Month: July 2010

Chris Good explains why the news is significant:

Because Levi Johnston represented a liability to Sarah Palin. He made repeated claims about her home life, representing her as a genuinely awful and selfish person. Regardless of whatever axe he had to grind, Palin's critics don't think she has any credibility either, and his claims were probably, mostly, believed by the people who don't support her. Even if you think he was lying, his public spat with the Palins added an unwanted bush-league, Jerry-Springer, soap-opera aspect to their private lives, and apparently it's one that Sarah Palin won't have to deal with anymore in her career as a public figure/politician.

Because she threatened to keep him from his child and longtime girlfriend. Taegan Goddard notes:

There was no mention of the book Johnston was supposedly writing that would "air the true story of the Palin household."

She's nothing if not brutal in defense of her own interests and lies.

Yesterday struck me as a humiliating spectacle for the president of the United States. What did he get out of the meeting? Netanyahu did not utter the words "Palestinian state" and made no pledge to continue even the freeze on new settlements in the West Bank after September. For this, he was feted and personally walked to his car. Maybe, as the NYT suggested, there has been a private deal to extend the settlement moratorium on the West Bank. If so, that makes this explicable. Or maybe Obama realized he has no ability to leverage Israel on anything, and was just desperately trying to get pro-Israel Democratic donors to pony up in time for the mid-terms. He didn't even publicly call for continuation of the moratorium! He also caved on Israel's 150 nukes:

In another gesture to the Israelis, Mr. Obama emphasized that there had been no shift in American policy on Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons program, despite the United States’ signature on a recent United Nations document that singled out Israel for its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, binding 189 countries.

Beinart sums up my feelings:

What kind of schmuck does Netanyahu think Obama is? He wants Obama to push the Palestinians into direct talks with Israel—talks the Palestinians are wary of because they fear that Netanyahu isn’t serious about negotiating a Palestinian state. The Netanyahu-Obama meeting was meant to help jumpstart those direct talks, and yet Netanyahu wouldn’t even utter the words “Palestinian state,” let alone outline what its borders should be. (Something Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has done in detail). The bald reality is this: Netanyahu has zero interest in birthing a Palestinian state until Hamas is crushed and the Iranian regime is disarmed, if not overthrown. And he can’t seem to grasp that movement towards a Palestinian state might actually further those goals. If this is what Obama gets for playing nice, perhaps he should consider going back to tough love.

But tough love didn't work either. We are discovering that in a struggle between the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel, it really is no contest. Somewhere, Dick Cheney is smiling.

(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty.)

Some hopeful signs of a bipartisan consensus on raising the social security cap and the retirement age. The Dish will support anyone of any party who has the balls to tackle this. And so far, the GOP's Boehner and the Dems' Hoyer and Clyburn are on the right side of the struggle.

A reader writes:

It's really not difficult to see what's going on here.  Custody battles are nasty.  They can drag on for years and cost thousands.  Levi is probably no angel.  It's obviously not difficult to make a few bad choices in Wasilla.  Throw in the Playgirl spread and 'partying' in Hollywood or wherever…it's red meat for the high priced team of lawyers I'm sure Palin hired for Bristol.

Short version: shut your mouth, we own you and your dirt on us … or you will never see your son again.  It's just how a highly contentious custody battle works.

It's totally unfair to say Levi caved and expect him to dish his dirt given this proverbial gun to his head.

And Tripp is the second innocent child that Palin has used as a weapon.

Funny how they are not squeamish about using the term "genocide" accurately – even in a fiercely contested context. A reader asks a potent question of the NYT's editors:

Hypothetically, is there any action the Bush administration could have authorized against a detainee that you would have called "torture," despite their objection to the word?

Recall the no one disputes that several individuals were tortured to death by the US under Bush and Cheney? Would Bill Keller use the word "torture" to describe that? Not if the far right objected.

From a political science symposium:

Many journalists and politicians believe that during the Bush administration, a majority of Americans supported torture if they were assured that it would prevent a terrorist attack….But this view was a misperception…we show here that a majority of Americans were opposed to torture throughout the Bush presidency…even when respondents were asked about an imminent terrorist attack, even when enhanced interrogation techniques were not called torture, and even when Americans were assured that torture would work to get crucial information. Opposition to torture remained stable and consistent during the entire Bush presidency. Even soldiers serving in Iraq opposed the use of torture in these conditions…a public majority in favor of torture did not appear until, interestingly, six months into the Obama administration.

The conclusion:

The people who had the most accurate perception of public attitudes turned out to be the people nobody believed or supported throughout the Bush administration—the 29% who were most opposed to torture.

This strikes me as a classic example of how much of the political class simply assumes the worst of the American people and acts in morbid fear of the far right, when fear is utterly unjustified. The contemporary right’s politics of total war – in which there is no accountability for the past, relentless focus on slogans, and extreme positioning – has intimidated non-authoritarians.

The right response to bullies is always courage – and argument. And yet the Democrats and decent Republicans too often reflexively adopt the defensive, cowardly crouch. It’s wrong and it empowers the bullies.

(Hat tip: Sides)

Governor Linda Lingle of Hawaii vetoes a civil unions bill because it would create separate-but-equal status for gay citizens. Lingle supports separate and unequal. Which is one better than the GOP platforms in Montana and Texas, which want gays back in jail.

From Mercede Johnston's blog:

The message was from my mother saying that Levi, who has not spoken to us since he rekindled his relationship with Bristol (although we had attempted repeatedly to call or text him), left a message saying that if I did not take my blog down by Wednesday that I would never get to see him, or Tripp, again.

I could not believe it! I thought to myself if he was really willing to make such a threat that he would at least have the decency to call me and talk about it first. I mentioned on my blog repeatedly that my intention was not to hurt or attack the Palins, but to speak out and tell the public my side of the story. As well as how badly my life, and the lives of our family members, had been impacted by our association with the Palins.

It had my mind spinning. How could my brother threaten me like this?

That's a very good question. So is the question of how Palin finally put the screws on Levi. In Palinland, no one knows what's really going on. But I wonder if this is a somewhat panicked response to the recent blip upwards in web interest in the Trig question. With all these family members able to speak to the public and McGinniss digging deeper, Todd and Sarah may have felt the need to crack down and use Levi's access to Tripp and Bristol as their latest weapon. Mercede has this to say about Levi's latest statement, which reads like a man who has a metaphorical gun to his head:

As for this new People magazine article where my brother “Apologizes to the Palins” I am extremely disappointed in him. Not only is he being controlled like a puppet, but saying that all of his comments and stories were lies is absurd!

I know for a fact that all of his comments were true. I lived through all this and I remember clear as day all of the times that Levi would come home and tell me about Sarah complaining, or fights going on between the family, .etc.

I know he wasn’t making all that up, why would he have back then? I am very disappointed that he is allowing them to control him in such a manner.

A message to all those under Palin's thumb in Alaska. Don't be intimidated. The only thing to do with bullies like Todd Palin is to face them down. Or in Mercede's words:

I wish Levi could be the man I know he is and have a mind of his own and finally stand his ground, but I guess he is blinded by love. I just wish he would take a step back and look at the bigger picture.