Begging For Caricature

This makes some sense. After the Democratic vice-presidential nominee gave a speech Thursday morning blasting President Trump, Charlie Pierce wrote

This was pretty much what made Harris the best choice for vice president on the Biden ticket. It is always the VP candidate’s job to be the monster back, flying to the ball and hitting hard—a heat-seeking, rapid-response weapon. ...  Harris has the prosecutor’s instinct for the jugular and the politician’s instinct for doing so calmly and with cold precision. Those two lines—Donald Trump froze. He was scared.—were damned near perfectly constructed and aimed. You know that, when the president heard a Black woman call him out as a poltroon, every demon in his demon-stuffed psyche began talking at once. The game, she is on now.

This, however, makes no sense:

"I think that there should be a thorough investigation and, based on what I've seen, it seems that the officer should be charged," Harris said in an interview with Craig Melvin of NBC’s “Today” that aired Friday morning.

Harris, a former prosecutor and California attorney general, conceded that she doesn't know all the facts of Blake's case and reiterated she would want the officer to receive due process. Asked whether she felt the officer's use of force was justified, Harris said, "I don't see it. But I don't have all the evidence."

"The man was going to his car. He didn't appear to be armed," she said. "If he was not armed, the use of force that was seven bullets coming out of a gun at close range in the back of the man, I don't see how anybody could reason that that was justifiable."

Let's run this through the clarity meter.

There should be a thorough investigation (and) the officer should be charged. There is no need for an investigation if it is already determined that the officer should be charged.

I don't see it (the use of force) was justified (but) I don't have all the evidence. If you don't have all the evidence- and you're a candidate for the second most powerful official elected nationally- you probably shouldn't suggest that the use of force was unjustified.

This was the Kamala Harris who in March 2019 told a crowd of wealthy donors "I support Medicare for All. But as you may have noticed, over the course of the many months, I've not been comfortable with Bernie's plan, the Medicare for All plan."

Harris had co-sponsored that Medicare for legislation. Nonetheless, her half-in, half-out stance was consistent with the Kamala Harris who supported abolishing private insurance, then opposed it, then supported, and finally opposed it. 

Call it consistent inconsistency.  There was another vice-presidential candidate whose selection was met with thunderous applause but whom probably ended up costing the presidential nominee election to the presidency, especially in foolishly trying to sell the duo as "mavericks" against the first major party black presidential nominee 

Kamala Harris is no Sarah Palin. But Sarah Palin wasn't Sarah Palin until Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live got the part down. Joe Biden, the Democratic Party, and the American people better hope there is no right-wing Tina Fey warming up to have a crack at Senator Harris. 

 

 

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A Wise Decision

Much to his credit, John McCain avoided one final humiliation. According to Raw Story

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has reportedly not been invited to attend the memorial for her one-time running mate, the late John McCain.

MSNBC booking director Jesse Rodriguez tweeted Wednesday that NBC White House correspondent Kelly O’Donnell learned that Palin was not invited to McCain’s memorial.

Senator McCain, who had spent twenty-one years in the Armed Forces, selected Governor Palin as his running mate because of her reputation as a "maverick." On the second day of the convention, four days after she was tapped, we read in The New York Times 

“She is an aggressive reformer who isn’t afraid to break glass, to bring change to Wasilla and later to the state of Alaska,” said Taylor Griffin, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, who declined to address specific aspects of Ms. Palin’s tenure as mayor. “Washington needs some of that.”

Palin was not only a maverick, but one who sympathized with the Alaskan secession movement. On the last day of the convention, a skeptical Rosa Brooks wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times in which she maintained "It's untrue that Palin has no foreign policy experience, anyway. In fact, she appears to have seriously flirted with the idea of trying to turn Alaska into a foreign country. How many vice presidential candidates can put that on their resumes?"

Not only can no other vice presidential candidate put that on his or her resume, very few can be said to have been instrumental, inadvertently or otherwise, in redirecting the theme of a presidential campaign.  She changed the direction and thus perception of the McCain campaign. If you're like most people, you don't remember

You will notice the "McCain" signs held aloft, the message "paid for by John McCain 2008," and most obviously, the tagline "John McCain, The American President Americans Have Been Waiting For."

The commercial was shown prior to the Senator's actual nomination and selection of a running mate. At that approximate time, the commercial disappeared, and Senator Obama probably breathed a sigh of relief.

Palin was from outside the continental United States, as was at birth the presidential candidate of the opposing party, which contributed to the perception that the latter was not born in the USA. John McCain, who had spent five+ years in captivity- a portion of it after he was given the opportunity to be released- decided to downplay his military service. To do so otherwise might have struck a discordant note in a McCain-Palin ticket.

Early last year, The Washington Post's Philip Bump reported

According to a 2010 study from researchers at Stanford University, noted by Brendan Nyhan, Palin's presence on the 2008 Republican presidential ticket cost John McCain 1.6 percentage points. In an election in which 131 million people voted, that's 2.1 million votes that McCain should have gotten but didn't.

There is no way to determine whether the Republican candidate would have been elected President if he had bypassed Palin, for, say, Joe Lieberman (his personal favorite) or former Pennsylvania governor and Vietnam veteran Tom Ridge.  The Stanford study argued "Since Obama actually won 53% of the popular vote, it suggests that Palin’s campaign performance did not necessarily change the election outcome, but was certainly large enough to be substantively meaningful."

However, that analysis is strikingly imperfect, given that a presidential election is determined not by popular vote but by electoral vote, as we learned in 2000- and were disturbingly reminded in 2016. We don't know where Palin cost McCain the votes but it's likely it was predominantly among "wavering Republicans, independents, and moderate Republicans," according to a Newsweek column cited by Bump.

Although it's very unlikely that Palin herself cost the GOP the presidential election, it's not at all unlikely that McCain would have won had he gone a different direction, which he probably would have with a different running mate. Instead of campaigning as a maverick trying to block the route to the  Oval Office of the first black nominee of a major political party, he might have run as "the American President Americans have been waiting for." 

Eight years later,  who unlike John McCain had no claim on patriotism, military service or service to the nation, the driving force behind the birther movement was elected President of the USA. 

It''s vitally important for one's health to pick parents well. And it's critical in politics to pick your opponents well. For Barack Obama- who wisely changed his image by having Joe Biden run with him- it was McCain and Palin. 

John McCain was not prone to making excuses, but choosing not to invite his 2008 running mate to his future funeral may have been subtle acknowledgement that she played a major role in depriving him of the biggest prize of them all.

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Off-Key, Strategically

The concept of "race" is controversial and elusive. For instance, Wikipedia explains "Arabs belong to the Semitic branch of the Caucasian race, mostly Mediterranean race.. The Arabid race is a term for a morphological subtype of the Caucasoid race, as used in physical anthropology."

In the context of American politics, then, "Arab" may be considered a race, even though that is arguably anthropologically inexact.

John McCain never became President because he was unable to navigate the currents of race in the USA..  That does not reflect badly on his character or personality, or even his politics (his selection of Sarah Palin in 2008 notwithstanding). Note that Donald J. Trump was far more adept in this regard, and as a consequence (albeit aided by the FBI and the Kremlin) managed to get elected president.

Charles Pierce reminded us on Sunday, the day after Senator McCain died at age 81 of brain cancer, that during the South Carolina presidential primary in 2000

There were whisper campaigns about the daughter his family had adopted from Bangladesh—the oldest and most poisonous card in the deck, especially in the home office of American sedition. There were whisper campaigns over the telephone conversations from some of America's most famous TV preachers—especially the odious Pat Robertson. There were dozens of loaded "push polls." The entire Atwater-Rove arsenal was turned on him. Rumors were spread about McCain's captivity, his mental stability, and his wife, but it kept coming back to his daughter, Bridget, who was dark enough for the bigots. Then, McCain made a critical gaffe. He remarked that the Confederate flag, which still flew near the state capitol in Columbia, was "a symbol of racism and slavery." And he lost.

That was the pivotal primary in the GOP nominating process, and McCain was defeated by someone less bold but better able to appeal to the demons existing throughout society, but especially in the Republican Party.

It was McCain's turn in 2008 and partly as a result, he secured the Republican nomination, but then lost the general election in no small measure for the same reason he had lost eight years earlier to George W. Bush in South Carolina. We may be getting sick of repeatedly seeing the following clip this weekend, but we have spent a decade giving it insufficient attention:

Stammering, the infamous woman in red maintains "I've got to ask you a question. I can't trust Obama. I, I have read about him and he's not, he's not.... he's an Arab. He is not- no?"

The mainstream media has long properly given McCain credit for having shown decency and courage in the face of apparent bigotry. However, the media refuses to acknowledge the role of the response in the candidate's defeat, largely because it contrasts with the comforting meme that the country put aside its racial division by electing its first black President.

"More than anything else, by 2006," Pierce writes, "John McCain wanted to be president more than anyone else I've ever seen." If so. two years later the GOP nominee exhibited exceptional ineptness by failing to manipulate the racial tension by which he was victimized to in 2000,

Barack Obama understood.  In 2004 he stirred emotions at the Democratic convention and the country beyond by claiming "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America—there's the United States of America."

Most of us bought it, bought it because we wanted to buy it. Four years later, Obama was elected President on a wave of disgust at the previous, Republican administration and on excitement in the Democratic electorate for historic change. Additionally, he benefited from a naive, misguided hope among many other voters that his election would put the "race" issue behind us, prove they themselves were not racist, and that America no longer was racist, or maybe never was.

He defeated Senator McCain despite the warning of the man, speaking before the woman in red, that "we're scared of an Obama presidency."  McCain did not heed the warning, and fell to the candidate who had built his reputation in an extraordinary speech with the oft-admired "there is not a black America and a white America." 

A little under eight years later, as the 2016 nominating campaign wound down, Gallup recorded its highest-ever number of Americans "very worried" about race relations in America. In retrospect, that was a tailor-made situation for Donald Trump. In the manner in which Obama caught a wave by (however artificially) calming fears, Trump did the same by exploiting fears, and especially demagogically.

John McCain was a victim in February of 2000 of similar racial bias. Eight plus years later, he refused to exploit those fears, which continued to build and landed us Donald Trump in 2016.   If he had caught that wave in either of his campaigns, the obituary of John S. McCain probably would include "elected President."  It may be to his everlasting credit that it does not.

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Go Big Or Go Home

In one of the (many) articles I wish I had written, Politico Magazine's Bill Scher argues

... if Mueller believes that Trump needs to be held accountable for any violation of law, he cannot expect Congress to do the accounting. There is only one mechanism that has any chance of working, and it is not impeachment. It's indictment.

He recognizes "impeachment is a dead end because the congressinal jury pool is tainted," now that the Special Counsel "has been systematically demonized for weeks by Trump and his allies." Further, if Democrats won every 2018 Senate race, they would still control only 58 seats, leaving them nine short of the 67 they would need to convict the President in the Senate. Thus

the more serious discussion to have is about indictment. Democrats and progressive activists need not get over their skis and call for an indictment before Mueller finishes his work, as he may welll declare that Trump has not committed any crimes.

On the assumption, however, that the Special Counsel will conclude that Donald Trump has committed one or more crimes, Scher summarizes the arguments for and against the notion that a incumbent President can be indicted.

Many pundits, lawyers or otherwise, hang their hat on the the 1973, and the 2000 concurring, memo from the Office of Legal Counsel arguing indictment of a sitting President would "interfere with the President's ability to carry out his constitutionally assigned functions and thus would be inconsistent with the constitutional structure."   However, one former head of the OLC maintains that a President can be indicted while in office and be tried after he/she leaves office.  And both the Watergate special counsel investigating President Nixon and a memo received by independent prosecutor Ken Starr argued that a sitting President can be prosecuted.

In that memorandum, law professor Richard Rotunda maintained "No federal  statutes recognize, or purport to recognize, any Presidential immunity from criminal indictment. Indeed, Congress has done quite the opposite: it has created an Independent Counsel statute for the express purpose of investigating alleged criminal activities of the President."  While the independent counsel has been replaced with a special counsel, Congress still has conspicuously chosen not to enact a statue "creating some sort of temporary immunity."

Nor is there a need to do so.  The notion that prosecution of a sitting President would render the nation rudderless flies in the face of reality- and of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which relegates to the Vice President (emphasis mine) the "powers and duties" of the President if the latter  unable to do so because he resigns, dies, or is unable to discharge those functions. Rotunda explains

Because·of this (i.e., 25th) Amendment, the temporary disability of the President does not incapacitate an entire branch of government because the Constitution itself recognizes the problems and deals with it in a structural way, not by creating an immunity but by providing for a temporary replacement. In addition, the indictment of the President does-not incapacitate either the President or entire Executive Branch. Aaron Burr was quite able to function as a Vice President although indicted. Indictment does not incapacitate the indicted individual. In the unlikely event that the defense of a civil case (e.g., Jones v. Clinton) or the defense of a criminal case would prevent the President from performing his duties, the Executive Branch does not simply shut down. The Twenty Fifth Amendment, § 3, provides a procedure for the Executive Branch to continue to function "[w]henever the President transmits . .. his written declaration that is unable to discharge the powel'S and duties of his office .... " This procedure is clearly not limited to cases of illness. 

One should also note that it is easy to make a claim that the Executive Branch will simply "shut down," but that claim is difficult to accept.

The only other constitutional duty of the Vice President is to preside over the Senate, which any dimwit can do. Nonetheless, the McCain-Palin ticket of 2008 was harmed by the widespread belief that the vice-presidential candidate was unqualified and unable to perform the duties of the President..

That has not been a common handicap to a presidential ticket, and Trump-Pence was no exception because- however awful a president he would be- Mike Pence is qualified for the office.  The notion that somehow the USA would be a hopeless basket case if President Trump is preoccupied with matters other than the presidency is laughable on its face.

No doubt Robert Mueller know, as Rotunda emphasizes,  that "the Constitution does not create an absolute Monarch above the law" and that "in this country, the US Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed the state that no one is above the law." If he is the stelllar public servant and patriot he is reputed to be, Mueller understands that confidence in civil institutions is at stake, The American people need to be assured (or convinced) that the powerful recognize that everyone is equal under the law and that this is a nation of laws and not of men.

Robertt Mueller will not be eager to look over his long career, including this long investigation, and conclude that all has gone to naught as Congress does little or nothing.  Therefore- as Bill Scher believes-

If by the end of the investigation, Meller concludes Trump has a (sic) committed a serious crime, he should recognize that he has only two real choices: Indict or go home.









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Not Happening

Channeling the minds- no, the emotion- of most Republicans

“Donald Trump understands that enforcing the laws and building a wall are paramount to what the will of the people is,” she told guest host Eric Bolling in an interview on "The O’Reilly Factor" on Fox News. “Thank God he’s still preaching that, because if he were not, then there would be a huge erosion of support.”

The Politico report explained

Trump over the past week has generated a flood of headlines by appearing to back away from his proposal for a "deportation force," saying he is open to "softening" immigration laws and that he's willing to "work with" certain undocumented immigrants if they pay back taxes.









Grump knows where the votes lie, for

In a Pew Research Center survey conducted in May, a solid majority (72%) of Americans – including 80% of Democrats, 76% of independents and 56% of Republicans – say undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S.should be allowed to stay in this country legally if they meet certain requirements. Last year, we asked a follow-up question of those who opposed granting legal status to undocumented immigrants: Should there be a “national law enforcement effort to deport” all immigrants here illegally? Just 17% of the public overall favored such an effort, including about a quarter (27%) of Republicans. 

For practical purposes, this puts the majority of Americans- and of Republicans, including some Trumpists- in accord with the general approach of President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic Party. Most individuals evidently want a path to normalization, some supporting citizenship, the others only legalization, a boon to unscrupulous employers and exceedingly destructive policy.

Admittedly, most Republicans want a wall, a vain yearning.  In testimony in May before a Senate committee, Richard Vitiello, deputy chief of border patrol for US Customs and Border Protection, noted "it is not necessary to have a pedestrian fence in places where the nfrastructure doens't support people walking toward the border." Moreover, in addition to pointing out the exorbitant price, this CNBC piece indicates

Border walls work in densely populated areas — such as Israel's wall in the West Bank — where slowing down a person trying to illegally enter by five or 10 minutes can make a difference to border patrol. But when the migrant trying to enter is traveling over remote mountains and deserts for three days, using a fence to slow them down by a few minutes doesn't have the same effect — it borders (pun intended) on the trivial, (deputy director of the US Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute Marc) Rosenblum said.

"There is a reason people don't build fences in the middle of nowhere; it doesn't change the enforcement profile in the middle of nowhere," the migration expert said. "The existing fence has worked because of where it is, near populated areas. Both Democrats and Republicans have testified that they have the fencing they need," Rosenblum said.

Both Democrats and Republicans have testified that they have the fencing they need. The message should be clear to conservatives who demand a wall, progressives who fear a wall, and Sarah Palin, relieved that Donald Grump has not relinquished his public support for a wall. Explosion of testosterone and display of beer muscles (for women and men) and anger at the Other aside, it's not going to happen. There will not be a wall. Believe me.






Up Next:  Mark Krikorian is wrong- and Ann Coulter is right.


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Palin Vs. Ryan. Anybody Vs. Ryan.

The experienced and celebrated blogger Tristero writes

1. Just because Sarah Palin declines to endorse Paul Ryan does not make Ryan a centrist.

2. Just because Sarah Palin declines to endorse Paul Ryan does not make Palin rational. 

Well, yes and no.  CNN reports 

Sarah Palin reiterated her support for Paul Ryan's primary challenger Friday night immediately after her political ally, Donald Trump, endorsed the House speaker.

Trump on Friday evening said in Wisconsin that he would back Ryan in his Republican primary against Paul Nehlen, a little-known challenger. That announcement was a reversal from earlier in the week, when the presidential nominee declined to endorse the speaker.

Minutes after Trump announced his support during a rally in Ryan's home state, Palin wrote on Facebook that she was "proud to be standing with Paul Nehlen since May 9th."

"Wisconsin, please vote for this man 'of the people' this Tuesday!" she wrote.

Evidently, very few people are taking Palin's advice, a blow for the middle class and the poor, Paul Ryan's targets for several years.

After announcement that the US government had transferred $400 million to Iran, exploited by a Republican Party cynically claiming it constituted "ransom" for return of four American hostages, Ryan remarked

If true, this report confirms our longstanding suspicion that the administration paid a ransom in exchange for Americans unjustly detained in Iran. It would also mark another chapter in the ongoing saga of misleading the American people to sell this dangerous nuclear deal.

If true that the temperature has not risen above 40 degrees Fahrenheit in Miami this summer, climate change is a hoax.   Unsurprisingly, the temperature has risen to at least 90 degrees for the last twenty days in Miami. However, "if true...."

Five weeks ago, Citizens for Tax Justice reviewed the GOP's latest budget scheme and observed the

“A Better Way” plan would reduce taxes for the top 1 percent of Americans icans (a group with average annual household income of $1.7 million) by an average of $137,780 per year. This massive tax reduction for the rich equals a 60 percent share of all the individual tax cuts. The top 0.1 percent of Americans would receive $798,000 a year in tax cuts or a 35 percent share of the total tax reductions.

CTJ found the plan would "overwhelmingly benefit the top 1 percent of taxpayers while resulting in a net loss for the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers" and would "add $4 trillion to the national debt over a decade."

Ryan's plan would eliminate the estate tax, which (the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out) currently applies to only .2% of estates because it is "levied only on the portion of an estate’s value that exceeds a specified exemption level — $5.43 million per person (effectively $10.86 million per married couple) " Whenever a Republican proposes elimination of what they vilify as a "death tax" (thank you, Frank Luntz), hold on to your wallet because he's diverting your attention while emptying your pockets.

When Ryan was running for vice-president, he told high schoolers outside of Denver

I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, when I was flipping burgers at McDonald's, when I was standing in front of that big Hobart machine washing dishes, or waiting tables, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life.  I thought to myself, I'm the American dream on the path or journey so that I can find happiness however I define it myself.

Ryan may have mentioned that he was six years old when his father died of a heart attack but neglected to note

In the year after his father's death, Ryan's maternal grandmother set up the Ryan-Hutter Investment Partnership, which remains an important part of Ryan's finances with assets of up to half a million dollars, according to the congressman's 2011 financial disclosure statement. Ryan continues as the general partner running the entity for the family.

Court records indicate Ryan's father left a probate estate of $428,000, though the number of assets existing outside the will or the probate remains unknown. Ryan was to receive $50,000 when he turned 30. The will leaves the bulk of the estate to Ryan's mother, who now lives in an oceanfront condo in Florida.

In addition to the Ryan-Hutter Investment Partnership, Ryan also benefits from another family entity, Ryan Limited Partnership, which was established in March 1995 by an aunt. Ryan's share of that is worth up to $500,000. Ryan makes no investment decisions in either partnership, the campaign spokesman said.

By the time Ryan had entered Congress in 1999 at the age of 28 and filed his first disclosure statement, he reported assets between $167,000 and $1.3 million, owned a home and had three rental units.

Ryan opponent Paul Nehlen is from the far right of the far-right Party, though he knows enough to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Sarah Palin is, well, Sarah Palin (two months ago in an alliterative way, below.  But if a blind squirrel can find an acorn once in a while, this is the former governor's once in a while moment, however she may have happened upon the acorn. Paul Ryan is a very, very dangerous man and as Charlie Pierce has written, is the.... Biggest. Fake. Ever.
















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Culture Clash

Nothing misogynistic- or crude- here. From Metro Lyrics, the words to "Cat Scratch Fever" by one-hit-wonder Ted Nugent:


Well I don't know where they come from
But they sure do come
I hope they comin' for me
And I don't know how they do it
But they sure do it good
I hope they doin' it for free

They give me cat scratch fever
Cat scratch fever

The first time that I got it
I was just ten years old
I got it from some kitty next door
I went and see the Dr. and
He gave me the cure
I think I got it some more

They give me cat scratch fever
Cat scratch fever

It's nothin dangerous
I feel no pain
I've got to ch-ch-change
You know you got it when you're going insane
It makes a grown man cryin' cryin'
Won't you make my bed

I make the pussy purr with
The stroke of my hand
They know they gettin' it from me
They know just where to go
When they need their lovin man
They know I do it for free

They give me cat scratch fever
Cat scratch fever


Right Wing Watch points out

After Mike Huckabee criticized Beyonce's music as "obnoxious and toxic mental poison" unfit for children and compared the singer to a prostitute, it didn't take long for people to point out that he himself had once joined with Ted Nugent to perform a sexually explicit song on his national television program.

Huckabee is, predictably, reacting by pretending that what happened didn't actually happen, telling the Christian Post today that Nugent "changed the lyrics pretty dramatically" when he sang the song "Cat Scratch Fever" on Hucabee's Fox News show.

In fact, anyone who watches a video of the performance can see that Nugent didn't change any of the song's explicit lyrics as Huckabee accompanied him, 5:25 in.











Sarah Palin, who says "You can absolutely say that I am seriously interested in running for President" (not a clear statement of intent, but we can only hope for the entertainment)  is somewhat similar. Roger Simon observed at the Freedom Summit in Des Moines on Sunday the former governor exclaiming "coronation, rinse, repeat," "the man can only ride you when your back is bent," and Obama "is so over it, America, he's just not that into you."

Simon reported that there was no context for the remarks. And if you think "the man can only ride you when your back is bent" makes little sense, this- considering the source- from Palin on Saturday made even less sense: "screw the left and Hollywood."

Not screw the left, of course, but "screw Hollywood" is at best insincere coming from Palin, who recently appeared with Tara Pyle at a charity event

thrown in honor of special ops veterans at the Vegas Show Show on Thursday (January 22) in Las Vegas.

If you don’t know yet, Taya is the widow of Chris Kyle, the late Navy SEAL that the movie American Sniper is based on.

“Taya is carrying on her husband Chris’ legacy boldly – spending hours visiting with all the heroes there and sharing Chris’ book, inspiration, and story through American Sniper,” Sarah wrote in a Facebook post.

If Sarah wanted merely to raise money for the Chris Kyle Frog Foundation and further to honor his life and legacy, she could have done so without the shout-out to American Sniper which, as a movie, is part of Hollywood culture (and nominated for six Oscars). But she didn't. Instead, she lauded a film which, arguably is not true to the real-life Kyle and his book, "American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History."  In The New Republic, Dennis Jett writes

Bradley Cooper, who plays Kyle, seems beset by uncertainty and moral anxiety in the above scene. But anyone who has read Kyle’s autobiography of the same title knows that his bravado left no room for doubt. For him, the enemy are savages and despicably evil. His only regret is that he didn’t kill more. He laments that there were rules of engagement, or ROE, which he describes as being drafted by lawyers to protect generals from politicians. He argues instead for letting warriors loose to fight wars without their hands tied behind their backs. At another point, he boasts that the unofficial ROE were pretty simple: “If you see anyone from about sixteen to sixty-five and they’re male, shoot ‘em. Kill every male you see.” 

Notwithstanding the differences between Chris Kyle and the portrayal by Bradley Cooper, Palin chose to identify herself in part with the biopic- and with the Hollywood she claims to want screwed.

No one should doubt Mike Huckabee's sincerity, while Palin sometimes infers she has a direct pipeline to God, though given her sometimes bizarre behavior (photo below via TPM) it's hard to believe she would be the one the Almighty would decide to communicate with.   But both of them at least appear not to have come to terms with modern culture, say, post 1990.

There are undeniable advantages for Republicans to fight the culture war as they contemplate GOP primaries.  But the slight scent of hypocrisy hovers.  By contrast, potential GOP presidential candidates could sidestep cultural issues, as has Chris Christie, whom Bill Clinton has termed "probably just a sideshow" or John Ellis Bush, a likely flame-out.  The prospective field is not, so it seems, all that far from the "clown car" Roger Simon observes..

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Focusing On The Big Stick

From time to time, Sarah Palin goes on a rant which seems to mimic gibberish.  But things are not always as they seem.  Under the subject line "President Palling Around With Terrorists," she recently wrote on her Facebook page

Good God, Mr. President. To partner with Iran is to trust the enemy, which is insane. Iran has complicity in the rise of ISIS as it supports radical militias and arms Islamic terrorists.

You've been the luckiest man in the world, in an un-American Democracy sort of way, to have had the liberal media in your lap allowing you to execute the least transparent presidency in history while they mock and destroy your critics for you. Until now. Even they must see that without accountability you are leading us into very, very dangerous territory.

In the 2008 campaign Sen. McCain and I warned, on behalf of every reasonable person, that your willingness to negotiate with terrorists would get Americans killed; that pulling an anti-Reagan move by taking our Big Stick of strength and putting it in the hands of any foe could be insurmountably devastating for our allies. Iran is one of Israel's staunchest enemies. Mr. President, who is advising you to come against Israel?

What is wrong with you, Barack Obama? You can not pal around with terrorists and expect us to survive. 

Of course, President Obama is not trying "to partner" with Iran but merely to negotiate an end to that nation's nuclear program.  Never mind that "partner" is not a verb, nor that Palin, who believes Obama has decided to "trust" Iran, once characterized as "America's lifeguard" the President who illegally sold weapons to Tehran.

But, whoa! What is that she said about the nation's big stick? Obama, she maintains, is "taking our Big Stick of strength and putting it in the hands of any foe" which could harm our allies. "Mr. President," she asks "who is advising you to come against Israel?"

We now know more about the ex-governor's sexual preferences than we ever wanted to know but her sex life, thankfully, remains a mystery. Among the 45-50 individuals commenting on the post, no one seems to notice what what their heroine is saying, although one man who recommended
impeachment appropriately implored her (or possibly Obama; hard to tell) "Do not sleep with the enemy."

Perhaps instead of recommending the President not "come against Israel," Sarah Palin should discuss with her husband her intriguing Big Stick policy.


(hat tip to Digby, below, photo from Salon; enough of Palin for now)

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Madame Sarah Sees All

By now, almost everyone knows that Sarah Palin has bragged on Facebook

Yes, I could see this one from Alaska. I'm usually not one to Told-Ya-So, but I did, despite my accurate prediction being derided as “an extremely far-fetched scenario” by the “high-brow” Foreign Policy magazine. Here’s what this “stupid” “insipid woman” predicted back in 2008: "After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next."

Thanks to media outlets like CNN, whose political unit writes "Sarah Palin may be having a bragging rights moment," people may actually believe the ex-governor of Alaska.

Even Foreign Policy is is insufficiently instructive, offering an unnecessarily weak defense, with one of its contributors arguing (subscription required)

Foreign Policy's Blake Hounshell called that hypothetical "an extremely far-fetched scenario," "Given how Russia has been able to unsettle Ukraine's pro-western government without firing a shot, I don't see why violence would be necessary to bring Kiev to heel."

Well, this week Russia did in fact invade Ukraine...

So we have to hand it to her: Six years after the publication oa a 156-word blog post, points to Palin. Sort of. Foreign policy wasn't Palin's strong suit when the campaign began so the McCain team assigned two Republican foreign operatives- Randy Scheunemann and Steve Blegun- to tutor her. And while Palin took to her studies with gusto, the campaign made a horrifying discovery in September 2008. "Palin couldn't expalin why North and South Korea were separate nations. She didn't know what the Fed did," John Heilemann and Mark Halperin write in their book 'Game Change.' "Asked who attacked America on 9/11. she suggested several times that it was Saddam Hussein. Asked to identify the enemy that her son (in the National Guard) would be fighting in Iraq, she drew a blank..." 

So... did Palin sit down one day in October, soberly consider the facts ,and conclude that, yes, Russia would probably invade Ukraine if Obama were elected?

It's easier to see the comments in the context of the GOP's 2008 narrative, which was the same as most Republican campaigns since World War I. Democrats are weak on national defense and that weakness will invite aggression, endangering us. And Obama would do things like "sit down with the world's worst dictators," Palin said, referring to Iran, while depriving our troops in Iraq of the tools they needed to win. In short, there are powerful enemies in the world: I am strong,; my opponent is not; I'll keep you safe.

It's a psychologically powerful message, which is why conservatives use it over and over again. America is always under threat, Democrats are always naive, the GOP is always strong. So for the purposes of riling up the crowd in Reno- which Palin did quite effectively- about any scenario would have done.

Admittedly, Palin's thoughts were less her own than those of her tutors.  But she made statements and is responsible for them, the apparently prescient as well as the silly.  And she was, almost proudly, ignorant. But a prediction made by someone unaware of the international situation is even more impressive if borne out, and is certainly more damning of the President of the United States.

Or it would be if it had been accurate.  Steve M. of No More Mister Nice (see blogroll on right) explains

Or, um, her speechwriters could. Or, to put it more precisely, they could see an imminent crisis that, as it turned out, wasn't so imminent. And in the same speech, the words they put in Palin's mouth condemned in advance what's turned out to be the greatest foreign policy triumph of the Obama presidency, the raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed. 

Let's start at the beginning. In a speech on October 19, 2008, Joe Biden predicted an early foreign policy crisis in an Obama presidency:

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you – not financially to help him – we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we’re right."

Two days later, in what The Weekly Standard called "prepared remarks" -- translation: Palin wasn't the author -- the Alaska governor did a riff on possible foreign policy crises that might result from Obama policies. Now, please note two things: 

First, Palin's speechwriters were predicting a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine "next," presumably in (to use Biden's words) the first "six months" of an Obama presidency. It's more than six months since Barack Obama became president, according to my calendar. 

And second, Palin's speechwriters were condemning an invasion of Pakistan without the country's assent -- which is precisely how Osama bin Laden was killed.

(Transcript of Palin remarks via the Standard -- emphasis mine. Video is at the end of the post.)



Did you hear what Senator Biden said at a fundraiser on Sunday? He guaranteed that if Barack Obama is elected, we'll face an international crisis within the first six months of their administration. He told Democrat donors to mark his words - that there were "at least four or five scenarios" that would place our country at risk in an Obama administration. Thanks for the warning, Joe!

He didn't specify what all those four or five scenarios will be, but for clues, let's review the Obama foreign policy agenda.

Our opponent wants to sit down with the world's worst dictators. With no preconditions, he proposes to meet with a regime in Teheran that vows to "wipe Israel off the map." Let's call that crisis scenario number one.

Senator Obama has also advocated sending our U.S. military into Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government. Invading the sovereign territory of a troubled partner in the war against terrorism. We'll call that scenario number two.

He opposed the surge strategy that has finally brought victory in Iraq within sight. He's voted to cut off funding for our troops, leaving our young men and women at grave risk. He wants to pull out, leaving some 25 million Iraqis at the mercy of Iranian-supported Shiite extremists and al Qaeda in Iraq. By his own admission, this could mean our troops would have to go back to Iraq. Crisis scenario number three.

After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence - the kind of response that would only encourage Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine next. That would be crisis scenario number four.

But I guess the looming crisis that most worries the Obama campaign right now is Joe Biden's next speaking engagement. Let's call that crisis scenario number five.



(Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that Palin also criticized Obama's plan to withdraw from Iraq in that speech. Hey, Sarah, are you going to call for us to send troops back in now?)

So Sarah Palin knew that an invasion of Ukraine in 2014 would occur in 2009.  More remarkably, though maintaining it would be because a President Obama would signal weakness to the Soviet Union, she just knew Victor Yanukovych would become Prime Minister of Ukraine in 2010, reject an Association Agreement with the European Union and instead turn toward Russia.  She foresaw that helping spur an overthrow of Yanukovych and replacement with an individual friendlier toward the West would result in ethnic strife in the western portion of the nation, offering Putin an excuse for invasion. A world-class psychic.

That would be the same Putin (video below from YouTube; video here from Fox Nation) whom Palin says chooses "to exert huge power and dominance."   But applying the description of "huge power and dominance" might not be a negative to the self-proclaimed "mama grizzlie," who told Sean Hannity "Look, the perception of Obama, of him and his potency across the world is one of such weakness. People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil. They look at our president as one who wears mom jeans and equivocates and bloviates.”  See those hormones rage!







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In A World With No Race

Back in the relatively early days of radio, when AM radio was king with its playlist of pop music, it was common to hear "the hits keep on coming" (or a variant).  And they still do, except now, it's Sarah Palin (photo below from CNN, with John McCain as latter concedes 2008 presidential race) and often with her Facebook page, where on Monday she posted

Happy MLK, Jr. Day!

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mr. President, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and all who commit to ending any racial divide, no more playing the race card.

Being fact-challenged, Palin didn't specify what set her off. But we do know President Obama is quoted for a January 27 profile in The New Yorker as stating

There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President,  Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black President...

It is especially likely the ex- half term governor was exorcised about this remark precisely because it is, clearly, accurate.  And balanced- in fact, fair and balanced.

Unwilling to face reality, many conservatives desperately want to be seen as color-blind, either as a cover for extremist, retrograde policies which disproportionately harm minorities or because they actually see color-blindness as a virtue.  Are they trying to deceive the electorate- or do they really believe it themselves?  If the latter, they should heed Ian Haney-Lopez, author of "Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class," who writes

“Is your baby racist?” The question blared from the cover of Newsweek Magazine in September 2009, eight months after the inauguration of the nation’s first black president. The accompanying story reported on several recent studies showing that young children not only notice race, they repeat painful stereotypes. In one study, a researcher recruited roughly 100 families from Austin, Texas; all of the families were white, with children between the ages of five and seven. When the children were asked how many white people were “mean,” they commonly answered “almost none.” But when asked how many blacks were mean, many answered “some” or “a lot.” The thrust of the article seemed to be that children possess racial biases. 

However eye-catching the title, though, it pointed in the wrong direction—at infants and little children rather than adults. The core of the article focused on parenting strategies, and especially on the desire to raise children to be colorblind—to be blind to race. The parents were not teaching their children to be bigots. Instead, they were doing their utmost to teach their children to reject racism by studiously ignoring race. Yet, even in a liberal bastion like Austin, it wasn’t working.

Today the dominant etiquette around race is colorblindness. It has a strong moral appeal, for it laudably envisions an ideal world in which race is no longer relevant to how we perceive or treat each other. It also has an intuitive practical appeal: to get beyond race, colorblindness urges, the best strategy is to immediately stop recognizing and talking about race. But it is especially as a strategy that colorblindness fails its liberal adherents. We cannot will ourselves to un-see something that we’ve already seen. In turn, refusing to talk about a powerful social reality doesn’t make that reality go away, but it does leave confused thinking unchallenged, in ourselves and in others. The Austin children exemplify this. Differences in race—including physical variation and its connection to social position—resemble differences in gender: they are plainly visible to new minds eager to make sense of the world around them. When unexplained, however, children (and our unconscious minds) are left susceptible to the power of stereotypes. As the Newsweek authors conclude, “children see racial differences as much as they see the difference between pink and blue— but we tell kids that ‘pink’ means for girls and ‘blue’ is for boys. ‘White’ and ‘black’ are mysteries we leave them to figure out on their own.”

An effort, then, to block out race from our consciousness- to pretend it doesn't exist- can help implant notions of inherent racial superiority,  the classic, and accurate, definition of racism.  (Stephen Colbert, sarcastically: "I don't see race.)  To acknowledge race as a factor is not to play "the race card."  

Conservatives are apoplectic about Obama recognizing that race oftentimes plays a role in perception of his performance and disinterested in the President remarking

I think it’s important for progressives not to dismiss out of hand arguments against my presidency or the Democratic Party or Bill Clinton or anybody just because there’s some overlap between those criticisms and the criticisms that traditionally were directed against those who were trying to bring about greater equality for African-Americans.

The hits keep on coming: Barack Obama as Kenyan or Muslim or, even more absurdly, a socialist. Add to it the charge that he is a racist or prone to playing the race card.

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Sarah Palin Response Rebutted


Sarah Palin does it again. That could mean virtually anything, of course, but in this instance, a case of over-reaction and exaggeration.   She placed on her Facebook page

Holy unbelievable. The hypocritical leftist lamestream media should be shamed by every caring, child-loving American. It has once again reached a new low. See the article linked below. One just can't win in their petty little games. Good thing most Americans don't play those little games! It's a beautiful thing the Romney family has done by embracing “the spirit of adoption.” What on earth is more beautiful? Shame on MSNBC for mocking this.

The LSM's pursuit of “shock ratings” is unreal. Governor Mitt Romney ran for higher office with what I believe is a servant's heart. He was saddled with some sup-par campaign tactics. That does not make him a bad person nor does it open his children or grandchildren to attacks over a year after the fact. This latest attack from the Left is despicable.

Leftist media hounds are not expressing an opinion with this attack; they are expressing a prejudice that would never be accepted if it came from anyone else but the lib media.

You really need a conscience, yellow journalists. May your 2014 New Year's Resolution be to find one.

Thank you, Romney family, for giving a child a family full of love.

The former vice-presidential nominee was exorcised by the portion of the December 22, 2013 portion of "Melissa-Harris Perry" (creative title, that) in which

Harris-Perry posted a photo of the extended Romney family, including newly adopted infant Kieran James Romney, who happens to be the only black person in the photo. She asked her panel of guests, including actress Pia Glenn and comedian Dean Obeidallah to come up with captions for the photo.
The panel made a series of jokes, all based around the fact that there was a single black baby in the photo. Harris-Perry speculated about a wedding between Romney's grandson and North West, the daughter of singer Kanye West and reality TV star Kim Kardashian.







While Palin had a conniption over a fairly innocuous discussion  (video below), her comments at least betrayed a slight connection to reality and suggested she saw the video or read excerpts from the offending segment. Not so Republican National Committee chairperson Reince Priebus, who tweeted "Disgusting: Harris-Perry should apologize immediately for mocking Romney's adopted grandchild."

This may be the apex (thus far) expression of the sense of victimization among Republicans, one in which "isn't he just the most gorgeous?" becomes "mocking."

Harris-Perry responded to GOP scorn by issuing on Tuesday, the 24th what (among others) Politico, the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and one of Rupert Murdoch's right-wing rags, the New York Post, misunderstood as an "apology." In a series, MHP tweeted

I am sorry. Without reservation or qualification. I apologize to the Romney family. I work by guiding principle that those who offend do not have the right to tell those they hurt that they r wrong for hurting. Therefore, while I meant no offense, I want to immediately apologize to the Romney family for hurting them. As black child born into large white Mormon family I feel familiarity w/ Romney family pic & never meant to suggest otherwise. I apologize to all families built on loving transracial adoptions who feel I degraded their lives or choices.

Melissa Harris-Perry must have a great attorney... or is extraordinarily smart.  She checked off everything needed for her remarks to be labeled as an apology- "sorry;" "without reservations;" "I apologize."  But she did not state what she is, without reservations, sorry for.  Presumably, it is for "hurting them" rather than for actually doing (or saying) something inappropriate or unjustified.  The burden is subtly placed on the object of the remarks- they were hurt- rather than on Harris-Perry herself, who "meant no offense." It is akin to the standard line from a defense attorney, in which the latter states "We argue (or maintain)  that John Doe did not commit this offense," never contending that Doe did not do it, only that it's their story and they're sticking to it.

If a so-called apology includes an inference that the speaker could not possibly have meant any ill intent because he/or she has experienced a similar situation, all the better.  We've all heard it before, most often in the ludicrous notion that individuals using the "n word" could not possibly be doing anything wrong because they themselves are black.  In this case, the MSNBC host noted she was "a black child born into (a) large white Mormon family"- which, it turns out, is true.   Now a Unitarian-Universalist, Harris-Perry has argued for tolerance toward the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.   And responding on a website for a Mothers Day Special in (it appears) 2012, she wrote

My mother is the fourth of five children born into a working class family at the end of WWII. She is descended from Mormon pioneers who pushed handcarts across the American west. A white woman in a Mormon family, my mom was raised in the racially homogenous enclave of Spokane, Washington and in 1960 went off to college at Brigham Young University. People are typically incredulous when I share this part of my mother’s biography. After all, if they know me as an outspoken, progressive, feminist, black woman, it might be hard to believe that I am the daughter of someone with these beginnings.

But my mother, Diana Gray, possesses an unmatched commitment to fairness, an unflagging belief in hard work, and more than a casual relationship with profound personal transformations.

Mom left the Mormon Church after a failed first marriage left her a single mother and sole breadwinner. Mom moved to a city, enrolled in graduate school in sociology, and eventually met and fell in love with my dad, a black man who grew up in Jim Crow Virginia. 

None of this should bear on the criticism of opportunists such as Priebus or Palin. The latter, apparently reveling in her role as a gadfly, less than two months ago had remarked

Our free stuff today is being paid for today by taking money from our children and borrowing from China. When that money comes due and, this isn’t racist, so try it, try it anyway, this isn’t racist, but it’s going to be like slavery when that note is due. Right? We are going to be beholden to a foreign master.

Persons who equate the relationship of the United States to mainland China with slavery ought not be terribly critical about mere bad taste and failed attempt at humor.  Something about glass houses, as they used to say.




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Still Not Reading


If Katie Couric never contributes anything further to good journalism (she hasn't, and she won't), she deserves credit for helping to expose Sarah Palin.  In September, 2008, she had the following exchange with the would-be vice-president:

Couric: And when it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?

Palin: I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media. 

Couric: What, specifically?

Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years. 

Couric: Can you name a few? 

Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too. Alaska isn't a foreign country, where it's kind of suggested, "Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?" Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

"Why, of course she reads newspapers!" we heard from the right, except when we heard "who reads newspapers anymore, anyway?"

But Palin was stung by the criticism she received for inadvertently acknowledging she was ill-informed.  And two years after she and Senator McCain were rejected for higher office, she boasted she does like to pick up a dead tree scroll.   After being criticized by a Wall Street Journal reporter, she pointed to a different WSJ article which allegedly buttressed her viewpoint.   She crowed on Facebook "Now I realize I'm just a former governor and current housewife from Alaska, but even humble folks like me can read the newspaper. I'm surprised a prestigious reporter for The Wall Street Journal doesn't."

Except that it now appears that she doesn't read newspapers either or, rather, relevant magazine articles of social significance.   On December 18, she would write on her Facebook page "Free speech is an endangered species. Those “intolerants” hatin’ and taking on the Duck Dynasty patriarch for voicing his personal opinion are taking on all of us" (comment from The Young Turks, below).  ButfFive days later, questioned by GOP TV's Greta Van Susteren, Palin would admit “I haven’t read the article. I don’t know exactly how he said it."

Sure, the ex-governor jumped to conclusions when she impulsively defended Phil Robertson and chastised his critics.  But she would have gotten away with it if she simply had taken fifteen minutes out of her publicity-crazed schedule to read the interview.

But then Sarah Palin wouldn't have been Sarah Palin. Still, she would have been the pol who was tapped five years ago by John McCain to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, a position in which she could have explained that she would have bombed Iran even if she had first read the briefing papers.

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It Must Be Government's Fault


Attempting, in a conservative vein, to be realistic, Bill O'Reilly suggests Phil Robertson at least made a tactical error.   Chatting with fellow rightie Laura Ingraham, O'Reilly asks "Do you think Robertson made a mistake in the condemnation line? See, that's where I think he made his mistake. Right up to there, he was OK. But once he went in and said you are not going to heaven."

O' Reilly at least was connected, however tenuously, to reality, as contrasted with Ingraham, who imagined "They want him to shut up. It's the new blacklist. If you don't submit to their worldview, they will try to destroy you."  Similarly, Mike Huckabee told Fox News' Chris Wallace that comments made by Robertson comparing homosexuality to bestiality are "more appropriate for the duck woods than the pages of a major magazine."

As everyone presumably knows now, they were referring to the patriarch of the Robertson clan of A&E's now-famous Duck Dynasty, who in arguably his most controversial comment to a GQ interviewer maintained

It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.

But if Laura and Bill and (of course) Sarah Palin are worried that A&E will cancel Duck Dynasty or Phil Robertson, they have little to worry about. The statement from the cable network stated it "has placed Phil under hiatus from filming indefinitely" but

Despite the suspension, A&E still has several hours of "Duck Dynasty” programming over the next week. For Thursday night, there is three hours of shows the network is airing. On Sunday Dec. 22, A&E will be airing the popular show from 5 p.m. until 4 a.m. the next morning. On Monday Dec. 23, episodes will air from 7 p.m. until 4 a.m. the next morning. On Christmas Eve, “Duck Dynasty” will be aired from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m. And on Christmas Day, A&E will air “Duck Dynasty” episodes from 3:30 p.m. until 4 a.m. the next morning. All times are Eastern.

The next day, Entertainment Weekly reported

A source close to the situation confirmed that when the network resumes airing new episodes of Duck Dynasty starting Jan. 15, footage featuring the Robertson patriarch will indeed remain intact. The network also hopes the media and fan furor will cool down over the holidays and that tensions over shooting future episodes can then be resolved.

“There’s no negotiation to have; we’re doing the show,” said an insider close to the situation. “We’ll figure out a solution. It’s just not going to happen overnight. Everybody will take a break for the holidays and regroup afterward. That’s probably the smartest thing for everyone to do. Time heals a lot of wounds.”

Duck Dynasty is a big hit with the network's audience, a big money maker, and we wouldn't want to (cliche for everyone over the age of 50) kill the goose that laid the golden egg.   It seems a fairly simple concept to understand- corporation cares little about politics but only the bottom line, and will maintain the status quo until and unless it fears an insurrection by advertisers.

But it is a concept conservatives apparently find difficult to grasp. On her Facebook page (on which the photo below appears), Sarah Palin writes "free speech is an endangered species. Those “intolerants” hatin’ and taking on the Duck Dynasty patriarch for voicing his personal opinion are taking on all of us."   PJ Media culture critic Andrew Klavan argues "But the rest of you liberals…  listen, I know you.  I know a lot of you are against the kind of oppressive and bigoted activity that is becoming more and more emblematic of leftist thought and action. But there comes a point where if you’re not against them, you’re for them."   And the openly gay libertarian Camille Paglia (to whom Klavan approvingly links) likens disapproval of Robertson's remarks to "the level of punitive PC, utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist, OK, that my liberal colleagues in the Democratic party and on college campuses have supported and promoted over the last several decades." Seriously.

Besides arguably inflammatory statements about gay people, Robertson also commented on black people in a fashion which would make Rand Paul's heart skip a beat.  But beyond Robertson's views of homosexuality or race relations or the misunderstanding of whether an employer can suspend an employee for remarks it finds inimical to its business model lies a more pervasive problem..

It is a myth which on his Fox News' program cleverly titled Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor avoided propagating. Recognizing the network as responsible for its actions, he notes reality television

has given us such high brow viewing as Jersey Shore, Temptation Island and Cheaters. It's okay for shows to glorify adultery, binge drinking, teen sex and serial promiscuity, but if someone on a reality show should actually reflect the reality of his Christian faith, then God better help him, because the network won't.

So just who do the suits at A&E think those millions were who watch Duck Dynasty? Muslims aren't criticized, ostracized or banned from the public square, and their views are far more harsh and intolerant of homosexuality.

Still, the dominant theme in the conservative community is to blame the public, rather than, the private, sector. Steve M. argues Paglia "is one more person who thinks A&E is a branch of the government."  First Amendment protections against abridgment of free speech apply only to government and not to the private sector, most notably in its role as an employer. As Digby puts it, "corporations and other employers can fire you for looking at them sideways much less expressing views they think will offend their customers."   A&E feared a backlash from its sponsors and acted in what the network perceived to be its pecuniary interest.

Still, once a company slaps down an employee for talking out of turn, much of the right turns on government as if the employer has suddenly become a government agency.

It's an easy target.  Republican President Ronald Reagan said "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."  Anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist famously vowed "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."  And in a more limited slam, responding to criticism of the rollout of health care reform, President Obama claimed "You know, one of the lessons -- learned from this whole process on the website -- is that probably the biggest gap between the private sector and the federal government is when it comes to I.T. " He would rather blame himself than business.

For better or worse, there is no first amendment right for an employer to honor an employee's views about ethnic or sexual minorities.  Equally certain is that when controversy arises, politicians and pundits alike instinctively know who to blame.

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