Not scared... yet.

Mike Huckabee generated a little buzz on Sunday. He told Fox News that he’s the Republican who “clearly at this point does better against Obama than any other Republican.” Mitt Romney, meanwhile, continues to focus on endorsements. He’sannounced three more in Maine, bringing his total this cycle to 100. Newt Gingrich is also keeping up with the endorsement game, throwing his support to Bill McCollum’s gubernatorial campaign in Florida.  Tim Pawlenty, for his part, continues to jet about. In recent days, he’s rallied GOP activists in Tennessee and tomorrow he heads to South Carolina, where he’ll lend a hand to Nikki Haley. Sarah Palin, of course, is also busy. | corner |

It's very hard for me to take any of these folks seriously as credible candidates for president at this point. Jonathan Chait, however, thinks that economic conditions could lead to what would be unthinkable in better times:

If economic conditions remain terrible, it's likely that the Republican Party will regain power. 9% unemployment would give even a radioactive figure like Sarah Palin a decent chance to win the presidency, and a double-dip recession would give her a very strong chance of success. This means there's a significant chance that by 2013 the country will be governed by a Republican Party that makes the Bush-era version appear benign by comparison. | tnr |

I gotta think things aren't that bad? C'mon, readers, tell me not to be scared.

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When you've lost The Corner....

Rich Lowry writes:

I think I have pretty well-established credentials when it comes to being charmed by Sarah Palin, but that statement, as a statement, was simply terrible. Rambling and not at all persuasive as an argument for her decision. More Gibson/Couric than GOP convention speech. She shouldn't have said a thing without getting Matt Scully—or some similarly talented speechwriter—on the case first. As to how this decision plays out ultimately, we'll see. There's plenty of time if (as I assume) she wants to run in 2012, and she obviously has plenty of capital with Republicans. But not an auspicious start.

and Rick Brookhiser:

Are we to accept in an aspirant to the Oval Office cutting short her tour of duty in the Alaska statehouse?

Feminism > stupidism

Did Palin's Looks Hurt?

...So at least in this sample, it was Republicans and independents who were internally debating Palin’s suitability for the job. The study suggests that their confidence in her abilities may have decreased the more they focused on her looks – and thus, in feminist terms, objectified her.

Well, as feminists would put it, "no shit, sherlock." Palin enthusiasts held her up as their party's Hillary... but hot! Get it!?

(No, they didn't get it.)

"Oh my god they're turkeys!"

Well. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin pardoned a turkey in Wasilla yesterday. Then she took questions from the television press while standing in front of the turkey slaughtering operation. Some of you might not want to watch the video, but I've just got to post it.



(via, though I totally would have seen it I hadn't been watching basketball)

OK, but the devil is in the details

Mail to Jonathan Martin:

Re: For the GOP, the cavalry apparently isn t coming.

Yes, there is....ask the Lord.

It is HIS election. Watch Him.

Check your history books.

Bingo.

Elaine

Sarah Palin, quoted by CNN:

“And it also strengthens my faith because I know at the end of the day putting this in God’s hands, the right thing for America will be done, at the end of the day on Nov. 4.”

I just wanted to get this down on the Blog of Record, so when we look back at what happened, we know whom to blame.

More updates please? Well, okay then:

Dobson says that he and other pastors have been praying to God for his intervention in the election: "We were just asking for, rather boldly asking, for a miracle with regard to the election this year."

Palin around

Item: The Alaska Legislative Council has agreed to share the confidential part of the Branchflower Report with Tim Petumenos, the investigator heading up the Personnel Board's investigation.

Item: Palin's Administration is now claiming that it will cost $15 million to comply with a media information request for copies of emails sent from private accounts. For the sake of consistency, the state government seems to be upping the fees it charges for unrelated info requests. The upshot is that Alaska's strong open records laws are now being enforced in a way that prices the public out of the market for public records.

Item: In other Palin email related news, a judge has ruled that Palin may continue to use private accounts for the time being, but has ordered the state to take measures to insure that any emails concerning public business will be preserved.

Item: I'm not quite sure what to make of this kerfluffle. Branchflower found that Colberg did not materially comply with his subpoena, Colberg claims that he did. My guess is that if Colberg provided the requested documents, he did so too late for their contents to be incorporated into Branchflower's report, and that this is the basis of Branchflower's finding. Again, though, I don't know.

Item: Owing to certain welcome distractions, I still haven't read the report all the way through. Maybe this weekend.

Item: As long as we're all meta-bellman here, I'm still using the troopergate tag, but it seems to me that the ongoing scandal regarding Palin's secret email accounts may need it's own gate.

Sullivan goes there

You may recall that there was some scurrilous, loose talk about the possibility that Trig Palin is actually Bristol's first child, and that Sarah faked her own pregnancy to hide that of her teenage daughter. This bubbling rumor was--we were told at the time--the reason that the Palins disclosed Bristol's current pregnancy (although, just to be scandalously clear, the two alleged Bristol pregnancies do not seem to be mutually exclusive). And, indeed, it seems to have worked. For awhile.

Today, though, I see Andrew Sullivan is picking up on some ongoing reporting on the subject, if only to make a point about Sarah Palin's hypocrisy.

Why would a hospital exhaustively record all births on their premises and leave out easily the most famous baby ever born there? There were only 24 births at Mat-Su in April of this year: it's not like they could have mislaid one. So why is there no formal record of Trig's birth? This is not an "unspeakable" question. It's a simple factual one. Presumably there's an explanation. Perhaps the Palins decided that it would be an invasion of Trig's privacy to have the birth actually recorded in the hospital where he was born. But at least they should be able to tell us that. Or perhaps the hospital decided for some reason not to record that one birth. I have no idea. I do know that if Sarah Palin were running against Sarah Palin, she would demand evidence, as she did with something just as accessible with respect to John Stein's marriage license.

I don't know if there's any there there, but I appreciate the continued focus on Palin's troubling approach to both governing and campaigning. She truly is cut out for the modern Republican party, you betcha!

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Palin installs tanning bed in Governor's Mansion

Apparently, this was one of Palin's first official actions as governor:

“The governor did have a tanning bed put in the Governor’s Mansion,” Roger Wetherell, chief communications officer of Alaska’s Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, confirmed to this newspaper. “It was done shortly after she took office [in early 2007] and moved into the mansion.”

That is not a tan we can believe in.

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Palin really, really wanted to ban those books

The McCain campaign now concedes to the Associated Press that Sarah Palin, as mayor, asked her town librarian about book-banning three times. That's quite a strong interest in a hypothetical action she had no intention of taking.

What she tells you three times is... something she really means, I guess.

Palin's Environmental Record

Rick Steiner, a professor of biology at the University of Alaska and a conservation specialist, summarizes Governor Palin's record on the environment during her governorship:

A particularly worrisome aspect of the Palin candidacy is her abysmal record on the environment during her two years as Alaska governor...

• Climate change. Although Alaska is ground zero in the crisis of global warming, Palin has done virtually nothing to address the problem except hold meetings and appoint a "climate sub-cabinet" that likewise has done little... Palin apparently does not believe [climate change] is human-induced or cause for alarm...



• Polar bears. This summer, Palin filed suit against the Bush administration over the federal listing of polar bears as threatened, saying that her opposition was based on a "comprehensive scientific review." But when asked to release the scientific review, she refused. The document, later obtained by the public (from the federal government), clearly shows that, contrary to Palin's assertions, the state of Alaska's marine mammal scientists agreed with the federal conclusions that the polar bears are in serious trouble because of global warming and loss of their sea ice habitat, and that they would be gone from Alaska by 2050.
  
  Palin clearly decided to oppose the listing in order to protect Arctic oil and gas development, then publicly misrepresented the basis for her decision, and then tried to conceal all of that. Having run for office on a platform of honesty and transparency, this behavior was neither. Her extreme position here puts her to the political right of the Bush/Cheney administration.



• Endangered species. Earlier this year, Palin approved a $2 million state appropriation for a conference on the "economic impacts" of the Endangered Species Act, designed to persuade the public that ESA listings were too costly and unwarranted. Recently she agreed to use the money instead to fund the state's lawsuit against the Bush administration over the polar bear listing -- a likely violation of the state constitutional provisions on appropriation. She opposes additional species listings and other protections in Alaska, where many species are at risk because of climate change and other threats.



• Predator control. Palin approved and expanded the state's aerial predator control program, where wolves are shot from aircraft and bears hunted from aircraft and killed upon landing... Hundreds of wolves are killed each year by this antiquated state program that has no scientific justification whatsoever, but rather is designed to appease Palin's urban sport hunter supporters.



• Pebble mine. Palin aggressively opposed [a] "clean water initiative"... favoring instead foreign mining company desires for fewer government regulations controlling their toxic effluent into salmon streams. She has supported virtually any and all mining proposals that have come her way, even likely the enormous Pebble gold and silver mine proposed in the Bristol Bay watershed. That plan put at risk the largest runs of sockeye salmon in the world, where this summer fishermen caught more than 27 million salmon.



• Oil and gas drilling. Palin has supported oil and gas drilling plans anywhere in Alaska, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the central Arctic, the entire Arctic Ocean, and in fish-rich Bristol Bay and Cook Inlet. On her watch, regulation and government oversight of Alaska oil facilities is terribly lacking, and she has declined to establish a citizens' advisory council to provide more effective public oversight of the expanding oil and gas operations in Arctic Alaska....


The pattern is clear... At a time when the nation and world urgently need strong environmental leadership from the United States, it is important to look beyond charisma and carefully consider the environmental implications of our vote in November.

|Sarah Palin's record on environment is abysmal (Op-Ed) - Seattle Post Intelligencer (emphasis added)|

Considering that even the Bush administration has finally been forced to admit that climate change is a real and significant threat to human civilization, it's astounding to me that Palin refuses to acknowledge this threat. Plain has brazenly ignored the evidence presented by the scientists employed by the state of Alaska to help guide her administration.

Failing to manage the ecology of a region can lead to the total loss of hunting and fishing as recently occurred in the Black Sea as a result of decades of overfishing.

Climate change, environmental degradation, and the scarcity of fresh water are the greatest threats facing human civilization in this century and Governor Palin's record on the environment makes me wonder if she is up to the challenge.

Via the Conservation Report.

You Better Get Right with God

We may shudder in horror and make fun of her for being nuts, but the hard-core base of the GOP is eating this stuff up. Be afraid, be very afraid.