O brother, what art thou?

Posted by Josh Painter, Apr 12 2009, 07:07 AM

Breaking news! It seems that Todd Palin not only has a half-sister, but he also has another half-sibling - a half-brother named Samson Palin. The First Dude's half-sister Diana, you may recall, was recently arrested for breaking into a house in Wasilla for the second time this week to steal money. You can go to Celtic Diva's blog and read all about it. You will find it as an update to the Levi/Bristol exploitation post under the mocking title "Palin Family Values" - with the professional Palin-hatin' diva's take on it:

"Karma has a sense of humor, no?"

Wow, just wait until she learns about this latest Palin problem! She and her posse are going to have a field day with it. Todd's other half-sibling has been accused of something so vile... so perverse... that it spells certain doom for Gov. Palin's political future.

As Karma would have it, Todd's half-bro Sampson was refused entry to Britain after reportedly being accused of an attempted sex attack on a 13-year-old girl on his last visit. Samson was denied a visa by UK authorities because he had previously been arrested by the cops in Berkshire after approaching a group of young girls, including a 13 year-old, and allegedly trying to sexually assault one of them.

He then followed the girls into a cafe where he became aggressive and was asked to leave by the owner. Police were called, and Samson was arrested. He reportedly gave officers phony identification information - an apparent attempt to conceal his relationship to the governor's husb...

Oh, wait.

I see I have made a critical error in my reading of this disturbing news. The perverted perp's name isn't Samson Palin. It's Samson Obama. And Sicko Samson is not Todd Palin's half-brother. He is Barack Obama's half-brother. The President of the United States, leader of the Free World and Hero of the Blue Diva and her Palin-mocking crew, has a half-brother who has a thing for 13-year-old girls and can't keep his filthy hands off of them.

So it seems that Irony, like Karma, has a sense of humor, no? Those superior souls who hang out at Diva's Oasis, where the pool is always full of blue Kool-Aid, won't notice. They will have their hands over their ears, shouting, "I can't hear you!" Exploitation of teenagers for political purposes must be a leftist family value, just as burglary must be a much more heinous crime than the attempted sexual assault of a child.

So I'm terribly sorry for the mistake. My bad. Nothing to see here folks. "These aren't the droids you're looking for. Move along. Move along..."

- JP

Doh! Obama thinks 'Austrian' is a language

Posted by Josh Painter, Apr 6 2009, 02:26 PM

President Barack Obama made a world-class gaffe in front of the entire planet’s press during his news conference in Strasbourg, France. The transcript was released by the White House on April 4:

Q Sonja Sagmeister from a little country, Austria, from Austrian Television. Mr. President, you said you came here to learn and to listen. So a quite personal question — what did you learn from your personal talk with the European leaders? And did this change in a certain way your views on Europe and its politics?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: It’s an interesting question. I had already formed relationships with many of them. Some of them I had met when I traveled through Europe before my election. Some of them I had met because they came to Washington after the election. This is the first time I’ve been in a forum with so many of them at the same time.

I’m extraordinarily impressed by the quality of leadership. I am constantly reminded that although there are cultural differences that are important and that we have to be sensitive to, what we have in common between Europe and the United States so vastly exceeds any differences that we have; that we should not forget why we are allies, and we should be careful about some of the easy stereotypes that take place on both sides of the borders.

It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There’s a lot of — I don’t know what the term is in Austrian — wheeling and dealing — and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics.

But I think it’s a testimony to the success of the European Union, as well as NATO, that on very important issues, each leader seems to be able to rise above parochial interests in order to achieve common objectives. And I think that has accounted for some of the extraordinary success and prosperity of Europe over the last several years.

So what’s so embarrassingly wrong about what the president said? Only this:

German is the official language of Austria.

In other words, this is no such language as “Austrian.” Isn’t there someone on the White House staff, a director of Protocol or something, whose job it is to make sure the leader of the free world knows these things? Or did no one say anything because they assumed that it was reasonably common knowledge?

You probably recall the howls from the drive-by media and the leftosphere when Fox News’ Carl Cameron said that he was told “by folks” - folks without names, apparently - that Sarah Palin didn’t know that Africa was a continent. The press and “progressive” bloggers had a field day with it, even though it was only a rumor and had never been confirmed by anyone willing to put their name behind it.

For that, Gov. Palin was maligned. A “dubious grasp of geography,” sniffed HuffPo’s Nicholas Graham. Wonkette, dripping with superiority, posted, “And did we mention that she thought Africa was a country, and not a continent? Wait until she hears about Australia: it’s both.” Salon’s Anthony Freed wrote: “Stunningly, but not surprisingly, the gal who was 3% of the vote and an old man’s heart beat away from the presidency thinks Africa is a country in and of itself.” It would later come to light that the “Martin Eisenstadt” who took credit for passing the tidbit along to Fox News does not exist. It was a hoax. But many Palin critics still believe the continent meme, even though it’s never been more than a rumor.

Obama’s ignorance of Austria and what language is spoken there, however, is a unicorn of a different hue. It’s on the official White House transcript. It’s on video. Many people know that German is spoken in Austria, and they didn’t have to look it up. So where are the Obama-worshippers on this? They are curiously silent. No snickering from HuffPo, no acidic Salon snorting, no “dumb as a bag of hammers” diaries from Wonkette. The double standard runs deep and wide, and there’s no ceiling, glass or otherwise, limiting the heights to which the Left’s hypocrisy can soar.

h/t: Free Republic

- JP

McCain rewards Palin's loyalty with a shrug

Posted by Josh Painter, Dec 14 2008, 11:01 PM

Today on ABC's This Week, when asked by host George Stephanopoulos whether he would support Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin if she runs for president, Sen. John McCain punted:

"Oh no. Listen I have the greatest appreciation for Gov. Palin and her family and it was a great joy to know them," McCain said. "She invigorated our campaign and she was just down in Georgia and she invigorated their campaign."

"But I can't say something like that," McCain said, "We've got some great other young governors... Pawlenty, Huntsman."

Pressed by Stephanopoulos that McCain had considered Palin to be the best person to succeed him if he had been elected and something had happened to him, the former Republican presidential candidate replied:

"Well sure, but now we're in a whole election cycle."

As if conservatives needed a reminder of why those that voted for him had to hold their noses to mark the ballot. Indeed, many of them wouldn't have even bothered to go to the polls November 4 if Gov. Palin had not been the GOP's vice presidential candidate.

For her part, Sarah Palin has shown nothing but loyalty, admiration and respect for McCain. Today he rewarded her devotion to him in the usual McCain manner. The man rarely misses an opportunity to stab conservatives in the back, except when he kicks them in the stomach.

When members of his own campaign staff slurred Palin in a most reprehensible manner, McCain was slow to defend her, and even when he finally did, he failed to name names or bother to criticize the culprits. She deserved better then from McCain, and she did today also.

Aside from his military service for his country, John McCain has proven time after time that to him, such values as honor, loyalty and respect are a one-way street.

- JP

A Thanksgiving blessing in disguise

Posted by Josh Painter, Nov 27 2008, 07:55 AM

As she celebrates this day designated to give thanks by proclamation of the nation's first president, Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, can be thankful that she is not Vice-President-elect of the United States. That is not as audacious as it may sound. Consider that if the McCain-Palin ticket had won the election, the woman who would have become the first of her gender to be the nation's vice president would have been forever doomed to carry the mantle of Dan Quayle.

Even after four years in that office, no matter how much she may have learned about national and international issues, no matter how assured and confident she may have become in one-on-one interview situations, no matter how much she may have broadened her appeal to moderates and independents, it would have been carved in stone - Sarah Palin would have been the political reincarnation of former Vice President Quayle. And that would have been as grossly unfair to Gov. Palin as the reputation he has been branded with is to Quayle.

Vincent Larobina, who blogs at We Have Sarah and They Don't, has posted a William F. Buckley defense of Quayle from 1988 on Free Republic which drives home the point of how the media would have cast the die. In his piece, WFB wrote of Quayle:

The moat built around him by the Bush people during the past two months was largely responsible for giving out the impression that he was a basket case of illiteracy.

Sound familiar? This is exactly what McCain's people did to Sarah Palin. When she dared to escape from the straight jacket they had put her in and called radio talk shows and local newspaper reporters, McCain's aides became incensed. Their tunnel vision kept them from heeding Santayana's warning about learning from history to avoid being doomed to repeat it. I seriously doubt that they would have suddenly learned it had the election gone the other way.

Despite how desperately the media wants to paint Palin as a Quayle clone, she has a way to avoid that fate by virtue of having been on the losing ticket in the '08 election. The governor can now immerse herself in the issues of the nation and the world until her knowledge of them is unshakable. Palin has already demonstrated that she's a quick learner, and she's smart enough not to repeat her early mistakes. She can pick the brains of some of the finest political minds of the day to learn how to avoid the pitfalls of running a national campaign.

With time as her ally, Sarah Palin will work to tweak her image. She has received offers of up to $7 million to write a book which she will use in the process. She will build her own network. She will make appearances at the required functions - CPAC, governors meetings, state and local GOP banquets, county fairs and the like - and emerge in two years time having changed existing perceptions and redefined herself in the process.

Rest assured that she will be making herself appear as non-threatening as she can. As McCain's running mate, Palin had to assume the traditional role of "attack dog" - a thankless job that all VP candidates get stuck with - and that helped to drive up her negatives. She no longer has to play that game. The new tone from the governor of Alaska will one of willing to cooperate with the new administration when and where she can, and constructive criticism when she thinks Obama & Co. are not doing the right thing. Either way, she will do it with an engaging smile. It will be a kinder and gentler Sarah Palin we will see, but she won't betray her Ronald Reagan conservative principles. Instead, she will take a page from Reagan's book and learn how to sell conservative ideas to those voters who don't consider themselves to be conservatives. That was one of the keys to the Gipper's great success. She shares his boundless optomism, she honors his principles and she looks good on a television screen, as did he. She only needs a media advisor with a director's eye who will place her in camera shots with carefully chosen backgrounds. No more mayhem going on behind her as she tries to get her message out.

Gov. Palin will emphasize those issues and learn to put herself into those situations that emphasize her strengths. She connects with everyday folks, and her most ardent supporters are people who have families. She will become an even more family-friendly figure in the months to come. She will use her record and knowledge on energy issues to her advantage. Free of the handlers who poorly prepared her and threw her into hostile confrontations with the media and then tried to lock her away from the less hostile talking heads, she will do a lot of interviews with local newspapers, radio hosts and TV stations. Palin will also make sure her national media appearances are more tightly-controlled and will probably only grant such interviews on the condition that they not be edited, for example. As McCain's number two, she didn't have much power over her image and still managed to excite the Republican party's conservative base. Now she will work hard to broaden that base.

This is the opportunity she has been given. Not only does Gov. Palin have the chance to change the way she will be perceived, but she will also have the opportunity to take a strong leadership role in the Republican party and redefine it in Ronald Reagan's terms using his conservative principles. None of this would have been possible if she - and not Joe Biden - would now be waiting to become the next vice president. Ironically, now it is Biden who risks being cast as the next Dan Quayle, and that's a role Palin should be thankful that the gaffemaster is destined to assume.

- JP

Patterico Rocks!

Posted by Josh Painter, Nov 20 2008, 11:56 PM

Patterico has been on a tear lately. His pwning of Andrew Sullivan is the major buzz of the blogosphere today. Just in case you missed it, here's a teaser:

This is the hysterical blogger who was taken in by the idiot Kos rumor that Trig Palin was the offspring of Sarah Palin’s daughter. Even the morons at Kos were so embarrassed that they deleted the post. Not Sullivan. He still wants the medical records!

This is the moron who, when there was a bogus rumor that Sarah Palin had been involved in an affair with Todd Palin’s former business partner, immediately wrote two breathless posts about it...

It started about a week ago, when Patterico took Howard Kurtz to the woodshed for misstating some facts by accusing Sarah Palin of misstating some facts. The governor, in her interview with Matt Lauer, scolded the mainstream media for passing along the internet rumors that her son Trig was not really hers, that someone else was the baby's mom and that Palin had faked her pregnancy.

Kurtz' argument was that no mainstream outlet published the Internet rumors until the McCain campaign issued a statement, during the GOP convention, that Palin’s teenage daughter Bristol was pregnant. He missed the point entirely, and Patterico schooled him:

First, how does that show Palin misstated any facts? She didn’t say: the mainstream media published scurrilous rumors about Trig’s parentage before we announced Bristol’s pregnancy. She said: the mainstream media published scurrilous rumors about Trig’s parentage. And you people did, Howard. Now you’re acting like you had no choice; as if McCain forced your hand by announcing that Bristol was pregnant.

Patterico was just getting warmed up:

Is the Atlantic not part of the mainstream media? Because Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic most assuredly was publishing these rumors before the McCain camp announced Bristol’s pregnancy. In this post from August 31, 2008, Sullivan disgraced the Atlantic by publishing rumors that had previously been confined primarily to the fever swamps of the Daily Kos. Sullivan ticked off a number of facts that he found suspicious about Trig’s birth, and referred to “the rumors buzzing across the Internets and the press corps.”

And the coup de grace:

Maybe Kurtz is hesitant to point all this out because he was part of the ridiculous frenzy himself.

Kurtz should be writing about the fact that Andrew Sullivan, a blogger for a mainstream media outlet, is so unhinged that he still thinks this is a legitimate story, and still pledges to chase it down. Sullivan is certifiably insane, and yet retains his post at a mainstream outlet.

And so it began. Today's evisceration of Sullivan is just the latest battle in the war which was ignited when Kurtz did some sloppy work.

About doggone time someone drained Sullivan's fever swamp. Bravo, Patterico!

- JP