In her own mind, she has already won the biggest prize of all: loving fans. Sarah Palin is playing pageant queen.

(Sarah Palin’s) use of the term blood libel to categorize the attacks against her and other conservatives was the chatter of the social networks in which she communicates. The term—a slur alluding to the idea that Jews feed on the blood of Christians—was, at the very least, a bad word choice. It did not convey her meaning clearly. She confused or alienated anyone she was trying to convince. And if it was meant to address only her base of core supporters, then it was an act of ill-timed agitation.

I’d go a bit further back than Sarah’s Facebook page, though: she comes from a church community that talks about “the blood” a lot. Pentecostals make much of 1 Peter 1:19-20,

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

As we’ve observed before, Sarah Palin’s first book is drenched in blood. Take a red magic marker to the edge of any page mentioning blood, heart, breast, kill, shoot, meat, death, or cut, and your copy of Going Rogue will go rouge. Her fascination with blood is not feminist, either; it’s fanatic.

But the most likely explanation is that someone cribbed it for her from this abortion of an op-ed in Tuesday’s WSJ.

The Army’s investigation into a group of Stryker soldiers who allegedly killed Afghan civilians paints Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs as the ringleader, but soldiers who served with him have been contradicting that picture at recent hearings.

Several witnesses who were stationed with Gibbs at Forward Operating Base Ramrod earlier this year say he was a solid leader.  In contrast, they say they didn’t trust Spc. Jeremy Morlock, who with Gibbs is accused of three murders. Morlock told investigators in May that Gibbs made up scenarios to kill civilians and they carried them out during patrols. (Emphasis mine)

War is a blunt instrument. Combat zones feature young, highly-motivated and trained killers who can be instructed to do awful things. Like any other human institution, the military has its sociopaths — but in uniform, they can wreak tremendous damage.

But what seems to be emerging in the testimony at trial is the picture of a specialist with a sickness and a sergeant who indulged him, much like the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Morlock sounds like the kind of guy who leaves the Army to smoke dope and start a militia. And just where does Morlock hail from? Why, none other than Wasilla, Alaska — where militias and right-wing culture produced the Palins.

I’m certainly not saying there’s a connection between the Palins and Morlock’s actions. He  also trained at Fort Benning, for instance, which is where the School of the Americas/WHISC is located; but he was never a student of that school. Connection is not causality. What I wonder is how close Morlock was to the Palins’ Pastor Muthee-inspired world of John Birch insanity, and whether that had a role.

Bristol is friends with Morlock’s sister, and according to Alaska’s Palin-watchers the house that was infamously trashed by an underage party was Morlock’s. Shannyn Moore has informed me that Todd Palin once dated Morlock’s mother. It is a small world; but did a small world produce both Sarah and Morlock?

“I think the majority of Americans don’t want to put up with the blue bloods,” Palin told Ingraham. “And I say it with all due respect, because I love the Bushes. “

Palin has a thing for blood. Take a red magic marker and highlight the edge of every page in Going Rogue with a reference to blood, death, meat, killing, eating, etc. Heart and breast show up frequently as well. In the space of thirty pages or so, you’ll realize the book is soaked in blood.

Blood cults aside, she’s throwing the Bushes under a bus here because among the tea party you cannot find a single person who approved of George. They will admit voting for him, but say the alternatives were worse; they will deny him three times. He’s that toxic. Up next: Sarah will tell us that George Bush was not a “real conservative.”

Certainly his wife expressed this view when she said during the 2008 campaign that she had never felt proud of her country until her husband started winning elections. In retrospect, I guess this shouldn’t surprise us, since both of them spent almost two decades in the pews of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church listening to his rants against America and white people. (Emphasis mine)

I could go on for a whole long post ripping the stupid out of that ‘graff, but it strikes me that Sarah has just accused the President and First Lady of being in a “church” for almost twenty years. CHURCH. As in not-a-mosque. Which is why I am posting this, because more people need to hear that — especially her base.

Over at WhoRunsGov, an otherwise interesting essay on the paths-to-power of female national executives centers around the un-interesting prospects of one Sarah Palin, ending on this note:

But if Palin can find a way to position herself as the natural leader of her party, the Lady Liberty at the front of the Tea Party mass, she may yet have a shot. And if she crafted a housecleaning message that unified rather than divided, she would strengthen her cause immensely.

But if Palin crafted a message that united rather than divided, she wouldn’t be Sarah Palin. In fact, she wouldn’t even be a Republican anymore.

Meanwhile, a commenter at Roger Ebert’s blog thinks Sarah speaks in anacolutha,

a rhetorical device that can be loosely defined as a change of syntax within a sentence. More specifically, anacoluthons (or “anacolutha”) are created when a sentence abruptly changes from one structure to another. Grammatically, anacoluthon is an error; however, in rhetoric it is a figure that shows excitement, confusion, or laziness. In poetics it is sometimes used in dramatic monologues and in verse drama. In prose, anacoluthon is often used in stream of consciousness writing, such as that of James Joyce, because it is characteristic of informal human thought.

In its most restrictive meaning, anacoluthon requires that the introductory elements of a sentence lack a proper object or complement. For example, if the beginning of a sentence sets up a subject and verb, but then the sentence changes its structure so that no direct object is given, the result is anacoluthon. Essentially, it requires a change of subject or verb from the stated to an implied term. The sentence must be “without completion” (literally what “anacoluthon” means). A sentence that lacks a head, that supplies instead the complement or object without subject, is anapodoton.

As a figure, anacoluthon directs a reader’s attention, especially in poetry, to the syntax itself and highlights the mechanics of the meaning rather than the object of the meaning. It can, therefore, be a distancing technique in some poetry.

She divides her sentences the same way that the movement of which she is a creature habitually divides Americans. She does it blissfully unaware that she’s even doing it.

Details here.

Moosiah is styled Supermom
AK bloggers then tossed her a βomb
No gut and no bυm
So where was Trig from?
“Why, from Jeebus,” she lιes with aplomb.

Original here.

IMO, Babygate is dumb. I’m with Andy Sullivan: a child came out of her body, but I have questions about her judgment flying ten hours across the country and then driving to the hospital over ten hours AFTER her water broke.

Nonetheless, it’s good electronic doggerel.

So did she or didn’t she? What do you think? Wonkette thinks she did. Here’s a yahoo slide show so you can decide for yourself.

Did the boob get a job?