Don Surber: "Sarah Palin, Man of the Year"

Okay, now that's it is more than a week into the new year,  I really need to wrap up my 2009-in-summation posts.  (Next on my to-do list:  finish the letter we're including with our Christmas cards.  Sad but true.)

With that said, Don Surber took an interesting look at last year and attempted to determine who he would name the man of the year.  (Why?  Among other things, because I'm pretty sure he could do a lot better than Time Magazine did, not that this would be a hard thing to do.)  He came up with a very interesting choice:  Sarah Palin.

As Mr. Surber writes, he did not originally intend to choose Governor Palin:

This post originally was written as the runner-up slot. Most readers thought Sarah Palin would be the first Man of the Year of the Don Surber blog, but I had other plans. Just as in the Miss Alaska contest a quarter-century ago, she would be the runner-up. Rush Limbaugh’s CPAC speech was a magical moment in American history and so he would win.

But he discovered, as so many have, that Sarah Palin truly became a symbol for many people who feel disenfranchised by the current attempt to expand the federal government's powers (and its debts).  Granted, this is not a new discovery, as Mr. Surber has been linked by this blog more than once previously, but I digress.

Mrs. Palin has endured more slings and more arrows than any other politician in America. She may not have gone into any burning buildings, but she was singed nonetheless. Had Obama’s mansion deal received one-tenth the scrutiny that her shopping for clothes received, we conservatives would be grousing today about President Hillary.

Not that everything Mr. Surber wrote was glowing praise for Governor Palin's decisions:

Not all the criticisms of her were without substance. Many of us remain puzzled by her decision to resign abruptly as the governor of Alaska. But her campaign for the 2012 presidency continues despite this misstep. She stood up for what is right and held her head high as she marched forward — ever forward.

For the record, I was puzzled by this decision to resign originally as well, but it has done an admirable job of making a lot of hyper-liberal ankle-biters in Alaska completely irrelevant, and it's probably saved the state of Alaska a lot of money.  But I think I'm repeating an old post.  This one, to be specific.

And Mr. Surber gives those haters a few words as well:

Half the people of the United States love her for hanging in there. They love her for sharing their values of home, hearth and country. They love her for being of the the people, by the people and for the people.

Oh, not the elites and the elitist wannabes. The little potty-mouthed drones on the left think they are so sophisticated as they mock 14-year-old girls, babies with Down syndrome and people who shop at Wal-Mart. The Washington Post’s book reviewer bragged that she did not read Sarah Palin’s book. Ignorance is now a status symbol for the left.

The whole article is worth a read, as it covers the journey Sarah Palin has had over the past year-and-a-half and declares her worth your consideration.  Check it out.

40 Most Obnoxious Quotes of 2009

Courtesy John Hawkins/Right Wing News, please check out the 40 most obnoxious quotes of 2009.  I can't imagine how many quotes there were at the start, before Mr. Hawkins narrowed them down to just 40.

As one might expect from a site called Right Wing News, several of the usual suspects show up.  For example:

34) Now, people when I say that look at me and say, 'What are you talking about, Joe? You're telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?' The answer is yes, that's what I'm telling you. -- Joe Biden

31) think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American. -- Jimmy Carter 

28) Do you remember tea baggers? It was just so much easier when we could just call them racists. I just don't know why we can't call them racists, or functionally retarded adults. The functionally retarded adults, the racists - with their cries of, ‘I want my country back. You know what they're really saying is, ‘I want my white guy back.' They apparently had no problem at all for the last eight years of habeas corpus being suspended, the Constitution being [expletive] on, illegal surveillance, lied to on a war or two, two stolen elections - yes, the John Kerry one was stolen too. That's not tin-foil hat time. That's just..." -- Janeane Garofalo 

But before you think that there weren't any people on my side of the aisle who were obnoxious (I can sense frequent anonymous commenter #2 ("Jeff") twitching already...hi Jeff!), this site covers them as well:

38) The governor is hiking the Appalachian Trail. -- Spokesman for Mark Sanford 

6) From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this, though: despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death. -- CBS Sports commentator David Feherty  

Sadly, there are 35 more.

Dave Barry reviews 2009

Courtesy Robbie Cooper of UrbanGrounds:

Dave Barry gives his usual recap of the major news events of the year, punctuated with his usual wit.  The first sentence, as it should, nicely sets the stage for the rest of the column:

It was a year of Hope -- at first in the sense of ``I feel hopeful!'' and later in the sense of ``I hope this year ends soon!''

As Robbie did, I particularly enjoyed this excerpt from February's happenings:

Congress passes, without reading it, and without actually finishing writing it, a stimulus package totaling $787 billion. The money is immediately turned over to American taxpayers so they can use it to stimulate the economy.

No! What a crazy idea THAT would be! The money is to be doled out over the next decade or so by members of Congress on projects deemed vital by members of Congress, such as constructing buildings that will be named after members of Congress. This will stimulate the economy by creating millions of jobs, according to estimates provided by the Congressional Estimating Office's Magical Estimating 8-Ball.

Take some time to enjoy the whole thing.