Palin steps down as Governor of Alaska

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

You have to be specific as to what claims you are disputing. "Claims like that" is vague.

Ted,

I quoted your words. That is pretty specific. Did you read them?

Are you telling me that Allende, elected with 31% of the vote, put in office with a pledge to respect the people's rights, who then nationalized the banks, the copper industry, and all land over 80 acres, and who was denounced by the congress and the supreme court was legitimate and maintaining a free society?

No.

Do you have a reading problem?

What dictator is on my side?

Pinochet.

You essentially said all the evil he did was the fault of communists. ("Whatever Pinochet's culpability"... gimmee a break!) You gave him a pass.

He's your dictator. Not mine.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

It seems there are still a few Objectivists who are not under Palin's spell, in view of posts by Laure Chipman and good old Bill Dwyer on RoR.

[jeffrey smith]

Matus--

A man who murders murderers is still a murderer. See under Dexter.

A man who kills another unjustly is a murderer.

No, he is not.

Murder. The unlawful killing of a human being by another with malice aforethought. (Black's Law Dictionary, fifth edition)

Unjustly means something entirely different from unlawfully.

Were these killings justified? In some cases, possibly, but without a public trial with due process we will never know. Were these killing necessary? Almost certainly not. Trial and conviction, with punishment as set by the criminal law of Chile, for crimes committed would have served the ends of justice just as well. Were they lawful? Certainly not: no court, even in secret session, passed sentence on these people.

Be it also noted that much of what the Pinochet regime was not really in defense of freedom but rather in defense of their own political power.

And remember this: the fact that some men do evil does not justify doing evil to them.

Oh, and what of people who WERE communists and actively worked to destroy the government? I find it amazing that everyone assumes that every single person Pinochet persecuted or assaulted was in fact NOT a communist. Amazing!

Try them in open court for their crimes.

Your attitude is appalling similar to that Inquisitor during the suppression of the Cathars who instructed his soldiers "Kill them all; God will know His own". The fact that you are an atheist and therefore don't believe that "God will know His own" is, in this case, a trivial superficiality.

Edited July 14, 2009 by jeffrey smith

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

There's no "Palin spell."

There's a big honking lack of viable options.

Michael

[Michelle]

I should have learned my lesson when you were standing around campfires holding hands singing 'give peace a chance' flying the communist flag of North Vietnam while tens of millions of people were getting murdered and you kept right on patting your self on your own back congratulating yourself for being so morally pure.

Well, color me confused.

If you had said I was "similar to" those people, your post would still have been ridiculous, but at least it would have been comprehensible. You would have clearly been drawing a parallel to illustrate a point (however incorrect). The form of it would have been correct, at least.

But this... am I supposed to be insulted by an insinuation which has no basis in reality? Hell, I was born in the late eighties. I can assure you I did not exist when the Vietnam War was going down.

Please, if you're going to insult me, at least do it correctly.

And yes, that last sentence (what you're seemingly attempting to mock here) was warping what you said. That was deliberate. You've taken one judgment of mine, that Pinochet is evil for torturing and killing tens of thousands of his own citizens, and constructed a bizarre web of accusations against me: that I value peace in itself, that I divorce ends from means, that I am against war in general, etc. etc. I was hoping my own distortion would get you to reflect on your own thinking. It apparently did not. It was a failed bid on my part.

And I see you are still obsessing over the discussion in that last thread. On that point, my terminology was skewed there. If it is justified to kill a person, it is also a contextually good act. I had thought I'd cleared that up, but apparently I did not.

[BaalChatzaf]

Sarah Palin burst onto the political scene in Alaska in 2006, a self-described "hockey mom'' and small-town mayor who ousted the incumbent governor to become the youngest person and first woman to hold the post in a state whose government had been dominated by many of the same faces since its inception. She burst onto the national scene two years later, when Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, drafted her as his running mate on Aug. 29, 2008. During the fall campaign, she was easily the most polarizing figure on the trail, drawing huge, devoted Republican crowds, but deeply negative reactions from Democrats and many independents. After Barack Obama won the election, Ms. Palin returned to Alaska, where her return has been rocky, as both Democrats and Republicans say that the currents of state politics have been altered by what they believe to be her national aspirations.

Sarah Palin was the fantasy babe for elderly Republican White-guys. Think of it. Seeing Sarah of the Frozen North draw out a magnum revolver from a holster strapped about her long shapely thigh gave these Old Republicans (many of whom were cover boys for Erectile Dysfunction Monthly) the first wood they had in twenty years. Woo Hoo!

Ba'al Chatzaf

[DavidMcK]

Selene: In answer to your request for sourcing the Goldwater nuke position; Sorry it took so long to reply but I lost track of this topic with the changes and a lack of interest in Palin. The source I have is from Brian Doherty's 'Radicals for Capitalism': " And despite his (sophistic) declarations that he never, never, never called for a nuclear war against the Soviets, even the most charitable of readers would find it difficult to figure out whatever he might have meant in Conscience about the commies if he didn't mean that."

The footnote (#59 chapter 6) goes on to make numerous quotes from The Conscience Of a Conservative including: 'In addition to parrying [the Soviets'] blows, we must strike our own. In addition to guarding our frontiers, we must try to puncture his. In addition to keeping the free world free, we must try to make the Communist world free. To these ends, we must always try to engage the enemy at times and places, and with weapons, of our own choosing" and "We should make every effort to achieve decisive superiority in small, clean nuclear weapons".

Edited July 14, 2009 by DavidMcK

[Matus1976]

I should have learned my lesson when you were standing around campfires holding hands singing 'give peace a chance' flying the communist flag of North Vietnam while tens of millions of people were getting murdered and you kept right on patting your self on your own back congratulating yourself for being so morally pure.

Well, color me confused.

If you had said I was "similar to" those people, your post would still have been ridiculous, but at least it would have been comprehensible.

It's as ludicrious as your implication that I am some kind of ravenous wannabe mass murderer because I do not think Pinochet was the incarnation of all that is evil and that sometimes it's good to kill evil people.

And I see you are still obsessing over the discussion in that last thread. On that point, my terminology was skewed there. If it is justified to kill a person, it is also a contextually good act. I had thought I'd cleared that up, but apparently I did not.

"Obsessing" Why the derogatory qualitative assessment? Should I assert that you are a whim worshipping inconsistent transcendalistist who thinks from one moment to the next you have no consistent identity? Or are you just clasping at straws to insult me, as if deriding me for bringing up the conversation immediately prior to this one in which the morality of killing evil people was discussed is in anyway insulting in the first place, let alone 'obsessing' given it's directly related to this topic.

"If it is justified to kill a person, it is also a contextually good act"

Great, now we've made some progress. If it is just, and good, then can it be something you can feel pride for, or depending on that definition, at least having a positive emotional assessment of the act and reflecting on it?

Pinochet was no doubt a scumbag and cruel even if he was not the incarnate of all that was evil. I have no doubt a large portion of what he did was wrong and evil, but I also have no doubt that some of what he did was necessary and the state of Chile today, in contrast to the rest of South America, and the fact that he established a constitutional democracy and voluntarily stepped down, is a testament to that.

You've taken one judgment of mine, that Pinochet is evil for torturing and killing tens of thousands of his own citizens, and constructed a bizarre web of accusations against me: that I value peace in itself, that I divorce ends from means, that I am against war in general, etc. etc.

It was a combined implication from your comments here, and your comments in the thread that discussed the morality of killing, in which you said (and never contradicted until now) that it might be right to kill an evil person, but never good. In that case, even if Pinochet killed only evil people who deserved to be killed (which I think we can assume is not the case) you would *still* consider him at least not good, perhaps even evil.

[Michelle]

Should I assert that you are a whim worshipping inconsistent transcendalistist who thinks from one moment to the next you have no consistent identity?

Whim-worshipping inconsistent transcendentalist.

I like that.

Edited July 14, 2009 by Michelle R

[Matus1976]

Should I assert that you are a whim worshipping inconsistent transcendalistist who thinks from one moment to the next you have no consistent identity?

Whim-worshipping inconsistent transcendentalist.

I like that.

Sure, you like that NOW... but two seconds later, nope!

[Michelle]

Should I assert that you are a whim worshipping inconsistent transcendalistist who thinks from one moment to the next you have no consistent identity?

Whim-worshipping inconsistent transcendentalist.

I like that.

Sure, you like that NOW... but two seconds later, nope!

You can be a funny guy.

[Matus1976]

Matus--

A man who murders murderers is still a murderer. See under Dexter.

A man who kills another unjustly is a murderer.

No, he is not.

Murder. The unlawful killing of a human being by another with malice aforethought. (Black's Law Dictionary, fifth edition)

Unjustly means something entirely different from unlawfully.

I am well aware of the difference between justice and law, and I used the appropriate term. Murder is the unjust killing of another human, not the 'unlawful' one, because laws do not always coincide with justice and properly laws are an attempt to codify justice, but all to often they are tools of oppression and tyranny. Not everything that is illegal is unjust, and not everything that is just is legal. In Iran it is legal to stone young women to death because they were gang raped. This is murder, even though it is entirely lawful, it is wholly unjust. Pinochet's murder of many of those people may have well be 'legal' but that does not mean they are just.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Pinochet's murder of many of those people may have well be 'legal' but that does not mean they are just.

Michael,

"Pinochet's murder of many of those people" was not legal, unless you describe the government of a dictator immediately following a "coup d'etat" as legal.

I don't.

After the dust settles, maybe the concept of legal as we know it starts emerging, but legal has no meaning to me for a thug who just took over a country.

Can the family of the murdered people seek legal redress, especially during the early months? How? They'll get shot, too. There is no "legal" in that situation. There are only orders to follow on pain of imediate torture and/or death.

I have no idea how a goon squad's actions immediately following a "coup d'etat" can be considered as legal.

Michael

[Selene]

Matus--

A man who murders murderers is still a murderer. See under Dexter.

A man who kills another unjustly is a murderer.

No, he is not.

Murder. The unlawful killing of a human being by another with malice aforethought. (Black's Law Dictionary, fifth edition)

Unjustly means something entirely different from unlawfully.

I am well aware of the difference between justice and law, and I used the appropriate term. Murder is the unjust killing of another human, not the 'unlawful' one, because laws do not always coincide with justice and properly laws are an attempt to codify justice, but all to often they are tools of oppression and tyranny. Not everything that is illegal is unjust, and not everything that is just is legal. In Iran it is legal to stone young women to death because they were gang raped. This is murder, even though it is entirely lawful, it is wholly unjust. Pinochet's murder of many of those people may have well be 'legal' but that does not mean they are just.

Not so fast skippy!

"Murder is the unjust killing of a human..." Black's continues without punctuation, "...being by another with malice aforethought, either express or implied."

Therefore, killing of a human with a just aforethought would not be murder...yes.

Adam

[Matus1976]

Pinochet's murder of many of those people may have well be 'legal' but that does not mean they are just.

Michael,

"Pinochet's murder of many of those people" was not legal, unless you describe the government of a dictator immediately following a "coup d'etat" as legal.

I don't.

That's the point, since he now had totalitarian control, he could have made 'legal' to be anything he wanted it to be. I'm just using this to emphasize that 'legality' is not the standard to judge something as just or unjust.

[Michelle]

People who define morality in relation to their country's legal standards are subjecting philosophy to the whims of government officials. A country's legal system can respect and honor justice by institutionalizing it, or it can spit upon it by disregarding it. If murder is defined primarily as "illegal killing," then to speak of murder is not to speak of a legitimate concept as such, but is merely to speak of killing that the state does not approve of. The focus shifts from philosophy to power-relations. From reason and logical analysis to men with guns.

The laws of a country are only as legitimate as the philosophical ideas behind them.

Better not to use words with multiple meanings and emotional weight unless you're writing propaganda, though. Immoral killing and illegal killing are both appropriate stand-ins for the word, based upon the context (philosophy or law).

[Selene]

• AUGUST 14, 2009

Palin Wins

If she's dim and Obama is brilliant, how did he lose the argument to her?By JAMES TARANTO The first we heard about Sarah Palin's "death panels" comment was in a conversation last Friday with an acquaintance who was appalled by it. Our interlocutor is not a Democratic partisan but a high-minded centrist who deplores extremist rhetoric whatever the source. We don't even know if he has a position on ObamaCare. From his description, it sounded to us as though Palin really had gone too far.

A week later, it is clear that she has won the debate.

President Obama himself took the comments of the former governor of the 47th-largest state seriously enough to answer them directly in his so-called town-hall meeting Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H. As we noted Wednesday, he was callous rather than reassuring, speaking glibly--to audience laughter--about "pulling the plug on grandma."

The Los Angeles Times reports that Palin has won a legislative victory as well:

A Senate panel has decided to scrap the part of its health-care bill that in recent days has given rise to fears of government "death panels," with one lawmaker suggesting the proposal was just too confusing.

The Senate Finance Committee is taking the idea of advance care planning consultations with doctors off the table as it works to craft its version of health-care legislation, a Democratic committee aide said Thursday.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the committee, said the panel dropped the idea because it could be "misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly." . . .

The Palin claim about "death panels" was so widely discredited that the White House has begun openly quoting it in an effort to show that opponents of the healthcare overhaul are misinformed.

You have to love that last bit. The fearless, independent journalists of the Los Angeles Times justify their assertion that the Palin claim was "widely discredited" with an appeal to authority--the authority of the White House, which is to say, the other side in the debate. One suspects the breathtaking inadequacy of this argument would have been obvious to Times reporters Christi Parsons and Andrew Zajac if George W. Bush were still president. And of course this appears in a story about how the Senate was persuaded to act in accord with Palin's position--which doesn't prove that position right but does show that it is widely (though, to be sure, not universally) credited.

<h3 class="first">Podcast</h3> James Taranto on Palin and the "death panel" debate.

One can hardly deny that Palin's reference to "death panels" was inflammatory. But another way of putting that is that it was vivid and attention-getting. Level-headed liberal commentators who favor more government in health care, including Slate's Mickey Kaus and the Washington Post's Charles Lane, have argued that the end-of-life provision in the bill is problematic--acknowledging in effect (and, in Kaus's case, in so many words) that Palin had a point.

If you believe the media, Sarah Palin is a mediocre intellect, if even that, while President Obama is brilliant. So how did she manage to best him in this debate? Part of the explanation is that disdain for Palin reflects intellectual snobbery more than actual intellect. Still, Obama's critics, in contrast with Palin's, do not deny the president's intellectual aptitude. Intelligence, however, does not make one immune from hubris.

For a wonderful example of such hubris, check out this post from David Kurtz of TalkingPointsMemo.com:

Is there anything quite as unsettling as when the nation's political class (and I use that term broadly to encompass the occasionally political, like the tea partiers) turns its fleeting but intense focus to a new (for them) and complex topic, like end-of-life issues?

It seems like years of painstaking work to nudge our death-denying culture toward a more frank and humane approach to our own mortality and dying could be erased by one misguided national discussion set off by none other than Sarah Palin.

Except that Palin didn't "set off" this discussion; President Obama did by trying to ram through legislation postalizing the medical system with no time for debate or reflection. How to care for dying patients is a serious, sensitive and complicated matter, one with which American families struggle every day. If you truly don't want the "political class" involved, your quarrel is with the man who is pushing for more federal involvement in this most personal of matters. It's entirely understandable that people would respond to such an effort by shouting, "Keep your laws off my grandma!"

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My my...and another ethics charge was completely dismissed. She is just such a dummy - it is pure luck she keeps coming down on liberty's side and never on tyranny's side - stupid bitch!

Adan ;)

Edited August 14, 2009 by Selene

[Selene]

Barbara:

I thought you would "appreciate" the utter intellectual gutter that the reporter, the editor and ownership of the Grey Lady has crawled back into.

I just heard about a 16 year old young lady in Pennsylvania who was accepted to MIT and was the valedictorian of her high school class...

except that the School Board eliminated ranking students and eliminated the valedictorian and the second person (also has a title which escapes me) so as not to hurt the self esteem of the other students!

Adam

Reb...

I thought I remembered a thread on Palin stepping down as Governor.

[Selene]

Sarah Palin not under FBI investigation, agency spokesman says

By Josh Meyer

July 5, 2009

Los Angeles Times

From the article:

A day after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin resigned, a federal official in her home state dismissed one potential explanation for her sudden and unexpected resignation: a rumored FBI investigation into the former Wasilla mayor on public corruption charges.

Despite rumors of a looming controversy after the Republican governor's surprise announcement Friday that she would leave office this month, some of them published in the blogosphere, the FBI's Alaska spokesman said the bureau had no investigation into Palin for her activities as governor, as mayor or in any other capacity.

"There is absolutely no truth to those rumors that we're investigating her or getting ready to indict her," Special Agent Eric Gonzalez said in a phone interview Saturday. "It's just not true." He added that there was "no wiggle room" in his comments for any kind of inquiry.

There is only one thing to do with liars. Keep exposing the lies they spread.

People committed to the truth will see it and eventually start judging the liars as... er... liars.

btw - I have moved this to "Stumping in the Backyard" since that is what this thread is turning out to be.

Michael

Looking back we find that:

Stevens was convicted of seven felony counts of corruption weeks before the election, after being charged with hiding $250,000 in gifts he received from an oil company executive and friends. Still, the final election tally took weeks after the Nov. 4 vote to complete as the tight race forced all ballots to be counted.

The U.S. Justice Department filed a motion Wednesday to drop its case against Stevens, 85, after it was discovered FBI agents and prosecutors mishandled evidence and withheld it from Stevens' defense team. A hearing is scheduled for April 7 to determine whether the case will be dropped.

Holder said the totality of the case -- including Stevens' losing the election and his advanced age -- forced him to call for the dismissal. One Justice Department source called the stunning turnaround a "black eye" on the department and the FBI.

A...

[Selene]

Camille Paglia certainly looks at facts in an answer to a reader letter on July 8, 2009:

Dear Camille,

Just wondering. Do you still think Sarah Palin is ready for the big stage?

James L. Somers

Good question! And very timely after Palin's shock resignation as governor of Alaska this past Fourth of July weekend. I assume that family priorities -- personal as well as financial -- had become all-consuming. Given her success with finalizing the massive Alaska pipeline project, I think Palin should have stuck it out, but of course she is master of her own fate. What certainly was blameworthy was the chaotic and rushed statement itself. Something so politically consequential needed more careful composition and rehearsal. Why provide more fodder for the vultures and harpies of the Northeastern media?

Unfortunately, it's pretty obvious that Palin still lacks that cadre of trusted pros who are the invisible elves behind every successful national politician -- the assistants who gather and vet material and who filter proposals and plan logistics. In a way, this is part of her virtues -- her complete freedom from routine micromanagement and business as usual. She does her own thing with seat-of-the-pants gusto. It's why she remains hugely popular with the Republican grass-roots base -- as I know from listening to talk radio. Callers coming fresh from her rallies are always heady with infectious enthusiasm.

Of course you'd never know that from reading hit jobs like Todd Purdum's sepulchral piece on Palin in the current Vanity Fair. Scurrying around Alaska with his notepad, Purdum still managed to find comically little to indict her with. Anyone with a gripe is given the floor; fans are shut out. This exercise in faux objectivity is exposed at key points such as Purdum's failure to identify the actual instigator of Palin's extravagant clothing bills (a crazed, credit-card-abusing stylist appointed by the McCain campaign) and his prissy characterization of Palin's performance at the vice-presidential debate as merely "adequate." Hey, wake up -- Palin cleaned Biden's clock! By the end, Biden was sighing and itching to split.

Whether Palin has a national future or not will depend on her willingness to hit the books at some point and absorb more information about international history and politics than she has needed to know in her role as governor. She also needs a shrewder, cooler take on the mainstream media, with its preening bullies, cackling witches, twisted cynics and pompous windbags. The Northeastern media establishment is in decline, and everyone knows it. Palin should not have gotten into a slanging match with David Letterman or anyone else who has been obsessively defaming her or her family. Let surrogates do that stuff.

The vicious double standard is pretty obvious. Only the tabloids, for example, ran the photos of a piss-drunk Chelsea Clinton, panties exposed, falling into her car outside London clubs a few years ago. If Chelsea had been the scion of Republican bigwigs, those tacky scenes would have been trumpeted from pillar to post in the U.S. as signals of parental failures or turmoil in clan Clinton. As a Democrat, I detest the partisan machinations that have become standard in Northeastern news management and that are detectable in editorial decisions at major metropolitan newspapers nationwide. It's why I, like a host of others, have shifted my news gathering to the Web.

Does anyone think Camille Paglia is a dummy or a middle-class uninformed nitwit housewife?

Michael

Seems like there are still a few who think that Sarah and The Donald appeal to the rubes...