Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Politico blames Palin for not getting a divorce?

Having denied -as well she should – a claim by a blog and a newspaper that she’s divorcing her husband, Jonathan Martin at Politico says it’s all her fault anyway:
Sarah Palin beats press to blog claim

By having her spokeswoman repeat the charges to rebut them in a public form, Palin effectively guaranteed coverage from the mainstream media that otherwise would not report claims attributed to unnamed sources on an anonymous blog.

James counters,

But that’s nonsense. Mainstream media sources — including Politico and including Martin (remember the way premature “John Edwards is quitting to be with his sick wife” rumors?) — report rumor and rely on anonymous sources all the time. The fact that people are talking about something is often in and of itself newsworthy. Especially when it’s about Sarah Palin.

Dan calls them Politico Pathetic:

If the Palin squad had not taken action, the news tonight would be the frenzy of reporters besieging the Palin camp to get a denial of a shocking claim. Boy, I’d bet they’d just love to get a no comment to that one. Or, the story would read, Palin denies disturbing reports sourced to Alaskan blog.

And People Wonder Why Sarah Palin Stepped Down

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Will Sarah Palin become the next Ross Perot?

artspalin0608gi

Palin to Quit as Alaska Governor, Won’t Seek Re-Election

Sarah Palin said Friday that she won’t run for a second term as governor of Alaska and will transfer her responsibilities to the state’s lieutenant governor.

Here is her statement:

“I am determined to take the right path for Alaska even though it is not the easiest path,” said Governor Palin after the announcement. “Once I decided not to run for re-election, I also felt that to embrace the conventional ‘Lame Duck’ status in this particular climate would just be another dose of ‘politics as usual,’ something I campaigned against and will always oppose. It is my duty to always protect our great state. With that in mind, my family and I determined that it is best to make a difference this summer, and I am willing to change things, so that this administration, with its positive agenda, its accomplishments, and its successful road to an incredible future, can continue without interruption and with great administrative and legislative success. I look forward to helping others – to fight for our state and our country, and campaign for those who believe in smaller government, free enterprise, strong national security, support for our troops, and energy independence.”

Look, I sure hope she has a huge ace up her sleeve because from here it sure looks like a Perot-like maneuver. In Jonah Goldberg’s words, “You’re blowing it”.

Her political career is not going to recover from this.

The Anchoress basically agrees.

Gateway Pundit has the video:

UPDATE
Instapundit mini-roundup.

Liberals never learn, do they? Doug has the back story on that.

Francis is heartbroken but takes no prisoners.

GM Roper ponders Palin derangement syndrome.

Ace:

It’s over. You can’t resign from a governorship and then run for higher office. Barring some strong reason, like needing treatment for cancer.

A contrarian view: No, Of Course Palin’s Political Career Isn’t Over

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Alinsky’s children: CBS, TNR and Andrew Sullivan

Gateway Pundit posts, OUTRAGE!… CBS: “Meet Iran’s George W. Bush” (Ahmadinejad!)

The CBS’s article Meet Iran’s George W. Bush
New Republic: Can Anyone Beat Ahmadinejad In This Week’s Election?, was a retread from an article in TNR:

cbs-mahmoud-bush

Lest we forget, Jim reminds us of two facts:
One:

CBS forgot the part about Bush liberating over 50,000,000 Muslims from two of the most violent regimes in history and bringing democracy to the Middle East.

And two:

For the record- The New York Times detailed the recount investigation paid for by a consortium of newspapers and admitted that BUSH WON in 2004.

Look it up yourself: the NYT actually said,

A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year’s presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.

But the Iranian election means is it’s time to slander, so Andrew Sullivan was over at The Atlantic saying that Ahmadinejad is Karl Rove. The link takes you to Stacy’s post; if you want to check out Sillivan’s post you go there. Sullivan never misses a chance to indulge his Sarah Palin fixation, while at it,

Ahmadinejad’s bag of tricks is eerily like that of Karl Rove – the constant use of fear, the exploitation of religion, the demonization of liberals, the deployment of Potemkin symbolism like Sarah Palin.

What is even more bizarre is Sullivan’s recurrent and perverse focus on Palin’s children, in which he constantly indulges in his posts, about which Althouse comments,

And why should the governor of a state be called an “attention-starved celebreality star”? Is it because you don’t respect her as a politician? You might call everyone with the nerve to run for President/Vice President an attention-starved celebreality star, but the fact is you don’t. Apparently, it’s because she’s got kids who do things that you think we can sit back and view as objects of idle amusement. If anyone is to be a politician — in your nasty little world — their kids better toe the line and stay perfectly prim and healthy and smart (or hide).

But back to Sullivan’s first post: Iran is a Red State:

Think of this regime as Cheney and Rove in a police state setting, and you see what’s been going on. (Of course, Rove and Cheney live within a democratic system utterly unlike Iran, and there’s no evidence they would violate democratic norms as Khamenei just did. But their demagoguery, abuse of the state, dedication to conflict abroad, co-optation of the armed forces, and manipulation of rural and religious voters all have parallels in Red State Iran.)

So what Sullivan’s saying, in his heightened consciousness and loftier intellect which given the chance he probably will humbly acknowledge, is that he would have you believe that voters in red state America don’t vote out of their own free will since Karl and Dick manipulate them any which way, through the deployment of Czarist shams like Sarah Palin and her children. From there to taking the leap and equating George Bush = Ahmadinejad is simply putting the icing on the metaphorical cake, or am I missing something here?

What these statements and false analogies in CBS, TNR, Sullivan and others have in common is Alinsky’s rules:

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

“One of the criteria for picking the target is the target’s vulnerability … the other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract.”

Targeting, personalization, polarization, and personification: The plight of the Iranians is just another opportunity.

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NOW adds Letterman to their Media Hall of Shame

And not a moment too soon:
Letterman “Jokes” About Palin’s Daughter
Offender: David Letterman on “Late Show with David Letterman”

The sexualization of girls and women in the media is reaching new lows these days — it is exploitative and has a negative effect on how all women and girls are perceived and how they view themselves. Letterman also joked about what he called Palin’s “slutty flight attendant look” — yet another example of how the media love to focus on a woman politician’s appearance, especially as it relates to her sexual appeal to men. Someone of Letterman’s stature, who appears on what used to be known as “the Tiffany Network” (CBS), should be above wallowing in the juvenile, sexist mud that other comedians and broadcasters seem to prefer.

Hadn’t heard CBS referred to as “the Tiffany Network”, but at last they did the right thing.

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Video: Vile Letterman, “these people are upset”

Referring to Sarah and Todd Palin as “these people,” Letterman digs in and repeats the jokes,

David Letterman responds to flap over Sarah Palin jokes

“We were, as we often do, making jokes about people in the news and we made some jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter [Bristol]… and now they’re upset with me…” Letterman says on tonight’s show. “These are not jokes made about her 14-year-old daughter. I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl…. Am I guilty of poor taste? Yes. Did I suggest that it was okay for her 14-year-old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No.” Saying he hopes he’s “cleared part of this up,” Letterman extended an invitation to Palin to come on the show as a guest.

Then he asked,

“would I do anything advocate or contribute to underage sexual abuse or misconduct? Absolutely not, not in a thousand years!”

But is he all for “advocating or contributing” to the sexual abuse of women over the age of eighteen.

So here we have it: Letterman believes himself justified in his “jokes”, because the jokes are about a different Palin teenager.

As I was asking yesterday, what is it with these impotent jerks and Palin’s children?

And, by the way,
CBS Altered Letterman Transcript, Not New York Times

UPDATE
This is American Sharia, *ssh*les.

1 more update,
Scott turns the tables on Letterman.

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Vile

Throughout mankind’s history, vile men have cast aspersions on women’s virtue for political purposes. The latest attacks on Republican and conservative women are just more on an ages-long trend. When you can’t defeat them with ideas, you diminish them through sex. My theory is that the mental impotence gets translated into sexual aggression, but then, that’s just a theory.

Now we have a new version of that trend, namely Playboy mag posting (and then deleting, but you can view the NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK article here) a 10-page, illustrated and cross-linked article about hatefu**ing (the new word for rape) 10 conservative women. The outrage in the media? None. Instead, Tommy Christopher got fired from AOL for condemning it.

The women Playboy picked are not the only ones. Carrie Prejean and a list of others have been targets because they are not liberals. That’s the only criteria.

So it’s hardly surprising that overripe gap-toothed comedians who didn’t get The Tonight Show come up with gems like this, saying that Sarah Palin’s “updated her slutty flight attendant look.”

But Letterman’s trying to be edgy while unfunny, so now he’s come up with this,

Attacking women for political purposes is an old story that is despicable and vile enough, but what is it with these impotent jerks and Palin’s children?

Just when you think they can’t stoop any lower: CBS has another jerk comparing Palin to an STD.

UPDATE
NSFW Dan Collins lets it rip.
Letterman in His Dotage

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Obama’s big government gamble, and other roundup items

Obama’s big government gamble

In his speech on the economy delivered at Georgetown University on Tuesday, he lectured the audience about the need to get serious about addressing entitlement reform. But even the Washington Post was skeptical.

“Many of the savings identified in the president’s budget are phony, and the real ones are used to offset the costs of his new spending increases or tax cuts,” the Post editorialized. The newspaper also noted that “the health-care savings he has identified are all directed to new health-care spending, and, even then, they cover only a fraction of the likely costs of a health-care bill — of what would become yet another entitlement program.”

In fact, the cost of implementing the type of health-care plan that Obama proposed during his campaign has been estimated at roughly $1.5 trillion over ten years. The only way Obama would be able to seriously reduce costs of medical care under a government-controlled system would be to ration care to the sick and slash reimbursement rates for doctors, which will trigger longer waiting times for patients. While Europeans may be used to this, it is harder to imagine Americans standing for it.

All told, Obama’s agenda is projected to more than double the public debt to $17.3 trillion by 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office, equal to a staggering 82.4 percent of the economy.

Obama will be hard-pressed to pay off that debt without either massive, broad-based tax increases, or printing enough money to pay of the debt, which would trigger massive inflation.

Dr. Krauthammer calls The New Foundation The Sting, In Four Parts

As it happens, Obama is not the first to try this slogan. President Jimmy Carter peppered his 1979 State of the Union address with five “New Foundations” (and eight more just naked “foundations”). Like most of Carter’s endeavors, this one failed, perhaps because (as I recall it being said at the time) it sounded like the introduction of a new kind of undergarment.

Undaunted, Obama offered his New Foundation speech as the complete, contextual, canonical text for the domestic revolution he aims to enact. It had everything we have come to expect from Obama

Augean Stables looks at Ivy League madness:
Harvard’s Muslim Chaplain Notes the Wisdom of Killing Apostates and The Email of Taha Abdul-Basser, Harvard’s Muslim Chaplain, on the question of death for Apostasy in Islam

Shilling for the Democrat Party can be stressful apparently

From Maria, The Left Is Making A Mistake In Ridiculing The Tea Parties, while Evil Right Wing Extremists Who Would Destroy America Gather in Denver

And last but not least, Palin Says She Considered Abortion

The governor’s 30-minute speech was folksy and full of digressions, but also surprisingly confessional, and she went into some detail about initially panicking after learning, 13 weeks into her pregnancy, that her son would be born with Down syndrome: “That blew me away, it rocked my world… It was a time I asked myself, was I going to walk the walk?”

She was on a trip out of state at the time, she said, and “just for a fleeting moment I thought, ‘No one knows me here; no one would ever know.’ … My amniocentesis came back and then I understood why some people would think they could change their circumstances, just take care of it. Todd didn’t even know” the results of the prenatal testing yet, so “no one would know.”

“Plus, I was old,” she continued. “And I thought, ‘Very funny, God. My name’s Sarah, but my husband’s not Abraham, he’s Todd.'” At 44, she said, she had a hard time imagining changing diapers again, not to mention “putting down the BlackBerry and picking up the breast pump.”

Though it was unclear from her remarks how seriously she considered terminating the pregnancy, she assured the audience that “we went through some things a year ago that’s helped me understand a woman and a girl’s temptation to make this go away.”

Another worry in what she called “my moments of doubt” was whether she could love the child enough. “Believe it or not, I didn’t even know what a baby with Down syndrome was going to look like or feel like.” She found the subject hard to research, she said, and “I had to ask that my heart be filled up” with feeling for her unborn son. That prayer was answered the minute he was born, she said.

“My heart overflowed. I felt a love I had never felt before. He’s brought amazing, surprising happiness; he’s the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

I admire her courage in doing the right thing, and in being so candid about her decision.

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