(Photo via an old Joe Scarborough post: Scarborough: "Is Bush An 'Idiot'?" )

In a post I did last week I was asking the whereabouts of George Bush. We now have a Bush sighting, and it's not about him defending Dick Cheney's lust for torture.

CQ has some excerpts from a new "inside the Bush White House" book coming out shortly, and what we find is Dubya was not much of a fan of Sarah Palin.

Bush also is quoted as saying Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was "being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for" after McCain announced her as his vice presidential running mate.

“I’m trying to remember if I’ve met her before. I’m sure I must have.” His eyes twinkled, then he asked, “What is she, the governor of Guam?”

Everyone in the room seemed to look at him in horror, their mouths agape. When Ed told him that conservatives were greeting the choice enthusiastically, he replied, “Look, I’m a team player, I’m on board.” He thought about it for a minute. “She’s interesting,” he said again. “You know, just wait a few days until the bloom is off the rose.” Then he made a very smart assessment.

“This woman is being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for,” he said. “She hasn’t spent one day on the national level. Neither has her family. Let’s wait and see how she looks five days out.” It was a rare dose of reality in a White House that liked to believe every decision was great, every Republican was a genius, and McCain was the hope of the world because, well, because he chose to be a member of our party.

When he says he's a team player all that meant was he didn't want to offend the wingnut base and their love affair with an unqualified VP choice. It's no surprise that he bangs McCain, but what will his loyal followers say after they read him attacking the teabagger Queen?

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(Sen. John Sparkman - D-Alabama - I know what you're thinking!)

Before Blue Dogs arrived on the political scene, we had Dixiecrats. That bunch of Southern Senators who always seemed to break with the rest of their party and go off on tangents, mostly about Civil Rights legislation at the time.

One such Dixiecrat Senator was John_Sparkman who was vehemently opposed to the re-election of Harry Truman during the 1948 election based on his proposed Civil Rights Bills, pending in the Senate.

Here he is, explaining his position, during the Sunday interview program "Chicago University Roundtable" from June 13, 1948 - the subject was "The Southern Democrats and the Convention".

Sen.Sparkman: “In our primary that was held May 4th, with runoff on June 1st, we selected delegates to the Democratic Convention to be held in Philadelphia. All of those delegate, every one without exception, is pledged against Truman. Furthermore, we named our Democratic electors who are to cast Alabama’s vote in the Electoral College in November . . .in December – elected in November. Every one of those electors, there are eleven of them, made a pledge to the people of Alabama prior to that election that, if chosen as an elector, each one of them pledged that he would not, under any condition, vote for President Truman.”

Talk about inspiring Party Unity. The irony to all this, is Sparkman wound up being Adlai Stevenson's Vice-Presidential running mate in 1952.

Somehow, it now makes sense why Stevenson didn't win in 1952.

How we wish we could quit you, Mrs. Palin. But the right wing blogosphere is celebrating the First Annual Sarah Palin Day, the anniversary of the glorious hour she was announced as McCain's running mate.

No. Really. I am not making that up. Honest. Look at the Google Blog Search yourself.

PS. Anyone who brings up "Obama Derangement Syndrome" after looking at those blogs can smooch my Left-of-Barack Socialist butt.

Open Thread below...

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John McCain embraces his former running mate Sarah Palin's "death panel" rhetoric on Sean Hannity's show last night and throws in a little fear mongering about socialized medicine for good measure. I want to know when McCain is going to give up his government health care since he thinks it's so scary.

HANNITY: Senator, your running mate, Governor Sarah Palin, came out with a very hard-hitting posting on Facebook, which I agreed with especially in light of what we've seen in Great Britain and Canada and elsewhere.

And then we had the Obama administration that brought back this book that the Bush administration had gotten rid of, "Your Life, Your Choices." They go through a series of scenarios with veterans at VA hospitals and nursing homes, which basically says, well, you know, you don't want to be a burden to society, to your family.

Is that the kind of death panel that maybe people were afraid of when they read pages 425 to 430 of the House bill?

MCCAIN: Yes, but I think they're also concerned because they're well read, they're well informed, they're knowledgeable. They know what's happening in other countries where basically there is a rationing of health care particularly when people reach a certain age as to what kind of treatment they can and if they can get it.

The incredible delays in acquiring that kind of care, so I think it's and not just that, I think it's the example of government-run health care in other countries which is not — America is not ready for that.

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While talking about the dustup between David Letterman and Sarah Palin, Republican strategist John Feehery instantly tried to say that no one made jokes about Chelsea Clinton. Contessa Brewer wouldn’t let that go and stopped him right in his tracks, which led Feehery to try and claim that Chelsea wasn’t 14 when the jokes were being made. Brewer then corrected that and reminded him, complete with finger wag and all, that Chelsea was only 12.

Considering how offended Sarah Palin is by Letterman’s jokes, I am sitting here wondering if she will boycott Rush Limbaugh now. Ok you caught me – I’m not wondering. We all know the answer to that, just like we saw how she never seemed to worry about the “jokes” her former running-mate made about Chelsea. 

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(The Shoes of Billy Sol Estes - no doubt the Alligator had other plans.)

What had to be one of the biggest scandals of the 1960's centered around one Billy Sol Estes whose influence and fraud wandered through many high places in Washington, allegedly all the way up to the office of Lyndon Johnson. Estes was the subject of a Senate Sub-committee investigation on political corruption which led to a startling number of discoveries and an even more startling number of "suicides" in the process. Although Estes was convicted of fraud and corruption charges and sentenced to prison, his conviction was overturned by a Supreme Court decision that ruled the massive amount of publicity the investigation garnered made a fair trial impossible.

Still, the allegations were serious enough about LBJ to force Kennedy to consider dropping him as running mate in 1964. And he probably would have, had fate not intervened.

On July 2, 1962, at the height of the investigation, ABC's long-running Sunday talk show Issues and Answers featured a dialogue between Texas Attorney General Will Wilson and Senator Edmund Muskie, who was a member of the Senate Subcommittee investigating the Estes scandal.

(Sen. Sam Irvin (left) - Bill Sol Estes (right))

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Colin Powell's recent remarks thumping on Republicans for wandering off into the wilderness under the guidance of people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter -- not to mention Karl Rove and Sean Hannity -- really seem to have upset at least Limbaugh and Hannity.

Limbaugh shot back by telling Powell to go join the Democrats. (And you wouldn't blame Powell if he took the defacto head of the conservative movement up on the invitation.)

Now, just for the record, here's what Powell actually said:

Powell said the GOP is "getting smaller and smaller" and "that's not good for the nation." He also said he hopes that emerging GOP leaders, such as House Minority Whip Cantor, will not keep repeating mantras of the far right.

"The Republican Party is in deep trouble," Powell told corporate security executives at a conference in Washington sponsored by Fortify Software Inc. The party must realize that the country has changed, he said. "Americans do want to pay taxes for services," he said. "Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less."

...He blasted radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, saying he does not believe that Limbaugh or conservative icon Ann Coulter serve the party well. He said the party lacks a "positive" spokesperson. "I think what Rush does as an entertainer diminishes the party and intrudes or inserts into our public life a kind of nastiness that we would be better to do without," Powell said.

He also said that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate last year, is "a very accomplished person" but became "a very polarizing figure." He said the polarization was created by Palin's advisers.

Powell said he does not want Republicans to turn into Democrats but rather to build a vibrant party.

Hannity responded by devoting the better part of his Fox News show last night to the subject. First he had on Karl Rove to talk about it, which of course meant we got a Rove Moment: When he informed us that Powell's remarks about the toxic value of Limbaugh's hatemongering amounted to trying to silence Limbaugh. Because exercising your free-speech rights actually becomes censorship and suppression if you happen to say anything unpleasant about Republicans, no matter how truthful.

This, coming from the guy who never hesitated to suggest that Democrats were treasonous for criticizing George W. Bush's handling of the Iraq war. Or anything else.

Then Hannity brought on famous non-American Mark Steyn to further agree with him that the problem with Republicans is that they aren't conservative enough. (We like this advice, because it is a sure loser for the GOP.)

In any event, these exchanges produced two classic moments from Hannity of the pure, distilled Planet Wingnuttia worldview. (It's always fascinating, because it's such an alien world from the one the rest of us live in, and it has a certain amusement value as well.)

Hannity [to Rove]: He attacks Rush Limbaugh, and we'll get into that in just a second here. And I'm sitting back and he talked about the nastiness of Rush on the radio, which I don't hear, ever.

[...]

Hannity [to Steyn]: Can you name one area now where Republicans are more conservative than they were when Reagan was president? Because I can't.

Um, the hard part is figuring out where to start. There are so many to choose from.

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In the latest chapter of their campaign of contrasts, Barack Obama and John McCain are set to mark two very different milestones this week. On Thursday, Obama will accept his party's nomination on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s' "I Have a Dream" speech. But in an altogether different act of symbolism the next morning, John McCain will announce his running mate on his 72nd birthday. That date also just happens to be three years to the day President Bush presented McCain with a birthday cake in Arizona even as Hurricane Katrina slammed ashore in New Orleans.

In Denver, an estimated crowd of 75,000 people will fill Invesco Field on Thursday to hear Obama accept the Democratic presidential nomination. The symbolism of Obama, the first African-American nominee of a major American political party, harkening back to Dr. King's "fierce urgency of now" won't be lost on the convention delegates, some of whom saw King deliver his speech in Washington, DC on August 28th, 1963. (No doubt, that symbolism is lost on the National Review, which proclaimed "quite probable that King, were he alive today, would not vote for Barack Obama." John McCain's country club economics, dismal record on civil rights and consistent opposition to the creation of the Martin Luther King holiday itself suggest otherwise.)

That debate aside, McCain's image management problems begin in earnest the next day with his scheduled VP announcement in Dayton. McCain's decision to highlight his birth in 1936 can only resurrect the age issue, one which he has tried to laugh off by joking, "I am older than dirt, with more scars than Frankenstein." Whoever McCain picks - Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Rob Portman, Tom Ridge, Joe Lieberman or even Colin Powell - the timing is not without risks, to say the least.

And it only gets worse.

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