This is what William “always wrong” Kristol has to say about the current feature article Vanity Fair is running on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Kristol: Liberal Media and GOP Hacks vs. Palin
Lefty journalist Todd Purdum has a hit piece in the new Vanity Fair on Sarah Palin. You don’t have to be a big Palin fan to recognize the article is full of dubious claims, and is dependent on self-serving stories provided on background by some of the people who ran the McCain campaign into the ground.(emphasis mine)
If we include the series of posts at running posts that ran at The Mudflats and a dozen other articles such as Sarah Palin’s powerful “First Dude” and The Sarah Palin Digest at ThinkProgress the only marginally new information in the VF piece is not from a straw man liberal that informs Bill Kristol’s every thought about Democrats, but from McCain’s own campaign staff. Its a common conservative pundit tactic to describe anything of a negative nature directed of one of the Right’s elite to deflect blame by calling the writer a liberal, the piece is an attack (in the winger mind any and all exposes that fracture their reality is a hit piece) feature negativity from Republicans against Republicans – all Republicans that cooperated get the rhetorical Stalin treatment – purged from the ranks of true pure conservationism, such as Krsitol. If only we could get that dang librul press to write stuff like this about a Democrat once in a while, It Came from Wasilla
Perhaps most painful, how could John McCain, one of the cagiest survivors in contemporary politics—with a fine appreciation of life’s injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history, and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor—ever have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?(emphsis mine)
VF author Todd S. Purdum drools all over John McCain whose reputation as an honorable maverick has been one of the most calculated and exaggerated in American politics. McCain who couldn’t dump the first wife fast enough to marry into money and power to advance his political career. McCain managed to sell this facade to the public with the complicity of the media ( just a partial list) who were all too happy to echo McCain’s egocentric talking points. McCain is more likable, for lack of a better term then the seeming semi-conscious James Imhofe (R-OK) and Mitch McConnell(R-KY) or perennial king of hypocrisy House Minority Leader John Boehner(R-OH) . While most liberals were quick to defend McCain against the attacks of Karl Rove and the freeper types that labeled him a RINO. McCain’s record was as rabid right as most of his colleagues. As was said at the time he picked Palin as his running mate, Palin was McCain’s first presidential level decision. While many of us are disappointed in some of President Obama’s decisions thus far, an easy way to console oneself is to imagine that empty suit, that legend in his own mind John Mccain as president and either Palin or Mitt Romney as VP. Where do the zingers in Pudum’s piece originate. From other Republicans,
But just months into its existence the pac’s chief fund-raiser, Becki Donatelli, a veteran of Republican campaigns, suddenly quit. One person familiar with the situation told me that Donatelli could not stand dealing with Palin’s political spokeswoman in Alaska, Meghan Stapleton, who has drawn withering fire from Palin friends and critics alike for being an ineffective adviser.
[ ]…Walter Hickel, 89, a former two-term governor and interior secretary, and the grand old man of Alaska politics, who was co-chair of Palin’s winning gubernatorial campaign, in 2006, now washes his hands of her. He told me simply, “I don’t give a damn what she does.”
[ ]…The top McCain aides who had tried hard to work with Palin—Steve Schmidt, the chief strategist; Nicolle Wallace, the communications ace; and Tucker Eskew, her traveling counselor—were barely on speaking terms with her, and news organizations were reporting that anonymous McCain aides saw Palin as a “diva” and a “whack job.”
Kristol knows as well as the rest of us that pieces like the current one in VF will only serve to up Palin’s martyr status among her cultish followers and for everyone else her status remains unchanged. As conservative columnist Kathleen Parker observed during the election Palin was and still is “Clearly Out Of Her League”. Palin- Romney 2012 is currently a popular ticket choice. And yes you read that correctly, Palin at the top of the ticket. As someone once said, bring it on.
10 non-sexual acts for Gov. Sanford’s favorite ladies
Dear Gov. Sanford,
Your latest confession has a lot of people wondering how exactly you had affairs with multiple women without actually having sex with any of them.
Adult oriented satire, proceed at your own risk. If I was one of Sanford’s friends I’d body block him from getting anywhere near a microphone for at least a month.
I can understand President Obama’s response to the events in Honduras. His take, if I understand it correctly is that a democracy takes careful measured steps to change leadership, rather then the military grabbing the president and forcing him out of the country. If our military had done that to Bush, as much as he conducted a despot-lite presidency, I would have defended Bush. The military is not a democratic instrument, while elections and votes are. That said President Manuel Zelaya is has not been poster boy for the way Honduran democracy is supposed to work, Nothing so shocking about this coup
For weeks, Zelaya — an erratic leftist who styles himself after his good pal Hugo Chávez of Venezuela — has been engaged in a naked and illegal power grab, trying to rewrite the Honduran constitution to allow him to run for reelection in November.
First Zelaya scheduled a national vote on a constitutional convention. After the Honduran supreme court ruled that only the country’s congress could call such an election, Zelaya ordered the army to help him stage it anyway. (It would be ”non-binding,” he said.) When the head of the armed forces, acting on orders from the supreme court, refused, Zelaya fired him, then led a mob to break into a military base where the ballots were stored.
His actions have been repudiated by the country’s supreme court, its congress, its attorney-general, its chief human-rights advocate, all its major churches, its main business association, his own political party (which recently began debating an inquiry into Zelaya’s sanity) and most Hondurans: Recent polls have shown his approval rating down below 30 percent.
Matthew Yglesias is a terrific defender of progressive policy. Someone who I agree with more often then not, but he might be behind the curve on applauding Wal-Mart’s sudden embrace of an employer mandate to provide health insurance, CAP, Wal-Mart, SEIU Join Forces in Support of Employer Mandate. Here’s why, Wal-Mart Supports Health Plan That Will Destroy Small Businesses
Sorry Matt! We hate to bust your bubble, but you and your employer are being used for Wal-Mart’s agenda, which is as greedy and selfish as ever. Actually, it’s worse.
This is all about introducing a bill that will harm its competitors, particularly businesses of a slightly lower size that can’t buy health insurance on the same scale. The company already has a major price and sourcing edge over its competitors, and this law would allow it to exploit that even more.
[ ]…Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, also said separately that the mandate should cover as many businesses as possible, and cover part-time and full-time employees.
Read that? They say “broad” and “as many businesses as possible.”
The other problem: Employer-based health insurance sucks! It’s terrible for worker mobility, creating economic stagnation by locking employees into their jobs, while discouraging workers from startups and other small businesses that don’t have the scale to buy healthcare in the beginning. Even Obama’s said he doesn’t think the scheme — which was developed as a way to get around WWII price controls — makes a lot of sense.
If anything Wal-Mart and other big retailers are a good case for the public option. If someone wants to take a chance on leaving their current situation to say, join a small alternative start-up that competes with Wal-Mart with their energy saving light bulbs and recycled products, they can take their public health plan with them and which to their new employers coverage once they get some revenue flowing in. Wal-Mart is doing what it almost always does, make a cynical calculated move that looks cuddly and cute from a distance, but is all about killing off small competitors.
The Long Goodbye 