POTUS vs. TOTUS

From an article in Midwest Voices calling out Gibbs for making his boss look bad by mocking Palin:

"Palin, of course, has been ridiculed -- and rightly so -- for scrawling several words such as "tax" and "energy" on her left hand..."

I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was a crime to write on your hand.

Here's the thing about the TOTUS criticism:

It's not wrong to use teleprompters. Everybody uses them. That's not the point. The point is that Obama is over-reliant on the dumb thing, and he so obviously has no clue what the speeches are even supposed to be when the teleprompter goes down. The point is that he doesn't appear to actually have a clue about what he's talking about without the teleprompter. The appearance is that he's an actor just reading his lines. That's the criticism. It's the puppet-like nature of TOTUS, not the fact that he uses a piece of technology.

The difference with Palin writing on her hand is obvious: She wrote on her hand. She knows the words because she wrote them. She wrote down her own answer. That kind of flies in the face of the whole, "Palin doesn't know what she's talking about. Someone else writes all of her stuff" theory doesn't it? I hardly think that someone else was writing on her hand.

And here's my theory about the whole thing:

We've all seen Palin during the VP debate furiously writing things down while the moderator was asking the question. I've watched her press conferences back in Alaska, and she does the same thing there. She writes down what she wants to say and then says it. I read somewhere that the questions were pre-screened. If that's true, she probably wrote down really quick what she wanted to say on her hand.

We've all had that moment when we thought of something extra that we wanted to say and the only thing to write on was our hand. Big flippin' deal. From the way the media has lost its mind over this, you'd think she murdered somebody.

The whole point of the mocking of TOTUS isn't that Obama reads his words; it's that he doesn't appear to know what he's reading because when the thing goes down, so does his speaking ability. Sarah Palin obviously knew what she was reading because she obviously wrote it herself. So the comparison of TOTUS and POTUS (Palm of the United States) is hilarious, and completely unfounded.

Palin's Team, Meghan McCain, and Sickos

An interesting article in the New York Times found here. Excerpts:
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Ms. Palin is quietly assembling the infrastructure of an expanding political operation. In addition to her longtime spokeswoman, Meghan Stapleton, Ms. Palin’s closest aides include members of her former running mate’s staff. Her current operations chief, Jason Recher, was a loyal lieutenant on Ms. Palin’s campaign plane — loyal to a point where some top McCain aides believed he was encouraging Ms. Palin’s “rogue” behavior. (According to internal campaign e-mail messages provided by a former top McCain aide, campaign officials considered firing Mr. Recher in October 2008 over “unacceptable” and “unprofessional” conduct during a rough swing through New Hampshire and Maine.)

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a badge of honor to be thought of negatively by some of these people,” Mr. Recher said. “But the bottom line is, I was incredibly proud to serve John McCain, and I couldn’t be happier to be part of Sarah Palin’s world now.”

People with knowledge of the daily briefings say they are conducted by phone or e-mail. They typically include information on the day’s news, material that could be relevant to an upcoming speech, or guidance about a candidate Ms. Palin might endorse. Mr. Scheunemann in particular is known as a conservative hawk on foreign affairs, in keeping with what many Palin-watchers have viewed as her steady shift to the right.

“She used to be a moderate Republican in Alaska, but I think all of these attacks have hardened her and made her absolutely more conservative,” said John Coale, a Washington lawyer and longtime Democratic fund-raiser who helped Ms. Palin set up her political action committee.

Mr. Coale, the husband of the Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, said the crowds that swarmed Ms. Palin’s campaign and book events have provided comfort amid so much criticism.

“I think there have been times during all the attacks when she thought, ‘This is just too much,’ ” Mr. Coale said. “But now I think it all makes her more determined. Whatever she’s doing now, it feels like a calling to her.”

Along with her paid advisers, Ms. Palin has been in regular contact with a kitchen cabinet of Washington power brokers: Mr. Barnett, a Democrat, on business and media decisions, and Fred Malek, an aide to Presidents Richard M. Nixon and the elder George Bush, on political matters.

When asked by The New York Times for others to speak to about Ms. Palin, her spokeswoman, Ms. Stapleton, mentioned the Republican media adviser Mary Matalin (who has been in sporadic contact with Ms. Palin’s camp) and Dana Perino, the former White House press secretary for George W. Bush (who seemed barely to know her)....

“I think if Sarah has a passion, it’s that she really believes that there is a silent majority out there that she wants the folks in Washington to know about,” said Kristan Cole, a friend in Wasilla.
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Not sure how reliable the New York Times is, but I think the parts by Jason Recher and John Coale are interesting.

And Meghan McCain is an idiot. From her gross misunderstanding of Palin's remarks on Iran to Chris Wallace, to saying that the Tea Parties are due to an innate racism, Meghan is more of a pain in the butt than her father will ever be. As for Rush Limbaugh, see my post below. It's so stupid.

And can the Left do anything without sexual innunendo? First teabaggers and now hand jobs. Some people can't think about anything without making it about sex. No wonder the Palin-haters are obsessed with her legs.

And a note on the teleprompter: It's okay to use one. Yes, that's right. No one is saying that you should never use a teleprompter. But relying on it to such an extent that people doubt you can go to the bathroom unless it tells you to, is a tad extreme.

Fox and Friends and TOTUS Falls for POTUS

Here's the F&F gang talking about Palin's Tea Party speech and the writing on her hand:



And here's a great piece in the American Thinker. TOTUS falls in love with POTUS (Palm of the United States):
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From: TOTUS (Teleprompter of the United States)

To: Sarah Palin's Hand

Subject: Memorandum

I hope you will not think this too forward of me but I noticed your picture in this article and must say I was instantly and deeply smitten. I assure you I am not in the habit of writing passionate missives to strange hands but I feel instantly we have so much in common.

First, I must begin with an explanation of who I am and what I do.

I work, as you might have heard for the President. I tell him everything he needs to say, whether it is to a handful of reporters in a kids' classroom or a speech before thousands. It's true that now and then he ignores me. But every time he does, he runs into big problems. Like the time he told a swank crowd in San Francisco that those Americans who didn't live in such rich places were clinging bitterly to their guns and God. Or something. (I really try not to pay attention to his many goofs when he's away from me because it makes me sad, knowing what pitfalls my presence could have avoided.)

Do I always rescue him when he remembers to pack me, you might wonder? Well, no. I mean I also phonetically spell out any word I think might be problematic, but who the hell supposed that the president of the Harvard Law Review wouldn't know that corpsman is not pronounced "corpseman"? And then -- the nerve -- he tried to blame me for that.

It is apparent that you play a much smaller role in Palin's life than I do in Obama's. I mean she only wrote a couple of words on you and they were simply memory aids not speeches. I say this not to denigrate your position nor to suggest how much more important I am than you are, but really, it seems to me in any long term relationship one of the partners has to have more time to devote to the everyday things, and, my dear Palin's hand, it seems to me that of the two of us, that's you.

Of course, you have to accompany her and I have to accompany him, which means we may not get to spend a great deal of time together. You'll be mostly in Wasilla and I'll be mostly on Air Force One traveling from one failed Hail Mary trip to another -- Copenhagen, Copenhagen, New Jersey, Virginia, Massachusetts... well you get the picture.

But absence makes the heart grow fonder they say.

If you have any interest in me, could you just give me a wave the next time she's speaking? I'll know what you mean and I'll try to respond as soon as he gives me a breather.
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Poor TOTUS. Methinks he will welcome a new master in 2012. In the meantime, we must sympathize with the poor, lonely piece of technology, gazing from afar upon its unrequited love.