Peggy Noonan, who literally called bullshit on McCain for choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate right before The Speech, is now a convert. Why? Palin put Noonan in danger of soiling her granny panties in the same way St. Ronnie did a couple of decades back: Palin is just so gosh darned American:
Much has been said about her speech, but a few points. “The difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick” is pure American and goes straight into Bartlett’s. This is the authentic sound of the American mama, of every mother you know at school who joins the board, reads the books, heads the committee, and gets the show on the road. These women make large portions of America work.
She has the power of the normal. There is something so normal about her, so “You’ve met this person before and you like her.”
Speak for yourself, Pegs. I have met this woman before, but I don’t like her. She’s not the one who reads the books – she’s the one who tries to get them banned, or, failing that, tries to shit-can the librarian who won’t knuckle under.
She’s one of the many power-mad mombies who elbow their way to the top of the trash heap that is most small-town PTA organizations and then go on to intimidate city councils and run roughshod over school boards in an eternal quest to stamp communities with their particular brand of morality.
She’s the braying jackass who insists on giving Genesis equal time with Charles Darwin in biology class and wants to make sure no 3rd grader is ever corrupted by Heather and Her Two Mommies and that no middle-school student takes in the subversive message of The Catcher in the Rye. She’s Beulah from Field of Dreams:
BEULAH: Your husband plowed under his corn and built a baseball field. The weirdo.
ANNIE: At least he is not a book-burner, you Nazi cow.
BEULAH: At least I’m not married to the biggest horse’s ass in three counties.
ANNIE: All right, Beulah, do you want to step outside?
BEULAH: Fine!
ANNIE: All right, I’ve got a better idea. Let’s take a vote. Who’s for Eva Braun? Who wants to burn books? Who wants to spit on the Constitution of the United States of America? Anybody? All right. Now, who’s for the Bill of Rights? Who thinks freedom is a pretty darn good thing? Come on! Let’s see those hands! Who thinks we have to stand up to the kind of censorship they had under Stalin? All right. There you go. America, I love you. I’m proud of you.
Yeah, I’m in the PTA, and I know the Beulah-Palin type alright. True story: each year, my kid’s elementary school takes a yearbook photo in which all of the kids come together on a field wearing shirts of some pre-determined color to form a message or picture, which is photographed from high atop the school. One year it was an American flag (my kid was part of a red stripe). One year it was the school’s initials.
And one year – about three years ago—the principal proposed that the kids form a peace sign. This came up during a PTA meeting, and our own contingent of Sarah Palins flipped out. A slap in the face to our troops! A political message against our glorious leader, George W. Bush! A capitulation to Osama bin Laden himself! It was unbelievable.
The poor principal, backed up by a few moms (including yours truly), tried to explain that peace wasn’t exactly a controversial subject. But the Palins and Beulahs wouldn’t budge. Rather than sit in undersized elementary school cafeteria chairs and argue about it all night, the principal and teachers proposed that the students form the school mascot – a dolphin – instead. In that year’s photo, it looks like an amoeba.
So yeah, I know Palin, alright. And the thought of her being an erratic 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency scares the living shit out of me.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman is among several national security experts helping brief Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on foreign policy issues as she prepares to hit the campaign trail while cramming for a debate with her Democratic opponent, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), in less than a month, according to officials from Sen. John McCain’s campaign.
Lieberman, who was the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee but is now an independent, has helped introduce Palin to officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the leading pro-Israel lobby. In a meeting Tuesday, the day before she delivered her prime-time address at the Republican National Convention here, Palin assured the group of her strong support for Israel, of her desire to see the United States move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and of her opposition to Iran’s aspirations to become a nuclear power, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
The exchange offered a brief glimpse into the views of the one-term governor of Alaska, who has virtually no record on foreign policy and has not traveled extensively outside the United States. As governor, she made two foreign trips last summer, one of which was to Canada. On the second, sponsored by the Pentagon, she traveled to Kuwait and Germany—and made a short stop at a “military outpost” in Iraq—to visit members of the Alaska National Guard deployed there, according to Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella. Comella added that Palin may have visited Mexico on a personal trip.
Campaign officials and McCain foreign policy advisers called Palin a quick study who has sound judgment that will serve her in good stead on national security issues. But privately, some in the GOP foreign policy establishment voiced concern that McCain has turned to a relative neophyte on national security matters at a time when the United States is facing challenges ranging from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the nuclear activities of Iran and North Korea.
“Her speech wowed the pro-family and anti-tax groups, but can she handle complex foreign and defense policy decision-making?” asked one leading conservative foreign policy thinker who is concerned. He spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to be publicly critical of the pick.
Democrats offered a more scathing assessment. “As much as Joe Lieberman might be trying to give her an information dump on what he knows, he can’t infuse her with the expertise that she’s sorely lacking,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) said in an interview, adding that vice presidents often serve as foreign emissaries during international crises. “The problem with her lack of foreign policy experience is she’s running with a man who’s 72 years old and, God forbid something happens to him, it’s frightening because this is someone who would have the tiller of America’s foreign policy.”
Noting that the vice president sits on the National Security Council, Wasserman Schultz added: “What advice could Palin possibly offer McCain? There might as well be an empty seat at the table.”
John McCain / Rosetta Stone ‘08 ... Cramming Our Way Into the 21st Century.
I won’t be watching it live. I don’t even know if I’m going to record it. Here’s a thread for you poor bastards who are going to suffer through the hell that is a John McCain speech. You can also discuss tonight’s Obama interview on The O’Loofah Factor. I will watch that, but not until after I’ve enjoyed a meal at my favorite local dining establishment.
UPDATE: Barack Obama on The O’Reilly Factor tonight (8PM ET). I caught his quick press conference after he completed taping the show and he was on fire, so I think it should be good. I’ll post a video of the presser if I can find a video of it.
Here you go…
Video (and related article) here if the embed doesn’t work for you.
I don’t know if we were the first blog to compare Sarah Palin to Marge Gunderson, but we rolled with it right after her selection was announced (see “new category” update). Glad to see it’s catching on. This is brilliant:
Sarah “Lipstick on a Prig” Palin, who doesn’t think global warming is manmade and, apparently, wants to drill the fuck out of every square inch of America, tossed this little hunk o’ red meat out to the crowd last night:
What does [Barack Obama] actually seek to accomplish, after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet?
A 19-square-mile (50 kilometers) ice shelf attached to an island in Canada’s northern arctic for thousands of years has broken from land, another sign of the effect of global warming, scientists said.
Nearly the size of Manhattan, the 4,500-year-old Markham Ice Shelf separated from Ellesmere Island in early August and is now floating in the Arctic Ocean, said Luke Copeland, director of the Laboratory for Cryospheric Research at the University of Ottawa.
Copeland and fellow researchers were watching the ice shelf, which is about as tall as a 10-story building, using satellite imagery when cloud cover blocked the region for five days. When visibility returned, the mass was gone
Sarah Palin, Mother Earth hates the living piss out of you.
Let’s be honest about what we saw: a woman who was thrust into the presidential race in a farce worthy of Preston Sturges, reciting a speech written by Matthew Scully, faking as hard as she could fake, and lying as fast as she could lie.
Starting tomorrow, the Democrats can and must come back hard on this issue of “reform”. McCain/Palin reform is just ... well, there’s nothing. It’s an overused phrase but it is all rhetoric. Not only has their party been in power for 8 years. But every policy pushed by John McCain is the one embraced by George Bush. Economic policy, tax policy, Iraq policy, social issues, Bush style politicking, everything. I’m not sure how many people agree with me. But I think the rhetorical ‘reform’ of McCain/Palin is like a big, imposing and very brittle vase. A few good hits and it’ll break apart in a thousand pieces.
They’ve been in power for eight years. They support all of Bush’s policies. And they say they’re bringing reform? Smack it with ridicule and an undertone of contempt and it will fall right apart.
No wonder they’re cool with eighty-seven year-old former prisoner of war John McCain as President for the brief fourteen moths he has left on God’s Green Earth before a renegade freckle goes Judas on him and drops him like a fainting goat that will never ever get up. He was, like, the youngest person there, besides that snowbilly family they found wandering around the Mall of America looking for the fried sugar stand.
Sarah Palin was smug, mean-spirited, and small-town nasty which should help shore up the evangelical base. Like Maud Flanders, those trips to Bible camp to learn to be more judgmental have really paid off ....
This may sound sexist, but there’s something about Palin that reminds me of the woman that used to come to our high school home ec class and do product demonstrations.
Judging a speech like this, it’s probably best to consider the goals and the audience. Going into the speech, I expected Palin to try to connect to a mainstream audience, demonstrating competence, credibility, and readiness. She already enjoys the support of the GOP base; Palin has to work on convincing everyone else.
And yet, she (or, more accurately, the McCain campaign aides who wrote her speech) went in a different direction, aiming to shore up the party’s base even more. Instead of seriousness, Palin went for biting and sarcastic partisanship. Instead of presenting herself as a trustworthy leader, Palin proved herself an attack-dog ideologue. Instead of answering questions about readiness, she answered questions about who she hates and how much. Palin not only steered clear of the concerns of swing voters, she practically thumbed her nose at them.
As Sarah Palin demonstrated she’s very good at reading other people’s speeches once the proper pronouns are cut and pasted. Now, the Republicans put forth the kind of campaign they will run.
It is, to be fair, one based on an ideal.
That Americans are stupid, base, resentful and bigoted. That if one can scream and bloviate loudly enough you can keep your Party in power even when it is about as popular as chlamydia. How Mavericky!
GOP: Is this the hill you want to die on? You do realize, I hope, that a lot of people who saw last night’s speeches, those who aren’t already predisposed to vote for McCain, will hear you slag community organizers and think, “Gosh, what a bunch of fucking assholes.”
Governor Palin’s address tonight was basically Reba McEntire doing a one-woman show on the life of Phyllis Schlafly. In turning the McCain campaign toward the traditional tactics of Republican politics—that is, fear, contempt, and patriotism—his advisors have also returned the Vice-Presidential role to that of attacker, who does the knife work so the Presidential candidate can remain above it all. But where Dole and Cheney, for example, looked the part, the novelty here was to have it performed by a young woman who dispensed her put-downs with the cheery sangfroid of a particularly vicious sewing-circle lady. She could afford, then, to be casual in dispensing her assaults, not only because the crowd had built up a froth of hatred against her enemies (whom, from the frequency and vigor of their booing, they must imagine to be everyone except themselves), but also because a large part of the audience probably thought it was not vicious, but cute. She’s certainly easier to take than the fist-clenching Giuliani, who may have been so warmly applauded in part for giving the delegates a good demonstration of how right they were not to have chosen him.
I think some of you are underestimating the percentage of voters for whom Sarah Palin lacks the standing to make this critique of Barack Obama. To many voters, she is either entirely unknown, or is known as an US Weekly caricature of a woman who eats mooseburgers and has a pregnant daughter. To change someone’s opinion, you have to do one of two things. Either, you have to be a trusted voice of authority, or you have to persuade them. Palin is not a trusted voice of authority—she’s much too new. But neither was this a persuasive speech. It was staccato, insistent, a little corny. It preached to the proverbial choir. It was also, as one of my commentors astutely noted, a speech written by a man and for a man, but delivered by a woman, which produces a certain amount of cognitive dissonance.
If you see any other good ones, drop a link in the comments (but please use the second button from the right above the comments box to highlight words and make them links). Oh, and TPM uploaded a video of the Ben Stein diss on Palin that we highlighted yesterday. You can view it here.
Brian Williams read this passage on MSNBC following Sarah Palin’s “Petty Woman” speech and normally I don’t pay much attention to Joe Klein because his beard creeps me out, but this was spot on:
There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is “a task from God.” The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.
After tonight’s towel-snapping speech Palin is fair game going forward and I think we can also throw away the “Biden has to be nice to her during the debate” meme. Pat Buchanan, after gushing over her on MSNBC, said they have to keep her away from the press (read: avoid tough questions) and just let her give speeches and raise money. So I guess she’s all prattle, no battle. Let’s see how she handles herself down in the trenches. As I said before, she’s not in Alaska anymore.
Ouch. Former Nixon speechwriter, economist, game show host and arch conservative Ben Stein was just interviewed by CNN’s Soledad O’Brien about Sarah Palin and he was somewhat complimentary at first, but when talk switched to the economy things turned sour fast. Here’s my rough transcript:
I don’t think she’s said a word in her life about the national economy, which contributes to making this one of the oddest choices in the history of presidential politics. I think this may go down as the most peculiar vice presidential choice there’s ever been.
They were selling themselves as the keen (?) ticket of experience. That’s out the window. They were selling themselves as the ticket of steady habits. That’s out the window. They were selling them as the ticket of people who are ready to deal with America in a foreign policy crisis. That’s out the window. What we have now is back to what you might call fundamentalist, born-again, backwoods values of the United States of America. That’s fine. I love those values. I’m all for them. I believe in intelligent design, which I’m probably the only person to ever be on CNN who believes in that. But let us be fair about this, she’s a very different person from what John McCain was advertising himself as and in terms of the economy, as far as I know, she has absolutely zero background in it. That’s fine. Neither did John F. Kennedy, but somebody’s got to get in there and fill her in on it really quick.
Soledad then asked Stein if that was “doable.” He said it was but that it was “a lot to learn” and that it would require “night and day” work. And then he added:
Alaska delegates were wearing plastic hard hats that said, “Drill Here. Pay Less.” They sported reflective construction vests with photos of caribou grazing at the Prudhoe Bay oil fields on the back
Gov. Sarah Palin wants a state board to review the circumstances surrounding the dismissal of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan—taking the unusual step of making an ethics complaint against herself. [...]
“It appears that the Governor has filed an ethics complaint against herself. ... This is very unusual because ethics complaints typically are filed against others,” [Tom Daniel, an Anchorage labor and employment lawyer,] wrote in an e-mail responding to a Daily News query.
BTW, don’t miss watching the video of Palin speaking at her old Wasilla church in June that Betty linked to in her earlier post. Sarah Palin makes Dubya look like Richard Dawkins. Sweet jeebus. (Videos here or here)
Jews for Jesus, one of those “grab the pamphlet and giggle” operations, has been a running joke of the subway system here in New York City for decades now. I’ll give you one guess who was absorbing their bullshit two weeks ago…
[...] [Sarah] Palin’s church, the Wasilla Bible Church, gave its pulpit over to a figure viewed with deep hostility by many Jewish organizations: David Brickner, the founder of Jews for Jesus.
Palin’s pastor, Larry Kroon, introduced Brickner on Aug. 17, according to a transcript of the sermon on the church’s website.
“He’s a leader of Jews for Jesus, a ministry that is out on the leading edge in a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism,” Kroon said.
Brickner then explained that Jesus and his disciples were themselves Jewish.
“The Jewish community, in particular, has a difficult time understanding this reality,” he said.
Brickner’s mission has drawn wide criticism from the organized Jewish community, and the Anti-Defamation League accused them in a report of “targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception.”
Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God’s “judgment of unbelief” of Jews who haven’t embraced Christianity.
“Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It’s very real. When [Brickner’s son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can’t miss it.”
Palin was in church that day, Kroon said, though he cautioned against attributing Brickner’s views to her.
As much as I hated the endless weeks of dog-whistling the media was doing about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, it definitely opened Sarah Palin up to this kinda scrutiny. It’s going to be a goshdarn joy to watch the same people who howled “how could Obama go to that church for twenty years?” try to dig there way out of this Pile O’ Palin. In addition, I can’t wait for Todd Palin having to prove that he’s proud of America even though he wanted to secede from it.
This really couldn’t have been scripted any better.
