The Prioress' Prologue and Tale -- An Interlinear Translation

Regarding the phrase, "Blood Libel":

565 Fro thennes forth the Jues han conspired
From thenceforth the Jews have conspired
566 This innocent out of this world to chace.
To drive this innocent out of this world.
567 An homycide therto han they hyred,
For this they have hired a murderer,
568 That in an aleye hadde a privee place;
Who in an alley had a secret place;
569 And as the child gan forby for to pace,
And as the child began to pass by,
570 This cursed Jew hym hente, and heeld hym faste,
This cursed Jew seized him, and held him tightly,
571 And kitte his throte, and in a pit hym caste.
And cut his throat, and cast him in a pit.

Vice Presidential Debate

The Republican are going to declare victory tonight because Ms. Palin was able to speak in full sentences. Woopedy-doo. Don't be fooled. Palin read her lines as she'd rehearsed and stuck to her script, even to the point of ignoring the questions.

Biden started slowly, but came off as reasonable and relaxed, and when it came to emotional connections came across as more genuine in the final half hour.

Also, Palin was kind of nuts. Did she really argue for extending the powers of the Vice Presidency? She wants to out-Cheney Cheney? Give me a break.

Palin came across well in a practiced environment and promised not to do anymore "filtered" interviews where we might catch her speaking extemporaneously and accidentally revealing the emptiness behind all the memorization.

Good for Biden, and good for the Obama campaign.

Bush Doctrine

Sarah Palin should learn to use wikipedia. This page has been up since 2002 and states pretty unambiguously what the Bush Doctrine says:

The Bush Doctrine is a phrase used to describe various related foreign policy principles of United States president George W. Bush, enunciated in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The phrase initially described the policy that the United States had the right to treat countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups as terrorists themselves, which was used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan.^[1] Later it came to include additional elements, including the controversial policy of preventive war, which held that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represented a supposed threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate (used to justify the invasion of Iraq), a policy of supporting democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating the spread of terrorism, and a willingness to pursue U.S. military interests in a unilateral way.^[2][3][4] Some of these policies were codified in a National Security Council text entitled the National Security Strategy of the United States published on September 20, 2002.^[5] This represented a dramatic shift from the United States's Cold War policies of deterrence and containment, under the Truman Doctrine, and a departure from post-Cold War philosophies such as the Powell Doctrine and the Clinton Doctrine.

To say that the question was unfair or that noone knows what it is seems pretty ridiculous when you consider how much test cramming she did in the lead up to the interview. Also the answer she gave pretty much contradicts the Bush Doctrine.

Most Republicans are praising her performance, saying it was pretty good for someone without a lot of experience in the national spotlight. Which is confusing when you consider how much executive experience she's supposed to have as a Mayor and as a Governor, and how much foreign policy experience she's supposed to have dealing with the Russians and the Alaska National Guard. Now it's: good going newbie!

You can spin it however you want to. The candidate is clueless.

Lipstick

Juan Cole on the McCain/Palin theocratic platform:

John McCain announced that he was running for president to confront the "transcendent challenge" of the 21st century, "radical Islamic extremism," contrasting it with "stability, tolerance and democracy." But the values of his handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers. On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.

Zing!

Now that McCain has unleashed the Christianist base, one wonders what role he thinks he'll play in a Palin/Dobson administration. Maverick czar?

More On Aerial Wolf Hunts

Sarah Palin's environmental practices remind me of the scalp hunters in Blood Meridian:

Palin didn't think Alaskans should be allowed to chase wolves from aircraft and shoot them -- they should be encouraged to do so. Palin's administration put a bounty on wolves' heads, or to be more precise, on their mitts.

In early 2007, Palin's administration approved an initiative to pay a $150 bounty to hunters who killed a wolf from an airplane in certain areas, hacked off the left foreleg, and brought in the appendage.

Palin's Edumacation

Ah, now I'm beginning to understand Sarah Palin a little better. She got the classic 80s middle-American underachiever's college education:

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin attended five colleges in six years before graduating from the University of Idaho in 1987.

Now I want to see transcripts. How many of those schools did the beauty queen party her way out of?

Andrew Sullivan writes, "If she applied for an internship at National Review, they would turn her down."