Just when you thought Sarah Palin, the shining star of the Republican Party, was slowly fading away, she goes and does this:

In a stunning announcement whose shockwaves will likely reverberate from Alaska’s state capitol to the Beltway politics of Washington, D.C., Gov. Sarah Palin said Friday morning that she will resign her office July 26.

“I really don’t want to disappoint anyone with this announcement,” Palin said during the press conference at her home. “Not with the decision that I have made. All I can ask is that you trust me with this decision and know that it is no more politics as usual.”

The official reason?  She’s not running for re-election so she doesn’t want to be a lame duck governor.  Right…

Obviously, the hastiness of the decision and the lack of substance in the resignation speech, coupled with the fact that she delivered it on a Friday during a holiday weekend (hell, I didn’t even hear about it until the day after), is leading people to believe that something else is afoot.

Sullivan ponders:

What could that shoe be? Some unknown ethics inquiry? Some big official scandal about to break? The free house-construction no-one quite resolved? Trooper Wooten’s revenge? Bristol can’t take the bullshit any more and has sold a tell-all? Levi just got a lot of money from the Enquirer? Sherri Johnston has implicated a Palin in her drug-bust? Did Track get in trouble again? Is there another unplanned pregnancy somewhere? Someone took a hike on the Appalachian trail? Has Lyda Green finally gone nuclear? Has Mercedes got a book contract?  Or has she pushed Levi one step too far? Is Trig really Tina Fey’s child?

The number of potential enemies and victims with an ax to grind and a lucrative story to tell is endless. Who can say? But the abruptness of the withdrawal is so weird one has to wonder.

Fasten your seat belts.  I have a feeling we’re headed for a grand finale in the epic train wreck that is The Sarah Palin Express.

Seriously. What. The. Fuck.

So, I’m not sure if you guys have newspapers and stuff up there, or CNN, or anything like that, but you guys do know that Ted Stevens is a convicted fucking felon, right?  Ya know, felon, as in criminal?  Like, the kind of felon that can’t vote in Alaska?

Oh! And also, that felony?  Yeah.  That was for political corruption.  It’s not like he robbed a liquor store or something like that.  I mean, yeah, we might be able to forgive that (dude’s gotta drink right?).  But the guy actually abused the power of his office in order to receive improper gifts, after which, he most likely delivered favors in the form of earmarks.  He committed a felony that was directly involved with his office as a United States Senator.

So, naturally, it begs the question:  Why the fuck did you guys re-elect this corrupt mother-fucker?  I mean, seriously.  Seriously.

What a bunch of fucking idiots.  And, you know, I usually don’t like to make sweeping allegations like this about a a large group of people, but, you gotta be fucking kidding me with this shit.  I mean, this is just absolutely fucking ridiculous.

Alaska.  Home of Sarah Palin, and America’s Felon Senator.

Not gonna see me there anytime soon.

(Note: Stevens technically hasn’t won yet, but the fact that he’s winning at all at this point is just absolutely fucking mind blowing)

My friend Adam at work passed along this blog post for the Juice The Blog crowd. Regarding the anti-Palin demonstration in Alaska:

…I felt a bit apprehensive.  I’d been disappointed before by the turnout at other rallies.  Basically, in Anchorage, if you can get 25 people to show up at an event, it’s a success.  So, I thought to myself, if we can actually get 100 people there that aren’t sent by Eddie Burke, we’ll be doing good.  A real statement will have been made.  I confess, I still had a mental image of 15 demonstrators surrounded by hundreds of menacing “socialist baby-killing maggot” haters.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t tailgating when I saw the crowd in front of the library or I would have ended up in somebody’s trunk.  When I got there, about 20 minutes early, the line of sign wavers stretched the full length of the library grounds, along the edge of the road, 6 or 7 people deep!  I could hardly find a place to park.  I nabbed one of the last spots in the library lot, and as I got out of the car and started walking, people seemed to join in from every direction, carrying signs.

Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage.  The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators).  This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state.  I was absolutely stunned.

Pics and vids and all the rest: http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/alaska-women-reject-palin-rally-is-huge/