RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Sarah Palin for VP

He was totally checking her out. I think he was also pissed she was there.

Until now, I'd forgotten Shatner's rendition of Sarah Palin a few months ago, that Palin's reading was in response to:



It's hard not to love Shatner's poetry and Tom Jones-esque singing.

I think you're right about him being pissed. The Shat does not share the spotlight well.

I’m just gonna go ahead and say what everybody else is thinking… Sarah Palin is hot!

You’ve never seen women before?

No alex, he’s only seen democrat women before. You know, ugly, hairy, botoxed carpet munchers.

An Op-Ed Sarah Palin wrote for the Washington Post, that appeared in the July 14, 2009 edition, entitled The Cap and Tax Dead End, turns out to be the third most read Op-Ed of 2009. The most recent Op-Ed Sarah penned for the august daily, which appeared this past Wednesday, December 9th, entitled Copenhagen’s Political Science, clocks in at the 21st most read.

Obviously that’s sort of big news, or at least a significant piece of trivia, as WaPo runs thousands of Op-Eds yearly. This obviously says that when Sarah speaks, people listen, and when Sarah writes, people read. Of course, supporters know that already, and her record shattering books sales, and 1.1 million Facebook supporters that read her every note, certainly attest to Sarah’s ability to draw readers in and hold their attention.

As you may remember, when Sarah wrote the Op-Ed in July, the left went berserk, and trotted out known climate scientist, John F.Kerry, who served in Vietnam, to deliver a meager rebuttal, which of course was an epic failure.

This latest Op-Ed though has the entire left all wee-wee’d up! As you know, Sarah has taken on the biggest liar in the whole global warming scam, Al Gore, as well as demanding, for a second time, that Obama take a pass on Copenhagen. This of course has the usual suspects losing their minds, while they perform mental and verbal gymnastics trying to justify their pagan beliefs, in the wake of the global warming hoax being exposed to the general public, with more proof coming out daily.

What is remarkable though, are the attacks on the Washington Post itself, for even running Sarah’s Op-Eds! Deliciously, Greg Sargent of the WaPo’s own Plum Line blog, is in high dudgeon and full cross burning mode over this:

“Sarah Palin’s Copenhagen-Bashing Op-Ed One Of Most Read WaPo Opinion Pieces Of The Year

“Here’s a dispiriting postscript to the massive flap over The Washington Post’s decision to publish an Op ed by Sarah Palin on climate change, a piece that has been widely criticized as riddled with falsehoods.

“I’m told by the paper’s insiders that her piece was one of the most-read WaPo opinion pieces of the year, coming in 21st in page views out of literally hundreds of opinion articles. An earlier Palin Op ed in the paper on the same topic was the third most read of the year.

“A lot of this is probably driven by heavy outside linkage. But still, the fact that Sarah Palin, of all people, is able to command such attention for her views on the science of climate change, of all things, is kind of amazing.

“To be clear, I’m not defending the decision to run the piece. I wouldn’t have run it. I’m just pointing out the undeniable fact that the woman’s name gets people clicking. Until people stop clicking, Palin and her views will continue to get attention.”

Don’t you just love the “loving” and “tolerant” left? We were laughing ourselves silly when we read this in the early hours of the morning. The consensus among friends, and hey if consensus is good enough for science……anyhow, we were all asking ourselves if these people really don’t see just how much like Nazis they sound like.

Remember when the left was spreading lies about Sarah “banning books?” You know, the list that was going around that had books on it that weren’t even written yet, when she was Mayor of Wasilla, and supposedly banning them? Yeah, that one!

Remember how insane the left went over this “book banning” hoax? Remember how “evil” they thought Sarah was for “banning books?” You know censorship man. It was almost as insane as they go over the global warming hoax. The left sure believes in a lot of hoaxes. Wouldn’t that basically make “progressives” supremely gullible?

But I digress.

These people cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas, so their answer is to always attempt to silence the competition. It’s truly all they’ve got.

Notice how Mr Sargent starts off by being “dispirited?” Well, he should be. Sarah Palin is single-handedly exposing their nonsensical lives, and beliefs. Sarah is single-handedly putting the brakes on their crazy ideas for “fundamentally remaking America.” Sarah is a force of nature they cannot stop!

Then, Mr Sargent goes into full Alinsky mode by saying her piece was “widely criticized as riddled with falsehoods.” Widely criticized by whom? What are the falsehoods? Who knows! The reader is left to their own faith, or lack thereof, in Mr Sargent. The old “trust me, it just is” ploy.

Yeah, let’s trust a guy who runs around screaming like his hair is on fire and telling you “don’t read this, don’t listen to the bad lady!” Yeah… for sane people, that means: “I might ought to take a look at what this guy doesn’t want me to see. It might just be something!“

What’s hilarious is Mr Sargent’s incredulity at the fact people would read, and take stock in, something written by “Little Old Sarah Palin from Wasilla.”

This is where I always just stop and shake my head. You wonder if these so-called journalists are capable of doing even the most basic of research on their subjects, or if they just sit around in an echo chamber believing their own BS.

So let me ask Mr Sargent this: Just why WOULD the public want to listen to a woman who is a lifelong environmentalist and conservationist? Why WOULD the public want to listen to a woman who was her state’s chief energy and environmental regulator, in an energy rich, and environmentally conscious state, and a woman, who as Governor, chaired an multi-state agency that was also tasked with both energy regulation as well as environmentally sound practices?

Why WOULD the public want to listen to Sarah Palin, who as AOGCC chair, IOGCC chair, and Governor, has a stellar record is safeguarding Alaska’s environment, and holding violators of policy accountable? Why indeed would anyone want to listen to her about subjects concerning the environment!

As remarkable as the fact that Sarah’s Op-Eds are well read and taken seriously by millions is, the real story here is just how totally sad the “progressives” have become. Their little world view is being shattered. Their narrow-mindedness has been exposed to the world.

Most people in America are fair minded. Even when someone is saying things we don’t believe in, we give them the opportunity to speak. In fact, our right to speak is guaranteed by the very first amendment to our Constitution. It’s the very first right in the Bill of Rights, a set of rules that restrict what government can do, a restraint on government from infringing our God given rights. Men have died protecting these rights.

Only those without real ideas and real solutions want to silence others. Only those who rely on tricks and falsehoods run around screaming “the debate is over” and saying idiotic things like “the science is settled” right in the middle of the revelations that prove, without a doubt, that global warming is a hoax and a scam!

This, of course, applies to everything the left does, not just their scheme on “climate change.” The left is just as wee-wee’ed up over Sarah Palin, and many others, who dare try and stop them from destroying health care in America, and usurping our Constitution.

I have a thought for the radical left: How about instead of thumbing through your well worn copy of Saul Alinsky’s Rules, in an attempt to smear others, you actually come up with real and plausible ideas! How about you stop living in your land of fantasy and theory, and join the real world!

That’s where Sarah Palin, and the rest of us live.

WASHINGTON - The snows that obliterated Washington recently interfered with many scheduled meetings, but they did not prevent the delivery of one important political message: Take Sarah Palin seriously.

Her lengthy Feb. 6 keynote address to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville and her debut on the Sunday morning talk-show circuit with Fox News' Chris Wallace showed off a public figure at the top of her game - a politician who knows who she is and how to sell herself.

This was not the first time that Palin has impressed me. I gave her high marks for her vice presidential acceptance speech in St. Paul. But then, and always throughout that campaign, she was laboring to do more than establish her own place. She was selling a ticket headed by John McCain against formidable Democratic opposition and burdened by the legacy of the Bush administration.

Blessed with an enthusiastic audience of conservative activists, Palin used the Tea Party gathering and coverage on the cable networks to display the full repertoire she possesses, touching on national security, economics, fiscal and social policy and every other area where she could draw a contrast with Barack Obama and point up what Republicans see as vulnerabilities in Washington.

Her invocation of "conservative principles and common-sense solutions" was perfectly conventional. What stood out in the eyes of TV-watching pols of both parties was the skill with which she drew a self-portrait that fit not just the wishes of the immediate audience, but the mood of a significant slice of the broader electorate. Freed of the responsibilities she carried as governor of Alaska, devoid of any official title but armed with regular gigs on Fox News Channel and more speaking invitations than she can fulfill, Palin is perhaps the most visible Republican in the land.

More important, she has locked herself firmly in the populist embrace that every skillful outsider candidate from George Wallace to Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton has utilized when running against "the political establishment."

It doesn't always win. There are more John Edwardses and Mike Huckabees than I can count. But it wins more often than you'd guess and for a greater variety of people, especially when things are not going well for the country.

Palin's final answer to Chris Wallace showed how perfectly she has come to inhabit that part. When he asked her what role she wants to play in the country's future, she said:

"First and foremost, I want to be a good mom and I want to raise happy, healthy, independent children. And I want them to be good citizens of this great country.

"And then I do want to be a voice for some common-sense solutions. I'm never going to pretend like I know more than the next person. I'm not going to pretend to be an elitist. In fact, I'm going to fight the elitist, because for too often and for too long now, I think the elitists have tried to make people like me and people in the heartland of America feel like we just don't get it, and big government's just going to have to take care of us.

"I want to speak up for the American people and say: No, we really do have some good common-sense solutions. I can be a messenger for that. Don't have to have a title to do it."

This is a pitch-perfect recital of the populist message that has worked in campaigns past. There are times when the American people are looking for something more: for an Eisenhower, who liberated Europe; an FDR or a Kennedy or a Bush, all unashamed aristocrats; or an Obama, with eloquence and brains.

But in the present mood of the country, Palin is by all odds a threat to the more uptight Republican aspirants like Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty - and, potentially, to Obama as well.

Palin did not wear well in the last campaign, especially in the suburbs, where populism has a limited appeal. But when Wallace asked her about resigning the governorship with 17 months left in her term and whether she let her opponents drive her from office, she said, "Hell, no."

Those who want to stop her will need more ammunition than deriding her habit of writing on her hand.

The lady is good.

I can understand why she needed to read the speech (which she did) but to also use crib notes on some key basics? How do the Palin worshippers rationalize this while obsessing over Obama using a teleprompter?

It doesn't but it's fun to poke a little fun at those partisans (like Jon Stewart) who go nuts over Obama using a teleprompter.

Fair play!

I can understand why she needed to read the speech (which she did) but to also use crib notes on some key basics? How do the Palin worshippers rationalize this while obsessing over Obama using a teleprompter?

Why does their hatred of her burn so hot?

Ask them, and they'll most likely tell you: Because she's a moron. But that is obviously false. To be sure, her skills at extemporaneous speaking leave much to be desired. But that can be said of a good many politicians on both sides of the aisle, including George W. Bush, John Kerry and, yes, Barack Obama. And don't get us started on the man who defeated her for the vice presidency.

Whether or not she is presidential timber--and we are inclined to think that she is not--there is no denying that she is a highly accomplished person. She is also a highly accomplished woman, what in an earlier age would have been called a feminist pioneer: the first female governor of the malest state in the country, the first woman on the presidential ticket of the party on the male side of the "gender gap." Having left politics, whether temporarily or permanently, she has established herself as one of the most consequential voices in the political media.

They say she is uneducated. What they mean is that her education is not elite--not Harvard or Yale, or even Michigan or UCLA. They resent her because, in their view, she has risen above her station.

In this respect we identify fully with Palin, for we have been on the receiving end of similar disdain. Our education, like Sarah Palin's, consisted of too many years at inferior state universities, although unlike her, we never even got around to graduating. The other day Paul Reidlinger took a shot at us for featuring one of his restaurant reviews under our "Wannabe Pundits" heading last month: "I was even denounced by noted high school graduate James Taranto." (For the record, our high school diploma is a GED.)

"Denounced" is far too strong a word; "mocked" is more like it. Reidlinger writes for San Francisco Bay Guardian, whatever that is. He doesn't say, but we surmise that he possesses advanced degrees from Stanford or the University of California, both very fine institutions. He observes that "it is a writer's job to afflict the comfortable and complacent." That would be an insufferably pretentious way to describe our job as a political columnist for an elite newspaper. What is a restaurant critic going to "afflict the comfortable" with? Food poisoning?

Professional jealousy and intellectual snobbery, however, only scratch the surface of the left's bizarre attitude toward Palin. They explain the intensity of the disdain, but not the outright hatred--not why some people whose grasp of reality is sufficient to function in society made the insane inference that she was to blame for a madman's attempt to murder Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

This unhinged hatred of Palin comes mostly from women. That is an awkward observation for us to offer, because a man risks sounding sexist or unchivalrous when he makes unflattering generalizations about women. Therefore, we are going to hide behind the skirts of our friend Jessica Faller, a New Yorker in her 30s of generally liberal politics. Over the weekend, she wrote us this analysis of Palin-hatred, which she has generously given us permission to quote:



We'd say this goes beyond mere jealousy. For many liberal women, Palin threatens their sexual identity, which is bound up with their politics in a way that it is not for any other group (possibly excepting gays, though that is unrelated to today's topic).

An important strand of contemporary liberalism is feminism. As a label, "feminist" is passé; outside the academic fever swamps, you will find few women below Social Security age who embrace it.

That is because what used to be called feminism--the proposition that women deserve equality before the law and protection from discrimination--is almost universally accepted today. Politically speaking, a woman is the equal of a man. No woman in public life better symbolizes this than Sarah Palin--especially not Hillary Clinton, the left's favorite icon. No one can deny Mrs. Clinton's accomplishments, but neither can one escape crediting them in substantial part to her role as the wife of a powerful man.

But there is more to feminism than political and legal equality. Men and women are intrinsically unequal in ways that are ultimately beyond the power of government to remediate. That is because nature is unfair. Sexual reproduction is far more demanding, both physically and temporally, for women than for men. Men simply do not face the sort of children-or-career conundrums that vex women in an era of workplace equality.

Except for the small minority of women with no interest in having children, this is an inescapable problem, one that cannot be obviated by political means. Aspects of it can, however, be ameliorated by technology--most notably contraception, which at least gives women considerable control over the timing of reproduction.

As a political matter, contraception is essentially uncontroversial today, which is to say that any suggestion that adult women be legally prevented from using birth control is outside the realm of serious debate. The same cannot be said of abortion, and that is at the root of Palinoia.

To the extent that "feminism" remains controversial, it is because of the position it takes on abortion: not just that a woman should have the "right to choose," but that this is a matter over which reasonable people cannot disagree--that to favor any limitations on the right to abortion, or even to acknowledge that abortion is morally problematic, is to deny the basic dignity of women.

To a woman who has internalized this point of view, Sarah Palin's opposition to abortion rights is a personal affront, and a deep one. It doesn't help that Palin lives by her beliefs. To the contrary, it intensifies the offense.

It used to be a trope for liberal interviewers to try to unmask hypocrisy by asking antiabortion politicians--male ones, of course--what they would do if their single teen daughters got pregnant. It's a rude question, but Palin, whose 17-year-old daughter's pregnancy coincided with Mom's introduction to the nation, answered it in real life.

Recently we were at a party where a woman in her 60s, a self-described feminist, called Palin a "moron" for having encouraged her daughter to carry her child to term and "to marry the sperm donor." Even apart from the gross language, this was a completely irrational thing to say. First, that Palin's values are different in no way reflects on her intelligence.

More important, why is Bristol Palin's decision to carry her child to term any of this lady's business? Those who claim to be champions of privacy and choice need to do some serious soul-searching if they have so much trouble tolerating the private choices of others.

What about male Palin-hatred? It seems to us that it is of decidedly secondary importance. Liberal men put down Palin as a cheap way to score points with the women in their lives, or they use her as an outlet for more-general misogynistic impulses that would otherwise be socially unacceptable to express.