Sarah Palin Word Salad Watch

On Sean Hannity’s show yesterday, Sarah Palin uncorked a gloriously incoherent tirade against reporters who aren’t engorged and throbbing:

I hear there’s some pretty ugly stuff right now coming out and what we predict, we always see a pattern. We’ve got some victories under the belt. Things are, things are going well, and then, then there is that public slam of us. So, we always expect what’s coming. I don’t read some of it because I know that those that are impotent and limp and gutless, and then they go on, they’re anonymous, their sources that are anonymous, and impotent, limp and gutless reporters take anonymous sources and cite them as being factual references. You know, it just slays me because it’s so absolutely clear what the state of yellow journalism is today that they would take these anonymous sources as fact. So, when a story especially is filled with those and we know it’s bogus and we’re not going to read it.

Palin, Translated

If you can make neither heads nor tails out of @SarahPalinUSA‘s stream of consciousness Twitterspeak, follow @palinslation to find out what she’s saying in English. Sort of.

Alaska surprise: Another GOP incumbent goes down

Entrenched GOP incumbent Bob Bennett of Utah — ousted in May by a grass-roots revolt against big government Republicanism — has company. Voters have retired liberal GOP incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. She is reportedly conceding tonight to upstart Joe Miller. It’s a big win for the Tea Party — and Sarah Palin.

Stacy McCain is liveblogging in Anchorage.

Allahpundit has a big Hot Air round-up here.

The latest from Fox News:

In a major upset, Sen. Lisa Murkowski has conceded her GOP Senate primary race to Tea Party Express favorite Joe Miller, who had the backing of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

“I don’t see a scenario in which the primary will turn out in my favor,” Murkowski said in her concession speech.

Murkowski made the concession speech Tuesday night, a full week after the primary.

Murkowski trailed Miller, a Fairbanks attorney, by 1,668 votes after last week’s primary. Election officials began counting absentee and outstanding ballots Tuesday. Murkowski made slight gains, but was never able to get Miller’s lead below 1,200 votes.

And here’s the NYT:

Mr. Miller shocked the political establishment here and in Washington last week when he emerged with a narrow lead, 1,668 votes, after the primary vote, on Aug. 24.

Mr. Miller, who had trailed badly in local polls in the weeks before the election, benefited from a last-minute flood of advertisements, mailings and automated calls casting Ms. Murkowski as a Democrat in disguise. An abortion-related ballot measure also brought conservatives to the polls .

Ms. Murkowski’s concession followed the counting of about 16,000 additional ballots on Tuesday, which left Mr. Miller with a lead of about 1,469 votes out of about 103,000 cast. Several thousand more votes were to be counted on Friday but the trend suggested Ms. Murkowski would not gain enough ground to win.

Here’s to the growth of the liberal Republican retiree club!

What Happened to Beck’s ‘Plan’?

Will Bunch says it all with his headline: It takes Beck just 55 hours to start cashing in on ‘restoring honor’ to America.

Glenn Beck’s original “I Have a Scheme” idea for his Washington rally that he announced in late 2009 was clearly one that was highly focused on a goal of….making boatloads of money for Glenn Beck. The concept, Beck told a large crowd in the Fox-happy retirement community of The Villages, Fla., was that he would consult a bunch of experts and develop a “100-year plan for America.” Then, after luring a huge audience in person and on TV to watch him at the Lincoln Memorial on what he claims he then didn’t know was the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, he would roll out new product, a book called “The Plan” that would surely be the Beckian best-seller to end all Beckian best-sellers.

That didn’t happen. Weeks later, the king of all right-wing media pulled a complete 180 (hardly the first time). The rally would still be on the same day and the same place, but everything else would be completely different. The event would be completely non-political, not about policy prescriptions but “Restoring Honor,” with a goal of raising money not for a Beck book but for a four-star charity called the Special Operations Warrior Fund. And to some extent, that’s what unfolded Saturday. Beck used his bully pulpit to urge America to turn inward, toward God as a source of answers, and although most of his aggressive fundraising went toward the massive cost of the National Mall event, Beck claims that SOWF will also reap a large donation.

There is indeed no book called “The Plan” coming out this week.

Nope. Instead, Beck — basking in the wall-to-wall coverage on national TV and the front pages of America’s newspapers — is using that afterglow to roll out a completely different for-profit venture of Glenn Beck Inc., one that could greatly add to the showman’s $32 million windfall that he reaped last year. His plan to stop America from wandering in the darkness apparently involves you visiting his new website aimed at competing with the Daily Beasts and Huffington Posts of the world.

Palin: Babies – Guns – Jesus

Here’s another photo from the Glenn Beck Restoration Minstrel Show; the rally’s organizers banned signs, so the audience brought t-shirts.

Glenn Beck’s Miraculous Goose Fly-Over

Behold the miracle that was prophesied, as God reveals his plan to Glenn through a wonder never before witnessed by mortal man: a flock of geese.

And by “never before witnessed,” I mean “witnessed every freaking day.”

For Tim Blair, A Sincere Apology

Tim Blair is a funny person! Now he’s demanding an apology from me. What will he think next?

This time he dug up an LGF post from the presidential election, in which I quoted some excerpts from Barack Obama’s autobiography about his prejudice toward white people, earlier in his life. (As with Shirley Sherrod, it’s only part of the story, because Obama has clearly moved past those prejudices.)

In Blair’s dim bulb one-liner wingnut universe, quoting Barack Obama’s own stories about his youthful attitudes toward race is exactly the same as Glenn Beck’s accusation that Obama is “a racist with a deep seated hatred of white people or white culture.” For this transgression I must beg forgiveness from the world on bended knee.

Well, I do want to apologize today for making a huge mistake.

I’d like to express my sincere and utmost regret that I voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin, instead of Barack Obama.

If I could go back in time and reverse that vote, knowing what I know today, I would.

I’m sorry, Nation.

Religion = Politics at BeckFest 2010

The emerging media narrative on Glenn Beck’s rally is that it was a “religious” event, not a “political” event: Glenn Beck Leads Religious Rally at Lincoln Memorial.

But they’re completely missing the point. In this context, there’s no distinction between “religion” and “politics.” The extreme right wing religious views promoted by Beck, David Barton, and Sarah Palin are their politics.

BeckFest 2010 Crowd Size: 87,000

CBS News commissioned an estimate of the crowd size at today’s Glenn Beck Festival, and the results are in: Glenn Beck Rally Attracts Estimated 87,000.

An estimated 87,000 people attended a rally organized by talk-radio host and Fox News commentator Glenn Beck Saturday in Washington, according to a crowd estimate commissioned by CBS News.

The company AirPhotosLive.com based the attendance on aerial pictures it took over the rally, which stretched from in front of the Lincoln Memorial along the Reflecting Pool to the Washington Monument. Beck and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin spoke at the rally.

Beck, who predicted that at least 100,000 people would show up, opened his comments with a joke: “I have just gotten word from the media that there is over 1,000 people here today.”

AirPhotosLive.com gave its estimate a margin of error of 9,000, meaning between 78,000 and 96,000 people attended the rally. The photos used to make the estimate were taken at noon Saturday, which is when the company estimated was the rally’s high point.

Scenes from a Glenn Beck Festival

The Glenn Beck Hope Restoration Minstrel Show banned attendees from carrying signs, knowing from past Tea Party experience that a public relations disaster always ensues when the loons get creative with a piece of cardboard and a set of colored magic markers. And they were trying to appear non-political and super-ultra-tolerant on the anniversary of MLK’s “Dream” speech, so the signs had to go. (Also banned: guns, toy guns, and explosives.)

But a courageous few souls managed to resist this brazen censorship and smuggled signs past the Beck Gestapo. That’s how strongly they believed in their messages.

(Credit: Philip Cloutier.)

Here’s someone who isn’t buying Glenn Beck’s praise for Martin Luther King, Jr.

We also had a few neo-Confederate types who don’t seem to be the usual audience for an event invoking the name of Martin Luther King.

(Credit: Philip Cloutier.)

And here’s a counter-protester with a funny sign, and an anecdote from photographer Eric P.

“Go Back to Puerto Rico”

This guy was standing with a small group as the people exited the Smithsonian metro station to go to the rallies. One Glenn Beck rally-goer approached him and said “I’m not a racist, but you should go back to Puerto Rico“.

Naturally, having been born & raised in Puerto Rico, I found that comment’s ignorance both amusing and sad at the same time.

Glenn Beck in January: If the Truth Got Out About MLK, He Wouldn’t Be Celebrated

Today in Washington DC, Glenn Beck wept at least four times during a speech that shamelessly invoked Martin Luther King’s name over and over, with an air of exaggerated reverence and treacly sentimentality.

But earlier this year, on his own website, Beck had no qualms at all about labeling King as a “radical socialist,” and said if the truth got out about Dr. King, “he wouldn’t be as celebrated.”

Glenn Beck Tea Partiers Try to Coopt MLK, Fail Miserably As Expected

Today thousands of angry white people have descended on the National Mall on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, to whine about how they’re being persecuted and unfairly maligned, sponsored by a race-baiting lunatic Fox News host who promotes the ideology of the far right and the John Birch Society and has called President Obama “a racist with a deep-seated hatred of white culture.”

They’re broadcasting this bizarre inversion of reality on C-SPAN, where you can see that they’ve done their best to recruit as many black speakers and absolutely horrible black singers as they could, because that’s how they prove they’re not racist … at all!

Glenn Beck managed to fill the stage with black people, but when the cameras pan around the crowd, it’s an unbroken sea of white faces. And the crowd is nowhere near the 300,000 figure Beck was trumpeting in advance.

If Martin Luther King were alive today, these same people would be vilifying him as a communist and an evil progressive. The irony meter is off the scale on this parade of white victimhood.

Here’s a photo of one of Beck’s admirers; they banned signs from this rally, so he simply put his racist slogan on a t-shirt instead.

Will Bunch: Glenn Beck Rewrites Civil Rights History

Here’s an excellent article by Will Bunch on the dishonest historical revisionism being quite successfully pushed by Glenn Beck, with the help of a cottage industry of extreme right wing religious fanatics determined to recast American history as a white Christian fable: Glenn Beck rewrites civil rights history.

More recently, Beck has featured on Fox, at several well-attended “American Revivals” and on his web-based “university” a new right-hand man — David Barton, a key figure in the recent right-wing rewrite of Texas school textbooks — to teach his viewers the much-debunked idea that America’s creation was rooted in Christianity.

Barton’s machine-gun-paced spewing of 18th-century God references and black-robed revolutionary preachers gives less than short shrift to the real achievement of the Founders in separating church and state. In April, Barton told Beck’s 3 million TV viewers that “we use the Ten Commandments as basis of civil law and the Western world [and it] has been for 2,000 years.”

The results of this re-education campaign have been nothing short of phenomenal. A mere on-air endorsement by Beck of any obscure book — such as “Sacred Fire,” on the spirituality of George Washington — will propel it to the best-seller list. Now, thousands of fans have signed up for a paid “insider” package that includes an online Glenn Beck University with lectures by Barton and others.

But pseudo-history is having a real impact on current events. In Texas, the new school curriculum downgrades democracy-minded Thomas Jefferson as well as 1960s civil rights. In the political arena, some activists are pushing to repeal the 17th Amendment that allows people to elect U.S. senators directly — largely because the measure was enacted during Wilson’s progressive era.

While all these histories are too important to lose to revisionism, none represents more of a risk than the civil rights era. In 1963, King understood that his dream of equal rights for black Americans would never happen without intervention from the federal government, a concept that’s such an anathema to the Tea Partiers, the Beck-sponsored 9/12 movement and the other right-wing radicals who’ll occupy the Mall this Saturday.

Read the whole thing.

Also see:
Glenn Beck Promotes Theocracy and Interviews David Barton – Speaker at Neo-Nazi Rallies.

Conservatives Waking Up to Global Warming?

There are signs that some right wing climate change deniers are finally waking up.

Science editor of the Daily Mail, Michael Hanlon, announced last week that he is changing his stance on global warming due to recent events in Greenland and his trip to this country (which he now refers to as “Global Warming Ground Zero”). Hanlon wrote: “I have long been something of a climate-change sceptic, but my views in recent years have shifted. For me, the most convincing evidence that something worrying is going on lies right here in the Arctic” (emphasis added). Joss Garman of Left Foot Forward said Hanlon “could previously be seen as the UK’s most influential ‘sceptic’” and has a good story on this and other recent changes in conservative media as concerns global warming.

And, on the other side of the Atlantic, a little over a week ago, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers made a breakthrough statement on one key issue of global warming, finally admitting that global warming IS caused (at least partly) by humans. Covering this story in more depth, Brad Johnson of The Wonk Room wrote: “One of America’s most influential global warming skeptics, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers, has finally admitted that global warming is “caused by man.’”

Now, most recently, oil-funded Pat Michaels, “a scientist who now works for the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank that strongly opposes caps to carbon dioxide,” and who has promoted global warming denial for decades, has acknowledged that addressing global warming is an issue of “political acceptability.”

Tea Partiers Beware: Stay Away From the Green and Yellow Lines

A Tea Party website in Maine has some handy tips for those planning to attend Glenn Beck’s rally in Washington DC — specifically, how to avoid being mugged by those third world minority types who lurk on the Green and Yellow lines:

DC’s population includes refugees from every country, as the families of embassy staffs of third world countries tend to stay in DC whenever a revolution in their homeland means that anyone in their family would be in danger if they went back. Most taxi drivers and many waiters/waitresses (especially in local coffee shops like the Bread and Chocolate chain) are immigrants, frequently from east Africa or Arab countries. As a rule, African immigrants do not like for you to assume they are African Americans and especially do not like for you to guess they are from a neighboring country (e.g. Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia) with whom they may have political or military tensions. It’s rare to meet anyone who gets really offended, but you can still be aware of the issue.

Many parts of DC are safe beyond the areas I will list here, but why chance it if you don’t know where you are?

If you are on the subway stay on the Red line between Union Station and Shady Grove, Maryland. If you are on the Blue or Orange line do not go past Eastern Market (Capitol Hill) toward the Potomac Avenue stop and beyond; stay in NW DC and points in Virginia. Do not use the Green line or the Yellow line. These rules are even more important at night. There is of course nothing wrong with many other areas; but you don’t know where you are, so you should not explore them.

The Metro is no picnic either, as wingnut blogger Dan Riehl discovered last year: Dan Riehl’s Imaginary Black Kid Beatdown.

And remember, folks: no signs allowed!

(Hat tip: DCist.)

Democrats Fraudulently Making “Tea Party” Candidates

There is strong evidence of fraud perpetrated by Democrat operatives in Michigan. Jason Gillman over at RedState has the information.

In a late afternoon press release, Ruth Johnson, a clerk for Oakland county discusses an issue with a candidate’s filing for a county seat election:

“We have a candidate filing with signatures we suspect are forged and an out-of-state high school teacher who says he never filed to run for office and has no idea what this is even about.”

Apparently, on July 23, 2010 a man calling himself Aaron William Tyler filed signed paperwork to run on the November ballot as a “Tea Party” candidate for the Oakland County Board of Commissioners, District 2 seat. The candidate also filed paperwork to form a campaign committee, Citizens for Aaron Tyler. He listed a Springfield Township address and gave his birth date as Feb. 26, 1983.

…

Johnson also said the alleged false Tyler paperwork was notarized by a Jason H. Bauer.

Further research shows that Jason H Bauer is a Democrat operative. Tom Gantert at Michigan Capitol Confidential has plenty of information on Bauer.

On the Oakland County Democratic Party website, Jason Bauer was listed as the contact and a member of the Host Committee for the party for Mike McGuinness, the chairman of the party.

The Detroit Democratic Party Meetup Group has a Jason Bauer page. On that page, Jason Bauer introduces himself as a member of the Oakland County Democratic Party and as a candidate for the Auburn Hills City Council. When Bauer filed paperwork to run for the Auburn Hills City Council, he identified himself as Jason H. Bauer.

On the Federal Elections Commission website, Congressman Gary Peters itemized his donations. A May 4, 2009, donation of $200 lists Jason Bauer as the contributor and lists his employer as the Oakland County Democratic Party and his occupation as “Political Director.”

Jason H. Bauer, an Auburn Hills resident, is listed on the Oakland County Democratic Party website as being on the Host Committee for a birthday party for the chairman.

…

Chetly Zarko, who recently passed away, uncovered the petition drive necessary to create the Tea Party and discovered it was being done by Progressive Campaigns Inc. out of California. Their website has a client list that includes a campaign issue supported by George Soros, a well known supporter of Democrat causes. PCI also was involved with the Reform Michigan Government Now petition that was supported by Democrats and opposed by Republicans.

And there’s that Soros connection, plain as day.

But Democrat operatives aren’t restricting their fraudulent activity to Michigan, they’re doing it in New Jersey as well.

According to the Courier Post story, not a single Tea Party group in the district – or in New Jersey – had ever heard of DeStefano prior to his inclusion on an internal poll released by the Adler campaign last week showing him at 12% – a poll that numerous experts in the Courier Post story called completely unreliable.

…

Marshall Spevak, a paid professional political operative, with close ties to Congressman Adler, the Camden County Democratic Organization and Adler’s pollster, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, signed DeStefano’s nominating petition, as did other members of his family. The Spevak’s have contributed thousands to Adler’s campaigns for Congress.

…

The Notaries who signed off on Mr. DeStefano’s petitions both appear to be politically active Democrats in Burlington and Ocean counties, respectively. Leonard Niedermayer contributed to Jon Corzine’s re-election campaign and is a perfect Democrat voter, while his facebook page contains numerous references bashing House Republicans. He certainly doesn’t sound much like someone with an active interest in or affinity for Tea Party candidates for Congress. The other lawyer was Harold Hensel of Toms River. Also a Democrat, he has contributed campaign funds locally to Democrats in Lakewood.

…

DeStefano’s own credibility also must be questioned based on the multitude of false information he gave to PolitickerNJ.com during an interview last week – at the same time he was cancelling interviews with the Courier Post. First, DeStefano’s claim that he tried to gain entry into the debate between Runyan and Adler on the Michael Smerconish Program was flatly refuted by the Smerconish Program in the Courier Post story. They claim never to have heard of him.

From the great state of Pennsylvania, we have this tidbit (courtesy of Bucks Right):

John Krupa, the phony Tea Party candidate who Democrat Party operatives inserted into the race to be Pennsylvania Governor, has dropped out of the race amid a review of his petition signatures.

After getting through only half of the 24,000 signatures gathered by leftist fraudsters, lawyers decided at least 5,000 were fraudulent. 19,082 signatures are the required minimum.

More from Pennsylvania (via Snowflakes In Hell):

I already mentioned the shenanigans in PA-7, and it’s amazing how slimy Democratic candidate Bryan Lentz and the local party leaders are trying to be by claiming that they have nothing to do with the third party candidate. In this age, you can’t hide. Here are some of the names and titles of Democratic officials and activists who pushed Jim Schneller over the edge to get on the ballot released by PA2010:

* Colleen Guiney is the head of the Swarthmore, PA Democratic Committee.
* Joseph Gallagher is a Democratic Committeeman from Aston, PA.
* Timothy Willard is a former Lentz staffer who previously worked on his state house campaign.
* Nicholas Allred is an officer with the Swarthmore College Democrats – an organization that already backed the Democratic candidate. (Election fraud – you can’t get started too early!)
* Democratic activists Rocco Polidoro and Arthur Manos signed petitions to get Lentz on the ballot and then turned around to collect signatures for the third party candidate.

…

In the meantime, we’re dealing with it here in PA-8, too. Here are the (so far) announced names of Democratic officials pushing a candidate who attended a Tea Party Forum in January only to tell attendees that they suck for attending and suck for voting.

* Brian Caplan now works for the state Democratic Party and is a former staffer for Democratic candidate Patrick Murphy.
* Jessica Milinichik also now reportedly works for the state party, but she was with the Murphy campaign as recently as a few weeks ago.

Down in Florida, there’s a connection between Alan Grayson and a “Tea Party” candidate. From Roll Call:

On Friday, Victoria Torres, 44, of Orlando qualified to run as a Tea Party candidate in state House district 51 in the last hours of the qualifying period.

…

According to records from the Florida Department of State office, Torres incorporated Public Opinion Strategies Inc. in December 2008. In the first quarter of this year, Grayson’s campaign made two payments to her firm, totaling $11,000, for polling and survey expenses.

…

The name of Torres’ company is curious, considering Alexandria, Va.-based Public Opinion Strategies is one of the largest and best-known Republican polling firms in the country. Egoroff declined to say if Torres has worked for any other clients, and her company doesn’t appear to have a website.

“We definitely do not poll for Democrats, nor do we have an office in Orlando,” said Glen Bolger of the Virginia-based POS. “However, we do wish Congressman Grayson the worst of luck in November.”

Dave Beattie, a prominent Florida-based Democratic pollster, also said he had never heard of Torres or her polling firm.

So, this Torres creates a Florida polling firm with an obviously Republican name to do polling for a Democrat, and she gets on the ballot as a Tea Party candidate. I smell an oversized rat.

This is in no way an exhaustive list of Democrat operatives creating fraudulent Tea Party candidates. It is clear that the Democrats are aware of the power of the grass-roots TEA Party organization. And the Democrats fear for their political lives because of it. Clearly, many Democrat operatives have disdain for the voters and for the Constitution, as evidenced by their actions.

On a related note, the middle school teacher who created “Crash The Tea Party” is no longer employed. Doug Powers, writing at Michelle Malkin, has the story.

Levin, a media lab technology teacher at Conestoga Middle School, drew international attention last spring after creating crashtheteaparty.org. The now defunct site had said it was part of a national movement to “dismantle and demolish the tea party by any nonviolent means necessary.”

The site encouraged people to infiltrate the tea party, then misspell protest signs, make wild claims during interviews and perform other public actions that would damage the public’s opinion of the tea party.

Poor guy probably started out thinking that it didn’t matter if he lost his teaching job because he’d be heading up a large national organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of Hope & Change by now. Instead, he’s missed out on another “teacher stimulus” served up by the people he was protecting from the evil Teabaggers, and because he resigned from his job instead of waiting to be fired, he may have prevented himself from getting a cut of unemployment benefits that have been extended to the Second Coming. Come on, pal, Obama can only help those who help themselves.

Reasons for the rapid extinction of “Crash the Tea Party”? Overkill is one