TV Ratings For The GOP Convention - Or, Decisions Have Consequences

One of the stories about the Republican convention that's under the wire is the significant drop in its TV audience.

Part of that might have been because more people (like yours truly) watched it via live streaming, or because of the alphabet network's insipid and reduced coverage.

But part of it might have been due to a much more obvious reason.

The resurrection of the GOP in 2010 was largely engineered by two people - Sarah Palin and Senator Jim DeMint. And they did it without much help, if any, from the GOP establishment. That's particularly true in Governor Palin's case. The money she raised through Sarah PAC, the endorsements she made and the speeches she made as she toured the country energized the GOP base and got them out to the polls.In the end, her batting average on her endorsements getting elected to office was over .750, an incredible number in baseball or in politics.

Her reward for her efforts was to be excised as a speaker from this year's GOP convention.

On day two of the convention, Paul Ryan's excellent speech was seen by 20 million people. In 2008, when Sarah Palin made her acceptance speech, she drew a whopping 37 million.

Love her or hate her, Governor Palin delivers outstanding speeches and has a huge and devoted following..which is exactly why Roger Ailes snapped her up for FOX.

Want to bet that if Governor Palin had spoken to the convention in Tampa, the ratings would have been off the charts? That it would have energized and revved up the entire convention?

The GOP establishment was likely afraid that Governor Palin would overshadow some of the politicos scheduled to speak, and that her speaking at the convention might have been too 'controversial.'

That decision was not only cowardly and ungrateful, but it was strategically a mistake. Paul Ryan's speech needed and deserved to be heard by a larger audience, and Sarah Palin would have delivered that.

A Message For The Palin Haters

I note that the Palin Haters on the Left are out in force today, celebrating what they consider to be their victory.

Andrew Sullivan, of course is as excited about this as a pedophile let loose in an elementary school and was predictably vile. Now that his obsession with Governor Palin's vagina is no longer a target, he'll be limited to writing about his homosexuality and occasional flacking for Obama, in that order.

Being creatures of the Left, the giddy celebrants are too stupid to see the implications of someone with integrity and something to offer who was not part of the political Ruling Class be forced to choose between running for office and having she and her family targeted for demonization and even physical attack. There were plenty of violent threats and fantasies concerning Governor Palin and her children that were put out there quite openly for the world to see, and a substantial risk that someone might have tried to act on them. I can testify personally to deleting comments on this site to that effect. A detailed map to her isolated family home in Wasilla was even published in stalker Joe McGinniss's latest anti-Palin screed to assist all the deranged wanna-be Jared Loughners of the world in getting to a mother with small kids at home.

She was, in essence the ultimate Uppity Woman Who Didn't Know Her Place and strayed off the Leftist plantation, and that just couldn't be allowed, so she had to be destroyed. After weighing all the factors, she simply chose a different way and as disappointed as I am, I understand why she did.

Another thing I'm certain of is that when Governor Palin said that she's planning to throw her considerable energy and skills into unseating President Obama and putting more real conservatives into Congress, she meant exactly that, and not being shackled by a campaign is going to free her up in ways that are going to be the Left's worst nightmare. If her batting average of .785 in 2010 is any indication, they might have been a lot better off with her running for office. And at 47, she has plenty of time if she wants to take another stab at the top job in the future.

For those that are enjoying a good laugh at Governor Palin now, an old Irish saying:

"Ligean dó gáire a Bhuaigh" ( "Let him laugh who wins")

-Selah-

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Bristol Palin Faces Down Heckler Calling Her Mom ' Whore', 'Devil'

( warning: NSFW language)

Bristol Palin was filming some footage for her reality show and riding a mechanical bull at the Saddle Ranch bar and restaurant in West Hollywood when one of the patrons began cursing her and her mother out.

"“Did you ride Levi like that? Your mother is a whore! Your mother is a f***ing devil!” he shouts.

Governor Palin apparently didn't raise any cowardly children, because she strides over, confronts this low life and asks him point blank why he would say that about her mother. "Because she's evil...if there's a Hell she's f**king going there" he yells at her.

Palin asks him, “Is it because you’re a homosexual and that’s why you hate her?”

“Pretty much … and why’d you say I’m a homosexual?” he responds.

“Because I can tell you are,” Bristol says.

(For the uninitiated, West Hollywood's nickname among L.A. residents is Boys Town, because of the large and aggressive homosexual community there. Gays of a certain type are not that hard to spot in that neighborhood)

“You’re f***ing white trash from Wasila!” he screams as she leaves with her production crew. “F*** you, you f***ing b***h!”

Of course,it should be said that if Ms. Palin is going to cruise the sewer filming her reality show, she's going to run into cowardly rats - like this one.He must have had a lot of beer to get his courage up to the point where he could shout obscenities at a young girl about her and her mother who was doing him absolutely no harm whatsoever.

Classy.

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NYT Book Review: Anti-Palin Writer Joe McGinniss Is a Disgusting Sleaze And Hack

Even Pravda-on-the Hudson can't tolerate the smell around this guy. This review, entitled 'Sarah Palin Could See This Guy From Her House' says it all:

Mr. McGinnis, who has been writing best sellers since “The Selling of the President” in 1969, starts this book by affecting a gee-whiz attitude about his amazing new digs. (“Forty years in the business and I’ve never had a piece of luck like this.”) But he doesn’t get far with that attitude. Ten pages into “The Rogue” he has already blown his cover, printing a map to the Palins’ isolated house. He describes having gone to the Palin door with a signed copy of his book about Alaska, “Going to Extremes,” and exploiting this encounter to engage the family’s older son, Track, in conversation. But had Mr. McGinniss been a good neighbor, he would have delivered that book without showing up unannounced.

Mr. McGinniss explains that he was shocked, just shocked, at the angry response his presence in Wasilla provoked. But “The Rogue” makes the Palins’ widely publicized anger understandable, even to readers who might have defended his right to set up shop in their neighborhood and soak up the local color. Although most of “The Rogue” is dated, petty and easily available to anyone with Internet access, Mr. McGinniss used his time in Alaska to chase caustic, unsubstantiated gossip about the Palins, often from unnamed sources like “one resident” and “a friend.”

And these stories need not be consistent. “The Rogue” suggests that Todd Palin and the young Sarah Heath took drugs. It also says that she lacked boyfriends and was a racist. And it includes this: “A friend says, ‘Sarah and her sisters had a fetish for black guys for a while.’ ” Mr. McGinniss did in 2011 make a phone call to the former N.B.A. basketball player Glen Rice, who is black, and prompted him to acknowledge having fond memories of Sarah Heath. While Mr. Rice avoids specifics and uses the words “respectful” and “a sweetheart,” Mr. McGinniss eggs him on with the kind of flagrantly leading question he seems to have habitually asked. In Mr. Rice’s case: “So you never had the feeling she felt bad about having sex with a black guy?”

So much for the soft sell. Soon Mr. McGinniss is settling in to enjoy the fuss his mere presence has created. “Normally, for a news story to continue beyond the first 24-hour news cycle, something newsworthy must occur,” he writes loftily, but “The Rogue” is filled with proof to the contrary. What was his hate mail like? He quotes it. What did Glenn Beck call him? That’s here too. Who took umbrage at this venom and chose to help him? One man offered him a hideout, despite Mr. McGinniss’s slight skepticism about his motives. “But you don’t know me,” Mr. McGinnis protested.

“Hell, I’ve even got an AK-47 you might like,” the man volunteered.

Yes, McGinniss's publisher was so lacking in ethics and simple human decency that he allowed this creep to publish a detailed map to Governor Palin's home, for all the deranged wanna-be Jared Loughners of the world to see. And remember, this is a mother with small kids at home.

Kudos to the Times, but let's nor forget that it was just a short while ago that the New York Times posted an appeal on their website openly soliciting the assistance of any and every sleaze merchant they could coax out of the woodwork to please help them dig up dirt about Sarah Palin by reading through that trove of just-released emails from Sarah Palin’s tenure as Alaska's governor the Times and the Washington Post had posted online.

As an interesting sidelight to this, Armando Salguero, a reporter on the Left-leaning Miami Herald was so disgusted that the paper ran McGinniss's sleazy and thus far unproven account of Palin's supposed short term affair before she was married with NBA Basketball player Glen Rice as 'news' that he took the unusual step of writing an open e-mail letter to all his colleagues. Both Salguero's letter and the responses he got say quite a bit about the state of what passes for journalism nowadays.

I have absolutely no doubt that there's no coincidence about McGinnis's book and Levi Johnson's 'Deer In The Headlights' being publish concurrently. It was probably coordinated between Lefties in the media and the White House several months ago, because they expected Governor Palin to be a presidential candidate by now.

The funny thing is, this kind of sleaze is so over the top and indecent that it tends to backfire...and Governor Palin is going to end up strengthened by it, just as she was by the e-mail 'scandal'.

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Pigs Fly - The New York Times Has A Fair And Favorable Article On Sarah Palin

Yes indeed..one of the writers at Pravda-on-the-Hudson thinks that Governor Palin's ideas are actually worth taking seriously....that they could even lead to a brand new political alignment.

Of course, those of us more familiar with Governor Palin have known that for quite some time.

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Sarah Palin - The Media's Still Making Things Up

Yesterday and the day before, the media was full of stories about how Sarah Palin has suspended her bus tour. Here are a few sample headlines:

Scott Conroy, Real Clear Politics: Palin Bus Tour Takes Extended Pit Stop

Colby Hall, Mediaite: No Joke, Sarah Palin Quits One Nation Bus Tour halfway Through

Talking Points Memo (TPMDC) : Sarah Palin Reportedly Quits Bus Tour Halfway Through

Salon: Sarah Palin Baffles And Frustrates Fans by Quitting Bus tour.

Kirsten Boyd Johnson, Wonkette: Sarah Palin Follows Comedy Rules and Quits Bus tour Halfway Through

New York Magazine - Sarah Palin Was Supposed to be Delighting Us all With ANother Bus Tour By now

PuffHo even ran a nifty little 'comedy' pictorial called '36 Reasons Why Sarah Palin Probably Quit Her Bus Tour' making vicious fun of Governor Palin and her family. And no, you won't find it linked here.

So..after all that what was the real reason Governor Palin curtailed her tour?

Here's the real, scandalous truth... wait for it..she got called for jury duty.

Yes, as a private citizen and a resident of Alaska, she's still in the database. Here's what she had to say about it:

Imagine our surprise when reading media reports today that the “One Nation Tour” has been cancelled. Why didn’t anyone tell me? Oh, wait, that’s because it hasn’t been cancelled. (Good ol' media... you never cease to amaze!)

As I said myself at the end of the east coast leg of the tour, the summer is long, and I’m looking forward to hitting the open road again. The coming weeks are tight because civic duty calls (like most everyone else, even former governors get called up for jury duty) and I look forward to doing my part just like every other Alaskan.

I wouldn’t think it to be such a slow news day that, what with numerous wars and serious economic woes concerning Americans, a bus is driving news stories today. The next leg of the tour continues when the time comes. In the meantime, no one should jump to conclusions – certainly not the media with their long track record of getting things wrong or just making things up.

After all the snide headlines referring to Governor Palin as a quitter, I have yet to see one retraction from anyone. Not one. And just imagine the headlines these people would have made if she had ignored the summons and just kept going on tour!

They remind me of small puppies who haven't been house trained yet, peeing in a corner and hoping no one notices.

In their entire lifetimes, none of them will ever accomplish even remotely close to what Governor Palin already has. But then again, none of them will likely ever enjoy the happiness she has in her own accomplishments or in her personal life either.

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Jon Stewart On The Sarah Palin E-Mail Dump

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

That's what I like about Jon Stewart..he's an equal opportunity insulter.

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Sarah Palin's So called Paul Revere 'Gaffe' - The Left Beclowns Itself Again

OHMYGOODNESS! Sarah Palin made another gaffe! And no,it wasn't referring to the 57 US States, or claiming the US is the largest Muslim nation in the world,or mispronouncing corpsman as 'corpse man.' And it wasn't even something like quadrupling the US deficit, believing that printing up bogus money to 'buy up' US debt in order to keep on spending ( AKA 'quantitative easing') or that putting a de facto ban on oil drilling with high unemployment and record gas prices were brilliant ideas.

Those bits of stupidity belong to someone else entirely.

No, Governor Palin's humungous error was to phrase things a bit inelegantly about Paul Revere's famous ride. Here's what she said, verbatim:


“He warned, uh, the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms uh by ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed.”

Needless to say, George Soros' paid internet mercenaries were all over this one,just like they were all over Governor Palin's remarks encouraging Tea Party activists not to relax and that they can't 'party like it's 1773 yet'.

But whaddya know? She turned out to be essentially right again. I actually remember reading about this historical factoid, but a hat tip to Conservatives4Palin for saving me the trouble of digging it up. It turns out Paul Revere did warn the British they were headed for trouble if they thought they were going to take the colonists unawares and seize their arms...exactly what Governor Palin said.

From a letter by Paul Revere himself, in a 1789 letter maintained by the Massachusetts Historical Society:

I observed a Wood at a Small distance, & made for that. When I got there, out Started Six officers, on Horse back,and orderd me to dismount;-one of them, who appeared to have the command, examined me, where I came from,& what my Name Was? I told him. it was Revere, he asked if it was Paul? I told him yes He asked me if I was an express? {ed. note - a courier}

I answered in the afirmative. He demanded what time I left Boston? I told him; and aded, that their troops had catched aground in passing the River, and that There would be five hundred Americans there in a short time, for I had alarmed the Country all the way up. He imediately rode towards those who stoppd us, when all five of them came down upon a full gallop; one of them, whom I afterwards found to be Major Mitchel, of the 5th Regiment, Clapped his pistol to my head, called me by name, & told me he was going to ask me some questions, & if I did not give him true answers, he would blow my brains out. He then asked me similar questions to those above. He then orderd me to mount my Horse, after searching me for arms.He then orderd them to advance, & to lead me in front.

When we got to the Road, they turned down towards Lexington. When we had got about one Mile, the Major Rode up to the officer that was leading me, & told him to give me to the Sergeant. As soon as he took me, the Major orderd him, if I attempted to run, or any body insulted them, to blow my brains out. We rode till we got near Lexington Meeting-house, when the Militia {ed.note, the Americans} fired a Voley of Guns, which appeared to alarm them very much.

Let's parse this a bit, shall we? Revere admits here that he was stopped by the British, that they interrogated him at gunpoint and that he warned the British that he had already roused the countryside and that the American militia had gathered and would be waiting for them if they tried to take away the American's arms..which was the entire British objective in marching on Lexington and Concord.



Score yet another one for Governor Palin.

Frankly even if she had been wrong,( which she wasn't) I feel a lot more comfortable with someone who makes an honest error when it comes to the minutiae of American history than someone who apparently doesn't understand even basic economics, has no clue how to act with our allies, and has spent the country into a huge hole out of sheer cluelessness and incompetency.

Sarah Palin Rumbles In Rolling Thunder

Governor Sarah Palin started off her northeast tour in Washington DC, as part of the Pro veteran organization Rolling Thunder's annual bike ride.

She got on her bike ( a Harley, natch) riding behind another female rider but was unable to move because there were so many members of the press snapping photos and such a large crowd who turned out to cheer here and the Rolling Thunder vets. Eventually the police were called also on motorcycles, to clear a path.

After moving just a few feet, Governor Palin dismounted to sign autographs and talk with the crowd. At one point she started discussing “the missing,” a reference to the soldiers still MIA — a key issue for Rolling Thunder.

Todd Palin drove another bike with Piper on the back, and Bristol rode on a third with another driver.

Believe it or not, there was some manufactured Palin Derangement Syndrome surrounding the affair, originating with MSNBC and 'reporter' Andrea Mitchell.She and MSNBC cohort Lauren Stephenson reported that Governor Palin was crashing the event based on an interview with Rolling Thunder's Ted Shpak ( a Democrat, of course) and using the headline 'Stealing Their Thunder' essentially accused Sarah Palin of using the vets group for her own political purposes.

Of course, being Andrea Mitchell and MSNBC, that was all they needed, but Hot Air's Ed Morrisey actually did what reporters are supposed to do and did a little follow up. And whaddya know..Governor Palin was indeed invited by Rolling Thunder's Michael DiPaolo, who had connections in Alaska with a veteran's group there and got Palin to agree to attend.

Morrisey is polite and gives Shpak the benefit of the doubt, writing that Palin's accepting the invitation came late and that Shpak was probably not informed before Andrea Mitchell got her hooks into him. But Mitchel and MSNBC have no excuse whatsoever.

Anyone who know anything about Governor Sarah Palin knows how pro-military and how pro veteran she is. If anyone was hijacking the Rolling Thunder ride for partisan political purposes, it was Andrea Mitchell and the crowd at MSNBC.

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Hamas Takes 'Credit' For Attacking School Bus - And The UK Warns Israel!

This just keeps getting more bizarre.

Hamas took 'credit' for attacking a school bus today with and anti-tank rocket and mortar barrage, as the Elder reports:

Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades English webpage says:

Gaza-Ezzedeen Al Qassam Briades (E.Q.B) the military wing of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas declared in a military communiqué released on Thursday April 7, 201l the full responsibility for the operation of targeting Israeli bus traveling in the nearby Israeli settlement of Kfar Sa’ad east of Gaza Strip.

The operation left two Israeli settlers injured, one of them was in a critical condition and evacuated by the Israeli medical crews to Soroka hospital.

Unlike previous communiques, Hamas is not even claiming that this was a military target.

The Arabic version of the communique said they attacked "infidel Zionist usurpers."

Rest assured, no one at the UN is going to be writing up any human rights violations reports over this.

In fact, our old 'friend' British Foreign Secretary William Hague went one better..actually appearing to equate Israel's self defense with Hamas attacking a school bus:

“I unreservedly condemn today’s attack from Gaza on a bus carrying schoolchildren in southern Israel. The initial reports we have received suggest the bus was deliberately targeted and that a 16 year old boy has been critically injured. This is a despicable and cowardly act that stands in stark contrast to people’s desire for peaceful reform across the region. Violence will never deliver peace. I reiterate that Hamas must halt these strikes immediately, and rein in other militant factions in Gaza.

This attack further highlights Israel’s legitimate security concerns. As I have made clear, Israel has every right to protect its people. But it is also important that in so doing that it also shows restraint and makes every effort to avoid causing civilian casualties. I am very concerned about reports that several people in Gaza were killed and others wounded in retaliatory strikes.” ( emphasis mine)

I wonder how Mr. Hague's language of restraint would be received in Britain if someone opened up on a school bus in the UK with an anti-tank rocket?

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Analyzing 'Palinoia'

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal appears to have coined a new word for the American lexicon to explain the almost psychotic fear and hatred of Governor Sarah Palin:

Why does their hatred of her burn so hot?

Ask them, and they'll most likely tell you: Because she's a moron. But that is obviously false. To be sure, her skills at extemporaneous speaking leave much to be desired. But that can be said of a good many politicians on both sides of the aisle, including George W. Bush, John Kerry and, yes, Barack Obama. And don't get us started on the man who defeated her for the vice presidency.{...}

They say she is uneducated. What they mean is that her education is not elite--not Harvard or Yale, or even Michigan or UCLA. They resent her because, in their view, she has risen above her station. {...}

Professional jealousy and intellectual snobbery, however, only scratch the surface of the left's bizarre attitude toward Palin. They explain the intensity of the disdain, but not the outright hatred--not why some people whose grasp of reality is sufficient to function in society made the insane inference that she was to blame for a madman's attempt to murder Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

This unhinged hatred of Palin comes mostly from women. That is an awkward observation for us to offer, because a man risks sounding sexist or unchivalrous when he makes unflattering generalizations about women. Therefore, we are going to hide behind the skirts of our friend Jessica Faller, a New Yorker in her 30s of generally liberal politics. Over the weekend, she wrote us this analysis of Palin-hatred, which she has generously given us permission to quote:

I am starting out with a guess that this stems from her abrupt appearance on the national scene during the McCain-Obama race. She appeared out of nowhere and landed squarely in a position of extreme attention and media power. Her sex appeal might not have been as much of an issue had she been a known entity with a tremendous, watertight political résumé.

Even lacking that, her sex appeal might not have been such an issue if her demeanor on the campaign trail had been more, well, conservative. But here is this comely woman, in a curvy red suit, giving "shout-outs" during the debate with Joe Biden, giving controversial interviews without apology, basically driving in there, parking the car, and walking in like she owned the place.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing. But she couldn't have pulled it off if she were a gray mouse in a pantsuit, and because the devil in the red dress wasn't orating like a professor, it roused an unquenchable forest fire of rage and loathing in the breasts of many women, perhaps of the toiling gray mouse variety, who projected onto her their own career resentments and personal frustrations.

I am amazed at how people still abhor her. I personally do not. I don't feel she would be a good choice to run this country, but she does not deserve the horrific treatment she gets. I can tell you, being privy to the endless, incendiary rants this past week about her, coming from hordes of liberal women--age demo 25 to 45--they rip her to pieces, they blame her for everything, and the jealousy/resentment factor is so clear and primal. I've never seen anything like it.

We'd say this goes beyond mere jealousy. For many liberal women, Palin threatens their sexual identity, which is bound up with their politics in a way that it is not for any other group (possibly excepting gays, though that is unrelated to today's topic). {...}

What about male Palin-hatred? It seems to us that it is of decidedly secondary importance. Liberal men put down Palin as a cheap way to score points with the women in their lives, or they use her as an outlet for more-general misogynistic impulses that would otherwise be socially unacceptable to express.

Liberal women are the active, driving force behind hatred of Sarah Palin, while liberal men's behavior is passive and manipulative. In this respect, feminism has succeeded in reversing the traditional sexual stereotypes. If this is the result, you have to wonder why anyone would have bothered.

I think James Taranto is on to something here,but I'd take it even further. Leftist women hate Sarah Palin because many of them hate their own lives.

Many of them married metro-sexual, compliant males, had one or perhaps two children late in life after going through grad school, drudge at a job many of them secretly resent or feel is beneath them, have perhaps even been recycled via divorce for a younger model or had an abortion or two...and this was always the way they were taught feminism worked,the way it was supposed to be.

Along comes Sarah Palin, with five kids and a masculine husband who obviously adores her, looking gorgeous and being successful, winning the game on her own terms and turning the entire feminist meme inside out.I mean, she even had the nerve to give birth to a Down's Syndrome child and love him instead of resorting to a convenient abortion.

Hating her is so much easier than taking an honest look at their own lives and beliefs and the choices they've made. No one likes to admit they were badly fooled.

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A 'Comparison Of Two Speeches'...Really?

The latest dinosaur media meme involves a comparison of two speeches given within hours of one another on the Tucson shootings- Sarah Palin's video and President Barack Obama's in a Tucson Basketball stadium.

Obama's speech is lauded as showing him to be 'a formidable figure','unifying a nation in its grief', 'conciliatory' and 'calling for anew era of civility in American politics'.

Sarah Palin's is branded as 'a missed opportunity', 'defiant', symptomatic of 'grievance-based' and 'urgent and defensive'.

I can appreciate why Sarah Palin's political enemies would want to compare these two speeches..but it's an exercise in absurdity.

No one accused President Barack Hussein Obama of being directly complicit in mass murder, and no one in Sarah Palin's camp orchestrated a campaign to do so. If they had, we might have heard a very different speech from one of the most thin-skinned presidents in modern times.

It was not President Obama who was receiving death threats from the right calling for 'payback' for the Tucson murders, and no one suggested that the killings were 'Obama's fault'.

President Obama was in Tucson to conduct a memorial service for the victims, and he did so.

Governor Palin had a very different task to perform, and a far more difficult one.Not only did she need to address what happened in Tucson, but she needed to defend herself in the court of public opinion.

Both of them did exactly what they needed to do, and the dinosaur media demonizing Governor Palin while lauding Obama is exactly what it smells like - pure partisan horse manure.

UPDATE: My friend Bookworm has some thoughts on Obama's speech in Tucson...and what she has to say is always interesting.

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Sarah Palin On The Tucson Murders - And The Left's Attempt To Exploit It

Sarah Palin speaks on the Tucson murders and reminds us all of what's really going on here.

Frankly, it's embarrassing that she should have to, but since the delusional Left is making use of this tragedy to shut down free speech and to slime Governor Palin in particular as being the ventriloquist to Loughner's dummy, I suppose it was necessary. The emphasis on certain points in mine.

Like millions of Americans I learned of the tragic events in Arizona on Saturday, and my heart broke for the innocent victims. No words can fill the hole left by the death of an innocent, but we do mourn for the victims’ families as we express our sympathy.

I agree with the sentiments shared yesterday at the beautiful Catholic mass held in honor of the victims. The mass will hopefully help begin a healing process for the families touched by this tragedy and for our country.

Our exceptional nation, so vibrant with ideas and the passionate exchange and debate of ideas, is a light to the rest of the world. Congresswoman Giffords and her constituents were exercising their right to exchange ideas that day, to celebrate our Republic’s core values and peacefully assemble to petition our government. It’s inexcusable and incomprehensible why a single evil man took the lives of peaceful citizens that day.

There is a bittersweet irony that the strength of the American spirit shines brightest in times of tragedy. We saw that in Arizona. We saw the tenacity of those clinging to life, the compassion of those who kept the victims alive, and the heroism of those who overpowered a deranged gunman.

Like many, I’ve spent the past few days reflecting on what happened and praying for guidance. After this shocking tragedy, I listened at first puzzled, then with concern, and now with sadness, to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event.

President Reagan said, “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.” Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state, not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle, not with law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies, not with those who proudly voted in the last election.

The last election was all about taking responsibility for our country’s future. President Obama and I may not agree on everything, but I know he would join me in affirming the health of our democratic process. Two years ago his party was victorious. Last November, the other party won. In both elections the will of the American people was heard, and the peaceful transition of power proved yet again the enduring strength of our Republic.

Vigorous and spirited public debates during elections are among our most cherished traditions. And after the election, we shake hands and get back to work, and often both sides find common ground back in D.C. and elsewhere. If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal. And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those “calm days” when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols? In an ideal world all discourse would be civil and all disagreements cordial. But our Founding Fathers knew they weren’t designing a system for perfect men and women. If men and women were angels, there would be no need for government. Our Founders’ genius was to design a system that helped settle the inevitable conflicts caused by our imperfect passions in civil ways. So, we must condemn violence if our Republic is to endure.

As I said while campaigning for others last March in Arizona during a very heated primary race, “We know violence isn’t the answer. When we ‘take up our arms’, we’re talking about our vote.” Yes, our debates are full of passion, but we settle our political differences respectfully at the ballot box – as we did just two months ago, and as our Republic enables us to do again in the next election, and the next. That’s who we are as Americans and how we were meant to be. Public discourse and debate isn’t a sign of crisis, but of our enduring strength. It is part of why America is exceptional.

No one should be deterred from speaking up and speaking out in peaceful dissent, and we certainly must not be deterred by those who embrace evil and call it good. And we will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of our country and our foundational freedoms by those who mock its greatness by being intolerant of differing opinion and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults.

Just days before she was shot, Congresswoman Giffords read the First Amendment on the floor of the House. It was a beautiful moment and more than simply “symbolic,” as some claim, to have the Constitution read by our Congress. I am confident she knew that reading our sacred charter of liberty was more than just “symbolic.” But less than a week after Congresswoman Giffords reaffirmed our protected freedoms, another member of Congress announced that he would propose a law that would criminalize speech he found offensive.

It is in the hour when our values are challenged that we must remain resolved to protect those values. Recall how the events of 9-11 challenged our values and we had to fight the tendency to trade our freedoms for perceived security. And so it is today.

Let us honor those precious lives cut short in Tucson by praying for them and their families and by cherishing their memories. Let us pray for the full recovery of the wounded. And let us pray for our country. In times like this we need God’s guidance and the peace He provides. We need strength to not let the random acts of a criminal turn us against ourselves, or weaken our solid foundation, or provide a pretext to stifle debate.

America must be stronger than the evil we saw displayed last week. We are better than the mindless finger-pointing we endured in the wake of the tragedy. We will come out of this stronger and more united in our desire to peacefully engage in the great debates of our time, to respectfully embrace our differences in a positive manner, and to unite in the knowledge that, though our ideas may be different, we must all strive for a better future for our country. May God bless America.

- Sarah Palin

Thankfully, 2/3 of the American people agree with her that the act of a deranged killer had nothing to do with any kind of political rhetoric.

Especially since he didn't watch TV, disliked the news and never listened to talk radio.

And by the way, I find objections to Sarah Palin for using the term 'blood libel' originating from a few Leftist Jewish groups wholly affiliated with the Democrat Party laughable.

As a Jew, I think her use of the term 'blood libel' was entirely appropriate, since it refers to false and libelous accusations leveled because of whom one is rather than anything they've actually done.

Sarah Palin may not be Jewish, but I would definitely say that based on how she's been treated since she became part of the national scene, she's an honorary member of the Tribe, the 'Jew' of American politics.

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Palin Derangement Syndrome Rears Its Ugly Head - Literally

Michael Shaw, one of the Lefty bloggers at HuffPo has a story, dammit.

As you know, Sarah Palin is in the middle of Haiti's cholera epidemic in a humanitarian mission as a guest of Frank Graham's Samaritan's Purse.

But as Shaw points out, Governor Palin, whom he characterizes as 'one of the shallowest and blatantly self-serving politicians, err, political celebrities I've ever seen' brought her hair dresser with her for the photo-op...after all, the AP said so!

Whoopsie.

It turns out that the 'hairdresser' is Palin's daughter Bristol, and Palin was just getting her hair pinned back, not getting "her hair done."

Once Shaw realized he'd been punked by the dinosaur media and his own rabid PDS, he tried to walk things back:


(Update 10:30pm PST: Credit is due to various commenters for clarifying that the "hairdresser" in the top photo is, in fact, Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol. This clarification certainly raises questions about the clarity and meaning of the AP caption below stating that Palin was "having her hair done." Still, the fact that Palin's daughter was attending to Palin's hair, as opposed to a professional stylist, only reinforces the concern I raise in the last paragraph of the post about the AP's objectivity in focusing on these particular images.

Nice try, no sale Mr. Shaw.

And here's something he didn't even try to walk back:

The multiple shots of Sarah sanitizing and washing her hands suggests the former Gov is primarily concerned, above all humanitarian else, about catching something."

Obviously Michael Shaw isn't the sort of person who goes around making humanitarian visits to cholera epidemics where infectious disease is a real danger. If he had the stones to do so, he'd see that the medical personnel do exactly the same thing, and I guarantee you he'd be doing it too.

(hat tip to Joshua's Army member Dan F.)

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Sarah Palin Fires Back On Gaffes

Sarah Palin made a small momentary gaffe on Glenn Beck's radio show during an interview, saying we needed to stand by our North Korean allies. She corrected it at once and it was obvious what she meant, but the Leftish press made a major political headline out of it.

So Sarah Palin, being who she is, decided to take this opportunity to remind them of a few things about double standards:

A Thanksgiving Message to All 57 States

by Sarah Palin on Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 6:46pm

"My fellow Americans in all 57 states, the time has changed for come. With our country founded more than 20 centuries ago, we have much to celebrate – from the FBI’s 100 days to the reforms that bring greater inefficiencies to our health care system. We know that countries like Europe are willing to stand with us in our fight to halt the rise of privacy, and Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. And let’s face it, everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma and they end up taking up a hospital bed. It costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early, and they got some treatment, and ah, a breathalyzer, or an inhalator. I mean, not a breathalyzer, ah, I don’t know what the term is in Austrian for that…

Of course, the paragraph above is based on a series of misstatements and verbal gaffes made by Barack Obama (I didn’t have enough time to do one for Joe Biden). YouTube links are provided just in case you doubt the accuracy of these all too human slips-of-the-tongue. If you can’t remember hearing about them, that’s because for the most part the media didn’t consider them newsworthy. I have no complaint about that. Everybody makes the occasional verbal gaffe – even news anchors.

Obviously, I would have been even more impressed if the media showed some consistency on this issue. Unfortunately, it seems they couldn’t resist the temptation to turn a simple one word slip-of-the-tongue of mine into a major political headline. The one word slip occurred yesterday during one of my seven back-to-back interviews wherein I was privileged to speak to the American public about the important, world-changing issues before us.

If the media had bothered to actually listen to all of my remarks on Glenn Beck’s radio show, they would have noticed that I refer to South Korea as our ally throughout, that I corrected myself seconds after my slip-of-the-tongue, and that I made it abundantly clear that pressure should be put on China to restrict energy exports to the North Korean regime. The media could even have done due diligence and checked my previous statements on the subject, which have always been consistent, and in fact even ahead of the curve. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story? (And for that matter, why not just make up stories out of thin air – like the totally false hard news story which has run for three days now reporting that I lobbied the producers of “Dancing with the Stars” to cast a former Senate candidate on their show. That lie is further clear proof that the media completely makes things up without doing even rudimentary fact-checking.)

“Hope springs eternal” as the poet says. Let’s hope that perhaps, just maybe, they might get it right next time. When we the people are effective in holding America’s free press accountable for responsible and truthful reporting, then we shall all have even more to be thankful for!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Sarah Palin"

Ah hah hah hah!

On a serious note, the ignorant RINOs who have been engaged in Palin bashing lately need to understand that they are playing a dangerous and self-destructive game. They need to be reminded that the Leftish media will not just go after Sarah Palin, but will cynically use them to bring down any Republican nominee no matter who it is...and that person will not receive anything remotely like fair treatment by the likes of the dinosaur media.

Remember how eagerly the media embraced Senator John McCain as their 'favorite moderate Republican' - until he was running for president?

The collective media fellatio of Obama is by no means over, despite a few momentary lapses and sore knees. It will come back with a vengeance in 2012, and wholesale bashing of Sarah Palin by the GOP will only fuel the fires for how any Republican nominee is going to be treated.

-Selah-

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Palin On Being Driven Out of Office By Bogus Lawsuits: 'We Wouldn’t Have Had a Pot to Piss In’

Sarah Palin talks about why she was forced to resign as governor on Dennis Miller's radio show...

(hat tip, Breitbart)

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Peggy Noonan Calls Sarah Palin A 'Nincompoop'

One half of what could have been a great column...but then Peggy Noonan's Palin Derangement Syndrome had to kick in.Pity.

Noonan's latest makes two cogent points - first that she's finally done with Obama:

On to the aftermath of the election. On Wednesday President Obama gave a news conference to share his thoughts. Viewers would have found it disappointing if there had been any viewers. The president is speaking, in effect, to an empty room. From my notes five minutes in: "This wet blanket, this occupier of the least interesting corner of the faculty lounge, this joy-free zone, this inert gas." By the end I was certain he will never produce a successful stimulus because he is a human depression.

Actually I thought the worst thing you can say about a president: that he won't even make a good former president. {...}

What Democrats have to learn from this election: Cut loose from that. Join with Republicans where you can, create legislation together, send the bill to the White House, see what happens. Even as the Republicans have succeeded in getting out from under George W. Bush, this is your chance to get out from under Mr. Obama, and possibly prosper in 2012 whatever happens to him.

The other cogent point Noonan makes is that the Tea Party Movement needs to realize both the message and the messenger is important, as she compares Marco Rubio with a Sharron Angle or a Christine O'Donnell. She has a point. But what she of course fails to get, like most ruling class elitists is that these people didn't nominate themselves. The voters did. And that even a well-spoken, gaffe free 'moderate' candidate can end up losing - ask Dino Rossi in Washington State about that.

At that point, Noonan's usual Palin Derangement Syndrome kicks in, sparked by Governor Palin's common sense answer to questions on FOX about her TV show about Alaska and 'Dancing With The Stars'..."Wasn't Ronald Reagan an actor? Wasn't he in 'Bedtime for Bonzo,' Bozo, something? Ronald Reagan was an actor."

Noonan's response was to say that Palin was ignorant and to go through Reagan's pre-Presidential resume, referring to his Hollywood profession as 'an artist'.

I have no doubt that the Gipper himself would have chuckled at that one, recalling all the lame movies he was compelled to make to earn that weekly paycheck, keep from angering the studio bosses and getting placed on suspension. And I doubt that President Reagan would have put hosting the GE Theater each week under the category of 'art'. Being a working actor didn't make him less of a great man, anymore than Palin sitting in the 'Dancing With The Stars' audience to root for her daughter diminished her. Noonan, of course, either missed that simple reality or chose to ignore it, as her PDS kicked in full strength:

The point is not "He was a great man and you are a nincompoop," though that is true. The point is that Reagan's career is a guide, not only for the tea party but for all in politics. He brought his fully mature, fully seasoned self into politics with him. He wasn't in search of a life when he ran for office, and he wasn't in search of fame; he'd already lived a life, he was already well known, he'd accomplished things in the world.

This 'nincompoop' as Noonan referred to her is directly responsible for GOP gains in this election. along with Jim DeMint. It was Palin in particular who kept the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party when she could have taken them third party for her own aggrandizement , and without the Tea Party things would be very different for the GOP today.

Governor Palin had the ninja political skills to go from being the defeated VP candidate in one of the most inept campaigns in recent memory to the hottest political ticket in America...and she did it on her own, outside the GOP establishment.

I and many others haven't forgotten how Peggy Noonan shilled for Obama during the '08 election and told us how wonderful he was going to be. Palin, on the other hand, had his number from Day One.

So who's the 'nincompoop', Peggy Noonan?

And that bit about accomplishment? Sarah Palin has been a mayor,a member of an important energy board in Alaska who took on the fat cats in her own party for corruption and won, a governor who took on Big oil, balanced Alaska's budget and put through a vital energy pipeline that had been sitting in limbo for thirty years, a successful small business owner, a vice presidential candidate, and she's now a best selling author, speaker, political voice and TV commentator whose fans mob her wherever she goes. And she's still in her forties.

And what was it Peggy Noonan accomplished again? A few speeches written a quarter of a century ago, a couple of books, writing a weekly column and attending a few of the right Manhattan cocktail parties.Oh, yes, and lying to her readers.

Whatever else she's done, Sarah Palin has made a difference, a positive change in America's political climate. Peggy Noonan never will, and that probably fuels her rage as much as anything.

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Why Don't Jews Like Christians Who Like Them?

And interesting question indeed, asked by Dr. James Q.Wilson, a celebrated professor at Harvard and Pepperdine, a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a prominent evangelical.

In the United States, the two groups that most ardently support Israel are Jews and evangelical and fundamentalist Christians. Jewish support is easy to explain, but why should certain Christians, most of them politically quite conservative, be so devoted to Israel? There is a second puzzle: despite their support for a Jewish state, evangelical and fundamentalist Christians are disliked by many Jews. And a third: a large fraction of African-Americans are hostile to Israel and critical of Jews, yet Jewish voters regard blacks as their natural allies.

The evidence about evangelical attitudes is clear. In 2006, a Pew survey found that evangelical Christians were more favorable toward Israel than the average American was—and much more sympathetic than either mainline Protestants or secularists. In another survey, evangelical Christians proved much likelier than Catholics, Protestants, or secular types to back Israeli control of Jerusalem, endorse Israeli settlements on the West Bank, and take Israel’s side in a Middle Eastern dispute. (Among every religious group, those who are most traditional are most supportive of Israel. The most orthodox Catholics and Protestants, for instance, support Israel more than their modernist colleagues do.)

Evangelical Christians have a high opinion not just of the Jewish state but of Jews as people. That Jewish voters are overwhelmingly liberal doesn’t seem to bother evangelicals, despite their own conservative politics. Yet Jews don’t return the favor: in one Pew survey, 42 percent of Jewish respondents expressed hostility to evangelicals and fundamentalists. As two scholars from Baruch College have shown, a much smaller fraction—about 16 percent—of the American public has similarly antagonistic feelings toward Christian fundamentalists

I can sympathize with Dr. Wilson's puzzlement in his excellent and mostly accurate piece.

Here's the missing part of the puzzle.

For centuries, Jews were demonized and locked in ghettos in Europe (literally - the gates were often chained and guarded after dark). That ended with Napoleon, and as Jews for the first time experienced civil rights, a number of them decided that the best way to be `real Frenchmen' et al was to throw away their ancient culture and become totally secular. Many of them found out what a fallacy this was around the time of the Dreyfus case and the Chelminitsky Pogroms, but by then it was too late.

Some went back to traditional practice of their religion, especially in Eastern Europe. Many emigrated to places like the United States, Australia and South Africa.

Others took the Dreyfuss case and similar incidents as a clear sign that Jewish assimilation in Europe was a lost cause, among them a totally secular Jewish journalist from Vienna by the name of Theodore Herzl, who witnessed the French mobs in Paris howling 'Death to the Jews' during the Dreyfuss case, concluded that the Jew, the Eternal Stranger could only have self-determination in his own country and helped form the Zionist movement.

A third group, having already given all or most of their Jewishness in favor of assimilating ended up migrating to the Left, which promised an end to ALL religion - and thus would remove the stigma of being Jewish. They could, in a sense finally be 'normal' again in that milieu.

Prejudice over centuries can easily warp human beings into self-hatred. This can result in some strange twists in the human psyche.

While Jews were never treated with the kind of genocidal hatred here in America that they experienced in Europe, many of the Jews here in America who emigrated went through the same process, coming from the shtetls of Eastern Europe and experiencing normal life for the first time.

Again, some reveled in the opportunity to practice their traditions and culture. Others did exactly what some of their fore bearers in Europe did and dropped their traditional religion and culture with the idea of becoming 'real Americans.'

There was never the equivalent of a Dreyfuss case here in America, but there was enough classical anti-Semitism in the 1920's, `30's and `40's to make a substantial number of Jews identify with the Left, a process that was accelerated by Soviet penetration into various areas of American life. On the extreme end of that scale, many of the so-called Red Diaper Babies were Jews born into devoutly Leftwing and communist families who went on to indoctrinate their own children in 'the faith.' David Horowitz's book `Radical Son' is a superb examination of how this worked.

There's a spectrum here, of course, but many of the anti-Christian Jews Dr. Wilson is talking about remain ethnically Jewish, but are almost entirely divorced from their religion and have embraced a new one - leftwing politics.

As the Left has distanced itself from Israel, so have many of these Jews. And why not? Israel is no longer really part of their religion any longer. They are merely conforming with the tenets of their new faith as part of a broader anti-Americanism, although many of them would never admit to it as such. To get an understanding of how this works, imagine if Israel, instead of allying itself with the US had proceeded even further along the secular socialist path and allied itself with Russia. Were that the case, I guarantee you that the Left would have embraced Israel from the beginning, the dinosaur media would now be totally supportive of Israel and would not be running the pro-Arab garbage it does now, and Israel would be as celebrated in Hollywood as Cuba.

Given a choice between supporting Israel and supporting the Leftist agenda, it's no contest for these people.

Other Jews whom identify with the Left but still consider Israel important temporize and rationalize. They ignore the anti-Israel part of the Left's agenda so they can embrace the broader part of the agenda, especially if a Leftist politician is savvy enough to give them a few general statements or gestures that could be taken as pro-Israel. Or they co-opt it, embracing chimeras like Oslo even when their common sense revolts at the reality of what that means.

To many of these Jews, Christians are part of the Evil Right. They might even be *gasp!* Republicans and therefore must be shunned and vilified, no matter how philo-semitic they may be. Believe it or not this attitude doesn't merely extend to Christians but to religiously observant Jews and Jews with conservative political views as well . Screwy, I admit, but there it is.

Dr. Wilson and those like him will wait a very long time if they expect a significant amount of reciprocity from Jews on the Left for their support of Israel. They may take comfort in the satisfaction of doing the right thing and in the words of the prophet Isaiah and the Gospels. Righteousness still has some meaning, after all.

On the other hand, the situation may actually be improving. When one looks at the demographics, the Jewish population in the US has actually increased, and it is increasing in an interesting direction. While many secular leftist Jews are mostly having few children and intermarrying, religious Jewry has had something of a renaissance. It's the Orthodox and observant Jews who are expanding synagogues, funding Jewish day schools and most of all, having the kids. And as Dr. Wilson has no doubt observed personally, most of those Jews by no means shun Christians, but welcome them as people of faith and allies.

I would expect this trend to continue and even to accelerate, given the common threat both Jews and Christians face.