A HarperCollins insider told The Daily Beast that the book sold a staggering 300,000 copies on the first day alone, which was Tuesday. “Sales are phenomenal, and we are convinced that the book will continue to sell phenomenally for some time to come,” says the insider. They’re not prevaricating: As of 2:30pm today, the book was #1 on Amazon, ahead of both Stephen King’s new novel, Under the Dome, and Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. The latter sold 1 million copies on its first day, but that figure included the UK, and top fiction generally trumps non-fiction.

The books are selling so well the publisher is printing out an additional 100k of em:

Sarah Palin’s memoir just hit the stands today but demand for “Going Rogue: An American Life” is so strong that HarperCollins Publishers is going back to press for an additional 100,000 run, bringing the total number of hard-covers in print to 1.6 million copies.

~~~

Three major booksellers declined to release sales figures for “Going Rogue” on Tuesday. However, a spokeswoman for Amazon.com… Inc.’s Web site noted in an email that the title “is already one of our bestselling nonfiction books of 2009.”

And a few numbers the lefties will not like, and will try to turn around is these:

As Sarah Palin blankets the media on a whirlwind book promotion tour, the former vice-presidential contender is clearly back on America’s radar screen. Despite being characterized by many as a divisive force in her party and the nation, Americans are much more likely to give Palin a positive rating (47 percent favorable) than another prominent female leader — Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (28 percent favorable). Moreover, about six in 10 Americans (61 percent) think Palin has been treated unfairly by the press, according to the latest Fox News poll.

And one nut (out of many) on the left is just a bit obsessed.

While the global economy is recovering from the worst recession since World War II, the United States flounders in the same doldrums of New Dealism that kept America locked in The Great Depression while the rest of the world enjoyed growing prosperity.

Crude is $79.92, Gold is $1,147.72, Platinum is $1,43.10; India has just contracted to buy two metric tons of Gold, China is sucking in most of copper, aluminum, and iron ore on the market; the United States languishes in the doldrums of skim milk Marxism, while other nations are forging into un-before known prosperity, we have economic pundits forecasting hyper inflation; and the AP worries whether Sarah Palin has errors in her new book Going Rogue, rather than examining the integrity and writing skills of the Great Ditherer.

The Great Ditherer has come by his nick name honestly, in the 89-90 school year he was elected by the Law students to be the President of he Harvard Law Review. A position that was to become symbolic, for other than gushing reviews from the New York Times over his “irresistible” writing skills, he contributed nothing and wrote absolutely nothing, other than one ineffectual unsigned case note, and since that brilliant contribution he has not written a legal article in nearly 20 years.

In reality, Obama was probably elected to the position, for much the same reason that he was elected to the Presidency of the United States, to appease White Liberal ambivalent guilt feelings over their wealth and prestige. Thus Obama became their Token Negro in the front office to lessen elite guilt, for how can you be a Liberal without demonstrating your uncompromising fairness without having Negro window dressing. Thus an irresistible writer was elected to a prestigious position and was expected to do… nothing. Thus the role of Great Ditherer was becoming more defined for a talent that thrived on being noted as a mediocrity and reinforced by the Ivy League Liberal Elite of Harvard. A precedent was set that the young Obama could finally grasp, the concept of dithering.

On November 28, 1990, Obama was issued a six figure contract by Poseidon Press, an imprint of Simon and Shuster for a memoir titled In Black and White. A memoir is the easiest of all books to write, there are no references, nor footnotes, the truth can be stretched as long as the writing is at least plausible. The manuscript was to be completed by June 15, 1992, thus Obama had 18 months to complete the manuscript and was advanced $75,000 of a $150,000 contract. A contract that is virtually unheard of unless you are Liberal window dressing. For some reason, the University of Chicago Law School loaned Obama an office to write his manuscript.

On October 20, 1992, after almost two years of earnest dithering, Poseidon terminated the contract for noncompliance.

Obama pleaded with Simon and Shuster that he and Michelle were in debt with student loans and that he had already spent the advance: in effect, he expected a bailout. Again, fate and liberal guilt allowed Obama to skate.

Soon after this debacle, Obama secured a $40,000 advance from Times Books to write the same book. In a fabricated story by the New York Times, Barack and Michelle went to Bali on a romantic interlude for four months so that he could unlock and write the book. The truth has now emerged that Barack went to Bali by himself for one to three months and at the very least spent his time dithering once again, for the sum total of his writing excursion was…. nothing. Thus the behavioral pattern of the Great Ditherer was becoming even more formalized and entrenched.

Of course the discrepancies in the Legend of the Anointed One aren’t as important as the new book of a former Vice Presidential candidate.

In 1993, Michelle realized that the Great Ditherer had once again lived up to his nick name and after having read, To Teach by William Ayers, and approving of the novel like journalistic style she approached their “friend and Hyde Park neighbor, Bill Ayers” about writing the Dreams book.

Christopher Anderson in his new coffee table book that portrays life with the Obamas, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage succinctly describes how the book Dreams of My Father was written in this quote from Michelle, “[The Obama Family] oral histories, along with his partial manuscript and a trunk load of notes were given to Bill Ayers.”

Thus an admitted and unrepentant terrorist, who told an undercover FBI agent that 20 to 25 million Americans would have to be exterminated in camps to establish a Marxist Utopia here in the United States is the one who actually writes the “irresistible” prose for the President.

While the AP hounds from hell are lunging past one another to shred the slightest variance from fact in Sarah’s ghost written autobiography, the most obvious and foul story of malfeasance is ignored. Thus the MSM contributes to its own demise of intellectual and journalistic integrity.

Jack Cashill, a professor at Purdue and a blogger at American Thinker has written convincing arguments concerning the similarities of Dreams and Ayers’ previous writing, similarities that are like fingerprints for seasoned writers. I follow Dr Cashill’s opinions on this matter and I have drawn most of my notes from his work.

Then you have the AP hiring 11 fact checkers to comb through her book.

Or Newsweek using a photo of Sarah in running shorts, taken for Runners World magazine, for it’s cover in an obvious attempt to minimize her.

And last but not least, a book review of her book by the Washington Post written by someone who didn’t read her book.

As Doctor Zero muses:

Shouldn’t a book review from someone who admits to not reading the book count as letter of resignation by a serious publication?

Most certainly.

The lengths the left is going to drag Sarah through the mud just proves how very scared they are.

When Sarah Palin made her “death panels” charge, the radicals once again came scurrying out of the woodwork. Obama sent his minions out to debunk what he calls disinformation (otherwise known the TRUTH). In this case, Obama sent out his own version of Dr. Mengele. Ezekiel Emanuel, a physician and brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and a longtime proponent of denying care to citizens based on the value of their worth to society (if you’re old and sick, you have no value).

The radicals came out yesterday, the beltway elitist “Republicans” came out today. In an editorial at National Review Online the editors, in the infinite wisdom, decide to attack Sarah Palin. Not Obama, the most far-left President in history, as he and his cohorts are in retreat over their socialist bill. No, they attack Palin:

To conclude from these possibilities to the accusation that President Obama’s favored legislation will lead to “death panels” deciding whose life has sufficient value to be saved — let alone that Obama desires this outcome — is to leap across a logical canyon. It may well be that in a society as litigious as ours, government will err on the side of spending more rather than treating less. But that does not mean that there is nothing to worry about. Our response to Sarah Palin’s fans and her critics is to paraphrase Peter Viereck: We should be against hysteria — including hysteria about hysteria.

Just one more bit of evidence that proves the beltway elite, either Republican or Democrat, are just completely out of touch with the people. She controlled this debate, from facebook of all places, and forced that provision OUT of that bill. Washington Post’s Anne Kornblut was amazed:

We are back to is she crazy or is she crazy like a fox debate about Governor Palin. We all wrote her off a month ago. We said she would have no platform if she was not governor of Alaska.

~~~

Here she is actually driving the debate whether its honest or not, whether what she is saying is true or not and as you point out she is doing it from Facebook when this White House was supposed to be the “Facebook White House.

And Andy McCarthy did a great job in taking NRO to task for it’s misguided ire:

I don’t see any wisdom in taking a shot at Governor Palin at this moment when, finding themselves unable to defend the plan against her indictment, Democrats have backed down and withdrawn their “end-of-life counseling” boards. Palin did a tremendous service here. Opinion elites didn’t like what the editors imply is the “hysteria” of her “death panels” charge. Many of those same elites didn’t like Ronald Reagan’s jarring “evil empire” rhetoric. But “death panels” caught on with the public just like “evil empire” did because, for all their “heat rather than light” tut-tutting, critics could never quite discredit it. (”BusHitler,” by contrast, did not catch on with the public because it was so easily refuted.)

The editors implicitly concede that Palin is on to something. Indeed, from an Obamaesque perch, they find themselves admonishing both “Sarah Palin’s fans and her critics.” With due respect, there’s a right side and a wrong side on this one. Above the fray is not gonna cut it.

Sure, the editors acknowledge, there’s lots of reason to be worried that we’re speeding down the road toward euthanasia and that Obamacare could make things worse. But it’s somehow “to leap across a logical canyon” to suggest that death panels are imminent or that they are what Obama wants.

On the latter, who cares what Obama personally wants? I don’t see why we should play into the personality cult that the Left is hoping will overcome the deep substantive flaws in the president’s policies. I happen to think that something like death panels is exactly what is desired by Obama — who is an abortion extremist, who supported a form of infanticide when he was an Illinois state legislator, and who has wondered aloud about the value of end-of-life care provided for his own grandmother. But Obama’s personal feelings are beside the point. What matters is what’s in the bill.

In suggesting it’s hyperbole to say death panels are — or were — in the bill, the editors engage in a little hysteria of their own, describing the function of such panels as “deciding whose life has sufficient value to be saved.” But few people worried about death panels think the process will be anything so crude. It will be what Mark Steyn described in his column this weekend: the bureaucrats won’t pull the plug on you; they will gradually restrict your access to various forms of treatment while you wither away prematurely. Maybe if Palin had called them “Dying on the Vine Panels” our opinion elites would have been more understanding — though I doubt it, Palin derangement syndrome having proved itself more infectious than Bush derangement syndrome.

The editors further suggest that Palin could be wrong — not that she is wrong, but she could be. After all, they reason, “it may well be that in a society as litigious as ours, government will err on the side of spending more rather than treating less.”

Really? First of all, there is no more to spend. Second, the editors themselves admit at the very beginning of the editorial that “rationing is inevitable in medicine. Not everything that might be in a patient’s best interest can be done in a world of finite resources.” The whole point of health-care “reform” is to enable something other than the combination of individual liberty and market forces — namely, government bureaucrats — to do the inevitable rationing. Third and finally, as I discuss in my column this morning, the Obamacare proposal has a remedy for “a society as litigious as ours”: it systematically cuts off access to the courts so that the decisions of the executive branch are final. The bill is designed to insure against litigation pressure to spend more rather than treat less.

I think Palin was right to argue her point aggressively. Largely because she did, a horrible provision is now out of this still horrible Obamacare proposal. To the contrary, if the argument had been made the way the editors counsel this morning, “end-of-life counseling” would still be in the bill. We might have impressed the Beltway with the high tone of our discourse and the suppleness of our reasoning, but we’d have lost the public. I respectfully dissent.

Sarah Palin embodies the conservative of today, the conservatives that hold fast to our best conservative traditions and reminds us that yes indeed….another Reagan just might come along. The Conservative Comeback:

In one week Sarah Palin had a portion of the bill tossed out and along with the help of townhall protesters has put ObamaCare on life support. Can anyone point me to a National Review article that has made headlines to damage this bill? Hell, can anyone show me anything they wrote that made headlines during the campaign? Actually, that’s not fair. They did make headlines when Christopher Buckley endorsed Barack Obama. Oh, and when Kathleen Parker called on Palin to resign. Keep up the great work.

Those wishy-washy conservatives that pepper the landscape of NRO will only lead to a future best described by Dan Riehl:

What is it going to take for conservatives to finally accept that William F. is dead, the heirs to the throne, with too few exceptions, are a bunch of 2nd and 3rd generation elitist brats who belong to the Inside the Beltway set? They are not a part of the conservative movement that must re-define American politics, just as Reagan did, if there is to be anything like conservatism going forward in the nation’s political discourse.

~~~

A combination of American heroes, including the late William F. Buckley and, even more importantly, Ronald Reagan brought new voices and ideas to Washington over two decades ago. Unfortunately, as happens, the seedlings of failure always come hidden within the fruits of great success.

The sprouts of Buckley and Reagan took root, flourished for a time and now seem tired-old and dying on thick-ish vines. If we can’t root these weeds up and out, we should at least smother them in dung and fertilizer so as to prepare a bedding for what must come next.

Their continued feeding and nurturing through donations by conservatives is, not just a mistake, but an utter waste of resources we can ill afford to squander by supporting oily-leaved, slippery eyesores such as NRO.

Please, if you “oily-leaved, slippery eyesores” (wonderful description btw Dan) hate winning that much then get out of the ballpark and let the real conservatives play.

UPDATE

Obama dishonesty on full display at Saturday’s townhall

Will Mr Obama respond w full quotes and citations?
Will he even read the bill?
Will he just try the general rhetoric road that continues to fail in stopping the loss of support for the Democrats’ plan?

Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these “unproductive” members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care.

The President made light of these concerns. He said:

“Let me just be specific about some things that I’ve been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t, it’s too expensive to let her live anymore….It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, etc. So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything.” [1]

The provision that President Obama refers to is Section 1233 of HR 3200, entitled “Advance Care Planning Consultation.” [2] With all due respect, it’s misleading for the President to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients. The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context.

Section 1233 authorizes advanced care planning consultations for senior citizens on Medicare every five years, and more often “if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual … or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility… or a hospice program.” [3] During those consultations, practitioners must explain “the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice,” and the government benefits available to pay for such services. [4]

Now put this in context. These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is “to reduce the growth in health care spending.” [5] Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care? As Charles Lane notes in the Washington Post, Section 1233 “addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones…. If it’s all about alleviating suffering, emotional or physical, what’s it doing in a measure to “bend the curve” on health-care costs?” [6]

As Lane also points out:

Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren’t quite “purely voluntary,” as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, “purely voluntary” means “not unless the patient requests one.” Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive — money — to do so. Indeed, that’s an incentive to insist.

Patients may refuse without penalty, but many will bow to white-coated authority. Once they’re in the meeting, the bill does permit “formulation” of a plug-pulling order right then and there. So when Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) denies that Section 1233 would “place senior citizens in situations where they feel pressured to sign end-of-life directives that they would not otherwise sign,” I don’t think he’s being realistic. [7]

Even columnist Eugene Robinson, a self-described “true believer” who “will almost certainly support” “whatever reform package finally emerges”, agrees that “If the government says it has to control health-care costs and then offers to pay doctors to give advice about hospice care, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending.” [8]

So are these usually friendly pundits wrong? Is this all just a “rumor” to be “disposed of”, as President Obama says? Not according to Democratic New York State Senator Ruben Diaz, Chairman of the New York State Senate Aging Committee, who writes:

Section 1233 of House Resolution 3200 puts our senior citizens on a slippery slope and may diminish respect for the inherent dignity of each of their lives…. It is egregious to consider that any senior citizen … should be placed in a situation where he or she would feel pressured to save the government money by dying a little sooner than he or she otherwise would, be required to be counseled about the supposed benefits of killing oneself, or be encouraged to sign any end of life directives that they would not otherwise sign. [9]

Of course, it’s not just this one provision that presents a problem. My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens….An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” [10] Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.” [11]

President Obama can try to gloss over the effects of government authorized end-of-life consultations, but the views of one of his top health care advisors are clear enough. It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing, and more evidence that the top-down plans of government bureaucrats will never result in real health care reform.

[1] See http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/08/president-obama-addresses-sarah-palin-death-panels-wild-representations.html.
[2] See http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf
[3] See HR 3200 sec. 1233 (hhh)(1); Sec. 1233 (hhh)(3)(B)(1), above.
[4] See HR 3200 sec. 1233 (hhh)(1)(E), above.
[5] See http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf
[6] See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080703043.html].
[7] Id.
[8] See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/10/AR2009081002455.html].
[9] See http://www.nysenate.gov/press-release/letter-congressman-henry-waxman-re-section-1233-hr-3200.
[10] See http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/Where_Civic_Republicanism_and_Deliberative_Democracy_Meet.pdf
[11] See http://www.scribd.com/doc/18280675/Principles-for-Allocation-of-Scarce-Medical-Interventions.

The release is in response to a ludicrous rumor being spread by Alaskan CNN stringer Dennis Zaki. Zaki, who previously bought into rumors of Trig Truth, picked up these allegations from the same source – the rabidly anti-Palin, Trig Truth-espousing anonymous blogger “Gryphen” of the blog “Immoral Minority”. Gryphen is a friend of Zaki’s, along with fellow Team Truth members Shannyn Moore, Phil Munger, and “AKMuckraker” of the Mudflats.

The rumor was already being picked up and spread around the echo chamber of the Alaskan Team Truther blogs…not only by Zaki, but by fellow Trig Truther “Doctor Phil” Munger of Progressive Alaska.

And they document quite well why the story is so bogus, including statements from Palin and her spokesperson plus pictures of Sarah and Todd definitely being cozy with each other at the same function that these idiots were reporting they were not speaking to each other.

So what do you think the MSM would do about this?  Ignore it maybe?  I mean Team Sarah put the rumor down quickly right?

No, they blame Sarah for answering these false charges.

By having her spokeswoman repeat the charges to rebut them in a public form, Palin effectively guaranteed coverage from the mainstream media that otherwise would not report claims attributed to unnamed sources on an anonymous blog.

OK, Sarah, listen to me. You ignored my very nice open letter, but this is important. You have to fire Meg Stapleton, or give her something easier to do. There are no “so-called journalists” reporting this rumor, but now, they’ll all get to report Stapleton’s denial on your behalf.

Yeaaaah.

Was Mr. Martin around during the campaign? The rules are different when it comes to the media covering Governor Palin. Mr. Martin, do you remember this?

- Palin banned books.
- Palin said that she believed that dinosaurs and humans co-existed.
- Palin charged victims for rape kits
- Trig Palin is not the governor’s son.

And where did all of these things, among others, originate? Blogs, usually with unnamed sources.

Actually Sarah and her team do a fantastic job of putting out these wildfires quickly. Politico can claim that “real” journalists wouldn’t have reported on a story from blogger till they get red in the face but the fact remains many of the stories put out during the 2008 election CAME from bloggers.

Sarah saw how the McCain campaign (specifically Steve Schmidt) handled internet rumors during the campaign. The whisper campaign by the left wing blogs went unanswered, then seeped into the msm, and by then it was too late. People couldn’t differentiate fact from fiction. Was she a book banner? Did she join a secession movement? Is Trig really her baby?

I find the charges from the “real” journalists to be quite telling actually. Sarah cannot win with them. If she doesn’t answer the rumors then the rumors have to be true. If she does answer them then she just helped get the story mainstream…she should of just kept her yap shut.

They are so afraid of this woman.

Meanwhile, Rick Moran believes this may have all been a set up:

I might add that Alaska Report has a about as good a record as Gawker in breaking news – which is better than some MSM outlets but far from perfect. And Gryphen, who apparently started the whole divorce rumor, is even worse.

Nevertheless, once both those sites hit the internet with the story, the blog feeding frenzy on the left began, with a couple of MSM outlets joining in.

As someone who doesn’t consider himself a journalist but who has been around newsrooms for many years, let me just say that if this had come across my desk, I would have smelled a set up. It’s too pat, the pieces fit too nicely together (an “explanation” for why she resigned) not to raise alarms with real journalists. So I think there is at least the possibility, that either someone in the Palin camp with an ax to grind with the media – or, less likely, Palin herself – whispered a few words to a birdie they were sure would get the word to people who would publish it.

The definition of “pwn” is “1. An act of dominating an opponent, and 2. Great, ingenious; applied to methods and objects.” If this was a set up by the Palin camp, it worked magnificently. Now, most of the lefty blogosphere has egg on their face.

Several Alaska bloggers hounded the former Alaskan governor with bogus ethics complaints while she was in office – Alaska Report being one of them. Could a little payback be at play here?

Not far fetched at all, and it just proved to many people how friggin mad those Alaskan bloggers are. The same ones who made bogus ethics claim one after another.

The left is in full freak out mode as they watch their supposed messiah fall to earth. Not only are the poll numbers dropping they see his promises made becoming broken promises. They are freaking out and view Sarah as one of the big threats to their dreams, so she….must….be….stopped.

Pretty funny actually.

Seems the AP forgot to tell us that Thomas Daiel, the investigator who thinks that outgoing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin may have violated state ethics law in raising money to defend herself against frivolous ethics charges, cut a rather generous check to Democrat Mark Begich’s Senate campaign last fall summer.  According to Open Secrets, he contributed $1,000 to that Democrat, the same amount he gave to John Kerry in 2004.  He gave $1,800 to the DNC (Democratic National Committee) and contributed to various Democratic campaigns, but not a dime to Republicans.

Don’t you think that might have some bearing on his ability to adjudicate an ethics issue involving a prominent Republican?

if the man investigating a Democrat had supported a Republican candidate, I’d bet the AP would let us know that.   Not just that.  The reporter neglected to inform us that Daniel works for Perkins Coie, a firm which served as counsel to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.  Given that Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign was trying to defeat the ticket on which Mrs. Palin ran last fall, you’d think that maybe Mr. Daniel might want to recuse himself from investigating her.  Or that that AP might report that.  I mean, if his firm had worked for Republicans and he were investigating Democrats, they would certainly make much of it.

Now should the investigator into ethics violations be a Republican if the person being investigated is Republican? Definitely not. But given the fact that he is most obviously a hardcore Democrat AND he is employed by the very same law firm that served as counsel to Obama during the campaign last year I would say the man had no business being anywhere near an investigation into Sarah Palin.

The writer is completely right also….if the roles were reversed there would be hell to pay from the MSM and the left.

But it’s Sarah Palin so instead we’re getting crickets.

What a shock that Maureen Dowd devoted her New York Times column Sunday to attack Sarah Palin. It did not so much criticize Alaska’s governor for prematurely stepping down from her official duties as to finish off what sister snipers Katie Couric and Tina Fey began last fall.

The assassination of Sarah Palin – by media.

For those who didn’t pay attention, Mrs. Palin’s unexpected stratospheric rise as a national political figure threatened the media’s preordained presidency of Barack Obama.

In light of how the Obama machine took down Hillary Clinton, which unsettled many feminists who believed 2008 was their time, many who saw sexism at play – the destruction of an ascendant Republican female icon was an urgent imperative for the Democratic Party.

~~~

Misses Dowd, Couric and Fey – Mr. Obama’s Angels (featuring Joy Behar in the role of “Bosley”) – used a potent mix of mockery, snobbery and vitriol to undermine Mrs. Palin’s feminist bona fides.

They are what my wife calls “pad throwers,” an allusion to the shower room scene in the Stephen King film “Carrie,” in which the popular girls throw sanitary napkins and tampons at the film’s namesake.

Simply put, they are bullies. And female bullies – “Mean Girls” as Miss Fey’s film calls them – are the cruelest kind.

Primarily motivated by a desire to keep abortion “safe, legal and rare,” female liberals in the media have carte blanche to do and say anything.

But since Mrs. Palin, a mother of five including a boy who was known to have Down syndrome before he was born, is a potent symbol of the pro-life movement, which means the female Alaska governor can’t have it.

Miss Dowd’s attempted takedown of Mrs. Palin is less skillful surgery than it is name calling using fun noun and adjective pairings. Think “Mad Libs.” And, that’s exactly what Misses Dowd, Couric and Fey are. Once the ladies did their job, liberal men like Jon Stewart and David Letterman had the cover to join the hate campaign.

While Mrs. Palin is at ease with her gender, as well as her place in the workplace and at home, Misses Dowd, Couric and Fey convey a base insecurity in their feminine skin. Their rage is fueled by liberalism’s false feminist dogma and they take it out on a woman who chose not to join their angry sorority.

The governor of Alaska’s compelling narrative – athlete, beauty queen, wife, mother, hunter, successful politician – shows adherents of narrow leftist dogma that, perhaps, women really can have it all. Most importantly: freedom of thought.

In calling Alaska’s governor “Caribou Barbie,” Miss Dowd used beauty as a weapon to diminish Mrs. Palin’s achievements. A man would be reprimanded for this, but Miss Dowd is a Pulitzer Prize-winning pad thrower and is licensed for such vindictive pettiness.

“Caribou,” of course, is a stab at Mrs. Palin’s backwater, Red State ways, attacks on which an Upper Westside liberal snob can never get enough. Miss Dowd goes on to ridicule “Sarah’s country-music melodramas.” This is her barely veiled attempt to call Mrs. Palin “white trash.” And this has been the loathsome subtext of all media criticism of the Palins. They even went after their children. Mercilessly.

And Mrs. Palin during the Letterman saga finally cried, “Enough!”

Exposed in the relentless Palin attacks is not just political bias, but unmitigated class bias.

I know the readers understand why I put feminists into quotations above because there is no way, no how, someone who is a real feminist would throw such insults at a female who is strong, independent, and successful. But the feminist movement has always been a leftist breeding ground, or has been as long as I’ve been alive. It’s not women rights they cherish, but the liberal ideology.

But there are still a few sane feminists out there and I happened upon one recently. Violet at The Reclusive Leftist (h/t Brutally Honest). I know her and I would disagree on much, but on this subject it appears we agree…or agree on having no answer why they hate Sarah so:

I don’t usually comment on other blogs; I have little enough time to keep my own gig in working order. But the other day I was over at I Blame The Patriarchy, where I was dismayed to find in the comment threads some of the same Palin-bashing that has become drearily familiar from the rest of the inner tubes. Now, IBTP is just about the best feminist blog going, with a genius proprietor and a thoughtful commentariat. Hence my dismay. Even here? I thought. Fortunately, some of the commenters there did try to set the record straight, though they got significant guff from others.

This is the comment I left, which I’m dragging back here to the smoking lounge for your perusal (the first bit in italics is a quote from Jill):

“Mang, when I wrote this post, I sure never expected it would result in blamer support for a skeevy antifeminist politician.”

It seems that some blamers know that the bullshit published about Palin (and unfortunately repeated here) was just that — bullshit. Palin considers herself a feminist, and except for the abortion thing, she’s more explicitly feminist than the average American. When a regular Jane with that kind of background proclaims her feminist sympathies, it doesn’t seem terribly productive to ridicule her or indulge in the misogynist slander put out by the political hacks running against her. I mean, sure, by the standards of pure feminism, she’s an enabling godbag. But so are most American women. On the other hand, by the standards of the Republican Party or evangelical Christianity, she’s Twisty Faster.

Pheenobarbidoll responded that abortion rights are a cornerstone too important to overlook, to which I replied:

Abortion rights are important. But it’s interesting that Hugo Schwyzer, a male “pro-life” feminist and former member of and financial contributor to Feminists For Life, is allowed into the feminist community. He even blogs at RH Reality Check, and has been befriended by Amanda Marcotte.

Schwyzer’s awkward pro-feminist/anti-abortion stance is the same as Sarah Palin’s, yet only Palin is reviled and ridiculed. How dare she call herself a feminist!

Someone else then loftily announced that Palin cannot be a feminist since she “believes in keeping children ignorant of the facts of their reproductive rights and responsibilities.” To which I replied:

She doesn’t believe that. She’s fully in favor of sex ed and contraception.

I imagine you consider yourself a feminist. What I’m wondering is why, if you’re a feminist, you don’t even give Palin the courtesy of finding out what she actually believes, rather than simply accepting the lies created by political hacks? This is bizarre to me. It’s really not difficult to google and discover that Sarah Palin is in favor of contraception and sex ed, that the whole “abstinence-only” thing is a smear spread by Obama supporters.

It’s a bit weird to drag all this back here to the lounge, but it’s the setup for the giant, rambling brain dump that’s about to follow. Sarah Palin’s surprise resignation has brought out the crazy again, and reading through the blogs I’m reminded of how much pure bullshit has been said and believed about her and continues to be said and believed. I’m reminded of how so many feminists seem possessed of a wholly irrational hatred for this woman.

Why?

This isn’t going to be the kind of post where I sketch out a pattern and then give you The Key To Understanding It All. This is going to be more like a stream-of-consciousness tiptoe through the violets of my reclusive thought processes. I’ve been puzzling over this stuff since last August. One reason I’ve written as many posts as I have about Palin is because I’m so baffled by the reaction to her. I can’t figure it out. It’s like quantum entanglement or dark energy: I make myself sick trying to understand it and worry that I’ll die before I get it sorted. (I know: Xanax.)

Of course, the first answer you’ll get if you ask feminists why they hate Sarah Palin is that “it’s because she ____” — and then fill in the blank with the lie of choice: made rape victims pay for their own kits, is against contraception or sex ed, believes in abstinence-only, thinks the dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago, doesn’t believe in global warming, doesn’t believe in evolution, is stupid and can’t read, etc., etc., etc., etc.

But none of those things is true. None of them.

Which brings me to my first puzzlement: why don’t people bother to find out what Sarah Palin really believes? I don’t mean people as in the usual sexist freaks; I mean feminists.

Sarah Palin is only the second woman in the history of this country to run on a major party’s presidential ticket. That alone makes her, to me, a fascinating figure worthy of serious investigation. When McCain announced Palin as his choice for VP, I immediately tried to find out as much about her as I could. I wanted to know who she was, what she believed, what her politics were. It never occurred to me that this interest would make me in any way unusual among feminists, but apparently it did. Apparently most feminists — at least the ones online — are content to just take the word of the frat boys at DailyKos or the psycho-sexists at Huffington Post. That amazes me. Aren’t you even interested in who she really is? I want to ask. She’s only the second woman on a presidential ticket in our whole fricking history!

But even weirder is what happens when you try to replace the myths with the truth. If you explain, “no, she didn’t charge rape victims,” your feminist interlocutor will come back with something else: “she’s abstinence-only!” No, you say, she’s not; and then the person comes back with, “she’s a creationist!” and so on. “She’s an uneducated moron!” Actually, Sarah Palin is not dumb at all, and based on her interviews and comments, I’d say she has a greater knowledge of evolution, global warming, and the Wisconsin glaciation in Alaska than the average citizen.

But after you’ve had a few of these myth-dispelling conversations, you start to realize that it doesn’t matter. These people don’t hate Palin because of the lies; the lies exist to justify the hate. That’s why they keep reaching and reaching for something else, until they finally get to “she winked on TV!” (And by the way: I’ve been winked at my whole life by my grandmother, aunts, and great-aunts. Who knew it was such a despicable act?)

It’s much longer then I have quoted above, so read the whole thing. Violet may be horrified that a conservative blog would quote her approvingly seeing as how we are on the opposite political spectrum (her fans can be assured we still disagree on much), but I am just as confused as she is about why a true feminist like Sarah Palin can be drawn and quartered by those who purport to be feminists.

One last quote from Violet:

it has not escaped my attention that many of the things Palin is accused of, falsely, are actually true of Obama. This is a guy who, as a U.S. senator from Illinois, didn’t even know which Senate committees he was on or which states bordered his own. (And don’t even get me started on Joe “The Talking Donkey” Biden, who thinks FDR was president during the stock market crash and that people watched TV in those days.) I’m not saying Obama’s a moron, but he’s sure as hell no genius. People say Sarah Palin rambles; excuse me, but have you actually heard Obama speak extemporaneously? As for being a diva, surely we all remember the Possomus sign and the special embroidered pillow on the Obama campaign plane. The fact is, Obama is an intellectually mediocre narcissist with a thin resume who’s lost without a teleprompter and whose entire campaign had all the substance and gravity of a Pepsi commercial. Yet people say Sarah Palin is a fluffy bunny diva.

Hit the nail on the freakin head there.

Myself, I believe it comes down to the liberal, leftist, ideology trumping feminism. Because any honest feminist would be proud of Sarah…..it appears there are very few honest feminists unfortunately.

So Occam’s Razor leaves us with: Who needs this?

In states far from the national spotlight, politics still attracts normal people. You’re a mayor or a state senator or even the governor, but you lead a normal life. The local media are tough on you, but they know you, they live where you live, they’re tough on the real you, not on some caricature cooked up by a malign alliance of late-night comics who’d never heard of you a week earlier and media grandees supposedly on your own side who pronounce you a “cancer”.

Then suddenly you get the call from Washington. You know it’ll mean Secret Service, and speechwriters, and minders vetting your wardrobe. But nobody said it would mean a mainstream network comedy host doing statutory rape gags about your 14-year old daughter. You’ve got a special-needs kid and a son in Iraq and a daughter who’s given you your first grandchild in less than ideal circumstances. That would be enough for most of us. But the special-needs kid and the daughter and most everyone else you love are a national joke, and the PC enforcers are entirely cool with it.

Most of those who sneer at Sarah Palin have no desire to live her life. But why not try to – what’s the word? – “empathize”? If you like Wasilla and hunting and snowmachining and moose stew and politics, is the last worth giving up everything else in the hopes that one day David Letterman and Maureen Dowd might decide Trig and Bristol and the rest are sufficiently non-risible to enable you to prosper in their world? And, putting aside the odds, would you really like to be the person you’d have to turn into under that scenario?

National office will dwindle down to the unhealthily singleminded (Clinton, Obama), the timeserving emirs of Incumbistan (Biden, McCain) and dynastic heirs (Bush). Our loss.

And his thoughts definitely have merit. But reading her speech yesterday leaves me with a different outlook. I do not have enough information to say that she is going for the 2012 election but I do believe, with what we know now, that she is resigning so she can bring about true change in this country.

Now she can do it unfettered from the constant lawsuits. This part of the speech speaks to both of my points:

Political operatives descended on Alaska last August, digging for dirt. The ethics law I championed became their weapon of choice. Over the past nine months I’ve been accused of all sorts of frivolous ethics violations – such as holding a fish in a photograph, wearing a jacket with a logo on it, and answering reporters’ questions.

Every one – all 15 of the ethics complaints have been dismissed. We’ve won! But it hasn’t been cheap – the State has wasted thousands of hours of your time and shelled out some two million of your dollars to respond to “opposition research” – that’s money not going to fund teachers or troopers – or safer roads. And this political absurdity, the “politics of personal destruction” … Todd and I are looking at more than half a million dollars in legal bills in order to set the record straight. And what about the people who offer up these silly accusations? It doesn’t cost them a dime so they’re not going to stop draining public resources – spending other peoples’ money in their game.

It’s pretty insane – my staff and I spend most of our day dealing with this instead of progressing our state now. I know I promised no more “politics as usual,” but this isn’t what anyone had in mind for Alaska.

If I have learned one thing: life is about choices!

And one chooses how to react to circumstances. You can choose to engage in things that tear down, or build up. I choose to work very hard on a path for fruitfulness and productivity. I choose not to tear down and waste precious time; but to build up this state and our country, and her industrious, generous, patriotic, free people!

Life is too short to compromise time and resources… it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: “Sit down and shut up”, but that’s the worthless, easy path; that’s a quitter’s way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and “go with the flow”.

Nah, only dead fish “go with the flow”.

No. Productive, fulfilled people determine where to put their efforts, choosing to wisely utilize precious time… to BUILD UP.

And there is such a need to BUILD up and FIGHT for our state and our country. I choose to FIGHT for it! And I’ll work hard for others who still believe in free enterprise and smaller government; strong national security for our country and support for our troops; energy independence; and for those who will protect freedom and equality and LIFE… I’ll work for and campaign for those PROUD to be American, and those who are INSPIRED by our ideals and won’t deride them.

I WILL support others who seek to serve, in or out of office, for the RIGHT reasons, and I don’t care what party they’re in or no party at all. Inside Alaska – or Outside Alaska.

But I won’t do it from the Governor’s desk.

There are those throwing the “quitter” label around but those same people never raised the issue of a broken contract with Obama, or from those whiners on my side of the aisle when Dole broke his contract to run for POTUS. MamaPundit hits the ball outta the park with this one:

…we Americans have a short attention span, and the “quitter” label just won’t carry any weight within a year, particularly since Palin is now an iconic figure who transcends any single action she takes.. Given who she is, and the passions she stirs in people, the relatively dull, bureaucratic fact that she decided to leave office early really won’t factor in the grand scheme of the Palin narrative.

Yup, this will be old news but what will still be relative is what Sarah stands for. True conservatism. And that may just mean being outside of the Republican party because we have all seen how wishy-washy our party has become. She confuses the political elite and the bobble heads in our media for the same reason that sets her apart from other politicians. She doesn’t play by the rulebook and she doesn’t need to go hire a PR firm to decide what her next move will be. Does anyone really think this woman gets all nervous about political repercussions? She ran against a sitting governor from her own party for pete’s sake.

She does what she believes is right. One of the biggest reasons why I loved George W. Bush and why I love this woman.

Maybe she isn’t running for President but instead see’s her mission as bringing about real change….not the idiotic utopia that Obama promised but for “free enterprise and smaller government; strong national security for our country and support for our troops; energy independence; and for those who will protect freedom and equality and LIFE.”

Time will tell. She may very well just be sick of politics. Or maybe some big scandal is about to explode.

But I, for one, am not counting her out. Her opponents in elections past learned that lesson the hard way.

It’s not your fault that it was misunderstood, it’s my fault. That it was misunderstood.

Yup, big misunderstanding. As Jeri says in the below video, “honest officer, I didn’t know she wasn’t 18!”

Here is the whole thing:

All right, here – I’ve been thinking about this situation with Governor Palin and her family now for about a week – it was a week ago tonight, and maybe you know about it, maybe you don’t know about it. But there was a joke that I told, and I thought I was telling it about the older daughter being at Yankee Stadium. And it was kind of a coarse joke. There’s no getting around it, but I never thought it was anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure in fact that she is of legal age, 18. Yeah. But the joke really, in and of itself, can’t be defended. The next day, people are outraged. They’re angry at me because they said, ‘How could you make a lousy joke like that about the 14-year-old girl who was at the ball game?’ And I had, honestly, no idea that the 14-year-old girl, I had no idea that anybody was at the ball game except the Governor and I was told at the time she was there with Rudy Giuliani…And I really should have made the joke about Rudy…” (audience applauds) “But I didn’t, and now people are getting angry and they’re saying, ‘Well, how can you say something like that about a 14-year-old girl, and does that make you feel good to make those horrible jokes about a kid who’s completely innocent, minding her own business,’ and, turns out, she was at the ball game. I had no idea she was there. So she’s now at the ball game and people think that I made the joke about her. And, but still, I’m wondering, ‘Well, what can I do to help people understand that I would never make a joke like this?’ I’ve never made jokes like this as long as we’ve been on the air, 30 long years, and you can’t really be doing jokes like that. And I understand, of course, why people are upset. I would be upset myself.

“And then I was watching the Jim Lehrer ‘Newshour’ – this commentator, the columnist Mark Shields, was talking about how I had made this indefensible joke about the 14-year-old girl, and I thought, ‘Oh, boy, now I’m beginning to understand what the problem is here. It’s the perception rather than the intent.’ It doesn’t make any difference what my intent was, it’s the perception. And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it’s not a very good joke. And I’m certainly – ” (audience applause) “- thank you. Well, my responsibility – I take full blame for that. I told a bad joke. I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It’s not your fault that it was misunderstood, it’s my fault. That it was misunderstood.” (audience applauds) “Thank you. So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the Governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I’m sorry about it and I’ll try to do better in the future. Thank you very much.” (audience applause)

Still pathetic, still lame, and the perv should go. The simple fact that he felt it ok to tell a joke about her kids like that is the problem. You don’t find it happening about Obama. Nor Biden. The MSM, including these late night shows, are in the tank for the left so they wouldn’t dare.

Via Hot Air comes this great question:

What really motivated Letterman to do this? Sincere remorse? A cynical play for more ratings? Or the simple fact that he was starting to lose sponsors over it?

And even better video of Mrs. Thompson today on with Neil Cavuto:

Stereotype: Womyn® are good Progressive Democrats.
Reality: Sarah Palin is a Republican.

Stereotype: Only Democrats give power to Womyn®
Reality: Sarah Palin is not just a Governor, she’s Governor of a State where the Governor has real power.

Stereotype: All manly men are part of Teh Patriarchy, dedicated to preventing Womyn® from achievement and deeply resentful of anything resembling a subordinate position.
Reality: Todd Palin is a manly man with a manly occupation; nevertheless he seems quite cheerful and accepting that his wife’s occupation is much higher on the social scale than his.

Stereotype: Good Progressive Womyn® are supposed to abort their babies to prevent career difficulties, especially if they might have medical problems.
Reality: Sarah Palin has several (three?) children, the latest of which has Down’s Syndrome, and seems perfectly capable of handling her duties as Governor despite any child-care difficulties.

Stereotype:Patriarchal manly men don’t participate in child-rearing; they force the Womyn® in their lives to do it all, which is why Progressive Womyn® have to avoid childbearing if possible.
Reality: Todd Palin apparently participates wholeheartedly in child-rearing.

Stereotype: Winger dupes of the Patriarchy are supposed to be disgusted with childbearing out of wedlock, call such girls “sluts” etc., and cast them out.
Reality: Bristol Palin is an unwed mother. The Palin family (all of them, including Todd and the grandparents) has been supportive.

There is more, but you get the idea — the whole Palin family is a direct challenge to the Leftoids’ bigoted (yes, that’s what it is), stereotyped notion of what a family of right-wing God-botherers should be.

It’s a challenge most certainly and they hate it! She can speak without a teleprompter and has way more executive experience then Obama has. On the attractiveness issue one commentor at the site hit the nail on the head:

Naah, attractiveness doesn’t matter. All that matters is the letter after their name.

* hot lefty chick (e.g. random hollywood types): deep, committed political thinkers all, well deserving of higher office

* not-hot lefty (e.g. Hillary, Pelosi, etc.) – gravitas, baby

* hot righty (Palin, Prejean) – ignorant slut

Yeah, he actually meant to “joke” about the 18 year old Bristol having sex with a baseball player rather then 14 year old Willow bring raped (statutory). Makes sense right? Seeing as how Bristol was NOT at the game he referenced but Willow was.

Give me a break.

His exact words:

One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game, during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.

Nope, no confusing that one no matter how much he lies in an attempt to squirm out of this pickle.

Palin called him pathetic in response….pretty damn good description of the man.

Meanwhile we have commentors telling everyone that hey…can’t you take a joke?

Lets see how the lefties react when a comedian calls Obama’s daughters “nappy-headed ho’s.”

You think they will just shrug their shoulders?

Yeeeeaaaah.

John Nolte has a rundown of the “Top Ten Possible Letterman Reactions to Fallout Over Willow Palin Rape ‘Joke’”….my favorite is number 1:

1. If what I said was so wrong, why haven’t feminists complained?

Indeed.

UPDATE

NOW finally slaps Letterman on the hand for being bad but has to put a dig into the conservatives by propagating the lie that Rush called Chelsea a dog:

Letterman said “I recognize that these are ugly” jokes. NOW agrees. Comedians in search of a laugh should really know better than to snicker about men having sex with teenage girls (or young women) less than half their age.

The sexualization of girls and women in the media is reaching new lows these days — it is exploitative and has a negative effect on how all women and girls are perceived and how they view themselves. Letterman also joked about what he called Palin’s “slutty flight attendant look” — yet another example of how the media love to focus on a woman politician’s appearance, especially as it relates to her sexual appeal to men. Someone of Letterman’s stature, who appears on what used to be known as “the Tiffany Network” (CBS), should be above wallowing in the juvenile, sexist mud that other comedians and broadcasters seem to prefer.

On that point, it’s important to note that when Chelsea Clinton was 13 years old she was the target of numerous insults based on her appearance. Rush Limbaugh even referred to her as the “White House dog.” NOW hopes that all the conservatives who are fired up about sexism in the media lately will join us in calling out sexism when it is directed at women who aren’t professed conservatives.

I love it. They have the gall to call us hypocrites when the only hypocrites on this matter can be found from the left side of the aisle. They go back 16 years and find an incident which was never accurately reported to somehow justify the dig. Puhlease. I just wonder where they were at last year when Palin and family were attacked daily with sexist jokes.

NOW has proven themselves to be hypocrites for the last four decades by basing every action, everything they do, on the leftist ideology….

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin:

Contessa Brewer interviews John Ziegler regarding David Letterman’s tasteless comments about Sarah Palin and daughter, Willow.

For background on the kerfuffle, see Curt’s post here.

When the interview got too hot to handle, Brewer orders Ziegler’s mic cut.

Roll the tape:

Letterman doubled down last night.

Roll the tape:

Exit question:

Who, on the left, has decried this hateful misogyny toward Sarah Palin and her minor daughter?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Didn’t think so.

UPDATE:

Apparently Letterman is feeling some heat about his back to back comments regarding Sarah Palin and her minor daughter.

According to Entertainment Weekly (EW.com) Letterman tried to back pedal and gloss over his disgusting comments during tonights’ taping of his show.

“We were, as we often do, making jokes about people in the news and we made some jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter [Bristol]… and now they’re upset with me…” Letterman says on tonight’s show. “These are not jokes made about her 14-year-old daughter. I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl…. Am I guilty of poor taste? Yes. Did I suggest that it was okay for her 14-year-old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No.” Saying he hopes he’s “cleared part of this up,” Letterman extended an invitation to Palin to come on the show as a guest.

Sorry Dave. Not buying it.

By the way, still no outrage from the left.

2. Bought makeup from Bloomingdale’s to update her “slutty flight attendant” look

Will the feminists come out in her defense?

Conservatives 4 Palin:

Letterman continues to reveal himself as a pervert when he reduces a governor, a mother, and a wife to an object that he can leer at for his own pleasure.

Letterman didn’t stop there….he made a joke about Palin’s 14 year old daughter being sexually assaulted during a Yankee game they saw while visiting:

Beyond the pale. But hey, it’s a-ok because she is a pro-life, pro-gun, strong accomplished conservative woman.

John Zeigler interviewed Sarah during the first airing of his new radio show and she responded to Letterman’s attack:

Go to the above link to hear the whole interview.