Archive for the ‘VPILF’ Category

Betrayed Constantly

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

John Hawkins, on why Sarah Palin fans get so upset with criticism from the Right:

To be conservative is to be betrayed on a regular basis. You send your kids to a school that tries to slyly indoctrinate them into liberalism, you come home to watch an “unbiased” news show that covers almost every story differently based on whether a Republican or Democrat is involved, and then you try to unwind by watching TV shows that take guarded shots at the values you cherish.

This Is Good LXI

Friday, July 17th, 2009

One last Palin cartoon…

Hat tip: Gerard.

And then a Palin column. We’re about to slam the door on all this stuff, but fellow Right Wing News contributor William Teach is speaking truth eloquently:

Palin Really, Really Scares The Left, Doesn’t She

And, too be honest, some of the Palin haters on the Right, too. But, let’s deal with the Left for the moment, shall we? Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight shows that the Palin hatred (this story isn’t quite in the PDS region) will drive them to use any rational to demean Palin

Sarah Palin’s political action committee — SarahPAC — raised $733,000 in the first half of the year and is set to push past $1 million in the wake of the recent attention she’s gotten herself. On the one hand, this isn’t that impressive. Mitt Romney, for instance, has raised twice as much. Kay Bailey Huthcison, Palin’s sometime rival who is now running for governor in Texas, raised nine times as much. For somebody with a political celebrity dwarfed only by Barack Obama’s, that’s just not all that much cashflow.

But, Palin isn’t actually running for Federal office, hasn’t announced she is running for Federal office, and obviously isn’t running for Governor of Alaska. Furthermore, SarahPAC is not about raising cash for a federal run.

To give Nate his due, though

What is impressive about Palin’s fundraising haul, however, is who it came from: the grassroots. Based on her FEC disclosures, I identified 406 donations worth $200 or more, which are worth a combined total of $289,932. That’s nothing, really: Home Shopping Club can bring in that much in 15 minutes selling vacuums. That leaves, however, $443,608, or 60 percent of SarahPac’s total, which came from small donors. That is a very high percentage — higher than for any of the ’08 presidential candidates but for Ron Paul — as you can see from this chart where I’ve colored Palin’s total in Misogynist Pink.

What that means is Palin is reaching out to, and reaching, the core of the Conservatives, those who will give $5 here, $20 there, $50 on the flip sides, the small donors that drove Dubya’s two elections. Those small donors are who we are. We may have the cash to drop, but, we will nickle and dime the politicians we are rooting for, to make sure they stay on track.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen a politician scare a faction of activist groups this badly. Ever. That cartoon says it all. Palin picks up a dinner fork to eat her salad and…just damn. The ensuing din can rupture your eardrum. Desperation personified.

Not the way people act when they think their enemy is truly ineffectual.

Comes From Working for a Living

Friday, July 17th, 2009

One of the Right Wing News crew asked a question just now, that really should not have been asked. She wants to know why anyone is defending Sarah Palin. Why have the Palin defenders — she invents a paradigm, which I’m challenged to take seriously in light of recent events, that the Palin fans are somehow militant, incurious, uncompromising and just-plain-nuts — not scrutinized her dismal performances? It’s a wonderfully elegant exercise in grokking. That means to observe something while having an effect on what’s being observed, so that it becomes an open question of who is changing the mindset of who. Ms. Cavere offers an illusion of asking a question and being open to whatever information drifts her way as an honest response, but the diligent observer can’t help but think she’s already got her mind made up about things…and is far more concerned with shaping an outcome than learning what she says she wants to learn.

Beating a Dead HorseThis strikes us as a particularly awkward time to be advancing the notion that a slick and polished performance on the teevee, has something to do with what’s generally accepted as good leadership. Our country appears to be finding out the painful way that that isn’t true. We thought there was a parallel; “we” voted for it; now it’s emerged that we gambled and lost. This “Right Wing” person wants to advance that assertion yet again? See, we here look at the elections that took place last year and we see three failures. Exactly three, no more and no less; two committed by the nice folks who voted for Obama, and one committed by the RINOs who thought John McCain would make the best candidate on the other side.

“If we vote for ‘hope,’ we’ll get it.”

“He’ll be a wonderful President because He gives such amazing speeches (There’s just something about Him! I can’t explain it!).”

“The only votes Republicans have a shot at getting, they’ll get by being moderate, friendly, classy, and they’ll lose the votes if they ever go on the attack (or mention Jeremiah Wright).”

All three of those were put to the test. And all three failed the test. But it’s a funny thing about the hoi polloi when they discuss things that fail tests, isn’t it? All they wanna talk about is Sarah Palin’s “performance” when she was interviewed by Katie Couric and Charles Gibson. News flash: “Katie Couric” appears nowhere in the Constitution. Neither does Charles Gibson.

Left this comment:

The “hostile” interviews with Charles Gibson and Katie Couric are mentioned, but why has Mrs. Palin’s performance in “friendly” interviews not undergone scrutiny among conservatives?

Because conservatives tend to be more worried about what she would do if & when she got elected, rather than how she “comes off.” This is a sharp contrast against Obama fans who, by and large, completely neglected the questions associated with what their Man-God would do in office, opting instead to genuflect before His “wonderful speeches”…which, it turns out, seem to be about all He has to offer. online.wsj.com

True conservatives, it turns out, are a pretty strange bunch — even stranger than people say. They tend to value what’s presented to them for the substance in it, rather than for the appearances. Comes from working for a living.

Mrs. Palin has adamant supporters who will defend her at any cost, but their reasons for this devotion have not adequately been explained. Why is there such vigor in defending her, instead of defending conservative principles?

This statement-disguised-as-a-question presumes a conflict where none exists. It would be far more legitimate to ask why some people seem so much more dead-set on electing someone with the letter ‘R’ after his name, instead of defending conservative principles.

The real question we need to be asking here has nothing to do with television performances. That isn’t even a question. What we need to be asking has to do with time…future and past. We saw last fall the permeating theme that we were voting for a New Tomorrow, for “change.” Here in the following summer, that is looking like a more and more ridiculous mindset with each passing week. You could say we just forfeited the country’s future — mortgaged a future that, as of a year ago, we still had. It’s in hock now. That’s what we get for voting for the future. Ironic, no?

Where is your Hope-n-Change now?

No, as a Palin backer I’d say we are the ones embracing the future — because in 2012, a “back to basics” approach is going to look pretty damn refreshing. Regrettably so. And call me naive if you want, but I have to doubt a flashy presence on the boob tube is going to count for very much.

Like I said. We tend to be rather selective about what’s been run through the “acid test” and is ready to be evaluated for its less than impressive performance, for a possible ranking as an abject failure never to be tried again. We’re choosy about that…because we can afford to be. But that’s changing. We’re losing some luxuries we’ve been enjoying, and that’s going to be one of them. Not that I’m rooting for this — I’m not some “never let a crisis go to waste” type o’ guy — but once people have had their standard of living eroded to the point where continuing survival is exposed to the ultimate exigency of question, their tendency is to become a bit more even-handed in applying tests and evaluating results. That’s what we as a country are facing right now…we’re learning some lessons that we have been needing to learn. Deep down, I believe every thinking voter knows that to be true. Just think back to November…and January 20. Imagine a space alien visiting our planet and watching that stuff, a space alien skilled in logic, reason, somewhat acquainted with different forms of government and how they work — but altogether foreign to our customs, the oddities in our culture, the factions within, and our recent history. Just imagine the questions he’d have for us about this Obamamania!

We, collectively, engaged in a poor exercise of decision-making, placing great weight on things that didn’t matter, and neglecting things that did. We are suffering the consequences, and in three years we’ll have an opportunity to do better. That’s really all there is to it. Couric & Gibson aren’t part of it.

No Authority

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

Just bookmarking it for later, no time to read it now. I’m like that sometimes. Like a spider mummifying a fly without sucking the good stuff out of it, for a midnight snack later on.

Will update later maybe.

Update: Yeah, that was every bit as dumbass as I thought.

Typical liberal thinking for ya. You can’t have an opinion unless you’re “smart,” not genuinely smart, but recognized-by-slobbering-lefties as being smart. Not unless you live in their fantasy land. All others please shut up.

Meanwhile, any putz who makes $20,000 a year or more should live in a six-bedroom house.

Good hands. We’re in really good hands.

“‘Cap And Tax’ Dead End”

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Sarah Palin, writing in the Washington Post today…

There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America’s unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won’t bring jobs. Our nation’s debt is unsustainable, and the federal government’s reach into the private sector is unprecedented.

Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:

I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.

American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president’s cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn’t lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America’s economy.

I’m giving it two-to-one odds that this gets bottled up in the Senate. There is even a possibility, albeit a statistically negligible one, that the Senate passes it but President Obama decides He doesn’t have the stomach to sign off on it given what’s going on, and the political repercussions over the long term.

See, this notion that the hardcore environmentalist measures might do harm to the economy…it is no longer an extremist right-wing nutjob talking point. A year ago, maybe it was. Now, it’s middle-of-the-road stuff. Pain will do that. Pain makes people aware of things. People don’t want to ignore things when pain is involved.

That means there’s a one outta three shot this will become law, though. That’s way too high for my sense of comfort.

I’m from California, so if it’s worth my time to write to my senators, it’s worth everybody else’s time to do the same…and it might help to get the word out to those “moderate” friends of yours. People are in the mood for spooky tales of crumbling ice floes, drowning polar bears, and other signs of Armageddon? Try this: Thirteen dollar gallons of milk, nine dollar gallons of gas, ten dollars for a box of cereal, three to six hundred dollars for your kid’s next pair of shoes.

You need energy to create, package, transport and market all that stuff. You have to emit carbon to buy and sell them. And apologizing for your very existence is an expensive proposition.

Don’t worry, it won’t affect everything you do. Just the things that require energy.

Why Palin Quit

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

Very well written. It belabors the obvious, and although I suppose there are some people who still need to be told, if they have the need they probably can’t be told. Also, it relies on unnamed “confidants,” although the reason for that is fairly obvious as well.

This is becoming a rather silly month news-wise, isn’t it? Everything’s either “Michael Jackson is still dead” or “Why Palin Quit.”

Anyway, on with the excerpts…

Contrary to most reports, her decision had been in the works for months, accelerating recently as it became clear that controversies and endless ethics investigations were threatening to overshadow her legislative agenda. “Attacks inside Alaska and largely invisible to the national media had paralyzed her administration,” someone close to the governor told me. “She was fully aware she would be branded a ‘quitter.’ She did not want to disappoint her constituents, but she was no longer able to do the job she had been elected to do. Essentially, the taxpayers were paying for Sarah to go to work every day and defend herself.”

This situation developed because Alaska’s transparency laws allow anyone to file Freedom of Information Act requests. While normally useful, in the hands of political opponents FOIA requests can become a means to bog down a target in a bureaucratic quagmire, thanks to the need to comb through records and respond by a strict timetable. Similarly, ethics investigations are easily triggered and can drag on for months even if the initial complaint is flimsy. Since Ms. Palin returned to Alaska after the 2008 campaign, some 150 FOIA requests have been filed and her office has been targeted for investigation by everyone from the FBI to the Alaska legislature. Most have centered on Ms. Palin’s use of government resources, and to date have turned up little save for a few state trips that she agreed to reimburse the state for because her children had accompanied her. In the process, though, she accumulated $500,000 in legal fees in just the last nine months, and knew the bill would grow ever larger in the future.

The question for Palin-phobes, at least those who successfully pass off the patina of being open to an opposing reasonable argument, then becomes one of: If you were the Governor of Alaska, what percentage of your time could you spend day-to-day in this defensive posture before you figured out the situation was unworkable and something had to change? If Palin’s decision says something so derogatory about her character, her resolve, her determination to fulfill a responsibility, her basic drive, then how high is that percentage, minute to minute? Fifty? Sixty? Eighty?

Some of the critics not only fail to remain open to opposing reasonable arguments, but they remain locked into the wishful thinking that pronounces SCANDAL! Most of those types are busily filling in the details. The question for them is somewhat different: What is this scandal? Are you remembering to take into account that it is now Thursday, nearly a week after the announcement, and the scandal has yet to bubble over? It has remained hidden beneath the most frothy and energized scandal-search, perhaps in this country’s history…lawyers, reporters, tabloid hacks, photographers tipping over trash cans in Juneau. They had ten weeks before the election, many months since then, and they missed whatever it is. Either the details eluded them or they didn’t give the details the same weight the Governor did. Once you fill in the nooks and crannies of that germinating theory, will it capably address all these dichotomies?

More Palin Comments

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

James Taranto, this weekend, officially went on the record hypothesizing that when Sarah Palin dishes out the traditional “I’m resigning to go home and spend time with my family” cliche now commonly associated with the scandal-plagued set…she actually means it.

“Go ahead and laugh, we can wait,” he says.

Knowing there is a heavily-populated and exceptionally loud chattering class of ankle-biters desperate to prove such a theory wrong, he set up a Facebook discussion page to do exactly that. The very first response reflected in a high-quality way, I thought, on exactly what is bollywonkers about all the shenanigans going down this year just in general, with things Palin-related as well as not-Palin-related:

I won’t even try to prove you wrong. The only thing I know for certain about Sarah Palin’s decision, is that it has proven to me that she has all the right enemies, while Barack Obama has all the wrong friends.

Zing! That’s gonna leave mark — on us all. In generations past this was how you figured out if a fellow was going to do right by you, or not: The company he keeps. “You can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses.”

We done got away from that pebble of wisdom, or allowed it to get away from us. The results seem to indicate our grandparents were a little bit smarter on this issue than we are. And let us think, not just of Sarah Palin’s enemies, but her friends. She entrusted some close inner circle, for some time it would seem, with this secret that she was going to step down. Quite the bombshell. We all proved trustworthy, as tough as it was for us not to let you in on it, at times.

No, seriously. Whoever was on the ins with this, was given trust and they repaid it. This speaks well of them, and of her. For a Caribou Barbie dimbulb, she seems to know and understand people quite well, and in a way that really counts for something. One wonders how many politicians still serving don’t have such a talent, although one is inclined to believe that one will not have to wait long to find out. Leaks? In Washington? They’re like bottle caps in a beer factory. They happen all the time. Brought in by the truckload, stacked by the palette. Because people don’t know who to trust.

Cassy thinks there was a contest here between Palin and the media, and the media won. The commenter familiar to us here at The Blog That Nobody Reads, Larry Sheldon, goes on record to say…

They won to the extent that they denied to the sate of Alaska what the voters there have a right to,

But they didn’t beat Palin.

Not b[y] a long shot.

All of your “she’s beaten” evidence is from the least credible sources in the history of language. [emphasis mine]

He’s right. Take another reading of the Palin-related sound bites, and keep track of who’s saying what. Everyone who says “stick a fork in her” possesses a Paul-Krugman-esque record of correctness, which is to say a non-existent one.

They shouldn’t be correct about anything, anyway; as we pointed out yesterday, the logic they employ is hideously unsound. We are, this week, consumed in discussing the future of a retiring politician who has none. Their logic says she’s too stupid to ever have had a shot at national office, she sure as hell doesn’t have one now, and yet a profound metamorphosis has taken place in American politics this last Friday. They want it both ways, in other words. The notion that Republicans are just a bunch of losers, because they lost their last, best hope — applies. But they are also to keep their stigma of trying to saddle us with a tundra yokel who can see Russia from her house. That they fail to take note of the obviously dazzling depth of her incompetence, speaks to their political myopia.

Well…you can’t have both of those. You have to choose one: Palin is a promising and effective champion — or she isn’t. I would expect any child claiming the logical grasp needed to graduate from seventh grade, to pick up on this in record time.

Update: Blogsister Daphne has the balls to state a truth avoided by the craven types of lesser substance, in a post called “Hate Is Fun.” She brings to mind a few things I already know:

Thing I Know #34. We are a tribal species, although we’re loathe to admit it, and it comes much more easily to us to bear silly grudges against entire cultures, than legitimate grudges against individual persons.

Thing I Know #40. We are a tribal species, although we’re loathe to admit it, and when people extoll the virtues of “diversity” they tend to talk about skin color and nothing else.

Thing I Know #53. We are a tribal species, although we’re loathe to admit it, and we have very little to say to our neighbors who enjoy a different set of luxuries or who labor under a different set of burdens.

Thing I Know #269. We have a strong tendency to confuse pulling your weight with fitting in. We’re therefore easily confused in the presence of people who pull their own weight but don’t fit in…as well as people who fit in but don’t pull their own weight.

That’s your substandard writing that’ll put you to sleep; now wake up, we’re returning to the subject at hand. Get ready for some far superior written stuff. Daphne’s comments:

Sarah Palin is not of their tribe, culturally or ideologically. She hasn’t played by their rules or bought into their code of narrowly defined group conduct. She’s a renegade anomaly, wielding all the power and benefit of every last feminist tenet without ever stepping foot on that particular reservation. She proves the current batch of young feminists wrong and obsolete, pulling the curtain back to reveal their lack of substance and relevance in the current game of sexual politics. Women have immense power. All the power they want is sitting in the palm of their hand, Sarah knows this fact and lives her life accordingly. She’s no victim of the patriarchy, she’s her own glorious force of life, putting to lie the vaunted despised vagina status many feminists preach all women are cursed with at birth as some delusional high truth of basic female existence.

Tribes get off on viral hate fests against the others, it’s massively fun stuff. Tapping into that primal vein creates unity, crafts a little momentum and fans the flames to chase down and roast rogue elements threatening the group’s comfortable mindset and debatable version of truth. The hate fueled hunt is a bacchanal most humans never pass up given the right conditions – we like a little slaughter with our communal feasts, women particularly enjoy delivering the verbal coup de grace over wine and cheese. We’re well skilled in that form of pack warfare, ripping an objectionable bitch to pieces is one of our ancient talents. Palin’s found herself on the wrong side of some fierce bitches and they’re having a damn fine time flaying the skin off her hide one strip at a time. I see no mystery to these hypocritical feminist attacks, the young ladies are just hewing to their basic natures and having themselves some good old fashioned, primal fun.

I do find it a damn shame that these women will probably never see the irony between their committed dogma and how they’ve treated a woman who’s achieved everything they glorify as the epitome of female success.

D’JEver Notice? XXXI

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Liberals like to call themselves the Reality Based Community. It’s a popular term used especially among liberals who despise George W. Bush.

Perhaps the time has come to re-think that.

They won the last election. Hugely. They won, and now run, freakin’ everything. They act like they lost. They snivel, they whine, they complain, they bitch and carp and moan and bitch some more about some big ol’ power player, some big omniscient omnipotent boss-man not giving ’em a fair shot. Earth to liberals: You are the boss-man!

Now Sarah Palin has ceased to be a threat to them, at least for the immediate future.

They behave as if she has only just begun. Freaking out. Like a sleeping puppy having some terrible nightmare, its little paws waving in the air as fast as they can possibly go. Their story is that this is a real change because Palin doesn’t have a chance now…and didn’t have a chance before…so her resignation is a huge event. Or something. And the country’s dodged a bullet because she would be such an incompetent leader. Although she never had a shot at getting in. And doesn’t have one now. Or something.

These reality-based people are something else. They know for a fact that our oceans are going to boil over due to man-made climate change, somewhere around 2050 or 2100. But they haven’t got a clue about whether it’s going to rain this weekend. They know for a fact that Sarah Palin will be nothing but a pitiful punchline in 2012…but they can’t see three months down the road that a $700 billion “stimulus” plan is going to take off like a scale-model F-18 Hornet made out of wombat shit.

Reality? I’m having an Inigo Montoya reaction. “You keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Update: This must be preserved for posterity. With our reality-based people running everything, we are losing our grip on…yeah…reality. Losing our grip so instantly, relative to the tapestry of history, that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will hunger to know how & why.

Josh, this has got to be the blog post of the year. By which I mean — if time capsules took blog posts, and I was invited to contribute to a really tiny one, choosing one item to illustrate to our great-grandchildren the historical backdrop against which the Grand Mistake of 2008 was made…plop. Your three paragraphs with links attached. In they go.

Those are my words. My words to describe…this

Palin to Andrea Mitchell: ‘You’re not listening to me’

Gov. Sarah Palin granted interviews to the legacy media yesterday, and each outlet added its own spin to its presentation of the story. One thing is obvious from watching the various videos and reading the stories: they don’t get it. Palin had to scold NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, for instance. “You’re not listening to me,” she admonished the ditzy reporter after Mitchell asked the governor a question she had already answered.

The Palins’ commercial fishing business requires them to be on the water at the peak of the salmon run, which occurs each year around the 4th of July. The media hacks were clearly out of their element, one reporter describing the experience of being with real people while they are doing real work as “surreal.” From the safe cocoon of the New York studio, Diane Sawyer thanked ABC correspondent Kate Snow in Alaska, “Thanks so much for going up next to the fish,” to get the interview. During the interview, Snow pointed out to Palin: “You have some fish guts on you.” Yes, Kate, that tends to happen to people who work on commercial fishing boats. Flyover country is an alien planet, and those of us who live in it are extraterrestrials to the chattering class. They are still looking for their first clue and not even getting warm.

Video of the Mitchell interview is here, CNN here and ABC here. Write-ups of more interviews by Fox News here, TIME magazine here and the Anchorage Daily News here.

There are updates. Overall, they continue with this faux-reality-based theme…especially with regard to the Manhattan blue-blood know-nothing media theme. Go read the whole thing. These are the people who bring you the news, so it’s important to keep reminding ourselves how little they really know. About anything.

Here’s your video. “I can see Russia.” Aw, a subtle dig, how classy. How balanced and objective. Keep on informing us, you journalists, you. You’re the guys who put Obama in where He is today, and you can’t even admit that you did it…so you must be really, really SMRT!!

*sigh* There are certain professions that have never, ever, in all of human history, attracted real venerability…least of all, from those folks with brains, who knew what they were doing. Journalism seems to have had this problem for awhile.

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” — Thomas Jefferson

Go, Dumpy!

Monday, July 6th, 2009

Speaking of Boortz, he did an unwise thing this morning. I think Boortz is going to be eating crow over this one. You can tell he’s on the wrong side of this thing, because he doesn’t agree with me:

Certainly Sarah Palin didn’t resign her seat as Alaska’s governor to pursue a higher political office. Now she has the patina of a quitter and is no longer a viable candidate.

I’ll go along with the “patina” part. It’s a good word, and it’s used well here.

1 a: a usually green film formed naturally on copper and bronze by long exposure or artificially (as by acids) and often valued aesthetically for its color
b: a surface appearance of something grown beautiful especially with age or use
2: an appearance or aura that is derived from association, habit, or established character
3: a superficial covering or exterior

The “viable” part does not apply. There would have to be a permanence about the patina for that to work. Now, walk me through this. It’s early 2012 and Sarah Palin, after two and a half years in the shadows, pipes up and says she’s interested in unseating President Obama.

From sea to shining sea, we all shout “Oh Sarah Palin, the quitter??”

Can’t quite see it, sorry. Patinas evaporate. And if they don’t, and you’re Sarah Palin, the eleventh Governor of Alaska, doing nothing to substantially benefit your state, pissing away your salary four, six or eight times as fast as you’re earning it, doing nothing to help this hypothetical Presidential bid of yours, doing nothing to help conservatism in general…but you’re worried about your “patina” so you stay put and grow your moss…you’re a loser. Sarah Palin is not a loser. So there’s really only one direction for her to go. The question is what took her so long.

Neal, this morning you had rocks in your head. You’ve done better before, and I’m sure you’ll do better again.

Caps-impaired commenter DumpyTheRed provides an education to the Talkmaster, more clear, more concise, and more articulate than anything I could put together. Hope Neal read it and realized the error of his ways. There’s some good wisdom in the paragraph below…even if there aren’t many apostrophes or capital letters.

restore credibility?
anyone else tired of hearing this phrase? we heard it time and time again when obama came back from his apology tour, about how he had restored the US’s credibility. the MSM repeated it over and over to hammer home that obama is god, and now the world loves us again. but alas, everyone still hates us, and looks like they will for a while. now we have to hear this phrase for palin. the people who say that the only reason mccain got as many votes as he did was because of palin, are correct in my opinion. i agree with whoever says palin “energized” the party. that’s true. the only spark mccain got was when he announced her as running mate. true conservatives dont care about restoring credibility with the republican party, or anyone else for that matter, we just want a freakin conservative candidate, and that’s what we get with her. let’s quit worrying about our credit score and just vote for those who are true to their beliefs; as opposed to people who pander to everyone in an attempt to not piss anyone else off – that’s the liberal thing to do, not conservative.

Bulls-eye for Dumpy. You don’t need any credibility at all, “restored” or otherwise, to credibly make the case: If you want people to transact business at a more frenzied pace, quit taxing them up to and beyond the point of pain for doing it.

And nobody needs to restore credibility here. At all. Except maybe the press, for going through an entire election season last year not doing their jobs. They have something that could stand some restoration, I think.

She Left to Get Rid of the John McCains

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

…or, to be more precise about it, the Meghan McCains. You know the type. The BUT type. “I really, really want to see the Republicans win…BUT…” And then there comes a “I wish Republicans would,” followed by something you wouldn’t say unless you wanted the democrats to win. Sensible “gun safety” laws, homosexuals getting married and adopting kids, global warming, helping people who just want to make a higher minimum wage, Wall Street greed has to be checked — or it’s high time that dimwit Sarah Palin got her ass home to take care of all these retarded kids she keeps squirting out.

There is another type that’s been itching for Sarah Palin to go home. These are the democrats who say they are not itching for Sarah Palin to go home. “Please, please, oh please, run her and make sure she debates Obama.” If & when Palin comes rebounding back into the national scene, they’ll sneer, and squint, and chortle, and exclaim “you’re digging HER up again??” And start peddling like crazy the talking point that Palin’s an idiot but she’s the best the GOP can do. Always make desperation look like the other guy’s problem.

...And Don't Change a ThingThey want her to debate the Teleprompter genius Obama. Want to be there for it. Want to see the Holy Man squish her like a bug. This is a meme that was repeated over and over again. I wonder how they think the Palin/Biden debate went? They must not think Biden won, after all, because if Biden drank her milkshake at that one then they’re lusting after seeing something for the first time that they’ve already seen before. That doesn’t make any sense at all. So this is a confession that Palin won the debate, or at least, it was a draw…or it’s certainly reasonable for someone else to see that debate as a draw. You’d have to be hoping Obama can do something in a debate that Biden can’t do.

Joe Biden. Even now, he remains the best rebuke against liberal talking points against Palin. Just mutter “oh yeah it’s just swell we got that super genius Biden in the job instead of her, huh?” Roll your eyes and walk away.

But what of the John McCain type Republicans, the ones that are so anxious to assume a left-wing position on things to show how reasonable and moderate they are? If Palin tries this Monty-Python-run-away approach now, and comes back on the scene in a year or two, couldn’t they take on the “Oh I wish she’d just go away for good” thing? That would look very silly. That, in my mind, is the big difference between then and now. That has a very good chance at being the reason she did what she did yesterday.

In fact, if it turns out this really is some kind of a reckless political gamble, I offer that it isn’t really that reckless and it really isn’t even a gamble. Palin retires for three months, or six, or an entire year, into a life of a private citizen…in 2010 she stumps for this Senator or that one, for this Congressman or that one. Fade from view again, and then she’s interested in becoming President. She’s wearing some albatross around her neck then? I’m having trouble seeing it. If there really is a scandal here, of course, that would change everything.

But if there is no scandal, then at that time she’ll just look like she left ’em wanting more. Because that’s exactly what will have happened.

We’re about to head out of town and I don’t know about innerwebtubes access at our hotel, so presuming this is the last update for awhile — To Scandal, Or Not To Scandal, That Is The Question. If something hasn’t blown up by Monday, it’s not going to blow up for a long time or there’s nothing to blow up. Certainly if things stay clean by the time she leaves on the 25th, it’ll be highly unlikely for her to ever be tainted. Just look at all the attempts made already.

So for the immediate duration, the sidebar graphic remains unchanged…especially the “don’t change a thing” part of it. She’s the last, best hope for the country to regain some lost common-sense bearings, and as far as hopes go, she’s pretty far from a ramshackle, half-assed one. She has been, and remains today, quite a decent one.

You can tell this from the left-winger comments. They’ve been a lot more anxious, a lot more desperate, to get their talking points out there…certainly compared to Palin-backers like us. Examine the typical mixed-company (conservatives and libs) thread about Palin’s announcement; by the time things quiet down again, for every comment from a reasonable person there’s ninety-nine more comments from some weasely liberal ankle-biters. And not 99 ankle-biters either. Something like a dozen of ’em, typing in crap and hitting “Post” over and over again. It’s the same story different day: They have to get the first word, they have to have the last word, they have to have all other words in between. Nothing less will make their wrong-headed policies look appealing to anyone, and they know it.

Of course, some of this is trickery on my part, since I’ve been pretending not to know things I know. Got a call from Palin’s press secretary yesterday evening, in response to a private e-mail I sent the Governor. It was about yet another theory, one not yet explored by anyone. Bulls-eye, first try! And since this is The Blog That Nobody Reads, there is no damage involved in spilling the beans here.

I was right. Sarah Palin never was the Governor of Alaska in the first place.

It was Bristol. It’s true. And the entire Palin family, from what was relayed to me last night, is quite mystified it’s taken this long for anyone to figure it out.

“Which Is It, Political Suicide or a Shrewd Political Gamble?”

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Neither one, dipshit. I’m quoting that dimbulb who’s filling in for Glenn Beck; clearly not a Palin fan, which is alright by me, but he’s indulging in wishful thinking like crazy. In so doing he’s really making an ass out of himself on live television. He’s homing in on the “quitter” argument, obviously got his ego wrapped up in it. I think he really does know: It’s now-or-never to get that talking point going. Palin can’t stand the heat, so she’s getting out of the kitchen. She’s meek. She’s mild. This isn’t the game for her.

Actually, it’s quite silly to debate whether or not Sarah Palin can take heat. That was decided months ago. One of the reason she has so many fans is that she’s shown she’s got the grace and maturity to let crap like this roll right off.

It’s the personal financial expense — and the pointlessness. Gov. Palin is doing exactly what I thought I’d be doing, in her shoes, several months ago. It’s an iron-clad rule with ankle-biters: GET AWAY NOW. They’re black holes for your energy. The “that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” rule doesn’t apply; instead, it’s the “never wrestle with a pig” rule that applies. I know this as well as anybody else. I’ve got jealous ankle biters in my past. I have no regrets whatsoever…none…about putting distance between me & them. I’m filled with regret about waiting as long as I did to get it done. So I can relate to this decision of hers, fully. Hanging around them, letting them hang around me — every single second of it was a soul-sucker. And there was no up-side to any of it.

In a stunning announcement, Gov. Sarah Palin said Friday morning she will resign her office in a few weeks.

Speculation has swirled for weeks, perhaps months that Palin would not seek re-election in 2010 as she pursues a political career on the national stage. The former vice presidential candidate has long been rumored to be considering a run at the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Palin did not address those rumors at the press conference at her Wasilla home, during which she did not take questions from reporters.

She implied that her real decision was not to seek re-election, and that the resignation was a natural step after that in order to avoid a lame-duck final 18 months of her term.

“With this announcement that I’m not seeking re-election, I’ve determined it’s best to transfer the authority of governor to Lieutenant Governor (Sean) Parnell,” Palin said. “I’m determined to take the right path for Alaska, even though it is unconventional and is not so comfortable.

She calls it a “superficial, wasteful political bloodsport.” Anyone who fails to understand that reference simply hasn’t been paying attention. Hopefully, once she’s out of the Governor’s office it will no longer be possible to target her for these capricious “ethics” complaints — at least until something materializes with some indictable meat to it.

Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.

Not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but Dagny Taggart resigned as the Vice President of Operations, Taggart Transcontinental, in Atlas Shrugged. Twice. Both times in the middle of “reforms” similar to exactly what’s taking place right now. Just kinda interesting…

Also Blogging:

 • Cas
 • Mel
 • Rick
 • Neo

Palin in Vanity Fair

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

So pundits on both sides of the ideological divide are talking about the length of Todd Purdum’s 9,823-word essay on Sarah Palin in Vanity Fair.

Palin in Vanity FairI certainly do think this is newsworthy. And it’s not because I’ve been lying awake at night, wondering what Vanity Fair thinks of Palin. It’s because the Vanity Fair piece changes the dynamics of what’s going on.

Huffington Post provides a helpful and quick summary

Purdum explains the anonymity of the negative quotes about Palin to the staffers finding it painful, even privately, to reflect on the selection of Palin because:

There is ultimately no way to read [it] as reflecting anything but an appalling egotism, heedlessness and lack of judgment… They all know that if their candidate – a 72-year-old cancer survivor – had won the presidency, the vice presidency would be in the hands of a woman who lacked the knowledge, the preparation, the aptitude, and the temperament for the job.

Chuck Todd, filling in for Chris Matthews, pressed Purdum on these extremely harsh words, asking if Purdum actually had McCain staffers telling him this or if it was more of a read-between-the-lines of the staffers’ statements. Purdum demurred, saying he didn’t want to get into a discussion about sources, but he stated it’s safe to say that he had people from the McCain campaign saying words extremely close to those words that he wrote.

It’s not a flattering piece. Probably not a very informative piece either; “anonymous staffers” with such a swell excuse for staying anonymous…with the campaign now eight months in the rear view mirror? At times it swerves into sheer bigotry. Not quite so much the woman-bashing, which we’ve come to expect when the Manhattan crowd carps away about Palin — but — Alaska-bashing.

The first thing McCain could have learned about Palin is what it means that she is from Alaska. More than 30 years ago, John McPhee wrote, “Alaska is a foreign country significantly populated with Americans. Its languages extend to English. Its nature is its own. Nothing seems so unexpected as the boxes marked ‘U.S. Mail.’” That description still fits. The state capital, Juneau, is 600 miles from the principal city, Anchorage, and is reachable only by air or sea. Alaskan politicians list the length of their residency in the state (if they were not born there) at the top of their biographies, and are careful to specify whether they like hunting, fishing, or both. There is little sense of government as an enduring institution: when the annual 90-day legislative session is over, the legislators pack up their offices, files, and computers, and take everything home. Alaska’s largest newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News, maintains no full-time bureau in Juneau to cover the statehouse. As in any resource-rich developing country with weak institutions and woeful oversight, corruption and official misconduct go easily unchecked. Scrutiny is not welcome, and Alaskans of every age and station, of every race and political stripe, unself-consciously refer to every other place on earth with a single word: Outside.

So, of all the puzzling things that Sarah Palin told the American public last fall, perhaps the most puzzling was this: “Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.”

It sounds like some central character in a made-for-TV movie taking place in the Renaissance era, something about Britain pushing into the Americas, or into Africa, or some other kind of colonialism. Some bigoted snotty Englishman dripping with venom describing those naked savages he’s been reading about off in that New World. Just stereotype after stereotype after stereotype…can’t you just see it? Makes you want to crack it open to see what else he has to say about Alaskans. Their kids can’t read; they eat their boogers; they poop in buckets…

So why is this news? You’ll find out when you examine the motive for allocating so many glossy pages on such an unlikely subject matter. Up until now, you could claim to be a devotee to cold, rational logic — and still arrive at any one of a number of different conclusions about the Palin effect on the 2012 elections, and the 2010 midterms. Palin is an incompetent that will snuff out the Republican candle for good. Palin is a pure placebo put there to patronize stupid conservative women. Palin is the equivalent of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. Palin is a Manchurian Candidate. Palin is a Trojan Horse…

Many of those options were eliminated just now, if you claim to be following logic. At least, they have been, if you presume 1) Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair is not a conservative Republican (and I’m just going to toss that in the stewpot, it seems safe) and 2) he knows what he’s doing. Purdum’s piece waxes lyrically about what strengths our youngest governor seems to possess politically, but always in the context of intermingling a carefully compiled dossier of her shortcomings. And the strengths, the obligatorily-mentioned strengths, all seem to have to do with her ability to campaign, not to govern. Something in my gut tells me this fellow is not a Palin fan.

In sum: This is the enemy, begging Republicans to put a weapon away.

Purdum doesn’t want us to know any more about Sarah Palin than we already do. He wants her heckled and ridiculed into non-existence, because if she remains on the game-board it sets up a potential outcome he doesn’t find appealing. Before this latest issue of Vanity Fair, that was just an idea, one kind of fun to think about. Now it’s a near-certainty with some solid strategic evidence behind it.

For those yet still unconvinced, here’s a thought: How much sense does it make for anyone, outside of Republican campaign officials and maybe a blogger or two, to be talking about Sarah Palin right now — at all? Think on that one for awhile. The drama with her grandson is over, the kid’s born, Trig is over a year old, she’s running Alaska, Joe Biden is doing such a swell job in that position for which he competed with her. We’re about to celebrate our country’s 233rd birthday; it’s very ill, perhaps terminally. The Nork Nerd is getting ready to lob a cruise missile in the air to help us celebrate, kind of a “Nice Car, We’ll Come Get It When We Want It” note to leave under the windshield wiper. The print media industry is on the ropes. Reporters are getting furloughed, laid off, outright-fired. Our new hopey-changey Obama economy is a turd circling the toilet bowl, getting ready to take the big plunge. Why is the glossy-mag industry looking up North?

The only answer I can think of for that one, is they’re concerned she might run and they’re afraid of what would result from that.

Can anyone think of another one?

“The Tent Sure is Tiny”

Friday, June 19th, 2009

Amen to that, Melissa. Today’s organized feminists have something wrong with them. They’re getting my OCBASASBDII acting up (Obsessive Compulsive Bullshit Alphabet Soup Acronym Shopping and Behavioral Disability Invention Impulse) as I try, in vain, to meaningfully comprehend what is going on upstairs that stops them from acting like normal, decent, clear-thinking human beings. They’re bringing up the thoroughly debunked urban legend about Sarah Palin and the rape kitsagain. And they’ll do it again and again, anytime Palin’s name is brought back into the news and the general public reaction isn’t already quite as negative and visceral as they’d like it to be.

Meghan McCain, next time you want the Republicans to become more inclusive, I have a suggestion on where else you can swivel your spotlight, you lover-of-big-tents-you. Melissa’s onto something here. You’re needed Mrs. Peel!

Feminists aren’t about defending women, and therefore, they aren’t about defending any other demographic group. They aren’t even about progressive policies; for if they were, it’s reasonable to expect they’d pick some policies that accentuate, rather than diminish, the worthiness and importance of women in our modern society. Abortion? Gay marriage? Those aren’t them. No, they are about finding an outlet for a destructive psychological impulse — the impulse to define anomalous persons as undesirable aliens, separate them, ostracize them, destroy them.

They are at the epicenter of a storm that has engulfed many in this late era. After my Bullshit Behavioral Disability Invention Impulse really gets going, I might think of some letters I can arrange into a cutesy acronym to describe it…or I might not…busy weekend ahead, and all. But the problem that afflicts so many appears to be — a long-accumulated stockpile of skills and long-refined personal drive to destroy things, leaving the sufferer feeling unfulfilled and burdened with a burning, unspoken desire to pretend to be creating something.

One Revolution AwayIn this way, they share a malady with the Obamabots. And they, in turn, with the environmentalists. And all those three, in turn, with all the most powerful progressive-politic types in general. They all have this in common: Meaningless cliches tossed out to suggest something wonderful and grand is being built, but if you watch them across a meaningful length of time you see all they do is destroy things. By now, it’s safe to say that if you don’t have this sickness, you aren’t running anything. Nothing so big that it’s assured to come out on top of things.

That is the root cause of what ails feminism lately, and it’s a far-flung widespread sickness now. All these people perched, like vultures on fence posts in some long-abandoned ghost town, ready to point, to heckle, to invent sordid tales about rape kits, to slander, to excoriate, to shun, to fling their insults. To do as much damage as they can to a designated target…once it’s been designated. All that poo just ready to be flung. And interspersed with all that scat, with all the bile, are these meaningless but carefully-chosen focus-group tested catchphrases that suggest constructing something. “Together we can do this” and all that.

Left to be discovered: Do they have some creative energies that are frustrated with the lack of an outlet? Is it possible that a desire to create can share a single human host with such a passionate impulse to destroy? Or are they wholly lacking in creativity…seeking to find new ways to offer a convincing illusion of something that isn’t there?

It’s late June now. Throughout this year, those who so overwhelmingly won an election — by slandering women, among other things, thereby “uniting” with the feminists one could have reasonably presumed wouldn’t have had their fancies so tickled — have constructed absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing but staggering debt…and a vegetable garden.

It’s a sweeping epidemic. It’s obviously quite contagious. And deadly. You were worried about Swine Flu?

Best Sentence LXIV

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

The sixty-fourth award for Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) goes to Jay Valentine at American Thinker, who is writing about Sarah Palin and this time it has nothing to do with the David Letterman flap. Or very little. It has to do, instead, with why she is so regularly singled out for good-natured jokes that aren’t good-natured, aren’t jokes, and aren’t funny.

Super PalinThe left is telling us something many feel, many find as a hunch, that Sarah Palin is the most dangerous threat to the Obama administration with no close second. The left is telling us this by their “over the top” attacks. Not just the Letterman assaults, but the constant barrage of grievances filed against her in Alaska. The attacks every day on Palin for no apparent reason — except that the left seems to see her quite differently from any Republican candidate. A difference of kind, not of degree.

They would never do this to Romney, Huckabee or Newt, at least not to this level. There is a clear reason — these guys couldn’t fill up a high school stadium unless they were giving out free beer.

Zing.

But it gets much better. Wait for it…

Palin could fill a stadium if she were reciting a cookbook. But she isn’t. She is delivering common sense to an electorate that is becoming ever more jaded every day with the Obama nonsense. Miranda rights for terrorists? $4 trillion deficit?

Look at the blow she delivered with one phrase about “styrofoam columns” and imagine what she can do with the material Obama has recently given her.
:
Some thought McCain would be the anti-charisma candidate against the charisma candidate and that would work. Now we may be lining up for the common sense charisma campaign against the nonsense charisma. [emphasis mine]

As an organization becomes dysfunctional, eventually the charismatic people run everything. There really is no getting around it. But charisma doesn’t have to be silly; in fact, when it is, charisma has no widespread appeal except across a short, nearly instantaneous, window of time. It becomes a flash in the pan. People start to pay attention to policies, nevermind how much they neglected policy before. They start to hunger for things that will actually work.

Remember 2008? It seems like such a long time ago. Even people who supported Obama, conceded that their candidate’s overpowering and palpable potential for winning was entirely unrelated to His policies. The electorate wasn’t paying attention. The Obama backers knew this, in fact, in some cases even joked about it. Why wouldn’t they? It made them happy. The happier they were, the more energy their movement had, and the more energy their movement had, the more votes they picked up and the drunker they got.

Well…calling in the bar tab has a way of ending happy hour, right-quick. Even a monopoly on charisma won’t stop that from happening. But Obama doesn’t have a monopoly on charisma right now. Valentine hit a bulls-eye here — silly-charisma versus sensible-charisma, that’s exactly the contest that’s being set up. And it’s going to be beautiful to watch, or ugly, depending on your point of view.

Hat tip to Rick for the find.

A Much Better Apology

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Yes, it’s still full of holes. I’m not saying if I was Todd or Sarah Palin I’d be inviting David Letterman over for dinner soon…or ever…in fact, I think I can still reassure you he’d be on my permanent block-list, since I’m from Earth and have red blood, and the situation is really quite clear. He’s just a fellow I wouldn’t care to have in my inner circle, y’know? But you can reach that conclusion, and still at the same time accept the apology.

He’s just a phony-edgy-comedian who got caught up in his own cleverness and said something indecent. He shot his mouth off and asked questions later…which is, when you think about it…kind of the job description. I think this is good enough for us to move on. I know Gov. and Mr. Palin have the final word on that, but that’s my take on it. David Letterman’s a dimbulb who didn’t mean any real harm. He’s just guilty of being a dimbulb.

“And then I was watching the Jim Lehrer ‘Newshour’ – this commentator, the columnist Mark Shields, was talking about how I had made this indefensible joke about the 14-year-old girl, and I thought, ‘Oh, boy, now I’m beginning to understand what the problem is here. It’s the perception rather than the intent.’ It doesn’t make any difference what my intent was, it’s the perception. And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it’s not a very good joke. And I’m certainly – ” (audience applause) “- thank you. Well, my responsibility – I take full blame for that. I told a bad joke. I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It’s not your fault that it was misunderstood, it’s my fault. That it was misunderstood.” (audience applauds) “Thank you. So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the Governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I’m sorry about it and I’ll try to do better in the future. Thank you very much.” (audience applause)

Two points to make here.

First — I still want to keep up my personal war on this brand of humor. You know what I mean; you must; for I have already explained it. That thing where, your joke isn’t really funny but it is calculated to offend and annoy a selected demographic, thereby pleasing another selected demographic that is elated whenever unpleasantness is created for the former demographic.

Conservative, liberal, I don’t give a shit. That just isn’t funny. When you’re in your forty-third year there is some effort involved in staying up for late-night comedy, and I want to see something truly funny. A bunch of bullshit about “I’m on your side all you hip people, so that makes me a cool comedian!” is a waste of my time and my DVR space.

Second. One of my favorite grocery cashiers rang up my purchase this weekend, and he happened to comment on how much he liked my pro-Palin shirt. “I don’t want her running the country, but she is a wonderful broad,” he said. Now that I’m seeing some of these comments (“I don’t like her politics, but this joke was…” et cetera) my mind flashes back to that conversation.

I have a question that is coming to me because of Sarah Palin’s new place in our evolving culture. This “I don’t like her politics BUT” place she has in our culture. Every time Gov. Palin’s name comes up and she is unquestionably in the right, which is nearly always, here comes that tired old disclaimer. “I don’t like her politics, or I don’t want to see her running anything important, but.”

And here’s a real quick bunny trail. “I don’t want her running the country” is a strange thing to say, Mister Cashier — because my shirt didn’t say “Sarah Palin is a swell gal” or “Sarah Palin is a cool broad.” My shirt said I did want her running things. It said “Palin in 2012.” Because I do want her making decisions. I think she’d do a better job than the folks who really are running things. A far, far better job…even if she is a chick. She was, and is, the best man for the job, period. Better than Barry, better than Mac, better than Doctor Ron, better than Mitt, better than Rudy. A real man can admit when the skirt is in the right, and that rule applies here. ‘Fess up, guys.

But back to the subject at hand. Here’s my question.

What is the MOST reprehensible position Sarah Palin has on anything? What is the most awful, repugnant, opprobrious, (breaking out the thesaurus here) scurrilous, reproachful, ignominious, inglorious, shameful, abhorrent, notorious, dishonorable, sinful…aw c’mon, by now, surely you get the picture…insert impressive list of synonyms here…position Gov. Sarah Palin has on anything? It’s such a popular thing to say, surely somewhere someone has to be able to answer to this.

Is it — when she is pregnant with a child that will be disabled, she decides not to kill him?

Is it — when we’re spending billions of dollars subsidizing terrorists by importing our oil, she’d rather have us digging it out of our own domestic reserves?

Is it — when she’s a Republican, and she’s eyeball to eyeball with Republican corruption, she takes it on anyway because she’s got more balls than some of the men have?

Is it — when a bottom-feeding ankle-biting late-night hack comedian makes a sexual joke about her fourteen-year-old daughter, she says & does something about it?

Are those the terrible, awful policy positions that it’s so fashionable for people to oppose?

Someone clue me in in the comments below, please. I’m dead flat-ass serious; I’d really like to know.

The Alaska Fund Trust Webathon

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

Please watch the video all the way through, it isn’t long.

The drive takes place from June 15-22, and I would really like to see a whole lot of money pour in from people who disagree with Sarah Palin politically. On whatever issue it is. Let’s say…you love watching our government sunk into hopeless depths of debt, you want more babies butchered, you think it makes lots of sense to keep our own oil in the ground and burn food to make the cars go…

Okay, no need to get nasty by calling things what they are. Let’s just say it’s some other issue. You’re just dancing a jig because the lightweight from the Arctic was voted down and sent back home up North where she belongs. Or you bought into the character assassination and believe she really is a dimbulb, and thank goodness we got Mister Two Teleprompter handling all our weighty problems. These next words are for you.

Although Alaska is getting along well enough we should wish the rest of the country is doing as nicely — and that is pretty much a lost hope for the immediate future now — there is one flaw with the fiftieth state. It has a reprehensibly low threshold of requirement for filing ethics complaints against public officials…any public officials. As I understand it, you prove you’re a resident, you say you’re concerned about something, sign something and away we go. No filing fee.

This is being leveraged in a “death by a thousand paper cuts” strategy so that the persons and organizations who disagree politically with Gov. Palin can let her know how they feel about her — and she can spend her personal finances into a deep hole trying to fight them. Which she’s doing, a lot more effectively than I or most of us could if we were put in the same position. Nevertheless, it isn’t cheap.

So these words are for those who do not yet have an opinion about what’s going on here. But don’t want to see Palin or anyone like her running anything, because their values are different from hers.

These are the words:

This STINKS. To high heaven.

You know it. Everybody else knows it.

It is not an effective way to bring a higher standard of ethics to any level of government. Anyone with working tissue topside of the brain stem, knows that too. What it does, is the opposite, which is to host attempt after attempt after pathetic attempt to install a custom-crafted dictatorship by bullying and intimidating anyone in any position of power, who might want to offer a reasoned challenge against what’s being attempted. It is tyranny. And regardless of ideological persuasion, we all have a stake in making sure at the end of the day, it does not work.

I hope you join me in donating.

Week Ending June 12, 2009

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

Do you realize what an incredible week this has been? I’m ready to go ahead and call it right now: In the months and years ahead, when Republicans and democrats try to figure out when the national scene all turned around, there will be bipartisan agreement that the fickle wheel of fortune did its spinning in the week ending June 12, 2009. That is when the Republicans really returned to power; when the democrats really fell out of it. When mainstream America figured out the Obama experiment was, in all the ways that mattered, a complete failure. Time to absorb the lessons of reality and let the tender bloated easily-bruised ego receive the punishment that had been coming.

There is, I confess, some wishful thinking involved in that. But that’s not really a bad thing. Every triumph against the odds, in human history, has started with that. And there certainly have been some. I’ll presume, for the thinking reader, no listmaking is necessary to bolster that point.

Let us instead fixate our list-making obsession on the week just departed. And in doing that, let us start with the big kahuna:

David Letterman’s sad, pathetic, stupid joke. Does Letterman have a Republican plant on his writing staff? The damage done here was incalculable. The joke delved down deep into what everybody knew, in their dark subconciousnesses, and brought it bubbling up into the light where it all had to be consciously acknowledged: How humor itself has been re-defined in the early part of the twenty-first century. Blue-blood super-liberal Manhattan comedian makes a conservative look like a buffoon, and the rest of us give a courtesy laugh. Even though it’s NOT FUNNY. This has been a seriously powerful weapon in the liberal arsenal, because if you respond to this the way a reasonable person does — roll your eyes — in our modern, twisted culture, you’re a die-hard lunatic extremist. In a more reasonable environment it is acknowledged that it takes a die-hard lunatic extremist to do the laughing.

The punchline simply didn’t pack any humor. Nobody’s waltzing into a bar and saying “Hey, didja hear the one about Alex Rodriguez and Sarah Palin’s daughter?”

What Letterman did, was wake up the “mainstream” Americans who don’t give a rip about conservatives or liberals — but who could’ve easily been suckered into voting liberal with some well-placed signals that Republicans are subhuman, beneath contempt, it’s okay to abuse ’em so it certainly should be alright to vote against ’em without bothering to study up on the issues. Well from here on out, maybe that will still work, but I think America will have a little bit better idea of what’s being done to it now. And that can’t be good for the plan.

Elsewhere on the Manhattan-lib fashion-plate front, Katie Couric’s ratings plummeted some more, and fellow fashion-plate blue-blood Manhattan-lib Jon Stewart actually had the balls to made fun of her about it.

Paul Krugman, seldom correct but never in doubt, tried to lead a charge against right-wing hate by fastening the identity of the Holocaust Memorial shooter to the conservative movement. And everly ambitious, he thought as long as he was at it he’d try to revive some credibility for that discredited Homeland Security report. He failed on both counts; as is usual for Mr. Krugman, his point failed when it was discovered the facts simply weren’t on his side. Hating George Bush, hating John McCain, being a registered Maryland democrat…these are not traits that typically apply to conservative-movement agitators. But they applied to this nutburger who’s supposed to be our new icon for conservative hate. Swing and a miss.

By now, there had arisen an urgent need to prove what was supposed to have already been proven seven months ago: that the democrats were innately nice folks, and there was something about human nature that made Republicans inherently mean. Typically, democrats like to pursue this with an objective of purity: Everything anybody does that is nice was inspired by a progressive movement somewhere, and every anecdote about man’s inhumanity to man has some conservatism in it somewhere. The Letterman joke all by itself was plenty enough to upset that applecart, so now the effort was to recover the sentiment through saturation. President Obama’s former Pastor and spiritual advisor Jeremiah Wright demonstrated his impeccable timing by choosing this as the week for his comments about talking to his former spiritual pupil: “Them Jews aren’t going to let me speak to him.” Good one! That guy we elected President to start our new Hopenchange good-time rock-n-roll chapter in history, who’d inspire us all to do better and love each other — he received spiritual counsel from this bigot for two solid decades. Republicans tried to warn ya. Ya didn’t listen. It was, and is, a reality. Yet another reminder.

And the week was still young.

Ah, but our country certainly knew what it was doing. We had a skeptical, energetic and free press filling us in on what was going on, and letting us come to our own decision about who would get our vote. Right? Well…hope you didn’t put too much faith in that. If you did, it might have come as a bit of a shock when Evan Thomas went on record to say President Obama “is sort of God.” Chris Matthews agreed. Yup. Real balanced and objective, there, gentlemen. I don’t understand why anyone ever doubted you. They must have been a bunch of unreasonable, lying, irrational, bitter angry conservatives.

Perhaps this is why — also this last week — a San Francisco Chronicle editor said “Obama and the fawning press need to get a room.”

After all that, the solid meat is still just ahead of us. Remember back in January when, if the world went to war and caught fire, you’d never have heard a single thing about it because the news was all filled up with stories about Michelle Obama’s gowns, Barack Obama’s ten balls (!), and hope was in the air? About how much the economy sucked but it was all going to get more better because we had our hopey changey iPresident now and He was going to fix everything? Nowadays the hardcore liberals, the mildly liberals, and the main-street guys who don’t care or say they don’t care — still defend that because hey, it’s only been five months since then. Give Him a chance! He’s trying His best! It’s too early, and He inherited all this! Well…sit down for this one…now, according to Rasmussen, by a six-point margin Republicans are more trusted than democrats on economic issues. Yup, that’s from this week too.

Now how’d that happen? I see a link between that story, and the one about the study from Ohio that found conservatives are more open to opposing arguments than liberals. Call me Pollyanna, but I think even the Main Street folks who don’t give a crap about any of this, intuitively understand that you can’t make good decisions in life if you already have your mind made up about something before you gather the facts. What I’m trying to say is that people want to follow a good leader, they know in their guts what a good leader looks like, and they don’t want to see someone locked into a mindset and with that mindset, a narrow field of options from which to choose for any given situation. Which, ironically, is what the democrats keep saying, citing reasons why conservatives can’t be trusted. But it turns out, in reality as well as in public opinion, liberals are the narrow-minded ones. This was aptly demonstrated when the study hit the innerwebs, and some cloistered communities of liberals aired their reactions to it. It typically looked something like this.

It’s not news to anyone who’s really been paying attention. But liberals are not open-minded, they’re not receptive to all points of view, they’re not willing to listen to new ideas, and they damn sure aren’t tolerant of anything called “diversity” unless, by diversity, you’re referring to monochrome concentrations of dark skin.

President Obama also thought He would demonstrate His impeccable political timing. Now that the country He was supposed to be leading was showing its reservations about investing in Him all this godlike power, He thought He’d appoint a czar to limit executive compensation at private firms. Now, He may have found it politically expedient to limit the effects of this to corporations accepting taxpayer funds in the form of bailout programs…and He may want to promote that…but you just can’t get around that it raises serious questions about the relationship between government and the private sector. And how long would such a policy remain limited to bailout firms? We’ll have to wait a few weeks for the polls to come out, I think. But my gut says most people are on my side on this thing, or at least, are similarly concerned. This is an alteration of the fundamental relationship between our government and the people it purports to govern. The party hacks get to decide if I’m making too much money, and cut me off at the knees if they think I’m getting as big as they are? What country is this again?

The point is, I thought it was Obama’s predecessor who was supposed to be making us ask that question.

Affirmative Action was in the news this week. You know what that is, right? That’s where, if your racial makeup is caucasian and you try to make something of yourself, you are artificially injured to help make up for the abuse that was heaped on persons of darker skin in times past. It’s a tit-for-tat thing. No wait…it isn’t…supposedly, it’s an effort to help the disenfranchised and underprivileged, and it’s entirely color-blind, any thoughts muttered to the contrary are purely hardcore right-wing agitprop. It’s long been my impression that a bare majority of the country does support Affirmative Action, but because and only because they believe that last summation. In other words, by a bare majority, we are on board with helping the underprivileged but we do not want special race-based privileges to apply. So it was further damaging when it came out that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayer ‘fessed up that she is an “Affirmative Action baby” in comments released by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Affirmative Action baby…as in…her test scores were not comparable to her classmates’ test scores. She leapfrogged ahead in line because of her racial background. Her statement that says that.

Is America on board with that kind of Affirmative Action program? An outcome-based one that confers the same prestigious position — Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, in this case! — upon members of beneficiary-groups with mediocre achievements, as it would upon a boring-old-white-guy who can offer spectacular achievements? Don’t forget, across all racial classifications, mediocre people vastly outnumber spectacular people. So what are the ultimate consequences of this? More to the point, could the country possibly become worried about such consequences? Want to have your next brain surgery done by someone who’d never been called on to truly distinguish himself, except by his or her race? Does Main Street USA’s support for Affirmative Action extend that far? Maybe we’re about to find out.

Congressman Barney Frank…whom nobody thinks is a Republican…demonstrated that much-lauded progressive-liberal patience and tolerance for diverse points of view during a live television interview. Wonder if they factored this in to that above-mentioned study.

And then we had that progressive-liberal respect for the rule of law demonstrated by our Climate Queen — yeah, that’s another matter, our liberals-in-charge want to control our weather. Climate czar Carol Browner apparently violated the Presidential Records Act.

So the picture’s pretty complete — as it has been for awhile, but in this damaging, damaging week, it was pencilled in, painted in, tinted, shaded, and framed to perfection in such a way that the apathetic mainstream centrist voters can understand it. And understand it well. These people are in power, uncontested, out of control, as closed-minded as any Republican has ever been, hateful, intolerant, impetuous, as pissy and resentful as any loser of elections has ever been. They are as dim and incurious as George W. Bush has ever been. They cannot get along with anyone else, even their own. They cannot deal with important decisions because they cannot deal with facts. They just want to have power over everybody else, and that’s all. Well, that and accumulate magnitudes of personal wealth as lofty and imposing as what they would deny to others.

The only thing missing from this week…and this may have happened too, if I missed it…was the usual, regularly “scheduled” embarrassing gaffe from Vice President Joe Biden. Other than that one cherry on top, everything else was there this week.

Small wonder that Biden’s old contender for the #2 spot, apparently felt so justified in saying I told you so.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Dave Letterman and Sarah Palin

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

Stay classy, Dave.

Liberals have such an awkward relationship with humor. We saw with the “I can see Russia from my house!” thing that, when reality is unkind to the liberal viewpoint, they use it to impressive effect to just make reality go away. This has the side effect of adding the Jon Stewart bazooka to their munitions stockpile, before it’s even needed: Someone comes along to say “Now she didn’t actually say that” and the defensive mechanism has already been activated and deployed — they get to say “Aw, it’s a comedy show, you’re taking it way too seriously.” So it’s Not-Comedy when you’re dictating what people should think about things and what people should do about things. As soon as you get called on your bullshit suddenly it’s comedy again and you don’t have to be accurate.

This is slightly different. It’s the Stalinist/Nazi technique of leading by example, identifying who among us is less than human…who is fair game. What’s really sad is nobody out there is saying “Oh you need to watch Dave Letterman, he can be so funny sometimes, like for example this joke about Bristol Palin and Alex Rodriguez.” Nobody says that. But the “He can be so funny sometimes” is made in reference to, instead, something else. People tune in to watch the occasional joke that is really funny. And then buzz-killers like this are tossed into the mix — but people still go out there and say You should watch David Letterman he can be really funny sometimes.

Kinda like the fast-food burger joint. People say “You gotta try that place they have the best burgers” but the burger-place isn’t there to cook you your burgers. They’re there to sell you a cup that costs less than one cent, with soda you put in there that costs two-and-a-half cents, and charge you $1.89 plus tax for that. They lose some serious money on the burgers. But you don’t tell people the burger place has the best soda, you talk about the burgers, which are a loss-leader. That’s what real humor is to hacks like David Letterman — a loss-leader.

Of course, if you reply that you gave Letterman a fair shot and can’t be bothered to stay up that late anymore…you are the one with the problem.

Hot Air commenter alliebobbitt provided a brand new list on this occasion that turns the tables a little bit.

Top ten reasons Letterman sucks
10. Because it’s not 1982 anymore.
9. Because you either suck or blow, and John Stewart called “blows.”
8. Because I and the other 20 million who change their channel when he comes on say so.
7. Because only Letterman laughs at his own jokes.
6. Because only drunk Puerto Ricans hang out in NY delis; everyone else gets their change and leaves.
5. Because if I wanted mean and nasty, I’d get in a bar fight and have more fun.
4. Because Norm McDonald does Letterman better.
3. Because writing these jokes isn’t my full time job, and this list is still funnier than his.
2. Because I realized the only reason I used to like him was I had him confused with Super Dave Osborne.
1. Because he can’t find anything funny about this administration?

Some real thigh-slappers in there, huh Dave?

Classy Dave. You just keep pluggin’ away, pal.

Conservatives4Palin has the Governor’s response.

Withstooding Gov. Palin

Monday, June 8th, 2009

Blogger friend Rick found a couple of gems about our favorite candidate for ’08 and ’12:

Thankful for Joe Biden…

… while calling Sarah Palin an idiot.

It can only come from a buffoon:

why we remain thankful for Joe Biden…

Because Sarah Palin is still an idiot and the world could not withstood 4 more years of this kind of stupidity. Sarah’s act wore thin in 8 weeks last fall so I can’t be alone in wishing she would just shut it for a couple more years until the 2012 nomination ball starts rolling. No such luck.

A guy who writes “the world could not withstood 4 more years” calls Palin an idiot. Yea…makes sense to me too.

Gov. Palin’s intellect is such that you have to have Soros money to make her look stupid.

Vice President Biden’s grace and worldliness are such that, in order to make him look like that “wise elder statesman,” you need nothing less than that same Soros money.

Barack Obama’s personality is such that the same Soros magnitude of funding is required to make Him look humble, curious, grateful, compassionate, accomplished, or any one of a number of those other things He claims to be.

Of course thanks to the massive, bloated, tender and easily-bruised egos of a few left-wing bloggers and failed sports anchors, these lies can coast on the built-up momentum with no money at all. We spend *way* too much time and energy in this country debating who’s smart and who’s stupid. In real life, smart people come up with stupid decisions all the time. Stupid people often come up with the right decision, too. Most folks sounding off about this stuff don’t get that…which means they know nothing about how to make an important decision. If you could consistently make the right decision, just by making sure it’s a really smart guy making it, then heck. Why don’t we just elect the very smartest guy in our entire country to some important post, and then just have him decide everything?

Ah well, I guess we’re already doing that. But who wants to bet a large amount out of their personal savings, that that’ll work out? I don’t see anyone doing that. I just see Soros spending millions of dollars to tell us who’s smart and who isn’t. And if what he was trying to tell us had a grain of truth in any of it, something tells me it would be a lot less expensive for him to be telling us.

Wonder Palin!The other thing concerns something Palin said that I’m sure is on the minds of many…at least, those who do a better job of figuring out what’s going on, and making up their own minds about what should & should not be a pressing concern —

“America is digging a deeper hole and how are we paying for this government largesse. We’re borrowing. We’re borrowing from China and we consider that now we own sixty percent of GENERAL MOTORS – or the U.S. government does… But who is the U.S. government becoming more indebted to? It’s China. So that leads you to have to ask who is really going to own our car industry than in America.”

…I think that more and more constituents are going to open their eyes now and open their ears to hear what is really going on and realize ok… Maybe we didn’t have a good way of expressing that, or articulating that message of ‘here is what America could potentially become if we grow government to such a degree that we cannot pay for it and we have to borrow money from other countries, some countries that don’t necessarily like America.

And this many months into the new administration, quite disappointed, quite frustrated with not seeing those actions to rein in spending, slow down the growth of government. Instead Sean it is the complete opposite. It’s expanding at such a large degree that if Americans aren’t paying attention, unfortunately our country could evolve into something that we do not even recognize.

It’s good ideas that can’t be easily communicated, versus bad ideas that can be easily communicated.

Except the bad ideas don’t even have easy-communication on their side. They became easily communicable through a four-year process of evolution, devil-take-the-hindmost, survival-of-the-fittest. Nobody is saying Barack Obama has all kinds of sensible policy positions John Kerry didn’t have; nobody is saying that anywhere. The difference between the two is, in 2004 it was learned that a little something extra would be needed to push the bad ideas over the top, to get the 270 electoral votes needed. Just a little garnish. A God complex. Maybe the ability to call your opponents racist, if they happen to call out the bullcrap in your awful ideas. Millions and millions of dollars of the above-mentioned Soros money.

Sadly, due in large part to the effects of all this Soros money, we’ve been laboring under this unwritten rule that if Sarah says it, the conversation is really going to be about her competence or lack thereof. Kind of a “Can’t acknowledge the house is on fire, if Sarah is the one who smells the smoke” rule.

But her remarks this time are easily understood. They echo the growing concern among millions of quote-unquote “mainstream” Americans. Maybe this’ll change the situation somewhat.

Regarding her concerns, the one thing that really could use some more attention is the interest on our debt. The expense of servicing a debt has to rise as the credit-worthiness of the borrower drops, and also, as the availability of borrowed funds dwindles. This is just simple supply-and-demand, and it works across international borders. If you were a Chinese investor, would you be thrilled about lending some more money to the United States right now?

This issue of deficit-spending is the second most potent winning issue for 2012. The first one, is another Palinism: “Drill Baby Drill.” Two big points to the Wonder of Wasilla. They both suggest that, notwithstanding the boos and hisses and catcalls and jeers from the left side of the aisle, perhaps Sarah Palin is a natural as the next leader of the resistance movement.

What exactly have Pawlenty and Romney done, on that order of magnitude, lately?

Do a Second Draft, Sarah

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

There’s something in the language of the thank-you notes you get back when you donate to Sarah Palin’s legal defense fund, that has just kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I finally figured out what it is.

Did you happen to see it, when you donated? Know what I might be thinking about?

I’ll give you a hint. It has nothing to do with reasons not to donate. Quite the opposite. Think about the three words: “Agree Or Not.” So why don’t you chip in a few bucks, get that boilerplate back, come back here and let’s compare notes.

Palin Still Under Attack

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

Politico

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s life has changed in a myriad of ways since she became the Republican vice presidential nominee last August, but one aspect of her newfound fame has been more bracing than the others: Since entering the national spotlight, Palin has been inundated by ethics complaints, most of them filed against her after she agreed to become Sen. John McCain’s running mate.

The complaints run the gamut, ranging from the governor’s use of state funds and staff to the workings of her political action committee and even to a jacket she wore to a snow machine race involving her husband.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how many complaints have been filed because the state doesn’t keep count and the complaints are kept confidential by the attorney general’s office unless the state moves forward with a public accusation of wrongdoing. But in total there have been more than a dozen, and most of those have surfaced in the last seven months.

That much is clear because the complainants have a habit of notifying the media and bloggers each time they lodge a grievance. It’s evidence, say Palin’s defenders, that there is a clear political component to them.

“As we’ve been saying, the number of ethics complaints filed against the governor and her staff — as well as the tortured logic they contain — continue to constitute the most disturbing trend in Alaska politics,” said Palin spokeswoman Sharon Leighow in a recent statement after one ostensibly confidential complaint was sent to the Anchorage Daily News and other news outlets.

“In the past several months, we have seen an orchestrated effort by the governor’s opponents to make differences of opinion and ideology almost criminal,” said Mike Nizich, the governor’s chief of staff, in a statement. “Governor Palin has spent a considerable amount of time and money fighting ethics complaints – and no charge has been substantiated. I hope that the publicity-seekers will face a backlash from Alaskans who have a sense of fair play and proportion. I served six previous governors, and I’ve never seen anything like the attacks against Governor Palin.”

You can contribute to Sarah Palin’s defense fund here — for now, so far as I know.

That may change soon, as the fund has now been challenged as a…wait for it…yup, you guessed it. An ethics violation.

The complainant, Kim Chatman of Eagle River, claims Palin is misusing the governor’s office for personal gain by securing unwarranted benefits and receiving improper gifts.
:
Chatman’s complaint cites as potential donors the 500,000 supporters signed up for Palin’s Facebook account and various political organizations.

“Gov. Palin is perched to improperly receive an enormous amount of money for herself and her family and position a pool of pre-paid defense lawyers organized to deflect consequences of wrongdoings,” the complaint says.

Chatman told The Associated Press in a phone interview that she voted for Palin as governor in 2006, but now sees her as unethical. Palin “is not holding up her end of the bargain,” she said.

Elsewhere in the news, Wikipedia’s Astroturfing page is still filled to the brim under the “Examples, Political” section with anecdotes about right-wing organizations pushing right-wing agendas through phony or motivated right-wing individuals. It has absolutely no examples whatsoever of any astroturfing going the other direction. This has led to a vigorous debate under the talk page about why this might be.

I’m thinking if the truth of the Palin complaints ever gets out, Wikipedia just might be able to remedy that, and therefore enhance/preserve/salvage its reputation as a centrist, complete and unfiltered information resource. But that’s a pretty big “if.”

“Plane Stupid”

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

New Yorkers received an unwelcome trip down memory lane yesterday, courtesy of the “Change We Can Believe In” crew.

A perfect storm of idiocy led to a frightening 9/11 flashback for thousands of New Yorkers Monday when a jumbo jet and an F-16 fighter jet buzzed lower Manhattan without warning.

A “furious” Mayor Bloomberg denounced the dunces who dreamed up the stunt – and the NYPD officials and bureaucrats who never told him about it.

By day’s end, an obscure City Hall deputy named Marc Mugnos, who makes $60,000 a year, was taking the fall for not telling Bloomberg that the low-flying planes were coming. He was reprimanded.

But there was plenty of blame to go around.

Louis Caldera, the director of the White House military office who sent Air Force One and the fighter jet on an “aerial photo mission,” got slammed by an angry President Obama.

“I approved a mission over New York,” Caldera said in a hastily prepared statement. “I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused.”

Under the bus you go.

Yeah, Obama wasn’t on the flight, He wasn’t aware of what was being done, and He was properly “furious” after the poop hit the fan. (Just like He would’ve been if the Somali pirate thing happened to turn into a crap-fest.) For reasons best left unexplored, the “Big We” will keep on buyin’ it.

But President Palin would’ve been able to get just as testy and screechy as she cared to get…she’d never for a split-second get away with this. It’s a double-standard created for, perpetuated by, and enforced by, our weakest thinkers. This is why, back during the presidency of Obama’s predecessor, the only planes that flew this kind of trajectory really were taken over by bad guys and really did want to hit the buildings.

It’s a Jar Jar Binks administration. Nobody in the hierarchy really owns a decision, because the credit for any good decision is going to straight up to the guy at the top, and the blame for any poor decisions will be systematically scattered down to scapegoats at the lower levels. And so anybody with the authority to decide things that really matter, just kinda does…whatever…and then does their very best to hippity-hop out of the way if there’s a boulder of crap rolling down the mountain. The crap-avalanche is quasi-random, virtually disconnected from the conscious decisions that occasionally cause it.

As for when the Big Guy At The Top makes a bad decision — well, it’s just more of the same. And the prospects of anyone in the room saying “Eh, boss, that just might not be a swell idea…” Don’t make me laugh. Hasn’t happened before. Why would it start now?

Better than even odds He was behind this one. Maybe not. But we’d never know, would we? The decision simply cannot be defended, so bring out the spear-catchers…not the first regime to function in such a way…but wasn’t that part of what was supposed to be — uh — “changed”?

You can’t change that when The Boss is a religious figure. Harry Truman’s “The Buck Stops Here” sign is in a closet somewhere, gathering dust. An unused relic from the past, a casualty of the hopey-changey goodness. Say what you want about Sarah Palin not making the best appearance of her career before Perky Katie — but if this call happened on her watch, there would be no spear-catchers. That idiotic stupid dimwit redneck hick from Alaska would’ve taken the fall.

Which is why it wouldn’t have happened.

Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XXIX

Saturday, April 4th, 2009

…but House of Eratosthenes is behind the Quote of the Day at Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air.

“I’ve met a lot of women who’ve achieved remarkable things in a man’s world. I have admiration for all of them. But I have a lot more admiration for the ones who managed to get it done, without becoming bitter. Such an extraordinary thing, in ordinary women.

But for the woman who aspires to lead us all? Lead us all, in that way we keep talking about? It seems like so little to ask. And Palin’s got it.

The ones who don’t have that…can’t stand it.”

As I was typing it in, I was thinking “I hope to God Becky never sees this.” (I think our respect was mutual, though neither of us would’ve admitted it…and holy cats, that woman was bitter, although she lost her bite as time wore on.) How ironic that because of that one occasional nice thing said about the fairer sex, The Blog That Nobody Reads is hit thousands of times in the space of an hour.

Now the world thinks I’m some super-polite, sweater-wearing politically-correct guy, rather being a somewhat-lovable somewhat-sexist jerk — “My favorite male chauvinist pig in the whole world,” in Daphne‘s words. Oh, dear. How damaging to my rep. How embarrassing.

We’re probably going to break an all-time traffic record over the weekend…possibly Monday as well…and all these thousands of people see us for the very first time, and form a mental image that looks something like…

You know, if there was a way to admire the awesomeness that is Sarah Palin and remain a decent sexist jerk at exactly the same time…I’d not only be doing it, I’d find a way to patent it. It does not seem the laws of physics, in this universe, will allow such a thing. So I’m gonna have to buy a whole fistful of these

Also linked by Free Republic, and Ace. Gerard got the ball rolling.

Why They Hate Sarah Palin So Much

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

As Barack Obama continues to serve out Jimmy Carter’s second term, the nation has over three years to figure out what it really thinks about Sarah Palin. As of now, I think it’s fair to say nobody feels lukewarm about her. At all. You love her or you hate her.

Much has been said about why people like her. Especially here. Perhaps it’s time to jot down the reasons why she inspires so much resentment…so much hate.

The people who really feel it, I think, for the most part don’t understand themselves why they feel it. This seems to me to be a great tragedy. If you’re nurturing such hostile passions, you ought to at least know why.

So this is just a list to keep in hand, throughout 2012. Toward the end, as the GOP heads into its convention, I would hope the Republican officials will be somewhat sincere in wanting to learn what plain, ordinary, humdrum voters really think about things. At that point, it’s really up to you. Support Huckabee or Romney, by all means, if you think they do a better job of representing conservative values. Or, if you don’t, and simply hate Alaska’s Governor on a personal level. My suggestion is simply that you get your thoughts straight in your own little head, first & foremost.

People feel threatened by Palin because she reminds us that…

1. There is room at the top, not just for women, but for pretty women

Like any energized populist movement, feminism achieved glory by playing to the wishes of ankle-biters. By “ankle-biters” I mean people who want to shake up a power structure, not quite so much for the purpose of improving anything, but just for the sake of saying they did it. People to whom it comes so easily to criticize what’s being done, but leave all that dry, boring, propose-a-better-solution stuff to someone else.

Palin Rocks!It played to the passions of strong women who were tired of watching male politicians screw things up, and to the passions of weak, passive, wallflower women who craved that security blanket of anonymity. That’s why we’ve had so many women serving in Congress by now, but we still haven’t had a female President — nor, I would argue, have we had a viable female candidate for same. A Congresswoman can safely and effectively clone herself from the next Congresswoman. Presidents stand by themselves and they are ritually abused for this, no matter what. Even Barack Obama. Fact is, many among us don’t see this job as a good fit for the ladies…it’s too degrading…and those are not all white men.

In playing to the weak, wallflower women who don’t want to distinguish themselves in any way, feminism has become an advocacy group for those who lack appeal. With time, it has become an advocacy group for those women who work at not having any appeal. And I’m not talking sex appeal. I mean, being ready to engage in dialogues instead of monologues; talking to people in some way other than as a cross stepmother; motivating your man to come home instead of go out somewhere else, when he’s in the mood for some sex; acting like that’s important to you. We’ve seen the incremental rise of a counterculture of females who are in a great hurry not to have any appeal to anyone else, or to be beholden to anyone else — except other females who don’t have any appeal to anyone else and aren’t beholden to anyone else. They’re a grown-up version of those chubby goth chicks you knew in high school who didn’t know how to behave in public, didn’t care to learn, were horribly out of shape, and kept to their own at all times.

Most of our female politicians seem to think that’s their constituency. This is a sensitive paradigm, and the prospect of shifting it makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

2. There’s a difference between following protocol and being boring

I’ve heard an awful lot of chatter since last fall about Sarah Palin being a dumbass and a klutz and a dimwit. The picture to be painted, is one of some redneck yokel raised up in some backwoods hick town in the most remote areas of Alaska. But isn’t it funny — the time comes to present the evidence, and what can they show me: A couple of awkward moments with Katie and Charlie, making names for themselves by ambushing Palin with Trivial Pursuit questions. After that, it’s time to really scrape the bottom of the barrel, they have to go on Saturday Night Live and invent some Palin quotes about seeing Russia from her house.

Yeah, well where’s the inbred hick from upstate? Anyone got footage of Palin spitting tobacco in the middle of an interview, or maybe picking her nose?

No, from what I’ve seen, Palin is at least as adept as following the details of protocol as any refined lady. I don’t think she’d hug the Queen of Great Britain, or give Gordon Brown a set of DVDs that won’t even play on the equipment back in his home.

Now, take a good look at your typical politician — conservative, liberal, white, not, male, female, gay, straight. They’re all good at following protocol too, right? Of course; you’d have to be. Now listen to them speak…and John Conyers, I’m looking right at you. Imagine yourself being offered a job where you’d have to listen to that for twelve hours every single day. What would your salary have to be? A lot, right? It’s like Ferris Bueller’s math teacher…at half-speed.

An occasional “you betcha” suddenly doesn’t sound that awful, now does it.

3. Conservatives, when all’s said and done, aren’t really committed to keeping women in the kitchen…

Palin Signing AutographsQuite to the contrary, that Palin fan club seems to be bursting at the seams with men, men and more men. These generation-spanning memes, leitmotifs, hymns and dirges about men working overtime to keep women oppressed and powerless, seem to have been vastly overstated.

A great blow has been dealt to that companion theme, and don’t believe for a minute that nobody’s sensitive to it — because people are, in a bad way. And that companion theme is that when the lady of a household sees fit to rise up to more eminent and prestigious responsibilities than vacuuming the carpets and washing the dishes, the household must become more leftward-leaning. We’re exorcising the spirit of Archie Bunker, after all. Well, it turns out that isn’t necessarily true.

Conservative households are, quite plain and simply, sick to death of watching normal people treated like sick, weird degenerates, and sick, weird degenerates treated like normal people. Men who are fatigued by that, tend to match up with women who are fatigued by that; and once we build a household with them, we don’t need to keep them shackled in the kitchen. Our women tend to share our values. That’s why we tend to like them, and they tend to like us.

4. …and liberals aren’t that committed to truly liberating them

What goes on on the liberal side of the fence, when it comes to putting a household together and showing each other mutual respect across that gender barrier? If a guy figures out he can meet up with the above-mentioned chubby-goth-chick by mumbling all the right catchphrases about “make love, not war” and “womens’ right to choose”…and things work out, and they actually get hitched and start a life together…can it be truthfully said they have mutual respect for each other?

Back in my younger and dumber days, I dated some liberal women. I doubt that mutual-respect thing very, very much.

Every day we’re reminded that on Planet Liberal, the worthiness of an idea is not determined by its content, but by who authored it. And if you’re a white male, they really don’t have a place for you; not unless you get yourself elected to a high public office, and do some big things to advance the liberal agenda. So you can be a Kennedy or a Kerry or a Schumer or a Durbin or a Frank…or a Bill Clinton…otherwise, they really don’t want to hear anything out of you.

Which means — nothing new out of one of those hated white males, no matter what. After all, what comes out of the white-male-liberal gentlemen listed immediately above, that strays outside of the liberal plantation? Not a blessed thing. The gift those intellectuals have given the liberal movement, is not a gift of new ideas, but new ways to package up old ideas so new suckers can be found who will buy them.

Do they have any place for the non-white non-straight non-male, then? It does not seem to be the case. Hillary hasn’t had the courage to venture past the liberal plantation, either; she did vote for the authorization of the use of military force in Iraq, of course. How did that work out for her? Has her leadership as a strong woman motivated the liberal power-structure to open up to these new ideas? No, she’s been paying for it ever since.

No, liberalism really doesn’t have to do with liberating women, or liberating anyone else for that matter. With liberalism, the agenda always comes first. That’s Rule #1. Rule #2 is that when you’re in doubt, refer back to Rule #1.

5. Running a city is not a liberal thing

This is an issue that isn’t discussed very much…except maybe in these pages, and here only once in a great while.

It’s got to do with the running of a city. Our nation has, at this moment, a long list of large metropolitan canyons — great, expansive, hulking things one hesitates to call “cities” — that have been under solid liberal governance for generations. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, DC, Seattle, Baltimore. Many, many others.

How they doin’?

Not so hot. Finances, crime rate, construction, blight…pretty much any way they can possibly suck, they suck. And why is that? Liberalism, I have noticed, is really less of an ideological position than a lifetime pursuit. A good liberal has to show his liberalism all the time, with every little thing he does. It’s like some kind of “employee of the month” award that keeps getting taken away. Prometheus’ gizzard in reverse.

And so a traffic intersection is deemed worthy of a new traffic light control…or a business park needs a new dumpster collection site…perhaps a new housing development needs a water supply. In liberal cities, the unstated goal is to find the most left-wing way to get it done. This demands some creativity, because there really isn’t a liberal way to collect garbage. And it also calls for some relaxation in the drive to get the job effectively and economically done…because…again, there really isn’t a liberal way to collect garbage.

Sarah Palin’s experience working her own way up, organizational layer by organizational layer, through the mayoral office and into state and national politics, really hits a nerve with people who are invested in the status quo. She did this as a life-loving conservative. And it would seem she’s done a pretty good job of it. There are no stories about Wasilla’s crime rate exploding during her tenure as Mayor, no stories about the unemployment rate spiraling out of control…and don’t you believe for a second that there hasn’t been any diligent search for such stories.

6. Remember what feminists were telling women about “having it all”? They didn’t mean it

Damn straight they didn’t. Signs indicate that Palin is a forceful, benevolent, fortifying and fulfilled wife and mother. And, word has it she does some other stuff too.

The nastiness and pettiness this has brought out in people. It isn’t just acrid. It is…history-making. Unprecedented.

Our society has some dark demons in it, not all of them ancient.

7. In these modern times, there is room for hunting, fishing, target shooting, dogsled races and flying airplanes

There is a significant, indeed a mighty, backlash against Sarah Palin that has nothing at all to do with her public life or her electoral ambitions. It isn’t that she’s supposed to be some redneck backwoods hick from Alaska who doesn’t know how to do anything; quite to the contrary, it has to do with the things she does.

Dangerous GamesThe riding motorcycles and ATVs. The handling and firing of guns. Not so much doing manly things, but fun things.

A lot of people haven’t been doing those fun things. Except when they see other people doing fun things, they’re suddenly energized — not to start doing those fun things themselves — but to stop others from doing them. For the last several decades, our nation has been in a state of decline, with fewer and fewer people doing things that take some know-how. And I’m not talking about fixing your car or your kitchen sink (although there is an issue there, too); I’m talking about recreating.

Deep down, I think people understand that when they use the video game console as an electronic babysitter for their own kids, weekend after weekend after weekend, this is a bad thing…unless everyone else within line-of-sight is doing the same thing with their kids, and then it’s alright. This is a subtle phenomenon that is playing out in the very fabric of our culture. For example, how many kids live in a “divided” household now? More do than don’t, right? Something like that?

If you’re a single-dad living in a cold climate, and your weekends consist of holing up and watching teevee, but mommy and her new boyfriend spend those same weekends going skiing…you will be hearing about it. And you should. But people tend to be more contagious with their dilatory behaviors than with their productive and beneficial behaviors. Contagious — and nasty. Nothing ticks people off like someone doing something they themselves damn well know they should be doing. Especially when it comes to having fun with one’s own kids, and teaching them about the adventures and pleasantries life really has to offer.

8. If you look outside the beltway for your leadership, you might find someone who’s effective and not neck-deep in scandal

We saw it with President Obama’s first appointments, at least, the ones that didn’t get in trouble for their back-taxes. Oh look, a Clinton toady…and another one…and another one…and another one. It’s just the same crowd over and over again.

What’s Bill Clinton all about? Well, he can’t keep his pants zipped, but it’s okay because he’s such a wonderful leader and we really need to keep our leaders public service separate from their private lives. Hasn’t that become the Clinton motto?

Well, there’s a problem with that: They don’t keep those things separate. Try this. Research five or six or so, Clinton lieutenants. White House officials, cabinet level positions, administrative folks…whoever. Were those the “most qualified” people in those jobs? No, they weren’t. They were friends. And there’s nothing unique about the Clintons here. It’s that old game of “It isn’t what you know, it’s who you know.”

Every four years we make a big show out of scouring from coast to coast, to find the “best” people for the presidential race. That’s a sham. It’s pretty much the same crowd…all the time. Barack Obama managed to break in to the circle by offering some sales skills, at a time when the democrat party needed those skills the most. Which is a damning indictment when you think about it — because when you’re selling a decent product you really don’t need a fresh face every few years to get it sold. But that’s another story.

The grim reminder here is that these little hiccups we keep hearing about…they aren’t the product of a merciless rectal exam that would bring embarrassment down upon even the most innocent among us. That isn’t the case at all. I’m a real flesh-and-blood guy; I haven’t been perfect; there’s things from my past that would embarrass me, I think. But I haven’t been getting my genitals sucked by an intern while I was on the phone with a congressman. You’re probably a flesh-and-blood person too. I’ll bet you haven’t been attending church services led by an America-hating bigot.

Fact is, our leaders have been just-plain-bad because we’ve been in a stupor. Just like the battered wife rationalizing away about how wonderful her husband is when he isn’t drunk.

We’ve been settling. It’s self-explanatory how there are people around with a vested interest in our continuing to settle.

Sarah Palin is a reminder that we don’t have to. If we’re willing to look beyond the same old crowd, searching for the skills and talents we keep telling ourselves we want to find, we’re apt to discover a lot of the embarrassment we’ve been enduring has been entirely unnecessary.

If we’re just going to look at the same old names, only pretending to look for some real talent…we’re apt to just keep wallowing in the same old filth. You always do whatcha always done, you’ll always get whatcha always got.

9. Success-by-Rolodex is an outdated notion — blend determination together with optimism, and having the right friends will follow

Now this is scary. Imagine that Sarah Palin’s success is due, not quite so much to John McCain choosing her last year, but rather to technology that wasn’t here ten years ago but is bound to stick around from here on out.

It’s not so far-fetched. Half a century ago, you couldn’t “Google” someone’s name and find out about them…or go looking for something else, and trip across their name. And so people did what they had been doing for centuries before that: They exchanged introductions by word-of-mouth.

Well, that worked out pretty well, as long as it was mutually understood that when people “vouched,” they did so for the newcomer’s character. Problem: In politics, it seems people don’t do their vouching for that, or anything like it. Once favors are involved, the vouching takes on a treacherous discoloration of quid-pro-quo. It works like this: You are A. You know B and you don’t know C. If B wants to vouch for C but you don’t owe B anything, then B has to explain some good things about C. Maybe C is a good salesman like Barack Obama; maybe C sticks to his convictions like George W. Bush; maybe C is just a cutthroat sonofabitch like Rahm Emmanuel. Whichever one it is, maybe you’ll go for it. But you’ve got to know why. B has to explain why. B has to give details on what, exactly, is being supported on the buttress and foundation of your good name.

If you do owe B something, then it’s all different. B just gives C the thumbs-up. You comply.

And so, throughout the centuries, politics has become a dirtier and dirtier business. People talk over and over again about so-and-so being “just a great guy”; nobody says anything about what’s so great. In that sense, ironically, President Obama is not a new kind of candidate — he represents not only an ancient class of candidate, but a doomed one. Yes, more people approve of him right now, than approve of Sarah Palin. There was a lot of money spent to make things turn out that way.

But that’s also the nature of transparency. A lot of people don’t have the maturity to be ready for it. Their time will come…as soon as they realize there are real decisions they can be making about things, and these decisions are more important than a vote on American Idol.

Say what you will about Palin’s weaknesses…and her strengths. At least she’s transparent. We knew, from Day One, what she was all about. We were never deceived about her, one way or another, except for those among us who chose to be.

Obama, on the other hand, being yesterday’s type of politician — is just “wonderful,” that’s all. We were never permitted, by his handlers, to know exactly what was so wonderful about him.

10. It really isn’t a good idea to let Charlie Gibson, Katie Couric and Alec Baldwin choose our leaders

The power to get together with your buddies in downtown Manhattan, and write a list of interview questions, or a variety show skit, that will eventually change the world — it has to be an intoxicating thing. And an addictive one.

But sooner or later, it’ll have to be a former addiction. People will get tired of the whole process. It’s an abuse of trust, this hoodwinking of millions of people into thinking Sarah Palin’s a dimwit, just because that’s what you want them to think.

And as this realization sinks in…the realization that Obama was elected, just because some sheltered, spoiled media stars wanted it to work out that way…please understand, the realization is going to sink in silently. It’s a humbling thing to have to admit you made a mistake, just because someone wanted you to make it, and you did some obeying when you really should have been doing some thinking.

People aren’t that vocal about their humbling experiences.

And I don’t think all their buyers’ remorse over Obama is going to immediately translate into goodwill for Palin. Far from it. But I do think there will be more than a few second thoughts about the qualifications of the morning talk show celebrities to make our decisions for us, about who’s a genius and who’s a dumbass. I don’t think anyone objects to the notion that Couric, Gibson, et al carried an energized agenda to make Palin look like a dimwit. I don’t think anyone contests the idea that the plan worked, exactly as it was intended to. What I think people are divided about, is whether they should carry some resentment about what was done, and how easy it was.

And I think that’s going to shift, over time, in a single direction…as people gradually figure out they were manipulated.

I expect Palin will be refining her techniques, as well. You don’t get to be Governor of Alaska without demonstrating some capabilities at learning new things, especially about how to relate to people. She’s young and energetic enough to still be learning, and she’s shown some signs of doing this learning. It’s learning she needs to do, in order to reach out to an audience bigger than, and culturally different from, the audience to which she’s accustomed.

That’s exactly where Bill Clinton was his first year out of Arkansas. By the time Clinton was in the national limelight as long as Palin has been by now, it was…lessee…seven months? He was still campaigning, right? The whole Travel Office scandal, Vince Foster, Hillary Healthcare, Quota Queen — months and years away. Public relations boondoggles, every single one. And not just “oopsies”; they were products of inexperience in performing on a national stage.

So Sarah Palin will do her learning. Of that, I have no doubt. The real question is whether the rest of us will get ours done.

11. Chicks can say stuff

Why do you think John McCain wasn’t out there, like Sarah Palin was, reminding people that Obama had been “palling around with terrorists”? Is that because, like the Generals who were losing the Civil War before the genius of Ulysses Grant was realized, he comes from a more civilized age? Because he wants to be everybody’s “friend”? Because he’s hoping to keep some comaraderie alive with the Manhattan blue-blood crowd, that may be helpful to McCain but is anything-but to the Republican party?

Yes, yes and oh hell yes.

But it’s also because John McCain is an old-white-guy. And there’s such a seething resentment against old-white-guys, a layered, cumulative one…rather like a stalagmite in a cave made entirely of guano. It’s been decades in the making. It comes from Watergate; the national mood that set in after Watergate; and most of all, from the television shows and movies that were made after Watergate.

When rich old white guys attack, it’s to keep a power structure in place and to keep the rest of us down. Blacks, Asians, women, homosexuals, secularists, poor people. And liberals. The last of which, explains why you can be as white and as male and as straight and as wealthy and as corrupt as anybody else, and still lash out with all the nastiness and venom that suits you, so long as you’re a liberal. You’ll live to fight another day. Because a liberal rich old white guy going on the attack, is just not part of the stereotype.

Rush Limbaugh — still! — won’t apologize for saying he wants Barack Obama to fail. Rush is still standing…but that’s only because there is no height from which he can fall. He hasn’t been elected to anything. If he could be taken down a peg, they’d be getting to him. Look at that fat, cigar-smoking, golf-playing, rich old white guy, attacking our Magical President, and refusing to apologize. You don’t really want to vote for this guy, do you? Rush would apologize. He’d have to. Apologize, or get ready for a real ass-whipping.

Any man who’s worked in an office with some resourceful, intelligent, determined or just-plain-pushy women, knows: Women can say stuff men can’t say. Aw hell, any man who’s been to a wedding, or roped into “helping” to organize one, knows this.

This is a huge spoiler for the entrentched liberal power structure. An important systemic belief that has helped them to get where they are, says that if nobody’s talking about Jeremiah Wright and the President’s other America-bashing asshole friends, there must not be anything worth discussing over there. But the truth is, it is only through negligence that we avoid talking about it. We just put someone in charge who has a long and rich history of associating with people who would do the country harm. And we did it to be politically correct.

Wonder Palin!Guys can’t point this out, especially if they’re rich, straight, white, and over 50. A woman who is known for seeking out positive relationships with people, when & where they can be positive, but is capable of speaking her mind nevertheless — certainly can.

And that’s a big point against Huck, Mitt and the rest of the gang. It isn’t that they’re rich white men. It’s that, if they go after this stuff, they’ll do it with kid gloves on because they will have to. I’m going to call this one early: The incumbent President, seeking re-election, won’t be playing with kid gloves.

12. Celebrating our similarities and not our differences: We talk a good game, but we’re not doing it

Sarah Palin does it. Class-wise, she is by herself. But she shares the interests of men…women who happen to be ugly…people who are not elected officials…people who don’t have seaplanes moored by docks in front of their houses…people who can’t fire guns and have no desire to learn…mothers who don’t have sons serving in Iraq, or giving birth to babies with special needs.

She represents a unique kind of politician. The representative who will establish and maintain a symbiotic relationship with you, as a constituent, without having anything demographically in common with you. She’s there to represent values. Not women, not mothers, not black people, not gays, not bigots. In short, she’s what we say we want to be getting when we vote for our Presidents. “He must be the President of all of us!” …how easily it rolls off our tongues.

But the President we did end up getting, is starting to resemble Hillary Clinton in one key way: Every little subject addressed, once the glittering bromides and platitudes have been exhausted, has to be eventually confronted with the illusion of a villain. Iraq, the crappy economy, the environment, the oil market, hiring and lending discrimination, abortions, crime, capital punishment…sooner or later, he has to veer off into that tired, toxic territory. You know why we’ve got a problem in the first place? Because of this individual…or that class. Please join me in a two-minute hate. Help me hate that guy over there.

This is the rhetoric of a President that does not represent all of us, and doesn’t try to. It’s the rhetoric of a public official who is accustomed to receiving automatic support and praise, from whoever shares his class memberships. Who is accustomed to obligatory adulation, and therefore enjoying the latitude to make enemies just for the sake of making enemies.

If we can simply recognize some of the problems we have, are due not so much to the machinations of some alien, unfamiliar villain…but rather, to our own historical neglect…a lot of them would vanish in a heartbeat. If we place power in the hands of someone who volunteers, simply to unite us the way we want to be united, some of these problems would disappear overnight. This is why — just as an example — we had a crippling energy crisis and inflation crisis in 1980. And, just a short time after that, we did not. It’s got to do with pulling our minds out of that toxic gutter.

I’ve met a lot of women who’ve achieved remarkable things in a man’s world. I have admiration for all of them. But I have a lot more admiration for the ones who managed to get it done, without becoming bitter. Such an extraordinary thing, in ordinary women.

But for the woman who aspires to lead us all? Lead us all, in that way we keep talking about? It seems like so little to ask. And Palin’s got it.

The ones who don’t have that…can’t stand it.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Update: Aiigggh!! The Blog That Nobody Reads is highlighted for the Quote of the Day over at Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air…and we’ve been posted at Free Republic as well…caught saying something nice about women. Oh, the shame of it. We’ll have to rudely demand a cold beer from the fridge a hundred times in a row, without saying “please,” just to start work on restoring that coveted knuckle-dragging sexist rep.

Welcome, folks. Have a look around. Take off the hat & coat and stay awhile.

Update 4/4/09: Also linked at Ace, who zooms in on our “flame-baity fun” about feminists (way up in Bullet Point #1). Ah…now we’re magnificent sexist bastards again. Much better.

Ace also has a thoughtful treatise up on how Palin would be treated as a candidate. I have mixed feelings about evaluating the conservative prospects this way. It’s an unavoidable exercise, I suppose; but on the other hand, it seems every time we go down that road we end up with a milquetoast as the champion of the cause. A milquetoast who is then mercilessly attacked with a full-frontal assault from Manhattan, Hollywood, and every inch of lefty turf in between…the avoidance of which was the entire point of the exercise.

The turbulent years that delivered me to middle age, have had a chiseling effect on the once-complicated machinery by which I used to perceive the word “futility.” My midsection is bloated, my face is craggy, my hair is gray, and nowadays I’m simplistic and pragmatic about the idea that something might be futile. To me, if you were supposed to get something out of it, and you didn’t, and there was no “gosh darn it” moment along the way fomenting an unusually negative outcome, it was futile. So I didn’t need any warnings from anybody about that Nigerian asshole who wanted to use my bank account. Where my wisdom would’ve otherwise failed me, my cynicism took care of the rest.

And that goes for finding a non-offensive, P.C., lovable, exactly-six-foot-tall guy-smiley “I can be moderate too!” super-bland straight white dude. The Left clearly fears Palin, just as the Nazis feared General Patton. It’s completely freaking obvious. They fear her, they fear nobody else, and they’re bending over backwards to get her stigmatized because social stigma is how they do their thinking. It’s Item #2 on the list of How To Motivate Large Numbers of People To Do a Dumb Thing, Without Anyone Associating the Dumb Thing With Your Name Later On.

Sorry, that’s kind of a whole new topic and perhaps would’ve justified a post of its own. It was a ramble and a rant. I’ll shut up now.

Repudiate

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

This is not ours. I know it looks like it could be…but it isn’t.

It’s put out by Chicago-based Devil’s Due Publishing, and their passions, allegiances and true affections lie…elsewhere…like, for example, with a certain “Barack the Barbarian.”

Those aren’t ours. Those are theirs. Original artwork, one would presume.

Chicago-based comics publisher Devil’s Due announced a pair of projects today that will involve Obama-related storylines, and released promotional images for the comics featuring the US President and a very, well… unique take on former Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

Like the massively popular issue of “Amazing Spider-Man” #583 that hit its fifth printing last month, the comics feature Obama prominently on the cover — but Devil’s Due president Josh Blaylock said they’d offer a very unexpected take on the fist-bumping president.

This one is ours…and it’s an edit of an old Red Sonja cover, “Devil with a Sword,” with the hair coloring changed and the signature eyeglasses added on. It’s not one of our best chop jobs; we should’ve left a hint of auburn coloring in place, but our eyeballs were almost bleeding by the time we got done with it and we neglected to compare the product to the celebrity. Nevertheless, it still retains the flattering depiction of determination and strength that is missing from that top DDP cover.

Keep the “change,” Devil’s-Due. We’ll hang on to our fantasies, about what a certain luminary is going to be wearing to her swearing-in on January 20, 2013. I’m thinking that out of all the outfits we’ve depicted, the Supergirl blouse with the puffy sleeves would provide the superior protection against those wintertime gusts rolling in off the Atlantic and Potomac. Not much of an issue for an Alaska native who knows how to field dress a moose, I’m thinkin’.

R and R-Lite Instead of D and D-Lite

Monday, March 30th, 2009

Cylarz has a challenge in the comments section that really makes you think. His intent is to show how absurd is the notion that Rush Limbaugh is running much of anything, along with the idea that anyone, anywhere, is somehow forced to listen to him:

Imagine what life in this nation would be like if our parties were Republican and Republican-lite…instead of Democrat and Democrat-lite. The former is what the political scene would look like if everyone were listening to Rush.

It is my conviction that American consensus-politics are revolving on the rim of a large wheel. It is a merry-go-round that spins into & out of, not so much conservatism and liberalism, but fantasy and reality. Right now we’re on the 1976-77 sector of the wheel, wherein we just installed a hopey-changey youthful-charismatic guy who’s gonna solve all our problems. This is an exceptionally narrow pie-slice of the wheel’s orbit. It’s over in the blink of an eye. We see life’s problems are ours to solve and it’s not realistic to elect some savior-champion to deal with them on our behalf…we see it some more…we see it some more…lesson learned. For a few more years.

This dream Cylarz has, is at the opposite side…and is perhaps a little bit wider. It’s the 1969-1973, 1980-1986 side of the wheel.

So it’ll happen. It’ll happen, and we’ll get tired of it. All this stuff is inevitable, as the wheel keeps on turning. That’s my point. We kick the democrats out of power when we get tired of fantasy; when we notice, that to keep liberal ideas even looking good, there’s this never-ending pressure on to pretend simple things are complicated, and complicated things are simple. After awhile we get tired of that and we kick ’em out. We fire the Republicans when we notice, gee, it’s been awhile since we engaged the government to solve a problem and watched the problem disappear before our very eyes, wouldn’t that be neat? (The conservative platform is constructed around the paradigm that this isn’t really the purpose of government; in that way, the Founding Fathers worked under well-defined conservative bias.) People will listen to Rush, to learn what they should’ve learned before they went to vote. It’s already started to happen. It’s that human instinct to think and think and think some more about “did I turn off the stove?” when the car is zipping on down the freeway and it’s way too late to do anything about it.

But imagine if things were that way, and they stayed that way? I notice when we’re in the fantasy zone, we really are D and D-Lite. Oooh, look at me, I’m a compassionate conservative, I can blow money away on bullshit projects just as fast as my democrat “friends”; vote for me. When Republicans are in power the liberals don’t engage in some contest to see who can be the most-moderate lib. They just get all pissy and mumble the word “fascism” a lot.

So lessee…what would happen…

That last election would have been between Fred Thompson & Sarah Palin…and…Joe Lieberman and Ron Paul. Dr. Paul would be considerably more hawkish, his concerns about the constitutionality of the War on Terror ejected from his platform. Gen. David Petraeus would now have a fifth star. We would have pulled out of the United Nations.

A massive stimulus bill would have injected trillions of dollars into the U.S. economy over the next decade-and-a-half…in the form of a tax cut.

Barack Obama’s formidable oratory skills would be deployed where they would do the most good: On a radio or television program, trying to compete with Rush Limbaugh.

The front page of my local newspaper, and yours, wouldn’t speak very often to the plight of: state legislators pretending to care about balancing the budget, homeless people, unionized workers, ignorant addle-brained students who can’t graduate high school because they haven’t learned anything, prison guards, single moms, troubled youth, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They’d live in a larger, better-informed world. Their headlines would very seldom deploy words like “BUDGET” and “DEFICIT” and “PROGRAM” and “NEED”…instead, you’d see proud, hopeful words in those daily headlines like “FREEDOM” and “OPPORTUNITY” and “LIBERTY.”

Your television “news” program wouldn’t talk too much about liberal programs are going to do. They’d be better-anchored to reality; they’d talk about what tax cuts have done, versus what liberal programs have done.

When some big major mega-city that’s been run by democrats for generation after generation, runs into a predictable budget deficit…you’d hear about it that way. An important part of the news report would be an editorial analysis of some rival city, floating along free of the concern of ever-enlarging social programs, without the deficits and without the liberals running everything. The news report would go through the budgets, line by equivalent line. After all, it isn’t useful news unless we explain why the problem occurred, is it?

Kids can pray in the classroom. Every classroom. If they don’t know English yet, they’re sent to remedial classes to learn it, before they learn another thing. Kids know how to fire guns, shoot arrows, build fires, tie knots. Intelligent Design? It’s recognized as precisely what it is: Just an idea that the universe, particularly the bits of it that make life possible, is here because of non-random activity as opposed to random activity. And then it’s debated. As science. Which it is.

Oh, and before I forget: This asshole is locked up for good, and/or fried crispy.

A convicted sex offender due to be released Saturday from prison after serving 11 months warned in letters that if set free, he would reoffend, even against children. In the letters, Michael McGill begged authorities to keep him locked up for life.

“Please throw the book at me … I’m harmful to others I should be locked up for life,” he wrote in block letters that resemble a child’s writing. “I will sexual abuse men. Do this for the safe (sic) of others then I be able not to hurt anyone else. Judge I’m begging you to put me away.”

In another place he wrote that he had told his two 7-year-old male victims, “I will do more sex crimes with boys 4 to 14. I will molest with boys 15 to 18.”

Neither the Polk County attorney’s office, which prosecuted McGill and distributed his letters to other agencies, nor the Iowa Board of Parole, nor the attorney general’s office, which handles civil commitments for sexually violent predators, says it can do anything to prevent McGill’s release.

Feminists are about as powerful…oh…as they are right now. See, we still have that going for us. People have only partially lost their minds. They’re still not ready to trust feminists again just yet. Feminists get together in their little clubs, isolated from everyone else, sharing notes with each other along with instructions to help-me-hate-this-thing-over-here. That’s the form in which they want to exist. Everyone else, walled off from them, gets work done, makes money, and has fun doing it.

At work, you can still be sent to sensitivity training — if you’ve somehow demonstrated this is necessary. Departments of people are not sent to mandatory sensitivity training. People are not randomly sent to sensitivity training. You can’t unilaterally decide you were harassed; it really does depend on the will and intent of the alleged harasser. And nobody makes any money off of the sexual-harassment racket. If they’re in some position that is created to deal with this in some way, they do it as volunteers, because the issue is supposed to be so important to them…which only makes sense. In other words: Lawyers don’t run things.

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit CalendarIn your work cubicle, or in your office, you can put up a Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar. If anyone comes by to mutter so much as a peep of protest, that is the one treading on thin ice…not you. The phrases “objectification of women” and “unrealistic unhealthy body images” are about as socially acceptable in that world, as a racial epithet is in this one.

Family comedies do not conclude with a feel-good comedy-tragedy ending with the dad whacking himself in the head realizing he’s been a jerk, or an asshole, or a killjoy, or a workaholic. If anything, they end with the kid whacking himself in the forehead, belatedly realizing he should’ve been listening to his Dad.

Neighbors talk to each other. They have block parties. You don’t need to drive 40, 50, 60 miles into the county to discharge a pellet gun or a firearm. Once the shooting-range is set up, you can do it right in front of City Hall. On weekends, the whole town gets together for target shooting. Somewhere else, they have a beer garden. (You can’t go to the target shooting after you go to the beer festival, because alcohol and firearms don’t mix…yes, Republicans and conservatives do get that. Most of us bathe daily and have all our teeth. Really!)

Men do not stand by, brain-dead, clutching a purse outside the womens’ toilet, awaiting their next orders. They talk to other men. They get together and compare notes. They each express admiration for the sidearm the other fella has purchased to defend his lady and his children, should any bad guys be stupid enough to enter uninvited in the dark of some terrible night. They brag about who achieved the tightest grouping on the targets. And they fantasize, together, like giddy little boys, about muscle cars. Women get together and compare notes too. They don’t brag about whose boyfriend bought them the largest engagement ring, or who took charge of the family menu or what they told the hubby to start eating, or how they keep him from hogging the remote. Their rivalry is engaged, instead, in terms of who does the best job bringing her husband beer. “Oh yeah? I’d never think of handing it to him without the cap already popped off…and it’s always ice cold.”

Vice President Palin is even more influential in her new role, than Dick Cheney was in his. She’s a true role model. Women suddenly want their hair made up into her ‘do, just like they wanted to emulate Hillary’s back in the 1990’s. Palin’s face, in this universe, is everyplace Obama’s face is in this one. Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, USA Today…et al. (Obama’s face, in turn, could be on a milk carton somewhere.) Everything female is Palin, Palin, Palin. Women want to learn to fly airplanes, to fire shotguns, to ride ATVs, to clean rifles and pistols, to drive a dogsled…and to field dress a moose. The fashionable cliche, assuming there is one, is “Yoo betcha!”

Tenth Amendment, all the way. Some states and counties allow gay marriage and others don’t; some states and counties allow pot, and others don’t. Some states and counties are officially Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Scientologist, if they can get the votes. Nothing is singled out for social stigma, be it positive or negative. So a married gay man just might be an abuser and a generally bad husband, just like a married straight man — “loving” is no longer a euphemism for “same-sex.” And if you smoke pot, you just might have an addiction problem…just like someone who drinks, might have an addiction problem. That means, friends and family might be inclined to intervene if the signs are there. And anyone can be a religious fundamentalist whacko; not just the Christians. If your child needs medical care but you think his sickness is Gods’ will, the nanny-state might eventually interfere — if you’re showing signs of possibly lopping off your daughter’s head because she’d dating the wrong fella, the nanny-state just might interfere with that too. True equality.

When kids get into fights on the playground, all the trouble is reserved for the kid who threw the first punch. The kid who threw the last one, assuming that’s someone else, hasn’t got a single thing to worry about. And that’s precisely the way the world politics work, too.

You may say I’m a dreamer…but I’m not the only one.

The Women Are Botching It

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

Someone at Memeorandum really has an agenda for the fairer sex to get back in the kitchen and go back to baking pies. Two headlines leap off the page there:

Hillary Clinton leaves flowers for Our Lady of Guadalupe, asks ‘Who painted it?’
Staff infection: Allies rip Palin team

It’s interesting to me that, having just read the headlines, we’re aware down to the most excruciating detail exactly what Hillary did that falls short of our expectations for someone invested in that most austere among cabinet positions, Secretary of State — and we haven’t got the slightest clue how this applies to the Governor of Alaska.

If you click on the Palin article, that situation continues. The definition of Palin’s failin’, is vague, substandard, and the sourcing…the sourcing is really something else. It’s pure tabloid shit. “…said one former aide and loyalist.” “…added a national Republican operative who has worked with Palin.” “…said a CPAC source.” “…said a Republican operative…” The only people named, so far as I can see, are spokesmen for Palin who are disputing the accounts from these unnamed, anonymous, nattering nabobs — who might very well exist, who knows? It comes from Politico, which should be above this kind of ritual astrology-tabloid-celeb-sourcing, but I guess sometimes you can’t let journalistic standards get in the way of an agenda.

The upshot is: Palin has friends, and there are also some people somewhere chattering away with some ugly things about her. Um…I notice, those are the two characteristics that apply to all effective people.

Hillary, on the other hand, committed a gaffe in the mold of “Isn’t it an amazing coincidence the natural elements could put four of our Presidents on Mount Rushmore?” Except it was the other way around…

Msgr. Monroy took Mrs. Clinton to the famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which had been previously lowered from its usual altar for the occasion.

After observing it for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked “who painted it?” to which Msgr. Monroy responded “God!”

Well, I’m no more Catholic than Hillary is. I could’ve made this mistake easily. I’m not a chick. So there’s no incrimination here, either.

What I find to be substandard performance on Clinton’s part, has nothing to do with the “who painted it” thing and nothing at all to do with being female:

Leaving the basilica half an hour later, Mrs. Clinton told some of the Mexicans gathered outside to greet her, “you have a marvelous virgin!”

This evening Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to receive the highest award given by Planned Parenthood Federation of America — the Margaret Sanger Award, named for the organization’s founder, a noted eugenicist. The award will be presented at a gala event in Houston, Texas.

Dis-gust-ing.

Look: Gals can do things gentlemen cannot do. As a dude, I am the successor to the first caveman to dig a hole in the ground to catch a tiger; the first Egyptian guy to invent beer (yay!); the Knights of the Round Table; the first guy to lay his fine cape across a mud puddle so a lady of stature and position could walk across it. We labor under a different set of rules. I get that.

But the line is drawn — I should think — here. Progress this far, and no further.

You can’t kowtow to the Catholics, and then in the space of a few hours, hobnob with the baby-harvesting crowd. Palin never did anything like this. Women, and men even more often, in the democrat party do this routinely. They get away with it routinely. Many of them are Catholic…or call themselves Catholic…and mention it, often, right before declaring the when-does-life-begin question to be “complicated” and mumbling some nonsensical stuff about supporting a woman’s right to choose even though it is, in their “personal” opinion, wrong.

So they’re good Catholics because they don’t abort, as individuals. Nobody in their family aborts. They cherish the belief that their Creator looks down upon this with disdain, as a Creator naturally would. But they’ll provide taxpayer funds so other women can abort. Whoopsee, all of a sudden there’s nothing wrong with it…if it’s a “choice.”

This is tolerated.

Once a Republican talks about “family values” he can’t even so much as look at another woman, if she happens to be pretty — the desperate, bellicose cries of “HYPOCRISY!” rise up like flames around gasoline.

As I said at Cassy’s place when she highlighted this story

In my opinion, this is just scratching the surface, and by itself it is plenty enough to completely turn things around. YES I said all by itself: This juxtaposition on the left side of the aisle, between Catholic and Catholic-wannabe stuff, and…well, let’s call it what it is. Baby-body-parts-harvesting.

Republicans talk about familee-valyooz and then get caught cheating on their wives — they have to take it on the chin for that stuff. And they do. And they should. But this is oh so much more disturbing, this wooing of the Catholic vote followed by playing to the Doctor Frankensteins. It is utterly irreconcilable.

I’d think the successor to Thomas Jefferson would be savvy enough to not place these highly public displays right next to each other. Shouldn’t she be? Maybe I’m asking way too much. Either way, this beats the “who painted that?” thing by a mile-and-a-half. Easily.

So creepy.

So anyway, that’s where we’re at. Back to the subject at hand: It’s play-gotcha-with-women day, it seems…and no, I don’t think Memeorandum started it, I think it’s a prevailing theme. Perhaps the time was right and Hillary’s incompetence ignited something. The whole Palin thing, clearly, is a solution-in-search-of-a-problem. Like most other Palin dirt, when you check it out there’s nothing there.

Nothing but somebody’s agenda. In over her head? Good heavens, you wanna find people in over their head, look no further than the White House. You want to fly to Alaska to get that kind of a story? I thought we were supposed to be worried about carbon emissions.

It’s an interesting study in contrasts:

With the Clinton story, I know immediately why she disappointed someone. With the Palin story all I know is what some nameless faceless strangers want me to think, and I have to grind through paragraph after paragraph after paragraph to figure out why I should think so.

What would’ve happen if Sarah Palin, noted for her staunch pro-life stance, asked “who painted that?”…I wonder? Could it be we’d end up talking about that for awhile longer than we’ll be stewing over this?

Palin Petraeus!

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

Breitbart wants to draft the General. Blogger friend Rick is on board.

I see the General as a decent supplement…not a staple. I’m unshaken in my conviction that the Barracuda belongs in the top slot. Admittedly, this is mostly a protest against the mistaken notion that there’s some reason for her not to be there. But that protest is crucial. It has to be part of 2012’s ticket. The only alternative, is to broadcast the message that conservative values are easily defeated, all you have to do is call the right person stupid, and they’ll be dropped like a hot potato.

The Governor of Alaska is an excellent litmus test against the RINOs who pretend to champion conservative values, but will reliably engage in the “Sarah is stupid” meme so they can score that coveted invitation to the next strawberries-and-champagne brunch in Manhattan. She’s a reminder that it’s rude and ill-advised to form opinions about the intellect of people you’ve not yet met. She has to be on the ticket, to demonstrate that Republicans are committed to doing the right thing whether it’s popular or not…which, although nobody phrases it this way, is the primary question in peoples’ minds.

To raise that middle finger at the people who need it. That may seem childish, but it’s heart-attack-serious important here. That’s how the left has been controlling what their enemies think & say; Palin is the only “general” around who can drop a MOAB on it.

You could put the General at the top of the ticket, but then the tired old idea-bubble comes floating up…oh look girls, it’s a white guy who looks like your dad, and he’s going to boss you around and stop you from having abortions. Puh-leeze. Let’s not go through it again.

Besides, as Veep, Sarah’s number one job is to appear in front of cameras and give speeches in front of a pain-in-the-ass reporter trying to make her look dumb. She’s learned a lot about this, but this is going to continue to be her weakness. She is a competent, proven executive, whereas Petraeus, bursting-at-the-seams as he is with all kinds of other useful decision-making talents, is not. Petraeus doing what Cheney used to do? Except…this time there is a political cost involved in calling him Darth-Vader-evil? Now you’re talking.

But we have to see where he’s at with the other issues. Border? English as the official language? Affirmative Action? War on Drugs? Reading-writing-rithmetic, as opposed to sensitivity training? The Kerry doctrine of stick your head in the sand, hope the bad guys go away? Just because he’s a soldier who carried the orders out, doesn’t mean I know his position on those orders.

I guess General Powell has made me cynical about this. To those of us who were old enough to pay close attention way back in Persian Gulf War I, Powell’s decline has been from a great height, syrupy slow, gradual, steady…and certain.

Remorse II

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

Question of the Moment and more than a little bit likely to become the question of the year:

RemorseDo you know of anyone whose opinion of Obama is higher now than when he was elected or inaugurated? Is there anyone on Planet Earth who is saying, “Gee, I voted against Obama, but he’s sure doing a much better job than I thought [h]e would”? Are there any moderates or Republicans slapping themselves on the head saying, “Boy, do I regret voting against Barack Obama”? They may be out there, but they are few and far between.

I certainly recall a lot of people having that notion toward Bill Clinton. Some even toward George W. Bush; just one or two, maybe, and a whole lot more on & after 9/11/01. I myself was wishing like crazy I’d re-elected Bush’s Dad, although a vote cast in California didn’t have much practical application toward something like that.

With Reagan, there were lots of people who voted against him and then saw the error of their ways.

Carter…not so much.

Hat tip goes to Gerard on this one.

What is remarkable about this question, the way it is asked, and the way Mssrs. Van der Leun, Wehner, and myself anticipate it will have to be answered? There is irony, and it is rich irony: Obama was chosen specifically because He was a virtual savior. We were to be assured there would be no regrets on this one.

And that is because the man can sell refrigerators to polar bears. (A more precise, and tragic, metaphor is that he can sell hair dryers to snowmen…the nation being the snowman.) On the democrat side of the aisle, things have always been this way. The democrats put their support behind the quintessential salesman. Obama is John Kerry v2.0; Kerry, who “could not get his message across,” and all that. It’s as if democrats understand, without anyone else pointing it out, that their plans already make precious little sense but at least the appearance will be there that their plans make sense, if everyone everywhere can be conned into executing them.

Rather like the fish that decide to swamp the fisherman’s boat by leaping into it. Woe be unto you if you’re the only fish that goes in on the plan. So all of life is a “Together We Can Do This” thing. The plan has never worked before, ever, but maybe that’s because not enough people were doing it.

Republicans, on the other hand, vote for whoever they’d trust to watch their kids.

That’s where the real split is. Republicans and democrats know Obama and Biden are better salesmen than McCain and Palin.

Republicans and democrats acknowledge it’s better to allow Sarah Palin to take your child, and his entire school class, on a sleepover-field-trip for two solid weeks…than to allow Barack Obama to talk to them for thirty seconds. For the democrats, this can’t be admitted out loud because it would cause damage to one’s social standing within a collective — which is, of course, the entire point. But deep down, everyone with something pulsating constructively north of the brain stem, understands it’s true.

Update 3/23/08: Great roundup (although there will be others) by Instapundit.

What Does Article II Say About Appearing on Leno?

Friday, March 20th, 2009

Now that 43 Americans have taken the oath of office for United States President — or is it 44? I’m confused — we have an occasion for some thinking today, since the current officeholder has broken form with his predecessors and appeared on a late-night comedy show.

I’m hoping we have a few years left before the sitting President is hosting a late-night comedy show. Or filling in for Art Bell.

The thinking has to do with how to report such an unprecedented phenomenon. But you don’t have to do too much thinking, to think, hey, maybe this is unprecedented for a reason.

Mary Kate Cary, opinion section, US News and World Report:

The morning shows were abuzz with reviews of President Obama’s performance last night on Jay Leno’s show. I still say he shouldn’t have done it. Here are the reasons this was a bad idea from the start:

The risky nature of unscripted, be-funny-right-now late-night television played against him. Overall, the president was his usual charming self. But sure enough, in an effort to be funny, the president slipped. Everyone cringed when he made a self-deprecating joke at the expense of the kids in the Special Olympics. Before the show even aired, he found himself apologizing to the head of the Special Olympics from Air Force One, and the White House put out a printed apology shortly afterward. Completely avoidable, and now it’s getting played over and over on cable.

Leno also asked the president about his confidence in Secretary Geithner, and his off-the-cuff response is being replayed endlessly as a “heck of a job, Brownie” non-endorsement. It’s adding fuel to the fire at Geithner’s feet, which is probably not what the White House wanted going in to the weekend talk shows. Again, completely avoidable.

The fact that the president didn’t control the questions, Jay Leno did. Although the White House intended that the interview would allow the president to explain to the American people his proposals for getting the economy moving again, he spent roughly half of his time answering Leno’s questions about the AIG bonuses instead. In fact, Leno asked a great question to which the president didn’t seem to have an answer: In reference to the bill that passed the House imposing a 90 percent tax on AIG executives who kept their bonuses, Leno said, “It’s frightening to me as an American that Congress could decide that ‘I don’t like that group—let’s pass a law and tax them at 90 percent’ … It seems a little scary to me as a taxpayer that they can just decide that.”

Great question, one that no one seems to have asked so far. What is preventing Congress from imposing a 90 percent tax the rest of us, if they so chose? Apparently it’s not going to be President Obama. He responded with a vague answer that started with something about not letting the horse out of the barn and ended with calling for tax hikes on the rich.

The appearance diminished the office of the president. First the president had to cool his heels backstage while Jay Leno went through his usual comedy monologue. When Leno ended it with his usual “Stay with us, _____ is up next,” it was not “Britney Spears” or “Ryan Seacrest” up next, but “The President of the United States.” When the show returned, we all waited through an extended bit on silly items found at the Dollar Store. As my sixth grader would say, awkward.

The president was introduced like any starlet or movie producer. There was nothing different from any other guest, except that Kevin Eubanks and his band played a rock-and-roll version of “Hail to the Chief” when the President came onstage.

Even if the president had it the ball out of the park, his appearance on Leno did nothing in terms of building respect for the office of the presidency. And now that’s he’s done it, what’s next … Letterman? The Daily Show? It’ll be hard to say no to everyone else, now that the precedent has been set.

It was a win for Leno, but not for the president. So much for making television history.

McClatchy News Service, on the same subject…I hope you’re sitting down. Get ready for a major tone shift. I mean major. Measured with the Richter scale.

President Barack Obama, offering salve for economic uncertainty, reached out Thursday to an unusual assortment of Californians: Talk-show host Jay Leno, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and an 8-year-old asking him to save teachers’ jobs.

In a town hall gathering and in private meetings with the governor and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Obama promised help — and money — to rebuild California’s infrastructure and revitalize its economy.

He also offered public words of support for California’s sacrifice as voters prepare to decide a package of fiscal reform measures that the Legislature put on the May ballot to help close a $40 billion budget deficit.

And Obama had a poignant conversation with Los Angeles third-grader Ethan Lopez.

The boy, in a crisp white shirt and necktie, provided the emotive moment at the town hall Obama hosted with Schwarzenegger in the gymnasium of the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex in downtown Los Angeles.

“Hi, my name is Ethan,” he told the president when called on for the last question of the forum. “President Obama, our school is in big trouble. Because (of) our budget cuts, 25 of our teachers already have been fired.”

Offering the president a card from his classmates, the boy asked for help in stopping pink slips resulting from budget cuts in the Los Angeles public school system.

“Ethan, we’re going to do everything we can to protect our teachers,” said Obama, who said federal money is headed to California to modernize schools, fight overcrowding and save jobs. He added: “We are going to make sure that we invest in that as well, because I want you to get a first-class education.”

In his appearance on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” later Thursday, Obama mixed light-hearted banter with serious discussion about his goals for America’s economic recovery.

“The important thing over the next several months is making sure that we don’t lurch from thing to thing, but we try to make steady progress, build a foundation for long-term economic growth,” he said.

At the town hall meeting, Obama promised that state communities will be receiving $145 million to address the mortgage meltdown and begin “transforming abandoned streets lined with empty houses back into thriving neighborhoods.”

Obama’s appearance with Schwarzenegger came a day after the Republican governor appeared in the Central Valley to tout 57 projects he said are in line to receive $625 million in funding under Obama’s stimulus plan.

On Thursday, Schwarzenegger said California alone stands to receive as much as $50 billion under the $787 billion national economic stimulus package. In introducing the president, Schwarzenegger said the pair “are partners in the fight to put people back to work.”

Obama called the governor “somebody who has turned out to be just an outstanding partner.”

It was far different rhetoric than during the presidential campaign, when Schwarzenegger, a supporter of Republican John McCain, joked about Obama’s “scrawny little arms.” On Thursday, the body-builder-turned-governor was delighted to share the stage with the new president.

It goes on from there. And no, not a single word about the Special Olympics thing. You figured that out already, right?

I think I’m putting more stock in that good-lookin’ brunette. It’s not because I’m down on PresBO — although I am. Geez, I never dreamed my fatigue would be setting in this fast.

Her piece is just plain more sincere, more honest, more responsible. More thoughtful. That’s obvious, right? Even to you hopey-changey people? No? Still wanna argue that point? Yeah, go ahead…put off that really hard work until another day. Hard to be humble when you spent all last year fainting and crying.

Of course, the McClatchy piece, it could be said, was more saturated with good old-fashioned hard data. Depending on what you consider to be hard data. A weepy human-interest story about a little boy named Ethan, who the smart money is going to say was just another plant…well, it did happen, so that’s hard data. And there are all these facts and figures about the money Obama is getting ready to provide. Whoops, though, no, Obama wouldn’t be providing it. He’d be making it available after taking it away from other people who provided it. Many of whom live in this troubled state of California. I guess I’m veering off here into what could be called inconvenient hard data.

But one thing impresses me about these stories more than anything else…the righteously jaundiced ones like the top one, as well as the borderline-pornographic pro-Obama biased ones, like the second one from McClatchy.

No matter which way they lean, I can’t resist the impulse to read ’em a second time, taking special care to substitute “President Palin” every time I see in print the name “President Obama.”

Try it with me…

President Sarah Palin, offering salve for economic uncertainty, reached out Thursday to an unusual assortment of Californians: Talk-show host Jay Leno, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and an 8-year-old asking him to save teachers’ jobs.

In a town hall gathering and in private meetings with the governor and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Palin promised help — and tax cuts — to rebuild California’s infrastructure and revitalize its economy.

She also offered public words of support for California’s sacrifice as voters prepare to decide a package of fiscal reform measures that the Legislature put on the May ballot to help close a $40 billion budget deficit.

And Palin had a poignant conversation with Los Angeles third-grader Ethan Lopez.
:
“Ethan, we’re going to do everything we can to protect your education,” said Palin, who said massive tax cuts are headed to California to modernize schools, fight overcrowding and save jobs. She added: “We are going to make it easier for concerned parents to provide high-quality home schooling, and make sure that we get the federal government out of the way, because I want you to get a first-class education.”

In her appearance on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” later Thursday, Palin mixed light-hearted banter with serious discussion about her goals for America’s economic recovery.

“The important thing over the next several months is making sure that we stop the bleeding, stop the reckless spending, and stand up for fiscal responsibility, to build a foundation for long-term economic growth,” she said.

At the town hall meeting, Palin promised that the federal government would be reducing overall spending by $145 million to address the mortgage meltdown and begin “transforming abandoned streets lined with empty houses back into thriving neighborhoods.”

You get the point. I had to modify the policies somewhat…had to…because whenever Obama says something that sounds good, it has to do with spending money that isn’t really his, which isn’t what Palin is all about. And when I say “whenever” I mean it in the absolutist, inflexible sense…as in, he hasn’t got anything else good to say about his own policies. He forced someone else to get them paid-fer. Right? Is that an exaggeration? Would Obamafans sign on to that one? I don’t think they’d enjoy doing it, but they’d pretty much have to. Or not. As noted previously, they do have that tender-ego thing going on.

But leaving that aside — how would McClatchy write that one up? Heh heh. Oh, my, Mary Kate Cary of U.S. News World and Report…you think you can huff and puff away about diminishing the office of the President of the United States by appearing on late night comedy. I’m pretty sure McClatchy, Associated Press, MSNBC, CNN, and a whole parade of dead-tree-newspublishing cabals could give you a run for your money if President Palin made the same appearance. There would, of course, be an obligatory line or two about how desperate the President was to use this appearance to deflect criticism, and distract from criticism, that she is quite plain and simply in over her head. There would be another snippet about how miserably she failed in this effort. And then the gloves would come off. They’d be howling for impeachment papers to be drawn up after Madame President let loose with the very first “You Betcha.” Unstatesmanlike and unbecoming! Diminishing our stature to our allies around the world! Making us look like a nation of gun toting middle-school-educated rednecks! Grrr!

They sure as snot wouldn’t be saying anything about President Palin offering a salve for the nation’s economy. I’ll bet you a Wagyu steak on that one.