Careful what we wish for

I know I should be thrilled that Republicans, in Jonathan Chait's words, are "reap[ing] the whirlwind" of the red meat they've sowed for 18 months. In Nevada and now in Delaware, Republican primary voters have nominated candidates so extreme that it's turned what looked like a coast to two Senate seats for Republicans into something...else.

But the fact that Republicans -- in Delaware of all places -- have determined that sending a certified nut case to represent them in the Senate gives me pause. The fact that she may still win is disturbing.

That said, maybe these developments will begin to erase some of that "enthusiasm gap," we've heard so much about.

A nation of idiots

Ezra doesn't "want to frame this issue politically," but I have no such qualms. Because of the deliberate misreading of the bill by a charlatan; the tweets or Facebook pronouncements of a failed, former half-term governor of Alaska; an eagerly gullible press*, cynical political groups; and the ravings of a few "keep government away from my Medicare" lunatics at a few town hall meetings; one of the most intimate -- and expensive --decisions a patient and a doctor can make was turned into a political football. The result is the status quo for a public policy that makes the end of a person's life more miserable then is remotely necessary and more expensive then should be acceptable.

*I'm probably being unfair to the press. As I sought out links, it became evident that the press -- with a reliably predictable exception, of course -- did pretty well in debunking the "death panel" nonsense. Because of that, the entire episode make me despair for our political and health care systems even more.

Palin is the liberol media's fault, obviously

Like a collision of two massive meteors, Andrew Sullivan's two great obsessions -- the liberal media cabal known as Journolist and the identity of Frag Trig Palin's mother -- have combined to produce a massive explosion of...the liberal media.

One should say this, however: I have no way of knowing what the DC has omitted, and how it has shaped this information. The thread stops rather abruptly. Maybe there is context that adds to what we know. I do not trust in any way the ethics of the Daily Caller. Nonetheless, I was obviously not alone in those August days, when I was pilloried for saying out loud what the entire chattering class was saying in private. Check these quotes out. First Ezra, setting down the line:

Seriously, folks? Best case scenario, what’s your outcome here: Her daughter, hounded by the tabloids, breaks down that it was her child, and her mother heroically took on the burden and welcomed the disabled boy as one of her own? Palin’s relationship with her children — however they may have come to her — strikes me as pretty far out of bounds. By all accounts she’s a wonderful mother, and devoted to her fifth son. Leave this be.

If you want to know why the allegedly liberal media didn't touch - and still won't touch - this story, look no further. It has nothing to do with the facts, and everything to do with their politics. Notice the core modus operandi of the political operative, not the journalist. When dealing with a story: first ask yourself not if it is true but whether the outcome benefits your side. Second, write things in defense of this that you cannot possibly know. Palin a "wonderful mother"? How on earth did Klein know that?

Here's Katha Pollitt, untroubled by the possible truth:

I like what you said about this possibly being a dirty trick, intended to blow up in our faces. so let’s just leave it alone…

Mark Schmitt:

“We” don’t have to do any digging. There’s enough reason for suspicion that the entire GOP research team is probably off the Obama-Biden job for the weekend to figure out what they don’t know, but should have, about Sarah Palin.

Actually, we know that the McCain team never asked her about this at all - and still don't know. They just played the simple denial game, demanded deference, worked out an agreement with the liberal media not to inquire into the story, and never, ever asked about it. But they sure felt that there was something fishy here. Laura Rozen:

seriously, if her water broke and the baby was what two months premature, it doesn’t seem normal to have not gone straight to the nearest hospital. again, if the official story is true. but that just doesn’t make any sense.

Er, yes - but if a story doesn't make sense and inquiring into it might backfire, the liberal journalists won't inquire. "Leave this be" comes the instructions from Ezra, and leave this be they dutifully did. Lamar Robertson:

all right. this is getting way fishy now. 1) getting onto the plane TO ALASKA after your water breaks? i’m sorry. that does not happen. i live 2 minutes from the hospital. my wife went to the hospital immediately after her water broke w/ my second child and it was almost too late to get the epidural. 2) the baby was 6 lbs, 2 oz? That’s a healthy sized baby for a preemie. it’s also incongruous w/ the notion that she — a thin person — wasn’t showing at 7 months.

Paul Waldman:

If the date on this photo from the Anchorage Daily News web site is correct, she is absolutely, positively, not seven months pregnant.

Kathleen Geier:

When I first heard this story, I thought it was preposterous. (And btw, a scenario similar to this lurid tale occurred last season on Desperate Housewives). And maybe I really am losing it, driven over the edge at last by my hatred of all things Republican, but at this point I’m starting to believe it.

All great points. Especially the latter. But nothing was to be aired in public, for fear of backlash from the right.

This is your liberal media, ladies and gentlemen: totally partisan, interested in the truth only if it advances their agenda, and devoid of any balls whatsoever. And people wonder how this farce of a candidate now controls one major political party and could well be our next president. One reason is that we do not have a functioning adversarial media uncorrupted by partisan loyalty and tactics.

Note, none of those listed above are journalists in the sense of reporters covering politics for an established newspaper, but rather opinion writers working for what are generally partisan, liberal, activist publications/web sites. But no matter. Their "collusion" in basically agreeing that the weird but inconsequential* birth of Palin's baby is probably not worth talking much about and could have the effect of increasing Palin's popularity is a sure sign that the "adversarial media" allowed Palin to be where she is today: one of the least popular political figures of any note in the country.

Well done liberols.

No, it doesn't make sense to me, either.

*And, yes, I know it would be further proof of the grifter's penchant for making shit up. But, really, we're talking about an infant, not a bridge to nowhere. There's already plenty of evidence of her grifterhood.

WWSPS

No, this is not The Onion. Really.

The right answer

This probably won't persuade the media to stop waiting on Sarah Palin's every tweet, but, still, it's good to hear.

STEPHANOPOULOS:I want to get to some of those broader issues [of nuclear proliferation]. Because you're also facing criticism on that. Sarah Palin, taking aim at your decision to restrict the use of nuclear weapons. Your pledge not to strike nations, non-nuclear nations, who abide by the nonproliferation treaty. Here's what she said. She said, "It's unbelievable, no other administration would do it." And then she likened it to kids on the playground. She said you're like a kid who says, "Punch me in the face, and I'm not going to retaliate." Your response?

OBAMA: I really have no response. Because last I checked, Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the string of criticism has been out there among other Republicans as well. They think you're restricting use of nuclear weapons too much.

OBAMA: And what I would say to them is that if the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff are comfortable with it, I'm probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But not concerned about her criticisms?

OBAMA: No.

The fact that she and Newt Gingrich are the GOP's standard-bearers right now (with honorable mention to the equally unpopular Cheneys, Dick and Liz), and that the media can't get enough of them, makes me both hopeful and depressed.

True populism

I generally avoid Palinogging, but this is just too great.

Andrea Fay Friedman played the girl with Down syndrome Chris dated in the episode. (Her IMDB says she's been on Saving Grace, Law & Order: SVU and 7th Heaven among other shows.) She was the one who said the fateful line which incurred Sarah Palin's facebook-based ire: "My dad's an accountant, and my mom's the former governor of Alaska." (Gawker.tv has got the clip.) And she has something to say to no-fun Sarah Palin, which she said in an email to the New York Times.

However! It appears that what the Times printed was just the nice portion of a much meaner email Friedman sent out to various media outlets. The blog Palingates has published the uncensored email:

I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor. I thought the line "I am the daughter of the former governor of Alaska" was very funny. I think the word is "sarcasm."

In my family we think laughing is good. My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life. My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes.

The Times did not, as you may have imagined, print that last bit.

UPDATED, because the Times did print he last bit.

Badgered questions and gutteral instinct

Is it a sign* that our public discourse is growing slightly less insane that an hour-long interview Sarah "Resigning because I'm not a quitter" Palin gave to Bill O'Reilly in November went pretty much unnoticed?

There are a number of gems, but this one is especially illustrative.

O'REILLY: You're a populist.

PALIN: A populist, yes.

O'REILLY: Do you know what they're calling you now?

PALIN: No.

O'REILLY: Evita.

PALIN: Well.

O'REILLY: Eva Peron.

PALIN: Uh-huh.

O'REILLY: That's who they're calling you now.

* No, not likely.

Palining

You will be shocked to learn that Sarah Palin lies about lies she's told.

Make it stop

Is it me, or is The Atlantic's "Voices'" obsession with ex-gov. Palin and her photos a trifle weird.

Based on the comment trails for Ta-Nehisi, I guess his readers are in to it, but still.

Misunderstanding populism

First, let's get this out of the way:

As for the theory of evolution, the most she really asks is that both sides of the discussion be taught.

And that from a dude who proclaims himself a proud atheist?

And what he calls "populists," Riley explains, we call "Republicans." Those from whom George W. Bush never lacked support, even as his polling numbers with the rest of the country scaped Nixonian lows.

Politics isn't about achieving anything for these people--not anything positive, which has proven to be too damn hard without making concessions to what Nabokov called "reality"--it's about the home team winning. It's about jabbing a stick in the eye of anything that moves differently than they do. Real populism is the last thing they, or Palin, or her PR team, would want.

Exactly. What Palin enjoys in popularity is largely the belief, generally a wrong-headed one, that she pisses liberals off.

The vast rightwing...

But you knew this.

Advanced even this week by Republican stalwarts including the party’s last vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, and Charles E. Grassley, the veteran Iowa senator, the nature of the assertion nonetheless seemed reminiscent of the modern-day viral Internet campaigns that dogged Mr. Obama last year, falsely calling him a Muslim and questioning his nationality.

But the rumor — which has come up at Congressional town-hall-style meetings this week in spite of an avalanche of reports laying out why it was false — was not born of anonymous e-mailers, partisan bloggers or stealthy cyberconspiracy theorists.

Rather, it has a far more mainstream provenance, openly emanating months ago from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating President Bill Clinton’s health care proposals 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, New York’s lieutenant governor).

It is encouraging that the New York Times recognizes this and is calling bullshit on it. But as long as the Chuck Grassley's of the world are considered Very Serious People, then real reform is doomed.

Palin, as read by Shatner

He was born for this.

The alternate version.

Engaged against Palin

I get email.

Hi John,

You know how engaged I am and we all need to be on global climate change - so I wanted to send you a couple of links to posts I've done the past couple days, responding with the facts to an op-ed from Governor Sarah Palin yesterday -- we need to fight these distortions every chance we get until we get real reform. Between the way you worked with me to stop the drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the fight you lead last cycle to defeat the smears against Barack Obama, I know you're the team I need engaged to win this one.

Huffington Post

Daily Kos

Thanks, and I'll be in touch with things you can do to help as we go forward. Really have to fight hard on this one.

John Kerry

Drill baby, drill

When I first saw the link, I thought it was a joke.

Look, even Sarah Palin has First Amendment rights, and since the WaPo editorial page has already proven itself to be an embarrassment, with a miasma of Fred Hiatt, George Will and Charles Krauthammer, I don't think this will cause any further damage. But, really, there are other avenues for Sarah Palin to repeat right wing misdirection about cap and trade to shore up her bona fides for the base. No where in the column does she mention that the energy policy is an attempt to do something about carbon emissions. And somehow a provision to retrain workers in the oil sector to find jobs in other, green technology fields is a bad thing. And, as one would expect of her, she blatantly lies about "progressing on the largest private-sector energy project in history" -- a pipeline that right now has about as much chance of being built as is Sarah Palin's chance at being taken seriously on energy policy. But I love this:

Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:

This is like something off of SarahPac website.

What keeps Time afloat?

After we noted that Time magazine slid off the journalism road, crashed, burned and exploded, we find one of the people behind the wheel bragging about it and trying to start it up again.

I'm back from the Last Frontier with this week's dead tree cover story on Sarah Palin, written with the very excellent editor-at-large David Von Drehle. I don't think this will be the last we hear from the soon-to-be-former governor. To me, one of the most interesting aspects of the story is how vehemently the Palin camp blames Barack Obama.

From the story:

For Palin, however, these aren't isolated incidents. She believes they grow from the same root, which is too big and too formidable to ignore. "A lot of this comes from Washington, D.C. The trail is pretty direct and pretty obvious to us," says Meg Stapleton, a close Palin adviser in Alaska. Awaiting a flight back to Anchorage from distant Dillingham, Stapleton adds that the anti-Palin offensive seems lifted straight from The Thumpin', which describes the political strategies of Rahm Emanuel, who is now the White House chief of staff. "It's the Sarah Palin playbook. It's how they operate," Stapleton says.

Palin and her Alaska circle find evidence for their suspicions about the White House in the person of Pete Rouse, who lived in Juneau for a time before he became chief of staff to a young U.S. Senator named Barack Obama. Rouse, they note, is a friend of former Alaska state senator Kim Elton, who pushed the first ethics investigation of Palin, examining her controversial firing of the state's public-safety commissioner. Both Rouse and Elton have joined the Obama Administration. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs scoffed at the theory. "The charge is ridiculous," he said. "Obviously there is no effort ... From my vantage point, a lot of the criticism she is getting from others seems to be generated from self-inflicted wounds.

Meg went a step further at one point telling me, "I just hope to God Rahm Emanuel isn't using taxpayer money to come after Alaska." That's the way they think about it: that these Alaskans filing ethics complaints have been hoodwinked by Obama operatives into wasting the Alaskan government's time and resources. They believe that with Palin gone, the state will no longer face this barrage of "frivolous" compliants. On that point, they are probably right -- there will be much less interest in filing complaints against Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell. Palin, Meg said, was their target all along because she "represents the biggest threat to Obama. She's the only one who can get the base excited." I'm not entirely convinced of Obama's Nixon-esque sabotage capabilities, but I do think Palin has felt under attack for the last eight months and it wasn't a hard leap for anyone in her orbit to connect local progressive wingnuts and the Administration. Palin has never been great at playing defense.

Now, that is the Sham-Wow of hacktastic newsmagazine "journalism." Extol your own story and then proceed to accept, more or less at face value, the paranoid rantings of a press flak, claiming, Victoria Jackson-like, that Rahm Emmanuel is the anti-Christ. Well done, Ms. Newton-Small!

And think about the charge Newton-Small makes: "They believe that with Palin gone, the state will no longer face this barrage of 'frivolous' compliants. On that point, they are probably right -- there will be much less interest in filing complaints against Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell." Thisis not in the context of the Alaskan state legislature. It's about Rahm Emmanuel. She is charging the Obama administration with laying out ethics probes to hurt what she seems to perceive as a political rival. Did the Bush administration's criminality so soil the reputation of the Justice Dept. that this is not only believed, but accepted as par for the course? Or is Jay Newton-Small a fucking idiot? I report. You decide.

It's funny, this morning I clicked on a link to a story claiming Levi Johnson "knows" why Sarah Palin quit (Was someone in Palin's family one of his mom's customers?, I wondered). Only to learn that, according to him, she did it to "cash in." Whoa, I thought. Who'd a thunk it? But then I read the bizarro-world post from Jay Newton-Small and I realized that only those who know the Tundra-billies up close and personal can catch the grift.

We had an election?

Time magazine skids off the journalism road, rolls multiple times down the hill, catches on fire, and explodes in a mushroom cloud of debris and despair.

In a classic example of newsmagazine overthink, Time profiles Sarah Palin with a cover story that practically celebrates her thin résumé and essentially makes the case that know-nothingism could be good for America. Seriously:

Palin's unconventional step speaks to an ingrained frontier skepticism of authority — even one's own. Given the plunging credibility of institutions and élites, that's a mood that fits the Palin brand. Résumés ain't what they used to be; they count only with people who trust credentials — a dwindling breed. The mathematics Ph.D.s who dreamed up economy-killing derivatives have pretty impressive résumés. The leaders of congressional committees and executive agencies have decades of experience — at wallowing in red ink, mismanaging economic bubbles and botching covert intelligence.

If ever there has been a time to gamble on a flimsy résumé, ever a time for the ultimate outsider, this might be it. "We have so little trust in the character of the people we elected that most of us wouldn't invite them into our homes for dinner, let alone leave our children alone in their care," writes talk-show host Glenn Beck in his book Glenn Beck's Common Sense, a pox-on-all-their-houses fusillade at Washington. Dashed off in a fever of disillusionment with those in power, Beck's book is selling like vampire lit, with more than 1 million copies in print.

Citing Glenn Beck as proof that many Americans are eager to turn to a pol with little expertise in national policy? But didn't the country just have an election? And didn't a significant majority vote for the guy with two Ivy League degrees who talked about bringing professionalism, science, and expertise back to policymaking in Washington? (Anyone remember Palin's climate change denialism? Not the Time people.)

Much ado about nothing

If Sarah Palin was "the victim of sexism," as Cokie Roberts and Ross Douthat are quick to explain this morning, then explain Dan Quayle to me, please.

No, she is an ambitious moron with a gift for victimhood. Enough, already.

UPDATE: Oh, I meant to mention that Cokie's comments came during her "analysis" that Dems gaining the 60th seat is actually good for Republicans. As usual.

No apologies necessary

Is this one of those things Michael Steele says the GOP will no longer apologize for?

WASHINGTON – The Federal Election Commission has dismissed a complaint over the $150,000-plus designer wardrobe the Republican Party bought to outfit vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the good-government group that filed the complaint, argued that candidates aren't supposed to use donor money for personal expenses such as clothes. The FEC ruled Tuesday that the ban doesn't apply to party money, however.

The Alaska governor was Sen. John McCain's pick for vice president. The purchases from such high-end stores as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus drew criticism for Palin, the self-described hockey mom.

The Republican National Committee told the commission that party money rather than candidate campaign money was used for the purchases.

"We have no information to the contrary," the FEC wrote in its decision.

Good for them!

PalinPac for "wildlife management"

I go to The Superficial to get away from politics, but sometimes it's the place where you can find the most trenchant anaylsis.

***

A McCain post, followed by one about Sarah Palin. Fuck, what a day.

"Palin being Palin"

I share these sentiments as well: Thank you Gov. Palin!

As Thanksgiving approaches, a conservative PAC plans to spend nearly a quarter of a million dollars airing a nationwide ad thanking Sarah Palin — for being Sarah Palin. The Our Country Deserves Better PAC, hot on the heels of its cross-country “Stop Obama” bus tour, unveiled on Monday two versions of an ad organizers said would start airing Tuesday in Alaska and nationwide for the rest of the week.