Eideard

Sarah Palin believed that the Queen rather than the prime minister was responsible for the decision to keep British forces in Iraq, according to research done for a new film chronicling her brief political rise.

The former Alaska governor reportedly made the comment during the 2008 presidential campaign as aides to John McCain, the Republican candidate, scrambled to bring his surprise-pick running mate up to speed on foreign affairs.

Her confusion emerged during a coaching session with Steve Schmidt, a top McCain adviser, who asked Mrs Palin what she would do if Britain began to waver in its commitment to the Iraq war.

In one of the many rambling responses that steadily eroded her credibility during the campaign, Mrs Palin reportedly replied that she would “continue to have an open dialogue” with the Queen…

The incident was revealed during research for Game Change, an HBO ‘docu-drama’ based on a book about the 2008 campaign by two leading American journalists.

While the film is a dramatisation – with the Oscar-nominated actress Julianne Moore playing Mrs Palin – its producers conducted dozens of research interviews and Mr Schmidt confirmed its accuracy in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

The incident can be added to a long list of policy gaffes made by Mrs Palin during her three months as the Republican vice-presidential candidate…

Game Change describes panicked cramming sessions during the campaign, with aides beginning their history tutorial with the Spanish Civil War and carrying through to post-9/11 era.

Mrs Palin was initially enthusiastic, making notes on hundreds of coloured flash cards, but became increasingly sullen and was described by tutors as going into a “catatonic stupor“.

Perhaps a catatonic stupor might be less embarrassing to the Republican Party than the confidently 19th Century noises brayed by the current herd of presidential candidates?

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Sarah Palin has written to Alaska Airlines, her favourite carrier, to complain about a decision to end its decades old practice of giving passengers prayer cards during flights.

Since the 1970s the airline has included cards bearing phrases from the Book of Psalms with its in-flight meals. The cards were intended to put people at ease during their journey. After a rising number of complaints the company said it would be abandoning the tradition from next month…

Mrs Palin, the former [part-time] governor of Alaska and Republican vice-presidential candidate, as well as a frequent flier with Alaska Airlines, said it “provides superb service” but called the decision “nonsensical.” She said it was the latest example of how it had become “hip to wage war on American traditions lately.”

Alaska Airlines is America’s seventh largest carrier with 16.5 million passengers per year. The prayer cards included quotes such as “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good. His love endures forever.”

An airline spokesman said: “Over the years, we’ve received comments from customers who were comforted by the cards, but many others felt religion was not appropriate on an airplane and preferred not to receive one.”

Palin and her phlock of phundamentalist phrasemongers fall back on “political correctness” as the main criticism of the airline’s decision. How support for a secular flight is PC is beyond understanding – though American politics proves over and over that nutballs have little need for logic.

The funniest part is that political correctness traces its birth back to the dark days of rightwing bigotry truly controlling American media. It was during the McCarthy era that we acquired “In God We Trust” on our currency, the War Department became the Department of Defense, the pledge to the flag of the United States became One Nation Under God. None of that crap was mandated by law before the Republican from Wisconsin demanded them of Congress.

Crisis averted. Partial-term Gov. Sarah Palin — who was maybe not going to show up at a Tea Party event this weekend because a certain suddenly-unpopular abstinence witch might end up standing too close to her — has agreed to show up at the event that she at which had previously agreed to show up…

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is set to appear at a tea party rally in Iowa Saturday, a source close to Palin told CNN.

O’Donnell was, for the second time in 48 hours, removed from the program Wednesday afternoon. Ken Crow, one of the rally organizers, told the Des Moines Register that he dis-invited O’Donnell at the Palin camp’s request.

You see? That wasn’t that hard was it? All they had to do was make sure that Christine O’Donnell not get any of her stink of failure anywhere near Sarah Palin’s hair, and everything was sorted out fine…

An aide to O’Donnell disputed that people close to her mischaracterized her relationship with Palin to the Iowa rally organizers and asserted they did not lie about the extent of conversations between the two late Wednesday.

It doesn’t really matter who’s lying does it?

Like, we have two loonies trying to appeal to a crowd of nutballs so they can rake in sufficient geedus to keep them in the lap of luxury and never ever accidentally have to work for a living, eh?

America is beginning the process of electing another Texan to be president. Gigantic tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, a trumped up war and a ruined economy from the last Texan seem incapable of dissuading supporters of Rick Perry.

His Saturday speech in South Carolina will make clear that he is entering the race for the White House and will spawn the ugliest and most expensive presidential race in U.S. history, and he will win. A C and D student, who hates to govern, loves to campaign, and barely has a sixth grader’s understanding of economics, will lead our nation into oblivion…

The big brains gathered east of the Hudson and Potomac Rivers believe that Mitt Romney is the candidate to beat. But they are unable to hear what Rick Perry is saying. The Christian prayer rally in Houston was a very loud proclamation to fundamentalists and Teavangelicals, which said, “I am not a Mormon…”

Michele Bachmann, who is from Iowa, and is Perry in Prada, has the same appeal among Teavangelicals. Her husband’s reparative gay therapy sessions, the Newsweek cover and a few speeches that were not reality based will, eventually, make even the GOP primary voters realize she is bound for the desert and not the Promised Land.

Romney and Bachmann are the only serious impediments to the Perry nomination…Because presidential politics tend to be more visceral than intellectual, Perry’s coyote-killer good looks, $2,000 hand-tooled cowboy boots, supernova smile and Armani suits, combined with podium skills to embellish the mythology of Texas, all will create a product Americans will want to believe and buy.

After he wins the nomination, protocol will require Perry to have discussions with Bachmann about the vice presidential slot, but he will, eventually, turn to Sarah Palin. The general election will force the Texan back toward the middle and he will stop talking about faith and abortion and gay marriage; Perry will campaign on jobs and the economy. Palin, who is loved by the tea party as much as Perry, will keep the Teavangelicals animated while he tries to talk to the adults to win the election on a single issue: the economy, stupiderest!!!

When the cold rains fall in early November next year, unemployed voters in places like Ohio will step into the booth and dream of a minimum wage job in the Texas sun selling fishing rods at big box sporting goods stores or working in call centers; they will vote against Barack Obama.

And in the process, they will write the epitaph to set upon the tombstone of history’s greatest democracy: Perry-Palin, 2012.

James Moore is a Texas-based Emmy award-winning former national TV news correspondent and co-author of the best-seller, “Bush’s Brain.” He’s witty and way too subtle for Kool Aid Party hacks.

 
Transcription: “He who warned, uh, the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms uh by ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed.”

Here’s the real deal:

Thanks, McCullough

Prominent Republican Sarah Palin defended her fiery rhetoric on Wednesday but ignited a fresh controversy by accusing critics of “blood libel” in linking her to a deadly Arizona shooting spree.

A defiant Palin, leaping into a roaring debate on the consequences of overheated political rhetoric, said her critics had been irresponsible in rushing to blame Saturday’s gun rampage on vitriolic campaign speech.

“Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn,” Palin, a potential 2012 White House contender, said in a video posted to her Facebook page.

Palin’s reference to “blood libel,” a false, centuries-old allegation that Jews were killing children to use their blood in religious rituals, launched a new round of criticism of Palin’s rhetoric.

“We wish that Palin had used another phrase, instead of one so fraught with pain in Jewish history,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

The accusation of “blood libel” has been employed for centuries to justify the killing or expulsion of Jews. The phrase had been used by other conservative commentators, including a Wall Street Journal column, since the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who is Jewish.

“Perhaps Palin honestly does not know what a blood libel is, or does not know of their horrific history — that is perhaps the most charitable explanation we can arrive at,” said David Harris, president of the National Jewish Democratic Council…

“Palin’s invocation of a ‘blood libel’ charge against her perceived enemies is hardly a step in the right direction,” Harris said.

This blivet has been criticized not only by the Left, but moderate and conservative political voices for her butt-kissing of gun-nuts and redneck posses ever since she ventured into the not-so-civilized world of politics. She not only gives Alaska, the Republican Party and fiscal conservatives a bad name, her upbringing in the bosom of truly nutball fundamentalist religious sects makes just another bigoted remark like this a natural for her.

When do we get to see a self-produced video of her speaking in tongues the revealed word of Yaweh? While clutching a copy of the Protocols of Zion?

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot at a Tucson event Saturday morning; five others have been reportedly killed.

Arizona state Sen. Linda Lopez, who is at University Medical Center in Tucson, said she spoke to Giffords’ parents and that they said she is in the emergency room undergoing surgery and is in very serious condition…

At least four people are dead, University Medical Center spokesman Darci Slaten said. They were among five to seven people who were being treated.

The NBC affilliate in Tucson reports that the FBI has taken over the investigation…

Giffords, 40, a Democrat, serves the 8th Congressional District…

Giffords was re-elected to her third term last November. She was a member of the Arizona House and Senate before coming to Washington.

She first won election to Congress amid a wave of Democratic victories in 2006. In November, she edged a tea party favorite.

There never is a shortage of violent, ignorant thugs in this land who fervently believe they can enforce their political will upon the land by force of arms, assault and murder.

UPDATE: Jared Laughner is the name of the shooter, an Arizona resident.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

France’s ex-justice minister Rachida Dati mixed up the words “fellatio” and “inflation” – which sound similar in French – during a TV interview.

She told Canal Plus: “I see some [foreign investment funds] looking for returns of 20 or 25% at a time when fellatio is close to zero.”

Within hours, the video was an internet hit on websites such as YouTube.

Ms Dati, now a Euro MP, later laughed off the whole episode saying she had spoken too quickly…

The French word for fellatio is “fellation”, which sounds similar to the word “inflation”.

Ms Dati left the government last year amid criticism of her management style, and gossip about her clothes and love life.

She is now an MEP and serves as mayor of Paris’s seventh arrondissement.

At least she sees the humor of mispronouncing a word – and doesn’t try to pass it off as a neologism.

The American rightwing still has the market cornered on infallible.

Holy Roddy McDowall. Christine O’Donnell doesn’t understand why monkeys can’t turn into people right before her eyes.

Bill Maher continued his video torment of O’Donnell by releasing another old clip of her on his HBO show on Friday night, this time showing one in which she argued that “Evolution is a myth.”

Maher shot back, “Have you ever looked at a monkey?” To which O’Donnell rebutted, “Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?”

The comedian has a soft spot for the sweet-faced Republican Senate candidate from Delaware, but as he told me on Friday, it’s “powerful stupid to think primate evolution could happen fast enough to observe it. That’s bacteria…

In the Republican primary, O’Donnell beat Congressman Mike Castle, who had the temerity to support stem-cell research and acknowledge global warming. O’Donnell’s numbers are dropping, while Castle is still beating the Democratic candidate, Chris Coons, by almost 20 points in a theoretical matchup.

In 2007, O’Donnell frantically warned Bill O’Reilly, “American scientific companies are crossbreeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains…”

Dr. Irving Weissman, director of Stanford’s Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, did the first experiments injecting human brain-forming stem cells into the brains of immune-deficient mice 10 years ago…

Dr. Weissman is sensitive to ethical questions and has tried to ensure that “the nightmare scenario” won’t happen: putting embryonic stem cells into mice at the earliest stages, which could give rise to every tissue in the body including human sperm and eggs, which could lead to two mice mating and the early formation of human fetuses in the body of a mouse.

He is working toward breakthroughs on multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, spinal cord injuries, strokes, breast cancer and a host of other diseases, and is worried by the retrogressive attitude about science and medicine among the new crop of Tea Partiers…

Dr. Weissman said, “The question they should be asked is, if it were their child or wife or selves or parents and there was this whole list of diseases treated by stem cells, would they deny these therapies?”

RTFA. Lots of details about individual Congressional races, individuals so concerned with ideology they refuse to face their world-class ignorance. Though, as usual, we have to face the concern that our whole electorate is focused wholly on the very slowly-growing economic rebound. Even that reflects our nation’s collective ignorance of history, previous battles through recession and rightwingers who could care less.

The Census, the official population count carried out by the UK Government, is to be scrapped after more than 200 years…

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said the Census, which takes place every 10 years, was an expensive and inaccurate way of measuring the number of people in Britain.

Instead, the Government is examining different and cheaper ways to count the population more regularly, using existing public and private databases, including credit reference agencies.

It will represent a historic shift in the way that information about the nation’s population, religion and social habits is gathered.

The suggestion is likely to be approved by Cabinet next week. It will be too late to prevent the next Census on March 27, 2011 from going ahead, although Mr Maude said he was looking at ways of reducing the £482million cost.

Britain has carried out a Census every decade since 1801, with the exception of 1941 during the Second World War.

It is the only time that everybody in the country is counted, and is used by the Government to determine spending priorities and track population movements.

Mr Maude, who has responsibility for the Census, told The Daily Telegraph that the Government was looking for a “fundamentally” better way of doing it. “There are, I believe, ways of doing this which will provide better, quicker information, more frequently and cheaper,” he said.

“Cheaper” being the operative word. Cost is always a higher priority than accuracy or usefulness for beancounters and Tories.

Next year, they plan on replacing the Queen with Sarah Palin. She’ll work for less and say funnier things about working people.