I'll quote some in a bit, just reading it now...

Palin defended a previous statement in which she reportedly characterized the war in Iraq as "task from God".

Gibson quoted her as saying: "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God."

But Palin said she was referencing a famous quote by Abraham Lincoln.

"I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words. But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side."

Incidentally, that's not spin, that's exactly what she said. The AP Dowdified her quote to take away the part about praying that we are on God's side to make it sound like she was simply saying "We're on God's side."

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God."

PALIN: You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words when he said -- first, he suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words.

Not exact words, Gibson. She said (paraphrase) "Let us pray that our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." The AP cut off the beginning off that, and of course all the idiots in the MSM repeat it.

And then Gibson says, "Exact words."

Hot Air is on this of course. Here's AllahPundit on it, back when the AP began Dowdifying the quote:

" Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God,” she exhorted the congregants. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”

HereÂ’s what the AP turns it into:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told ministry students at her former church that the United States sent troops to fight in the Iraq war on a “task that is from God.”…

“Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God,” she said. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God’s plan.”

Contact ABCNews immediately to demand a correction. This isn't an arguable mistake; it's a complete, provable mistake. And Gibson doubles down on "exact words."

Sorry, Gibson-- exact words means exact words. And if you're going to edit out key words and transform a statement from one meaning to another, that's not even close to "exact."

Greg Gutfied on Why They Hate Her: It's funny because it's true. [CJ]

Write Charlie Gibson: Ask him what "exact words" means, especially when the words are deliberately Dowdified in order to make Sarah Palin's explanation implausible.

With the censored words included, her explanation makes perfect sense-- in fact, it's pretty inarguable.

So ask them if "exact words" now means something else in the ABCNews stylebook.

Posted by: Ace at 01:44 PM | Comments (230)
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Matt Damon wants to know if Sarah Palin believed dinosaurs lived 4000 years ago.

The source for this absurd claim?

This. An utterly absurd viral email, supposedly containing "real quotes" from an Anchorage newspaper... but notice -- No links! No actual citation to anything appearing in real newspaper!

Also noted these quotes are positively absurd. I believe they were first written as a pure parody (dinosaurs are... "lizards of Satan"? Really?), but of course the reality-based community adherents of the community-based reality has accepted them uncritically as "real."

How absurd is this? Do these sound like real quotes, or parodies?

And yet Matt Damon, Genius, thinks we ought to trust his judgment as to who the next President and Vice President should be.

Skip down to the bold for the dinosaur "quote."

Below are some actual quotes by Governor Palin during a series of interviews by the Anchorage Daily News in 2006 when she was running for Governor...

On Creationism:
The simple yet elegantly awkward moose proves God's creation and not evolution is the source of all life. How could something as oddly shaped and silly looking as a moose evolve through so-called "natural selection?" Is evolution a committee? There is nothing natural about a dorky moose! Only God could have made a moose and given it huge antlers to fight off his predatory enemies. God has a well known sense of humor, I mean He made the platypus too.

On oil exploration and drilling in the ANWR:
God made dinosaurs 4,000 years ago as ultimately flawed creatures, lizards of Satan really, so when they died and became petroleum products we, made in his perfect image, could use them in our pickup trucks, snow machines and fishing boats.

Now, as to the ANWR, Todd and I often enjoying caribou hunting and one year we shot up a herd big time, I mean I personally slaughtered around 40 of them with my new, at the time, custom Austri an hunting rifle. And guess what? That caribou herd is still around and even bigger than ever. Caribou herds actually need culling, be it by rifles or wolves, or Exxon-Mobil oil rigs, they do just great!

On Alaskans serving overseas in Iraq:
Well, God bless them, and I mean God and Jesus because without Jesus we'd be Muslims too or Jewish, which would be a little better because of the superior Israeli Air Force.

Note... The title of this post-- "FAKE Sarah Palin Quote" -- and the disclaimer at the end -- "She didn't really say these things -- I made them up. But thanks for all the visits."

But even if you don't go searching for the original source, isn't kind of fucking obvious this is a goddamned fucking parody?

Matt Damon!

Are They This Stupid? You think they'd have learned the simple proposition that one should check uncited claims made in internet emails before parroting them. Do they not remember Barbra Streisand's quote of "Shakespeare" warning us all not to vote for Bush?

CNN Debunked This Absurdity, As If It Weren't So Transparently a Parody That it Needed Debunking In the First Place, Two Days Ago: Speaking to the blogger directly.

Matt Damon thinks everything he reads on the internet is real. Think about that.

He must purchase a lot of miracle penis-growth vitamins.

Not Only Is this Obviously a Joke... But it's a variation on an old joke. Some years back, Jimmy Fallon, on SNL's Weekend Update, cracked a joke that a state would allow teaching evolution, but only if the curriculum called dinosaurs "Jesus horses."

Hilarious. I've quoted that before.

This blogger did a variation of that joke (no offense -- it's not theft if you change it up, and kudos to that blogger for having the taste to recognize a great joke when he or she heard it).

The point is, it's a fucking joke. It's a goof. It's obviously a goof. The line comes directly from an SNL punchline (well, slightly retrofitted and with the factory serial number filed off).

But this genius, Matt Damon, who spends his off hours splitting atoms... with his mind, couldn't recognize an obvious (and old) joke for what it was.

For him, it wasn't a joke.

It was an Important Action Alert and Pretty Vicious Rant.

And Maureen Dowd, Too! Obviously Sarah Palin doesn't stack up to MoDo's level of scary-intelligence.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:42 PM | Comments (105)
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Tag 'em and bag 'em.

"Everyone's buzzing about the 'sophisticated and lethal special operations program,' " said a posting on Wired.com last Tuesday. "What in the heck was Woodward talking about? Secret death rays? The Voice of God weapon?" More likely, the Web site speculated, it was a tagging, tracking and locating program that placing thermal signatures, or tags, on unsuspecting targets to monitor them.

Two reporters from The Washington Post -- Mr. Woodward's newspaper -- posited that it is an assassination team called "fusion cells," which involves special operations, unmanned drones, forensic scientists and the members of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

While remaining tight-lipped on its details in his book, he was a little more explicit during his publicity tour earlier this week. "If you were a member of al-Qaeda or some extremist militia, you would be wise to get your rear end out of town," he told CNN's Larry King this week.

More, and the source article, at the link.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (35)
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There's some sweet backstory to this too.

As Obama promises to ram amnesty down our throats, Allah wonders:

What’s going to happen when Charlie Gibson asks Palin how she feels about amnesty and she looks in the camera and starts mouthing the old, stomach-churning Maverick-ian platitudes about what it means to be a “true friend” to Hispanics? Second look at Fred!

I think that is 60% likely.

But there's a 40% chance that McCain/Palin will choose instead to simply win the election right now.

We all know that Veeps change their positions to accord with the top of the ticket.

But Sarah Palin is supposed to be a straight-talking maverick, headstrong, and not afraid of conflict.

Furthermore, there is an especial danger with Palin merely aping every John McCain talking point -- the MSM and left are pushing the notion she's a brainless beauty queen without any real mental firepower. Other Veeps don't have to fear that, or at least not as much, because they're men and the media is usually not pushing the idea that a woman is unfit to be vice president. (But see George Bush the Elder and the "wimp factor" attributed to him.)

How to push the maverick idea and dispel the well-coached parrot idea?

Sarah Palin could -- if McCain and Palin wish to win this election right now -- say that while she will support her senior officer, she is personally skeptical of a mass-amensty until not only are the borders secured, but in fact really secured, such that illegal immigration does not merely stabilize but in fact falls by one half or more. Only then can we even begin contemplating an amensty.

Her beliefs will not change McCain's, alas. But for the 70% of the public opposed to (or very reserved about) amnesty, she'd be the only person on either ticket expressing their policy preferences.

So, McCain:

You haven't played it safe very often and so far your reckless disregard of conventional thinking has not only secured you the nomination, but the status of front runner.

Care to play it unsafe and unconventional one more time and score a fourth-round knockout? How's the idea of instantly adding 3% to your national support grab you?

Posted by: Ace at 12:20 PM | Comments (38)
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Off message. So far off message he can't even see the message. So far off message he'd need a relativity-defying ansible to even relay a message to the message.

I think the Hadron accelerator/Black Hole Death Machine may have replaced parts of the universe with their mirror-universe counterparts.

Has anyone noticed if Blago was sporting a goatee when he said this?

Blagojevich, who supports favorite son U.S. Sen. Barack Obama for president, today criticized Democrats for belittling the experience of Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, and took a jab at the work of legislators who run for executive positionsÂ…

Blagojevich, who said he spent two summers after high school working on the Alaska pipeline, readily defended the executive experience that governors have in contrast to legislators when it comes to being presidential material.

"I would hope the Democrats wouldn't say that about a governor," Blagojevich, a former state legislator and congressman, told [radio host Spike] O'Dell of criticism that the first-term Palin lacks experience.

"The reality is, governors every day have to make decisions for better or for worse. That's part of the job. It's an executive position. And it's a position that is like what you're going to do when you're president. Legislators, they do different things. They debate and they pass their bills back and forth," he said.

"But governors make decisions, and I think it's a tactical mistake for the Democrats to question Gov. Palin's experience when she's been a governor of a state," he said. "I don't think the size of the state is relevant. It's the kinds of decisions you have to make as governor. They (Democrats) should focus on the issues and why the policies of President Bush ought to be changed and I think that's what will help Obama win."

Just like a liberal gasbag to say such nonsensical gibber--

What?

What the crap did he just say?

Did he just say what I think he did? Did he not only champion gubernatorial experience, but demean legislative experience?

The One really isn't keeping his Apostles in line.

But you know who else had that problem? Jesus. Until he went all Goodfellas on Judas.* Then everyone got the message.

* Yeah I know the "Official Story." But engineers tell me that the rope which "hanged" Judas could not have supported human weight. Judas Trutherism is an entry-level conspiracy theory, and I'm getting in on it early so I can make lots of videos and lots of $$$.

Posted by: Ace at 11:46 AM | Comments (93)
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Amazing stuff.

From Hot Air, which links one of the more amazing assertions by the unhinged left in recent days (and that's saying something!): That John McCain was "well treated" by his North Vietnamese captors.

You can see all that care and compassion in his limp and mangled arms.

Well, he still does have at least 50% use and range of motion in his limbs. That's definitely a glass-half-full sort of thing as far as I'm concerned!

Stop complaining, John. You had it easy. Don't you realize that Khalid Sheik Mohammad had water dribbled into his nose?

Posted by: Ace at 11:16 AM | Comments (25)
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Our country just isn't putting out silly-crank letters like they used to.

Found on Roger "Sir Elton" Ebert's site. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:53 AM | Comments (29)
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And so the WaPo continues building its brand: Liberal, but not crazy. Liberal, but not stupid. Liberal, but not anti-American.

Excepts and extended commentary at Op-For.

But They're Still Ridiculously Biased, Right? Oh yes. Oh very yes.

Posted by: Ace at 09:59 AM | Comments (23)
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Just desperate.

Posted by: Ace at 09:53 AM | Comments (40)
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Hmmm... their "choices" will be reduced by their choice of a choice you obviously wish them not to choose.

[O]hers fear Ms. Palin’s emergence as a parental role model sends a different message. As a vocal opponent of abortion, Ms. Palin’s widely discussed decision to keep her baby, knowing he would be born with the condition, may inadvertently influence other women who may lack the necessary emotional and financial support to do the same, according to André Lalonde, executive vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada.

Dr. Lalonde said that above all else, women must be free to choose, and that popular messages to the contrary could have detrimental effects on women and their families.

Are you sure you're pro-choice? 'Cuz it sounds like you're just pro-abortion.

More Pro-Abortion Politics! Ross Douthat, at the gay gossip site and antisemitic conspiracy newsletter The Atlantic, takes Slate's Jacob Weisberg to task for his similar worries that Sarah Palin's examples might reduce abortions.

I think that's from Hot Air's Headlines, too.

Posted by: Ace at 09:42 AM | Comments (42)
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