Notable Quotes

"At the founding of our country, a great American patriot wrote, 'If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.' Obama's motto seems to be, 'Let the good times roll in my day. The kids can deal with the catastrophic bankruptcy in theirs.' That's no way for the leader of a great nation to behave, and I hope Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney continue to call him out on it. Generations of American children are counting on them."

Sarah Palin 

Sarah Palin and the Legacy of Republican 'Idiocy'

Via-American Thinker

By Jack Cashill

Sarah Palin may be the reigning Republican "idiot," but she shares in a proud legacy that dates back to at least Dwight David Eisenhower, if not earlier.

The "idiot" talk began as soon as Palin was named McCain's running mate. As I drove to the 2008 Republican Convention in St.Paul -- my first -- the radio blared all Palin all the time and just about all negative. The talking heads were busy telling Republicans how they ought to think and what they ought to do -- namely, dump Sarah Palin. What with that Marge Gunderson accent and University of Idaho diploma, not to mention the single mother daughter, Sarah Palin was no more ready to serve as vice president than Ellie Mae Clampett.

None of this surprised me. The left, through its control of the media, including the entertainment media, has been rigging political IQ tests for the last half-century, if not longer. Those Republicans who were not evil geniuses -- Nixon, Cheney, Rove -- the media have painted as blithering idiots.

Dwight Eisenhower, the architect of Operation Overlord, was doddering and incoherent. Gerald Ford, perhaps the best athlete to occupy the White House, was a bumbling fool. "I wanted [Jimmy] Carter in and I wanted [Ford] out," comedian Chevy Chase would later admit of his mocking Ford impersonation on "Saturday Night Live," "and I figured, look, we're reaching millions of people every weekend. Why not do it?"

Ronald Reagan, the century's best president, was, in the memorable words of Clark Clifford, an "amiable dunce." Former CIA Director George Bush was so out of touch that he was ambushed by a grocery scanner. Dan Quayle could not spell "potato" (in fact, the word was spelled "potatoe" on the teacher's flash card). George W. Bush inspired the popular bumper sticker that reads, "A village in Texas is missing its idiot" as well as charming websites like "presidentmoron.com. And now Sarah Palin -- the hillbilly who could allegedly "see Russia from my house" -- was being anointed Bush's idiot successor.

In a 2010 tour of the White House, my former favorite Beatle, Liverpool High grad Paul McCartney, would capture the pop zeitgeist perfectly both in terms of content and dopy condescension. Said McCartney, in a graceless dig at George Bush -- an avid reader and Harvard MBA with a librarian wife -- "After the last eight years, it's great to have a president who knows what a library is."

Democratic politicians, by contrast, have been "scary smart," too bright for an undeserving American citizenry. Adlai Stevenson was an "egghead." JFK was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Eugene McCarthy was professorial and a poet to boot. George McGovern was cerebral. Bill Bradley was a Rhodes scholar. So was Bill Clinton.

Hillary Clinton was the smartest woman on the planet. Gary Hart, Michael Dukakis, and Al Gore were all big-brained wonks. John Kerry was so finely educated that when smearing American troops, he remembered to pronounce "Genghis" "Jenjis." And Barack Obama, of course, as historian Michael Beschloss put it, is "probably the smartest guy ever to become president."

Most Americans never got to hear that Ted Sorensen wrote Kennedy's Profiles in Courage (and lied about it under oath) or that Bill Bradley scored a lowly 485 on his SAT verbals or that John Kerry's grades at Yale were "virtually identical" to George W. Bush's. And while the Associated Press alone would dispatch a swarm of reporters to fact-check Sarah Palin's memoir, Going Rogue -- eleven, to be precise -- the media were no more likely to fact-check Obama's Dreams from My Father or The Audacity of Hope than they were the Koran. As to Obama's grades and SAT scores, Jimmy Hoffa's body will be unearthed before they are.

In Going Rogue, Palin would not shy from crediting Lynn Vincent for "her indispensable help in getting the words on paper." And yet the story is told honestly and sincerely in Palin's voice. There is no artifice, no postmodern mumbo-jumbo, not a sentence in the book Palin could not have written herself. My personal favorite: "I love meat." I suspect that, unaided, journalism major and former reporter Palin is a better writer than Obama.

The media chose not to see this. Chris Matthews, "Hardball" host, showed the self-willed depths of his blindness when he learned of Palin's book deal. "Sarah Palin -- now, don't laugh -- is writing a book," sneered Matthews. "Not just reading a book, writing a book."

In the week of Going Rogue's release, the New York Times house conservative David Brooks would call her "a joke." Dick Cavett, the Norma Desmond of TV talk, would dismiss her as a "know-nothing." Ex-con Dem fundraiser Martha Stewart would brand Palin "a dangerous person." And literally thousands of lesser liberal lights would deride her as "stupid," an "idiot," or a "moron" (8.5 million Google hits for "Palin" "moron.")

Unlike Palin or John McCain, but like Hillary Clinton, Obama refused to credit his ghosts. "I've written two books," Obama told a crowd of teachers in Virginia in July of 2008. The crowd applauded. "I actually wrote them myself," he added with a wink and a nod, and now the teachers exploded in laughter. They got the joke: Republicans were too stupid to write their books.

Obama's dissembling was obvious to anyone who cared to look. The articles he wrote before Dreams -- and for the next ten years as well -- were awkward and amateurish. He is simply not a writer.

Left to their own devices, as I got to see up close, Palin is also a better speaker than Obama. Before Palin emerged for her big Wednesday night convention speech, I watched a whole parade of female speakers do their thing -- Meg Whitman of eBay, Carly Fiorina of Hewlett Packard, Governor Linda Lingle of Hawaii. All were a bit dull and stiff but competent. They read their teleprompters without incident. I remember hoping that Palin could just do as well as they did.

As history will record, she did hugely better. She was sharp, sexy, funny, and utterly charming. Under enormous pressure, she served up the most dazzling convention speech in modern political history -- including Obama's 2004 keynote -- and she did so with just a few days' preparation before a malfunctioning teleprompter. "I knew the speech well enough that I didn't need it," she would say.

Had Obama's teleprompter malfunctioned at the 2004 convention, he would not be president. He has always depended on the eloquence of others. So thoroughly hooked on the teleprompter is Obama that the irrepressible Joe Biden jokes about it. "What am I going to tell the president?" Biden asked the crowd at the Air Force Academy after a teleprompter blew over. "Tell him his teleprompter is broken? What will he do then?"

A Spine Transplant for the GOP

By G. Tracy Mehan, III 

Governor Sarah Palin just hit a home run with her cogent op-ed in theWall Street Journal endorsing Congressman Paul Ryan's (R-WI) Roadmap for America's Future, a tax-cutting, budget-balancing, entitlement-reforming proposal which House Republicans still refrain from embracing wholeheartedly.

In putting her political capital behind the Ryan plan, she may be giving a needed spine transplant to the Republican Party and saving it in spite of itself.

Governor Palin nicely highlights the relative merits of the Ryan plan over the recent recommendations of the president's Nation Commission on Fiscal Responsibility which, while certainly calling for some necessary and painful cost-cutting proposals, "makes only a limited effort to cut spending below the current trend set by the Obama administration."

Lest we forget, the National Commission is also proposing an additional trillion dollars of new taxes, something that is antithetical to everything the voters told us in the recent election and anathema to most Republicans.

So, if Republicans don't want to raise taxes, they presumably want to cut discretionary spending and, even more importantly, reform runaway entitlement spending which is about ready to deluge the nation in red ink with the aging and retirement of the Baby Boomer generation now underway. Why then are the House and Senate Republicans seemingly without any comprehensive, programmatic alternatives to the presidential Commission's recommendations? After all, it takes a horse to beat a horse.

What is the GOP's Big Idea? I am all for cutting earmarks, but they are drops in the big bucket of federal spending. I am all for reducing marginal and corporate tax rates; but this game of chicken in which Republicans join Democrats in spending on new entitlements, two wars, increased discretionary spending, and bailouts, well, for everyone, is going to turn out badly for limited government and taxpayers absent a major overhaul of the way the federal government does business. Something, as they say, has gotta give, as the Greeks and Irish are finding out.

Which brings us back to Paul Ryan's Roadmap. No sitting Republican in the House or Senate, no GOP governor, and no policy wonk in any conservative think tank has produced anything as comprehensive as Ryan's magnum opus which deals with health care, taxes, entitlements, and economic growth all in one audacious proposal.

This last point, i.e., the need to energize economic growth, not simply stop the economic bleeding and outrageous spending, was not lost on the former Alaskan governor. Ryan's proposal "does more than just fend off disaster," says Palin. "CBO [Congressional Budget Office] calculations show that the Roadmap would also help create a 'much more favorable macroeconomic outlook' for the next half-century."

"The CBO estimates that under the Roadmap, by 2058 per-person GDB would be around 70% higher than the current trend," says Governor Palin. This is so because the plan replaces the U.S.'s high and anticompetitive corporate income tax, maybe the highest in the developed world, with a business consumption tax of just 8.5%.

"The overall tax burden would be limited to 19% of GDP (compared to 21% under the deficit commission's proposals)," notes Palin.

Notwithstanding the Roadmap's comprehensive approach to cutting the Gordian Knot of high spending, spiraling health care, entitlement costs and an inefficient tax structure, only a dozen or so Republicans have signed up to co-sponsor Ryan's legislative package. The party of Lincoln has gone AWOL on the only credible proposal for fiscal reform consistent with Republican principles.

The GOP's no-show on the Ryan plan would be understandable if there were several other viable alternatives floating around out there in the political ether. There are none.

At some point, the Republican congressional leadership is going to have to… well… lead. In this case, leadership begins by educating the American people to the dimensions of the crisis they face, something Governor Palin actually gives the President's commission credit for doing; but it cannot stop there. It is well past time for them to must embrace a concrete proposal that takes on the tough issues, head-on, and prepare the electorate for the momentous issues that must be faced now and in 2012.

The only game in town is Paul Ryan's Roadmap around which Governor Palin is rallying the troops, be they independents, Tea Partiers or GOP mainstreamers. This may be her greatest contribution to the Republican Party and the nation in its time of need.

"Cuda" Cuts

The NRO reports that Sarah Palin is giving a speech to some trade group and they post the following excerpt. The fact that she is making such serious policy speeches rather than just her, until now, boilerplate political and patriotic speeches leads me to believe she is going to run in 2012.

I’m deeply concerned about the Federal Reserve’s plans to buy up anywhere from $600 billion to as much as $1 trillion of government securities. The technical term for it is “quantitative easing.” It means our government is pumping money into the banking system by buying up treasury bonds. And where, you may ask, are we getting the money to pay for all this? We’re printing it out of thin air.

The Fed hopes doing this may buy us a little temporary economic growth by supplying banks with extra cash which they could then lend out to businesses. But it’s far from certain this will even work. After all, the problem isn’t that banks don’t have enough cash on hand – it’s that they don’t want to lend it out, because they don’t trust the current economic climate.

And if it doesn’t work, what do we do then? Print even more money? What’s the end game here? Where will all this money printing on an unprecedented scale take us? Do we have any guarantees that QE2 won’t be followed by QE3, 4, and 5, until eventually – inevitably – no one will want to buy our debt anymore? What happens if the Fed becomes not just the buyer of last resort, but the buyer of only resort?

All this pump priming will come at a serious price. And I mean that literally: everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher. And it’s not just groceries. Oil recently hit a six month high, at more than $87 a barrel. The weak dollar – a direct result of the Fed’s decision to dump more dollars onto the market – is pushing oil prices upwards. That’s like an extra tax on earnings. And the worst part of it: because the Obama White House refuses to open up our offshore and onshore oil reserves for exploration, most of that money will go directly to foreign regimes who don’t have America’s best interests at heart.

We shouldn’t be playing around with inflation. It’s not for nothing Reagan called it “as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hit man.” The Fed’s pump priming addiction has got our small businesses running scared, and our allies worried. The German finance minister called the Fed’s proposals “clueless.” When Germany, a country that knows a thing or two about the dangers of inflation, warns us to think again, maybe it’s time for Chairman Bernanke to cease and desist. We don’t want temporary, artificial economic growth bought at the expense of permanently higher inflation which will erode the value of our incomes and our savings. We want a stable dollar combined with real economic reform. It’s the only way we can get our economy back on the right track.

Video-Bait

Via-Freedom Lighthouse

The Palin Platform

Via-The Right Network

All Great Ideas Are Simple

by Morgan Freeberg


Nobody but nobody, it seems, feels lukewarm about Palin.

That her ideas possess currency is undeniable. In fact, just now there is a burst of energy behind her ideas. Which is interesting, because her ideas are rather plain; in fact, they are wholly lacking in anything remarkable at all. They are deficient in the irony people usually crave. These are quaint, bland, “up is up and down is down” ideas. If she were to announce a run for the Presidency, it would probably be along these lines:

1. The Government should fear the citizens, not the other way around.

2. If you want the economy to be stronger, do not fight the people who produce our nation’s wealth. Help them.

3. If your plan will not get us the results we need, with all due respect I could care less how smart you are.

4. If we have seen this scheme put into action before, and have yet to see it succeed; then let us shelve it until someone makes it work.

5. Make it inexpensive to put people on a payroll, or to keep them on it. Then, maybe businesses will make cuts somewhere else during the lean times…and perhaps hire some more. We are not beating this any other way.

6. Every move we make on foreign policy should send a signal to our allies that they made the right choice defending us; or, to our enemies that they made the wrong choice and need to reverse course. Those who are undecided about us, but watching, should be motivated in a powerful way to decide in our favor.

7. Anyone who does something you might not be ready, willing or able to do yourself – regardless of what they pull down for an hour on the job before overtime – is deserving of your respect.

These are dangerous ideas. Because they just might do what they're supposed to do... and fix more problems than they create.

This is a dangerous woman. She is committed to ideas like these. Come what may, you will not see her supporting their opposites. And she can fill up a stadium, bookstore or rental hall without paying people to be there. It's a bad, bad combination... depending, that is, on who you are and what you're trying to do.

Video-We won't let it slide

Via-Real Revo

A Conservative's Case for Sarah Palin's Genius

Via-The Atlantic

Tony Lee

I hadn't seen Sarah Palin speak in person since the 2008 elections. If one just watched or read mainstream media accounts of her paid speeches and appearances since then, including some accounts that have been featured on this site, one may have come to the conclusion that Palin was just a money-hungry ex-politician devoid of conviction, half-heartedly speaking to various interest groups and causes to line her pockets or raise her national profile to peddle books that she didn't even write herself.


Curious about how such memes can develop among supposedly intelligent commentators (most of whom are on the left, but the right has its fair share too), I went to Palin's speech in Washington, D.C. on Friday, where she spoke at a breakfast hosted by The Susan B. Anthony List, an extremely influential pro-life organization.

Nowhere did I see a caricature of a bumbling dolt just going through the motions. What I did hear was substance. Warmth. Humor. Unapologetic feistiness. And an optimistic belief in conservative values and principles. And what I saw was the makings of a potentially transcendent and transformational figure not only for the conservative movement but for American politics.

I don't know if Palin wants to or intends to run for President. And though her speech was delivered to those who would most likely comprise her base if she chose to run, this speech - perhaps more than any of her others - showcased some themes for a potential campaign against Democrats, liberals, and President Obama that would be more than formidable and could possibly attract a fair number of independent voters as well. It definitely struck me as a rough draft of something larger down the road.

1. Palin as the "Mama Bear" defending America's children from "generational theft."

As Barack Obama and Democrats spend more money, as the country goes more into debt, as the specter of inflation gets near, it goes without saying that voters will care more about the deficit and fiscal responsibility, and they will demand politicians do something about it. Americans often tell pollsters they worry that their children will be the first generation of children who won't do better than their parents, and they often cite America's crippling debt as one of the primary reasons for their pessimism. If Palin can convince voters - old and young - that she is indeed the proverbial "mama bear" fighting to restore an America where parents leave behind for their children an America that is in better shape than the one they inherited from their parents, it would resonate powerfully.

2. Palin as a "frontier feminist."

The frontier has always been a powerful symbol in American politics. But Palin personifies this theme in way unlike any other previous politician. As she alluded to in her speech, women on the frontier have always been ahead of the curve; Palin made reference to how frontier women fought for suffrage before it became popular among the more educated classes on the east coast. She made references to frontier women having to "do it all" in defining her version of a new feminism and then connected the Tea Party movement to mothers, sensing in their guts when something is wrong, "rising up." The more Palin can convince independent voters to align themselves with the frontier ethos, as opposed to the technocratic model associated with Obama that promises competence but may not always deliver on it, the more powerful this message will get.

But the frontier may represent a more powerful meme in the coming decade for yesterday's frontier is today's and tomorrow's exurbs, a place where middle class Americans escape crowded cities and suburbs to better their lots in life. These voters don't want government to get in the way of their economic aspirations but also want government to ensure that they wont' be, for lack of a better term, "screwed" by corporations that can sometimes be just as stifling as an oppressive government. Call them Tea Partiers. Or cloth-coat conservatives. Or Reagan Democrats. Or voters who call themselves conservative and not Republican. These voters and those who identify with this spirit have swung every election since 1980.

If anyone had any doubts which side of the city/exurbia debate Palin was on, it is worth nothing that in the same week in which Barack Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court may have been a symbol of Obama as the ultimate urban, city dweller, Palin firmly planted her flag in small towns and exurbia when she urged an Illinois high school girl's basketball team to "play ball" in reference to the school's boycott of Arizona over Arizona's recently passed illegal immigration laws.

Yet for conservatives, it's Palin's style that earns her "street cred" and makes her beloved. It's her unflinching embrace of her values and conservatism, something she proudly wears on her sleave, that convince conservatives that Palin, in her heart, is "one of them." And it's her willingness to toy with, mock, taunt liberals that endears her even more. To use professional wrestling jargon, Palin is the conservative "baby-face" reveling in attacking the hated liberal "heels."

1. She can testify.

Just as Obama spoke the language of Black and urban America in churches and on the stump, Palin speaks the language of social conservatives. Her personal experiences, especially the birth of her son Trig, and those of her daughter, Bristol (in a lighthearted moment, Palin told the audience that Bristol advocates abstinence by telling teenagers they should hit "pause before play"), make her testimony about being "pro-life" more powerful and moving. When Palin shared some of her more personal experiences and struggles with the audience, the room became hushed, the audience noticeably captivated. To state the obvious, these stories signal to social conservatives that Palin has walked the walk.

2. She attacks Obama.

On Friday, Palin first attacked Obama subtly by invoking Margaret Thatcher's quote, "If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman." Of course, implicit in this is that Obama may score points for having the better rhetorical flourishes but Palin can actually put the country on a better footing.
And she also attacked him directly, calling Obama the "most pro-abortion" President ever and calling for more leaders - unlike President Obama - who "don't vote present for an issue" and for whom issues concerning life are "not above one's pay grade." When attacking Obama, Palin has an underdog, feisty style about her that permeates the room. In attacking Obama, conservatives get the sense that Palin is punching fearlessly up in her weight class and they find her more endearing because of it.

3. She relishes attacking liberals.

Palin finds glee in attacking liberals. Their lifestyles. The cars they drive. Their highbrow ways. And she finds joy when describing herself as an Annie Oakley or a redneck. This is when she often seems to be most on top of her game. On Friday, when praising those associated with The Susan B. Anthony List for inspiring women to see feminism from another perspective, she contrasted her "frontier feminism" with the feminism associated with "faculty clubs (said in a mocking tone)," a direct shot at intellectuals in elite ivory towers who would thumb their noses at Palin and would seriously consider moving to Canada if someone from Palin's stock became President.

4. And she's optimistic.

Most importantly, though, Palin hardly seems like someone who is on the verge of post-partem depression. She's cheerful. She's punchy and feisty. She's optimistic. She's hopeful. And it comes across not just in person but also on the more important small screen.
After Palin finished her speech, I again thought about why left-leaning commentators mock, dismiss, and caricaturize her. And two things came to mind.

First, these critics probably have never fully listened to any of her speeches. Rather, like Attorney General Eric Holder, who recently admitted that he went on Meet The Press to criticize a law - Arizona's recently passed immigration laws - that he has not even read or been briefed about, these critics are merely parroting popular misconceptions about Palin and thinking they are original and smart in doing so.

But I think there's something else at work here. I think liberals and those in the mainstream media fear her. Sure, they openly say she has no chance of beating President Obama - if she even runs, that is; but, inside, they must fear that she could very well beat President Obama in a one-on-one match-up. And unlike previous Republicans whose conservatism has been diluted once they got to Washington, Palin does not seem to care in the least what the establishment class - on both sides of the aisle - thinks of her. If she does come to Washington, her conservatism and convictions won't get watered down. She'll come to Washington to change it and not let Washington change her. In the end, this, more than anything, is what scares the left-leaning members of the establishment and chattering class. And also why conservatives gravitate towards and are willing to fight harder for her.
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Sarah's Smile

Via-WU Blog



I am a big fan of Sarah Palin. I was a fan before she was even known by most people and well before she was picked by John McCain to be his running mate. I had heard about her a year or so before that event in regards to her stand against the alarmist view of global warming. That and the few things that I read about her made me a fan, my admiration has only grown and last year my wife and I went and saw her at a campaign ralley and I knew that she was and is something special.

I don't say this because I have any particular interest in her running for President, though I suspect had things worked out different she one day would have made an excellent candidate, perhaps someday she still will I do not know. I have no doubt that she was far more qualified to be President less alone Vice President than Barack Obama was or is.

I like her because she is what this country needs in their leaders, she is real. She has real values, real principles and a real life, all rare in an American politician on the national scene these days. She may never be President and if she runs depending on when and who she is up against I might not even support her for the office but I'll always support her as a person and a true American patriot.

The reason I write this is because whether you realize it or not, since she resigned as Governor of Alaska she has become one of the most influential people in American politics. I'll explain in a bit, but first let me point out how ironic that is.

When she resigned as Governor she was assailed from all sides. Nothing new there she has been savagely demeaned and attacked since she came on the scene. But pundits left and right thought that at the least by resigning she was diminishing her influence. How, after all, could someone resign giving up that status of a high elected office and still speak with authority? Many thought and opined it was political suicide. This it was pointed out over and over was in addition to the fact that people would see her as a quitter. The best that she could do was make some money on the speaking circuit, write a book, really learn about issues (like Obama?) and prepare for some kind of comeback in the future. But many figured her political career was over a sad footnote in American political history,

Well she has done some of that but she has done much more. Sarah Palin has with an absolute impeccable sense of political timing had a major impact on all the political events since she left office.

Sarah Palin is the spiritual leader of the Tea Party movement. There is not a rally, a march , a demonstration where her presence is not palpable. Of the Tea Party participants I would bet that she is probably the most popular and trusted of all political figures. This does not mean that a majority of these people, like me, necessarily would vote for her, but they trust her. And trust amongst a movement that was and is built around the idea that we no longer can trust our leaders is remarkable and powerful.

This past summer as Obama and the Democrats were starting to get untracked to pass health care legislation, Sarah Palin's "Death Panel" face book entry and subsequent Wall Street Journal editorial, galvanized the opposition. As has been rightly noted when the President began defending the idea that he was not going to pull the plug on grandma rather than marshaling his troops for passage, the battle was lost. Oh they keep trying and they may actually pass something but Sarah Palin put the brakes on the monstrosity so that everyone could have a good look. That good look is killing the Democrats and the President's popularity and with any luck it will kill the bill. In a large part we owe that to Sarah Palin.

She was one of the first major political figure to publicly endorse Doug Hoffman for congress in the New York 23 race and she is the one whose endorsement got the grass roots moving to support him. Of course she was criticized even more so by those in her own party. Guess what? The Republican candidate has suspended her campaign and Hoffman will likely win the election. In large part we owe that to Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin has been a leader in calling out Obama on a number of issues such as his dithering on Afghanistan, energy policies, the stimulus package.

Sarah Palin's Face Book page is as influential as any newspaper in America, when she writes, people read and they respond. More often than not it becomes a national discussion for a time. They still pound her in the media to their shame and so great is their influence that her book was and is a best seller and it still has not yet been released.

Michelle Obama may be the most popular woman in the media, but Sarah Palin is the most powerful woman in the country-bar none-not bad for an ex governor from Alaska.


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Hurricane Sarah

Via-Holger Awakens

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Sarah Palin -- All In

Via-American Thinker


There is a point in tournament poker where one player doesn't have the chips to play out the next raise, but they have great cards, so they call "all in." At that point, nobody can raise them and the hand gets played out -- either to a game changing win or a total loss for the person who made the call.


It appears Sarah Palin decided she and her family could no longer deal with the thousand cuts, so she is "all in."


Palin may well decide to stay home and make macaroni and cheese for the kids, but history may not let her. She has already established herself as a major player -- candidate or not. More importantly, the wildly critical left has put her in a financial position where she has no choice but to speak out, perhaps do a book, and make the money she needs to pay legal bills for 15 unwarranted "ethics" investigations, all of which she handily won. The legal bills remain.


One doubts that when she speaks out, it will be about how to field dress a moose. Rather, she will take positions in speaking and writing about her core beliefs. That is a problem for the radical left of their own creation.


Palin enters the arena where the fight is not between liberal and conservative; nor is it between Republican and Democrat. The fight is between elite and the common person who works every day and continually asks how Washington D.C., under both parties, is so out of control.


Elitism has never been popular in America. Major American critics from H.L Menken to Rush Limbaugh made careers poking fun at elites.


Elitism is on display today as never before. Senate and Congressional seats are passed down in the family. Just look at the family members lining up for Ted Kennedy's seat or Caroline's assumption that she deserved the New York Senate seat. Vice President Biden's Senate seat is being kept warm for his son, now serving in the Middle East. Lots of talk that Michelle Obama may be the next Illinois senator.


Hereditary government on display. How much more elitist can a nation become?


The fight is between an out of control government led by media and government elites and common sense Americans, of both parties, who have had enough. Sarah Palin is in the enviable, although personally painful position, of being the "anti elite" voice of common sense and shared American values.


The vicious left put her there and now they may live to regret it.


When informed of the invention of "poison gas" by Admiral Cochrane, the Duke of Wellington cautioned that "that is a game two can play." He wisely chose not to go there because it would certainly be used by both sides.


The parallel exists with Saul Alinsky, the progenitor of much radical leftist smear techniques. His key dictum was that ridicule had no antidote. Sarah Palin was wildly successful heaping ridicule on Obama during the campaign, when he was at his best.


Nothing is more easily and cogently ridiculed than elitism.


Obama even appointed an elite college professor who posits that animals should have legal rights to sue their owners. Can one imagine Sarah Palin foisting this foolish, elitist intellectual on the question: "well, then professor, shouldn't a 6 month, developed fetus have the same legal rights as a chicken?" Make Obama defend that position.


Now Obama is finding the treading a bit harder. Rasmussen polls show a weakening of his approval numbers and all polls agree that most Americans do not support cap and tax, do not want illegals to get health care funded by taxpayers and now are becoming pro life. Wide swaths of informed citizens are coming to understand man made global warming is a hoax used to heap new energy taxes on them. Only elites, from both parties, can propose such nonsense.


Even Colin Powell, the truest weathervane of elitist thinking, is openly questioning Obama's spending. Certainly he did not get these doubts from listening to Rush Limbaugh. Perhaps, Colin Powell senses where this is going, and it is not going his way.


Sara Palin takes on the "fancy people" from a position, eagerly given to her by her enemies, of being a "common" person who went to an ordinary college, has typical family problems, is married to a guy who works in an oil field, buys her kid's diapers at WalMart. If the fight is with the elites, what better background could one have?


Ayn Rand said that there is right and there is wrong, and everything in the middle is evil. Sarah Palin is not a person from the middle. She has her beliefs and lives them in her daily life. Her children are her life's work, they are not accessories.


Nobody is better positioned, as a candidate or commentator, to take on the elites and the nonsense they put forward.


What an irony if the only American President who can make a 3 point shot were taken out by a point guard who came up to his shoulder. And if the guard was a chick -- who went to a no name school?

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The Palin Seminar on Moderate Women

Via- American Thinker

Sarah Palin's speech to the folks at Vanderburgh County Right to Life last month didn't seem to get on the national political radar. But if you get a chance to review the YouTube video, it's worth it.

Governor Palin (R-AK) may have been giving a speech to conservative pro-lifers in Evansville, Indiana, on April 16, 2009, but the speech was an arrow aimed right over the heads of the conservatives present towards the hearts of moderate women voters everywhere.


And that, if you ask me, is the future of conservatism.
Palin's first big theme that night was "gifting." You men all know how important gifting is to women. If you don't stop at the store on the way home tonight and buy her a bunch of flowers, because you are already behind the 8-ball.


Palin told her audience that it was the gifts that persuaded her to come to Evansville. First it was the chocolates on her birthday. Then it was the donuts and the pastries. Finally, it was the hockey stick from the Evansville Youth Hockey Association. And try to guess husband Todd's favorite movie? Of course, it's Hoosiers.


Then there was Palin's home-state boosterism, her "teacher" theme. With a disarming reference to her school-teacher parents she reeled off a host of facts about Alaska to her Hoosier hosts. I hadn't really thought about it before, but women do participate, as enthusiastically as George F. Babbitt, in the boosting of their homes, their hometown, and their home state. Home is where the heart it.


Finally, when Palin got down to the pro-life part of her speech, she explained her beliefs using a "dilemma" theme. Conservative men have principles. Liberal women have issues. But moderate women have dilemmas.


Palin talked about finding out she was pregnant in her forties, about finding out that her baby had that extra chromosome. She talked about the love that flooded her when she finally had Trig in her arms. Disarmingly, she spoke about how she thought, for a fleeting moment, about getting rid of her little problem when she out of town. Nobody would know.


Fortunately, our liberal friends didn't publicize the speech. So the MSM missed the chance to tell moderate women what to think about it. And unless moderate women are carefully taught, they'll receive the speech, and the ones that come after, as a conversation over coffee.


They will get to appreciate the moment when Palin mentions how they are criticizing her for leaving Alaska to come talk to the folks in Indiana. They will get to hear about a couple of disastrous sit-down interviews. Women are good at this faux self-deprecation -- when they mean, between the lines, how dare they!


Some of you alert readers may recall that I called for a woman-centered conservatism in 2007 here, in 2008 here, and this year here.


There's no rocket science about the need for a woman-centered conservatism. It stares at you out of the numbers over at usgovernmentspending.com. Our rulers are spending about a trillion dollars a year on health care, a trillion dollars a year on education, and half a trillion dollars a year on welfare. Health care, education, and welfare are things that women care about.


But there's a problem, a problem that, in a world without an MSM, would have women up in arms. The trillions of dollars are not being spent in sensitive, compassionate ways that respond directly to the needs of mothers and adult daughters. Instead, it is spent in rigid, compulsory, government programs devised by experts and administered by workers with lifetime tenure.


You may have noticed that the purpose of this administrative system is not to help people. It is to reward its servitors. That is how a vertical system of social organization is supposed to work, whether it is a feudal system, a political machine, or a welfare state.


If conservative are ever to break the back of the welfare state, and introduce a horizontal and sociable society in place of the cruel and rigid liberal administrative state, then our task is clear. We have to persuade moderate women that the present setup does a terrible job of helping them care for their children, their mothers, and themselves.


It shouldn't be that hard. After all, the current system does do a terrible job of caring for people. It puts the children that women care for in custodial institutions for most of their childhood. Its assault on marriage subjects adult women to frightening insecurities when they need security most during their child-raising years. And it puts the aging mothers that loving daughters worry about in custodial institutions.


But every message needs a messenger. The question confronting conservatives is: who is to be our messenger?


Who will talk to moderate women and talk their language?


How about a woman with executive experience who knows all about "gifting" and "dilemmas" and can fearlessly skipper a fishing dory right through the surf up onto the beach?
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"You Betcha!"

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Palin Preaches Fiscal Restraint for Alaska

An upbeat Sarah Palin congratulated her state for tightening its belt during past years and asked them to sacrifice a little more in the year ahead during her State of the State address Thursday evening.

“At a time when other states are staring at multi-billion-dollar deficits, and when our federal government proposes a deficit in excess of a trillion dollars this year alone, we all have the cautionary examples we need in the virtues of living within our means,” Palin said. “With less revenue we have an obligation to spend less money.”

She proposed a spending freeze, except for public safety, and new restrictions on discretionary purchases to help do this in 2009. Palin also praised the state for “finding efficiencies during times of prosperity” enabling the state to allocate billions to infrastructure needs in previous years. “That’s common sense fiscal responsibility,” she said.

Palin discussed a number of other state issues, including her state's lawsuit against the federal government for its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species. “We’ll challenge abuse of federal law when it’s used just to lock up Alaska,” she warned.

The Governor barely mentioned her high-profile run as the GOP vice presidential candidate in her remarks, saying only that, “I used to wonder if the occasionally rough edges of politics were unique here under the Great North Star. But I ventured out a bit this past year, and I tell you that, as partisan quarrels go, ours really aren't so bad.”
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Complete Original Article from Townhall

Palin unveils state energy goals

Tough combination here if people would open their eyes, woman could be not only the first woman President but a truly transformational one. Too bad it'll probably never happen. -Jer


2025 GOAL: At least 50 percent of state's power to be from alternative sources.

Gov. Sarah Palin has crossed swords with conservation groups over petroleum drilling, but she earned nothing but praise Friday after announcing the most ambitious renewable energy goals in the nation. At a news conference announcing her statewide energy plan, Palin called for 50 percent of Alaska's power to be generated by renewable resources by 2025.

The goal addresses both urban Alaska, including Anchorage, Fairbanks and other cities that make up the Railbelt, and the hundreds of Alaska villages off the road system and power grid.

Palin called for six state utilities that serve most of the population to stop traditional infighting and take a regional approach for new power generation projects that could lower costs.

Palin also unveiled a guide listing alternative energy assets of every village in Alaska. Those resources can be developed to wean far-flung villages off electricity generated by burning diesel fuel that must be imported by barge or airplane.

"This guide will help us move to a future where, ideally, 50 percent of Alaska's electricity is generated from renewable resources by 2025," Palin said.

President-elect Barack Obama has called for 25 percent renewable energy use nationwide by 2025. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 26 states have adopted renewable electricity standards and four states have a voluntary renewable energy goal, with no specific enforcement mechanism. Washington state's goal is 15 percent by 2020 and Oregon's is 25 percent by 2025.

Complete Original Article