Last night Sarah Palin gave a speech and took part in a scripted Q & A (a far cry from the impressive Q & A President Obama had with the Republicans last week) at a “Tea Party Convention” in Nashville, Tennessee.

She gave a disastrous performance that is made even more pathetic by the fact that she was caught reading notes off the palm off her hand like a 7th grader cheating on a test.

It’s shocking that anybody in this country takes Sarah Palin seriously. Absolutely shocking. She’s an embarrassment.

If you haven’t seen this yet, you need to. It’s President Obama’s question and answer session with the Republican obstructionists in congress at a GOP retreat:

Obama refuted every single Republican talking point with reason & facts. All of the Republican talking points are either outright lies or distortions of fact.

This becomes obvious when their talking points can be answered like they are in this Q&A rather than spouted out without response like on the right wing echo chamber that is the teabagger network (Fox “News.”)

Republicans are not interested in helping this country, they are only interested in campaigning. They vote “no” on everything no matter what it is (including “Pay As You Go” - so much for being “fiscal conservatives”) not because they are against the policies but because it fits into their political strategy.

Also, anyone who bought into that “Obama needs a teleprompter” meme has been proven to be a complete idiot by this impressive performance by the President.

President Obama gave an amazing speech tonight in which he called on politicians in both parties in both the House & the Senate to get past playing political games and to actually work towards the good of the country for a change. Watching this speech tonight was like watching an adult speaking to a room full of children.

Here’s hoping that at least a few Republican Senators will take the hint and will actually start do what’s right instead of just doing whatever they need to do to get reelected. As Obama said, it’s time for the “perpetual campaigning” to stop.

And to any confused person who actually thinks the Republicans are on the side of the people (and not on the side of big business) watch the members of the GOP sit on their hands as President Obama talks about getting all of the bailout money back from the banks:

And it’s very important to remember that the “solutions” that the Republican party are offering in 2010 are nothing new. In fact, they’re exactly the course we took for eight years during the Bush administration. Those “solutions” are what got us into this mess in the first place. And if McCain/Palin had won instead of Obama/Biden we’d have 13% or 14% unemployment instead of 10%.

Yes, things are bad. But they’re bad because of the enormity of the mess left by eight years of Republican policies, not because President Obama hasn’t tried to do everything he can to make things better.

And things could be better already if Republicans and “conservative Democrats” weren’t standing in the way of progress now. The time of “just say no” needs to come to an end. It’s time to do what’s right.

You can see the complete speech here:

With not much to say about the 2012 presidential campaign in January of 2010 (Obama’s approval rating is at a decent 50% as of the most recent Gallup polling and he leads all potential Republican opponents in polls) it seems like a reasonable time to take a look back at the 2008 presidential campaign which is quickly receding into history with President Obama nearing the one year mark in office.

What follows are some books about the 2008 campaign that you may want to check out, both as a reminder for all of the twists & turns of that epic campaign and to get the “inside scoop” of what was really going on inside the campaigns (the stuff that wasn’t on TV or in the papers or even on the internet.)

I believe all of the books below are available on the Kindle.

David Plouffe - The Audacity to Win

Plouffe was the mastermind behind the Obama campaign’s winning approach so this is a true “inside account” of the ‘08 presidential election.

Richard Wolffe - Renegade: The Making of a President

John Heilemann & Mark Halperin - Game Change

This is the most recent book out on the campaign (it came out last week.) I’m somewhat suspicious of this book as it’s sources aren’t sourced. This book was the cause of the faux “controversy” surrounding Harry Reid’s comment about Barack Obama. It’s also where we learn more about the true idiocy of Sarah Palin (she thought that Iraq was behind the attacks on 9/11.)

Haynes Johnson and Dan Balz - The Battle For America: 2008

Chuck Todd & Sheldon Gawiser - How Barack Obama Won

This is a “state by state” guide to the election.

As bad as the unemployment problem in the US is right now, it’d probably be at least 1.6 million jobs worse if McCain/Palin had won last November.

The Republican approach to fixing economic problems is basically this: “Do nothing and eventually the market will correct itself.” This is exactly what Republican Herbert Hoover did from 1929 through 1932. To say it didn’t work would be an understatement. Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to turn the country around with this “New Deal.”

And since people so closely associated the Great Depression with the Republicans, they had little hope of scuttling FDR’s plans. Unfortunately these days people have a short memory and it’s like some folks have already forgotten that our current economic woes came to be under the “leadership” of George W. Bush and company.

The truth is, as bad as things are now, they’d be a lot worse with a Republican President. Look at this chart on the private sector job creation under Democratic and Republican Presidents over the last 50 years. The pattern is obvious, Democratic Presidents are better for the economy.

Obama’s approach has already saved or created over one million jobs and because of his leadership this country is headed in the right direction. With McCain/Palin in the White House unemployment would likely be over 12% by now (it’s currently at 10%.)

Watch this report on ABC News with Charlie Gibson on some of the jobs being created with the President’s stimulus plan:

Despite the President’s approval ratings slipping below 50% for the first time recently, Obama still leads his potential 2012 GOP challengers in head to head match-ups in a new set of PPP polls:

Obama 49% Mike Huckabee 44%
Obama 48% Mitt Romney 43%
Obama 51% Sarah Palin 43%
Obama 46% Ron Paul 38%

The winner of the Health Care Reform Video Challenge has been announced:

The media seems far more focused on Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney seems to be seen as “next in line” for the Republican nomination but the latest Gallup polling shows Mike Huckabee may actually be the 2012 front runner at this point (a full 3 years from the 2012 general election!)

According to this poll 71% of Republicans say they would “seriously consider” supporting Mike Huckabee for the Republican nomination. Comparatively Mitt Romney & Sarah Palin are both at 65%, Newt Gingrich is at 60%, and Tim Pawlenty is at 32% (this is probably due to having lower name recognition than the others.)

In bad news for the Republicans; none of these candidates has much support among the general electorate with only 40% saying they would “seriously consider” supporting Mike Huckabee for President (obviously his opponent is assumed to be President Obama) with 51% saying they would not consider (I’m not sure what the other 9% are saying?) Meanwhile Romney is at 39% and Palin is at 33% among the general electorate. Considering that Romney and Palin are already very well known, that seems to indicate that they would have a very hard time winning in 2012.

A lot of the talking head political pundits (both Republican operatives and so-called “journalists”) are trying to spin the story that the Republican wins of the Virginia & New Jersey Governor races has something to do with President Obama and the national Republican party (that it somehow spells big wins for them in 2010.)

But why would this be the case? Do Governor races generally have anything to do with national politics or not? The answer is clearly that they do not have anything to do with national politics. All it takes is a simple look at the recent histories of Governor races in Virginia and New Jersey to see that quite obviously (which makes one wonder if these idiot pundits do even the most basic research?)

In 2001 when George W. Bush had a sky high approval rating over 80% (post 9/11) both Virginia & New Jersey went for a Democratic Governor. Did those elections have anything to do with Bush? No, obviously not. And did they foretell any Democratic sweeps in 2002 or 2004? No, clearly not.

So why would these elections be any different?

In fact the last nine times Virginia has voted for a Governor (including tonight) it has voted for the candidate whose party does not control the White House. Nine times in a row! So why is this time suddenly supposed to say something about the President? Did it say something about Reagan when Virginia voted for a Democratic Governor twice during his Presidency? No, I don’t think so. Did it say something about Clinton when Virginia voted for a Republican Governor twice during his Presidency? No, obviously not.

So why would it suddenly say something about Obama for a Republican to win while he in office? Why would that make any sense at all? How is it that there are supposedly informed people on cable television making that claim tonight? That’s just shockingly stupid.

I’ve also heard the claim that’s a huge deal that New Jersey voted for a Republican Governor since it’s such a blue state but of course New Jersey had a Republican Governor throughout most of the ’90s (Christine Whitman) and certainly other very blue states have voted for Republican Governors in recent history (Schwarzenegger in California, Pataki in New York, & Romney in Massachusetts for three obvious examples.) So it’s not really that unusual at all.

So while many on the right are trying to make a big deal out of these two Republican wins in these Governor races which tend to have nothing to do with national politics, the Democrats actually won both of the congressional races (in New York & California.) Most impressively they won NY-23 for the first time since the 1800s.

And even more interesting than the Democratic party winning this seat for the first time in ages is how they won it. Really, it was more the Republicans that lost it with their infighting. The Republicans would have almost definitely won the seat but some “conservatives” (ie: right wing nutjobs) decided that the Republican candidate wasn’t “conservative enough” so they ran a Glenn Beck approved candidate named Doug Hoffman in the general election and Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and other far right wing political figures endorsed him.

Eventually the moderate Republican dropped out of the race which the teabagging crew applauded at first because they thought her votes would go to Hoffman so he could beat Owens. But instead she ended up endorsing the Democrat and tonight the results are in: Bill Owens won NY-23 for the Democrats for the first time since the 1800s.

I think the Democratic party would welcome a lot more of this teabagging stuff! I think they’re hoping they go to Florida and take out Charlie Crist next.

I bought Renegade: The Making of a President by Richard Wolffe over the weekend and I’m finding it quite fascinating thus far (I’m on page 105.) It’s a close-up look at the 2008 Presidential campaign from the perspective of Barack Obama and his team and as someone who followed the 2008 election extremely closely (I have a blog devoted to the topic) it’s really interesting to read what was going on “behind the scenes” of all of these things that I remember clearly (but from another perspective, of course.)

Beyond the campaign talk, there’s also some interesting background on Obama that makes me feel like I know who he is a bit more and where he’s coming from. I think a lot of us on the left (I am very liberal, far to the left of where Obama presents himself politically) get upset with the President not pushing harder for big changes but I really do believe that he is on our side, it’s just that he’s also very much a pragmatist and that he believes what matters most are results (not ideological purity.)

I think we should try to be a bit patient with him while simultaneously pushing as hard as we can for the changes we believe in. Many times in the book the point is made that Obama believes that change really comes from the “bottom up.” In other words, that we have to push for change if we want it to happen, we can’t just sit back and expect the politicians to do what’s right on their own. Corruption is very deep in Washington and I think we’re all living in a fantasy land if we expect Obama to be able to just change everything with a wave of his wand.

This book was released on June 2 but there are a couple of new books focused on the 2008 election coming out this week: David Plouffe’s The Audacity to Win (Plouffe was Obama’s campaign manager) comes out on November 3 and, of course, Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue, which will likely be the first book many Palin fans have ever read, comes out on November 17th.