and she's comfortable using the odious term "homeland"... ewwwwww....

"... is the wiser course of action ignoring Sarah Palin because she's a foolish clown undeserving of attention, or shining a light on her offensive antics to help demonstrate the misguided inanities of the larger right-wing movement?"

As tempting as it is to try to ignore the lies and outrages of Saint Sarah and the reich-wing, I believe that it is essential to continue to rebut them.

If Steve and other bloggers do not rebut their lies, they continue to grow as the truth for too many of the amerikan public. It is essential that all persons make an effort to correct the false impressions that amerikans regurgitate after hearing the lies of the reich.

There are about 25% of the amerikan voters who will believe the lies of the reich, regardless of how ridiculous they are. There are probably another 25-40% of the amerikan public who half-believe the lies if they are not refuted.

It is essential that this last group keeps getting the truth pointed out to them!

Governess Palin has a son serving in the military. How dare you criticize her?

Much as it pains me to say it, Palin's inability to have a coherent foreign policy also reveals that Obama hasn't really come up with a coherent reason for us to "surge" in Afghanistan either. So I'm all for asking Palin about why we should be surging in Afghanistan and what she thinks our military should be accomplishing there.

She shows up at a military base to promote her book and beg for SaraPac donations...and then she has the gall to say that Obama doesn't acknowledge and respect the troops to her satisfaction. What an ass.

And this comes AFTER W never attend a state funeral for the fallen from Afganistan and Iraq - NEVER once! AFTER Obama rescinded W's order to ban photos and videos of the coffins arriving at Dover! AFTER Obama greatly increased medical and mental health aid to returning veterans!

I am increasing convinced that Sarah Palin is not merely an egotistical ignoramus, but a truly nasty, flint-hearted person.

The problem is, of COURSE, that the White House failed to vet the President's schedule with Mrs. Palin's event secretary. How was the former governor to know that the President spent Veterans Day at Arlington (or on any of the other occasions) giving "acknowledgment" to the troops if no one bothered to keep her apprised?

What we have here is a true breakdown in failed governor-White House protocol.

What John Cole seemingly forgot to add is "If you skip a day genuflecting before the troops, only to pick it up again the next day, in conservatives' eyes, you hit the terrorist-enabling double: You acknowledge that the right was correct in attacking your lack of honor to the military, AND you're cravenly using the military for shameless photo ops. But at least Dubya's daddy was avenged. That's worth all we've sacrificed, right?

Like SadOldVet, I came here to use the word "regurgitated." I was quite struck that her specific criticism, when pressed, was an echo of the grievances people had against the Bush administration in the middle part of the Iraq war, when it became clear that the forces sent lacked the equipment and tactics needed to deal with an IED & terror based insurgent strategy.

I don't think one should underestimate the effectiveness of this. People can nod their heads along in agreement because it pokes a memory. But it's another striking example of Palin coming across as a simulacra rather than the real thing.

slader sez: " an egotistical ignoramus, but a truly nasty, flint-hearted person."

Before the comma, pretty much, after it, not so sure.

I think she has surrounded herself with a posse of like minded souls, ill informed, undereducated, and lacking any interest in topics pertinent to a political life.

Who is her chief of staff? Her media consultant? And what are their bona fides?

The catty nastyness has a high school clique feel to it; her talons deployed without thought, then basking in the adulation of her peers.

Palin ROCKS!

Her flock are what's the matter with Kansas. They are sick of "Eastern Establishment" Republicans who agitate for their issues (teh gays, abortion, and more theocracy) and don't deliver shit. No way they are gonna vote for another suit (like Romney). It's gotta be a true believer or NOTHIN'!

One teeny problem with that tho. The heretofore real powers in the party (old time money like the Vanderbilts, Rockafellers - and the Wall Street crowd) are never going to support an uncontrollable loon like good ol' Sarah.

Just watch and remember I said this: sometime around 2012, she is gonna walk out of the Republican party and take about half of it with her.

Get plenty of popcorn; it's gonna be a lot of fun to watch. The Republicans are about to become a historical footnote - like the Whigs.

GO SARAH!

maybe if she has an "innie" she sell your buffalo wings up there at the top...

so that the homeland can be safe and they can fight for democratic ideals around our world.

With all do respect to our badly used members of the military, they are doing no such thing. We are militarily occupying two countries and it is time to stop.

"due" dammit. "due respect"

In Palin-speak the only way to properly "honor" our troops is to get them killed in a noble and gallant cause.

Palin is the clearest example of the rising dysfunction: conservative identity politics that votes solely on tribalism and flatly refuses to seriously consider policy.

That's a shift that has to be addressed and discussed. It's a mistake, though, to do so only through the lens of deconstructing Palin and her daily idiocies. She is the most obvious symptom, not the cause. Useful discussion will focus on the underlying problem.

Palin, the master of the sound bite, was interviewed by one of the Fox Chix yesterday. She said she stood on the shoulders of other feminists, and uttered the names of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to show her deep historical knowledge of feminism.

I wonder if she knows that both women started out as abolitionists, and only when freed males slaves got the vote (HA!) did they fight for women’s suffrage. But then I wonder if she knows anything about the two, other than that parroting their names is evidence of a towering intellect. . .

Where is the Democratic Party leadership?

During a Republican presidency, any such statement would be immediately denounced by the political leadership of the GOP, and the person responsible would have hell to pay.

The Democratic leadership, alas, is silent.

Limpdick Democrats never fail to live up to their stereotype.

At some point, an honest accounting of leading progressive websites who obsessively cover her every utterance needs to be taken. If you admit you shoot fish in a barrel by preaching to the converted exclusively for web traffic, fine. If you think you're doing some sort of service, then you're more delusional than she is.

Who knows if Palin actually believes her own nonsense... and who cares? She's learned to play the media and her critics like a fiddle. Every little while, she comes up with an unprovoked, outrageous grievance that leaves her opponents angry and befuddled, while she gets more airtime to sell books and delight her followers. Enough with catering to her manufactured outrage already.

I>But in Grown-Up Land, the Commander in Chief has honored the service and sacrifices of servicemen and women repeatedly. He did so at Dover Air Force Base last month; just as he did at Fort Hood and on Veterans' Day this month. Obama, in just the past few weeks, has met with U.S. troops in Florida, Alaska, Texas, and in South Korea.

Yes, but in Real Amurika they know that those were just photo ops. Dick Cheney said so.

I want to agree with shortstop, Palin is a sympton not the cause. I don't believe I've seen seen a really good discussion of where this wave of know-nothingness comes from and what, if anything, can be done about it.

It's fun to make fun of these people, but until they can be dealt with in some fashion they are going to continue to bleed this country.

Regarding these remarks, there is nothing remarkable about it. Palin is taking pot shots at Obama, she probably neither knows or cares about what he thinks about the troops or good strategy. She is entirely trying to appeal to people that fear Obama cause he is different. As SB said vile, but entirely in character.

Palin said, "I want to see them equipped."

What? When, recently, has anyone suggested that they are underequipped? It was under the Bush she worships that their families were having to buy them their armor.

Are any of Palin's kids in school these days? The girls were on the Oprah set. Can't she be charged with neglect up there in Wasilla? Also.

Time to stop pointing out that Palin is stupid and start pointing out that she is a vicious, hatemongering shit-head.

This is going to be the new right-wing hack narrative as previewed on Hannity's radio show yesterday. Because, apparently, President Obama is going to send less than the full 40,000 that McChrystal requested, he is underequipping, endangering, and generally disrespecting our brave soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. Be prepared.

There was an interesting story in the New York Post the other week - not a newspaper that supports the president and not by a writer who supports the president - telling about how the writer went to Arlington to visit the grave of a friend who had died in Afghanistan. When he was finished paying his respects, he turned and there was President Obama - no reports, no photographers, no publicity - paying respects and talking to any family member or person there about the wars, about his concern. The reporter wrote about how surprised he was that the president would do this, talk to anyone without any screening, ready to take a widow's accusations, or anything else. And it was done on a personal level, not to score points. In fact, it scored so many points with the writer that it changed his mind about the president.

As to Sarah Palin, she is the perfect embodiment of where every sexist put-down of women ever came from. I can't think of anything that could happen to her that I would think of as "too bad."

Day said: I wonder if she knows that both women started out as abolitionists, and only when freed males slaves got the vote (HA!) did they fight for women’s suffrage. But then I wonder if she knows anything about the two, other than that parroting their names is evidence of a towering intellect. . .

Surprise surprise, Day gets his history wrong once again. In fact, the women's suffrage movement began in the 1850s, before the slaves were freed, and it began as a result of the male-led abolitionist movement being unwilling to advocate for freedom and full civil rights for everyone.

Steve, I believe it might be nothing more than pride which makes you choose the former rather than the latter "course of action". Don't give in to the peer pressure coming from your audience because I truly believe those who say we ignore her at our own peril have it right.

True, it is progressives' outrage and hand-wringing that empowers her through her base. However, something occurred to me a few days ago that I find terribly unnerving: that if Democracy breaks down (both Republicans *and* Democrats lose their viability), it is the Palinites/Tea Baggers who form the most cohesive political force (not to mention, the most aggressive, and the least friendly to the idea of Democracy in general).

This woman was inches away from the highest office in the World! This is not a nightmare and it is no laughing matter (though Palin herself might be). Let us not forget that the '08 Presidential elections really happened!

I agree with others above that this is a particularly disgusting line of attack by Palin, even by the awful standards set by her and the rest of the right-wing.

Aside from all the ways that Obama has publically and privately honored the troops, Palin's complaint that she would like to see them equipped and provided with a "strategy" ought to get unanimous howls of outrage from everyone that really cares for the troops. After the way the Bush/Cheney administration's seven years of spinning their wheels in Afghanistan, their point-blank refusal for years to come up with any exit strategy for Iraq and repeated failures to provide adequate equipment for the troops (remember family members buying body armor for newly-deployed soldiers?!?), Palin's words should trigger a fight between howls of laughter and howls of outrage in everyone hearing them.

the republicans don't want obama to genuflect in front of the troops. the want him to genuflect in front of the generals and let them run our foreign policy.

Seems clear to me that Karl Rove is writing her talking points. The whole underequipping, not acknowledging thing was Bush/Cheney behavior, so naturally it must be projected on Obama.

In her view a proper way to honor the troops is to make sure they are fighting and dying forever whether there is any point for it or not. Got it.

President Obama has done more positive things for the US troops in these few months than Bush did in the entire time he was in the WH. I am so happy when I walk into the VA hospital and see his and Joe's pictures on the wall rather than those evil twins that were there before.

I guess today's Thanksgiving message from Obama doesn't count either: "But tomorrow is also a day to remember those who cannot sit down to break bread with those they love. The soldier overseas holding down a lonely post and missing his kids. The sailor who left her home to serve a higher calling. The folks who must spend tomorrow apart from their families to work a second job, so they can keep food on the table or send a child to school. We are grateful beyond words for the service and hard work of so many Americans who make our country great through their sacrifice. And this year, we know that far too many face a daily struggle that puts the comfort and security we all deserve painfully out of reach."

Or maybe he only wrote this in reaction to Sarah's criticism!

"Visit the troops and you are accused of using them as a photo op. Spend one day not genuflecting to the troops, you are accused of ignoring them." John Cole quoted by Steve Benen.

Sums up Republican projectionism very well!