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You are here: Home / Economics / Grifters Gonna Grift / 7/10, Shows Improvement

7/10, Shows Improvement

by $8 blue check mistermix|  April 28, 20147:30 am| 57 Comments

This post is in: Grifters Gonna Grift

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Palin’s latest:

“C’mon! Enemies who would utterly annihilate America, they would obviously have information on plots. They carry out jihad. Oh, but you can’t offend them. Can’t make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen,” […] “Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.”

I’m sure the Russian judge would score it differently, but here’s how I marked my card:

  • Degree of difficulty: 3/5 It was a NRA convention, and the subject was terrorism. She could have stood at the microphone and muttered “Terrorists..Bad” and gotten at least a round of politc applause. Perhaps you think my DD score is a bit high, but let’s face it–she’s never going to appear in front of a really tough crowd, so a 5 for her might be a Mary Kay convention or a regional meeting of Chevy dealers, if either of those events were held somewhere in the South.
  • Execution:  4/5  The initial simpleton phrasing (“Enemies … carry out jihad”) and the aw-shucks “smidgen” would lead one to to think this was basic Palin trolling, designed to get NPR listeners worked into a frothy-mouthed swivet while driving to Whole Foods in their Priuses. But the waterboarding/baptism coupling takes it up a couple of notches, broadening her aim to a whole new set of targets: Christians who aren’t inclined to don a white robe and burn a cross in the front yard of the local mosque.

If you think 7/10 is too high, take a look at the way the British Judge, Andrew Sullivan, scored it. He was barely through his morning coffee yesterday before he posted his “no true Christian”  response, with video, which is exactly the kind of life-giving succor that keeps Palin raking in the speaking fees and PAC donations.  If she keeps playing this kind of “A” game, I expect we’ll be hearing a hell of a lot more from her in the future.

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Reader Interactions

57Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    April 28, 2014 at 7:45 am

    I expect we’ll be hearing a hell of a lot more from her in the future.

    Hopefully, not here. Her schtick is old.

  2. 2.

    Tokyokie

    April 28, 2014 at 7:46 am

    The Spanish judge probably would have scored the execution a tad higher because her remarks made him feel a tingle imagining of Tomás de Torquemada with lots of makeup.

  3. 3.

    gnomedad

    April 28, 2014 at 7:48 am

    “Tundra Torquemada”?

  4. 4.

    eric

    April 28, 2014 at 7:51 am

    The Lack of Inquisition?

  5. 5.

    MattF

    April 28, 2014 at 7:52 am

    I do wonder if the comment was aimed at Sullivan. Palin + christianity + torture = ??? Hmmm.

    ETA: Fair to note that there’s no mention of circumcision.

  6. 6.

    Poopyman

    April 28, 2014 at 7:53 am

    @gnomedad: While it has a great ring to it, Torquemada was at least a man of action. The snowbilly, not so much.

  7. 7.

    Schlemizel

    April 28, 2014 at 7:56 am

    I suppose she had to up her game some if she hopes to keep the grift going. Lard knows she has the money and the time to get high quality help. The only question was “is she smart enough to look for help and to follow the advice?”. Apparently she is at least some.

    GEE, Sully taking the wrong path, who would guess that. I’m sure he had highly intellectual and well reasoned arguments to believe the bullshit he believes.

  8. 8.

    Jeffro

    April 28, 2014 at 7:58 am

    Let’s not beat around the bush: that comment came from a very dark place. I know she is a clown, but “water boarding is how we baptize terrorists” is a truly evil, un-Christian, un-American statement.

  9. 9.

    eric

    April 28, 2014 at 7:59 am

    @Jeffro: no darker than most of white Red America. Sadly.

  10. 10.

    Ash Can

    April 28, 2014 at 8:05 am

    @Jeffro: Sarah Palin has always been evil, un-Christian, and un-American.

  11. 11.

    sharl

    April 28, 2014 at 8:06 am

    Yeah, one of the conservative NatSec/war-tweeters I look in on occasionally – an academic type, fwiw – once again brought up the fact that she presents a really bad image for “real” conservatives. But her fans are a tenacious lot, and they popped up among the folks who agreed with the guy. Her fans, as everyone now knows, never offer up a policy or fact-based defense of her, it’s all based on shared grievances (or at least the perception of that) and simmering rage and frustration.

    On a related matter, I assume someone already posted somewhere here (at least in comments) the utterly unsurprising Washington Post story, Tea party PACs reap money for midterms, but spend little on candidates

  12. 12.

    Jeffro

    April 28, 2014 at 8:08 am

    @eric: I try not to paint with that broad a brush. But she continues to find new depths, that’s for sure. Even Nixon would have been like, “whoa…now that’s some seriously wicked stuff”.

  13. 13.

    OzarkHillbilly

    April 28, 2014 at 8:08 am

    My hatred for the NRA is complete. She is superfluous.

  14. 14.

    Just One More Canuck

    April 28, 2014 at 8:11 am

    Who are these sane Republicans Sully speaks of?

  15. 15.

    JPL

    April 28, 2014 at 8:11 am

    This is good news for McCain. The MSM will ask his views on this soon.

  16. 16.

    MattF

    April 28, 2014 at 8:11 am

    @Jeffro: Nixon was more subtle. But he did pardon Lt. Calley.

  17. 17.

    eric

    April 28, 2014 at 8:12 am

    @Jeffro: I do too. But look at the wholly unchristian policies taken towards health care and immigration coming out of those states. they are getting MORE strident. the darkness is now out in the open for us to purge or else to suffer

  18. 18.

    Ash Can

    April 28, 2014 at 8:15 am

    @sharl: It’s a perfect grift — the rubes will give money, and if they’re confronted with the truth they won’t believe it, and will give more. The people running those PACs are unscrupulous, but they’re smart.

  19. 19.

    Botsplainer

    April 28, 2014 at 8:19 am

    @Jeffro:

    “water boarding is how we baptize terrorists” is a truly evil, un-Christian, un-American statement.

    Dunno if I agree. I tend to find that it describes the flower of True ‘Murkan fundamentalist evangelical Christianity perfectly. It’s always operated brutishly, violently, disproportionally and coming from a simplistic theology of deliberate pig ignorance, thoughtlessly. Part of the root of how brutal it is involves the necessity of operant conditioning via the school system in order to infect the next generation, hence the education freakout, and even after that, their pathetic, half-assed asshole deity requires reinforcing propaganda planted in adult settings in order to gain compliance.

    The Soviets were not exactly wrong in their early treatment of religion.

  20. 20.

    D58826

    April 28, 2014 at 8:21 am

    I wonder what John McCain is thinking now. Whatever his many faults he was a POW and he was tortured and he has said that waterboarding is a war crime. I wonder if he has any bad dreams about unleashing the psychopath on American politics.

  21. 21.

    sharl

    April 28, 2014 at 8:21 am

    @Ash Can: Yes to all of that. A commenter at the WaPo article posted the following quote:

    “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” ~

    LYNDON B. JOHNSON

    I haven’t attempted to verify this quote, but I think it’s entirely likely that LBJ said it, and was accurate in doing so.

    ETA: Found a lot of hits on this quote, with this sourcing in one:
    >> LYNDON B. JOHNSON, 1960, remark to Bill Moyers,
    >> “What a Real President Was Like,”
    >> Washington Post, 13 November 1988

  22. 22.

    JoyfulA

    April 28, 2014 at 8:28 am

    @Jeffro: I saw a lot of that on my Twitter feed last night: No true Christian would put the sacrament of Baptism in that light.

    I hope she’s shocked a few believers out of her orbit.

  23. 23.

    WereBear

    April 28, 2014 at 8:29 am

    @D58826: I wonder what John McCain is thinking now.

    He can’t say anything, because he took the same path.

    Either one rises because of effort and application, or one tramples over others to get on top.

    He chose marrying money, scamming and scheming, and sucking W’s teat to get the Presidential nomination.

    He can’t say a word.

  24. 24.

    Hal

    April 28, 2014 at 8:31 am

    I always think of this Christopher Hitchens quote when Palin verbal diarrhea strikes:

    What price the courageous frontier huntress now—an empty-headed echo chamber for rumor-mongers and freaks who shoots from ambush and then runs away? Some condescending right-wing intellectuals are calling her style “populist” and comparing it with Andrew Jackson and William Jennings Bryan. The true name for it is demagogy, descending from Joseph McCarthy, Robert Welch, and the nastier elements of the old Nixon gang—people to whom slander and defamation was second nature.

  25. 25.

    Botsplainer

    April 28, 2014 at 8:35 am

    @D58826:

    He is an idiot in a lot of ways, but I think he does have a conscience. If you remember, he nixed her idea for a rabble rousing, violence spurring speech the night he lost.

    God knows what she planned to say. The Teatards were bad enough, but I suspect we’d have had open civil war and some secessions before Inauguration Day in 2009.

    That may have been his greatest service to the country.

  26. 26.

    wormtown

    April 28, 2014 at 8:40 am

    Brilliant post. Thanks!

  27. 27.

    D58826

    April 28, 2014 at 8:48 am

    @Botsplainer: He also talked down that woman who was starting to go on about Obama being a Muslim. For someone who experienced torture it must be painful to watch as his fellow Republicans and some idiot democrats hold up the use torture as a and example of the American way. The WWII cliché was ‘mom apple pie and the American way ‘ not ‘torture IS the American way.’

  28. 28.

    Jeffro

    April 28, 2014 at 8:49 am

    @JoyfulA: I think that’s a great way to put it. I was a little surprised that I was still able to be surprised by her…stuff like that will surely cause some of* her more casual supporters to stop and think about who, and what, it is they’re defending.

    *I said “some of”, people, “some of”…

  29. 29.

    Ash Can

    April 28, 2014 at 9:01 am

    @JoyfulA: I have a feeling that any believers who’d be shocked by that were never in her orbit in the first place.

  30. 30.

    xenos

    April 28, 2014 at 9:18 am

    @JoyfulA:

    No true Christian would put the sacrament of Baptism in that light.

    But a satanist sure would. Is that not the whole approach of satanism, to take Christian sacraments and to re-purpose them in the cause of cruelty and power?

  31. 31.

    boatboy_srq

    April 28, 2014 at 9:20 am

    waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists

    Makes you think that in her brand of Xtianity, “Saved” actually means from drowning.

  32. 32.

    CaseyL

    April 28, 2014 at 9:32 am

    Palin’s savage rhetoric is certainly contrary to the teachings of Jesus, but it is hardly “un-Christian.”

    2000 years of genocide, torture, rape and forced conversion during Inquisitions, Crusades, pogroms, heretic burnings, witch-burnings and other campaigns of organized savagery lead one to conclude that “waterboarding-as-baptism” is quintessentially Christian.

  33. 33.

    Gretchen

    April 28, 2014 at 9:32 am

    @Botsplainer: It never occurred to me to wonder what she wanted to say until you mentioned it. You’re right, it probably would have been a resentment-soaked diatribe against the usurper.

  34. 34.

    Botsplainer

    April 28, 2014 at 9:35 am

    @boatboy_srq:

    Makes you think that in her brand of Xtianity, “Saved” actually means from drowning.

    I can just picture her looking on and giggling as some shit-drawling redneck preacher waterboards a Muslim while shouting “do you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?”

    She’s got a real Karla Faye Tucker vibe.

  35. 35.

    LanceThruster

    April 28, 2014 at 9:52 am

    Joan of Snark.

  36. 36.

    bob

    April 28, 2014 at 10:21 am

    Didn’t she and Rush call the pope a socialist anticapitalist lib? Now compares baptism to waterboarding? And the Christian right love her… lol

  37. 37.

    bob

    April 28, 2014 at 10:22 am

    Didn’t she and Rush call the pope a socialist anticapitalist lib? Now compares baptism to waterboarding? And the Christian right love her… lol

  38. 38.

    bob

    April 28, 2014 at 10:24 am

    The military’s investigation into torture showed among other sick things, that anal rape with gun barrels, broom sticks, etc was commonly used in camps to loosen up suspects for interrogation. Perhaps she considers that their Confirmation or First Communion?

  39. 39.

    scav

    April 28, 2014 at 10:27 am

    All ‘merkan Sacraments

    Of Initiation (into the Church, the body of Christ): Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist =
    1) Water-boarding, 2) electricity to the gonads, and 3) penetration by cattle-prods or vaginal probes.

    Of Healing: Penance and the Anointing of the Sick =
    1) announcement that ones wife has forgiven and the children deserve privacy; 2) free-market invisible healing hands permitted only

    Others: Holy Orders and Matrimony.
    still working on these. The first might involve Lockstep Marching, the second Lockstep Mixed-Sex Shackling.

  40. 40.

    Mike in NC

    April 28, 2014 at 10:35 am

    As long as FOX News remains a blight on the planet, La Palin will have an outlet to spew her stupidity.

  41. 41.

    Villago Delenda Est

    April 28, 2014 at 10:51 am

    @WereBear: Exactly so.

    He sold his soul to the Devil to feed his ambition.

    He is lost forever.

  42. 42.

    Villago Delenda Est

    April 28, 2014 at 10:53 am

    @bob: The “Christian” Right is anything but Christian.

    Jesus weeps.

  43. 43.

    maya

    April 28, 2014 at 11:04 am

    What marks did Franklin Graham give her?

  44. 44.

    Chris

    April 28, 2014 at 11:13 am

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    “The Christian Right is neither.”

    Bumper sticker wisdom.

  45. 45.

    Villago Delenda Est

    April 28, 2014 at 11:19 am

    they would obviously have information on plots.

    So, by all means, use torture techniques so that they give you false information just to stop the pain.

    Brilliant.

    Mooselini thinks EVERYTHING through!

  46. 46.

    Villago Delenda Est

    April 28, 2014 at 11:21 am

    @Botsplainer:

    The Soviets were not exactly wrong in their early treatment of religion.

    Their motivation wasn’t very pure. They didn’t like competition.

  47. 47.

    jrg

    April 28, 2014 at 11:22 am

    Why does the NRA insist on hitching its wagon to lunatics like Palin and Nugent? I grow less and less sympathetic to their views every time they show one of these displays of deranged idiocy.

  48. 48.

    feebog

    April 28, 2014 at 11:38 am

    Palin is suffering from the law of diminishing returns. As her starry eyed fan base continues to shrink, she has to ramp up the rhetoric to 11 to hold on to as many loonies as possible and hopefully attract the truly crazy. Her comments were truly vile and ugly, which is exactly what she intended.

  49. 49.

    Chris

    April 28, 2014 at 11:42 am

    @WereBear:

    This.

    I should add that my view of John McCain’s anti-torture shenanigans is fairly cynical. The motherfucker has never met a war he didn’t want, cheerled for every variation of the Patriot Act, cosponsored a bill a few years ago that would allow the U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone suspected of terrorist connections without a trial or access to a lawyer. He’s perfectly fine with every single abuse the security state’s ever dreamed of, except torture, and the only reason he’s squeamish about that is that it happened to him… which makes him just another “it’s not real until it affects me” asshole.

    Still a step up from “it’s only bad when it affects me, but it should still happen to everyone else,” which has increasingly become the teabagger manifesto, but still. Fuck him.

  50. 50.

    Roger Moore

    April 28, 2014 at 11:57 am

    @jrg:

    Why does the NRA insist on hitching its wagon to lunatics like Palin and Nugent?

    Birds of a feather.

  51. 51.

    bobbo

    April 28, 2014 at 12:13 pm

    My first reaction was, “Is Ann Coulter now writing Palin’s speeches?” Doesn’t it just totally scream Ann Coulter? Double-down on something totally horrible and bring in the Jesus angle for extra credit?

  52. 52.

    Aardvark Cheeselog

    April 28, 2014 at 12:22 pm

    @sharl:

    “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” ~
    LYNDON B. JOHNSON

    Time to draw attention once again to Davis X. Machina’s perennially true observation:

    “The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of who will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.”

  53. 53.

    Golgaronok

    April 28, 2014 at 12:32 pm

    Baptism by drowning? Aeron Greyjoy would approve.

  54. 54.

    Chris

    April 28, 2014 at 12:33 pm

    @Aardvark Cheeselog:

    “The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of who will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.”

    I need that quote framed on my wall.

  55. 55.

    Heliopause

    April 28, 2014 at 12:56 pm

    I’m afraid Sullivan hasn’t been reading his Bible:

    “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Romans 6:3-4

    Baptism is, in fact, ritualized death and rebirth, similar to the torturous death of Christ at the Crucifixion, at least according to St. Paul.

  56. 56.

    Villago Delenda Est

    April 28, 2014 at 1:10 pm

    @Heliopause: Well, St. Paul was a serious asshole who I hold responsible for all the crimes that have been committed in the name of Jesus from the 1st Century CE onwards.

    Which are a lot of crimes.

  57. 57.

    K488

    April 28, 2014 at 1:27 pm

    @feebog: I’m just waiting for her to answer the question, “What do you call your political movement?” “The Aristocrats!”

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