Another shot at Sarah

I also ran across this:

On Tuesday night, CNN's Larry King had comedian Sarah Silverman on his program and, towards the end of the show, Silverman made a crack about whether Sarah Palin should pose for Playboy. Silverman said "I think she should go for it" and King responded, "Agreed."

As might be expected, the comment has irked some.

Lulu Flores, president of the National Women's Political Caucus, told POLITICO that King's comments were, “waaaaayyy inappropriate.”

Referring to King's recent divorce filings to end his 8th marriage, Laura Ingraham said, "Larry, when you're in a hole, stop digging."

"Larry should pose for 'Viagra Monthly'," said Ann Coulter.

Since this is going to be kicked around on talk radio all day I figured I'd have a go at it first.

First of all I was somewhat shocked that the president of the "national Women's Political Caucus" would speak out in defense of Sarah Palin. Then I thought that it might be an organization for conservative women but a check of their website shows that they are truly bipartisan, having members ranging from Michelle Bachmann all the way to Sheila Jackson Lee.

In other words they are doing what the National Organization of Women only pretends to do - support the aspirations of ALL women.

As for the comments themselves. . . so what?

Silverman is a comedienne and a liberal and in the bubble universe occupied by left-wing Hollywood personalities there is no safer target than Sarah Palin. As the one person on the right that the left senses has the most potential to become the next Ronald Reagan Palin terrifies "progressives" with IQ's in the high double to triple digits to the point of losing control of their bowels and bladders.

This fact is sensed (if not well understood) by "progressives" with IQ's in the low double to single digits - folks like David Letterman and Sarah Silverman - who dimly realize that they can elevate themselves and generate buzz among "people who matter" (defined either as people who can get them work or people whom they wish to sleep with) by taking shots at the great bogeyman who gives their leftie friends who went to school on the long bus night sweats.

As for the unfortunate Larry King, whose Alzheimer's Disease is not so fully progressed that he can't have a moment of near lucidity once in a while, we have to make some allowances. In those days when he was possessed of his full mental faculties, such as they were, he would have most likely had the sense to stay away from such a remark. Now that it's all he can do to show up for work with his Depends on under his trousers we do need to cut him some slack.

It isn't like his falling ratings are going to let CNN justify keeping him on the air for much longer anyway.

The "Next Reagan"?

Bruce Walker has a piece up on American Thinker about who he thinks the GOP should choose as its nominee in 2012.

If Republicans could, surely they would nominate Ronald Reagan for president in 2012. As it appears increasingly likely that Republicans -- conservative Republicans -- will control Congress after the 2012 elections, the only missing element in the political equation is a strong, conservative president like Ronald Reagan. In the mix of possible candidates for 2012, there are some potentially promising people.

Sarah Palin, rightly beloved by nearly all conservatives for her honesty, her advocacy, and her spunk, will figure into any list of candidates. Mitt Romney, who decently withdrew from the race before he lost in 2008, ought to be on the short list as well. Mike Huckabee will be some conservatives' favorite as well. Tim Pawlenty has decided that America really needs him to be president, and other Republicans will too.

Already we see that Mr. Walker isn't up on the current situation. Romney just took himself out of the running by endorsing John McCain against J.D. Hayworth (Palin had no choice in this and Republican voters are smart enough to understand that).

Huckabee was removed from serious consideration late last year when another of the violent felons whose prison sentence Huckabee commuted while governor of Arkansas murdered police officers in California. The incident reminded the electorate once again of how profligate Huckabee was in granting clemency, pardons and commutations to men who should never under any circumstances been allowed out of prison. Huckabee did this more than all the governors of the states surrounding Arkansas combined and the murdered cops in CA are not the only innocent people to pay the ultimate price for Huckabee's insane desire to empty the prisons of societies most dangerous and violent bottom-feeders.

As for Tim Pawlenty remember when there was all that press speculation about McCain choosing Pawlenty as his running mate back in 2008? Remember how the consensus opinion in the GOP was that if McCain picked another RINO like himself it would doom what little chance he might have of winning? Pawlenty is still the same man now that he was then and if McCain's humiliating defeat to a know-nothing, done-nothing empty suit like B. Hussein Obama as well as the recent conservative ascendancy seen in everything from the Tea Party movement to the GOP's seizure of the "Ted Kennedy" seat in the Senate teaches us nothing else it is that the "era of McCain" is over (if it ever "was" in the first place)

With deepest respect for Sarah, none of these candidates is another Reagan. Many people have decided that we simply will not find another Reagan for a long time. I think otherwise. During the 2008 nomination season, I wrote several articles proposing a Republican not yet in the race as the Next Reagan. The stars were not aligned right then for him, but all that may be different in 2012. What do we want in our Next Reagan?

First, we want someone whose conservatism is beyond question -- someone who campaigned hard for Doug Hoffman, for example, even while the RNC was supporting the RINO. Second, we want someone of absolute integrity -- someone who is willing to stand all alone if he thinks he is right. Third, we want someone who does not "need" politics -- someone who was a great success in life before entering politics. Fourth, we want someone disassociated from the failures of Obama and also of Bush -- someone who grasped America's disgust with Washington long before the Beltway insiders. Fifth, we want a "grownup" -- someone who is in every sense of the word mature, sober, and serious. Sixth, we want a great communicator -- someone, like Reagan, who works well in every medium of communication. Seventh, we want someone who is universally perceived as a good man -- just like Reagan. One Republican in 2008 met all those criteria, and in 2012, he stands out at least as clearly as anyone as our Next Reagan: Fred Thompson.

First of all everything he says about Mr. Thompson is true, but with the exception of the masculine gender pronouns (he, him, man) it is also true of Mrs. Palin.

Some might quibble about whether Mrs. Palin was a "great success" in life before she entered politics but I challenge anyone to read her autobiography and not be impressed with her life prior to her entrance into politics.

(1) When conservatives began to despair of any true conservative in 2008, gradually, many began deducing that Thompson was the only one who fit the bill. Across the board, in a very thoughtful way, Fred Thompson represents conservative values. When Doug Hoffman ran for Congress, Thompson went to upstate New York to help.

What Mr. Walker says about the way conservative voters felt in 2008 is true. I was there after all. Anyone who was a reader of this blog back then knows how enthusiastically I supported Fred Thompson. And it is also true that Fred followed Sarah Palin's led and supported Doug Hoffman.

(2) No one questions Thompson's integrity. His career was founded on a willingness to fearlessly confront corruption in Tennessee. As a young Republican Senate staffer, Thompson boldly opposed the crimes of Nixon. And as pundits have noted, there are many Senate votes of 99 to 1 in which Fred was that single "no."

It is true that Mr. Thompson was first brought to the public's attention as a young attorney in Tennessee when he brought down a corrupt Democrat governor and that he played a part in the Watergate affair. His voting record in the Senate is very very good. If fact the only problem any conservative might have with it would be those few occasions when he allowed himself to be persuaded by his "good friend" John McCain.

Of course Sarah Palin also built her career on fighting corruption and in her case she had the courage and integrity to take on corruption within her own party.

And this brings us back to that "integrity thing". You see as much as I admire Fred Thompson we do have to admit that there is a stain upon his integrity. You see we found out after the fact that when Fred was holding himself out as a candidate for the presidency he was never serious about it. He was actually angling for an invitation to be someone's vice presidential pick. When he began doing well in the polls he had to make some attempt to seriously campaign but it was clear that his heart was never in it. That fact was never more clearly revealed than in the fact that his single best performance of the campaign was the speech in which he withdrew from the race. And to cap it off his performance on the campaign trail was so lackluster that he would up taking himself out of the running as anyone's VP choice.

(3) Thompson, a star of film and television and a retired senator, does not "need" political power. He is famous, rich, and popular without it. He has a beautiful, loving wife and delightful children. His only reason for seeking the presidency would be his love of America.

Again, everything said about Mr. Thompson here is also and equally true about Governor Palin. Her book sales have made her wealthy and she is able to command large speaking fees. Her online presence and contract with Fox News give her a forum for her views and she has more requests from political candidates who want her to campaign for them than she can possibly assent to. Her family is close and loving and offers her as much joy and fulfillment as Mr. Thompson's could possible offer him. Sarah Palin believes that political power and high office are not things that one seeks out of ambition but are duties that one is called to fulfill.

(4) Thompson gave up his Senate seat soon after Bush began as president. He has not held elective office since 2002. He left Washington in disgust for its machinations, Republican as well as Democrat.

Sarah Palin did not leave Juneau because of her disgust with "its machinations, Republican as wall as Democrat". She rolled up her sleeves and cleaned up the corruption. She left office only after accomplishing everything she had set out to do.

(5) Thompson, like Reagan, is not young. He would be just about as old on inauguration day in 2013 as Reagan when he was sworn into office. Thompson, like Reagan, grew up poor in a small town and worked many jobs and lived in the real world. Thompson is learned in the best sense of the word: He knows exactly why be believes what he believes, but he is also an excellent listener. He is a grownup.

Compare Sarah Palin's upbringing in rural Alaska, where if you didn't hunt you didn't eat, to Mr. Thompson's. Look at some of the jobs she has held. Waitress, journalist - both print and television, commercial fisherman (a business that she and her husband continue to own and operate).

Now compare Mr. Thompson's appearance today to Ronald Reagan's appearance in 1980. Ronald Reagan was an elderly man but he looked vigorous and healthy. The lines on Reagan's face made him look distinguished and wise. Fred Thompson on the other hand simply looks old, even decrepit. It isn't fair. It isn't right. But it is true that in the television age appearance matters to a very great degree. It is true that by 2012 the public might be angry enough at Obama to vote for a man who has aged poorly and looks much older than his actual years, but why take the chance on someone who has already proven himself to be a poor candidate?

(6) Thompson is not only a star of film and television, but Paul Harvey chose Thompson to stand in on his radio show -- a great compliment to Thompson's voice. He has spent decades in all areas of communication and mastered them well.

True, but none of that did him any good in the 2008 primaries. Think about it people. Fred Thompson couldn't even beat JOHN MCCAIN in an election in which most of the people voting were conservative Republicans! That has got to tell you something! In fact let's make it a rule. If you couldn't even beat JOHN MCCAIN is a Republican primary then you shouldn't be allowed to enter ever again.

(7) No one, including his ex-wife, has a bad word to say about Thompson. The left can criticize him only as being "too old, too conservative, and too dumb." This, recall, is precisely what they said about Reagan.

Again, how is this different from Sarah? The left says that she is stupid. The left called Reagan an "amiable dunce". They said that Reagan was a dangerous extremest who would start WWIII with the Soviet Union. They say that Sarah is a warmonger who can't wait to nuke Iran.

If you go back to the beginning of Mr. Walker's essay he says that Romney, Pawlenty, Palin and Huckabee are not the "next Reagan" but that Fred Thompson is. Read Mr. Walker's entire piece over at AT without my comments and then answer this.

In what way does Mr. Walker think that Reagan and Thompson are similar?

They are both men, Republicans, both were once actors, both grew up poor in small towns and both are honest men.

What does Mr. Walker have to say about policy?

Basically nothing. In Mr. Walkers view to be the "next Reagan" one must only have a superficial surface resemblance to Reagan. You have to have grown up in a small town, been an actor and be an old man.

Now I don't think that Mr. Walker is indifferent to policy and I don't think that he is overly concerned with a candidate's personal story. It's just that Mr. Walker loves Fred Thompson.

Mr. Walker is so in love with Fred Thompson that he is blind to both Mr. Thompson's deficiencies as a candidate and to Governor Palin's strengths. That blindness causes Mr. Walker to miss both how much Sarah Palin's personal story tracks with Ronald Reagan's and, for that matter with Fred Thompson's, and how poorly Mr. Thompson campaigned in 2008.

Does Mr. Walker really believe that four more years of age will make Fred Thompson a more attractive and energetic candidate in 2012?

Sarah at the Tea Party

This is 40 minutes long, but worth the time.

What the GOP needs to do

Steve McCann offers some good advice to conservatives going forward to November and then 2012:

The only way to defeat the Left is to stop playing by their rules.

First, it must be understood that the enemy we are fighting, the Liberals or the Left, makes up 20% of the country's population. Moderates are 36%, and conservatives are more than 40%. Based on that breakdown, one might assume that something like 67% of moderates lean to the conservative view. Thus, 64% of the citizenry are potential voters against what is happening in Congress and the White House.

Why does the conservative coalition allow 20% of the people to dictate how or why campaigns are conducted? Why do conservatives still curry favor from the once-mainstream media, who in a marketing death wish choose to appeal to this same 20%? Why, within this alliance, is there so much suspicion among each faction? And lastly, why is it not understood that only by the in-place organization of the Republican Party, under conservative control, can the current tide in Washington be reversed?

Conservatives must discipline themselves to stop being so thin-skinned about what the media, bloggers, and pundits on the Left say about them. These immature and self-righteous blowhards must be ignored and allowed to talk among themselves without any response from anyone on the right. The only response necessary is to correct or rebut immediately and firmly the mistakes and misrepresentations of the once-mainstream media.

The Tea Party Movement, instead of reveling in its declared independence, should immediately either join forces with or take over the local Republican Party establishment in its respective county or state.

Each person has one political or social issue that is of the highest importance to him. Regardless of what it is, everyone must now realize that without individual freedom and liberty, plus a limited government -- all of which are now under massive assault by the Obama administration -- it matters little what that issue is.

In order to overcome the Democrats' misuse of "community organizations" and biased election laws and officials to skew close elections, the members of the conservative coalition must turn out in massive numbers to vote and support one political party.

Everyone must stop the absurd belief that one should vote for the person and not the party. The lesson of the passage of the Health Care Reform Act in Congress should never be forgotten: There is no such thing as a "conservative Democrat" once installed in Congress. There is a major difference between the parties. Conservatives can influence what happens in the Republican Party; they cannot do so in the Democratic Party.

Above all, everyone in the current coalition opposing what is happening in Washington, D.C. must unite behind one theme and put all differences aside. That cause should be this: For future generations, the United States must remain the dominant global economic force able to underwrite being the unrivaled military power in the world. The destructive path the current government in Washington has chosen will relegate our country to long-term economic stagnation and secondary world status.

The upcoming midterm election is one of the most pivotal in history. Despite the current optimism surrounding the outcome of the November 2010 election, the conservative movement will not triumph unless it unites, remains disciplined, and above all, understands and learns from its adversaries.

The overwhelming and unexpected victory in Massachusetts should not be allowed to lead to complacency or overconfidence. The Democrats and the Obama administration will be more determined than ever to hold on to the power necessary to transform the United States into their image.

I have added emphasis to what I consider to be the key elements of Mr. McCann's argument.

First we must stop playing by the left's rules. Conservatives are the majority and should begin acting like it.

Consider this. Rush Limbaugh has more listeners on Manhattan island than MSNBS has viewers in the entire nation. Look at the ratings for the nightly network news broadcasts and look at sales figures for your average daily broadsheet newspaper.

Then look at the ratings of Fox News and conservative talk radio.

What we have been calling the "Mainstream Media" is not, not any longer. What was once the mainstream media has become a niche product serving the left-wing 20% of the population and using its rapidly dwindling reservoir of credibility to make that small minority look far larger than it is and giving them a vastly exaggerated influence on the nation's politics.

The media which is truly "mainstream", that is reflecting the beliefs and values of the majority of the people is now the "alternative media" of talk radio the internet and Fox News.

Conservatives need to internalize this truth and begin to live by it. This doesn't mean shutting out the Old Media the way Obama tried to freeze out Fox. What it means is that when being interviewed by someone from network news or the New York Times you are for all intents and purposes talking to someone from your opponent's campaign and act accordingly.

Then to get your message out you rely on Sean Hannity or Chris Wallace to interview you fairly.

The Tea Party movement does need to explicitly join with the Republican party however that cuts both ways. If the polls in a state or district show that in a three way race the Republican candidate would both get fewer votes than a hypothetical Tea Party candidate then the Republicans need to understand that when the Tea Party folks have been fully brought on board then it is them who will be in charge.

This is so important that I'm going to say it again. In those places (and they are many) where the Tea Party had more credibility than the GOP it needs to be understood by everyone that when the Tea Party has been brought under the GOP umbrella it is for the explicit purpose of putting the Tea Party people in the driver's seat - not to bring the Tea Party under the control of the GOP establishment!

The statement about voting for the party not the man may seem controversial. It goes against what many have always believed was the height of political wisdom. However it is the absolute truth. The parties are so different that the worst Republican will almost always be better than the best Democrat. The only exception to this would be getting rid of a Republican whose voting record makes them hard to tell apart from a Democrat.

Consider this. If the two parties really were the same then Obama's socialized medicine plan would have already sailed through both houses with broad bipartisan support and have already been signed into law. The same would be true of Cap and Trade. And amnesty for illegal aliens. And a great many other things which have not happened because of united opposition from the GOP.

I would also add this point that Mr. McCann did not cover. The GOP needs new leadership. While I am proud of the way Republicans in the House and Senate have held the line against Obama's radical agenda it is not enough to be the party of opposition. We must also present a program for people to vote for in the affirmative sense and the GOP is not doing that in any coherent way.

Right now he leadership of the party seems to be thinking that all they need to do to win in November is sit back and let the Democrats continue to destroy themselves. This may work in the short term to regain the House in 2010 and even the Senate and White House in 2012 but it will not serve to form the foundation of a long term Republican dominance.

When you get right down to it the central theme of Barack Obama's campaign was that he was not George W Bush. Since taking office Obama has governed in a way which is inexplicable unless you understand that the central theme of his government also is that he is not George W Bush.

We see how well that is working out for him.

The GOP must avoid the situation of being elected but without a clear mandate by developing a clear set of goals, publicizing those goals and then running our House, Senate and presidential races on the promise to fulfill those goals.

My advice on exactly what goals we should set would be to concentrate on restoring economic prosperity, securing America's energy independence and defeating the Islamofascist enemy.

We have until November to make the case for a return to Republican dominance in Washington. Please let us not screw it up.

Palin closes in on Obama

From the Los Angeles Times:

Lordy, Lordy, Lordy, look what the pollsters just brought in.

A pair of new surveys revealing that Democrat President Obama is still declining and has hit a new low in job approval among Americans just 56 weeks after they elected him with a decided margin.

And -- wait for it -- Republican Sarah Palin is successfully selling a whole lot more than books out there on the road. Even among those not lining up in 10-degree weather to catch a glimpse of pretty much the only political celebrity the GOP has these days.

First, el jefe. Facing double-digit unemployment, rising spending, deficits and Afghan war casualties plus a keystone but stalled healthcare reform effort that caused a rare Sunday presidential visit to Capitol Hill, Obama recently fell below 50% job approval for the first time.

Then, last week's deft dance of rhetoric over sending reinforcements to Afghanistan but, on the other foot, bringing them home quickly maybe gave him a brief boost. That, however, collapsed with equal rapidity.

Obama's new Gallup Poll job approval number is 47%. Last month it was 53%.

Regular Ticket readers will recall how in this space in late November we pointed out that Obama's closely-watched job approval slide was coinciding with Palin's little-noticed rise in favorability. And it appeared they might cross somewhere in the 40s.

Well, ex-Sen. Obama, meet ex-Gov. Palin.

The new CNN/Opinion Research Poll shows Palin now at 46% favorable, just one point below her fellow basketball fan.

(The same poll, btw, has bad news for Dick Cheney-haters; the outspoken former VP has climbed out of the 29% basement back up to 39% now. How do you suppose he's done that without a new book? But that's another story.)

Not that either Palin or Obama will admit caring about such trivial things as disparate political polls....

Now would all the people who have been saying things like "sure Palin's great, but she's just too unpopular" shut the frak up!

If you don't think she would make a good president fine, just say so. But stop this "she can't win" whine. Like I've told you all along when the people get to meet her, unfiltered by McCain campaign staffers who hated her because she is conservative, they will love her.

Let's remember something. Come 2012 anyone who will not vote for Sarah Palin because she is "too conservative" will wind up voting for Barack Obama anyway no matter who the Republicans run. Colin Powell and a whole raft of so-called "moderates" proved that. When the Republican party nominated exactly the kind of moderate candidate they had been telling us to nominate they repaid the GOP by voting for Obama.

40% of the people in this country identify themselves as conservative. 20% identify themselves as liberal. That means that to win a presidential election Democrats have to convince 30% plus 1 either that they really aren't all that liberal or that being liberal is the way to go.

Republicans, on the other hand, only have to convince 10% plus 1 that conservatism better serves the nation - provided that they can convince the conservative base that their candidate is genuinely conservative.

Which is easier, to persuade 30% of a lie or 10% of the truth?

High-Tech Rape?

Robin of Berkley has an excellent piece up on American Thinker today which shins the spotlight on one of the nastier aspects of the continuing plague of Palin Derangement Syndrome which is gripping the Left, especially its propaganda organs - otherwise known as the mainstream media. Robin's point here reminded me of Clarance Thomas' characterization of the attempt to sabotage his Supreme Court appointment with baseless charges of sexual misconduct as a "high-tech lynching".

The Wilding of Sarah Palin

By Robin of Berkeley

When I was in college, I read a book that changed my life. It was Susan Brownmiller's tome, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, which explained rape as an act of power, not just lust. What I found particularly chilling was the chapter on war -- how rape is used to terrorize a population and destroy the enemy's spirit.

While edifying, the book magnified the vulnerability I already felt as a female. Fear of rape became a constant dread, and I sought a solution that would help shield me from danger.

The answer: seek safe harbor within the Democratic Party. I even became an activist for feminist causes, including violence against women. Liberalism would protect me from the big bad conservatives who wished me harm.

Like most feminists, it was a no brainer to become a Democrat. Liberal men, not conservatives, were the ones devoted to women's issues. They marched at my side in support of abortion rights. They were enthusiastic about women succeeding in the workplace.

As time went on, I had many experiences that should have made me rethink my certainty. But I remained nestled in cognitive dissonance -- therapy jargon for not wanting to see what I didn't want to see.

One clue: the miscreants who were brutalizing me didn't exactly look Reagan-esque. In middle and high schools, they were minority kids enraged about forced busing. On the streets of New York City and Berkeley, they were derelicts and hoodlums.

Another red flag: while liberal men did indeed hold up those picket signs, they didn't do anything else to protect me. In fact, their social programs enabled bad behavior and bred chaos in urban America. And when I was accosted by thugs, those leftist men were missing in action.

What else should have tipped me off? Perhaps the fact that so many men in ultra left Berkeley are sleaze bags. Rarely a week goes by that I don't hear stories from my young female clients about middle aged men preying on them. With the rationale of moral relativism, these creeps feel they can do anything they please.

What finally woke me up were the utterances of bitch, witch, and monster toward Hillary Clinton and her supporters early last year. I was shocked into reality: the trash talk wasn't coming from conservatives but from male and female liberals.

I finally beheld what my eyes had refused to see: that leftists are Mr. and Ms. Misogyny. Both the males and the females don't care a whit about women.

Women are continually sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. If under Radical Islam women are enshrouded and stoned and beheaded, so be it.

My other epiphanies:those pony tailed guys were not marching for abortion rights because they cherished women's reproductive freedom. It was to keep women available for free and easy sex.

And the eagerness for women to make good money? If women work hard, leftist men don't have to.

Then along came Sarah, and the attacks became particularly heinous. And I realized something even more chilling about the Left. Leftists not only sacrifice and disrespect women.

It's far worse than that: many are perpetuators.

The Left's behavior towards Palin is not politics as usual. By their laser focus on her body and her sexuality, leftists are defiling her.

They are wilding her. And they do this with the full knowledge and complicity of the White House.

The Left has declared war on Palin because she threatens their existence. Democrats need women dependent and scared so that women, like blacks, will vote for liberals.

A strong, self sufficient woman, Palin eschews their protection. Drop her off in the Alaskan bush, and she'll survive just fine, thank you very much. Palin doesn't need or want anything from liberals, not hate crimes legislation that coddles her, not abortion, which she abhors.

Palin is a woman of deep and abiding faith. She takes no marching orders from messiah like wannabes, like Obama.

And so the Left must try to destroy her. And they are doing this in the most malicious of ways:

By symbolically raping her.

Just like a perpetuator, they dehumanize her by objectifying her body. They undress her with their eyes.

They turn her into a piece of ass.

Liberals do this by calling her a c___t, ogling her legs, demeaning her with names like "sexy flight attendant," and "Trailer Park Barbie," and exposing her flesh on the cover of Newsweek.

And from The Atlantic Magazine's Andrew Sullivan: "Sarah Palin's vagina is the font of all evil in the galaxy."

Nothing is off limits, not actress Sandra Bernhard's wish that Palin be gang raped or the sexualizing of Palin's daughters.

As every woman knows, leering looks, lurid words, and veiled threats are intended to evoke terror. Sexual violence is a form of terrorism.

The American Left has a long history of defiling people to control and break them. The hard core 60‘s leftists were masters of guerilla warfare, like the Symbionese Liberation Army repeatedly raping Patty Hearst. Huey P. Newton sent a male Black Panther to the hospital, bloodied and damaged, from a punishment of sodomy.

The extreme Left still considers themselves warriors, righteous soldiers for their Marxist cause. With Palin, they use sexual violence as part of their military arsenal.

Palin is not the only intended victim. As the book, Against Our Will described, the brutality is also aimed at men. By forcing men to witness Palin's violation, the Left tries to emasculate conservative men by rendering them powerless.

The wilding of any woman is reprehensible. But defiling a mother of five, with a babe in her arms, and a grandmother, is particularly obscene. It is, of course, Palin's unapologetic motherhood that provides fuel to the leftist fire.

Because, as a mother, and a fertile woman, Palin is as close to the sacred as a person gets. She is not just politically pro life. Palin's whole being emanates life, in stark contrast to the darkness of the left, the life despoilers.

These "progressives" are so alienated from the sacred that they perceive nothing as sacred. And they will destroy anyone whose goodness shines a mirror on their pathology. The spiritually barren must annihilate the vital and the fertile.

It has been almost two years since I woke up and broke up with liberalism. During these many months, I've discovered that everything I believed was wrong.

But the biggest shock of all has been realizing that the Democratic Party is hardly an oasis for women. Now that it has been infiltrated by the hard Left, it's a dangerous place for women, children, and other living things.

In the wilding of Sarah Palin, the Left shows its true colors. Rather than a shelter for the vulnerable, leftists will mow down any man, woman, or child who gets in their way. Not a movement of hope and change, it is a cauldron of hate.

From Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.

In these dark times, with spiritually bankrupt people at the helm, thank God we have bright lights like Sarah Palin to illuminate the darkness.

A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a psychotherapist and a recovering liberal in Berkeley.

Conservatives have long remarked on the hypocrisy of the left which supposedly champions women's rights yet can't think of any way to express disagreement with Michelle Malkin's political views other than to call her an "Asian whore".

I think that Robin is spot on in her analysis. As hysterical as the left could get in it's attacks on George W Bush there never was a sexual component in them. Yet with Gov. Palin they have enormous trouble coming off the sexual component of their attacks. And left-wing women seem just as eager to participate in this high-tech rape as left-wing men.

I looked at the comments to this on AT since I was curious to see how leftists would respond (and there are always leftists lurking on AT and other conservative sites) yet no one had the guts to weigh in on this issue.

It seems that Robin shined the light on a truth so ugly that even the most delusionaly committed leftist wackjob can't bring him/herself to engage with it directly.

However I did see this comment by someone identified as Mabelee:

You are right in saying that "rape" is aimed at men, too, to terrorize them by making them watch. Look at the number of prominent conservative men who have announced that Palin is not a serious contender for the presidency simply because of the bashing she's taken from the left. They see her as "spoiled goods". Wow! This is all making sense now. Sarah isn't letting the left define who she is and I won't let them define who she is either.

This is an excellent observation. The Republican establishment hates Sarah Palin because she is not one of them. Their ideal Republican is someone like John McCain or Bob Dole. They hate Gov. Palin for the same reason they hated (and in their hearts continue to hate) Ronald Reagan.

But there are many more Republicans who distance themselves from Mrs. Palin because they figure that she has been so damaged by the attacks that she cannot recover politically or because they don't want to get a dose of what the left is dishing out against Sarah by publicly identifying with her.

To that first group I point out that Sarah Palin's poll numbers are moving up not just among Republicans but among Independents and even Democrats. As the people have more opportunities to get to know her they are finding out how wrong the media caricatures were. Eventually you are going to be in the embarrassing position of having to run along behind the Palin bandwagon shouting "me too, me too!".

To that second group of Republican "men" who are simply too gutless to come out in support of someone who is currently being slimed by the left and it's attack-dog media I have only this to say. You are utterly and absolutely beneath contempt. You are nothing but a worthless pack of geldings who should be stripped naked and whipped through the streets of your home towns then be clothed in burkas and sent to Somalia where you can live out your worthless lives as junior "wives" of Islamic warlords or pirates.

To the left I have this to say. What you say about Sarah Palin or anything else does not bother me in the least. It has been more than a decade since I have recognized any common humanity with you. Your words have no more power than the barking of a flea-bitten mange covered stray mongrel dog rooting around in the city dump. At best you can occasionally rise to the level of a pack of monkeys screaming and throwing feces at something that frightens them.

But under no circumstances do I consider any thought or opinion you might now or ever have to be of the slightest interest or import. Nothing you might ever have to say about anything can be of the slightest consequence to any civilized participant in the human race. The only reason that you can not be hunted down and exterminated like the malignant vermin you are is the unhappy fact that you possess DNA which identifies you as biologically "human" and so entitles you to ghe same protections under law which real people enjoy.

Conservatives, and other actual human beings, should take the left's hysterics about Palin as a sign that she is the best person to undo their evil, since if she really were nothing but a stupid c--t they would largely ignore her - after all when was the last time you heard a leftist rant against Peggy Noonan?

National Socialist Health Care passes the House

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Democratic-controlled House has narrowly passed landmark health care reform legislation, handing President Barack Obama a hard won victory on his signature domestic priority.

Republicans were nearly unanimous in opposing the plan that would expand coverage to tens of millions of Americans who lack it and place tough new restrictions on the insurance industry.

The 220-215 vote late Saturday cleared the way for the Senate to begin a long-delayed debate on the issue that has come to overshadow all others in Congress.

When I heard this morning that the House had passed this with a narrow margin under the cover of darkness I had the strong impression that it was nothing more than a bit of political theater. The impression was strongly reinforced by this article on the Financial Times website.

Many Senate watchers are predicting that the measure will die a quiet death in the upper chamber.

When I heard that the House approved the bill I figured that a deal had been cut with enough of the 80+ Democrats who were planning to vote no on the bill to let it pass. They change their vote to yea and and give the little tin messiah and San Fran Nan their little cockadoodle of victory and in exchange it goes nowhere in the Senate.

The thinking is that by next November the voters will have forgotten who voted for a socialized medicine bill that never became law.

I doubt that it will work. The electorate has been too angered by this latest attempt to deprive them of their liberty and their wealth. Add the shear arrogance of the legislators defying such clearly expressed disapproval from the voters and you have a recipe for another 1994 style bloodletting in 2010.

But there will be one important difference. While Bill Clinton had as his number one priority being reelected so that he could continue to enjoy the perks of the office Obama actually believes his own propaganda about being a messianic figure and will redouble his efforts to transform the nation if he senses that he is losing the public.

How this will play out against a Republican dominated congress (or at least a GOP dominated House) will be interesting to see.

Given that Obama is a Marxist whose heroes are people like Arafat, Castro, Che and Chavez it is not impossible that he could attempt some kind of end run around congress by some kind of declaration of martial law. This could set the United States up for the kind of constitutional crisis that Honduras is currently weathering.

Would it not be amusing to see Obama hold up in the Venezuelan embassy issuing manifestos and calls for his supporters to arm themselves and descend on Washington to return him to power.

You know, the more I think about this the more possible it seems. . .

Can you imagine what a lunatic asylum it would be sealed in with Obama and his loyalists, sort of like the fuhrer bunker under Berlin, but less mature and more delusional.

Cry me a river

MADISON, Wis. (Reuters) - A year after his historic election, President Barack Obama sought to remind Americans on Wednesday the biggest problems he is grappling with -- from the economy to the war in Afghanistan -- are the legacy of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

With his approval ratings down from once-lofty levels and Tuesday's Democratic election losses raising questions about his political clout, Obama held no special ceremony to mark the anniversary of his election as America's first black president.

He instead traveled to Wisconsin to appear before a friendly audience in a school gymnasium and promote education as a pillar of his economic recovery efforts.

Obama was elected on a promise of sweeping change after eight years under Bush, but many Americans are increasingly expressing impatience that his pledge has yet to bear fruit.

He used the preamble of his speech to insist his administration had indeed had important successes and also to remind Americans of the litany of daunting challenges he inherited when he took office in January.

"One year ago, Americans all across this country went to the polls and cast ballots for the future they wanted to see," Obama said.

But he said his administration was also confronted with a "financial crisis that threatened to plunge our economy into a Great Depression, the worst that we've seen in generations."

"We had record deficits, two wars, frayed alliances around the world," Obama added.

President Obama, or the manchild as Rush calls him, is emotionally incapable of accepting responsibility. Credit he will claim even when it is not due him, but responsibility is alien to him.

This is why Mr. Obama's crybaby whinging about the mess the previous president left him with has to be examined closely.

The Financial Mess. It is true that exercised almost no restraint on a Republican congress that was determined to spend like Democrats. It is also true that Bush authored some big spending programs of his own. But here are some facts.

One, while it is true that the first big budget-busting chunk of money to be spent by the government to help the financial markets recover (TARP) was a Bush administration program it enjoyed more support among Democrats than Republicans. Then Senator Obama supported and voted for TARP, as did the entire House and Senate Democrat leadership.

Two, the meltdown in the mortgage lending industry which triggered the current financial crisis was caused by government policies which were authored by Democrats. The idea that people should be given home loans that they have almost no chance of being able to pay back because everybody has a "right" to a house was something so stupid that not even a RINO like Lindsey Graham could have come up with it. Ultra-left legislators like Barny Frank acted as human shields to protect Fannie Mae and Fredie Mac from the kind of regulation (which George W Bush wanted to impose on them) which might have prevented the current crisis.

Three, Obama complains about Bush's deficit but he has increased that deficit by orders of magnitude and is seeking to increase it even more. If the problem is that Bush spent too much isn't the answer to spend LESS?

Two Wars. Yes we are fighting two wars in response to an attack on American soil which killed more Americans than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Afghanistan was not simply sheltering Osama bin Laden he was acting as an unofficial participant in the Taliban government of that nation. And Saddam Hussein was writing large checks to the families of suicide bombers, giving more and more young men - and women - incentive to strap on an explosive belt and murder innocent people.

Frayed Alliances. If Mr. Obama is so worried about our relationship with our allies then why is he offering a series of calculated insults to those same allies? Obama has insulted the British people as a whole and both the Prime Minister and Queen individually. The French have been so disappointed with Obama that they have largely given up on trying to forge a closer relationship with the US and are now looking to do military and nuclear deals in Asia and the Middle East. And in the latest flipping off of a European ally Obama is boycotting the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The reasons for Obama's refusal to acknowledge the significance of the event which symbolizes the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany are not entirely clear but among them are probably these.

The defeat of the Soviet Empire was done before Obama became president and in Obama's world the USA only became capable of doing anything good when he was elected president.

Ronald Reagan was responsible for the final victory over the Soviets and Obama hates Reagan because Reagan, as a free market capitalist and enemy of big-brother nanny state government, is the exact opposite of Obama.

The celebrations will be held at the Brandenburg Gate which is where Ronald Reagan made his "tear down this wall" speech. The Gate's reopening is a symbol of German reunification which was only possible because of the fall of the USSR. As a Marxist Obama resents the fact that the world's first communist nation was beaten by the capitalist West.

And finally, and with what we know about Obama's massive narcissism perhaps the most likely reason for Obama's refusal to attend the festivities in Germany is that Obama had wanted to address the German people from the Brandenburg Gate during the campaign but had to back off after too many objections were raised about his plan to use such a potent German symbol as a prop in a campaign speech. Having had his whim denied Obama is still in a snit and he won't go unless they beg him.

And we won't even talk about how Obama has alienated the Israelis (one of our strongest allies in the world and the only true friend we have in the region).

For a president who was supposed to heal the damage allegedly caused by the Bush administration in our international relationships seems to be doing little more than driving away our closest friends.

I like the fact that Obama keeps trying to play the "Bush card". Every time he does he simply makes himself look smaller and less to be taken seriously. In the short term this is bad for America because as our enemies take the measure of the insignificant little punk that sits in the Oval Office they will be emboldened. However in the long run this is good for the country because it will pave the way for an easy GOP victory in 2012 as Sarah Palin, or any other conservative Republican, will win simply by demonstrating to the nation that they are a fully functioning adult.

The sleeping giant awakens

And is filled with a terrible resolve.

From The Washington Times:

This is one Mr. Deeds who apparently isn't going to town. The collapse of the Democratic campaign for governor of Virginia speaks volumes - chapters, anyway - about what the body politic is trying to tell Barack Obama's Democrats.

They're learning, painfully, that campaigning without George W. Bush is baffling, frustrating and scary. Worse, it offers a preview of what the congressional campaigning will be like next year. One Obama doorbell ringer, working neighborhoods in Northern Virginia for Creigh Deeds, says even the promise of free pizza can't lure faithful Democrats to a rally.

For weeks, The Washington Post, the house organ of the national Democratic Party, pounded away at Bob McDonnell, the Republican nominee, for having written politically incorrect term papers in graduate school, citing his master's thesis, which decried abortion, gender-bending and radical feminism, as proof that he doesn't like women very much.

Only a month ago, Mr. Deeds, the Post's horse in the race, wouldn't talk about anything but the McDonnell graduate-school thesis - maybe a boon to master's and doctoral candidates who can't get anybody but a professor to read their wit and wisdom, but, as it turns out, a bore to voters in Virginia. The public-opinion polls continue to show Mr. McDonnell ahead, despite all the Post's ineffective deeds, and with a lengthening lead.

Now Mr. Deeds doesn't want to talk about graduate-school scribbling at all, just as leaks from the Post newsroom reveal that the newspaper has a seven-part series ready for publication to prove that Bob McDonnell has had a lifelong hostility to those of the pink persuasion. He once pulled the pigtails of a little girl in the second grade, and as a third-grader he bounced a spitball, aimed at a male pal, off the shoulder of a girl two rows over. These are no doubt serious charges, violence against (tiny) women, sexual harassment and all that, but not likely to turn the tide of a runaway that is building in Virginia.

Suddenly, the White House is treating the bereft Mr. Deeds as if he's on the fourth day of a three-day underarm deodorant pad. Bill Clinton, accustomed to speaking to cheering thousands at a hundred grand a pop, was dispatched the other night to a Deeds rally to set the throng on fire with one of his late-October stumpwallopers. The rally, such as it was, was held not at an arena or a hotel - not even a Motel 6 - but in a campaign office in the Washington suburbs. The "throng" was counted in the dozens, about the size of a PTA meeting. Not even Bubba could dispel the gloom of a wake.

Didn't they learn anything when Clinton was president? Don't they remember how no one that Bill Clinton campaigned for actually won? Perhaps this was Obama's way of providing a scapegoat for Deeds' inevitable loss. After all the little tin messiah and Deeds were joined at the hip earlier in the campaign when everyone thought that Obama's anointment of a candidate would guarantee victory, but now that Deeds is sure to lose we can't have anything splash back and cast doubts on the deity of The One.

"These polls are either accurate, or they're not," he said, delivering an insight worthy of a Harvard political science professor. "So are the polls right? The answer is yes, no, and maybe." But what else could he say? Dispatched for mortuary duty, Bubba could only sympathize with the preacher called on to say something nice over the grave of the town bootlegger.

Barack Obama himself is offering the mere minimum of presidential support over the past seven days of the campaign, just mailing it in (even if delivering the mail in person). He'll make one last appearance with Mr. Deeds this week in Tidewater. Meanwhile, back in Washington, the president's political aides continue to dish the obsequies over a doomed candidate while pretending to pray for a miracle. So far no one has invoked Harry Truman, patron saint of doomed candidates, but there's still a week to go.

Mr. Deeds' friends are bitter about the anonymous voices peddling the discouraging word from the White House. "These 'anonymous voices' have decided those hard-working [down-ballot candidates] are just collateral damage in their effort to tell the world that if [Mr.] Deeds doesn't win, it is because he ignored advice," Paul Goldman, a former chairman of the Virginia Democratic Party, tells Politico, the Washington politics daily. "This isn't change we can believe in, but the same old, same old we voted out of office. Do they really believe their attempts to shield the president from blame is going to distract [Mr.] Obama's critics, much less change the arc of today's politics?"

Of course it won't, and that's what makes the Virginia race so scary for the president's men. Voters will use whatever club is available to "send a message," and sometimes, as any number of pols could tell you, the club is big, rough and means business.

Yes, a message is being sent. Here is another component of that message, from the Club for Growth:

Hoffman Surges Into Lead in NY-23
New CFG Poll shows Hoffman 31.3%, Owens 27.0%, Scozzafava 19.7%

Washington - A poll released today by the Club for Growth shows Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman surging into the lead in the special election in New York's 23rd congressional district to replace John McHugh, the former congressman who recently became Secretary of the Army.

The poll of 300 likely voters, conducted October 24-25, 2009, shows Conservative Doug Hoffman at 31.3%, Democrat Bill Owens at 27.0%, Republican Dede Scozzafava at 19.7%, and 22% undecided. The poll's margin of error is +/- 5.66%. No information was provided about any of the candidates prior to the ballot question.

This is the third poll done for the Club for Growth in the NY-23 special election, and Doug Hoffman is the only candidate to show an increase in his support levels in each successive poll. The momentum in the race is clearly with Hoffman.

"Hoffman now has a wide lead among both Republicans and Independents, while Owens has a wide lead among Democrats. Dede Scozzafava's support continues to collapse, making this essentially a two-candidate race between Hoffman and Owens in the final week," concluded Basswood Research's pollster Jon Lerner, who conducted the poll for the Club.

It would seem that voters in New York as well are using the vehicle of a special election to send a message to Washington about the direction that the little tin messiah and his Jackass Party are taking the nation.

As far as NY 23 goes Sozzafava is now the spoiler and should withdraw - that is if she truly has the best interests of the Republican party at heart.

But I doubt that she will. RINO's tend to be more hostile to genuine conservative than they ever are to left-liberalism. As the Queen of the RINO's Sozzafava will almost certainly think that denying the Palin wing of the GOP a victory is a more satisfying goal to achieve than denying the Pelosi-Obama wing of the Democrat party one.

Also we can only hope that events in New York will shame Newt Gingrich into shutting his stupid cake-hole.

Finally Rasmussen has more bad news for the Left as the residents of New Jersey (of all places) prepare to send the little tin messiah a message of their own:

With just a week to go in New Jersey’s closely contested race for governor, Republican Chris Christie holds a three-point advantage over incumbent Democratic Governor Jon Corzine.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in New Jersey show Christie with 46% of the vote and Corzine with 43%. While the margin is little changed from a week ago and the week before, the biggest news may be that support for independent candidate Chris Daggett has dropped four points to seven percent (7%). The number of undecided voters is down to four percent (4%).

The decline in support for Daggett comes in a week when several state newspapers endorsed Christie or Corzine, but none followed The (Newark) Star-Ledger’s lead and came out in favor of the independent candidate. Additionally, Christie began a new ad campaign linking Corzine and Daggett.

Christie leads by eight points among those who are certain they will show up and vote. A week ago, he was up by five among that group. Christie’s supporters are also less likely to say they might consider voting for someone else.

Of course 2010 and 2012 are a long way off in political terms however in politics trends like this rarely reverse themselves.

Sometimes it takes a Democrat president who is too arrogant and/or too stupid to hide what he and his party really believe to wake the public up and stir them to action. That happened in 1980 after four years of the almost unbelievably incompetent Carter administration and it happened again in 1996 after Hillary Clinton's bumbling attempt to impose a Stalinist socialized medicine scheme (now known as ObamaCare) on the nation made her the national face of the Democrat party.

Things are shaping up now to make 2010 a repeat of 1996 and 2012 an echo of 1980. The only thing that could save the Democrat party would be for B. Hussein Obama to emerge from the narcissistic fantasy world he is currently living in and realize that the "historic" nature of his presidency and his unparalleled skill at reading a teleprompter are not enough to keep the electorate somnolent in an era of double digit unemployment, a dollar in free-fall and growing international threats.

The problem for Democrats is that Mr. Obama is too arrogant to ever come to that realization, too stupid to know the right thing to do even if he did and too lazy to do the hard work to turn things around even if he did have the humility and good sense.

Far more satisfying to jet around the world on "date nights" with his wife, play golf and make speeches to handpicked crowds of brain-dead worshipers.

Good news from the Old Dominion

From American Thinker:

Good tidings from Virginia that may extend all the way across the nation. The coalition of voters that propelled Barack Obama to the White House is fragmenting and falling away, losing interest in Obama and unlikely to support other Democrats in future elections- at least if the Virginia gubernatorial election holds clues to the rest of the electorate. The anti-GOP wave has crested.

From the Washington Post regarding a poll of Virginians focus on potentially critical shifts among Obama's coalition:

First, just half of Virginians who say they voted for Obama last November say they are certain to vote in the gubernatorial election. That compares with two-thirds of those who say they backed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Second, there is a lack of energy in the African American community.

Third, the poll shows an even sharper falloff in interest among younger voters. Last November, they accounted for 21 percent of the Virginia electorate. In the new poll, they account for 8 percent of likely voters, suggesting that their interest in politics might not extend much beyond the president.

Fourth, the intensity gap between Democrats and Republicans has done a complete reversal. On the eve of last November's presidential election, 67 percent of Obama supporters nationally said they enthusiastically backed his candidacy, compared with 41 percent of McCain's supporters. The Post poll found that just 20 percent of Deeds's voters say they are enthusiastic about supporting him, compared with 35 percent of McDonnell's supporters.

The coattails are gone, but perhaps there are other factors in play. A shift among independents nationally has been noted; generic polls show Republicans gaining; approval of the President has been on a downward trajectory for months; esteem for Congress -- Democratically dominated -- is at a low; young people may be busy looking for a job rather than focusing on supporting a party that promises to hit them with health care charges.

Now the GOP will have to finally figure out a way forward to capitalize on this dissatisfaction. A coherent message with less fratricidal friction would help. So would a commanding figure with great charisma and a reputation for competency (since Obama is increasingly being perceived as incompetent). There is not magic formula but the ingredients are there for a comeback.

Usually when someone says that the GOP needs something like "less fratricidal friction" they mean that conservatives should just shut up and unite behind someone like John McCain.

How'd that work out last time?

We have to give the people someone and something to vote for rather than just hoping that they will vote against the Democrats. And just nominating a RINO moderate because it is "his turn" will not cut it.

As far as I'm concerned the first rule of Republican presidential candidate selection should be that anyone who couldn't even beat John McCain in the last round of GOP primaries shouldn't even be considered this time around.

The second rule is that we don't need to look in the Senate for our candidate. The results of the 2008 election proves that Senators make bad candidates and worse presidents.

In my view Palin is the best candidate we have. She has executive experience as Governor of Alaska and a proven ability to win elections. She was almost single handedly able to carry even a presidential candidate as poor as John McCain to victory. Imagine what she could have done on her own.

The RINO's had their chance to win a national election with McCain. The question now is are they willing to shut up and unite behind a conservative.

Checking in on Sarah

C. Edmond Wright looks at how things are working our for Sarah Palin:

Now correct me if I am wrong, but didn't I hear the Jurassic media bury the career of Sarah Palin just last July? And weren't they joined in this mockery by the so-called conservative elites like David Brooks and Karl Rove and Joe Scarborough and so on?

Wasn't Mo Dowd just delirious in fact that the wicked witch (of her world) was dead?

Well, just who is looking out of touch and foolish now? Hint: It isn't the Killa from Wasilla. And yes, I think that is her Brinks Truck in fact. One of them anyway.

The temptation here is to rub the seven million dollar book advance in the face of all her naysayers -- then add that the book is coming out early and in fact breaking all kinds of sales records though not even edited yet. But we won't do that for Mo's sake.

Another temptation is to chide the Jurassics and the elites who were snickering at the thought she could command the six figures fees the big boys get for speaking engagements -- with the reports that she is currently sifting through some eleven hundred offers. Cha-ching. We won't make a big deal over that either. It might make Colin Powell blush.

What is the real story here is that given a set of singularly difficult circumstances, Governor Palin made a counter-intuitive and gutsy decision that has already proven right for all parties involved. We call that brilliance. We call that effective leadership.

Perhaps inside the beltway, those measures of wisdom and intelligence and instinctive leadership are out of date. All too often in that world, decisions are made by what is the safe play and by what will play well with the pundits. Damn the consequences to others, just pull that focus group report and make sure we look good to the media.

That was not how Palin measured her decision. She was willing to look outside the box for a possibility, and when she found an idea that worked for everyone she grabbed it. Quickly. And she never looked back. Why Dan Rather might call that "...courage..."

Palin did not seem to worry a bit about how her decision would look to the pundit class as she strode to the microphones and confidently gave a shocking announcement that she knew would bring down a hell storm of self-important derision. She did not flinch. She made her decision, announced it, and went about making it work for all involved.

And it has. It has worked for the state of Alaska, where their small government is no longer burdened by over the top media scrutiny and an endless string of nuisance legal actions. Alaska can get back to being Alaska, and the state is governed by a man who shares Palin's vision for the state without having one of the biggest media targets in the history of the country painted on his back.

What? You don't know his name? Good. Alaskans probably like it that way.

And the resignation has certainly worked for Palin's family and the former governor herself no doubt. They no longer have the targets painted on their backs either. They no longer are burdened by a mountain of legal debt and the mountain of legal debt is no longer growing like it was. Win. Win. Win.

Heck, it looks like the family will be able to travel the entire country at the request of many other people happy to pay their expenses and a nice honorarium as well. That's not a bad educational experience, and I even doubt the former governor will burden us with stories about how much she has sacrificed while doing all of this jet setting.

Along the way, she will be exposed to millions and millions of American voters who will see her in person or see local coverage of her appearances. She will curry favor with many Republicans and other conservative candidates across the country. Her rolodex will be engorged with valuable contacts. Her work in this area is likely to have a major impact on the mid-term elections of 2010 in fact. If it goes well for the GOP, she will get much of the credit in all likelihood.

There will be sound bytes from her on any number of weighty issues. That started last week in Asia in fact. Even Charles Krauthammer will be impressed. By the time 2012 rolls around - just in case she has that year circled in her day planner - any notion of her lack of depth or experience will have been clearly dispelled.

Tina Fey shooting the moose will be a distant memory. Charlie Gibson will be the one thrown to the curb in his chosen profession. And I doubt Katie Couric will age as gracefully as Sarah Palin will.

To summarize, every single ramification of Palin's resignation has come up aces. For her, her family, her state and even for any future political ambitions, it was the right call.

Even in the one arena the Jurassic media and conservative elites thought they were really expert -- politics -- Palin has trumped them in that too. It is almost 100% certain that she will come in to the year 2012 with a lot more money, a lot more exposure, a lot more commentary on the big issues, a lot more potential campaign workers across the 57 states and a lot more favors owed than she ever could have by hanging around Juneau for two more years. Yes, even in purely political terms, Palin's business and personal decision has proven to be superior to what the pundits thought she should have done.

Now of course this is sending the pundit class in the D.C.-Manhattan corridor into the vapors, not to mention shock. They never have been able to make one correct assessment about Palin and her relationship with the American people and their reaction to their own ineptness is to hate Palin herself.

Millions of Americans are not surprised however. Why do you think so many are buying her book already. You can call those "votes" and also "future campaign contributors."

They are not caught off guard by the brilliance of her decision. They knew it all along.

And I add proudly, so did American Thinker. Our contributing authors penned no fewer than 9 articles in the two weeks following Palin's resignation, and every single one of them supported her decision as wise and several pieces were scarily prescient in how they predicted just this type of success for her in light of the decision.

It is obvious that Palin knew what she was doing all along. Who knows what she will do in 2012. It doesn't matter at the moment. What matters is that her decision to resign as Governor of Alaska will put her in a far superior position for whatever she does or does not pursue.

I think that's hilariously ironic. Betcha she does too. So who's laughing now?

The world is Sarah's oyster. It will be fun to see how the left and the "Republican" establishment try to spin her triumphs into more "evidence" that she is an idiot.

President Palin. Get used to it.

Attn: GOP

The definition of insanity is repeating the same actions and expecting a different result.

From The Politico:

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been quietly assembling the blueprint of a presidential campaign and will announce Thursday the support of a group of high-level political strategists and donors, complemented by a handful of top new media consultants, POLITICO has learned.

Pawlenty, under the radar of D.C.’s political community, has locked up some of the key operatives who engineered then-President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign — a significant feat for a little-known Midwestern politician.

The moves underscore, and will lend credence to, the emerging belief among many establishment Republicans that Pawlenty is becoming the sole viable alternative to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a potential Republican primary rival. The Minnesota governor has even gone so far as to contact some of Romney’s former supporters.

These "establishment Republicans" are the RINO assholes who pissed away the party's majority in congress and gave us John frakin' McCain as our nominee last time! Do we still want to listen to them?

Has everyone forgotten the fear that gripped the GOP when it looked like McCain was going to pick Pawlenty as his running mate? We knew that adding another useless RINO to the ticket wold make absolutely certain what was already highly likely - a Democrat in the White House come Jan. 2009.

As I have pointed out and as Rush Limbaugh has pointed out the left is showing us who they fear, who they think can beat Obama and that is Sarah Palin.

Nothing else explains the continuing insane jihad against the former governor.

Let me repeat. When the entire Democrat party AND the RINO Republican "establishment" (who are responsible for the GOP's current problems) collectively shit themselves in blind terror at the mere mention of Sarah Palin's name that should tell real conservatives (also known as real Americans) that WE HAVE OUR CANDIDATE!

Who the enemy fears

Mark Steyn offers the GOP some truly excellent advice:

This piece by Lloyd Marcus, a black conservative, is called "Stop Allowing The Left To Set The Rules", and deals with the alleged racism of the anti-Obama opposition. As Mr Marcus notes:

The Left published a cartoon depicting former black Secretary of State Condolezza Rice as an Aunt Jemima; another depicted Rice as a huge-lipped parrot for her Massa Bush. Neither were considered racist by their creators or publishers, or even widely condemned on the Left.

In opposition to black Republican Michael Steele's campaign torun for U.S. Senate, a liberal blogger published a doctored photo of Steele in black face and big red lips made to look like a minstrel. The caption read, "Simple Sambo wants to move to the big house". Not one Democrat denounced these racist portrayals of black conservatives.

True. Nobody minds liberal commentators expressing the hope that Clarence Thomas "will die early from heart disease like many black men", etc. Contemporary identity-group politics are prototype one-party states: If you're a black Republican Secretary of State, you're not really black. If you're a female Republican vice-presidential nominee, you're not really a woman. What's racist and sexist here is the notion that, if you're black or female, your politics is determined by your group membership.

But, if we're talking about letting the left "set the rules", Mr Marcus' column reminded me of a larger point: Don't take your opponents at face value; listen to what they're really saying. What does the frenzy unleashed on Sarah Palin last fall tell us? What does Newsweek's "Mad Man" cover on Glenn Beck mean? Why have "civility" drones like Joe Klein so eagerly adopted Anderson Cooper's scrotal "teabagging" slur and characterized as "racists" and "terrorists" what are (certainly by comparison with the anti-G20 crowd) the best behaved and tidiest street agitators in modern history?

They're telling you who they really fear. Whom the media gods would destroy they first make into "mad men". Liz Cheney should be due for the treatment any day now.

Sad to say, many who should know better go along with it. Our old comrade David Frum wrote a piece called "Whose Side Is Glenn Beck On?" Well, in the space of a week Beck claimed the scalps of Van Jones, Acorn and that Yosi Sergant guy at the NEA, none of whom should ever have been anywhere near the corridors of power but who'd still be there if it weren't for Beck. So whoever's side he is on, it seems pretty clear he's not on the Obama Administration's. Hence, Media Matters' sudden obsession with such pressing concerns as Glenn's mom's three decade-old suicide.

The media would like the American right to be represented by the likes of Bob Dole and John McCain, decent old sticks who know how to give dignified concession speeches. Last time round, we went along with their recommendation. If you want to get rave reviews for losing gracefully, that's the way to go. If you want to win, look at whom the Democrats and their media chums are so frantic to destroy: That's the better guide to what they're really worried about.

I've been saying the same thing for years.

The left's attacks on Sarah Palin are an infallible sign that she is the one they most fear.

And as for David Frum he is just another "me-too" Republican who wants so desperately to be liked and accepted by the left. You'll also remember that he was a major cheerleader for amnesty a couple of years ago.

The Republican party listens to men like that at its own peril.

Good News!

From Rasmussen Reports:

Just 41% of voters nationwide now favor the health care reform proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s down two points from a week ago and the lowest level of support yet measured.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% are opposed to the plan.

Senior citizens are less supportive of the plan than younger voters. In the latest survey, just 33% of seniors favor the plan while 59% are opposed. The intensity gap among seniors is significant. Only 16% of the over-65 crowd Strongly Favors the legislation while 46% are Strongly Opposed.

For the first time ever, a slight plurality of voters now express doubt that the legislation will become law this year. Forty-six percent (46%) say passage is likely while 47% say it is not. Those figures include 18% who say passage is Very Likely and 15% who say it is Not at All Likely. Sixty percent (60%) are less certain.

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Democrats say the plan is at least somewhat likely to become law. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans disagree. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 34% say passage is at least somewhat likely while 58% say it is not.

This is why Obama was in such a tearing hurry to get congress to pass the legislation before the August recess despite the fact that it would not go into effect for years.

He, and/or his handlers knew, that once people got the chance to see exactly what Obama meant by "health care reform" the less they would like it.

The fact that support continues to fall while opposition continues to rise makes it far less likely that enough Representatives and Senators will be willing to defy public sentiment and vote for this legislative turd.

Another good thing about this is that as Obama keeps going out and pushing a plan which the majority of the public has already made up it's mind is bad he keeps losing credibility with the voters. This is reflected in his falling job approval and personal popularity numbers.

Keep it up Barry you're rapidly becoming the GOP's best friend.

All hail Jimmy the Second!

Jeremy Lott writing on the Politico:

When he ran for president, George W. Bush promised to be a modest reformer at home and a humble representative of the United States on the world stage. The Al Qaeda-organized-and-funded terrorist attacks of eight years ago changed all that. During his presidency, Bush created massive new government bureaucracies, sent troops into two wars and threatened more as part of America’s war on terror.

Barack Obama’s initial approach to the office of the presidency has been as grandiose as Bush’s was restrained. It’s not hard to recall that he ran as a transformative candidate, promising sweeping, though somewhat fuzzy, “change” during the campaign.

For the first several months of his presidency, Obama has labored to deliver on that pledge. He pushed a controversial stimulus bill through Congress to help rev up the economy, turned Bush’s reluctant bailout of Chrysler and General Motors into a giant government auto buyout and appointed a record number of “czars” to help regulate bureaucracies in both public and formerly private sectors.

Then, Step 2. Obama is trying to fundamentally alter the American economy by backing sweeping environmental, labor and health care legislation. He wants to change the way Americans consume energy, unionize and see their doctors.

So far, he’s failing miserably. Consider the following:

• Cap-and-trade legislation had to limp over the finish line in the House of Representatives with the help of a few moderate Republicans, who then caught holy unshirted hell from their constituents. Environmental legislation generally has taken a drubbing in public opinion polls when people consider how costly it is.

• The Employee Free Choice Act may be stripped of its “card check” provision in the Senate, which would effectively do away with secret ballots for unionization elections. Even in its watered-down form — which still includes highly objectionable, mandatory, binding so-called gunpoint arbitration and makes no concessions to employers who don’t want to have to prop up teetering union pensions — it might not pass the Senate. And the leadership of the House has refused to touch it until the other chamber has made up its mind.

• On health care, forget the rage set off by private citizen Sarah Palin tweeting about “death panels.” Forget the misleading talk about whether there will be a “public option.” (The ever-evolving plan is one giant public option, folks.) Forget the angry voters who crowded into the town halls during the August recess. Forget that a number of Democratic senators and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are still not willing to sign on to a bill. Right now, even after Obama’s address to the joint session of Congress last week, it’s possible Democrats don’t even have the votes in the House — where they currently enjoy a 77-seat majority.

It’s entirely possible — nay, likely — that Obama will lose on all three big issues. He’ll probably take that personally. As he has pushed for the passage of his reforms, his public approval ratings have taken a beating, and voters have started to trust the Republicans more than his party on a host of issues.

The question that most political handicappers are considering right now is not “Will Republicans make gains at the midterm elections?” but “How large will those gains be?”

What all this means is, barring some unforeseeable world event, Obama’s will probably not be a historic presidency. He will have some successes and a lot of failures. His opposition won’t roll over, and his party will refuse to go along with his more costly, and thus risky, schemes. He won’t coast to reelection.

So Obama now has the chance to be the sort of president Bush would have been if the World Trade Center towers had not come down. Here’s hoping he makes the best of it.

From his keyboard to God's ears.

Reaching the boiling point

From Tampa Bay Online:

What was intended to be a town hall discussion on President Barack Obama's health care reform proposal dissolved into a shouting match with shoving and scuffles in Ybor City tonight.

The event brought home to Tampa the recent phenomenon of angry opponents of Obama's proposal disrupting town hall meetings by Democratic members of Congress during the August recess.

This meeting was organized by Democratic state Rep. Betty Reed but was to include comments on the proposal by U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, a strong supporter.

Castor tried to speak for nearly 15 minutes but the crowd drowned her out, chanting, "You work for us,'' "Tyranny, tyranny,'' and "Read the bill." She ultimately left the meeting early, further angering some attendees.

Why should one sit in silence and listen to someone spout what you know to be lies? Why should an elected official, someone who is not a master of the people but a servant - like the people who mop the floor and clean the toilets - expect to be treated with respect when they stand up to knowingly and maliciously lie to the people they are supposed to work for?

These Democrats who are going out to try and convince their constituents to support their party's socialized health care scheme are attempting to convince the citizens of this nation to accept much lower quality health care which will cost them much more money in the long run and which will enslave them and their children in chains of dependence to a federal government which will have become much more powerful and much less responsible to and responsive of the people. And those politicians know that this is what they are doing.

If they truly believe that the new Marxist health care system they are attempting to build for the citizens of this nation is better than what we have now then why have they exempted themselves and their families from that new system?

You do know that they have built into the legislation an exemption for themselves, don't you? They will not have to go the the same filthy overcrowded clinics and wait in line for hours and hours and hours to see a doctor like the rest of us will. They will not have to spend years on waiting lists for surgery, sometimes living in agony and sometimes dying for lack of treatment, like people in Europe and Canada do. They will not be told that the drugs they need are too expensive. They will not be told that they are too old to make treating them "cost effective". They will not be told that they are too fat or have smoked too much or drank too much to deserve treatment.

But the rest of us will.

Friends, the fact that they have exempted themselves from the system they are trying to impose upon the rest of us proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that they know EXACTLY what they are trying to do to the rest of us!

The fact that they do know exactly what they are trying to ram down our throats and will stand up and lie to our faces about it forever removes any obligation to treat these scumbags with any shred of respect or even civility. They deserve nothing from us but absolute and perfect contempt! They have made themselves the enemies of the American people and they deserve to be treated like it.

And I am profoundly glad to see huge numbers of my fellow citizens coming to agree with me.

The problems began when a crowd of around 500, many of them recruited to attend by interest groups both for and against the proposal, sought to enter the meeting room. The room, in the offices of the Hillsborough County Children's Board on East Palm Avenue, has a capacity of only about 250.

Several hundred people, mostly opponents, wound up outside or packing a hallway leading into the meeting room. Some scuffled with members of the sponsoring groups who manned the doorway.

One man who said he was injured and intended to file a police complaint, Randy Arthur of Oldsmar, was outside the meeting room with his wife, Kathy Arthur, when organizers tried to close the doors.

She said he was slammed against a wall. He later talked to police officers, his knit shirt ripped and a few scratches visible on his chest.

Among the crowd outside, opponents and a smaller number of proponents got into occasional shouting matches.

After trying to speak, Castor left at about 6:40 p.m., taking jeers as she left.

"They're hiding from their constituents. She works for us and needs to listen,'' said Karen Jaroch, a Tampa homemaker and organizer for the 9-12 Project, set up by TV commentator Glenn Beck, which had recruited its members to attend.

These people, who in their own minds hold a place closer to medieval aristocracy than public employees, are simply unused to being held to account for their actions. It angers and frightens them and their first impulse is to do what some 12th century baron would do and have the ungrateful serfs flogged.

Castor spokeswoman Ellen Gedalius said Castor left because her part of the event was finished.

"We said all along our role was to come and give an update on the bill in Congress,'' Gedalius said, noting that Reed, not Castor, organized and sponsored the meeting. "That's what Betty Reed asked us to do … and that's what we did.''

But Reed said afterward that she encouraged Castor to leave because, "She couldn't get a word through."

Gedalius noted that Castor will have a town hall meeting by telephone on Aug. 13 and that her office has been receiving hundreds of comments on the health care issue.

The meeting was organized by Reed plus the Service Employees International Union, other unions and Organizing for America, a liberal group that grew out of the Obama presidential campaign.

SEIU is a union which violates the law by using member dues for political activities and Organizing for America is an Obama Marxist front organization. Two ultra-left organizations attempt to pack the meeting (one breaking federal law to do so) and yet it is the opponents of the legislation who are accused of "astroturfing".

Some opponents accused the organizers of trying to stack the crowd by allowing early admission to those on their side. Reed denied that, saying those admitted early were organizers setting up the room.

In any case, opponents appeared to outnumber proponents both inside and outside.

Of course they did, all you have to do is check the polls to see that those who are protesting this socialist boondoggle are representing the majority of the people.

After doors to the meeting room closed, some of those outside crowded around the windows of the meeting room, where they held up signs and chanted.

In the last week or so, similar disruptive protests have erupted at town hall meetings in several states.

Democrats, including White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, have said the disruptions were organized attacks aimed at Democrats by conservative, anti-health care reform interest groups. Several protestors at Thursday's meeting in Tampa angrily rejected that contention.

Castor's staff said Reed planned the meeting and invited Castor before the controversy became so heated.

Reed said she set up the meeting because, "I represent a number of people who ask questions about what's going on with health care, so I thought it would be good to put on a meeting and have the congresswoman come in and give an update."

Reed said she was shocked by the number of people who turned out and some of their reactions.

"When you get to the point of possible violence, you've gone over the edge," she said.

When politicians reach the point where they have driven law abiding and patriotic citizens to the point of possible violence THEY have gone over the edge!

In a news conference prior to the town hall, Castor had said, "I do expect some rabble-rousing."

She said the protesters who have been appearing at town hall forums on health care "would have been protesting Medicare … they would never have accepted Social Security."

Medicare and Social Security - two massively expensive federal government programs which the federal government has mismanaged and are now all but bankrupt. They represent tens of trillions of dollars worth of liabilities which the government has no means to pay for. Americans have paid into a system which was supposed to create accounts to fund retirement income and health care in their old age but congress has looted the trust funds in order to pay for vote buying pork projects and now that the Baby Boom generation is nearing retirement age the entire system is threatening to collapse.

This should be all the American people need to consider when contemplating whether the government should be entrusted to take over the nation's health care industry. We are talking about one seventh of the American economy. Do we really want to turn it over to a bureaucracy which will have all the compassion of the IRS, all the customer service skills of the DMV and the fiscal responsibility of, well the federal government (the only entity in the world ever to pay $600.00 for a plastic toilet seat)?

Tampa police spokeswoman Andrea Davis said the department was told a couple hundred people would show up and sent a squad of 10-15 officers, two marked cars, two supervisors and some undercover officers.

As the crowd grew, more were brought in – mainly for traffic control, she said, but they also broke up some scuffles.

She said no arrests were made.

All in all very instructive in helping us understand the amount of anger this attempt to royally screw over the American people in generating.

It also gives us a foretaste of what the left will do to support Comrade Obama in his efforts to turn the US into the new Cuba.

Expect criminal organizations like ACORN and the New Black Panther Party (as well as some labor unions) to start bringing in thugs to intimidate and even attack protesters at these meetings (think Hitler's SA attacking rival political party's meetings). Of course the mainstream media will spin this as peaceful pro-health care reformers defending themselves against attacks by right-wing neo-Nazis.

Remember this is all to the good. The public has Obama's measure now and the time when he was trusted is rapidly vanishing in the rear view mirror. The more he works for this the less people are going to like it and the less they are going to like anything else Obama advocates in the future.

Obama is locking himself into being a one-term president and Nancy Pelosi is handing congress back to the GOP in 2010. Hell, even Harry Reid looks to be defeated in his bid for reelection next year.

I made the point last year that sometimes it takes a Jimmy Carter to make the nation ready for a Ronald Reagan. Well the GOP has three Reagans waiting in the wings. Palin, Perry and Jindal are all capable of doing the jog and indications are that any of them would be willing to step up.