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Hecuba roared

Sarah Palin is a western feminist?

Joan McCarter demolishes that trope here.

Drill, baby, drill

As Louisiana faces another catastrophe, one that is wholly the product of human hands, an always courageous Sarah Palin publicly defends off-shore drilling:

We've all been shocked and saddened by the tragic events in the Gulf of Mexico. My heart breaks for coastal residents who are facing fears of the unknown impacts of the oil spill.

As an Alaskan, I can speak from the heart about the tragedy of an oil spill. For as long as I live, I will never forget the day the Exxon-Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef and millions of gallons of North Slope crude poured into the waters of our beautiful Prince William Sound. The spill was devastating to so many Alaskans who, like my own family, make their living on the water from our commercial fishing industry. "Heartbreaking" was the word my husband Todd, an Alaska Native and trained oil spill responder, used to describe the scene as we watched it unfold on land and water that we feel is sacred.

Alaskans understand the tragedy of an oil spill, and we've taken steps to do all we can to prevent another Exxon tragedy, but we are still pro-development. We still believe in responsible development, which includes drilling to extract energy sources, because we know that there is an inherent link between energy and security, energy and prosperity, and energy and freedom. Production of our own resources means security for America and opportunities for American workers. We need oil, and if we don't drill for it here, we have to purchase it from countries that not only do not like America and can use energy purchases as a weapon against us, but also do not have the oversight that America has.

Is Palin suggesting that British Petroleum engaged in responsible drilling? that the American federal government ensures adequate environmental oversight in the drilling sites it governs? that the residents of the Gulf were made secure by the oil industry located in their region? and that they will remain secure after the initial phase of the disaster concludes?

Do any of these questions matter, as Palin sees the issue? It looks like they do not:

All responsible energy development must be accompanied by strict oversight, but even with the strictest oversight in the world, accidents still happen. No human endeavor is ever without risk — whether it's sending a man to the moon or extracting the necessary resources to fuel our civilization. I repeat the slogan "drill here, drill now" not out of naiveté or disregard for the tragic consequences of oil spills — my family and my state and I know firsthand those consequences. How could I still believe in drilling America's domestic supply of energy after having seen the devastation of the Exxon-Valdez spill? I continue to believe in it because increased domestic oil production will make us a more secure, prosperous, and peaceful nation.

It's all for the best except for those unfortunate people who live along the Gulf Coasts. For one thing, they will have the opportunity to observe the responsible folk wielding authority over the matter set ablaze one of the world's greatest natural environments so that they can practically minimize the damage the slick causes to the region as a whole. This effort will not be without perverse effects. Gulf residents can expect polluted water, foul air, decimated shorelines and much else. Yet these effects, bad as they might be, will only prove a lesser harm than the one produced by doing nothing but stopping the oil at its source. In any case, the people of the Gulf will likely have the opportunity to prepare for the next oil disaster since oil drilling in their neighborhood will not stop because it is risky and because we all know accidents will happen, as Palin points out. Their prosperity, security and peace may suffer for it, but the rest of the country will enjoy the benefits which oil provides to those with the right technology and access to the stuff. Of course, these benefits will seem like a witless diversion once the ecological crisis goes global and becomes decisive.

Reagan’s true successor emerges

On Palin's charisma

According to Max Blumenthal's latest article, Sarah Palin cannot "…be easily criticized." She sits beyond the reach of rational criticism because she has acquired, it would seem, Ronald Reagan's Teflon mantle. At least her fans have no trouble at all in seeing her aura:

Palin is so well positioned as the darling of the movement that any criticism of her would be experienced by believers as a personal attack on them. In this way, their identification with her through the politics of personal crisis is complete.

For the 2010 mid-term elections, Palin's endorsement is already a coveted commodity.... As she sets out on her book tour, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune only propel her forward. Her influence on a party largely devoid of leadership is expanding. If she doesn't prove to be the Party's future queen, she may have positioned herself to be its future king-maker — and potentially its destroyer.

Sarah — Zion's Prophet in the United States — would merely provide another freak show to a culture that thrives upon them but for the political failures of the Obama administration. What, after all, has Obama delivered to those who voted for him a year ago? Viable health care? A reaffirmation of America's safety net? Structural reform of a corrupt economy? Reindustrialization? A push towards a green economy? A push towards a full employment at a living wage economy? The conclusion of America's occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan? Demilitarization? An affirmation of the rule of law? Good government?

Has he delivered anything of tangible value?

A well-founded "No" only points to an Obama-backlash as it gestates within America's civil society as it decays, a reaction which can only benefit the professional fear-mongers, fundamentalists and opportunists on the right. Thus considered, Obama's failures reflect America's failures. They are the products of a history the enduring problems of which require radical reform if the country would resolve these problems. But Obama is not a radical reformer. He is, rather, a system politician who leads a system that will fail if only reproduces itself.

Palin allegedly violates ethics rules with legal defense fund

The Associated Press reports:

An independent investigator has found evidence that Gov. Sarah Palin may have violated ethics laws by accepting private donations to pay her legal debts.

The report obtained by The Associated Press says Palin is securing unwarranted benefits and receiving improper gifts through the Alaska Fund Trust, set up by supporters.

An investigator for the state Personnel Board says in his July 14 report that there is probable cause to believe Palin used or attempted to use her official position for personal gain because she authorized the creation of the trust as the "official" legal defense fund.

Since Saint Sarah likely had a law firm on retainer as she defended her good name against these mean-spirited accusations, she might have troubled her barristers by asking them if her legal defense fund was, well, kosher. It appears she didn't ask or that she asked but had hired the steady and capable firm of Dewey, Cheatham & Howe or, perhaps, the rather famous firm of Howard, Fine & Howard. In any case, it looks as though Saint Sarah will need to pay the fees for next defense from her own pocket.

Saint Sarah of the icy wilderness

In his latest piece for the Wall Street Journal Thomas Frank neatly captures what I believe to be the essence of Sarah Palin's charisma:

Indeed, if political figures stand for ideas, victimization is what Ms. Palin is all about. It is her brand, her myth. Ronald Reagan stood tall. John McCain was about service. Barack Obama has hope. Sarah Palin is a collector of grievances. She runs for high office by griping [emphasis added].

Frank rightly considers Palin's constructed identity a political achievement:

This is no small thing, mind you. The piling-up of petty complaints is an important aspect of conservative movement culture. For those who believe that American life consists of the trampling of Middle America by the "elites" — that our culture is one big insult to the pious and the patriotic and the traditional — Sarah Palin's long list of unfair and disrespectful treatment is one of her most attractive features. Like Oliver North, Robert Bork, and Clarence Thomas, she is known not for her ideas but as a martyr, a symbol of the culture-war crimes of the left.

The "victim" is not a politically innocent category, for it has been an authoritative symbol throughout the post-Civil Rights era, one that has driven American militarism ("overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome"), the reaffirmation of racial segregation (epitomized by the white flight to the suburbs which marked the post-war era), the mass incarceration of the poor and the not-white (the wars on "crime" and "drugs"), the many anti-tax movements across the country (the middle class taxpayer as the victim of "big government") and much else. Indeed, according to Jonathan Simon (p. 75), the victim became the paramount symbol of the post-New Deal era. As a symbol it proved to be sufficiently effective that using it enabled the then emerging New Right to displace the New Deal political system and its progeny, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs along with the Civil Rights and New Left movements which pervaded the politics of the 1960s. In the United States today being labeled a victim does not by this means spoil the identity of the "victimized." The victim as thus described and known does not carry the burden of having a stigma. Rather, the label points to what some if not many Americans now consider the authentically American political subject, as Simon contends (pp. 75-110). It is a kind of honor badge!

Behold: Saint Sarah, the right-populist icon of a nation-state heading for trouble.

So, did Palin cultivate this persona? Or, did historical circumstances fashion her into what it needed? Frank clearly believes she actively sought to embody this specific image:

To become a symbol of this stature Ms. Palin has had to do the opposite of most public figures. Where others learn to take hostility in stride, she and her fans have developed the thinnest of skins. They find offense in the most harmless remarks and diabolical calculation in the inflections of the anchorman's voice. They take insults out of context to make them seem even more insulting. They pay close attention to voices that are ordinarily ignored, relishing every blogger's sneer, every celebrity's slight, every crazy Internet rumor.

But he also believes that the GOP image makers imposed this identity on her.

This has been Ms. Palin's assigned role ever since she stepped on the national stage last summer. Indeed, she has stuck to it so unswervingly that one suspects it was settled on even before she was picked for the VP slot, that it was imposed on her by a roomful of GOP image consultants: Ms. Palin was to be the candidate on a cross.

For my part, I believe that Saint Sarah was at least partially complicit in the imposition of this symbol upon her life! I also believe it to be a role to which she is suited to play.

Perhaps Palin has a few of her fifteen-minutes to spare….

Bill Kristol thinks we’re all stupid

Kristol recently lamented the manner in which the elite treated Sarah Palin since she emerged as a national figure. Now that Palin has walked off the Governor's job, she will:

…be able to make the case effectively that she should be the nominee [for President of the United States], or she won't.

The odds are that she won't — just as the odds at this point are against any one of the GOP candidates. It's a wide-open race. And Palin may not even run. But the panic among mainstream media commentators and the GOP establishment suggests real worry that if she does, she might pull off an upset. Why else the vehement assertions that she's clearly made a terrible mistake? Why else the categorical insistence that her political career is finished? Aren't they all protesting too much?

In other words, "the GOP establishment" and "the mainstream media commentators" have put aside their considerable differences, which usually generate useless conflict and hot air, to oppose Saint Sarah's quest for world domination. Kristol wonders why she has drawn opposition this strong when she compares so favorably to George W. Bush who lacked this kind of opposition as he began his run for the presidency! Sexism, perhaps….

It is to be expected, however, that Kristol would not follow this comparison to the end, as he did not do. After all, Americans, along with the rest of the world, now know the mischief a simpleton armed with barbaric ideology can make when he or she has the power and force of the American state at his or her command. They may have learned that the country and the species cannot pay the bills which are the unavoidable consequences of presidencies like those of Reagan and the Bushes. They may well suspect and even anticipate that sending Palin to the White House would amount to putting another painted clown in the "big chair." Why regress to another Reagan or Bush regime? Why would they want this when multiple disasters loom? Especially when these disasters are covered with Republican fingerprints?

To be sure, Kristol's fingerprints are on a few of these disasters, a fact that might explain his defense of Sarah Palin.

Are Sarah’s fifteen minutes up?

Robert Parry concludes his recent Palin essay with these disturbing observations:

And, as Palin's bizarre resignation statement made clear, the GOP was excited over possibly handing the reins of national power to someone who was clearly unstable and unfit for high office.
After eight years of George W. Bush and last year's nomination of Sarah Palin, the question must now be asked whether the Republican Party in its current form has become a clear and present danger to the security of the United States and to the future of the American Republic.

Paul Krugman has written the latest GOP obituary

To be sure, Krugman considers the role played by the Bush administration in his critique. But he also paints in broad strokes: "That's why the soon-to-be-gone administration's failure is bigger than Mr. Bush himself: it represents the end of the line for a political strategy that dominated the scene for more than a generation."

The strategy in question:

Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party's champion, to the Bush administration's pervasive incompetence, to the party's shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.

It is certainly possible the Republican Party will learn from Sarah Palin's crash and burn during the last Presidential campaign. But, speaking for myself, I hope they prove to be as dull as they seem to be!

Double Yikes….

Using the N-Word at a Palin rally

Via the Red State Rebels.

Culture or Cash?

A roundtable on America's culture war

McCain campaign fomenting violence?

It looks to be (via Talking Points Memo), according to Frank Schaeffer, a one-time McCain supporter, who states

John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as "not one of us," I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.

At a Sarah Palin rally, someone called out, "Kill him!" At one of your rallies, someone called out, "Terrorist!" Neither was answered or denounced by you or your running mate, as the crowd laughed and cheered. At your campaign event Wednesday in Bethlehem, Pa., the crowd was seething with hatred for the Democratic nominee — an attitude encouraged in speeches there by you, your running mate, your wife and the local Republican chairman.

Shame!

Is McCain too ill to be elected president?

He may well be according to Alexander Cockburn at CounterPunch who reports that signs indicate and some experts suspect that McCain has had another bout with melanoma.

If he has, then McCain could be judged too ill to run for and to be voted into office unless, of course, the idea of President Sarah Palin strikes one as proper. But, like McCain's 'Smear Obama' strategy and his 'flip-flop for votes' strategy, his possible willingness to run for President while dangerously ill suggests that he is a man who is long on ambition and ego but short on good sense and honor.

McCain camp wants journalists to treat Palin with “respect and deference”

The Los Angeles Times reports:

John McCain's campaign essentially confirmed over the weekend what some had suspected: Media access to Sarah Palin, would-be vice president of the United States, will be tightly controlled.

Troublemakers need not apply.

And how will we know those troublemakers? They will be the ones unwilling to treat the governor of Alaska with what campaign manager Rick Davis called "some level of respect and deference."

Clearly McCain and Palin are not running on the "openness and accountability" platform. In fact, they appear to be running on the "All FUD, all the time" platform, as the Lipstick controversy makes plain.

N.B: Glen Greenwald takes the McCain campaign and its media enablers to task for generating the Lipstick pseudo-controversy in this piece.