News Roundup for 10/6/11

Sarah Palin

-Headline of the day-
"Palin: Already Almost Forgotten."

When Sarah Palin announced she wouldn't seek the GOP nomination for presidency, she said she wasn't going away, but that she would "continue driving the discussion for freedom and free markets."

To which former Bush speechwriter David Frum answers, "Um, probably not."

"Sarah Palin’s political voice had dwindled well before she announced her decision not to run," he continues. "Now it will sink altogether into inaudibility. She will be no kind of force in future national discussions. She will have no sway over party debates. She will retain some starpower for a little while longer. She may for another cycle or two be able to help certain candidates for certain political offices raise some money. Even that will fade within two more years or four. Her political career was brief, bizarre, and sordid. But now at least it is definitively finished."

Seriously, this whole post is great. It's like an obituary written by someone who didn't like the deceased very much and wanted to get one last good whack in before they started shoveling in the dirt. He says she was a phony who was "never even a very good con artist" and that the people who fell for her bullshit were "people who passionately wished to be fooled."

Sure, she'll pop up occasionally, but for the most part she sit in the green room with people like Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter, waiting for the calls for an encore that never come. I like to imagine her as a sort of political Norma Desmond (look it up, kids), rattling around a decaying mansion in the end, waiting for past glories to come again and keeping an eye on the Behring Strait through a big spyglass, in the event that Vladimir Putin pops his head up. There he is! It's Putin! Max! Max! Call Fox News! I'm ready for my live feed, Mr. Hannity!

However it ends up, it's over. Those fifteen minutes are finally up. Everything from here on out is epilogue. (FrumForum)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, President Obama's here and he's going to tell us all about fighting terr'ism! Yay!


Click for animation

In the words of the great Walt Kelly, "We have met the enemy and he is us." (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Sarah Palin's Die Hard Supporters 'Stunned,' 'Disappointed.'"

Wow. You mean both of them? (ABC News)