Wednesday 30 June 2010

Fun with Kathy Griffin, Levi Johnston + Bonus: Conservative bloggers kicked out of Palin speech - Open Thread - UPDATE

After dealing with many serious topics recently, we thought that it's time for a light-heartened open thread. Fortunately, a new TV clip with Kathy Griffin and Levi Johnston was just published yesterday. It was shot during Kathy Griffin's visit in Alaska last winter, and it's simply hilarious - comedy at it's best. We also see for the first time the entrance of Sarah Palin's house, where Kathy Griffin rang the doorbell and then left a note. Seems like a pure miracle now that she wasn't shot on the spot. ;-)


In addition, because we have so much fun right now, here is the clip of Kathy Griffin's incredibly funny appearance on the David Letterman show from June 10, 2009 - it's a classic:



If you would like to see the Letterman video in a larger format, please CLICK HERE.

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BONUS:

I would put this also under comedy. Well, you see, there are two conservative bloggers from Virginia, J.R. Hoeft and Brian K, who write for the right-wing website "www.bearingdrift.com".

Last Sunday, June 27, Sarah Palin appeared at the "Freedom Fest" in Norfolk, VA, together with a bunch of other right-wingers, most of whom the world has never heard of. So the conservative bloggers thought, why not live-blog the speeches?

They wrote:

"Freedom 1650AM in Hampton Roads is sponsoring tonight “Freedom Fest” with Keynote Speaker Sarah Palin!

Bearing Drift is pleased to provide you floor-level coverage and behind-the-scenes access all night as Palin, Former Gov. George Allen, ACLJ’s Jay Sekulow, Lt. Col. Oliver North, Exodus Faith Ministry’s Bishop E.W. Jackson, Lee Greenwood, and 2nd Congressional District GOP nominee Scott Rigell talk about the importance of the conservative movement and how to advance the cause!

Check out the live-blog:"

The event started quite well for the enthusiastic conservative bloggers. From the link above, you can go to their website and can still see the live-blog (click on the large box). They started live-blogging at 6.23 pm and covered several of the speeches.

Then came Sarah Palin. Excitement rose! They shot out three messages at the beginning of the speech:


Conservative bloggers live tweets Sarah Palin Freedom Fest


And then...well...the two bloggers experienced the brave new Sarah Palin world:


Blogger kicked out Sarah Palin appearance screenshot - new

"J.R. Hoeft:
We're being kicked out. So much for transparency"

Haha! We always like a good laugh!

Read the recap of these events on a Democratic website HERE.

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Addition to the events in Virginia:

Conservative blogger JR Hoeft was then accused of misrepresenting the real facts after he was kicked-out in Norfolk. On C4P it was posted that the claim that it was the "Palin-people" who kicked him out was wrong. I cannot find the comment right now on C4P, maybe it was deleted in the end, but it had seen it before, and it was also repeated in the comments on JR Hoeft's conservative website "www.bearingdrift.com":

JR Hoeft - response

JR Hoeft had a stinging response to these allegations:

JR Hoeft - comment

JR Hoeft - comment 3

He also makes no secret of his thoughts towards Sarah Palin:

JR Hoeft - comment 2

"AMERICANS, DO YOU LOVE YOUR FREEDOMS?"

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JK Hoeft reported his bad experience in Norfolk in the conservative "Washington Times" (page 2 of the article). He asks Sarah Palin at the end of his article to allow coverage by "anyone". Great idea! Problem is that it won't happen, as Sarah Palin is afraid of nothing more than "real" coverage.

He wrote:
And then it happened.

"Sir, you have five minutes to shut down and clean up," said a voice in the pitch-dark arena.

"Excuse me?" I said. I was dumbfounded. "I have permission to be here from the event coordinator and an 'all access' pass - what do you mean I have to shut down?"

"The governor's ground rules state you can only be here for the first five minutes - you have to leave."

What in the world was this guy talking about? We ignored him.

A few moments later, he returned and reiterated his point. Then he came back a third time.

Not wanting to create a scene in the middle of this exciting moment, and knowing Steve was extremely busy, I capitulated.

I typed my last entry into the live blog: "So much for transparency. We're being kicked out."

We shut down our computers, stowed the digital camera and stopped my hand-held voice recorder. We were done.

I thought about staying and listening, but the speech was boilerplate, and I was ticked. Brian stuck around.

Mrs. Palin, please change your rules. Let conservatives cover you. Let anyone cover you. You have a lot to offer.
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UPDATE:

A Palinbot live-twittered Sarah Palin speech which she gave yesterday in Georgia, at an event in support of the ministry "Zachariah's Way" (here is a press report, another one here). I haven't seen a transcript or a recording of the speech so far. Please let me know if you find anything.

These twitter messages are very interesting in several respects. First, Sarah Palin made fun of the allegation that the "Palin-people told the conservative bloggers to leave":

Twitter Georgia speech 3


The other twitter messages are also very revealing. Sarah Palin made "fun" of the Trig Truthers, and she "calls the 'triggers"'? What the heck does that mean? Please don't tell me that she meant what I think she meant.


Twitter Georgia speech 4

Also, here is something we have never heard before. "Trig delivered for Alaska"?

Twitter Georgia speech 5

Another of the legions of "real life stories" by Sarah Palin which she loves to tell in her speeches which don't pass the sniff test: A four-year-old girl uses the word "awkward":

Twitter Georgia speech 7


Twitter Georgia speech 2

Twitter Georgia speech 1

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UPDATE 2:

According to the new post on Sarah Palin's facebook, conservative bloggers are not trustworthy sources! The "Palin people kicking bloggers out" story never happened, according to Palin! Welcome to the distorted reality of Sarah Palin, conservative bloggers! Hope you enjoy the ride!

Sarah's esteemed facebook writers have the following to say:
Earlier this week, I spoke at the Freedom Fest in Norfolk, Virginia; and, evidently, the media was asked to leave – not by me, that’s for sure. I want my message out, so despite reporters making up a story about “Palin people kicking us out” (uh, the “Palin people” entourage would consist of one person – my 15-year-old daughter, Willow – and I have no doubt she could take on any reporter, but I know for certain she didn’t “kick ‘em out” of the event). Anyway, here are some of the key issues I spoke about.
I haven't read the complete post yet, but if you want to make a fact-check: Palin's complete speech in Norfolk was actually recorded and can be found HERE.

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UPDATE 3:

A physician in Ohio wrote a blog post about "babygate". Very brave! He doesn't know yet that Palinbots are not interested in medical facts, but only in praising her infallible queen.

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UPDATE 4:

JR Hoeft from "www.bearingdrift.com" left on his website a response to Sarah Palin's facebook allegations - as stinging as some of his previous comments:

JR Hoeft new comment

Seems like Sarah Palin lost a supporter - forever.
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Tuesday 29 June 2010

Patrick from Palingates talks on the Nicole Sandler Radio Show about babygate, Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy with Trig


+++Please download our short summary about "babygate" HERE+++

It looks like our extensive, fact-based reporting about Sarah Palin's private and political scandals is starting to attract more attention. Nicole Sandler, formerly with Air America, contacted Regina and me today and asked if we wanted to talk today about Sarah Palin's speech at CSU Stanislaus and about Palingates. I was very happy about this offer and immediately called her to confirm.

Nicole Sandler's show is live streamed HERE. She was very kind and we had a long conversation without any rush. Maybe there will be a repetition at some point! I have heard rumors that Regina is quite keen to go on the air as well! ;-)

The brilliant article by Andrew Sullivan called "Why Does Trig Matter?" which I mention in the interview can be found HERE.

Andrew Sullivan wrote today:

It may be a loony conspiracy theory, like the 9/11 Truthers and the Obama birthers. But we have all seen mounds of evidence that prove the Truthers are out of their minds and we have seen the birth certificate that refutes the Birthers. What have we seen to back up the maternity of Trig? Nada. Not a single page from what must be a mountain of medical records, no birth certificate, nothing but a single page doctor's note confirming the birth in passing, issued four hours before polls opened, by a doctor who once spoke freely with the local press but clammed up completely as soon as Palin hit the national stage. Yes, we have three photographs of her looking slightly pregnant (though much less so than in her previous pregnancies) toward the end of her term, but we also have photographs, like the one above, from the same period revealing almost nothing at all. The story she has told about her pregnancy, moreover, has not passed any sniff test by some of the leading obstetricians and pediatricians in the country's leading teaching hospitals.

No one in the McCain campaign asked for confirmation and some in that campaign now privately wonder if the whole thing wasn't and isn't a scam. Palin, for good measure, directly claimed that the medical records had been released early in the campaign, a simple falsehood. Why would anyone say such a thing if it were not true? How would any mother who had actually given birth to a child with special needs exploit him so publicly for political gain? Why has the press not asked a single question about the insane wild ride that included water breaking at 4 am in Texas and a birth in Alaska a day later after three plane flights?

Please read also the excellent post by litbrit about Andrew Sullivan and babygate! Litbrit really nails it:

"So. Here we are. For nearly two years, the media has been inexplicably squeamish and hands-off about reporting the truth of this lying woman’s fifth child—which would not be anyone’s business if (a) she were a private citizen and/or (b) she had not made said child’s existence the center—indeed, the be-all and end-all—of her pro-life cred, thus “energizing the base”, as they say.

Bravo to Mr. Sullivan, I say. And bravo to all and sundry who, like him, like me, are capable of looking at the evidence already in front of us--who well understand why it matters so much and will thus continue to call for someone in the press to please say something. Do something."

Here is my conversation with Nicole Sandler. Please distribute the link to this post and the other links widely.

In case there is a problem with the video, see the ALTERNATIVE UPLOAD HERE.

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Please read Nicole Sandlers summary of her show HERE.
.

Monday 28 June 2010

Palingates Weekly Roundup - June 23 to June 27

By Blueberry Tart



Patrick’s post highlights one of Alaska’s true heroes and one of the bravest people around, Andrée McLeod, who continues her quest for accountability in government in Alaska. The post highlights her efforts to get Alaska to reveal the names of the oil and gas companies that received $193 million in tax and capital investment credits. (Hundreds of millions more in ACES credits went to companies already producing oil and gas.) More_Cowbell discovered that tax credits that are not used can be sold. Hmm, is it just me, or does it seem that systems in Alaska are designed to make fraud really easy to pull off (kind of like not requiring building permits, or not having births be public records)?


In this post, Patrick follows up on another attempt by Andrée to make the workings of Alaska’s government more transparent and less corrupt. Andrée argued that the state improperly withheld six emails sent to Todd Palin from public disclosure. AK Superior Court Judge Patrick McKay (whose real convictions have more to do with DUI than with legal principles) ruled against her, saying that the emails to Todd did not constitute a waiver of deliberative process exclusions to public records disclosure. For this, the judge relied primarily on that bedrock principle of jurisprudence, “common sense.” The judge found that the deliberative process privilege applies to consultants and advisors, paid and unpaid, including the spouse of a “head of state.”

In the first update, Sarah’s attorney extols the virtues of a legal decision based on “common sense,” but foreshadows that she will soon “take one for the team.” BlueDogAK reminds us that the Petumenos Troopergate report found that Todd Palin was “a private citizen not subject to the Ethics Act”; this was a crucial part of the Ethics Commission decision clearing Sarah. The third update forecast another legal storm: Geoffrey Dunn reported on HuffPo that the Alaska Fund Trust case may be settled against Sarah.


Later on Thursday, that bombshell hit! Concluding a case brought by Kim Chatman (thank you, Kim!), Tim Petumenos ruled that Sarah’s slush fund, AKA the Alaska Fund Trust, violated Alaska law by using Sarah’s position as Governor to solicit funds that could be used for her personal benefit (and the benefit of her family, friends, staff, hairdressers, plastic surgeons, sycophants, etc.; but I digress). The decision is worth reading.
In the blink of an eye, Meg Stapleton (emerging from dormancy, like a grub) posted on Sarah’s Facebook page that Sarah had done nothing unethical or illegal, suggesting that this ruling was politically motivated (blame Obama!), and claiming that “not a penny” of the money had gone to anyone. The ADN reported that $87K of the $420K was spent; the report says “incurred.”

Hmmm.

And, faster than you can say “this is a stickup,” a new fund is already in operation, claiming no ties to SarahPAC (unless you count the same address and phone number, and Timothy Crawford’s fingerprints all over it – standing O for Patrick’s great research!). We also found out that Meg and Sarah were the ones who set up the fund, contrary to prior denials that Sarah was involved. “ I want to be clear on a point that has been misrepresented: The Governor is not and was not involved with the Trust. The Governor has never worked on or with the Trust…” (From Kristan Cole, with H/T to So_many_unanswered_questions)

But of course it’s not her fault; she got bad legal advice (and rejected the advice of her own attorney). As Curiouser11 noted, the report says that, “Governor Palin chose not to accept the advice of Mr. Van Flein, and followed instead the advice of another attorney who recommended against seeking the advice of the Governor's ethics supervisor (the attorney general), who advised to simply contest the "inevitable" complaint when it came.” (Did you follow that? She rejected advice to seek advice, followed advice not to seek advice, which advice was to contest the inevitable complaint…)

AK Dispatch (citing Palingates) highlighted the previously unknown fact that “a contract for legal services was issued by the state of Alaska to [VanFlein’s law firm] to represent Gov. Palin in connection with these matters for up to $100,000 at public expense.”

As EOY and others later noted, the Petumenos report confirms what Palingaters discovered last year: “…Petumenous pointed out that the way the trust was written there was nothing to stop Palin from using the money for anything she wanted… Thus the Trust itself contemplates personal gain and financial benefit’ to the governor in violation of the Alaska Ethics Act.”
The new trust uses the same language and is the same blank check to Sarah, her relatives, and whomever the Trustee decides should get the money. It also says that legal bills of Sarah, her family or staff could be paid from the trust. Phew! Willow and Bristol won’t have to use their money from the VF photoshoot to pay their legal bills. What a relief!


The ethics feast on Palingates continues. I again bow down to Andree McLeod. She is a real crusader, doing the work of 1000 trying to hold Alaska’s officials accountable. This post covers an ethics complaint that she filed charging Bill McAllister with misuse of his position and accepting gifts. Apparently he took an extended, paid vacation in Sweden, immediately after starting work as Palin’s communications director. Andrée also challenged the appointment of Mike Nizich, Palin/Parnell chief of staff, as the public representative on the state Aeronautics Development Board. The level of corruption in Alaska is astonishing. But here is what Sarah Palin had to say about Andrée (a Republican, BTW) back in the day before she had become Enemy#2 (right after President Obama and before Levi Johnston): "Kudos to Andree... she's obviously got tireless energy and desire to keep government and government officials accountable to Alaskans... we need more "Andrees" in this state...




Sorry for such a long recap here, but Friday night and Saturday morning proved to be an incredible time at Palingates – live streaming and an on-line blogging party covering Palin’s appearance at CSU Stanislaus. The campus was in partial lock-down and cordoned off with chain link fencing. The speech itself was an olio of Reagan (mentioned 9 times), the Apostle Paul, our founding eye-dills, her son defending our freedom, an “anticdote” about Margaret Thatcher, the Constitution of Liberty, bendy straws, chastising of the dumpster divers, Glenn Beck’s Founders Fridays, writing on her hand, Adolf Hitler, “our great Republican experiment,” Alexis de Cokeville, President Kennedy (2 quotes), the evil empire, dissing college professors, sunny optimism, pioneering spirit, beacon of hope, don’t apologize, teach 3R’s and “true history,” “only dead fish go with the flow”, the last best hope and the shining city on the hill. Oh, I forgot American exceptionalism. And entrepreneurial spirit.

But the best part came right AFTER her speech, when the cameramen were overheard totally panning her speech as the inane babble, empty rhetoric and stolen quotes that it is – in other words, standard Palin fare. Some of their open-mike quotes:

"Oh my God, I feel like I just got off a roller coaster. Round and round, up and down, shit flying out everywhere and scaring you--"

"It's like when you gotta write a report as a college student, and you just try to jam as many quotes in as possible, you know, from as many random, you know, things as you can…."

"Now I know: The dumbness doesn't come from just soundbites."
Palingates also reported that CSU Stanislaus Foundation president Matt Swanson’s company donated $50K to the event and (at least) 3 other board members donated $10K each (Sarah thanks you from the bottom of her bank account.) Kathleen confirmed some of the extravagant costs of the event and that the campus newspaper was not given media access to the gala.

Professor Patrick Kelly, one of the leaders of the protest movement, wrote on behalf of

“…the students, faculty, staff, and alumni who have been so deeply offended by the ‘TERRIBLE CHOICE’ of a small group of people in the CSU Stanislaus Foundation and university administration to select Sarah Palin as being in some way representative of academic excellence…This is more than a joke. It is a deep insult to most who care about the university and it flies in the face of what a university should be about. Our university administration and its partners in this terrible enterprise have done a grave disservice to the institution they supposedly serve.”
OMG, there were already 1186 comments on this post when I first checked in the morning (and hundreds more later)! For those who missed the party here last night, you can have lots of fun reading through the comments …I was laughing ‘til I cried reading through them!

Kudos to Patrick and Kathleen for staying up all night to cover this and capturing the open mike-gaffe. H/T to the Modesto Bee for great photos of the protest, to Sarah Jones at politicususa and to our own honestyingov, who protested with these signs:

One side - " $100K ...& bendy straws for Sarah. NO scholarships for the STUDENTS "
Other side - " Hey Tweet-e...YOU LIE. Todd's BP caused the Oil Spill... NOT Environmentalists”
" The QUITTER lies...Palingates tells the TRUTH.” (with PG url and flying pig logo)


Patrick was not done yet! Later Saturday, he wrote another excellent blog post, reminding us all of why we do this. Yes, Sarah is a vapid nincompoop who can’t string together a sentence, but she is also a shill for rich powerbrokers who are using her for their own purposes. Palingates got a shout-out from DailyKos (AnnetteK) and was cited for coverage of CSU Stanislaus story by the SF Weekly blog (in May). Though they called PG a “Euroblog,” Patrick also applauded the guest writers, researchers and readers, most of whom are from the USA. (And we’re all citizens of the world.)


Reader dr patois was very brave and transcribed Sarah Palin's entire CSU speech. A transcript helps immensely, protecting sensitive ears and displaying the usual word salad in all its glory. Regina did some fact checking and discovered that Sarah Palin is still inclined to pander to local audiences by saying the first thing that comes to her head, such as California being Ronald Reagan country and moving Eureka College all the way from Illinois to the sunny state of California. Quotes and anecdotes in her speech were either inaccurate or taken out of context. Sarah has great difficulty with names: O'Biden, Naija, Nadia, oh heck! The three posts about the CSU gala and protest complement each other perfectly, giving the readers a good overall picture of the whole event, with the added bonus of extra research to put it in perspective.


Comments of the Week (there were SO MANY good ones…)



espresso4me posted this gem from Emptywheel.

Along with rewriting history, the Texas Board of Education changed the Pledge of Allegiance:

“I pledge allegiance to the barrel
of the capitalist states of America
and to the destruction for which it stands,
still oozing, undeniably,
with flooding and heat waves for all.”

macandcheesewiz coined a brilliant new term: “whacktose intolerant” and told of her confrontation with a belligerent woman who had parked in a handicap-only spot. Many ((())) from Palingaters to macandcheesewiz!

ontohertricks discusses the hypocrisy of so-called fiscal conservatives who also push more military spending (and by extension oil consumption): “…we would actually be a much more prosperous nation – by far – were we to pursue peace as a national objective – worldwide – and merely use our military only defensively and only when actually necessary…"

There was no shortage of opinions and conjecture about the scuttlebutt about Mercede, Levi and Bristol. BanditBasheert: “There must be a backstory.”

Fawn218, Bandit and RipleyinCT (among others) brightened my day with their idea about how Sarah is being set up for an “epic fail.”

trisha observed how Palin constantly picks fights, and sdilmoak reported that it was the same in AK when she was governor: “…a new fight and a new drama every single day… can you imagine her picking fights with World leaders everyday?”

laprofesora commented about how hostile Sarah’s tweets are, to which EyeOnYou responded: “Her tweets aren't about reaching ‘reasonable’ people. They are to feed her cult members and keep them coming back for more. She loves the adulation she gets from them, and this is her way of reaching out to them. This is her 'pitbull with lipstick' shtick. The thing is we all know that she is a coward at heart.”

LouieCypher: “Sarah. WhooHoo!! you are like a solution machine, that whole divine intervention thing, Did you learn that when you were becoming an energy expert?”

Sunnyjane: “...Actually, if God's talking to her, He's probably saying "Get the message, dumbbell: I said "no" to your election, and I'm trying to tell you "NO!" to drilling for oil. When are you going to start LISTENING?"

Lillibird, Sjk, cheeriogirl and SalG let us know about the hazards of, and legal exemptions for, “fracking” for natural gas.

The McChrystal scandal generated many strong opinions (strong consensus: he is a warmongering a**hole and should be court-martialed for his remarks). Kellygrrrl linked to Alan Grayson, whose message on McChrystal is: “Fire him.”

Ennealogic: “War is for killing. We are killing all kinds of people in Afghanistan, people who have no relationship to anyone responsible for "the event that changed everything" on 9/11/2001, people who never did anything to us or asked for anything from us except to be left alone. …The irony is that the Taliban is virtually no different from the Xtreem Fundies here in the US…”

Litbrit: “As a veteran friend of ours says, "Afghanistan is where empires go to die."

Keegan’s search for a safe house from Palin-mania led to Palingates: “If blogs are virtual houses, I wanna be adopted by the Palingate family. Now I know it was terribly rude of me to just move in without proper introduction so I'm not above bribing you with flattery if you wish!” Peacepax and many other Palingaters extended a warm welcome: “Welcome to 'safe haven.’ We are all pilgrims as we travel on our way. We are all equal here.”

Lilybart: “ Normal people can't just repeat lies over and over, way after they have been debunked. Normal people don't think they are qualified to lead the Free World because their husband managed state affairs by email while they were sort of gov.”

SickntiredofPalin had an interesting post about how Todd, Sarah and their extended family have raised manipulating and bullying the press to an art form; this began (at least) during the gubernatorial campaign, when they tried to get a reporter fired. Several readers commented about Todd’s and Sarah’s reputations for nasty tempers.

More_Cowbell: “So much for Palin's ‘Actions have consequences’ mantra. Once again we see that in Alaska, actions have NO consequences if your name is Palin.”

Pallotine: “Her staffers will probably ask donors, instead of a refund, how about just transferring your donation, to the newly established trust fund.” Ginger50 and others agreed.

Myrtille: “This is the email they send to people to encourage them to give more money:
‘My friend, this is a witch hunt, pure and simple. So today we are starting over. Her legal bills are still there and growing. Will you please help her and give your very best gift to The Sarah Palin Legal Defense Fund today? It is urgent that we help relieve this crushing legal burden.’"

Annes_123 speculated that Sarah quit because she would be able to keep any funds received once she was no longer Governor. Several readers agreed.

Aha: “Maytag could take a lesson from these people's spin cycle...”

sjk: “…let me see if I understand....tawd paylin, a private citizen working for bp, was acting as an advisor to the sitting governot? then he was just a private citizen when it was convenient, then he was an advisor with executive privilege when it was convenient? Ok...I thought so.”

Kasha Knish: “Maybe we should have a holiday calendar just for Palingates? There are many moments that we might want to observe. Quitter's Day would be just one of many. What might we call the time frame between Quitter's Day and the actual final day of governance - Ju-"lie"???”

Helen picked up this idea: “So kick off the long weekend with a little "4th of July Eve" celebration for those people who can share the special political joy of the occasion.

Party menu suggestions:
Quitter Quesadillas
Lipstick Pigs In Blankets
Chips Are Down
Granny Meltdowns
Grifter Fries
And for cocktails? – Teabagger Sunsets”

Laprofesora: “I'll bring the Mandation Margaritas!”



and espesso4me: “I'll mix up some Salade d'Word!”

historygoddess (quoting Bob Cesca on HuffPo): "I never thought I'd write this, but I think we've discovered a new level of stupid below the heretofore impenetrable Sarah Palin floor… the idiot curve is now redrawn in her favor." SoCalWolfGal posted some more quotes from this hilarious article.

More_Cowbell: “Common sense is ‘rarely used’ because it's not a legal principle in any way. Why should justice depend on one judge's ‘common sense’ rather than on precedent and established statutory and common law? He really IS an idiot.”

Ginger50: “… I can't remember how I came to find this blog, but I wish all Alaskans would find it. I wish I could copy these posts and take them to every restaurant, hotel, hospital, court house (haha) and Taco Bell in Anchorage... I agree with others that have said Palingates should be a book, including all of the comments. Palingates and Andree McCleod are my heroes.”

KarenJ (from WaPo comments): “Had to laugh at this comment under that article: ‘Sarah, Glenn and Rush are the vuvuzelas of the GOP. Republicans love their noise because they have no plan, no direction and no soul...’” Posted by: Hawkestreet1 | June 24, 2010 4:22 PM

Sdilmoak: “ …Remember Kristan Cole had stated that Palin was not involved in the establishment of the fund....she said she did it on her own. She said Palin was not aware. But then remember all the Palin fans who posted photos of the hand written thank you notes they got for contributing to the trust fund.......written by the Queen herself?”

Guest: “I find it interesting that the attorney Kristan Cole used for the Trust Fund, Jon Givens is the very same attorney used in the Dairygate lawsuits.”

MarvinM: “Pay your dang debts and stop whining. Asking other to fork out to pay for what you can afford to pay is extremely tacky.”

Numerous English-speaking readers were offended by this sentence from Sarah’s new bilk-the-sheeple scheme: "They know she is making a difference in her work to return America to the Constitutional principles that made it the great and exceptional nation it remains."

LouieCypher made us LOL again: Hey Sarah, sorry about the little fund thingy being illegal an all, but after reading Meg's fb post it all makes sense. Like you pretty much ever bad thing that happens in my life guess who's behind it? OBAMA!! I stubbed my toe this morning, why? I tripped over my Nike's guess who endorses Nike's, Michael Jordan, who's played for Chicago, guess who else is from Chicago, OBAMA!! The other day I got a speeding ticket the officer's name Bob Osborne, guess who else's initials are B.O.? OBAMA!! It doesn't take hardly any "common sense" to see what's going on here, like you that guys out to get me!! …



Saskat picked up the theme: “And when you forget to use deodorant and you get B.O., well, we all know who's fault that is.”

Clairey: From the report: "In addition, the Trust contains a so-called "Crummy Provision" that permits a beneficiary under the Trust to demand withdrawals from the Trust for any reason whatsoever…”

Disqusux (quoting from Petumenos report): "the degree of delegation to Ms. Stapleton ..... was troubling" (para 23) "the degree of BLAME-SHIFTING to Ms. Stapleton ..... was troubling"

Ontohertricks: "’Ongoing legal challenges faced by the Palin family’? You mean like, who is the daddy of the new baby? Or defending vandalism charges?”

Curiouser11 (another bombshell from the report): “Sarah ignored legal advice to have the trust reviewed by the AK Attorney General and she chose instead to INVITE an ethics complaint. This implies she knew there was a problem.”

GrannyJ spoke for many readers: “Excellent post Patrick. I love the way all of you are able to discover the connections. You really put the main stream media to shame.”

Cheeriogirl, curiouser11 and others raised the question of Sarah’s claim of $500K in legal expenses and the later claim of “millions.”

Espresso4me: “Palin is a shell of a person, an absent parent and a fraud. People who see through this charade, this con game are frustrated and bewildered with how this uneducated idiot continues bilking people, while seemingly getting a free pass when it is obvious that she was complicit in whatever lie or con was perpetrated.”

Mxm’s excellent bullsh*t translator was working overtime on Meg & VF’s posts.

Indy_Girl (quoting from HuffPo comments): "Sarah Palin is the Seinfeld of politicians... She's the show about nothing."

Elizabeth: “By setting up a new fund and asking for more money, isn't she saying ‘Yes I have millions now but I'd rather spend MY money on goodies like cars, new houses, and boob jobs. I know the economy is tough, but why don't you send me some of YOUR money to pay for the boring stuff like lawyers.’"

WesinOregon had an interesting post on techniques of Nazi propaganda, which seems to also reveal the template for Sarah’s speeches (his comment includes much more detail):

“A number of techniques are used to create messages which are persuasive, but false... Appeal to fear; Appeal to authority; Bandwagon; Obtain disapproval; Glittering generalities; Rationalization; Intentional vagueness; Transfer (projecting positive or negative qualities); Oversimplification; Common man; Testimonial; Stereotyping or Labeling; Scapegoating; Virtue words; Slogans”

Cheeriogirl reminded us that: “Prohibiting free speech and freedom of assembly is exactly what led up to the Kent State University murders. Is history doomed to repeat itself?”

Maelewis: “Putting up a security fence to keep out students and faculty who have a right to be on their campus, prohibiting free speech and use of police force to intimate protesters-- that really looks like Hitler's Nazi government.”

Helen: “Cleopatra had an asp, Marie Antoinette had the guillotine, and the Quitter Queen has Palingates. : D”



Espresso4me: “ … There are many like her though. They are in prison or mental institutions.”

Laprofesora: “Hey, these people got their money's worth: Word Salad Supreme with BS croutons.”

Ontohertricks: “I saw a bumper sticker today that said something like, "Using war to promote peace is like using sexual intercourse to promote virginity." I laughed because I know a famous person who believes in both of those concepts – as do her followers – and is taking her money to the bank in a wheelbarrow by promoting them.”

BlueDogAK (quoting George Orwell): “As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.”

Curiouser11 picked up on Orwell theme: "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind."
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act."

The last one is in honor of the courageous dumpster divers who sought truth and uncovered lies.

LouieCypher: “WooWhee Sarah what a speech, I can only describe it as the sound of 1000 vevesulas going off right next to my ear in a closed room! I see you got that book of quotes I sent you, fabulous! I especially like were you brought up lynching as a way of solving cultural differences!! Oh and work ethic nothing says work ethic like showing up late speaking for 20 minutes taking you 90K and getting the hell out of there! …”


Links of the Week



Patrick was on a roll posting links this week; here are a few. He started with an excellent excerpt from this New Yorker article, quoting Steve Schmidt referring to Palin:
“…showing [Sarah Palin] as an entertainer instead of a serious thinker”

Next was a link to a good post on Political Carnival with excellent Rachel Maddow videos.

He flagged a great piece in DailyKos on being offended by Palin’s unwillingness to engage in dialogue with critics or even those in the middle. Sarah Palin has run from defending her views for a year and a half now, and unless that changes radically, I cannot respect her opinions enough to take them seriously, and neither should you.

This is the fascinating video clip in which Robert Redford speaks out for a new energy policy.

Here is an older link from MSNBC with a great Olbermann clip on Redford.

Newsweek has published a huge piece about "Sarah Palin's most controversial tweets".

Mad Magazine made a new parody about Sarah Palin! :-)
Page 1

Page 2

Sorry don’t recall who posted this excellent link calling out Sarah for her lie about Rahm Emanuel.

Kilob posted Olbermann’s dissection of the GOBP.

Wonkette on Sarah asking for divine intervention
.

Honestyingov w/H/T to AKM: "Close Encounters of the Turd Kind"

Patrick: Anger grows across the world at the real price of 'frontier oil'

Say No to Palin in Politics: Here a great video that needs to be passed around.......get this out there gators! Note the big BP/AK connection.

Here is a link to Fresh Air (on NPR), which aired an excellent program explaining the science of deep-sea drilling, and what happened to cause the disaster of the Deepwater Horizon rig.

IWantToKnowTheTruth: O/T but I saw this wonderful little video on drill baby drill on Buzzflash

Finny: "But the more interesting point to be made about Palin is how toxic she's become among the broader electorate. In fact, buried in the internals of the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll is an amusing number: A majority see a Palin endorsement as a clear negative."

+++

By Patrick:

NEW TOOLBAR ON PALINGATES:

You have certainly seen already our brand new, state of the art toolbar! Let me explain:

You have various options to share posts and easily to connect to social networks.

You can also view our recent posts.

OK, in detail, from left to right:

1. CONNECT: You can connect for example to facebook and then update your status, it will then say in your status on facebook automatically that you are reading this post on Palingates. Perfect for easy sharing!

2. SEARCH: Make a google search of the blog!

3. RECENT POSTS: Terrific! See our lasts posts in an overview and click on them!

4. VIDEOS: Currently linked to my doublegrandmapalin youtube account

5. PHOTOS: Currently linked to my flickr account

6. PEOPLE ONLINE: See how many people are online, which posts they are reading and from which countries they come from!

7. LIKE ON FACEBOOK: Well, in case you like us!

8. SHARE: Share the posts on various sites (facebook, digg etc.)

9. TWITTER: Twitter our posts in an instant! And see our own twitter messages, which we will now start again.

10. BUZZ: Share on Google Buzz

11. JOIN CHAT: Yeah, we have a chat now! Please be aware that the chat is NOT monitored, and please NEVER share any personal details on the chat like real names, email addresses etc. Also, be aware that anybody can login with any nickname. If you are in doubt that somebody has the "correct" identity, ask him to leave a comment on disqus. I will ALWAYS leave a comment on disqus before I go on the chat.

You can open several windows of the toolbar at the same time, you have to click them down with "_" instead of closing them ("x").

HAVE FUN!
.

Sunday 27 June 2010

Sarah Palin full speech at CSU Stanislaus - Video and transcript - Inaccuracies in the speech exposed!



LINK TO THE VIDEO.

Apparently there is a software glitch, and this video sometimes disappears. Here is an alternative upload at another website.

+++

Our brave reader drpatois transcribed Sarah Palin's speech at the CSU Stanislaus gala. The transcript is in "Palinese" because it was the only way drpatois could face the task without going completely ga-ga. A bit of humour is always helpful on these occasions.

Thank you so much! Thank you. Well thank you so much. Oh I so appreciate that warm introduction and I tell you what, you are a bold man. You are a bold man.

Um, I am so honored to get to be here and before we get started let me just get through some logistics really quickly. First, um, I got my water... do I have my straz? I want my straz. And I want ‘em bent, pleaz, thank you. At least that’s what I read in some of the lamestream media outlets. Is that I was demanding straz or some ridiculous thing. So, I’m just so glad that we got some of those con contractual demands out of the way and finally settled. I think though that my speaker bureau, Washington speaker’s bureau, I think that this is one of the toughest contracts I think that they ever ended up getting to sign. Um, they found it to be one tough event to sort out because it seemed to them they were negotiating with the entire state of California. And here you know, the rest of us looking in and kind of following what was going on with you know some of the shenanigans with like Jerry Brown and friends. Come on this is California; do you not have anything else to do? Goodness, gracious! Priorities!

And then though, you know I was expecting quite a few protests, protesters, I, I thought that, you know I’d get a little bit of the Ann Coulterism um, and I thought hey, that would be cool, I, love Ann Coulter, and more power to her as she goes on college campuses and she talks about America and American values and principles and what it means to be an American and I expected a little bit of that but it’s been nothing but absolute loveliness here in this part of California and I so appreciate the hospitality and again, I do appreciate your boldness thank you for the invitation!

What Sarah Palin saw of the protests

What she didn't see

In spite of some of the hoopla leading up to this dinner I am as I say extremely delighted to get to be here and be back in beautiful California and especially Turlock it’s gorgeous. And uh, relating to so many of you who are the family farmers in this part of the country, um, I have great respect for you in fact kind of in that same realm Todd and I we have a family commercial fishing business and that too is a business that you want to pass on generation-to-generation and Todd today he couldn’t be with me because he headed over to our fishing grounds this morning in Bristol Bay and that’s where he is but getting to speak with many of you today and hearing about you’re um, entrepreneurial spirit and your work ethic as you are raising your children to help take over some of the family farming business it’s very impressive and I’ve learned much about your business even in this day and I’ll never call an almond an almond again. I will call it an amen. Yes.

But that relationship and that connection with that family farming business and our own commercial fishing business that uh, has really made a wonderful connection and it’s good to be here in the home of the Warriors. I was raised a Warrior too, Wasilla Warriors is our mascot, so I feel that connection. And I was telling Willow about that and happy that my daughter Willow could get to be with me and, yes, my entourage is with me today, the one, the Willow, that’s, that’s, that’s what I got.

Sarah Palin's very small entourage (click here to see video)

So it’s going to be funny as more of this contract business is being brought to court and what they’re doing whatever they’re doing as they look at what the demands were to put this event together I think they’re going to be really surprised that there not really being a there, there. There’s not a whole lot uh, of controversy I think involved in this and I’m just so happy that uh you uh stuck with this program, you stuck with this event and uh you didn’t cancel on me I appreciate it very much you guys. I do.


It’s evident that there is something special here there is something different and really I think it’s made manifest an event like this. I so appreciate it. Uh, the Golden State, always being nice to be here and uh always feeling such a connection here a special place in my heart is California uh because this is Regan country and YEAH and perhaps it was destiny that the man who went to California’s Eureka College would become so woven within and inter-linked to the Golden State and it was here, that he, of course, that Reagan became famous as an actor and then distinguished himself as such a good governor and then launched his bid for President and then of course found his final resting place underneath the warm, blue, California sky.

And I thought of Reagan as I was preparing for this evening because of course speaking at a California University as I say, I figured that I’d probably have a welcoming committee of a lot of uh perhaps angry demonstrating protesters. Couldn’t help but remember that as governor of California Reagan too he had his share of confrontations with his state the college protesters from here and remember back then they’d call him a fascist, they called him an idiot, ah, but the Gipper he would return the compliment and he was never one to shy away from confrontation but he would return the compliment.

Uh, I read one quote from him in speaking about these protesters these um well they look like Tarzan they walk like Jane and they smell like Cheetah. So, maybe not a lot has changed in the last 40 years. Reagan liked to crack a joke or two about the college protests essentially because he recognized what they were protesting was differing views? And um, not wanting to maybe apply freedom of speech to those with whom they perhaps would be disagreeing but uh, he never failed to stress the importance of the education though that his students in the state that the students were receiving and I wanna talk about that tonight and again it being such an honor to be here with this organization associated with one of the most prestigious university systems in the nation and one of the largest in the world. Congratulations on your success and helping prepare our next leaders, the warriors that will be leading this nation. Congratulations on your success. And such a gorgeous campus. Gorgeous.


I’ve certainly been thinking a lot about this topic though, this teaching of the next generation. I want to talk about our civic education and how it touches upon the idills of our youth and the idills of our country and the topic came up for me some weeks ago when I was presenting a speech in Denver and I had the privilege following the speech of participating in a Q & A panel with two uh well respected radio talk show hosts Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Prager both very bold individuals and I have a lot of respect for both of them so I was pleased to get to participate. One question asked by the moderator, “If you could name a single threat to our society, one above all others, what would it be?"

And Dennis Prager was the first to answer this question. Now he could have chosen any number of important life or death threats to our country and our culture. He could have said greatest threat is our exploding national debt and the record setting deficits because this is where we’re going, this is, we’re putting our country on a path of insolvency and that’s immoral, that’s unethical, it’s wrong, it’s generational theft because we’re stealing opportunity from our children as we incur these great debts and we will be an insolvent country if we continue down this road. So, he could have said that um, and remind people that with this debt we are less safe and we are less free. Or he could have said that the growing threat to our energy security is the number one threat because Washington and it seems our President doesn’t understand the inherent link between domestic energy production and our own prosperity. Or energy and our freedom, energy and our security. There seems to be that missing link there in Washington not understanding. Or he could have said the international terrorisms attempt to destroy us both at home and abroad or to destroy our allies an, a consistent strong ally like Israel. A threat to that country.


Coulda mentioned that, but instead Prager looked beyond these immediate threats and he focused on something that would affect us all forevermore in a longer-term sense. His biggest fear he said “is that we’re not passing on what it means to be an American to this new generation.”

And I agreed with his concerns but I offered a caveat when it was my turn to respond. I had to ask then; recognizing that yeah we’re not doing as well as we could passing on what it means to be an American to the next generation but then how could it be if we’re not teaching the next generation what it means to be free and how important it is to be free? How then can it be that we have America’s finest with our thousands and thousands of young men and women who are choosing, as patriots, my own teenage son being one of them having chosen though never having tasted anything but freedom to join our United States military. Just kind of inherently knowing how important it is to fight for freedom and to protect our Constitution to know that America’s worth defending. They enlist then voluntarily in our U.S. military to defend freedom. And that is so encouraging.

So how could it be, it can’t be possible that we are losing this next generation, not when you see that proof of that acknowledgement of how important an American is and living that American idill is when you see who is enlisting in our military. Perhaps these kids and so many of them are just kids, perhaps they not being able to articulate what it is that instills in them this inherent belief that they need to protect the blessings of liberty. But they get it and thank God they get it and they’re willing to lay down their lives for us and lay it all on the line to sacrifice to deba, defend and to serve something greater than self. To defend the American idea of liberty. Thank God for these kids.


But even considering the example of young people like our servicewomen and our servicemen, Prager is right perhaps it is that we are not properly educating our youth in the exceptional nature of America and our liberty. It’s worrisome because this belief in American exceptionalism is something that every new generation has to make its own if we expect our Republic and our liberties to be secure and to live on. For America to survive, we’ve got to pass this on to that next generation. And to understand that we have to go back to the beginning of our Republic and to the heart of what it means to be an American and I do wish that we had a lot of time tonight to talk about a lot of examples that we could give of things we’re doing right bu things that we could be doing better we don’t have much time but I want to hit on this you see that most countries are accidents of history. Either wars of conquest or peace treaties things like that.

But America is different. We’re not the product of historical accident but of design. We’re the only country in history that was founded on an idill and that idill is liberty. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and among those life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the genius of our founding fathers is that they took that took what the Declaration of Independence called the laws of nature and of nature’s God and those laws that as the apostle Paul says are written on our hearts and these providential forefathers of ours they designed a constitution that enshrined them and allowed people to live within them and it’s an awesome gift given to us in this Declaration of Independence which really was a declaration of responsibility too and in our Constitution including the Bill of Rights.

There’s an anecdote about Margaret Thatcher, who’s a big fan of America, she was a good friend of Ronald Reagan’s remembering, she agreed with this enshrinement of God given liberty. It’s said that during a meeting about the British Conservative Party’s best course of action to take during an economic crisis in the seventies that she was arguing with some so called political pragmatist who was arguing in favor of a third way between free market capitalism and socialism and before he was even finished Margaret Thatcher reached into her purse and pulled out a copy of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty and she slapped it on the table and she says, “this is what we believe in, this Constitution of Liberty.”

And in that same way, every American should and could whenever she or he is challenged to define what America really stands for? That American should be able to pull out a copy of our very own Constitution of Liberty and say, “this is what we stand for, this, is what makes us different.” It’s the very thing that all of our politicians and our men and women in uniform, it is what they swear to uphold and to defend and it’s the glue that holds us together as Americans as we strive for a more perfect union. But something seems to be missing and especially it seems like in this last year or two something’s missing in this more enlightened day I guess some people want to consider this day.

But here’s the crux of the issue, it’s what Dennis Prager was trying to get at. The Constitution has giving (sic) us an amazingly valuable governing principle and institution that this Constitution provides us with, checks and balances and limited government with enumerated powers and an independent judiciary and states rights as protected under the 10th amendment. But those principles, that are enshrined, hmm, are still the best possible protection against tyranny. They’re not enough in and of themselves to assure the survival and the success of liberty or the survival of our country. There have been other countries that have sometimes managed to kind of live by essentially the same laws of nature that America has that we enshrined in our founding documents.


Countries have tried to copy our Constitution and our institutions but if you think about it not all of them are still free today. But it is human nature to want to be free. People living in these countries, they so want to be free. Countries that have tried to copy what it is that America does but they haven’t been successful. In all countries, even in the worst tyrannies you’ll find people courageous enough to stand up for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And it is in this striving that helped bring down the Berlin wall, remember, and it made one brave man stare down a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square and it brought thousands of people onto the streets of Tehran to defy the unelected dictatorship of their country. What a contrast, by the way, between the ultimate sacrifice, made about a year ago, about a year ago. Made by the beautiful young Iranian woman Naija (sic) Soltan (Neda Agha Soltan). She was shot through the heart and bleeding to death on the streets of Tehran while demonstrating for her FREEDOM! And for women’s rights, for equal rights.

What a contrast between her and the students, or the political operatives anyway, maybe not students necessarily. Here. Who spent their valuable precious time diving through dumpsters before this event IN ORDER TO SILENCE SOMEONE WITH WHOM THEY PREJUDICIALLY THOUGHT THEY WOULD MAYBE DISAGREE WITH! WHAT A WASTE OF RESOURCE. Now a suggestion for those dumpster divers. Instead of trying to tell people to sit down and shut up maybe you tell, spend some time telling people like our President to finally stand up and speak out for those like Nadia (sic) her, as she sought her freedom. She was willing to die for it and to speak about perhaps the brutal, brutal suppression of Iran’s Green Movement and maybe become a Green Revolution. Students and political operatives who have been a part of the controversy of this event tonight goodness gracious, you have a chance to hold America’s leadership to the high idills of which this country was founded. Please take that opportunity it really is much more worthy and important than rummaging through garbage bins to REVEAL TO THE WORLD PERHAPS, SOMEONE’S DEMAND for bendy straz.

Speaking to a couple of new friends that I made on this day, who’ve come from Iran as a matter of fact. They have reminded me of America’s opportunity to export our democracy in such a good way. Hmm, that is so encouraging and so inspiring to me to keep up the good fight. But, okay, back to the point that as inspiring as these revolutions are, these aforemissioned (sic) revolutions, and as hopeful as the efforts at emulating our successful Constitution may be in the end we can learn as much though from the failed attempts at copying our institutions as from the successful ones. And again I wish that we had more time.

Uh, one way to get more examples of some of these failed revolutions and what we can learn from them so that we do not repeat the mistakes of other countries in the past, is, uh, I’ll do a little advertisement here, if you watch on Fridays, Founder’s Fridays, Glenn Beck he highlights much, in fact (raises palm of hand) Founder’s Fridays, this is my reminder. Yes. The poor man’s version of the teleprompter. That’s one thing you forgot, you didn’t get me a teleprompter. But, um, yeah, when the media hands you lemon (sic) ya make lemonade.

Every speech I do I get to do a free advertisement cause I know you guys are going to pick it up, back there. So Glenn Beck’s Founder’s Fridays, he’ll tell ya a lot more about these failed attempts, maybe successful attempts and with other countries even in the past and historians agree though for example that, one example we hear much about the German Weimar Republic had the most democratic Constitution in the world. Did you know that? In human history, the historians look back and say; man their Constitution was even more democratic than our own. But that same Constitution allowed a man named Adolph Hitler to seize power because of some tweaks in the law and some misinterpretations of what the Constitution actually said. It allowed, it allowed them Adolph Hitler to seize power and plunge the world into a NIGHTMARE period of chaos and war and genocidal murder. These failures like that one show us that freedom doesn’t just depend on institutional guarantees or words written on a document it is also and above all a question of culture.



And here’s where the university system comes in. To most Americans freedom isn’t just an idill or words written on a, uh, charter of liberty. It is a way of life for most of us and it’s in our lively public debates which give us opportunity to exercise our Constitutional Rights, to free speech even and it’s in our free markets which give everyone with an idea and with a willingness to work hard, too really work hard, to make something of themselves in this country. And it’s in our country’s voluntary associations and our culture of most generous voluntary charitable giving when you see someone having troubles for instance our instinctive response for most of us it’s not well what is the government going to do about it? No our response is what can I do to help? How can I jump in there and help. It’s this love of freedom and the moral capital that’s generated through these free markets and these free associations that has helped keep our great republican experiment alive for more than 200 years now.

So when we see Washington straying from those idills and the free market system that has built America into the strongest the strongest most generous country on earth it’s why we know we’re on the wrong path right now and we have to turn some things around and America may be founded by laws see but it’s sustained by a morality that’s recognized by so many other countries even as a French writer, Alexis de Tocqueville said, “America is a great country because America is a good country.”

And Dennis Prager’s point that night in Denver was that this uniquely American culture, of freedom, it needs protecting and nurturing and it needs to be carefully handed over from one generation to the next and Regan use to speak of this too. So schools, the universities need to take note of this message I wish, it’s where education does comes in. President Kennedy once spoke of the survival and success of liberty. Well there can be no survival and success of liberty without an education in freedom and the values that made this country great. Values like thrift and perseverance and responsibility and work ethic reward for honest hard work.

And some might say there is a contradiction here perhaps. They’d argue that academic freedom is incompatible with our need for a civic education that instills in young people the wisdom and the patriotic grace necessary for the survival and the success of liberty but I think that they are wrong. I think that they are dangerously wrong. The fact that we allow, or should allow for, a healthy and free academic debate of all ideas doesn’t mean that we have to believe that all ideas are equally valid. Unfortunately, too often, that turns into just one small step away from claiming that, well there just isn’t just one right answer to the question what is right what is good or just or true. To saying that well, uh, there are no right answers to these questions there’s, that’s where relativism comes into play and that turns into nihilism. And then we find people saying well then nothing is truth therefore anything goes. Just, just do it, every things permitted.

There’s no truth. If this cultural relativism is confined merely to just a few individuals, the exceptions to the norm, well that’s one thing but we have seen before what happens when whole sections of society fall into that trap. Take note of this, uh, consider that would the brutality of communism have lasted as long as it did if there hadn’t been a large group of people here in the west who were willing to essentially accommodate it for fear of daring to even condemn it. For a long time, folks it was kinda consider, considered sophisticated to take a position somewhere between freedom and communism.

And it took a supposedly unsophisticated graduate from lowly Eureka College to bring Communism to its knees. And he did it by simply calling an evil empire what it was, evil. There’s an important lesson here for us today. A free republic can only survive if its citizens are willing and able to defend it ideologically and to stand up for its founding principles.

And there’s an old conservative joke it, it says that an elite liberal is someone who is so broad minded that they can’t even take their own side in an argument. I think that could apply to some of the college professors I’ve met and so, uh. But you know. But that’s really no joke when we have seen, hmm, even recently, American diplomats apologizing to a communist dictatorship because of one of our sister states here in the good ol’ United States of America, Arizona just trying to enforce an American federal law? To apologize for that? Or, if we get an administration, if we get an administration that unilaterally tries to end a war on terror, not by winning it but by instead no longer referring it, to it, as a war on terror as if the evil terrorists will stop attacking us once we proclaim that we just won’t call it terrorists or terrorism anymore.

That’s not how we’re gonna win this thing. That is as dangerously naïve as the supposedly broadminded intellectuals who defend repulsive practices like, like female mutilation in some countries simply because well they claim, oh that’s part of their culture. So, shh, we don’t talk about it. We’ll tolerate that, that’s part of their culture.

That reminds me of the 19th century British General Sir Charles Napier. He was a Commander in Chief in India. Years ago he made a controversial decision to ban the barbaric practice of suttee and that’s where Indian men would burn a widow alive by putting her on a funeral platform, a pyre, with her dead husband, ah, I. When Indian men protested, that hey, this ritual is just part of our culture, well, Napier answered that if they insisted on exercising that cultural rite then they’d introduce them to a British custom. And what he told them was well in Britain when men burn a woman alive we hang ‘em. So you build your funeral platforms and we’ll build our gallows. You follow your custom, we’ll follow ours. And needless to say that terrible crime against women became scarcer and scarcer under Napier’s insistence. Like him, we too, we have to have the courage of our convictions in taking a stand against evil when confronted with it and sometimes that means calling evil by its name.

For example, regardless of what some politically correct intellectuals say a terrorist like Osama bin Laden is not a freedom fighter. He does not fight for freedom he fights against it and um, he, he fighting against democracy and all of our ancient liberties, how, how dare we want to label his, him anything that has kinda a positive connotation of being a freedom fighter. And it’s not just about calling evil, evil. It’s not just about being against something but it is being for something right. It’s about being unashamed to defend what is good about our culture and in our country. Not thinking that we must apologize for what America stands for but we must honor our belief in the fundamental rights, in the dignity of every innocent human being.

And we must celebrate our relentless sunny optimism. Remember that’s what Reagan was known for that had to have come from California, that sunny optimism. And, and that pioneering spirit that built this country, it inspired us to cross oceans and carve out a life in the wilderness and by the sweat of our brow to create and contribute and to build a better life in America. We must embrace our entrepreneurial drive to build, and to produce, and to innovate and allow America to remain the world’s standard-bearer for excellence. And we must affirm our willingness to stand up for people across the globe who are yearning to be free. They look to us. We are that beacon of hope for what it means to be free. And truly that is nothing to apologize for.

Now we could spend the precious valuable time trying to build some complicated, bureaucratically blessed new national civics curriculum I’m sure and uh, in all of our schools and but to be honest in the end, it all comes down to good old fashioned commonsense. And I know that on a lot of college campuses that ain’t a real cool thing. It’s not real hip to just have some commonsense. Eh, I know, I know. But uh, ask parents, what they want in their child’s education and they’re probably gonna tell you that they don’t care much for all this political stuff. What a parent desires for their child’s education it’s basic you know they want the three R’s and they want true history taught. Our country, our laws, our traditions, our arts, and our literature, and our heroes, and our statesmen. They want true teachin’ of our geography and biology and getting to know the world in which we live in and the beautiful creatures, which we share this planet with. Within Science, finding out how things work and unraveling the mysteries of the universe and not shying away from being able to debate different sides of theories and ideas.

And a basic knowledge of right and wrong that’s what we desire in our children’s education. And obviously these things aren’t exclusively the purview of universities but schools and universities do play such a crucial role in educating young people about what it means to be an American. And it is up to the universities to help make sure that our liberties are secured for the next generation. And you do that by promoting those values on which our free society has been built. And sometimes too by opposing those that undermining, that undermine it. To have the boldness, the courage like Ham has at this University to kind of buck the tide, to not just go with the flow.

As a commercial fisherman I look down there at the run of fish and I notice only dead fish go with the flow. But someone like Ham… not just going along to get along but not being afraid to kind of shake it up and to allow that debate of different sides of issues. That’s what’s valuable. Here, on this campus.

Politicians have to do their part too by ensuring the survival of the institutions on which our free society is built. One can’t do one without the other. President Kennedy said, liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain. From Valley Forge, to Gettysburg, to Omaha Beach the fate of America has always kinda skirted a precipice but most of us we never doubt that it’s been a providential hand that has guided us and is guiding us towards a better future.

Education's highest aim should be instilling in students a sense of this uniquely American predicament. Of the fragility of it? As well as the greatness of this republican experiment of ours and an awareness of the survival and the success of liberty depends on them.

And I do believe that America is great because she is good. And that we are a force for good in this world, not, again, not something to apologize for but something to be proud of. America is truly the exceptional country and we are in the words of Lincoln,” that last best hope on earth” and if we do it right we remain in the words of the Golden State’s Ronald Regan, “the shining city on a hill” where the abiding alternative to tyranny. So let us help our young people understand this, let’s teach the next generation what it means to be American and we’re so on the right track here at CSU. So God bless you, thank you for being part of the solution.

God bless you and God bless America!

Thank you! Thank you very much. Thank you guys.

BONUS:

The crew (open mic comments - snippets):

What’s your problem?

Oh my god I feel like I just stepped off of a roller coaster! Go round and round and up and down and shit flying out of everywhere and standing. Remember when you had to write a report as a college student and you just tried to jam in as many quotes as possible? You know, from as many random things you could get, you know, that’s what I got.

I got she didn’t ever finish a statement.

Right.

Did she make a statement? Cause I didn’t catch that either.

I think she said, “Hi” and “Thanks”.

To think she could even quote Kennedy.

Twice.

You guys have a tough job; I don’t know how you’re going to make a story out of that.

Well… that’s the story.

Now I know…. That dumbness doesn’t have to be soundbites.

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Reading the transcript is not as painful as listening to the actual speech and the inaccuracies become clearer than when we're subjected to spoken word-salad. A few passages were quite obviously wrong or taken out of context. Sarah Palin is very fond of saying that she googles before certain events. I like googling, also, too. I noticed that the first item shown on the search results is very often a Wikipedia entry. It doesn't get simpler than that...

LET'S CHECK SOME OF THE FACTS IN PALIN'S SPEECH:

Sarah Palin:

Uh, the Golden State... always being nice to be here and uh always feeling such a connection here a special place in my heart is California uh because this is Reagan country and YEAH and perhaps it was destiny that the man who went to California’s Eureka College would become so woven within and inter-linked to the Golden State and it was here, that he, of course, that Reagan became famous as an actor and then distinguished himself as such a good governor and then launched his bid for President and then of course found his final resting place underneath the warm, blue, California sky.


Wikipedia:

Eureka College is a liberal arts college in Eureka, Illinois related by covenant to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and founded in 1855. It has a strong focus on history, political science, and the fine and performing arts.

Conservapedia:

Reagan was born and raised in Illinois, and was nicknamed "Dutch." In high school he earned low grades, mostly because of his focus on extra-curriculars.

He attended Eureka College, where he quickly developed a reputation as a "jack of all trades", excelling in campus politics, sports and theater. Reagan was a member of the football and track teams, the basketball cheerleading squad, captain of the swimming team, yearbook editor and was elected student body president. Reagan was a political liberal at that point and led a student revolt against the college president. In his first year at Eureka, the president of the college tried to cut back the faculty. Reagan helped organize a student strike.

If Sarah Palin (or her speech writers) had googled just a little bit, she wouldn't have shown her ignorance about her greatest hero.

Sarah Palin:

What a contrast, by the way, between the ultimate sacrifice, made about a year ago, about a year ago. Made by the beautiful young Iranian woman Naija (sic) Soltan. She was shot through the heart and bleeding to death on the streets of Tehran while demonstrating for her FREEDOM! And for women’s rights, for equal rights.

What a contrast between her and the students, or the political operatives anyway, maybe not students necessarily. Here. Who spent their valuable precious time diving through dumpsters before this event IN ORDER TO SILENCE SOMEONE WITH WHOM THEY PREJUDICIALLY THOUGHT THEY WOULD MAYBE DISAGREE WITH! WHAT A WASTE OF RESOURCE. Now a suggestion for those dumpster divers. Instead of trying to tell people to sit down and shut up maybe you tell, spend some time telling people like our President to finally stand up and speak out for those like Nadia (sic) her, as she sought her freedom. She was willing to die for it and to speak about perhaps the brutal, brutal suppression of Iran’s Green Movement and maybe become a Green Revolution. Students and political operatives who have been a part of the controversy of this event tonight goodness gracious, you have a chance to hold America’s leadership to the high ideals of which this country was founded. Please take that opportunity it really is much more worthy and important than rummaging through garbage bins to REVEAL TO THE WORLD PERHAPS, SOMEONE’S DEMAND for bendy straws.


Wikipedia:

The footage of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan (Persian: ندا آقا سلطان - Nedā Āġā Soltān; January 23, 1982 – June 20, 2009) drew international attention after she was killed during the 2009 Iranian election protests. Her death was captured on video by bystanders and broadcast over the Internet and the video became a rallying point for the reformist opposition.

Those who knew her maintain that Agha-Soltan had not previously been very political – she had not supported any particular candidate in the 2009 Iran elections – but that anger over the election results prompted her to join the protest.

Again, some research would have given her little story some context and perhaps pointed to the correct name of the person Sarah Palin so eloquently exhorted. Neda wasn't fighting for women's rights, she was arriving at protest about the 2009 elections and wasn't really prepared to die.

Sarah Palin:

There’s an anecdote about Margaret Thatcher, who’s a big fan of America, she was a good friend of Ronald Reagan’s remembering, she agreed with this enshrinement of God given liberty. It’s said that during a meeting about the British Conservative Party’s best course of action to take during an economic crisis in the seventies that she was arguing with some so called political pragmatist who was arguing in favor of a third way between free market capitalism and socialism and before he was even finished Margaret Thatcher reached into her purse and pulled out a copy of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty and she slapped it on the table and she says, “this is what we believe in, this Constitution of Liberty.”

Wikipedia:

Hayek wrote an essay titled "Why I Am Not a Conservative" (included as an appendix to The Constitution of Liberty), in which he disparaged conservatism for its inability to adapt to changing human realities or to offer a positive political program. Although he noted that modern day conservatism shares many opinions on economics with classic liberals, particularly a belief in the free market, he believed it's because conservatism wants to "stand still," whereas liberalism embraces the free market because it "wants to go somewhere."

Ah, context, context!

Sarah Palin:

And I do believe that America is great because she is good. And that we are a force for good in this world, not, again, not something to apologize for but something to be proud of. America is truly the exceptional country and we are in the words of Lincoln,” that last best hope on earth” and if we do it right we remain in the words of the Golden State’s Ronald Reagan, “the shining city on a hill” where the abiding alternative to tyranny. So let us help our young people understand this, let’s teach the next generation what it means to be American and we’re so on the right track here at CSU.

Abraham Lincoln Online
:


Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.

Lincoln did not make reference to American exceptionalism. He was more concerned about ensuring that the freeing of the slaves was not seen by historians as a mere paper exercise.

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This speech was probably the worst in Sarah Palin's career as a paid speaker. The president of the CSU Stanislaus Foundation Matt Swanson told the press that the event was a non-political fundraiser.

Swanson said his organization is not obligated by law to disclose financial details. He also dismissed some of the criticism, saying political agendas played into it.

"You know, we're not here to make a political statement. We're here to raise money," Swanson said.

Well, his star speaker decided to go rogue and couldn't resist bashing the present administration.

There are other aspects of this speech which are troubling, but they can be explored in a future post.

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Read all the reports by Palingates about the CSU Stanislaus-Palin scandal HERE.
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