Month: November 2010

From a reader: the most recent episode of The Simpsons.

Mercede Johnston, Tripp Palin's aunt and sister of Levi, on the mysteries that remain about the provenance of Trig Palin:

I’ll admit that there have been many times when I have had my doubts. It is simply a fact that I just cannot fathom someone being evil and narcissistic enough to fake a pregnancy. Plus I was around during that time, and heard first hand Bristol saying that they thought their mom was pregnant, which she at first denied, and then admitted. And after seeing Bristol so furious with her mom for hiding it, well that led me to believe that it was legit. But yes I still do have my doubts, and if I were Sarah I would just release some proof to end all of this speculation. If it were me that would seem like a no-brainer.

Me too. The editor of the Anchorage Daily News tried to get the Palins to offer proof to put the resilient myth to rest in December 2008:

I want to be very clear on this: I have from the beginning and do now consider the conspiracy theories about Trig's birth to be nutty nonsense. If that's true, then why has Lisa Demer been asking questions about Trig's birth?… It strikes me that if there is never a clear, contemporaneous public record of what transpired with Trig's birth that may actually ensure that the conspiracy theory never dies. Time will tell.

"On Fox, the news exists in order to generate controversy. Controversy exists in order to generate resentment. And the resentment is what generates ratings," – Jay Rosen.

Fred Barnes hedges his bets:

When moderator and [Alabama Policy Institute] president Gary Palmer asked the panelists for their take on potential 2012 presidential candidates, Moore brought up the names Chris Christie, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence. “Moore forgot Sarah Palin!” exclaimed Barnes, who said that Palin is the most solidly conservative possibility with a tremendous following. While he considered Jim DeMint to also be a good potential candidate, Barnes said “Never underestimate Sarah Palin.”

Meanwhile Conservatives4Palin is about to get a major makeover, and its propaganda engine is in full throttle. Among their new list of qualifications for the presidency that Sarah Palin has that five recent presidents didn’t:

2. Ten years volunteer work in the Parent-Teacher-Association.

That’s Number 2.

Adam Serwer puts it in perspective:

The last president of the United States brags openly about ordering people to be tortured, and the current one asserts the authority to kill American citizens he believes to be terrorists overseas.

But most of these measures are either invisible enough to put out of mind or occur outside of what most Americans can imagine happening to them. As long as it's just Muslims being tortured and foreigners being detained indefinitely, the price we pay to feel secure seems all too abstract. The TSA's new passenger-screening measures just happen to fall on the political and economic elites who can make their complaints heard. It's not happening to those scary Arabs anymore. It's happening to "us." 

Emmonak, Alaska, 8 pm

David Frum sees the deeper meaning of Labash's anti-Palin story:

Politicians love to present a narrative in which they and their band of outsiders battle an entrenched party establishment. In most cases, the stories are self-serving myths: party establishments are far less entrenched than they used to be, and the insurgents usually hold paid-up memberships in the party establishment themselves. See eg Howard Dean, career of.

But in Palin’s case, the myth rings true. There really is a GOP party establishment. That establishment took up Palin as a useful tool in 2008, deployed Palin as an edged anti-Obama weapon in 2009 – and is now horrified to see that they may have set in motion a force possibly too powerful to halt when its time has ended. The story of the behind-the-scenes struggle to squelch Palin – and her ferocious determination not to be squelched – will be the big GOP-side story of the coming year.

Timothy Kincaid exposes DADT defenders like Congressman Mike Pence:

[A]chieving the best Military is of no consequence to those who are leading the public opposition to open service. If irrefutable proof were offered that open service by gay personnel would increase unit cohesion and military effectiveness by 25%, they would still be opposed. Because their chief objection has nothing to do with the military, the fears of other soldiers, or even sensitivity to the religious teachings of chaplains.

No. Their objection is based on the fear that open service would remove the stigma and hostility that is institutionalized by the DADT policy. They don’t care about military policy nearly as much as they do about condemning homosexuality and gay people.

I think many under-estimate the symbolic importance of this to those who believe homosexuality is a sickness or a sin. What we are asking of them is not simply to tolerate reluctantly the fact that some gay people refuse to be ashamed or closeted, but to conflate the symbol of the American soldier with a homosexual. There are very few emblems in American life that carry the weight, power and symbolism of the American soldier, the veteran, the men and women in uniform. 

To say that open gay men and women are serving their country in uniform is to say that they are fully citizens. It is this equal citizenship that simply cannot compute with the idea of homosexuality in the minds of a minority of the older generation.

It moves the debate from "we tolerate you" to "we are you" and "you are us." The same with marriage equality. This is what the holdouts cannot tolerate. Because they realize they will not just have to tolerate but to honor a gay person. And they will have to honor him or her because that is their own value system, being required to integrate citizens who were once defined as the "other" in every imaginable way.

(Photo: Iraq War Army Veteran, Lt. Dan Choi, who was discharged from the military for being gay, cleans the gravestone of Sgt. Leonard Matlovich, at Congressional Cemetery on November 15, 2010 in Washington, DC. Sgt. Matlovich who died in 1988 was a Vietnam Veteran who a received both the Purple Heart and Bronze Star and was later discharged from the Air Force for being gay. An inscription on his tombstone reads 'When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.' Some 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' repeal advocates consider Sgt. Matlovich's gravesite to be a memorial to all gay veterans. By Mark Wilson/Getty Images.)

Ben Smith tries for a record. My favorite quote is this from a top Israeli official involved in diplomacy with the U.S:

"Obama’s like rain. You can do all kinds of things to cope with it."

There is not a single quote from a single Palestinian in the entire piece. Instead there are endless quotes such as these:

“Israelis really hate Obama’s guts,” said Shmuel Rosner, a columnist for two leading Israeli newspapers. “We used to trust Americans to act like Americans, and this guy is like a European leader.”

Rosner is an impassioned neocon. There is one – count it, one – quote from the Palestinians:

“[Netanyahu] has a chance, and he’s wasting it,” said the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erakat. “Given the chance between settlements and peace, he’s always chosen settlements.”

Er, that's it. The rest is a summary of the Israeli government's intransigence and contempt for the president of the US because he dared to ask them to freeze illegal settlements.