Category: Sarah Palin

Let’s Laugh Now: Palin Edges Huckabee Among Mississippi Segregationists?

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While checking Memeorandum to keep track of the latest government shutdown developments Friday, I saw this headline at the liberal Talking Points Memo blog:

Nearly Half Of Mississippi Republicans
Think Interracial Marriage Should Be Illegal

Hmmmmm. So I went over to check the results at Public Policy Polling and found that, in a poll of “400 usual Mississippi Republican primary voters” — ostensibly intended to measure support for Gov. Haley Barbour’s GOP presidential bid, and Republican preferences for Barbour’s successor — liberal pollster Tom Jensen made this the 14th question in the survey:

Do you think interracial marriage should be legal or illegal?

Of course, no such legislative proposal is pending in Mississippi, but 46% of respondents answered, “illegal.” Frankly, I’d gone to the PPP site hoping to find out what percentage of Mississippi Democrats share that opinion, but Jensen has never asked Democrats any such question.

So we are left to laugh at the cross-tabs by which Jensen correlates (a) opposition to interracial marriage with (b) favorability of GOP 2012 contenders:

Haley Barbour . . . 79%
Sarah Palin . . . . . 74%
Mike Huckabee . . . 73%
Newt Gingrich . . . 56%
Mitt Romney . . . . 44%

Clearly, Romney’s got to do something to shore up his support among segregationists, or this could spell serious trouble for him in the crucial Mississippi presidential primary.

It Was Not Until I Went Looking for a Photo to Illustrate This Post …

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. . . that I stumbled onto this photo of Baldilocks, Darleen Click and Little Miss Attila:

You see, it was a little past 1 a.m. this morning, and I’d just gotten the URL for my column at The American Spectator, which was written Sunday afternoon. What I was looking for was a photo to illustrate an event that took place in October 2008. And when I did a Google image search on a couple of names, I was surprised to find myself directed to Darleen’s blog account of that event — an event which just so happened to be the lead of my Spectator column:

We could probably blame it all on Shelly Mandell. It was at a Sarah Palin campaign rally on October 4, 2008, that Mandell — president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) — endorsed the Republican and proclaimed to a cheering crowd: “America, this is what a feminist looks like!”
Mandell’s speech at the rally in Carson, California, produced an immediate and decisive backlash. The president of the California state NOW organization disavowed Mandell’s endorsement, saying that it was “apparently intended to mislead the public” because NOW had in fact endorsed the Democratic ticket. “John McCain and Sarah Palin oppose many of the rights and freedoms we have fought for throughout NOW’s 42 years,” California NOW president Patty Bellasalma said in an official statement, “and we will not be pushed back to the days of back-alley abortions, forced pregnancies, and pay discrimination without remedy.” Bellasalma’s rebuke to Mandell encapsulated what most conservatives would consider a workable definition of “feminist” — a liberal woman who habitually votes for Democrats. . . .

You can go read the whole thing. That Darleen Click had posted the only photo I could find online showing Mandell and Palin together — well, I suppose you could call that a “coincidence,” although “one hell of a kick in the head” would be an acceptable synonym.

Showing Any Public Figure Crucified Is As Tasteless As Burning The Qur’an

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by Smitty

An interesting discussion came up today regarding the idiot in Florida who burned the Qur’an, and the resulting deaths in MeS, just north of me by a couple of hours.
Burning anyone’s scripture is deplorable. Double deplorable for anyone nominally a follower of the Christ. Do you really think He’d do such? Really?
And so then you have horrid depictions of other sacred objects, connected to public figures.  The image is far enough out there that I don’t care to embed it in this blog post.
The discussion went in the direction of the Florida pastor being held responsible for the Afghan deaths. While not defending the goofball pastor in the slightest, I cited the 2005 Newseek story about Qur’an flushing, which fiction cost 17 Pakistani lives. The causality gets to be challenging. The Florida pastor and the LA artist both merit public derision for tastelessness. But is the threat of a Heckler’s Veto by citizens willing to undertake violence sufficient justification for government restrictions on freedom of speech?
My counterpart in the discussion felt that the Pastor had behaved immorally. Now, from a Christian standpoint, you can build that argument, but what about a secular legal vantage? Playing the slippery slope card, I told him that we could equally decide alcohol is immoral, and outlaw beer. He said “Fine by me, I hate beer.” Great, we can outlaw all alcoholic beverages, then.
The argument concludes around the notion that we all have things we don’t like, but which others cherish. The least-worst answers here are:

  • Never actively offend others’ faith.
  • Strive to minimize passive offense of others’ faith.
  • When someone of your own stripe runs amok, regulate them.
  • Ensure the regulation is kept at the social level; attempts at codifying good taste as secular law are doomed to failure.

And may God have mercy on the creep in LA who depicted Sarah Palin getting spiked. Not asking him to like the lady; just for a modicum of decency. As art, the style isn’t completely without merit. The subject matter is the problem. Also, I’d put forward the same objection if BHO was enjoying the nine inch nail. If the artist had gone that route, the media would probably call the artist a raaaaacist.

Ed Driscoll has more, as does M. Joseph Sheppard

Three Cheers For Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

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by Smitty

Via CNS News:

The chair of the U.S House Foreign Affairs Committee said Monday she will introduce legislation that makes U.S. funding for the United Nations contingent on reform. It also calls for the U.S. to withdraw from the Human Rights Council.

I understand what Humans are, and Rights. I also know what a Council is. But when you say ‘HRC’, the image formed is a relatively useless old bag of wind.
Later in the article. . .

The U.S. provides 22 percent of the U.N.’s regular operating budget. The administration’s 2011 budget request for contributions to the regular budget was $516.3 million, part of an overall $1.18 billion for the U.N. and affiliated agencies (the World Health Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency etc.)

It is likely that if the US wants the UN to be more than the low-point drain of the World Anti-Semitism System, we’re going to have to elect somebody with a clue, like The ‘Stache, or Sarah ‘Headsploder’*, or maybe Tim Pawlenty.

*I was eating breakfast the other morning, and some civilians were at the next table. A guy facing me says ‘Sarah Palin’, and the grey-haired bint with her back to me proceeded to vent her spleen. “I hate that woman. She’s so divisive. She’s got a disabled child and she’s running around the world. . .”
I had to move to another table. It would have been equally offensive to have heard such a diatribe about, say, President Obama. Only, like the Israelis, it’s OK to blast Sarah anytime, anyplace.

Does Mitt Romney Agree With Bill Maher?

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In case you missed it, hate-filled HBO “star” Bill Maher one-upped his own most tasteless anti-Palin slurs:

Question: Has Mitt Romney ever spoken out forcefully in Gov. Palin’s defense? Because some people have noticed the crickets chirping:

Joseph Fein, a party insider from the Los Angeles area, said some people feel they can’t trust Romney.
“Where was he when Michael Steele was being attacked?” Fein said. “Where was he when Sarah Palin was attacked? Romney not standing up was noticed.”

That’s from a Politico story about the notable paucity of 2012 contenders at the California GOP convention, and that quote is from our buddy at the Valley of the Shadow blog, who covered the convention all weekend.

Media Decides to Be the Decider

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So, after a couple hours offline, I return to the computer, check Memorandum, and see headlines like these:

What’s going on here is that (a) the liberal media are once again trying to tell the Republican Party what to do, and (b) some Republicans — including a celebrity millionaire trying to promote his reality-TV career — are playing along with this game.

As a conservative, being able to think clearly about politics requires an enormous effort to see through the layers of tendentious bovine excrement smeared across the public mind. Understand, for example:

  • Members of Congress are fully authorized to vote their consciences without regard for how their votes would be portrayed by a hostile press.
  • When a reporter asks a question, “no comment” is an acceptable response.
  • Anonymous “insiders” are a dime a dozen in politics, and every time you see an anonymous source quoted in a story, you have every right to ask yourself, “What’s his agenda? What’s in it for him? Whose ox is this anonymous source trying to gore?”
  • Polls taken many months in advance of an election are a dubious predictor of the actual result, otherwise Charlie Crist would be a Republican senator and Martha Coakley would be a Democratic senator.

I’m not saying that people should ignore the news. I’m saying that people need to keep in mind that the media have their own agendas ( including trying to gin up readership and TV viewership) and that this imposes on news-consumers the burden of ignoring the hype and spin to find the actual facts buried beneath the bovine excrement.

And Republicans who try to advance their own narrow interests by playing along with the liberal media’s game — to the general detriment of the conservative cause — do not deserve admiration as “leaders.”

Cubachi Assesses Sarah Palin’s Trip To Israel As A ‘Run’ Indication

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by Smitty

So what do I make of this visit? It’s a sign that she is running for 2012, and that she wants to reaffirm her commitment to Israel. It’s nice to see that we have some political leaders that recognize the importance of Israel. A very nice contrast to the current Commander-in-Chief.

My points are:

  • She’s not not thinking about a run.
  • The Lefty head ‘splosions are already at critical mass. Very critical. Yet so very, very entertaining.
  • I hope any final announcement pertaining to 2012 comes at the last possible moment. Suspense is its own pleasure.
  • Getting a President with some principles is the crucial thing about 2012. Whether that principled public servant is Sarah or not is simply less important.
  • As noted elsewhere, I’m arriving at the suspicion that the ‘bad cop’ negative feedback from the Pundit Priesthood (Will, Krauthammer, Brooks, &c) is as much a reverse psychology play as anything.
  • Her ongoing non-commitment to campaign orthodoxy is curious. I’ve bought both her books, but hope that she really throws down the gauntlet in the form of a comprehensive, well-founded plan to cure the Progressive disease and restore fiscal sanity. Rep. Paul Ryan, the legislative equivalent of John the Baptist, has a fine (and unique) going-in position.