How We Love A Man In A Uniform….

Lost in the general haze of stupid/evil that hangs over Sarah Palin was a grace note in her recent speech supporting indictment-in-waiting Joe Miller, her cherished anti-Murkowski senatorial candidate.

In a sparsely attended rally for the fading Teabagger senatorial candidate, Palin recalled Miller’s military background, and asked “are we even fit to tie his combat boots?”

Are we fit?

Seriously?

Well yes – and what makes this so dangerous is not just that Palin is once again being Palin, but that after a decade of warrior worship, this kind of nonsense is staining more and more of our national fabric.

The end point of such hagiography is pretty well mapped out.  If people persuade themselves that the military offers a unique reservoir of virtue—and especially if the uniformed officer corps come to believe it…then the next move is obvious.

…which brings me to an article published last month that I don’t think got enough attention.

Writing in the National Defense University’s Joint Force Quarterly,  United States Marine Corps Lt. Colonel Andrew Milburn found within himself the courage to say exactly what he thinks:

“There are circumstances under which a military officer is not only justified but also obligated to disobey a legal order. [italics added]

And there you have it:  a claim that the US military should take the hard duty of deciding national policy when – in the view of the officer corps – the civil powers are incapable of doing so properly.

More » ▲

Color of Change is shrill

In November voters will face a choice. It is not a Republican vs Democratic choice or even a liberal vs conservative choice.

Nope.

It is a bit more primal than that.

In November we face a choice between the Confederate Party and modernity.

All around the globe we face a battle with reactionary forces that seek to pull society back to some imagined fantasy time that they define as “better”. Most of the time these Dark Ages Disciples wrap their lunacy in some cultish religious rhetoric that Jesus, Allah, Yahweh, Zoroaster, Indra or whoever blesses and mandates their insanity. But religious ideology is not the only meme these wackos embrace. Nationalism and political myths also motivate. And often the Nationalist myths are woven tightly with the religious myth into one big twisted blob of hate and madness. This fantasy world view animates and drive al-Qaeda and here in America it animates the Confederate Party.

More » ▲

Put Up or Shut Up. Never Mind, Just Shut Up.

Betty Cracker at Rumproast is shrill:

For context, click the link to read “POTUS Talks to PPOFB”.

(H/t commentor Licensed to kill time.)

▲

Queen of the TeaGrifters

If you’re snowbound and desperate for entertainment, Jezebel will be liveblogging Palin’s speech at 9pm.

Princess Sparkle Pony has a Sarah Palin Tea Party Convention Bingo card, which you could probably use for a drinking game, but only if you’re not planning on driving or possibly walking for at least 12 hours afterwards.

I’ll probably be out for dinner when the big event takes place, but with an estimated “almost a hundred” media (and only 600 paying guests), the odds are that we’ll find out pretty soon if anything significant happens.

▲

RedState Chivalry

Erick Erickson starts his latest post, “I swore I was going to keep my mouth shut on this, but I keep getting emails from people along the lines of “if you don’t say it, who will?” Yeah, I guess I have become that guy.”

And here at Balloon Juice, well…

To further quote Mr. Erickson:

I am afraid Sarah Palin is going to harm herself unintentionally over this tea party convention in Nashville…

Let me be blunt: charging people $500.00 plus the costs of travel and lodging to go to a “National Tea Party Convention” run by a for profit group no one has ever heard of sounds as credible as an email from Nigeria promising me a million bucks if I fork over my bank account number.
...
The tea party movement was always about the unorganized masses of concerned, passionate Americans uniting together with a common voice to protest the direction of the country. From that passion, others have sought to make money off the tea party movement. Some have done it for good. Many have not. And more and more we are seeing some people rise up to claim the mantle of “leader” of the tea party movement. Many of us who have been around for a while just want to know who the heck these so called leaders are.

Even before his massively successful game-changing Narnia-referencing leadership of several dozen Red State Trike Farce Strike Force minions to send rock salt to a Maine Congresswoman just before driveway-clearing season, Erick Erickson was the kind of leader who could organize a super-select registration-limited Red State Gathering...

Tonight, we’ll hear from Roy Blunt, Pat Toomey, Jim DeMint, and Rick Perry. Then we’ll watch a special presentation of John Ziegler’s new movie. Tomorrow, Tom Price, Karen Handel, a super secret special guest, Ken Cuccinelli, Michael Williams, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Nikki Haley join us.

We’re also going to do two workshops. One will be on becoming better online activists and the other on being better offline activists.

... and he brought them to Atlanta. In August. For a mere $50!

For some reason, I am reminded of how some people “organize” their university Student Activities Group and a handful of fellow geeks for a couple thousand dollars and the chance to meet the guy who wrote “Trouble with Tribbles”, while other people manage to turn their passionate concern for the underrated genre artforms into something like the San Diego Comic Con. Possibly thirty-plus years as an out and proud geek may have damaged my perspective on other folks’ enthusiasms.

I have been waiting for TBogg’s take on Erick the Red’s new crusade, but it’s still early on the left coast. So I leave you with his masterful commentary upon the 2009 Atlanta event, including the Big Reveal of the super-secret special guest…

Tragic the Gathering Is Go!

As If the All-U-Can-Eat Bacon Bar Wasn’t Enough…

▲

Obligatory Sarah Palin

I suspect good progressives are too hip ever to have watched Judging Amy, but the new infotainment-friendly Sarah Palin strikes me as the runaway offspring that Tyne Daly was too embarrassed to tell Amy Brenneman and her siblings about…

Andrew Sullivan complains “She wants to be a celebrity, not a politician. And if she could get to be a politician using the prerogatives of a celebrity – and a propaganda channel like Fox News – she would be happy. That’s what’s at stake here – beneath this farce.” Which is a pretty good summary, assuming that the nouns in the second sentence got swapped in the heat of live-blogging: Palin wants to be a celebrity, and was willing to act out what she understood to be a politician’s role to get the prerogatives of celebrity. When Bill Kristol’s Cruise Ship of Fools Neocons breezed into Juneau, Palin had aged out of the beauty-queen pageantry competitions that seem to have been her formative social training, her unwillingness or inability to handle the tedium of actual governance had her underlings trembling on the edge of revolt, and her attempts to reclaim Modern Supermom status on her own or by proxy weren’t going so well. It was… providential!... that Someone should send unto her a Messenger, trailing clouds of astroturfing calculation, proclaiming that Sarah Palin could be chosen to stand among the Elect. For lo, all her life she had been journaling, recording both the firewood-stacking and the prayers that were the Aleph and Omega of her Real American™ small-town red-state life—and at last her determined piety was rewarded! Prosperity Gospel, unbelievers!

More » ▲

Open Thread: War-Against-Xmas Shopping Season Begins!

Via The Mudflats, the blog that did so much to bring attention to Sarah Palin’s less-than-starburstacular career before William ‘Wrong Again’ Kristol cruised Juneau:

To anticipate your next question, no this is not a joke, or some fabulous Photoshop creation by the Mudflats Art Department (flyinureye). It is in fact the real cover and the real title of a real book that will be in bookstores on November 17, also too.

“Going Rouge is compiled by Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, two top editors of the left-leaning weekly The Nation, and includes essays by Nation regulars like Katrina vanden Heuvel, Naomi Klein, and Katha Pollitt. It’s the first release from OR Books, a fledgling outfit founded earlier this year by publishing veterans John Oakes and Colin Robinson that “embraces progressive change in politics, culture and the way we do business,” according to its website.”

But wait, there’s more! In addition to those listed above, Mudflatters will be able to enjoy essays by Max Blumenthal, Shannyn Moore, and yes,…. yours truly! I was quite honored to be asked to write a piece for the book.

It is a deep, deep disappointment to me that Amazon not only has failed to make this thrilling tome available for pre-order, but when I typed GOING ROUGE into the search bar, they suggested I “meant” that other book, the unintentional parody. I may be dyslexic, Amazon, but I’m not a godsdamned idiot!

EDIT: Meant to credit Valdivia for bringing this to my attention.

And unfortunately WordPress (FYWP) won’t let me ‘fix’ the link:
http:www.themudflats.net/2009/10/21/going-rogue-vs-going-rouge/

▲

My Favorite Monday Sentence (Palin edition)

Pareene at Gawker  has a rather interesting (okay, fairly hilarious) essay, including a number of videos, concerning Sarah Palin’s Gradual Descent into Incoherency: 

What was your favorite line from Sarah Palin’s second resignation speech? Was it:

“So, how ‘bout in honor of the American soldier, ya quite makin’ things up?”

Or maybe this amazing bit:

“Let me tell you, Alaskans really need to stick together on this with new leadership in this area especially, encouraging new leadership… got to stiffen your spine to do what’s right for Alaska when the pressure mounts, because you’re going to see anti-hunting, anti-second amendment circuses from Hollywood and here’s how they do it. They use these delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets, they use Alaska as a fundraising tool for their anti-second amendment causes.”

Actually, this is our favorite line:

“In the winter time it’s the frozen road that is competing with the view of ice fogged frigid beauty, the cold though, doesn’t it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs?”

It’s like Peggy Noonan, Jack London, and William Faulkner wandered into the woods with three buttons of peyote and one typewriter, and only this speech emerged.

And she wrote this speech! In advance, on paper! What does any of it mean? It is amazing. Twenty years ago she could competently descibe a dog race, three years ago she could articulate a position on the abortion issue, and this weekend she composed a resignation speech by throwing culture war stock phrases into a hat and dumping it upside down on a copy of The Paranoid Style in American Politics.

▲

The Iron Dog snowmachine competition

John’s PUMA doppleganger is up to his old tricks:

In an unusual attempt to forge an alliance between two of the most prominent families in American politics, John Coale, a Washington-area Democratic donor and onetime adviser to Sarah Palin, urged the conservative Alaska governor to use her political action committee to help retire the presidential campaign debt of Hillary Clinton.

[....]

An outspoken Clinton supporter during the Democratic primary who switched his allegiance to the GOP ticket for the general election, Coale made his case to Palin at the Iron Dog snowmachine competition in Fairbanks, where Todd Palin was competing over Valentine’s Day weekend. His broader aim, say Palin camp insiders, was to help Palin develop a relationship with the former first family that he thought could bolster the polarizing governor’s standing with Democrats and independents.

I think it may be time to start thinking about a single name for the whole Palin-Coale-Van Sustern industrial complex. Something like Bennifer or Tomkat. I realize it’s complicated by the fact that there are four people and three last names involved, but I think it’s doable.

▲

Case Studies in Bad Governance

Speaking of Palin, here is what she is up to:

Meantime, Palin is engaged in a less nationally-visible effort to deny a state senate appointment to a highly popular and competent state house member—Juneau Democrat Beth Kerttula—who happened to voice the uncontroversial view last August that Palin was “not ready” to be Vice President. When state Sen. Kim Elton resigned last month to take a job with the US Department of the Interior, Palin was obligated by state law to name a registered Democrat to replace him; the local party organization forwarded Kerttula’s name to Palin as its sole recommendation—a decision that was reasonable, given Kerttula’s surpassing qualifications for the job and given the near-certainty that she’ll win the seat outright next year during the fall elections. Palin, however, opted instead to nominate a conservative legislative aide, Tim Grussendorf, who had actually switched his party affiliation to qualify for the job. Palin wasn’t required by law to accept the local party’s recommendation; by the same token, the senate Democrats weren’t required to accept her choice. And so yesterday, the senate Democrats rejected Grussendorf by a majority vote in closed session.

Now to you and me, this is why she is unfit for office. But to the Palin crowd, this is why she is their hero. What motivates her is not the public good, but petty revenge and pissing off the side with a different colored foam finger.

▲

Zombie lies and the liberal media

Sheryl Gay Stolberg in in the liberal New York Times pimps the marsh mouse myth:

Mr. Gingrich sees the stimulus bill as his party’s ticket to a revival in 2010, as Republicans decry what they see as pork-barrel spending for projects like marsh-mouse preservation.

Update: I’m late to the party, I see. Greg Sargent has more:

It turns out, however, that earlier drafts of the story did describe the claim as “misleading” — but Times editors removed that description from the copy, leaving the assertion to stand on its own. An email from the author of the story to a reader confirms this.

▲

The Never-Ending Stream of Bullshit

Palin “reflects”:

Q. What misinformation are you talking about?

A. Some of the goofy things like who was Trig’s mom. Well, I’m Trig’s mom (raises her hand) and do you want to see my medical records to prove that? ... And banning books. That was a ridiculous thing also that could have so easily been corrected just by a reporter taking an extra step and not basing a report on gossip or speculation. But just looking into the record. It was reported that I tried to ban Harry Potter when it hadn’t even been written when I was the mayor. So, gosh, we have so many examples, I mean every day, especially the first few weeks, every day something that was thrown out there.

Did any reporters actually ever make a big deal about Trig Palin? The only person I remember ever even talking about that nonsense was Andrew Sullivan, and he isn’t even a liberal, let alone a liberal blogger. In fact, I think this is as close to the issue as I have ever come, because it is just stupid and tawdry and unseemly to suggest someone is not the mother of their child. And additionally, I love the part about her medical records, since she refused the entire campaign to release them. She never released them in any way shape or form, just a two-page letter from her Doctor on election day (which, by the way, she got the idea from Obama, who never released his medical records, either). Saying people can see her medical records when she knows she was the one keeping people from seeing them is just more of her never-ending bullshit.

This, too, was funny:

Q. Why do you think your campaign lost?

A. I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a 10 trillion dollar debt in a Republican administration? How have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration?

Sarah- you only ran up 5 trillion under this Republican administration. Does she know anything? Seriously? Anything? And is it not a smear against God, country, and the troops to admit their were blunders in the war? Does this mean you do not look at America like the rest of us? Why does Sarah Palin hate the troops?

▲

Sarah Palin, Team Player

I read this yesterday, but forgot to comment about it until I saw a reminder in the comments:

The day of the third debate, Palin refused to go onstage with New Hampshire GOP Sen. John Sununu and Jeb Bradley, a New Hampshire congressman running for the Senate, because they were pro-choice and because Bradley opposed drilling in Alaska. The McCain campaign ordered her onstage at the next campaign stop, but she refused to acknowledge the two Republican candidates standing behind her.

Not that this should be a problem in the future. Both Sununu and Bradley lost, and with the defeat of Chris Shays, I believe you can count the number of Republicans from New England in the House or Senate using one finger- Susan Collins from Maine.

*** Update ***

Oops. Forgot Olympia Snowe. Every time I think of her, I think of the movie Moonstruck, for obvious reasons. Forgot Gregg, too. So three Senators, no Representatives. Impressive.

▲

Not Socialism

According to our fierce leader on the Alaska/Soviet frontline, holding back Putin from the lower 48, raising the top marginal tax rates from 36 to 39% will usher in a new era of socialism, but this is not socialist at all:

Ms. Palin, in an interview in her office on Friday, said she was ready to work.

“Now we kick in that fiscal conservativeness that needs to be engaged, and we progress this state with $57-a-barrel oil,” Ms. Palin said. She said the state would have to “be prudent with public dollars and provide services more efficiently than have ever been provided in the state of Alaska before.”

The price and production of oil determines state finances: taxes on oil bring in about 85 percent of state revenue. To balance the budget for the 2008-9 fiscal year, the price of oil needs to average $74 over the 12 months, said Karen J. Rehfeld, director of the state office of management and budget. If it falls below that average, the state could have to make emergency cuts or dip into a reserve account that contains several billion dollars. High prices early in the fiscal year may help keep the average up this year, but next year is another matter.

That is right. Taxes Alaska takes from oil and gas companies balance their budget, and that only happens if oil costs more than 74 bucks a barrel. In other words, in order for Gov. Palin to be that reforming mavericky fiscal conservative, you and I and every other American, real or not, needs to pay through the teeth for gas. If we don’t have high gas prices, Alaska doesn’t have a balanced budget. In a sense, Alaska is taxing YOU to pay for their budget. A nice gig if you can get it.

Also, while clearly not socialism, either, Gov. Palin gets to mail out big checks to every Alaska resident. In 2008, that was about $3300.00 big ones. That buys a fair bit of moose hunting ammo.

In addition to all this, Alaska is one of the largest recipients of federal aid to state and local government per capita. In 2006, it was 3600 per person, making them #2 in the nation. Only Dick Cheney’s Wyoming ranked higher. This fiscal conservatism is fricking awesome, and you almost have to wonder how she managed to get Wasilla 20 million dollars in debt.

This socialism thing is so hard to figure out these days. It is almost like the rules keep changing. And WTF was that sentence in the beginning of what I quoted (“now we kick in that fiscal…”)? That was worse than Bush. ▲

So Stupid it Makes My Hair Hurt

I made the mistake of turning on CNN the day before the election, and the Wasilla wingnut is in all her glory, telling us wonderful things like:

“It is not negative campaigning to talk about your opponent’s record.”

Well, actually, it is. And, attacking your opponent’s record is a perfectly legitimate line of attack, completely within ethical bounds, and to be expected.

The problem is that what you are getting tagged for are your bs smears, which are, by definition, also negative campaigning, but not deemed legitimate. For example- your “palling around with terrorists” crap. Or, as another example, Joe the plumber you touted just a second ago as the model of America, stated the following yesterday:

“McCain has fought and bled for our country, loves our country,” said Joe Wurzelbacher, aka “Joe the Plumber,” who has campaigned throughout Ohio with and on behalf of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “There’s too many questions with Barack Obama and his loyalty to our country. And I question that greatly.”

Fox News’ Neil Cavuto tried to clarify: “You’re not doubting that he’s a good American. Or you are?”

“His ideology is completely different from what democracy stands for,” said Wurzelbacher.

Got it, Sarah? No one would complain if you were just looking at Obama’s plan or record and saying he is too liberal or has the wrong ideas. But when you and your buddies run around smearing him as a traitor, a friend of terrorists, or not sufficiently loyal, then you cross the line. This woman is either incredibly stupid, incredibly dishonest, or a toxic combination of both. John McCain’s career should be forever marred for his having elevated her to the national platform.

▲