Sarah Palin's Mystical Magery Tour

Miller Time

I really don't think Bob Schieffer understands what Joe is saying. But until Cubachi provides some more Christie clips, consider this your Commonsense Conservative Porn fix:

Quitter!

Imagine a politician who is elected to one office, then two years later loses in the Electoral College. Two years and seven months into the term of the first office, months after the loss, this politician resigns! Can you imagine such a "quitter" being elected POTUS in the next election? I'll bet you $20 it can happen.


You'd lose the bet.

Andrew Jackson resigned his US Senate seat on October 14, 1825, after two years, seven months, and ten days in that six-year term. For those keeping score, that’s a dozen days fewer than Sarah Palin served of her four-year term as Governor of Alaska. He won the 1828 election for President, the first to do so in the “Democratic Party” faction he formed from the “Democratic-Republican Party”. So the next time you hear a Democrat talk about a "quitter", remind them about Old Hickory.
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"I Still Hate You, Sarah Palin"

Over at NRO, David Kahane explains all we need to know about why..."I Still Hate You, Sarah Palin"

A taste:

Not only were we offended at the sheer effrontery of McCain’s pick: How dare the Republicans proffer this déclassée piece of Wasilla trailer trash whose only claim to fame was that she didn’t exercise her right to choose? Where were her degrees from Smith or Barnard, her internships at PETA, the Brookings Institution, or the Young Pioneers? We were also outraged that the Stupid Party had just nominated a completely unqualified candidate nobody had ever heard of, a first-term governor of Alaska whose previous experience consisted of a small-town mayoralty. As opposed to our guy, Barry Soetoro of Mombasa, Djakarta, and Honolulu, a first-term senator nobody had ever heard of, whose previous experience had been as a state senator (D., Daley Machine) in Illinois. After eight long, illegitimate, lawless years of &*^%BUSH$#@! tyranny, how dare you contest this election?

Go read the whole thing. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You may even get angry.

Brian Lundmark captured it in Rockwood's standard three panels, nearly a year ago:

Sarah Shrugged

When I found out about Sarah Palin's decision to step down as Governor of Alaska later this month, I dropped a comment into the chatroom for Hot Air's Ed Morrissey Show that was immediately picked up by regular Friday co-host Duane Patterson as a STOP THE PRESSES moment, and dominated the remainder of the program.

It also stopped head chatroom moderator Jazz Shaw's vacation long enough for him to write a piece about it for PJTV. He doesn't much like Sarah Palin, so it's not surprising that he'd have unkind words about her. I'm used to it by now. But he really pressed my buttons with this dig:

You know, if you’re hoping to set your standard on a hill of quality, you might not want to focus on how much of your time has been spent fighting investigations into your ethical lapses.

A key word is missing from that sentence: "alleged". It presupposes that there have been such lapses. Even though every single one has been rejected by the ethics board, the accusations, by their sheer number they have become equivalent to convictions.

To really appreciate the extent of the problems Gov. Palin has had with the "anklebiters" requires some understanding of history. She campaigned on cleaning up the notoriously-corrupt AK politics, and a key part of her program was tougher ethics rules. Those rules are now used against her. The tactic could have come straight out of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals:

RULE 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity's very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)
. . .
RULE 8: "Keep the pressure on. Never let up." Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

The people who file the ethics complaints have followed Alinsky's advice well. They bear no cost for doing so; the state is required to investigate each complaint, no matter how ridiculous they are, at great expense to the state and to the Governor personally. Thus far, she's run up a half million dollars in legal bills defending herself against these allegations. Perhaps the most bizarre was the charge that the very act of establishing a legal defense fund (despite the most stringent rules I've ever seen, including a limit of $150 per contributor) was itself an ethics violation. Recently, we highlighted the webathon organized to retire that debt. As can be seen in the sidebar, it has fallen far short of that goal. Palin has a book deal that might help her raise funds, but as soon as she saw a dime of it, it would have spawned yet another ethics charge. As long as Palin remains governor, she must hold up the weight of the endless ethics investigations. The solution to Palin's Predicament is clear:

"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the rest of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders–what would you tell him to do?"

"I...don’t know. What...could he do? What would you tell him?"

"To shrug."

–Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

In a few weeks, Sarah Palin will no longer be subject to a process that by law forbids her or any of her representatives from publicly commenting on any pending ethics complaint, while empowering the complainers to tell whatever stories they want with impunity.

Her attorney has suggested that the gloves may be coming off very soon, in swatting down the "other shoe" theories being spun to explain the timing of the announcement. He points out in his closing paragraph that telling out-and-out lies about someone, even a public figure like Palin, is actionable. (You know, Jazz, you might want to keep that in mind.) He calls out Shannyn Moore, the blogger and Saturday-night Anchorage AM talker who has been spreading the stories on HuffPo, MSNBC, NY Times, and WaPo. She insists she "will not be muzzled", and dares the Palins to sue her. She may get her wish, say, about the day after Sean Parnell takes the oath as Governor?

Moore's response was entirely predictable, and I wouldn't be surprised if Palin's attorney had that letter (among others) written and saved on his laptop, just waiting to fill in the particulars of whoever was fool enough to try to resurrect a particular non-story. A lot of people have read the timing of the announcement as a sign that there must be "another shoe". Why else, the theory goes, would she make her announcement at 3 pm Friday of a holiday weekend?

Well, I can think of a lot of reasons why. David Letterman tapes his Friday shows on Thursdays. Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert don't do Friday shows, but they'll be in reruns next week, just dying because they can't cover this one now. Most of the big-shots on the cable networks were taking Friday night off, too. Poor Greta Van Susteren had to call in on her own show to discuss the shocking turn of events. Glenn Beck tweeted

Many write:Palin is done.U don't understand EVERYTHING is about to change. What you thought you knew, could trust or depend on is shifting

Even Rush Limbaugh felt compelled to comment while on vacation, if only to say that it's premature to write her off.

The holiday weekend was the best time to get the message out before the Journolist machinery could coalesce around the Official Talking Points, other than the reflexive "She's a quitter! She's erratic!" that would be expected in any event. The media can't comprehend a politician willingly giving up power. They didn't really understand when Bob Dole gave up his Senate seat to focus on his Presidential campaign. It didn't pay off for him, but the idea isn't unprecedented. Why, in Honduras, the Vice President resigned last year so that he would be legally allowed to run for President this year. They have a rule against people staying in power too long, which I rather like.

Meanwhile, she's directly connecting with people (over 63,000 followers for @AKGovSarahPalin on Twitter last I checked) and bypassing Charlie and Katie. If she hadn't already gotten offers from Rupert Murdoch to work for him, I'm sure she will shortly. And her career as a professional speaker is well underway. She's already booked for an August 8 Simi Valley Women's Republican Club appearance, according to an Insty reader.

I'd say she's shrugging off a lot. Perhaps even . . . a chrysalis.
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[Update] Corrected timing of Limbaugh's vacation

Webathon to Retire Palin Legal Debt

Ever since John McCain named her as his running mate, Sarah Palin's political opponents have exploited the Alaska ethics complaint system to bring frivolous charges against her. Time and again, the complaints are rejected as unfounded, but she has incurred about a half million dollars in legal expenses just to defend against them.
A legal defense fund was established to help retire that debt (bizarrely sparking yet another ethics complaint, alleging that the fund itself is unethical; they like their victims unable to defend themselves), and a week-long Webathon is starting today to make a big push to get it done. Governor Palin has set the maximum allowable contribution from any individual at $150, and prohibited any corporations, oartnerships, or unions, foreigners, lobbyists, or anyone who thinks they might be doing business with the State of Alaska, to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. That means there won't be any big donors, and they'll have to make it up in volume.

The fine folks at Conservatives4Palin.com have created this video to kick off the festivities, and briefly explain why it's needed:

Double Standard on Politicians' Kids

Well, David Letterman has offered up a pathetic explanation for his recent comments:

The late-night host had drawn particular fire from Palin and some pundits for a joke about one of Palin's daughters being impregnated by New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez during a trip to Yankee Stadium. Camp Palin apparently took the joke to be a crack against Palin's 14-year-old daughter Willow, who had recently attended a Yankees game, but Letterman insisted today that the real target was 18-year-old daughter Bristol.

Let's see if we can discern the rules here.

I'd like someone to diagram that joke any way that isn't calling Willow Bristol a whore. So, we've established that it's just fine to joke about a female politician being slutty, and her daughter being knocked up by a professional baseball player during the seventh inning, and the daughter is a whore. And that's OK because both the politician and her daughter are over 18.

Well, now. Let's set the Wayback Machine for February 2008, shall we? Chelsea Clinton was within a few weeks of her 28th birthday, and MSNBC's David Shuster commented on her participation in her mother's campaign.... He thought she was "sort of being pimped out" by the campaign. There are many interpretations of the phrase (Billy Mays and Vince Shlomi can be said to be "pimping" various products, or an actor appearing on Letterman's show might be "pimping" a movie role), but Hillary expressed her outrage at Shuster calling her daughter a whore. She received an apology from the head of NBC News, and Shuster was suspended from the air for two weeks.

Why is it OK to call Bristol Palin a whore, when she is nearly a decade younger than Chelsea Clinton was when Shuster made his remark?
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Why They HAVE To Hate Palin...

The other day (right after seeing CNN do it) , I found myself in a brief discussion with some mouth-breathing network-news adherents who were busily parrotting the MSM talking points around the latest push to marginalize Sarah Palin into "non-threat-to-The-One-in-four-years" status.
I calmly destroyed point-after-point, using nothing but historical fact and logic, but was later bothered by what I saw as just one more salvo in a much larger battle. I spoke to my brother about this (some of you may remember Monopticus) - which helped me sort of codify the following ramble....

---

The biggest problem Palin ever had was that she’s demonstrated herself to be the living, breathing embodiment of America’s Frontier Spirit ("Hey! Hold on, let me stomp off some of this snow - there - Now, what's the problem? Aw, Hell, we can fix that!") - and ran afoul of a media (and I mean nearly ALL media) that has labored slavishly for years to make any commitment/proclamation to the favor of that AFS not only Politically Incorrect (in the very country where it brought them to their own relevance) , but actually…Rude.

This is just another demonstration of the slow, insidious removal of “Hero” from the Meaningful-Word-Lexicon.

Spread that once-revered word around - with a well-meaning-appearance, of course - so that the Domino’s kid becomes a “Hero” for getting your pizza to you in 30-minutes-or-less, and suddenly, you don’t have to worry about any of those actually exceptional people mucking up your plans by saying:
“Hey! THAT’S not the way we’re supposed to be doing it.”

Because they’ll have no standing to go with that actually authentic appellation of “Exceptional”.

And this BU!!$#!T of the “New Dan Quayle” meme against Palin is just another way to get people on board with dismissing even the basis of Heroism, via a sneering rejoinder of “Standing up and saying ‘Do What’s Right Because It’s Right’ is just UN-NUANCED!!!”
- Why, the next thing you know, she’ll misspeell something!!

They have to hate Palin - not just for being who she is, but for what she both demonstrates and represents.

Because. They. Know.

They know that if we start moving the party (and, leading by example, our Country) back toward a real Conservatism - toward the real, bedrock virtues and ideals America was built on... they don’t stand a chance.

They know that the only way they get to run things is to convince people to ‘Go Along To Get Along’.

And they know that the only way to do that is to convince the mouth-breathing, lowest-common-denominator that anyone who suggests or displays actual exceptionalism is just “oversimplifying” or “being unrealistic” or “is out-of-touch with the real problems/issues” or "caught up in being a Cowboy/BoyScout/etc".

(Remember when the imagery of both the 'Cowboy' and the 'Boy Scout' was enfused with virtues and ideals considered to be universally Good? - what do you suppose ever happened to that?)

Convince them that to merely do-your-job makes you a “Hero”, then merely doing-your-job is not only the highest attainable goal, but anyone who does or suggests or expects more/better (or, God forbid, Greatness) must actually want to upset-the-system-that-keeps-us-all- (fill in the blank).

Arbeit macht frei…. Not.

So now what?

“Vote the bums out” seems to have largely been taken care of - seems like the same flesh-eating-zombies that voted in The One went for a straight Left-ticket wherever they were.

Nearly a clean-slate, as far as Conservatism is concerned, politically[Click on the title above, or date stamp below, to see the full article.]
The question becomes - how do we make it so that the ideals and principles that have gotten the country this far can be considered worthy - nay, Virtuous again.

And how do we keep from getting another crop of only-degrees-from-Left McCain-RINOs, out for the "Cash-Hos-and-Blow" that comes from acting like Democrats?

- MuscleDaddy

Palin Abuse of.....Power?

Doesn't this guy ever SLEEP?
Hell, no - he's got kids...

Okay - here’s the problem… (please bear with me)

Let’s start with our reference material, being the report & findings in question.

While I’m as happy as anyone else with the “within her rights to fire the insubordinate ass-bag” - part, there is, unfortunately, another part…

In the linked doc, go to page 8 to see “Finding 1″ - this is where the “abuse of power" part comes from....

Apparently, Alaskan statutes maintain that “…each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.”

It also defines “benefit” as “anything that is to a person’s advantage or self-interest, regardless of financial gain”. (pg 49)

It further identifies “personal interest” to include “immediate family members” which, in turn, includes “siblings” (pg 50).

Finally, “Official Action” is defined as “…advice, participation, or assistance, including… a recommendation, decision, approval, disapproval, vote, or other similar action, including inaction, by a public officer.” (pg. 50)

---

Okay - so basically it boils down to this:

When Sarah & Todd kept asking where the investigation was going, RE: her sister’s complaints about the kid tasering, moose poaching, drunk driving, criminality-bragging state-trooper-ex-husband…

… and repeatedly asked why such an embarrassing asshat was allowed to continue to represent the agency and the state of Alaska….

…that was a breach of ethics - as those inquiries were “official actions” committed for the “benefit” of her “sibling”.

Todd’s inquiries apparently count against Sarah as well, since she didn’t stop him from making them, bringing us back to the “inaction” part noted above.

That is the purported “Abuse of Power”.

---

But wait…. what’s this?…
Waaaayy down on page 79 - under the heading “The Second Recommendation”…

“The legislature should consider amending AS 39.25.080 to permit those who file complaints against peace officers to receive some feedback about the status and outcome of their complaint”


Hmmm….

So… this all got started because the AK state police had apparently ‘circular filed’ all of the sister’s complaints - and there was no legislative requirement to give the complaintant any information - so Sarah and Todd had to try to run it down for themselves…

…just to keep the department from doing whatever-the-hell-they-wanted?

(page 58 references an account of Wooten[asshat] having been slapped with a Restraining Order for harrassing and intimidating his ex-wife….which was lifted, when his supervisors intervened - looks like "whatever-the-hell-they-wanted" was the order of the day…)

Well - there we are.

Myself?

If pursuing a do-nothing police agency over a do-nothing investigation of an asshat-scumbag-embarrassment of an officer is “Ethically Wrong”…

I don’t wanna be right (and like her better knowing she feels the same way)

Like the man says:

thatisall.
- MuscleDaddy
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They'd better have brought a really good cake, if this is all the "October Surpise" they can manage...