Bristol Palin ad campaign receives positive response

Bristol Palin, one of the nation’s most famous teen moms, recently made an appearance in a highly publicized public service announcement for The Candie’s Foundation. The spot, entitled “Pause Before You Play” depicts Bristol and her two-year-old toddler Tripp, showing montages of  Sarah Palin’s 2008 run as the Republican vice presidential candidate. Bristol asks the question in the ad: “What if I didn’t come from a famous family?”

Neil Cole, the founder of the Candie's Foundation says the response to the ad campaign has been positive.

"Over the past week, I have received hundreds of emails in response to the ad campaign. The people who have a personal experience with teen pregnancy - either themselves, a family member, or as part of a program - were nearly unanimous in their appreciation," said Cole. "In a typical response, one teen mom said, "I'm so glad you're getting the word out about teen pregnancy. I'm 17 years old and have a two month old. I've had to take myself out of school for months and am having trouble finding daycare so I can go back. This is definitely not how I pictured my life. Young people need to know the reality."

Cole went on to point out that although Bristol Palin is similar and different from most teen moms in this country, the ability to tap into the voice of a teen mom with a platform has propelled the issue into national dialogue with striking force.

"This ad campaign is not about politics, religion, or abstinence versus contraception. (For the record, The Candie's Foundation supports both.) It is about preventing teen pregnancy," Cole said. "Children need and deserve parents who are emotionally and financially stable. There is nothing ideological about that. Just ask a teen mom."



Read more articles by the National Sarah Palin Examiner at Examiner.com

Sarah Palin Interview: Will Pursue A Presidential Bid In 2012

Governor Sarah Palin keeps the door wide open to a White House run! In an interview The Governor said she "doesn't know politically what is next for me."  Governor Palin said she will "pursue" a 2012 presidential bid if she decides it's the best way to help the American people with their challenges.

Sarah Palin said her and her family have had an "exciting and full ride" since the 2008 Novermber election. Travels all over America have given her a glimpse of some of the struggles and the greatness of regular Americans.

"If I can help provide some encouragement, some inspiration, some hope for them to get through their battles and make good decisions and get through a challenge, because that's what we've been able to do, then I am going to stay focused on that," 

"Whether that's on a local level in my own little town of Wasilla, or in the Oval Office, if it's right, then we will pursue that."

"I do believe that it is a wise thing for us to put our lives in our Creator's hands," she said. "I put my life into God's hands and say, I'm going to do the best that I can every day to bring positive change to people that perhaps need some help. Need opportunity, too."

"That's what I'm going to do, day to day, not necessarily knowing what will bring to my family, to my country, to my life, in the next year, two years, three years down the road," she added.

Sarah Palin 2012 Response At 1:16

Sources:

CNN: Palin on 2012: 'If it's right, then we will pursue that'

Conservatives4Palin: Sneak Peak from Sarah Palin's Interview with Connie Smith

(Full Interview) Always Good News With Connie Smith

Original Post:

Citizen Palin 4 President: Sarah Palin Interview: Will Pursue A Presidential Bid In 2012

Palin reacts to Graham's dis-invite

The Army recently rescinded its invitation to Evangelist Franklin Graham for the Pentagon's National Day of Prayer service on May 6 amid complaints from Muslim members of the military about previous comments Graham made about the Islam religion.

Sarah Palin, who visited the Graham family in November during her highly publicized book tour, spoke out on Friday morning on her Facebook page.

"It’s truly a sad day when such a fine patriotic man, whose son is serving on his fourth deployment in Afghanistan to protect our freedom of speech and religion, is dis-invited from speaking at the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer service," Palin said.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Graham said Islam "is a very evil and wicked religion." In a later op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal, Graham wrote that he did not believe Muslims were evil because of their faith, but "as a minister ... I believe it is my responsibility to speak out against the terrible deeds that are committed as a result of Islamic teaching."

Army spokesman Gary Tallman told Fox News on Wednesday that Graham's "presence at the event may be taken by some as inappropriate for a government agency."

Palin questioned, "Are we really so hyper-politically correct that we can’t abide a Christian minister who expresses his views on matters of faith? What a shame."

Palin recalled having Rev. Franklin Graham speak at her Governor's Prayer Breakfasts and said she was honored.

"His good work in Alaska’s Native villages and his charitable efforts all over the world stem from his servant’s heart," Palin added. "In my years of knowing him, I’ve never found his tempered and biblically-based comments to be offensive – in fact his words have been encouraging and full of real hope."

Read more articles by the National Sarah Palin Examiner at Examiner.com

Sarah Palin Slams The Obama Regime For Institutionalizing Crony Capitalism

This is gonna leave a mark:

Institutionalizing Crony Capitalism

In the wake of the recent financial meltdown, Americans know that we need reform. Not only have many individuals learned lessons about personal responsibility through this, but we’ve been able to engage in a discussion about government’s appropriate role.

The current debate over financial reform demonstrates what happens when political leaders react to a crisis with a raft of new regulations. First off, the people involved in writing government regulations are often lobbyists from the very industry that the new laws are supposed to regulate, and that’s been the case here. It should surprise no one that financial lobbyists are flocking to DC this week. Of course, the big players who can afford lobbyists work the regulations in their favor, while their smaller competitors are left out in the cold. The result here are regulations that institutionalize the "too big to fail" mentality.

Moreover, the financial reform bill gives regulators the power to pick winners and losers, institutionalizing their ability to decide "which firms to rescue or close, and which creditors to reward and how." Does anyone doubt that firms with the most lobbyists and the biggest campaign donations will be the ones who get seats in the lifeboat? The president is trying to convince us that he’s taking on the Wall Street "fat cats," but firms like Goldman Sachs are happy with federal regulation because, as one of their lobbyists recently stated, "We partner with regulators."

They seem to have a nice relationship with the White House too. Goldman showered nearly a million dollars in campaign contributions on candidate Obama. In fact, J.P. Freire notes that President Obama received about seven times more money from Goldman than President Bush received from Enron. Of course, it’s not just the donations; it’s the revolving door. You’ll find the name Goldman Sachs on many an Obama administration résumé, including Rahm Emanuel’s and Tim Geithner’s chief of staff’s.

We need to be on our guard against such crony capitalism. We fought against distortion of the market in Alaska when we confronted "Big Oil," or more specifically some of the players in the industry and in political office, who were taking the 49th state for a ride. My administration challenged lax rules that seemed to allow corruption, and we even challenged the largest corporation in the world at the time for not abiding by provisions in contracts it held with the state. When it came time to craft a plan for a natural gas pipeline, we insisted on transparency and a level playing field to insure fair competition. Our reforms helped reduce politicians’ ability to play favorites and helped clean up corruption. We set up stricter oversight offices and ushered through a bi-partisan ethics reform bill. Far from being against necessary reform, I embrace it.

Commonsense conservatives acknowledge the need for financial reform and believe that government can play an appropriate role in leveling the playing field and protecting "the dynamism of American capitalism without neglecting the government’s responsibility to protect the American public." We’re listening closely to the reform discussion in Washington, and we know that government should not burden the market with unnecessary bureaucracy and distorted incentives, nor make a dangerous "too-big-to-fail" mentality the law of the land.

- Sarah Palin

Stopping corruption, and having complete transparency in government,  is a subject Sarah Palin knows a little something about. Above she modestly talks about taking on "Big Oil" in Alaska. That was an epic battle!

In fact, Sarah’s successful efforts to stop the cronyism and reform the energy business in Alaska were so impressive Kay Cashman, the publisher and executive editor of Petroleum News, wrote the book entitled: Sarah Takes On Big Oil. This is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the leadership Sarah Palin has exhibited in the area of reforming government and industry. You can pick up a copy from Amazon.com here.

We should also remember that Sarah, while working as the state’s chief energy and environmental regulator, found massive corruption within her own Republican Party. Those included were the party chairman, and a former Attorney General. When she was through fines were paid, and some were trotted off to prison.

Contrast Sarah with Barack Obama. Chicago is world famous for it’s corruption. Being a corrupt Chicago politician is almost a given, especially if one is a member of the democrat party. The guy who is running for Obama’s old seat has Mob connections for God’s sake! While Obama was putting on a dog and pony show today on Wall Street, he was pretty silent all those years when he was in an incredibly target rich environment.

The difference between the courage Sarah Palin shows standing up to corruption vs Obama’s willingness to wallow in it, is breathtaking.

What’s very interesting about the snake oil Obama was peddling today is the fact that as soon as he was done with his circus act, he and his cronies retired to a swanky $30,000 a plate fund raising dinner attended by the same "greedy Wall Street bankers" he had just went off on!

One has to ask what the real end game is here. Is this another Big Government, power grab, where Obama is trying to impress the Castro(s) and the Chavez(s) of the world with the speed he can take over the economy, and turn America into a communist hell hole, a banana republic, or is this a good old fashioned Chicago style shake down, with Wall Street paying "tribute" to the head of this gangster government?

Hard to know, could be a little of both.

Michelle Malkin notes there sure are a lot of ex-Goldman Sachs people now working for the Obama regime:

All the president’s Goldman Sachs men

While President Obama assails the culture of greed and recklessness practiced by the men of Goldman Sachs, his administration is infested with them. The White House can no more disown Government Sachs than Da Boss-in-chief can disown Chicago politics.

Obama is headed to Wall Street on Thursday to demand "financial regulatory reform" — just as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil suit against Goldman Sachs for mortgage-related fraud. Question the timing? Darn tootin’. There are no coincidences in the perpetually orchestrated Age of O. Everyone from disgraced former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to analysts at the Brookings Institution and Barclays Capital to the GOP leadership and Rush Limbaugh has noted the reeking political opportunism in the air.

As the New York Post reported Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee immediately bought sponsored Internet ads on Google that direct web surfers who type in "Goldman Sachs SEC" to Obama’s fundraising site. "It’s time to hold the big banks accountable," the money-grubbing DNC message bellows. But just like his crony capitalist predecessor George W. Bush, Obama has relied on Goldman Sachs and Wall Street power brokers to engineer massive government interventions to "rescue" failing businesses with the tax dollars of ordinary Americans.

While irony-challenged Democratic candidates like mob-linked banker Alexi Giannoulias in Illinois (who hopes to fill Obama’s old Senate seat) call on Republicans to return their fat-cat Goldman Sachs donations, the Democrats are silent on the $994,795 in Goldman Sachs campaign cash that Obama bagged. The class-warfare Dems are also mum on all the president’s Goldman Sachs men sitting in the catbird’s seat:

You can read more and check out the updates here.

One of Michelle’s readers asks:

"Who made money off SEC/Goldman Sachs announcement?"

Reader Daryle wants to know. He e-mails:


On Friday tens of millions of dollars, possibly hundreds of millions were made or lost on Goldman Sachs stock and options.


Friday was option expiry which meant puts and calls, the right to sell or buy Goldman Sachs stocks at preset prices expired. Goldman Sachs puts – the right to sell stock at a set price – increased at some strike prices by more than a hundred fold.


The SEC announcement cause this to happen in the space of two hours. At 12:00 pm Friday trading in April puts and calls ceased trading. Those who sold calls or bought puts before the announcement made big money.


Somebody made at the least tens of millions, probably a lot more because of the announcement.


It would be interesting to know who they were and what they knew in advance.

As the photo on her website suggests, the big benefactor in this whole deal could very well be Nazi collaborator, self-proclaimed "owner of the democrat party" and Obama puppet master extraordinaire: George Soros.

Remember, Soros made his billions by crashing the British pound and has reportedly done very well betting against the American economy since Obama has been in office. Of course who could forget the fact that just three days after Soros purchased controlling interest in Brazilian oil company Petrobas, Obama sent $10 billion down there so the Brazilian oil giant could do more off shore oil exploration. These were ten billion tax payer dollars.

Let us also remember that Obama has also effective shut down all meaningful off shore oil exploration in the United States, even stopping already scheduled lease sales. We absolutely know who this little deal helps!

For a radical Marxist, who continually prattles on about the evils of capitalism, and "rich fat cats" he sure doesn’t have a problem engaging in massive corruption to help out his incredibly rich buddy Soros, does he?

With apologies to Winston Churchill, Obama is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. This is why he is so hard to pin down. Is he a radical communist bent on destroying America and the American way by any and all means possible, or is he Chicago street thug...a two bit gangster...an incredibly corrupt human being who is on the take?

I’d have to say: Yes!

Petition Drive Launched to Support Palin's AK Series

Graphic by Karen Allen

As most of our readers know, Palin Derangement Syndrome (PDS) comes in many forms. We see it every day in the mainstream news media,on the Internet, and elsewhere.. Recently, it reared its ugly head as extremist environmental groups launched petitions to pressure Discovery Communications to drop Governor Palin’s Alaska documentary series.

So the authors of Sarah’s Web Brigade have decided to launch a counterattack. We are launching a petition drive to support Sarah Palin and Discovery Communications and to promote their upcoming Sarah Palin’s Alaska series. We are all looking forward to this series with great anticipation and will not allow political malelovents to distract from what is promising to be an awe-inspiring look at the natural wonders of Alaska and an introduction to its history and everyday life.

Each of our SWB authors has a website of his/her own and will be posting a graphic that is hyperlinked to the petition. All Sarah Palin supporters are invited to join us in this effort.. Becoming a sponsor of the Support Sarah Palin’s Alaska Documentary Series is a show of support for Governor Palin and Discovery Communications as they launch the Sarah Palin’s Alaska documentary series. There is no charge for participating. The only requirement is that each sponsor website post a copy of the hyperlinked graphic on their website and post the link to the petition on Twitter, Facebook, or other social networking sites.

Anyone who would like to participate can leave a comment in the comments section of this blog.or send me a tweet at @sarahpalinlinks. Once you are approved, the name of your website will be added to the list of sponsors on the petition. This will be done on a first-come-first-serve basis determined by the available space on the website.

Whether you participate as a sponsor website or not, please show your support for Governor Palin by adding your signature to the Support Sarah Palin’s Alaska Documentary Series petition at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/sarahpalinsalaska. A hyperlinked graphic that will take you directly to the petition can be found at the top of this article as well as on all participating websites.

Sarah Palin, Ready To Lead The Nation

If presidential means being able to take the heat in the kitchen Sarah Palin has demonstrated this quality to the fullest imaginable extent.

-Professor Steven Kates

I am always amazed to read the international media, and their take on all things American. Not only does one get a different perspective on things, it serves to remind us just how biased, dishonest, and corrupt the American media have become. No longer in the business of simply reporting the facts, our media, for the most part, have become a propaganda arm for the Marxist-progressive movement, and the leading cheerleaders for the Obama regime.

Knowing this, it was a delight to read the scholarly opinion of Steven Kates from Quadrant Magazine, the leading general intellectual journal of ideas, literature, poetry, historical and political debate published in Australia.

Making Them Listen

Suppose Sarah Palin couldn’t make the simplest public statement without a teleprompter. Just suppose. Suppose she suggested that the people of Austria spoke Austrian or that there were fifty-seven states in the USA. Suppose she really had said that she could see Russia from her front porch. Suppose she had done that, or had spelled potato with an e at the end. Well, we can all agree that any and all of those would clearly make her or anyone else unfit to be President.

Wait, wait. Let’s have another look at the business about the teleprompter. Perhaps it would be a bit hasty to condemn someone as unfit for the presidency for using such modern technologies even in a kindergarten classroom, but should someone write notes on the palm of their hand before making a major speech, nothing would obviously make them less fit to be President than that.

There are at least three matters that follow from this. There is first the malign influence of the established media in the United States on the conduct of American politics. Second is how we, mere citizens, can ever get to know, really know, what we need to know about the people who run for office. Finally, what do we know from her book about who Sarah Palin is and whether or not she has what it takes to be President of the most powerful nation on earth?

This is spot on. Obama has proven he is incapable of coherent speech without his beloved TOTUS (Teleprompter of the United States) You get him speaking off the cuff and hilarity usually ensues. He either sounds like a complete idiot as he stumbles around, or if he is among "friends," and feeling his oats, he is apt to insult the American people, over and over.

In contrast, Sarah Palin is very comfortable speaking off the cuff with only notes to help her stay on point, a technique every speaker worth their salt has mastered.

It’s interesting to note that while Sarah Palin is erroneously credited with saying "I can see Russia from my house." (It’s become accepted fact.) Absolutely no one mentions the many gaffes Obama makes on a regular basis, such as saying on the campaign trail he had "visited 57 states, with one or two more to go."

Look, anyone who regularly speaks in public, with or without notes, is going to say something stupid in their life, anyone. But there are varying degrees of stupid, and for someone who wants to be President of the United States to not know we have 50 states, not 57, 58, or possibly 59, is a rather high degree of stupid.

We never hear Obama kidded about that, but we hear the line that was made famous by Tina Fey, not Sarah Palin, repeated ad nauseum.

We have a tradition of poking fun at our political leaders, and frankly, it’s a healthy one. Keeps everyone humble. But our media is so in the tank for Obama, and Obama himself is so thinned skinned, that no one, not even the "edgiest" comedian seems to be able to find something they can poke fun at. They don’t dare. In fact they go out of their way to tell us that Obama is just too "perfect" and simply doesn’t provide them with any material. I call BS on that one!

The American Media

There is a malignancy in the American media. It has been captured by Left-liberal opinion to such a phenomenal extent that for those who do not share their perspectives, news shows on the traditional networks have become almost impossible to watch and newspapers an ordeal to read. As with the old Soviet press, one must unscramble and decode what is written to work out what may, or may not, have taken place. Sins of omission abound.

There is still, for all that, an expectation that the media will be objective. None of us come without our biases, but there was nevertheless an imperative at one time to try to present the news straight without embedding analysis and personal opinion within the story. Or maybe that is how it looked to me and it is my own opinions that have changed over the years. It is perhaps I who have drifted away from mainstream newspaper opinion while the media is as biased as it ever was.

But still, has there ever been a case quite the same as Sarah Palin’s? And what makes the case all that much more instructive is that her arrival almost exactly parallels the arrival at centre stage of Barack Obama. Whatever one might say about the fitness of Sarah Palin for the Vice-Presidency might just as easily be said about Obama, who was running to be the actual President. Indeed, on almost any of the criteria that one might choose on an objective basis—executive experience, decisiveness, known track record of sound decision making—Sarah Palin comes out ahead. You might like Obama’s aim to "spread the wealth around" or to end the war in Iraq, but there was nothing from his history that would have provided solid evidence that he would be capable of delivering on what he promised.

Politics, like any contact sport, is a much more difficult practice than you might think from watching the pros. The ones who get to the top and stay there have been tested to their utter limits in a proving ground that few can survive. Obama somehow got to the very top without really having had to fight such battles along the way. In large measure he can thank the American media for that. Whatever form of testing examination they might have given to Obama during his run for the President just never happened. He remains a mystery man to this day. Just try to find out his university results. It’s easy to get Sarah Palin’s, impossible to find Obama’s. Why that is I do not know.

Anyway, whatever lack of scrutiny there was of Obama, the media certainly made up for with Sarah Palin. For most of those the media wish to destroy, there is plenty of time. But with the American election imminent—the time between the nomination and the election being less than three months—the need for a proper and thorough character assassination became more urgent. It began on day one, never eased off until after the election was over, and has not ended to this day. The focus on the former vice-presidential candidate and former Governor of Alaska, who is now a private citizen, has been unrelenting.

This business with Sarah Palin having written a few notes on the palm of her hand before speaking to a major gathering—the equivalent to what someone with pockets in his clothes might do on the back of an envelope—is quite instructive. The media in the USA clearly have no shame, nor an apparent sense of irony. Not to have roasted Obama for his addiction to the teleprompter shows a leniency that would never have been extended to anyone on the other side—imagine if George W. Bush never spoke without having nameless others beaming thoughts into his head. It really does speak of someone not in command of his facts or his thoughts and who needs others to feed him directives to keep on track.

Meanwhile Sarah Palin writes a few notes on her hand and the media treats her as if she were a brainless nong, apparently demonstrating an incompetence well beneath that of Obama and his teleprompter. Does the media not think anyone will notice? Do they not even notice it themselves? It is easy to understand Sarah Palin’s take on the media: "What a bunch of buffoons". How extraordinary it is to observe all this from the outside as the rest of us do, but how much more extraordinary it must be to be the one in the middle of such maddening criticism that never seems to come to an end.

But what is notable about all of this is that she has not wilted. If presidential means being able to take the heat in the kitchen Sarah Palin has demonstrated this quality to the fullest imaginable extent.

Man does he have our media pegged, or what! Barack Obama became President without most of the American people knowing anything about him whatsoever.

It’s not like the information isn’t out there. Anyone who has enough computer savvy to turn the machine on, open up an internet browser, and find Google, will be treated to a plethora of information on Obama’s radical friends, ties to domestic and foreign terrorists, shady real estate deals and even questions about his past romantic life.

Maybe the media was too busy checking out Sarah Palin. In my entire life I have never seen a person so thoroughly vetted by the press. Of course, as stressful and dishonest as it was, one thing we know in absolute certainty, if there was something even remotely shady about Sarah Palin, we would know it in full detail.

While the media were ignoring Obama’s ties to people like domestic terrorist William Ayers and his convicted cop killing wife, the Reverend Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright, slum lord and real estate speculator Tony Rezko, and his strange ties to Larry Sinclair, they were all too happy to look into every nook and cranny of Sarah Palin’s life.

When she was announced as John McCain’s running mate, there was a mad dash to Alaska by every media outlet. Rags like the National Enquirer were offering big bucks for all of the dirt on Alaska’s successful Governor. And of course, when none was found, Obama’s own Alaska Mafia © the hand picked group of hate bloggers chosen by Obama’s campaign chief-of-staff, Pete Rouse, just made things up!

Lot’s of sick stuff, the sickest being that Sarah’s youngest son, Trig, is not even hers. Some bloggers have made a career out of furthering this hateful and disturbing nonsense.

Of course, Sarah Palin can’t be intimidated. She is absolutely fearless. That she didn’t just sit down, shut up, and fade away has caused the Obamacentric media to lose it’s collective minds. Sarah Palin is a force to be reckoned with, so with coordination from the White House, the media has been little more than an attack machine for the Obama regime.

Though they couldn’t spare a single man to check out any of the ObamaCare legislation, or the porkulus bill, or well, anything our corrupt Congress and President have been up to, the Associated Press assigned no less than eleven "fact checkers" to read through Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue, an America Life, the best selling non-fiction book of 2009. They found nothing of consequence to point out, so...they made stuff up.

The attacks by the media against Sarah are daily, and relentless. Frankly, I think it’s a win for her. Unlike any other potential presidential candidate in history, we know absolutely everything about her. There are no secrets, no surprises, no "skeletons in the closet" left to be probed. At this point anything negative said of Sarah Palin can be categorized as nothing more than a political attack having little or no merit.

It’s done something else positive, as well. All of the relentless attacks by the dishonest Obamacentric media have forced Sarah Palin to prove her metal. Unlike any candidate I can remember, Sarah Palin has been forced to justify her very existence, and prove her ability to handle anything.

As Professor Kates points out, if being presidential means being able to handle anything that is thrown at you: "Sarah Palin has demonstrated this quality to the fullest imaginable extent."

How Can We Come to Know Our Political Leaders?

Clearly, one of Sarah Palin’s aims in writing Going Rogue is to tell her side of the story. If all you knew of her was what you knew from reading the papers, you would never be able to understand how she had even become Governor of Alaska, never mind the candidate for Vice-President. Shallow, ignorant, stupid, under-educated, unlettered, incapable and yet incredibly arrogant—these would be the kinds of notions that would immediately come to mind. This is the American mainstream media version of Sarah Palin. I cannot recall a single positive story about her in any of the traditional major American news outlets. Consequently, I would venture there is not a person anywhere interested in the politics of the United States who has not to some extent been influenced by these thoughts.

Yet the unmistakable bias of the media in the USA raises a serious question. If we can no longer depend on the media to provide us with relatively straightforward information about politics and politicians, we are heading for some very rough waters. The American mainstream press—the newsgathering agency of the most powerful nation on earth—given the evidence of their portrayal of Sarah Palin during the Presidential campaign, is a distorting lens that may make it nigh on impossible to know with anything resembling clarity what in fact is taking place. It will require an extraordinarily thick skin to put up with the invasiveness of the press for anyone opposed to the media’s own agenda, an agenda it need hardly be said that should not be part of the way news is gathered or portrayed.

The great equaliser is the internet, which now provides a counterweight to the mainstream media. There are also now other significant sources of information, especially Fox News and talkback radio. For the most part, blogs are merely opinion; very little news is actually generated through the web. But because of the ability to pool whatever news does show up into easily accessible reports, however obscure the origins of such stories might be, alternative sources now exist. But it is not the default position for outside observers. An effort has to be made.

Were Sarah Palin’s reputation solely in the hands of the traditional media her name would now be so mangled, so completely in ruins, no one could remotely suggest that she might yet be the Republican nominee for President. But her reputation is not solely in their hands and she is no farther behind today than Ronald Reagan was in 1977, three years before he was elected. Among some very important segments of the American polity, she is the epitome of excellence. And the book she has written to tell her side of the story is part of her strategy to reinforce those views on the way to becoming President.

That this is a tract intended to make her President I have no doubt. At this stage, so far out from the election in 2012, it is much too early to begin an official campaign which she may eventually decide not to pursue. But positioning is important, and there is a great deal of debris she must clear away. And this debris is from two sources, one the American media but the other from various officials within the McCain election bureaucracy, some of whom seem to have just as great a disdain for their own previous candidate. Her book is an answer to both.

The opening pages seem to be a kind of summary response to all of the major questions about her raised during the campaign. Perhaps the most infamous moment was her non-responsive answer in the CBS interview with Katie Couric about her reading habits. She writes later in the book about how her irritation with the questioning got the better of her—it was an interview many hours long and conducted over a number of days in the midst of a dawn-to-dark political campaign—but in this early section she simply states:

Reading was a special bond between my mother and me ... My siblings were better athletes, cuter and more sociable than I, and the only thing they had to envy about me was the special passion for reading that I shared with my mother.

In the first six pages of Going Rogue she weaves in, through personal stories from her past, her pro-life position, her fiscal conservatism, her long-time interest in politics, her introduction to political thinking by Ronald Reagan, her opposition to rule-by-insiders, her sense of herself as an outsider, her aim to bring ethical issues into the political process, the importance of energy, the need for small government, her independence of "Big Oil" and therefore her independence of big business, her support for the military and her determination as a political leader "to act in the best interests of the people". This is the Sarah Palin identifiable by her supporters.

Is this the real Sarah Palin? And if it is, is it inconsistent with her also being shallow, ignorant, stupid, under-educated, unlettered, incapable and yet incredibly arrogant? Her book has been fact-checked by the Associated Press, which found nothing in it that could be described as wrong. The "errors" they found were trivialities, matters of interpretation, so that in sum and substance it is apparently a book that, whatever might be left out, provides an accurate description of what she has done and who she would like us to think she is.

Kates points out the real serious problem we have in America, a completely dishonest media. The amount of damage caused to society at large by the erroneous perceptions caused by biased and downright dishonest reporting (read lies) is immeasurable.

Not only did our media conspire to suppress any negative information concerning Barack Obama, thus aiding and abetting his election effort, they continually attack anyone who opposes the Obama regime or the Marxist-progressive agenda.

Our media is complicit in the destruction of America by the Obama regime, and should be consider co-conspirators in what amounts to a coup d'état.

By continually attacking any opposition to the Obama regime, and just making up things about Sarah Palin out of whole cloth, the American media has failed the American people, and seriously abused it’s freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment.

Of course, now that we know we can’t trust the American media, with a few notable exceptions, we are now more alert than we have ever been, and more apt to do our own exhaustive research on things that matter to us. In the end, even though the dishonest, Obamacentric media has sought to deceive, in fact, I think they have made the search for the truth more prevalent than ever before. By becoming know liars, the media has actually caused the truth to be found. There’s a certain poetic justice in that.

Does Sarah Palin Have What It Takes to Be President?

During the 2008 campaign much was made of Barack Obama’s lack of executive experience in comparison with Sarah Palin. Running a major enterprise, such as the executive branch of the American government, requires a kind of savvy in using the various levers of power to achieve one’s ends. Even more important, it seemed to me, was to have the necessary political judgment that could be brought to bear on the decisions that would inevitably have to be made.

Political judgment is the prime requisite of someone at the top of a political system. Do we want this person rather than some other to be making the important decisions about the most diverse array of issues that no one, absolutely no one, can ever hope to fully understand for themselves? They must make the final decisions based, as they must always be, on incomplete information about the present, and with no certain information at all about what will happen in the future. It is the knowledge one has and the instincts one has developed that tell. The question becomes, if Sarah Palin does actually seek the nomination in 2012, whether she is the right one for the job.

Her book is therefore in many respects an outline of her political past. It is a review of many of the decisions she has made as a sampler of the kind of President she would be. It discusses her philosophical position on a number of questions which will be major matters for decision for a President having to deal with the world as it will be in 2013 and beyond.

The Presidency is no place for learning on the job. What you bring along on day one so far as philosophy and instinct are concerned is more or less what you take home when your term is passed. It is the visceral judgments that will tell.

Since what I know best are the economic questions she will face, I will dwell on what she writes on these. They are, in many respects, an indicator of how she might be expected to act in areas far from the explicitly economic, because there is an entire political philosophy bundled up in how these sorts of questions are framed and answered. But in looking at her approach, I will also focus on what I see as a weakness for Sarah Palin as a candidate for the Presidency. But first she must speak for herself:

Within six months of taking office, President Obama put the United States on track to double its already staggering national deficit. The new debt, which will burden future generations, is immoral ...

Where is all the money going to come from? It can come from only three places. Government borrows it, government prints it, or government taxes the people for it ...

We tried growing government back in the 1930s, and it didn’t work then either. Massive government spending programs and protectionist economic policies actually helped turn a recession into the Great Depression. New Deal-like spending plans aren’t the only blast from the past we see today. With the government takeover of parts of the banking industry and the auto industry, we see the return of corporatism—government collusion and co-option of big business.

No one person is smart enough to control and predict markets. The free market is just that: free to rise or fall, shrink or expand, based on conditions that are often outside of human control. Government interference in market cycles is just as dangerous as government-directed programs that encourage permanent dependency. In both cases the rewards for responsible behavior and penalties for irresponsible behavior are removed from the scene. This is the lesson I tried to convey to Bristol when we discussed her plans for the future. [emphasis added]

This is, as economics goes, remarkably sophisticated but given the Keynesian semi-dirigiste kinds of societies in which we live, where government direct involvement is often seen by substantial majorities as the central component of almost every solution to social problems, it is well outside current norms. That five pages previously she has quoted Thomas Sowell gives me a fair idea of where such ideas may have come from. But it is not that she read such concepts in Sowell that matters (if that is indeed what happened) but that when she did come across them, those were the ideas that stuck and remained. Sowell is one of the most articulate conservative intellectuals of our time (and interestingly for me, his first book, like my own, was on Say’s Law). That she would find an affinity with Sowell, understand with perfect clarity what he had written and then condense the points so well, is entirely to her credit. She (as well as he) may be wrong. But these are crucially important ideas that, should current policies fail and new ones be required, may make the difference between prolonging recessionary conditions even further and the ability to recover from what began as a relatively mild recession, however much commotion there may have been at the time.

It is that these ideas resonate and make sense to her that matters. Being President is not being the head of a fact-finding commission. It’s not about being the smartest person in the room. The role is to make decisions in real time about issues that have become boiling hot. What you are looking for is someone whose value system, background capacities and general outlook on the world will keep the community safe in a dangerous and unpredictable world. It is to answer these kinds of questions towards which this book has been directed. Sarah Palin’s aim is to demonstrate that she is just the kind of person in whose hands the American public can safely place its trust.

But let me come back to the words, "this is the lesson I tried to convey to Bristol". Bristol is her daughter, and an important part of Sarah Palin’s discourse on the economy and other matters is presented as part of a dialogue between her and members of her family. One can say it is in the Socratic tradition where Plato’s ideas are detailed as part of a similar sort of dialogue. It may be that this is the means to make one’s thoughts clearer to others who are not used to the kinds of more technical ideas found in more technically in-depth works (I suspect more people will read Going Rogue than have read the collected works of Thomas Sowell).

But this does have a negative side. For anyone with an academic background (such as, for example, the kinds of people who might read an article such as this), there is a certain cornpone tone that keeps rubbing away at the serious intent. The "you betcha" of the campaign carries over into the book. She writes, "I joked, ‘Dang oil companies’", and later on she says, "‘Dang, I must be getting old’, I mumbled". And her use of "so" as an emphatic is so persistent and consistent (as in "the green grass smelled so good") that I have little doubt that whatever help she may have had, this book is written in her own voice.

And for no reason at all that I can see, other than to show a kind of independence that can, in my view, do her no good (but what do I know in comparison with her about political calculation?), she wrote:

I believed in the evidence from microevolution—that geologic and species change occurs incrementally over time. But I didn’t believe in the theory that human beings—thinking, loving beings—originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea. Or that human beings began as single-celled organisms that developed into monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees; I believed that we came about through a random process, but were created by God.

Not one decision an American President must make will depend on their views on the mechanics of human evolution. Such views will, however, alienate significant portions of the public on whose good will she would depend, since this is one of those issues where sharp ideological lines have been drawn which are not paralleled by the usual Left–Right of politics. With this statement she is offering hostages to fortune that bespeak a character that is far from the girl-next-door sweetness the rest of the book portrays. She has strong views and plays to win.

And is she running for President? She has branded herself as a "Commonsense Conservative". You tell me what her intentions are, based on this passage which comes at almost the very end of the book:

As I write this, Commonsense Conservatives are out of power in D.C. But that does not discourage me. I think of Reagan in 1976, when his conservative politics and his political future were declared all but dead. How did he turn things around in four years? By speaking to ordinary Americans about the ideas that bind us together.

These ideas resonate just as strongly today. Encourage the free market. Lower taxes. Get government out of the way. Put the people’s money back into their hands so that they can reinvest. Empower them to be generous. Respect honest work. Strengthen families. But because these are commonsense ideas, they will be ignored by politicians until their employers—the American people—make them listen.

Will Sarah Palin be President? Will she be the one to "make them listen"? This we will only know sometime in 2012, possibly not until the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November. Maybe we won’t even know until 2016.

More important, however, is should she be President? Is she up to the job (assuming anyone is)? That is a different matter that may never be resolved unless she finally is, and perhaps not even then. In the meantime, Going Rogue is her early manifesto, written to put her back on a pathway towards this undoubted goal. The book has done exactly that and has done it extraordinarily well in spite of the enormous obstacles that have been thrown in her way. She is nobody’s fool, not to be underestimated by anyone.

Steven Kates teaches Economics at RMIT University in Melbourne.

I’m always mystified by those who proclaim Sarah Palin doesn’t have the experience to be President. My God, Barack Obama had never run anything as complicated as a lemonade stand, and yet his is somehow "qualified." I find this to be outrageous.

My guess is a lot of this has to do with the fact that Sarah is a girl, and a mighty attractive girl at that. There a lot of dimbulbs out there that simply cannot accept the fact that women can do anything they set their minds to, just like us guys.

Women are at the very forefront of the conservative movement, and as we wrote earlier, Sarah Palin has inspired millions of strong women to go out and take leadership roles

When Sarah Palin was chose by John McCain, she immediately became the most experienced person on either presidential ticket, and the only one of the four: Herself, McCain, Obama, and Biden, who had an ounce of Executive experience, the real experience one must have to be an effective President

Despite what they want you to think, the Obama campaign, and now the Obama regime, recognized this straightaway. This is why the attacks started from the moment she was introduced to the world, and why they have never stopped.

Readers will recall that once Sarah was announced as the Republican candidate for Vice President, for all intents and purposes, John McCain pretty much ceased to exist. It was attack Sarah all day, every day. Still is. One doesn’t exert this sort of effort on people who are inconsequential.

Does Sarah have the right experience, we think so. She’s spent most of her adult life in positions of authority, and most of these positions were as a chief executive. Sarah was the Mayor of Wasilla. Now some will say Wasilla is a small town, and they are right. But the mechanics of management are the same. Doesn’t matter if you are running a city of 7,000 ...70,000... 700,000... or 7 million. That’s only the scale of the job. The scope of the job is the same. If you can run one successfully, chances are you can run them all.

For those that aren’t familiar with city government, there are two types. One is a government of elected officials who actually run things, with the Mayor in charge of day to day management. This is the type of government Sarah was in charge of.

Many cities, of all sizes, including the one I live in, chose a City Manager form of government. In these cases the city actually hires someone to run the city’s business on a daily basis. The city manager then reports to the city council, which consists of elected officials, including the Mayor. In this form of government, the Mayor is but one of a group who merely oversee what the city manager is up to. It’s not a full time job.

Again, in Sarah’s case, she, herself, was the City Manager. This is an important distinction, and immediately gives her more executive experience that Obama has, even now.

Of course Sarah and Todd also have several successful businesses, which gives her a leg up on Obama, who has zero business experience, as well as 90 percent of the Obama regime’s advisors, who also have never had a job in the real world.

Remember, Obama boasted that running a presidential campaign, his own, counts for "executive experience." Of course that’s completely laughable, but he was able to get away with that. Kind of like Mitt Romney saying having his sons serve on his presidential campaign in 2008 was the equivalent of military service, because they were "serving their country." Yeah, whatever. Tell that to Track Palin who served a year in Iraq on the front lines.

After serving as Mayor, and being the president of the Alaska Council of Mayors, Sarah ran for Lt Governor. This resulted in a loss, but garnered her more experience, should you want to use the Barack Obama method for measuring experience. All joking aside what her run did do was elevate Sarah’s political profile and netted her a position as the state’s top energy and environmental regulator, another executive position, and one of the most powerful jobs in the energy rich state.

Then there is her Governorship. There is a reason why Americans generally seek out Governors to become Presidents. Other than declaring war, the job of Governor and the job of President are the same, only the scale is a bit different.

Sarah was an incredibly popular and effective Governor, one of the top in the nation. As Governor she also was Commander-in-Chief of the Alaska National Guard, which has the unique distinction as the only permanently deployed Guard in the nation. She was also C-I-C of the Alaska Defense Force, an auxiliary police and militia unit that can be called up in times of crisis. Member of the ADF fought with distinction in WWII when the Japanese invaded Alaska.

As a leader in energy Sarah was also the Chairman of the nation’s Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, an agency that develops policies on energy exploration and sound environmental stewardship. Sarah served as Chairman of this commission while serving as Governor of Alaska.

When one looks at Sarah Palin’s career, one see’s a solidly qualified Chief Executive who has the resume that says "yes, I am made of presidential timber." For those who have read Sarah’s book, her many nationally published op-eds, and her Facebook blog, as well as listened to her speeches and political commentary, there is no doubt she has the right policies and temperament to be a successful President.

Sarah Palin has established herself as a leader and yes, she is ready to lead the nation.



H/T Israpundit

Happy 21st Birthday, Track!

Happy 21st Birthday, Track! We at the Sarah's Web Brigade and the Sarah Palin Web Brigade hope that you have had a memorable birthday.

We've heard good reports about you from your tour in Iraq and were so thankful when you arrived back home safely. May the Lord continue to light your path and make all your dreams come true and your plans succeed.