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Stand with Rand: Tea Party Turks and the filibuster heard 'round the world

"My Tea Party cup runneth over," we twittered Mark Tapscott this morning in appreciation of his bracing filibuster post "Is Rand Paul America's William Wallace or Robert the Bruce?" wherein the DC Examiner columnist compares the generational struggle between Young Turk Rand Paul and Old Bull John McCain to the conflict between Robert the Bruce and his don't-rock-the-boat father in the film "Braveheart."

"He has definitely energized the base in a way that it hasn't been energized in a long time," enthused Tea Party Express Chair Amy Kremer following Paul Rand's filibuster heard 'round the world (Wednesday night the hashtag #standwithrand was number one trending topic worldwide on Twitter). The DC Examiner's Susan Ferrechio explains:

Until Paul's appearance, the Tea Party's popularity appeared to be waning. Republican leaders pushed Tea Party lawmakers to the sidelines during budget negotiations with President Obama. After a very successful 2010 election, the Tea Party took a beating in the 2012 [national] contests. And pollsters found that fewer and fewer people were affiliating themselves with the movement.

But Paul's filibuster attracted huge support on social media sites, from conservatives and liberals, and some believe it could mark a comeback for the movement …

By night's end, 40,000 new followers had signed up for Paul's Twitter feed.

We were caught up in the euphoria Wednesday afternoon and into the evening as C-SPAN 2 live broadcast the junior Senator from Kentucky doing it "the old-fashioned way," holding forth on the senate floor— with a little help from his friends, including our own fave, Sen. Ted Cruz! — for just under 13 hours of spirited discourse. We loved Hugh Hewitt's take:

[Rand Paul] engaged the country in a serious discussion of first principles. You may not agree with him, but he did it. The Constitution was actually discussed on the Senate floor for more than a dozen hours. Incredible.

He put the president on the defensive, using the force of argument to penetrate the White House's standard operating procedure of never engaging its critics on a serious level. Eric Holder, the hapless AG, came away scorched.

Paul also took an old, old device and married it to the new communications technology, instantly generating hundreds of thousands of messages about him and his argument which spread across the Twitterverse and associated platforms at an astonishing speed …

Senators Cruz, Lee, and Rubio are the sort of skilled talkers that the other side does not have. 

In this metaphorical battle to retake the Shining City, Sir William Wallace's words on the eve of the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297 resonate:

We come here with no peaceful intent, but ready for battle, determined to avenge our wrongs and set our country free."

Update: Why we love Twitter:

Sens. McCain and Graham appeared in the Senate gallery to criticize Rand Paul. #StandWIthRand twitter.com/ExJon/status/3…

— Jon Gabriel (@ExJon) March 7, 2013

"I am big. It's the media that got small." Andrea Mitchell channels Norma Desmond

"A horse got me out of bed ... and living life," Ann Romney told the Ocala Star-Banner recently, referring to how horseback riding, and specifically the art of dressage, has helped her overcome some of the debilitating symptoms of MS. “Horses are great teachers. Horses are great companions. They bring us great joy," she enthused, but you'd have no idea of the depth and richness of her involvment were your primary "news" source MSNBC and Sarah Palin's "lamestream" media. Yes YOU, Lawrence O'Donnell. (CNN photo)

"All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up," quips Lisa B on Twitter, locating the perfect fictional equivalent of old-media delusions of grandeur in Gloria Swanson's "Sunset Boulevard" portrayal of faded silent-movie star Norma Desmond, descending from denial into madness:

I am big. It's the pictures that got small.

Or, as faded lamestream-media stars like Andrea Mitchell — who was caught by new-media star Sooper Mexican the other day smearing Mitt Romney by twisting his words into the JournoList narrative of choice — might put it:

I am big. It's the media that got small.

She's right. It's those annoying gadflies Juan Williams calls "just bloggers" and our fellow soldiers in Glenn Reynolds's Army of Davids, wielding our rhetorical weapons of choice through social media old and new, who are as mad as hell and are not going to take this any more!

Who is big? The Anchoress twitters the answer in response to a snotty New Yorker whine about Ann Romney's horse sense, "Do we have to cheer for Ann Romney at the Olympics":

What a small question.

Update: Almost forgot. Ms. Mitchell has been honing her journalistic "objectivity" skills for decades: This from "The Tribal Filter on Green News," Insight July 23, 1990:

There was applause from the pressies in conclave assembled, after which Andrea Mitchell, an NBC correspondent, said that "clearly the networks have made the decision now, where you'd have to call it advocacy."

 Update II: Teresa nails it in the comments:

When I saw the story pop up yesterday all I could think was... people still watch MSNBC? Really? Or are a few people listening in so they can grab twitter fodder?

Update III: David Hogberg ponders the question "Which end of the horse is Lawrence O'Donnell":

Surely O’Donnell has assistants who can look this stuff up for him. Or was it just too tempting for him to score cheap political points to bother with the research showing the benefits of hippotherapy on multiple sclerosis?

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Howard Kurtz and the media's "astonishing slowness" on Trayvon Martin

Once again the people sitting in their living rooms in their pajamas are way ahead of the lamestream media, who appear to prefer peddling their tired racist narratives to getting the facts, ma'am, just the facts.

"On Reliable at 11, Derek McGinty, Lauren Ashburn, Eric Deggans on media's astonishing slowness on Trayvon Martin killing & Sharpton's role," Howard Kurtz twittered the lineup for his Sunday show "Reliable Sources" this morning. We appreciate his candor but couldn't resist a little snark in our reply:

Astonishing? I saw it right away. It's why the bloggers and tweeters are leaving Palin's "lamestream" in the dust. :)

Breitbart's Ben Shapiro was on top of it from the start:

We will not stop vetting the media, including Al Sharpton! Persist we much!

Bill Hobbs cut through all the speculation and irresponsible "reportage" [rhymes with garbage] that had whipped up some of our more suggestible fellow Americans into a frenzy:

I have no idea what REALLY happened in Trayvon case, & neither do you. Nor does Al "Tawana Brawley" Sharpton.

As we've been twittering ourselves the last couple of days:

Sensed in my BONES, from the moment it entered my consciousness that Sharpton was involved, it was laced w lies.

SHARPTON'S INTEREST TOLD ME IT SMELLED: Zimmerman was on ground being punched when he shot Trayvon Martin.

So creepy watching lamestream media fall for the latest iteration of Sharpton & Co's tired old narrative.

Now that our "mainstream" betters are starting to ask the questions they should have asked two weeks ago, how will they handle the poison and vitriol of the virtual lynch mob being fomented by members of the New Black Panther Party and other spawn of President Obama's old Harvard Law mentor Derrick Bell's Critical Race Theory?

#LynchMob: RT @dangainor: Terrorists: #NewBlackPanthers offer $10,000 bounty 4 capture of shooter Zimmerman http://bit.ly/GOZ0Gr #Trayvon

Our buddy Pete DaTechGuy isn't holding his breath:

Martin Killing #msm outrage; Black Panther bounty, Black youth killed in cities by other blacks #iseenothing

What's it going to be, Howard Kurtz?

Update: Soros-backed MoveOn is gloating:

The Department of Justice has announced that its Civil Rights Division, in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will investigate Trayvon Martin's death. This is a positive step.

However, the Sanford Police Department has a history of failing to successfully prosecute crimes when the victim is African-American and the alleged assailant is not. Sign the petition to the Department of Justice telling them to launch an investigation of the Sanford Police Department.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Amazing Grace: Is Rick Santorum the new Sarah Palin?

"I believe in free people and free markets," Rick Santorum told a spirited and well-informed town hall audience last night in Brentwood, a few miles down the road from our hometown, Exeter, New Hampshire. We caught the event in C-SPAN reruns this morning and were struck once again at the disconnect between old-media caricatures of "Soaring Santorum" and the man himself we're coming to know and admire through a full panoply of media, old and new. More on that below. Program Note: We're heading up to Manchester Saturday for "an evening of ruminating, riffing & debate watching" with National Review's Jonah Goldberg and company.

"The interest was palpable in Santorum’s first New Hampshire event since the caucuses," reports the Boston Globe as the former Pennsylvania senator steps up to the "very short but open window" of opportunity [Dana Perino's words on Fox this morning] to grab the nation's attention in this frenetically condensed primary season. First a few facts and then a bit of commentary:

The former senator from Pennsylvania has been a frequent, if under-the-radar, presence on the stump in New Hampshire for the past four months. But after surging to within eight votes of winning Iowa Tuesday, Santorum faced a standing-room only crowd at the Rockingham County nursing home hall …

The room, which had capacity to seat 160 people, was packed with voters and journalists standing in the aisles and lining the walls. It was a sharp contrast to his 100-plus previous town halls in New Hampshire, some of which attracted just a few dozen people … A campaign aide said Santorum plans to stay in New Hampshire through the primary Tuesday.

"This economy is suffering because this administration is crushing it with regulations," Santorum told town hallers last night. "Why are they doing it?" Because they know better than you. They don't trust you to make those decisions … The principle reason I'm in this race is because of Obamacare because I think Obamacare will turn every American into a dependent American … and the more dependent he can make you, the more power he has over you ….Obamacare is the tipping point." If you have the time, be sure to listen to the whole thing. See also James Pethokoukis's "Santorum vs. Romney is a conflict of conservative visions" for an enlightening discussion of two political world views, "traditional conservatism vs modern, free-market conservatism."  

"It's all about media and momentum," says Fox political analyst Larry Sabato, seemingly troubled that "the process is being rushed. One reason why no big themes are being developed is because there isn't time." But there IS time, Dr. Sabato, and there ARE big themes if you know where to look, that "panoply of media, old and new" where fans of the Shining City can disintermediate the lamestream media narrative at will: C-SPAN, blogs, facebook, twitter, not to mention the town halls themselves, under the radar till Tuesday's "unexpected" Iowa caucus results.

Now a larger audience is getting a taste of this authentic, thoughtful, knowledgeable, deliberative, experienced, articulate, principled, humorous and good-hearted man, very much a formidable opponent in any debate with the current Leader of the Free World. And this "flavor of the week" appears to be sticking to the ribs. As Fox anchor Bret Baier just retweeted:

RT @jeffzeleny Santorum not only draws big crowd, he holds their attention in Northfield. Long answers, but classic NH Q&A voters have been craving. #fitn

Like those NH voters, Tea Partiers like us — behind enemy lines here in Taxachusetts — have been craving "long answers." To our surprise, "Darwinian Libertarian" that we are, we haven't been so energized by a candidate's words and manner since that day in late August of 2008 when Sarah Palin burst onto the national stage.

Update: Bruce B. AKA Chickelit in twitter:

Santorum has many of the same archenemies in the media as Palin--so there's that similarity too.

BTW, I think your blogpost took heuvos. I hope you're not attacked.

Update II: Santorum's "Faith, Family & Freedom" tour schedule via our behatted men on the spot, longtime Santorum supporters Stacy McCain and Pete Ingemi. Here's the latest:

Axis of Fedora Update Manchester NH 12:50 p.m.

Greetings From the Granite State!

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Anti-Palin tempest in a teapot? "Fog of war describes Twitter in a nutshell"

"This has been a long tease with Sarah Palin, and at some point that tease has just got to go away. What's going to happen next," snickered Laura Ingraham (above left) to guest Ann Coulter last night as the two blonde bombshells shared what struck us as a covenly caterwaul over the Mama Grizzly's disintermediating GOP primary tactics. Twitter buddy Charles @repub9989 thinks it's a jealous-woman thing, but then there's Red State's Erick Erickson's complaint. See below for more, and click here for The Right Scoop's video.

"Fog of war describes Twitter in a nutshell," twittered Moe Lane this afternoon in response to our attempt to defuse a friendly-fire incident over our blogfriend's preference for announced Lone-Star candidate Scott Rick Perry (thanks to chickelit in the comments for the correction) vs our own first love, unannounced shoot-to-where-it's-going Sarah Palin:

Oh. Didn't realize you were a Perry supporter. Just retweeting a tweet that made sense to me. Reminds me of the fog of war.

We were but two hand-to-hand combatants in an army of cyberwarriors locked in a fiery internecine battle that erupted this morning between Palinistas and everyone else on our side of the aisle in the wake of a dishy catfest last night between mischief-maker Ann Coulter and host Laura Ingraham, subbing for O'Reilly:

Coulter: Most Americans don't want Sarah Palin for President, but she's become sort of the Obama of the Tea Party. She's just "The One" to a certain segment of right wingers, and the tiniest criticism of her — I think many of your viewers may not know this — no conservative on TV will criticize Palin because they don't want to deal with the hate mail.

Ingraham: People like Palin to show up at these events and whip up the crowd. There's a place for that, and I think we need that. but people, when I talk to them, they seem to be desperate and hungry more than ever for real substance, beyond kind of the sloganeering and the bumper sticker stuff.

Bring on the smelling salts. Then there was Red State's Erick Erickson, "all wee weed up over Palin," as Dan Riehl so memorably puts it. We particularly liked Rants for Reasonable People's PolitiJim's open letter to Erickson:

Did you forget it was PALIN who helped galvanize and garner the conservative movement in 2008? Have you not read the citations of those of us who started with Santelli and were empowered with Palin who comment how many ended up as 'the tea party?'  When the 'big government' republicans and pretenders forced us onto McCain - Palin was a sign of hope.

Update: Memeorandum links Erick Erickson's "Enough."

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Cloven Not Crested.

Whither goest thou? "Only a living thing can go against the stream"

 "Against the Tide" by Rob Colvin.

"Shorter NYT: Tea party is out of the mainstream because members are white, religious and socially conservative," twitter buddy Hale Razor writes re Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell's inadvertently self-revelatory New York Times op ed, "Crashing the Tea Party," a fact-challenged, politically correct dismissal of us and our fellow constitutional conservatives as "less popular than much maligned groups like 'atheists' and 'Muslims.'" A couple of paragraphs, and then some analysis:

GIVEN how much sway the Tea Party has among Republicans in Congress and those seeking the Republican presidential nomination, one might think the Tea Party is redefining mainstream American politics.

But in fact the Tea Party is increasingly swimming against the tide of public opinion: among most Americans, even before the furor over the debt limit, its brand was becoming toxic … Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right. 

Swimming against the tide, indeed. Redefining mainstream American politics is what the tea party has always been about, gentlemen, notwithstanding the last-gasp efforts of the powers that be like you and your fellow travelers in Sarah Palin's "lamestream media" to demonize us into oblivion. Can you say Tea Party terrorists? The Anchoress explains in her must-read review of Mark Steyn's After America: 

But Steyn is not writing solely about the social unrest and the hooliganism that so often comes with economic distress. After America warns that an over-regulated, bureaucracy-laden society, dissuaded from conceiving and achieving great things because too much has come between an idea and its execution, is a society dumbing down and numbing-up, growing not just stagnant, but inert, like Chesterton’s “dead thing” that “can go with the stream,” while “only a living thing can go against it.”

Oh, the irony that Harvard's Robert Putnam, author of the iconic "Bowling Alone," trapped in his tribal Pauline Kael bubble, is blind to what's right there before his eyes. As Hale Razor twittered:

Putnam sees social isolationism and decreasing church attendance, yet can't spot a nexus, while ripping social conservatives.

Putnam's "groundbreaking book based on vast data," published just over a decade ago before blogs and twitter and facebook and other social media reshaped and re-energized the public square, seems sadly set in amber today:

Putnam warns that our stock of social capital – the very fabric of our connections with each other, has plummeted, impoverishing our lives and communities.

Putnam draws on evidence including nearly 500,000 interviews over the last quarter century to show that we sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations that meet, know our neighbors less, meet with friends less frequently, and even socialize with our families less often. 

Signing fewer petitions and belonging to fewer organizations? That is so yesterday, Mr. Putnam. You and your co-author need to get out more. You shoulda interviewed people like ourselves before writing that New York Times relic. Tea Partay!

Update: Doug Ross of Larwyn's Linx links.

Update II: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link (to our crosspost at Dan's).

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

From violent, racist "teabaggers" to debate changers with a seat at the table

"If a good political compromise is one that has something for everyone to hate, then last night's bipartisan debt-ceiling deal is a triumph," says the WSJ this morning: "The big picture is that the deal is a victory for the cause of smaller government, arguably the biggest since welfare reform in 1996." Enough of a "balanced approach" for you, Mr. President? It's the momentum, stupid (see below). Above, image of Kitty Hawk Class aircraft carrier.

"I'm with you on this," twitters Mary Katharine Ham as others out here in the twittersphere and blogosphere with whom we usually agree are scoffing at debt-ceiling-deal headlines this morning like the Wall Street Journal's "A Tea Party Triumph" or Mark Thiessen's piece in the WaPo, "How the Tea Party 'hobbits' won the debt fight." Here's MK:

Is it a giant victory for American people? No, but by pathetic Congressional measures, it's a step forward.

We agree. As we twittered back to our protesting friends:

Metaphor that works for me: Changing direction of aircraft carrier. Slow it down, keeps going in same direction awhile.

Consider, too, turnaround of Tea Party in MSM narrative. From violent, racist "teabaggers" to debate changers with a seat at the table.

Not to mention the lame Tea Partier as terrorist meme the President and his crew were desperately trying to sell the American public last week. Their attempts at demonizing us are being overtaken by events. We were delighted to see our friend Peter Ingemi of DaTechGuyblog had already "read/skimmed" the 74-page budget bill and sees it as we do as a course correction:

After reading the bill, if it was up to me, I’d be a yes vote. This bill is not an example of steaming in the right direction, it is an example of completing the turn of the ship so it is facing in the right direction but you have to turn the ship before you change directions. This is the turn.

As the WSJ editors note: "The tea partiers pride themselves on adhering to the Constitution, which was intended to make political change difficult.

Yet in this deal they've forced both parties to make the biggest spending cuts in 15 years, with more cuts likely next year. The U.S. is engaged in an epic debate over the size and scope of government that will play out over several years, and the most important battle comes in the election of 2012.

Update: Michelle Malking Buzzworthy link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Like Andrew Breitbart only more so

"She just paints whoever inspires her," twitters Mandy Nagy — aka Liberty Chick — whose mother's deep, dark and delicious portrait of Andrew Breitbart (detail above) caught our eye in the thrust and parry of the social media matrix yesterday. Breitbart's using the image as his new Twitter avatar. "Your face was a good one to paint (while listening to "Burning Down the House)," quipped artist Nagy. "Like Andrew Breitbart only more so," we chimed in. (View Nagy Gallery here)

"Why bother to remember when you can just use Google?" runs the ars technica headline teasing the latest scientific findings of where our social-networking heads are at:

The potential to find almost any piece of information in seconds is beneficial, but is this ability actually negatively impacting our memory? The authors of a paper that is being released by Science Express describe four experiments testing this. Based on their results, people are recalling information less, and instead can remember where to find the information they have forgotten.

Like any set of entrails, these have got some of our fellow opinionators tearing their hair out over the end of civilization as we know it, but we're kinda thrilled. It's totally Darwinian, our homo sapient survival instincts kicking in to adapt us to a changing environment. As a brand manager might put it, It's the "transactive memory," stupid.

"Transactive memory suggests an analysis not only of how couples and families in close relationships coordinate memory and tasks in the home, but how larger groups and organizations come to develop 'group minds,' memory systems that are more complex and potentially more effective than those of any of the individuals that comprise them," explains Daniel M. Wegner, John Lindsley Professor in Memory of William James (a co-author of the paper described above) of the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Can you say Adam Smith's Invisible Hand? Above, flocks of birds "wheel and swoop in unison," not unlike twitterers and other social network denizens," as we blogged a couple of years back. Totally awesome must-watch video here.

"Researchers found that people are more likely to remember information if they believe they won't be able to access it in the future, and that they are more likely to remember how they found the information than the information itself." Works for us. Choose your battles. Keep your ammo close to the chest. Go for the jugular. "Shoot to where it's going, not to where it's been." "Don't retreat, reload." "Fight like a girl!"  As Ben Franklin said, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it." 

Clicking over to the Nagy online studio, we were smitten with the artist's wild and whacky portrait of take-no-prisoners Red Eye force of nature Greg Gutfeld (detail above). We agree with Chris Barnhart that Red Eye has "the potential to be the 'gateway drug' of a whole new generation of conservatives and independents."

"The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves," write the authors in their abstract of the study. Enter, stage right, Google+. Again the social network is aflutter over what it all might mean for the future of our species, and again, it's Darwinian, in the Thomas Sowell/Geerat Vermeij sense:

It's starting to appear that Google actually does have the chops, and obviously the financial backing, to put out a social product sweet enough to lure people, who tend to be creatures of habit, to spend less time with their traditional network and cultivate a new one.

Andrew Breitbart. Greg Gutfeld. Looks like NagyArt is on a roll. Could Jonah Goldberg's Twitter avi (above) be next on her palette of immortals who will keep the (incandescent) lights burning in the Shining City?

It's the market forces, stupid.

Update from the Liberty Chick herself:

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this post! Creative :)

Update II: The conversation continues.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Jack Dorsey's Twitter Town Hall: By Obama, for Obama

"The first-ever presidential forum on Twitter was undercut by the commander-in-chief himself, as President Obama answered questions from average Americans with a tide of talking points that went uninterrupted and unchallenged, short-circuiting the event’s populist potential," summarizes the Boston Herald's Jessica Van Sack, who watched Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey's "Twitter Town Hall" so we didn't have to. Above, a comely attendee lifts her iPad beside the East Room door at what one critic who blogs at Harvard Business Review is calling "a Meaningless Marketing Stunt." (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) 

"How can we make Twitter Town Halls better in the future? And not just for the US government, but any government," twittered Twitter co-founder and enthusiastic Obama supporter Jack Dorsey following yesterday's predictably stilted, "first-ever presidential forum on Twitter," unwittingly revealing a fundamental misunderstanding of American Exceptionalism and the Shining City.

"The big winner of today’s White House Twitter Townhall (besides Twitter)?" asked Bag News Notes: "Well, where do I get my own White House-edition MacBook? Then, regarding the double logo, talk about leveraging your brand." Final stats via Mass Relevance: 169,395 #AskObama Tweets. Hot topics: Jobs (32%) Budget (18%) Taxes (18%) & Education (11%).

How to make future Twitter Town Halls better? As we twittered in response,

Try to remember that here in the USA town halls are not for the GOVT but for the PEOPLE.

Beyond that, we salute Mr. Dorsey for a technological knockout, but is his creation, as he asserts, "a great first step for future Town Halls"? What about all those disintermediating, grassroots, Twitter-enabled Town Halls of two years back that gave voice to the Tea Party movement? We do applaud Dorsey's "curatorship" model, where a panel of journalists and bloggers from across the country were invited to join the President and Dorsey in the East Room to help select the 18 (too few) out of nearly 170,000 (good show!) questions submitted with the #AskObama hashtag by our fellow Americans. A couple of quotable quotes from that Boston Herald article referenced above:

“Amazing how Obama can give such a long answer to such short questions,” tweeted Drew Cline, editorial page editor of the Union Leader of New Hampshire, who was chosen by the social media site as one of eight so-called “curators” to help select questions for the forum.

“BO’s verbosity was a huge problem. An actual moderator could have made space for 100% more questions,” replied another curator, political blogger Will Wilkinson.

That was the consensus in the blogosphere and Twitterverse yesterday after Obama answered just 18 questions out of the 160,000 submissions during his live Webcast of the Twitter Town Hall. Hosted by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, the hourlong forum devolved into a typical, meandering town hall stump-athon that was a mockery of the Web site’s famous 140-character limit.

"Roughly half the questions were softballs, which [curator Drew] Cline attributed to low participation among conservatives who felt they wouldn’t get a fair shake," but a subset of questions we all knew would never make the final cut kept the twittersphere afflutter with RT's and lol's. Note: Fans of Jonah Goldberg's 140-or-fewer-character zingers may use Snap Bird to read all of his AskObama tweets using the following terms: Search: Someone's timeline, WHO? JonahNRO, FOR: #AskObama.

The last word goes to Benjamin Howe on Twitter:

Idea @RepPaulRyan: Hold a town hall, use the same tweets obama did, and answer them with the facts that @BarackObama is ignoring. #AskObama

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update II: Jonah Goldberg tosses us a link from The Corner!

Update III: Doug Ross of Larwyn's Linx links.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Palin Undefeated: "A story of empowerment for modern women and their daughters"

Stephen K. Bannon, Director of the epic Palin documentary "The Undefeated" — "a story of empowerment for modern women and their daughters" — talked with Stacy McCain about "the gap between the reality of Sarah Palin and the perception created by the media" at the Right Online conference in Minneapolis last weekend, where the film was previewed before what Bannon calls "the vanguard of this revolution, the bloggers."

"Sarah Palin Reportedly Quits Bus Tour Halfway Through," snarked the headline at Talking Points Memo this morning, seamlessly spinning a speculative Real Clear Politics story about "one of the most unpredictable political figures in America" into their Palin's-a-Quitter narrative of choice:

Former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin has reportedly packed in her bus tour… halfway through.

Oh, and lest we forget how stupid she is, a bit of shopworn, gratuitous boilerplate thrown in to keep the natives happy:

The bus tour was launched over Memorial Day weekend, and was particularly scrutinized after one event in Boston where Palin badly flubbed the story behind Paul Revere's ride.

The card-carrying commenters piled on with glee, signalling their membership in the tribe. Our favorite:

"the quitta from wasilla" or the "Iquitarod queen" which discribes [sic] Palin the best?

We couldn't resist and posted a guest comment of our own with links vindicating Palin — The Boston Herald's recent "Old North Church vicar defends Palin on Revere" and John Fund's July 2009 WSJ column "Why Palin Quit: Death by a Thousand FOIAs." It was too much for TPM, who promptly removed our comment without ceremony, but not before a rabid pack of regulars — irregulars? — had had a chance to pile on:

Get lost troll. Go collect your money for posting here at TPM.

Great sources. hahahaha!!!!!! America is such a great country, everyone is free to choose from which direction they take a spin [Oh, the irony!]

Two papers owned by Rupert Murdoch,* who just happens to be Palin's employer?* Is that your idea of objectivity? *I wouldn't be surprised if he was yours as well.

If only. But moving along, as we mentioned in a follow-up comment, had TPM been doing their homework, they would have discovered this bit of inconvenient truth from a June 1 ABC News report:

Palin confirmed that she's going to Boston after New York and that after the northeast, she'll go back to Alaska before re-launching the tour - called the "One Nation Tour," after all - on the West Coast.

"Sigh. Reports of Tour Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated," the deftly disintermediating Palin twittered, not without a bit of snark of her own:

I wouldn’t think it to be such a slow news day that, what with numerous wars and serious economic woes concerning Americans, a bus is driving news stories today. The next leg of the tour continues when the time comes. In the meantime, no one should jump to conclusions – certainly not the media with their long track record of getting things wrong or just making things up.

As Big Hollywood editor John Nolte twittered in awe at this latest Facebook coup:

"Sarah Palin lets the MSM climb way out on a limb before sawing it off. It's called fighting like a girl.

*Update: Twitter buddy irishspy explains:

They invoke the name [Murdoch] to banish the hated facts. :)

Update II: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update III: Victory Film Group links with "Sissy Willis Goes Into The Bowels Of TPM To Defend Palin:

Yes, it's messy there. Go read the whole thing.

Crossposted at Riehl World View, Cloven Not Crested and Liberty Pundits.