That's it for me: I'm through.

I'm through letting the nitwits at NRO convince me that McCain's selection of Palin is a bad choice because someone who wasn't going to vote for McCain anyway might think that she's a bad choice.

I'm through letting "EeyorePundit" from HotAir depress me by sticking a knife into a candidate not because he thinks they're a pompous windbag, but because he gets off on creating controversy.

I'm through giving two fucks about what ANY employee of a cable, network or PBS broadcasting organization thinks about Sarah Palin, or as I began calling her this morning, "The Thrilla from Wasilla". Fuck 'em all, and that includes any political expert they bring on like Dick "toe-sucker" Morris or David "I worked for a Republican ONCE" Gergen.

I'm way fuckin' through with giving any sort of a fucking damn about what print journalists think about Sarah Palin. They lost me years ago, and they'd have to literally part the Red Sea again to get me back in their camp. Print journalism has gone the way of buggy whips and whale oil lamps, and the sooner it's taken out behind the barn and given one to the head, the better off we'll all be - conservative AND liberal.

I look at Sarah Palin and see a woman who agrees with me on several important issues. She's pro-2nd Amendment, pro-life, pro-drilling and pro-family values. That's family VALUES, not family PERFECTION. I don't expect my candidate to be lilly white with no marks on her record. If I were that stupid, I'd have voted for Huckabee in the caucus instead of Fred!

As far as all the issues she hasn't addressed yet, like allowing Iran to get nukes, prosecution of the GWoT, immigration, national fiscal policy, and "states rights" & 10th Amendment issues regarding Federalism, I'm going to assume that she's with me until she proves otherwise by her own statements. No longer will I believe ANY so-called "facts" presented to me by the media. They've lied to me so much that I've started to refer to myself as "Elizabeth Edwards" in private moments. If it's not "Bush was AWOL from the National Guard", it's some crap about "McCain is sleeping with a lobbyist" or "Fred Thompson insulted firemen in Northeast Iowa" or "Republicans in Wisconsin booed when President Bush wished President Clinton a speedy recovery from heart surgery". Or "Trig Palin isn't Sarah's son after all; he's her grandson". That's right up there with Trutherism, which is a category of it's own in the Bullshit Hall of Fame, IMFO. (In My Fucking Opinion, since we ARE the #1 site for profanity on the political right.)

From now on, my bias will be that ALL media stories are lies unless they're meticuously documented & attested to by vetted disinterested parties. The media has been playing by "Chicago Rules" for about 8 years now, and I'm adjusting my perceptions to allow for those distortions.

I don't like telling people on my side of the aisle to go fuck themselves. I've been a subscriber to NR for over a decade now, and AllahPundit is a long-standing fixture among Conservatives/Libertarians on the internet; however, if I don't banish these pessimists from my mental crawlspace, I'll NEVER get enthusiastic about supporting ANYONE in politics. And that sort of cynicism is just what the leftists want us to feel. After all, if you're more motivated to oppose a bad candidate than you are to support his imperfect but markedly better opponent, there's a pretty good chance that you're gonna say "Fuck it" and sit out the election.

And that, my friends, would be a big mistake.

Please don't confuse my refusal to let these pessimists win me over with a call to boycott their organizations. NR is still a great conservative magazine, and Allah's a wicked funny satirist who can get to the truth when others just see static. I'm just deciding to tune them out and listen to my own sense of right & wrong & take my own cousel on what's good for America.

UPDATE: I just had an email exchange with allahpundit, and he's nothing if not pleasant to converse with. I thought his Hot Air Headline was passive/agressive and smarmy, but he explained that I was wrong and he was just referencing my "personal" boycott instead of a general call to a boycott. He's very cool about the whole thing, and people should take that into consideration when they go after him personally. I got defensive when I checked out HA after being told of his link, and went off half-cocked. It's all good now.

I can't speak for the Corner at NRO. They haven't gotten ahold of me yet, but I'd assume that any of them who are asked about this post would answer "Russ who?"

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 10:22 AM | Comments (176)
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After yesterday's abbreviated session, the GOP convention is taking on a more normal look tonight with a revamped lineup of speakers.

Republicans say Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman will speak on Tuesday at the Republican National Convention.

Convention organizers and John McCain's campaign adjusted the schedule of the four-day gathering with Hurricane Gustav bearing down on the Gulf Coast. The storm now has weakened. That means Republicans will resurrect their program with some changes.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani had been scheduled to give the keynote address. But Thompson and Lieberman will take the podium instead. Republicans say the two will talk about McCain's biography and their friendship with him.

Not to diminish the impact Gustav had on those directly affected but it's clear at this point we aren't looking at a Katrina level national disaster so it will be interesting to see if a partisan edge starts to return tonight.

All in all, given that yesterday was Labor Day, I'm not sure the party lost all that much by not having a regular session. With Gustav behind us and Palin on everyone's mind, people should be much more focused on what the party has to say.

UPDATE:

I'm not a big Mike Huckabee guy to say the least but he can be a very effective speaker and advocate. Today he's come out swinging in defense of Palin.

Here's a taste.

"Over the past few days weÂ’ve been hearing all this stuff about how Gov. Palin doesnÂ’t have experience let me tell you something I can assure having been a governor myself for ten and a half years, sheÂ’s had more executive experience in 2 years than her counterpart Joe Biden has had in all the years that heÂ’s been making speeches because sheÂ’s been making decisions heÂ’s been making just simple speeches," Huckabee told the crowd.

"In fact I donÂ’t know if you realize this but Sarah Palin got more votes running for mayor in Wasilla Alaska than Joe Biden did in 2 quest for the presidency that oughta tell you something,

I guess the partisan edge is back, at least if Huck has anything to say about. I like it.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:48 AM | Comments (72)
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The finalized 2008 GOP platform is now available (PDF). So far I haven't noticed anything too remarkable, but I'm still skimming. NRO's Stephen Spruiell writes that the differences between this platform and the prior two are noteworthy:

The new platform is distinctly different from the two adopted during the candidacies of George W. Bush, which were constructed to essentially mirror his positions. The 2000 and 2004 platforms made exceptions for Bush in areas where he strayed from traditionally conservative principles. By contrast, the 2008 platform accommodates McCainÂ’s maverick positions on issues like immigration and climate change without accepting his views as the official positions of the Republican party.

[...]

On some issues, the party was less accommodating. The new platform renews the call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, even though McCain does not favor such an amendment. It also calls for a complete ban on all embryonic stem-cell research. McCain favors the Bush policy on stem-cell research, which allows federal funding for research that utilizes a few existing stem-cell lines. Unsurprisingly, BushÂ’s policy found expression in the 2004 platform.

Perhaps the most striking difference between the 2004 and 2008 platform documents is the removal of any references to the candidate running for office. In the 2004 document Bush was mentioned over 250 times, with the committee finding something about him to “praise,” “commend,” “hail,” or “applaud” over 70 times. By comparison, neither McCain nor Bush is mentioned at all in the 2008 document, except in passing in the preamble. Some conservative activists who attended the drafting of both platforms attributed this shocking difference to Karl Rove’s influential role in shaping the 2004 platform into an advertisement for the Bush campaign.

Is there nothing that man can't do?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:23 AM | Comments (22)
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So far, the strategy seems to be: belittle Sarah Palin's accomplishments. Right. Let me know how that works out for you, Senator Community Organizer.

OBAMA: Well, you know, my understanding is, is that Governor Palin's town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We have got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month.

So, I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute, I think, has been made clear over the last couple of years. And, certainly, in terms of the legislation that I passed just dealing with this issue post-Katrina of how we handle emergency management, the fact that many of my recommendations were adopted and are being put in place as we speak, I think, indicates the degree to which we can provide the kinds of support and good service that the American people expect.

It's really quite revealing that Obama is forced to ignore the office Palin currently holds in order to make the case he's more experienced.

(Thanks to Eukardios in the comments for suggesting the change in Obama's title.)

Update - Oh, goody. The Obama campaign has decided another excellent line of attack will be to paint her as a Nazi sympathizer for wearing a Buchanan button once. She wore the button because Buchanan was visiting her town, and she was the mayor. Palin was a Forbes supporter. They've gone barking mad.

Posted by: Slublog at 07:04 AM | Comments (135)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:07 AM | Comments (21)
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Faced with the all-too-real prospect of the Obamessiah's defeat, TalkLeft's formerly rational Jeralyn Merritt has has resorted to fingers-in-the-ears lalalalacan'thearyou denial:

Pool: What Day Will Sarah Palin Drop Out?

Of course, the Kos Kids Want to Believe as well... A full half of them have sacrificed all common sense on the altar of wishful thinking.

That dread you feel, lefties? It's not something you can wish away. But your responses show your true, ugly colors.

Posted by: Open Blog at 03:55 AM | Comments (91)
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On the other hand, it will also end under President John McCain.

It will also end under a Sam Elliott/Powers Boothe Action Cowboy Co-Presidency.

In other words, it's ending.

No sunspots seen in an entire month -- the first time that's happened since 1913. Fewer sunspots = lower solar activity = lower earth temperatures.

A 2005 paper predicted sunspot activity would dwindle to nothing... but it was rejected for publication as being "too controversial." So, this is kind of a major thing.

And on top of that, the longer the delay before the next period of high sunspot activity, the more severe the cooling will be. And we've been waiting for the start of a new cycle for a long time.

Doesn't matter. The Black Hole Machine's going to kill us all first. So we're not only going to die, but Al Gore's going to get to keep his fucking Oscar.

This article is kind of funny. When global warming itself is not being directly discussed, or challenged, scientists and science journalists feel freer to kinda-sorta admit: You know, it's pretty much all about the Sun when you get right down to it.*

Shhh. Don't tell anyone. There are... political considerations to weigh when discussing science.

As a commenter said (sorry, forget who):

If only there were some... natural mechanism for explaining the warming and cooling phases of the earth.

This hypothetical mechanism would have to be a massive source of energy, however. Approximately on the scale of our own Sun.

PS, one observatory says they saw one tiny speck of a sunspot in August. So, if you go by their findings, it's merely a 50-year rarity rather than a century rarity.

Thanks to both Arthur and someone.

* Actually, they probably didn't mention global warming to avoid the delicate, politically charged question of whether it would sorta be a good thing to have some man-made warming in a period of severe solar cooling.

Science.

Oh: Last year alone, as sunspot activity continued to dwindle, we lost something like .7 Celsius in global mean temperature -- nearly wiping out all the scary-huge warming we've had over the past century (about 1 degree C). And more cooling seems to be on the way.

Posted by: Ace at 12:28 AM | Comments (85)
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We're all thinking the same thing.

Let's not say it.

Let's just let it remain unsaid.

Posted by: Ace at 10:01 PM | Comments (70)
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Can be found at Homefrontsix.

Just another typical, bitter, gun clinging female who Milky Glutes would probably find something to piss and moan about.

Posted by: Open Blog at 09:47 PM | Comments (7)
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One silly bit of made-up information I've been confronted with is the frequent assertion by lefties that Levi Johnston is, and I quote, an "eighth grader." I'd seen that claim made two or three times on different web-sites... including this one, via one of our Moby Trolls.

When someone asked me about this (she had just read it herself), I tried to make sense of it, and tried to imagine why the hell a 17 year old girl would be dating an "eighth grader," and how it was possible they could be married with him at that age, and what kind of absolutely horrible marriage that would turn out to be.

And what about statutory rape? That's quite an age difference. Four or five years means a lot at that age.

And then the dime dropped, and I asked, "Who the hell says he's an eighth grader? The same lefties who claim that Trig is an incestuous love child of Bristol?"

The thing is, they just keep repeating crap like this over and over. One of these shits makes it up, and the rest just start repeating it.

Then Madame MuscleGlutes sees if she can push it into the mainstream.

The normal state we exist in is to assume most information we read is true, or sorta true, or true-ish.

We assume that people may be biased or just plain wrong. But we don't assume that hundreds of people conspire together to coordinate a lie they not only positively know is false, but they happen to know that first-hand, as they themselves invented the facts a couple of hours ago.

That's a weird thing: Coordinated mass lying. Shit is slipping by us that we're assuming might be true or somewhat true (those missing months of Bristol's when she was carrying baby Trig, that "Alaskan Airline crew members stated Palin didn't look pregnant," etc.) just because we're simply not used to thousands of people agreeing to spread deliberate lies to as many people as they can. The fact that multiple people on multiple websites are claiming it, seemingly independently, tricks us into thinking, subconsciously maybe, "Gee, they must have gotten that from some article; they all couldn't just be lying in unison."

Or could they?

I'll print this posting found at DU, tipped to me by the great Larwyn, again:

122. What many here don't understand. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. RUMOR IS TRUTH.

The modern laws of media hype and political warfare have a useful tenet:

Repeat ANYTHING or raise false concern over ANYTHING and it is likely to be planted in the conscious/subconscious of many voters.

If people start to think that there might be something fishy with Palin's last kid (if hers), then that's FINE. One more doubt (whether tied to reality or not) is another hesitation at the ballot box.

GET WITH THE PROGRAM PEOPLE. The "rising above it" bullshit has served us so well in the past, hasn't it?

If you have problems with the story, then STFU and get out of the way of Dems who are engaged in MODERN POLITICAL WARFARE. Go tend your garden or some other pedestrian task, because the "concern trolls" are not helping shape the message.

J

So now I kind of have it stuck in my head that Bristol's soon to be husband is an eighth grader.

Except he's not. He's 18 and just graduated high school.

Not really the "eighth grader" I was expecting him to be.

Seriously, be aware, there is a deliberate and -- I guess the word is "cynical," but that seems to understate the situation so grossly -- viciously, haughtily cynical effort to simply put out as many lies as possible and repeat them as frequently as possible.

The old rule that lurks in the back of our minds is inoperative: "This many people can't all just be deliberately spreading the same lie!"

As their cult leader says: "Yes we can."

"They must be held accountable:" Um, I'm sorry -- accountable for what?

Obama and the Blogs: Is Obama behind this?

It is kinda true that suddenly every left-wing source was pushing this story -- or, as in Colmes' case, where he was too timid to push the story itself, he pushed a related story that didn't accuse Palin of faking a pregnancy but "raised questions" about why she'd board a flight in such a delicate condition. (Wink, wink.)

Talking Points Memo and Kos and Sullivan of course get Obama tips. Did Axelrod suggest to Sullivan the story was worth pursuing? It is almost too ludicrous to even imagine Sullivan didn't ask Axelrod about the story's provenance before running it.

And, well... who knows who "ArcXIX" will turn out to be.

But I don't think that Obama has to encourage his cultists to be rotten lying inhuman bastards. They seem to be eager self-starting volunteers.

Obama definitely is pushing stuff on to the lefty bloggers after the MSM turns it down -- stuff like wild claims about the race card and white women, etc. -- but this still seems to be a pure nutroots sort of thing. It's their particular insane style.

Hmmm... If Obama's pledged to not spread this sort of filth, isn't he required to stop all aides from communicating with/coordinating with/tipping Kos and Sullivan?

Hmmm II: Check out how Obama's cultists are setting up Moby sites to attack Palin and McCain.

(Note: Read through to the update at the end before you blow your gasket too much; the guy running these sites says he has no connection to Obama's campaign. Whether that's true or not, who knows. Let's say he has no official, provable connection and let it lie at that.)

Edit: I quoted a source who Mr. Right told me wasn't necessarily authoritative. Since the quote really didn't advance what I was saying much, anyway, I've decided discretion is the better part of valor and just omitted the reference.

Posted by: Ace at 08:44 PM | Comments (132)
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