http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/so ... -palin.php

Something awful produces the much-late apology needed to heal America.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/feat ... dit-200907

this is great.

Here is the scary part: her book flogging marathon may be a prelude to seeking the republican nomination for president in 2012.

Do you think Palin really wrote this article? Perhaps I'm a wee bit cynical, but someone who says she has foreign policy experience because she can see Russia just doesn't seem capable of writing this well. Not that I agree with her points, but it's a fairly coherent article.

Copenhagen's political science

By Sarah Palin

Wednesday, December 9, 2009
With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue.

"Climate-gate," as the e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politicized scientific circle -- the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worse.

The e-mails reveal that leading climate "experts" deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to "hide the decline" in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. What's more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd. Some scientists had strong doubts about the accuracy of estimates of temperatures from centuries ago, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate.

This scandal obviously calls into question the proposals being pushed in Copenhagen. I've always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics. As governor of Alaska, I took a stand against politicized science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population had more than doubled. I got clobbered for my actions by radical environmentalists nationwide, but I stood by my view that adding a healthy species to the endangered list under the guise of "climate change impacts" was an abuse of the Endangered Species Act. This would have irreversibly hurt both Alaska's economy and the nation's, while also reducing opportunities for responsible development.

Our representatives in Copenhagen should remember that good environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits -- not pursuing a political agenda. That's not to say I deny the reality of some changes in climate -- far from it. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. I was one of the first governors to create a subcabinet to deal specifically with the issue and to recommend common-sense policies to respond to the coastal erosion, thawing permafrost and retreating sea ice that affect Alaska's communities and infrastructure.

But while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes. We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs. And those costs are real. Unlike the proposals China and India offered prior to Copenhagen -- which actually allow them to increase their emissions -- President Obama's proposal calls for serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions. Meeting such targets would require Congress to pass its cap-and-tax plans, which will result in job losses and higher energy costs (as Obama admitted during the campaign). That's not exactly what most Americans are hoping for these days. And as public opposition continues to stall Congress's cap-and-tax legislation, Environmental Protection Agency bureaucrats plan to regulate carbon emissions themselves, doing an end run around the American people.

In fact, we're not the only nation whose people are questioning climate change schemes. In the European Union, energy prices skyrocketed after it began a cap-and-tax program. Meanwhile, Australia's Parliament recently defeated a cap-and-tax bill. Surely other nations will follow suit, particularly as the climate e-mail scandal continues to unfold.

In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to "restore science to its rightful place." But instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the United States will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices, the president has upped the ante. He plans to fly in at the climax of the conference in hopes of sealing a "deal." Whatever deal he gets, it will be no deal for the American people. What Obama really hopes to bring home from Copenhagen is more pressure to pass the Democrats' cap-and-tax proposal. This is a political move. The last thing America needs is misguided legislation that will raise taxes and cost jobs -- particularly when the push for such legislation rests on agenda-driven science.

Without trustworthy science and with so much at stake, Americans should be wary about what comes out of this politicized conference. The president should boycott Copenhagen.

The writer was the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president and governor of Alaska from 2006 to 2009.

What it comes down to is would you rely on Sarah Palin's brain, which i would say has almost been statistically proven to be inefficient, and a detriment to the gene pool, or thousands of scientists who all study the phenomenon independantly?


http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1946082-3,00.html

No, I totally agree that a few emails doesn't topple the case for AGW. But the article is reasonably coherent and fairly well-constructed even if the underlying argument is weak. I just don't believe Palin wrote it.

No.

I very much doubt that Palin wrote that article.

Probably she walked into an office full of PR people, all salivating at the chance to grab hold of her Dunce cap and ride it into the primaries of the next election, and she said:

"Ya know, we gotta show them real americans out there that these guys with their science degrees, or whatever they got, don't know REAl americans like we do. Lets tell em all bout how america is great and global warming is nothin but a big ol sham!"

The PR people would have then transfered the audio file of this statement and input it into the "downhome idiot to english" translator and would have discovered that Sarah was emoting her desire to drum up some kind of attack on the scientific consensus, which as an unfrozen caveman only confuses and scares her, so that she can be in position to ride a tidal wave of ignorance into the hearts and minds of the un-informed masses of the bible belt.

They know what to do with folks full of fancy book learnin down there!

LOL. I know it's early, but man I really hope conservatives can come up with someone better than Palin for 2012. Does anyone really think she would be a contender on the national stage? I mean really? Has the Republican Party degenerated that far?

My guess is, as incredible as it may seem, she will be a contender. In a way, this represents a core value of capitalism. It says: peddle what is going to sell, not necessarily what has redeeming value.

Despite eight disastrous years of Republican administration, and the arrival of a bright and articulate figure in opposition, 46% of those who voted in the US still sided with the McCain/Palin team. Almost half of the electorate. At the very minimum, if they thought about it at all, and it is possible that they didn’t think very much, they stated through their vote that they were ok with Palin as VP, and also ok with the slight possibility that she would become president if the worst should occur. Some may have been more than just ok, and enthusiastic about her abilities.

No doubt Republican strategists and spin doctors have poured over these kinds of figures, and ruminated, how can we package this, give her a re-branding, a new polish, a glossier image……..? Only another 5% and we have made a sale!

And it wouldn’t be a huge departure. I’m willing to bet the spin doctors spent many a late night trying to pistol-whip GW into something saleable, and they went with him, even though their results were modest.

This truly scares me. I keep thinking that there's no possible way someone so stupid could become president, then I realize that it could very well have happened. What are the American people thinking?

Me too. I just received my new voter registration card in the mail this week. I'm no longer a Republican. I changed to no party affiliation. Palin is NOT qualified to lead this nation and potentially not her own life too.

Seems likely this was ghosted. To be as fair as possible to Palin, I don't have a high degree of confidence that any of the articles I see in newspapers with a politician's byline were written by him/her. The syndrome starts with speechwriting, staffers putting their boss's positions into words. From there it becomes easier to present ghosted articles as the politician's own work. It doesn't matter to me whether the politician "could have" been capable of writing the article. If he/she didn't write it, it's dishonest to put their name on it.

I agree with DWill. One could argue that even though the article wasn't penned by the politician it does indeed represent their views and position on the issues discussed within the article. But why not just interview the politician instead of falsely creating the impression that the politician is, in addition to being a successful politician, a successful writer?

Bill Maher speaks on the properties of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann that allow us to recognizee them as the idiots they are.


http://gawker.com/5821930/bill-maher-ta ... air-tirade