Sadly, No!

RedState’s Erick ‘Erick’ Erickson on Sarah Palin quitting in the middle of her gubernatorial term:

I’ve had this running thought all day, perhaps because I was watching it on TV in HD for the first time, that this is kind of like Ben Kenobi letting Darth Vader strike him down. Palin is not going to run in 2012, but by doing this she can now become Barack Obama’s worst nightmare, and help rebuild the opposition to Obama.

And then Trig blows up the White House and it’s all, ‘Awesome!’ but then he and Bristol almost get it on and it’s like ‘Ewwww’ and the prequels with Hayden Christensen in blackface make a ton of money but the die-hard fans are mostly disappointed.

Also, ‘watching it in HD’ has precisely what to do with the which-what-why now?

Hanx: ignatov in comments

Shorter Jim Hoft:

ABOVE: Jim Hoft demonstrates his preferred method for finding dates

Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit:
White House Garden Tests Positive For Lead

• Wouldn’t it be hilarious if the First Family gets lead poisoning from their own garden?

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Did the Pantload just claim credit for Sarah Palin’s tactical face-plant?

Palin Resigning [Jonah Goldberg]

Well, aside from my timing being impeccable, the best I can say is I’m flabbergasted.

Not running again could make sense as a pre-presidential move. Resigning strikes me as very strange. I do hope all is well with her family and that there’s the best possible reason for this fairly shocking news.

Oh, and: It’s not my fault!

‘Timing’? ‘It’s not my fault’? What could Jonah possibly be talking about? Aha – seems he splooged a mash note Palin’s way today:

A Letter to Sarah

Dear Governor Palin,

You’re blowing it.

With all the rampant speculation about Palin’s motives going around, this the first I’ve seen it theorized that she quit because Jonah Goldberg ordered her to fellate him. Talk about ‘central’ to your ‘point’ … rowwrrr!

Caribou Barbie could take a lesson from Dick Cheney — you’re supposed to shoot the other guy in the face, not yourself.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

Rather, it’s a wonderful new column from the Moonie Times’ Diana West:

Iraq is Victorious… Over the ‘Foreign’ U.S.?

I’ve been stewing over something really lousy that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been saying since June 20: that Iraqis have won a “great victory” over the “foreign presence in Iraq.”

That “great victory,” as he calls it, is the June 30 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq’s cities. That “foreign presence,” as he calls it, is the United States — the thousands of mainly young American men who have fought a vicious enemy under the harshest conditions for more than six long years, with 4,321 Americans killed, many thousands wounded, often grievously so, and some small, tortured number wrongfully ensnared by the U.S. military justice system in apparent deference to Iraqi political considerations.

“Ingrate” doesn’t begin to describe this al-Maliki creep — or, as all too many conservatives and Bush loyalists persist in thinking of him, our Iraqi “ally.” But let’s skip the labels and stick to the implications of the Iraqi prime minister’s rhetoric: He has transformed long-term American sacrifice on Iraq’s behalf into a residual “foreign presence” over which he now declares Iraqi victory.

Speaking of Cheney, he really has been doing his bit to keep the spirit of 2005 alive — and in the frankly dull Age of Obama, this has not been unappreciated by liberal comedy bloggers. Mocking garden-variety stupidity is one thing, but stupidity that is in a position of authority is the real mother lode … I’ve been pretty much mailing it in since the election because teasing the politically marginalized just doesn’t instill one with the same sense of purpose, no matter how venal the wingnuts remain.

Which is why Diana West’s little diatribe caught my attention. The scare quotes around ‘foreign’ are pleasing enough, but trotting out ‘ingrate’ really puts this bit over the top — it’s a throwback to a time when the invasion of Iraq was still being defended by its architects as a great victory for human rights, a little trip down memory lane for anyone who ever felt the guilty thrill of encountering a particularly juicy example of the up-is-downism that propped up that earlier era’s conventional wisdom on aggressive war.

It brings some small joy to my heart to see that someone out there in wingnuttia is still defending our Baghdad satrapy in the old, neocon fashion — by flat-out denying that our occupation of another country is really an occupation, that we are not gate-crashing foreigners in Iraq at all but rather invited guests who occasionally shoot our hosts and blow up their property.

The Bush years were awful, of course, but you have to admit they were also awfully fun. Almost enough to make me want to tempt fate and hope for Cheney-Palin in 2012, if only just to relieve the ennui.

She didn’t even finish out her first term as Alaska’s governor. K-Lo, amazingly, thinks this shows she’s more fit than ever to be president:

Mother Palin [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Who knows all the reasons — Todd and Sarah Palin, presumably fully understand.

Listening to her, it seems like this is a combination of stepping back and moving forward. Stepping back, because it’s way too overwhelming to be Sarah Palin, political phenom, Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, and Sarah Palin, wife and mother. I don’t know that anyone can fulfill all those roles well, simultaneously. And we’re unrealistic, I think, when we assume people can or should.

One reservation I’ve always had about Sarah Palin has to do with her family. If she is stepping down because of what politics has done to her family, because of something in her family life she doesn’t want to see as David Letterman fodder, because it’s impossible to be governor, a star, and a mom to an infant … this is good. It demonstrates good judgment and priorities.

Uh, well gee. Barack Obama is somehow able to be a political phenomenon, a father and husband and the president of the freaking United States. We don’t elect people because they aren’t able to multitask, K-Lo.

UPDATE: This is not a normal person:

I thought that she still had a shot to win the GOP nomination before watching the video. Then I watched the video. Mitt Romney is popping champagne as we speak.

UPDATE II: K-Lo has been reduced to sad blubbering. Look at this:

Gerry Seib’s Romney Time Timing Is Better Then He Knew?

Keep her away from the sharp objects, someone!

UPDATE III: The nail in the coffin — Bill Kristol thinks this was strategic brilliance:

Kristol: A Contrarian Take

If Palin wants to run in 2012, why not do exactly what she announced today? It’s an enormous gamble – but it could be a shrewd one.

After all, she’s freeing herself from the duties of the governorship. Now she can do her book, give speeches, travel the country and the world, campaign for others, meet people, get more educated on the issues – and without being criticized for neglecting her duties in Alaska. I suppose she’ll take a hit for leaving the governorship early – but how much of one? She’s probably accomplished most of what she was going to get done as governor, and is leaving a sympatico lieutenant governor in charge.

And haven’t conservatives been lamenting the lack of a national leader? Well, now she’ll try to be that. She may not succeed. Everything rests on her talents, and on her performance. She’ll be under intense and hostile scrutiny, and she’ll have to perform well.

All in all, it’s going to be a high-wire act. The odds are against her pulling it off. But I wouldn’t bet against it.

Posted by William Kristol on July 3, 2009 05:06 PM | Permalink

UPDATE IV: It just occurred to me that these things always occur in threes. So who’s next? Bobby Jindal, do you have a lobster fetish we should know about?

“Address my ass, libs!”

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What Brent Bozell meant to say in his “letter” to Oliver Stone:

Dear Oliver:

Remember when you and I were on Bill Maher? You know, back when he was funny. You know before he said something I disagreed with about the 9/11 terrorists after which nothing he ever said could ever be funny again. In fact, he could tell that hilarious joke about Al Sharpton and the watermelon — that joke still just slays me if anyone else tells it — and I wouldn’t crack a smile. No siree!

Well, anyway, as you might recall, you and I were on the Maher show together, and it was all fun until I quoted some interview which was in some paper that I’ve totally forgotten but I swear to God I didn’t make up. In that completely unfabricated and 100 percent real interview you said you were a historian and I said you weren’t a historian, you were a socialist which is the exact opposite of a historian. You got mad and said “Am not” and I said “Are too” and you said “Am not” and so I kicked you in the nuts under the table which totally shut you up for a minute.

Well, I’m writing this letter to apologize, not for kicking you in the nuts, but for saying you weren’t a historian. You are a historian. You’re a shitty historian. Isn’t this the best kind of apology ever? ROFLOL. I’m sorry I said you were prick. You aren’t a prick. You’re a syphilitic prick. I could apologize like this all day.

Well, anyway, let me stop cracking myself up and get back to my apology. You are a historian, leaving aside that movie W which I didn’t bother to see but which I absolutely know was nothing but 2 hours of filthy liberal lies. But you’re a bad historian because you were just on Bill Maher again and you quoted that RINO Richard Nixon as saying that St. Ronald was a “dumb son of a bitch.” Nuh-uh. Reagan wasn’t dumb and to prove it I asked a bunch of Republicans who worked in the Reagan White House and they all said, to the man, that Reagan was so smart he could do the Sunday New York Times crossword in ink while blind-folded, could recite the value of pi to the three zillionth digit and even had read Heidegger’s Being and Time. In German. What do you have to say to that, Mr. Smartypants?

Best of all, I talked to Al Regnery, now that’s a real historian if there ever were one, even if he made up a story about his wife getting raped by a black burglar and even though he told a tiny little fib, when he was on Reagan’s anti-pornography commission, about the pornography the cops found in his house when they were investigating that other little fib about his wife getting raped.

Oh, and I apologize for calling you a “lousy historian,” because you’re not a historian but a big fat liar who blasphemes the greatest President who ever lived in the history of the entire universe.

Your BFF,

Brent

ABOVE: Lisa Schiffren suppresses gag reflex at the
thought of another plate of French food

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One of the abiding questions of interest to academic wingnutologists (such as the staff here at Sadly, No!) is the travel question. Why, we ask, do wingnuts travel to foreign countries? Creatures of habit, suspicious of strangers, monolingual junk food addicts and perpetual scolds, what exactly is in it for them? They wander about Rome complaining that they can’t find a Starbucks or Caribou Coffee anywhere. They return from Madrid complaining that not one restaurant served a taco salad. Imagine that, in the place that invented Mexican food, the locals eat raw ham and some kind of funny little fish called tapas.

So when I saw that Lisa Schiffren posted to America’s Shittiest Website™ from France, I could scarcely control my excitement. What news would she send us from l’Hexagone? What indignity would she report had been visited upon her by an un-shaven waiter, reeking of sweat, garlic and tobacco? How many vile shopwomen had shortchanged her? Well, kids, its better than that. Schiffren writes that the best place to eat in France is McDonald’s. Fuck the foie gras, she’s shoving another Royal Deluxe (that’s frog for Quarter Pounder with Cheese) down her craw every chance she gets.

Let’s join Lisa with her three children (Rush, Little Ronnie, and Ayn) at the Louvre:

[T]here is a lot of bad food in France — especially around tourist sites, including the great museums. I will not say what I paid for two sandwiches and two salads — all premade so unwanted ingredients could not be removed in advance — and a few soft drinks at the Louvre.

Well, certainly the best place to get a good idea of any country’s cuisine is around its biggest tourist sites. I too would be outraged if I went to a place overrun with tour buses and bought a pre-packaged sandwich only to discover that, rather than medium-rare Wagyu beef strips, artisanal goat cheese, a crisp mesclun garnish and hand-made aioli on a freshly-baked olive baguette, I got a ham sandwich on stale bread with wilted lettuce and two drops of acrid mustard. Who’d a thunk? Only the vile French could pull a stunt like that on an unsuspecting American.

And here’s another valuable travel tip from Lisa. When traveling abroad, rather than eating on the local schedule, insist on eating at the same time you’re used to eating at home:

Restaurant meals are available at very limited hours. You want lunch — it had better be between 12 and 2. Miss that and you can have a snack — but only if you are in a place big enough to have a range of restaurant types. Dinner starts at 7, no matter that you missed lunch and want a burger or a salad at 5, not ice cream or a beer.

Of course, the reason Lisa might not be able to get a burger at a restaurant in Paris at 5:00 may have more to do with where she was than what time it was. She’s in frigging Paris. You don’t find burgers on the menus in Paris any more than you can find civet de sanglier or tarte tatin on the menu at Chili’s or Applebee’s. And also, here’s a tip for Lisa. Every corner bar in France serves food, all sorts, all the time; you’re not just limited to beer and ice cream.

To explain these draconian dining hours, Lisa reaches deep into her bottomless well of nutty ideas. The reason is:

The French do not much like children

In that case, I’m amazed that French civilization didn’t disappear from the face of the earth centuries ago. But hold that thought about the French hating children for just a sec

I like the leisurely lunch as much as any journalist, of course. But not with my kids. …

She’s on vacation with her children but doesn’t want to eat nice lunches with them. Can’t you feel the love pouring from Lisa towards Rush, Little Ronnie and Ayn?

So it’s Le MacDo pour tout le monde. All I can add to this is that Lisa is clearly auditioning to be the successor to America’s Worst Mother™, formerly Meghan Gurdon, and that one day little Ayn will write a tearful memoir about how her self-absorbed mother dragged her by her pigtails through France, Le Happy Meal, her only source of nourishment, while Momma screamed at the shopkeepers who pretended not to speak English and made nasty remarks to the waiters who brought her, and overcharged her for, a bottle of Perrier every time she ordered a scotch and soda. The dust jacket will be illustrated with a picture of a young girl with her nose pressed against the window of a pâtisserie being beaten with a coat-hanger by a disagreeable woman in sweat pants and sneakers.

Hot Air’s Allahpundit steps away from the ledge by sweeping one leg spasmodically over the gaping precipice of rightwing nuttiness:

Scheuer to Beck: The only chance of saving America is … another Al Qaeda attack

… What’s striking about this clip is how closely it tracks some of the key tropes of nutroots paranoia during the Bush years. Now as then, it’s assumed that the greatest threat to the country is its own government. Now as then, the “solution” to getting the nation back on the right track involves some ghoulish catastrophic failure of national security (losing the Iraq war in Bush’s case, failing to prevent a new attack in this one). And now as then, because the president acted in a legally controversial way in one circumstance — Bush on “torture,” Obama on corporate takeovers — he’s instantly suspected of ruthless designs on the Constitution itself, irrespective of whether he actually has the support he’d need to change it.

Unfortunately, with few exceptions, Allah’s commenters do not appreciate his nuance:

It may seem alarmist, but a wakeup call is needed. It’s too bad that for most of the elites, in fact, all of them, one 9/11 wasn’t enough to change how they think.

keep the change on July 1, 2009 at 6:19 PM

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It sounds terrible, and it would be completely horrible, but it is going to take America on it’s knees to wake people up.

If this is what it’s going to take,I pray for another way. I just don’t see it.

portlandon on July 1, 2009 at 6:19 PM

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Y’know what’s scarier than all the crazy/paranoid-seeming warnings these guys are throwing out there? That both Beck and Scheuer have track records of being right far more often than not. 🙁

aero on July 1, 2009 at 6:19 PM

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I would love to take comfort in the fact that Beck is just a nut job. I have found no comfort in that assessment at all. I do not know what the tipping point will be. People are just not as pissed as I am. It does keep me awake at night, because I do not know what to do to fight this president and Congress. I do not know how to protect myself and my family. I thought I knew as of last fall. After Nov. 4th it all changed.

BetseyRoss on July 1, 2009 at 6:37 PM

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Why is Hot Air so hostile to Glenn Beck?

He loves America, reveres the Constituion and bewails the collapse of our culture.

Got a problem with that?

guntotinglibertarian on July 1, 2009 at 6:54 PM

And the final word, from suzyk:

I hate to say this, but if there is going to be another terrorist attack (however, I think that Obama is a terrorist attack)I hope it happens in Washington D.C.

We have friends there and I told them to get their animals out of there to be safe and prepare.

I hope all these evil politicians are taken out. There, I said it. I have had it. This is not what this Country was formed on and what it’s all about. If it can’t be Washington, D.C. then please let it be San Francisco.

suzyk on July 1, 2009 at 10:32 PM

Michelle Malkin ominously warns us to ‘[b]eware the grubby paws‘ of Barney Frank. It seems that the ‘powerful Massachusetts Democrat last week quietly introduced legislation that aims to use $1 billion in dividends paid by the recipients of government aid to provide rental housing opportunities for low-income and homeless families.’

The horror! One-fifth of the meager return taxpayers have received so far from the ongoing bailout of stupid, amoral predators might be spread thinly amongst their most vulnerable victims! Why, for half that sum, we could hire a K Street brain trust to conduct a feasibility study on the merits of forming a working group tasked with determining the benefits of appointing a committee entrusted with selecting a blue-ribbon panel charged with getting to the bottom of why we shouldn’t be doing this sort of thing at all!

Later in the Dow-Jones story Malkin cites, we learn that this modern-day Robin Hood wants to reallocate 4/700ths of the funds we’ve earmarked for well-heeled pyramid schemers to yet more paupers. Should this sort of thing continue, we’ll soon be allowing our impoverished clerks to take Christmas Day off to spend time with their crippled children.

Are there no workhouses, &cetera?

Not-so-sMarty Peretz is displeased with Obama’s stance on the Iranian protests:

Let’s face it. The American president has not exactly been on the wrong side…. But he has certainly not been on the right side. Not with his mincing and parsimoniously petty escalations of do-nothing rhetoric.

Because as any neocon will tell you, there are two sides to every conflict; one is purely good and the other unspeakably evil — there are no shades of gray. Then, in Geddy Lee shrillo voce, neocons will insist that if you choose not to decide/ You still have made a choice. Thus by the neocons’ reckoning, Obama, who has refused to involve himself much with the conflict lest he jeopardize the protesters he actually sympathizes with, is somehow objectively pro-Ahmadinejad.

One piece I commend to you is Fouad Ajami’s op-ed in the June 22 Wall Street Journal, “Obama’s Personal Tutorial: The president has to choose between the regime and the people in the streets.”

And that is really the choice.

Yeah, yeah. Standard neocon boilerplate: the macho tone, faux idealism, barely-masked cynicism, the overflowing mendacity. Then, in his concluding, sell-a-subscription paragraph, he says something interesting:

If you don’t you’ll have to wait until the rich little essays on the Iranian revolt go on-line. They are all informative, really each and every one of them. Let me especially commend one. It is by Nader Mousavizadeh, a former student, a good friend and past assistant editor of this magazine. Oh, yes, he is also a senior fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies in London. Nader really knows what he is talking about, unlike many of those whose attitudes are drawn from their always cool and detached temperaments. I’ve learned much from his disciplined yet morally engaged mind, from this piece perhaps more than any other.

What a blurb! Somewhere, a jealous Jamie Kirchik just sobbed into his pillow. Extra credit to Marty for the next-to-last sentence, a bitter sneer at, he imagines, Obama’s and Brent Scowcroft’s expense. But just who is this Nader guy Peretz likes so much? A glance at his essay reveals sympathetic biographical details; also, a clever — by which I mean, devious — neoconservative take on Obama’s “loss of nerve.” The essay’s not nasty enough for Commentary and it’s too smart for The Weekly Standard; but Peretz’s rag is just right. Anyway… Institute of Strategic Studies… where have I seen that name? Ahhh, the time crapsule! Yep:

A FEARFUL ACCOUNTING The International Institute for Strategic Studies has released a comprehensive report detailing the stockpile of weapons of mass destruction currently available to the Iraqi government, and projecting how long it would take Iraq to develop on other weapons of mass destruction. This report is an eye-opener for anyone who still doubts that Saddam Hussein is a threat.

posted by Pejman at 9/09/2002 11:37:00 AM

Oh. Those guys. (Incidentally, Pejman’s site mysteriously vanished from blogger after the “Time Crapsule” post; IISS’s article, meanwhile, has been robots.txted for who knows how long.)

Before blaming Obama for an “emboldened” Iranian regime, Mousavizadeh concedes “[t]hat there are few lessons to be learned from the cheerleaders of the Iraq war… goes without saying.”

YA RLY.