Palin in Scottsdale

Just when we thought the Arizona Freak Show couldn't get any more grotesque, Sarah Palin buys a $1.7 million house near Hayden Road and Dynamite "Boulevard" in north Scottsdale. Apparently the title release came through a robo-signed (fraudulent) procedure. The Kooks write better real-life material than I could invent. The New York Times did a whimsical piece on "neighborly advice for the Palins," including wear sunscreen and watch for rattlesnakes. But it made north Scottsdale sound like a real community, which it's not. In fact, she'll fit right in with the white-apartheid culture there, where people don't want to know their neighbors, fear going south of Bell Road, shout down opposing views in city council meetings and live somewhere else for most of the year. The shocker would have been if she had bought a hundred-year-old bungalow in the Phoenix historic districts.

She will find simpatico "neighbors" who believe the banking panic was caused by the socialist Community Reinvestment Act, that America is under siege from Mexican immigration, which somehow just happened despite the resistance by the God-fearing Anglos, and the Patriot Act is too politically correct. Her motorcade can take her to outer-belt chain book stores for signings. Maybe Russell Pearce can get an audience. Maybe she can get an audience with the Badged Ego. One must wonder what Sen. John McCain, R-Fox News, must think. From the authoritative reporting of the presidential campaign, it seems the two didn't get along. McCain is rarely in the state anyway. Not for nothing did daughter Meghan flee to a bachelorette pad in west Hollywood.

Will Palin run for Jon Kyl's Senate seat? She could win it, no question. She's with her base now, far more than in Alaska where her half term as governor left much bad blood. Will she use Arizona as a base from which to launch a presidential campaign for 2012? Why should we care? Alas, we must. She is able to galvanize the white-right in a way no other Republican can. The fact that she has no accomplishments and plays up her arrogant ignorance makes no difference (here's a recent example). Far from being a liability in today's America, it is an asset.

President Obama has done nothing to deserve another term. But the combination of overseeing the killing of Osama bin Laden, making peace with Wall Street and the "financial services industry," and preventing action on climate change, thus limiting the enmity of the powerful fossil fuel interests, probably guarantees his re-election. It doesn't help that the party of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and even Reagan has a raggedy stable of contenders. Gingrich imploded almost immediately, and he's too fat and ugly to be president in our telegenic age. Mitch Daniels' wife won't let him run. Tim Pawlenty has that little deadly bridge incident to deal with, aside from an utterly vapid personality. Mitt Romney would be a serious candidate, but he can't be crazy enough to please the base and many Americans won't vote for a Mormon. A taste of Republican "reform" plans for Medicare has awakened many Americans, but they remain restive and ignorant, waiting to be led in any direction as long as they can keep driving to the Super Wal-Mart.

Meanwhile, corporate profits are at a record, the banksters are back at their rackets, real reform on a host of fronts has been stymied and the military state continues to grow. One can almost sense the fix is in.

Which brings us back to Palin. She'd be a perfect replacement for Kyl, who did nothing for Arizona in all his years in the Senate, with the somewhat exception of helping settle tribal water rights that had to be addressed anyway. But the Senate would bore Palin. If being chief executive of a state wasn't enough, imagine her as one of 100. So will she run for president? We scribes can only hope. She could go far in the Republican primaries. Frank Rich was worried that the wrong combination of events could even put her in the White House. It would serve us right.

Sarah Palin of Scottsdale. How appropriate.

 

Comments

[cal Lash]

I should not have ate the chile verde at Ranch market (16st and Roosevelt)before reading this column. I just puked it all over my puter.
A really old republican, cabrone cal

[cal Lash]

RE:phxsunfan for your info from Tornado.
Just for the record, even though I have been here 61 years I am from Iowa and I love da heat. Hancock and I used to hunt the desert North of Sunnyslope. Wayne Hancock.

[Nero]

Yawn. Please stop interrupting my fiddling with silly talk about silly people.

[soleri]

I don't see Palin running for the Senate from Arizona and if she does, I don't see her winning. Arizonans are obviously not the brightest rubes strolling the midway, but the Palin con could be spotted by a blind narcoleptic sucking on Xanax. I think leaving Alaska will also permanently damage her brand by removing its only salient selling points: her Mooseburgers and "oil expert" bona fides. I don't blame her for wanting to leave. She's a permanent celebrity now and can live anywhere she chooses. Why Scottsdale? Because it's not a city so much as a consumer experience. It's a perfect fit for the half-term halfwit whose idea of citizenship means using public office to settle personal scores.

I see Palin "running for president" not to win but to burnish her star power among those who think the national destiny revolves around their cultural resentments. Obviously party honchos struck gold when they realized the average Republican could care less about actual issues than having Real American "attitudes" about abortion, gay marriage, guns, illegal Mexicans, and Scary Black People.

The nomination is Mitt Romney's to lose. Given the economy, the election may be his to lose as well. Romney, the ultra-white family man, may seem a tad exotic for being a Mormon, but the dirty little secret about Republicans is that they know as much about Jesus as they do floating currency exchanges. If Romney were a Democrat, he'd lose the general election in a landslide, but the Right-Wing Noise Machine will sanitize Willard of "otherness" if not all weirdness.

Here's a column by wunder-pundit Ezra Klein on our primary national challenge (short version: our chronic inability to engage reality). http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/if-it-can-go-wrong-it-will-go-wrong-and-itll-be-our-fault/2011/05/19/AFW9kRAH_blog.html
Sarah Palin knows something about us and it's not flattering in the least. It's that if we could somehow think, however remotely, that she's qualified to be president, we are utter fools. She may well be right.

[phxSUNSfan]

I agree 100% with Soleri...recent polls, as found on abc15, the Republic, and other local websites have surprised me as they have indicated that not more than 35% of Arizonans would vote for Palin, 57% would not and the rest are undecided.

Cal, I think we actually make too big of a deal about the heat and how many people could tolerate the Arizona desert. I think the worst aspect of the summer sun is the heat island effect (which generally affects night time temperatures). I've visited and lived all over the U.S. and have had to endure worse heat than Arizona's deserts produce except on few occasions. I've visited Minnesota one year during the winter, then summer and experienced both extremes (subzero temps and 90 or higher with great humidity).

It is those night time temps that get to people. Another reason to dislike sprawl and those who move to North Scottsdale. The desert up there is beautiful but the McMansions mar the splendor. Now throw Palin into the mix! The land has been raped...

[cal Lash]

May ED ABBEY cast a plague of locust on those land rapers!

[Rate Crimes]

No nation is more deserving of its destiny than that which cannot discriminate between the issues deserving of its contemplation.

[jmav]

Sarah Palin's new residency adds to Arizona's reputation as a white right intolerant place. Whatever she decides to do to the state, it will only make matters worse. A place where right wing ideology trumps rationality, moderation and commercial interests. Many professionals and businesses have decided against Arizona as a place to be due to this terrible reputation.

[jmav]

The beat generation and flower power moved to San Francisco in earlier times to be among like minds. Today Arizona is the destination of choice for white right firebrands. The political descendents of the KKK and John Birch have found their center in Maricopa County. Run!!

[morecleanair]

What about Michelle Bachmann? She's articulate, telegenic and does not have a voice (like Palin's) that can peal paint? She's a tax attorney and may even have a modicum understanding of how to analyze numbers. She's an Iowa girl who might do well in the Heartland primaries. Granted, she's a whacko, but maybe has a little gravitas about her? The only word that comes to mind when I think of Palin is SHALLOW!

[cal Lash]

I believe that Palin would take great pleasure in aiming her rifle from a hovering helicopter at "liberals" just as easily as she shoots a wolf.
And is "the white right" so blinded by hatred that it has little insight into how harmful they are to the freedom they espouse.

[eclecticdog]

I would hope AZ would not elect Palin senator, but I have my doubts. Her presidential bid is about as serious as Trump's and aims only for stuffing her coffers fuller. But really I doubt she will run for senator too. Though I have to wonder how financially savvy she is by overpaying for her new Scottsdale digs - she should have been able to get the place for under a million.

morecleanair - I wouldn't let Bachmann balance my checkbook let alone craft tax or budgetary policy. She's a moron, albeit an ambitious moron (and just goes to show how far the legal profession has fallen).

[AWinter]

Was the person who shot at an airplane practicing for the welcoming committee?

Now that AZ is the officially crowned Kook frontier state ('Help! I need to be choppered out like after the fall of Saigon.') I'd like to know what the Kook solution is. "It would serve us right." and previous writings point me to "By Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he is driving out demons." That is, keep serving up the full Kook until people hit rock bottom and finally take a stand.

But things can always get worse - and not get better after that. Swallowing the full Kook medicine to rid us of their irrationality can be a dangerously self-fulfilling prophecy. I remember someone from a less developed place writing "The level of injustice and corruption that has become normal is unbelievable. For some there is always enough money for SUVs and breast implants."

[soleri]

I think Bachmann has a degree of discipline and self-possession that eludes Palin, but otherwise, she's amazingly ignorant of basic American history and Constitutional law. The thing that I almost always notice about right-wing populists is their incuriosity about different people, nations, cultures, etc. Somehow, if it doesn't reference themselves, they see it as somehow hostile or irrelevant. It's this blindness about other others that's really the core ideological feature of the tea-party crowd. They're nice people who see themselves as exceptional because they not black or strung out on crack or working in some menial job. It's why their politics easily veers into nihilism. A lack of empathy is probably the first requirement for joining the hard right and engaging in fantasy political solutions.

[mark sanchez]

Oh God, what else?

[azrebel]

Is there some kind of cosmic connection between General Sherman speaking in Maricopa, AZ a century ago and Bristol Palin purchasing a home there in 2011 ??

Sounds like a show for the SCI_FY channel.

[eclecticdog]

A time warp maybe? Sherman's curse took 120 years to enter the jetstream, circle the globe and then drop back to earth to stir an Alaskan snow drift to deliver up the Palins to AZ?

[Mick]

Wait a minute everyone!!

I hope Palin runs for President and WINS.

There is nothing more evil and repugnant than a Republican. I'm impoverished because there are no jobs. Millions of Americans can't get any job at all because Bush and the Republicans deliberately wrecked our economy, sent our jobs to Asian, and imported millions of legal and illegal immigrants to work for cheap.

Obama is a hopeless loser who has done nothing to promote job creation.

Frankly, I don't give a flip about any issue except getting a job. When you can't buy groceries NOTHING ELSE MATTERS. Too many Americans are eating out of garbage cans and dumpsters.

So, Obama is a horrible choice, and so is any Republican. Let's try a complete whack-job nut. Maybe if Palin screws it up enough, it will speed the United States to a point of implosion or demolition or a total crisis, which just might cause actual, real change.

I would just as soon have Palin in the White House as any of the other Republican traitors. Jeb Bush, who is a huge traitor, would be the worst of the bunch.

I need a job. Is anyone hiring in Arizona? In Florida, nurses are getting fired, along with everyone else. The true unemployment rate (U-6 number) in the county where I live is almost 20%. HELP!!!

[soleri]

Mick, you've got my sympathy. There are jobs but unless you're willing to work for minimum wage plus, I can't tell you what to do.

One reason why Palin won't be elected president (and won't seriously run for the job) is that the business elite understand the danger she represents. I'm not sure if our situation is so dire that only a collapse of the decadent order will finally wake up people. Generally, you'd be better off pushing the nation to peaceful change since the alternative is rather unpredictable. We keep talking here about a "man on a white horse" saving the day (read: military coup). I'm skeptical but I see the thread of logic in that idea. What I don't see is elite opinion waking up to the damage that is currently being done to the nation.

We had a discussion about six months ago here about whether a revolution is our only hope. I voted no since the right has most of the firepower and insanity on their side. When I bring up the subject with people on the outside (I do so very gingerly) most are stunned that anyone could think such nonsense. But we shouldn't ignore the signals like yours. When people lose hope in the system and there's no political vector even expressing their needs, the situation will become volatile. Yet, as we saw with Weimar Germany, the crazies often win the argument. Here's Kunstler's take from yesterday: http://www.kunstler.com/index.php

[Mick]

Thanks, Soleri.

Here is the truth about the job market in Florida.

Virtually NO ONE can get a job.

The Wal-Mart stores have been periodically CUTTING jobs.

The McDonald's restaurants have been cutting staff. If you venture into a McDonalds during a non-peak time, you will find that the staff has been put "off the clock" and are sitting around waiting for customers to appear. Workers at McDonalds may be physically present in the restaurant for 10 hours, but only are paid for about 3. If they don't like it, they can quit, and have no job at all.

Many nurses in Florida can't get jobs, especially new graduates or very experienced nurses (read: over 50).

Unemployed engineers are as common as dirt in Florida. When the space shuttle program ends, another 15,000 or so workers will be laid off.

Houses that were once purchased for $300K and up are now selling for less than $100K, because there are no buyers, because NO ONE can get a job.

Former bank managers and vice-presidents are on Food Stamps and sometimes eat out of the dumpsters behind the local Winn-Dixie store.

Governor Scott has cut school budgets, and numerous teachers are being fired.

Walgreens has laid off several thousand pharmacists in Florida over the past 2 years, and pharmacists can't get jobs either.

NO ONE is hiring anyone, for the most part, in Florida. You can't even get a full-time job cleaning toilets or flipping burgers. Those jobs are part-time, with no benefits.

Former construction workers, bankers, engineers, teachers, and all the rest are sitting around, angrily talking about guns, mayhem, and how much they hate the government.

I actually would welcome a revolution. It is better than quietly starving to death. The leadership of our country is completely evil, and determined to wipe us out through deliberate job destruction. They want to make us work for nothing while we live short, bitter, brutish, miserable lives. We don't have much to lose.

When enough people realize that they are doomed to miserable lives and have nothing to lose, then maybe we will get the revolution that we need.

The core issue: THERE ARE NO JOBS.

[Jacob Hughes]

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/29005-N-82nd-St-Scottsdale-AZ-85266/8037192_zpid/#{scid=hdp-site-map-bubble-address}

Palin's new compound gets a Walk Score of 8. Because walkability is for gays and liberals.

[cal Lash]

As an ole crippled conservative Republican I like walkability as I can still gimp along at a good pace and ride a recumbent.
I am storing my 4 wheel drive caddy in Ed Abbeys Sahuaro compound in the great Sonoran desert until I need it. I am saving it for the coming war so I can be a really old Mad Max. I know some really conservative republican folks that dont own cars and live in downtown's like Austin