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So Now All These People Will Apologize to Sarah Palin About Paul Revere, Right?

So Now All These People Will Apologize to Sarah Palin About Paul Revere, Right?

As with most people, I simply took at face value the popular version that Paul Revere warned that the British were coming, the British were coming. 

Not having any real reason to look into it any deeper, Sarah Palin’s statement that Revere warned the British that the colonial militias were waiting seemed odd.

But it appears that the popular version is not complete. 

In fact, as pointed out at Conservatives4Palin, Revere did in fact tell the British that the colonial militias, who had been alerted, were waiting for them.  Here is the original historical text written by Revere (spelling in original, bold added):

I observed a Wood at a Small distance, & made for that. When I got there, out Started Six officers, on Horse back,and orderd me to dismount;-one of them, who appeared to have the command, examined me, where I came from,& what my Name Was? I told him. it was Revere, he asked if it was Paul? I told him yes He asked me if I was an express? I answered in the afirmative. He demanded what time I left Boston? I told him; and aded, that their troops had catched aground in passing the River, and that There would be five hundred Americans there in a short time, for I had alarmed the Country all the way up. He imediately rode towards those who stoppd us, when all five of them came down upon a full gallop; one of them, whom I afterwards found to be Major Mitchel, of the 5th Regiment, Clapped his pistol to my head, called me by name, & told me he was going to ask me some questions, & if I did not give him true answers, he would blow my brains out. He then asked me similar questions to those above. He then orderd me to mount my Horse, after searching me for arms

Palin’s short statement on the video was less than clear; that sometimes happens but the part of the statement which has people screaming — that Revere warned the British that the colonial militias were waiting — appears to be true.

I’ve learned something new today, about Paul Revere.

The leading lights of the left-blogosphere have made fools of themselves, as have people who are not of the left-blogosphere.  I presume they all will be apologizing.

Update:  Aaron Worthing at Patterico has a round-up of all the hyperventilated left-blogospheric reaction, including by Think Progress, which writes:

It’s hard to imagine why Revere would warn the British of anything, or why he’d do it with bells and gun shots.

This account in “Paul Revere’s Ride” by David Hackett Fischer (Oxford University Press 1994), may be of interest to Think Progress and all the others laughing because they purport to be so much better informed than Palin:

“A townsman remembered that ‘repeated gunshots, the beating of drums and the ringing of bells filled the air.’…. Along the North Shore of Massachusetts, church bells began to toll and the heavy beat of drums could be heard for many miles in the night air.”

It’s available on Google Books.

Update 6-4-2011: “I’m not a potted plant. I’m here as the blogger. That’s my job.”

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Comments


Good lord. Professor, you can do better than this.

Revere didn't warn the British – he told the British he had already warned the Americans of their approach. There's a difference – the tone of the conversation referenced above is that of Revere trumpeting his successful effort to screw the British.

Professor you're playing the role of a Palin apologist.

"So yes, Sarah Palin loves the Jews. She wants them dead, converted, though. Later. Not yet, not now.

But that’s not LOVE, though. That’s New Testament antisemitism in the most ugly and vile form."

Nope. YOUR WHOLE STATEMENT is anti-Christian in its ugly and vile form.

When the Apostle Paul (a favorite whipping boy for assorted malcontents) said in his letter to the Romans, "Israel shall be saved", he didn't mean "just a few chums." He meant all of Israel. Every Evangelical Christian wants to see Jews alive, well and thriving, because there is a blessing from God for those who bless Israel, and a curse for those who hate them. So, Evangelicals will rather take God seriously. That is only a "death sentence" for those who hate Israel.

When Sarah Palin visited Jerusalem's Old City recently, she didn't go there with a pernicious agenda. In fact, when she was told that they had to be in the ready because of the Palestinians and other assorted enemies, she asked the one question that every single Evangelical Christian asks Israel: "Why do you have to apologize all the time?"

The ones who want to see people "dead or converted" are radical Islamists – not Sarah Palin. Heck, radical Islamists want to see dead Jews and Christians – including Sarah Palin.

As for you, I'm very sure God will see it that you learn your lesson.

Bigot.

A minor quibble: Revere and the colonists were British. He may have warned his fellow British colonists that the "regulars", "redcoats", or "King's men" were coming, but he almost certainly never said "The British are coming!"

Professor, I appreciate your efforts to set the record straight.

And I also appreciate Nicole Coulter's effort to bring the subject of the legends around Paul Revere, the facts and the misrepresentations of history that have been going on ever since. Even the whole George Washington's cherry tree legend has been believed to be true. That's the power of myths, even in American history.

Yet, you must understand, Professor, that those who hate Sarah Palin will think of her as wrong every single time, even if she says or does something right.

She gives life to a child with Down Syndrome – wrong.

She supports her daughter's bearing her child, however the origins, setting her own way in this world to support said child, participating in Dancing with the Stars, etc – wrong.

Being married to the same guy for over twenty years – wrong. (She should have taken cues from Sex and the City.)

Having to defend herself amidst false accusations and even "blood libel" (the correct term here), against her person and dignity – Wrong.

Having to give up a political position because her enemies were about to bankrupt her, her family, her staff and her state – Wrong.

Heck, Sarah Palins very existence – SO WRONG!!!!

This little bit is nothing. She can have a full History faculty correct the record and even give her credit, however minimal – and she'd still be totally wrong. If Paul Revere had a bathroom break while riding the horse and she mentioned it, she'd be given back a "How Dare You!" and put on a woodshed for months – not hours or days at a time. Heck, they'd resurrect Cotton Mather to have her tried, convicted and executed for "witchcraft"!

Heck, she can even state the Copernicus theory, mention that Saturn has 64 moons, Pluto is now considered a minor planet after the discovery of a bigger minor planet, and even that sunlight can be partitioned into all the colors of the rainbow, as Sir Isaac Newton proved – and she'd be called a "heretic" and burned at the stake.

Everything she says or does is Wrong, including uttering the words "A" and "the".

They will NEVER apologize to her, even if she were right about something – anything. Simply because they hate her.

So, I'm not going to wait for anyone to say, "I apologize", because that would mean giving up their damned pride – something they will never do for this "damned snow-billy", this "redneck", even if their very lives depended on it. Nope. To them, Sarah Palin is a subhuman being – nay, maybe even a non-human – who should be a candidate for extinction, along with her entire family.

That is why my instinct tells me that if she's ever close to being the GOP nominee, or even close to being elected President, someone will seek to destroy her so utterly (maybe even an attempt against her life and limb) that she will have to live in the streets and scavenge on garbage dumps for the rest of her life.

I think she, her family and her closets associates see what's going on. If she's disgusted at the whole thing, why blame her?

"dan" above sez: "She loves the Jews. But she loves the Jews because she wants them eventually dead. Dead, or converted."

This Christophobic slander is beyond the pale. Don't believe me, believe Dennis Prager who has addressed this specific slander on his show many times and who has met with Palin.

The Left hates Israel and works to drive a wedge between it and some of its greatest non-Jewish supporters; what better way then to demonize the motives of the Gentile supporters?

Let's cut through all the crap. Whether you love her or despise her, Palin is just plain not presidential. How you are supposed to glean any meaning from that garble she spewed is beyond me. Our president needs to at least be able to communicate simple, cohesive thoughts. Furthermore, a president needs to be able to communicate with the media, foreign dignitaries and world leaders whether they make her/him uncomfortable or not. No excuses, we are not electing a prize pig at the county fair, we are electing the leader of the most powerful country in the world– and Sarah, bless her heart, ain't it, ya' know.

"warn" vs "warn" vs "warn" – the verb can either mean
1) to give notice of danger i.e. raise an alarm — such as when accuweather give out an "excessive heat warning"
2) to give caution as when the cop says "I'm letting you off with a warning this time instead of a ticket"
3) to admonish or exhort, as when we regularly warn N. Korea that x action against S. Korea will be met with y action.
Revere warned the militia that the redcoats were coming AND he warned the redcoats that they would be met by resistance if they continued.

Btw, more than 100 comments on Paul Revere? I bet these commenters think Barbara Fritchie really did wave the Union flag in Stonewall Jackson's face too.
😀

Doug Hardy

"To warn" doesn't just happen when addressing people one cares about. You can also warn an enemy of the consequences of their continued behavior.

Or didn't your English teacher do a better job than your History teacher?

Palin articles really seem to bring out the fear in leftists. Amazing!

@Doug: "Good lord. Professor, you can do better than this.

"Revere didn't warn the British – he told the British he had already warned the Americans of their approach. There's a difference – the tone of the conversation referenced above is that of Revere trumpeting his successful effort to screw the British."

And by telling the British, he warned them.

@Roland: "Our president needs to at least be able to communicate simple, cohesive thoughts."

Without a teleprompter. (And no, mine was not a jab at Palin.)

And while we're cutting through the crap, let's not forget that this thread is not about Palin's qualifications to be president. It's about the left's knee jerk and very uncharitable characterization of her Revere comments as dumb and uniformed, when in fact, she was spot on or at least closer to the mark than her critics.

Garbled as her comments were (she appeared distracted to me), she was correct that Revere warned the British, and she was spot on in her reference to bells and gunshots, according to David Hackett Fisher (did you read what he wrote at Google Books?). No, Paul Revere may not have actually rung the bells and shot the guns, but he and his fellow riders "triggered" the system of warning bells and gunshots.

Meanwhile, Palin's critics on the left are still reciting Longfellow.

Yeah, Terrye was the "conservative" who spent 2008 telling us how conservative "McLame" is.

Pull the other one.

"Our president needs to at least be able to communicate simple, cohesive thoughts"

Obviously you don't listen to The One when he goes off-teleprompter

"Furthermore, a president needs to be able to communicate with the media"

Ok, I give you that the current Media is Obama's poodle (to put it nicely), so we just keep electing people the Media picks out for us so we can meet your requirement?

"foreign dignitaries and world leaders"

I wonder how many times a President Palin would be bowing to dictators?

"whether they make her/him uncomfortable or not."

and I wonder how many times President Palin would betray our allies and make them take the backdoor out of the White House?

"we are not electing a prize pig at the county fair"

Oh, no, Obamaian slip there!

"we are electing the leader of the most powerful country in the world"

Obama certainly doesn't act like he knows that.

I understand that Palin's statement that Revere was riding to "warn the British" can be understood to mean that he was warning the colonials, given that they likely still considered themselves British citizens. On that point, fine–Paul Revere warned the British. I can live with that as a possible explanation for her seemingly incorrect statement. Except that it doesn't make any sense at all if you consider it in context with the rest of her statement. Here's the rest of that thought: "[Paul Revere] warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms."

It's clear from her words that she considers "the British" to be the same people that were coming to confiscate the colonists' arms. Therefore, when she uses the phrase "the British" she's not referring to the colonists, but to the British army–the regulars.

So what she's saying is that Paul Revere went out to warn the British army. That's patently false. Revere was riding to warn Hancock and Adams, as well as people in the countryside generally, that the British were coming–although he didn't use that phrase. He was delivering a warning to the colonists, NOT to the British army.

The fact that Revere was captured later doesn't really help. It's clear from the historical record that Revere didn't want to get caught and that he in fact wanted very much to avoid contact with the British. The fact that, after his plan to evade the British failed, he said some things that could be construed as a warning doesn't mean that his purpose when he set off was to warn the British army–it's clear that that was the exact opposite of this goal at the time he started riding.

There's no saving Sarah Palin's statements, and this feeble attempt to do so by a respected law professor (I'm an attorney myself) is appalling.

@Greg said…

@Roland: "Our president needs to at least be able to communicate simple, cohesive thoughts."

Without a teleprompter. (And no, mine was not a jab at Palin.)

Maybe if she spoke Austrian the lefties would forgive her.

Now, this is a real scandalfor real journalists. Not that silly Weinergate story.

Intelligent Americans do not enable insanity and ignorance.

Are you intelligent? Do you seek higher education?

Sarah is ignorant. Hate me for knowing that, but the majority of us agree. The republicans need a candidate that will pull votes from both sides to win over Obama. Sarah is not that person.

LOL. Nope, not apologizing.

She seems to think Revere shot his gun and rang bells. He was both unarmed and had no bells, at least as far as the historical account goes (although some pictorial depictions of him do show him ringing what looks like a teacher's school-bell, so it's hard to tell for sure). But by all written accounts, it was the people he warned that shot the guns and range the bells, not himself.

And I knew he'd been detained by the Brits and warned them of the colonists being ready for them (I will agree that the laughing response to that from folks means THEY didn't know that bit of history); that's a little different than embellishing it with him telling the British that "we're going to be free" and "they weren't going to be taking away our arms".

Although he was either a member of or sympathetic to the Sons of Liberty, which contained many people who wanted independence from Britain, most of them simply wanted self-determination under British rule. So while I'm no scholar of Revere, there's a good chance Revere no more wanted independence from the Crown than most of the colonies in 1775. Up until this time, in fact, they were sending delegation after delegation to Britain petitioning to allow the colonies representation in Parliament, hardly the actions of people who hated the Crown so much they wanted complete freedom.

It wasn't until AFTER the battle at Lexington that most colonists realized that the Brits were going to ruthlessly put their foot on the Americans and thus began the first serious discussion of real independence rather than self-determination took shape, leading to the Declaration of Independence a year later.

The best resource for Revere comes of course from his own accounts as well as those of his companions (most people forget that he had two others riding with him). The website for Revere House is here: http://www.paulreverehouse.org/index.html

Years ago my school district, in a never ending effort to promote multiculturalism, had a Black speaker address the staff. I wish I remembered his name. He told us how his poker-playing pals were sure O.J. didn't murder his ex-wife Nicole and Nicole's-boyfriend. Of course, the speaker said, O.J. did it. Ex-husbands or ex-boyfriends are always the prime suspect when a woman is murdered, standard police operating procedure. But of his poker-playing pals he said "When a person reaches a conclusion with something other than logic, only something other than logic will get them to change."

The Sarah haters are so blind in their rage they have become incoherent. We should be concerned that in their irrational anger they would do something, well, irrational and maybe dangerous.

You folks are HIlarious. The lengths you will go to to excuse this self-promoting fool. In no way was she referring to that incident. IN. NO. WAY. Listen to the words that are coming out of her mouth. Warning the British that they would not be able to take away our arms. Please. It not so bad that she misstates history. Everyone does that from time to time. It's that she misstates history with such a blatant distortion toward her political messaging.

Oh, I love it that the "Smirking Heads" all got it wrong, and Sarah Palin got it right!!!

I am going to do a poem on this too.

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

I'm so thankful I didn't get into Cornell Law School right now.

Have we wandered into some kind of leftist gathering here?

I find this tit for tat between left and right about the supposed significance of bloopers tediously boring. I can't believe this is important to some people.

However; I do understand how the people of a certain small European country find this silliness very seriously important. As they say in that country:

"Wir Österreicher sind so dankbar, dass Präsident Obama für die Schaffung des österreichischen Sprache für uns. Vor seiner Rede, konnten wir nur grunzen. Jetzt können wir reden!"

A very rough translation can be found by clicking here.

Andrew I. Martinez writes, "I understand that Palin's statement that Revere was riding to 'warn the British' can be understood to mean….", conceding one of the more ludicrous attempts by a commenter to explain Palin's remarks.

Then he quotes Palin, "[Paul Revere] warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms."

Having now setup his strawman, he then seeks to demolish it with his "logic".

But Palin never said that Revere "rode to warn the British", as his quoting of her clearly shows. So, rather than destroying Palin's logic, Andrew has destroyed his own, and in the process revealed exactly how the left works to discredit people – quote them, reinterpret what they said to some ridiculous construction that is easily ridiculed, and then set about to, with the most paternalistic concern for her lack of intelligence, to show how incredibly stupid she is.

"The British weren't coming to take away anyone's arms, they were coming to Lexington to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock."

No, they weren't. (Dr. Warren thought they were, but he was mistaken.) The plan was for Revere and Dawes to continue to Concord and warn the colonists there, after warning Hancock and Adams.

Congratulations, Professor! You made the points first and best.

You're linked all over the place. I've been sent to this post from about 10 different major twitter sources. Though I read it first here because, well, that's one reason I follow your blog.

I guess this tops your Weiner posting. 🙂

http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2011/05/ive-figured-out-blogging.html

booradley said…
You're a lawyer? How did you miss the part you highlighted where it says "I had alarmed the Country all the way up"? In other words, he had ALREADY warned the colonials that the British were coming.

I'm not a liberal, or an American, and Revere's defiance is certainly there in the text, but I can't believe you've misread this.

I'm not a Liberal?

You're a progressive troll.

We have a saying in some parts of Massachusetts… "The voters are coming! The voters are coming!"

The ultimate proof the left is wrong…

stink eye

The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on Breed's Hill. 🙂

Come on apologists. Her face alone say it all ("Uhhh, ummmm, wtf do I say!?") … You apparently have no clue how silly you look trying to defend this one.

AT http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2011/06/so-now-all-these-people-will-apologize.html?showComment=1307190937567#c5080705691538829550

"Meatless Runner" suggests that the phrase "blow my brains out" is anachronistic and may not have been in the original letter.

One can view a hi-res image of p. 4 of the actual letter here:
http://www.masshist.org/database/img-viewer.php?item_id=99&mode;=large&img;_step=4&tpc;=&pid;=#page4

About half way down, "blow my" is at end of one line, and "brains out" is at the beginning of the next.

Fine–for the sake of argument, let's concede that Palin is familiar, off the cuff, with the historical nuances of Revere's ride as confirmed in the letter so ably explicated by the Professor. So why has she so carefully concealed her encyclopedic knowledge of American History? What subtle strategy has led her to be wildly incorrect on hundreds of previous assertions? How do you explain her bizarre and ridiculous statements regarding the Bill of Rights? (Her routine conflation of the Declaration and the Constitution is understandable since that is standard practice among Jesus-freak wingnuts to the point that it has entered the catalogue of falsehoods that y'all simply pretend are true). Or is that yet another construct of the Lame Stream Media, that all-powerful Oz?

Waiting.

ice9

Don't know what exactly you're referring to, David. What statements about the Bill of Rights? When does she conflate the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution?

Let me get this idea Palin is promoting: Revere warned the British. Wouldn't that mean Revere was a traitor? Am I missing something here? Paul Revere rode to warn the Colonialist that…the British were coming. Whose spinning whom?

Perception is reality. And the perception is that she is an idiot. It also happens to be the reality.

Gee Jerry… glad you cleared that up,.. now run back to huff n puff where the heavy lifting of distortion and hateful partisan slander is really done.

you never bothered to read the text of Revere's own account did you?

He did tell them, he was trying to get them to turn back out of fear that the 500 militia he mentioned would be ready for them… Revere was trying to get them to avoid a fight,.. wouldn't you?

You miss that? or so blinded by partisan hate, you just don't care whether you spread a lie or not?

My God you Palin haters are incredible.. you can't be this ignorant naturally, you must really work hard at being a dunce.

This blog needs to spin harder. Being interrogated isn't the same as riding around guns blazing like Yosemite Sam while threatening the British.

Dig! Dig deeper! Anything we might be able to spin wildly into a limpwristed defense of a joke of a politician is as good as gold on the right-wing blogosphere!

Dan,.. reality is perception, only if you believe there is no such thing as objective truth.

Typical for a progressive, they haven't been guided by reality for a very long time, and if a shallow surface perception is all that matters to you, have fun defending Obama, because the erception of his reality, is he's not half as smart as advertised, he's cold, and he's awfully cavalier about having nearly 10% unemployed.

He can kiss off Ohio, we're at 12% unemployed and find his snake oil awfully hard to run a car on..

Go hump someone elses leg.

I don't know which is sadder, Palin's incoherent ramblings about Paul Revere, or your attempt to prove that they actually reveal a understanding of American history so subtle and nuanced that only a law professor could grasp it. Come on, guys. I know she's a lot of fun because she pisses liberals off, but as mom used to say, "it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt." There's a remote chance that all this fun might end up giving us a president who's a former governor of a tiny state who quit halfway through her one and only term because she wasn't making enough money. Do you really want that? Really???

Your quoted passage itself demonstrates that the primary purpose of Paul Revere's ride was not to inform the British of the amassing colonists, even if he did, in fact, inform six British officers of that fact. The very passage states that he told those officers that he "had alarmed the Country all the way up"–i.e., his purpose was to alert the colonists, not the British.

I was wrong. Apparently going through life fat, dumb and whoring for George Soros is perfectly acceptable to a large section of the more logic-challenged heroes on the left.

Good lord, I decide to stop by and see what the Howard Zinn "educated" Lefties with PDS are up to and here, yet again, a whole cadre of ilk who want to crow about how intelligent they are but who have no grasp on how the word "warn" is used.

Go back to your 57 states of denial.

I just knew somebody was going to post this video on Facebook today. Most of my Facebook "friends" are from my school days. It's an extremely liberal area.

I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt … I try to be friends and remain friends with everyone. But the lefties have to bring politics into everything. And they always have to make things ugly. It's been me alone against a horde of people on that Facebook thread. It gets really ugly … not from me. I just try to make my points in an entertaining fashion … but so many on the other side make it so personally insulting.

Has my wit eviscerated the witless lefties? Yes. Do I feel good about it? No.

I can't understand this vile hatred for Sarah Palin. And it is vile. I don't hate any politicians on the left. I may find them absurd or insufferable … but I certainly don't hate them.

Now the conventional wisdom from all my classmates will be that I'm a right-wing wacko. (I'm from an extremely liberal area). I could just imagine going to my high school reunion and being avoided like the plague. I can't believe my generation has grown to be so childish.

Is it true it's almost impossible to close a Facebook account once you've started one?

LukeHandCool (who will now have a half-dozen or so too many drinks with dinner in a superhuman attempt to feel better … but who may just stop following politics … who feels like one day soon he will wake up and have no friends left … that every single classmate from his school days will have ostracized him … and who is too old to make new, close friends like one can in childhood … and who, frankly, can't believe he's feeling this way … oh, well, drinks before dinner tonight!)

LukeHandCool,

1. My brother cancelled his Facebook account. Don't worry!

2. Move on from high school. I have never been to my high school reunions. You have changed and so have they. Why bother?

3. "I can't understand this vile hatred for Sarah Palin. And it is vile."

And this is why I worry for her safety.

I have a bad feeling that her very life will be in serious danger if she ever comes close to the GOP nomination, to say the least. Someone will try to "get even with her" because of all the stuff said and done against her, however unjust and cruel.

Worse yet: someone would probably have the idea that he needs to "avenge the Congresswoman's shooting" or some sh** like that – even though everyone knows she had no influence whatsoever over the wacko gunman's actions.

If she runs for the Presidency (which I think she will not), she will have to take with her everywhere a security detail worthy of Benjamin Netanyahu. Eight bodyguards for at least three people to protect: imagine protecting seven people, including minors. The vigilance around her would be a strategic nightmare.

Ohhhhhhhhh, boy, you struck a nerve!

@David: "Fine–for the sake of argument, let's concede that Palin is familiar, off the cuff, with the historical nuances of Revere's ride as confirmed in the letter so ably explicated by the Professor. So why has she so carefully concealed her encyclopedic knowledge of American History?"

Hey you twit. Put the goal posts back where they were.

I ran into this just yesterday, at a party. Palin's name came up, some leftard said "Can you believe that people are actually considering voting for someone who is too stupid to know anything about Paul Revere?" I said "Actually, I don't think she was that far off, historically. When Revere was captured, he did warn the British.." and she started SCREAMING at me about how stupid Sarah Palin is. I, damn my black Irish temper, yelled back at her. We had quite the row. It was uncomfortable for the other people at the party, to say the least, and yea, I know I should have been the big man and walked away, but damnit, she was flat out WRONG on the facts and wouldn't listen or discuss the points I was trying to make, and I'm just plain tired of backing down to PDS. It wasn't even about Palin as far as I was concerned, it was about historical fact. I have a degree in American history, for Christ sake, I DO know a little bit about what I'm talking about. She tearfully left the party because "She wasn't used to being treated like this, SHE, you understand, has no problem talking to people whom she disagrees with politically, but I was just so mean and unreasonable…."etc, etc. This kind of thing is going to happen a lot more over the next year and a half, and I need to find a better method of responding, but I'm no longer going to roll over and show my belly just because some lib is spouting off. I feel bad for yelling because I AM better than that, but she called the tune, and when that happens, I'm going to dance. I plan to give back that exact level of decorum that I receive. No more retreating for politeness sake, 2012 is too important for that.

Sorry, Greg. Too nuanced. For you:

"How come she's really smart on Paul Revere, but stupid on just about everything else?"

That is to suggest that she isn't really smart about Paul Revere but that she gave her supporters enough to spin. Then the blind supporters, such as yourself, can run their binary logic routine and conclude that, since Palin was right after all, everybody else must be wrong. From there it's only a short leap to be reconfirmed in the belief that Harvard Law Review Editor Barack Obama is, in fact, stupid, a stuttering fool without his teleprompter.

Revere was riding a harley across New England taunting the British with the impending ratification of the second amendment. Those goal posts?

Touched a nerve, did she?

My previous post got swallowed in the attempt to log into WordPress, so I'll summarize:

Those on the right who claim Palin is not electable or not "presidential" need to educate themselves on the definition of the word "presidential" (from Dictionary.com):

pres·i·den·tial
   [prez-i-den-shuhl]
–adjective
1. of or pertaining to a president or presidency.
2. of the nature of a president.

Clear as mud. Let's remember, the MSM said Reagan wasn't electable, nor was he "presidential," either (and this was in comparison to Jimmah Carter).

And to claim she "abdicated" the governorship of Alaska shows a blatant disregard for the facts. Go look up the circumstances of her resignation, and the fact that SHE WAS RIGHT to do so! Ever heard of "retrenching?" Only a fool would rush into a battle that he knows he would lose, unless ordered to do so by a superior (read the historical facts behind "The Charge of the Light Brigade" – don't rely on Tennyson solely).

Those of us who support Palin do so unapologetically, and we know that she, like everyone else, is human. "To err is human, to forgive divine." Christ died for us so that we would learn forgiveness. If the Lord can forgive us our sins, who are we to be unforgiving for a simple verbal gaffe?

To the lefties who scream PALIN IS AN IDIOT at the top of their lungs: Get some facts, learn how to debate with them, otherwise STFU. Stop simply gainsaying an argument (go Google the Monty Python "Argument Clinic" for a perfect example of what I mean) or deflecting the discussion with some arcane discussion about the meaning of the word "warn" (sounds Clinton-esque) or moving the goalposts regarding the intent of her statement. And don't rely on "perception," because PERCEPTION ISN'T TRUTH! Only the TRUTH is the truth; perception is how we muddle the facts to suit our worldview. Go back to the corner until you learn to behave like an adult. I'm sick of you.

Palin is one of those people who believe that if something is worth preserving (like our liberty), it's worth fighting for.

And I'm ready to fight.

@VanHalen
How much of the deficit is due to BUSH's TWO wars he started?

Do you know what the medical (and economic) bills will result for this country because up to 35% of our veterans come home with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder?) (do the math) – it's a HUGE problem.
source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090914151629.htm

Those wars and those medical bills (and the economic devastation of removing those soldiers from the workforce).. do the math.

So now we are to believe that the comment was not a bumbling misremembrance of the tale, it was an astute analysis of several recondite academic sources? Occam? Meet razor.

"…go Google the Monty Python "Argument Clinic"…"

Or rather, Google "bring out your dead." I'm convinced that's the actual basis of Palin's confused bell recollection.

@newton

Thanks for the wise points lovely lady!!

It just dawned on me last night that I don't really have any friends left.

My best childhood friend seems to have written me off, too.

He de-friended me on Facebook and hasn't spoken to me in many months. I was joking one day just as I've always done … I jokingly called him a self-hating Jew (and it was 100% obvious I was kidding … just like he and I had always kidded each other for a few decades). And, now that he's become a vegetarian (after he used to mock vegetarians when we were teenagers) I kidded him about that … I posted something about making my world-class hamburgers for him as a teenager and watching him gobble them up …

He sent me a message asking me to stop insulting him, etc.

I was shocked, to say the least. He lives up in the San Francico area now. I sent him a message back saying something to the effect of,

"Whatever group of lefty friends you're hanging around with up there now … they sure did a job on your sense of humor. If you ever find your sense of humor again and stop taking yourself and life so seriously … feel free to contact me … no hard feelings, I'll always let bygones be bygones."

Haven't heard back from him and doubt I will. Like other lefty friends, in these rancorous partisan times he's moving further left … and with each step in that direction there is a simultaneous loss of sense of humor.

My male friends are all gone.

One girl, who I've known since elementary school, divulged to me on Facebook that she'd had a crush on me her entire life and would write diary entries about me daily for years !!!

We've corresponded a lot since getting in touch via Facebook. She was such a sweet girl in school. (I had no idea in school she liked me.) She is now a lawyer representing abused and neglected children … doesn't surprise me, she has always been the salt of the earth.

As much as I cherish our friendship … she's just a girl : )

The worst part about last night when a wave of sadness swept over me? Well, in the ninth grade, a gorgeous new girl came to our school. All the boys we're crazy about her. One day her friend approached me and told me this girl liked me and wanted "to go steady." We did … for two weeks … until she broke it off because I was too shy. Although outside of school things were fine, she was angry that I wouldn't go near her at school (because all the other boys' eyes watching constantly made me so uncomfortable).

I still have her up on a pedestal (and she is still gorgeous).

But last night, because of all the furor over the Sarah Palin post, which she couldn't see because she's not friends with the person who started the post (but she is friends with a number of people who contributed lefty talking points to it) I actually sent her a message, knowing she'd be hearing from people saying I had become a right-wing wacko and was foaming at the mouth (the foaming part being complete projection on their part).

In the message I pleaded my case, assuring her I was completely civil in my postings and that anything she would be hearing to the contrary was only sour grapes and simply not true.

A few minutes after I sent the message, I thought, "What the heck am I doing? How pathetic I'm acting. I feel like I'm in high school again with all the insecurities. This is how they've gotten under my skin and worn me down."

Well gotta go … I need to find that list of friends and acquaintances and scratch her name off, too!!

Isn't life funny?

Well, this was not the explanation she offered to Chris Wallace, as noted by Crooks and Liars:http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/palin-i-didnt-mess-about-paul-revere

Dang! I was really looking forward to her trying to convince us she was familiar with those obscure texts.

So a woman who was flummoxed by the question of what newspaper she reads every day is reading obscure historical works on Google Books? Is that the story you are trying to sell here, Professor?

Sounds good! Now what's the price again on that bridge in Brooklyn?

The refusal of Palin's critics to admit she was right is astonishing. The simple facts are as follows:

1. Palin said that Revere warned the British.
2. The MSM screamed: no, idiot, Revere warned the *colonists(!
3. We now know that Revere *did* tell the *British* that approximately 500 Americans colonists would be waiting for them.

I consider "warn" a correct verb for that action. But no, Palin's critics continue to insist, she couldn't have been right. She's too dumb. It was a lucky mistake.

But HOW she got it right is not at issue. The MSM said she got it wrong. SHE GOT IT RIGHT. So be quiet.

One more point: Logic 101: when your premises, logically followed, lead you to incoherent conclusion, you might want to reconsider your premises.

So a woman who was flummoxed by the question of what newspaper she reads every day is reading obscure historical works on Google Books? Is that the story you are trying to sell here, Professor?

So a woman who knows American history in detail was flummoxed by the question of which newspaper she reads? Is that really the story you genuinely believe?

Let me recap things:

1. Palin says something.
2. People who hate her say she's wrong and stupid.
3. She's not wrong.
4. People who hate her say she didn't know it wasn't wrong, and therefore is still stupid.

And how do they know she didn't know this? Because she's stupid, of course. No, that's not circular at all.

We get it. You hate Sarah Palin. That's not an excuse to pounce on every little thing with no regard for its veracity because it fits the narrative you've bought into. When you do that, it betrays the fact that your position has become emotional, rather than rational.

Get a GRIP, people. You're allowing a politician you don't like to turn you into a bunch of crazies.

What she said was still wrong.. He wasn't riding around, shooting his gun off, to warn the British. Instead, at gunpoint, he told the British that the colonists were coming.. He didn't go out on his ride planning to tell the British. He wasn't going around warning the British. And he wasn't shooting his gun off. Shes still completely wrong.. oh.. and sorry guys, but Palin didn't use this explanation for what she said..

It's called a narrative. She wasn't giving a detailed analysis of each anecdote: the causes, the results, etc. She was restating the story to make a point.

From what I hear, all the details are right: bells went off, shots were fired in the air, and REVERE WARNED THE BRITISH. She is foreshortening the causal connections (apparently Revere didn't ring the bells or fire the shots, or literally ride through town) TO TELL A STORY. The point of the story is that Revere WARNED THE BRITISH that the colonists would not have their arms taken away.

I'm a college teacher, and I do it all the time. I usually alert my students that I am reshaping the facts for narrative purposes, but then I don't have to worry that my description will be taken out of content on the 6 o'clock news.

@David: "How come she's really smart on Paul Revere, but stupid on just about everything else?"

For me? Little me? How kind of you.

First, let's clear a few things up: I am not a Palin supporter. I am anti-smug however. Oh, and I'm not a big fan of the labels "stupid,"or "dumb" either, though they rank right near the top, just under the word "racist" of the deck of cards the left uses. Unfortunately, they're so worn and bent out of shape as to be of no use any more in the political game.

Now to your question: Stupid in everything else? As in the picayune gotchas you guys are so fond of? I know she's "stupid" enough that she has the press at her beck and call. She's "dumb" enough to–how do they say it–live rent free in the minds of her critics. She's so much of an "idiot" that she ran for office twice (three times?) and won, has parlayed a brief stint as a vice presidential candidate into a fortune, and has you wasting your time deriding her on an obscure blog (sorry Ann). Is that what you mean by stupid?

Oh and to repeat: garbled as her statement about Paul Revere was in that snippet, she was more correct than her Longfellow wielding detractors. (By the way, how comfortable would you be having your life, your intelligence judged by snippets of video? Unless you stood there with your lips sealed, I could make you look like a blithering idiot, leaving your best lines and most important insights on the editing floor. In the end, Sarah Palin may be "stupid," but in the morning she won't wake up uncharitable. Her critics will.)

As to Mr. Obama: I've never said he was stupid. I did quip that he's not so good without his teleprompter. And he's not. With teleprompter at the ready, he's an inspiring man. Without it, not so much. That says nothing about his intelligence.

Now I'm off. I won't be responding to anything else.

Angela Marie | June 5, 2011 at 10:03 pm

Palin is dumb as a stump and everybody knows it.

What a clusterfuck. As a MA native and a history major, I can see all sides of this story. Sure, Revere warned Adams and Hancock that they were due to be arrested. Sure, Revere warned the British soldiers that the populace was getting ready to resist. As with any historical event, many different takes are possible, and all hold some small kernel of truth. And sure, Palin pretty much misspoke. Let's just get that out of the way. The mumblejumble of crap that spewed out of her mouth was in no way comprehensible. It neither proves that she's an abject moron nor that she's an over-educated mastermind spinning the "libtards" into a frenzy as a distraction technique. It just IS. Let's move on, shall we?

Let's move on to the fact that no matter how you slice it, that woman is in no way qualified to be president of these United States. IN NO WAY. She couldn't handle the governorship of Alaska, and she (co-)ran a ruinous campaign for president. No thinking person could seriously consider her a candidate, and yet here we all are, listening to this inane drivel and talking about it ceaselessly.

Her family vacation and the garbage that continues to come out of her mouth while that vacation is being endlessly covered by the media is taking attention away from reasonable candidates, candidates who should be getting our undivided attention as we go into yet another campaign season. We have more important things to worry about and comment on than the ill-chosen words of one American moron. Let's listen to ALL the ill-chosen words of ALL the morons running for president, and with any luck, pick the best of a bad bunch. What say you?

Palin is dumb as a stump and everybody knows it.

You can't stand it, can you, Angela?

Quoting Palin, "He who warned, uh, the…the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and um by makin’ sure that as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warnin’ shots and bells that uh we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free…and we were gonna be armed."

Did she say he was riding to warn the British? That that was his purpose? No. Yet some have insisted that’s what she was saying and it was therefore stupid. The stupidity is on the part of the hearers, who don’t listen. They conflate his ride, which actually had two purposes, to warn Adams and Hancock and also to alert the countryside and villages with her statement about his encounter with the British.

As for the shots and bells, she used a synecdoche, a common figure of speech, that puts the part for the whole. No, Revere didn’t literally ring the bells, pound the drums and fire the warning shots. But, by warning all who did, he can be said to have done it. And the figure of speech synecdoche is used in precisely that way.

When you only have ten seconds to answer a question, you can’t expound upon the subject. Her point is quite clear to those whose judgment isn’t clouded by a hatred of Palin or by having been so thoroughly corrupted by the media’s portrayal of her as stupid that you can no longer think for yourself.

Some have even argued that he never rode through a town, only villages, and therefore Palin is stupid. If you can’t see how strained that attempt to defame her is, your vision is obscured.

The larger point is that had anyone else said this, there would have been some scratching of heads until those with knowledge confirmed the accuracy of her statement. Because it’s Palin, the alarm bells go off instantly and the full force of PDS rises up to damn her. Yet she just keeps chugging along like nothing has happened.

I want a person with that level of intestinal fortitude and peaceful inner strength to be my President. If she is the nominee, I will gladly cast my vote for her. What will you do? Vote for Obama?

If you vote for Obama after what he's done and is doing to this country, then give up calling Palin stupid, because you just won that prize yourself.

@Jennaratrix:
"Palin pretty much misspoke…" but…but..but…she did NOT misspeak The essential fact under dispute is true.
"The mumblejumble of crap that spewed out of her mouth was in no way comprehensible."
It was perfectly comprehensible to me.

"the fact…that woman is in no way qualified…"That is not a "fact". It is an opinion. As far as I know she meets the essential qualifications: age, natural born citizen, etc.

She "handled" the governorship so well that she resigned when it became clear that her political enemies were going to investigate her into administrative stasis.

Finally, the VP candidate does not "co-run" the campaign. Never.

I'm a college teacher. I think that qualifies me as a "thinking person." I would seriously consider her as a candidate. So you are wrong when you say "no thinking person."

Those darned liberals are so frustrating, relying on facts and reality, etc. But where they can never beat us is in our ability to spin a yarn, to twist those facts into something that may seem bizarre, but if we pretend it's not bizarre, after a while it's almost like it was true! So, don't give up, Sarah, no matter how wrong or inaccurate you are, we are standing by to "set it all straight!"

@Yikes So, libs are going to rely on facts and reality now? Wow. That'll be a refreshing change, what brought that on, someone take away your raaaaacism card?

Angela Marie said…

Palin is dumb as a stump and everybody knows it.

Says the stump.

Yikes' post is amusing, because liberals in this comment section are now taking both positions: that she was technically wrong, and that she was technically right, but-who-cares-because-she's-still-stupid. You can even have fun pretending that they're arguing with each other!

Very interesting. Good job on this post about Palin and Paul Revere!

"On the same day at about 10 pm, Dr. Warren sent Revere and William Dawes, a shoe maker, to Lexington where Adams and Hancock were staying. They took separate routes in case one of them was arrested; they had to make sure the message would get to its destination. Dawes was sent through land while Revere embarked through the Charles River. As he was getting ready to board, he realized that the oars would make too much noise and would alert the British. Finally a boatman provided him with a petticoat from his girlfriend which he wrapped around the oars to muffle the sound."

This was written by the Paul Revere Heritage Project and the graduates at Boston University History Club.

Please note that Revere had ABSOLUTELY NO INTENTION of warning the British of anything, let alone signaling he was near.

http://www.paul-revere-heritage.com/midnight-ride.html

I can't wait to see what the left comes up with when she recounts the history of the "COME AND TAKE IT" flag. I bet they'll claim it's not a cannon, but a…use your imagination.

Mr. Jacobsen: Are you kidding me!!!!

We all know there is absolutley NO WAY Palin ever read Paul Revere's obscure 1789 letter. Even if she did, why minimize the aspect of Revere's ride that changed our nation's history i.e. his warnings to colonists?

Palin didn't describe the legend of Paul Revere, nor the actual historical events. She screwed up the facts and now defenders such as yourself are digging up an obscure story not even relevant to the history itself and holding it up as though Palin knew what she was talking about. This is insane.

Yeah, you sure learned something about Paul Revere. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The man was an American patriot who spent his ride trying to avoid the British – he even escaped a chase once – before his eventual capture. This is the problem when you put politics ahead of truth.

you know they will not apologize http://nabacar.com

Notice that Christopher's supposed derisive laughter ("hahaha!") changes to an orgasm? ("ahahahah!")

What a pathetic looser.

"…he largely road through the countryside…"

Good thing this is a history lesson and not an English lesson ;c)

There sure are a lot of stupid people on the left. They can't read. They don't understand the English language at all. They clearly don't understand that words can have more than one meaning. They can't grasp how anachronistic interjection alters the meaning of a story, don't grasp what a figure of speech is and aren't aware that regional speech patterns can influence the meaning of words as well as phraseology.

For example, Tony Matias (and numerous others) completely misses the meaning of the word "warn" (as in "threaten, admonish, caution") which Revere most certainly did when captured by the British. Yes, it was a ploy designed to win his release, and yes, it involved a bit of false bravado, but he warned the British nonetheless.

For Tony, warn can only have one meaning – alert – and he simply can't grasp why Revere would have warned the British when he was trying so hard to avoid them.

Either we are to believe that, or we must accept the fact that Tony knows exactly what warn means in this instance but, for partisan reasons, refuses to acknowledge it, preferring instead to mock Palin for something she never said.

Others want to insist that Palin couldn't possibly have suddenly boned up on the minutiae of Revere's letters, completely forgetting that she had visited the museum that day and probably heard the story from a museum guide. I suppose it's because they never go to museums and so have no idea what kind of information one can learn there. Yet that was, in part, the purpose of Palin's trip.

For them, if something is incomprehensible to them it is incomprehensible to all. The idea that someone else might comprehend something that they cannot comprehend is, well, incomprehensible to them.

Still they insist on lecturing others on the meaning of words, sentences and paragraphs and how people think as if their knowledge and comprehension knows no bounds.

It would be pitiful if it weren't so dangerous. Once we have restored freedom to America, we should find a special place for such people, a place where they can babble incoherently without doing any more damage to the nation.

1) Palin had no idea what Revere was about until the next day after her handlers helped her out 2) the ride was obviously over if he was captured 3) once caught, he didn't "warn" the British Regulars, he "taunted" them and "boasted" 4) some townspeople in some towns rang the bells and shot their guns, but he didn't and he didn't tell them to.

Did she perhaps mean there were no "Americans" yet, as there were no United States? They were all British subjects, but no one's made that argument that I've heard, certainly no one from the Palin camp. 

What's this unaccomplished anti-intellectual quitter going to call her third party? "Know-nothings" is already taken. 

You just can't stand it, can you, TheFooshShow? "He only taunted them! He didn't warn them!" LOL.

Revere had ABSOLUTELY NO INTENTION of warning the British

Until he did.

Uh, logic?

1) Whether or not he INTENDED to do it doesn't change the fact that he did.

2) Oh my. Big laugh at the "he didn't war them, he haunted them."

The parsing that's going on here is tremendous. If these are the lengths you have to go to prove that someone's dumb, you're clearly beyond the low-hanging fruit, people. I'll say it again: GET. A. GRIP.

Here are a few things: First, The British were coming, in part to take arms, not every colonist's personal arms, but the supply cache of weapons in Lexington and Concord. Second, they were also coming to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Third, Paul Revere's job was to warn Adams and Hancock of the British's intent to arrest them and to warn the colonists of the British forces. Fourth, Paul Revere was not tasked with warning the British soldiers that the Colonists were not going to let them take away their arms and would fight them, they already knew that was the feeling among a lot of the Colonists. When he was captured, he did inform the British soldiers again of the Colonists intent.

Bottom line, Sarah Palin's answer to a simple question, "What have you seen here (Boston) today and what will you take away from today?" was inaccurate and jumbled. I do not believe her misstep was the result of ignorance of American history, but rather she was surprised by the question and was trying to give an answer that would remain on message. My biggest complaint is that she refuses to say, "Oops, I misspoke."
http://www.canigetawordin.com

Another idiot joins the fray. "It wasn't the colonist's arms, but a supply cache of weapons." Who do you suppose those weapons belonged to moron? And do you suppose they might have referred to them as "our" arms?

No one has ever said that Revere was "tasked with warning the British" except for the boobs like you that can't read. I know this might be hard for you to grasp, but sometimes people end up doing things they weren't tasked to do. Work on understanding that. It might help you in the future.

OK political numbnuts let's look at the real history, not what a poet wrote close to 100 years after the fact, or what other historians wrote 200 years after the fact.

1) The colonists were British in April of 1775. They were not fighting for freedom from the British Empire, but to be Free Englishmen with the ability to govern themselves. The Declaration of Independence was not ratified until the next year, 1776. Although some radicals might have wanted separation from England sooner "the cause of liberty" from England had not yet been adopted by the Continental Congress which was the defacto government of the rebellion.

2) If you look at the Orders of General Gage to the commander of the military expedition to Concord, Lt Col Francis Smith, dated April 18 1775 (found online at: http://tinyurl.com/6ebs4b4), Gage does not mention Samuel Adams or John Hancock, NOR does he mention Lexington at all. The colonists, though knowing in advance of the expedition, did not know and only speculated that Adams and Hancock were targeted.

3) Paul Revere. When Revere was stopped en route to Concord by Maj Mitchell and party and then questioned, Revere lies. He tells then that the troops intended for Concord had been stopped by some 500 militia in Cambridge. This is not warning the "British", this is lying to unnerve a small group of mounted officers on horseback, 10+/- miles away from safety, in the middle of a chilly April night. (Side note: when Revere appears a couple weeks later, he puts in to the Committee of Safety for the Cost, Care and Feeding of the horse he lost on his ride. He bill is paid by the Committee. However, the horse did not belong to Revere, but to Deacon John Larkin of Charlestown and Deacon Larkin never saw a penny of that money. If Revere sped through the night to warn the countryside, would he have stopped to feed the horse along the way? If you want o read more abo0ut Revere's character look into his exploits on the Penobscot Expedition of 1779. The man if not an idiot was a complete Douche!

4) Colonial Arms. The stock pile of arms, munitions and military supplies which were the focus of Gen Gage's orders were not targeting people's personal property, but were the property of the Colony of Massachusetts. What colonist would have a 12-lb cannon for his own personal protection??? The Colony of Massachusetts was owned by England. If the Colony is owned by England, and the munitions and arms were property of the Colony of Massachusetts, you do the math, who owned them??? They were supplies originally supplied by or stolen from the Government of Massachusetts and therefore property of not the colonists but the Government. Not one order was given to target individuals in their homes and abscond with their personal Fowler or musket.

Please notice I have not commented on Sarah Palin, her politics, or the Tea Party movement. I have posted only to set straight historical inaccuracies which have been vomited all over this blog.

I wanted to quote from David Hackett Fischer's book "Paul Revere's Ride" , Oxford Press 1994. Taken from the chapter"The Capture" pp.135-136. "At last the (British) officers began to feel the full import of what Paul Revere had been telling them.His words of warning took on a stronger meaning when punctuated with gun fire (from the colonist)…..As they (the British) came closer to the Common they (the British) began to hear Lexington's town bell clanging rapidly"

@Antimedia

You said, "No one has ever said that Revere was 'tasked with warning the British' except for the boobs like you that can't read."

No one except for Sarah Palin in her interview with Fox News. She said, "Part of his ride was to warn the British that were already there."

@riasgt, it was common for individuals, groups and towns to own cannons in America until the late 1800's. A group of whites used a cannon to slaughter some blacks in South Carolina shortly after the civil war. In 1873 in Louisiana, a group of whites used a cannon to kill 80-150 people, mostly black, in what is known as the Colfax Massacre. Three years later, in South Carolina, a cannon was used again to slaughter blacks in what is known as the Hamburg Massacre.

So the idea that the colonists wouldn't own a cannon is rather silly and doesn't square with the historical facts.

It's a lame attempt to argue that the arms to which Palin referred were not the arms that the British wanted to capture and reveals a willingness to parse words in the extreme to arrive at a preconceived conclusion.

Furthermore to argue that the arms belonged to the Massachusetts Colony and therefore not the colonists is to argue that the colonists were not the Massachusetts Colony. The Colony is apparently some disembodied entity that has no relation to its inhabitants. This kind of thinking makes a mockery of Lincoln's words "of the people, by the people, for the people".

The argument about lying not warning doesn't even deserve a response it's so ridiculous.

@Steven Kippel, first of all, the quote you cite was from a later interview and has only a tangential relationship with Palin's comments that engendered such derision from the uninformed and which are the subject of this post.

Furthermore, even that quote does not say that the purpose of his ride was to warn the British. I know you think it does, but you clearly don't get the Palin vernacular. If you read it, it's actually true. Although it wasn't the reason he was sent out, it turned out to be part of his ride.

I don't expect Palin's critics to ever concede a single point. It's not in their DNA. But as long as you keep making these ridiculous assertions in vain attempts to denigrate Palin, I will keep responding with facts.