The very first thought I had about Sarah Palin last fall was "how can she even think about leaving her young children, her DOWN SYNDROME INFANT and her terrified pregnant unmarried teenage daughter to take the second highest job in the land? She is crazy!"

I am a working mother and a proud feminist but even I know that there is no way that anyone could do a decent job as vice president of the United States with that much crisis going on at home. Given that John McCain would have been the oldest (and least healthy) president in 100 years I really did not want to trust my national security to a frazzled worn-out mother who may have spend the previous night up nursing every 4 hours and calming nightmares. No. Thank. You.

The mere fact that Sarah says she can "do it all" shows how unstable and how OVER EGOED she is. Sarah Palin is what my grandfather would describe as having "not enough sense to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel."

Dr. Strangelove (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb) is a great film.

It's also a satire of the Cold War mentality.

General Ripper was insane.

What does that say about SP?

"You can't fight in here - this is the War Room!"

I echo all the WTFs I've read earlier, and The Jim pretty much covered the more egregious statements contained in this write-up. Especially when you consider how many women with children there are in politics.

This article is pretty damned ridiculous, like it's subject.

it's embarrassing to see you publicly whack off and share your Palin fantasies. get a room.

and now to add to your list... KKK luminaries, Monarchical trapping... Bobby Knight? yeah, good ole Bobby Knight, the guy who threw a potted plant at a 60 year old secretary in a fit of pique. the man who assaulted numerous males, as well, and held his job as long as he did only because he was a cash cow. he was and is a disgusting excuse for a human. he was and is a disgusting example of abuse of power.

which, it seems, is something that attracts you.

have you considered that you may have masochistic tendencies? you can probably find someone where you are and pay to satisfy that desire. please do not try to impose that desire on the rest of the nation with this fantasy-based view of Palin as something other than a small town, worthless sniping political hack.

This nation deserves much better than Palin. I would imagine you do to.

That was a righteous head of steam you built up. Very good work! Instead of playing grammar Nazi, I just stopped reading about halfway through, and hit the letters page instead.

I wholeheartedly agree with the majority of your criticisms. However, I do have a nit. The split infinitive is perfectly okay in English, and usually sounds less pretentious than otherwise. Furthermore, the convolutions necessary to avoid splitting an infinitive can change the meaning of the phrase.

Are these phrases all equivalent in meaning? Read them aloud and tell me which one sounds the best.

1. To seek out new life, and new civilizations. Boldly to go where no man has gone before.

2. To seek out new life, and new civilizations. To go boldly where no man has gone before.

3. To seek out new life, and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before.

My take:

#1 sounds like NPR

#2 sounds like the Enterprise crew are idiots and rushing ahead into certain doom

#3 sounds courageous, and bold

The reality is that split infinitives had always been fine in English, until some monks in the middle ages decided that, since you can't split an infinitive in Latin, you can't do it in English either. This doesn't make a lot of sense, given that English is a Germanic language, and not a Romance language. I, for one, am not about to grant posthumous permission to a bunch of brownshirts to corrupt my language!

[cue -- My Country 'Tis of Thee]

I meant to say --

Furthermore, the convolutions often taken to pompously avoid splitting an infinitive can change the meaning of the phrase.

Try putting pompously on either side of the infinitive without sounding like an English teacher. I dare you.

8. Yes, but won't new polls come out showing a post-resignation fade? That's possible, but she has another ace in her sleeve: the announcement of 1/1 through 6/30 PAC fund raising, which is due by 7/31.

Maybe Palin can build interest by resigning from that too.

she doesn't know about the most basic institutions of the government she, in her endless narcissism, believes she would be fit to run

(Asked whether she’d be subjected to the same “political bloodsport” if she went for national office, Palin told Snow she’s confident that the “department of law at the White House” would protect her from baseless allegations.)

uh, Department of Law?

She seems to have forgotten that Republicans were willing to waste 70 million taxpayers dollars investigating Clinton. She claimed she was resigning to keep from wasting taxpayer money. Does she really think that the non-existent Department of Law (overseen by Deputy Dog?) will keep her from ethics investigations?

She cannot open her mouth without spouting stupidity or lies... and sometimes she multi-tasks in this regard.

Hey has anyone noticed how hot Sarah Palin is getting ?

Excellent post. I too am tired of people who believe that splitting an infinitive is some sort of grammatical no-no. Prescriptive authoritarians used to teach that, typically in K-12 settings, and people who learned it in K-12 somehow seem to think that it's set in stone. Bosh.

However, I have a nit to pick as well. English certainly is a Germanic language (with its roots in Anglo-Saxon); however, while not a "romance language," the Norman invasion permanently changed its character. Most philologists (few remain in this day and age) describe contemporary English as rooted in Old Icelandic, Anglo-Saxon, AND Latin.

Although, to be honest, our chief debt to Latin is vocabulary, not grammar.