SARAH DUKAKIS

I mock -- but Lucianne.com, which has a collective girl-crush on Palin, thinks she looks just great:



To Palin's credit, she apparently decided to forgo the codpiece.

This photo was taken during Palin's visit to the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska on Monday. She was presumably looking to pad out her forthcoming memoir, and to garner stills for her 2012 presidential ads on the federal taxpayer's dime.

After that?

Gov. Sarah Palin is on her way to an undisclosed "overseas" location to visit deployed Alaska National Guard troops.

From Palin's Twitter feed:

"Travel now to bring appreciation from their Alaska family & Natl Guard leadership to heroes in US European Command's area of responsibility."

The European command's area of responsibility includes Europe, Russia, the Caucusus and Greenland. I'm not sure where all the state's National Guard troops are deployed in that area, but we know from news coverage some are in Kosovo....

The Anchorage Daily News has more photos, in most of which she doesn't look nearly as dorky, presumably because she's not in those goggles, which a savvy politician wouldn't wear within a mile of a camera.