job will be to work to replace this legislation with real reform that relies on free market principles and patient-centered policies. The first step is, of course, to defund Obamacare.

Replace the legislation, yeah. Replace it with that major health care legislation you pushed during the six years that Republicans controlled the White House, the US Senate, and the House of Representatives. That one.

Anyway, interesting that I can agree with the former Alaska governor on at least something (but that's more because I'm a moderate than any inclinations toward across-the-aisle compromise on her part).

Today in stupidity

• On an upcoming visit to India, US President Barack Hussein Obama won't be visiting a famed Sikh temple because the head covering he'd be required to wear might stoke rumors he's a Muslim.
  
  Again, the elitist Obama is treating the American people like they're stupid, as if they can't tell the difference between Sikhs and Muslims. (Oh, by the way, I'm being sarcastic.)

• The Republican candidate for Delaware's US Senate seat, Christine O'Donnell asked "Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” After being told it was the First Amendment that bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O’Donnell replied with (faux?) incredulity, "You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?"
  
  Clearly the First Amendment, which bars Congress from making "law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," contains the principle of "separation of church and state. But it appears she was going with the notion that the First Amendment does not contain the actual wording "separation of church and state." From various right-wing sites I've read, this is a popular notion aimed at demonstrating how liberal interpretation of the Constitution has led the country down a God-hating path. They note also that the Constitution does not contain the word "privacy" nor does it say anything about abortion.
  
  But if that's what she was going for, then she tripped up on her own wording. She should have asked, "Where in the Constitution are the words 'separation of church and state'?" Because the principle is right there, even if that phrasing is just shorthand for it. I guess this disconnect is why so many people think nothing of the government blocking a mosque or Muslim prayer center where a mainstream church or synagogue would be allowed.

• Sarah Palin was warning her supporters not to get complacent, telling them by tweet not to "party like it's 1773 just yet." Assuming that that date was yet another brain fart on the part of would-be Republican candidate for the presidency in 2012, the Daily Kos guy and PBS's Gwen Ifil (a Kushibo favorite) chided her for not remembering the year the Declaration of Independence was signed. What Ms Palin meant was that the eponymous Boston Tea Party occurred in 1773. Egg... on... faces.
  
  The Boston Tea Party, of course, was a major historical event in which local citizens who felt powerless tried to strike a blow against the perceived elite and forge a political force by scapegoating an unpopular ethnic minority. Much like today's Tea Party. (I kid! I kid! I kid because I love... to kid!)

Sarah Palin's old-school Teleprompter

This would be funny if she weren't poised to take the Republican nomination in 2012 and oust an increasingly unpopular President Obama who by then might still not have gotten America out of the economic quagmire that started with his predecessor: Sarah Palin has to write stuff on her hand so she'll know what to say.

From the Times:

Sarah Palin is facing fresh doubts about her readiness for high office after being caught reading crib notes scrawled on her hand to prompt her on the core principles of conservatism.

Video footage showed Mrs Palin glancing down at the palm of her left hand — on which the words “energy”, “budget cuts”, “tax” and “lift American spirits” had been written in ink — during a question-and-answer session at the grassroots Tea Party convention last week. The word “budget” had been crossed out.

Mrs Palin’s detractors have ridiculed the crib notes — already being called the “Hillbilly Palm Pilot” — noting that basic conservative principles are something she should surely be able to remember without help. Minutes before she used the notes she had castigated President Obama in a prepared speech as a “charismatic guy with a teleprompter”.

Hillbilly Palm Pilot... ㅋㅋㅋ  I wish I'd thought of that.

1463 days of night

A vanquished Sarah Palin returned to her home state of Alaska this week, after seventy days of campaigning in virtually all forty-eight of the Lower 48 to be the next vice president.

The beleaguered governor of the Last Frontier was greeted by well wishers when she landed in Anchorage, and while 52% of the country may be happy she has left, they would be foolish to think she is gone for good. 

That's right: don't think you've seen the last of Sarah Palin. She will run for the Republican nomination for president, she will likely win, and she will give President Obama a run for his (substantial) money, if not win outright. [Caveat: I'm not always right when I predict the future presidential aspirations of female politicians, but my premise is still sound.]

What I'm about to say should not be misconstrued as an endorsement for Governor Palin's future plans—there is no small amount of trepidation over what I am predicting here. It is simply a dispassionate look at the woman, her party, and how things tend to work with those on that site of their aisle and their supporters.

Simply put, she will be back. Forget what you think you know about her and look at her for who she is, and it will be easy to see. The once-obscure governor of one of America's two "freak states" (the other being Hawaii) won the jackpot of political lotteries this summer when she was thrust upon the national stage. And now, despite her defeat (oh, by the way, running mate John McCain also lost) she still retains a great deal of that capital.

And that, dear readers, may be enough for her to clinch the GOP nomination in 2012. 

Oh, the horror, my Democratic friends are saying. There's no way that's possible! Everyone knows what an intellectual lightweight she is. Everybody knows what a cynical choice this vacuous politician was. There's no way on God's green earth that Republicans would choose Sarah Palin when they've got... when they've got... just who the heck do they have? 

And therein lies the rub. Republican nominations, like their Democratic counterparts, are not (for the most part) determined by moderate, middle-of-the-road Americans just to the right of center who wish to balance the wishes and desire of all the people. Rather, they are partisans who often loathe the other side, and many of them are one-issue voters who will do whatever they can to make sure a sympathetic politician becomes the nominee. 

We democrats are no better. For our party this year, it was an anti-war candidate (Obama). For Republicans, it was a stay-the-courser who they thought might have wider appeal and thus overcome the high degree of hatred and distrust so many Americans harbor toward President Bush. 

But for the many Republicans who did not support the McCain candidacy (and there were so many), it was pro-life churchgoer Sarah Palin who brought them to the polls. 

And see, this is the stuff most Democrats do not get. They see in Palin a mindless zealot who is out of her league and make foolish claims about why she was picked, demonstrating the very fact that they do not understand Sarah Palin's appeal. And that is why they will be blindsided in 2012 when she not only wins the nomination, but actual makes a credible run for the White House against President Obama. And it's already started: check out the "Palin 2012" bumper sticker with the "You can keep the change" motto that popped up the day after McCain-Palin went down to defeat (yes, they're really on sale already):

If you think that McCain chose Palin primarily so she would take pro-Hillary votes (especially women's votes) away from Obama, then you have no clue what's up. Sarah Palin was chosen because she was the perfect combination of two things: she was a maverick (or so it seemed to McCain) who could appeal to the socially conservative (mostly churchgoing) supporters of the GOP. 

You see, these conservatives hate McCain. They still do, even though most of them ended up voting for him. They think he doesn't care about "values" issues like ending abortion, promoting prayer in school, stopping gay marriage, blocking gays in the military, or fretting over gays anything, plus a bunch of other issues. Even non-religious Republicans thought he had betrayed the party with campaign finance reform such as the McCain-Feingold Act that helped curb the GOP's financial advantage. The fact that the so-called "mainstream media" seemed to love him so much in 2000 simply confirmed their suspicions. 

McCain won because the self-described "values voters" were divided amongst several Republican candidates. There was Reverend Governor Huckabee of Arkansas (who lacked national and international experience), Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts (who was a cultist Mormon who flirted a bit too much with socialist ideas like universal health care), Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York (who seemed to have little appeal beyond his role in 9/11 and was way too liberal on social issues), and former senator and "Law & Order" actor Fred Thompson (the savior who ended up putting everyone to sleep). While single-issue voters and right-wing zealots battled it out over which of them to pick, McCain stole the nomination with the help of the moderates in the party who are usually outnumbered. 

So the Republicans were faced with the real possibility of fighting for someone they personally disliked but who was probably the most electable from their party. Thus, despite McCain winning his party's nomination, there was a real danger that much of his party would stay home or, at the very least, not get too enthusiastic about their GOTV (get out the vote) drives. He had to do something.

Enter Sarah Palin. She was all the things the anti-McCain crowd wanted, plus she was photogenic. Rush Limbaugh and other mouthpieces of the Republican right were busy talking her up as McCain's people were preparing his short list. But for McCain, she also had something that genuinely appealed to him: she seemed to be willing to go against her own party when she felt her party was wrong. In other words: Like him, she was mavericky. (We can argue about whether that perception was right, but what it comes down to is that McCain felt it to be true.)

So both sides got what they wanted: McCain got a fellow maverick who could shake and stir things up when they needed to be shaken and stirred; the conservatives got a fellow traveler who would make sure what was near and dear to them stayed on the McCain Administration radar. Everybody happy! 

[Again, this was not about Palin being a woman, though it didn't hurt things that she was a looker. McCain could have chosen several prominent female Republicans who were closer to him ideologically, such as Christine Todd Whitman, but he needed someone to appeal to the right.]

And believe it or not, it worked. Despite the nation being in the midst of an unpopular war started by a wildly unpopular president with rock-bottom approval numbers who was in McCain's own party, the GOP ticket got nearly half of the popular vote—46%. In this record-breaking election (whose total voters managed to top the record-shattering election of 2004), it was that Republican GOTV drive—galvanized by Sarah Palin—that got McCain as close as he did and denied Obama a landslide. 

Without Palin to galvanize the right, we would have seen McCain's percentage closer to Mondale's in 1984, as the Republican GOTV campaign would have sputtered and many self-described conservatives and Republicans would have stayed home or even voted for Obama (as about one-fifth apparently did). 

Just what is that appeal that Palin has? To understand that you need to know what a RINO is. It stands for "Republican in name only" and it refers to the Big Tent Republicans that are not welcome by those who don't like the idea of a Big Tent of ideas. That is, a RINO is a Republican who is pro-choice, believes global warming is really happening and is likely manmade (at lest partly), supports gay rights, doesn't support prayer in schools or other issues that embed Judeo-Christian theology in a prominent place in the public sphere, or is involved in some other transgression against "family values." 

Certain RINOs are tolerated. Huckabee, after all, is a Protestant clergyman, so he gets a pass for his socialistic notions of wealth redistribution aimed at helping the poor (the man reads his Bible!). The aforementioned Christine Todd Whitman, however, would not. Nor does pro-choice California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

So when it comes to RINOs, Sarah Palin is about as far away as you can get. Sure, she has done mavericky things that the Republican establishment might not like, but it is crystal clear that she gets it on pro-life issues, which is the single-biggest values voter issue there is. 

This goes beyond Palin and her husband pushing their pregnant teenage daughter to get married and have the kid. Anybody can do that (and many do, in fact). Palin's absolute credibility on this issue stems from her and her husband's decision not to get an abortion when they discovered they had a child with Down syndrome. 

That, ladies and gentlemen, is walking the walk when so many other politicos just talk the talk. And for that alone, Governor Palin is a veritable hero to the pro-life values voters. 

One problem on my side of the aisle is that there are too many people who simply dismiss the pro-life issue as religious zealotry, which is not only strategically foolish, it is borders on being offensive. 

Don't get me wrong, I hate terms thrown out by the pro-life leadership like "pro-abortion," as if any substantial number of people actually thinks abortion is a great thing. Even to the pro-choice movement, it is almost always not a good thing to have to choose.  

However, the pro-life movement's driving force is the fact that each and every abortion is the ending of a human life (whether you consider it a current or future human life) by killing it. It's not a pleasant thing to think of in those terms, but that's exactly the point of the pro-lifers: abortion is murder. 

President Clinton was a Democratic leader who understood what troubled "values voters" on this issue, but he also believes that criminalizing or banning abortion does not eliminate it and often ends up causing more problems of its own. Hence his famous pledge to make abortion safe, legal, and rare, which his wife echoed as she made her own run for president. This is a position I have supported: prevent unwanted pregnancy from happening, realistically help those with an unwanted pregnancy to seek an option other than abortion wherever possible, but keep it safe and legal for those women who—for whatever reason—simply feel that abortion is what they must do. Yes, it's a morally precarious position, but it addresses my pragmatic concerns. 

Sarah Palin would not agree with me on the last part, but she is no hypocrite. She is saying women who get pregnant should live with the consequences since this is a human life we're talking about, and she applies that in her own life as well. How easy would it have been to go to a clinic and end the pregnancy that was sure to produce a Down syndrome-affected child that would likely bring serious inconvenience, difficulty, and pain to her family's lives! But she didn't, and that's why the right loves her. Present tense. 

But of course, the rest of America is afraid of her for other reasons. Some are related to her faith: they fear that she, like a number of other Republicans, are trying to shove their own version of Christianity (and not Barack Obama's) down America's throat. But a lot of the fear people had was that the chief executive from America's fourth least populous state was simply not ready to take power if 72-year-old cancer survivor John McCain were to die before his term was up. According to Fox News exit polls, 66% thought Joe Biden was qualified to step in, but for Sarah Palin the number was in the high 30s. 

And so for the next thousand days or so, Sarah Palin is going to be remedying that very problem. She will be talking with advisors, practicing in the mirror, and reading up on whatever she can get her hands on so that she is up to snuff on the major international issues of the day over the course of Obama's first term. Though "anonymous" McCain staffers have said she thought Africa is a country and not a continent, she is a smart enough person to be able to cram for the foreign policy and economics exam she will be forced to take four years from now.

As for that claim about Africa, if it comes from anonymous sources, you should take its veracity with a grain of salt. Like Al Gore claiming to have invented the Internet, Clinton White House staffers trashing the White House before Bush took over, etc., it might turn out not to be true. I tend to believe reports that McCain's people and Palin's people stopped getting along, and I have no doubt that some McCain people see folks like Palin as the bane of their party, which would provide the motive for McCain-associated vampires to smear Palin in order to nip in the bud her rise to the top of the list of 2012 presidential contenders. Not that McCain himself plans on running again. He's old now, and that's not expected to change in the next four years.  

So to sum up, Sarah Palin is a hero to some of the most active Republicans, she will spend the next several years schooling herself so that she's ready for Katie Couric's questions (if Katie herself is still around in 2012), and she will be the default frontrunner at least until anyone actually votes. 

For many who have been VP or a VP candidate, it's almost irresistible to make that leap to the presidency. John Edwards tried it this year, Al Gore in 2000, Mondale in 1984, etc. In recent times, Cheney seems an exception.

They say that a year is forever in politics and four years is an eternity, so everything I say now could blow up in my face by late 2011. Dan Quayle, after all, one of those moths to the flame whose taste of the vice presidency made him long to be president, came in eighth on a list of contenders for the 2000 Republican nomination, at which point he dropped out. That could be Sarah Palin's fate, especially if the Africa stuff sticks to her like the the legendary potatoe [sic] did to Quayle.

On the other hand, if Sarah Palin dazzles everyone with a performance that starkly contrasts with that of the deer-in-the-headlights neophyte that the world saw in her 2008 television interviews, then she will be a viable candidate.  

UPDATE (Saturday, November 15, 2008): This Washington Post article—"Five Myths About an Election of Mythic Proportions"—agrees with much of what I wrote about Palin and McCain.

[Above: This picture doesn't actually belong here (it's a still from "30 Days of Night," a vampire flick about an army of the undead who invade Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost community in the United States, where they take advantage of the month or so of continuous night so they can wreak havoc on the local population by feeding off them one by one). Or does it? Maybe it's a metaphor on how political operatives are a bunch of soulless bloodsuckers who will turn on you at a moment's notice. Or maybe the pic just looks cool while serving as a reminder of that movie so that the photo of Palin arriving at Anchorage International Airport up at the top will finally make sense, and you'll have a little epiphany where you go, "Ah, that's what the title of this post is referring to!" And stop ending your sentences with a preposition; it makes you look uneducated.]