read the links, and i guess i don't understand your point. again, i ask that people who want to post with links offer at the very least a para, so those of us who are too busy to open up every last link can get at least a small idea about what is being discussed.

i don't understand your point or purpose at all, would you care to clarify?

thoroughly.

What she has said is off limits is the story about the daughter. That is obvious and above reproach.

What she continues to aggressively pursue about Palin is her blatant lack of qualifications.

BTD thinks the "experience" argument is bogus, but Jeralyn's continuing point is that what's lacking is more than experience, its gravitas and any kind of awareness of national issues.

You're either intentionally missing the distinction or not reading carefully.

I love her posts but I hate her prison-like management style.

Why in the hell would anyone want to torture themselves into posting when summarily she'll publicly chew them out and embarass them? And who the hell wants to visit sites that pereptually keep warning one to watch it, as if one were a misbehaved two-year old?

Hell, I'll keep visiting, stealing links and let it be at that.

for one of the few liberal blogs focused on human rights and justice.

notime4lies, if you love her posts, name one and post a link. Give me context as to what has changed.

who was once even handed has stopped being even handed. Sorry, I didn't know that quoting paragraphs was a rule or something I've never posted here before besides in the comments. I didn't think my post would end up on the front page. I guessed it would go in the sidebar or something.

Maybe you have to be a regular reader of the blog and comments. But to give you an idea of how bad it has gotten see BTD's post to Jeralyn's thread where she's offering prizes for guessing when Palin will drop out.

I find this post utterly offensive.

Indeed, I disassociate myself from all of Jeralyn's posting on Sarah Palin.

As of my writing that comment has been rated a 5 by 25 readers.

Here is another commenter that also has noticed the similarities between pushing this woman out of the race and what happened to Hillary.

Wow, this sounds like another version of Why Won't The Stupid B** Quit?

She's not going to drop out. But hey, if you want to lower expectations for her, go right ahead. But be aware that you're helping McCain get elected.

source

I'd like to more comments by people expressing their outrage at the shift that Jeralyn has taken compared to the primaries or expressing outrage except most of them have been deleted and I'm not sure those that remain will remain. But you can check out the bottom of the thread for some one in particular says that Jeralyn is above that kind of post.

Yesterday, she linked to MoDo and it wasn't to criticize her for her sexist take on Governor Palin. But to say she wasn't attacking her in a sexist way because people in the comments section were having flashbacks to the way Sen. Clinton was treated.

BTW

feel free to delete this I didn't know it would get on the front of the blog here without someone approving or voting for it first.

I think.

No one has to vote or approve a post for it to keep its place.

I completely agree. I've been stunned by the petty meanness jeralyn has been pushing on her blog. Almost a completely different person.

Hillary Clinton, The Man of My Dreams

at corrente, and as others have pointed out, when you (registered users) post, you get to post right on the front page, full on stupid and all! so i hope you've learned: think about what you write before you post here, for the whole world will see it (or not) just like everyone else's work will be. freedom is sexy, but also dangerous, yo?

it's worth saying that lambert has not chosen to limit front page privs to only sr. fellow and those of you who've fed the hamsters with actual cold, hard cash. treasure that.

but he does have a rigid streak a mile wide. and since when is he the final word on a particular topic?

Some of the commenters at TL -- and I am a frequent reader and poster -- simply cannot let go of their dreams of HRC on the ticket, and their anger over the massive misogyny that was directed at her. Now they are engaged in an ongoing attempt to shame Democrats and the blogs for the way HRC was treated. These same commenters are increasingly angry at Jeralyn's and TL's active support of Obama. They are identifying with Palin solely because she is a woman, imho, and latching on to all criticism of her as if it is gender-based and morally equivalent to the unfair treatment HRC got.

There is absolutely no element of WWTSBQ to Jeralyn's posts. The whole WWTSBQ meme was about forcing a qualified candidate out of the race -- when she was winning primaries -- to allow a male candidate to win. Jeralyn's critique of Palin is based on the blatant LACK of credentials that Palin brings to the ticket and what Jeralyn perceives to be her utter lack of qualifications for the Presidency should something happen to McCain. It is not based on her gender, as she has REPEATEDLY pointed out. But it must be, of course, because Palin has a uterus, right?

EDIT: let me add, for the record, that there have been grotesquely sexist criticisms of Palin put forward already. The point I am making, however, is that they haven't come from Jeralyn or the FP'ers at TL.

BTD believes the experience argument doesn't favor Obama - which is ridiculous, imho - and that going after Palin is somehow mean. I think he is the one being sexist here, but not from someplace malevolent.

And if I hear one more person defend the quality of their post with "But I got high ratings!!11eleventy-one!" I may hurt myself laughing.

No criticism is allowed of Palin's actions or behaviors because any such commentary is "just like what those mean Obama people did to Hillary."

Contending that a complete unknown will not be able to withstand the glare of a national spotlight and the full pressure of the head-hunting dirt-digging trash-picking rumormongers that pass for modern investigative journalists is equivalent to trying to hound a world-famous sitting two-term US Senator and former two-term First Lady out of a presidential primary while she still has a plausible shot at winning.

Announcing up front that comments attacking Palin's person and her family would all be deleted and then following through on it is censorship.

Beyond absurd.

No wonder the Left gets whipped every four years, if this is what constitutes "thinking." I'll keep reading Jeralyn - and Greenwald and Digby and Hamsher and Marcy Wheeler and many other people who have taken a lot of grief for not sufficiently castigating Obama - and enjoy them, because they're well-informed and provocative and thoughtful and decent and interesting to read even when I don't agree with what they have to say. ChicagoGuy, this post was none of those things.

I'm not offering my post get axed because I'm embarrassed by it or anything. On the contrary, I have thought about it...I've been thinking about the way Jeralyn has handled the situation for the past two days, what she's said in the comments and what she has posted on the front page. I posted what I thought would be a diary like at mydd to see if anyone else had noticed it too and when I noticed it would be different I figured I'd offer it up in case you had a policy against allowing registered users to criticize A-List bloggers.

I just remembered a comment by BTD saying he would not be posting about politics there for the time being and gave a bunch of reasons as to why, that has since been deleted. It is possible he deleted his own comment but like the rest of the dissension that I read there tonight I'm guessing it got axed by Jeralyn.

scoutt

Thanks. I was wondering how many people had noticed it. I was begging to think maybe it was just me.

so I don't know what standard has to be met before asking the question of TL.

But on the Palin stuff, there's a whole being built that's greater than the sum of its parts, and it's getting to be a weird one. Is it full blown PDS, just early symptoms, or something that just looks similar?

That's pretty close to a 'toniness' argument, and as Lambert (correctly, imo) points out, those are pretty hard to moderate. They're also pretty hard to pin down. But almost any Palin post in the past 4 days has regular commenters pushing back by asking what's wrong with Jeralyn.

Some support, although this doesn't really capture it:

On the Palin pick, using punditocracy as proof:

Every tv anchor tonight is asking his surrogates what makes Palin qualified. It's the story with the longest legs. Not one of them has anything but a laughable answer. All they can cite is her 1 1/2 years as Governor and her position as chief of the Alaska National Guard. Then they say she's as experienced as Obama. The Democratic pundits on tv are making mincemeat of that argument.

Palin's Mother-in-Law won't vote for her.

HuffPo as support Palin

On vetting Obama vs vetting Palin:

Voters now know Obama. They vetted him during the course of the campaign. 18 million Democrats voted he was their choice.

There's also some poll and poll data cherry-picking going on, and on the experience argument an assertion that 17 months of campaigning trumps 2 years as Governor (which I can't find).

You really have to read through all of it to get the feel.

But here's my problem with it: Jeralyn has said several times, in response to commenter's concerns, that she's going to try to work against McCain-Palin as much as possible. Which is fine. It's advocacy (or reverse advocacy). Perhaps I'm just oversensitive to the truthy crap that got thrown at Clinton, and I honestly don't want to see it against other politicians, even ones I dislike. But it seems to me the most persuasive and yet honorable advocacy takes the opposition's best arguments and rebuts those, and ignores the penny-ante 'housegate' like silliness, rather than channeling campaign propaganda, regardless how ridiculous.

That's what's giving me a queasy feeling. Is it kidnapping? Don't know, some of you who were around for WKJM's beginning tell me.

Why won't that stupid bitch stop running her own blog as she sees fit?!!?!?

/snark

It's supereasy, isn't it, to blame any negative comments on the die-hards, isn't it? Psychologically damaged as we are.

When Jeralyn starts discussing Palin's positions on the issues, she'll stop getting pushback.

Any criminal case, or potential criminal case discussed at TL carefully delineates the presumption of innocence and dissects the evidence with an eye toward separating rumor and gossip from facts. (as it should) Except Troopergate. The definition of spreading 'smears' is slowly morphing into 'anything bad about Obama that can't be credibly countered'. I can't give links because the comments have all disappeared.

You want to talk about issues? Then, for the love of g&d, let's talk about issues, and not what Palin's mother-in-law thinks of her. There's plenty of legit arguments to be made against Palin, without resorting to invocations of Dan Quayle or Thomas Eagleton, for cryin' out loud.

There’s also some poll and poll data cherry-picking going on, and on the experience argument an assertion that 17 months of campaigning trumps 2 years as Governor (which I can’t find).

I think you're remembering this comment:

Obama has had 17 months of learning while campaigning. He's learned every aspect of Government while running for President. He may not have had that much more experience when he began running, but it's silly to say he doesn't have it now. She can't get close in 2 months.

This pick is an embarrassment for both of them.

here.

What really got me was the fact that she put up the pool today when the news of the fetus that shall not be named broke and then wants to pretend like she's staying above the fray and her pool is in no way related to story of the fetus that shall not be named. I'm not sure who is falling for it but I'm not.

When I started to get suspicious that this was not the Jeralyn I knew was when she blogged about "Palin's Pastors" and proceeded to smear Palin with quotes from Dobson. I don't see any proof in her blog entry that Dobson is her "pastor" and the only thing she offers them is that apparently Dobson loves him some Palin. I mean, seriously? This is the same blogger who for a number of days wouldn't mention or allow people to mention Rev. Wright and now she's hanging Dobson around Palin's neck. For all I know Palin could have been thumping her Bible in Dobson's pews but no evidence of a relationship is provided.

When I saw Jeralyn post:

Museum Staff Quit En Masse in Protest Looks like her history of firings is going to be a big deal, I'll be doing a new post:

And then use this article to back up her claim;

MUSEUM STAFF QUITS IN ANGER Anchorage Daily News (Alaska) August 6, 1997,
Opal Toomey, Esther West and Ann Meyers don't seem like politically active types. There are no bumper stickers on their cars, no pins on their lapels.

But the three gray-haired matrons of Wasilla's city museum decided to take a stand last week. Faced with a $ 32,000 budget cut and the prospect of choosing who would lose her job, the three 15-year-plus employees decided instead to quit en masse. They sent a letter to the mayor and City Council announcing they plan to retire at the end of the month, leaving the museum without a staff. They also sent a message: They'd rather quit than continue working for a city that doesn't want to preserve its history.

source

I was left scratching my head. I mean, doesn't the title of the article say they "quit" and if someone quits how does that prove a "history of firings?" When your own source refutes your argument in large font is it a good idea to continue with that line of thinking?

I say no, and I'm lead to believe that she's been kidnapped.

Because of the nature of comment threads, may I ask that you include in your comment to which other comment or comments you are framing an answer?

Re: the "smear" of Palin by quoting Dobson, please be aware that Dobson had resolutely insisted that he would never vote for McCain, but changed his mind after the pick of Palin, making it explicit that her inclusion on the ticket had made the difference. Now, it is true that doesn't mean she agrees with everything Dobson believes or says. However, there is also evidence that the most intensive, or perhaps I should say the only real vetting process that her candidacy received from the McCain campaign was a vetting for the approval of the most rightward leaning elements of the Republican base, and that, in fact, they helped select her.

Here's the story as told at The Nation by Max Blumenthal: here's just a tease:

Last week, while the media focused almost obsessively on the DNC's spectacle in Denver, the country's most influential conservatives met quietly at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis to get to know Sarah Palin. The assembled were members of the Council for National Policy, an ultra-secretive cabal that networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy.

CNP members have included Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Grover Norquist, Tim LaHaye and Paul Weyrich. At a secret 2000 meeting of the CNP, George W. Bush promised to nominate only pro-life judges; in 2004, then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told the group, "The destiny of the nation is on the shoulders of the conservative movement." This year, thanks to Sarah Palin's selection, the movement may have finally aligned itself behind the campaign of John McCain.

Though Dobson and Perkins reportedly attended the recent CNP meeting in Minneapolis, a full roster of guests would be nearly impossible to require. The CNP deliberately operates below the radar, going to excessive lengths to obscure its activities. According to official CNP policy, "The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs before or after a meeting." Thus the CNP's Minneapolis gathering was free of reporters.

Max goes on to explain how he found out about the meeting, and he also describes the standing ovation her speech received by the attendees.

Jeralyn is not a journalist; she runs a blog. She has every right to to remind readers of the ideas of someone like Dobson, who, even without the Nation story, we know changed his mind about McCain because he liked Palin, although since I can't load her site, I don't want to make my approval definitive until I can read her post.

Please do go and read the Blumenthal article; I think it's an important addition to the discussion.