Brutally Honest

"These people don’t hate Palin because of the lies; the lies exist to justify the hate."

That from someone named The Reclusive Leftist who continues:

That’s why they keep reaching and reaching for something else, until they finally get to “she winked on TV!” (And by the way: I’ve been winked at my whole life by my grandmother, aunts, and great-aunts. Who knew it was such a despicable act?)

The only thing Palin is commonly accused of that is actually true is her anti-abortion stance, though, as I’ve pointed out several times, her political position is that “the will of the people” should decide the law. She has also expressed sympathy for women choosing abortion and has said that she is totally opposed to any woman ever being criminalized for it. I’m not pretending she’s anything other than what she is (an adamant “pro-lifer”), but I am trying to be as clear and honest as I can be about her actual stance.

...

I cannot figure it out. I look and look, and it’s like trying to see someone else’s hallucination. No matter how hard I squint, I can’t see whatever it is they’re looking at. What is so horrifying?

My own reaction to Palin’s convention speech was the polar opposite. I can honestly say that, aside from Nixon’s resignation speech, Sarah Palin’s address at the convention is the only Republican speech I have ever enjoyed. Or even been much interested in. I don’t agree with Republicans on politics — not by a long shot — but as a person, I found Palin charming in a Harry Truman, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Erin Brockovich kind of way. How could you not? Especially after the goons had spent the previous weekend in a misogyny fest of lurid speculation and grotesque sexual insults about her and her family. I was proud of her for her courage, as well as for her personal accomplishments as a working-class regular person who went into politics and succeeded.

Her speech also delivered some welcome punctures to the national gasbag known as Obama. And that’s another thing: it has not escaped my attention that many of the things Palin is accused of, falsely, are actually true of Obama. This is a guy who, as a U.S. senator from Illinois, didn’t even know which Senate committees he was on or which states bordered his own. (And don’t even get me started on Joe “The Talking Donkey” Biden, who thinks FDR was president during the stock market crash and that people watched TV in those days.) I’m not saying Obama’s a moron, but he’s sure as hell no genius. People say Sarah Palin rambles; excuse me, but have you actually heard Obama speak extemporaneously? As for being a diva, surely we all remember the Possomus sign and the special embroidered pillow on the Obama campaign plane. The fact is, Obama is an intellectually mediocre narcissist with a thin resume who’s lost without a teleprompter and whose entire campaign had all the substance and gravity of a Pepsi commercial. Yet people say Sarah Palin is a fluffy bunny diva.

So: are we back to Obama after all? Is this a transference thing? Are people subconsciously frustrated by the fact that Obama is an empty suit, and are they transferring that rage to Palin?

Seems plausible to me... but only the Palin haters can answer these questions.  You know the type, those that heap praise on Maureen Dowd for engaging in... well... Palin hatred:

Note to self: never piss off Maureen Dowd.

Ouch.

In her piece in today's NY Times, Ms. Dowd absolutely skewers Sarah Palin for her baffling decision to resign the governorship. When I grow up, I want to write as well as Maureen Dowd. For now, I'll settle for writing as well as Maureen Stapleton.

Sarah Palin showed on Friday that in one respect at least, she is qualified to be president.

Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy.

Usually we don’t find that exquisite battiness in our leaders until they’ve been battered by sordid scandals like Watergate (Nixon), gnawing problems like Vietnam (L.B.J.), or scary threats like biological terrorism (Cheney).

When Lyndon Johnson was president, some of his staff began to think of him as “a sick man,” as Bill Moyers told Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Moyers and his fellow Johnson aide Dick Goodwin even began reading up on mental illness — Bill on manic depression and Dick on paranoia.

And so it was, Todd Purdum learned, as he traveled Alaska reporting on Palin for Vanity Fair, that the governor’s erratic and egoistic behavior has been a source of concern for people there.

“Several told me, independently of one another,” Purdum writes, “that they had consulted the definition of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — ‘a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy’ — and thought it fit her perfectly.”

The White House can drive its inhabitants loopy. So at least Sarah Palin is ahead of the curve on that one.

Praising Maureen Dowd makes tremendous sense when one values style over substance but in actuality, The Reclusive Leftist puts it best as she summarizes, categorizes and otherwise defines the Palin hatred:

Awhile ago I came up with what I think is the most plausible explanation yet when I said:

Sarah Palin is the Designated Hate Receptacle for self-described feminists. They know they’re not supposed to hate other women, but they do anyway because their feminism is not quite as strong as their patriarchal brainwashing. Sarah Palin is the culture’s designated Hate Receptacle.

I’m not entirely satisfied with that, but it’s the best I can come up with. If we add to that the subconscious Obama resentment-transference, perhaps on a kind of sliding rheostat thing, we may be getting close to a solution.

What’s alarming is that the need for a female Hate Receptacle exists, even with feminists. But that would explain why Palin haters are so reluctant to give up hating her. It would explain why they’re so resistant to the truth. They don’t want to find out that the lies are lies; they don’t want to be disabused. They need a hate receptacle, and so they need Palin to be the sum of all things they fear.

Sarah Palin: "this decision has been in the works for quite a while"

TheCaucusBlog:

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska announced Friday that she would step down by the end of the month and not seek a second term as governor, fueling speculation that she is seriously weighing whether to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2012.

Ms. Palin, who was Senator John McCain’s vice presidential running mate last year and solidified the support of the party’s conservative base, explained her decision at a news conference at her home in Wasilla, Alaska, accompanied by her husband, Todd, and other family members.

“We know we can effect positive change outside of government,” she said in making the announcement.

Known as Sarah Barricuda when she played basketball in high school, Ms. Palin used point guard analogy in explaining her decision, saying she knows “exactly when to pass the ball so the team can win.”

She said that she planned to hand over the reins of the state government to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who would be sworn in at the governor’s picnic in Fairbanks on July 25.

“This decision came after much consideration,” Ms. Palin told reporters gathered at her home, and added, “I really don’t want to disappoint anyone with this announcement.”

...

“Some are going to question the timing of this, and let me say this decision has been in the works for quite a while,” she said.

A hint as to why might come from the response to this event given by a friend of John McCain (and no friend of Sarah Palin):

"We've seen a lot of nutty behavior from governors and Republican leaders in the last three months, but this one is at the top of that," said John Weaver, a longtime friend and confidant of  Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the party's presidential nominee in 2008 whose of selection of Palin catapulted the first-term Alaska governor to national prominence.

What an a-hole.

Sarah Palin has been a breath of fresh air and a stalwart conservative in a field where no voice seems to represent my own.  God bless her and her family as she moves on.

"we may be lining up for the common sense charisma campaign against the nonsense charisma"

Jay Valentine believes that Sarah Palin may be the most dangerous threat to the Obama administration:

The best and the brightest on the left go into politics.  The best on the right run their own businesses.  So it is no surprise that the left is far more adept, even expert at the art of hardball politics.  And they are telling us something profound.

The left is telling us something many feel, many find as a hunch, that Sarah Palin is the most dangerous threat to the Obama administration with no close second.  The left is telling us this by their  "over the top" attacks.  Not just the Letterman assaults, but the constant barrage of grievances filed against her in Alaska.  The attacks every day on Palin for no apparent reason -- except that the left seems to see her quite differently from any Republican candidate.  A difference of kind, not of degree.

...

The landscape is now quite different.  There are tens of millions of people who never voted for Obama, telling their friends "don't blame me."  There is a growing number who did vote for Obama who have lost their jobs at car dealerships, who have not found work yet even after the massive spending, and there are those who just say "...this is not the change I had in mind."

Some thought McCain would be the anti-charisma candidate against the charisma candidate and that would work.  Now we may be lining up for the common sense charisma campaign against the nonsense charisma.

The left is telling us something and they are the experts.  They are telling us not to make Palin the conservative candidate because if we do, it will be humiliating.  I agree with them and I take them at their word.

It will be the undoing of Obama, and it may be overwhelming.

There's a ton more where that ellipsis is... a ton more.

And I think you Palin smiters ought to especially go read it.

You know who you are.

But be careful not to bust a vein.

Hey... all you Sarah Palin haters

And you know who in hell you are, here's more fodder for your hatred:

Jim Geraghty tweeted it first and writes:

Back in March, I took a look at a Portfolio article on Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s plan for a natural-gas pipeline. Among the article’s criticisms of Palin was that she had effectively shut out the oil companies whose cooperation was necessary for completion of the project.

One of her defenders credited her plan for bringing “three of the four key players into alignment: the U.S. government, the Canadian government, and the state of Alaska,” adding, “the fourth player, the producers, are going to have to deal with that reality.”

Well, today TransCanada (the pipeline builders) and ExxonMobil (one of the producers) have reached an agreement to work together on an Alaska gas pipeline.

Not bad for a stoopit, back-woods, white-trash, snow-mobiling, moose-killing, “slutty flight-attendant-looking” hick who didn’t go to the right colleges and stubbornly wouldn’t abort her “retarded kid,” or force her sluttish, teenage daughter to “sensibly squish” her own baby (see comments here) and who didn’t have enough experience to be vice president, unlike the smart current veep (who disclosed his own safe-location) and who certainly was too stoopit and inexperienced to inhabit the Oval Office. Not bad for a “mayor of a small town” who once owned her own business, and then went on to run a state, unlike our current president, who has never run anything or met a payroll, and who - with typical Bushian American Obamian arrogance and unilateralism - appears to have moved the Uighurs (ahem - terrorists) to Bermuda without bothering to talk to the UK about it, once again treating one of our staunchest allies very badly, by means of his “smart diplomacy.”

Yeah, we sure dodged a bullet last November. Whew.

Bustin' a vein yet... idiot?

Sarah Palin: "our country could evolve into something that we do not even recognize"

Via Drudge:

Palin continues:

"America is digging a deeper hole and how are we paying for this government largesse. We’re borrowing. We’re borrowing from China and we consider that now we own sixty percent of GENERAL MOTORS – or the U.S. government does… But who is the U.S. government becoming more indebted to? It’s China. So that leads you to have to ask who is really going to own our car industry than in America."

HANNITY: You know but it goes back - It does go back a little to the campaign. I mean, ‘spread the wealth, patriotic duty…’

PALIN: Kind of a ‘we told ya so’.

HANNITY: Well, is that how you feel?

PALIN: That’s how I feel! I feel like… and I think that more and more constituents are going to open their eyes now and open their ears to hear what is really going on and realize ok… Maybe we didn’t have a good way of expressing that, or articulating that message of ‘here is what America could potentially become if we grow government to such a degree that we cannot pay for it and we have to borrow money from other countries, some countries that don’t necessarily like America.

And this many months into the new administration, quite disappointed, quite frustrated with not seeing those actions to rein in spending, slow down the growth of government. Instead Sean it is the complete opposite. It’s expanding at such a large degree that if Americans aren’t paying attention, unfortunately our country could evolve into something that we do not even recognize.

She speaks for me.

Unlike so many politicians today, Sarah Palin is real

Via AllahPundit at Hot Air who adds:

Like Geraghty says, “Pro-lifers will love her all the more, because she contemplated what they see as a great evil, felt the temptation, and resisted it,” but the left will seize on the fact that, even if only for an instant, America’s favorite hockey mom was glad she had a choice. In fact, they’re seizing on it already.

Ony those with a seriously demented view on life could take this woman's words and twist them for their own wicked purposes.  Sick, purposely sick people.

Palin and back taxes

MSNBC and presumably most of the major media outlets within 24 hours will be covering this story ad nauseum:

Gov. Sarah Palin must pay back taxes on nearly $18,000 in expenses she charged the state for living in her home outside Anchorage instead of at the state capital, officials said Wednesday.

A review of state policy and Internal Revenue Service tax laws determined the per diem payments should be treated as income, Department of Administration Commissioner Annette Kreitzer said.

The charges came to light after Palin was named John McCain's running mate on the Republican presidential ticket in August and became a campaign issue after she was presented to the nation as a fiscal conservative.

"These issues were raised during the national campaign and as result of the national campaign the governor asked us to look into this," Kreitzer said.

Emphasis on that last statement is mine.

Unlike the Democrats who are forced to come clean when appointed to high profile positions, Palin actually asked that her situation be looked at internally.

It's a distinction that won't be made by the MSM.

Guaranteed.

Paglia on Palin, Palin haters and Katie Couric

She is a refreshing liberal voice:

Ideology-driven attacks on Palin became clotted liberal clichés within 24 hours of her introduction as John McCain's running mate. What a bunch of tittering lemmings the urban elite have become in this country. From Couric's vicious manipulations of video clips to Cavett's bourgeois platitudes, the preemptive strike on Palin as a potential presidential candidate has grossly misfired. Whatever legitimate objections may be raised to Palin on political grounds (explored, for example, by David Talbot in Salon) have been lost in the amoral overkill that has defamed a self-made woman of concrete achievement in the public realm.

And let me take this opportunity to say that of all the innumerable print and broadcast journalists who have interviewed me in the U.S. and abroad since I arrived on the scene nearly 20 years ago, Katie Couric was definitively the stupidest. As a guest on NBC's "Today" show during my 1992 book tour, I was astounded by Couric's small, humorless, agenda-ridden mind, still registered in that pinched, tinny monotone that makes me rush across the room to change stations whenever her banal mini-editorials blare out at 5 p.m. on the CBS radio network. And of course I would never spoil my dinner by tuning into Couric's TV evening news show. That sallow, wizened, drum-tight, cosmetic mummification look is not an appetite enhancer outside of Manhattan or L.A. There's many a moose in Alaska with greater charm and pizazz.

"Amoral overkill" to describe those suffering from Palin Derangement Syndrome.  Beautiful and pointed choice of words that just nails so many.

You know who in hell you are.  Doesn't it just piss you off to be so acccurately described?

"She is the real deal"

Who?

Sarah Palin:

One of the things you quickly learn when you visit the Palins is that the legend created around who they are and how they live is no myth. It appears to be absolutely real and everything about them seems 100% sincere. From the stuffed hunting trophies on the wall, to Track’s military photo by the TV set, to Piper’s crayon school projects on the refrigerator door - everything is exactly as you imagined.

What’s particularly valuable about my perspective is that I am not Charlie Gibson, Matt Lauer or Greta Van Susteren (who I understand now gets her mail delivered to the Palin home) — the conductors of the three most prominent interviews done in this Wasilla home on a frozen lake at the end of a drive with the sign “Palins” posted on a tree. I am virtually unknown nationally and there was absolutely no reason for anything to be done differently as “show” for us. We saw the genuine Sarah Palin and it is patently obvious this is the only one who exists.

She is the real deal.

As a former TV sportscaster and radio talk show host I’ve interviewed a lot big-time “celebrities,” and can honestly say that even though you could argue Sarah Palin was the most prominent, she is also by far the nicest, most sincere and seemingly honest subject I’ve ever questioned.

The entire post should be read.

And this entire video ought to be seen:

She is the real deal. And I hope she does gain the kind of experience necessary over the next 4 or 8 years to come roaring back.

To the chagrin of every conservative hating progressive out there. That would be an awesome thing to see.

"She was the welfare-state queen pretending to be the independent frontier gal"

Who dat?

Why dat be Sarah Palin, TIME magazine's runner up for person of the year:

Democrats were instantly and gleefully appalled that the Republicans would consider a one-term governor qualified to challenge their one-term Senator. She was the welfare-state queen pretending to be the independent frontier gal, the crusader against cronyism who had installed her own courtiers and blackballed her enemies. And who goes to four colleges in six years anyway, and names her children after sports seasons and fishing spots? Right away, before she'd had a chance to take off her coat, the attack was intense, intimate.

The most stunning accusation was not about her experience or intellect or attitude; it was the allegation that she had committed a stupendous moral fraud, faking her infant son Trig's birth to cover up her teen daughter's pregnancy. Throughout the weekend after her selection, the rumor moved from Daily Kos to the Times of London at Internet speed: the fact that it spread as far and as fast as it did signaled just how much the two sides of our cultural divide distrust each other.

Nice eh?  The Palin hatred leaping off the page like a host of moonbat leftist jack-in-the-boxes.

Don Surber sums it up nicely for me:

You got that?

It isn’t the fault of Time’s Internet darling Daily Kos that it spread the worst rumor in presidential history.

It somehow is the fault of everyone equally.

She was somehow asking for it.

In that way, Time is like the judge in the 1960s who said a raped woman was “asking for it” by wearing a miniskirt.

Time also said: “She was the welfare-state queen pretending to be the independent frontier gal, the crusader against cronyism who had installed her own courtiers and blackballed her enemies.”

Based on what?

Despicable.

The New York Times is fish wrap.

The Charleston Gazette is bird cage liner.

Time?

Lower. Far lower.

Indeed.