Moe Lane

Which is not bad for a political prognosticator, actually. Charlie Cook is arguing in his latest column that the President must be hoping that one or more of the following things happen:

1. Unemployment goes down;
2. We not lose the war in Afghanistan; and/or
3. THAT WOMAN gets the Presidential nomination.

…if the President wants to be reelected. First off: amazing what two years of institutionalized blithering incompetence will do to a man’s public perception, isn’t it? Seriously, Barack Obama should have taken four years off to go be Governor of Illinois, or something: because he’s got pretty much none of the life skills that we expect from chief executives these days. Second: let’s look at Charlie’s points, more or less out of order.

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Let me sum up this story (via Hot Air Headlines): the America by Heart book tour of THAT WOMAN – who has not yet announced whether or not she is running for President – does… not include any stops in the state of New Hampshire.  This apparently confounds a large variety of professional political observers, even though THAT WOMAN is not particularly popular in New Hampshire and is not running for anything at the moment.

(pause)

I know that this is going to sound like a radical, wild-eyed theory: but have people considered the notion that a state with a total population of 1.3 million people and no major cities might not be the most cost-effective place to hold a book media event?

Moe Lane

While going through Ben Smith’s law blogger roundup of THAT WOMAN vs. Gawker (short version: Gawker is kind of hosed*) I came across this bit of misdirected exasperation on William McGeveran’s part:

…if you are sick of hearing Sarah Palin decry the arrogance of the media that covers her, then you’d rather deny her the satisfaction of being right.

I think that it’s just the tiniest bit uncouth to be blaming the victim for this, Mr. McGeveran?  Blame Gawker, blame the abusers of fair use, heck, blame the media/liberal/Democratic crusade if you like.   But I don’t see exactly what THAT WOMAN did wrong here.

Besides exist, of course.

Moe Lane

*They probably didn’t help matters much by taunting THAT WOMAN with links to… sites that proved her point, actually.

Mostly because America by Heart : Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag is not even out for the next two days and it’s already #23 on Amazon: my readers are probably going to buy it from somebody, so it might as well be me.  Not to mention the fact that the latest book by THAT WOMAN is promising to be the centerpiece of a sharp lesson to Gawker about why you Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Print Conglomerates.  Something about how Harper Collins would very much enjoy putting a New Media icon’s head on a stick as a warning to the rest…

And on that cheery note, farewell to Bring the Jubilee.

Moe Lane

The executive summary:

• Former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin has an upcoming speech in which she criticizes a plan to institute ‘[quantitative] easing,’ which is in this case basically the practice of creating money via buying our own debt (this particular example of the practice is usually called ‘QE2′ by the papers, apparently because the term is more confusing to people than simply calling it ‘[quantitative] easing’).  Palin makes the fairly obvious point that this encourages inflation, and in the process mentions that food prices have significantly gone up recently.
• “A-ha!” shouts Sudeep Reddy of the Wall Street Journal.  “The CPI says that they have not!  Silly Sarah Palin!” (I summarize.)
• Sarah Palin raises an eyebrow, as her source for that claim was apparently… the Wall Street Journal, which reported last week that food prices had significantly gone up recently.  It also derives that conclusion from an examination of the CPI, which suggests that if Reddy has an issue with the methodology, then Reddy should probably take it up with his own newspaper.
• As Palin put it: “Now I realize I’m just a former governor and current housewife from Alaska, but even humble folks like me can read the newspaper. I’m surprised a prestigious reporter for the Wall Street Journal doesn’t.”

Agreed, but I’d go one step further: it’s fascinating to see what an editor for the media will let pass through.  Statement that food prices are rising?  Smart! Sarah Palin agreeing with your statement that food prices are rising?  Dumb!

And they wonder why even their own reporters don’t read the papers anymore.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

I saw this last week; the Washington Post has put up a Palin Endorsements Tracker to track, well, former Governor Sarah Palin’s endorsements. So far, of the 42 that they list: 20 primary wins, 10 primary losses, 6 still to be determined (this includes Miller up in AK, as the primary isn’t officially concluded up there yet), and 6 no-primary. That works out to two-to-one successful primary picks, which is apparently not too shabby.

Looking at the map itself: it’s pretty eclectic.  Categorizing the choices is surprisingly hard, and may be actually the result of a deliberate strategy by Palin.  Maybe she’s running, maybe she’s not; maybe she’s Tea Party, maybe she’s establishment; maybe she’ll throw her support behind female candidates, maybe that’s not really a concern for her, balanced against the need for conservative candidates. If I were a Democratic strategist, this would be worrying me.  Hard to plan against a strategy where the pattern isn’t obvious*.

Moe Lane

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‘if you strike a match and put your finger in, common sense tells you you’re going to burn your finger.’

AFL-CIO head thug Dick Trumka is worried about THAT WOMAN’s ‘poisonous‘ rhetoric.  The thug feels that a June speech in which she referred to ‘union thugs’ hit a little too close to home is an incitement to violence:

“And down in Tyler, Texas, she’s talking about — and I quote — ‘union thugs.’ What? Her husband’s a union man. Is she calling him a thug? Sarah Palin ought to know what union men and women are,” Trumka will say. “That’s poisonous. There’s history behind that rhetoric. That’s how bosses and politicians in decades past justified the terrorizing of workers, the murdering of organizers.”

Eddie York could not be reached for comment.

Moe Lane (more…)

Not to be mean-spirited about this, but it’s at times like this that Arianna Huffington demonstrates that she has a black-box approach to understanding Americans*.  In discussing the inexplicable (to her) attraction so many people have towards THAT WOMAN, Arianna wrote:

It’s not Palin’s positions people respond to — it’s her use of symbols. Mama grizzlies rearing up to protect their young? That’s straight out of Jung’s “collective unconscious” — the term Jung used to describe the part of the unconscious mind that, unlike the personal unconscious, is shared by all human beings, made up of archetypes, or, in Jung’s words, “universal images that have existed since the remotest times.” Unlike personal experiences, these archetypes are inherited, not acquired. They are “inborn forms… of perception and apprehension,” the “deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity.”

…and then goes on to compare said mama grizzly video with this Reagan campaign video, which is apparently also ‘policy-free’ (that’s the latest progressive buzzword for ‘black magic’). And oh, yeah!  That has a bear, too!  That’s Jungian!  And it links Old Devil Figure to New Devil Figure, so that’s a plus!  Yes!  IT ALL COHERES!

Yes.  It makes Allahpundit’s head ache, too. (more…)

For those who don’t know – lucky you - “Trig Troofers” are people who believe that former Governor Sarah Palin did not actually give birth to her son Trig Palin; they instead believe that the child is Bristol Palin’s, despite the fact that Ms. Palin herself had a child at about the same time*.  This has thus become a particularly bizarre conspiracy theory, on the level of the ‘we faked the Apollo moon landing:’ it will elevate (or descend) to the level of 9/11 conspiracy theorizing once the Online Left figures out how Sarah Palin’s uterus relates to the International Zionist Conspiracy.

I mention all of this because I wanted to make it clear that people who believe this nonsense are crazy.  And apparently some of them are riddled through the ranks of the leading liberal magazine The American Prospect.  Which means that there are people at TAP who are crazy. (more…)

You’ll be wanting to answer THAT WOMAN’s question, methinks.

It’s widely rumored that Jon Huntsman (former Republican governor of Utah, and current ambassador to the People’s Republic of China) has future political ambitions: I submit that those ambitions will quickly die the True Death if he does not address the recent ridiculousness over our State Department apologizing to the People’s Republic of China for Arizona’s enforcement of the government’s own illegal immigration policy. Because it’s now officially part of the national discussion:

The absolute low point of this campaign came last Friday, when a U.S. State Department delegation met with Chinese negotiators to discuss human rights. Apparently, our State Department felt it necessary to make their Chinese guests feel less bad about their own record of human rights abuses by repeatedly atoning for American “sins” – including, it seems, the Arizona immigration/pro-border security law. Asked if Arizona came up at all during the meeting, Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner answered:

“We brought it up early and often. It was mentioned in the first session, and as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination, and that these are issues very much being debated in our own society.”

Note that he said “We brought it up” – not the Chinese, but the U.S. State Department’s own delegation. Instead of grilling the Chinese about their appalling record on human rights, the State Department continued the unbelievable apology tour by raising “early and often” Arizona’s decision to secure our border.

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I’ve done my best to come up with some fresh angle to justify writing my own post on Sarah Palin, Jon Huntsman, and our bizarre human rights apology to a regime that used to shoot dissidents and charge their families for the bullet*… but it ain’t happening. I flatter myself that this is rare, but it happens.

So… what Allahpundit said.

Moe Lane

*They still kill dissidents, but they don’t charge the families for the bullet anymore. I believe that this is called ‘progress.’

‘This’ being this picture (H/T Hot Air):

In order it to be cognitive dissonance, the people involved would have to have an internal conflict about the idea that they were simultaneously: declaring their area to be ‘hate’-free; and wishing for a woman’s death. Given recent history, it is too charitable to suggest that any of them have managed to have gotten so far as to think about the contradiction.

Moe Lane

PS: They hate you, too. I don’t recommend hating them back – it’s bad for your mental and spiritual development – but neither do I recommend trusting any of them with anything that you’d rather not lose. (more…)