Sarah Palin's End: Losing Altitude

Frank Rich has mentioned Sarah Palin in his op-ed at The New York Times, "The G.O.P.’s Post-Tucson Traumatic Stress Disorder:"

SIX weeks after that horrific day in Tucson, America has half-forgotten its violent debate over the power of violent speech to incite violence. It’s Gabrielle Giffords’s own power of speech that rightly concerns us now. But all those arguments over political language did leave a discernible legacy. In the aftermath of President Obama’s Tucson sermon, civility has had a mini-restoration in Washington. And some of the most combative national figures in our politics have been losing altitude ever since, much as they did after Bill Clinton’s oratorical response to the inferno of Oklahoma City

Glenn Beck’s ratings at Fox News continued their steady decline, falling to an all-time low last month. He has lost 39 percent of his viewers in a year and 48 percent of the prime 25-to-54 age demographic. His strenuous recent efforts to portray the Egyptian revolution as an apocalyptic leftist-jihadist conspiracy have inspired more laughs than adherents.

Sarah Palin’s tailspin is also pronounced. It can be seen in polls, certainly: the ABC News-Washington Post survey found that 30 percent of Americans approved of her response to the Tucson massacre and 46 percent did not. (Obama’s numbers in the same poll were 78 percent favorable, 12 percent negative.) But equally telling was the fate of a Palin speech scheduled for May at a so-called Patriots & Warriors Gala in Glendale, Colo.

Tickets to see Palin, announced at $185 on Jan. 16, eight days after Tucson, were slashed to half-price in early February. Then the speech was canceled altogether, with the organizers blaming “safety concerns resulting from an onslaught of negative feedback.” But when The Denver Post sought out the Glendale police chief, he reported there had been no threats or other causes for alarm. The real “negative feedback” may have been anemic ticket sales, particularly if they were to cover Palin’s standard $100,000 fee.

What may at long last be dawning on some Republican grandees is that a provocateur who puts her political adversaries in the cross hairs and then instructs her acolytes to “RELOAD” frightens most voters. ...

Palin Family Circus News - Monday, November 22, 2010 -- Now with DWTS liveblog! -- Now with VIDEO!

Has Sarah Palin quit narrating the audio book of America by Heart? Chris Michael, comedian and artist, says so.


The Washington Post's Lisa de Moraes writes The TV Column. This morning she wrote about the controversy over Bristol Palin's longevity on Dancing With the Stars, and she has a lot of comments from the show's executive producer, Conrad Green.


The NY Daily News has talked with a dietician about Bristol's weight gain on DWTS. Update: Gryphen has weighed in on this story with his experience as a personal trainer.


Life & Style Weekly quotes named sources on Willow Palin's 1:00 AM drug buy and underage drinking. Gryphen added his insight into the Palin family's problems here. Perez Hilton has posted a story, too.


I thought The Proposal, a 2009 movie with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds, might afford people looking for Alaskan scenery an alternative to Sarah Palin's Alaska. Although most of the movie is set in and around Sitka, it was actually filmed in the Cape Ann area of Massachusetts, mostly in Rockport. There is some beautiful scenery in the movie, however. It is a romantic comedy and held my attention; it wasn't boring. The contrast between the New York office and the outdoors, wherever it was, was especially interesting.

This morning Mudflats posted "Voices from the Flats: This Movie Was Shot in Alaska." It is very informative and has an extensive list of films shot in Alaska. "The King (Salmon) is Dead. Long Live the Mine" mentions that the December issue of National Geographic is now online and links to a slideshow of Michael Melford's very beautiful photos of Alaska.


Update: I must have lucked-out or become wise before I'm old. I waited until 7:45 PST -- oops! 6:45 PST; I've retreated to an undisclosed location for the holidays and should reset my watch -- before tuning in to DWTS. Bristol started in a cage, and it was Mark Ballas who ended up in the cage! Freestyle. They received scores of 8, 9 and 8 for a total of 25; 52 out of 60 for the night. Apparently, they're going to dance again, tomorrow night? I don't regularly watch DWTS, so I am unfamiliar with the rules.

I must say that Bristol's size can depend on lighting and camera angle. Before she danced she expressed her feelings about the "haters"; obviously, Mama has schooled her on the sympathy vote. The camera panned to Sarah Palin -- in the audience, again. Jennifer and Derek are up next. Derek is very good; Jennifer not so good in comparison with Derek. The judges are more enthusiastic about their dance -- scores after the break -- it's 10, 10 and 10!

Yes, more dancing tomorrow. The leaderboard: Jennifer/Derek, 60/60; Kyle/Lacy (?), 56/60; Bristol/Mark, 52/60. Can "the people" save Bristol? Whatever the outcome, there is sure to be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Apparently they danced twice tonight, and in my "wisdom" I missed the first dance.

OMG! Skating With the Stars is on next! When will we see Sleeping With the Stars?


Update November 23: The Hollywood Gossip has a summary of what happened last night.


Here is last night's first dance:



Carrie Ann Inabe had a little criticism of the way Bristol pointed her toes, but then said she was more "vibrant." You have to watch the video and see her say that to understand what she means. The judges were all enthusiastic about the dance. Bristol and Mark got three nines.

I am not sure why the video embeds at 240p. After it starts, it can be changed to 480p for a clearer video (there is a widget to the left of the YouTube logo, on the control panel).

People magazine has a story with backstage comments from Carrie Ann Inabe and some of the other participants, here.

PopEater's Rob Shuter writes that Sarah Palin is lobbying the show's producers to have failed senate candidate Christine O'Donnell appear as a contestant on DWTS! "Christine is not a bad idea at all," one ABC executive tells me. "After Kate Gosselin and Cloris Leachman, O'Donnell would fit right in. She certainly would be so controversial that the amount of press attention and buzz the show would get would be huge. Plus, you know they would make her dance in a witch's hat with a broomstick." That's the way it is. Isn't life wonderful?

Scary People, Scary Times

Monday, September 13, 2010
by James Howard Kunstler

... There is no theme song for [economic] contraction - at least not one with a hummable tune. The current background music sounds like Stockhausen run through scrap-metal shredder. No wonder everybody's so nervous.

A few hours ago I drove up the immaculately conceived highways north out of Detroit to the drear industrial outlands of Happy Motoring history, north past Flint and Saginaw where an exhausted American Dream is being hunted down by the angry ghosts of the Wyandots. The heartland these days looks like it's preparing for a return trip to the 9th century A.D. Nobody knows what's ailing it, but they're whispering of "last stands" out here around the all-you-can-eat buffet at the year 'round Christmas Shoppe.

And the Tea Party aims to fix all this, to make things right again. I listen to their blather about "freedom" and all I can imagine is the sound of boots outside the door, and men in badly-fitted camo uniforms and buzzcut hair commanding me to accept John Boehner as my personal savior. ...

... You can just feel the heat of emotion rising, ... . We can't speak clearly anymore; we can only beat drums. All across the land self-appointed saviors are stepping up to heroically rescue the squandered entitlements of the bygone day: Rand Paul, the Kentucky physician who (like his dad) subscribes to the idea that the earth is only about 4000 years old; Dan Maes, the Colorado Tea Party candidate for governor who believes that bicycling is a "gateway drug" to communism; Sharron Angle, the Nevada polymoron running John Birch Society scripts to the psychologically-spavined blackjack dealers crowding the unemployment lines. ("The Trilateral Commission and the Bilderburgers did this to you!"); and lonely Joe Miller, the hermit-attorney of Fairbanks, stalking out of his survivalist cave to drive a silver lance through the flaming heart of the ravening liberal windigo. ...

Kunstler's essay can be read in its entirety by clicking the post's title.

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Kunstler's "Rehearsal for a Civil War" is another piece about the Tea Party; his blog is here.

Stockhausen's "Helicopter String Quartet" can be heard here. The recording may not be the best, or my computer's audio isn't the best, because Stockhausen wrote, "The microphone transmission from each helicopter should be such that the sounds of the rotor blades and that of the instrument blend well, and the instrument is heard slightly louder," but when I listened to the MP3 the helicopters weren't that audible.

After listening to Stockhausen's piece (or the tea partiers), you may be ready for Zen. See yesterday's post, "Something to bug you," below.

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Frank Rich, writing this morning in The NY Times, elucidates the origin of the anger and the Tea Party:

... That wave of anger began with the parallel 2008 cataclysms of the economy’s collapse and Barack Obama’s ascension. The mood has not subsided since. But in the final stretch of 2010, the radical right’s anger is becoming less focused, more free-floating — more likely to be aimed at “government” in general, whatever the location or officials in charge. The anger is also more likely to claim minorities like gays, Latinos and Muslims as collateral damage. This is a significant and understandable shift, if hardly a salutary one. The mad-as-hell crowd in America, still not seeing any solid economic recovery on the horizon, will lash out at any convenient scapegoat.

The rage was easier to parse at the Tea Party’s birth, when, a month after Obama’s inauguration, its founding father, CNBC’s Rick Santelli, directed his rant at the ordinary American “losers” (as he called them) defaulting on their mortgages, and at those in Washington who proposed bailing the losers out. (Funny how the Bush-initiated bank bailouts went unmentioned.) Soon enough, the anger tilted toward Washington ...

The Tea Party has, since then, however, become a front for big business and the Republican party.

The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O’Donnell

By FRANK RICH
Published: October 2, 2010

... While O’Donnell’s résumé has proved largely fictional, one crucial biographical plotline is true: She has had trouble finding a job, holding on to a home and paying her taxes. In this, at least, she is like many Americans in the Great Recession, including the angry claque that found its voice in the Tea Party. For a G.O.P. that is even more in thrall to big money than the Democrats, she couldn’t be a more perfect decoy.

By latching on to O’Donnell’s growing presence, the Rove-Boehner-McConnell establishment can claim it represents struggling middle-class Tea Partiers rather than Wall Street potentates and corporate titans. O’Donnell’s value is the same as that other useful idiot, Michael Steele, who remains at the Republican National Committee only because he can wave the banner of “diversity” over a virtually all-white party that alternately demonizes African-Americans, Latinos, gays and Muslims. ...

... Election Day is now only a month away. The demoralized Democrats are held hostage by the unemployment numbers. And along comes this marvelous gift out of nowhere, Christine O’Donnell, Tea Party everywoman, who just may be the final ingredient needed to camouflage a billionaires’ coup as a populist surge. By the time her fans discover that any post-election cuts in government spending will be billed to them, and not the Tea Party’s shadowy backers, she’ll surely be settling her own debts with fat paychecks from “Fox & Friends.”

Click on the post's title to read Frank Rich's entire op-ed at The NY Times.

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The op-ed is worth reading for its background information about the Tea Party, and its surprise that Karl Rove, who clearly doubted O'Donnell's senatoriality and challenged Sarah Palin to demonstrate her chops by campaigning in Delaware for someone he considered unqualified, has changed his mind.

For a "local" perspective on the state of the race, see a Delaware newspaper's article, "Delaware politics: O'Donnell abruptly flees spotlight."

Ground Zero Victory Mosque to soar 5600 ft and be capped with solid gold dome!

From The UK Guardian's "'Ground Zero mosque'? America needs a reality check. Really" by Charlie Brooker:

Things seem awfully heated in America right now; so heated you could probably toast a marshmallow by jabbing it on a stick and holding it toward the Atlantic. Millions are hopping mad over the news that a bunch of triumphalist Muslim extremists are about to build a "victory mosque" slap bang in the middle of Ground Zero.

The planned "ultra-mosque" will be a staggering 5,600ft tall – more than five times higher than the tallest building on Earth – and will be capped with an immense dome of highly-polished solid gold, carefully positioned to bounce sunlight directly toward the pavement, where it will blind pedestrians and fry small dogs. The main structure will be delimited by 600 minarets, each shaped like an upraised middle finger, and housing a powerful amplifier: when synchronised, their combined sonic might will be capable of relaying the muezzin's call to prayer at such deafening volume, it will be clearly audible in the Afghan mountains, where thousands of terrorists are poised to celebrate by running around with scarves over their faces, firing AK-47s into the sky and yelling whatever the foreign word for "victory" is. ... [There is much more at the link, above.]

The cartoon appeared with today's Frank Rich op-ed in the NY Times, "How Fox Betrayed Petraeus," which referred to an important article by Salon's Justin Elliot, "How the 'ground zero mosque' fear mongering began."