How many books do they have to sell to make a profit on $7mm plus touring and marketing?

What’s ‘ghost’ about a known, announced, and credited collaborator?

When years from now historians try to mark the beginning of the end of America as a great nation, the rise of Sarah Palin will be the consensus event.

Who are you to call any one in public office “unqualified”…have you ever held public office? Do you know Palin intimately enough to make that bold assertion…or are u just another Palin bashing liberal who gets their info from Vanity Fair?…my vote goes to the latter.
Oh and BTW…how is Obama and that baffoon (“sorry, I don;t remember the web site NUMBER”…LOL!!) Biden working out for you? Now there’s unqualified if there ever was . Please spare me your lame analysis.

She’s so dumb she just made $7mm for a book that hasn’t been published. I just pre-ordered one and am delighted that it will irritate statists, socialists and elitists.

When did Philip Giraldi morph into Joy Behar, exactly?

Easy on the circular firing squad, Philip. In case you hadn’t notice, the Steve Schmidt/Nicole Wallace/David Frum/David Brooks strategy got its posterior kicked last November, even with that faction’s perfect candidate.

If you want to maintain the Blue Blood purity ideal, have fun in the political wilderness. A Mormon white guy who’s religion was having black issues a few decades back isn’t beating Obama. Nor is a current FOX host who’s now trying to be Palin-lite.

Finally, if you or anyone else thinks that Barack is a better fit than Palin, please raise your hands. The guy is about to take over 1/6th of the US economy via a parliamentary stunt or reconciliation move. Yeah, he talks great, and I bet Polanski did, too, the night he bopped the 13-year-old.

Murtha and Kerry, a couple of real johns, would be proud to hear Shakespeare say, “Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Then back to accusing American Soldiers of atrocities.

W.S. Gilbert, a satorist from the 1800’s, insisted that his characters be unaware of how grotesque they were. A church-goer himself, he understood that for there to be such a thing as “grotesqueness”, there had to be an ultimate sanity to compare to.

Even an idiot, if he has truth, can carry such a piece of the ultimate sanity as he can hold.

Where the liar, even if he thinks he has a superior capacity, can only carry what he filters through his own finite understanding. And regardless of his noble intentions, such limitation argues against the ultimate sanity.

Which we hope that the evolution of eventual human understanding will further discover.

To see evolution at work, one must only remember back to college, theology 101, where you start with an infinite God that must be “attribute-less”. For purposes of human understanding, we must invent attributes. Now days, we know of course, that God looks a lot like George Burns and Morgan Freeman.

This is, then, one of the strong arguments for why God is a Conservative, and you must be racist, and love burned women and children, if you disagree.

Mr Giraldi, I have gotten a lot more good information from you, than I ever have from Sarah Palin. Certainly I read a lot of good things about you in the Huffington post. I’m sorry you don’t have $7 million. Sure shoots apart that business about equal pay for equal work, doesn’t it?

Looking at your profile, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Giraldil, I can understand why you would assume the former Governor is unqualified, at least to your standards. However, stating so, so definitively led me to suspect your motivation. Are you still a Ron Paul adviser? If so, might that not explain, possibly, your disdain for the former Governor and soon to be Best Selling Author? Wouldn’t it behoove you to at least give her the benefit of the doubt considering her accomplishments so far, without your support obviously? She is “everyman” and it is the reason for the popularity. It is not however, a primitive desire. That notion is elitist to say the least. Thank you for allowing me to comment.

JL:

Nice attempt at rhetoric, but a failure nonetheless, what with your false dichotomy (“or are u…”) and your vain attempts at indirection (Joe Biden’s statements have nothing whatsoever to do with gauging Sarah Palin’s incompetence). Nice try, though…

As for your question “who are you to call any one in public office unqualified?”, that’s easy: Sarah Palin deemed herself unqualified by her resignation. She was elected, swore an oath to uphold the duties of the office, and then bailed on the citizenry. She proved herself unqualified by her own actions.

Or do you believe that “qualified” is somehow equivalent to “breaks solemn oaths as sworn with one’s hand on the bible”? Do you?

Mr. Giraldi isn’t making the news — he’s merely reporting it, so quit trying to shoot the messenger. If you can’t handle facts that make you uncomfortable, then go read some fiction instead, e.g., Palin’s upcoming screed.

What kind of “conservatives” are you? No wonder Google chose your spew as their “balanced” conservative voice – you dislike leaders with strong records of accomplishment in favor of … I haven’t read you or even heard of you – how, exactly is Sarah Palin unqualified? You didn’t bother to explain the basis of your sneering put-down. What a low quality of “journalism”. OK … so she’s successful – you rely on Google for exposure, yet you tout yourself as conservative – you’ must be envious of Ms. Palin’s success. Resentment of honestly earned success is not a conservative value – haul your sorry self over to Huffington Post forthwith and join their sorry band of whiners who hate their own country.

All I can say to those conservatives who are such believers in Ms. Palin is to consider how closely she resembles Mr. Bush before he was elected and ask whether in retrospect you still consider him to have been so “qualified” for the job of being President.

In essence, both are individuals who, through happenstance essentially, find themselves on the national stage without have evidenced even a molecule of previous interest in (much less credibility upon) any national much less international issues. And look at how that worked out with Mr. Bush: You know, the one who said he had “redefined” the Republican Party from one that owned not only the White House but both Houses of Congress to the pathetic rump it is now. And the one who presided over the failure to prevent 9/11, got us into two foreign quagmires, tried to give amnesty to illegal aliens, opened the Treasury doors to Wall Street, and left with the country damn near being in another Great Depression.

In brief, if what Mr. Bush presented as a candidate is all that is necessary to “qualify” someone for you as being a conservative President then you are in for a whole lot of future disappointments.

What I (and most other foreigners I spoken to) find so baffling about you guys is your tolerance of complete incompetence in your highest offices, for no other reason that “he/she’s one of us”.

Sarah Palin reminds me of a woman we had in Australia a few years back called Pauline Hanson. She was a folksy conservative from the outback, and despite that she probably had her heart in the right place she said a lot of stupid things. The whole country, fellow conservatives included, fell about laughing and she eventually faded away.

But in Sarah Palin’s case, there seem to be so many people in America that still think she’s great, and I cannot for the life of me understand why.

Palin doesn’t know a thing about a single national issue. She’s never been interested, never even read the paper, and it’s a bit late to start.

Back during the fall campaign, I enjoyed watching Republican hacks explain how Russia’ proximity to Alaska somehow gave her foreign policy experience: funniest was Barone’s idea that Japan’s occupation of a couple of the Aleutian Islands (Kiska and Attu) twenty years before she was even born somehow prepared her for the Presidency. I sure hope Barone is paid enough to afford some really powerful mouthwash.

Even a dimwit like Bush Junior thinks she’s spectacularly unqualified.

Sheesh. Lincoln, while a lawyer, went through the first six books of Euclid to sharpen his mind: Eisenhower , after West Point, argued with Fox Connor about Clausewitz and the Vicksburg campaign. Abe and Ike were pretty good Presidents, certainly better than any we’ve had in decades: why would anyone think that a complete ignoramus could do as well as they did? Would Palin’s fans accept an ‘MD’ who’d studied at cosmetology college – but was ‘one of us’ ? Would they take their families across a bridge designed by a ‘true Republican’ who’d only read the first page of the instructions for his Erector set?

Truly -nothing – gets a wingnut’s panties all bunched these days quicker than someone taking a well earned swipe at the Quitta from Wasilla. You’ve particulary got to love the kneejerk howls of “You’re a dirty liberal!” for pointing out that a 600+ page ghost-written application for wingnut welfare does not a compelling political superstar make.

Because, yeah, demanding that everyone has to see starbursts whenever someone mentions Moosolini’s name is a bang-on guaranteed way to convince the country that the GOP isn’t overrun with creepy nutcases, isn’t it?

Yeah. (golf-clap) Good luck with that.

“…written with the ASSISTANCE of a ghost writer.”

HA! Good one, sir!

If Sarah Palin holds true to form, she quit writing the book at about page 300 and will quit the book tour through 2/3rds of the way. I am glad she was able to capitalize on the large book advance because she has little else to offer America. Maybe she will take her advance check and stay home and take care of her children. If the Republican Party is going to find a qualified candidate for 2012, they need to look beyond the Palin patter and find someone with intelligence something Palin is lacking.

What Greg said.

I completely agree with TomB, Palin is W with a skirt. I lived that movie through two extended deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan; I never want to see the sequel. Wake up, America! Or at least let’s wake up the pop-cons, who prefer red-meat comfort food like popcorn, to American Conservatives. We who support political leaders that don’t have flags of foreign countries in their offices that repeatedly and continue to conduct espionage against our Republic.

Since when did the comments section of this site become such a hive for Palin cultists? So, so sensitive: I almost want Palin to run again to see these people have their hopes and dreams decimated.

I am glad that Sarah Palin is making some money, she deserves it, after what the media put her and her family through, I hope she runs for President in 2012 so that i can vote for her. I am sure that she is qualified to be president, and Obama is just making her look very good for the upcoming election. I believe that Sarah Palin would put her country above anything, and that she is a hard worker, has integrity, and a family that stands by her.

So anyone that doesn’t lap at the altar of Palin is a Joy Behar-loving liberal, statist, socialist, elitist.. etc? Ridiculous.

When Palin ceases to be the pandering(‘the only flag in myoffice is Israeli!’ http://www.nysun.com/national/palin-only-flag-in-my-office-is-israeli/86671/), gold-digging nitwit that she appears to be, then maybe she’d get more support from Ron Paul supporting Republicans such as myself.

Hilarious comment, Dominic, by the way.

“I believe that Sarah Palin would put her country above anything, and that she is a hard worker, has integrity, and a family that stands by her.”

You’ve never met her, don’t know a thing about her. ‘Put not your trust in princes’ – maybe you’ve read _that_ Book. One would hope.

reply to JR

What I (and most other foreigners I spoken to) find so baffling about you guys is your tolerance of complete incompetence in your highest offices, for no other reason that “he/she’s one of us”.

Unfortunately our businesses are run that way also. When I was growing up years ago you actually had to be competent. If you were discriminated against you had to be more competent and hard working. Somehow trying to eliminate discrimination meant looking the other way about standards of competence or even denying they were relevant. Or at least it is that way for the weak minded. So instead of learning statistics people got black belts in six sigma.

I think the global financial meltdown is a demonstration of this. It’s called the Peter Principle. People have risen to the level of their own incompetence. It doesn’t have to be that way but it universal now.

Palin was barely okay as a mayor of a small town but no more than that. And that was because she hired a city manager to do most of the work that was done by previous mayors.

She could well be the next President. She would get 40% of the vote if she ran today.

“Palin is W with a skirt”. I don’t see it, honestly.

Bush-the-latter and Palin aren’t very similar. At all. Bush was never “someone like us” – he just seemed recognizably human to many people. The wealthy son of a president, educated in the ivy league, isn’t an ordinary American. Then, his narrative was redemption: he was the prodigal son, a sinner who came to Jesus. Palin’s narrative on the other hand is immaculate conception (Mary’s own birth without original sin was the immaculate conception, not her conception of Jesus). She was born and raised among wheatfields and snowbanks, and Assemblies of God churches. She was educated in nothing very much at a motley assortment of unknown institutions. She had a job looking pleasant in front of a camera and reading off clearly enunciated cliches, married a lumberjack GQ model who reeks of testosterone and cologne, raised a bunch of kids and did some small town politics. That is much more like “one of us”, in a slightly idealized way. She is just simple and uncomplicated and stuffed with Values and never did anything wronger than getting giggly on beer in a college dorm, and this enables her to see the true truth, that is otherwise obscured behind ambiguity and cost/benefit analysis and moral relativism and godlessness and whatnot.

In their characters Bush and Palin are quite different as well. Bush’s stage character, so to speak, is diffident, mischievous, slightly sheepish. He seems to shrink into himself when speaking publicly, often stumbles into faults in his speech, sticks with the script. Palin is all hair and teeth and pert ass and glowing skin, and comes at you like a pharmaceutical sales rep, intent on snowing you with enthusiasm, willing to improvise odd harmonizations between the way things ought to be and the way they actually are.

Bush’s tragic flaw, it might be said, is that he is too social. He fell in with a bad crowd, and was too willing to be one of the gang. Late in his presidency he began to show signs that he understood that maybe his trust was fundamentally displaced, and that there were things he would have done differently if he had it all back.

Palin on the other hand, is a rogue-lite. She doesn’t seem to get her ideas from anywhere at all – they are just sentiments that are in the air. Talk radio, evangelical sermons, Reader’s Digest, family arguments. Bush was the pious face of neoconservatism – that vast and shadowy web of think tanks and radio hosts and arms makers and cold-eyed men peculiarly fascinated by Israel. Ideologically, Palin is the creature only of the evangelical/ socially conservative outlook. “Government never makes anything better: that’s just common sense” counts as an idea, and there is nobody whispering any better ones into her ear. She speaks her own mind, but unfortunately doesn’t have one. Whereas Bush has the reputation for being pleasant, humorous, and generous in private conversation, it’s apparent that Palin is most beloved across the footlights.

In their daily lives they are dissimilar. Reading about Bush is to go to sleep. When he was governor he didn’t play family feud. Now that he’s back in Texas … one imagines that he watches a lot of TV. One doesn’t care. Whereas when Palin returned to her fortress of solitude, the fun was just getting started. There’s no telling what she’ll get up to next, or which of her relatives will be arrested.

They are similar only in the superficial gloss that, like Reagan, they are unspoiled by too much brains or liveliness of intellect, having rather a soulful dedication to the right sort of values, which guide their prayerful thoughts to the only possible conclusions. And they’re both naive Christians, though even there Bush’s imitation of Christ looks pale and episcopalian compared to Palin’s. Apart from that, their apparent similarity arises from the fact that they both prompt something like adoration from the same demographic group.

Bob Wright wrote:

“I don’t see it, honestly.”

Oh yes you do Bob, but it’s a wonderful piece of writing nonetheless. Thank you. A bit better at characterization than analysis, but still wonderful wonderful. Brings to mind Mencken a bit.

A “pharmaceutical sales-rep”; dangerously hilarious.

Keep it coming, regardless of what your politics are.

Cheers,