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Not now, honey, Mommy's pretending to care about you
Sarah Palin, mother of special needs child:
"I was shocked to learn of the comment made by President Obama about Special Olympics," Governor Palin said. "This was a degrading remark about our world's most precious and unique people, coming from the most powerful position in the world."These athletes overcome more challenges, discrimination and adversity than most of us ever will. By the way, these athletes can outperform many of us and we should be proud of them. I hope President Obama's comments do not reflect how he truly feels about the special needs community."
Sarah Palin, lunatic right-wing governor of Alaska desperate for brownie points for a 2012 nomination:
Gov. Sarah Palin is refusing to accept over 30 percent of the federal economic stimulus money being offered to Alaska, including dollars for schools, energy assistance and social services......The biggest single chunk of money that Palin is turning down is about $170 million for education, including money that would go for programs to help economically disadvantaged and special needs students.
Thank god we have great people like Sarah Palin to heroically defend the special needs community against bad jokes.
Circle jerks, pt. 2
Good god. There are volumes- encyclopedias worth- of words devoted to pointless non-subjects spilled onto right-wing weblogs over the last few years, but I cannot for the life of me recall another moment where so many bloggers were so pathetically open about how angry they were to not be part of an imaginary private club they invented to be angry about not being part of.
Hyperbole in the modern digital era has rendered moot any chance of this statement being perceived as legitmate, but Jesus Christ, you have no idea how sorry I feel for these people right now.
Circle jerks
It's fascinating watching right-wing bloggers fall over themselves trying to find posturing, self-gratifying ways to vent their jealousy over the ability for a couple of progressive bloggers and writers to manage to get together over e-mail and talk about... get this... writing and blogging about politics.
Ezra Klein, who I know and met more than a few times when I lived in DC, is a very smart and connected political writer. For him not to be exchanging ideas and opinions with others in his profession would astound me. For Christ's sakes, I'm an amateur political cartoonist and I exchange e-mails with people in my profession on a private mailing list. If this concept is actually amazing to you, please consult the history of the internet circa before the internet was even called the internet.
The reality of this is, ironically, that once again The Politico, the reigning queen of everything that symbolizes internalism in Washington, dolled up a story about a mailing list to get Matt Drudge to once again hype that up even further for link traffic. As a result, hundreds of right-wing bloggers who follow Drudge's talking points proceeded to gnash and wail about... the perception that liberals distribute talking points. It's a mystery, wrapped in an irony, festered in a conundrum, surrounded by idiots.
DC internalsim magnifies a reality that these right-wing bloggers are more than happy to prove: it really pisses them off when their irrelevance is validated. The idea that successful liberals are working on their ideas privately and without their interference annoys them to no end because it reminds them that for all their posturing, they're not on the inside. For a bunch of guys who hate David Schuster, RedState seems really, really passionate about David Schuster knowing who they are.
"Post partisan"
Look, I understand Barack Obama wants to "work with Republicans." At the beginning, it was an admirable stance. Of course, we've learned very quickly that Republicans have no intention of working with Obama at all, and in retrospect it was kind of stupid to even think otherwise.
But apparently Obama now has to deal with this "partisanship" stuff on both fronts: he's obligated to act concilatory to Republicans, while at the same time the Washington Post and other DC-based media insist that he's being overly partisan. Meanwhile, Bush probably tried to outlaw being a Democrat in a few signing statements and no one raised an eyebrow. Sigh.