DIAMONDS AND RUBIOS?
The dynamic public presence of Sarah Palin charms her fans and fixates critics, who can’t take their eyes off her no matter how hard they try. Her best-seller has sold 2.2 million copies, there’s a new book in progress - this one on values and faith - and Mrs. Palin continues to polish her image on the Fox News Channel, talk shows and through select speaking engagements. Then there’s the sparkling “Sarah” lapel pin, created by Washington jewelry maven Ann Hand, set with Swarovski crystals and reasonably priced at $25 in her shop on MacArthur Boulevard Northwest or online (www.annhand.com).
“Though we are totally nonpolitical here, we base our choices for these pins on prevailing public sentiment. There’s really an audience who are just so devoted to Sarah Palin,” Mrs. Hand tells Inside the Beltway, noting that her shop also created pins for such namesakes as President Obama, former President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, among other luminaries.
“In the past, our pins have been a pretty good gauge of who wins and who doesn’t. We’ve already gotten an inquiry from a customer wondering if we’ve got any pins for Marco Rubio,” she adds, referring to the conservative Republican candidate for U.S. senator in Florida.
SHUFFLE BOARD
“Old person replaces sick person as corrupt person steps aside.” (Gawker.com)
A Democratic shuffle: Summarization of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s selection of Rep. Sander M. Levin of Michigan over Rep. Pete Stark of California to “temporarily” replace Rep. Charles B. Rangel of New York as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
“One of the big problems with congressional Democrats is their fanatical devotion to the seniority system, which is how you end up with dudes like Max Baucus in charge of the Senate Finance Committee and Kent Conrad in charge of the Budget Committee,” says Gawker political writer Alex Pareene.
NOT RECONCILED
Some observers say President Obama has jettisoned his carefully crafted nonpartisan demeanor and gone “Chicago-style” aggressive to get health care reform through all the baroque convolutions on Capitol Hill, like, by Monday. The switch is getting to some people.
“We’re hearing a lot of pent-up anger over this brazen last-ditch effort to take over health care,” says Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, a grass-roots group founded by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. “These arrogant procedural games simply will not be tolerated by the American people.”
Says Mr. Armey himself, “This is an exercise in using a sledge hammer to achieve a short-term political goal instead of taking the time to create good public policy.”
The group has launched a kind of online sympathy site for the angst-ridden that includes a “war room” and protest petition, advising visitors, “The reconciliation process was created in 1974 so that Congress could move quickly on budget matters. But the Left wants to use it to pass their big-government agenda, starting with ObamaCare.”
See it here at www.NoHealth CareReconciliation.com.
JUST SO YOU KNOW
“Over the last three days, ABC’s World News devoted almost six times as much coverage to Sen. Jim Bunning and his temporary hold-up of an unemployment bill as the program did for the ongoing revelations that Democratic Charlie Rangel violated House ethics with his trips to the Caribbean,” says Scott Whitlock of Newsbusters.org, a conservative broadcast watchdog.
His mini-analysis revealed that the Kentucky Republican warranted 4 minutes and 38 seconds; Mr. Rangel 48 seconds.
Observes the discerning Mr. Whitlock, “The difference here is that Rangel’s story was an actual scandal, and ABC only treated Bunning’s actions, which amounted to not giving unanimous consent to a $10 billion spending bill, as a scandal.”
HOLLYWOOD EXPRESS
“Avatar” just got a little more politicized. The Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and 52 other “environmental and indigenous groups” have attached themselves to the wildly popular, sci-fi film to protest the refining of Canadian “tar sands” to produce “dirty” oil - which they say has more pollutants and toxins in it than the regular stuff. Their ads placed in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter rename these fields “Avatar sands” and include plenty of references to the blockbuster film.
“We want Hollywood, and the powerful thought leaders there, to know ’Avatar’ does a great job of exposing the tar sands. It’s the world’s most destructive project - Pandora’s unobtanium is Canada’s tar sands,” said Rick Smith of Environmental Defence Canada.
” ’Avatar’ is like one big advertisement for our fight against tar sands oil,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope. “This is one of the most destructive projects on Earth, and we can’t let it expand into the U.S.”
The group is calling on Americans to send an e-mail to petition President Obama to stick with “clean energy, not dirty fuels like tar sands oil.”
WEEKEND READING
The peculiar rumor that U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts was going to retire actually got started in a Georgetown University Law School classroom. As an exercise in the weird workings of the media-political feedback amplification and echo chamber, see the entire deconstruction of events (and our apologies for the lengthy online address) here: https://abovethe law.com/2010/03/the_back story_of_the_john_roberts_ retirement_rumor.php.
POLL DU JOUR
• 58 percent of Americans say our debt owed to China is a greater threat to the security and well-being of the U.S. than the threat of “radical Islamic terrorists.”
• 61 percent of Republicans, 59 percent of independents and 57 percent of Democrats agree.
• 27 percent of Americans overall cite radical Islamists as the greater threat.
• 32 percent of Republicans, 28 percent of independents and 24 percent of Democrats agree.
• 7 percent of Americans overall say neither is the most serious threat.
• 4 percent of Republicans, 5 percent of independents and 12 percent of Democrats agree.
Source: A Zogby poll of 2,068 adults conducted Feb. 17 to 19.
• Rumors, rants, shameless self-promotion to jharper@washingtontimes.com.
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