Atlas Shrugs

Obama Pays off: Nominates Vocal Palin Foe Persily to Ala$ka Pipeline Job

Obama is so transparent, petty and small, he is an embarrassment. O's latest Chicago way payback? He has nominated Larry Persily, who writes hit pieces on Palin for the Puff Ho, for an Alaska Pipeline job. Got that?

Obama defines the hatred of the good for being the good. You go, Sarah. We've got your back.

Obama nominates former Palin aide to pipeline job [note lefturd Reuters headline -- as if he was part of her camp /not]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama nominated Larry Persily, a former aide to ex-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, on Wednesday to be federal coordinator for Alaska Natural Gas Transportation Projects, the White House said.

Persily, a former Alaska journalist, worked for more than a decade on oil and gas issues for three Alaska governors, including Palin.

Persily became a vocal critic of Palin after leaving her office.

Obama cannot hold a candle to Palin. This will become increasingly clear in the ensuing weeks, months, years.

Ex-Palin Aide Mocking Her as 'Foolish' Also Worked for Alaska Democrat

Who is Larry Persily? Kurtz added a little detail when he forwarded another Persily insult at article’s end:

With the campaign over, Palin seems more than happy to fill the media void. "Being in the limelight is good," says Persily, a former Anchorage Daily News editor. "She's smitten by it, just like McCain was smitten by her. She loves the attention."

Persily showed up on The Huffington Post during the fall campaign, most notably questioning her vice-presidential debate facts. Another item, cross-posted on the site Alaska Dispatch, mocked Palin as an airhead:

Will Palin continue her tactics of "ask, but don’t expect an answer"? Will she avoid specifics as much as possible? Or will she stumble through multiple commas for want of a period to end her sentence, as she did in her CBS interview with Katie Couric?

Garrison Keillor made light of the governor’s Couric interview during a presentation Monday evening in Washington, D.C., when he was asked if he had any advice for the candidates. Yes, he said, "think in complete sentences."

Persily worked in Alaska's lobbying office in D.C. for about a year in 2007-08, but he also worked for four years in the administration of Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles (who served from 1995 to 2003), as noted in the State of Alaska press release on his hiring in 2007: 

Persily has an extensive background in public service and with the press. Among other positions, from June of 1999 to June of 2003, Persily served Alaska as Deputy Commissioner for the Department of Revenue.

The Post also used Persily to knock Palin on September 19:

Nor has she proven particularly attentive to the details of public policy. "She's not known for burning the midnight oil on in-depth policy issues," said Larry Persily, a former journalist who was associate director of the governor's Washington office until the spring.

He also trashed her on Hardball, delighting Chris Matthews on October 10 as he agreed she was an ignorant, immature demagogue:

MATTHEWS: Do you think she should be vice president?

PERSILY: No, I don't think she should be vice president. She's not qualified. She doesn't know what she thinks she knows. She's too immature politically and just doesn't bring anything to the ticket other than this cheerleader....

PERSILY: But, as she talked, she can really get people behind her without dealing with the facts.

MATTHEWS: You're talking about a demagogue?

PERSILY: Yes, maybe a small 'd' on demagogue.

A Washington Post reader might only suspect this degree of hostility from the dishy quotes, not from Kurtz, who failed to describe adequately the depths of Persily's pique.

Palin's Political Climate

The woman is singular. She takes on all comers. Obama must want to go Chicago gangsta on her. He is planning something. Watch. She is sooooooooooooo on to him.

Check out her editorial in the Washington Post on Climategate and Obama's war on America. She has more testicular fortitude than all of the GOP. The left wets their pants at the mere mention of her name.

Copenhagen's political science

By Sarah Palin

Our representatives in Copenhagen should remember that good environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits -- not pursuing a political agenda. That's not to say I deny the reality of some changes in climate -- far from it. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. I was one of the first governors to create a subcabinet to deal specifically with the issue and to recommend common-sense policies to respond to the coastal erosion, thawing permafrost and retreating sea ice that affect Alaska's communities and infrastructure.

But while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes. We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs. And those costs are real. Unlike the proposals China and India offered prior to Copenhagen -- which actually allow them to increase their emissions -- President Obama has proposed serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions. Meeting such targets would require Congress to pass its cap-and-tax proposals, which will result in job losses and higher energy costs (as Obama admitted during the campaign). That's not exactly what most Americans are hoping for these days. And as public opposition continues to stall Congress's cap-and-tax plans, Environmental Protection Agency bureaucrats plan to regulate carbon emissions themselves, doing an end run around the American people.

In fact, we're not the only nation whose people are questioning climate change schemes. In the European Union, energy prices skyrocketed after it began a cap-and-tax program. Meanwhile, Australia's Parliament recently defeated a cap-and-tax bill. Surely other nations will follow suit, particularly as the climate e-mail scandal continues to unfold.

In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to "restore science to its rightful place." But instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the United States will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices, the president has upped the ante. He plans to fly in at the climax of the conference in hopes of sealing a "deal." Whatever deal he gets, it will be no deal for the American people. What Obama really hopes to bring home from Copenhagen is more pressure to pass the Democrats' cap-and-tax proposal. This is a political move. The last thing America needs is misguided legislation that will raise taxes and cost jobs -- particularly when the push for such legislation rests on agenda-driven science.

Without trustworthy science and with so much at stake, Americans should be wary about what comes out of this politicized conference. The president should boycott Copenhagen.

Gridiron Sarah

There is so much going on with Palin that the media isn't covering, it's hard not to laugh. No coverage of her visit to Walter Reed hospital. I only know about it because her Sioux City appearance was delayed because her visit to Walter Reed went longer than anticipated. Of course Sarah wasn't looking for media coverage (unlike our attention-whore-in chief), but Atlas is here to tell you that's where she was. She did it from the heart, did it quietly and without fanfare. 

There's been even less coverage of her number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list. And just under a thousand folks showed up for her Iowa book signing.

And I hear her Fort Hood signing was incredible. Hundreds cheered her arrival. The crowd began chanting "Sarah! Sarah!" just before Palin arrived Friday night. Many stood on chairs, their cameras poised to capture Palin as she entered. During the book-signing, Palin gave a $10,000 check for a fund set up to help soldiers affected by the Nov. 5 shooting (more here).

"I'm joining the efforts of many others by donating my royalties from the book sales during our stop at Fort Hood to the families of the victims whose lives have been forever changed by the tragic events," she added. (NY Daily News)

To the  Point News has this great account of Sarah at the Gridiron:

[The Gridiron Club, founded in 1865, is the oldest and most prestigious journalist organization in Washington DC.  The annual Gridiron Dinner is attended by the media elite, at which the president is traditionally the speaker.  This year, President Zero was the first president to refuse to address The Gridiron Dinner since Grover Cleveland.

[Last night, Saturday December 5^th, the black tie dinner at the ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel had double the attendance of recent years - for instead of Zero, the speaker was Sarah Palin.  The tradition of the dinner is that the speaker pokes fun at himself and the attendees.  Sarah was such a hit there were dozens of the most liberal elite journalists in America laughing their heads off, many wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. Here's her speech. It is as clever as it is funny.]

Good evening. It's great to be in Washington.  I am loving the weather [it was snowing].  I braved the elements and went out for a jog! Or, as Newsweek calls it, a cover-shoot.  I feel so at home here in DC.  I can see the Russian Embassy from my hotel room!

It's a privilege to be here tonight at the Washington DC Barnes & Noble.  Tonight, I'll be reading excerpts from my new book.  Perhaps you've heard of it?  "Going Rogue."

Yukon wasn't sure if I'd go with that title and somebody suggested I follow the East Coast self-help trend and go with, "How To Look Like A Million Bucks...For Only 150 Grand."

Todd liked, "The Audacity of North Slope." [She nods to him as he's at the head table]

Hey, I considered not having a title at all.  I've said it before, but you Beltway types just don't seem to get it. You don't need a title to make an impact.  But anyway, let's get started.

I'll begin my first reading on Page 209.

It was pitch black when we touched down in Arizona late on August 27, 2008. The next morning we drove to John McCain's ranch in Sedona. John was waiting on the porch.  Before he can say a word, I tell him, I'm quoting now,

"I know why I'm here, and I'm ready. But, I'm worried.  The cost of credit protection for the largest U.S. banks is rising precipitously. Have you given any thought to the run on the entities in the parallel banking system? Do you realize the vulnerability created when these institutions borrow short term in liquid markets to invest long term in illiquid assets?"

John said, "you betcha!"  I thought, "you betcha?"  Who talks that way?

Well, sometimes you just have to trust your instincts.  When you don't, you end up in places like this.  Who would have guessed that I'd be palling around with this group? At least now I can put a face to all the newspapers I do read.

It is good to be here and in front of this audience of leading journalists and intellectuals. Or, as I call it, a death panel.

To be honest, I had some serious reservations about coming to visit your cozy little club. The Gridiron still hasn't offered membership to anyone from my hometown paper in Wasilla, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley Frontiersman. And my dad thought it was just a plain bad idea to leave the book tour for some football game.

He might have a point! [She waves to her parents at a table at the back of the room]  Hi, Dad!  Hi, Mom!  They crashed the party, you know.

I've been touring this great, great land of ours over the last few weeks. I have to say, the view is much better from inside the bus, than under it!

But really, I am thrilled to be with you. And I'd like to thank the Gridiron for the invitation and Dick Cooper for his introduction.

To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, this has to be the most extraordinary collection of people who have gathered to viciously attack me since the last corporate gathering at CBS.

Despite what you have read, or more likely, despite what you have written, I do feel a real bond with all of you. I studied journalism, earned a communications degree and for a time only wanted to be a journalist. I was even a television sportscaster back home.

I'm guessing some of you probably got your start the exact same way... once there was television.

Let me get back to the book.

I know that many of you are still upset because I wouldn't play that silly Washington game. You know, the one where all of you read a book in its entirety, from the first page of the index to the last.

But think about it, because you actually had to read the whole book in the vain hope of finding your name, you now know all about Denali, mom, dad, ungulate eyeballs, slaying salmon on the Nushagak and Ugashik near Alegnigak, where we make agootak and moose chili!

You're welcome.

Still, I want to do something very special for this audience of Washington elite. So, I'll read from the index--which I chose not to include in the hardback. Would you believe me if I said I didn't include it because we wanted to save trees?

Under A we have...

Alaska, media not understanding. Pages 1-432.

Under B...

Biased media. Pages 1-432

And under C...

Conservative media. See acknowledgments.

I'll stop there.

I know this can be a long night, and as I understand it, we're going to break with a Gridiron tradition. Normally, the Democrat speaker would deliver a speech after me. But instead, John McCain's campaign staff asked if they could use that time for a rebuttal.

A lot has been made of a few campaign relationships. The closeness. The warm fuzzy feelings.  John and I both agree all those staffers should just move past it. It's history.

Let's just say, if I ever need a bald campaign manager, it appears all I'm left with is James Carville.

I don't want to say that I've burned a bridge, but I know all about canceling a bridge to nowhere.

That Democrat speaker I referred to is, of course, the one-and-only Barney Frank.

And I'm the controversial one?

Barney, the nation owes you and the government a debt. A huge, historic, unbelievable debt.

But, it's good to be here with you, Mr. Chairman.

Because by Chairman, I don't just mean the House Financial Services Committee. As far as I can tell, Barney's also the Chair of AIG, CITI, and the Bank of America.

I don't want to say that the U.S. Government is taking over the role of the private sector, but I have to admit, on the flight here, thumbing through a magazine and looking at a photo of President Obama with the President of China, the person next to me pointed at it and said, "Hu's a communist."

I thought they were asking a question.

Still, when I see this administration in action, I can't help think of what might have been.

I could be the Vice President overseeing the signing of bailout checks. And Joe Biden would be on the road, selling his new book, "Going Rogaine."

Speaking of books....  Did I mention mine?  "Going Rogue"  Makes a great stocking stuffer. Available now at a bookstore near you. Hey, I have to pay for my campaign vetting bill somehow.

Really, the response has been great. So I'll close by reading a final passage.

Page 403:

...I've been asked a lot lately, "Where are you going next?'

Good question!

Wherever I go I know that, as with anyone in the public eye, I'll continue to have my share of disagreements with those in the media. Maybe even more than my share. It will come as no surprise that I don't think I was always treated fairly, or equally.

But despite that, I respect the media very much. It's important. A free press allows for vigorous debate! And that debate is absolutely vital for our democracy.  So as hard as it can sometimes be, we must all look past personal grievances.

We must move beyond petty politics. And we must allow these incredibly talented and hard-working women and men to ask the hard questions and hold us, and our government, accountable. Because their mission is as true as the sun rising over the Talkeetna and Susitna Mountains....

Okay - so none of that is actually in the book. Not a word.

But I do believe it!  And I believe we live in a beautiful country blessed with so many different people who want the best for their children, families and for our great nation. I'm so proud to be an American.

And that is what I'll be talking about when I travel to where I'm headed.

No better place than here to announce where I'm going. I'm going to Iowa!

I'll be there tomorrow from noon to 3:00 pm at the Barnes & Noble on Sergeant Road in Sioux City.  Come early. Long lines are expected.

Thank you everyone. God Bless the U.S.A!

Sarah is a nirther :)

On Rusty Humphries' radio show, in an the exclusive interview, Sarah Palin said the following according to  Ben Smith’s transcript at Politico.com:

“Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?” she was asked (around 9 minutes into the video above).

“I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers,” she replied.

You can watch the interview on video from Ustream.

She must have seen the analysis of the forged COLB (certification of live birth) at Atlas from June 2008.

Atomic Palin

Atlas operative John Jay was on the scene at a Sarah Palin book signing in the great state of Washington. Nobody in the GOP can generate this excitement, and nobody in the GOP will get folks out to the polls like this force of nature.

 

 
 
 

 


 
 
 

 
 
  

  
 

 

Sarah Palin dazzled ‘em November 29, 2009 in the town the Atom Bomb built**, as nearly 3,500 people, a crowd very affectionate and well disposed to her, lined up around the block for over a ¼ mile to attend a book signing of her just released book, scheduled from noon until 2.00 p.m. at Hastings book store in downtown Richland, Washington.

[photos of line: 0706, 0734.] The raucous crowd began assembling yesterday, camping out in the wee morning hours, as though for a rock concert, for the chance to have Sarah sign a book purchased at Hastings: the kids at the store said they had sold nearly 6,000 books for the signing, and many in attendance showed up with 2 or more books for her autograph. I spoke with a young woman in line, an Air Force veteran who served in an AWACS in the 1992 Iraqi campaign: she had been in line since 3.00 a.m. in the morning, book in hand, waiting for an autograph. [top photo] With her in line, were a group of 5 or 6 kids, one young guy dressed in shorts and tennis, shoes, who braved the chill from about 2.30 a.m. to get his book signed:

when I asked if he were cold, he said "No, I dress this way all the time."

There were many older folks in attendance, all of them quite amused to be Right Wing Radical Terrorists, and some of them taking no little pleasure in the notion of boxing some ears, if need be, to retain their liberties. A lot of these people were Vets, many quite proudly decked out in Marine Corps regalia, and more than several emerging from the store in their Combat Veterans Association leathers, though they dispensed with riding their bikes into the store. On the other end of things, however, there were very many youngsters in the crowd, some as young as 9 & 10 years of age, and having a very high time, dashing between the security officers, looking for the best vantage to photograph Sarah Palin: inside the book store, some even rode on the shoulders of their parents with cameras, hoping to get pictures over the partitions separating the book signing from the rest of the store’s business. A folk hero of sorts emerged from all this, as a ten year old boy somehow finagled his way to the book signing, going in the exit, and coming out again with a signed and autographed book, gained solely on wit and guile and daring: he was cheered wildly by family, and more than just a little bit by the rest of the crowd gathering at the entrance of the store just to see Sarah Palin when she left. And, from a demographic point of view, there were many young families, husbands and wives with children in tow, who braved the crowds for their signed books.

It was a very broad based showing of support, and a very impressive showing of her appeal across demographic and age categories: my guess is it would mean a very wide spectrum of voters might support her.

The setting and the mood may not have been carnival like, but it was very festive and very friendly, and quite relaxed. And, not to miss an opportunity, local politicians like Clint Didier, who played nine years in the NFL for the Washington Redskins and the Green Bay Packers, was on hand working the crowd trying to get his campaign for U.S. Senator in opposition to Democratic Senator Patty Murray off the ground. (Yes, it was a Republican crowd.) We had a most enjoyable chat about his quarterback in college, Neal Lomax, at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon who also enjoyed a good NFL career, cut short by injury: Didier said Lomax "threw" him into the pro’s, and laughed. A nice fellow. Patty Murray will not find him a push over, … , he is a serious fellow, with a serious purpose.

And, sad in a way, but emblematic of the concern that Sarah Palin has for kids with disabilities, five or six families had Down Syndrome children in tow, many of the kids quite gleefully hugging a book personally autographed by Sarah Palin. Sarah's son Trig was outside the store, mingling with the crowd watching the whole thing going on held by his grandmother, Sarah Palin’s mom. [Sarah Palin's mom and son: hpim 0735.jpg.] She held the boy as she spoke with a reporter from the Seattle Times, a large man in a dark suit jacket, identified as Eric Lassitae, but i know that memory fails me. Grandma passed him back and forth on occasion to an attractive dark haired lady identified to me as Sarah Palin’s cousin.

[Sarah's cousin, Trig and Seattle Times reporter: 0730.]: you can see her holding Trig's blankies and bottle. [Sarah's cousin, with bottles, diaper bag for Trig: 0736]. The Palins were, … , well, just as you might expect the Palin family to be with Trig, … , caring and completely nonplussed about sharing him and sharing themselves with him: they were also very cordial and willing to talk with all present, and submitted to having their pictures taken literally hundreds of times. I overheard Sarah Palin’s cousin discussing Thanksgiving dinner and pizza the next day with family in the Tri-Cities, with apparently upwards of 45 family members in attendance.

What a riot that must have been.

There were more people there than there were books to sell. Without the purchased book and proof of purchase from the Hastings store, there were lots of people who had no chance at an autographed book. Yet, many waited outside the store, for a chance to see her, if only for a bit.

The local t.v. stations were there, KNDU from the Tri-Cities, and two freelance journalists, Kevin and Mike, a cameraman and soundman from Everett, Washington had been hired by “Entertainment Tonight” to film and record the festivities: I waited for Sarah Palin to emerge the store with them, about 60 feet from the front of the store where she emerged. With us, a young girl from Walla Walla high school, Walla Walla, Washington.

Six (6) or seven (7) Richland police officers, a Washington State patrolman, and private security were there to control the crowd, with mixed results. The crowd in front of the store, waiting for Sarah to come out, really began to gather and build numbers when the last of the long line disappeared into the store for the book signing, and as people emerged with their books, many very gleeful and raising the books and fists and pumping them in the air and yelling, the crowd started peppering them with questions, how many left in the line, when is Sarah coming out, ... , that sort of thing. The fever pitch built when members of her entourage came from the store with cardboard boxes and materials, and the security apparatus started ducking out the entrance assaying the crowd, and speaking on their cell phones describing the scene. The Richland police had set out orange cones, and vainly tried to move the crowd back behind them, the newspaper and t.v. people being absolutely incorrigible and refusing to budge, and the crowd begin to push its way forward to get a view of Sarah Palin.

When she emerged the store, instead of ducking into the car for a quick exit, she moved quickly past it, and confounding the police, moved directly to the crowd to shake hands and welcome the people in attendance. [Sarah Palin, shaking hands, lady in the red coat: you just have to take my word for it: 0763 & hands raised w/ cameras, trying to find a photo of sarah: 0765]. At that, the crowd pressed forward, and she was enveloped in the welcome: not once, in the glances that I was able to catch, did I see any alarm on her face, just an absolute ease of deportment and genuine pleasure in talking to people. Yet, when she wanted to get into the car, the crowd eased her passage, and she got into the car and left, with people pressing forward with cameras and cell phone to take her picture. [Sarah Ppalin leaves in suv: 0766]. A man in the crowd fell faint to the ground as this happened, but several people rushed to his aid, a cordon of arms went up around him in a circle as others attended to him, and not one person in the crowd impinged upon the care the man received: by the time the Fire Department ambulance arrived, he was sitting and comfortable and alert.

As I drove towards home over the I-182 bridge spanning the Columbia River I looked upriver to the north at the condensation plume rising over the Hanford Project *** where the U.S. refined the uranium ore for WWII's Manhattan Project, and just a bit downriver I crossed over the Snake River at its confluence with the Columbia, and the Tri-Cities Grain grain elevators loading the wheat harvest onto barges for their trip to Portland, Oregon on the great slack water pools/lakes behind the damns built on the Columbia during the Depression and just after WWII.

It was a forceful reminder that S.E. Washington, on the rain shadow side of the Cascade Mountains is the creation of the collective might of the people of the United States working through the government to build the Hanford Project in support of the atom bomb and the resultant nuclear defense establishment, and the building of Bonneville Dam and Banks Lake, the kingpins of the Columbia Basin Project supplying water to flower agriculture in the middle of the desert, ... , technically speaking, a high arid steppe region with less than 12” of annual rainfall.

Richland is the town the Government and Trade Unions built.

One might have expected, therefore, some ideological opposition to Sarah Palin’s book signing this afternoon, … , yet there was none, the sole opponent voicing his opposition being a well behaved young man bearing an Obama “2008” poster, extolling “change.” This lone exponent of the left looked a bit disappointed to be wholly ignored by a crowd ebullient and focused solely on the chance to see Sarah Palin, and just eager as everything to express their support of her and to disparage Obama, yet in a very decorous manner.

It is just the way conservatives behave in public, isn't it?

I saw no evidence of any Trade Union presence, and absolutely none of any opposition to her presence. There certainly was no “demonstration” against her in the slightest.

She received a very strong welcome, from a large crowd who braved the chill and were very festive and upbeat at the chance to see her, if even for the briefest of moments. Her welcome was enthusiastic, and raucous, people chanting "Sarah, Sarah" as she appeared before leaving, and staying around to chat for a bit after she had left. And, the crowd, seemed to have a very genuinely good time chatting amongst themselves, as they shuffled along the sidewalk toward the signing, and as they gathered before the store to see her depart.

It was an event of community.

This country, it seems to me, is geared up to see someone unseat Obama from the Presidency. And, it would seem to me, that Sarah Palin, is seizing precious early high ground in a battle for the republican nomination for President, if that is in fact her intent.

I think it is.

One does not necessarily need one’s mom and dad in tow at a book signing, now does one. [Sarah's cousin and daughter: 0754]

John Jay @ 11.29.2009

................................................................................................. ................................................................................................. ................................................................................................. index of photos .... index of photos ....

hpim 0706.jpg .... line at entrance of Hastings books store, noon hpim 0734.jpg .... line stretching to Torbett street, from front of bookstore 0707 .... member of U.S. Air Force in full uniform, duty in awacs during 1992 iraq campaign 0710 .... one of any number of groups of young kids who stood in line for the book signing 0735 .... Grandma and Trig Palin, outside the store, talking with the crowd 0730 .... Sarah's cousin (as identified to me) talking with Seattle Times reporter 0760 .... crowd & cars, waiting for Sarah to emerge 0717 .... t.v. reporter and wife, nice fellow, I have watched him for years 0759 .... t.v. camera person 0763 .... picture of Sarah Palin in the crowd, on foot, before leaving in car 0765 .... picture of Sarah Palin in the crowd, on foot, before leaving in car 0766 .... Sarah Palin leaves, as crowd presses to her, and tries to take pictures w/ cameras, cell phones, ... , whatever, laughing 0754 .... Sarah's cousin, Sarah's daughter (as they were identified to me)

Dangerous Obama Targets Sarah Palin

Dirty lowdown gangsta-style politics of personal destruction. Welcome to hope and change, America. The new America is all about fear and loathing.

Obama's hatred of the good for being the good manifests itself in his latest. Palin is everything O ain't. Quintessentially American and proud and patriotic and good. Beware, evildoers. You will not win. Sarah has something Obama and his brown shirts can't touch - heart and soul.

Organzing for America, aka mybarackobama.com, is Obama's old campaign website, blighted with Jew hatred and Israel bashing, still allowed to run unchecked.

Obama Group Targets 'Dangerous' Palin ABC blogs

Organizing for America, a fundraising arm of the DNC, sent an email to supporters today in an attempt to raise $500,000 off her assertion this fall that Democratic health care bills would create panels of government bureaucrats to decide end-of-life care.

"It's dangerous. Remember, this is the person who coined the term ‘Death Panels’-- and opened the flood gates for months of false attacks by special interests and partisan extremists. Whatever lie comes next will be widely covered by the media, then constantly echoed by right-wing attack groups and others who are trying to defeat reform," reads the email from Organizing for America national director Mitch Stewart.

The email asks Obama supporters to donate $5 to “help push back against Sarah Palin and her allies.”

Here’s the full email:

Right now, Sarah Palin is on a highly publicized, nationwide book tour, attacking President Obama and his plan for health reform at every turn.

It's dangerous. Remember, this is the person who coined the term "Death Panels" -- and opened the flood gates for months of false attacks by special interests and partisan extremists.

Whatever lie comes next will be widely covered by the media, then constantly echoed by right-wing attack groups and others who are trying to defeat reform.

As we approach the final sprint on health reform, we can't afford more deception and delay. We need to be ready for anything -- and have the resources to respond with ads, events, and calls to Congress when the attacks come.

So we're setting a big goal: $500,000 in the next week to help push back against Sarah Palin and her allies. Please chip in $5 to help reach our goal.

Earlier this month, Palin publicly said that she hopes health reform will be "dead on arrival." And since then, she's been working fiercely toward that goal.

On Tuesday, Palin went on Rush Limbaugh's radio show where she outrageously -- and falsely -- suggested that Americans could "face jail time as punishment" if they don't buy insurance.

Palin has many more interviews scheduled on Hannity and other conservative shows in the next few weeks, with more platforms to go after the President. As soon as she does, the rest of our opponents will likely parrot those attacks.

We need to be prepared. And we're counting on you help. Can you chip in $5?

Thanks,
Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America

Palin Blasts Obowa's Bow Tic

And Palin is coming out guns blazing with America in her hip pocket, and I like it, I like it, yes I do do. I think America can breathe a little having someone speak for us against the invaders.

She's da bomb.

Exclusive: Palin Slams Obama for Bowing, Breaking Promises‎ -

Palin cited the contrast between Obama's comportment in bowing to Japanese royalty and the leadership style of former President Ronald Reagan.

"There is where his steel spine strengthened our entire nation," she said of the Republican icon. "The leadership he provided, where he allowed us to believe in ourselves as a superpower — not in an abusive way as a superpower, but as a power and a light and a hope for the rest of the world.

“That allowed us to be a healthier, safer, and more generous nation to help other nations. So those things that Ronald Reagan did . . . he said on national security issues, he said you know: 'We win. They lose.' Leadership like that we need today. [It] allows a very clear path in front of us we'd be foolish not to follow."

In criticizing the bow, Palin underscored the distinction between Reagan's view of American exceptionalism and President Obama's efforts to cast America as but one member of the community of nations.

"That [bow] made me and many of us uncomfortable, and I don't think it was just an accidental breach of protocol, because we've seen it before with one of the Saudi leaders, too," Palin told Newsmax. "I think it goes along with that same mode of operation that was apologizing for who America is. In order to build relationships with other countries and strengthen our allies and allow more alliances across the globe, we don't need to apologize for who we are. In fact, I think we would be respected to an even greater degree if we exerted more of the diplomatic power that, again, Ronald Reagan did."

Palin, who was a lightning rod for criticism during the presidential campaign, warned that America is in "a dangerous place economically" because Congress is debating healthcare reforms that would affect up to one-sixth of the U.S. economy, without keeping the public informed about exactly what provisions are being proposed. And she doesn't think that void of information is accidental, either.

"There are so many questions right now that I'm like every other American," Palin told Newsmax, "just kind of scratching my head saying, 'When are we going to get the answers so that we can debate this very responsibly and very intelligently?'

"I think it's purposeful that some in Washington, D.C., don't want us to have all of the answers, so that the debate is more nebulous and puts more of the generalities out there. Even knowing what we do know about it though, I think it is a very dangerous place for Americans to be, to be told that the only solutions to the healthcare challenges in our country . . . is that government has to take it over."

Palin, whose book was a runaway best-seller before it was even released, charged that Obama has broken his promise to take a transparent, bipartisan approach to governance.

She noted the efforts of GOP Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and others in Congress: "They're saying, 'Hey, we've got some common-sense conservative solutions that we've put forth and were shut out of the discussions.

"That's a broken promise of Obama's and others in Congress, who promised an open, transparent, bipartisan approach to finding these solutions, and that's unfortunate. But these common-sense conservatives have put forth solutions suggesting the intra- and interstate competition amongst healthcare providers, and the tort reform, and the waste and fraud measures that can help address the rising cost problems right now.

"Those things aren't even being considered in the bills pending before Congress. Very frustrating for a lot of us as Americans, saying wait a minute, this isn't what we've bargained for."

Palin also gave Newsmax a behind-the-scenes account of her candid reaction after she saw the controversial, critical Newsweek cover story, which she has criticized as "out of context" and "sexist." The magazine took an image of Palin posing in short running shorts, which she did for Runners World magazine to promote the benefits of exercise, and splashed it on its recent cover.

Palin told Newsmax she was mortified.

"I fired off an e-mail to my daughters, to my sisters and my mom, and I said you know I almost feel like I have to apologize for some of these surprises that happen in our lives here," she told Newsmax. "I don't know why I felt like I had to apologize because I didn't do anything wrong with it, but I didn't like it. But it was a bit of a shot there by Newsweek that I thought was unnecessary and I didn't like it."

Asked why some journalists in the mainstream media have attacked her, she responded: "Maybe some people are really threatened by just a normal everyday average American who is very blessed to have a megaphone right now, and doesn't want to squander or blow this opportunity to get a common-sense conservative message out there heard across the nation. I'm very blessed to have the opportunities that I have in speaking up for normal Americans."

Palin predicted that, in the 2010 mid-term elections, Americans will look back at what Reagan did for the country and vote against big-spending incumbents.

Palin on the Fort Hood Jihad: "Profile Away!"

Palin sounds very good here. Very good indeed. I am enormously encouraged. She gets better and better. Here's an issue no politician will touch: so fearful are they of being labeled bigot, they will throw our troops on an IED and our nation under a bus. Palin has cojones and they are growing :) We love that.

Palin on Nidal Hasan: "Profile Away" Weekly Standard

I spoke to Governor Palin by phone this afternoon. Lots of interesting material, but to me the most interesting takeaways were the following:

1) I asked about Palin's upcoming visit to Ft. Hood. "We had planned on that before the tragedy struck," she said. She commented on the trail of evidence linking the alleged Ft. Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan, to militant Islam. "There were such clear, obvious, massive warning signs that were missed," she said. "This terrorist, even having business cards" that identified him as an "SoA" or soldier of Allah. Palin blamed a culture of political correctness and other decisions that "prevented -- I'm going to say it -- profiling" of someone with Hasan's extremist ideology. "I say, profile away," Palin said. Such political correctness, she continued, "could be our downfall." If the upcoming investigations into the attack reveal bad decision-making on the part of senior officials, Palin continued, those officials ought to be fired.

Palin visits Ft. Hood on December 4. She plans to donate all the royalties from her book-signing there to the families of the victims.

2) I also asked Governor Palin about Attorney General Holder's decision to try September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohamed in federal court in New York City.

"Does KSM deserve constitutional rights?" I asked.

Palin's response: "Not no, but hell no."

And she went on: "That was an atrocious decision," she said. "And it makes a mockery of our judicial system." She focused in particular on the fear that "war criminals" like KSM and his accomplices will use the trial as a "platform" to denigrate America.

More Palin to come, including her thoughts on President Obama's trip to Asia and the role of the tea-party movement in the GOP ...

The SoA card ...... Atlas broke that story. :)

Gore-cle's Oracle: Palin is a "Gun Ho" and a "Twitterer I'd Like to F**K"

The party of the left, the party of the feminists, the party of "empowering women" has done more to degrade, destroy and diminish the standing of women in the last 20 years then any machismo Jihad could ever imagine. Speaking of which, it is hardly surprising that they have aligned themselves with the ideology that promotes gender apartheid, women in slavery, clitorectomies, women as property and the cloth coffin colloquially known as the burka.

Ron opined, "in the new [leftist[] lexicon, a woman who has slept only with her husband of 20 years is a “ho.” Guess this means all women are – in Gore’s world and in the world of those who don’t like Sarah".

Al Gore's Current TV Calls Sarah Palin a 'Gun-Ho' and a 'TWILF' Newsbusters

Days after announcing another huge layoff, Al Gore's Current TV referred to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as a "Gun-Ho" and a "TWILF."

These disgraceful, sexually-charged epithets were part of an attack on prominent conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and came in the form of a cartoon ironically titled "The Stupid Virus":

When a lab-monkey declares that President Obama wasn't born in America, he becomes Patient Zero for a new brand of fear-based news virus - Fearus Ignoramus. We watch as the virus goes ear-borne, spreading from Rush Limbaugh to CNN to the mainstream-media to the general public. America devolves into panic, convinced its President is an illegal alien anti-Christ.

In the end, this was just a lot of conservative bashing in very bad taste, especially the shot of Palin's Twitter page and her astonishingly offensive screen name "Gun-Ho" (video embedded below the fold, vulgarity alert, h/t Breitbart TV):

Did you notice Palin's screen name at Twitter was "Gun-Ho?"

After Palin tweeted, Brian Williams of NBC's "Nightly News" reported it as the "Top Story," and in the right of the screen was the word "twilf" with a question mark after it (h/t Amanda Carpenter):

This appears to either be a take on the acronym MILF with the "TW" standing for "Twitterer," or an urban dictionary reference way too disgusting to address.

Regardless, is that what a former Vice President and Nobel Laureate believes is acceptable to call a former Governor and vice presidential candidate?

Lest we not forget the vulgar attack on Beck at the end.

And these folks wonder why they're continually having to lay people off!

It's Pure Palin: Endorsing Real Conservatives, Doug Hoffman

Palin, once again, does the right right. And it's wildly refreshing. The left is twisted in knots. That's what  she does. She twists up the bankrupt leftopaths: “Sarah Palin’s latest blunder". They are going to choke on their own vomit.

Palin is backing the conservative in a local New York race.  Good for her. The old guard is backing an ACORN Working Family party endorsed RINO. WTF? Will the old guard ever get a cluebat? I mean that historical footnote, ole' Gingrich, came out for ultra liberal Dierdre Scozzafava.

DeeDee is the classic DIABLO, Democrat in all but label only. Have we not had enough of these turncoats? Have they not wreaked havoc on this once great party? It is time to take a stand. Rout the old guard.

Palin, Thompson, Armey, Santorum, Bachman Abandon Republican Party

Get behind Hoffman. Donate to Hoffman, In the nabe, campaign for Hoffman, You know the racketeering  party will have their paid ACORN and SEIU thugs out in full force.

Sarah Palin gets it -- big time. The future looks bright. Check out her post:

The people of the 23rd Congressional District of New York are ready to shake things up, and Doug Hoffman is coming on strong as Election Day approaches! He needs our help now.

The votes of every member of Congress affect every American, so it's important for all of us to pay attention to this important Congressional campaign in upstate New York. I am very pleased to announce my support for Doug Hoffman in his fight to be the next Representative from New York's 23rd Congressional district. It's my honor to endorse Doug and to do what I can to help him win, including having my political action committee, SarahPAC, donate to his campaign the maximum contribution allowed by law.

Our nation is at a crossroads, and this is once again a "time for choosing."

The federal government borrows, spends, and prints too much money, while our national debt hits a record high. Government is growing while the private sector is shrinking, and unemployment is on the rise. Doug Hoffman is committed to ending the reckless spending in Washington, D.C. and the massive increase in the size and scope of the federal government. He is also fully committed to supporting our men and women in uniform as they seek to honorably complete their missions overseas.

And best of all, Doug Hoffman has not been anointed by any political machine.

Doug Hoffman stands for the principles that all Republicans should share: smaller government, lower taxes, strong national defense, and a commitment to individual liberty.

Political parties must stand for something. When Republicans were in the wilderness in the late 1970s, Ronald Reagan knew that the doctrine of "blurring the lines" between parties was not an appropriate way to win elections. Unfortunately, the Republican Party today has decided to choose a candidate who more than blurs the lines, and there is no real difference between the Democrat and the Republican in this race. This is why Doug Hoffman is running on the Conservative Party's ticket.

Republicans and conservatives around the country are sending an important message to the Republican establishment in their outstanding grassroots support for Doug Hoffman: no more politics as usual.

You can help Doug by visiting his official website below and joining me in supporting his campaign.

Drill, Sarah, Drill!

Great piece from Sarah over at NRO. Palin's leadership, courage, wisdom, and goodness will become increasingly clear as America's descent into darkness becomes ever more dire.

"Alternative sources of energy are part of the answer, but only part. There’s no getting around the fact that we still need to “drill, baby, drill!” And if those in D.C. say otherwise, we need to tell them: “Yes, we can!”

You go,  girlfriend!

Drill by Sarah Palin, NRO

Petroleum is a major part of America’s energy picture. Shall we get it here or abroad?

Given that we’re spending billions of stimulus dollars to rebuild our highways, it makes sense to think about what we’ll be driving on them. For years to come, most of what we drive will be powered, at least in part, by diesel fuel or gasoline. To fuel that driving, we need access to oil. The less use we make of our own reserves, the more we will have to import, which leads to a number of harmful consequences. That means we need to drill here and drill now.

We rely on petroleum for much more than just powering our vehicles: It is essential in everything from jet fuel to petrochemicals, plastics to fertilizers, pesticides to pharmaceuticals. Ac­cord­ing to the Energy Information Ad­min­is­tra­tion, our total domestic petroleum consumption last year was 19.5 million barrels per day (bpd). Motor gasoline and diesel fuel accounted for less than 13 million bpd of that. Meanwhile, we produced only 4.95 million bpd of domestic crude. In other words, even if we ran all our vehicles on something else (which won’t happen anytime soon), we would still have to depend on imported oil. And we’ll continue that dependence until we develop our own oil resources to their fullest extent.

[...]

Building an energy-independent Amer­ica will mean a real economic stimulus. It will mean American jobs that can never be shipped overseas. Think about how much of our trade deficit is fueled by the oil we import — sometimes as much as half of the total. Through this massive transfer of wealth, we lose hundreds of billions of dollars a year that could be invested in our economy. Instead it goes to foreign countries, including some repressive regimes that use it to fund activities that threaten our security.

Reliance on foreign sources of energy weakens America. When a riot breaks out in an OPEC nation, or a developing country talks about nationalizing its oil industry, or a petro-dictator threatens to cut off exports, the probability is great that the price of oil will shoot up. Even in friendly nations, business and financial decisions made for local reasons can de­stabilize Amer­i­ca’s energy market, since the price we pay for foreign oil is subject to rising and falling exchange rates. Decreasing our dependence on foreign sources of energy will reduce the impact of world events on our economy.

In the end, energy independence is not just about the environment or the economy. It’s about freedom and confidence. It’s about building a more secure and peaceful America, an America in which our energy needs will not be subject to the whims of nature, currency speculators, or madmen in possession of vast oil reserves.

Read it all.

I think there's a plan afoot :)

Sarah Palin is number one on the Amazon and Barnes and Noble best seller lists, and her book isn't even out yet: Going Rogue: An American Life

Heh. Palin's Revenge ............

And btw, Todd Palin has resigned his position at the oil company. (hat tip Joan)

The husband of former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has quit his oil field job on the North Slope. Todd Palin's resignation as a production operator for oil giant BP PLC comes almost two months after his wife stepped down as Alaska governor and shortly before the release of her highly anticipated memoir in a deal rumored to be worth millions.

"Todd loved his union job on the Slope and hopes to return," Meghan Stapleton, Sarah Palin's personal spokeswoman, said in an e-mail Friday. "For now, he is spending time with his family."

The resignation was effective Sept. 18, according to BP spokesman Steve Rinehart.

I think there's a plan in the works.

With Love from Hong Kong

I posted earlier excerpts of Sarah Palin, proud American, remarks in China. Palin has posted more on her Facebook page.

We live in hope (for change).   Close your eyes and imagine a President of the these United States making these remarks. Ah yes, I remember .....America.

Many have asked to see my remarks as presented in Hong Kong. Here is an excerpt:

So far, I’ve given you the view from Main Street, USA. But now I’d like to share with you how a Common Sense Conservative sees the world at large.

Later this year, we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – an event that changed not just Europe but the entire world. In a matter of months, millions of people in formerly captive nations were freed to pursue their individual and national ambitions.

The competition that defined the post World War II era was suddenly over. What was once called “the free world” had so much to celebrate – the peaceful end to a great power rivalry and the liberation of so many from tyranny’s grip.

Some, you could say, took the celebration too far. Many spoke of a “peace dividend,” of the need to focus on domestic issues and spend less time, attention and money on endeavors overseas. Many saw a peaceful future, where globalization would break down borders and lead to greater global prosperity. Some argued that state sovereignty would fade – like that was a good thing? – that new non-governmental actors and old international institutions would become dominant in the new world order.

As we all know, that did not happen. Unfortunately, there was no shortage of warning signs that the end of the Cold War did not mean the end of history or the end of conflict. In Europe, the breakup of Yugoslavia resulted in brutal wars in the Balkans. In the Middle East, a war was waged to reverse Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. North Korea’s nuclear program nearly led to military conflict. In Africa, U.S. embassies were bombed by a group called al Qaeda.

Two weeks ago, America commemorated the 8th anniversary of the savagery of September 11, 2001. The vicious terrorist attacks of that day made clear that what happened in lands far distant from American shores directly affect our security. We came to learn, if we did not know before, that there were violent fanatics who sought not just to kill innocents, but to end our way of life. Their attacks have not been limited to the United States.

They attacked targets in Europe, North Africa and throughout the Middle East. Here in Asia, they killed more than 200 in a single attack in Bali. They bombed the Marriott Hotel and the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Last year in Mumbai, more than 170 were killed in coordinated attacks in the heart of India’s financial capital. In this struggle with radical Islamic extremists, no part of the world is safe from those who bomb, maim and kill in the service of their twisted vision.

This war – and that is what it is, a war – is not, as some have said, a clash of civilizations. We are not at war with Islam. This is a war within Islam, where a small minority of violent killers seeks to impose their view on the vast majority of Muslims who want the same things all of us want: economic opportunity, education, and the chance to build a better life for themselves and their families. The reality is that al Qaeda and its affiliates have killed scores of innocent Muslim men, women and children.

The reality is that Muslims from Algeria, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan and many other countries are fighting al Qaeda and their allies today. But this will be a long war, and it will require far more than just military power to prevail. Just as we did in the Cold War, we will need to use all the tools at our disposal – hard and soft power. Economic development, public diplomacy, educational exchanges, and foreign assistance will be just as important as the instruments of military power.

During the election campaign in the U.S. last year, you might have noticed we had some differences over Iraq. John McCain and I believed in the strength of the surge strategy – because of its success, Iraq is no longer the central front in the war on terrorism. Afghanistan is. Afghanistan is where the 9/11 attacks were planned and if we are not successful in Afghanistan, al Qaeda will once again find safe haven there. As a candidate and in office, President Obama called Afghanistan the “necessary war” and pledged to provide the resources needed to prevail. However, prominent voices in the Democratic Party are opposing the additional U.S. ground forces that are clearly needed.

Speaker of the House Pelosi, Defense Subcommittee Chairman Murtha, the Senate Armed Services Committee Chair, and many others, recently expressed doubts about sending additional forces! President Obama will face a decision soon when the U.S. Commander in Afghanistan requests additional forces to implement his new counterinsurgency strategy.

We can win in Afghanistan by helping the Afghans build a stable representative state able to defend itself. And we must do what it takes to prevail. The stakes are very high. Last year, in the midst of the U.S. debate over what do to in Iraq, an important voice was heard – from Asia’s Wise Man, former Singaporean Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, who wrote in the Washington Post about the cost of retreat in Iraq. In that article, he prophetically addressed the stakes in Afghanistan. He wrote:

“The Taliban is again gathering strength, and a Taliban victory in Afghanistan or Pakistan would reverberate throughout the Muslim world. It would influence the grand debate among Muslims on the future of Islam. A severely retrograde form of Islam would be seen to have defeated modernity twice: first the Soviet Union, then the United States. There would be profound consequences, especially in the campaign against terrorism.”

That statesman’s words remain every bit as true today. And Minister Lee knows, and I agree, that our success in Afghanistan will have consequences all over the world, including Asia. Our allies and our adversaries are watching to see if we have the staying power to protect our interests in Afghanistan. That is why I recently joined a group of Americans in urging President Obama to devote the resources necessary in Afghanistan and pledged to support him if he made the right decision.

That is why, even during this time of financial distress we need to maintain a strong defense. All government spending should undergo serious scrutiny. No programs or agencies should be automatically immune from cuts.

We need to go back to fiscal discipline and unfortunately that has not been the view of the current Administration. They’re spending everywhere and with disregard for deficits and debts and our future economic competitiveness. Though we are engaged in two wars and face a diverse array of threats, it is the defense budget that has seen significant program cuts and has actually been reduced from current levels!

First, the Defense Department received only ½ of 1 % of the nearly trillion dollar Stimulus Package funding – even though many military projects fit the definition of “shovel-ready.” In this Administration’s first defense budget request for 2010, important programs were reduced or cancelled. As the threat of ballistic missiles from countries like North Korea and Iran grow, missile defense was slashed.

Despite the need to move men and material by air into theaters like Afghanistan, the Obama Administration sought to end production of our C-17s, the work horse of our ability to project long range power. Despite the Air Force saying it would increase future risk, the Obama Administration successfully sought to end F-22 production – at a time when both Russia and China are acquiring large numbers of next generation fighter aircraft. It strikes me as odd that Defense Secretary Gates is the only member of the Cabinet to be tasked with tightening his belt.

Now in the region I want to emphasize today: The reason I speak about defense is because our strong defense posture in Asia has helped keep the region safe and allowed it to prosper. Our Asian allies get nervous if they think we are weakening our security commitments. I worry about defense cuts not because I expect war but because I so badly want peace. And the region has enjoyed peace for so long because of our security commitment to our longstanding allies and partners.

Asia has been one of the world’s great success stories. It is a region where America needs to assist with right mix of hard and soft power. While I have so much hope for a bright future in Asia, in a region this dynamic, we must always be prepared for other contingencies. We must work at this – work with our allies to ensure the region’s continued peace and prosperity.

I know that you all -- like all of Asia and indeed the whole world – has a keen interest in the emergence of “China as a great power.” Over the past few decades China’s economic growth has been remarkable. So has the economic growth and political liberalization of all of our key allies in Asia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Asia’s economic growth and political development, together with our forward military presence in the region and strong alliances, have allowed the region to prosper in peace for a long time. We hope that Asia will continue to be an engine of world economic growth, will continue to democratize and will remain at peace.

Our future is now deeply linked to Asia’s success. Our children’s future. We must continue to strengthen our key alliance with Japan, a country going through its own democratic change. Together the U.S. and Japan built the security umbrella under which so many Asians prospered. While there is so much attention to China these days, we cannot forget the importance of Japan in helping to make this the “Pacific Century.”

The recent elections in Japan demonstrated that voters wanted reform and an end to debt and stagnation. We have a substantial stake in Japan’s success -- our alliance with must continue to be the linchpin of regional security.

With its open political system and vibrant democracy, South Korea wants to play a larger role on the international stage as well. Of course it wants us to work together toward a future where the peninsula is irreversibly denuclearized, and unified. But it also wants to play a global role. We need to work together with Japan, South Korea and our steadfast ally to the south, Australia, to make sure Asia remains peaceful and prosperous.

Australia rightly reminds us to keep our eye on Southeast Asia, where Indonesia has proved that Islam and democracy can co-exist. Indonesia has fought extremism inside its own border and is consolidating a multi-ethnic democracy that is home to hundreds of millions of Muslims. Those who say Islam and democracy are incompatible insult our friends in Indonesia.

She is clueless on Islam.

Our great democratic friend India is also “looking East”, seeking a greater role in East Asia as well. Together with our allies we must help integrate India into Asia. If we do so we will have yet another strong democracy driving Asia’s economy and working on shared problems such as proliferation and extremism. And we must continue working with the region’s most dynamic economy, China. We all hope that China’s stated policy of a “Peaceful Rise” will be its future course.

You know better than most the enormous change that has taken place in China over the last thirty years. Hundreds of millions of Chinese have been pulled out of poverty as China has undertaken economic reforms that have resulted in unprecedented growth. Even today, China’s economy is projected to grow by some 8%. It is helping to edge the world out of recession.

China has amassed huge financial reserves. Chinese diplomats are engaged on every continent and, through its vote on the United Nations Security Council, China has become critical in gaining UN support on multilateral issues from Darfur to Iran to North Korea.

Just four years ago, then-Deputy Secretary of State Bob Zoellick urged China to become a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. He observed the many benefits to China of a “benign international environment.”

The peaceful regional environment that China has enjoyed was created through the hard work of Americans, Japanese, South Koreans and Australians. Secretary Zoellick urged China to step up and play its role too. We are working with China to de-nuclearize North Korea. But to be a responsible member of the international community China should exert greater pressure on North Korea to denuclearize and undergo the fundamental reforms it needs. Zoellick urged China to play a greater role in stabilizing the international energy market by ceasing its support of dangerous regimes.

China could play a role in stabilizing its ally Pakistan, and working for peace in Afghanistan. There are many areas where the U.S. and China can work together. And, we would welcome a China that wanted to assume a more responsible and active role in international politics.

But Secretary Zoellick also noted that many of China’s actions create risk and uncertainty. These uncertainties led nations to “hedge” their relations with China because, in Zoellick’s words: “Many countries HOPE China will pursue a ‘Peaceful Rise’ but NONE will bet their future on it.”

See: this is the heart of the issue with China: we engage with the hope Beijing becomes a responsible stakeholder, but we must takes steps in the event it does not. See? We all hope to see a China that is stable, peaceful, prosperous and free. But we must also work with our allies in the region and the world in the event China goes in a direction that causes regional instability.

Asia is at its best when it is not dominated by a single power. In seeking Asia’s continued peace and prosperity, we should seek, as we did in Europe, an Asia “whole and free” – free from domination by any one power, prospering in open and free markets, and settling political differences at ballot boxes and negotiating tables.

We can, must and should work with a “rising China” to address issues of mutual concern. But we also need to work with our allies in addressing the uncertainties created by China’s rise. We simply CANNOT turn a blind eye to Chinese policies and actions that can undermine international peace and security.

China has some 1000 missiles aimed at Taiwan and no serious observer believes Taiwan poses a military threat to Beijing. Those same Chinese forces make our friends in Japan and Australia nervous. China provides support for some of the world’s most questionable regimes from Sudan to Burma to Zimbabwe. China’s military buildup raises concerns from Delhi to Tokyo because it has taken place in the absence of any discernable external threat.

China, along with Russia, has repeatedly undermined efforts to impose tougher sanctions on Iran for its defiance of the international community in pursuing its nuclear program. The Chinese food and product safety record has raised alarms from East Asia and Europe to the United States. And, domestic incidents of unrest -- from the protests of Uighurs and Tibetans, to Chinese workers throughout the country rightfully make us nervous.

It is very much in our interest and the interest of regional stability that China work out its own contradictions – between a dynamic and entrepreneurial private sector on the one hand and a one party state unwilling or unable to adjust to its own society’s growing needs and desires and demands, including a human being’s innate desire for freedom.

I do not cite these issues out of any hostility toward China. Quite the contrary, I and all Americans of good faith hope for the Chinese people’s success. We welcome the rise that can be so good for all mankind. We simply urge China to rise responsibly. I simply believe we cannot ignore areas of disagreement as we seek to move forward on areas of agreement. Believe me, China does not hesitate to tell us when it thinks we are in the wrong.

I mentioned China’s internal contradictions. They should concern us all. We hear many Chinese voices throughout that great country calling out for more freedom, and for greater justice. Twenty years ago, many believed that as China liberalized its economy, greater political freedom would naturally follow. Unfortunately that has not come to pass.

Ummm, in fact, it seems China has taken great pains to learn what it sees as “the lesson” of the fall on the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union: any easing of political constraints can inevitably spin out of control. But, in many ways, it is the essence of China’s political system that leads to concerns about its rise.

Think about it. How many books and articles have been written about the dangers of India’s rise? Almost as large as China – and soon to be more populous – virtually no one worries about the security implications of India becoming a great power – just as a century ago the then-preeminent power, Great Britain, worried little about the rise of America to great power status. My point is that the more politically open and just China is, the more Chinese citizens of every ethnicity will settle disputes in courts rather than on the streets. The more open it is, the less we will be concerned about its military build-up and intentions. The more transparent China is, the more likely it is they we will find a true and lasting friendship based on shared values as well as interests.

I am not talking about some U.S.-led “democracy crusade.” We cannot impose our values on other counties. Nor should we seek to. But the ideas of freedom, liberty and respect for human rights are not U.S. ideas, they are much more than that. They are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many other international covenants and treaties. They apply to citizens in Shanghai as much as they do to citizens in Johannesburg or Jakarta. And demands for liberty in China are Chinese, not American, demands. Just last year, many brave Chinese signed Charter 08, a Chinese document modeled on the great Czech statesman Vlacav Havel’s Charter 77. Charter 08 would not be unfamiliar to our Founding Fathers and was endorsed by Havel himself. No, we need not convince the Chinese people that they have inalienable rights. They are calling for those rights themselves. But we do have to worry about a China where the government suppresses the liberties its people hold dear.

Nothing of what I am saying should be seen as meaning conflict with China is inevitable. Quite the contrary. As I said, we welcome China’s responsible rise. America and China stood together against fascism during World War II, before ravages took over in China – we were ready to stand together with China to shape international politics after World War II. Much has been accomplished since President Nixon’s fateful visit. And again, we stand ready to work with what we hope will be a more open and responsible China on the challenges facing the 21st century.

All of you here know how deeply integrated the economies of the United States’ and China’s are. We rely on each other, sometimes unfortunately in unhealthy ways. America spends too much that we don’t have, and then we go to China as a lender of first resort. Our fiscal policy, lately, seems to be “tax, spend, borrow, tax some more, repeat” and then complain about how much debt China holds. America needs to gets its own fiscal house in order. That’s a Common Sense Conservative perspective. We can hardly complain that China holds so much of our debt when it’s over spending that created the debt.

But here’s the reality. If in fact the United States does the “right” thing – if we spend less and save more – then China will also have to rebalance its economy. We need to export more to China – and we’d like China to consume more of our goods – just as we need to save and invest more. This vital process – so crucial to both countries – is impeded by problems of market access.

We must talk about these issues with more candor. If China adopts policies that keep our highest value products out of their markets, by manipulating technical standards or licensing requirements, our economic relationship suffers.

Our economic interdependence drives our relationship with China. I see a future of more trade with China and more American high-tech goods in China. But in order for that to happen, we need China to improve its rule of law and protect our intellectual property. We need to avoid protectionism and China’s flirtation with state-assisted “national champions.” On our part, we should be more open to Chinese investment where our national security interests are not threatened. In the end, though, our economic relationship will truly thrive when Chinese citizens and foreign corporations can hold the Chinese government accountable when their actions are unjust.

I see a bright future for America in Asia. One based on the alliances that have gotten us this far, one based on free and open markets, one that integrates democratic India into East Asia’s political life and one in which China decides to be a responsible member of the international community and gives its people the liberty – the freedom – they so desperately want.

Sadly, however, our largest free trade agreement ever in Asia, with South Korea, sits frozen in the Congress. In contrast, China is behaving wisely in negotiating free trade agreements throughout Asia. We want an Asia open to our goods and services. But if we do not get our free trade act together, we will be shut out by agreements Asians our making among themselves.

All of you here follow global financial markets and economic policy closely, I know that it will come as no surprise to you that United States leadership on global trade and investment is being sorely tested at this moment.

We are struggling with a monumental debate on whether fiscal discipline, or massive government spending, will drive a sustained recovery. We are struggling to repair the excesses that grew in our own economy and served as a trigger to a catastrophic collapse in the global financial system. And we are attempting to do so under the weight of a global imbalance of debt and trade deficits that are not only unbearable for the world’s mightiest economy, but also unacceptable in that they foster tensions between global economic partners like the United States and China.

I am proud to be an American. As someone who has had the tremendous opportunity to travel throughout the United States and listen to the concerns of Americans in towns and cities across the country, I can tell you that there is a sense of despair and even crisis afoot in America that has the potential to shape our global investment and trade policies for years, and even decades to come. Never has the leadership of our government ever been more critical to keeping my country, and the world, on a path to openness, growth and opportunity in global trade and investment.

It would of course be a mistake to put the entire burden of restoring the global economy on the backs of America’s leaders. There is plenty of work for all of us to do in this matter. Governments around the world must resist the siren call of trade protection to bring short term relief during a time of crisis.

Those who use currency policy or subsidies to promote their nation’s exports should remain acutely aware that if there ever were a time in which such policies could be viewed as “tolerable,” that time has now passed. All participants who seek to find benefit in the global trading system must also take the responsibility of playing by the rules.

The private sector has responsibilities as well. For instance, it should not be the responsibility of government to dictate the salaries of bankers or the ownership of companies. And yet, due of the excesses committed by some, this is exactly where we find ourselves now because government now owns substantial portions of the private economy – even, unbelievably, in the United States.

These are challenging times for everyone, but we in the United States must humbly recognize that if we are to lead and to set the direction for the rest of the world, it must be by our example and not merely our words. And we must tread lightly when imposing new burdens on the imports of other countries.

Well, CLSA: My country is definitely at a crossroad. Polling in the U.S. shows a majority of Americans no longer believe that their children will have a better future than they have had...that is a 1st.

When members of America’s greatest generation – the World War II generation – lose their homes and their life savings because their retirement funds were wiped after the financial collapse, people feel a great anger. There is suddenly a growing sentiment to just “throw the bums out” of Washington, D.C. – and by bums they mean the Republicans and the Democrats. Americans are suffering from pay cuts and job losses, and they want to know why their elected leaders are not tightening their belts. It’s not lost on people that Congress voted to exempt themselves from the health care plan they are thrusting on the rest of the nation. There is a growing sense of frustration on Main Street. But even in the midst of crisis and despair, we see signs of hope.

In fact, it’s a sea change in America, I believe. Recently, there have been protests by ordinary Americans who marched on Washington to demand their government stop spending away their future. Large numbers of ordinary, middle-class Democrats, Republicans, and Independents from all over the country marching on Washington?! You know something’s up!

These are the same people who flocked to the town halls this summer to face their elected officials who were home on hiatus from that distant capital and were now confronted with the people they represent. Big town hall meetings – video clips circulating coverage – people watching, feeling not so alone anymore.

The town halls and the Tea Party movement are both part of a growing grassroots consciousness among ordinary Americans who’ve decided that if they want real change, they must take the lead and not wait to be led. Real change – and, you know, you don’t need a title to do it.

The “Tea Party Movement” is aptly named to remind people of the American Revolution – of colonial patriots who shook off the yoke of a distant government and declared their freedom from indifferent – elitist – rulers who limited their progress and showed them no respect. Today, Main Street Americans see Washington in similar terms.

When my country again achieves financial stability and economic growth – when we roar back to life as we shall do – it will be thanks in large part to the hard work and common sense of these ordinary Americans who are demanding that government spend less and tax less and allow the private sector to grow and prosper.

We’re not interested in government fixes; we’re interested in freedom! Freedom! Our vision is forward looking. People may be frustrated now, but we’re very hopeful too.

And, after all, why shouldn’t we be? We’re Americans. We’re always hopeful.

Thank you for letting me share some of that hope, and a view from Main Street with you. God Bless You.

Palin in Asia: Real American Leadership Overseas

It is reassuring to know that there is a courageous leader going across the world to show the international community that there are great American leaders who are prepared to stand up and speak for America, capitalism and American exceptionalism. That's Sarah.

It is important that the world understand that Americans see Obama as a terrible blip on the American historical landscape. Good intentions gone horribly wrong. Chest pounding proud that Sarah is getting out there telling allies, not so fast fellas, it ain't over.

Her remarks were breathtakingly fresh, commonsensical, and distinctly American. I am so behind this woman. She knows who we are.

Alex Frangos reports from Hong Kong on Sarah Palin’s speech.

Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, delivered her first major international speech outside North America Wednesday in Hong Kong at an investor conference. The speech was closed to the media, but The Wall Street Journal reviewed a recording of the event. Here are some excerpts on various topics, from death panels to Chinese human rights.

Sarah Palin, Hong Kong, CLSA Asia Pacific Markets Conference, Sept. 23, 2009 Speech Excerpts

U.S. DOMESTIC POLICY

On Conservatism:

You can call me a common-sense conservative. My approach to the issues facing my country and the world, issues that we’ll discuss today, are rooted in this common-sense conservatism… Common sense conservatism deals with the reality of the world as it is. Complicated and beautiful, tragic and hopeful, we believe in the rights and the responsibilities and the inherent dignity of the individual.

We don’t believe that human nature is perfectible; we’re suspicious of government efforts to fix problems because often what it’s trying to fix is human nature, and that is impossible. It is what it is. But that doesn’t mean that we’re resigned to, well, any negative destiny. Not at all. I believe in striving for the ideal, but in realistic confines of human nature…

On Liberalism:

The opposite of a common-sense conservative is a liberalism that holds that there is no human problem that government can’t fix if only the right people are put in charge. Unfortunately, history and common sense are not on its side. We don’t trust utopian promises; we deal with human nature as it is.

On what caused the financial crisis:

While we might be in the wilderness, conservatives need to defend the free market system and explain what really caused last year’s collapse. According to one version of the story, America’s economic woes were caused by a lack of government intervention and regulation and therefore the only way to fix the problem, because, of course, every problem can be fixed by a politician, is for more bureaucracy to impose itself further, deeper, forcing itself deeper into the private sector.

I think that’s simply wrong. We got into this mess because of government interference in the first place. The mortgage crisis that led to the collapse of the financial market, it was rooted in a good-natured, but wrongheaded, desire to increase home ownership among those who couldn’t yet afford to own a home. In so many cases, politicians on the right and the left, they wanted to take credit for an increase in home ownership among those with lower incomes. But the rules of the marketplace are not adaptable to the mere whims of politicians.

…

Lack of government wasn’t the problem. Government policies were the problem. The marketplace didn’t fail. It became exactly as common sense would expect it to. The government ordered the loosening of lending standards. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates low. The government forced lending institutions to give loans to people who, as I say, couldn’t afford them. Speculators spotted new investment vehicles, jumped on board and rating agencies underestimated risks.

On Milton Friedman:

Now even Milton Friedman, he recognized that the free market is truly free when there is a level playing field for all participants, and good financial regulations aim to provide the transparency that we need to ensure the level playing field does exist, but we need not, we need to make sure that this regulatory reform that we’re talking about is aimed at the problems on Wall Street and won’t attack Main Street.

On the Federal Reserve:

How can we discuss reform without addressing the government policies at the root of the problems? The root of the collapse? And how can we think that setting up the Fed as the monitor of systemic risk in the financial sector will result in meaningful reform? The words “fox” and “hen house” come to mind. The Fed’s decisions helped create the bubble. Look at the root cause of most asset bubbles, and you’ll see the Fed somewhere in the background.

On deficits and Reaganism:

Common sense tells you that when you’re in a hole, you have to stop digging! A common sense conservative looks to history to find solutions to the problems confronting us, and the good news is that history has shown us a way out of this, a way forward from recession. Ronald Reagan, he was faced with an even worse recession, and he showed us how to get out of here.

If you want real job growth, you cut taxes! And you reduce marginal tax rates on all Americans. Cut payroll taxes, eliminate capital gain taxes and slay the death tax, once and for all. Get federal spending under control, and then you step back and you watch the U.S. economy roar back to life. But it takes more courage for a politician to step back and let the free market correct itself than it does to push through panicky solutions or quick fixes…

I can’t wait until we get that Reaganomics sense supplied again because we are going to survive, and we’re going to thrive and expand and roar back to life. And as the world sees this, the world will be a healthier, more secure, safer and more prosperous place when this happens.

On greenhouse gas legislation:

It seems like some are looking to ever more ways that will actually destroy economic opportunities today. Take for example, Washington’s cap-and-trade scheme. I call it the “cap-and-tax” scheme. Right now we have the highest unemployment rate in 25 years, and it’s still rising. And yet some in D.C. are pushing a cap-and-tax bill that could cripple our energy industry or energy market and dramatically increase the rates of the unemployed, and that’s not just in the energy sector.

American jobs in every industry will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under this cap-and-tax plan. The cost of farming will certainly increase. That’s going to drive up the cost of groceries and drive down farm incomes. The cost of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also rise. We are all going to feel the effects. The Americans hardest hit will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet today, much less with this new tax every month…

I am not indifferent to environmental concerns. Far from it. As governor, I created a sub-cabinet to study the impacts of climate change in my state. And I was the first governor to do so. It took us in a new direction…

I’m a supporter of nuclear power and renewables. We can develop these resources without destroying our economy. And we can help the environment and our economy through energy independence.

On health care:

I seem to have acquired notoriety in national debate. And all because of two words: death panels. And it is a serious term. It was intended to sound a warning about the rationing that is sure to follow if big government tries to simultaneously increase health care coverage while also claiming to decrease costs. Government has just got to be honest with the people about this….

As I said, it’s just common sense to realize that government’s attempts to solve large problems like the health-care challenges that we have, more often create new ones, and a top down one size fits all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for some one-fifth of our economy.

Common sense also tells us that passing a trillion dollar new retirement program, that’s not the way to reduce health-care spending. Real health-care reform is market oriented, patient centered and result driven. It would give all individuals the same tax benefit, that an ideal plan that I would have in mind, same tax benefits as those who get coverage through their employers. And give Medicare recipients vouchers so that they can buy their own coverage. And reform tort laws and change regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top down government plan, we should give Americans themselves control over their own health care with market friendly responsible ideas.

FOREIGN POLICY

On relations with China:

We engage with a hope that Beijing becomes a responsible stakeholder, but we must take steps in the event that it goes in a different direction. See, we all hope to see a China that is stable and peaceful and prosperous. Optimism that yes, it will be.

Asia is at its best when it is not dominated by a single power. In seeking Asia’s continued peace and prosperity, we should seek, as we did in Europe, an Asia whole and free. Free from domination by any one power…

On China’s relations with Taiwan, and other controversial issues:

We simply cannot turn a blind eye to Chinese policies and actions that could undermine international peace and security. Here, China has some one thousand missiles aimed at Taiwan and no serious observer though believes that it poses a serious threat to Beijing. Those same Chinese forces make our friends in Japan and Australia kind of nervous.

China provides support for some of the most questionable regimes, from Sudan to Burma to Zimbabwe. China’s military buildup, it raises concern from Delhi to Tokyo because it’s taking place in the absence of really any discernable threat to it. China, along with Russia, has repeatedly undermined efforts to impose tougher sanctions on Iran for its defiance of the international community in pursuing its nuclear program. And the Chinese food and safety, uh food and product safety record, of course it’s raised alarms from East Asia and Europe to the U.S. and domestic instance of unrest. From the protest of Uighurs and Tibetans to Chinese workers throughout the country rightfully makes a lot of people nervous.

On human rights and democracy in China:

The more politically open and just China is, the more Chinese citizens of every ethnic group will be able to settle disputes in court rather than on the streets. The more open it is, the less we’ll be concerned about its military buildup and its intentions. The more transparent China is, the more likely it is that they will find a true and lasting friendship based on shared values as well as interests. And I’m not talking about a U.S.-led democracy crusade. [We’re] not going to impose our values on other countries. We don’t seek to do that. But the ideas of freedom and liberty and respect for human rights, it’s not just a U.S. idea. They’re very much more than that. They’re enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many other international covenants and treaties.

On China-U.S. economic relations:

Our economic interdependence drives our relationship with China. I see a future of more trade with China and more American high tech goods in China. But in order for that to happen, we need China to improve its rule of law, and protect our intellectual property. We need to avoid protectionism and China’s flirtation with state assisted national champions. On our part we should be more open to Chinese investment where our national security interests are not threatened. In the end though, our economic relationship will truly thrive when Chinese citizens and foreign corporations can hold the Chinese government accountable when their actions are unjust.

The Essential Goodness of Palin

 I love this woman. Pure goodness. Check out the auction at ebay.

Ride2Recovery Charity Auction

Ride 2 Recovery has launched an online auction to help our nation's wounded warriors. Todd and I are so happy to help such a worthy organization. Please click on this link to view the auction and begin bidding - and, as always, thanks for all your support.

-Sarah Palin

100% of proceeds from this auction will benefit the Ride 2 Recovery program whose mission is to improve the health and wellness of wounded warriors by providing a life changing experience that can impact their lives forever.

Newsmax: Pamela on Palin

Read it all - Palin, a year later

UPDATE: Motivation: Truth: Palinistas Take Manhattan

Our first Palinversary ............. a National Love Affair Turns One

It was a year ago today that Sarah Palin walked onto the national stage and raised us up. Those of us who were fed up with a limp GOP moving center left were thrilled with a principled conservative, a rugged individualist VP pick. It saved a McCain campaign on life support.

McCain had it right when introducing her. He said, "she's exactly what we need, she's exactly what this country needs". Bingo.

There is no artifice with the woman. You couldn't write a more perfect resume. Raising her kids, involved in the PTA, elected mayor of her hometown where she stopped wasteful spending and cut property taxes, elected to the oil and gas commission where she stood up to lobbyists, special interests, the old boy network .... the rest is history.

What a year it has been for her and us. Looking back in hindsight, could the differences between Palin and Barack be more stark? Obama is all artifice. Palin is all real, all that. Obama is all style. Palin is all substance. Obama is anti-American. Palin is all-American. Obama holds the US military in contempt. Palin reveres the military. The military loves Palin. The military is on to Obama. The corrupt activist media loves Obama. The corrupt activist media loathes and libels Palin.

Despite the attacks and lawsuits by freaks in Alaska working for Obama's hatchet men, Palin perseveres. Hampered by the ethics lawsuits and attrition, she moved on to take on the enemy within, here, on the front lines. When Palin made her "farewell" speech last month, I said that her speech was no farewell address at all, but a commencement address. "I will fight even harder for you, for what is right and for the truth," she promised. "And I have never felt I needed a title to do that!" Her speech embodied what a great American sounds like, and what a President ought to sound like. Palin made no apologies. She said nothing like Obama's inane drone of "America's best days are behind us." No tearing down of our nation. Obama ranks on us; Palin raises us up and speaks of national pride.

Palin wasted no time in taking on the big boys yet again, and winning. No slave to the leftist feudal media caste system, Palin circumvents the O-propagandists and disinformationalists. Sarah, alone, with her Facebook page as her unfiltered messenger, calls out the rotting, decaying vultures in DC on their death panels -- and they recoil to their nests and pull the death panels out of Obamacare legislation. Palin, alone, on her unedited Facebook page, declares no healthcare reform without tort reform, and she gets Howard Dean to confess they won't take on the lawyers. You can't make this stuff up.

She's a marvel and wonderful to watch. She is a lioness.

Palin is all content. Obama is all about playing the race card. The Obama mop up will be huge. The Republicans are going to need a "real" genuine article; that's our girl Sarah, plain and tall.

Many of us saw the divergent paths America would take with the 2008 election of a radical or the election of a patriot. America, in the well intentioned interest of putting the first black man in the White House, never looked beyond color to content of character.

America fell for the smooth talking boulevardier, like an impressionable school girl. But once you've had one of those, you run the other way.

I suspect America will be running far and fast from the destroying Democrats into the arms of the pure and the good. When the pendulum swings, its swings hard and fast.

Happy 1st anniversary, Sarah. Looking forward to the next four and especially the eight after that. I love huh!

 

UPDATE: Planning Palin

 

Adrienne Ross of Motivation Truth, Atlas and Raj Rajagopalan, Associated Content

Palin Rules: No Health Care Reform Without Legal Reform

Finally someone is speaking for the little guy. Exhale.  Sarah is in da hous.

The Democrats have refused to address tort reform. Lawsuits and legal malpractice has sent the cost of healthcare (among other whole sectors) through the roof, but tort reform is the Democrat's sacred cow. Everyone should starve except the lawyers.
What hypocrisy. Palin knows it. She calls them out. Bear in mind that the top trial lawyers' donations amounted to $636,000 to Democrats campaigns vs $5,000 to Republicans.
Transparency! Sarah Palin has just hit on the one issue Obama and his death cult do not want to discuss, and that is tort reform - out of control lawsuits, sky high malpractice insurance, and doctors running more tests than needed just to cover their tails, are all part of the single largest expense in American health care that can easily be remedied.

I say good legal representation is a universal right! I need it more than health care. I want me some $500 an hour lawyers. And I want the leftopath liberals in DC and Hollywood to pay for it  :)

Over at Sarah Palin's Accomplishments

Here is Sarah’s statement from Facebook:

No Health Care Reform Without Legal Reform:

President Obama's health care "reform" plan has met with significant criticism across the country. Many Americans want change and reform in our current health care system. We recognize that while we have the greatest medical care in the world, there are major problems that we must face, especially in terms of reining in costs and allowing care to be affordable for all. However, as we have seen, current plans being pushed by the Democratic leadership represent change that may not be what we had in mind -- change which poses serious ethical concerns over the government having control over our families’ health care decisions. In addition, the current plans greatly increase costs of health care, while doing lip service toward controlling costs.

We need to address a REAL bipartisan reform proposition that will have REAL impacts on costs, and quality of patient care.

As Governor of Alaska, I learned a little bit about being a target for frivolous suits and complaints (Please, do I really need to footnote that?). I went my whole life without needing a lawyer on speed-dial, but all that changes when you become a target for opportunists and people with no scruples. Our nation’s health care providers have been the targets of similar opportunists for years, and they too have found themselves subjected to false, frivolous, and baseless claims. To quote a former president, "I feel your pain."

So what can we do? First, we cannot have health care reform without tort reform. The two are intertwined. For example, one supposed justification for socialized medicine is the high cost of health care. As Dr. Scott Gottlieb recently noted, "If Mr. Obama is serious about lowering costs, he'll need to reform the economic structures in medicine—especially programs like Medicare." [1] Two examples of these "economic structures" are high malpractice insurance premiums foisted on physicians (and ultimately passed on to consumers as "high health care costs") and the billions wasted on defensive medicine.

Dr. Stuart Weinstein, with the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, recently explained the problem:

"The medical liability crisis has had many unintended consequences, most notably a decrease in access to care in a growing number of states and an increase in healthcare costs.

Access is affected as physicians move their practices to states with lower liability rates and change their practice patterns to reduce or eliminate high-risk services. When one considers that half of all neurosurgeons—as well as one third of all orthopedic surgeons, one third of all emergency physicians, and one third of all trauma surgeons—are sued each year, is it any wonder that 70 percent of emergency departments are at risk because they lack available on-call specialist coverage?" [2]

Dr. Weinstein makes good points, points completely ignored by President Obama. Dr. Weinstein details the costs that our out-of-control tort system are causing the health care industry and notes research that "found that liability reforms could reduce defensive medicine practices, leading to a 5 percent to 9 percent reduction in medical expenditures without any effect on mortality or medical complications." Dr. Weinstein writes:

"If the Kessler and McClellan estimates were applied to total U.S. healthcare spending in 2005, the defensive medicine costs would total between $100 billion and $178 billion per year. Add to this the cost of defending malpractice cases, paying compensation, and covering additional administrative costs (a total of $29.4 billion). Thus, the average American family pays an additional $1,700 to $2,000 per year in healthcare costs simply to cover the costs of defensive medicine.

Excessive litigation and waste in the nation’s current tort system imposes an estimated yearly tort tax of $9,827 for a family of four and increases healthcare spending in the United States by $124 billion. How does this translate to individuals? The average obstetrician-gynecologist (OB-GYN) delivers 100 babies per year. If that OB-GYN must pay a medical liability premium of $200,000 each year (which is the rate in Florida), $2,000 of the delivery cost for each baby goes to pay the cost of the medical liability premium." [3]

You would think that any effort to reform our health care system would include tort reform, especially if the stated purpose for Obama’s plan to nationalize our health care industry is the current high costs.

So I have new questions for the president: Why no legal reform? Why continue to encourage defensive medicine that wastes billions of dollars and does nothing for the patients? Do you want healthcare reform to benefit trial attorneys or patients?

Many states, including my own state of Alaska, have enacted caps on lawsuit awards against health care providers. Texas enacted caps and found that one county’s medical malpractice claims dropped 41 percent, and another study found a "55 percent decline" after reform measures were passed. [4] That’s one step in health care reform. Limiting lawyer contingency fees, as is done under the Federal Tort Claims Act, is another step.

The State of Alaska pioneered the "loser pays" rule in the United States, which deters frivolous civil law suits by making the loser partially pay the winner’s legal bills. Preventing quack doctors from giving "expert" testimony in court against real doctors is another reform.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry noted that, after his state enacted tort reform measures, the number of doctors applying to practice medicine in Texas "skyrocketed by 57 percent" and that the tort reforms "brought critical specialties to underserved areas." These are real reforms that actually improve access to health care. [5]

Dr. Weinstein’s research shows that around $200 billion per year could be saved with legal reform. That’s real savings. That’s money that could be used to build roads, schools, or hospitals.

If you want to save health care, let’s listen to our doctors too. There should be no health care reform without legal reform. There can be no true health care reform without legal reform.

Gary opined:

Tort reform is key. To "fix" healthcare, without major tort reform, would be like going in to do open heart surgery on someone, but not actually working on the heart!

We all know the stories of the trial lawyers who have gotten rich with bogus lawsuits. One of the most egregious practitioners of these phony baloney lawsuits is newly minted baby daddy John Edwards. Edwards became a multi-millionaire ambulance chaser by specializing in suing on behalf of children with cerebral palsy.

[...]

Turn on the television. If you watch for any length of time, you will see dozens of ads from big law firms actively seeking defendants for all sorts of cases. Not saying all of them are bogus, but when you see people resorting to advertising nationally for victims, you have to wonder just how big the problem truly is or isn’t, and conclude it’s all about the Benjamins!

Of course, another issue people overlook in this, is the fact that lawyers are so busy chasing high profile, big paydays, that many cases that are real get shoved aside because they won’t make the attorney a huge payday. Small cases don’t add a new wing to the family compound!

As a Texan, I can say that tort reform works. Texas passed major tort reform years ago, capping damages one could get for "pain and suffering." They also beefed the medical boards to investigate doctors suspected of having issues.

The result? As Sarah points out, thousands of doctors have moved to Texas. This has had a huge impact, especially in rural areas. Where there were once shortages of doctors, now there is coverage.

I live in a hospital town, we are home to a hospital that started out in a log cabin, which is still on the grounds, that has grown into a regional system of hospitals and clinics, and even has it’s own health care insurance plan.

Seeing a doctor here is an easy, very friendly process. Even though the complex is huge, the effort is to make sure every patient has their own regular doctor who is able to meet their needs. Very user friendly.

It is also a teaching hospital and is part of the Texas A&M system.

This is what happens when government is responsible, then gets out of the way.

I agree with Sarah Palin 100% on tort reform. For Barack Obama and the rest of his communist party to talk about "health care reform" without tort reform is beyond ridiculous, and it borders on criminal.

Of course, we all know that actually "reforming" health care is the last thing on these people’s minds. This is all a big power grab, and an attempt to completely usurp the Constitution of the United States. Anyone who has actually read HR 3200 knows that monstrosity is nothing more than a gateway to a complete communist state. It is a liberty and freedom stealing document that needs to be burned!

Lets get serious and get behind Sarah Palin. No tort reform, no health care bill.

Sarah Palin Unfiltered

Stop getting your news through the perverse, degenerate prism of the leftopathic corrupt media.
Sign up for Sarah Palin's facebook page here.

Don't be a slave to the the leftist feudal media caste system. Get the news first, free from O-propagandists and disinformationalists.

FB Sarah here.

Straight Talk: Sarah Palin on the Death Panels

Honest and unafraid. That's real leadership. Palin speaks truth to the thugocracy. Sarah Palin on the death panels:

Concerning the "Death Panels"

Yesterday at 10:55pm

Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these “unproductive” members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care.

The President made light of these concerns. He said:

“Let me just be specific about some things that I’ve been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t, it’s too expensive to let her live anymore....It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, etc. So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything.” [1]

The provision that President Obama refers to is Section 1233 of HR 3200, entitled “Advance Care Planning Consultation.” [2] With all due respect, it’s misleading for the President to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients. The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context.

Section 1233 authorizes advanced care planning consultations for senior citizens on Medicare every five years, and more often “if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual ... or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility... or a hospice program." [3] During those consultations, practitioners must explain “the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice,” and the government benefits available to pay for such services. [4]

Now put this in context. These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is “to reduce the growth in health care spending.” [5] Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care? As Charles Lane notes in the Washington Post, Section 1233 “addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones.... If it’s all about alleviating suffering, emotional or physical, what’s it doing in a measure to “bend the curve” on health-care costs?” [6]

As Lane also points out:

Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren’t quite “purely voluntary,” as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, “purely voluntary” means “not unless the patient requests one.” Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive -- money -- to do so. Indeed, that’s an incentive to insist.

Patients may refuse without penalty, but many will bow to white-coated authority. Once they’re in the meeting, the bill does permit “formulation” of a plug-pulling order right then and there. So when Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) denies that Section 1233 would “place senior citizens in situations where they feel pressured to sign end-of-life directives that they would not otherwise sign,” I don’t think he’s being realistic. [7]

Even columnist Eugene Robinson, a self-described “true believer” who “will almost certainly support” “whatever reform package finally emerges”, agrees that “If the government says it has to control health-care costs and then offers to pay doctors to give advice about hospice care, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending.” [8]

So are these usually friendly pundits wrong? Is this all just a “rumor” to be “disposed of”, as President Obama says? Not according to Democratic New York State Senator Ruben Diaz, Chairman of the New York State Senate Aging Committee, who writes:

Section 1233 of House Resolution 3200 puts our senior citizens on a slippery slope and may diminish respect for the inherent dignity of each of their lives.... It is egregious to consider that any senior citizen ... should be placed in a situation where he or she would feel pressured to save the government money by dying a little sooner than he or she otherwise would, be required to be counseled about the supposed benefits of killing oneself, or be encouraged to sign any end of life directives that they would not otherwise sign. [9]

Of course, it’s not just this one provision that presents a problem. My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens....An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” [10] Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.” [11]

President Obama can try to gloss over the effects of government authorized end-of-life consultations, but the views of one of his top health care advisors are clear enough. It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing, and more evidence that the top-down plans of government bureaucrats will never result in real health care reform.

Steve Maloney adds this, "It's important to understand the reasons why the death panels will become a reality: the liberals (mostly Democrats) have wildly overpromised seniors. Predictions of the "underfunded" liabilities are up around $50 trillion (and more). These are promises to older Americans, mainly Baby Boomers, that the government has no way of keeping. Many Baby Boomers and those youinger know this is the case, but they somehow can't believe it. To meet the liabilities the feds would have to double taxes ON ALL TAYPAYERS. Confiscating the income of people making $250,000 a year WOULD NOT DO IT. These aren't "my opinons"; they're the view of every actuary that has studied the situation. We are talking economic collapse, folks. The "cuts" Obama and other leftists talk about in Medicare are meat-axe cuts. In short, they are what Gov. Palin called them: refusals to pay for medical services. Doctors are just like us: if they don't get paid for their labors, they eventually refuse to do the work. Translation: patients won't get care. A "private" market will spring up -- even a black market for health care. You'll be paying a pretty price for health care that won't be available . . . unless you pay extra money out of your pocket. That isn't change we "can believe in." Its change we don't even want to imagine.

It's all basic economics. If, for some reason (terrible hurricane? War?) there was no way to get gasoline to your area, that doesn't mean there wouldn't be gasoline available. It might cost $10 a gallon -- or $20 a gallon. Suppliers, looking at hefty profits, would get gasoline to your region by hook or by crook. That would produce shortages in the regions where gas was selling at, say, $3 a region. Good news for them: gas is cheap. Bad news? There isn't any gas.

The analogue to health care? If you're willing to pay $300 extra for a simple office visit, hey, you'll have many doctors willing to take your money. Problem? The people who can't afford to pay extra will find it takes a six-month wait to see the doctor. If you're having chest pains, well, just suck it up.

What I'm describing is the situation for many Canadians. If they need breast surgey immediately, they can get it -- by going to the U.S. and paying out of their own pockets. I get criticized by Obamabots for saying these things; however, they take place in all nations at all times. Michael Jackson wanted a private doctor who would bend the rules for him. The cost to Michael was between $150,000 and $300,000 per month. The old saying that "everything is available at a certain price" is true.

The "public option" will drive private insurers out of the market. The reason is that a subsidized public option will cost "consumers" less than an unsubsidized private option. Yes, there will be "competition" as Obama claims, but it will be unfair competition because government subsidies will make it that way. If you throw enough wrenches in the gears, eventually the gears -- the private plans -- stop working.

At that point, we have exactly what Obama and the leftists want; a government-run, single payer system.

Palin Smear Merchant: Kindergarten Teacher "Resigns" Position

Back on August 3, I ran Palin Smear Merchant: Kindergarten Teacher "Trip Palin Will Get His Ass Beat".

Dan Riehl exposed Jesse Griffin, the slimy operative who was the "anonymous" blogger behind the Palin divorce smear. Griffin's day job was as an assistant kindergarten teacher -- who penned sick invective against Palin and her children like, "Trip [sic] Palin Will Get His Ass Beat"

Yesterday the low life "resigned" from his kindergarten post. Would you want that teaching your 5 year old?

Dan Riehl was on the Eddie Burke show in Alaska.  The video below edits out all commercials and advances through the four episodes. (hat tip Kasper)

GOOD!

Dan followed this story assiduously. When he called me and told me what he was working on, I fell off the chair. This is story is outrageous, but typical of the left.

I am sure Alaskans would be thrilled about the standards their schools use in employing kindergartner assistants. But I do not believe Griffin's statement to be accurate, or even true. We shall see.

Most likely, it is but one more lie upon the many he seems to have used in his vicious, uncalled for attacks on Sarah Palin and her family, as well.

Should we really be surprised? Most disgusting is the on going fawning his commenters display while knowing his vulgar sexually explicit postings and claiming to instruct kindergarten-aged children in a public school a the same time. It makes one wonder if they have any morals at all. It seems that as long you appear to be benefiting their political cause, you can engage in any kind of behavior you like without being judged.

R.S. McCain has all the dirt.

Palin: The Power of Good

Considering the fact that Obama and his operatives are behind the campaign of harassment, ethics charges and attacks on her and her children, Sarah Palin is nothing short of divine. The election is over.

It is time to repair friendships with the other party.

Gov. Sarah Palin is doing her part.

The rest of the world cannot understand how, after bitter election campaigns, American politicians can kiss and make up.

For instance, Gov. Palin has invited, to her great state of Alaska , the men who defeated her, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, along with their wives. She has set up a moose hunting trip for their enjoyment and hired three prominent experts in their field to assist them.

Dick Cheney will carry the gun, Ted Kennedy will drive them back to their cabins each evening, and Bill Clinton will entertain their wives.

Sarah is such a good sport! She thinks of everything!

These guys are evil. I hope Palin is not holding her breath waiting on the tarmac.

Palin Smear Merchant: Kindergarten Teacher "Trip Palin Will Get His Ass Beat"

This weekend I railed in an oped against left wing operatives and their evil campaign to destroy the good, Palin (read it here). Obama's operatives don't debate her positions; they spread libels. They ridicule. This is Alinsky warfare. Considering how filthy Obama's background is, the media's refusal to investigate the myriad claims against Obama amounts to criminal activity. The American people were sold a bill of goods. And if that weren't enough, the syndicate is looking to eviscerate the antidote, our shot at a future as a free state.

CNN ran the divorce libel on the mere word of two rancid Alaska bloggers. Investigate Obama's ties to Khalid Al-Mansour? Never. Auchi? Never. Farrakhan? Never. Soros? Never. Rezko? Never. Walid? Never. Ayers, Dorne, Raila Odinga ............... the list is too long (not to mention the dirty, salacious stuff).

But a personal Palin smear ..... right on it!

The Palin camp has issued a statement decrying rumors of a Palin divorce being spread by Alaskan CNN stringer Dennis Zaki, sourced to an anonymous Anchorage blogger and the National Enquirer.

Yesterday, over at Riehl World and The Other McCain, the anonymous blogger behind the Palin divorce smear was outed.

The identification of "Gryphen" as Jesse Griffin, part-time kindergarten teacher at Trailside Elementary in Anchorage, is now confirmed. And let me add an overdue thanks to Dan Riehl, who got the same information and followed up with research and sources of his own.

Dan is one of the best document-research guys in the conservative blogosphere, and his standards of verification make Dennis Zaki look like a clown in floppy shoes. (Of course, Zaki doesn't need much help in that regard.) I've been a reporter for more than 20 years, the past 12 years in D.C. Dan is "just some blog dude" who only moved to the D.C. area two years ago, and in some respects, he's got better sources than I do.

Will update later with more below . . .

LEAVE JESSE GRIFFIN ALONE!

ORIGINAL (6:39 p.m. ET): An anonymous e-mailer forwards to me this communication, which I post without editing, except for formatting purposes:

I would like you to know that Gryphen of Immoral Minority (Palin divorce smear) is actually one Jesse Griffin. He must value his identity because he had his fellow Palin Hater, Dennis Zaki, black out his name in this document:

Zaki reveals that Gryphen is a kindergarten teacher of some kind:
Thomas Van Flein, Sarah Palin's lawyer, threatened Saturday to serve libel papers at a kindergarten to the owner of the highly trafficked "ImmoralMinority" blog for a divorce story on the Palins. The blog was given until 3pm Saturday to remove the story and post a retraction. The blogger stands by the story.
He also admitted in his most recent post that he is a teacher, but note that he won't post his name

Here is the evidence that he is one Jesse Griffin:

Gym forum page where Jesse Griffin's handle is "Gryphen:" (bottom of page)
Facebook page (friends with other Palin haters)

Donated to "Alaskans for Truth," a group created to smear the Palins:

Now here is the disturbing part, he is a teacher's aide to small children:

How this person can be allowed children is beyond me. He has written absolutely sick things about the Palins. He once posted a cartoon of Governor Palin holding a gun to her head. He once stated that he hoped that the "bitch would snap her ankle" walking off of a curb. This person is absolutely disgusting and should not be around children. At the most, his identity should be exposed in order for Alaskan parents to see who their children are around during the school day. If you look back through his website you will notice a disturbing obsession with the Palin family. He is also a Trig Truther person who thinks Palin's son Trig is not really hers.

These Palin Haters are liars who are trying to destroy a good conservative. I'm sick of this crap.

Dan Riehl advanced the story here:

Kindergarten Guru: Trip Palin Will Get His Ass Beat

This deserves its own post - click here for the rest.

Gryphen reveals himself, but doesn't back down.

As many of you are already aware I DID receive a notification from Palin attorney Thomas Van Flein yesterday. It arrived in my e-mail in PDF form and you can read it over at the Alaska Report.

Now Van Flein is forcing me to make an admission that I have resisted addressing for the four plus years I have had this blog.

Yes I DO work in a Kindergarten class during the school year. My main job affords me some time during the day and I have chosen to use it

teaching children to read

, and helping them to become more independent. I do it because it brings me joy to work with these children and I believe, and have been told, that I am very good at it.

Here is the kindergarten guru referencing Trip Palin in comments on a post:

Maybe he can bring that up while the kids in his elementary school are beating his ass because he has a stupid name.

More to come. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Much thanks to Libbi:

Here is his boss's name and contact info:
PATRICK FREEMAN
freeman_patrick@asdk12.org
907-742-5500
Trailside Elementary School, K-6
• Physical Address
5151 Abbott Rd
Anchorage, Ak
99507
Let's call until he is on his blog whining about losing his job!

Fathima Rifqa Bary: I hope she got away

I pray that Fathima ran away and escaped this fate -- unlike Amina and Sarah who ran away and returned at the insistence of their mother, Tissie Said, only to be brutally murdered by their father Yaser Said. I hope Fathima got away, unlike Aqsa Parvez, who stayed with friends only to return home and get murdered by her father.

I pray she escaped Islam. The 16-year-old girl was converting to Christianity from Islam. She lived in a Muslim home.

Reports that saw fit to mention her recent trips to churches in her community, some of her friends are worried that her going missing has something to do with her recent conversion. (more here)

Here's the missing persons report at the Ohio Attorney General's webpage.

Fathima Rifqa Bary After Nearly 2 Weeks, New Albany Teen Still Missing hat tip Diane

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Police on Friday were still looking for information about a central Ohio teenager who vanished nearly two weeks ago. Investigators said there is no evidence that Fathima Rifqa Bary, 16, is a victim of foul play, but they could not rule out that she is not in danger, 10TV's Maureen Kocot reported.

Bary, of New Albany, was last seen on July 19.

The teenager's cell phone has been turned off and her Facebook account deactivated, Kocot reported.

According to police, the girl's friends told detectives that it was possible she ran away because of conflicting religious beliefs in her home.

"If anybody is harboring her they are definitely in violation of at least one misdemeanor charge that I know of, and that's interference of custody," said Columbus police Sgt. Jerry Cupp.

Investigators said Bary is affiliated with two central Ohio churches: one on Cleveland Avenue and the other near the Ohio State University campus.

They also said Bary may have been seen near campus the night she disappeared.

Anyone with information about the case was asked to call Columbus police at 614-645-4545.

Watch 10TV News and refresh 10TV.com for additional information.

CNN Tells, Sells More Lies About Palin -- it's Time to Expose the truth about Obama

The Palin camp has issued a statement decrying rumors of a Palin divorce being spread by Alaskan CNN stringer Dennis Zaki, sourced to an anonymous Anchorage blogger and the National Enquirer.

Let's understand this. CNN won't touch the birth certificate issue, the Rezko/Auchi corruption, Obama's anti-semitism, his ACORN/SEIU ties and corruption and other legitimate stories that need investigation. But they write fiction about Palin. Daily. So why not tell the truth about Obama and his reported strange sexual predilections? My question is, it is well known that Obama allegedly was involved with a crack whore in his youth. Very seedy stuff. Why aren't they pursuing that story? Find the ho, give her a show!  Obama trafficked in some very deviant practices. Where's the investigation?

He spent three weeks in Pakistan in his college days at Occidental in 1981. WTF was he doing in Pakistan in 1981? In 1979 Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was hanged in Pakistan and the military ruler Zia Ul-Haq enacted the controversial Hudood Ordinance, which was intended to implement Islamic Shari'a law, by enforcing punishments mentioned in the Quran.

Back in the early 80's, there were only two reasons to travel to Pakistan. Jihad or drugs. I think he went for the drugs and came back with jihad. (He did, after all,  change his name to Barack Hussein Obama from  Barry Soetoro, upon his return from that trip).

Why isn't CNN pursuing the nude pornographic photos of Obama's mom, Stanley (unretouched pictures here and here) allegedly taken by Frank Marshall Davis in his apartment. Obama's spiritual father, Davis was a child rapist and famous communist. I never ran the pics, as it was unseemly and wasn't relevant. But this assault on Palin is too disgusting. It's time to tell the ugly truth about the enemy in the White House and his whores in the media. It is Obama operatives who are spreading the Palin lies. I strongly recommend that conservatives start sending emailing these family pictures. They know we won't play dirty, so it's time to play dirty.

I say when they ratchet up the lies, then we ratchet up the truth.

 

doobie doobie doo

UPDATE: excellent post here from reader Carol at no sheeples.

UPDATE: Buzz it up!

UPDATE: The hyenas had it take down again (this is the fifth time), but thanks to the thousands of  you great Americans that have downloaded it -- it's back up again. Rip it baby. Vidgrab it :)

Pamela Geller, American Thinker: Sarah Palin's Commencement Address

A nice complement to last night:

Palin's Commencement Address
Pamela Geller
Sarah Palin's Farewell Address as Governor of Alaska Sunday was no farewell address at all. It was just the beginning; it was a commencement address. More

 

Excerpt:

Her speech embodied what a great American sounds like, and what a President ought to sound like. Palin made no apologies. She said nothing like Obama's inane drone of "America's best days are behind us." No tearing down of our nation. Obama ranks on us; Palin raises us up and speaks of national pride.

First and foremost, she thanked our brave men and women defending this great nation and ripped the media, warning:

"You represent what could and should be a respected, honest profession that could and should be a cornerstone of our democracy. Democracy depends on you, and that is why, that's why our troops are willing to die for you. So, how about, in honor of the American soldier, you quit makin' things up?"

She briefly outlined her plans for real energy independence -- American resources for Americans -- speaking of commercializing our clean natural gas (AGIA) as the first private sector energy project in the history of America. Palin believes (and rightly so) that the pressing issue of our time is energy independence. "There is," she said, "an inherent link between energy and prosperity...We will prove you can be pro-development and pro-environment because no one loves their clean air, and their land, and their wildlife more than an Alaskan. We will protect it!"

She invoked America's pioneering spirit. She urged us to resist enslavement to big central government: "Be wary of accepting government largess."

Sarah Palin embodies what an American is. She is what Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin envisioned when they carved out the American idea.

Anyone who wants write her off, proceed at your own risk.

The more evil succeeds and overwhelms our foreign and domestic policy, our culture, our discourse and the very social fabric of our lives, the clearer it becomes that Palin is the antidote, the answer to fighting this morally bankrupt sewer in which we find ourselves during the Obama Administration.

The low state of the world is a fact, but so are great Americans who will fight tooth and nail to stop what Obama is doing to America. Clear thinking Americans see what is happening. America is being tested in a way she never has been before. The President has in every decision reinforced the impression that he is a radical, even a communist/Islamist: the usurpation of the Constitution, the bankrupting of our nation, the illegal grab of private wealth, the infiltration of Islamic supremacism, the abandonment of our allies, the weakening of our military. It's stunning.

Sarah Palin sees it, too. Smart, sharp, patriotic, she best represents the majority of Americans. Not Obama's shills in the press, not the chattering elites and the Beltway insiders, but Americans.

Read it all and feel good.

Download Atlaska on KBYR 28July09

Atlaska Radio: Atlas on The Eddie Burke Radio Show

Davod gifted Atlas readers with a podcast of my appearance on The Eddie Burke Show on WBYR - the best news and talk in Alaska, talking about Sarah Palin.

You can download it from here to your computer or ipod. Or listen by clicking here: Download Atlaska on KBYR 28July09

Tim over at Conservatives4Palin uploaded it to youtube. I love those guys! Put it on your must read blog watch.

Part II is here.

Download Atlaska on KBYR 28July09

Atlas on Alaska Radio

In addition to my regular gig on the Jaz McKay show today at 4pm Eastern time, 1560 KNZR, I will be appearing on the The Eddie Burke Show on WBYR - the best news and talk in Alaska to talk about Sarah Palin at 3:30pm Alaska time, 7:30pm Eastern time. I very much look forward to it.

VIDEO: Obama Operatives Behind Palin Legal Harassment and "Ethics" Charges

UPDATE: The video was taken down again,this time at sevenload. It seems the jackals and the hyenas don't want their mugs used (believe me we don't want to have to look at 'em) so they keep sending emails to have them taken down. Myriad frivolous, harassing lawsuits against Palin  but don't flash my ug-mug!

But here it is.................

I liken "ethics" out of the mouths of Obama and his operatives to chastity and abstinence out of the mouth of the chief cook and bottle washer (ahem) of the Chicken Ranch. Criminal governance at work. Target - the good (for being the good).

BTW, "The Alaskan bloggers featured in this video had it removed from YouTube".

Link:

Exposed "Ethicsgate" Obama and the Democrats multiple direct links to the political effort to destroy Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin: How can an American Patriot not love this woman?

The more evil succeeds and overwhelms our foreign and domestic policy, our culture, our discourse and the very social fabric of our lives, the clearer it becomes that Palin is the antidote, the answer to fighting this morally bankrupt sewer in which we find ourselves .

The low state of the world is a fact, but so are great Americans who will fight tooth and nail to stop the coup.  America is being tested in a way she never has been before. Treason is in power.

Go Sarah!

Go Sarah! Taking on the Enviro-Energy Nazis

Happy to put my name on the pro-ANWR/pro-Alaska/pro-Energy Independence resos today; we look forward to showing US safe production techniques
   

More to come. I will have more, check back at Atlas.

I love huh!

BUSTED: Country Clubber Ron Paul Smears Sarah Palin, exposes his own hypocrisy

Just for knowing, the always entertaining and lunatic Ron Paul said in a Politico piece here:

As for soon-to-be departing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Paul dismisses her supporters as "more establishment, conventional Country-Club type of Republicans.”

So the Stan Laurel look-alike Ron Paul is attacking Sarah and her supporters for being "country clubbers." An absolutely absurd comment. I am sure all those Joe Sixpacks are waiting for their golf carts as we speak.

Well, I've done some searching around, and there is zero evidence to indicate that Sarah has ever been a member of a country club. Is there a more down to earth, true grit haimish candidate out there, I ask you? My vlog on Sarah is here.

Ron Paul and his wife Carol are Lifetime Members of the Lake Jackson Country Club. It is located on Highway 332 in between Lake Jackson and Brazoria.

Nothing new here. Ron Paul is a full of shitnik glomming onto Sarah's star just to get a little (any) publicity. She wouldn't be a real frontierswoman, a real American. Her platform of small government, less taxation, individual liberties, energy, national security and good old fashioned American exceptionalism is the cure this sick country needs.

Ron Paul is a never has been. Next!

Palin in 2012!  World Net Daily

UPDATE: OT but related:

Delicious factoid: The latest Rasmussen Poll (out today) has Barack Obama leading Sarah Palin (for President) by 48% to 42%. Somehow, I don't ObamaLand was happy to hear those results.

PUFF HO Bares her Jealous Fangs: Huffington Post Palin Attack again

 

Once again, Palin is on the front page of the Puff ho (the attacks are daily) -- part of the relentless drum beat of the left to destroy this iconic individualist. The mission by objective? Ruin strong leaders on the right. Therefore, more daily pounding on the American psyche to destroy this popular figure.

Today's libel depicts Palin as psychologically fragile, weak, and about to break. As if.  That's nerve. Palin is a rock. The Puff Ho, OTOH, is, well ......my kingdom for a look see into Arianna Huffington's medicine cabinet and Birkin bag ..............

It strikes me as pure envy that Arianna Huffington, who did not make it on her own, should undertake such a naked and pathetic campaign to destroy a superior specimen. Huffington was a high priced courtesan when she came to the States from her native Greece, via England. She didn't have to be. She had every advantage. Instead, she sold herself to the highest bidder, selling herself as a beard to a gay husband and getting remunerated for it handsomely.

Character alert: Huffington was accused of plagiarism for copying material for her book Maria Callas; the claims were settled out of court.^[

Palin is everything that carpetbagger isn't. Palin's existence vaporizes the moochers, looters and destroyers like Arianna Huffington. Which is why the Puff Ho's attacks are so vapid, so unhinged, so relentless, so ugly.

During these years and around the time of her [Huffington]  involvement with John-Roger's religious group, she was involved with Democratic politician and then-governor (currently Attorney General) of California, Jerry Brown. It was during this time that Huffington (then Stassinopoulos) was first known as a liberal/left-wing/Democrat,  the position she returned to once again in the post-90s following the right-wing years of the 1980s to late 1990s.^{[citation needed]}

She became a Republican when she married the gay Republican, Michael Huffington. Ed Rollins has publicly claimed that she offered to provide him with a prostitute if he would manage her husband's campaign. (The rumor is the prostitute was .......)

She met oil millionaire Michael Huffington, a family friend of the Bushes, at a 1985 party hosted by Ann Getty in San Francisco. The couple were married in 1986 at a wedding paid for by Getty, who had declared that she needed to find Arianna a husband. They moved to Washington, D.C., when he was appointed to serve as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy. They later established residency in Santa Barbara, California, in order for him to run in 1992 as a Republican for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, which he won by a significant margin. He was a political conservative on most issues. Arianna campaigned for her husband, courting religious conservatives, arguing for smaller government and a reduction in welfare. In 1994 he narrowly lost the race for the U.S. Senate seat from California to incumbent Dianne Feinstein.^[3] Arianna and Michael have two daughters: Christina and Isabella.

The couple divorced in 1997, and in 1998 Michael Huffington revealed that he was bisexual.^[4] A 1999 magazine article claimed that Arianna Huffington "entered the marriage... with full knowledge of Michael Huffington's sexual interests in men".^[5] The financial terms of their divorce agreement remain undisclosed. Arianna Huffington chose to retain her former husband's surname, although she had been known as Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington during the period of her marriage. (more here)

She took her gay husband's payoff - and started a blog with leftopaths and barely literate Hollywood celebs.

Here's Rollins in RCP 2003:

Every time I see her I can hear Ed Rollins' description of her ringing in my ears. Here is how Rollins, who managed Michael Huffington's 1994 California Senate run, described Arianna and her husband in his book "Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms":Since early July, I'd been working for two of the most unprincipled political creatures I'd ever encountered. One was such a complete cipher he gave empty suits a bad name. But his wife was even worse - a domineering Greek Rasputin determined to ride her husband's wealth to political glory at any cost....

Arianna Huffington had charmed me out of my socks to get me to manage her husband's campaign. But in a few short months, I'd come to realize that she was the most ruthless, unscrupulous, and ambitious person I'd met in thirty years in national politics - not to mention that she sometimes seemed truly pathological.

Could her bio be any more different than Sarah Palin's? Palin is everything this useful idiot is not. She is good, real, honest and smart. She has a solid marriage with a man she adores - healthy marital relations -the glow is unmistakable :)- Huffington married a gay man to give him a beard and she was paid handsomely for it. Sarah builds, Huffington destroys. Sarah is honest, Huffington is dishonest and a vile disinformationalist. Sarah has a fabulous sex life, Arianna has ............. well, I'll refrain here from being cruel.

 

These two dig each other.

Huffington hates Palin. Remember that. The hatred of the good for being the good. Huffington hates Palin because she is everything the Puff ho ain't. It's that simple.

The Puff Ho has a messy smear blogger devoted to Palin.

Here's today's Puff Ho Palin headline (as if a real friend of Palin would talk to the Puff Ho).
Screenshot of Huffington Post front page.
 

Atlas Vlogs Palin!

Palin in 2012!

Atlas Vlogs Sarah Palin - Oorah!

Atlas Vlogs Sarah!

Here is what I said the day she resigned the Governorship to join the fight.

UPDATE 11:15 am: Palin Talks to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

UPDATE: July 11 3:59 pm: Master List of Governor Palin's 2009 Accomplishments

UPDATE: Governor Palin on the Michael Dukes Show pt 5 July 10, 2009 (Listen to it)

PALIN LEADS POLLS! The Coming of the Second American Revolution

Clear thinking Americans see what is happening. The furious coup on America by a radical communist/Islamist -- best illustrated by the usurpation of the Constitution, the bankrupting of our nation, the illegal grab of private wealth, the infiltration of Islamic supremacism, the abandonment of our allies, the weakening of our military -- is stunning.

Sarah Palin sees it, too. Smart, sharp, patriotic, she best represents the majority of Americans. Not the BO hos in the press, not the chattering elites and the Beltway insiders. Americans. There was no way she would stay on as Governor, as she was unable to fulfill her duties. The leftist wing in America had her tied up in bogus lawsuits (all of which she won). She agreed to pay the travel fees for taking her children on one of her trips. Obama should do the same. Those trips to Paris for his two girls. Pay it back. Pay back the $100,000 it cost taxpayers for his "date" in New York. Pay it back. Pay for those ridiculous $100 steaks. Pigs at the trough. Not Palin.

The hypocrisy knows no bounds.

We want Palin. I heard Michael Steele say on FOX today that she would not run in 2012. Steele is a suit. He speaks for no one. The GOP won't even back Lt. Colonel Allen West. He (nor the GOP) will pick our candidate. Palin is going to help us win back the House/Senate by campaigning and working for candidates in that fight in 2010. And we, the good, decent folks in America, are going to help her win the White House 2012.

We need her. She knows it. She is heeding our call. Is she a hack like Obama and going to campaign on the taxpayers' dime, as he did as a junior senator when he ran for President? No. Extraordinary? Yes. But so is integrity, ethics and decency. The left is calling her a "quitter". Just the opposite, my friends. Just a fighter, a winner. And she is getting into the fight. Baruch hashem!

The American Revolution has its leader.

Check out my oped piece I wrote the day she resigned: Palin in 2012! World Net Daily

From Pollster.com:

Articles and Analysis
 
July 6, 2009
Palin's Base

So the point is this: The Pew numbers show that Palin's base as of June 2009 was as strong as Obama's on the eve of the 2008 campaign. Consider two numbers: Palin's "very favorable" rating last month on the Pew Research survey among all adults was 15%. Obama's very favorable score among all adults on a Pew Research survey in August 2007 was 14%.

As such, it is not completely crazy for Palin want to free herself from the time and travel constraints imposed by her gubernatorial commitments in Alaska. A month ago, Chris Cillizza outlined the logistical reasons why Palin would want to "take a pass" on a second term (resigning now is another story, of course). She has a big base and time is a resource. With more time to travel and speak, she would be able to build a grassroots army as Obama did.   

DEMOCRAT DESTROYERS: FBI "ABSOLUTELY NO TRUTH" to Leftwing Lily Livered Lies, Libels Against Palin

This beauty is Shannyn Moore, Puff Ho libel blogger.

The notoriously left wing LA Times reports that the FBI reports that there is  is "absolutely no truth" to the lies being spread by force of nature Sarah Palin. Palin scares the malevolent to death. Palin is the silver cross to the Democrats' Dracula.

Palin in a facebook message said yesterday:

I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed fiscal restraint"
"How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it's about country," the statement said. "And though it's honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make."

"To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now claiming as 'fact' that Governor Palin resigned because she is 'under federal investigation' for embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation," Van Flein said in a statement. "This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law."

I love her! She is the leader Americans need. She is the leader the tea parties need.

I hope Palin sues just to shut these fat bastids up.

Sarah Palin not under FBI investigation, agency spokesman says LA Times

The former GOP vice presidential candidate's surprise resignation as Alaska governor had set off speculation, including rumors of a pending federal corruption probe or charges.

Reporting from Washington -- A day after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin resigned, a federal official in her home state dismissed one potential explanation for her sudden and unexpected resignation: a rumored FBI investigation into the former Wasilla mayor on public corruption charges.

Despite rumors of a looming controversy after the Republican governor's surprise announcement Friday that she would leave office this month, some of them published in the blogosphere, the FBI's Alaska spokesman said the bureau had no investigation into Palin for her activities as governor, as mayor or in any other capacity.

."There is absolutely no truth to those rumors that we're investigating her or getting ready to indict her," Special Agent Eric Gonzalez said in a phone interview Saturday. "It's just not true." He added that there was "no wiggle room" in his comments for any kind of inquiry.

In case you missed this, read it: 

Palin in 2012! Exclusive: Pamela Geller lauds Sarah for 'assuming the mantle' of leadership vs. Obama --WND

UPDATE: Gary gets it

UPDATE: Oorah!

Marion man already driving around with Sarah Palin 2012 poster by James Q.
Lynch The Gazette

Harlan Muth isn’t organizing Sarah Palin’s presidential campaign, but pledges as soon as someone does, “I’ll be with ’em.In the meantime, the Marion maintenance contractor is turning heads with his “Sarah Palin 2012” poster prominently displayed on his van.

Pamela Geller, World Net Daily: Palin in 2012

Check out my latest oped piece in World Net Daily: Palin in 2012!
Exclusive: Pamela Geller lauds Sarah for 'assuming the mantle' of leadership vs. Obama
--WND

UPDATE: Want to get involved? Of course you do! From the folks at Team Sarah

We have had many new members join and many others come back in to Team Sarah to get involved, so I wanted to provide some basic  information to help you navigate the community.

To find out how things work here, go to this page: This explains our governance.

If you want to find people with a similar interest or participate in a get together and meet Team Sarah members in your state go here  and use search, type in your interest or state to find groups you can join.

How can you help Team Sarah and Sarah Palin?

SarahPAC is Sarah Palin's PAC, it is here: This is to support Sarah Palin's Political Action Committee and it's activities and candidates/causes she supports.

To support her legal defense fund go here:  This fund is working to retire the legal expenses accrued from all those false ethics complaints.

For general information and action project news “friend” these profiles:
Team Sarah Real World
The Watercooler

Follow us on Twitter: Palin Tweets

Palin's Complete Text of her Speech

Palin spoke from the heart. She is a natural leader. I unequivocally support her. I have to find the video of her full speech in Alaska today. Here is the official statement from her office: (hat tip Larwyn)

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has released her complete remarks announcing she will be stepping down from office; they can be found on her Web site.

Hi Alaska, I appreciate speaking directly to you, the people I serve, as your Governor.

People who know me know that besides faith and family, nothing's more important to me than our beloved Alaska. Serving her people is the greatest honor I could imagine.

I want Alaskans to grasp what can be in store for our state. We were purchased as a territory because a member of President Abe Lincoln's cabinet, William Seward, providentially saw in this great land, vast riches, beauty, strategic placement on the globe, and opportunity. He boldly looked "North to the Future". But he endured such ridicule and mocking for his vision for Alaska, remember the adversaries scoffed, calling this "Seward's Folly". Seward withstood such disdain as he chose the uncomfortable, unconventional, but right path to secure Alaska, so Alaska could help secure the United States.

Palin Stepping down! Palin Putsch: Pray for A Palace Revolution!

6:40 pm: The diseased and utterly morally left at work again (I talked of this very evil here, earlier this week) - photoshopping Palin family pictures here. Do you believe this represents America? (hat tip Dave)

Bear in mind, this is not the first time they have made fun of and photoshopped Trig. And these are not fringe blogs. These are some of the biggest blogs in the left wing blogosphere. (Wonkette, Tbogg, Firedoglake etc.)

CNN (!) video.  I LOVE HUH!

5:00 pm: FOX is running Palin's remarks. They must read Atlas :)

Turn on FOX, decide for yourself. And please, someone vidgrab it!

4:46 pm: Stop the ACLU has rounded up reaction from the right blogosphere. He culled the wrong opinion. They don't get it.

4:30 pm: My take? If Palin is anything like I think she is (know she is), Obama's treasonous presidency is responsible for this. She, like all patriotic Americans, is shocked by what is happening. Obama is destroying this country. She knows it. We all know it. We need a leader. She is answering our call.

She did not quit. She is going to get into the fight to save America. Watch what happens.

4:23 PM: FOX news cut her news conference. 7 days of Michael Jackson and they did not allow us to hear her remarks in full. First Iran, now this.

From what I saw - this is not a woman who is retiring. She is assuming the mantle. This was a campaign speech. She was amazing. I will try to get text or video.

4:09 pm: Liveblogging her announcement........... she is speaking (no teleprompter, how refreshing!) about the sacrifice great Americans have made on this eve of Independence day and what our founding fathers fought and died for.

"I am showing my independence"

She is outlining all of the achievements of her administration.

"living beyond our means today is irresponsible for tomorrow"

"vetoed debt ridden stimulus dollars"

"being right is better than being popular"

She is going after every Obama move without naming him. I have got to get a copy of these remarks.

The ethics legislation she championed was used by an army of political operatives who filed 15 charges against her, draining the public resources. She and her staff spend most of their day on the charges that have been dismissed, incurring over half a million in legal fees. That is not serving the people of Alaska.

The biggest problem today is that people are apathetic. They go with the flow. "Todd and I are fishermen and know only dead fish go with the flow".

This is a great speech.

She believes in and wants to fight for free enterprise, small government, national security .....

FOX NEWS JUST CUT OFF HER SPEECH. WTF???????????????

4:05 pm: The 2012 campaign began today!

3:47 pm: We are waiting for her press conference. There is lots of speculation. I am paying it no mind. In my opinion, it will allow her to spend more time in the lower 48 states without the left accusing her of neglecting her duties as Governor.

Her husband, Todd Palin, said she wants to do things to help the country that she can't do while fulfilling her role as Governor.

UPDATE: Governor Palin is stepping down! We are awaiting her announcement. She is the right's best hope for 2012. She is handing over control to Lt Governor Sean Parnell. He will be sworn in July 25.

I hope the reason is to run. Her country needs her desperately.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is being reported that Governor Sarah Palin will announce that she will not be running for reelection as Governor of Alaska. Eureka! This is magnificent news. The thrilla from Wasilla! Hope! Change! Seriously.

She has been mercilessly attacked. Brutal, but like water off a duck's back. Those on the right who have suffered the slings and arrows of the vile left smear machine (the depths of which are unthinkable to decent men, here) know that the more they throw, the greater you are. The more vile, disgusting, outrageous the smear, the more envious and afraid you know the destroyers are. 

The Democrats and their propaganda machine, the dinosaur media, will continue to attempt to destroy and marginalize this wonder woman. New media better pick up the slack. Jugular for jugular.

The hatred of the good for being the good. That is Palin. I am unmoved by assertions that Palin needs more foreign policy or more this and that. She has the key ingredient to great leadership - common sense. I am not concerned that she won't get up to speed on the nitty gritty details of national and international issues. Her thinking, her epistemology is good.

She has common sense, a moral compass and a very definite understanding of good and evil.

Best of all, she is not a product of the limpwristed, spineless, dickless GOP. She is outside the box. She has grit. She has balls. She is my kind of kishka.

PALIN: They Wanna Killa The thrilla From Wasilla

The hatred of the good for being the good. Ayn Rand

Sarah Palin scares the guts out of RINOs, leftopaths and freedom haters. She embodies all that good and fine and decent, and they vomit. You couldn't have written a more charismatic honorable character in a Victor Hugo novel. They will do anything and say anything to destroy this woman. They are so low, so corrupt .... their depravity continues to shock even the most jaded.

Wonkette Goes After Trig Palin Again

It really is hard to understand why some adults feel the need to make fun of Trig Palin, a one-year old who has Down Syndrome. Politics alone cannot explain it. If you don't like Sarah Palin, fine, but why go after Trig?

The controversy regarding the Photoshop of Trig by Alaskan blogger Linda Biegel is only the tip of the iceberg. Ever since Sarah's nomination, Trig has been a target. Last fall, the popular DC-based "gossip" website Wonkette joked how Trig must have wished he'd been aborted. Now Wonkette has taken Biegel's Photoshop antics as an excuse to go after Trig anew.

In a recent post, Wonkette promoted and joked about even cruder Photoshops of Trig at the Something Awful web forum, where people can post anonymously (examples below). Wonkette even included one of these photoshops in its post (above right) while mocking Trig as the "New Jesus," "Holy Infant" and "Sacred One."

All the attacks on Trig are Sarah's fault, according to the Wonkette post, since Sarah had the audacity to bring Trig on stage at the Republican National Convention (where the original photo in question was taken), which Wonkette calls using Trig as a "cheap political prop." I guess that makes the Obama kids fair game according to Wonkette since they were brought on stage at the Democratic National Convention.

Sarah is to blame for all the new Photoshops of Trig, according to the Wonkette post, because Sarah complained about Biegel:

The Virgin Palin, Our Lady of Eternal Anger, gave birth to the New Jesus at some point last year — or not, who knows, and now Andrew Sullivan just cares about Iran (which is a good thing!) so we’ll never find out the truth — and ever since it has been both a Cardinal/Venial Sin and Sharia Law that no mortal shall “desecrate” an image of the Sacred One … no one but Sarah Palin herself, because Allah both allows and encourages the use of the Holy Infant as a cheap political prop as long as such cruel hackery is performed by the Virgin Palin herself.

Palin’s fury was such, when she found out some blog “on the Internet” had combined a picture of her cradling one of her Magic Babies together with a picture of her Jedi Master, some dingbat old radio talk-show clown in Alaska, that she did verily send her dumbest disciple, “Brother Meg,” to start a Jihad against the Entire Internet.

But we know what happens when a fear-and-anger crazed Snow Witch starts a vain war she can never hope to win: The Internet Strikes Back.

Which is to say, Palin basically poked a stick in the world’s largest beehive filled with cheap & tireless insanity, and the SomethingAwful.com goons have unleashed a pack of Photoshop Dogs From Hell to make the most incredible collection of Sarah Palin Desecration Images in the History of Time, the end.

General Bullshit > Sarah Palin thinks photoshopping special needs babies is appalling [Something Awful]

Here are two of the milder Photoshops in the Something Awful forum, which are Sarah's fault according to Wonkette:

What a riot. It takes small people to stoop this low.

[Note: Accordingly to one of the commenters, the face imposed on the photo immediately above is that of a convicted sex offender, Brian Peppers, which makes that Photoshop particularly sick.]

UPDATE: Huffington Post blogger Jason Linkins has joined Wonkette in blaming Sarah for the crude Photoshops because Sarah complained and used the word "desecrate":

And now, all of these people that you had heretofore never heard of are famous, because Sarah Palin wouldn't let the stuff slide. Even dumber, she said that the photoshopping was a "desecration," which means she believes Trig had been "divested of her sacred character." Now I think Trig Palin is an awesome kid, but COME ON. That's a really pretentious thing for a parent to say.

Can't the Editors at Wonkette or bloggers at HuffPo check the dictionary? Desecrate has more than one meaning, and is not limited to someone being "divested" of "sacred character." The Merriam-Webster online dictionary includes "to treat disrespectfully, irreverently, or outrageously" in the definition of the term. Sounds right to me. More important, regardless of which words Sarah used, why does that justify attacks on Trig?

As if that weren't terrible enough, Vanity Fair has a hit piece coming out  filled with lies and propaganda. Worse, they were aided by the cancerous liberals of the Republican party.

There is a struggle in the Republican party for the heart and soul of our future. The RINOs (McCain, Romney etc. vs true individualists and conservatives). You must get involved in this struggle.

The GOP wants to knock her out, for the same reasons that they don't back the formidable, courageous Lt. Colonel Allen West.

Steve wrote:

Vanity Fair is loaded with Obama lovers and Palin-haters. It's right up there with MSNBC. My friends, this is more than a struggle to keep Sarah viable. It's a battle for the Republic. Ferocity, please!

The McCain Campaign was abominable in every way imaginable -- no strategy, low-quality support staff, pathetic fundraising, and a top-of-the-ticket candidate who was more interested in preserving his Beltway status than in winning the election. The low point in the campaign was when McCain essentially told the woman in Wisconsin who "feared" Obama that she had nothing to fear from an Obama presidency.

As a 3-year-speechwriter, I found it obvious that Sarah needed a topflight speechwriter/advisor (Elaine Lafferty would have been fine, and I would have done it for nothing) with her; she had no such person. Biden did. Sarah didn't. McCain clearly resented the fact that Sarah drew huge crowds . . . and he couldn't draw flies.

The GOP is trying to knock her out.

Below is to give you a taste of what is to come. There is a devastating hate piece in Vanity Fair, in what can only be a pathetic attempt at complete and total character assassination.Vanity Fair on Palin: 'It came from Wasilla'  - reporter Todd Purdum relies heavily on quotes from unnamed McCain campaign officials.

The same shills that laud Obama for dropping a cool $100,000 on a "dinner and a show with Meesh in NYC, are aghast that Sarah spent $150,000 of donated bucks on her wardrobe for the presidential campaign. 

By the time Election Day rolled around, the staff had been serially pummeled by unflattering press reports about the gaps in Palin’s knowledge, her stubborn resistance to direction, and the post-selection spending spree in which she ran up bills of $150,000 on clothes for herself and her family at high-end stores.

The leftopaths have chutzpah!

Todd S. Purdum, Vanity Fair: NY Daily News

"Whatever her political future, the emergence of Sarah Palin raises questions that will not soon go away," Todd Purdum writes in a long piece that ranges from her campaign for governor to her current status as the "sexiest and riskiest brand" in GOP politics. "What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded? What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life? Why did so many skilled veterans of the Republican Party-long regarded as the more adroit team in presidential politics-keep loyally working for her election even after they privately realized she was casual about the truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency?" ...

As Palin makes her way slowly across the crowded ballroom—dressed all in black; no red Naughty Monkey Double Dare pumps tonight—she is stopped every few inches by adoring fans. She passes the press pen, where at least eight television cameras and a passel of reporters and photographers are corralled, and spots a reporter for a local community newspaper getting ready to take a happy snap with his pocket camera. For a split second she stops, pauses, turns her head and shoulders just so, and smiles. She holds the pose until she’s sure the man has his shot and then moves on. A few minutes later, the evening’s nominal keynote speaker, the Republican Party’s national chairman, Michael Steele, who has been reduced to a footnote in the proceedings, introduces the special guest speaker as “the storm that is the honorable governor of the great state of Alaska, Sarah Palin!”

[...]

In the aftermath of the November election, the conventional wisdom among Palin’s supporters in the Republican establishment was that she should go home, keep her head down, show that she could govern effectively, and quietly educate herself about foreign and domestic policy with the help of a cadre of experienced advisers. She has done none of this. Rather, she has pursued an erratic course that, for her, may actually represent the closest thing there is to True North. Her first trip to Washington since the election was to attend the dinner of the Alfalfa Club, an elite group of politicians and businesspeople whose sole function is an annual evening in honor of a plant that would “do anything for a drink.” Some of her handlers first said she had accepted—though she then went on to decline—an invitation to speak at the annual June fund-raiser for the congressional Republicans. She created a political-action committee—Sarahpac—with the help of John Coale, a prominent Democratic trial lawyer. But just months into its existence the pac’s chief fund-raiser, Becki Donatelli, a veteran of Republican campaigns, suddenly quit. One person familiar with the situation told me that Donatelli could not stand dealing with Palin’s political spokeswoman in Alaska, Meghan Stapleton, who has drawn withering fire from Palin friends and critics alike for being an ineffective adviser. Also with Coale’s help, Palin formed the grandiosely named Alaska Fund Trust, to defray a reported half million dollars in legal expenses arising from a slew of formal ethics complaints against her in her home state—prompting yet another formal complaint, that the fund itself constitutes an ethical breach. Onetime supporters have become harsh critics. Walter Hickel, 89, a former two-term governor and interior secretary, and the grand old man of Alaska politics, who was co-chair of Palin’s winning gubernatorial campaign, in 2006, now washes his hands of her. He told me simply, “I don’t give a damn what she does.”

Palin is unlike any other national figure in modern American life—neither Anna Nicole Smith nor Margaret Chase Smith but a phenomenon all her own. The clouds of tabloid conflict and controversy that swirl around her and her extended clan—the surprise pregnancies, the two-bit blood feuds, the tawdry in-laws and common-law kin caught selling drugs or poaching game—give her family a singular status in the rogues’ gallery of political relatives. By comparison, Billy Carter, Donald Nixon, and Roger Clinton seem like avatars of circumspection. Palin’s life has sometimes played out like an unholy amalgam of Desperate Housewives and Northern Exposure.

Another aspect of the Palin phenomenon bears examination, even if the mere act of raising it invites intimations of sexism: she is by far the best-looking woman ever to rise to such heights in national politics, the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs. This pheromonal reality has been a blessing and a curse. It has captivated people who would never have given someone with Palin’s record a second glance if Palin had looked like Susan Boyle. And it has made others reluctant to give her a second chance because she looks like a beauty queen.

Soon Palin will take a crack at her own story: she has signed a book contract for an undisclosed but presumably substantial sum, and has chosen Lynn Vincent, a senior writer at the Christian-conservative World magazine, as co-author of the memoir, which is to be published next year not only by HarperCollins but also in a special edition by Zondervan, the Bible-publishing house, that may include supplemental material on faith. During the presidential campaign, Palin’s deep ignorance about most aspects of foreign and domestic policy provided her with a powerful political reason not to submit to interviews. The forthcoming book adds a powerful commercial reason.

Palin is a cipher by choice. When she chooses to reveal herself, what she reveals is not always the same thing as the truth. Her singular refusal to have in-depth conversations with the national media—even Richard Nixon and Dick Cheney, among the most saturnine political figures in modern American history, each submitted to countless detailed interviews over the years—has compounded the challenge of understanding who she really is. There has been Hollywood talk that Palin could star in a reality-TV show about running Alaska, but nothing has come of it yet. Recently, Palin did star in a week-long seriocomic feud with David Letterman over some of his borderline jokes. Meanwhile, she has begun sharing insights several times a day on Twitter, with chipper reports on her own doings and those of her husband, Todd, and the rest of what she calls the “first family.” “Look forward to today’s staff discussion re: my 3rd justice appt to highest court in 3 yrs. Supreme Court truly effects AK’s future,” reads one. And another: “Picking up my handsome little man to rtrn to Juneau, Trig got 1st haircut so my little hippie baby’s ready for AK sunshine on his shoulders.”

It gets worse. Newbusters had this:

Moving on, Purdum writes:

The top McCain aides who had tried hard to work with Palin—Steve Schmidt, the chief strategist; Nicolle Wallace, the communications ace; and Tucker Eskew, her traveling counselor—were barely on speaking terms with her, and news organizations were reporting that anonymous McCain aides saw Palin as a “diva” and a “whack job.”

This quote, irritating as it is, is merely a setup for a later assertion:

Some top aides worried about her mental state: was it possible that she was experiencing postpartum depression? (Palin’s youngest son was less than six months old.)

One might ignore the jab about being a diva – after all, then-candidate Barack Obama said:

"Like any politician at this level, I've got a healthy ego."

However, quoting anonymous sources to imply that a national political figure may, in fact, have been mentally unstable during a campaign is beyond any stretch of journalistic integrity.  And yet, Purdum is not content to smear Palin with the ethereal possibility of postpartum depression:

More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy”—and thought it fit her perfectly.

It is amusing to consider the idea that random, unidentified constituents would, unbidden, pick up the copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that they just so happened to have sitting on the bookshelf, and wonder if Sarah Palin suffered from a mental disorder.

For the sake of argument, however, let us simply settle on the fact that failing to identify these people – or their expertise in the field of psychiatric medicine – leaves this paragraph as a near-libelous attack on the mental state of a public figure.

Palin's Legal Costs

The Palin "webathon" means a lot to me. I love this woman. She is a damn fine woman and a great American. The best. And the liberals know it, which is why they have done everything to destroy her. Bankrupting her is part of it.

A bunch of "ankle biters" in Alaska has pursued frivolous ethics complaints against Sarah Palin since the 2008 election. She has won every one of these, including the complaint that she wore a jacket with the logo of her husband's snowmobile team. This is the way liberals work the system.

"Conservatives4Palin" is running a webathon to help retire the $500,000 in legal debts that Palin has incurred. People can contribute as little as $5.00, but most important spread the word about the webathon. Here is the link for information about the complaints and for contributing:

Click the image above to visit AFT and make a donation.

ACTION ALERT: HELP PALIN FIGHT THE DEMOCRATS' LAWFARE

The Democrats despise Palin (the hatred of the good for being good), because she best embodies everything they are not. Principled, true, hard working, smart, honorable ............. "the ideal man" (in the Randian sense). I adore Palin, and will work for her candidacy - whatever race she chooses.

Just for knowing, the moochers and the looters are attempting to bankrupt the Palin family with needless litigation costs. She has been cleared of all, but she has to pay her bills -- and unlike the Democrats, we don't rob the public treasury. We guard it. Democrats, OTOH, build John Murtha airports to fly him back and forth to Washington.

Help Palin pay off the legal debt incurred by the harassment and attrition of the dangerous party.

Over at Conservatives for Palin:

Friends, Conservatives, and Ordinary Barbarians...

lend me your ears...

As I announced last week on the Tammy Bruce Show, Conservatives4Palin is sponsoring a Webathon to retire the legal debt that Governor Palin amassed while defending herself from frivolous and politically motivated ethics complaints.

To date, all fourteen of these complaints have been dismissed, but in the process of defending herself, Governor Palin amassed over $500,000 in legal debt.

The Alaska Fund Trust is the official Palin legal defense fund. There was limited media attention given to the AFT when it was launched. The attention has tapered off, but Governor Palin's legal debt is still there and is still accumulating as her enemies have regrouped and are looking for new ways to hit her with more frivolous complaints.

The AFT needs our help.

What use is a grassroots movement if we can't take a stand and help Governor Palin when she needs us the most?

Conservatives4Palin will sponsor a Webathon from June 15 – 22, 2009, and we encourage all of you to join us and be an active part.

Here’s how it works...

We created the following “Webathon Banner” which we would like people to post prominently on their websites throughout the week:



Notice the Banner’s four simple instructions.

We are asking people to donate to the AFT and then email us to tell us how much they gave.

We will update the Banner daily to reflect the new numbers raised.

Alongside the Webathon Banner, we would like people to post this video announcing the Webathon:

ACTION ALERT: PUNISH THOSE WHO REWARD THE TROLLS

The systematic leftist smear campaign of Republican leaders is criminal and slanderous. And yet everyone on the right puts up with it in the spirit of what? - free speech? Vile pornographic slander is what it is.

They take our finest people and attempt to destroy them. IT HAS TO STOP. Absent of morality, we must live in a culture where stupidity, anti-Americanism, promiscuity, racism, betrayal, ridicule is heralded. Hollywood personalities, "cultural icons" are in and out of drug addiction centers and applauded for their courage. Music "icons" spew racist bile, degrade women, and denounce America. Debased Democrats defraud the people, perpetrate voter fraud, pay for play, disabuse voters and pat each other on the back - job well done!

They rob, cheat, steal and usurp our Constitution. Democrats with refrigerators full of cash get off scot-free. Presidential candidates cheat on their cancer stricken wives and father children out of wedlock, and the media ignores it while the left yawns. The engineers of the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac meltdown not only walk away but now oversee the subsequent "solution" - the greatest theft (and generational theft)  of the American treasury in world history. Democrat leaders run gay prostitution rings out of their apartments and if we don't like it - we are homophobic.

The leftwing media - now indistinguishable from the Democrat party - call evil good and good evil. They bow to an unfit, unqualified, America hater in the White House - and vilify anyone who points out that the emperor has no clothes.

Jack Wheeler saw what I saw and  nailed it when he wrote:

No one, much less a President of the United States, who is not a Moslem would deeply bow to a Saudi Wahhabi tyrant in an act of utter submission.



This is the most disgraceful act of any president in American history.  Wahhabism is the most evil religion on earth, a religion of hate which the Saudi king spends billions promoting around the world.  To bow to its principal proponent is submission to evil, an announcement of one's true beliefs.

No patriotic American can ever again, upon seeing this picture and understanding its meaning, consider this man to be the legitimate president of his country.

And the media never reported on it.

No one has suffered the libelous slings and arrows more than Sarah Palin. Simply because she represents greatness. Yes, greatness. The better the person, the more debased and vile the attacks. Palin represents the right's best hope. This is hatred of the good for being good. Smart, hardworking, accomplished, clear, rational - every attribute the leftopaths lack. She came up the hard way, married a delicious guy she is crazy about (and he her), and has a wonderful family. And this is what riles the left. They hate normal. Despise it - like Dracula hates the silver cross. Her daughter has suffered unmercifully all because she didn't get an abortion - that's what it's all about. The leftopaths are giving our five year olds sex ed in school, handing out condoms in the hundreds of thousands, and offering abortion without parental consent to underage girls, but Bristol Palin is a bad girl.

The Alinksy inspired leftists need to destroy our most effective leaders. Palin is presidential and I would support her candidacy in a heartbeat in 2012. No RINOs for me - not this time. Any future leader - Palin, Bobby Jindal, Allen West, Michele Bachmann, will be crucified in the press.

Basta! Enough is enough. We must stand up and fight, aggressively.

Over at Conservatives 4 Palin, they are doing something about it. And I intend to join them AND URGE YOU TO DO THE SAME. Go here now. (hat tip vid)

Regular readers here know that we frequently disagree with the slanted journalism at the Anchorage Daily News. The bias appears not only on their editorial page (where even the two "conservative" voices, Dan Fagan and Paul Jenkins, are virulent over-the-top Palin-bashers) but in their news articles. We have no problem calling them out on that regularly, or pointing out such stupidity as linking to Trig Truth blogs, or investigating Trig Palin's parentage themselves.

Obama1Fan wrote on 04/03/2009 05:19:44 PM:
Talk about WHITE TRASH.....LOL.

Yosarian wrote on 04/03/2009 05:35:15 PM:
Oh this is hilarious. Maybe Levi's mom could help her out, he he.

BunkerBuster wrote on 04/03/2009 05:47:47 PM: The Palin's are a joke a minute. Bristol already has a new boyfriend too. The Palins = The Beverly Hillbillies.

CrabbyPatty wrote on 04/03/2009 07:22:15 PM:
Goodness - does this mean that Palin is pallin' around with criminals? So, is the new Fox Reality Show going to be called "Palin Family Values"?

ajkrueger wrote on 04/03/2009 07:27:07 PM:
Probably needed some things for the trailer! You betcha!

martha12 wrote on 04/03/2009 07:27:36 PM:
Palins are a family of grifters!

Lelbo wrote on 04/03/2009 07:53:56 PM:
Yesterday Brystals baby's father admitted to Tyra Banks that Palin permitted two minors to stay in the same bedroom and breed. Did these underage sexual romps occur in the govenors mansion, or in Wasilla where she charged the state a perdiem for this "act of abstanence"

SissyHankshaw wrote on 04/03/2009 08:12:12 PM:
Ennealogic wrote:
"And the reason for the theft ... one might infer that Todd's sister-in-law has a habit that needs supporting? Maybe?"

Ha! No doubt. I would imagine that ANYONE who found themselves married into that dysfunctional family would need a little pharmaceutical help to get them through the day! I rule Not guilty by reason of (imposed) insanity!

pmalaska wrote on 04/03/2009 08:46:14 PM: The Palins really are the modern version of Beverly Hillbillies. Trailor courts, drug dealing relatives, child pregnancy and drug busts, and now petty burglaries.

Ninette wrote on 04/03/2009 09:01:46 PM: ooooooooooweeeeeee! Cue the banjo song from Deliverance.

Ninette wrote on 04/03/2009 09:09:45 PM: Or, at what point will the state come in and take those kids away from such a dysfunctional environment where these kids are obviously neglegted by a dad who tinkers and a mom who is more interested in her own ambition?

ikeyboy wrote on 04/04/2009 10:36:13 AM: Yep, them Palin hillbillies are at it again. Every day is another story!

Alaskan4Ever wrote on 04/04/2009 01:50:58 PM: The Palin Family is an embarrassment to Alaska and Alaskans. GO AWAY SARAH! And take your crazy family with you!

This kind of behavior even spilled over into an article about the economic stimulus:

Doggonit wrote on 04/03/2009 10:18:57 PM:
How is allowing your young teen daughter's boyfriend to share her bedroom with her, practicing abstinence?

blueeyedgurly wrote on 04/03/2009 11:29:16 PM:
Shes listening but wont do anything. She could care less about Alaskas kids. She cant even take care of her own. High School drop outs

lived9lives wrote on 04/04/2009 11:28:14 AM:
Oh, sorry about my previous post. I now realize Sarah was busy listening to Levi and Bristol practicing abstinence in the bedroom of HER home. (See Levi's commments @ bedroom) Guess that's why she couldn't read the Stimulus Package.

(I should add that all of the above comments were "recommended" by dozens of other adn.com readers.)

Now, my question to Mr. Dougherty and Ms. Wright would be: How do these types of comments lead to "a relatively free flow of ideas in hopes of stimulating a vigorous conversation about happenings in our state"?

Some might ask why I don't simply flag these abusive comments via adn.com's built-in reporting features. The reason is that I can't - because I've been banned from their website. Shortly after the new comments policy was announced, I began flagging comments that, in my opinion, violated the guidelines. Within a matter of couple of days, the ADN mods banned me.

(I should note that that adn.com uses a particularly weaselly method of banning commenters. There is no notification, and to all appearances it seems that you can post comments as normal. However, the comments posted are invisible to all but the banned user. If you're wondering if you've been banned, log in to ADN and post a test comment. Then log out and refresh the page. If your comment isn't visible anymore, then you've been banned.)

So my message to Mr. Dougherty, Ms. Wright, and the rest of the ADN staff is this:

Your promises to clean up the poison at adn.com have turned out to be completely insincere. Enough is enough. No more invective about white trash, hillbillies, methamphetamine or crack cocaine use, or trailer parks. No more snarky comments about the purported sex lives of the Governor or her children, such as statements that the Governor was listening to her daughter "breeding" in her own home. No more insults towards special needs children, or speculation about the parenting skills of the Governor and her husband. No more assertions that the Governor is not the mother of her youngest child. These claims all appear on your website on a regular basis and are deeply offensive to all decent people.

Liberals understand protest and invective. When they're angry at you, they might write nasty letters or show up outside your offices with signs. Conservatives understand business and free enterprise, so we'll just target your Alaskan ad revenue.

Let me be clear about what we'll do. Every time one of the worst examples of these comments appears on adn.com, we won't flag it as offensive. We won't even contact you. Instead, we'll cache that webpage and make screen captures. Then we'll look at the Alaskan advertisers who have purchased space next to these vile comments, and pass the messages along to them with a query as to why they are financially supporting such toxic garbage.

Let's start with a few test cases, who I contacted today with the examples given above. I encourage our readers to do the same. We'll expand our database of advertisers as time goes on.

1. Alaska Communications Systems - externalaffairs@ACSalaska.com
2. Jack White/Vista Real Estate - info@prualaska.com
3. Witzleben Legacy Funeral Home - james@alaskafuneralhomes.net
4. Sixth Avenue Outfitters - sixthavenueoutfitters@gci.net
5. Shred Alaska - shredalaska@ak.net

I encourage you to take this seriously. This blog may still be relatively small fry in the blogosphere, though we've quadrupled our readership over the last couple months to several thousand readers per day. If I can motivate only 1% of this blog's readership to get involved, I can put dozens of complaints per day into the inbox of an Anchorage realtor or car dealership. And I won't limit myself to the resources of this site - I'll drag in whatever allies I can, from Team SarahFree Republic. And there are plenty of those people willing to get involved. When you consider that Team Sarah has almost 70,000 members, or that Governor Palin's Facebook page has over half a million followers, you don't want to face the impact if even a tiny percentage of those people get irate with your advertising clients.

Your lawyers and advertising people can explain until they're blue in the face that, due to fine print in your user agreement, the ADN is not legally responsible for slanderous user comments. But you, I, and everyone else knows that you are MORALLY responsible, because this toxic content appears under the banner of the Anchorage Daily News, and right next to space paid for by your advertisers.

A couple of political realities that you should refresh your knowledge on -- despite 7 months of unending savage criticism in the national media, Governor Palin still enjoys the solid approval of over 60% of Alaskans. And even those who disapprove of her are unlikely to be sympathetic to the evil personal attacks that you host on your website. I'd ask you to look even deeper into the subset of Alaskan small business owners who give you the majority of your advertising revenue - do you think they lean more Republican or Democrat? And do you think they like the idea of funding these toxic comments?

Oh, and I forgot to mention - we'll also continually remind the nice folks at McClatchy Corporate of what's going on at your paper. I'm starting with these folks, but hopefully we can expand our mailing list to include others in your corporate hierarchy, especially members of the Board of Directors. And each message will prominently mention, and link, that Pat Dougherty and Julie Wright promised to clean up this problem, but that they still inexplicably allow hate speech to appear under the banner of a McClatchy publication, next to space paid for by McClatchy clients.

We're asking that the ADN follow one of the following options -- either go to a fully-moderated format to ensure that none of this stuff ever appears on your website, or, if you can't do that, follow the example of the Juneau Empire and eliminate reader comments altogether. After all, you already have another discussion forum for readers to exercise their free speech rights.

Mr. Dougherty and Ms. Wright, keep your promises and clean up your website.

Or we'll do it for you.

BRAVO!

SARAH!

This is our future -- mighty bright. This is our Margaret Thatcher (can you see the leftard lurkers groan? A figure like Palin is to the left what a silver cross is to a vampire).

After four years of an incompetent socialist, America will throw him the hell out with both hands and the pendulum will swing the other way. Think David Dinkins in NYC (a perfect example of a wildly unqualified failed affirmative action project).

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PALIN ATTENDS CHANUKAH CELEBRATION, LIGHTS MENORAH AT CHABAD ALASKA

I l-o-v-e this woman. True grit. Baruch HaShem! (hat tip Bruce)

Palin Attends Chanukah Celebration and Lights Menorah at Chabad of Alaska

ANCHORAGE, AK [CHI] — Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin lit a candle in memory of the victims of the Mumbai attacks and the Schluchim, Rabbi Gaviel Noach and Rivka Holtzberg, at a public Chanukah celebration of Chabad in Alaska organized by the Rebbe’s Schluchem Rabbi Yosef and Esty Greenberg.

More pictures in the Extended Article!

More than 600 people participated in the 18th annual Chanukah Arts Festival of Chabad in Alaska. The celebration was dedicated to adding light and good deeds of kindness as a response to the Mumbai attack. In addition to the Alaska tradition of lighting a giant ice Menorah for Chanukah; this year a “Cannorah,” a Menorah made of cans, was constructed by an Alaskan artist to be delivered to the needy as an expression of adding goodness and kindness to the world, which was lit by community supporters, David and Shani Green

SARAH IS WOMAN HEAR HER ROAR!

Nidra Poller who has joined me in my Florida trek to convert the misled Jews on our Great Reverse Shlep has penned (and nailed it) oped on Palin. Fresh from Paris ...... an expat's perspective.

And btw, check out Team Sara's response to Obama's wink here.

Sarah Palin is not every woman’s Everywoman

Northern Virginia, Southern Florida October 25-29, 2008

Nidra Poller

[original English version of an article published in Hebrew translation by Makor Rishon]

John McCain’s vice presidential pick was a stroke of strategic genius. The popular Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, looked like the queen that would trump Obama’s knight. More sex appeal than Barack and Michelle combined, more and cuter kids, more spring to her step, more charm and…real executive experience. A track record you could believe in because it is all up front, visible and documented. Obama was attracting swoons from the idol worshippers. Sarah Palin inspired whoops of joy. Go girl go!

Her presence on the ticket was a shot in the arm to McCain, who suddenly began to show his impish smile. Her grace offset the wooden gestures of the war hero and survivor of Vietcong prison camps whose sacrifice earned him no credit in the opposing camp or in the mainstream media, deeply settled in Obama’s pocket since day one of the Democrat primaries. But Sarah Barracuda (her nickname on the basketball court) and self-described hockey Mom announced from the get go that she was not afraid of the media.

Her boldness was like blood to a shark. The media moved in immediately and have been doing a hatchet job that would leave a lesser woman twice dead. Governor Palin is subjected to relentless scrutiny, mockery, sarcasm, and sleaze. It doesn’t faze her. She keeps on stumping, drawing huge enthusiastic crowds at Republican rallies. She conveys the campaign message with convincing candor. She makes TV appearances, including a triumph of good sportsmanship on the Saturday Night Live show, side by side with Tina Fey, the actress who imitates her on the political comedy show. She is interviewed by hostile journalists who frame their questions with the sole intention of showing her up. Palin keeps smiling. Her enemies take this as confirmation of her stupidity.

On the—rather broad—lunatic fringes of Democratic fans, the attacks on Sarah Palin have reached a new low in American politics…and in misogyny, including disgraceful t-shirts reduce her to her sexual organs “Sarah is a c___ .” A mockup of her baby was auctioned on e-bay as a “prop” and, most recently, she was hung in effigy from the eaves of a home in Californian as a Hallowe’en decoration. The first anti-Palin rumor went straight to the womb, with allegations that she was pretending to be the mother of the Down syndrome babe in arms who really belonged to her 17 year-old daughter Bristol. That gossip was rapidly replaced with a new scandal and much clucking over the discovery that the daughter is in fact pregnant, out of wedlock, and intending to marry the father of her child, 18 year-old Levi Johnston.

You would think the entire progressive camp had turned into 19th century Puritans. But no, silly, her sin was not in having sexual relations outside of marriage—everybody does that. Her sin was in not having an abortion. There was no further need to look at Governor Palin’s record as mayor of Wasilia and governor of Alaska. No need to look at McCain’s platform. All you had to do was look at the child-mother’s swelling belly to conclude that Governor Palin is opposed to birth control and abortion. In short, she’s a witch! If the girl had posed nude in a pornographic film or been caught driving while high on drugs it would not have provoked such outrage as her precocious maternity.

The fact that Barack Hussein Obama was born to an unwed seventeen and a half year-old mother was not considered proof of anything. The fact that his father already had a wife and two children in Kenya when he brought his seed to Ann Dunham caused no retroactive scandal. And the fact that if Ann had been as modern and enlightened as progressives require, she would have aborted, and there would be no Obama to worship and elect, seemed not to occur to anyone but me.

French media are more Obamophile and less fair and balanced than the worst of the US brand. The nominally conservative Figaro newspaper is just as one-sided as the leftwing Libération. One would think, from French election coverage, that the U.S. was already an African style dictatorship with one 90% sure-to-win candidate and a pygmy somewhere out in the bush lucky to stay alive before the victory of the President for Life is announced. McCain is virtually nonexistent…except to be panned. The top NY Times slur of the day is picked up and recycled a few days later in France, and so it was with the pro-life scandal of the Palin family. However, a few days into that story, unwed Justice Minister Rachida Dati announced that she is pregnant. I am ashamed to say that I have no inside information about the father of Dati’s child. It may be one of those well-disseminated French secrets that everyone who is anyone knows… for awhile people were saying the father is former Spanish president Aznar…they would make a handsome couple but the rumor has been denied… Nonetheless, no one suggested that the Justice Minister was a wimpess for not having an abortion. But then she is in her forties, so her pregnancy can fall into the trendy category.

On the Left, Sarah Palin is seen as an affront to feminism. On the Right she is held forth as a resounding denial of the doctrinaire ideology of a liberation movement that, we should remember, originated with closet lesbians like Kate Millett who rejected not only male domination but males, threw off not only the chains of uncontrolled fertility but maternity itself. As the movement broadened to include heterosexual women these harsh positions were tempered but, as we see from the hysterical reaction to Palin, it never disappeared. Women in their forties inherited freedoms seized by the bra burners and at the same time uncritically adopted the narrow definition of the Acceptably Liberated Woman. Palin doesn’t make the grade!

NIDRA POLLER ON AMERICA'S COMMON FOLK

Nidra Poller, who is my partner in crime on the Great Reverse Shlep Tour, wrote this oped piece for Atlas readers.

I have always said the greatness of the country is the common man. "The individual will save this nation".  If history has talk us anything, its that the individual can change the course of human history. Despite Obama's and his cultists contempt, the very idea of America, the birth of this nation was the rights of the individual, not the collective, not the state -- it was ..... Joe.

Nidra gets it too. Although she is an expat living in Paris (fo decades now), she is distinctly American and love her very American perspective from a European perch.

Joe the Plumber, Sarah the Governor, and other common folk

Nidra Poller

October 19, 2008

The chance encounter between Barack Obama and a commoner—Joe the Plumber—not only exposed the Hope & Change candidate’s plan for redistribution of wealth, it also revealed his attitude toward the ordinary guys he has pledged to serve.

Leftists everywhere love the wretched of the earth…as long as the poor stay poor and the downtrodden downtrodden. As we see by Barack Obama’s reaction to the uppity Ohio plumber, the wretched are supposed to know their place. The Democratic candidate is splurging millions on ads to show how much he’ll do for the working man & woman but the sight of a real guy, who would like to make his way into a higher tax bracket without getting taxed back down to where he came from, threw him off balance. He blurted out his true intention of spreading the wealth around. More like spreading it thin, no?

Senator Obama lectured Joe on the spot, explaining (what do plumbers know?) that his success would be all the more acceptable if those coming up behind him could also succeed. Obama was too heady with ideology and ambition to understand that Joe is that guy coming up behind. Now Obama’s dissing him. “Who ever heard of a plumber that makes 250,000?” Obama’s minions are furious with Joe for tricking their idol into spilling his socialistical beans. They went and dug up the dirt on Joe. “His name is not really Joe,” they hissed. Voters beware: under an Obama administration first names will come first, middle names will stay in the middle, and last will not be least…

PALIN'S INSIGHTS INTO RUSSIA

Perhaps this is what Palin was talking about while  the tittering hyenas yuked it up over this quote:

"And we've got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable," she told Gibson. Russia invaded Georgia after the ex-Soviet republic invaded the separatist region of South Ossetia.

Palin said she had insights into U.S. relations with Russia because "they're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska ... from an island in Alaska." (more here)

Van wrote me that the Russian long-range Bear recon and bombers would soon be back. Palin's remarks about these flights were ridiculed in the press.  Well, here they come and they are armed now. He predicts they will show up in Cuba. They have already flown to Venezuela.

First Russian live missile fire air exercise near Alaska

DEBKAfile's military sources report that starting Monday, Tu-160 Blackjack and Tu-95 MS Bear-H strategic bombers will fly missions carrying the maximum combat payload and firing all cruise missiles aboard over sub-Arctic Russia and Belarus, close to Alaska. Moscow is claiming to 18 percent of the oil-rich Arctic's territory.

PALIN UNLEASHED DOES THE HEAVY LIFTING

Palin comes out swinging and starts telling the folks what's at stake here. Why McCain is so damn polite when the very country is at stake confounds me. These are dangerous people and we need a leader, unafraid of the media, unafraid of the leftwing bullies -- we are counting on you McCain and you are failing us.

Palin OTOH is opening up and telling folks what we on the blogs have been reporting for over a year now - Obama's  nefarious radical alliances. The media is having a two year old temper tantrum but even the deeply leftarded Rolling Stone agrees. This from February 2007 - thanks to Joe

In the tank for Obama early and often, Rolling Stone was enthralled back then at the thought of Obama, with "as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from," (p.3) becoming a force for change on the national stage. The reference is to Wright, rather than to Ayers, but the politics are ultimately the same. I bring this up not because the article sheds any new light on Obama, but rather because of its tone. Obama's radicalism was a selling point with which leftist journals like RS were trumpeting just last year and attempting to bury now.

Palin says Obama 'palling around' with terrorists  YAHOO

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. -Republican vice presidential candidate  on Saturday accused Democrat Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists" because of an association with a former '60s radical, stepping up an effort to portray Obama as unacceptable to American voters.

Palin's reference was to Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the group the Weather Underground. Its members took credit for bombings, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol, during the Vietnam War era. Obama, who was a child when the group was active, has denounced Ayers' radical views and activities.

While it is known that Obama and Ayers live in the same Chicago neighborhood, served on a charity board together and had a fleeting political connection, it's a stretch of any reading of the public record to say the pair ever palled around. And it's simply wrong to suggest that they were associated while Ayers was committing terrorist acts.

This is mainsteam media injecting its narrative into a news story.

Falling behind Obama in polls, the Republican campaign plans to make attacks on Obama's character a centerpiece of candidate John McCain's message in the final weeks of the presidential race. Coming late in the campaign, Palin's remark could be particularly incendiary, however, and could knock Obama off his focus on the troubled economy.

Incendiary and true.

Palin told a group of donors at a private airport, "Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." She also said, "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."

Emis.

Palin Wins the Debate

That's my take. She was herself. And she's wonderful. Smart, authentic. I dug when she chided that old dinosaur.
I wish she had gone more on the attack more particularly when Biden was blaming Bush/ McCain for the financial meltdown. It was the poisonous fruit of cancerous Democrat government intervention.She missed opportunities to go for the jugular but her performance was exceptional. She seemed perfectly comfortable. She got her shots in.

Biden said, we will end this war.

Palin: “Your plan is a white flag of surrender.”

Calling him on redistribution of wealth. “You said paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle-class, where I’m from, that’s not patriotic. You’re the problem.”

She made no mistakes. O'Biden was  wrong at least 10 times (Karl Rove just said Biden was absolutely wrong ten times, arguably wrong another six)

She was engaging, warm charming. She feels like family, so I am kvelling :)
He was old, tired robotic .............

UPDATE: FOX TV PHONE POLL: PALIN 86% BIDEN 12%

Palin knocked it out of the park, I tell ya