Is Politico Trying To Build Support For Governor Sarah Palin?

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by Smitty (h/t DaTechGuy)

Really. What dreck. Politico begins an article with two lines of slander, and then walk it back with “Those are just some of the opinions about Sarah Palin held by members of a small but extremely active network of gadflies, bloggers and authors who have devoted much of the last 2½ years to proving their case to American voters.” Well, as long as you put lies in someone else’s mouth, it’s OK.
Feel the tension mount, emphasis mine:

But some of their leading theories have been thoroughly discredited and earned them widespread criticism. (See: ‘Mama Grizzly’ Sarah Palin back on the prowl)
Yet that only seems to have hardened a commitment to accomplishing what they profess to be their ultimate goal: the absolute and complete exposure of Palin as a fraud unworthy of a role in American civic life. And now, with Palin edging back into the political spotlight in the face of flagging poll numbers, they believe that they are closer than ever to achieving it.

I have no doubt that there are “fraud(s) unworthy of a role in American civic life” afoot, but she isn’t the one I’m thinking of.
Summarizing the rest of the article:

  1. Having lost sight of truth and fact as though they were spinal vertebrae, the Lefty worms seek comfort in lies.
  2. And there shall be books and rumors of books spewing forth from that invertebrate Left.
  3. And they shall throw this book at her, and that, and another, even unto the uttermost length of the shelf shall they stretch, grasping after tomes, that the utter dreck of the writing may somehow stick to Palin.
  4. For they recall their 2008 propaganda coup, when an admittedly clever one-liner in uttered by the lips of a comedienne was mis-attributed to Palin by the multitudes.
  5. But alas, real satisfaction is rooted in truth, which the Left rejected, back in verse #1, and thus are were they doomed to a life spent emitting crap in the manure spreader fashion.

What will the effect of this polarizing nonsense be? I submit that the polarized country left by the Uniter of 2008 will be little affected. Maybe some ambivalent people in the center will be turned off by the series of anti-Palin books. However, they will sell poorly, I predict. Their chief effect will be to rile up the Palinistas and improve her support. Because, sooner or later, everything the Left undertakes achieves the opposite of its intended effect. Only when they can make their efforts fail upward is there a temporary simulation of success.

Is she running for President? Not yet, not officially, and perhaps never. I wouldn’t even worry about it until almost the last minute. Nor should we care: the plan to recover the country from the Progressive Century is more important than who implements it. If she’s on the ticket, and you’re a conservative, then you know what to do.

Death Panels May Work, If Christoph Waltz Is In Charge

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by Smitty

He was the Nazi in Inglourious Basterds who was so evil that he didn’t need a James Earl Jones voice, and could make ordering a glass of milk into a sinister act. Sure, we’re talking some garden variety mayhem here, but he brings such a flair to the task that I truly think he could salvage ObamaCare, given the opportunity.
This American Idol clip show him in fine form casually, yet directly, addressing the problem at hand:

Give ‘Toten’ Waltz A Chance!

Actually, Sprinklerman Has A Straighforward Play

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by Smitty

Morrissey makes it sound as though the Speaker of the House was ‘a young apprentice / caught between the Scylla and Charybdis’ when it comes to the debt ceiling:

Of course, most voters don’t want the debt-ceiling limit raised, either. That gives Boehner a lot more political leverage than he normally would have, since he can claim to represent the mandate of the electorate — and a broadly bipartisan mandate at that. Even a plurality of Democratic voters don’t want it raised again (48% to 36% supporting an increase in the CBS poll). But that’s also a trap for Boehner even if a deal is finally struck that includes both entitlement reform and a debt-ceiling hike; the result will be unpopular for both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

That means that Boehner has to get entitlement reform and take ownership of it while putting the blame for the debt-limit increase on the White House, an effort amply assisted by the Obama administration’s early hysteria strategy on the issue. He can’t afford to come out of the battle with nothing but the debt-limit increase and some assorted discretionary-spending caps that save just tens of billions of dollars like he did with the FY2011 budget. There are no real ways to win in this fight, but plenty of ways to lose. Boehner’s latest warning is a recognition of that fact.

Lacking GOP control of both chambers of commerce, it seems that the sucking wallet wound is going to continue to extract lifeblood from the American people.
One route Boehner could take would be to play the Simpson-Bowles card:

The plan would reduce cost-of-living increases for all federal programs, including Social Security. It would reduce projected Social Security benefits to most retirees in later decades, though low-income people would get higher benefits. The retirement age for full benefits would be slowly raised to 69 from 67 by 2075, with a “hardship exemption” for people who physically cannot work past 62. And higher levels of income would be subject to payroll taxes.

But the plan would not count Social Security savings toward the overall deficit-reduction goal that Mr. Obama set for fiscal year 2015, reflecting the chairmen’s sensitivity to liberal critics who have complained that Social Security should be fixed only for its own sake, not to help balance the nation’s books.

Substantially leverage the entitlement reform pieces of that, and serve it up as the President’s own work. For added snark, publish the legislation with a watermark based upon the Hawaiian long form birth certificate. Then, the President has to defend, again, the old panel he’s blown off. VP Biden would feel the heat, too, on his new panel. Oh wait, he has no clue.
After that fracas, the debt limit can be raised by enough to bring the issue up again in another month. If we’re going to talk about the President like a dog, let us ensure he returneth to his vomit, say, monthly. It will help mellow him out, for caustic values of ‘mellow’.
Cubachi points to Sen. Mike Lee at The National Review preaching the Balanced Budget Amendment. Ho hum. When you’ve got a drug addict running the pharmacy, what good are promises? Tell me what you’re doing to separate the junkie from the pills, where ‘doing’ means ‘stripping power’.

Rhetorical Question Day at The Corner

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by Smitty

Steven Hayward and Jonah Golberg have questions, and I have answers.

Hayward quotes Kinsley, emphasis mine:

If the deficit doesn’t matter, why have any taxes at all? And if there is some point at which the deficit does start to matter, and become dangerous, when is that point if $1.6 trillion isn’t it?

Three reasons, for starters:

  1. Behavior shaping. Individuals may or may not have freewill, but the population as a whole gets mighty sheepish. For example, Washington can bait a lot of people into electric cars, then turn around and tax them. Brilliant!
  2. Class warfare. The assumption of eminent domain over every American wallet is a fantastic divide-and-conquer tool. The poor get a kickback every spring from the Treasury, the rich can be conveniently demonized for not paying that ‘fair share’, and the middle class feels nutty there in the nutcracker.
  3. ‘Job’ growth through complexity. The less intelligible the tax code, the more staff required at all levels to manage it, and the more secondary opportunity there is. Before Gutenberg, literacy was a full-time job. The tax wonk is the modern scribe. Who says Progressives are not conservative, after their sick fashion. If the IRS added to the economy, instead of taking, it would be such a Good Thing.

Goldberg is right behind Hayward, again, my emphasis:

Why have a debt limit at all? I mean, if it should automatically be raised the second you reach it without precondition, isn’t it a purely arbitrary and fictional barrier? I tried to make this point last night on Special Report, and it came out a bit clumsy, in part because I used the mathematically rigorous term “kuh-trillion.”

Jonah is playing coy about this. He knows that we need to have political theater. Theater is a bi-partisan device whereby the Ruling Class Overlords generate a vast hue and cry and demand we move in a sane direction, then go the opposite way.
The federal government has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted and is incapable of internal reform. You don’t have a choice, Tea Parties: you’ve got to continue to pressure incumbents, vote them out, demand change, and take the required haircut like an adult.

Fiscal boot camp ain't no frickin' beauty contest, mister.

If you’re still too peppy after all that, then step over to Piece of Work in Progress for a hit of financial gloom from Meep. Truly, our government is a sucking wallet wound.
Now, it would be an ill thing to go with such an entirely down post, so let me finish on a Rule 5 note, with Stacy’s patron Twitter saint:

Now, don't you feel better already?

‘The Return to TV of One of America’s Most Gifted Thinkers and Communicators’

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Which is to say, a new cable show for Keith Olbermann:

Keith Olbermann’s new show on Al Gore’s Current TV will have the same name as his old one on MSNBC — Countdown With Keith Olbermann. It will also air in Olbermann’s old 8 PM slot beginning June 20, 2011. Olbermann abruptly left MSNBC in January and joined Current in February as Chief News Officer and producer and anchor of a primetime show. “Countdown With Keith Olbermann will showcase the return to television of one of America’s most gifted thinkers and communicators,” said Joel Hyatt, co-founder and Executive Vice Chairman of Current.

The Washington Post has this video announcement:

To Hell With ‘Gender Equity’

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That’s my reaction to a New York Times story about how universities are faking their way around Title IX, which mandates an artificial “equality” between men and women’s sports programs.

Americans have for too long been tortured on the Procrustean bed of “equality,” which aims to destroy all custom and tradition — indeed, to destroy liberty itself — in order to render individuals as atomized and interchangeable units in a one-size-fits-all regime.

As the denunciation of Larry Summers proved, recognition of actual differences between people, or between groups of people, is permitted only to those radical egalitarians who propose to eliminate those differences in the name of “social justice.” And if you question the wisdom of their project, either in its ends or its means, you will be demonized as an apologist for oppression.

To hell with “gender equity” and to hell with Title IX.

(Remember: National Offend a Feminist Week starts May 2.)

And Yet, Instapundit . . .

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by Smitty

Insty links Pilon at Cato on the Barbour exit, and finishes with a rumination:

. . .when you have a system of government so demanding at top levels that few normal people care to participate in it, you will get few normal people at the top levels.

Two points:

When normal people, e.g. the Tea Partiers, do participate, the ruling class reviles them, and calls them everything but honest citizens.

When a normal person, e.g. Sarah Palin, does strive for the top level, she takes a non-stop napalm shower.

Forget these ruling class creeps. If Americans back down now, we can join with the invertebrate Left in feeling that we deserve what we get.

Update: linked by Don Surber, at some expense to the byline.

Carl Salonen & the Left-Wing Trolls Who Smeared ‘Advice Goddess’ Amy Alkon

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Yesterday I blogged about Amy Alkon’s encounter with the online Left which, taking offense at something Alkon had written about unwed motherhood, organized one of its characteristic “Two-Minute Hate” campaigns against her.

What I did not know was that the Left attempted to destroy Alkon’s career as a journalist, by posting defamatory fallacious Amazon “reviews” of her book I See Rude People.

Nor did I know that Alkon had named Carl Salonen and Loretta Serrano as key perpetrators of that smear campaign.

Donald Douglas has an excellent post summarizing this shocking story, of which I was previously unaware. And this is the kind of vicious behavior in which self-proclaimed “progressives” now engage routinely. These destructive tactics are the radical offspring of what Frankfurt School intellectual Herbert Marcuse advocated in his notorious 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance”:

Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.

Elsewhere in the same essay, Marcuse denounces “pure” or “non-partisan” tolerance, which he describes as the “active, official tolerance granted to the Right as well as to the Left, to movements of aggression as well as to movements of peace, to the party of hate as well as to that of humanity.” Is anyone so blind or so ignorant of history as to miss the significance of this? Continue reading Carl Salonen & the Left-Wing Trolls Who Smeared ‘Advice Goddess’ Amy Alkon →