me very smart

With her celebrity dwindling by the hour, Sarah Palin must be auditioning for a talk show.. There really is no other explanation for why Alaska’s Number One lightweight would be prancing around the media. Or is the media prancing around her. One media outlet called it “The Sarah Show”. I know the average GOP Governor is a serious non-entity, but still that seems just a tad unfair. A lot of these guys might even be called competent on a good day. Of course the reason that it was her show is that without her ‘celebrity’ the event would have been as much fun as a country club fundraiser for John McCain.

Palin’s pronouncements at the GOP Governor’s Conference had all the newsworthiness of the Conference hotel lunch menu but that didn’t stop her every vacuous word being splashed on every news outlet. Parsing her statements is a like panning for gold on the town beach. There ain’t nothing there, but in the interregnum before Obama’s inauguration, this is what I suppose passes for news. One only wishes that there was at least a little irony left in the world.

Tim Pawlenty, the put upon Governor of Minnesota called Palin’s speech “interesting”. The media seemed to agree – albeit in a slightly different way – by jamming into the conference to get close to last week’s political celebrity. What they got was no-thing, except empty headlines.

The media’s ability to understand a story is dwindling to the point of absurdity. She’s history. She’s yesterday’s news. What she thinks does not matter. Enough already.

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The truth is that attempting bipartisanship is a recipe for total disaster. The nation is in deep trouble on all fronts. It needs real change (not just the half-baked rhetorical kind). To make the truly progressive advances the country needs means breaking some eggs and seriously pissing off some vested interests. And with the mandate that the Democrats have there’s no need to even talk to the GOP, let alone bring them aboard on the process. They are in the wilderness and that’s where they deserve to stay.

We have to hope that Obama is smart enough not to embrace his own Bipartisan BS. The choice of Rahm Emmanuel as White House Chief of Staff is clearly a very good sign that the next President is ahead of the curve. Emmanuel is a true attack dog, just the kind of enforcer to strike fear into recalcitrant Blue Dog Democrats looking over their shoulder. When Emmanuel is on the prowl, there are going to be casualties. And that is a good thing.

If Obama governs from the center, like he suggests he will, there is no question he will fail to halt the decline of this country. He’s talked a great deal of “sacrifice”. The sacrifice required to transform the nation might include his own popularity. Nothing less than sweeping legislation on all fronts is needed. If he doesn’t enrage large chunks of the population he’s not going far enough.

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