Oh no, Rubio! From outLandish to uh-oh

Promoted by SBC ethics czar Richard Land as a credible 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mario Rubio is under Internal Revenue Service investigation.

The Miami Herald reports that Rubio is one of three former Florida Republican Party credit card holders being scrutinized for their alleged use of party credit cards to pay personal expenses.

Whether a full-fledged criminal investigation is merited has not been decided, and Rubio adviser Todd Harris told the Miami Herland, "There is absolutely nothing to this."

The principal effect, as Talking Points Memo suggests, is likely to be on the dynamics of Rubio's fight with Florida Gov. Charlie Crist for the Republican senatorial nomination, without which Rubio becomes another Land loser.

Is Rubio for president outLandish?

After making a scandal of himself in opposition to health reform, Southern Baptist Convention ethics czar Richard Land has in an interview with Politico promoted former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio as a credible 2012 Republican presidential nominee who has "more experience than Obama had."

The gimlet-eyed journalists at PolitiFact poured that outLandish claim through their fact-filter and emerged with a "barely true." Even that conclusion is a stretch. It assumes, for example, Rubio is elected to the U.S. Senate and serves two years -- although he has yet to win the Aug. 24 Fla. Republican primary.

Sarah Palin benefitted from Land's dubious blessings. In 2008 he sang her praises as a potential vice presidential nominee in an interview with Brian Goldsmith of CBS, mentioning Southern Baptist Mike Huckabee only as an afterthought.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain chose Palin as his vice presidential nominee and after a brief popularity bubble, she helped sink his candidacy. Then, Palin the public servant went home to abandon the governorship of Alaska.

Palin's former prospective son-in-law Levi Johnson said at the time that she left in pursuit of cash. The dollar figures have since born Johnson out. Matthew Mosk of ABC News reported:

Since leaving office at the end of July 2009, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee has brought in at least 100 times her old salary – a haul now estimated at more than $12 million -- through television and book deals and a heavy schedule of speaking appearances worth five and six figures.

Along the way health reform, in which Land and Palin both invested so much vilifying energy and who contributed to the "death panels" howler which copped a "lie of the year" award, passed.

When Land comes to anoint you, candidate Rubio, if you're really interested in public service, then for heaven's sake outrun him.

Palintologists discover the annotated Sarah Palin global warmer

Not-a-liberal Mark Ambinder of The Atlantic gives us a clarifying interpretation of the text of the Washington Post's Sarah Palin outreach to refugees from the pink-slip besieged Washington Times.

As counterfactual as it is charming, Palin's text benefits from Ambinder's concise Palintological efforts.

The spun 'blessing' of Sarah Palin by Billy Graham

Burned by Richard M. Nixon, whom he advised in various ways and for whom he wrote at least one speech, Southern Baptist evangelist Billy Graham no longer endorses those who would be president. Still, the big spin is that he gave something of a blessing to Sarah Palin after she dined with the family last week.

The elder Graham is 91 and apparently still speaks for himself. After dinner with Palin he issued the following circumspect statement:

It was an honor having Governor Palin and her family in our home this evening. I, like many people, have been impressed with her strong commitment to her faith, to family and love of country. I appreciated hearing her speak of her own spiritual journey and her life in Alaska. I shared with her my own memories of preaching in the Sullivan Arena in Anchorage in 1984. We had an opportunity to pray together. Life in the spotlight is not easy and I pray that whatever lies ahead for this family that their faith in God and His Son, Jesus Christ, would remain strong and that God would put a hedge of protection around her and all those she holds dear. Sarah and her family will always be welcome in the Graham home.

That's circumspect in contrast with the Raleigh News & Observer's suggestion Sunday that Palin had received Graham's blessing.

The N&O spin was drummed up out of son Franklin Graham's statement to The Charlotte Observer that his father has "followed her career and likes her strong stand on faith. Daddy feels God was using her to wake America up."

Even that seems too circumspect by far to be called a "blessing" from the Billy Graham Jr. we've all heard shake the foundations from pulpits around the world.

We missed it too, Andrew

"Which we have done," , Sarah Palin said. And, she has not.

Counterfactual overstatement = 'the evil one'

Mainstream Baptist dissects Manhattan Declaration's overstatement and distortion. They are not echoes of righteousness, he explains:

In my mind, there's something about Jesus' injunction to "let your yea be yea, and your nay be nay" (Matt. 5:37) that is applicable beyond oath-taking situations and confirms the truth that "anything beyond these is of the evil one." Christians have no business embellishing the truth and twisting it for political purposes and that is what the Manhattan Declaration does from beginning to end.

All driven by the desperation of a Christian Right which feels power slipping through its fingers like sand.

Has Palin written a parable?

Going Rogue may not be quite as much a work of fiction as Left Behind but Dan Gilgoff seems to think they're aimed at the same general audience.

Sarah Palin, the smeared Dominionist feminist

Sarah Palin the Christian Right Dominionist is rarely directly acknowledged as a feminist who asserts her right to power. Even feminist Echidne of the Snakes comes at that issue obliquely when defending Palin against the misogynist smears (like the current cover of Newsweek). The Goddess writes:

The list of explosive topics for feminist bloggers is slightly different than for, say, progressive bloggers in general. And no, I'm not going to give you the list because that would get the yelling started. But one of those topics certainly is the way Sarah Palin is treated in the political media and on various political blogs. The debate on her is predictable: Some (poor dear) feminist blogger points out that her treatment contains large chunks of sexist smearing. Then others note that Sarah is trading on her sexuality so she deserves the sexualized responses. Or that she's too stoopid for words and has such horrible politics that we really should dump everything possible on her head. Including misogyny, whenever appropriate.

Alaska Left Behind ...

The Mudflats bloggers were Left behind in Alaska when former Gov. Sarah Palin "was raptured by the far right fringe" to Hong Kong where the Asia Times reports she received to a mixed reception. Economics Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman observed that her analysis in that speech suffers from an absence of any facts to back up her claims.

Nonetheless inspired, Frank Walker at decidedly Catholic PewSitter.com invented a Palinesque "common sense:"

The honesty and simple wisdom of Sarah Palin is rejuvenating. Many who lead the Catholic Church will hopefully take notice. Today there are bishops worldwide who will go to almost any lengths in the name of social justice. Often when they do, they reveal their allegiances and their worldliness. This week the social justice arm of the USCCB, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, is under intense light again for its openly political, anti-Catholic, and corrupt beneficiaries. In Vienna Cardinal Schoenborn recently tried to squelch a pro-life rally and then forbad clergy to participate. Notre Dame, the pre-eminent American Catholic University, continues to prosecute eighty-eight pro-life demonstrators, including Norma McCorvey, following the Obama honors last spring. In August Boston's O'Malley scandalized the world with a funeral for anti-life pariah Ted Kennedy, and this past week Scotland's Cardinal O'Brien railed in the press about global catastrophes, millions of refugees, and the poor before a climate meeting at the UN.

What hath transcendence of Alaska made her then, but a vessel to be filled by conservatives in need of someone about whom to rapture. Factlessness, no object.

'Straw Huckabee' sums it up

No, the headline doesn't say it all. Mark Silk explains why the results of the Values Voters straw poll favoring Mike Huckabee as the 2012 Republican nominee are likely to blow away with the next light political breeze.

This time the winner might be wise to Huckpack his candidate bags and go home. Even if the Republican Party falls more deeply into disarray, Huck can't expect fellow Southern Baptist Richard Land to pull him out of a hat like a Palin Rabbit. He's a known quantity whose appeal was narrow at last election time and remains, narrow.

Sarah & SarahPac: No time for the base?

Visit SarahPac and let us know if you find any hint that this most Pentecostal of candidates confesses any connection there to her evangelical conservative sponsors.

It isn't so bad that she stiffed House Republicans. But Dan Gilgoff reports that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin wouldn't grant an interview for a cover story about her in the January issue of Charisma magazine (whose key market is charismatic Christians).

Too busy for the rest of us, it seems.