Palin in 2012

After listening to the podcast of the speech Sarah Palin gave in Madison yesterday, I felt like rushing to the polls to vote for her right away. Video and transcript at Conservatives 4 Palin.

"Palin-bashing by the brain trust"

To go with the previously noted piece on Obama, Van der Leun also gives us On Palin Bashing by the 'Brain-Trust': "As far as coward Charles Krauthammer goes…."As a commenter says, "How did we go from Reagan to Pansy Patrol in so short a period of time?"

A propos of Palin, this from Glenn Reynolds:

MARC AMBINDER ON FACEBOOK: “My hunch is that this election will hinge on who best harnesses the gut fear that America is in decline — and turns it into real optimism.”

Who does this better than she?

Preview of the State of the Union speech

There's a first draft of the speech posted at Professor Jacobson's place, which I've recently added to the "recommended reading" list over in the sidebar (it's the one with the dots, Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion). Funny stuff, if you can stand some bitter truths with your funny.

Also, a post on "why people like me, who currently are open-minded as to the field of potential candidates in the absence of knowing who will run, will not support any Republican candidate during the primaries who attacks Palin." That goes for me, too. She is an example of the best in America. Her principles are American principles. Knowing the name of the prime minister of Tadjikistan is of far less importance than having the right principles.

Andrew McCarthy sums up Feisal Rauf

In the process of defending Sarah Palin against a false charge leveled by Henry Payne, McCarthy puts enough info on Rauf into his short article to take care of all you need to know about the leader of the Ground Zero mosque plan. Thank you Mr. McCarthy. And thanks to Neo-Neocon commenter expat for pointing out the article.

Battle Hymn of the Republic, updated for the Tea Party and Sarah Palin

I was thinking that the Tea Party needed some songs.



The smugness of the comments at Youtube must be seen to be believed.

Update: I see there is some discussion at Althouse.

Obama surrenders the high ground, without a fight

Three things.

An open letter from Neil Armstrong, Eugene Cernan, and 25 other astronauts, about Obama's new direction for NASA. They don't like it.

Charles Krauthammer says,

We are seeing the abolition of the manned space program.

When Neil Armstrong speaks out, that’s an event. This is a guy who is the most self-effacing American hero in our history. He could have been Lindbergh and he became J.D. Salinger.

And now he speaks out in an open letter together with [Eugene] Cernan, the last guy that walked on the moon, and James Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13. And they are saying that the program that Obama has abolished — has cancelled — is essentially the end of man in space. It turns NASA into an R&D agency for pie-in-the-sky ideas like having humans on asteroids and ends its role as the agency that actually gets us into space, even low-Earth orbit and back.

Obama spoke about — we’ve done the moon, so we are going to do asteroids and Mars. This is total pie in the sky. On what rocket? With what space capsule? With what simulators? With what training program? There’s nothing here of substance.

And when Kennedy committed us "in this decade," as he said, he meant it within his presidency. He intended to be — he expected he’d be — president until January 1969. Obama is talking about 2025, 2030. All of this is total speculation.

And what it does is it ends our human dominance in space, which we had for 50 years. We have no way to get into earth orbit. We’re going to have to hitch a ride on the Russians who are charging us extraordinary rates and are only going to increase that.…

All the private stuff [launching humans into space] is complete speculation. What we’re doing is we're ceding the certainty of access into space. We are not going to have it. The Russians will have it. The Chinese will have it.

We spent tens of billions on the space station and spent three decades in constructing it. We're not going to have any way to get there....

And we'll look up in a decade and there’s going to be a lunar base ... [there are] not going to be Americans on it.

Sarah Palin, on Facebook, asks,

"Mr. President, is a strong America a problem?"

Yesterday at 10:09am

Asked this week about his faltering efforts to advance the Middle East peace process, President Obama did something remarkable. In front of some 47 foreign leaders and hundreds of reporters from all over the world, President Obama said that “whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower.”

Whether we like it or not? Most Americans do like it. America’s military may be one of the greatest forces for good the world has ever seen, liberating countless millions from tyranny, slavery, and oppression over the last 234 years. As a dominant superpower, the United States has won wars hot and cold; our military has advanced the cause of freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan and kept authoritarian powers like Russia and China in check.

It is in America’s and the world’s interests for our country to remain a dominant military superpower, but under our great country’s new leadership that dominance seems to be slipping away. President Obama has ended production of the F-22, the most advanced fighter jet this country has ever built. He’s gutted our missile defense program by eliminating shield resources in strategic places including Alaska. And he’s ended the program to build a new generation of nuclear weapons that would have ensured the reliability of our nuclear deterrent well into the future. All this is in the context of the country’s unsustainable debt that could further limit defense spending. As one defense expert recently explained:

The president is looking to eliminate the last vestiges of the Reagan-era buildup. Once the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are “ended” (not “won”), the arms control treaties signed, and defense budgets held at historic lows while social entitlements and debt service rise to near-European levels, the era of American superpower will have passed.

The truth is this: by his actions we see a president who seems to be much more comfortable with an American military that isn’t quite so dominant and who feels the need to apologize for America when he travels overseas. Could it be a lack of faith in American exceptionalism? The fact is that America and our allies are safer when we are a dominant military superpower – whether President Obama likes it or not.

And the question is, Are the first two things related to the third thing?

Private space development would be great. But what Krauthammer says about ceding the certainty of space is not speculative.

Will NASA and the FAA and the rest of the government get out of the way of private space efforts? Encouragement would be too much to ask for.

Update: Harrison Schmitt, astronaut and US Senator, has more to say:

“I am very much of the mind that America can’t afford to be second-best in space. It’s the new ocean. It would be as if the United States decided in the last 200 years or so not to have a Navy. The oceans were where the competition between nations existed, and now that competition has moved into space. We should not be afraid of it. We should embrace it.”

Via Althouse. One of the commenters at the linked CapTimes article says,

"Wait, so here's an area where Obama would just as soon not spend $230 billion (likely more, because, remember, the shuttle program ultimately came in at a 55% cost over-run), and the same people who scream about the exploding deficit are saying we need the program, we need to spend the money? This just proves that nothing Obama could do would appease these people."

This is the kind of thinking that comes from someone who would eat the seed corn, or skip the oil changes to buy spinner hubcaps and mag wheels. Speaking of wheels, I'm inclined to agree that NASA has been spinning its wheels for years, as a result of being run by pork-minded bureaucrats who have lost sight of the mission, but what's called for is not abandonment of the mission, but a return to it. As I said in an earlier post, "Men will go to space; but no law of nature requires that they be Western, or free."

There are a couple of fairly zingy comments by yours truly on that Althouse thread.

Hockey sticks in the ice (cores)

Some sharp comments at this post by Neo-neocon, The WaPo goes rogue …, mentioning Sarah Palin's op-ed on Climategate. Commenter rickl suggests mailing this around: Hockey stick observed in NOAA ice core data. One of several striking graphs:

Those are years B.C. to A.D. across the bottom. Mann's hockey stick is visible on the far right. Or,

over the period of recorded history, the average temperature was about equal to the height of the MWP. Rises not only as high, but as rapid, as the current hockey stick blade have been the rule, not the exception.

Nice interglacial we have going here. Let's not mess it up.

Law school pirate

This is illegible as seen here, so click it to get a better view.

That subtitle is likely to be going away pretty soon, but it seems worthy of preservation. It's a testimonial to Althouse's sense of humor.

Related: Pointed, pointless questions.
Sarah Palin is Dumb.
Ann Althouse Is Dumb
"Oh...did I mention Althouse is a dirty libtard pirate whore?"
"Sirs, the smiles will leave your faces when the walls come tumbling in..."
There may be more to come.

For reference: Palin's Hong Kong speech

The speech is transcribed at Citizen Palin for President.

Most sites that mention this speech have only excerpts. This looks big enough that it might be the whole thing. A pity they didn't get the Q & A as well.

A tale of two transcripts

Efforts to marginalize Sarah Palin are becoming risible and transparent. This bit on the Conan O'Brien show, with William Shatner reading a few sentences from her farewell speech as beat poetry, to the accompaniment of bass and bongos, is schoolyard-level mockery.

It's instructive to compare the transcripts offered by a hostile site and by a friendly one. The HuffPo's AKMuckraker has a transcript with the ums and hesitations preserved, some dialect spellings, and very little punctuation. This seems to be the one that's going around.

For contrast, Townhall has one with correct spellings and punctuation. (And paragraph numbers! If you find the paragraph numbers intrusive, try this version at Free Republic.) These transcription tricks are reprehensible, but they further the narrative, which is all that counts.

For an example of how NPR routinely cleans up interviews, see NPR news, "fake but accurate," here earlier. All of the media that present these transcriptions of Palin with the dialect spellings and um's preserved should do the same for everyone they quote. Pigs will be flying on that day.

Bill Whittle on "The Destruction of Sarah Palin"

It's a must-see, so go on over there to PJTV. Or read it, if you'd rather.

It might better be titled "The Attempted Destruction of Sarah Palin." I don't think she's destroyed, just yet. The efforts to damage her keep making her look better.

Thanks to The Crack Emcee, commenting at Althouse. Crack Emcee's own blog, The Macho Response, is well worth a look, by the way.

This gets a "psyops" label because of the Alinsky references.

Where in the world is Sarah Palin?

Or, Photo caption writer didn't read the article.


It's actually a pretty decent article. But that was too funny to let go by.

Palin in WaPo: "The 'Cap And Tax' Dead End"

Sarah Palin lays out familiar objections to cap-and-trade.

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America's economy.

Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.

In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.

The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.

A little of that good Sarah snark there. And to conclude:

We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama's plan will result in the latter.

For so many reasons, we can't afford to kill responsible domestic energy production or clobber every American consumer with higher prices.

Can America produce more of its own energy through strategic investments that protect the environment, revive our economy and secure our nation?

Yes, we can. Just not with Barack Obama's energy cap-and-tax plan.

Nice. In this written piece, she is able to throttle the speed of her thinking, simplify her sentence structures, and supply her own punctuation, so that the usual media tricks of inaccurate transcription can't be applied. The WaPo comments are, for the most part, about what one would expect, mostly accusations that she did not write it herself. Here's a NY Times op-ed from last year, for comparison. No, I did not read all 3000+ comments, but 10 pages or so seems like a fair sample.

It's awfully good to see these sensible arguments presented in a major publication, from someone whose ability to command attention is so great.

Palin on women in politics

A campaign speech, from October 21, 2008 (it says here). And a good one. She speaks so well. I was struck, listening to her in debates and interviews, by how she never, well hardly ever, used fillers like well, um, ah, to gain time; and by her ability to construct complex sentences on the fly. Her interviews with Greta Van Susteren were particularly good. For instance. I think a lot of the criticism of her speaking was from people who simply didn't have the grasp of the language to understand her. Obama, by contrast, always talks down to his audience, using simple grammar and simple vocabulary.

John Ziegler recently interviewed her on the radio. About 20 minutes.

The speech was mentioned in a comment at Reclusive Leftist. The main post deals with internal politics of NOW and their connection with generational changes in approaches to feminism. Linked by Reynolds.

Keeping an old smear alive

Jim Macdonald, at Making Light, has seen fit to revive the "Sarah Palin made rape victims pay for their rape kits" smear from last year. Lest it fade from memory.

I'm very fond of Making Light, have been reading it for years, have commented there a few times, but not lately, and certainly not lately on a political thread. So I'll post this here, for my own future reference.

Macdonald, in the main post:

I have a rape kit right here. Let’s look at it…

The first thing I notice is that its official name, printed right on the cover of the box, is “Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Kit.” Hmmm… nothing there about patient care or treatment. “Evidence Collection” sounds more like a police function.

Macdonald, at comment #4:

A Rape Kit is normally performed by a SANE nurse (that's Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner). An RN with additional specialized training.

Right. And it's usually done at a hospital, not at a police station. By a nurse, not a police officer. Macdonald is an EMT, not quite a doctor or nurse, not quite a policeman, but a little of both, which might account for his blurring of the distinctions.

Since the rape kit is customarily administered at a hospital, by a nurse, rather than at the police station, by a policeman, the hospital administration is going to be involved, and would like to bill someone for the time and effort. Hospitals usually try to bill a patient's insurance company. That was exactly what the police chief in Wasilla took as standard procedure; what he wanted to do was to obtain restitution from the perpetrator. The Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman article from 2000 is a little incoherent, but after the first wild charge, quotes the police chief saying some sensible things:

While the Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies have covered the cost of exams, which cost between $300 to $1,200 apiece, the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.

Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon does not agree with the new legislation, saying the law will require the city and communities to come up with more funds to cover the costs of the forensic exams.

In the past weve charged the cost of exams to the victims insurance company when possible. I just dont want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer, Fannon said.

According to Fannon, the new law will cost the Wasilla Police Department approximately $5,000 to $14,000 a year to collect evidence for sexual assault cases.

Ultimately it is the criminal who should bear the burden of the added costs, Fannon said.

The forensic exam is just one part of the equation. Id like to see the courts make these people pay restitution for these things, Fannon said.

Fannon said he intends to include the cost of exams required to collect evidence in a restitution request as a part of a criminals sentencing.

[Sic, sic, sic.]

Some states have a fund to pay for rape kits, some do not. In North Carolina, for instance, from Feb. 13, 2008:

N.C. hospitals bill rape victims

Rape victims across the state are paying for their ill fortune in the most tangible of ways: a bill for the evidence kit needed to lock up the rapist.

The vast majority of the 3,000 or so emergency room patients examined for sexual assaults each year shoulder some of the cost of a rape kit test, according to state records and victim advocates. For some, it's as little as a $50 insurance co-payment. For those without insurance, it's hundreds of dollars left when a state program designed to help reaches its limit.

From August 2008, the situation seems to have improved:

Rape victims won't face exam bills

Victims of sexual violence in North Carolina will no longer be forced to pay for the forensic exams needed to help capture their attackers.

The N.C. General Assembly approved more than $1 million this summer to revamp a program designed to help cover the cost of rape kit exams for uninsured victims. The exams are used to collect bodily evidence of an attacker and are standard in the prosecution of sex crimes.

Now, hospitals will settle directly with the state, sparing victims of sexual assault the aggravation and trauma of receiving a bill.

Billing for rape kits was also standard procedure in other places, until quite recently:

Rape Victims Can Be Hurt Financially, Too

"It's been a problem for a long time," says Ilse Knecht, deputy director of public policy at the National Center for Victims of Crime. "We've heard so many stories of victims paying for their exams, or not being able to and then creditors coming after them." In order to qualify for federal grants under the Violence Against Women Act, states have to assume the full out-of-pocket costs for forensic medical exams, as the rape kits are called. But according to a 2004 bulletin published by the NCVC, "[F]eedback from the field indicates that sexual assault victims are still being billed." Knecht says she's recently heard from caseworkers in Illinois, Georgia, and Arkansas reporting that rape victims continue to be charged for their forensic exams.

The rape kit itself generally contains bags to collect clothing, test tubes for collecting blood, swabs for fluid, and a comb to collect pubic hair. Small-change stuff. But exams also involve administering tests for pregnancy, HIV, gonorrhea, and syphilis, and that's where the costs add up, says Randall Brown, medical director for the Baton Rouge Rape Crisis Center in Louisiana.

How forensic exam costs are handled varies. In some locations, hospitals bill patients' insurance and absorb whatever the insurers don't pay or bill patients for the balance. Some states have special funds to cover a portion of the costs. Others require convicted offenders to pay into a fund to reimburse the costs of the exams.

Also Missouri: In 2006, State Sen. Michael Gibbons introduced an amendment to a crime bill that

would require the Department of Health and Senior Services to make payments to medical providers to cover the charges of forensic examinations for victims of sexual offenses. Victims would also be able to seek “out-of-pocket” losses from the Crime Victims Compensation Fund to cover the cost of personal property that is seized as part of the investigation.

The legislative database says the last action on the bill was that it was "in conference," this in 2007.

A NOW press release from 2002 says

NOW's local activists report that in many jurisdictions the victim must pay for the processing of the "rape kit" evidence – an absurdly unfair proposition. Is there any other assault in which survivors are required to pay the cost of investigating the crimes against them? These expenses can reach $1,500 for DNA analysis, and $5,000 or more for extra costs such as evidence collection and medical care.

So it wasn't only Wasilla, it wasn't only Sarah Palin, it was standard procedure in lots of places. More from Rachael Larimore at Slate.

I guess there is still some concern on the Left that Palin is not quite finished, politically, so it will be necessary to keep the old smears alive. Like zombies!

Laughing just to keep from crying

The Ace of Spades has the report right here. And a lot of comments. Here's the video. Your neighbors and mine, and, you know, they vote. That is, they voted! Oh dear oh my.

"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried." Thanks, Winston Churchill. We could be doing a lot worse. We really could. And might yet.

Cheer up, now, didn't you see in the last post that there's going to be less grumbling around here. Like it or not.

Update: followup on the video at Power Line.

Debunking a Palin smear

Is this the truth under the smear? So "she thought Africa was a country" was a hoax from the beginning.

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.

Now a pair of obscure filmmakers say they created Martin Eisenstadt to help them pitch a TV show based on the character. But under the circumstances, why should anyone believe a word they say?

I do not anticipate much if anything in the way of apologies from the lefties who seized on this and made much of it.

Wise fools

This is … dismaying. Yet one of the perennial questions is "How can such smart people be so dumb?" Reason magazine's 2008 Presidential poll. Obama wins by a mile among this group of highly intelligent, highly imaginative people, who apparently have not been paying attention, and are mostly so annoyed with Bush that they want to slap him with a fish, never mind that he isn't even running.

Tim Slagle makes sense:

Who are you voting for in November? I'm voting for Palin. Maybe it's just the tendency of a guy with a big crush to project his ideology on that crush, but she just smells like a Libertarian to me. I'm probably wrong, but the alternative really frightens me. The darkest moments in world history have occurred during the confluence of a bad economy and a charismatic leader. Those videos of children singing and marching for Obama are really disconcerting. I don't care for McCain, but with Palin behind him, his age is an asset.

And Michael Shermer is funny (and I hope not serious about those first three words):

Who are you voting for in November? I’m voting Democrat because I think lawyers should run the country, because the last two years under their control has gone so well, because the government has done such a great job with FEMA that they should also be in charge of our school choices, health care choices, and retirement choices, because they protect me from crime so well that I don’t need a gun, because I want to pay more taxes (especially Capital Gains), because unions need to be stronger against evil corporations, because trade with foreign corporations is anti-American and we need to protect American jobs, and mostly because I’m tired of having so many choices and want someone else to make them for me.

But most of them seem to be suffering from the notion that a vote for Obama will be seen as a vote against current Republican policies, which will indicate to the Republican party that it needs to get back to the principles of Reagan and Goldwater. Or else they believe, out of sheer wishful thinking, apparently, that Obama will govern as a moderate. Do I need to say it: a vote for Obama will be taken by him as an endorsement of whatever he wants to do. There is no way to mark a ballot to say that "I am only voting for you because I don't like the other guy, even though I like you less." Can't do it.

Wise fools.

McCain : Palin :: Théoden : Éowyn

Rachel Lucas explains it all. She sounds like Winston Churchill: "[T]he only honorable thing to do, ever, is to fight until you cannot fight any more. Even when you are horribly outnumbered, outgunned, outwhatevered - you must never give up because if you do, you’re handing victory to the enemy." That's a Texan speaking, one who, I imagine, remembers the Alamo.

Part 1: Do not despair, Part 2: Fell deeds awake.

That leaves Obama : Biden :: Saruman : Gríma Wormtongue.

That's assuming that Obama is not actually in the pay of foreign enemies, though the many dubious contributions give one to doubt that, but believes himself to be acting in his own behalf; one receiving such contributions might imagine that he could take their money, but not be beholden to them afterwards. So, assuming that he is self-deluded in this way is actually a charitable assumption.

I should explain that in this analogy I do not see Gríma so much as the evil counselor who nearly destroyed Théoden, but more as the feckless clown, trailing around after Saruman, who speaks words, lots of words, that are only loosely connected with reality.

Update: see here for a laugh. (That's the next post in chronological order, or the one above in blogological order, so if you arrived from the index page you have already seen it.)

Compare and contrast: law school students, poll respondents, and Clever Hans

Althouse has this: "Professors Found to Keep Political Views Quiet, but Students Detect Them." Zombie has this: The Left's Big Blunder, in which are mentioned the Clever Hans phenomenon, and the Solomon Asch conformity effect. There seem to be some striking parallels.

I am trying to watch Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live while writing this; I don't think I can do both at once. So this post is a stub, as they say at Wikipedia. I'll see if I can come back to it.