John Hayward: The Palin Uncertainty

Palin's is often the first voice raised in response to attacks against conservatives.
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At Human Events, John Hayward opines on the Palin slam that Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter tag-teamed up to perform Tuesday night on Fox News:

Judging the fortunes of political candidates from polls is a tricky business, especially those who have not formally declared yet. Is it a sign of strength or weakness that non-candidate Sarah Palin shows up in third place behind Rick Perry​ and Mitt Romney? Whatever that says about Palin, it’s probably a more significant data point for the declared candidates chugging in behind her. Personally, I would not find the notion that I could enter the Presidential race in third place to be depressing.

At any rate, people do change their minds.

[...]

In the wake of the conversation between Coulter and Ingraham, many bloggers echoed Coulter by expressing their exasperation with fans who can’t tolerate any criticism of Palin. I suspect Palin herself would strongly maintain that the issues at hand are far larger than any single person, and would not be happy with those who say they will only participate in the 2012 elections if they can vote for her. She also wouldn’t want the issues she cares about to be evaluated solely through personal admiration or disdain for her. Of all the many things Palin has been, or aspired to be, I’ve never heard her express a desire to become an ingredient in an ideological litmus test. She puts too much effort into writing and speaking eloquently, about matters of great substance, to be treated that way.

Why are so many Palin fans dedicated to her, and why do they perceive so much of the criticism leveled at her from sources on the Right as unfair? Because she’s always out in front. She took a mountain of abuse in 2008, and then cheerfully began climbing the even bigger mountain behind it. Hers is often the first voice raised in response to attacks against conservatives, the Tea Party, and middle-class Americans… especially against the really vicious attacks. And when Palin herself is the target, as in the wake of the Tucson atrocity, too many conservative and Republican “leaders” are much too slow to speak up for her.

Look at her response to James Hoffa’s vile remarks on Labor Day, and Barack Obama​’s agreeable silence afterward. She didn’t just run to a camera and express her outrage. She wrote a very detailed, thoughtful response, as constructive as it was fiery, and posted it in the wee hours of the morning. Did you see anything like that from the declared GOP presidential candidates? Why not?

Maybe Palin won’t run, and never seriously planned to. Maybe she will, but she’s taking a long time to make her announcement. She always said she wanted to see if there’s another candidate she could support. Tonight will be the first big debate appearance of Rick Perry, the last big name to join the race. He had a pretty spectacular campaign launch. Is it so unreasonable for Palin to wait a bit longer and see how he fares, once his campaign reaches orbit? If she’s a non-factor, why are so many people – pro and con – being so unreasonable about her?

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Tammy Bruce also discussed this on her show today.

- JP

John Hayward: Palin Conquers the Storm

Palin’s prescriptions... are the exact opposite of Obama’s dodges and whiny demands..."
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Here's another rave review of Gov. Palin's Facebook essay, "Conquering the Storm." It's by John Hayward at Human Events, and we have some excerpts to whet your appetite:

It’s a big piece, but well worth reading in full. Compare it to the weary talking-point retread our clueless President delivered in his statement on the same afternoon, and you can see why the markets were nose-diving even as Obama spoke. Palin wrote the speech he should have given, but is utterly incapable of conceiving.

As Palin points out, the S&P downgrade wasn’t a surprise to people who were paying attention. She claims no great powers of clairvoyance. She was just reading the statements pouring out of the credit agencies, which is hard to Democrats to do, since they immediately roll those statements into clubs for beating the Tea Party.

[...]

Palin’s prescriptions for dealing with the crisis are the exact opposite of Obama’s dodges and whiny demands for tax increases, and they make a hell of a lot more sense than anything the President has said for months.

[...]

This powerful and detailed Palin essay makes an excellent [addition] to your collection, in case you find yourself confronted by the occasional zombie who parrots the talking point that she has no expertise, and takes no serious positions. The people who volunteered to paw through her email would be well-advised to read this instead. People who are still willing to re-elect the man who professes to be surprised by every major development of the past two years should try listening to someone who didn’t find any of his failures “unexpected” at all.

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- JP

John Hayward says, Let them take the Palin Test

"Now that we’ve established the Palin Test, let’s apply it to every candidate"
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In a Human Events opinion piece, John Hayward argues that the media's fishing expedition in Alaska has established what he calls the Palin Test. Let’s apply that new standard to all presidential candidates, he proposes, and not just those on the Republican side:

The most spectacular embarrassment in recent media history left the New York Times, the Washington Post, their far-left “partner” organizations, and their army of citizen muck-rakers sitting in a pile of crumpled Sarah Palin emails, with absolutely nothing news-worthy to show for their efforts. They could do no better than saying her correspondence shows she had some interest in the vice-presidential spot before McCain selected her, and she doesn’t much care for the “lamestream media.” Gee, I wonder why?

The UK Guardian summed up its findings as follows: “Tens of thousands of pages of Sarah Palin's emails released on Friday offer an intimate portrait of a politician caught in an almost daily battle on issues ranging from oil exploration to an ethics investigation.” Does anyone think the media dove into the Governor’s correspondence looking to prepare an “intimate portrait” of her “daily battles?”

[...]

Not only is the lack of any scandal in the Palin emails remarkable, but it’s almost astonishing how perfectly her private correspondence matches up with her public pronouncements. She even uses a lot of the same colorful language, like “unflippingbelievable.”

[...]

Well, now that we’ve established the Palin Test, let’s apply it to every candidate, including the incumbent President. Release a couple of years’ worth of email, and let’s see what we find. Do you think it would take an army of volunteer readers very long to find something hypocritical, or even horrifying, in Obama’s correspondence?

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We seriously doubt that few, if any, of the candidates or potential candidates for the 2012 presidential race could stand up to the intense scrutiny and come out of it looking as good as Gov. Palin does right now.

- JP

John Hayward: The Paul Revere Trap

"My God, she’s a fiend."
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In a Human Events Monday opinion piece John Hayward has a little fun at the Palin-hating elite's expense, as he wrings his hands, with tongue in cheek, over "an obvious act of cruelty from Sarah Palin":

I can believe she was thinking only of her intended audience when she told the Tea Party to “party like it’s 1773.” Of course liberals have no idea when the original Tea Party occurred, and raced to demonstrate their deplorable ignorance of history by attacking her for saying it. She didn’t know they were going to make fools of themselves. She was thinking about the Tea Party enthusiasts she was speaking to, not ignorant lefty bloggers and talking heads.

But this time… this time was on purpose. She knew exactly what she was doing when she said Paul Revere “warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells, and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that were going to be secure, and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed.”

She knew that lefty bloggers and media talking heads would walk right into it. She knew they are as ignorant of the Revolution as they were of the Tea Party, and remember nothing about Paul Revere except “one if by land, two if by sea.” She knew damn well they wouldn’t be able to resist the opportunity to stick their noses in the air and arrogantly inform their audiences that she needs to go back to school and take high-school history over again.

There’s no way I’m letting Palin slide on this...

[...]

Frightened liberals flailing around for ways to attack Palin should give up on writing ridiculous diatribes about how she’s endangering the lives of reporters by refusing to provide the exact route of her “One Nation” tour in advance. It’s manifestly absurd to keep bleating that she has no “substance” when she belts out impromptu policy speeches every time she hops off that bus. Instead, you should be complaining about her cruel genius for making liberals look stupid. Only Anthony Weiner can hold a candle to her at that… and she’s obviously having much more fun doing it.

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Heh.

- JP

John Hayward: Hells No

"I lean more toward the Palin prescription"
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In a Human Events opinion piece, John Hayward says Congress' “debt ceiling” is a lie if they keep raising it:

Back in March, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he said he would “vote to defeat an increase in the debt limit, unless it is the last one we ever authorize, and is accompanied by a plan for fundamental tax reform, an overhaul of our regulatory structure, a cut to discretionary spending, a balanced budget amendment, and reforms to save Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.”

On Friday, Sarah Palin said on Fox News, “Hells no, I would not vote to increase that debt ceiling. Otherwise it just shows the American people we’re not serious yet. We’re still going to incur more debt. No and we don’t have to increase the debt ceiling in the next few weeks. It turns my stomach to hear this assumption articulated that ‘well we have to,’ despite the fact we’re raking in, the federal government, six billion a day. Take that money and service our debt first and pay down some of that debt. Make sure that we’re showing the international financial markets and our lenders that we’re serious about getting our debt and our deficit problems under control.”

“Hells no” is an interesting turn of phrase. Dante said there was more than one hell – nine of them, to be exact. The ninth and worst hell was reserved for traitors. They spent eternity frozen in ice.

There’s increasing talk of demanding hard spending caps and a balanced budget amendment, in exchange for one last debt ceiling increase, as Marco Rubio proposed. I respect the arguments made by advocates of this approach, and it seems in line with the way Washington works – deals must be struck, compromises reached, and so forth. I lean more toward the Palin prescription, though… and really, aren’t she and Rubio saying essentially the same thing?

Take away Palin’s churning stomach and invocation of the infernal, and swap in Rubio’s list of demands that Congress will never meet, and you end up in the same place: the hells of no. If Rubio is serious about his terms, he’s just one disappointing Senate vote away from standing on Palin’s ground.

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Related: Mark Steyn, Hitting the Real Debt Ceiling

- JP

John Hayward: The Cincinnatus Trap

This ideal is an intellectual bear trap that ultimately serves the purposes of the Left
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John Hayward opines at Human Events that the Republican who opposes Obama will need more than just "fire in the belly" to unseat the sitting president in 2012:

Conservatives and libertarians have a certain romantic fascination with Cincinnatus, by reputation if not by name. Cincinnatus was a Roman farmer who reluctantly left his fields to take charge of the Republic during a moment of crisis, served wisely and selflessly for precisely as long as he was needed, and trudged quietly back to his farm when Rome was safe once again. There’s a statue in his namesake city of Cincinnati that shows him surrendering the symbols of power with one hand, while he limbers up his trusty plow with the other.

That’s the mythological ideal of a limited-government president, isn’t it?

[...]

This ideal is a dead end, an intellectual bear trap that ultimately serves the purposes of the Left. Embracing it will deny us the tough and energetic leadership we need for real reform to succeed in Washington.

I found myself thinking of the Cincinnatus Trap as I read an opinion piece from former Republican senator John Sununu in the Boston Globe on Monday. Sununu criticizes prospective GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump and Sarah Palin for being “captivated by the idea of being President,” which makes them “exactly the type of political figure our country’s founders were worried about.”

Sununu goes on to recount the Founders’ abiding suspicion of populism, reminding us how they were “troubled – some might say preoccupied – with the potential dangers of ambition, factions, and concentrated power.” Although he assures us he doesn’t “view Palin or Trump as a threat to the republic,” he feels “ill at ease with officeholders or candidates who are too enamored with the idea of holding a particular office.”

Here’s the problem: no one will win a modern Presidential race unless they want the Oval Office like Gollum wants the One Ring. The 2012 race will be an incredible test of endurance and character. No matter how affable and inoffensive they might seem today, any candidate who runs against Barack Obama will be mercilessly savaged. The media will sit up nights preparing ambush interviews, and magnify the smallest gaffe into evidence of greed, stupidity, or psychosis. Every moment of the candidate’s history will be scrutinized, every element of their personal lives will be weaponized, and every member of their families will be a target.

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Hayward reminds us of how the armies of the press left no dumpster unexplored in Alaska in 2008 and warns that it’s going to even w0rse than that in 2012. "The candidate will spend the first round of media appearances appealing a summary conviction of racism, hypocrisy, and slavish obedience to the Evil Rich." No reluctant Cincinnatus, Hayward concludes is going to be able to weather that kind of storm. To take down Obama, the GOP candidate will need the endurance of the Energizer Bunny and a campaign organization which pays meticulous attention to detail.

Sarah Palin is the only Republican who has been under the media's magnifying glass for so long in the midday sun, yet she has not been reduced to mere ashes from the intense scrutiny. She has proved that she can weather the firestorm. The next question is does she have that burning desire and the leadership qualities to change the course of this nation away from the cliff. We know she can lead; she's clearly demonstrated that. We have also seen evidence of the fire inside. The only remaining question is can she build a winning campaign organization. We believe she can. She has done so at the municipal and state levels in the past, and she has witnessed, up close and in a very personal way, how it should not be done in the big leagues at the national level, thanks to the McCain campaign's mixed bag of the good, the bad and the ugly in 2008. The time to build that winning team is now or never.

- JP

John Hayward: Why Palin is NOT the Al Sharpton of Alaska.

"Palin had to speak out against the attempts to slander her"
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The latest hit piece on Sarah Palin, spawned by sweet nothings whispered inb the ears of the tag team of Jonathan Martin and John Harris at Politico by The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash seem to awakened some conservative pundits, many of whom have been snoring right through some of the vilest attacks on Sarah Palin that have been leveled at her since "progressives" on both the left and the right started bashing her before the 2008 RNC convention was even gavelled to a close. Good to see them waking up, smelling the coffee, and once again defending the woman who has never failed to defend conservative principles.

Here are some experts from John Hayward's response at Human Events to the latest anti-Palin smears:

Politico published an article filled with establishment conservatives attacking Sarah Palin, using a juicy pull quote from Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard for their title: “She’s Becoming Al Sharpton, Alaska Edition.” Supposedly her transformation into the maestro of the Tawana Brawley hoax has been prompted by her “frequent appeals to victimhood and group grievance.”

The central piece of evidence for this claim is Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” to describe the sickening attempt to pin the Tucson massacre on her. Speaking as one who used that term several days before Palin did, I can testify that I received no group grievance discount. It was the first time that came to mind when I saw what the media was trying to do to her, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

If the standards applied to Palin in this Politico roundup were to be accepted, no female or minority conservative would be able to defend themselves against any attack, because all such defenses would become “appeals to victimhood.” Try Googling any black or female conservative, and take a look at the vicious racist and sexist assaults they have to put up with on a regular basis. It would be very convenient for the Left if we agreed to make them suffer these assaults in silence, because responding only makes things worse.

[...]

Palin had to speak out against the attempts to slander her, not only because conservatives cannot allow liberal slander to stick and harden into conventional wisdom, but because she wasn’t the only target. Ultimately, all conservatives were. The same Left that flushed John Edwards down the memory hole as soon as he became an embarrassment would force us to wear “Sarah Palin, Voodoo Murder Priestess” around our necks forever.

It’s hard to understand how Sarah Palin could be simultaneously criticized for wallowing in victimhood and fighting back too vigorously. It sounds more like another doomed attempt to win peace from the Left, and media approval, by letting them rule the person they hate most out of bounds – as if politics were a trial of ideas by jury, and they get to strike down a few jurors of their choice before the contest begins. Of course, they will never grant the same courtesy to conservatives, or arrive at any given moment without a fresh “person they hate most” on tap.

[More]

- JP

John Hayward: Bristol Palin Is Uninvited

Campus liberals could teach Hosni Mubarak about suppressing dissent
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John Hayward weighs in on the recent episode of what Jonah Goldberg rightly calls Liberal Fascism at Washington University that we wrote about here and here:

The nominal reason given by the campus conformity police was that inviting Palin to speak would be too expensive.

[...]

A November 2010 report from the Student Life newspaper at Washington University said that the Green Action environmentalist group paid disgraced Obama cabinet member Van Jones a $5000 honorarium, which is the maximum allowed for appeals made over the summer. Green Action tried to get another $2500 for him, but the Student Union Treasury voted them down. If Van Jones is worth five to seven thousand dollars, Bristol Palin for $20,000 is the deal of the century...

[...]

Another claim made by the campus left is that Palin was “too controversial” to speak, a consideration that obviously doesn’t apply to people like Van Jones. You can see how a young mother discussing the perils of teen pregnancy would be more controversial than the views of a self-described Communist who was run out of the most radical Administration in modern history, because he entertained the notion that George Bush was the real villain behind the 9/11 attacks.

Elevating this line of reasoning to totalitarian art, Sean Janda wrote in Student Life that Palin’s appearance would “fundamentally shift the discourse that this event will create. Instead of discussing issues regarding abstinence in college, students will discuss the suitability of Ms. Palin as a keynote speaker. In this way, Ms. Palin’s appearance will suppress dialogue about the issues that Sex Week is meant to address and, instead, spark dialogue about Treasury’s use of its money.”

In other words, because the campus left is mad with hatred at the Palin family, her presence would be too much of a distraction. Their resistance automatically makes her too controversial to be allowed to speak, which means anyone they really dislike would instantly hit the same level of controversy, and be silenced. I don’t know what else is being taught at Washington U, but Sean Janda seems to understand fascism pretty well.

[...]

Palin’s place on the Student Sexual Responsibility Week panel will be taken by Dr. Katie Plax, an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Washington University. I doubt she’ll pull the kind of crowds Bristol would have, since she’ll be walking across the quad to deliver her presentation. A May 2009 profile of Dr. Plax from the Washington University Newsroom mentions that she is the recipient of a two-year fellowship from the Soros Foundation, and actively campaigned for Barack Obama in the 2008 election. She sounds like someone the campus-left cowards will be more comfortable with.

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h/t: Cubachi

- JP

John Hayward: Sarah Palin Versus The Blood Libel

"You lose, liberals"
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John Hayward, the perceptive pundit formerly known as "Doctor Zero," commented at Human Events Wednesday morning on Gov. Palin's statement regarding the media left's exploitation of the Tuscon shootings:

MSNBC can retire their idiotic “Sarah Palin: On the Lam” graphic now. The former vice-presidential candidate and governor of Alaska has released an eight-minute video response to those who tried to pin responsibility for the Tucson shootings on her specifically, and conservatives in general. Liberals who thought they would be able to bury her under Jared Loughner’s victims are going to be very disappointed.

Aside from expressing condolences for the victims, and best wishes for Representative Giffords, Palin has said little since the atrocity on Saturday night – which is both understandable and appropriate, because the incident has nothing to do with her. Imagine what the Left would have said about Palin if she had begun pumping out blog posts and videos within hours of the attack. Unlike liberals, she knows better than to exploit a tragedy for political points, and she obviously had no intention of joining cretins like Paul Krugman or Keith Olbermann in their slime pit for a wrestling match.

After days of being named as an accessory to murder by liberal hysterics, Palin finally decided to speak out. She begins by once again offering condolences for the victims and their families, even as she acknowledges that “no words can fill the hole left by the death of an innocent,” and she salutes the heroism of those who brought the gunman down before he could do even more damage. She also says she’s been “praying for guidance.” Note to the nitwits who spent days trying to paint Loughner as one of her devotees: she doesn’t use a shrine made of skulls and orange peels in a backyard tent when she does that.

Afterward, her main thrust is a celebration of the “passionate exchange of ideas” in our “exceptional country”… and her devastating rebuttal of those who seek to force others out of that debate, using either bullets or vicious slander.

[...]

Thus does Sarah Palin shame those who tried to put her in the parking lot of that Tucson grocery store, when gunshots rang out. There is no question who they are – we have hours of videotape from ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC, plus stacks of rotting paper from liberal newspapers, clearly identifying the people Palin destroyed with this video. You lose, liberals.

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- JP

John Hayward: Palin And The Ryan Roadmap

"People like Palin, Ryan, and Pence are the adults in the room"
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In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece today, Gov. Palin endorses the fiscal “road map” drawn up by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Human Events' John Hayward opines that the backing of Ryan's carefully-constructed plan by one of the most popular figures in the conservative movement is an important development:

Palin judges the deficit commission’s report inadequate because it leaves three major financial tumors largely untreated: Social Security, ObamaCare, and our incredibly convoluted tax system. The commission would address Social Security by raising the retirement age, long after the point where the system would have become insolvent – and even at that, it would be making an already rotten deal for future retirees even worse. Ryan’s “Roadmap For America’s Future,” on the other hand, offers a program for younger workers to opt into a private retirement account, while preserving existing benefits for those 55 and older. There is, quite frankly, no other approach that will save the system.

[...]

On taxes, the Ryan plan would “replace our high and anticompetitive corporate income tax with a business consumption tax of just 8.5%. The overall tax burden would be limited to 19% of GDP (compared to 21% under the deficit commission's proposals).” From World War II to the 1970s, the government spent less than 20% of GDP. Our fiscal health went terminal when that limit was exceeded. There is a school of economic thought that suggests it’s essentially impossible for any government to indefinitely sustain spending beyond the 20% threshold, as the recessive effects of excessive taxation and spending cause the economy to begin deflating. I think we’ve gotten close enough to proving this theory to suspend the experiment.

Ryan’s plan also simplifies the tax system to two rates, 10% for single filers up to $50,000 or joint filers up to $100,000, and 25 percent for higher amounts, with a generous standard deduction. It eliminates double taxation on savings, investments, and estates, taxing only income. Aside from the health care credit, the rest of the complex maze of deductions, subsidies, and penalties that turn our current tax code into an instrument of social control are eliminated.


[...]

It’s important to see one of the most popular figures in the conservative movement throwing her weight behind a carefully thought-out set of proposals like Ryan’s. As Palin concedes, the Roadmap for America’s Future isn’t perfect, but it’s clearly not a bunch of cockamamie ideas Ryan tossed out in a beer-fueled rant after realizing he couldn’t handle Speaker Nancy Pelosi for one more instant. Ryan’s ideas are also consonant with a lot of interesting things Mike Pence has been saying lately.

The common liberal knock on the Tea Party movement in general, and Sarah Palin in particular, is that they have no ideas, only complaints and sound bites. Palin expresses her own concrete proposals on a regular basis, and now she’s signing on to the reinforced concrete of Paul Ryan’s comprehensive plan. As Americans watch the Democrats dissolve in a petulant meltdown over their own childish demands, economic fantasies, and utter irresponsibility, they would do well to learn that people like Palin, Ryan, and Pence are the adults in the room.

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- JP

John Hayward: The Left Breaks Upon The Rock Of Palin

The left consistently underestimates Palin. They can't help themselves.
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John Hayward, the blogger formerly known as Dr. Zero, turns in another top notch political commentary at Human Events:

The most astonishing thing about Sarah Palin’s career, since the conclusion of the 2008 presidential campaign, is how frequently the Left breaks itself to pieces against the sunny rocks of her good humor.

[...]

Every time Palin closes her eyes and holds out her sword, a hundred liberals race up to impale themselves upon it. They’ve tried to gin up some kind of weird conspiracy theory about Bristol Palin’s success on “Dancing With The Stars.” David Letterman nearly ended his career (and it should have ended) by making rape jokes about Palin’s youngest daughter. Tina Fey got famous by lampooning Palin, who was a good enough sport about it to appear on Saturday Night Live in person… but [Fey] recently made headlines by launching into a vicious anti-Palin tirade – complete with tired and discredited smears – during a comedy award ceremony. The audience was left to fidget nervously, while an embarrassed PBS edited the worst of the garbage from its broadcast. Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic twisted himself into a laughingstock whose continued presence disgraces the magazine, by obsessively peddling conspiracy theories about the true parentage of Palin’s son Trig. Liberals wrote her “death panels” Facebook post into the pages of history by screaming themselves hoarse over it.

What’s going on here? Is the Left simply out of their minds with hatred for Sarah Palin? That’s part of what motivates them, but the reason she keeps getting the better of them is because they’re slavishly devoted to following an outdated playbook. They think they almost got her with the “stupid, ignorant chill-billy” meme during the 2008 campaign, and they’re determined to twist that knife until they hit a vital organ. Along with their complete lack of understanding for her enduring appeal, it leads them to consistently underestimate her.

[...]

The Left can’t help underestimating Palin. Their world-view will not permit serious engagement with someone they have formally ruled beneath their notice, championing ideas they try very hard not to think about. She’s not just arguing for minor adjustments to the system liberals have constructed over the past century. She questions its very existence, alongside a Tea Party movement that gets the same treatment she does. They’re also very sensitive about threats to their cultural dominance, which Palin threatens with her easygoing charm… frequently broadcast through Fox News, which has already done irreparable damage to leftist media control.

The Left drew some blood from Palin during the 2008 campaign, hitting her hard when she was still learning how to handle a national audience, and getting precious little help from the McCain campaign. She survived, and liberals who try to dismiss her with casual slander increasingly find themselves sneering at each other across a media space the general public has long since vacated. If she runs for office again, Democrat political operatives would be wise to consider what she’s actually saying, not Tina Fey’s fevered opinion of it, and understand that the number of people willing to completely ignore her is not going to increase. The public will not have a difficult time choosing between a pleasant lady with a winning sense of humor and some serious ideas to discuss, and the bitter scolds who think they can drown her out, if they can just put enough spittle behind calling her an idiot.

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- JP