Month: November 2009

Apparently this "Ricky Hollywood" thing is not a Palin invention (although it is not a porn name, as she suggests). Renata Espinosa goes shopping with Levi and his bodyguard, Tank:

“What we did was, we came up with an alter ego, Ricky Hollywood,” explains Tank. “Ricky Hollywood would iron his shirt.” Levi looks at Tank and raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, right!” he says. “OK, well, I’d iron it. He doesn’t know how to iron.”

“We’re not going to find my style out here,” says Levi rather contentiously.

“Oh, yes, we will,” says Tank. “We’re going to find Ricky’s style!”

So Sarah Palin reads Gawker as well as the Dish! Of course she does.

Ross Douthat is blogging again.

A reader writes:

Please don't kowtow to the readers (I think new readers, in my opinion) who are telling you to drop the Palin Inquiry. Those of us who have read you 5-6 times a day for years know what they don't – that is, the trajectory of your questioning, from the very onset in '08, and your utter frustration with the MSM. They do not get that this is not sensationalistic at all, it is elementally important and absolutely imperative that you never back down and do not stop the pressure. Please. Please.

She can not get NEAR the White House and it is our and your job to stop her, and stop her early.

Whatever it takes, the truth must come out and you are the guy to get to it.

My reader certainly reflects my own motivation. Yes, some of this is funny, some weird, a lot tabloidy … but the fact that a person of no credentials and no transparency and no knowledge came that close to being president of this country, and that the system had no real way to expose it, and indeed enabled it and continues to enable it, is a deadly, deadly serious issue in a democratic republic. 

That's why I'm doing what I do. I want the truth about this farce fully exposed so it never, ever happens again.

Calderone has the story. Editor (now fired) Kevin Naff says:

"The Blade staff is united and ready to continue the paper's long-standing mission. The first meeting for our new venture is Tuesday and we welcome the community's input as we move forward."

More here. And here.

Steve Coll asks:

[T]he question requires a definition of failure. As I’ve argued, in my view, a purpose of American policy in Afghanistan ought to be to prevent a second coercive Taliban revolution in that country, not only because it would bring misery to Afghans (and, not incidentally, Afghan women) but because it would jeopardize American interests, such as our security against Al Qaeda’s ambitions and our (understandable) desire to see nuclear-armed Pakistan free itself from the threat of revolutionary Islamist insurgents.

So, then, a definition of failure would be a redux of Taliban revolution in Afghanistan—a revolution that took control of traditional Taliban strongholds such as Kandahar and Khost, and that perhaps succeeded in Kabul as well. Such an outcome is conceivable if the Obama Administration does not discover the will and intelligence to craft a successful political-military strategy to prevent the Afghan Taliban from achieving its announced goals, which essentially involve the restoration of the Afghan state they presided over during the nineteen-nineties, which was formally known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

(Photo: David Furst/AFP/Getty.)

Hitchens slams Continetti's starburst-laden Palin tome:

Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime.

From earlier in the review:

The Palin problem…might be that she cynically incites a crowd that she has no real intention of pleasing. If she were ever to get herself to the nation's capital, the teabaggers would be just as much on the outside as they are now, and would simply have been the instruments that helped get her elected. In my own not-all-that-humble opinion, duping the hicks is a degree or two worse than condescending to them. It's also much more dangerous, because it meanwhile involves giving a sort of respectability to ideas that were discredited when William Jennings Bryan was last on the stump. The Weekly Standard (itself not exactly a prairie-based publication) might want to think twice before flirting with popular delusions and resentments that are as impossible to satisfy as the demand for a silver standard or a ban on the teaching of Darwin, and are for that very reason hard to tamp down.

Palin complained about the various TV interviews exposing her massive ignorance and suggested that they could have been edited to her disadvantage. Would it not be a public service at this point for ABC and CBS to release online the full tapes of the interviews, unedited, so we can have a look and see if Palin's concerns are merited?

What would be lost by this? Let's see the raw, uncut, bigger, longer Palin. And I don't mean Levi.

The Guardian interviews Caspian Makan, boyfriend to Iranian martyr Neda Agha Soltan:

Caspian has lost not only the woman he was planning to marry, but also his country, his family, his friends and his career. Anyone and everyone who had anything to do with Neda's death are now toxic to the Iranian government. Members of her family have been bullied, threatened and even detained. The doctor who is caught on camera trying to save her life is now exiled in Britain. The music teacher who was with her when she died has been rolled out on Iranian television, patently required to deny what he saw: that Neda was shot by a member of the religious militia.

And Caspian disappeared.

In the days after her killing, he spoke out on foreign satellite stations and then vanished. Finally it was confirmed he was in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran – the frightening symbol of the Shah's oppressive regime smoothly transferred into the hands of the Islamic Republic's secret police. He was held for more than two months, some of that time in solitary confinement. In September he was released on bail pending trial – perhaps being prepared for one of the extraordinary show trials that have been broadcast on Iranian TV over the past months, in which leading supporters of the opposition have been obliged to recant their actions. Urged on by family and friends, Caspian decided he had to escape.

Palin is right on this.

The extended remix because, God knows, after that hour of Palin hell, I need it: