“Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?” she was asked (around 9 minutes into the video above).

“I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers,” she replied.

“Do you think it’s a fair question to be looking at?” Humphries persisted.

“I think it’s a fair question, just like I think past association and past voting records — all of that is fair game,” Palin said. “The McCain-Palin campaign didn’t do a good enough job in that area.”

And that’s the end of that political career!  Really, it was only a matter of time before she said something birther related.  She’d long ago entered to realm of conspiracy and paranoia.

No doubt, there was a higher percentage that answered that the U.S. should “mind its own business and let other countries get along the best they can on their own,” but the alternative was to answer that the U.S. “is the most powerful nation in the world, we should go our own way in international matters, not worrying about whether other countries agree with us or not.” Given that choice between something that sounds reasonable and something that sounds idiotic, a great many non-”isolationists” would prefer the former response. Essentially, the survey offered two choices. On the one hand, the respondent can choose arrogant hegemonism and disregard the interests of all other nations, or he can choose something less obviously obnoxious.

Larison also makes the point that the United States hasn’t really been an “isolationist” country in over a century (if ever).

“Isolationism” is really just a term employed to silence debate on our foreign policy.  Democrats have used it just as much as Republicans in recent years.  Instead of perpetuating our continued military presence in over a hundred countries, and the cost in resources and lives that entails, this country would do well to have quite a few more “isolationists” in its body politic.  Perhaps that would have saved us the fiasco of the two wars we’ve been fighting this decade.

A year ago, he said, for every one Allied soldier killed, wounded or captured, some six Taliban were. Now the ratio is 1:1. “This means the Taliban gave as good as they got,” he observes. “During all of 2008 the kill ratio never was so close. This should be unacceptably embarrassing news for the Coalition.”

Is American prepared for that kind of casualty ratio?  Think of the costs involved now that Obama has tacked on an additional three years and thirty thousand G.I.’s.

A U.S. withdrawal leading to a Taliban triumph would electrify jihadists from Marrakech to Mindanao and mark a milestone in the long retreat of American power. Pakistan, having cast its lot with us, would be in mortal peril. NATO, humiliated in its first war, would become more of a hollow shell than it already is.

Obama plans to send tens of thousands more U.S. troops to hold off a resurgent Taliban, even as he plans for their eventual withdrawal.

The United States is today led by a commander in chief who does not believe military victory is possible, who is not sure this war should be fought and who has a timetable in his own mind as to when to draw down our troops. And we face a Taliban that, after eight years of pounding, is stronger than ever, and believes God is on its side and its victory is assured.

Who do we think is ultimately going to prevail?

If this were a necessary war – wouldn’t Obama’s decision regarding troop levels have come months ago?

Earlier this year, Chaffetz traveled to the region and said that, since then, he’s “become more engrossed in my conviction it is time to bring our troops home.”

“I am opposed to nation building, and I quite frankly don’t see or understand what victory looks like,” he said. “I believe, as most people do, that our military can do everything we want them to do. … But we’re asking them to fight a war that is not very well-defined. And we are asking them to do so with one hand tied behind their back.”

The GOP used to stand against foreign interventionism and nation building.  Hopefully that sentiment will return now that Bush is out of office.

Edward is simply a terrible, violent, abusive person; Bella is a suggestible, weak, and emotionally battered woman. Their relationship, if removed from its supernatural context, would be a sad tale of a violent coupling, one that could certainly prove fatal to one or more partners; apparently the ghouls-and-mystery sheen that Stephenie Meyer has painted over her books obscures the facts of this relationship from view, but that gloss does not change the violent nature of Edward and Bella’s romance…

A generation of young girls will not have the tools to discern abuse because all of the warning signs have been normalized and approved by their favorite film. This will lead to violence against women. I am normally not one to say that violent behavior can be blamed on the media, but when something has messages as insidious and destructive as those in Twilight – and when those messages are being delivered to a definitely impressionable audience – the creators are very culpable in the violence to follow. Stephenie Meyer and the Twilight filmmakers have taught a lot of terrible lessons, and will continue to do so; hopefully, parents and educators will have the patience and foresight to undo that damage.

Yikes, that’s scary stuff – especially for a series of books/movies that market themselves on abstinence.  I have no idea it it’s true or not – but then again how many times have we heard this kind of stuff before?  Is there any tangible evidence?

The bottom line is that you don’t need to be a sociologist, political scientist, or a student of colonialism or foreign cultures to understand why military occupation is such a poisonous activity and why it usually fails. If you’re an American, you just need to read a bit about Reconstruction and reflect on how its effects — along with the effects of slavery itself — have persisted across generations. If that’s not enough, visit a society that is currently experiencing occupation, and take the time to go through a checkpoint or two. Then you might understand why the local population doesn’t view the occupying forces as benevolent and isn’t as grateful as occupiers often think they ought to be.

Of course none of that is particularly shocking or new (at least it shouldn’t be to anyone with a cursory knowledge of world history).

Palin the next great American populist?  Daniel Larison has something to say about that:

Of course, we understand that the purpose of the article is to give favorable press coverage to Palin and to continue The Weekly Standard’s embarrassing cheerleading for her. There is also a clear desire to burnish Palin’s credentials as the “rogue” anti-elitist and to make her part of the most absurdly artificial tradition of “Jackson-Bryan-Reagan.” After all, no Palin love letter would ever be complete without some reference to how she resembles Reagan in some intangible, mystical way that only devotees can understand. I simply don’t know how one draws a line between William Jennings Bryan, an intense evangelical Christian who fiercely opposed concentrated wealth and power, and Ronald Reagan, a mild Unitarian Presbyterian and former FDR Democrat whose practical domestic legacy was the advancement of corporate and large business interests. Of course, Bryan never won a presidential race, so it’s hard to know whether he would or could have translated his rhetoric into policy, but I doubt very much that he would have recognized any of his legacy in Reagan. How much less is Palin in the same tradition?

Continetti seems to be continuing in the proud tradition of The Weekly Standard by shilling for Republican candidates.  David Brooks did it for McCain, Fred Barnes did it for Bush and now Continetti does it for Palin.

Andrew Sullivan chalks Continetti’s partisan hackery to pure ambition.  That’s probably accurate.  Given that anything with the name “Sarah Palin” attached to it will sell like hotcakes, any aspiring political writer could do quite well ($$$ that is) to jump on the gravy train.

That Continetti is willing to become the poster boy for Palinistas isn’t surprising, but it is nevertheless disappointing.  Back in the spring of 2006, Continetti wrote a little book called the “K Street Gang.”  In it, Continetti detailed how Congressional Republicans under the leadership of Tom Delay sold out on conservatism for the glory of power and wealth.  Mind you that he was doing this before the GOP’s collapse, before it was popular to shake one’s head in disgust.  That book didn’t give me the impression that Continetti would one day trans-morph into a public relations director for a pseudo-candidate whose platform never extends beyond recycled talking points.  Continetti genuinely seemed to be someone willing to challenge the conventional wisdom.  Republicans need a lot more writers like that – young men and women who can still see right from wrong without needing to check on party affiliation.  Perhaps Continetti will get back to that once Palin’s political career finally ends.  I certainly hope so.