Sarah Palin delivers incoherent speech at Iowa Freedom Summit

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 5 Comments

At some point on Saturday, the snake that operates Sarah Palin fell in love with a licorice whip and ran away, leaving her host body to deliver a half-hour nonsense speech at the Iowa Freedom summit. Lest you think I am indulging a liberal trope, I want to make it clear that this was not the usual folksy assault on syntax. It was bona fide word salad. I quote from the 26-minute mark:

Things like that: it must change. Things must change for our government. Look at it. It isn’t too big to fail. It’s too big to succeed. It’s too big to succeed, so we can afford no retreads, or nothing will change. With the same people and same policies that got us into the status quo—another that word, status quo, and it stands for man, the middle-class everyday Americans are really getting taken for a ride. That’s status quo. And GOP leaders, by the way—you know, the man can only ride you when your back is bent.

That’s 23 seconds of a speech that lasted a half hour. I urge you to watch as much of the video as you can tolerate, if only for the reaction shots. That is as publicly surly as Iowans get.

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Friday links! Sounds of sodomy edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links, Uncategorized 0 Comment
A tractor pulls a pickup truck out of the mud.

A tractor pulls a pickup truck out of the mud.

Should children be exposed to the sounds of sodomy? That’s the (presumably rhetorical) question that an Irish anti-gay group asks in this pamphlet urging voters to oppose adoption for homosexual couples. Won’t somebody please think of the children while he’s railing hot twinks? And sure, people have a right to do things that we find unpleasant, but we shouldn’t have to confront any evidence of it. Today is Friday, and one man’s hot action is another’s clarion call. Won’t you try something a little different with me?

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Only public opinion or John Boehner can save us now

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 0 Comment
Tea Party protesters distill their platform to its core message.

Tea Party protesters distill their platform to its core message.

Yesterday, we quoted Rep. Steve King (R–IA) in his confidence that “the American people will weigh in” as the government shutdown continues. The public opinion train is pulling into the station now, and it’s loaded with unrendered hog fat for the hopeful children of Republicantown. First of all, Republicantown is Atlanta. Second, the collected pundits of these United States seem to agree that what conservatives in the house are doing is awful, and the President should not give in to their demands. Andrew Sullivan, himself a card-carrying conservative, considers it an attack on American government itself. But that’s typical liberal media bias. Over at Forbes, whose pro-wealth stance makes it a natural ally of the GOP, House Republicans are merely dumb.

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“I was elected in 2010. I feel Obamacare is shutting down America.”

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 0 Comment
Rep. Jeff Duncan (R–SC)

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R–SC)

The quote above comes from this New York Times article, in which conservative and then mainstream Republicans explain their attitudes toward the ongoing government shutdown. Interestingly, where they stand tends to correlate with how long they’ve been in office. Of the representatives quoted who supported tying a continuing resolution to defunding Obamacare, Steve King (R–IA) is the most senior, having assumed office in 2003. The next most experienced Reps in favor of shutdown were elected in 2010. It’s possible that means they haven’t been so long exposed to the corrosive effects of Washington party politics, so they’ve stayed true to their conservative principles. It’s also possible that they don’t know what they’re doing, and their confidence is a product of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

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Oh boy

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 6 Comments
Sleep, you awful giant.

Sleep, you awful giant.

If Congress does not pass a stopgap funding bill today, the federal government will shut down at midnight tonight. Conventional wisdom says that will probably happen. Once Ted Cruz (R–TX) finally stopped talking, the Senate rejected a House bill that funded the government but also defunded Obamacare, returning instead a “clean” continuing resolution with no Obamacare amendments. Beaten but unbowed, the House plans to pass another funding bill that keeps the government open but repeals the medical device tax and delays implementation of Obamacare for one year. The Senate will not pass that. As of this writing, it looks like the federal government will shut down.

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