Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
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?
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The scandal is that her political opponents, mainly the ones with PDS, are combining the Alinsky handbook and an “ends justify the means” strategy to destroy her career (and whatever else of hers they can destroy) — and basically wasting the government’s money to do it. As she said, it costs them nothing.
The scandal is is that the Left is just what we’ve been saying it is, as it paints itself as the upstanding good guys and the right as the evil racist cheats and fascists.
The truth is, they’re the evil racist cheats and fascists. Maybe people are starting to figure this out.
- philmon | 07/09/2009 @ 11:31