Well, then, let's just hand her the presidency right now

So a comedian tactlessly told a joke about "special needs children" at a Sarah Palin event, and the very same "lamestream media" against which Palin rails all the time is having the vapors. Well, then....someone did something that might offensive to Sarah Palin. Let's just call off the election and anoint her Queen-for-life, then. After all, it's the least we can do, just in case her feelings were hurt.



John Cole is right. We ARE the dumbest country in the world.

Around the Blogroll and Elsewhere - special Wussy-Ass Democrats and Shamelessly Racist Republicans edition

Here in the Land that We Wish Irene Had Forgotten, the cleanup continues, with gawkers and scavengers haunting the neighborhoods of those still putting their ruined belongings out by the curb and the usual post-disaster scams cropping up already. Meanwhile, another storm is starting to look like it's gong to have to do a 90-degree turn soon if it's going to miss us, my electrician is I'm sure going to charge a multi-thousand dollar premium to get a wired generator setup in here before she hits, and I'm starting to think all this is Mother Earth shaking us off like a dog with a really bad flea infestation -- our just reward for treating her so shabbily.



Today I was in Springfield, NJ and took a side trip to World of Tile, a place I've gone past many hundreds of times in my life, most of them as a child, returning from a trip out to Route 22 to Harmony House to buy records, and perhaps a side stop at the Dairy Queen for a Buster Bar. World of Tile is out on that stretch of Route 22 in Union County that is now a sea of strip malls and megastores like you see on every other highway in the universe, with a few remnants of my childhood and businesses that advertised on AM rock 'n' roll radio still standing, like the Flagship (which is now a P.C. Richard store) and, yes, World of Tile -- a store I hadn't even thought about until I read about it on Retro Renovation. So the extra black wall tiles that I had hoped to get in case I want to replace the American Standard Ming Green bathrub with a shower pan are $12 each, because they are the original 1950's tile, so it's better to just either leave the tub alone or use the Home Depot tiles. But in one of the "showrooms" in the back, it's a cornucopia of retro bathroom floor tile, even an almost exact duplicate of the hideous green quasi-checkerboard pattern that all 1950's bathrooms have. And they have it in many, many colors, at $12.99 a square foot (though why anyone would want to replace one of these floors with the same thing, I have no idea). I was, however, happy to see that they have white 1" hex tile sheets and also black hex tile so that it's possible to do borders and flowers and other cool things with hex tile, and I will definitely go see them again after we recover from certain Generator Sticker Shock, assuming you can get near the place, because now that it's been linked in the New York Times Style section, this quirky little retro store in Springfield is going to become the hottest thing around.



Anyway, it's Labor Day weekend in a country that has been doing whatever it can go eliminate the protections and benefits that 100 years of organized labor brought us. I'm sure that out in the flyover states, where they worship people like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin and Rick Perry, they're going to fly flags and grill hamburgers and "celebrate" Labor Day and shake the hands of their legislators who are gutting unions in a state of complete cluelessness as to what it really means.



So let's take a trip around the blogroll for some perspectives on some of the fresh horrors that this week in Year Three of the American Racial Freakout saw.



Karen Garcia gives a well-deserved smack to that shandeh far di goyim Eric Cantor.



How does this differ, really, from Obama's allegedly proposed "worker training program"?



If you were hit by Irene, maybe you'll start listening to Kindly Old Uncle Bustednuckles, finally.



Katherine Haenschen at Burnt Orange Report has the top Google searches for Rick Perry.



Cool historical Labor Day stuff at Ramona's Voices.



Driftglass: The Big Jobs Fuck.



You'll never hear about this on your local network news, but Oil is resurfing again not far from the location of the BP Macondo Well.



Gossip or truth? Go read this at Mudflats and decide. I'll tell you this much: whether Sarah Palin runs for president or not, she is definitely going to have a very hard time when the looks start to go -- no matter how much botox or surgery she has. Time bows to no surgeon. We're seeing it already. You could almost feel sorry for her if she wasn't such a bitch.



Helen Philpot, as always, cuts to the chase.



The Perry Platform is the new Shit My Dad Says.



And now I'm going to go pay some bills and wonder if I'll be able to get fresh corn tomorrow. After all, what's the point of making a quinoa salad with summer vegetables if I have to use frozen roasted corn from Trader Joe's?

The lunacy of Sarah Palin supporters

MSNBC's Martin Bashir fights back against the froth-mouthed Palinistas who are freaking out because he dared to point out that their anointed deity is making a shitload of money, and that maybe money, rather than a run for higher office, is the point:

There's nothing here that's wrong, or even insulting to the glass jaw of Evita Mooselini. Especially when her own husband admits she's in it for the money:

I don't object to anyone going for the money. Yesterday I shocked some co-workers by expressing some admiration for Jersey Shore's Snooki, because here's a young woman of no achievement, little grey matter in her cranium, she's 4'9" tall and chubby, and she's been able to parlay that into enough money so that she never has to work again. At a time when working Americans are seeing the lives they've been living pulled out from under them because the wealthiest corporate executives simply do not have enough money yet to fill the vacant black hole in their souls, it's hard to judge those who through skill, luck, or even just plain cynicism, have the opportunity to go for the lucre.



The problem isn't Sarah Palin deciding to go for the money. After all, with all the lawsuits against the Palins stemming from Evita's abuse of power while governor of Alaska, I'm sure they ARE deeply in debt -- or were, until Palin realized that in most cases, she can knock just about anyone, even fellow religious fanatic and model Republican Stepford wife Michele Bachmann, off-camera. The problem is that she's painting herself as some kind of public servant while she's doing it, and trying to dupe some of the very people from under whom the rug is being pulled, that she gives a shit about them.

So why is she on the cover of Newsweek?

Bill Maher had some choice words about Newsweek slapping Sarah Palin on their cover every couple of months because they think she sells magazines. I'm not sure why they do this. If they're selling male fantasy, why not just put a Victoria's Secret model up there and cut the crap already?

Palin feels like so much yesterday's news these days, now that there's a new grifter Reublican female presidential candidate in town, and yet the media machine still insists on extending her shelf life because it can't imagine a 2012 without Sarah Palin running for president.

Here's the problem, though. Newsweek costs about four bucks at the newsstand. For only another three bucks, you could have taken in a bargain matinee of Undefeated, the cinematic love letter to The Oldest High School Mean Girl In Captivity, and had free air conditioning in the bargain.

Except that Mrs. "I Can Win" can't, if only about 9,000 people showed up:

The film opened in 10 mid-sized cities Friday and grossed about $70,000 for the weekend for a per-screen average of about $5,000, the distributor reported. Based on average U.S. ticket prices, that works out to a very rough estimate of less than 9,000 people paying to see “The Undefeated” in its first weekend.
Read more:

The Politico article linked above tries mightily to make it seem like this is some rip-roaring success, but the reality is that a film about the Heather-In-Chief is going to do very well among the red-meat, Rich Lowry Starburst crowd, and nowhere else. Preaching to the converted always does well among the converted. For everyone else, we had her number a long time ago.

That Woman Is An Idiot

Last Friday, Randi Rhodes had a hysterically funny opening to her show about how much the incoherent babblings of Sarah Palin are reminiscent of the infamous Miss Teen South Carolina Map Fracas of 2007.

You decide:

It's a Sarah Palin world, we just are allowed to live in it...for now

And so it begins again, the media love affair with Sarah Palin. If you watched the news at all yesterday, you know that it was all Sarah Palin, all the time. Every news broadcast was turned into the Sarah Palin show. This morning it's the same thing -- the only story that the news broadcasts think is important is whether this aging prom queen is going to run for the presidency.

Has it ever occurred to these people that this love affair may just put this incurious, mean-spirited, idiotic sociopath into the White House?

You'd think that they'd have wised up by now, what with the 2008 debacle and the relentless self-promotion that she's done since. But no, all Sarah Palin has to do is put on yet more drag (this time a motorcycle helmet) and they're all ejaculating in their pinstripes. (And didn't we have enough from 2000-2008 of a moronic so-called "president" who liked to dress up in costumes?)

I realize that Tim Pawlenty is colorless. I realize that Mitt Romney is plastic. I realize that all the other would-be Republican nominees are batshit crazy (as if Palin is not?). But at what point does the giant maw of cable television news have to do something like actually INFORM, instead of just providing a platform for this blatant self-promoter?

Yesterday was Memorial Day. We still have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, though for what end is now a mystery. Thousands of families spent the day yesterday remembering their loved ones instead of grilling burgers, developing melanoma at the beach, or shopping at the mall. You'd think the media would pay attention to some of them. But no, all Sarah Palin has to do is flash her lovely capped teeth, and the media are right there bearing the Greatest Gift of All -- endless, nonstop attention.

You know, Sarah, you can take something for that

It happens more often once you get north of age 45. I take Tums unless it gets too bad; if it's really severe I take a Zantac 75.

If you think you've got fire in your belly now, wait till you start living on a diet of corn dogs, funnel cakes, and fried butter on the campaign trail.

No idiocy is too idiotic for these women to use to bash the Obamas

I've never had children, but I do know enough about the care and feeding of infants to know that at least in this country, when you have a baby, the choice is not between breastfeeding and a carton from Tuscan Farms, it's between breast milk and infant formula.

Infant formula is not cow's milk. It is not just like Ensure. It's designed to mimic breast milk in terms of nutrition and composition. To the extent that cow's milk is used in non-soy-based baby formula, it's the whey from the milk that's used. Now, I'm not here to debate the relative merits of breast milk and formula. My feeling is that if you have this free source of damn near perfect nutrition, why not use it, unless there's a compelling reason not to. But to each her own. Whatever works.

The National Institutes of Health recommendation for consumption of dairy products in infants under one year is:

# None for infants 0-3 months
# None for infants 4-5 months
# None for infants 6-8 months
# Small servings for infants 9-12 months

If you are giving a baby under eight months the contents of the Tuscan carton in a bottle instead of either breast milk or formula, you are not feeding that baby; instead you are spending too much time listening to Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, whose hatred for Michelle Obama knows no bounds:

Rep. Michele Bachmann, a potential Republican presidential candidate, is taking issue with Michelle Obama over the first lady's recent promotion of breast-feeding.

Speaking to conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham Tuesday, the Minnesota Republican said Obama's efforts to promote breast-feeding and the IRS's announcement that nursing supplies that aide in the practice can be deducted from tax returns amounts to a "new definition [of] the nanny state."

"This is very consistent with where the hard left is coming from," Bachmann told Ingraham. "For them, government is the answer to every problem."

"I've given birth to five babies and I breast fed every single one of these babies," she added. "To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump for my babies? You wanna talk about the nanny state, I think you just got a new definition."

The comments come on the heels of Obama's recent contention that breast-feeding can play a key role in reducing childhood obesity.

"We also want to focus on the important touch points in a child's life. And what we're learning now is that early intervention is key. Breastfeeding. Kids who are breastfed longer have a lower tendency to be obese," Obama told a group of reporters last week, according to Politics Daily.

"Breastfeeding is a very personal choice for every woman," Kristina Schake, a spokeswoman for Obama, later said. "We are trying to make it easier for those who choose to do it."

It's not the first time Obama has faced ire from the right when it comes to childhood nutrition. Sarah Palin told Ingraham last fall that "the first lady cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat."

What the fuck is this with these two dames, the Crazy Olympics? How is it a nanny state to allow a tax deduction for nursing supplies so that you can provide your child's caregiver with breast milk in bottles while you are at work? And as for Snowflake Snooki, here's what she said in her latest campaign (and don't kid yourself, it is a presidential campaign) on Long Island last week:

"It's no wonder Michelle Obama is telling everybody you need to breast feed your babies ... the price of milk is so high!"

This is the kind of off-the-cuff moronitude that reminds me of George H.W. Bush claiming that his dog Millie was smarter than these bozos. It's what you say when you have nothing intelligent to say -- and God knows Sarah Palin has nothing intelligent to say. Because in Sarah's World of Anger, Rage and Fear, it's a mother's God-given right to feed her infant cow's milk and chocolate chip cookies if she wants to, and that mean lady in the White House isn't going to stop her, nyah, nyah, nyah.

Except that before she began exhibiting a very bad case of Obama Derangement Syndrome, she was a promoter of breastfeeding:

WHEREAS, breastfeeding is recognized as an unequalled means of providing food for infants.

WHEREAS, throughout their lives, breastfeeding can offer children protection against serious health conditions, including obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Breastfeeding also saves lives by reducing the incidence of life-threatening cancers in women and preventing premature death in infants.

WHEREAS, breastfeeding forms the most basic bond between mother and baby and is a foundation for lifelong health and wellness.

WHEREAS, government and community organizations have a vested interest in protecting and promoting breastfeeding as a means of preventing infant malnutrition, morbidity, and mortality.

WHEREAS, during October, organizations throughout our state will promote the importance of breastfeeding. This year, in conjunction with World Breastfeeding Week - October 1 through October 7 - the State of Alaska will support networks that encourage and promote breastfeeding in all communities.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Sarah Palin, Governor of the State of Alaska, do hereby proclaim October 2007 as:

Breastfeeding Awareness Month in Alaska, and encourage all residents to recognize and support the important contributions breastfeeding makes in improving the quality of life for all Alaskans.

Jesus H. Christ. The stoopid....it BURNS.

Well, at least people will want to know what blood libel really means now

About a dozen years ago, I had a co-worker who was from Cuba. Al is a very nice, Catholic boy, but he didn't know jack about other religions. One day we were talking about religions, and Al said, "We have the 10 Commandments. What do Jews believe in?"

He was serious.

Of course my first thought was to tell him about how we slaughter Christian babies on Shabbos and use them to make flanken, but I thought snark would be lost on him. So I had to tell him about Who Had the Ten Commandments First.

It's still astonishing just how much ignorance people have about Jews, Jewish holidays, Jewish rituals. And it isn't just the orthodox practices of the Hasidim that are a mystery; the infamous hole-in-the-sheet nonsense is always asked when the conversation comes around to Judaism.

So in the spirit of "It's An Ill Wind That Blows No Good", I'm kind of glad that Snowflake Snooki, in her inimitable "IT'S ALL ABOUT ME!! ME!!! ME!!!!" fashion, brought the notion of blood libel to the foreground. Because on that day so long ago, if I had told Al that we eat Christian babies on shabbos, he might have believed it.

Here's why (for those who don't already know):

In 1144 CE, an unfounded rumor began in eastern England, that Jews had kidnapped a Christian child, tied him to a cross, stabbed his head to simulate Jesus' crown of thorns, killed him, drained his body completely of blood, and mixed the blood into matzos (unleavened bread) at time of Passover. The rumor was started by a former Jew, Theobald, who had become a Christian monk. He said that Jewish representatives gathered each year in Narbonne, France. They decided in which city a Christian child would be sacrificed.

The boy involved in the year 1144 hoax became known as St. William of Norwich. Many people made pilgrimages to his tomb and claimed that miracles had resulted from appeals to St. William. The myth shows a complete lack of understanding of mainline Judaism. Aside from the prohibition of killing innocent persons, the Torah specifically forbids the drinking or eating of any form of blood in any quantity. However, reality never has had much of an impact on blood libel myths. This rumor lasted for many centuries; even today it has not completely disappeared.

Check out a whole list of what Jews have endured over the centuries as a result of this "blood libel."

No one has said that Sarah Palin took a gun into her hands and shot over a dozen people. What people have said is that Sarah Palin uses the metaphor of guns and gunsights and other eliminationist rhetoric for political gain. You can argue whether she bears any responsibiility for the current climate of believing that those who disagree with the right-wing agenda should be "taken out" (Sharron Angle's expression). But that would be a difficult argument to make. What is easier to demonstrate is that for Sarah Palin, it's all about her. It's always about her.

Let's face it -- the decrying on the left (and among the more responsible, less-insane quarters of the right, including -- God help me -- Joe Scarborough) of this kind of rhetoric is something that Sarah Palin had better learn to accept if she is going to have a future on the public political stage. Because what I see in Sarah Palin is someone who talks a good game about grizzly bears and gun-totin', but say "Boo!" to her and she squeals like a stuck pig. And her disgusting self-serving performance today just further underlines her narcissism. Because there is a dead child and five other dead people whose families loved them. There are wounded people who aren't celebrities in the hospital, and there is a Jewish Congresswoman with a hole in her brain who is miraculously still alive, but has a long road ahead of her. But in Sarah Palin's world, they aren't the victim's of Saturday's crime. Only Sarah Palin is. Because for Sarah Palin, it's a Sarah Palin World. The rest of us just live in it. And die in it.

Because nothing projects "joy" like cholera and homelessness

Saint Sarah of the Cookies visits Haiti:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin began a tightly stage-managed visit to Haiti on Saturday in which she visited cholera clinics while avoiding crowds and the press.

The 2008 vice presidential candidate was a guest of Rev. Franklin Graham, whose aid group works in the impoverished country. Haiti is facing a brutal cholera epidemic while struggling with an electoral crisis and reconstruction from the January earthquake.

Palin, who traveled in part by helicopter, provided access on her tour solely to the U.S. cable network Fox News.

Graham's organization, Samaritan's Purse, refused to discuss Palin's itinerary with other media and asked Haitian and American reporters to leave its compounds, citing a "security lockdown."

"I've really enjoyed meeting this community. They are so full of joy," Palin was quoted as saying on the organization's website. "We are so fortunate in America, and we are responsible for helping those less fortunate."

Associated Press television journalists saw Palin talking with foreign aid workers. She wore cargo pants, a T-shirt and designer sunglasses on her first trip outside the United States since speaking to investors in Hong Kong last year. That speech was also closed to the media.

Samaritan's Purse posted pictures online of Palin touring a post-quake shelter, touching the hand of a Haitian child and laughing with Graham and Fox News host Greta van Susteren.

Palin's visit comes amid a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 2,000 people and sickened more than 96,000 others.

"So full of joy." Just like that nice Mr. Robinson who danced with Shirley Temple and then had to stay in the chauffeur's quarters at the Desert Inn instead of in the hotel itself.

How willfully ignorant and heartless do you have to be to visit an area stricken with cholera and describe the people that were allowed through your "tightly stage-managed" entourage to greet you as "joyful"?

Sarah Jones:

Shuffle shuffle Miss Daisy. Them people are always smiling and so good at basketball too. Oh, no, I kid. I kid. We’re lucky she didn’t accuse the Haitians of being limp, impotent and weak as is her wont (see Barbara Walters interview). But, bonus time, she did come bearing every socialist’s tool: a push up bra. Double points for morale boosting.

Good news is that Palin now says we are responsible for helping those less fortunate and this is a great turn around. Pretty soon she’s really gonna deserve at least a teabag’s worth of community organizing cred. It seems like just yesterday that Palin was saying they were supposed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps like Palin did, but without the government cheese and pork because, like, healthcare for everyone was a bad thing….

Since she’s only there for a day, and has no plans to get dirty helping out with actual work, bestowing the beauty of her visage upon the deprived and desperate Haitians is all we can expect from the goddess of charity.

Nothing says Presidential like waiting a year to show up in Haiti — a year spent trying to destroy your own country’s democratically elected president no less. But no worries, Palin is in Haiti now, getting her picture taken by Fox News to sell herself in 2012 as Someone Who Has Been to Other Countries, also, too. Now, the real question is will the prolific tweeter find time to at least tweet out a call to help the Haitians, or will the miser in her overwhelm any urge of Christmas spirit, knowing as any teabagger does that there’s only so much to go around and she’s still got loads of books to sell?

Maybe when someone suggested she visit Haiti she thought that a country with "Hate" in its [incorrect] pronunciation was right up her alley.

And just to finish off your weekend on just the right note of hopelessness, John Quiggin projects what a Palin presidency would look like.

(via)

I'm with TBogg on this one

It's now a Thanksgiving tradition, sort of like WFUV's annual noontime playing of Alice's Restaurant:

This is a holiday classic just like A Charlie Brown Christmas but with death and blood and a skinny white chocolate mocha from Starbucks. -- TBogg

And yeah, I think Reich is right on the money too.

Do you honestly think I'm going to watch "Sarah Palin's Alaska" when "Dexter" is on?

Yes, I know I have not one but two bigass DVRs in the house. But one is filling up rapidly with episodes of Levi Roots' Caribbean Food Made Easy, Spice Goddess, Futurama and movies like Coco Before Chanel and Young Victoria that Mr. Brilliant would rather have hot metal spikes shoved into his eyeballs than watch, and the other is almost full of Daily Show and Colbert Report reruns, Boardwalk Empire, concert programming from Palladia, and the aforementioned Dexter so Mr. B. can watch it when he gets home on Monday.

But seriously...I've just spent an entire weekend sitting in fromt of a computer getting a project ready for a review tomorrow, and I'm not about to spend time watching Sarah Palin turn the campaign finance system on its ear by getting PAID to do a one-hour presidential campaign commercial every week. Whatever happened to the days when candidates had to pay for their airtime? What's next -- Christine O'Donnell's Rehoboth Beach?

I have a day job that often takes up 60-80 hours a week of my time. Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon gets paid to watch this stuff. So I'll let her weigh in:

One telling scene shows Palin and members of her family fishing near a bear and two frolicking cubs. Cut to the Tea Party darling and her self-sufficiency speech. For months, Palin has referred to strong Republican female candidates as "mama grizzlies."

"I love watching these mama bears," Palin tells the TLC camera. "They've got a nature, yeah, that humankind could learn from. She's trying to show her cubs, 'Nobody's gonna do it for ya. You get out there and do it yourself, guys.'"

Translation: Stop relying on government.

That scene and others are sure to suggest to some viewers that the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee is positioning herself for a 2012 presidential run.

There are other messages that seem to conflict with those ambitions, though. Palin talks about her love of wild Alaska, offering in one well-known homily, "A poor day of fishing beats even a great day at work."

In a promo for the show with a montage of outdoor scenes, she says, "I'd rather be doing this than in some stuffy old political office" and "I'd rather be out here being free."

Then come the snippets that easily could fill in as campaign slogans, particularly with Palin's very political tweets, Facebook postings and other media forums. Her Alaska landscapes also loom larger than life.

"What all this suggests is that she's crafting her lifestyle and her biography as typifying a person who's independent, rugged, resilient, in touch with nature and has learned life lessons that she can bring into governance if she moves back into governance," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania communications professor who studies political rhetoric.

[snip]

If the series is about more than Palin's love for the state, it would be hard to overlook the irony of a former governor who abruptly resigned in July 2009 with 17 months left in her first term. Take the footage of Palin struggling to climb a steep rocky slope in Denali National Park.

"About halfway up the rock, I did not know if I was going to be able to finish the task," she tells the camera. "But I didn't want to quit. I didn't want to quit in front of other people."

That may be perhaps the only time in her life when Sarah Palin didn't want an audience. I'll give her this much, though -- the woman knows how to work the system to her own advantage. If only she were interested in using this shrewdness for the benefit of all instead of just her own ego and pocketbook, perhaps she might even be considered to have leadership ability.

Yeah, that'll work.

Imagine the shining country on a hill the U.S. will become under these few examples of Kevin Williamson's proposed Sarah Palin Administration:

Vice President of the United States
Mitt Romney
WHY: The strongest 2012 candidate right now is “Generic Republican,” and Mitt Romney is as close to a generic Republican as the world is apt to see: silver spoon, plain brown wrapper. He is the vanilla ice cream of American politics: nobody’s favorite, but nobody’s least favorite, either. Smart, decent, reliable. Good to have a guy around who knows how to read a balance sheet, and excellent to have one who has actually turned a profit as a profit-turning enterprise.

Secretary of State
John Bolton
WHY: Because he will strike fear into the hearts of our enemies. Our friends, too. Most awesome political mustache since Bismarck.

Secretary of the Treasury
Mitch Daniels
WHY: “The Knife” is the man you want standing athwart Treasury, yelling, Stop!

Secretary of Defense
David Petraeus
WHY: Somebody has to be good cop to Bolton’s bad cop. Also, General Petraeus has more credibility than just about anybody else on the scene. Unflappable.

[...]

Secretary of Agriculture
Pat Woertz
WHY: The Archer Daniels Midland CEO is steeped in the subtleties of the commodities markets and the real business of agriculture. Want to sell more stuff to China? How about we start with food? She’d be perfect, if we can afford her.

[...]

Secretary of Labor
Lincoln Diaz-Balart
WHY: Poetic to have Fidel Castro’s Republican nephew slugging it out with the labor unions that remain the last robust vestige of old-fashioned thug socialism in the United States.

[...]

Secretary of Health and Human Services
Bobby Jindal
WHY: Has actually fixed a health-care system. That’s saying something. Put him in charge of replacing Obamacare with a consumer-driven, market-based system.

[...]

Secretary of Homeland Security
Rudy Giuliani
WHY: Because we need some steel in our spine on everything from border-control to straightening out TSA. Also, why should Tina Fey dominate all the wig-and-dress action in a Palin administration? Also, Rudy owes the world an act of penance after failing to run for governor of New York, leaving the field to Carl Paladino.

You have to especially love the idea of John Bolton as Secretary of State. Because bullying worked so well when he was at the U.N.

More Cowbell

Needs more cowbell, please. And make it loud. Really loud. And often. Like constantly throughout the piece. Because really loud and annoying crap will be believed by SOMEONE if just loud enough and frequent enough:

In an interview taped last week for Newsmax.com, a conservative website, the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate said that she had been right in 2009 to accuse President Barack Obama of trying to set up "death panels" with his health care overhaul. But the legislation, according to PolitiFact.com, did no such thing. In fact, when Palin first made this charge, PolitiFact called it a "pants on fire" lie.

Palin, though, is utterly unrepentant. She boasted to Newsmax:

I was about laughed out of town for bringing to light what I called death panels because there's going to be faceless bureaucrats who will based on cost analysis and some subjective ideas on somebody's level of  productivity in life—somebody is going to call the shots as to whether your loved one will be able to receive healthcare or not: to me, death panels. I call it like I saw it, and people didn't like it.

The problem: what she saw was not there.

In the Newsmax interview, Palin echoes, almost word-for-word, her original accusation. In August 2009, she posted a Facebook note that decried the health care reform proposal:

And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Reviewing Palin's much-noticed claim, PolitiFact noted:

We agree with Palin that such a system would be evil. But it's definitely not what President Barack Obama or any other Democrat has proposed.

We have read all 1,000-plus pages of the Democratic bill and examined versions in various committees. There is no panel in any version of the health care bills in Congress that judges a person's "level of productivity in society" to determine whether they are "worthy" of health care.

Palin's claim sounds a little like another statement making the rounds, which says that health care reform would mandate counseling for seniors on how to end their lives sooner. We rated this claim Pants on Fire! The truth is that the health bill allows Medicare, for the first time, to pay for doctors' appointments for patients to discuss living wills and other end-of-life issues with their physicians. These types of appointments are completely optional, and AARP supports the measure.

Palin also may have also jumped to conclusions about the Obama administration's efforts to promote comparative effectiveness research. Such research has nothing to do with evaluating patients for "worthiness." Rather, comparative effectiveness research finds out which treatments work better than others.

In other words, no "death panels" and nothing like "death panels." Factcheck.org also pronounced Palin wrong on this.

In the past year, Palin has offered no proof to back up her "death panels" charge. Yet now she's not only doubling down on "death panels"; she's bragging about her gutsiness in calling out Obama. It's as if she never was refuted—or refudiated.

Palin's obsession with nonexistent death panels and how they would mandate the death of her poor, defenseless Downs Syndrome baby, makes me wonder if she's not perhaps expressing her own wish, rather than anything in, like actual policy.

Projection much, Sarah?

How sharper than a serpent's tooth....

From the Bite The Hand That Feeds You file: Joining Joe Miller in tapdancing around the question of Sarah Palin's presidential qualifications is onetime Satan-dabbler and Hari Krishna almost-was Christine O'Donnell:

Wilmington, Delaware (CNN) -- Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell granted me a 10-minute interview at her campaign headquarters on Thursday. Here are the highlights:

[snip]

Is Sarah Palin qualified to be president?: "Is she running for president? Again, hypothetical."

Does Palin give you advice?: "She gives me 'You go, girl' advice."

Did Palin really tell you to speak through Fox News?: "I heard her say something like that on 'O'Reilly.' If anybody knows about the politics of personal destruction, it's women candidates, women politicians like Sarah Palin."

Heh. I'm not sure she meant that last one the way it sounded.

And yet the media are still treating her as if she's the next president

If you needed further proof that the media obsession with Sarah Palin is less about her popularity and influence in the country and more about the tingling in male media personalities' dicks, here's a poll showing that Palin's favorable ratings seem to be limited to the extreme of Teabag Central:

Sarah Palin is viewed unfavorably by nearly 50 percent of Americans, a new CBS News poll finds, a significant challenge for her to overcome should she enter the 2012 presidential race.

Palin is viewed favorably by just 22 percent of Americans, according to the poll - including less than half (44 percent) of Republicans. Twenty-one percent of independents and 6 percent of Democrats view her favorably.

Forty-eight percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Palin. That includes 73 percent of Democrats, 44 percent of independents and 22 percent of Republicans.

Twenty-nine percent said they are undecided or not sure how they feel about Palin, including about one in three Republicans and independents.

Joans, Peggys, and Christine O'Donnell: Is this what feminism has come to?

I'd never been able to much get into Mad Men, but this season I started watching and found myself getting sucked into it. Part of it is that we're in familiar territory this season, since I was about the same age in 1964-65, when the season takes place, as Don's daughter Sally. But I think much of it is that this season is more about the women than about a bunch of Guys Behaving Badly.

Part of what's fascinating this season is watching the interplay between the women and the men, as the early glimmerings of change start to take hold. Joan, the whispery-voiced somewhat aging sexpot who's the office manager, seems stuck in the previous decade, while Peggy, the secretary-turned-copywriter, sees a glimpse of a new way of being at a boho party, starts to find her own voice and begins to assert herself. I'm not sure that Peggy actually existed in 1965; her rise seems somewhat unlikely until a couple of decades later. But in this week's episode, when Peggy fires a freelance copywriter whose filthy drawing about Joan truly IS beyond the pale, Girl Solidarity backfires right in Peggy's face:

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Peggy and Joan are in their own ways trying to find a way in a world that's still very much controlled by men and the rules (or lack of same) that men make.

The feminism for which Joan and Peggy are just a few years too early gave a lot of lop service to being about toughness. It had to. Look at the world that women who were trying to fight their way out of being baby-making appendages lived in. It's no wonder that the Rogers and the Dons and the Joeys of the world laughed at the women who dared to challenge the established order and called them ugly...and they still do.

The rise of Victim Feminists like Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell is perhaps a natural consequence of the fatal mistake that the 1960's feminists made -- of not realizing that "the system" that they felt enslaved them in the 1950's also enslaved men. As massive jerks as Don Draper and Roger Sterling and Henry Francis are on Mad Men, it's hard to argue that they're kings of the world. Roger and Henry have young pretty trophy wives, but they're still unhappy. Roger and Don are clearly alcoholics (though Don, being the show's protagonist, is starting to show signs of getting his shit together). These guys, like Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Revolutionary Road, have lives of mind-numbing sameness that were only marginally better than the stifling lives of 1950's housewives in the suburbs. EVERYONE was oppressed by the budding culture of consumerism that was given life after World War II. But the minute early feminism claimed the mantle of oppression, it lost any semblance to an empowerment movement and paved the way for Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell. That's why I was so disturbed last night to hear Howard Fineman opine that part of the reason for O'Donnell's victory last night was that Mike Castle, known in Delaware as a Really Nice Guy, hammered at O'Donnell too hard and that made women voters upset.

Of course Joan and Peggy don't know about feminism yet, but in the exchange in the elevator, Joan seems to be aware that in firing Joey, Peggy has succumbed to this kind of victimology. I don't know if pornographic drawings of the office manager were a commonplace pastime among the creative department in 1960's ad agencies, but I do know that when I was a secretary in an ad agency as late as 1980, I arrived every morning to find one of the bosses standing by the coffeemaker, mug in hand, waiting for me to make the coffee, and then expecting me to break into meetings any time his girlfriend was on the phone for him (but not if it was his wife). Peggy may think she's sending a message that this sort of behavior will no longer be tolerated as of today, but I suspect that the remaining assholes in SCDP's creative department are going to be testing their limits, asserting their dominance over Joan (who rightly knows that they see her as a "meaningless secretary" and treating Peggy like a "humorless bitch."

Fast-forward forty years and you have Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell, two mind-bogglingly stupid and unqualified women, wrapping themselves in the mantle of poor, put-upon fragile flowers being picked on by mean old men like Mike Castle and others who dare mention the obvious -- that if one is to participate in government, one is at least supposed to be coherent and not sound like the early boot on Survivor, kicked off for being useless in challenges AND around camp. Because for all that Sarah Palin talks about Mama Grizzlies, what stares us in the face is the smoking ruin of feminism -- and it looks a lot like corseted Victorians fanning themselves on fainting couches.

Sarah Palin came into the public eye with her guns and her talk about field dressing a moose and shooting wolves out of a helicopter and her aura of dominatrix. But it quickly became about the imagery of the soccer mom tied to her minivan, the Downs Syndrome mom, the poor widdew goilie being bullied by the "lamestream media." Any scrutiny of Sarah Palin was just mean old media men being mean to a girl. Palin appropriated the mantle of feminism as her own, but she's twisted it into a gargoyle of victimology. Palin feminism isn't about toughing it out in a man's world, and it isn't even about changing that man's world. It's about playing the victim card every time someone dares ask you to play on the same field as the guys. Christine O'Donnell has clearly studied her Sarah Palin very carefully. She looks like Palin (only without the psychopathic eyes), she dresses like Palin, and she won just like Palin -- by playing to victimhood. This is a woman who thinks masturbation is adultery, who checks the bushes outside her house for her political enemies, hasn't held a real job in years, pays her living expenses off her campaign donations, rails against people sucking at the government teat, but is running to collect a taxpayer-funded paycheck herself.

This is what feminism has come to? Last night in her victory speech, O'Donnell threw down the gauntlet when she talked about ordinary people being able to run for office without fear of "character assassination." This is a worthy goal regardless of party, but somehow I get the feeling that this goal is not going to apply to her Democratic opponent, who is a man and is no doubt already wondering how he's going to run against her when any criticism, no matter how minor, is going to be be met with cries of "character assassination." Because in the feminism of conservatism, women are just little fragile flowers, wilting under the slightest breeze.

Freedom....freedom...troops...military.... reform...independent...pioneering... blah...blah...blah...

If you really can't resist reading about Evita Mooselini's appearance in Wasilla on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Mudflats has the entire sorry tale, including a transcripts of Mean Grrrl's remarks. It is interesting indeed how only mentions the anniversary that's the reason why she's even there. Doesn't she understand that invoking September 11 over and over again is the key to the Republican arsenal?

Wow...she really IS just an aging high school mean girl

Michael Joseph Gross, who used to LIKE Sarah Palin, changed his mind after talking to people who have actually had dealings with her:

Ah, yes, THAT'LL solve the country's problems -- elect a cruel, hostile, vindictive, atttention-seeking, willfully ignorant pathologically lying Heather as president.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the 45th President of the United States

Better lay in a BIG supply of Orville Redenbacher and Jack Daniels, because I am telling you right now, that starting January 20, 2013, we are going to have four-to-eight years of listening to (or reading) incoherent stuff like this:

In the past there were many great union leaders who courageously defended the rights of workers. Unions were founded for all the right reasons! They were to give working men and women the clout to negotiate fairly with their employers and to fight for decent pay and working conditions. The unions of old would often end up fighting big government on behalf of the little guy. Today’s unions seem to be big government’s most enthusiastic supporters. It’s turned into some nonsense when union bosses back the government takeover of the car industry, and the mortgage industry, and the entire health care sector. And with the help of big government they aim to push through card check legislation that some characterize as being unfair to workers, and even un-American, because of its insistence on stripping workers of their right to privacy with a secret ballot. And that’s not just me voicing concern over card check – ask current union members how comfortable they are with what some of their leaders are saying about the legislation.

To my hardworking, patriotic brothers and sisters in the labor movement: you don’t have to put up with the scare tactics and the big government agenda of the union bosses. There is a different home for you: the commonsense conservative movement. It cares about the same things you and I care about: a government that doesn’t spend beyond its means, an economy focused on creating good jobs with good wages, and a leadership that is proud of America’s achievements and doesn’t go around apologizing to everyone for who we are.

My friends, that woman is an idiot. Compared to her, W. was Demosthenes.

I wonder if Chris Christie agrees with her about the virtues of unions.

(h/t)