"I’m not so egotistical as to believe that it has to be me, or it can only be me, to turn things around..."

It's the other woman: Sarah Palin.

An example of Newsweek's subtle approach to undermining Palin:

Palin has also become conversant on the subject of quantitative easing, the inflationary effects of which she illustrated with a personal anecdote. “I was ticked off at Todd yesterday,” she said. “He walks into a gas station as we’re driving over from Minnesota. He buys a Slim Jim—we’re always eating that jerky stuff—for $2.69. I said, ‘Todd, those used to be 99 cents, just recently!’ And he says, ‘Man, the dollar’s worth nothing anymore.' A jug of milk and a loaf of bread and a dozen eggs—every time I walk into that grocery store, a couple of pennies more...”

So does she understand quantitative easing or not? There's no answer. The anecdote is about inflation, which we all understand, and it's put in that paragraph as if it reflects her comprehension of the much more difficult concept, about which Newsweek provides zero information.

They choose an unflattering cover photo too.

"As a plain-vanilla candidate, Romney is never going to win the excitement primary."

"A telling moment occurred when Sarah Palin stole the spotlight by taking her bus tour to New Hampshire on the day that Romney was officially kicking off his candidacy there. He lost the battle of the headlines as the Manchester Union Leader splashed Palin on the front page and ran Romney’s announcement inside the paper. But he remains the front-runner—though his staff recoils from the term—and she remains a long-shot celebrity with high negatives."

Howard Kurtz. The article is called"Mitt Romney, Boring Genius?" I think the suggestion is not that Romney is a genius but he's boring. It's that he's a genius at being boring.

Rush Limbaugh presents his new product — bottled tea — as a political argument for entrepreneurship.

"What I wanted to demonstrate was that even with the obstacles that we face, like Obama out there, that jobs can be created and that growth or jobs can be saved, to use his vernacular, and a new product can be brought to market."

The label is political: Check it out.

Did anyone tell Sarah Palin that Limbaugh was going to be exploiting the Paul Revere image? Or did she just happen to step on his roll-out of new merchandise?

What do you think of Rush Limbaugh portraying himself as Paul Revere and putting the American flag on the label?

If I were to drink this, it would most likely be...
	... because it's the best tea at the best price.
	... to tweak and annoy liberals.
	... to horse around and get a little attention.
	... to make an unspoken argument in favor of traditional values.
	... to help Rush prove that private entrepreneurship is the way to save the economy.
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Will the "lamestream" journalists now look straight into the camera and proclaim Sarah Palin a media genius?

"The Daily Show" had a great montage of the idiotic media excitement over Sarah Palin's email.

A few thoughts:

1. This intense eagerness to get Sarah Palin for whatever it is she might have done on line unfolded concurrently with all the attention that had to be paid to Anthony Weiner for his on-line antics. What we can't see is the agony the poor journalists must have endured as Weiner's wienerisms hurt the Democratic Party just when they stood ready to damage the Republican Party with Sarah's misdeeds. And then — oh, how awful! — they got nothing from Sarah. Nothing but hard work and — urrrgghhh! — good government and — damn! — family values.

2. The fact that there was nothing was actually news, and the journalists should have protected their integrity — appearance of integrity — by reporting the nothing with clarity. In the run up to the receipt of the boxes of xeroxes, air time was devoted to speculating about what might be in those emails. Most notable — it's in the middle of the "Daily Show" montage — was the suspicion that the governor's husband was secretly running the show, pulling the strings. (You know, the shameful sexism.) But there was absolutely nothing that looked at all like that. Maybe there's another montage that could be made of these reporters spelling out clearly what was disproved by the emails. But I think what they did was dribble out statements like "no smoking gun yet" — seemingly expecting that we'd gradually lose interest and move on to something else.

3. Let's credit Sarah Palin for phenomenal, hilarious restraint. She knew there was nothing that would hurt her in there. She resisted the disclosure for legitimate privacy reasons, but she had to also know that the revelation of nothingness would backfire on her disgustingly salivating opponents. Her designation of them as "lamestream media" is vividly vindicated. And, because there was nothing, the invasion of her privacy looks especially unkind. Finally, she knew that the most interesting thing in the big box was the full text of the letter from God. She'd edited it down for publication in her memoir "Going Rogue." It might have seemed maudlin to reprint the whole thing at that point. But now we get the entire missive, and we're stunned and weeping. Oh, Sarah! The idiot is a genius!

"Republicans' support for Mitt Romney as their party's 2012 presidential nominee has increased significantly..."

"... to 24%, compared with 17% in late May."

Gallup finds. 

Palin, in second place, has moved up too, but only one point, from 15% to 16%.

Jonathan Chait on Michelle Bachmann: "she may be crazy, but she does have a strong grasp of political reality."

"The problem with so many radical candidates is that they lack political sense as well. Bachmann is a potent combination of substantively radical and politically shrewd, much like [Paul] Ryan. And if Ryan does not run, Bachmann could make some noise."

Subtext: Distinguish Bachmann and Palin on the sanity/intelligence axes. Palin is the stupid one, so Bachmann is the crazy one. With the negatives nailed down, we may concede that Bachmann is pretty smart (watch out!) and Palin is pretty sane (now, go home take care of your children).

NYT headline proves they got nothing out of that Palin email dump.

"In E-Mails, a Glimpse From Inside Palin’s Rise."

"Palin Wanted a Tanning Bed in the Governor's House."

The NYT is picking through the Sarah Palin email oeuvre, and that's the first nonscandal extracted from the 24,000 printed pages.

Sarah Palin's tanned good looks may have gotten a bit of help.

An e-mail from the manager of the governor's house to Ms. Palin in early 2008 makes clear that Ms. Palin had inquired about the possibility of installing a tanning bed in the house.

The outrage! How can we trust a politician who would hide the source of her skin coloration?

"Apparently I made an horrific horror-film, but shouldn't a good horror film be horrific?"

"My dear people it is a f****cking MOVIE. It is all fictional. Not real. It is all make-belief. It is art. Give people their own choice to watch it or not. If people can't handle or like my movies they just don't watch them."

Director Tom Six responds to the British Board of Film Classification's ban on "The Human Centipede Part 2 (Full Sequence)."

IN THE COMMENTS: Chip Ahoy said:

You know what else is horrific. This has me completely terrified. I just now looked at photos of Palin's new home in Scottsdale and the whole place is empty except for one exceedingly macabre bit of taxidermy.

Romney tops Obama in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

WaPo reports Romney ahead 49% to 46%, among registered voters. (Among all Americans, the 2 men are tied at 47%.) Obama is ahead of the other 5 Republicans, and "[a]lmost two-thirds of all Americans say they “definitely would not” vote for Palin for president."

The Post-ABC poll asked Republicans and GOP-leaning independents whom they would vote for if a primary or caucus were held now in their state. Romney topped the list, with 21 percent, followed by Palin at 17 percent. No one else reached double digits, although former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has suddenly shown interest in becoming a candidate, is close, at 8 percent. Without Palin in the race, Romney scores 25 percent, with all others in the single digits.

Surely, a lot of that is name recognition. It's not really fair to Pawlenty. But let's see if the Republicans have the cohesiveness to resist tearing down Romney. Meanwhile, Democrats ought to make Palin their new McCain. Give her a free ride, until she's clinched the nomination... and then destroy her.

Boston University history professor Brendan McConville backs up Sarah Palin's account of Paul Revere...

... but said she got "lucky." 

Is there anyone else in American public life who is treated like Sarah Palin? Here's this historian, forced to say she wasn't wrong — after all the Sarah-haters have mocked her — and he instinctively grasps for a way to knock her down again. If she got something right, it must just have been an accident.

And here's Andrew Sullivan commenting on Palin's refusal to back down on here Revere story:

One of the most pernicious and dangerous features of Palin is her clinical refusal to understand reality, to accept error, to acknowledge when the facts she has cited are not actually facts, but delusions. And her vanity and pathologies are so deep she will insist that black is white until her minions actually find a source to prove it.

She's dangerous; she's shrewd; she's an exhibitionist. But she is also, we must keep reminding ourselves, a farce. What worries me about this political leader incapable of telling fantasy apart from fact is that, in a long and deep recession, someone who can lie that readily and manipulate religious and cultural resentment as well as she does is a danger. Not just to America, but to the world.

We must keep reminding ourselves... isn't that the attitude of someone with a clinical refusal to understand reality, to accept error, to acknowledge when the facts cited are not actually facts, but delusions. You have something you want to believe about Sarah Palin, and whatever new information you receive, you reflexively remind yourself that she is a farce. Applying your own standard, at what point would you be a farce?

In another post, Sullivan says "I fear I'm headed to crazy-land." But he's talking about his beard.

Everybody's talking about...

... Paul Revere.

Let me help you with the real "Legend of Paul Revere":

In a little town in Idaho
Way back in '61
A man was frying burgers
Gee - it seemed like lots of fun
But to his friend the bun boy
He confessed his misery
I think I'd like to start a group
So come along with me...

Wow. In the list of greatest songs telling the story of the singer(s), that's so far below...



... "Creeque Alley."

But I know, you want the real story of the real Paul Revere, which every jackass knows, is the poem by Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, so here, listen carefully, because there will be a quiz:

Politico says: "Sarah Palin's bus tour leaves GOP cold."

Evidence?

While Palin has reveled in giving an extended one-fingered salute to the national press, refusing to give out details about her travel schedule and forcing reporters to literally chase her vehicle up I-95 in order to cover her, she reached out to precious few activists and party leaders in the states she visited.

So "leaves [them] cold" means that she was cold to them? In normal English usage, when you say X leaves Y cold, it means that Y isn't responding to X's overtures. It's not another way of saying X cold-shouldered Y.

Pennsylvania Republican Party Chairman Rob Gleason, whose state hosted Palin on visits to Gettysburg and the Liberty Bell, voiced a common exasperation about Palin’s tour: “I don’t think theater wins elections.”

“Running for president is a very serious thing and you need to deal with it as such,” Gleason said. “I’m looking for party builders.”

How far down on the list did Politico go to get a GOP politico to give the quote it wanted for an article disparaging Palin's bus tour? (And I love the locution "whose state hosted." Americans have a right to travel from state to state. We don't need the state to extend any invitation or hospitality. )

In New York – where Palin stopped at Ellis Island – GOP Rep. Peter King mused that the Alaskan “probably has more hardcore support than any other candidate.”

“But she needs to show that she can go beyond that, and this tour doesn’t accomplish that,” said King, who is urging Rudy Giuliani to enter the 2012 race.

So... King is pushing another candidate.

To former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, Palin’s visit to his state seemed more or less irrelevant. Asked for his thoughts on her arrival Thursday, the Republican shrugged: “I don’t think she’s running.”

Because nobody's more relevant than John Sununu.

Conclusion: The evidence in Politico's article is best seen as evidence of Politico's desire to undermine Sarah Palin.

Rush Limbaugh goes after Krauthammer.

On the occasion of Krauthammer's disrespect for Sarah Palin:

Krauthammer was on Fox the other day, I happened to see it. He said that Sarah Palin still doesn't cut it for him.  She's got good instincts but she's just not properly schooled.  And he said I don't mean schooled in the right places.  She's just not learned.  She's had two and a half years to school herself on matters of policy.  She hasn't done it.  She can't demonstrate it.  She's just not properly schooled.  And Tom Rowan, "Analyzing the Analyst" in the American Thinker, says why in the world do we sit here and bow down at the opinion of somebody that used to write speeches for Walter Mondale. 

Now, Rowan's theory is that people's pasts matter.  So here you have Dr. Krauthammer, who was a speechwriter for Mondale who obviously at a point in his life thought Ronald Reagan was a total idiot, you know, probably not schooled.  So Rowan's theory is, analyzing the analysts, that Krauthammer sees Reagan in Palin.  Wasn't particularly enamored of Reagan.  George Will was not an early Reaganite, for example, became a good friend and associate later on.  But this got me to thinking about this whole notion of who earns respect and why.  And Mr. Rowan, the American Thinker, said, why is it that everybody stops what they're doing and when Krauthammer issues an opinion that's it?...

Now, Krauthammer in many ways has acquired this respect because in many of the venues he appears he's the only conservative....

The segment at the link begins and ends with thoughts on Weinergate, by the way. Read the whole thing if you want to see how he weaves these themes together.

"Sarah Palin's bus tour treats reporters like paparazzi."

Ha ha. Great headline.

James Wolcott, a 59-year-old man, purports to empathize with Piper Palin and...

... tries to enfold her in his flabby old arms with the pretense that he is somehow cooler than her parents:

Piper in that shot looks like Grace, the elder daughter played by Ruby Jerins in Nurse Jackie....

My "sources" tell me is that a future stop on Palin's bus tour will at Randy's Rodeo in San Antonio, Texas, the site of the Sex Pistols' infamous gig in 1978. Todd Palin intends to stand on the very spot where Sid Vicious staggered. I had no idea Todd was so "into" punk history, and wish I could be there when he explains to Piper what Sid and Johnny Rotten meant to America, and from there they'll all be heading to the Alamo to find the basement where Pee Wee Herman's bike is reputed to be.

Hmm.

Wolcott is...
	Hip and cool.
	Sweetly empathic.
	Squicky.
	Pathetic.
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"This isn’t a campaign bus. This is a bus to be able to express to America..."

"... how much we appreciate our foundation and to invite more people to be interested in all that is good about America and to remind ourselves we don’t need to fundamentally transform America, we need to restore what’s good about America."

Oh! So that's what kind of a bus it is.

Palinspeak. It's apt to drive the media mad.

"Sarah Palin and her family sneaked out in Washington on Sunday night for what she called an 'incognito' tour of the national monuments..."

Reports the NYT:

Details of the visit were posted Monday morning on her Web site, along with pictures that show her, her husband, Todd, and her daughters enjoying stops at the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial and the World War II Memorial.

In one picture, Ms. Palin and Mr. Palin are sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, looking out toward the Washington Monument, like any other couple might. In another, the whole family is seen standing below a part of the World War II Memorial that says “Alaska,” their home state.

Beautiful, innovative unrolling of what is presumably her candidacy for President.



Sarah, she's just like you, visiting the monuments, posing by the name of her state, wearing a visor and a baggy black T-shirt. I love the way she's slouching as if she's not thinking about her looks at all, while the other women are doing the photo-pose-y thing and the husband takes the figure-flattering 3/4 position and sucks in his gut.

Palin posts her Rolling thunder pics.

More here.

ADDED: "'I love that smell of the emissions,' she said, donning sunglasses and a Harley Davidson skullcap-style, black helmet."

Palin's Rolling Thunder photo op.

The NYT emphasizes that she couldn't really ride anywhere because of the crush of photographers. I will emphasize the utter gorgeousness of the photograph at the link (and, presumably, all the other photographs that got taken as the bike went nowhere).