"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
by Smitty
A Sarah Palin quote, and Dan’s reaction:
This weekend, it’s Nashville, but in March, I’ll head to Searchlight, Nev., for the kickoff rally at the Tea Party Express III. In April, I’ll be in Boston for a Tea Party gathering there. Across the country, tea-partiers will be sharing our vision for America’s future, a vision that promotes common sense solutions to out-of-control spending and an out-of-touch political establishment. Continue reading Accusations of Coyness from Dan Riehl →
by Smitty
Below is a sampling of the speech. Themes included Scott Brown as a Tea Party signal, the need for common-sense values, questions on national security and stimulus money. Broken promises.
I thought it a solid effort. The critics are going to be all over the shrill voice, in their own shrill tones. Continue reading Live Blogging Gov. Palin at Tea Party Convention →
“Anything done by any Republican is a scandal, if I decide it is, because being a Republican is such an inherently shady choice to begin with, you just know they must be up to shenanigans.”
Lefty journalists have operated by this principle for years now: “Hey, look, Joe Congressman (R-Somewhere) is on the banking committee and accepted X-thousand dollars in campaign contributions from — wait for it — bankers! Assign our Investigative Unit to this story immediately. We’ll do a five-part Special Series and win a Pulitzer. This could be bigger than Watergate!”
Meanwhile, Chris Dodd is whoring himself out to Countrywide and nobody really seems to notice. Can’t make an A1 headline out of that story, because front-page news about a Democratic scandal might lead to the election of (gasp) a Republican. Which brings us to the topic of the latest Olbermann rant: Sarah Palin acting as a distributor for her own book and perhaps making a buck or two in the process:
Olbermann decides to take a dig at Hot Air en route to suggesting that it’s somehow sinister and unethical — perhaps even felonious — for Sarah Palin to buy discounted copies of her own book and then resell them.
Arrest me, too, then. I’ve resold a few dozen books that way. Demand for Palin’s book is somewhat greater than demand for Donkey Cons, so that she’s ordering thousands rather than dozens, but so what? Lots of authors act as vendors of their own books on a smaller scale, and the fact that Palin’s book is a runaway bestseller is the only reason anybody notices. (Hint: If you click that Donkey Cons link, it takes you to my Amazon Associates page, and I collect a few cents for every book I sell. The shameful scandal of it all!)
Olbermann? He’s less popular than syphilis. And speaking of social diseases, Andrew Sullivan is operating by the Olbermann Rule when he pursues the paranoid certainty that, whenever a famous Republican woman has a baby, there must be a smoking gun somewhere.
Just when you think Andrew Sullivan can’t possibly go further off the deep end, he manages to surprise you. When someone put this on Twitter — “Andrew Sullivan hits new low in attacking Palin” — I thought they were joking. Surely his new low couldn’t actually be lower than his old low? Foolish naivete!
At what point does Andrew Sullivan’s derangement over Sarah Palin and his bizarre conspiracy theories about how her son was really birthed by her daughter become an issue for an otherwise respectable publication such as The Atlantic? If his employers don’t take action over this blog post of his, then we’re totally through the looking glass.
UPDATE: Best Ace-on-Sully beatdown evah? It’s like Sonny Corleone on Carlo . . . except in this case Carlo’s an AIDS-infected dopehead foreigner who should be deported immediately.
UPDATE II: Almost forgot there’s a Facebook group:
Concerned Patriotic Americans Committee to Deport Andrew Sullivan
Retailing for $8.99, the 100-page glossy magazine, titled “Sarah Palin: Faith, Family, Freedom,” hit newsstands in mid-January and was jointly published by a fashion-publishing subsidiary of international marketing firm IMG and Imagine That Publishing. It will remain on sale through April 30.
The best parts of Sarah’s new magazine? Low-fat moose-meat recipes and a medical-advice column by Andrew Sullivan.
Maybe she did this just to make Allahpundit’s head explode:
National political icon and conservative leader Sarah Palin has endorsed Dr. Rand Paul in his bid for United States Senate from Kentucky. The Paul campaign has received a generous donation from Governor Palin’s PAC.
Palinistas + Paulistas = Wow. The Kentucky primary is extremely bitter (53 comments on that thread) and the last thing I expected was for Palin to get herself involved in that feud.
UPDATE: Scott Brady at Conservatives for Palin says, “Rand Paul has solid conservative positions on the major issues,” and quotes more from the Paul campaign’s press release:
Dr. Paul was recently identified as one of the five most important candidates to support by Dick Armey, Freedom Works and the National Tea Party Movement. Dr. Paul has also received endorsements from Concerned Women for America, Gun Owners of America, Steve Forbes and RedState.com.
Recent independent polls show Rand holding a double digit lead in the Republican primary and large leads over either Democratic opponent. Rand Paul has raised over $1.8 million dollars, including over $650,000 in the fourth quarter of 2009.
These are bandwagon arguments and I don’t suspect they will placate Kentucky conservative Lisa Graas and other such supporters of Bill Johnson, to say nothing of Trey Grayson’s supporters. Meanwhile, it seems Allahpundit has been stunned into silence.
Tommy at Conservatives For Palin has the details. Perhaps the most encouraging bits are that the PAC received contributions from 14,000 individuals:
“Dollars were raised primarily on the Internet and small fundraisers; no direct mail.”
Having a large number of small donors is very important to grassroots activism. Those $10 and $20 contributions have a way of adding up over time.
Which is my cue to ask, have you hit the tip jar lately?
Just sayin’ . . .
Sarah Palin nailed the National Organization of Women for trying to prevent CBS from airing a pro-life ad during the Super Bowl:
“My message to these groups who are inexplicably offended by a pro-woman, pro-child, pro-life message airing during the Super Bowl: please concentrate on empowering women, help with efforts to prevent unexpected pregnancies, stay consistent with your message that for too long women have been made to feel like sex objects in our ‘modern’ culture and that we can expect better in 2010.”
The man-haters whine that they’ve been misunderstood:
NOW President Terry O’Neill said that Palin is “missing our point.”
“The goal of the Focus on the Family ad is not to empower women. It’s to create a climate in which Roe v. Wade can be overturned,” O’Neill said. “There are always going to be women who need abortions. In this country, one in three women will have an abortion.”
“Focus on the Family has cynically set it up so they can say anyone who disagrees with airing this ad is disrespecting one woman and her choice. NOW respects every woman’s right to plan her own family and insists our laws do the same,” said O’Neill.
Feminists against cynical manipulation of issues? That would be something new.
The ad in question shows Tim Tebow and his mother discussing the medical difficulties of her pregnancy, during which she was urged to abort the future University of Florida quarterback — a decision that would have spared her child the unbearable pain of losing the SEC title to Alabama.
OK, you knew I had to take that shot at Tebow. (Roll Tide!) But seriously, while the man-haters at NOW tried to prevent the Tebow ad from being shown during the Super Bowl, they haven’t mounted a similar protest against Budweiser ads featuring scantily-clad babes. Chris Stirewalt of the Washington Examiner explains:
In terms of Super Bowl ads, “sexist” is code for “anti-abortion.” But “sexist” does not apply to parading women around in their underpants to sell beer.
Got it?
Yeah, but real men don’t need women parading around in underpants to sell them beer. NTTAWWT.
UPDATE: Liberals have developed a brilliant new communication strategy: Twitter trolls. They lurk on the #TCOT (Top Conservatives On Twitter) feed, then post derogatory responses. After I Tweeted this post, one such creature responded by calling me “Bullshit artist” and “Douchebag,” before Tweeting this:
I triple dog dare you to print my comment on your blog, Mr. Dishonest Fuckwit. 🙂
The comment (submitted with a bogus e-mail address, of course) was approved:
As usual conservatives like yourself and Palin can’t even argue the issue at hand. You develop a strawman . . . and then present that to your ignorant followers as fact so that they never face the inherent nihilism of conservative “values.”
Exit question: Does feminism deprive people of a sense of humor, or are humorless people just naturally attracted to feminism?
UPDATE II: In the comments, Amanda Read links to her post on this subject, featuring video of Americans United for Life’s Charmaine Yoest debating Erin Matson of the National Organization for Women Parading Around in Their Underpants: