Month: July 2009

I know nothing about sports. But here's a diagram from Deadspin's

The purported and transparently untrue claim that Palin resigned her office abruptly because of the millions of dollars frivolous lawsuits are costing Alaskans deserves a little factual push-back. From the Anchorage Daily News:

There have been 18 known ethics complaints filed against her. The governor's office said they've been dismissed so far with no finding of wrongdoing, although she did settle a complaint over state-paid travel for her children. The state personnel board put its cost of dealing with the complaints at about $300,000 — around two-thirds of which was in addressing the "Troopergate" issue last fall. Palin herself initiated the personnel board investigation on "Troopergate," saying that the state Legislature's investigation of the matter was politicized and she was seeking the appropriate venue to deal with it.

So one ethics complaint saved the state money; and the most expensive one was initiated by Palin herself, because the legislature came to the wrong conclusion. Her claim of "millions" is dreamed up by trying to include hours spent by legal staff responding to lawsuits. But that's their job. Like almost every other defense Palin has given of something weird in her life, this one makes no sense.

The Cajun Boy at Gawker describes a bloggy truth:

Felix Salmon agrees. Me too. It's a bit of a shock at first, but once you get into the water, it feels bearable after a while. My silent mantra to myself whenever I read some particularly nasty missive or blogpost: it doesn't matter what they say about you as long as it isn't true. If it is true, then learn from it.

"All the knowing commentary — all the speculation about how stupid, or brilliant, or just plain inexplicable her behavior is — seems to me to ignore a crucial possibility: that with Sarah Palin, what you see is what you get," – Roger Kimball.

Just sit back and reflect:

But as for whether another pursuit of national office, as she did less than a year ago when she joined Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the race for the White House, would result in the same political blood sport, Palin said there is a difference between the White House and what she has experienced in Alaska. If she were in the White House, she said, the "department of law" would protect her from baseless ethical allegations."I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out," she said. There is no "Department of Law" at the White House.

Maybe she was thinking of the Office of Legal Counsel: you know the lawyers hired by Cheney to let him do whatever he wanted, including the torture of human beings. Maybe she was thinking about her own view of the First Amendment – that it protects politicians from journalists. Or maybe she's as massively ignorant and completely ga-ga as she seems.

Look: I don't buy it. She loves criticism. She loves getting into it with her enemies. She's fought umpteen investigations. She's done it her entire career. She threatens to sue all the time. And money is not a problem since her devoted fans would raise the personal defense costs for her in a couple of seconds. And her addiction to scandale has been obvious since she became Wasilla mayor. If the limelight ever starts to dim, she rushes in to start another public spat – as with the Letterman fracas. And this is what she said before she was picked for veep:

No: it's something else. At least that's what it looks like to me. I guess we'll have to wait to find out. Mercifully, it doesn't much matter any more. I sure hope her family recovers from what she has done to them.

That's roughly Sarah Palin's media strategy, and has been since the beginning of her crazy career in Wasilla. But the latest is quite a doozy, as Mudflats explains:

It’s the exact same phenomenon that happened the week before when Meg Stapleton issues a press release talking about how mean people were about photoshopping Sarah Palin holding a baby with a head that belonged to something other than her baby. In the first instance, it was the image on a local Alaskan blog that published Palin with a conservative radio talk show host head. But after Stapleton’s ridiculous press release, the internets were ablaze. There were photoshops of Palin with a baby Kim Jong Il, a baby Bat Boy, a baby Meg Stapleton, and my favorite, a baby…herself. …

And some are just priceless:

The Palin resignation was noticed in halls of the state Capitol in Juneau as well. The "Time to Make a Difference" clock that counted the time left in Palin's term was taken down from the wall outside her office.

… a little, anyway:

Her problem is that she seems to be one of those people who stirs up whirlwinds and dust storms. These are not all of Andrew Sullivan’s making.

"It is the common habit of mankind that the more closely men are bound together by the ties of kinship, of acquaintanceship, or of neighborhood, the more responsibilities for one another they share. This does not offend God; for his providence, as it were, leads us to it. But I say: we ought to embrace the whole human race without exception in a single feeling of love; here there is no distinction between barbarian and Greek, worthy and unworthy, friend and enemy, since all should be contemplated in God, not in themselves. When we turn aside from such contemplation, it is no wonder we become entangled in many errors. Therefore, if we rightly direct our love, we must first turn our eyes not to man, the sight of whom would more often engender hate than love, but to God, who bids us extend to all men the love we bear to him, that this may be an unchanging principle: Whatever the character of the man, we must yet love him because we love God," – John Calvin, whose 500th birthday is this coming Friday.