One thing I do respect about MSNBC is that unlike the rest of the mainstream media, even during the network’s so-called straight news segments, MSNBC doesn’t even try to hide its agenda. If only the equally left-wing Politico had the same integrity. For starters, it might help their traffic numbers. Both outlets are in bed together, though, but only one has come out of the closet. They still make a good tag-team for Obama. No question about it.

Below is a segment where MSNBC host Alex Wagner moderates and Politico’s Maggie Haberman participates in a mostly one-sided roundtable discussion about the “great” work Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are doing to make the case against free political speech for everyone but them. The clip is longish but illuminating in a number of ways:

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As I wrote in my piece last week, the reason outlets like Politico and millionaires like Stephen Colbert hate Super PACS is because they believe that only corporations like Politico and millionaires like Stephen Colbert should enjoy unlimited political speech. Once you eliminate Super PACs, then leftist outlets like Politico and leftist partisans like Colbert will enjoy a lot less competition for the all-important 2012 election narrative.

Politico and Colbert both know that the whoever owns the narrative wins the election, and they intend to win the election for Obama.

Another fascinating part of the segment is how Wagner makes no secret of the fact that Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin helped to define the Governor in Obama’s favor during the ‘08 campaign. Wagner completely misses the irony, though. To whatever degree Fey was effective, that effectiveness did not come from “Saturday Night Live,” a show that only draws somewhere around 10 million viewers.

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I suppose we couldn’t get past the one-year anniversary of the crime against Democrat Representative Gabrielle Giffords without some Old Media outlet blaming the supposed “heated” political rhetoric of the day for her shooting. On Sunday we saw NPR doing just that. The fact is, no matter how many times they say it, politics and the “heated rhetoric” thereof had absolutely nothing at all to do with Giffords’ shooting. The linking of the crime to politics is just not legitimate.

On this one-year anniversary, NPR’s Linton Weeks was all about the improvement of our “civil discourse,” and full of lament that it just isn’t happening. Perhaps it is a noble sentiment, but he marred that nobility by beginning his piece with a false allusion once again tying the Giffords shooting to the “political atmosphere” of the day.

“When a gunman opened fire on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords,” Linton wrote, “some people were quick to blame the episode on the overheated political climate.”

With that false allusion we also know what NPR meant to do. It meant to blame conservatives for Giffords’ shooting.

He went on to say:

At the time of the attack, there was a high tide of political rhetoric across America and a low ebb of social civility. The New York Times reported that the shootings “raised questions about potential political motives” and that the Pima County, Ariz., sheriff was blaming the tragedies on “the toxic political environment.”

According to The Times, national reaction was immediate. “Democrats denounced the fierce partisan atmosphere in Gifford’s district and top Republicans quickly condemned the violence.”

To the extent that “some people” did indeed immediately jump to the conclusion that the rhetoric of the Tea Party, conservatives and the Republican Party was at fault for the Giffords shooting, Linton is correct.

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Personally, I don’t care what Michelle Antoinette wears on her taxpayer-funded lavish Hawaiian vacations with her husband President FailureTeleprompterDuffer. Thanks to an autobiography that was probably ghost-written by domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, Obama’s a millionaire and more power to him. If the First Lady wants to lord over the peasantry her fashionable dresses and skirts and purses that cost enough to feed about 500 hungry families, that’s Our Champions Of The Poor’s business. The same is true with what the GOP chooses to spend their money on during a campaign. The attacks directed at Governor Sarah Palin over the clothes supplied to her during the 2008 election were silly, stupid intentional distractions ginned up by Obama’s MSM Palace Guards.

What isn’t silly and stupid is that the left-wing, journOlist-infested institution known as Politico was obsessed with Palin’s wardrobe in ‘08 and one of the prime drivers of that narrative. Just for starters see here, here, here, and most especially here.

And now for the news that will surprise no one. A good faith search has revealed that the left-wing, journOlist-infested institution known as Politico isn’t at all interested in Michelle Obama’s pricey wardrobe. Nothing here or here. And if I did miss a mention, it still won’t compare to their Palin firestorm.

In their defense, however, Politico has been awfully busy.  Why, there’s White House spin to spread, those hundreds of articles necessary to cover 15 year-old harassment claims against Herman Cain, strategic memos to craft in order to get Obama’s Occupy Wall Street allies back in the 2012 game, and the frantic journOlisiting necessary to protect Obama from critics of his excessive golfing.

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Remember when the DLC published a “hit list” of vulnerable districts and included crosshairs over Gabrielle Giffords’s Arizona district–and then some time later Sarah Palin published a map doing the same outlining the same vulnerable districts? The media excoriated Palin, blamed her for the Tucson massacre, and completely ignored that Democrats had done it weeks prior, Gawker among them. The online outlet has apparently forgotten their dislike of such lists because they’ve recently published a “hit list” of their own.

Gawker describes it as:

Click here or on the image on the right for a map of where the most notable New York City 1%ers—including Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and a bunch of Wall Street billionaires—live, for your protesting needs.

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- What does Eric Holder have that Alberto Gonzalez didn’t? Air cover from the drive-by media, of course.

This leads us to Attorney General Eric Holder. I would think with the way the MSM handled Mr. Gonzalez they would be all over Mr. Holder. I’m sadly disappointed. Actually the only person who talks about Fast and Furious on a regular basis is Cam Edwards, host of Cam & Company at NRA News. Sharyl Attkisson at CBS cares about Fast & Furious, too, and Lord knows she is not being received well. We must also give credit to Matthew Boyle at Daily Caller and Katy Pavlich at Townhall.

- MSNBC may not have Sarah Palin to kick around in the 2012 GOP primary, but they’ll settle for Herman Cain, for now. That’s MSNBC, aka the MoStly NoBody Cares network.

This afternoon, Jack Coleman at NewsBusters noted how MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow took a shot at GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain for supposedly “taking a month off the campaign trail — taking a month off — to go on a book tour.” The original source for this “claim” is a very poorly written and quite deceptively headlined October 3 item at the Christian Science Monitor by David Grant.

- Yes, Troy Davis is dead. He was executed for his crime. But what jury heard the case before the media opted to execute the truth in their reporting of the unfortunate matter?

Lou Arcangeli, a retired deputy chief of police for the Atlanta Police Department, has offered his own view on media coverage, saying, “This case demonstrates that when a lie is unchallenged and repeated often enough it comes to be taken as fact, and truth is lost in the fog of time. The facts of Officer Mark MacPhail’s murder, and the trial that convicted Davis with its legally admissible facts, have been lost in the blitz of social media and news media misinformation.”

- Okay, we get it, folks. Is there one mainstream media talking head that hasn’t gotten the memo. Hey, let’s try and make this into our (the Left’s) version of the tea party! Tea is a hot commodity this year. Sorry, MSM, no sale.

During the 1 p.m. hour of Tuesday’s Newsroom, CNN’s Randi Kaye touted the potential for the “Occupy Wall Street” protests around the country to morph into a “left wing Tea Party.” Kaye reported that the group is “gaining momentum” and hosted one of the protestors for a soft interview.

- Somewhat summing up all of the above, the media can try as hard as it might to keep the truth of the Occupy Wall Street effort from coming to light.

Liberal radio host Thom Hartmann is peeved that media outlets such as Fox News and CNN are covering the so-called Occupy Wall Street movement and allegedly interviewing only the most “politically unsophisticated” protesters, after searching all of nanoseconds to find them.

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‘That was a little dismissive,” I wrote to some of my colleagues yesterday morning after reading somewhere that Governor Sarah Palin had referred to The Mighty Herman Cain as ‘the flavor of the week.” Cain’s my favorite candidate in the race, Palin’s my favorite candidate not in the race, and suddenly I was all conflicted and tense — because I’m sensitive that way. Moreover, it seemed awfully uncharacteristic for the Governor to wrist-flick Cain in such a manner. In the past, I’ve never heard her speak of Cain with anything but respect and even affection.

—–

After mentally processing all of this I figured it was just the liberal media being the liberal and went on about the business of the day. But before the day was out I saw that a number of conservative sites had picked up the “flavor” comment and that it was taking off on Twitter.

And now we get to the beauty of new media part.

Because we live in the great, big open world of the wild, wild Web, the fact that this growing meme seemed so counter-intuitive to what I had heard with my own ears wasn’t something I had to remain confused over. Instead, I could go out and investigate on my own: What did Palin really say? What was the full context?

And lo and behold look what I found… We’ll start with the quote everyone’s still parsing, interpreting and going on about. I’ve emphasized the moment in question but encourage you to read the full quote: [There's some  dumb sideshow over whether or not Palin called Cain "Herm." Whatever. Below is straight from the FNC transcript.]: 

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In an Associated Press article published last night, Becky Bohrer writes the following: [emphasis ours]

[Governor Sarah Palin's attorney] John Tiemessen, in a letter to the publisher of Crown Publishing Group Monday, cites an email that author Joe McGinniss allegedly sent a blogger in January seeking substantiation for several rumors that have surrounded Palin’s family. That email was posted online last week by Andrew Breitbart.

The email in question was not “allegedly sent.” Both Joe McGinniss and the party the email was sent to, Jesse Griffin, are on the record verifying the email.

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Normally I loathe Lawrence O’Donnell’s overly-dramatic Shatner-esque editorial delivery, but it was so apropos in his interview with Levi Johnston.

Johnston is out hocking his next book that is all about trashing the grandmother of his son. O’Donnell forced Johnston to read not just any passage from his book, but the passage where Johnston got into the shower with Bristol Palin.

Ever the gentleman, Johnston obliged.

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NewsBusters catches a liberal think tank accidentally destroying the liberal meme that millionaires don’t pay their fair share.

A non-partisan pollling firm discovered Fox News is viewed as the best news network by a plurality of Americans. Don’t tell Erick Boehlert, he might cry.

Palin Derangement Syndrome: Get the real scoop on Joe McGinniss’ latest misfire in his attempts to smear Sarah Palin.

The media is attacking Perry for his attacking Obama over his Israel policy. Scott Whitlock sets the record straight.

Lately, there’s been plenty of reason to mock Obama. Just not if you’re Ben Smith of Politico. He doesn’t get it, somehow.

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- Obama implores black American media members: Carry my water for me:

President Obama spoke to a White House forum, titled “Open for Questions with InteractiveOne,” which featured various administration officials discussing how the administration’s polices have affected and will affect the black community, taking questions from NewsOne.com and its sister sites in the InteractiveOne network, TheGrio.com, TheUrbanDaily.com, HelloBeautiful.com, and BlackPlanet.com.

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The Washington Post’s “faith” writer (and former author of “The Party” column until she penned a column airing her family’s conflicts and after complaints by her own family was demoted to writing on faith) and beltway hostess Sally Quinn says that Norway murderer Anders Breivik is a Christian because doggone it, he says he is!

“Well I say the guy’s a Christian! He talks about Jesus Christ our Lord, he actually says ‘I am a Christian …’”

To borrow from the “Merchant of Venice,” “Even the Devil can cite Scripture.”

Quinn launches into a bizarre monologue about terrorism and Christianity and Oslo and who knows what else; honestly, I began losing interest when O’Reilly demanded that she produce a Breivik quote on Jesus and Quinn had to shuffle through her talking points.

Had Quinn perhaps skipped a party or two and did her due diligence on her subject she would have learned that not only is Breivik most emphatically not a Christian, but he’s also an environmental-worshipping socialist — the absolute opposite of what the progressives and the Soros News peddled in the press before the bodies of Norway’s fallen had grown cold:

The Judeo-Christian religions played an important and influential role in building the once mighty West but we also discovered that these religions contained aserious flaw that has sewed the seeds of the suicidal demise of the indigenous peoples of Western Europe and our cultures. This flaw was identified by the brilliant German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who described it as “an inversion of morality” whereby the weak, the poor, the meek, the oppressed and the wretched are virtuous and blessed by God … pg. 391

A pragmatic approach, which involves acknowledging the primal aspects of man for the purpose of preparing him for a martyrdom operation, should always take precedence over misguided piety … pg. 1434

Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers -already, you see, the world had already fallen into the hands of the Jews, so gutless a thing Christianity!-then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. pg. 231

I’m not going to pretend I’m a very religious person as that would be a lie. pg. 1344

Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian. pg. 1307, 3,139

A “cultural Christian?” Such a thing doesn’t exist in Scripture. There is grace through faith and a relationship with Christ, grace that one does not achieve alone. What Breivik preaches is humanism, not Christianity. He believes he can achieve grace alone, thus a relationship with Christ is unnecessary. The lowliest pseudo-scholar would recognize this if they are true to their intelligence, which Quinn is not, either by choice or pure ignorance.

Quinn has spent the better part of her “faith-writing” taking partisan jabs at conservatives.

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This is the kind of childish speculation you expect to see at some lowly, left-wing hit site like the Soros’-owned, tax-exempt Media Matters — not at a brand publication like Forbes. Based ONLY on a sweatshirt logo, Jeff Bercovici, who writes at the Forbes’ Mixed Media site, created a 400+ word piece of wild speculation in order to disguise yet another tired Palin=celebrity article as “news” and, most importantly…

…to create the following anti-Palin headline:

Did Sarah Palin Use Newsweek for Product Placement?

Huh?

Whuh?

Where in the world did that come from? Well, it looks as though Forbes has some sort of editorial policy that allows their “journalists” to think and mull and speculate out loud. Because if you read the actual piece, there’s no beef there other than the subtext of a writer desperate to trash Governor Palin … just cuz.

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As John Nolte points out here, The Daily Beast/Newseek’s Andrew Sullivan — with the help of some MSM allies — is always on the lookout to weaponize Sarah Palin’s own children as political weapons against her. It’s an obscene tactic and also an unprecedented one.  But because nothing and no one will stop Uncle Sully from using a mother’s own children as a partisan bludgeon, he went off again earlier this week:

Is it too outrageous to ask why this little girl is not in school, rather than acting as a media bouncer for her mother on a publicity/campaign tour?

The “little girl” he’s weaponizing is Piper Palin, Sarah Palin’s youngest daughter. Not only is this no one’s business but the Palin family’s — is Sullivan’s bubble so thick he’s never heard of home schooling? — but he also happens to be dead wrong.

Here’s his later backfill:

Update: because school in Alaska is now out for the summer. My bad.

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There’s a scene in Platoon – a crappy movie, by the way – where Willem Defoe’s character is running from the pursuing communists and we see him take hit after hit, stumbling, getting up, stumbling some more, and then finally, inevitably, and despite the best efforts of his comrades, dropping dead.  Except for the communists doing the pursuing, it’s not unlike the mainstream media’s current predicament – enduring failure after humiliating failure, it’s only a matter of time before it expires.  And this week, the new conservative media tossed a couple more shovelfuls of dirt into its open grave.

The first load was hurled in by none other than Sarah Palin – you know, the woman too dumb to tie her own shoes, as demonstrated by her shocking failure to realize that her lack of a Yale diploma disqualifies her from participation in the political process.  Except the woman the MSM is doing everything it can to portray as the Clown Princess of Conservatism has tied the MSM itself up in knots.

Her bus tour, whether the prelude to a campaign for the presidency or merely as way to take over the conversation from our embattled president, was straight out of “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu.  Sun Tzu counseled his students to know their enemies as they know themselves, and to take advantage of their enemies’ weaknesses and laziness.  And that’s just what Sarah has done.

Two huge weaknesses of the MSM are its boundless self-regard and the lack of residual goodwill among the American people, a consequence of decades of shameless shilling for every pinko with social program and a “D” behind his name.  Sarah’s bus tour – as did her conversion of her Facebook page into a kind of unassailable right-wing Olympus from which she issues pronouncements – went straight at those weaknesses.  She’s like a new media Patton in heels, applying her strengths to their vulnerabilities. (more…)

Let’s talk about 2012 and electability…

There’s no way to be sure if the story is true or not, and I don’t even remember where I read it, but when I did I knew Senator John McCain had no chance of winning the presidency in 2008. The article was about his relationship with the mainstream media, which had been a pretty chummy one while he was the Maverick in the Senate stirring up trouble for conservative Republicans, most especially President Bush. The story said that McCain felt that his long-standing media relationships would serve him well during his run for the White House. After all, he had been friendly with these folks for years, they had treated him pretty fairly, and there was no reason for him to believe that would change.

Again, I don’t want to sell McCain short with something I read two years ago that may or may not be true, but either way it goes to a larger point. But first, a more recent example — which would be this. Yes, that’s correct, the GOP actually considered letting two of the most corrupt news outlets ever conceived — NBC and Politico — co-host the first presidential debate. Thankfully, someone smartened up and the debate was postponed until September, but it’s still a very bad idea and shows a dangerous naivete from our side when it comes to dealing with the media.

When Democratic candidates boycott Fox News, do you want to know what that is? Smart. Real smart. Not to take anything away from Fox, who would obviously be much fairer to Democrats than the rest of the MSM is to Republicans, but those Democrats are trying to get elected and so it only makes sense that they play it as safe as possible. That’s not cowardice, it’s tactical competence. (Once elected, however, they have an obligation to do the rounds.)

Shouldn’t our candidates consider doing the same thing in 2012?

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In an argument (usually a political debate), a concern troll is someone who is on one side of the discussion, but pretends to be a supporter of the other side with “concerns”. The idea behind this is that your opponents will take your arguments more seriously if they think you’re an ally. – Urban Dictionary

Before she’s even announced her decision as to whether or not to run for president, according to a new Gallup poll, Governor Sarah Palin currently sits in second place among 11 announced and/or potential GOP candidates. Gee, how did that happen? After all, the MSM told me Palin was irrelevant (usually in 1200 word articles obsessing over one of her tweets or the tweets of one of her staffers).

Ezra Klein’s sinister Journolist might be dismantled (though I suspect it lives on elsewhere), but “journ-o-lism” has always been alive and well and lately, when it comes to their unrelenting  and somewhat perverse need to demolish a mother of five, the corrupt path of Obama’s MSM Palace Guards has gone a little something like this: After pulling a minding-her-own-business Sarah Palin out of her Wasilla home in order to beat her about the neck and shoulders for causing that terrible crime in Tucson,  led by this rocket scientist, it was decided the time had come to ignore Palin and write her political obituary.

Indulge my backing up just a bit here …

You have to keep in mind that journ-o-lism is just another term to describe how dishonest journ-o-lists conspire to create corrupt narratives. Have you ever noticed how the MSM almost never competes for stories? What I mean is that nine times out of ten they all cover the exact same things with the exact same emphasis. Why is that?  You would think that in order to stand out from the herd, ABC News would sell a Whopper to compete with NBC’s Big Mac. Or that the Washington Post would come up with Pepsi to the New York Times’ Coke.  Don’t even get me started on Mountain Dew.

The reason for this is that the MSM isn’t about The News, it’s about The Agenda, and what they do is no different than what they accuse Big Business of doing. Only instead of conspiring through a secret monopoly with other companies to fix prices, they conspire through a secret monopoly of other media outlets to create a version of the truth –which we call The Narrative.  The word goes out and suddenly….

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In their ongoing crusade to target and silence decent, everyday Americans as racists, some in the MSM love to use the term “dog-whistle” in order to ascribe racial motives to words like, say,  “basketball.” Well, lately I’ve been hearing a dog-whistle of my own — a dog-whistle of the journ-o-list variety that tells me that in their relentless campaign to destroy Sarah Palin and undercut her as a serious political force, the MSM is preparing to up the ante when it comes to using the Governor’s own family and children as a political weapon against her.

First, a little background…

Why the Media Whips Up the Palin-Fury

Watching the MSM react to Governor Palin over the last few years has been an illuminating crash course in Alinsky 101. Like elite, elbow-patched community organizers, the media collectively targets, polarizes, demonizes and intentionally creates a perpetual storm of personal drama around the Governor in the hopes of exhausting even those of us who support her. I call it whipping up the Palin-Fury.

This is a common tactic from the Left, but one we usually see played out in the streets with the idea being to so toxify the atmosphere that decent people give up the fight and go home just to get away from the awfulness of it all. The last few months of ugly and relentless pro-union protests in Wisconsin — though a failure for the left — were a textbook example of this. However, when it comes to Governor Palin, what we’re seeing is this tactic practiced by almost every so-called “objective” news outlet in America.

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I don’t blame him. I’d leave them up, too, and even populate them in various accounts all over Youtube and Vimeo.

Rebel Pundit has received the following threatening letter via our YouTube account message inbox, from a YouTube user known as stephaniepinta.

Concerning one of your videos
You have a video of a gentleman at the tea party rally in Chicago this past tax day (Monday). I am requesting that you please remove it from Youtube as well as your website “rebelpundit.com“. If nothing is to be done on your side to remove this material from the internet, actions will be taken to make sure this video is removed and negative repercussions may follow.  It is quite evident that you were harassing this man, and there is no evidence of a video/photo release statement. If this video is not taken down in a timely manner, please be aware that you will be contacted again quite soon. If you have any questions or concerns, please send them to my email account: StephaniePinta@gmail.com.‬

[...]

Please allow us to be very clear. At Rebel Pundit we do not appreciate threats against our First Amendment rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution or our right to publish freely under section 4 of the  Illinois Constitution. Perhaps the “gentleman” in the interview should have thought a little bit harder about his own personal choice to show up at a public protest on public property with a large sign publicly voicing his opposition to the event.

So going to a public place with a derogatory sign while shouting profanities isn’t harassment but politely asking a guy why he’s in public with a derogatory sign while shouting profanities is? Photo release statement? No. The man on the tape was engaging in public protest and by the very nature of such an act was asking for media coverage. No statement is needed, just like no statement was needed for the media when they covered the Madison protests, et al.  Nice try, but no dice.

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From Legal Insurrection:

First of all, Sarah Palin doesn’t “parade” her kids around any more than any other politician.  Hey Ken, have you seen all those photos of the Obama kids with their parents on vacation and elsewhere?  I’ve addressed this phony “prop” charge before.

But more important, Layne has a very convenient memory.  In 2009, as I documented in my post Wonkette Goes After Trig Palin Again, Layne mocked Trig, including running this photoshop which he took from a posting board:

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Is this supposed to make it all better?

Posted by Dave Weigel at Slate:

UPDATE: Wonkette editor Ken Layne looped me in on an e-mail to AdWeek, in which he wrote that Steuf has been admonished.

I have four kids myself and I wouldn’t want them mocked on the Internet by a bunch of cretins on the Internet. And that’s just one reason why I wouldn’t parade my children around in the media. What kind of mother does that?

In any case, Jack has been admonished and put on night probation until further notice. Anything involving Palin, I want to make it extra clear that *Palin* is the problem with America. Not her kids. Not her little kid, anyway. The older ones seem to be on their own path and you can’t really blame Sarah for it, although she certainly encourages the sleaziest possible behavior from her grown children, which is hardly a very “family values” thing to do. But as far as Jack’s future, a few months on the night shift  cleaning up the furious, ALLCAPS unmoderated Wonkette comments, without pay, should teach him a thing or two about writing stuff that confuses the target. Trig is cool with us. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is a grave danger to America.

Sarah Palin didn’t “parade” Trig Palin around in the media. She held him in public. It’s hyperbole to state otherwise. Layne is unconcerned with the welfare of the Palin children, otherwise he would have pulled the post and fired the guy that wrote it costing them advertisers. Pretending to recognize and uphold “family values” is shtick Layne uses to lend himself credibility in this instance where none actually exists.

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