PalinBlog, The Saga Continues
Has there ever been a politician blogger who can create such a fuss with each posting?
On Tuesday afternoon in Wasilla (Wednesday morning in Washington), Sarah Palin did it again, posting a blog riff that has created a stir. Her subject was a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal about a $2 billion U.S. Export-Import Bank loan to the Brazilian state-owned oil company, Petrobas, for expansion of an offshore oil field in South America. The point of the Journal piece was to highlight an irony: The Obama Administration, which has been resistant to expanding some offshore drilling spots in U.S. waters, was loaning money to expand offshore drilling in another country.
Palin concurs with the Journal critique, saying that Obama should broadly expand U.S. drilling, especially in Alaska. But then she goes a step further than the Journal, saying the ExIm bank loan shows irony, if not hypocrisy, not just in Obama's drilling policy but in his economic stimulus policy.
Writes Palin:
Buy American is a wonderful slogan, but you can't say in one breath that you want to strengthen our economy and stimulate it, and then in another ship our much-needed dollars to a nation desperate to drill while depriving us of the same opportunity.
Here Palin enters murkier waters. The problem with her line of argument is that it leaves out--or misrepresents--a key fact about the $2 billion ExIm loan: It would be used to help the Brazilian company purchase U.S. goods and services. Helping U.S. business is, after all, the entire purpose of the program. (See original press release here.)
Politico's Ben Smith catches up with Phil Cogan, a spokesman for the bank, who explains the situation:
In this case, Cogan said, the proposed loan would likely finance [American] engineering services, sales of ships to service oil platforms, or drilling equipment."This is the government doing what it's supposed to do: Create jobs and make sure that Americans get a fair shot at selling goods and services — not the British or the French or anyone else — and to help American workers compete on a level playing field," Cogan said, noting that most developed countries have similar credit-export agencies.
Maybe Palin will post a follow up on Facebook clarifying. (It could be argued that oil drilling expansion in U.S. waters with U.S. companies would have more long range economic benefit for the U.S. than work by U.S. companies in Brazilian waters.) Or maybe not.
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1
She just saw an issue to demagogue and it didn't really matter what the facts were. I drilled gas wells in domestic U.S. up until a few years ago. I personally think there is a healthy enough domestic drilling situation, you make it too easy to drill and the costs go up for the decent Cos. (steel, manpower, leases, etc.) and the crooks jump in and rip people off.
I also know some people who sell hi-tch logging services to Petrobras, it will certainly help people like them and the deep sea rig guys. Helping out Petrobras would ironically help our manufacturing more than allowing drilling in someplace like California; I think the Brazil play is way deepwater, and those rigs are multi-year manufacturing jobs. On the other hand, U.S> plays would be shallow shelf, we already have rigs for that. I think we should keep what little oil we have left as a piggy bank for use the next time we get in a war btw.
Why do you reward someone whose every little misrepresentation should not be news? It is disgraceful journalism. How many times does she have to lie and misrepresent a situation for you to stop pretending her views should be reported? She is Madsen Report material. Treat her as such. -
2
MS: Palin is widely regarded as an intellectual laughingstock. Treat her thoughts as worthy of discussion at your own peril.
(Incidentally, I dismiss any Republican's views on oil exploration and development out-of-hand until I know that person expressly accepts that the Earth is more than a few thousand years old.)
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3
"Has there ever been a politician blogger who can create such a fuss with each posting?"
MS, whoever is making you cover Palin is abusing you.
Taking the 30 seconds it took to read the response to Palin's musings made me think of John Lydon's classic line-
"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?” -
4
If you didn't cover her nonsense, there would be no "stir."
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5
"Palin is widely regarded as an intellectual"
Thank you square. Why is Michael embarrassing himself like this? Sarah knows...Oh wait I didn't see this part of your comment:
"laughingstock. Treat her thoughts as worthy of discussion at your own peril."
Never mind.
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6
So, MS, did anyone SMART have anything to blog about today?
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7
I'm waiting for Michael to start breathlessly posting everytime someone starts a new Free Rupublic thread at this point.
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What's next? Time channels NewsMax? How about Debka? -
8
Basta! Basta! Basta!
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8.1
What Neo said.
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8.2
Exiled, you forgot the "rd" at the end of each word....
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8.3
(The things you learn when you date an Italian)
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Actually Mav he didn't. It's an Italian pejorative, and without the last two letters the connotation is much more negative than with. Of course Neo can clarify more than I can, but yeah, trust me, the word works. -
8.4
Actually, I think it just means "Enough!", in both Italian and Spanish. I don't think it's particularly rude, though it might be abrupt.
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9
So in sum: the Quitter with the Twitter demonstrated that she doesn't actually care whether America benefits - anything foreign is to be attacked. But perhaps, as a former member of the Alaskan Independence Party she sees us as a foreign country too?
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10
Has there ever been a journalist stupid enough to report on the Facebook ramblings of a known liar and failure?
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Yes. Yes there has.-
10.1
Does anyone think of Michael as a journalist? I regard him as transcribing whatever hot air the Republicans want to inflict on us - a sort of Amway salesman for GOP extremists.
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10.2
That's actually the current definition for "journalist."
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11
Hey, I'm going to go interview the crazy homeless guy at the bus stop and see what he has to say about Obama's economic policies.
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Anyone got any questions for him?-
11.1
…ask him how the government can keep its hands off his Medicare without shutting it down.
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11.2
"Freepie, don't you regret swallowing the red pill now?"
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11.3
All right, his answer to the first question was, "I like my women like I like my coffee - COVERED IN SPIDERS!"
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I couldn't think of anything to follow that up with.
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12
…so if Lovely Sarah promotes US companies, why did Trans-Canada win the AK gas pipeline deal when she WAS governor? And BP (aka *British* Petroleum) is still interested in its own pipeline jv with ConocoPhillips?
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/inherting-palins-pipeline-ambitions/
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13
[...] Sarah Palin's Latest Facebook Blog - Swampland - TIME.com Her subject was a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal about a $2 billion U.S. Export-Import Bank loan to the Brazilian state-owned oil company, Petrobas, for expansion of an offshore oil field in South America. … Read more here: Sarah Palin's Latest Facebook Blog - Swampland - TIME.com [...]
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14
MS, please stop subjecting us to this crap. She is a moron, and unpleasant to boot.
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15
Has there ever been a corporate welfare queen who could waste so much of real Americans' time with such inane blog posts? Watching Palin is like watching the Paris Hilton of politics, but with even less common sense and honesty.
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16
Why do Time writers link to the wrong Wa Po writers? We get Joe's weekly Kraut-love and today KT propped up the wrong Pearlstein. This Kuttner piece is spot-on:
"When economically stressed and frightened people are anxious and sullen, you never know who will capture their fears and hopes. In the 1930s, economic anxiety produced leaders as different as Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler. History shows that if the reformist left doesn't offer a plausible story and strategy of reform, the lunatic right will gain ground even with an implausible one. So where are the liberal protesters? The initiative has passed to the know-nothing right for two big reasons.
One is Obama himself. This president recoils from confrontation, even with those who are out to destroy him. He has had ample opportunities to put himself on the side of popular economic grievances and to connect America's economic troubles to the forces that Roosevelt called "economic royalists." But Obama, whose propensity for consensus is hard-wired, keeps passing up those opportunities.
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17
Michael Scherer, I thought you were the white house correspondent? It's not like Palin will ever get any where near the place, unless of course you count Lisa Murkowski getting her some tour tickets.
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Let's face the fact that pretty soon now the GOP is going to be exposed as the degenerates they've become. Obama was the GOP's last chance to redeem themselves as legitimate political leaders of an opposing view. As all extremists eventually do they've have gone one step too far. They've forced Obama to recognize that the GOP leadership can not be trusted and must do what the country needs him to do without their involvement.
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Guess what, when that happens we are going to find that the majority of the country have indeed embraced the policies of the left. We will wake up one morning very soon and recognize the GOP has been practically encouraged armed insurrection, secession, and an end to the peaceful transfer of power we've enjoyed since 1789.
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American will finally realize that bipartisanship was achieved on November 4, 2008 when everyone interested in addressing the problems of this country voted Democratic. From now on it's no longer going to be about left and right. the new American coalition is going to be about sane and not! -
18
Your comment is awaiting moderation (and I thought I could sneak dipsh!t in there...)
As for MS writing (again) about SP:
"Shortly after graduation, Scherer discovered literary narrative writing and devoured the works of authors A. J. Liebling, Gay Talese, H. L. Mencken, and others. Lately, he sustains himself with modern American poetry, in part because he has so little free time. Occasionally, he is derided for his literary roots: "I was on the bus with McCain in Iowa in early 2007, and I referred to the French cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard in my story. At least one blogger came after me for that," Scherer said with a laugh.
Although Scherer said he didn't come to Washington to cover the White House, he is clearly in his element. A big fan of the television drama The West Wing--"I still believe the second season of West Wing is the best season ever in the history of television"--Scherer was drawn to what he called the "white-collar fantasy" that underlies the show.
"The premise of West Wing is that you can work incredibly hard at something that matters, and that it's not just about making money, and that it can be fulfilling," he said. "I've always wanted a job like that, and I guess I've got it now."
http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/text.asp?pid=2757
So, tell us Michael, does writing about this uber dipsh!t fulfill you? Does it, in your expert opinion, matter? If we could extract Mencken from his grave and resuscitate him, I reckon he'd retch (i.e. make an effort to vomit) on most of your recent work.
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19
The false intellect continues only it is not Palin who suffers from it but the lot of you folks.
For months libs have belittled, mocked, criticized and tried to embarrass her and her family. If this women was as useless and stupid as the entire liberal establishment makes her out to be, how dumb does that make all of you?
How can someone with so little to offer always cause such fear in the morally superior? Another example of what libs do best: not use an intellectual argument but act intellectually superior to do a character assassination. You are all PATHETIC!
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19.1
Have you considered communicating in English, freepie? You get bonus points if you figure out the mysteries of punctuation. Hint: it isn't the same as having a flat tire.
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19.2
juniusredivivu…
Don't worry, if you keep working and don't try to read moving your lips; you will be reading at a grown up level in no time.
Maybe one over your over pompous friends can explain the post to you. But you explained the mystery of this site punctuation and spelling rules over content. Explains all the drivel you write.
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19.3
Freepie, I don't know anyone who speaks freepie. Is it a variation of Palinese? My friends are all American, so naturally we speak English. You need to work on your conditional sentences, correct use of the comma, prepositions and including a subject. After that, start reviewing basic logic and content, because you have some obvious problems in that department.
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19.4
juniusredivivu
The only problem I worry about is becoming a liberal. To think I would have to suffer being an arrogant know it, wear a tin-foiled hat and still not have HEALTH CARE REFORM
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19.5
That's some serious penis-envy you've got there, Freepie.
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20
Another ode to Michael Scherer:
“Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.”
Janet Malcolm
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20.1
He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.”
That perfectly describes most of you folks here.
Don't worry Cliff since HCR failed, the Dems will do flat tire reform for you.
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20.2
I think freepie has a tantrum coming on. Even by his low standards, he's being miserably uninteresting tonight. Freepie - it's "tinfoil hat" by the way, not "tin-foiled". Can't you even get your insults right?
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21
Hint: it isn't the same as having a flat tire.
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I like it. -
22
It seems that freepie has found his natural place in the blogosphere, namely, the non-grammar Nazi. It's not much of an achievement, but it probably compensates for losing that village idiot gig to Sarah Palin.
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22.1
I blame spellcheck personally. Why oh why do people just accept whatever comes up rather than determining if the word actually, y'know, FITS?
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22.2
Yutsano, I don't think we are allowed to talk about Freepie's fits. Come to think of it, we can't even discuss how his Oxycontin addiction *really* started....
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22.3
Remember: in honor of our dearly departed Pirate Wench tomorrow is No Feed Thursday!
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22.4
Only 35 minutes to tell the story of Freepie's Oxycontin Adventure? But yes, we must honor the tradition of despising the trolls silently tomorrow. I guess we could see it as cutting the pork from their diet.
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23
You know what's most amazing about this whole story? Swampland is still a thing.
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24
More excerpts from that Rick Perlstein piece I can't get enough of:
I'd add MS to this one: "The point I would make to Blitzer, Andrea Mitchell, and Chuck Todd is that authoritarian takeovers of nations happen, they happen slowly, and it's a process. I would ask them, if they were reporters in Weimar Germany when Nazi street thugs starting using violence as a way to settle political disputes, when would you begin to report--not opine, report--that democracy was under threat? (Because that is the definition of democracy: the ability to settle political questions without violence.) How far down the road to authoritarianism does a nation have to get before you drop the he-said, she-said paradigm?
...
I suspect we may in fact be on the verge of a new progressive majority based on demographics, and the anger we're hearing from those who oppose it is more akin to their (metaphorical!_ death rattle. But politicians need to understand nothing happens automatically. Even a "progressive majority" can fail to produce progressive change without courageous leadership willing to stand up to the anger of the minority. Unfortunately, a lot of cable news these days has sapped their will to do this--it can create the illusion that the minority is bigger than it actually is (angry minorities, after all, are loud and make for good TV).
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Sometimes moderation isn't a virtue. It wasn't, for example, in the 1850s, when the "moderate" position was that slavery should be allowed to exist and perhaps even possibly to expand.
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Americans in the center hate disorder, so if Democrats can be rhetorically successful in framing the Republicans as being responsible for disorder they can be successful (just like Republicans were successful in the 1960s and after framing the Democrats as responsible for disorder). LBJ did this effectively against Goldwater in 1964. But this doesn't happen automatically. You have to be willing to call out the other side--and calling out the other side is not Obama's style. So this opportunity may end up being squandered." -
25
PS, just when I was prepared to leave politics behind and return to the classroom (no, not to teach Freep-ese), I hear one of these endearing election vans go by the front of my home:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxunevD3suI
This one's communist (not my vid), but all the parties do it. Imagine if your local official were blasting this crap in front of your house at 8am!
- michaelscherer Ah.... Richard Wolffe. - 4 hours ago
- michaelscherer AP Fact Checks Obama's speech: http://bit.ly/5OR9ph - 4 hours ago
- michaelscherer RT @AlexKoppelman: "I refuse to accept the notion that we cannot summon that unity again." Obama joining 9/12 Project! - 4 hours ago
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