Archive for the ‘VPILF’ Category

Their Raison d’Etre

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

We already talked about Bill Maher’s lame attempt at humor here. A short transcript of the offensive part follows:

“Did you hear this – Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan and she’s demanding that we invade ‘Tsunami,’” Maher said. “I mean she said, ‘These ‘Tsunamians’ will not get away with this.’ Oh speaking of dumb tw**s, did you…”

And then things got embarrassing for the conspicuously silent National Organization of Women.

The National Organization for Women (NOW) refused to comment on Maher’s use of the derogatory term. A rep told FOXNews.com it is a “known fact” that NOW does not correspond with FOX News.
:
Matthew Vadum, Senior Editor at the Capital Research Center in Washington DC, said Maher’s insults spotlight hypocrisy in the media.

“Bill Maher feels he can get away with such jaw-droppingly offensive verbal attacks on Sarah Palin because virtually the entire media-academia-entertainment complex agrees with him,” Vadum said. “Clinging to their political correctness and disdain for her quintessentially American values, the left-wing cocktail circuit regards Palin as a punch line.”

So if a prominent media figure had made such a disparaging remark towards a leading female Democrat, like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, would the mainstream media have reacted with outrage?

“If a conservative used that language to describe Hillary Clinton, we wouldn’t be hearing very much about Japan or Libya,” said John Ziegler, creator the documentary “Media Malpractice.” “If they said it about Michelle Obama, the media would be going 24/7 with the story.”

“I suspect NOW hasn’t come to Palin’s defense because the group agrees with Maher,” added Vadum. “After all, NOW didn’t have a problem with someone on California Gov. Jerry Brown’s campaign staff calling his Republican opponent Meg Whitman a ‘whore.’ NOW really ought to change its name to National Organization for Liberal Women because as far as it’s concerned conservative women aren’t real women at all.”

Yesterday the heat got to be a little bit too much, and after NOW heard about this from someone other than Fox News, they lowered the thunder down upon the pitiful head of Bill Maher. Sort of.

“Listen, supposedly progressive men (ok, and women, too): Cut the crap! Stop degrading women with whom you disagree and/or don’t like by using female body terms or other gender-associated slurs,” Lisa Bennett, NOW communications director wrote in a statement.

In addition to chastising men (and women) like Maher who use their position as progressives as a shield against charges of sexism, NOW made it clear that their denouncement of Maher’s sexist remark toward Palin is in no way an endorsement of her or conservative policies.

“You’re trying to take up our time getting us to defend your friend Sarah Palin. If you keep us busy defending her, we have less time to defend women’s bodies from the onslaught of reproductive rights attacks and other threats to our freedom, safety, livelihood, etc,” wrote Bennett. “Sorry, but we can’t defend Palin or even Hillary Clinton from every sexist insult hurled at them in the media. That task would be impossible, and it would consume us. You know this would not be a productive way to fight for women’s equal rights, which is why you want us stuck in this morass.”
:
“It would be nice to think that you’ve suddenly discovered sexism and are interested in joining us in the struggle for full equality. But this really smacks of the worst kind of hypocrisy: Folks with no history of working on an issue trying to discredit those who have been working for decades on the issue. Ridiculous.”

I’m taking these comments from NOW with a medium-large grain of salt. Lisa Bennett is a real person, but I can’t find any linkage between these quotes and any resource I know to be connected with NOW. So far as I know, Daily Caller is not a satire site. But this reads like satire.

Okay let’s pencil this last part in. Look what you’ve got going on here. A famous liberal “comedian” engages in some “humor” about a high-profile conservative figurehead who is holding no office and seeking no office. Then he calls her a twat. NOW, depending on what you want to believe, is either entirely silent or speaking out only under protest.

If you think they said what was linked above, then I submit Swen is in the running for having delivered the best summation (10:00 PM 3/22/2011):

“NOW further wants to make it clear that it is duplicitous for the right to now be interested in sexism after, what they say, has been years of absenteeism on the matter.”

It seems even more duplicitous for NOW to now be interested in sexism directed against Sarah Palin after 2-1/2 years of absenteeism on the matter. After all, combatting sexism isn’t the raison d’etre for conservatives, but it is for NOW, so they’ve got some cheek accusing the right of absenteeism on the issue.

The Left likes to call itself the “Reality Based Community.”

Nobody who’s been following this should be the least little bit in the dark about how Maher’s brand of “humor” works here…although it’s understandable that the “twat” word made his punchline immediately forgettable. So far as anyone can tell, Sarah Palin has made no such comment about invading Tsunamia or sticking it to those Tsunamis so they stop pushing us around. Just like she never claimed to have seen Russia from her house.

But, altogether now…quit taking it so seriously, it’s just a joke. Yeah right. For daring to notice it or remember it, I’m the problem. Again.

And it’s a joke, why. It’s funny, why. Because although Palin didn’t say it, you can certainly imagine her saying it, it’s perfectly in keeping with this reputation she’s earned. The joke that isn’t a joke, that you aren’t supposed to consciously notice, that was immediately wallpapered over by a vulgar slang term for a woman’s vagina, to guarantee that by the next day everyone would be talking about something else, still manages to make a point. After all, that dumb twat Sarah Palin must have earned this reputation she has, that makes the Tsunami crack believable, right?

So the joke makes a point. And she had it coming anyway. The dumb twat.

Ah, well there’s the rub. The “Reality Based Community” places this level of importance upon things they consciously know to be untrue. And these little anecdotes about the dumb twat Palin that are known to be untrue, figure in large part into her supposed “reputation”; this is by design. Nobody needs to apologize for it. It’s a glorious fight. Reproductive freedom or something.

Here, I’ll go ahead and put the remaining pieces together. If the joke is funny because Sarah Palin didn’t say it but you can certainly imagine Sarah Palin saying it because it would be entirely consistent with her reputation, and her so-called “reputation,” such as it is, relies so very heavily on made-up untrue things just like this spun up by dumb prick comedians like Bill Maher…what do we really know about Sarah Palin? It ends up being a classic case of circular reasoning. The punchline proves the reputation and the reputation prove the punchline.

One other question: Assuming Sarah Palin wanted to do something to make these dumb prick comedians and establishment feminists stop being mad at her — just go with that one, alright? — how would she go about doing this? She isn’t running for anything. Have our leftists, once again, put so much thought and energy into sustaining a satisfying tsunami of hatred that they’ve forgotten what they’re trying to bully people into doing? What’s the payoff? What is Palin’s offense? What’s the complaint?

How dare that dumb twat continue to exist as 2012 gets closer? Something like that?

If Sarah Palin doesn’t have any opportunity to mollify the anger thrown in her direction, what chance do any of the rest of us have? Our “reality based community” that doesn’t really live in anything close to reality, is supposed to be busily constructing a wonderful utopian society in which everybody has a place; everyone is entitled not only to the staples of life, but to some of the luxuries as well, plus guaranteed respect and dignity…as some busybody anonymous bureaucrat defines it, anyway. But when we observe their actions it seems that isn’t entirely true. It’s looking like, once you go on the record disagreeing with them as Sarah Palin has done, the dignity part of it is something you don’t need anymore. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a candidate for elective office, or not. Since she isn’t.

So the rest of us aren’t entitled to dignity unless we agree with the leftist establishment. All right. What else can we not have then? We can’t expect some miracle worker leftist busybody to come out of the woodwork and start organizing our communities, I take it? I’ve been told if I like my health plan and my doctor I can keep those…was that, also, conditional on me agreeing with leftist dogma? Is that off the table too? What about, if I make less than a quarter mil a year, my taxes “won’t go up by one dime”?

Life? Liberty? Pursuit of happiness? Oxygen to breathe? Is there anything out of the entire cornucopia of needs and wants that our frenzied leftists consider to be “rights”…to which, as a matter of fact, none of us are actually entitled unless we agree with those leftists on all the important issues, and work on their behalf? To what extent has the reality-based community been lying to us about the everyone-is-entitled-to thing? What exactly are the conditions? What exactly are we to lose, out of this seemingly endless banquet of promises, for not cooperating? All of it, maybe?

Whether Palin is in it or not, the 2012 campaign ought to be about that. Call her whatever you want to, but a candidate Palin would see to it. I wonder if anyone else has the balls.

Cross-posted at Washington Rebel.

DJEver Notice? LXI

Friday, September 17th, 2010

There’s a fair-minded liberal out there who has taken the time to research this quote from Sarah Palin about “I can see Russia from my back porch” (actually, “house”)…and, of course, has found out the line was actually delivered by somebody else. To his credit, and contrary to the dictates of the left-wing playbook, he isn’t being quiet about it.

I found him through notorious factoid-cherry-picker Ed Darrell, who could learn a lesson from him about the proper treatment of inconvenient truths.

Be that as it may: This is the exception, NOT the rule. The effort to slander the intellect and character of Alaska’s former governor, lest there be any doubt, has been an overwhelming success. If we were getting people hired, as quickly as we were getting them convinced Palin was a book-burner, we’d have nothing to worry about with our economy.

And yet her candidates keep winning and winning.

The most devastating point to be made in favor of Palin’s influence, arrives with the admission that her personality has been successfully slimed. At this point, it becomes undeniable that the electorate is working hard to communicate a thought, and she has been carrying the banner on this thought since before it was cool.

Of course, I’ve been bullish on her since before it was cool, so I’m biased in saying this. But it can’t be denied: She is owed her due. Her idea is the logical one to try next, whether she is elected to something or not.

The guy who’s in charge now, is supposed to be repairing the damage done by His predecessor…and yet we can’t criticize what He’s doing, because His predecessor was doing the same thing. That’s supposed to solidify the charges of racism, since He has black skin and His predecessor had white skin, so He gets a pass since He’s just continuing the policies of the guy before. You know, the one whose messes He’s cleaning up.

That makes no sense at all.

Palin’s out there saying, Just stop it already! Stop living life as an American apologetically, stop it with the drilling moratoriums and the disaster of ObamaCare. Make it easier to run a business — easy=profitable, that’s what makes an economy stronger. Stop it with the screeds against “rich people.” Stop treating people who contribute to the economy, as if they’re the enemy. They’re not.

This, contrasted with what came earlier, makes perfect sense.

And if America isn’t ready for it, how come her candidates are consistently winning? The propaganda has been put out there that she’s a religious-zealot dimbulb…more people are buying into it, than not. Even Republicans are believing it…all of it…even the nonsense about “Quitter Palin.” But then they nominate her candidates. And, when these candidates are polled against their opposition, they do alright.

The effort to slime Sarah Palin has been an unqualified success.

But the effort behind the effort, is to make her ineffective.

This has become an irreversible failure. It may be the most failing-est failure in living memory, which says a lot. It has become embarrassing, by proxy, watching the latest “paramedic” try to jump start this cadaver, which is stinking up the joint as the defibrillator is applied yet another time.

On Palin, Obama, and Leadership

Monday, September 6th, 2010

“This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting and never use the word ‘victory,’ except when he’s talking about his own campaign…[W]hat exactly is our opponent’s plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer…is to make government bigger, and take more of your money, and give you more orders from Washington, and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy; our opponent is against producing it. Victory in Iraq is finally in sight, and he wants to forfeit. Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay; he wants to meet them without preconditions. Al Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights. Government is too big; he wants to grow it. Congress spends too much money; he promises more. Taxes are too high, and he wants to raise them.”

— Sarah Palin, accepting the nomination as John McCain’s running mate at the convention

“Chicks can say stuff.”

— Me, exploring all the reasons Why They Hate Sarah Palin So Much (#11)

“Seventy-one percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday morning believe the former Alaska governor [Sarah Palin] and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee is not qualified to be president…”

CNN political ticker story from October 2009

“Fifty-nine percent of U.S. adults said they don’t think Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate and potential 2012 candidate, would be an effective president of the United States.”

60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll

That’s twelve points in ten months. If you’re not favorably impressed by that, you’re not paying attention. Oh yes, I’m serious. Consider what a manifestly more hostile question it is to say “not qualified to serve,” when the qualifications are clearly laid out and Palin demonstrably possesses them. She is, as a matter of personal opinion, properly excluded from further consideration nevertheless? Too many teevee interviews botched? Too many made-up quotes about being able to see Russia from her house — and that’s it? Move along? Stick a fork in her she’s done?

That’s a much stronger statement than “I don’t think she’d be effective once elected.” Now, the much milder statement nets a bare majority, and that’s among Vanity-Fair-reading airheads.

There is a phenomenon taking place here; Palin isn’t going away, to anywhere, anytime soon. She isn’t even heading in that direction. She’s moving toward the limelight.

But Palin is not all of it. The event we see unfolding is a deep and troubling crisis, a disease consuming the republic. She is the medicine.

Dissent is born from the simple reality that government must prove its case to us, NOT vice-versa.

Dolly’s current fave aphorism, stolen from Dante

And that’s your definition of the crisis, right there. Are We, The People to sit in judgment of our elected government, to ponder the question of whether it is worthy of our continued support — or is it the other way around?

The White House’s current occupant was elected because He happens to have black skin. Oh yeah, I went there; I said it. He was nominated as the champion of His political party over that very aspect.

And as long as we’re getting down to brass tacks over things, let’s take a look at why this mattered. It wasn’t because our nation wanted to heal its racial divisions. No, Barack Obama’s skin color is not a medicinal balm to be applied, it is a cudgel to be wielded. That is, now, all too clear. It is a weapon, a means of shutting down the opposition. His party has long been shopping for just such a weapon, arousing nary a care as to the weapon’s nature, size or shape; they’ve cared only that the damn thing works. Remember, from 2004, Sen. John Kerry’s “moral authority”? Al Gore’s preening faux-intellectualism? Bill Clinton’s sloppy sex appeal to faithless, bored housewives and silly, stupid, college-age girls? This is not a political party that is in search of bold, new, effective, helpful ideas. Far from it.

They have been wanting, and want now, to win. That’s all.

For the last twenty years or more, they have been searching for the perfect salesman to pitch bad ideas. They’ve been looking for a guy with a gimmick. A good, powerful gimmick suitable for selling ice cubes to polar bears — something that will cut the whole debate short. Something that will conquer ideas instead of simply examine them. Something that dismisses. The magic elixir of thoughtlessness and undeserved rhetorical victory. Obama’s skin color happens to be the munition that finally netted the desired results and prevailed in an election.

We're Just Wrong About EverythingBut it only works with getting those bad ideas sold. It isn’t healing the racial divide, not by a damn sight. To the contrary, we have the privilege of watching the situation unfold every day: Our Government wants to do something, here come some concerned citizens advancing perfectly rational arguments as to why it should not be done. And our government’s executive branch, predictable as gravity, comes back with the smackdown.

You must be a racist.

You must be angry.

You’re a xenophobe.

You’re clinging bitterly to your guns and your Bibles.

You have a problem with a black man as president.

You’re one of the Wall Street fat cats that got us into this mess in the first place.

My goodness, you certainly do seem to have a lot of white people in your crowd, don’t you?

This is not uniting us and it has become an exercise in abject absurdity to suppose it is intended to. You…You…You…You You You You You You You. Our so-called “leaders” seem to have absolutely nothing else to say to us, other than — thanks for your support, or else, here’s a bunch of snotty, snooty, snobbish, pretentious, and frankly downright juvenile reasons why their desires should rule the day, and nobody else should have anything to say about any of it.

They seem to be absolutely lacking in any ability to listen. The tragedy is that their inability to listen, is costing everybody else mightily in their ability to get along with each other. More name-calling means more ugliness, less debate, more fighting, less edification, more heat, less light.

So back to the Palin situation. I’m given to understand there’s still a split as to whether Palin would be an effective President? That’s the question, is it?

The relevant inquiry to which this leads, is: How does Palin leadership handle the situation in which it has made a decision, and a vocal critic emerges from the fog of anonymity, critical of it. We already know how the current leaership handles that, and count me among the ones doubtful that our nation can survive much more of it without great injury.

Oh, we don’t need to wonder too much about how a Palin administration would work this. We have it on tape:

Much has been written about her service as Alaska’s twelfth Governor and Wasilla’s Mayor. From all that has managed to find its way to me, it seems it all falls into the theme of the video above. Oh, you’re a hockey mom too. Oh, you’re a teacher. Let’s find something upon which we agree. No, my mind is made up over there, sorry that ship has sailed…but maybe, further on down the line, we’ll work together on something.

That’s what healing looks like, folks.

In a free society, that is a vital ingredient to leadership. In government and outside of it. Our right to petition our Government for redress of grievances, has been officially recognized since the very beginning. You know what that means? That means we should be getting something we’re not getting. “Mister Mayor, Governor, President, I’ve got a beef with you” means — or should mean: Here’s what you did and here’s what I don’t like about it. Please reconsider, or give me your reasons why not…and kindly refrain from all this talk of what I am, how I am, what’s wrong with me, how I need to be picked up and moved someplace else by my betters. With all due respect: Take that part of it, and stick it where the sun don’t shine. I’m sitting in judgment of you, not the other way around.

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Thomas Jefferson

See, there is the problem, right there. It is much, much bigger than Barack Obama; He is just a small fish in this pond. The disease which currently consumes our republic, like a hungry fungus between your toes, is a breakdown in this “other wall of separation,” if you will. Jefferson’s principles. Jefferson’s styles. The people in charge right now would like to invest all of the enforcement authority with regard to our immigration laws in the Federal government. And then, for the government to simply walk away from the obligation to enforce. Now, what is that; a principle, or a style? That is one example but there are many more. The economy needs to be stimulated through government programs which provide lucre to people who can’t generate it on their own, as opposed to tax cuts which would lower the risk involved in creating wealth that would benefit the rest of us. We need a nationalized health care plan, doesn’t matter what kind, as long as it’s nationalized. It’s time to turn the page on Iraq. I just think when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody. The people building that Victory Mosque have a right to build it, and they should, or maybe they shouldn’t, you know what I’m going to keep mum on that.

What are these, exactly? Principles? Or are they styles? Perhaps a little of both?

I don’t know, and you can’t tell me because you don’t either. Nobody knows. There is the problem. Obama’s generation, just a handful of years ahead of my own, has been indulged throughout the decades. The baby boomers have been told that because there are so many of them, they must be right. About everything. Their styles are principles. Stand like a rock, baby boomers!

And so our current leaders do; they stand like a rock, on the principle of…not standing for much of anything. If indeed there is one “principle” at work that remains consistent across all the disparate issues, it seems to be this:

The Change SucksIn any conflict, the side that prevails must be the more metrosexual one. The less male, the more effeminate, the less hetero, the more gay, the less white, the more ethnically mixed, the less English, less nationalist. Christians should lose all the time, they have it coming. These guys over here should win all the time, those guys over there should lose so they can find out what it’s like.

Blacks are better than whites, gays beat women, blacks beat gays, or is it the other way around? One atheist is worth three Christians but a Muslim is worth two atheists. Pray in school and go directly to jail, do not pass Go do not collect two hundred dollars.

But really, the rules are just kinda made up as we go along. The effort is distilled down into a comical attempt, which only looks sensible when viewed from within, to stand like a rock on everything and then fail at doing it.

That is our current leadership. And Palin is somehow less than qualified to be a successor to it?

Well, I suppose I have to agree.

Sarah Palin, who disagrees with me on as many issues as anybody else, comes from a bizarre corner of the universe in which disagreements are engaged forcefully but minimally. Hers is a sword that slices through, not because of the vigor with which it is thrust, but because of the fine point to which it has been sharpened. She seeks to win after she has properly defined what exactly the disagreement is. And she doesn’t engage in culture wars until such time as it becomes necessary.

This is not to say she is not a culture warrior. She is that, and a fine one. Many victories lie in her wake. And the culture she represents is mighty and proud, much stronger than President Obama’s because her culture is not afraid to represent itself as what it really is. She’s a hockey mom but she doesn’t nurture some personal agenda to transform the nation into a nation of hockey moms. She runs, but she isn’t going to tirelessly work to bludgeon or coerce us all into a running craze. If you disagree with Palin on Issue A, and on Sunday mornings she likes to go jogging and then attend church while you sit around in your underwear gnawing on butter sticks watching the game — she’ll debate you on Issue A and leave the rest of it alone. It’s called being a grown-up.

And this is what America is all about. You do your thing and I do mine, then we come together to find some agreement on what to do when it is unavoidable. The rest of the time, we have our different tastes and that is quite alright.

Obama was about that too, once. Remember? Learning to live together? Aw yeah, I guess we’re all supposed to “change” before that can happen. It’s made us happy and fulfilled, hasn’t it? Being called a jerk and a bigot every week and every month if we don’t march in lock-step, yeah that’s worked great.

We need a real leader. We need a leader who unifies. We need a leader who says: If we must agree on what to do, and our opinions are irreconcilable, and I’m in charge, then, well, sorry. Later on hopefully we’ll see eye-to-eye on something else.

Obama doesn’t have the maturity to govern this way because He is the champion of an entire movement that lacks this maturity. “Us Good, You Bad” is their constant refrain, unavoidable, every time they run into opposition. Any opposition. About anything. It was a mistake to elect them into any level of power or authority, no matter how modest; their proper place is in a portrait, a display, preserved for the benefit of future generations who can then fully understand what leadership is NOT.

Cross-posted at Washington Rebel and Right Wing News.

Cartoon credit: Theo Spark.

Aw, Poor Newsweek

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Looks like they just got snookered.

On this one, I’m taking a leftist point of view. The lefty said aloud exactly what I was thinking: Palin was confronted by a hater and handled the whole situation extremely well? That’s a scandal? Could the bar possibly be pushed down any lower?

D’JEver Notice? LVII

Saturday, May 29th, 2010

Former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin received a whole lot of criticism this week for the terrible crime she committed of being-spied-on.

My d’jever-notice-moment comes from reading the late, but now lengthy, history of Palin criticism. Ever notice that with ninety-nine percent of it, if you take out all the occurrences of “Sarah Palin” and replace them with “Barack Obama,” it makes more sense after you do that than before?

Obviously the paranoid stuff about water breaking and labor pains doesn’t fall into that. I said “ninety-nine percent.”

I’m talking about the lack of experience, the questions that “come up” every time she does something, the press not doing their jobs, you aren’t allowed to criticize her (!), the silly fantasies about dirt that has yet to come out, we-don’t-know-who-she-really-is, et cetera, et cetera.

She wrote a book, and the publisher went and printed it! For money! ZOMGWTF!!

Yeah you’re right Andrew, we really haven’t done any homework about her. It’s almost like Barack Obama, with just a few exceptions.

1) She’s a private citizen and nothing more than that, which means she’s an idea and nothing more than that. When her face comes on the teevee while it’s on mute, you have the luxury of saying “Oh jeez not her again!” As opposed to “Oh, what the fuck did he do this time?” This is why a lot of sane people are questioning and criticizing our President — it used to be the very definition of “patriotism,” remember those old days? — and when you express the same frustrations that this private citizen hasn’t been similarly “vetted,” you just look deranged and silly.

2) We don’t really have any indicators to clue us in that she’s fond of socialism, or has communist-oriented colleagues or mentors in her past;

3) If & when you do delve into that past, when you talk to people who went where she went and who ought to be able to remember her, they can.

Other than those, the situation is exactly…er…hey, wait. I lost track of whether that makes the Palin situation better than the Obama situation, or worse.

Keep digging, Andrew. Maybe you’ll eventually find out Trig is someone else’s baby, and as a bonus, she spent twenty years going to a church that installed a bigoted anti-American Marxist asshole as its pastor. That would really make your day wouldn’t it.

One other Palin gem came out this week. Blogger pal Gerard Van der Leun liked and linked our take-down of Peggy Noonan, for whom we still hold some measure of respect and admiration, although nowadays it is a vestigial moon-shadow of what it used to be. And so we were kinder than this older fusillade with which he paired us…kinder and less delicious.

As an aside, the analogy that connects a vote for Barack Obama, to bringing a baby bear cub home, was something that just popped into my head when I was grasping for a way to illustrate something. Before I even knew it had been excerpted, I was mulling it over in my head throughout the day, thinking a bit more about all the ways that it worked. It does work. It works well. People go ’round living their lives, 24/7/365, making life-changing decisions based on whether this-thing-or-that-thing is cute. Within the city limits, you generally don’t get in too much trouble doing that.

What’s the appeal of camping out in the woods? You are forced to make wise decisions. Where do we build the fire. Where do we pitch the tent. Can we drink the water. It’s an environment still considerably more sanitized than what was endured by a ’49er stumbling on a fresh patch of turf to prospect, but it’s an environment in which every li’l thing out there isn’t necessarily there to entertain, thrill, palliate, or spoil you. For some of us, that feels good.

Bringing a baby bear to the car to take it home, would be something done by someone who just missed the point entirely. It would probably be whoever wanted to stow the iPod with the water softener tablets. The city folk who are accustomed to everything in sight being built & done for their benefit, and with no other purpose to it at all. Everything’s all about them. And with that mindset at work, some of the decisions they make are poorly-thought-out and quite wretched.

That’s a bunny trail within a bunny trail. It also says just a little, in a great many words.

Must mark off this link to something that says much in just a few words:

You’re Peggy Noonan and you’re jealous. You started a new venture, “The Women on the Web” website, a very conservative, free-enterprise thing to do and still you are not appreciated. They talk about the Palin family fishing business — big deal. Anyone can get a couple of fish — just call Leonards’ on Third Avenue and they will deliver. [emphasis mine]

When I find a way to chisel this down into a one-line item, I should add it to my list of things I notice about the Palin-bashers:

They seldom-to-never state it outright, but they speak of Palin falling short of what is required for the presidency as if she is part of some larger continuum of persons, some odious sub-strata of humanity, similarly unqualified. It isn’t just her.

Up top, I compared the criticism of Palin to the criticism of Obama. Funny how we’re told by the loud people, those ever-present yelling people who must always have the last word, who may be many and may be few, that criticism of Obama is actually bigotry in disguise. Meanwhile, Obama Himself is actually on record as having been associated with a real racist. But when you take the time to talk to an Obama critic, you find out it’s really just about Obama and His inner circle. And it’s informed. They have paid attention to the decisions He has made, and how He’s made them, and applied logic to this to figure out what kinds of decisions He is likely to make that He hasn’t made yet.

Criticism of Palin is a mirror-reverse of this. It is supposed to be only about Palin, but when you take the time to talk to a Palin critic you find out their criticism is for an entire way of life. That, and they really don’t know what they’re talking about. These are the people who think bringing in a couple of fish is no big deal, just call Leonard’s and have it delivered. These are people who’ve never watched Dirty Jobs, and if they ever did, they’d sneer at the people being interviewed and change the channel in a great big hurry. Probably to The Joy Behar show. But their hatred of Palin is just a reflection of their hatred for this entire way of life. They want entire classes of people to be disqualified, permanently, from ever making any decisions about anything. It is things about Palin that they don’t like, not the outcome anticipated should she ever be put in charge of deciding something. The state in which she resides, the schools to which she went, the things she has done for a living, the kids she has had and how she has chosen to raise them.

Whether they realize it or not, they’re setting aside big chunks of humanity, millions of souls strong, as they so breezily pronounce these personality attributes and personal histories as disqualifications for higher office.

I linked a few days or weeks ago to Volokh who was bitching that everyone making any decisions right now graduated either from Harvard or Yale. It isn’t a picture of America, and it’s a problem. When these people bitch about Palin, with their vague and useless descriptions of what’s wrong with her and why she isn’t suitable, they reveal themselves to be that problem.

Memo For File CXIV

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Goodness, gracious me. I had no idea when I jotted down yesterday’s comments about the “McGinniss siege” yesterday morning that this was going to be the main story of the blogosphere. We got a “Memeorandum-launch” out of it again, from linking to Dave Weigel’s confession that he is an insane person.

The background is that a certain private citizen who lives in Alaska, who holds no elected or appointed office whatsoever but once was that state’s governor and whose name was on a major party ticket for the Presidency, is being stalked by an unscrupulous biographer. The writer has rented the house next door to hers, and his new front porch comes within fifteen feet or so of hers. So she snapped a photo of it and uploaded it to her Facebook page with some pithy comments. Yep…altogether now…she can see his house from her house.

None of this was sufficiently remarkable, to me, to merit a post. What really tipped the scale was that Weigel — are you sitting down? — sees Sarah Palin as the perpetrator and McGinnis as the victim. She invaded his privacy with that Facebook entry.

Palin informs her readers that McGinniss is “overlooking my children’s play area” and “overlooking Piper’s bedroom.” Alternately sounding angry and mocking, she refers to “the family’s swimming hole,” which at first reference sounds like she’s accusing McGinniss of checking out the Palins in their bathing suits, until you realize the family’s “swimming hole” is Lake Lucille. And she posts a photo of the space McGinniss is renting, captioning it, “Can I call you Joe?” Can somebody explain to me how this isn’t a despicable thing for Palin to do?

Heheh. Yeah Dave, I could, but why should I have to? Have you read many of the typical Facebook entries? “Feelin’ blue, listening to a Whiter Shade of Pale on my old turntable.” “Walked out to my car in the rain, didn’t know I had a hole in my shoe, my sock got wet.” Some creep is renting the house next door so he can spend half a year spying on you, that’s some delicious red meat right there. Facebook should pay her an advance.

Blogsister Daphne is on Weigel’s side on this thing. She thinks Palin’s whining about the natural consequences of being in the public eye, or something.

This is one of those rare happenstances in which my reasonable and well-thought-out opinion happens to be in line with that of the majority. Although I have to admit, it wasn’t the undeniable logic of my defense that swayed the majority; this is The Blog That Nobody Reads, of course. The viewpoint that seems to surface over and over again is that people took the time to read Palin’s Facebok entry (linked above), and to listen to her interview on Glenn Beck about this matter, and when they kept an ear our for some whining they just didn’t find it. From that, I think they figured out they were being directed to despise somebody just for her noticing something.

That’s a relic from the 1970’s; Archie Bunker probably started it. We can figure out you’re a baaaaad person, by noticing you noticing things. It seems kinda like noticing some guy’s skin is black, get it? So when you notice things, like some asshole reporter is going Peeping Tom all over you for an entire summer, we can notice you noticing things and that makes you bad. Well — that nonsense has been going on for forty years now, it’s aged badly and that dog won’t hunt. Palin got a new neighbor, she noticed it, uploaded an entry on Facebook, and all-in-all that strikes most clear-thinking people as pretty reasonable. Actually, it’s a much cooler reaction than they or I would have.

Dave Weigel is feeling defensive about this. He wrote a follow-up piece about his “Palin mailbag”; he was as surprised as I was that this thing would catch fire. He then treated his critics the way most newspaper employees, I’ve noticed, treat their critics. He pulled out four or five samples that would most effectively buttress his intended theme, which is one of “I’m a fair guy and trying to give these Palin defenders a shot at saying what’s on their minds, but gosh, these people are just whacked.”

This has always concerned me somewhat, and over the years I must confess it’s caused me to delay buying newspapers, and more recently, to skip the ritual altogether. It’s just lazy thinking. If one Palin defender fails to catch on to a joke, and another Palin defender uses potty-mouth language in a letter, that doesn’t mean they all do. And even if they all do, what of it? Ask an idiot whether it’s raining or not and the idiot says yes it’s raining, does that mean it isn’t raining? No, it doesn’t. Like I said: Lazy thinking. And I’m more inclined to believe idiots than lazy thinkers, because if you’re a lazy thinker you can be a freakin’ genius and you’re still going to be opining on pure nonsense, or stuff that is only correct now & then by random chance. Whereas the idiot might at least try to get it right.

Erick Erickson sees things my way with regard to the Weigel problem. He just can’t take the man seriously anymore, although his reasoning is slightly different.

A reporter moves in next door to Sarah Palin — a reporter with a negative history reporting on Palin — and Palin takes to Facebook to complain about the rather stalkerish vibe of this reporter taking up residence right next door to snoop on the family. This is the same reporter who once tried to get into a charity contest where he bid $60,000 to have dinner with Palin. Imagine if you had someone like that move in next door to your family and say they were going to write a book about being your neighbor. We all know that’s exactly what this guy is going to do.

But Weigel, along with a host of other reporters in DC, is going after Palin for being upset about it.

Politicians don’t have veto power over who gets to write about them, or how they research their stories, as long as they’re within the bounds of the law. It’s incredibly irresponsible for them to sic their fans on journalists they don’t like. And that’s what Palin is doing here — she has already inspired Glenn Beck to accuse McGinniss of “stalking” Palin and issuing a threat to boycott his publisher.

This follows on the heels of this defense of the White House that could have been ghostwritten by Greg Sargent, the Post’s lockstep defender of the left. According to the logic of the piece, it was impossible for anyone to know that Sestak was running for the Senate until the day he announced, and it would be totally impossible for Barack Obama to move someone out of the way for Sestak once that person was confirmed by the Senate. That one doesn’t pass the laugh test.

In fact, if you go through Dave’s archives you’ll find a slew of stories from the most recent one as I write to others that no one on the right really cares about, but people on the left who see the right collectively as fringe will eat up. And that’s the whole point of why he’s there.

On the other hand, our resident “gadmaggot,” TBogg, is within the vocal minority. He’s following the Weigel approach of, nevermind whether Palin is being stalked by a creepy neighbor even though that’s what the subject is supposed to be. Let’s talk instead about irony and how some people aren’t capable of comprehending it.

So when Sarah Palin goes Full Metal Mayella Ewell, accusing Joe McInnis of eye-raping her children, [Mark] Hemingway buys it and the horseshit it rode in on. Not willing to settle for being a garden variety half-wit, Hemingway doubles down when McGinnis’ son replies sarcastically to an email from Politico’s Ben Smith:

Bestselling author may be romantically stalking Sarah Palin
By: Mark Hemingway
Commentary Staff Writer
05/25/10 1:10 PM EDT

[…]

Well, it gets even crazier. Ben Smith of Politico got ahold of Joe McGinniss’ son and asked him about his father’s recent move to Alaska:

I haven’t been able to reach McGinniss, but did send an errant email to his son, the novelist Joe McGinniss Jr., who replied, “Sadly, she’s right. We tried our best to intervene, but alas, the heart wants what it wants. We can only pray for him now. He’s convinced that Todd will step aside and when the time is right, he’ll be there, right next door, to pick up the pieces.“

Wow. Just wow.

People like Hemingway like to complain that someone is always trying to shove something down their throats. This may be because they seem all too willing to swallow just about anything.

I note, with interest, that all TBogg has to say about this is that this Mark Hemingway guy failed to comprehend the joke. In his world, the story begins and ends there. That’s all he has to say.

And what a fragile little hook upon which this chandelier rests. “Wow just wow.” When you think about it…that doesn’t even prove anything. Not that I care. This whole irony-thing is just a bunny trail.

See, TBogg doesn’t live in a world of ideas. He is one among many lightweight thinkers who just want to be on the good side of things, to be assured that no one who agrees with them ever has a bad idea…and spin a fantasy that nobody who disagrees with them can ever have a good one. So if you read through his archives you’ll see his blog is just one meandering ad hominem attack. Oh, and it’s hip and edgy too. So he’s selling what lots of other folks are selling.

As an argument about the subject at hand, it is a curious one to say the least. Let me see if I can follow it: I am TBogg! You are scum! There are good people like me, and bad people like you and Sarah Palin. My people are better. Sure, they believe so much in what they’re doing and get so caught up in sliming your people that we sometimes do creepy, stalker-ish things, like move in next door so we can spy on your people all summer long and write books about it. But we understand irony. And our ability to understand irony (while we spy on you) makes us much, much better.

Okay TBogg. So noted.

Mediaite tries once more for the “Palin’s the real stalker here” defense. Good luck with that, guys.

But if you want something with real meat, I’d be remiss in leaving out Sheya’s piece at Conservatives4Palin, “David Weigel Doesn’t Get It.” Now, that is a rebuttal. “Conservative” Weigel indulges in a longstanding liberal tactic, which is to make a passing reference to something with a history behind it and hope to hell you don’t go doing any homework about it. Sheya did the homework on the Conde Nast Portfolio hit piece, and the results are devastating for whatever argument it was Weigel was trying to put together.

But after reading all this stuff that came up yesterday, I see it all this really comes down to one thing. I had made a passing reference to it twenty-four hours ago, having no idea how incredibly prescient the comment was and how relevant it was. In this comment, is the key to all things Sarah-Palin-related you’re hearing nowadays…at least, from the critics who are so desperate for her to “just go away already.”

Just dang, if Joe McGinniss burned her house down would you come down on her for using up his matches and gasoline?

Palin FenceSee, this just cuts to the heart of it. And most of us can’t see it because Palin’s not out there trying to be a victim, not running herself breathless trying to fill the role of victim, there’s nothing “victim” about her at all. McGinniss has laid his little siege; so Todd’s building a fourteen-foot fence. Problem, solution.

But you see, these people aren’t thinking straight. They can think logically about it, but thinking logically is a procession in a sound direction from whatever point of origin, and if the point of origin is cockeyed then the logic doesn’t do a lot of good. Their point of origin is that Palin cannot be a victim — ever. In many cases, they have built an entire social life around this. Here’s a story about that Palin chick we all want to “go away” so badly, let’s talk about it and give her the attention we’re wishing people would stop giving her…and the first person to show her any of what looks like sympathy, is to be drummed outta the club.

There are events taking place in real life, now and then, in which people are victims whether they accept the role or not. And when you start out with the prejudiced determination not to ever acknowledge that, you end up saying childish boneheaded stupid things, just like Dave Weigel. And that’s the problem they’re having. In their world, if you run over Sarah Palin with your car, the story is about the damage her rear end did to your car.

Weigel made an ass out of himself and he knows it. I know he knows it, because he did what newspaper people do when they realize they’ve made asses out of themselves. “Uh, I recieved a lot of complaints, and they’re all from crazy people, get a load-a this.” Sure, Dave.

As for Daphne, she’s just made the mistake of accepting a false choice about Palin’s motives. See, Sarah Palin may be motivated by a sincere desire to turn the country around and put grown-ups back in charge again…or…maybe she really is just “Sarah Paycheck” and is motivated by the money. To me, the whole thing is a First Amendment issue because the First Amendment isn’t about edgy shocking talk radio or crucifixes soaked in urine, it’s about efforts to change the government be they ultimately successful or not. Now, if everyone with an influential presence & set of opinions is forced, in this new “McGinniss siege” cultural protocol, to build fourteen foot tall fences around their homes just because they’re having an impact on things, that isn’t the death of the First Amendment. But it’s certainly takin’ a beating, in spirit, there can be no doubt about that.

Daphne uses sound logic proceeding from an unsound point of origin: That Sarah Paycheck is a showgirl. Palin doesn’t give a rat’s behind where the country is going, she just wants her book advances and royalties. She goes to give speeches for the money. Wherever she goes, she chuckles at suckers like me.

If you’re going to presume that, then I can see this makes some measure of sense. Palin’s flying around from one hot spot to another not giving a shit about politics one way or another, fooling suckers and making big coin. So all kinds of reporters want to know more about her, and sooner or later someone rents the place next door. Why yes, that does seem just natural. Live by the spotlight, die by the spotlight.

I’ve borrowed a favorite phrase from Obama Speech Bingo and called that a “false choice” because that’s exactly what it is. You see, Palin can be about both the money and about changing the country for the better. All the other politicians are supposed to be about both of those two things, I don’t see any reason why she has to be the exception. Palin’s life has been inspected with magnifying glasses, microscopes, rectal-scopes, fine-tooth combs. There is not a whiff of evidence anywhere that her personal values are anything but exactly those: Personal values. She believes in ’em. Not a syllable has been uttered by anyone suggesting anything to the contrary, save for the ugly whispering about Bristol’s pregnancy. Months of digging through the trash cans in Wasilla and Juneau, that’s the best they could do. So if Palin is indeed a charlatan, she isn’t a pure one; or if she is a pure charlatan who is apathetic about politics & the way a society should be run, she is awfully clever.

And you know what, Daphne? If both of those motives apply to what she’s doing, which is a virtual certainty — the values, and the moolah — my argument wins and yours falls flat. She is a potent force for jettisoning the liberal bullshit, starting right now, and the folks who happen to like the liberal bullshit recognize this and are engaging in the same bullying tactics we’ve been seeing for the last twenty-one months now. Whether Palin is officially appointed to a high office or not, the chessboard looks a lot different with her off of it, than with her on it. She’s the Queen. The liberals are doing what makes the most sense in a game of chess, and so is she. So she’s making money at it; so what?

Except in their case, it’s a little bit of Einstein’s classic definition of insanity. Renting a house next door for an entire summer while you’re writing a book about the person who lives therein…it’s just pure bullying, like everything else they’ve been doing, just pure “We’ll show you what’s in store for conservative media darlings, now how do you like THEM apples.” Well, some folks can be bullied and others cannot. So the people who want her to go away, and have their reasons for wanting her to go away, must understand this whole anti-campaign of theirs holds very little prospect for victory. There is no reason for them to keep deploying it, unless someone has figured out there are no other options available.

So in the last twenty-four hours, I’ve come to have a change of heart about this. Not about Sarah Palin being a whining crybaby who’s unable or unwilling to accept the natural consequences of being in the “public eye”; really, enough is enough Daphne. Your readers aren’t with you on this, the evidence isn’t with you. Give it up. No, what I’ve changed my mind about is the importance of the story. I did not see, at first glance, all the importance that was wrapped up in it. It is a newsworthy item — not that Palin put up a Facebook entry about McGinniss moving next door, but that McGinniss bothered to move next door. Very, very big event. If, that is, you see 2010 as a promising year for getting the kids-in-charge back to the kiddie-table where they belong. We need to know what’s going on with this procession of related events, and the “McGinniss siege” supplies a lot of clues as to what is going on.

But Legal Insurrection summarized the entire absurd situation as capably as anybody else, IMO:

There is something strange, unprofessional and paranoid going on here, but it’s not Sarah Palin.

Updated: Picture of Palin Fence — that’d be your Lake Lucille version of “whining” — borrowed from Gretawire, by way of John Hawkins.

Go Todd, go.

Their Own Double Standard Exhausts Them

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Me:

This is the saddest part of modern day liberalism, IMO. It’s the part that compels otherwise-decent and otherwise-thoughtful people to reject simple, straightforward, wise courses of action, and accept simple, crooked, fraudulent, stupid ones. They get distracted by the question of who else is decent. And choosing just the right double standard to make Bill-n-Hillary look like saints, and cast such a contemptuous darklight on Levi-Bristol that hopefully some of it bounces up and hits Sarah Palin, consumes all the brain cycles they have. Like, somehow Hillary’s a “victim,” Bill was “tempted,” Bristol is just a shitty judge of character and surely she got that from her Mom…

By the time they’re done writhing around and jumping through their own intellectual hoops, they’re so exhausted you could tell them we’ll fix the nation’s economy with a trillion dollar health care plan, and get rid of our racial-tension for good by drinking beer.

What am I talking about?

Daphne’s liberal friend had some kind of point to make. I’m doubting the liberal friend, herself, would be able to explain what exactly the point is…but Daphne noticed Mr. Johnston is not keeping current with his child support obligations.

One way or another, it all reflects on the former Governor, and therefore anyone & anything that doesn’t agree with Obama. Or something.

Palin Speech Opens Sixth Seal

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Buck doesn’t like coming to our pages and finding grim depressing stuff; I guess for him it’s all hockey stuff, something else cheery, or nuthin’. Well, in our book when you see some dumbass putting square wheels on a shopping cart, you take the time to tell him things aren’t gonna work, right? And the shopping cart of the U.S. of A. is being fit for square wheels, make no mistake about it.

But we do recognize the benefits of balance. And this Onion piece that apparently seeks to poke some fun at the former Governor, tickled our funny bone. But that’s a little complicated in itself, as we’ll explain below:

“This Tea Party movement just goes to show ya that America is ready for another revolution,” Palin said as things long ago divined came finally to pass. “Who do you think is gonna stand up for the freedoms promised by our Founding Fathers? Folks like us, or some socialist professor of constitutional law in the Oval Office?”

It was then, witnesses claim, that there was a tearing of the heavens, and the skies receded as does a scroll when it is rolled up, and anecdotes about everyday middle-class Alaskan families were enunciated in down-to-earth tones.

“That’s right, partner,” Palin said, as every mountain and island moved from its place, and flames overtook the lakes and the rivers and the seas. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

What does intent matter?

The outcome is, both sides are ridiculed; Palin fans, and Palin bashers. With much of the unintended comedy aimed squarely at the bashers.

Palin giving a speech, after all, doesn’t have much to do with End Times. By Onion standards, the satire is a little clumsy. What’s the point? She’s such a mental klutz that we should expect the dead to rise out of their graves the first time she forms a complete sentence? No, if I’m looking for a recent event to portend the Apocalypse, my mind would go back to Holy One’s (broken) promise to close down Guantanamo. Or the Beer Summit. Something like that.

Government’s broke. I don’t mean just the feds. I’m referring to all the states as well. Here in mine, we have “furlough Fridays.” Every Friday morning like clockwork, our airhead traffic report radio people flock to the airwaves to gladden our hearts that the roads are going to be nice and clear, without those bothersome state workers sharing them with us.

Get the picture? We’re paying taxes…all 51 governments are moving in the direction of — no services. Not that productive people tend to be in demand of such services in the first place. But we’re moving rapidly in the direction of just dropping the pretenses. We pay our taxes, and it just goes to people who are friends of the politicians who go through the motions of providing “services” to us.

Palin gives speeches pointing out that you know, maybe this isn’t the best way for things to work.

And the Obama apologists, and Palin-bashers, work up a hysterical lather just as well as any loco barnyard animal ever did. Acting like…yeah…the world’s coming to an end.

Poking fun at anything and everything. Just hoping the topic of conversation, for God’s sake, will somehow change.

We have Health Care II. We have Son of Stimulus. Huh. I suppose the world is gonna end if we don’t pass those.

“Drop The Pretenses Day” can’t arrive soon enough, in my book. I’ll open the seals of the Great Book myself. Just stop pretending you’re trying to help people, using stem cell research to cure polio victims, giving burn therapy to orphans, “creating or saving” jobs, blah blah blah. Just take our money, give it to your friends who aren’t any better at securing a productive and honest livelihood than you are — right out in broad daylight — and start counting down with us to the inevitable revolution.

That way, you’re not insulting our intelligence anymore. And frankly, this business of “Boy Sarah Palin’s Stupid, Who’s With Me?” hoping the subject will change whenever you find it convenient for the subject to change, is as insulting as anything. Just because some folks fall for it, doesn’t mean everyone does.

Update: This is more like it.

“Intellectual Ordinariness”

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

George F. Will thinks Sarah Palin is being celebrated for the quality named in the headline of this post.

In this work, he is a sad story. His whole point is that seven persons in ten consider Palin unfit for the presidency…therefore, he does as well. It’s not quite so much that he’s figuring out which way the wind is blowing and then responding to it. It’s that he’s figuring out which way the wind is blowing, and based on that figuring out whether this is the time to say out loud what he’s thinking. Which is just as bad. Not deriving an opinion from popular will, but being a fair-weather friend to popular will. Most people agree with me — on this one point — so on this one point, that proves I’m right. Naturally, if there’s some other point on which the popular will happens to be less receptive to George Will’s way of looking at things, we’ll never know about it.

So he sacrifices his intellectual scruples in order to put his finger on the pulse of The American People. That is the one prize…and it eludes him. He thinks Palin’s popularity is some rebellion against intellectual cred. Perhaps he is taking the situation too personally.

Could Thomas Sowell be talking about George Will, I wonder?

I can only speak for myself. This Palin supporter doesn’t give a good goddamn if her I.Q. is 200…or 50. I’m tired of the nonsense, tired of the bullshit, kill some terrorists and drill for some oil. At this point, those are the common sense things to do, and if you’ve got some talking points that make them seem otherwise I say you’re doing enough talking that you’ve stopped thinking so I don’t care how well you think you’re doing it.

I want to see some domestically produced oil barrels, some whittled-down tax rates across the board, crap-n-trade nuked for good so it ain’t never coming back, and some terrorist corpses with looks of real fear frozen on their dead crispy faces. Period. And frankly, all this talk of who’s “qualified” or smart or stupid or enlightened or educated or folksy or charmy or a lightworker, is beginning to bore me. And by bored what I mean is I’m getting pretty goddamn irritated over it for a couple of years now. I daresay I’m speaking for more people in that statement, than George Will is with his.

Another Low Blow

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Boortz doesn’t think very good things would happen to you if you were a cartoonist and you chose to lampoon a liberal politician this way. I agree.

I’d sum up the mood of the intelligentsia this way: “(Name of lefty politician here)’s family is absolutely positively off-limits, now get a load of my Tripp Palin impression.”

“Better Off With Her”

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

So noted leftist crackpot cartoonist Ted Rall was ranting away about our current President being clueles, and he kinda went off the deep end and made some disparaging remark about Obama’s intelligence — finding it inferior to Sarah Palin‘s. I thought nothing of it at the time. Looked to me like a classic case of a hardcore progressive type grasping-at-straws for the MOAB of insults to throw down.

And then HoundOfDoom said something that inspired me.

So now even uber-liberals admit that we would be better off with Palin.

Better Off With HerWelcome aboard!

Took me awhile to figure out the brilliance of it. And then, like I got smacked in the forehead with a two-by-four — That’s It! Announcing…drum roll please…

The Blog That Nobody Reads Better Off With Her campaign. Yessiree. We’ve all been looking for that patch of “common ground” on which the righty-tightee and the lefty-loosies can agree. This is it. You’re looking at it right here.

Yes, it is true…people like me say those four words, we mean one thing — people like Ted Rall say them, they mean something else entirely. They’re trying, once again, to motivate people toward their side with vinegar instead of honey. They’re using the former Governor to help accentuate their insult. Because they’re so veeeeerrrrrryyyyy angry. He Who Was Supposed To End All Suffering has not made them into a happy crowd…not by a damn sight. You see it here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here. And dozens upon dozens upon dozens of other places.

So my new campaign is just a little bit sneaky. Just a little bit Obama-like…trying to be all things to all people. Not really quite so much resolving disputes, as papering them over.

What of it? Who freakin’ cares? We’re still agreeing on something aren’t we? Common ground. Middle-o-th’road. Reaching-across-the-aisle. That’s still supposed to be a good thing, is it not? And if we agree on it, it becomes important for the word to get out. Palin might not run. Again — who cares? The slogan still works. If she was running things…if. We’d be better off.

Besides…we would be a lot better off with her.

Take that in whatever way you will.

“Drunken Irishman”

Monday, February 15th, 2010

This absolutely, positively makes the cut and I’ll tell you why.

The two male blowhards did a bang-up job of correctly articulating the prevailing viewpoint.

The skinny blond chick illustrated, with pinpoint accuracy (somewhere just past the two minute mark), why, where and how this deviates from common freakin’ sense.

I also agree with the idea that this speculation of what kind of a President Palin would make, is overblown in the extreme. Palin may have decided not to run; she certainly has not decided she will run. Personally, I think behind closed doors she is absolutely non-committal about it. Just from watching the way she makes decisions, I think she’s settled on a date-for-deciding. Up until that date, anything that happens just goes into a “piggy bank” of events, if you will…things go in, they don’t come out. If there’s any one thing that makes it a go or a no-go, she’ll ponder it when the date arrives and not one minute before.

So yes, this could be much ado about nuthin’.

But not any time soon are you going to hear any one of these “Palin Is Not Qualified” types give voice to what exactly the minimal qualifications are. I say she’s qualified, and I’ll tell you what the qualifications are right now: Constitutional: Born in the USA, on or before January 20, 1978. Practical: Bringing the cash to the party — motivating many, many others to write checks. And most important of all, Beneficial: Ready, willing and able to call the liberals out on their bullshit. America needs to be protected from economic malaise, terrorism and illegal immigration, but before we get to those it has to be protected from George Soros.

Those are the minimal qualifications. Without those, things are sure to get worse during the next administration.

I hope she possesses these qualifications, because thus far, not too many others have demonstrated even a trace of evidence of having ’em. The first one is easy, the second one is almost as easy, the third one…for the most part, it’s just her.

Grateful hat tip to Associated Content.

Helping Bagdad Bob Gibbs With His Hand Job

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

So Bagdad Bob Gibbs wants to make fun of Sarah Palin with his hand. Very clever, Mr. Gibbs. But as Gerard’s seventh comment, from CBDenver, notes — it’s a bit too late for any good comedy. Palin already made any snark her own private domain the day before. She does that. One of many reasons she’s called Sarahcuda.

Nice try, though.

Anyway, you need to represent your boss just a little bit better. He’s about oh so much more than hope and change…isn’t He? So we thought we’d help the press secretary out a little bit (click for larger).

You might want to use an extra-fine Sharpie, and continue on the other hand.

You’ve got a shopping list too, Bob? Aw, that’s a toughie. Guess that’ll have to go on your tie, or your ankle or something.

Update 2/10/10: Ah, I see over at Hot Air, Derek‘s photoshop of Bagdad Bob’s actual hand has been picked up by the Malkin crowd so I suppose that will become the “official” version. Ah well. Mine’s funnier.

But why dwell on it anyway. Oh yeah that’s right — Bagdad Bob Gibbs is the official spokesman of the President of the United States of America. We are impacted, directly, each and every day, by the decisions made there…

Now, on the other hand (har!), why does Gibbs care about Sarah Palin’s hand? Uh, she’s the running-mate on the losing ticket from fifteen months ago. Governor of — oh no wait, no she isn’t, not anymore. She’s a private citizen who wrote a note on her hand before appearing on teevee, and the White House has to take the time to comment on it. The White House. The constitutional government’s ultimate executive authority. They’d like to get the final word on things Palin writes on the palm of her hand.

*Sniff*

*Sniff*

That isn’t fear I smell?

She Adroitly Rewrote History

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

Me, making my predictions for 2010 (#4):

Speaking of Palin, she will stump for five GOP candidates, four of them will win, everyone will talk about the one who didn’t.

Now, there’s this writer-of-editorials who goes by the name of David Wiegel. We recall him as the guy who put together a special column just to announce he would not talk about Palin’s Facebook updates — no matter what! What followed was very little more than a manifesto that demonstrates David Wiegel does not like Sarah Palin.

Naturally, he got the gig of informing us about her speech when she appeared at a commemoration of Ronald Reagan’s 99th birthday.

“I am a supporter of this movement. I believe in this movement,” said Palin. “America is ready for another revolution.”

Palin adroitly rewrote the history of the past three months of elections, giving the Tea Party movement credit for Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts and calling the White House “0 for 3″ in recent elections — leaving out the New York special election where her candidate, the Conservative Party’s Doug Hoffman, lost in a last-minute upset. [emphasis mine]

Wow, can I call it or can I call it?

I had earlier given Wiegel some props for managing to form some criticism of Palin that made some sense. It’s become a pretty rare thing. Well, maybe I should pull back on that. His hatchet piece ends up being rather incoherent and rambling, suffering from the “mass murder and overtime parking” problem. Every single paragraph drips with resentment and criticism, and it isn’t always clear what exactly the criticism is supposed to be.

I’m wondering how he got the assignment, frankly. Wiegel seems to owe Palin much for whatever definition currently exists with regard to his career: Resident Palin Hater. I don’t think it would be very good policy to assign a Palin fan to cover a speech like this. But it doesn’t make too much more sense than that to assign the guy who comes right out and admits he can’t stand her.

Maybe it’s Wiegel’s move to make. If so, it was a bad one. He comes off looking rather petty and jealous. Like a scorned wife writing an editorial about her husband’s much-younger mistress.

Prepare For Your Defeat!I got a feeling David Wiegel is much, much angrier at Palin than he would be if there was some doubt about what she was saying. But the Obama/Biden “Hope and Change” ploy has been put to a more-than-fair test, and it’s an enormous bust. History in the making. And perhaps this is the kind of thing that is burying print journalism in a tar pit while we watch: Lately they are a perfect reverse barometer of what to take seriously, and what not to. Ideas that deserve serious attention, they treat with derision and ridicule; to the ideas that deserve derision and ridicule, they offer the most solemn and studious worship, and expect the rest of us to do the same.

Update: Althouse (hat tip to Gerard) shares her thoughts on the ordinary citizen “quitting” her job last year…and being “toast”…

What I love about all this is the extreme contrast to the way Palin was mocked when she resigned as Governor of Alaska. I, myself, did not think it was stupid, because I pictured her doing something like what she is actually doing, but I certainly remember the derision. Her political career was over. She was “toast.”

A big difference between what I pictured and what she’s doing is that she’s staying in Alaska. I thought she needed to get out of Alaska (in order to run for President). It’s innovative the way she’s staying in Alaska. As a blogger, operating from my remote outpost in Madison, Wisconsin, I love that she’s working through Facebook and staying rooted in Wasila, Alaska. Fox News is building a TV studio in her house in Wasila. That’s so not toast.

This Is Good LXVII

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

IMAO has a story — believe it if you want — about an apology being issued by private citizen and former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin:

In a brief statement, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin apologized for describing White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel as “Obama’d”.

“All I meant to say,” said Palin, “was that sometimes Rahm says things that are kind of Biden, and in the heat of the moment, I slipped and said he was ‘completely Obama’d’. It’s a phrase that many people who are sick of the government’s liberal, nanny-state agenda toss around as a casual epithet. I didn’t stop to consider how hurtful it is to people who, because of some tragic mental handicap, actually embrace the Obama agenda.”

“It was a very Reid thing for me to say. I Pelosied up, and I’m sorry for being such a complete Axelrod.”

“Please Try, ‘I’m Listening, People'”

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Advice He needs, whether He likes it or not:

We’ve now seen three landslide Republican victories in three states that President Obama carried in 2008. From the tea parties to the town halls to the Massachusetts Miracle, Americans have tried to make their opposition to Washington’s big government agenda loud and clear. But the President has decided that this current discontent isn’t his fault, it’s ours. He seems to think we just don’t understand what’s going on because he hasn’t had the chance – in his 411 speeches and 158 interviews last year – to adequately explain his policies to us.

Instead of sensibly telling the American people, “I’m listening,” the president is saying, “Listen up, people!” This approach is precisely the reason people are upset with Washington. Americans understand the president’s policies. We just don’t agree with them. But the president has refused to shift focus and come around to the center from the far left. Instead he and his old campaign advisers are regrouping to put a new spin on the same old agenda for 2010.

Americans aren’t looking for more political strategists. We’re looking for real leadership that listens and delivers results. The president’s former campaign adviser is now calling on supporters to “get on the same page,” but what’s on that page? He claims that the president is “resolved” to “keep fighting for” his agenda, but we’ve already seen what that government-growth agenda involves, and frankly the hype doesn’t give us much hope. Real health care reform requires a free market approach; real job creation involves incentivizing, not punishing, the job-creators; reining in the “big banks” means ending bailouts; and stopping “the undue influence of lobbyists” means not cutting deals with them behind closed doors.

Instead of real leadership, though, we’ve had broken promises and backroom deals. One of the worst: candidate Obama promised to go through the federal budget “with a scalpel,” but President Obama spent four times more than his predecessor. Want more? Candidate Obama promised that lobbyists “won’t find a job in my White House,” but President Obama gave at least a dozen former lobbyists top administration jobs. Candidate Obama promised us that we could view his health care deliberations openly and honestly on C-SPAN, but President Obama cut deals behind closed doors with industry lobbyists. Candidate Obama promised us that we would have at least five days to read all major legislation, but President Obama rushed through bills before members of Congress could even read them.

Candidate Obama promised us that his economic stimulus package would be targeted and pork-free, but President Obama signed a stimulus bill loaded with pork and goodies for corporate cronies. Candidate Obama railed against Wall Street greed, but President Obama cozied up to bankers as he extended and expanded their bailouts. Candidate Obama promised us that for “Every dollar that I’ve proposed [in spending], I’ve proposed an additional cut so that it matches.” We’re still waiting to see how President Obama will cut spending to match the trillion he’s spent.

More than anything, Americans were promised jobs, but the president’s stimulus package has failed to stem our rising unemployment rate. Maybe it was unfair to expect that an administration with so little private sector experience would understand something about job creation. How many Obama Administration officials have ever had to make a payroll or craft a business plan in the private sector? How many have had to worry about not having the resources to invest and expand? The president’s big government policies have made hiring a new employee a difficult commitment for employers to make. Ask yourself if the Obama Administration has done anything to make it easier for employers to hire. Have they given us any reassurance that the president will keep taxes low and not impose expensive new regulations?

Candidate Obama over-promised; President Obama has under-delivered. We understand you, Mr. President. We’ve listened to you again and again. We ask that you now listen to the American people.

Still ready to debate whether Sarah Palin is as stupid as people say?

Does it even matter?

With every resume that’s written up for anything anywhere, the phrase “excellent communication skills” becomes just a little bit more threadbare and worn-out, a little bit more outdated, a little bit more vague. It could be argued to mean a whole lot of different things.

It shouldn’t include the ability to promise one thing, deliver on an entirely different thing, and get away with it. That’s not what communicating is.

It’s War, Not a Crime Spree

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

The common-citizen, the one who used to be the Governor of Alaska, speaks. Those who mock her spread out in their familiar horseshoe-arrangement, point their fingers, and open their maws — but nothing comes out, for her points are unanswerable. Oh, how the hatred bristles. How dare she opine on Facebook. Why can’t she do what we want, and appear on an interview with Katie Couric? It’s so unfair!

President Obama’s meeting with his top national security advisers does nothing to change the fact that his fundamental approach to terrorism is fatally flawed. We are at war with radical Islamic extremists and treating this threat as a law enforcement issue is dangerous for our nation’s security. That’s what happened in the 1990s and we saw the result on September 11, 2001. This is a war on terror not an “overseas contingency operation.” Acts of terrorism are just that, not “man caused disasters.” The system did not work. Abdulmutallab was a child of privilege radicalized and trained by organized jihadists, not an “isolated extremist” who traveled to a land of “crushing poverty.” He is an enemy of the United States, not just another criminal defendant.

It simply makes no sense to treat an al Qaeda-trained operative willing to die in the course of massacring hundreds of people as a common criminal. Reports indicate that Abdulmutallab stated there were many more like him in Yemen but that he stopped talking once he was read his Miranda rights. President Obama’s advisers lamely claim Abdulmutallab might be willing to agree to a plea bargain – pretty doubtful you can cut a deal with a suicide bomber. John Brennan, the President’s top counterterrorism adviser, bizarrely claimed “there are no downsides or upsides” to treating terrorists as enemy combatants. That is absurd. There is a very serious downside to treating them as criminals: terrorists invoke their “right” to remain silent and stop talking. Terrorists don’t tell us where they were trained, what they were trained in, who they were trained by, and who they were trained with. Giving foreign-born, foreign-trained terrorists the right to remain silent does nothing to keep Americans safe from terrorist threats. It only gives our enemies access to courtrooms where they can publicly grandstand, and to defense attorneys who can manipulate the legal process to gain access to classified information.

President Obama was right to change his policy and decide to send no more detainees to Yemen where they can be free to rejoin their war on America. Now he must back off his reckless plan to close Guantanamo, begin treating terrorists as wartime enemies not suspects alleged to have committed crimes, and recognize that the real nature of the terrorist threat requires a commander-in-chief, not a constitutional law professor.

What I Notice About Palin-Bashers

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

Had these thoughts in my head for awhile, and as long as we’re on the subject of Palin I thought I should jot ’em down.

These people are in a “most lunatic” photo-finish neck-and-neck with the hardcore Obama-zealots. I seriously think we’ve discovered a new mental sickness epidemic. Palin isn’t it, but she’s a useful black light for detecting it. For how many years, before the nation learned to pronounce her married name, has this been going on, churning away in our midst, unseen?

1. They’ve achieved a great deal less in life than she has, even though some are quite a bit older than she is.
2. They don’t want to be called “haters,” although their reaction to her is purely negative and purely emotional; I’m left groping for another word and “bashers,” far from being a perfect fit, ends up being the least-unsuitable.
3. They persist in the mistaken belief that Charles Gibson tripped her up.
4. Whatever they have to say about Palin’s lack of competence or intellectual acumen, is felt, not thought. It invariably relies, not on observations, but on perceptions of what others are going to do. Nobody truly owns this.
5. A lot of them are ready to vouch for other women in power who are relatively homely and frumpy, like Hillary Clinton. This, also, fails the thought-over-feeling test; it isn’t based on much of anything. It’s just a reverberation of feelings felt by others, nothing more.
6. They breathe hard and their pulse quickens. I haven’t run into too many people who are ready to calmly explain Sarah Palin’s lack of qualifications.
7. Their laughter, in response to Palin jokes, is forced.
8. Their lofty opinions of the minimal requirements for the offices Palin has sought, or might seek, is selective. When the topic of conversation shifts to Joe Biden, suddenly it seems the Vice Presidency doesn’t demand a whole lot out of anyone.
9. They don’t seem to think it takes a whole lot to govern Alaska, or to even live there. They don’t appear to think very highly of Alaskans. One wonders if they’d back a Constitutional amendment establishing a “geographical litmus test” for future candidates, and if so, how many other states would go in the “No Can Do” column.
10. A lot of people claim to like her personally, just don’t “feel” (see Item #4 above) that she’s “right”; when the topic of conversation shifts to Barack Obama, this principle turns out to be selective (see Item #8) and they have a whole new and different way of seeing people.
11. They seem to have an awful lot of ego invested in these discussions, like if they cannot convince ALL reading or listening that Palin is a dimbulb, right here & right now, that this failing will somehow diminish them as a person.
12. They aren’t at all willing to say women should be staying home raising their kids; but they’re perfectly willing to say Palin should be staying home raising her kids.
13. They are loud, eager to get their opinion on the record, to the point of being obnoxious. Nobody seems to be sitting in a corner anywhere quietly thinking to himself “Wow I wish Palin would go away she’s so unqualified.”
14. Some of them think it’s way too early to talk about 2012. They seem to realize if the nomination process was conducted today, the results would be pretty clear. They seem to understand, but not to be willing to confess, that Palin is less likely to embarrass herself compared to her rivals, between now and 2012.
15. The standard they apply to Sarah Palin is not just higher than the standard they apply to others; it is surreal. Speculation on false pregnancies, burning books, forcing rape victims to pay for their own examinations, months and years after being thoroughly debunked, is somehow considered residually damning against her.
16. The people who get angriest about her, make me really happy she’s around to make them so angry because these are people who’ve had it comin’. As OldT6Flyer said at Neptunus Lex’s place (hat tip to blogger friend Buck), “If she didn’t exist somebody would need to invent her for the cause.”
17. Other than the secular types supposedly living in fear of some tighty-righty coming along to transform American into a “theocracy,” there doesn’t seem to be a single soul among them willing to say what a President Palin would do that they wouldn’t like. As a community, if you can call it that, they seem to be nearly brain-dead on matters of policy.
18. They’re ready to say what they think about things, in general, a whole lot more quickly than they’re ready to comment on their qualifications or lack thereof for thinking these things. This figures: They’re dissing the intellect of someone they’ve never met and never will meet.
19. If they’re Republicans, they long for a return to the halcyon days when the Republican party was known for its intellectual depth, and won elections that way. I, too, think that would be kinda cool. They aren’t ready to clue me in on when in the last hundred years that ever happened, or how likely such a thing ever is to happen again. Haven’t they noticed in columnist-world, the conservatives have a monopoly on intellectual wherewithal? Charles Krauthammer, Thomas Sowell, George Will…their counterparts are Keith Olbermann and Arianna Huffington? And that there’s a filtration process in place to keep that from ever translating into our elections, so that when it’s time to vote suddenly it’s the liberals who are the eggheads. What do they think is going to happen to upset that? What should be done to overturn that canoe? They aren’t ready to discuss this, not in the slightest. One would reasonably expect they’d be chomping at the bit.
20. A lot of them fall into Item #22 on my list of Fifty Fucking Sick Things. They want me to think something just because they think it — they’re so undeniably smart that if I don’t agree straight-away, that’s evidence of my own thick-headedness and cluelessness. But they can’t tell “their” from “they’re” or “your” apart from “you’re.” Innocent, excusable mistakes until you stop to realize: The whole point of their garbled writing is to raise doubts about someone else being qualified to graduate from high school!
21. They use “beauty queen” as an insult. One cannot help but wonder if they’re prepared to explain why this is.
22. They’re ready, willing and able to quickly concede that the attacks on Palin have been “unfair”; but their opinions about Palin appear to have been decided entirely by these unfair attacks. How’s this work exactly?
23. If they’re women — and a lot of them are — they all have that same look. Like they go to New Year’s Eve parties looking exactly the same as when they’re spending a day housecleaning. No one’s ever gotten ticked for leaving late because they took too long in front of a mirror.
24. They show an astonishing, whiplash-inducing ability to go from one extreme — “yes that’s true, her family should be off-limits” — to the other — “that little skank Bristol didn’t listen to abstinence education so why should anyone else.”
25. They hiss at her for being a “quitter” but give you a blank look when you name some of the Obama nominees who had to withdraw because of tax “problems.”

In person as well as on the innerwebs, I get the feeling I really shouldn’t be arguing with these people. Not in a “ah shucks, you’ll never see things my way and I’ll never agree with you, so what’s the point? Let’s talk baseball!” But more of an I-gotta-get-outta-here kinda way. With that unsettling kind of feeling you’d get if you ever found yourself arguing with some homeless guy covered with pigeon droppings about whether he really is hearing voices in his head.

They aren’t expressing hostility inspired by Palin; they’ve been carrying the hostility around, some of them perhaps for generations, and Palin has provided the outlet. In lots of ways.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Shatner Reads Palin’s Autobiography

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

In his own style. This one definitely makes the cut.

Hat tip to Rick.

Palin Favorability 46 Percent in CNN Poll

Monday, December 7th, 2009

That’s kinda like Satan’s approval rating on the rise in a Heavenly poll. There’s definitely something going on.

Sarah Palin has erased her drop in the polls that followed her resignation as Alaska governor, according to new national survey.

But when it comes to opinions of Palin, a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Monday suggests a partisan divide and a gender gap.

The survey indicates that Americans are split on Palin, with 46 percent saying they have a favorable opinion of her and an equal amount saying they have an unfavorable view of last year’s Republican vice presidential nominee.
:
Following her resignation, Palin’s favorable rating dropped to 39 percent in CNN polling, but her popularity is now back to the same level it was before she stepped down.

I got an off-line from fellow Palin blogger Shane Vander Hart letting us know about his latest post…a few more tantalizing hints about whether she’s planning to run or not. Couldn’t resist hitting the reply button and sharing what I’ve been seeing:

Two statistically significant factions exploding in number since the book tour started:

A. “Hate to break it to you, but this woman is NOT winning any elections!”
B. “It is WAY soon to be talking about any of this!”

How many deluded Palin-hating souls do you think have made the mistake of signing up for both of these? Perhaps they need to have it pointed out: You need to choose one…

I’d nominate Boortz to represent A, and blogger friend Buck (commenting at Daphne’s place) to represent B. Yes, neither one’s a hater. But both represent millions of people who do so hate…or nurse a grudge…or criticize to the point of tedium…or sneer…or, or, or.

I’ll take them all as sincere commentary — provided nobody’s crossing over. Anyone occupying the overlap is simply grasping at straws, and driving themselves nuts by doing it. So that’s my challenge to the Palin haters. Choose one.

Meanwhile, I can’t help noticing: Forty-six percent approval is within a point or two of He Who Walks On Water, over in the White House. For all intents and purposes, it is equivalent. Hmmm…I think Faction A just took a beating. Need to watch those hasty predictions.

Hardball Bigotry

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

These people are nuts. And this stuff they’re peddling — it’s just plain sick. What in the hell is the matter with Chris Matthews? And who in the world is launching these fusillades against Fox News, and ignoring him?

Just have a look at some of this nonsense. And I’m using “nonsense” as a euphemism for something else.

NORAH O`DONNELL, NBC CORRESPONDENT: They have a connection with her, and I think it`s an emotional connection. A lot of the people I spoke with today were unable to articulate exactly why they supported Sarah Palin…But she`s about to arrive any minute, and there`s a stage out front where she`s going to take to that stage and make remarks, almost like a mini-campaign rally.

MATTHEWS: Well, they look like a white crowd to me. Let`s go back to Joan Walsh. Not that there`s anything wrong with it, but it is pretty monochromatic up there.

Joan, no surprise in terms of the ethnic nature of the people showing up. Nothing wrong with that. But it is a fact. Let me go to this intramural — the nastiness — and I want to get back to Norah on this, Norah covered the campaign and — the nastiness of this, the attacks on you might call them the “little people,” Steve Schmidt, Nicolle Wallace, in the campaign. Here`s somebody who was governor of a state taking whacks in a published book, her only book, trashing little people, and at the same time, she`s looking out for little…

Here`s her quote. By the way, here is McCain defending his people. “There`s been a lot of dust flying around in the last few days, and I just wanted to mention that I have the highest regard for Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace and the rest of the team, and I appreciate all the hard work and everything they did to help the campaign.”

So he`s pushing back, Joan.

JOAN WALSH, SALON.COM: Yes. You know, he was trying to stay out of it, Chris, for a few days. He was saying nice things about her. But when she insults his team like that — and you know, I — there are questions about who`s right, but they strenuously deny it, and other reporters who were around also deny her version of things. So, I think that there are a couple of whopping lies, as well as just a mean-spiritedness that doesn`t serve her well.

It`s why she will never be president. She is a very divisive, mean- spirited person. She is fighting down with her 19-year-old ex-future-son- in-law, who should really be ignored, if anything.

So, you know, I think you see a side of Sarah Palin — Norah is right. People who love her love her. But the general public doesn`t trust her and sees this kind of mean girl persona that she`s never grown out of.

Norah did great reporting, by the way. I was watching when she interviewed these people who were wrong about TARP and who just started babbling about she will defend the Constitution, as though Obama won’t.

MATTHEWS: Right.
:
MATTHEWS: … on “Sean Hannity” last night.

I think there is a tribal aspect to this thing, in other words, white vs. other people. I think she is very smart about this. Here she is on the issue of — of what happened down at Fort Hood, obviously, an ethnic issue, as many people see it.

WALSH: Right.

MATTHEWS: She sees it that way. Here she is going at him.

This mindset is plenty worthy of an expose all by itself. I can just see it now…”Coming up next: A political phenomenon grips the fears and passions of the nation. Guilty white liberals who see every issue in terms of white-versus-not-white. What drives them? What motivates them?”

I’d love to see health care reform presented in this way. Gather up a couple hundred communists who are chomping at the bit for government to take over health care, with all their sob stories, and gravely intone: “These people feel an emotional connection, they feel like they have been, in one way or another, beaten-up on…I was struck by the meanness of this, the nastiness of this…whopping lies, mean-spiritedness of this…”

What this is, is a liberal effort to take control of the “water cooler” conversation. People see this rot, and if they happen to like Sarah Palin — or even if they don’t, but they’re just part of the growing majority who think Obama needs to be stopped — the thought that comes into their heads is, “My God, the people I work with are going to see me the way they see the white racist knuckle-draggers in this video.” And they become chilled. They shut up.

It’s part of a deliberate strategy.

Meanwhile — none of the issues presented here are white-versus-not-white. Not a single one. Matthews, O’Donnell and Walsh are bringing that into it. If they are honest in their remarks, and I think they are, then that means they are sick and weak to the point of being incapable of making a logical decision about anything, because they get distracted and drift off into irrelevancies that determine the final outcome for them with regard to what they’re deciding. And then, like little kids, they seek validation for what they’ve decided, in the form of agreement toward/from others. “Oh you are so right, Chris, you are SO right.”

We’re looking at why blogs became popular in the first decade of this century. It’s not a matter of instant communication or high technology or even any kind of wonderful job the bloggers are doing. It’s a matter of trust. When you don’t trust anybody you want to get as many perspectives on what’s going on as you possibly can. The days of “Listen To Uncle Walter For An Hour And Consider Yourself Well-Informed” are long gone. And these guilty-white-liberal-racist-holier-than-thou airheads are what made it happen.

That Magazine Photo

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

One more Sarah Palin thing, because something has to be said about Newsweek.

I was going to blog about the Runner’s World spread, but that was the weekend that Palin resigned from the governorship of Alaska. Her fitness regimen ended up not making the cut. Anyway, Newsweek somehow selected one of the pictures for the November 23 cover. Probably for purely commercial reasons, not to reflect a party bias.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like SarahAlthough I do find it rather incredible to think they’d make a similar decision about a democrat.

Palin herself has a problem with it. Darn, there goes that fantasy of her attending her own inauguration ceremony in a Supergirl costume. From her Facebook page:

The choice of photo for the cover of this week’s Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this “news” magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner’s World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness – a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention – even if out of context.

– Sarah Palin

I see the objection. It isn’t against her being shown as casual, or come-hither, or bookish or leggy. It has to do with what is appropriate in what setting.

It also has to do with relocating things. Newsweek, it seems, didn’t have permission to use this. Palin posed for the picture “among friends,” one might say. Kinda. Her comments for Runner’s World were entirely apolitical (hilariously, a couple of readers objected anyway since they didn’t subscribe for “that political stuff”). Newsweek placed the picture before a decidedly more hostile audience.

What’s the message here? That if Palin is President, she’ll spend all her time jogging and posing for pictures? I can certainly see more than a few Newsweek readers picking that up…the ones who are inclined to. Which is probably most of ’em. Still and all, the thought makes me chuckle. The nightmare of having a President who spends all the President’s time posing for pictures. Oh heavens to Betsy. Perish the thought. What’s that like?

Dr. Melissa Clouthier adds:

After this post got fed to Twitter, I got into an argument with a leftist feminist there about this cover. She brought up Hillary Clinton. She believes that Sarah Palin did this to herself by posing for Runners World. What serious politician or man would pose for that sort of cover?

What serious newsweekly would put a degrading picture, say of Obama frolicking in the surf or Bil and Hill dancing in the sand for the camera, on the cover of a magazine? Only conservative politicians need worry about being portrayed as trivial and sexy (Sarah), mean and old (McCain), mean (Cheney), mean and stupid (GWB). A Democrat gets gravitas-portraying treatment.

Always.

And that’s why conservatives view the press as biased. They don’t even attempt, even feebly, to hide it anymore.

Well said.

Another Black Conservative has an interesting thought:

I am beginning to think that I was right when I said that the Oprah interview humanized Palin. It is going to be much harder to disrespect Palin like the left did before without pissing off new people. Perhaps this book tour and all the interviews on the lamesteam media will produce a Sarah Palin 2.0. It will be interesting to see Palin’s approval ratings after the book tour.

Neptunus Lex, perhaps committing an infraction of protocol, audibly notices the elephant in the room:

[O]ne only has to look here, where Newsweek greets Palin’s newly published memoir with a provocative photo from a running journal and asks “How do you solve a problem like Sarah,” a header that literally begs the question, while demonstrating both political and gender bias and undoubtedly souring the faces of envious, shrewish, muumu wearing, lemon-eating scolds across the country. [emphasis mine]

Yep, there it is. That was undeniably the effect of it; and I’m pretty sure there was a fair strength of effort in that direction as well.

There certainly is some resentment there. And looking really good in running shorts while being a 45-year-old mother of five, probably has a lot to do with it.

However, it must be said — lately, winning elections seems to have a lot to do with figuring out who you can write off, not who you should go chasing for their vote. Case in point, Barack Obama doesn’t seem to care one bit what He has to do to get my vote. He doesn’t and He shouldn’t. I, and millions like me, have been gutterballed. It seems to be working out very well for Him.

Sarah Palin should do the same. Women who dislike her because she’s good looking, aren’t ever, ever, ever gonna like her.

And hey. Let’s be completely frank about things. If you’re answering polls saying Hillary is qualified to be President, and Palin is not — whatever the bee is that is up your butt, I do not want you deciding anything. Let me repeat that: Anything. I do not want you taking my customer service calls, I do not want you making my coffee, I do not want you running a leaf blower on the sidewalk an hour before I go walking on it. You have just-plain-poor decision-making abilities. Stay home.

Regarding Sarah’s comment. She would have been ahead-of-the-game keeping her mouth shut. Just let everyone argue about the magazine cover; maybe make it privately known that she disapproves of it, to sort of nudge the national conversation off in the direction of the permission Newsweek gained to use the photo, or lack thereof.

Good-lookin’ women showing their legs when they run for President? Hey…if you don’t know whether I’m for-or-against, you must not have been reading this space very long. Not saying I don’t see where she’s coming from, because I do. Yes, it’s sexist. But sometimes a subtle critique can be much more effective.

Anyway: Why so much attention riveted on the photo? Check out those headlines:

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah?

She’s Bad News for the GOP — And For Everybody Else, Too

Good grief. You see my point. The photo, inappropriate as it is, is nuthin’. Nuthin’. Melissa’s right. They aren’t even trying to hide it anymore.

Update 11/19/08: Ah hah…as I figured.

What on earth was Sarah Palin thinking when she posed in a pair of teeny-tiny gym shorts for a photograph that ended up on the cover of Newsweek — a cover she has called “sexist”? Perhaps she was thinking that her image would only appear in the magazine she was posing for, Runner’s World, and nowhere else, at least not for months and months. If so, she had good reason — since, as DailyFinance has learned, the photographer who shot the picture violated his contract by reselling them to Newsweek.

That photographer, Brian Adams, could not immediately be reached, and his agent, Kelly Price, declined to comment, saying, “I keep all of my clients’ business private.” But a spokeswoman for Runner’s World confirms that Adams’s contract contained a clause stipulating that his photos of Palin would be under embargo for a period of one year following publication — meaning until August 2010. “Runner’s World did not provide Newsweek with its cover image,” the spokeswoman said. “It was provided to Newsweek by the photographer’s stock agency, without Runner’s World’s knowledge or permission.” The spokeswoman declined to say whether Runner’s World intends to respond to Adams’s breach of contract with legal action.

Update: The resident conservative of NPR, which I guess would be like the tallest building in North Dakota, doesn’t like Palin. And he’s found some exceptionally silly reasons…that’s the only adjective that seems to apply after a fair amount of this…

The rap on Palin is that she’s too shallow and inexperienced for the presidency — a conclusion that early Palin supporters like me came to during the 2008 campaign. Alas, for conservatives in search of a champion, there’s nothing in Going Rogue to challenge that conclusion. It’s like this: Palin spends seven pages dishing about her appearance on Saturday Night Live, but just over one page discussing her national security views.
:
This is the Republican Party’s great populist hope?

Sarah Palin is selling a personality, not a platform. That’s not dumb. She’s doing the best she can with what she has to work with. She quotes her father’s line upon her resignation this summer as Alaska’s governor: “Sarah’s not retreating, she’s reloading.” On evidence of this book, Sarah Palin is charging toward 2012 shooting blanks.

Palin’s selling a personality and not a platform.

Consistently since 1992, people have been getting elected on personalities and not platforms. Most notably in the election just passed. But we should hang it all on Palin like she’s in the process of inventing it. She’s not to be taken seriously unless she’s the only contender running on platform. And not even then. Like I said: “Silly” is the only word that applies.

Doctor Zero has a different take:

Newsweek advertised its cover story on the release of Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue” by asking, “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?” This headline was informed by the same journalistic standards that led the Washington Post to publish a book review by someone who admits she didn’t read the book – and then prompted MSNBC to invite this person on the air as an expert on the book she didn’t read. Newsweek apparently couldn’t be bothered to watch “The Sound of Music” all the way through, because Maria is the hero of the piece. The nuns singing “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” are singing about suppressing the very spirit that will help Maria save her family from totalitarian oppression. Considering Palin’s indestructible good cheer, if she runs for office again, I wouldn’t be surprised if she used “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” as a campaign song… and thanked Newsweek for the suggestion.
:
The careless, sloppy disdain of the Left’s reaction to “Going Rogue” is almost as strong an argument for Palin’s politics as anything contained within its pages. The absolute lack of care and competence from the government that ran up a $12 trillion national debt is astonishing. Months of dithering over Afghanistan strategy, with American troops under fire, ends with a painfully unqualified Commander-in-Chief wailing that he wants a new set of options…
:
The argument over whether Sarah Palin is “qualified” for the presidency is the opposite of the question conservatives should be asking. What we need to know is whether any other aspiring candidate has the essential qualifications Palin brings to the table. [emphasis mine]

“How do you solve a problem like Maria?” as a campaign song. I like it.

Sarah Palin is indeed a conundrum. A prevailing viewpoint is a powerful thing, and a durable thing too. It can survive its own internal contradictions, if it has some — for quite awhile. And our current prevailing viewpoint does have some.

It goes like this: Sarah Palin is to be summarily disqualified because she is a contender in a contest of personality, not quite so much of platform or position. BUT — right after she’s been so dismissed, and you address our current Commander in Chief, you shouldn’t be so bold as to ask Him any heady questions about platform-or-position, and most certainly not about how He came to a certain decision about a certain thing…instead, you should compliment Him on the gracious and dignified lilt to His voice. In sum: He gets to compete on appealing aspects to His personality, at the expense of any debate on substance. Palin is to be dropped from the running for any hint that she’s about to enjoy the same advantage, even if it isn’t at her instigation.

This is an unworkable contradiction, one that becomes less comfortable with repeated exposure, for all consciousnesses save for the most intellectually flaccid. If this is a vital underpinning for Palin’s still-considerable disapproval rating, and it is our impression that it is, don’t look for the disapproval rating to remain where it is for too long.

Update: Victor Davis Hanson has some interesting things to add:

[M]any conservative elites imagine that a Harvard Kennedy School degree is superior to multifaceted knowledge of .357 Magnums, chain-sawing, skinning game, and fishing, they will judge her only in terms of a traditional cursus honorum—spiced up with invective about creationism and Christian fundamentalism. (I have some experience with such snobbishness: when I used to speak before hostile university audiences, I was often introduced along these lines: “Mr. Hanson is a raisin farmer from Fresno State of Jerry Tarkanian fame.” [and therefore, presto, must be an idiot].)
:
If Sarah Palin thinks FDR was President in 1929, or that he could speak on non-existent TV, she is through; if Biden says that, it’s “just old Joe again.” If Obama does not know the first thing about our most prestigious medals, the language of Austria, or diplomatic protocol about presidential bowing, it’s because he is deliberately trying to be cool; if Palin did the same, she’s a buffoon hockey mom. That is the way it is, and her supporters should accept it, deal with, and overcome it.

Ridicule can be a powerful weapon. And how difficult would it be to deploy?

Liberal snobs and conservative snobs are wondering aloud about some kind of threat…some unstated threat…some avenue by which our nation will meet harm due to a President Palin’s cluelessness and lack of intellectual depth.

In the very same week in which the hysterics begin, Kalid Shiekh Mohammed is being brought to New York City to face trial and enjoy the same privileges and guarantees an American citizen would enjoy in civilian court. Because the “intellectually deep” folks in charge think that’s just a swell idea.

Priorities, snobs. Priorities. Maybe if some of you spent some time working for a living, you’d be organizing them better.

How Does She Stack Up…

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

…against other candidates on presidential tickets over the last few years? Really?

Levi’s Hiding Huge Things on Sarah Palin

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Huge things, man…really huge. They’d really, really hurt her if they got out, but I’m just not going that far.

Levi Johnston says he’s keeping some “huge” things about Sarah Palin from the public.

In Part One of a two-part exclusive interview with “Early Show” co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez, which aired Wednesday, the father of Palin’s grandson says, “There are some things that I have that are huge. And I haven’t said them because I’m not gonna hurt her that way.

” … I have things that can, you know — that would get her in trouble, and could hurt her. Will hurt her. But I’m not gonna go that far. You know, I mean, if I really wanted to hurt her, I could, very easily. But there’s — I’m not gonna do it. I’m not going that far.”

Johnston says he’s referring to things Palin did while she was governor of Alaska. Asked whether those actions were illegal or immoral, he refused to elaborate.

And I’ll be signing autographs. Burbank Wednesday, Vegas Thursday, Phoenix Friday. Buy my tee shirts and coffee mugs, I’m not talkin’. Yet.

Hey, I heard Sarah Palin’s Air National Guard commander wasn’t happy with her logged hours of flight time, and I’ve got these proportionally-spaced memos from a 1974 office typewriter to prove it.

Great job, CBS. Great journalism; great work. Keep it up.

How Many Jaydens

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

I’m happy to see the “blogosphere burning up” with posts about Jayden Capewell. President Obama just got done taking His pot shots at Sarah Palin for her “death panels” comment, all-but-naming her in His address to Congress. Foon Rhee of the Boston Globe tried to peel back the armor in advance of the President’s salvo, asserting that Palin’s insinuation, now made twice, has been “rather thoroughly debunked.”

You’re a fool, Foon. Nothing’s been debunked, except with the (quite correct) idea that there’s no one single plan to argue about just yet. But nationalized health care leads to life-and-death decisions being made by bureaucrats who are worried first-and-foremost about their lunch breaks, and how many little stacks of Post-It notes are left in the supply cabinet. That’s just what happens. It’s like heat-plus-fuel-plus-oxygen-equals-fire.

Enter the Jayden situation (hat tip to Rick):

A young British mother has criticized medical guidelines that, she said, resulted in doctors refusing treatment and leaving her newborn premature son to die. 23 year-old Sarah Capewell told media that her son Jayden, born at 21 weeks and five days gestation, was refused intensive care because he was two days under the limit set by the British government’s National Health Service (NHS) rationing guidelines.

Capewell said that her son Jayden cried and lived for two hours before dying in her arms. During that time, his mother took photos of him and pleaded with doctors that he be admitted to the special baby unit at James Paget University Hospital (JPH). Staff at the hospital, in Gorleston, Norfolk, told her that had Jayden been born two days later they would have helped him.

Blogsister Cassy adds:

In Britain, where socialized health care is firmly in place, doing everything you can to save a life is not important. What is important is following regulations put in place to save the government time and money.
:
Now, many of you may wonder what this story has to do with us here in the United States. Well, thanks to Obama’s government run health care bill that Democrats are trying to force on us, it’s entirely possible that horror stories like this one could start occuring here. Consider the fact that Obama voted not once, not twice, but three times against a bill requiring doctors to provide treatment to babies who survive abortions. What kind of compassion do you honestly think he would have for babies like Jayden, especially if he’s successful in implementing his government run health care reform? Babies like Jayden would be just like the elderly to him — too expensive, a waste of time, and a drain on the system. It’s one more reason why we need to keep the pressure on lawmakers in Washington to, for once in their feeble, pathetic lives, actually grow a spine, listen to their constituents, and do the right thing.

Blogger brother Rick adds:

Bureaucrats enforcing cost saving measures as to who should be cared for… all in the name of nationalized health care.

Obama will make the upteenth attempt tonight to convince you that this is what America needs to embrace.

Bullsh*t.

Bullshit indeed. All of His slobbering toadies are climbing all over themselves to color and characterize Palin’s now-notorious “death panels” comment as some kind of made-up fable, a fiction, a fantasy, a myth, an urban legend.

And every single time they do that — without exception! — they prove beyond the shadow of any doubt that they simply don’t know what they’re talking about. That, or they’re talking to other people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

Update: Sarah Palin knows what she’s talking about, much as that may irk some folks. And of all the possible lead-ins to her op-ed piece, I think Dr. Melissa Clouthier has put together the very best one:

The press alternately calls Sarah Palin stupid or irrelevant. However, both in political instinct and policy substance, it’s clear that she is neither.

Today, her Op-Ed appears in the Wall Street Journal. It’s good. Cogent, clear, and well-written. She’s got a ghost-writer, say lib operatives. Let’s hope! Does Barack Obama write all his own stuff? Surely, libs jest. His college thesis can’t even be found. Why would anyone quibble that Sarah Palin would have a ghost writer? Probably because she makes sense:

Instead of poll-driven “solutions,” let’s talk about real health-care reform: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven. As the Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon and others have argued, such policies include giving all individuals the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers that allow them to purchase their own coverage; reforming tort laws to potentially save billions each year in wasteful spending; and changing costly state regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top-down government plan, let’s give Americans control over their own health care.

Democrats have never seriously considered such ideas, instead rushing through their own controversial proposals. After all, they don’t need Republicans to sign on: Democrats control the House, the Senate and the presidency. But if passed, the Democrats’ proposals will significantly alter a large sector of our economy. They will not improve our health care. They will not save us money. And, despite what the president says, they will not “provide more stability and security to every American.”

D’JEver Notice? XXXVIII

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

Not entirely sure how many months, weeks or days we’re talking about when we read one more article about Levi Johnston living with the Palins and getting his inside scoops on what goes on in that household. But his talking about it, is starting to take on the air of a Barbra Streisand or Cher or Madonna “final farewell tour.”

Do we have to “learn” new “truths” about Sarah Palin every time Johnston needs a new tin of chaw now, or it’s time for him to gas up that ginormous expensive truck?

It goes without saying these stories have currency and demand. And it further goes without saying that the reason they’re in demand, is that the public has this fascination with warped, dysfunctional personalities.

What’s not so obvious is — maybe the public’s real fascination with “Levi has more dirt to dish on Sarah” isn’t quite so much a fixation on the flaws in her character, but rather on the flaws in his. After all, it isn’t every day you get to make an acquaintance of a Sarah Palin, but there are Levi Johnstons everywhere you look, and we’re all a little bit unsure about how to handle them. Other than the obvious things, like not counting on them to do anything important, or say anything that’s true.

Those who doubt that, should probably read this. By all means, buy that issue of Vanity Fair, but know what you’re getting. Not quite so much an accurate portrait of events, but a window into a troubled soul. And I’m not talking about hers.

How to Destroy a Leader

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Guilty people always have an excuse ready; every minute of every day. It is what they do, they’re always getting ready. That’s part of being guilty.

Bill Whittle has those thoughts and more.

I recall something about this in Atlas Shrugged. Henry Rearden is blackmailed into signing over his rights to Rearden Metal, and he makes the point to the state thug doing the blackmailing — if we really were the type of people you were threatening to make us look like, your threat of blackmail would have no effect on us. And the state thug says, of course, yeah I know. Whatever. Ya gonna sign that thing or are ya gonna make me wait all day?

Rather shocking the amoral things that are done by a state, when it engages in the masquerade of supposedly trying to do super-moral things.

Hat tip: Hector Owen.

“Death Panel” is as Good a Name as Any

Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

Charles Krauthammer exposes an ugly truth about these various efforts we’ve undertaken in the modern age to build our dream Utopian society that works “for the benefit of everyone”: A central pillar to the vision, is now and has always been, one of creating an exclusive club very much like the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Unfortunately, he exposes this ugly truth not by realizing it about others and responsibly pointing it out, but by being a part of it.

Let’s see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.

We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I’ve got nothing against her. She’s a remarkable political talent. But there are no “death panels” in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.

Speaking of debasing the debate…if you pop that link open and read it, you’ll see the next several paragraphs after this snide little salvo, Krauthammer goes on to most articulately make Palin’s point.

The good Dr. Melissa goes after the good Dr. Charles with some points he should have been able to realize on his own. The truth is, even when Krauthammer makes Palin’s point apparently without consciously realizing he’s making Palin’s point while telling Palin to shut up, he fails to capture exactly how bad things might get. But the point isn’t lost on Melissa Clouthier any more than it’s lost on Sarah Palin.

Taken on its own, Section 1233 of H.R. 3200 is not a death panel. It’s more a death recommendation.

Dr. Krauthammer forgets though, that this isn’t the only death-related provision of the bill or of this health care legislation generally. The counseling is an indicator of intent. While a doctor is financially incentivized to have a death discussion, the government program will, by nature of sheer numbers, want people to choose, as President Obama says, a “pain pill over surgery.”

Further, the government, and a bureaucratic board of 27 appointees will be deciding care for people. That is, 27 people will be answering questions like: who receives care? Who qualifies? Who doesn’t? In what circumstances? It will be a bureaucratic answer and bureaucrats, who cannot be sued and have no incentive beyond cutting costs and appeasing political special interests. Individual needs will get lost in the collective good. Some people will die because of these choices.

This Utopian society we’ve been trying to build that nobody living or dead has actually seen…I’m just fascinated with it. During the planning and construction, someone is always being excluded from something. Old people should just die, former Governors of Alaska should just shut up, those people shouldn’t be in this town hall because they’re too well dressed.

We’re trying to find a way to get “everyone” covered, no matter what, so nobody’s excluded.

Before we talk about that, we should have Sarah leave the room.

She has the annoying habit of pointing out that this plan might give us an incentive to kill people.

Which, according to Krauthammer’s own words, is exactly right. She’s gotta go.

I would argue that the entire exercise of building this society is, from the foundation on up, riddled with contradictions. It has no clue as to whether it wants to honor the fundamental God-given right of humans to exist and to fight for that right to exist…it doesn’t know. Because its answer to that is both a yes and a no. Both of them rather emphatic. And so it labors under the heavy burden of an inherent contradiction. It ends up fighting itself. That’s why it’s failing.

When Dr. Clouthier cross-posted this at Right Wing News, Commenter CavalierX cut right to the heart of the matter in one deft motion, like a skilled surgeon wielding a sharp scalpel. Every single syllable of his is loaded with wisdom, you know this to be true because every single syllable of it could have been mine.

I generally like Krauthammer, but he’s an ass if he thinks there’s no such thing as a “death panel” just because the words “death panel” don’t appear in the bill that hasn’t been written yet. Someone’s going to have to make decisions on what qualifies people to recieve what treatments, and you can call it a commission, bureau, cabinet, task force or board — they will decide who lives and who dies. “Death panel” is as good a name as any.

TAMI

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

I got her permission to re-post this from the e-mails. And this doesn’t have anything to do with our previous discussion about how the chicks use parentheses; TAMI is not abusing them nearly as badly as that phony-male Palin-hater guy. She’s got the balls he’s missing. So don’t go there. I asked permission to re-post this because it’s two paragraphs of pure awesome, and she has my full support, girly-parentheses and all.

I am (as my blog plainly states) a mom in support of Sarah Palin. I’m not a columnist, I’m not a professional blogger. I’m a Sarah Palin. I don’t say that to in any way equate myself to the caliber of person that Sarah is, but rather to say that she motivated women like little ole me to throw my two cents into the blogosphere during the election (and beyond) because I desperately wanted to do SOMETHING to make a difference! I am sure there ARE those who support her just because she is charismatic, or because she is beautiful, or whatever the case may be…but anyone I’ve met thus far who supports Sarah supports her because they believe, with all their hearts, in the cause of conservatism. They believe in what is right, and good and true and they want what our founding Fathers wanted for this great nation. They believe that Sarah Palin is an honest woman, who IS who she claims to be. They believe she stands for what is RIGHT, and that is why they support her. I am in a situation here in south Fl where the local paper has covered my blog a few times, and when they have done so, they are boycotted locally because they would report and give credence to such a horrible message as the one put forth on Moms 4 Sarah Palin. They attack me personally. They are unable to attack the message in any way. They cannot.

I am proud that I have the freedom, and have been given the opportunity, to spread the word about Sarah Palin. I may not always be the best writer, I may not always do things as professionally as some others who are backed by some sort of funding, but as long as I have the ability, I will give of my time, between teaching my child here at home and being the best wife and mom I can be, to write and spread the word about not only what is going on with Sarah politically…but to educate others on Conservatism, the real history of this incredible nation, and what she once stood for. On occasion, I might even throw in my two cents on what Obama’s doing, but that became frustrating very quickly as much as he’s overloaded the system!

TAMI is speaking on behalf of me, several others, and dare I say it a slumbering giant that will be slumbering not too much longer. At least, for the good of the nation, I hope that’s true. Check out more of her work here.

The Remora Cycle

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

So we got another round yesterday of Palin rumors, and as always it was nicely mixed in with loads of bile targeted at Alaska’s former Governor and anyone who would dare to see anything positive about anything she has done:

Earlier this week one of my best sources claimed to have explosive new information for me.

It took all week for us to finally get together, but last night we finally sat down for an amazing conversation. And what I heard made my jaw drop.

According to my source Sarah is finished with Todd and has decided to end their marriage.

She has purchased land in Montana (I wonder whose donations paid for that?), and may be considering moving herself and the children as far away from Alaska as she can get.

Do you remember all of that talk about her missing wedding ring during the three part going away picnics? Well it turns out that ring now sleeps with the fishes. Apparently in a fit of anger Sarah stripped the ring from her finger and tossed it into a lake. (No I did not think to ask WHICH lake so I cannot confirm if it is Lake Lucille, on which her house is located, or some other lake. I apologize for not getting clarification, but I was a little tired last night and so was my source.)

So it appears that the reason Palin has been so quiet, and has given her tweeting fingers a rest, is NOT because of any master plan, or carefully orchestrated new direction, but simply the result of the emotional stress that prevents her from communicating with her fan base or making any public appearances.

I would assume that this stress is also the reason that Sarah has suffered such a dramatic drop in weight and would also explain the hair loss that Jessica Steele referred to in the New York Times (and which she quickly tried to take back after she received a scolding from the Palin camp.)

On this point I must spend a few words deviating from this latest national tragedy to toss some of my attention briefly toward another one: Men who use parentheses like women. Parentheses are to be used to designate those portions of your prose which are disposable. They are for garnish. Too many of you are using them to put together a sort of a “salad,” not a garnish…an overwhelming hodgepodge of items that are on equal footing with one another. In this case, it’s a list of scintillating tidbits to be carried forward into the next heated cocktail party pro-Palin anti-Palin melee. Twenty-eight insults for the Caribou Barbie is a lot better than twenty-seven, right? That’s not disposable. That’s “buckshot.” And when you use parentheses to separate them, it gives people headaches (but only for the people who aren’t sharing in your Palin bashing vision (so not that you care too much about that)).

Also, it makes you look like a complete pussy. Not that “Gryphen” is restored to his guy-card credentials should he choose to cease and desist. “It took all week for us to finally get together, but last night we finally sat down for an amazing conversation. And what I heard made my jaw drop.” A guy wrote that? An Alaska guy? This guttersniping about weight loss…that came from a tough Sourdough fella? Between hits of moonshine to keep his ticker tickin’ at 75 degrees below zero, and mouthfuls of raw polar bear intestine? He’s managed to put something together that could have been torn from the pages of the National Enquirer.

Okay enough of that rant. Back to the subject at hand…

Yes, it’s bullshit.

Sorry, my left-wing friends, but today isn’t Christmas, the Palin’s aren’t getting a divorce, and you can’t have a pony. I know that your favorite blogs are running with the unsubstantiated rumor that the Palins are splitsville like Darryl Grant with an errant Gary Hogeboom pass in the 1982 NFC Championship Game, but it’s not victory they’re running toward, just another credibility-demolishing embarassment.

The rumor, which you will surely hear on some Sunday talk show tomorrow is being spread by someone with a history for spreading stuff that not even the Weekly World News would put on its front page.

The Palin family has discounted the fantasy without equivocation in a statement on Sarah Palin’s facebook page, posted by Meg Stapleton.

Yet again, some so-called journalists have decided to make up a story. There is no truth to the recent “story” (and story is the correct term for this type of fiction) that the Palins are divorcing. The Palins remain married, committed to each other and their family, and have not purchased land in Montana (last week it was reported to be Long Island).

Less than one week ago, Governor Palin asked the media to “quit making things up.” We appreciate that the more professional journalists decided to question this story before repeating it.

Palin herself chimed in with a definitive quote first published by Stacy McCain and Dan Riehl.

“Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd? I may be just a renegade hockey mom, but I’m not blind!”

You can’t debunk a rumor any harder than that. Well, I suppose you could use a baseball bat or a lead pipe but, if words are your only weapon, that nasty little piece of borderline slander is as debunked as debunked can get.

In the fitful moments between REM sleep and giving some thought to climbing out of bed to start my day, I was thinking about this thing people do. I was thinking about the way people behave — at a very, very high level, staying out of this whole Republican-democrat thing. The idea that Palin earns all this scorn because she’s some kind of a dimwit, is laughably silly. The idea that she earns it because she enjoys imminent potential to become our next President, or to be launched into some other high office with real decision-making power…this contradicts, directly, the things said by those who carry around that scorn. They are not motivated by her stupidity, and they are not motivated by her power, or the power she will be wielding next year or the year after that. But they are motivated by something; can anyone anywhere deny that?

And they are not in an exclusive club. They are recruiting each other, and having a rather easy time doing it. They must be making contact with something deep in the prospective recruit’s soul, something that has been there since long, long before anyone outside of Wasilla ever heard of Sarah Palin. And it must be something present in all of us, or most of us…so let us finish the rest of this little essay without using her name again. We’ve already looked into, in great detail, why so many people hate Sarah Palin so much. But we’ll not be guilty of redundancy here…not too much. There is more that is worthy of inspection here. This really isn’t about her. This is something far, far bigger than her.

I was tossing and turning in bed, not thinking quite so much about this latest gossip-burp from yesterday, as about other things going on — wondering where I’d seen it before. In those moments before the dawn when man’s mind is left alone, enjoying complete peace and quiet, and occasionally finding greater chaos in its own repressed thoughts than it will ever find throughout the day, the truth suddenly hit me like a Mack truck: Everywhere. At work. At school. In the women I’ve loved, and, in my younger days, in the girls.

It takes me by surprise, time after time, because it possess the stealth of an enemy who isn’t always there. In fact, so many years pass before I see it. It’s something deep inside us, but something we cannot support constantly. It has to pulsate. And no single individual can make the decision that the time is right for it to erupt again. It is a purely social thing. People get together, in larger and larger numbers, and then if the time is right the collective will make the call that belongs to no one single member who is a part of it. And then the members practice this thing, that knows no name and no description.

I cannot name it but I do know how to describe it now:

It has to do with that star/solar-system configuration so familiar to anyone who’s watched girls in high school hang out together. There’s the ringleader, and then all the hangers-on riding her coattails.

It’s a beautiful symbiotic relationship in its own way. They are nothing without the club; the club is nothing without the ringleader; the ringleader would be nothing without the rest of them.

One quarter of the time, it seems, all the rest of us are in that constellation. Or we want to be.

This thing that wells up within people every so-many years, has to do with seeking this out. The Head Bitch of that little clique, does not offer herself to be the leader of it, nor has she built the clique. That’s the dirty little secret nobody seems ready to admit. They come looking for her. We come looking for her. Every few years we seem to get it in our heads, that life is all about seeking out some champion. But not the sort of champion who inspires us to be the best we possibly can be. A Head Bitch champion. Someone with truckloads of charisma but with very little character.

And so the way I would describe this thirst we all seem to have, or that most of us seem to have, but only occasionally — this Pon Farr of social idiocy, if you will — is: We make friends with those who lack character, and we direct our enthusiastically destructive energies toward anyone who might possess an abundance of it.

You see someone cannot really be trusted, some observed person shows all the scruples of an alley cat. And as the fever hits you, instead of thinking “Okay I know pretty well what he/she is all about, I’ll keep my distance” — like a red-blooded earthling would think — instead, you say “This person knows how to get what s/he wants, and maybe s/he’ll do me some good if I hang out with him/her.”

In other words, we admire each other for our most destructive, antisocial qualities.

And we start to labor under the delusion that by turning things upside-down this way, we have defined what life is all about. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. Survival of the fittest. You have to be looking out for Number One. It’s you or him, so it’s gotta be him! And if it’s you or me, then say your prayers pal because it’s gonna be you.

Well, there is some truth to all that; life isn’t all sweet and comfy, it does have competition, and sometimes the competition has consequences. And occasionally you can come out ahead by making all the “wrong” friends. But if that’s such a reliable lodestar, rather than just a load, then why the Pon Farr of stupid? Why is there this cyclical pattern to it; how come we come to this understanding just one-quarter of the time? How come we have to let all these years zip on by, stupidly putting our trust in, y’know, people who are actually worthy of it…being nice to people who have been nice to us…building a real community of people who depend on each other? How come for years and years we catch ourselves doing things that boring old-fashioned way, before a snake presents us with an apple and we’re suddenly endowed with all this “wisdom” that we have to start screwing each other over?

If life is just a Lord of the Flies re-enactment, and we can only show a useful strength by deceiving those who have been fairly kind and decent toward us, then how come we only manage to catch on to this truth for a year or two, out of five-to-ten? The Golden Rule deals not nearly so devastating a blow to this doctrine, as any decent observation of our own pattern of behavior, coupled with an understanding of time.

As I said, I’ve seen it in love, I’ve seen it in school, I’ve seen it in business. What do we call this? “You’re too nice, you’ll have to go”? No, it’s not quite so much niceness. Character. Trustworthiness. The impulse is to make friends with human sharks, who just swim through life grabbing at what they can. The reward to be offered is the reward of Remoras, who just cling on and scavenge the bits of stray meat that drift on by during a frenzy. Ostracism for those who have not succumbed. Those who live their lives according to defined principles. Jealousy toward those who’ve managed to arrest the drama involved in living day-to-day, and divert their energies toward where they want them diverted…rather than fighting on the phone with collection agencies, or divorce lawyers.

It isn’t all jealousy. Some of it is selection. They…we…want, at the apex of this cycle, to be friends with those who we know betray everybody…who will eventually betray us. Somehow, our cycles stay in sync. And so when a few people show greater fidelity to those they know are not capable of returning it, the society-at-large seems to do exactly the same thing. For a little while.

Something else I’ve noticed about this…in love, at work, at school. As we come off this high apex of one-way-fidelity and stupid-socializing with those we know are going to betray us, it all seems to fall apart like a pyramid scheme. Last in, first out. The latest newcomers, those least devoted, figure out they’ll always be called-upon to put more into this thing than they’ll ever get out of it. Kind of like Butters, on South Park. Those in the middle, who never had a shot at leading the pack but still had some kind of “cred,” are next. They fall away in layers, dejectedly, very much like losers at a casino, all out of chips, taking up that walk of shame to the pawn shop.

Those ultimately choosing to remain a part of it, as the phenomenon reaches its lowest ebb, are the hardcore types…those who’ve never left it and never will. The ones who really, absolutely truly, do see life this way. Life…is nothing but a series of surprises, hopefully pleasant ones. And you make your own surprises pleasant ones by screwing the other guy. Usually, this is the one who was the shark for the remoras. The Head Bitch cheerleader ringleader type. But not always. Some of these sad souls are not destined to take charge of anything, ever. They’re just good-for-nothing cowards, incapable of living in any kind of community, any kind of society of give-and-take, or mutual cooperation. They aren’t capable of living in such an arrangement because they don’t believe in the concept.

To the discredit and everlasting shame of the rest of us, or most of the rest of us, it seems for about 25% of the time — we allow them to define for us all what a community is, and should be.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.