So this week, we were treated to yet another week of the “Sarah Palin is dumb” meme, brought to you by the usual suspects, the clueless cadre of media elites and self-appointed cognoscenti, which was seized upon by the dutiful lower ranks of the liberal intelligentsia, who more often than not, take in their daily programming from such ideological organs as MSNBC.
For smart people, they sure do silly things.
Consider this: After McSame chose her for a running mate, the left declared war on her, and truly ran a campaign that was against her, all but ignoring the top of the Republican ticket. Only in a year when lemmings in thrall of making a “historic” choice, and white liberals captivated with the idea of finally absolving America of racial sins paid off more than a century before could a ticket led by a man with a paper-thin resume and a record showing dedication to nothing but the right to let murderers stained with the blood of innocents take their contemptible practices outside the womb, and a vice presidental candidate who’s major accomplishments included failed bids for the top job himself, reliable gaffes nearly every time he opens his mouth, and a career backing bad legislation and generous entitlement spending in Congress could succeed in calling a self-made governor stupid, and carry that platform to victory.
However, after a year of executive ennui and legislative excesses that would make the most hardened shopaholic blush with embarrassment, the opinionmakers still carry water for the party of “It didn’t work, so let’s do it again only bigger this time” and, inexplicably, this agenda requires them to continue campaigning against someone they already defeated.
If the idea is distract Americans from the incompetence of government and its solutions to America’s immediate problems, it isn’t succeeding, as polls clearly demonstrate that the average American is concerned about the economy and rates a need to have government take over health care at the bottom of their priorities.
If it is an attempt to dismiss and marginalize a threat in the next election, it is a dangerous strategy, especially when so many loyal party legislators are facing the prospect of electoral annihilation in the upcoming mid-term elections for their unwavering willingness to go along with a legislative agenda that Americans know runs contrary to the Constitution and that we cannot afford. To spend so much time to neutralize a threat that they keep telling us is dumb, stupid, etc. only calls attention to the fact that with a few notes on her hand, she can give a speech that the Chicago Messiah wouldn’t be capable of without the beneficent assistance of TOTUS and a beautifully polished and manicured script.
Perhaps the left’s shot callers would have more success if this wasn’t such a personal matter to them.
I recently had an exchange with one of the few left voices who will actually attempt to defend the left’s policies on the issue of Palin. He exhibits all the symptoms of a fatal case of Palin-itis, characterized with all the venom and “but-but-but”s that you see in the voices who are desperate to silence her. His latest issue is that she is not genuine, and that her family is simply a prop to be trotted out when convenient and ignored and left to their own devices between photo ops. His source for this meme is an Alaskan blogger who has been practicing the very same form of stalking that the legacy media has been practicing since she was chosen as McSame’s Number Two. This perceived insincerity for him is yet another bit of political and cultural damnation that is so significant that it justifies the uneven and biased scrutiny focused on Palin, rather than the more relevant and glaringly lacking turning of it to the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight currently pretending to know better than we do in the Capitol and the Oval Office.
I think that the Sarah Palin’s real sin has nothing to do with her intellect, sincerity, or the purported lack of either. For the left, and the feminists who can’t stand her and have attacked her from jump, her real sin was not knowing her place. Politically powerful women had to be cut from their mold, present their image, and tell their story. Their ambitions were acceptable, even necessary to show the fulfillment of women and their ability to play the game with the big boys. Her ambitions are venial, and unacceptable because she hasn’t paid her dues the way that they have, and don’t reflect the goals of the interests that have carried them to were they are. And many Americans not only get that, but love her because of that. For them it isn’t a problem that she isn’t the typical Democratic female politician. They know that NOW and Planned Parenthood don’t represent their values, and are more concerned with the pursuit of power than the issues that affect them.
The hypocrisy of feminism and the left’s “progressive” agenda has openly come to the fore in their mistreatment and continued attacks of Sarah Palin, and have done far more to polarize the cultural climate in this country in the last year and half than anything said by a conservative politician or pundit, all the left’s cries of “code words” and thinly veiled [fill in the Democratic denunciation of the week here] aside.
The jig is up. I’d start making some plans for what you do after, (I’m looking at the assorted voices on the left) because I see the sun setting rapidly on the legitimacy of the expertocracy with which you planned to rule.
Pitch perfect, BiW. I can’t think of a word to add. Congratulations!
I’m curious: What do you like about Palin?
You mean besides the fact that she drives the Left insane with hatred to the point that there simply is no charge too idiotic for them to avoid breathlessly indicting her with on a daily basis? Isn’t that enough? No?
Ok, then how about the fact that she rose to national prominence while being everything that feminism has been telling women they can’t be for more than 40 years?
Still not enough?
How about demonstrating that everyday people can come up with solutions that avoid or reverse the corruption endemic in the approach prescribed without fail by the expertocracy since the New Deal?
What? Still not enough?
There is the way that she unmasks the various faces of hatred and prejudice that our betters on the left continue to project upon conservatives and the fact that she can poke that bear so very effortlessly.
I think that’s fine, for a start.
Hi Blackiswhite!
Keith Olberman, isnt he something else. O_o
He makes me sicker than a dog.
Palin is the person that the left blames now, when they have ran out of blames for Bush.
Purely for entertainment value, I love that she drives so many on the left to apoplexy.
Of course, I’ll give TCS the benefit of the doubt and presume that he wants to know what Palin stands for that I admire.
Well, first off, she doesn’t think the Federal Government needs to be sticking its nose into the BCS bowl games. Seriously, the current incumbents in DC (both parties, to a certain extent) feel compelled to address every single facet of life in America. That’s contradictory to the paradigm of the authors of the Constitution, who wanted the Federal Government to address ONLY those issues HAD to be addressed to provide a minimum of social stability and to ensure a society that could be secure to prosper from commerce and industry.
She understands that the current level of spending is not only unsustainable, but poisonous to our economic well being, even in the short term.
She recognizes that the economic strength of America comes from, and always has come from, the middle class. No society that is hostile to the small businessman can long prosper. When the government is busy bailing out massive corporations, such as GM and Chrysler, they choke off any opportunity for small businesses to grow.
I agree with xbradtc that those are Palin’s strengths. It does bother me that spending rose rapidly during her tenures in Wassilla and Alaska, though. In the course of her political career, her actions have not matched her current rhetoric. So that remains to be seen.
The right wing, including Palin, does have a fingertip grasp on the major issue of the next generation of America. I hope they can refine that to full, firm grip. The can do that by starting to be honest with us about federal fiscal policy. We are not going to balance the budget through cost cutting. There is NO plan in existence that cuts $1.4 trillion per year from federal spending. We have spent 25 years borrowing money, and now owe more than $12 trillion. It is time for us to man up, and be truly “conservative” — which means paying our own bills and not leaving them for the grandkids.
[To my far-right friends: Bonus points if you can answer this question: 2009's federal budget deficit was about $1.3 trillion. How much of that came from increased federal spending?]
Excellent essay, BiW.
Center Square, the thing that I like best about Sarah Palin is that her mere existence causes all the liberals to make little poopies in their panties.
The left has been laid bare as a completely unhinged, irrational, infantile and hateful mob who collectively possess nary a scintilla of understanding about life between the coasts.
And what has incited that mass political seppuku?
http://tinyurl.com/yzj6tl3
Hahahahaha. God I love her.
Oh yeah, she’s also fucking hot.
The current progressive party is as putrid as any party representation in American history. Should not be long before their own children laid on the altar as a televised sacrifice to their god Baal Obama.
Obama and his wife take great joy in humiliating and insulting their own children as example for any Leftist cause – whether it be a public admission of poor grades or the insinuation their children are “fat”. They apparently are bullying parents, not fit raise even healthy, young ones.
Fortunately, a disabled child like Trig was born into a loving family, with a doting mother. He would have been condemned to death in the Amazon’s first lady’s womb.
No, I meant what policies of hers do you like.
Personally, I think as long as we see politics as sport between left and right, we’re doomed.
If your suggestion is to man up by paying more in taxes for those who have received no benefit from borrowing money, then I couldn’t disagree more. If you want to cut entitlements,, means test Medicare and audit why it has a 30% fraud, cut Medicaid, eliminate useless departments like the Dept. of Energy, Dept of Education, with substantial cuts to Homeland Security and the EPA, I’m all for it.
Our corporate tax structure is already the highest in the industrialized world. If you want to employ people and increase revenues, you would provide incentive to hire by cutting taxes – not raising them.
There is no doubt now for every $2 my family makes, $1 will go to a tax of some nature. I’m not financing another dime.
You always seem to score a troll who actually wants to debate with you.
What the fuck is that about?
When it comes to taxes, deficits and spending, there are two major economic realities that liberals are incapable of understanding.
The first is that tax revenues increase when you have a vibrant, growing economy. You get a vibrant, growing economy, not through government spending, but through private sector investment and job creation.
So I ask this simple question: which encourages private sector investment and job creation, higher taxes or lower taxes? If you think the answer is higher taxes you are an economic illiterate or you live in the fantasy land of unicorns and saved jobs.
The second issue that liberals foolishly misunderstand is that it is ridiculous spending, not insufficiently high taxes that drive deficits. Allow me to prove that to you:
http://tinyurl.com/yj5dwdz
My question for Center Square and other liberals is this:
What is the cause of the actual and projected record budget deficits under Obama? Are they due to the massive tax cuts that he’s proposed? Uh no they are not.
Also, were you alive in the 80s? Reagan cut taxes and tax revenues increased. However the deficits also increased. According to liberal thought, such that it is, that shouldn’t have occurred. Tax revenues went up so the deficits should have decreased, right?
What could possibly explain increasing deficits in the face of increasing tax revenues?
If you guess out-of-control spending you win a prize.
This stuff isn’t rocket science.
@ Tex Taylor: I appreciate your comment very much, because that is exactly what we are facing. Here is the problem though: The very few who are campaigning on such a message are either going to be defeated, or will be completely unable to effectuate such changes against the entrenched political interests.
That is exactly why I believe that only when we are forced to bear the cost of government directly can we generate enough election leverage to change the future.
If you are referring to the 46% of the households that, through EIC and other tax credits, end up paying NO income tax having to shoulder some of the burden, I don’t have a problem with that. I’d trim the marginal rates, flatten them out, and simultaneously reduce the credits and rebates.
You can fuck around with marginal rates all day, but when half the population isn’t paying income tax, you’re just setting yourself up for an entitlement culture, AND ensuring the top half do whatever they can to get out of shouldering the burden.
Progressive taxation rates are inherently unfair. And there’s a bias to greater numbers of people being exempted. If we let the bottom 20% of the population not pay, the next 5% will argue successfully that they shouldn’t have to pay either.
I don’t have a problem paying my taxes. I’m cool with paying my fair share (and being single, and not having house, I’ve ALWAYS paid taxes) but it pisses me off no end that others can weasel out.
Evan Bayh will not seek reelection
A smarter lib seeing the writing on the wall…his comments about a lack of bi-partisanship smack of Rutherford level selective outrage.
Evan, now you cretire undefeated. It was your turn to go supporting the Chump for President and you took the cowards way out by avoiding the upcoming thumping.
Well, bipartisanship means finding a way to help the Dems with their agenda, whether or not they are the majority, and I find your lack of sensitivity disturbing, Tex. Even though they are currently in the minority, their job is to help the clueless cadre rule. Obama said so.
BIC,
Fair point with groveling apologies.
I had completely forgotten the Dimocratic golden rule:
Do unto others as Obama chooses for you to do.
By the way, somehow my sentence from the previous post got truncated. That was supposed to read: Evan, now you can retire undefeated. Oops…
Oh that is rich.
Bush had the benefit of a GOP contingent who unquestionably did everything he asked of them. In the meantime, Obama has to contend with a divided Democratic faction who fuss and fight over every little detail.
How to properly deal with a corrupt and inept teacher’s union:
http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-unionized-rhode-island-teachers-refuse-to-work-25-minutes-more-per-day-so-town-fires-all-of-them-2010-2
Excellent…be sure to read of their sterling performance.
Too bad other districts don’t have that option, Tex.
Here BIC, and on topic of Ogremann in case you miss this.
Followed by:
http://www.billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/article_1074f29c-1aa0-11df-998a-001cc4c002e0.html
PLEASE!!! With that one comment your law degree should be revoked. How friggin’ ridiculous.
BiW you know full well the speech was delivered from prepared notes (as it should have been) and the cheat sheet on her hand was for the Q&A afterward. A Q&A I might add that was pre-screened. I might also add she wrote her core beliefs on her hand. WOW, they must really be core beliefs if she needs to peek at her hand to remember them.
The best thing you can do BiW is the following. When people say “Sarah Palin is a joke”, you should respond, “yeah, you’re right. Let’s find someone who can beat Obama and make us proud in January 2013.”
Anything short of that calls into question your credibility if not your sanity.
P.S. I’m particularly bothered by this because it is not your habit to distort the facts. Shame on you!
“R”,
Do you think for one moment people like BIC, myself, and the countless other Bible believing, Conservative leaning type you debate don’t understand your true motive? Even if by chance you don’t recognize them or at the very least won’t admit to them? Sarah Palin is reflective of that which you are diametrically opposed to; that crowd of superior intellect you believe you are a part. I have no doubt why you disdain her.
If you weren’t horrified of Palin’s ability to acquire a position of authority over you, if you did not honestly believe she was a major player, there would be no need for you to constantly be beating the drum for her destruction. You will stoop to any means to do so. If it were not so, Palin would be the occasional butt of jokes and not an obsession.
Though you’re a bit player, you are no different than the MSNBC folks you follow with the same intent, the same techniques of personal destruction and gotcha politics, the same pretentious nature, the cult like following you sometimes accuse Christians of belonging.
Like Voddie Baucham said of you, “Your weakness is you make yourself the measure of all things and believe in the sovereignty of the government.” You are a Roman citizen bowing at the altar of your Caesar. You deify Obama – we deify Christ. It separates us and defines our differences of anything of importance.
You don’t know this, but politic is the end all for you. It is your own brand of practicing a form of humanistic, pseudo religion – the essence of all things hoped for, doled out by what you perceive the best and brightest of those walking presently amongst us.
I don’t usually leave fan mail for commenters but The Center Square … you’re cool dude. Wish you had your own blog (do you?)
P.S. You know a “politician” is worthless when the number one reason her supporters give for supporting her is that she pisses off the opposition. Yeah, that’ll make her a GREAT POTUS.
Oh that is rich.
Bush had the benefit of a GOP contingent who unquestionably did everything he asked of them. In the meantime, Obama has to contend with a divided Democratic faction who fuss and fight over every little detail.
Rutherford, do you think that Congress, and the Senate specifically were designed to be “efficient”? Don’t look to the “Constitutional Scholar” in the Oval Office for an explaination of it, as he continually demonstrates an understanding tainted by his contempt for it.
“R”,
Math and statistical gathering apparently aren’t your bag either.
How many of those articles were published after September 2008, the first time you had ever heard of Sarah Palin, and how many total posts have you had since September 2008? Get back to me when you’ve done the math. You’ve hated Sarah Palin since the Chen days when you told us she hadn’t been properly “vetted”.
If I didn’t know you limited in travel and knowing your circumstances, I would guess you were masturbating outside her window since October 2008. I’ve never witnessed a grown man so smitten with a woman.
BiW I must say I’m disappointed. I’ve given you a full day to retract your misrepresentation that Sarah Palin delivered her Tea Party Convention speech from four lines written on her hand and you have not done so.
So much for honest debate.
P.S. No, the Senate is hardly efficient.
P.P.S. My apologies for enclosing both Tex’s comment and my answer in the same quote … I left an end-blockquote off in my haste.
Don’t trouble your pointy little head about it. After three much deserved days off, I was very busy at work, and I came home to deal (again) with a very sick young boy. Your comment got all the attention it deserved under the circumstances.
And don’t pretend to be interested in honest debate given the fact that the subject happens to be “Rutherfordnip” to you.
Would you like some source materials for your post on Christianity and its role in American History, or will you deal strictly with the legacy media’s take, and Americans for Freedom From Religion?
I didn’t ask you if it is efficient. I asked you if you believed it was designed to be efficient.
I’ll answer it for you. No. It was not. And your whining about the fractious Dems? Sad, but at least you aren’t taking the same tack as the Chicago Messiah™, who is still trying to blame the failure of his ill-considered agenda on the Republicans, who simply don’t have the numbers to stop anything a group of united Dems care to push through.
Bush had the benefit of a GOP contingent who unquestionably did everything he asked of them. In the meantime, Obama has to contend with a divided Democratic faction who fuss and fight over every little detail.
I don’t think that’s quite the way it was. Bush often got what he wanted from Congress, ’tis true. But that’s largely because Congress often got what they wanted from Bush.
I’m firmly convinced that one of the reasons Bush wasn’t a deficit hawk was because there was a tacit understanding that many Republicans in Congress would continue to support the War in Iraq (or at least keep their grumbling to a low level) provided they had a chance to ‘dip their beaks’ and bring home a lot of pork, which, in the aggregate, is bad, but for each member, had the benefit of being electorally attractive.