Category Archive 'Sarah Palin'
10 Jan 2011

According to the Left, Sarah Palin Did It

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Matthew had a nice comment apropos of all the opportunistic leftist whingeing about “vitriolic political speech.”

The First Amendment is the singer on stage in front of everyone whose voice can not be ignored, while the Second Amendment is the individual in front of the stage making sure no one kills the performance.

21 Oct 2010

Lots of Egg on Liberal Elite Faces This Week

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First the liberal elites represented by the Kos himself and PBS anchor Glenn Ifill gleefully pounced on that bone-headed Sarah Palin for a tweet warning conservatives to continue working to win the upcoming election rather than partying “like its 1773.”

Obviously, thought the great big leftwing brains, she must mean 1776. After all, nothing of any significance happened in 1773. (Except the original Boston Tea Party, of course.)

Then, as William Jacobsen describes, liberal America was laughing itself sick over Christine O’Donnell ‘s ignorance of the First Amendment’s wall of separation between church and state.

[At] Widener Law School …as soon as O’Donnell questioned whether “separation of church and state” was in the First Amendment, the crowd erupted with gasps of disbelief and mocking laughter.

And if O’Donnell’s imperfect — or perhaps nuanced? — understanding of the First Amendment w[as] so outrageous, how about the inability of Chris Coons, a Yale Law School graduate, to identify the other freedoms protected by the First Amendment, and his misquoting the text of the First Amendment in his challenge to O’Donnell:

“Government shall make no establishment of religion,” Coons responded, reciting from memory the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (Coons was off slightly: The first amendment actually reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”)

Ann Althouse has more on how Coons simply was wrong in his quotation of the First Amendment which led to O’Donnell’s supposed major gaffe about the Establishment Clause, and how the press has taken O’Donnell’s comments out of context:

    O’Donnell reacts: “That’s in the First Amendment?” And, in fact, it’s not. The First Amendment doesn’t say “government.” It says “Congress.” And since the discussion is about what local school boards can do, the difference is highly significant.

    Also, it isn’t “shall make no establishment of religion.” It’s “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” There’s a lot one could say about the difference between those 2 phrases, and I won’t belabor it here. Suffice it to say that it was not stupid for O’Donnell to say “That’s in the First Amendment?” — because it’s not. Coons was presenting a version of what’s in the cases interpreting the text, not the text itself.

A literal reading of O’Donnell’s comments reflects that she was correct, but of course, the press and the blogosphere don’t want a literal reading, they want a living, breathing reading which comports with their preconceived notions.

In an age of an increasingly sophisticated public in which alternative information channels, like Fox News, AM talk radio, and the blogosphere exist, it is becoming more and more difficult to succeed in winning debates on the basis of crude sloganeering and oversimplification of complex issues and the leftwing mob winds up looking stupider and stupider when it tries relying on its traditional tactics.

13 Oct 2010

How to Make a Moonbat’s Head Explode

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Just show him this.

From Van Helsing at Moonbattery.

09 Sep 2010

Roland Was Right and Palin is Wrong

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Alphonse de Neuville, Count Roland Behaving Insensitively at Roncesvalles, 1894

Or guart chascuns que granz colps,
Que malvaise cançun de nus chantet ne seit!
Paien unt tort e chrestiens unt dreit.

Now must we each lay on most hardily,
So songs of shame shall ne’er be sung of us.
Pagans are wrong and Christians are right.

Chanson de Roland, 1013-1015

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Sarah Palin says that burning a copy of the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is “insensitive and an unnecessary provocation” and reminds us of the Golden Rule.

I don’t think Golden Rule applies to foreign enemies in time of war, and I’d say that Sarah Palin is clearly getting too close to Washington and sounds more and more like a conventional politician.

The FBI is warning that a backlash and retaliation is likely.

Pastor Jones may be a crank, and burning the Koran is neither genteel nor the most attractive choice of gestures, but here we are.

We are in a situation in which the obscure minister of an insignificant local congregation proposes an action insulting to Islam, and consequently find ourselves threatened and warned of bloodshed and massive violence if we don’t stop him.

Meanwhile, the leadership class of the country is responding by urging him to cease and desist, openly acknowledging fear of Islamic violence. Mere squeamishness and discomfort with being placed in the position of defending a gesture which is just not nice is additionally at work in rendering the American leadership class hors de combat.

Most of the same people ran, rather than walked, to defend Imam Abdul Rauf’s project constructing and Islamic Cultural Center, originally named for one of Islam’s most prized European conquests, within the zone of impact of the 9/11 attacks.

Personally, I’m completely fed up with the intelligentsia’s culture of utilitarian calculation and its cowardly inclination to shrink from direct opposition and open conflict with a hostile and insolent alien superstition. At this point, Pastor Jones burning that Koran is just like knocking off the chip that the town bully has placed on his shoulder.

Knock it off and then clean his clock for him, or prepare to bow and scrape and cringe in perpetuity is the real choice. We already have the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and Yale University Press practicing self censorship in response to Saracen sensibilities with respect to the Danish cartoons featuring Mohammed. We have Harvard University introducing sexual segregation in its gymnasium to accommodate Islam.

Where does accommodating and appeasing of Islam stop? With dhimmitude (subjection of non-Muslims to Islam) and with payment of the Jizyah, the Islamic tax on non-Muslims.

[T]he Jizyah shall be taken from them with belittlement and humiliation. The dhimmi shall come in person, walking not riding. When he pays, he shall stand, while the tax collector sits. The collector shall seize him by the scruff of the neck, shake him, and say “Pay the Jizyah!” and when he pays it he shall be slapped on the nape of the neck.

10 Jun 2010

Palin Looks Attractive at the Belmont Stakes

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Sarah Palin with husband Todd attending the Belmont Stakes

And some anonymous hatchet-wielder at Wonkette accuses Sarah Palin of surgical enhancement. That’s the left for you. Their mind is always in the gutter and they judge everyone by their own standards.

Watch Andrew Sullivan climb all over this one.

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Lori Ziganto notes how the left, as usual, missed the real story while focusing on trivia and spite.

Rachel Larimore, at Slate’s Double X, asked about the primary wins [Tuesday] night, “Where is the rah-rah sisterhood?”

    The overriding theme of Tuesday night’s primary coverage was that it was a big night for female politicians. But there is a noticeable dearth of rah-rah sisterhood going on (though the National Review is pretty excited).

She further noted that the only talk amongst the Left, and feminists in particular, regarding this big night for conservative women was rather nasty comments about said women and lamenting that they were conservatives. Icky businesswomen, to boot! One even asked, “Do you still cheer if the ceiling is crashed by two conservative businesswomen?” …

[A] big part of [the story of ] last night’s primary wins was that Sarah Palin had endorsed most of the winners, indicating that she does, in fact, wield quite a bit of power and has great pull with large segments of the population. Not everyone has to like Sarah Palin, but even those who don’t, should respect her, if only for the fact that she’s changed the national debate at least twice sheerly through her own Facebook postings. She is one of the best spokespeople we have right now. She pulls no punches and talks straight.

So, what is the story circulating among the lefty blogs and now worming its way into traditional media regarding Sarah Palin today? Not the success of the candidates she endorsed, but, rather, her breasts. That’s right. The big question of the day, first promulgated by the always inane Wonkette, is whether or not Sarah Palin had breast implants. I suppose we should just be grateful that it’s not incessant investigation of her uterus again, although I’m sure Andrew “I’ve finally lost my already weak grasp on sanity” Sullivan will work that in somehow.

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UPDATE and CORRECTION:


She looks pretty similar to me in this August 2008 issue cover picture

Hmmm. Commenter Funkyphd informs me that the Vogue cover picture I referred to, which is all over the web, is a Photoshop fake. Thanks to Funkyphd.

I fell for it, I expect, because I knew that there really had been a Vogue feature on Palin published about that time.

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So what can we find in its place? How about this 1984 Beauty Pageant picture

and the 0:37 video of her apearance in the swimsuit competition?

09 Jun 2010

Next Time a President With Actual Executive Experience?

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Bill Hobbs: “If you think Sarah Palin would do better job than Obama re BP and the oil spill, you’re right. In fact she already has.”

As Governor of Alaska, I did everything in my power to hold oil companies accountable in order to prove to the federal government and to the nation that Alaska could be trusted to further develop energy rich land like ANWR and NPR-A. I hired conscientious Democrats and Republicans (because this sure shouldn’t be a partisan issue) to provide me with the best advice on how we could deal with what was a corrupt system of some lawmakers and administrators who were hesitant to play hardball with some in the oil field business. …

BP’s operation in Alaska would hurt our state and waste public resources if allowed to continue. That’s why my administration created the Petroleum Systems Integrity Office (PSIO) when we saw proof of improper maintenance of oil infrastructure in our state. We had to verify. And that’s why we instituted new oversight and held BP and other oil companies financially accountable for poor maintenance practices. We knew we could partner with them to develop resources without pussyfooting around with them. As a CEO, it was my job to look out for the interests of Alaskans with the same intensity and action as the oil company CEOs looked out for the interests of their shareholders.

11 Feb 2010

Latest Palin Gaffe Meme Dies a Quick and Ignominious Death

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Yale graduate student accuses Palin of making a mistake. Left blogs cry Gotcha! And Professor Jacobson demonstrates that there was no mistake. Yale Graduate student apologizes.

They will keep trying.

08 Feb 2010

Palin Turns Palm Notes into a Joke

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Palin mocks hand notes story

The big news of the day (from the perspective of the left blogosphere) was the HuffPo photo taken during her speech at the Tea Party Convention revealing some talking points jotted on the palm of Sarah Palin’s left hand.

This one did not impress many people outside the left, but it did provoke derision from Ann Althouse and a humorous response (see photo above) from Sarah Palin herself.

13 Dec 2009

Palin Bashing

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Morgan Freeberg has a number of personal observations about Palin bashers. Several of his points fit my own experience to a T.

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. ..

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. …

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

It seems to me that Palin provokes fury in members of the community of fashion simply by being an outsider. As the Tanenhaus mugging in the New Yorker so effectively demonstrated, to the American elite the possibility that someone from outside their own class and culture and residential regions could possibly aspire to national leadership seems incongruous and insulting.

Sarah Palin, I have noticed, also provokes a special animus on the part of the lavender left. Andrew Sullivan, for example, seems about to tear himself into pieces à la Rumplestiltskin by an excess of negative passion inspired by Sarah Palin’s very existence. My guess is that the authentic femininity of a beautiful woman when associated with traditional cultural values unfriendly to sexual inversion has roughly the kind of impact on the likes of Andrew Sullivan that the crucifix has on vampires. The volume of the hissing and the screeching is directly proportionate to the frustration of the faux female confronted by what he recognizes as his definitive nemesis and rival. For those of us who had Roman Catholic childhoods the image of those ubiquitous statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary treading on the head of the serpent always come to mind when reading Andrew Sullivan on Palin. It’s all very Jungian: the serpent does not like the idea of the feminine principle, the Mother Goddess Creatrix, which can crush him into the earth with ease.


Move fast, Andrew!

11 Dec 2009

Palin Gets Another Good Review

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Sarah Palin’s memoir Going Rogue has been been sitting on top of best seller lists for weeks, and has been reprinted 13 times for a total of 2.8 million copies… so far.

Palin even attracted a favorable review from liberal Bay Area critic Sandra Tsing Loh, and now, even more remarkably, we find kind words from postmodernist literary critic Stanley Fish.

When I walked into the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan last week, I headed straight for the bright young thing who wore an “Ask Me” button, and asked her to point me to the section of the store where I might find Sarah Palin’s memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.” She looked at me as if I had requested a copy of “Mein Kampf” signed in blood by the author, and directed me to the nearest Barnes and Noble, where, presumably, readers of dubious taste and sensibility could find what they wanted.

A few days later, I attended a seminar on political and legal theory where a distinguished scholar observed that every group has its official list of angels and devils. As an example, he offered the fact (of which he was supremely confident) that few, if any, in the room were likely to be Sarah Palin fans. By that time I had begun reading Palin’s book, and while I wouldn’t count myself a fan in the sense of being a supporter, I found it compelling and very well done. …

For many politicians, family life is sandwiched in between long hours in public service. Palin wants us to know that for her it is the reverse. Political success is an accident that says nothing about you. Success as a wife, mother and citizen says everything.

Do I believe any of this? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she does, and that her readers feel they are hearing an authentic voice. I find the voice undeniably authentic (yes, I know the book was written “with the help” of Lynn Vincent, but many books, including my most recent one, are put together by an editor). It is the voice of small-town America, with its folk wisdom, regional pride, common sense, distrust of rhetoric (itself a rhetorical trope), love of country and instinctive (not doctrinal) piety. It says, here are some of the great things that have happened to me, but they are not what makes my life great and American. (“An American life is an extraordinary life.”) It says, don’t you agree with me that family, freedom and the beauties of nature are what sustain us? And it also says, vote for me next time. For it is the voice of a politician, of the little girl who thought she could fly, tried it, scraped her knees, dusted herself off and “kept walking.”

In the end, perseverance, the ability to absorb defeat without falling into defeatism, is the key to Palin’s character. It’s what makes her run in both senses of the word and it is no accident that the physical act of running is throughout the book the metaphor for joy and real life. Her handlers in the McCain campaign wouldn’t let her run (a mistake, I think, even at the level of photo-op), no doubt because they feared another opportunity to go “off script,” to “go rogue.”

But run she does (and falls, but so what?), and when it is all over and she has lost the vice presidency and resigned the governorship, she goes on a long run and rehearses in her mind the eventful year she has chronicled. And as she runs, she achieves equilibrium and hope: “We’ve been through amazing days, and really, there wasn’t one thing to complain about. I feel such freedom, such hope, such thankfulness for our country, a place where nothing is hopeless.”

The message is clear. America can’t be stopped. I can’t be stopped. I’ve stumbled and fallen, but I always get up and run again. Her political opponents, especially those who dismissed Ronald Reagan before he was elected, should take note. Wherever you are, you better watch out. Sarah Palin is coming to town.

09 Dec 2009

New Yorker Slaps Down Palin

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Sarah Palin: crazed hick or naughty child in New Yorker’s caricature?

Back in September, Sam Tanenhaus published a slender book titled, in a note of hopeful optimism, The Death of Conservatism.

Alas! Barack Obama is sinking in the polls, populist critics like Glenn Beck have had a field day exposing the controversial aspects of his appointees, the progressive impetus is faltering in the halls of Congress, and prospects for the kinds of champions of “the civic sector” that Tanenhaus admires are looking dim in upcoming elections.

With characteristic even-handedness, the liberal New Yorker turned to Conservatism expert Tanenhaus for its “review” of Sarah Palin’s memoir “Going Rogue.”

What Tanenhaus really delivers is an in-print liberal temper tantrum, trashing Palin up, down, and sideways, sinking frequently to the level of the high school “in crowd” savaging the non-cool kid from the not-rich family who got above herself. Carried away by his indignation at the nerd Palin, from the wrong side of the nation’s geography and class structure, daring to sit down at the lunch table reserved for the cultural equivalent of cheer leaders and football players, Tanenhaus openly reveals what liberals really think (in their most secret little hearts): Sarah Palin represents the erasure of any distinction between the governing and the governed.

Unlike our liberal friends, we conservatives think the American Revolution erased that distinction. In today’s America, the successors to Jefferson and Madison and Jackson, the people who really believe in the equality of the individual before the law, the people who believe that people from outside the ranks of the national Establishment may be worthy and capable of holding high office, are Republicans.

Today’s liberals are a strange combination of the Secret Six, the Narodnaya Volya, and every high school’s ruling clique. Like the 19th century radical Abolitionists with whom they explicitly identify, Liberals believe they are morally and intellectually more enlightened than Americans generally, and perceive grave and fundamental sins (retrospectively, Slavery and segregation and other forms of inequality; contemporaneously, the absence of National Health Care and the profanation of the Natural World) blemishing America, which they feel entitled to correct regardless of what any or all of the rest of us happen to think about it. Like the 19th century underground radical conspirators, and despite the Fall of the Soviet Union, they still consider themselves a Vanguard of the Left, empowered by History to bring society as it currently exists forcibly into a Utopian future, characterized by an enormously expanded Statism benificently presided over by an elite intelligentsia (i.e. themselves).

On a more mundane level, like any high school clique, they feel entitled to rule, and they demand deference, on the basis of status. Tanenhaus refers to “distinction,” which he summarizes as consisting of skill, experience, intellect but, as we saw in the 2008 campaign, in which the record of the most popular and successful governor in the nation was compared disfavorably by every liberal evaluator of “distinction” to a candidate whose only meaningful accomplishments were a (possibly ghost-written) post-Law School memoir and the campaign then still underway, that skill, experience, and intellect tend to be qualities varying greatly in the eye of the beholder. A captious critic could easily observe that the election of Barack Obama proves just how easily the top lunch-table clique can be seduced by such superficialities as glibness and a good announcer’s voice.

24 Nov 2009

Yes, She Could

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Matthew Dowd has some very bad news for liberals. Sarah Palin, he argues, has a real shot at winning the presidency in 2012.

Gallup polls over the past 60 years show that no president with an approval rating under 47 percent has won reelection, and no president with an approval rating above 51 percent has lost reelection. (George W. Bush’s approval rating in the weeks before the 2004 election hovered around 50 percent.) The 2012 election will be primarily about our current president and whether voters are satisfied with the country’s direction.

Who the Republican candidate is, and his or her qualifications and abilities, will matter only if Obama’s approval rating is between 47 and 51 percent going into the fall of 2012. Interestingly, in the latest Gallup poll Obama’s approval rating was at a precarious 49 percent.

Second, America is still (unfortunately) politically divided and polarized, and Palin benefits from this dynamic. While Democrats love Obama, Republicans look on him with real disfavor. The gap between Obama’s approval rating among Democrats and among Republicans is nearly 70 percentage points — a higher partisan divide than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush experienced. Obama’s agenda and actions this year, and some mistakes, have solidified this divide.

Polls show that Palin’s favorability numbers are a mirror image of those of Obama. She is respected and loved by the Republican base, while Democrats despise her. Granted, independent voters have significant reservations about her capability to be president, and this would be a hurdle in the general election. But to win the Republican nomination, Palin needs only to get enough support from the base to win early key states. Already, in nearly every poll today, she has a level of support that makes her a viable primary candidate. Just look at the crowds and the buzz her book tour is drawing. …

Like it or not, if Sarah Palin decides to seek our nation’s highest office, she has a shot.

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