Given that we’re spending billions of stimulus dollars to rebuild our highways, it makes sense to think about what we’ll be driving on them. For years to come, most of what we drive will be powered, at least in part, by diesel fuel or gasoline. To fuel that driving, we need access to oil. The less use we make of our own reserves, the more we will have to import, which leads to a number of harmful consequences. That means we need to drill here and drill now.
We rely on petroleum for much more than just powering our vehicles: It is essential in everything from jet fuel to petrochemicals, plastics to fertilizers, pesticides to pharmaceuticals. According to the Energy Information Administration, our total domestic petroleum consumption last year was 19.5 million barrels per day (bpd). Motor gasoline and diesel fuel accounted for less than 13 million bpd of that. Meanwhile, we produced only 4.95 million bpd of domestic crude. In other words, even if we ran all our vehicles on something else (which won’t happen anytime soon), we would still have to depend on imported oil. And we’ll continue that dependence until we develop our own oil resources to their fullest extent.
Those who oppose domestic drilling are motivated primarily by environmental considerations, but many of the countries we’re forced to import from have few if any environmental-protection laws, and those that do exist often go unenforced. In effect, American environmentalists are preventing responsible development here at home while supporting irresponsible development overseas.
My home state of Alaska shows how it’s possible to be both pro-environment and pro-resource-development. Alaskans would never support anything that endangered our pristine air, clean water, and abundant wildlife (which, among other things, provides many of us with our livelihood). The state’s government has made safeguarding resources a priority; when I was governor, for instance, we created a petroleum-systems-integrity office to monitor our oil and gas infrastructure for any potential environmental risks.
Alaska also shows how oil drilling is thoroughly compatible with energy conservation and renewable-energy development. Over 20 percent of Alaska’s electricity currently comes from renewable sources, and as governor I put forward a long-term plan to increase that figure to 50 percent by 2025. Alaska’s comprehensive plan identifies renewable options across the state that can help rural villages transition away from expensive diesel-generated electricity — allowing each community to choose the solution that best fits its needs. That’s important in any energy plan: Tempting as they may be to central planners, top-down, one-size-fits-all solutions are recipes for failure.
For the same reason, the federal government shouldn’t push a single, universal approach to alternative-powered vehicles. Electric cars might work in Los Angeles, but they don’t work in Alaska, where you can drive hundreds of miles without seeing many people, let alone many electrical sockets. And while electric and hybrid cars have their advantages, producing the electricity to power them still requires an energy source. For the sake of the environment, that energy should be generated from the cleanest source available.
Natural gas is one promising clean alternative. It contains fewer pollutants than other fossil fuels, it’s easier to collect and process, and it is found throughout our country. In Alaska, we’re developing the largest private-sector energy project in history — a 3,000-mile, $40 billion pipeline to transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas to markets across the United States. Onshore and offshore natural gas from Alaska and the Lower 48 can satisfy a large part of our energy needs for decades, bringing us closer to energy independence. Whether we use it to power natural-gas cars or to run natural-gas power plants that charge electric cars — or ideally for both — natural gas can act as a clean “bridge fuel” to a future when more renewable sources are available.
In addition to drilling, we need to build new refineries. America currently has roughly 150 refineries, down from over 300 in the 1970s. Due mainly to environmental regulations, we haven’t built a major new refinery since 1976, though our oil consumption has increased significantly since then. That’s no way to secure our energy supply. The post-Katrina jump in gas prices proved that we can’t leave ourselves at the mercy of a hurricane that knocks a few refineries out of commission.
Building an energy-independent America will mean a real economic stimulus. It will mean American jobs that can never be shipped overseas. Think about how much of our trade deficit is fueled by the oil we import — sometimes as much as half of the total. Through this massive transfer of wealth, we lose hundreds of billions of dollars a year that could be invested in our economy. Instead it goes to foreign countries, including some repressive regimes that use it to fund activities that threaten our security.
Reliance on foreign sources of energy weakens America. When a riot breaks out in an OPEC nation, or a developing country talks about nationalizing its oil industry, or a petro-dictator threatens to cut off exports, the probability is great that the price of oil will shoot up. Even in friendly nations, business and financial decisions made for local reasons can destabilize America’s energy market, since the price we pay for foreign oil is subject to rising and falling exchange rates. Decreasing our dependence on foreign sources of energy will reduce the impact of world events on our economy.
In the end, energy independence is not just about the environment or the economy. It’s about freedom and confidence. It’s about building a more secure and peaceful America, an America in which our energy needs will not be subject to the whims of nature, currency speculators, or madmen in possession of vast oil reserves.
Alternative sources of energy are part of the answer, but only part. There’s no getting around the fact that we still need to “drill, baby, drill!” And if those in D.C. say otherwise, we need to tell them: “Yes, we can!”
The British newspaper The Independent reported today that Gulf oil producers were negotiating with Russia, China, Japan and France to replace the dollar in pricing oil with a basket of currencies.[1] According to the Wall Street Journal, Arab oil officials have denied the story, but even the possibility of such a talk weakens the dollar and renews fears about its continued viability as an international reserve currency.[2] In fact, today a United Nations official called for a new global reserve currency to replace the dollar and end our “privilege” to run up huge deficits.[3] We can see the effect of this in the price of gold, which hit a record high today in response to fears about the weakened dollar.[4]
All of this is a result of our out-of-control debt. This is why we need to rein in spending, and this is also why we need energy independence. A weakened dollar means higher commodity prices. This will make it more difficult to pay our bills – including the bill to import oil.
In his book Architects of Ruin, Peter Schweizer points out that the Obama administration is focusing primarily on “green energy,” while ignoring our need to develop our domestic conventional energy resources.[5] We’re ignoring the looming crisis caused by our dependence on foreign oil. Because we’re dependent on foreign nations for our oil, we’re also at their mercy if they decide to dump the dollar as their trade currency. We can’t allow ourselves to be so vulnerable to the whims of foreign nations. That’s why we must develop our own domestic supplies of oil and gas.
Though the chant of “Drill, baby, drill” was much derided, it expressed the need to confront this issue head-on before it reaches a crisis point.
Bottom line: let’s stop digging ourselves into debt and start drilling for energy independence.
- Sarah Palin
[1] See http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html
[2] See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125484066563367821.html
[3] See http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.e272eaa74dccc30f21c6ff7638b0f37b.461&show_article=1
[4] See http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091006/ts_afp/commoditiesgoldmetalsprice_20091006144514
Here is most the news I wanted to talk about in the last three weeks while I have been sick. Of course this resulted in falling behind on school work which didn’t help either. Keep checking back as News Roundup Part II is on the way. – Editor
ACORN has asked an “Independent Panel” to do an investigation of the organization.
Well ok come to find out it is not so independent after all.
In a press release, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis says, that as “a result of the indefensible action of a handful of our employees,” the group will immediately stop accepting anyone into ACORN office for service programs, will conduct in-service training of staff, and begin an audit “to review all of the systems and processes called into question by the videos,” to be conducted by the group’s Independent Advisory Council.
The Council includes many prominent Democrats, including the man who helped President Obama Transition Team, John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress; former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend; Andrew Stern, International President of the Service Employees International Union; and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros.
Hotair.com’s new blogger Karl has a few interesting details:
Cisneros, whoworked regularly with ACORNas HUD Secretary, would laterplead guilty to lying to the FBIto cover up a political embarrassment.Perfect choice. Townsend is so inependent that she called the stories of ACORN’s frequent involvement in voter fraud a“desperate smokescreen maneuver”masking an extensive coast-to-coast GOP push to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in 2008.No bias there. Stern heads SEIU, which hasa very cozy relationship with ACORN. How cozy? ACORN controls or significantly dominates several SEIU chapters. And Stern hand-picked ACORN’s Wade Rathke to direct SEIU’s nationwide organizing projects.He could not be more independent. And Podesta runs the Soros-funded Center for American Progress, which has beencoordinating the public defense of ACORN this summer.He might be even more independent than Andy Stern.
Results from a national Sacred Heart University survey released today reveal that many news consumers believe the media played a significant role in electing President Barack Obama and that the media continue to promote his presidency.
“A large majority, 89.3 percent, suggested the national media played a very or somewhat strong role in helping to elect President Obama,” according to a summary of the findings. “Just 10.0 percent suggested the national media played little or no role. Further, 69.9 percent agreed the national news media are intent on promoting the Obama presidency while 26.5 percent disagreed. Some, 3.6 percent, were unsure.”
And 86.6 percent said they believe the news media try to influence public opinion and that they have their own public policy and political positions. This compares to 87.6 percent in 2008 and 70.3 percent in 2003.
The survey, the third Sacred Heart survey of its kind, was conducted from Sept. 8-11. I am still seeking demographic information about the people who took the survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.
Of those surveyed, 70.4 percent said they believe the national news media are not responsive to “consumer preferences and market desires.”
Congressional Research Service: Obama Wrong, Honduras Correct to Remove Zelaya
Another shocker and it is just like we told you HERE and HERE. The CRS Report is HERE.
The legal arguments made in the report, which was prepared by Senior Foreign Law Specialist Norma Gutierrez, are quite intricate and based in Honduran law. But the bottom line is this:
The Honduran Congress appears to have acted properly in deposing President Manuel Zelaya. Unlike in the United States, the Honduran Congress has the last word when it comes to interpreting the Constitution. Although there is no provision in Honduras’s Constitution for impeachment as such, the body does have powers to disapprove of the president’s official acts, and to replace him in the event that he is incapable of performing his duties. Most importantly, the Congress also has the authority to interpret exactly what that means.
The Supreme Court was legally entitled to ask the military to arrest Zelaya. The high court, which is the constitutional venue for trials of the president and other high-ranking officials, also recognized the Congress’s ouster of Zelaya when it referred his case back down to a lower court afterward, on the grounds that he was “no longer a high-ranking government official.”
The military did not act properly in forcibly expatriating Zelaya. According to the CRS report and other news stories, Honduran authorities are investigating their decision, which the military justified at the time as a means of preventing bloodshed. In fact, Zelaya should have been given a trial, and if convicted of seeking reelection, he would have lost his citizenship. But he is still a citizen now, and the Constitution forbids the expatriation of Honduran citizens by their government.
The proper line of succession was followed after Zelaya’s ouster. Because there was no Vice President in office when Zelaya was removed (he had resigned to run for president), Micheletti was the proper successor, as he had been president of the Congress.
“The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concluded the removal of former President Zelaya was Constitutional, and we must respect that,” Rep. Aaron Schock said today. “It’s unconscionable the administration would attempt to force Honduras to violate its own Constitution by cutting of foreign aid.”
By the way Zelaya’s thugs trashed part of the capital of Honduras, but since the elite media is in the tank for Obama there was zero coverage of it. Gateway Pundit has the DETAILS.
Our ambassador is the only person I met there who thinks there was a ‘coup.’ Let’s release the State Department legal analysis.
In the last three months, much has been made of a supposed military “coup” that whisked former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from power and the supposed chaos it has created.
After visiting Tegucigalpa last week and meeting with a cross section of leaders from Honduras’s government, business community, and civil society, I can report there is no chaos there. There is, however, chaos to spare in the Obama administration’s policy toward our poor and loyal allies in Honduras.
That policy was set in a snap decision the day Mr. Zelaya was removed from office, without a full assessment of either the facts or reliable legal analysis of the constitutional provisions at issue. Three months later, it remains in force, despite mounting evidence of its moral and legal incoherence.
While in Honduras, I spoke to dozens of Hondurans, from nonpartisan members of civil society to former Zelaya political allies, from Supreme Court judges to presidential candidates and even personal friends of Mr. Zelaya. Each relayed stories of a man changed and corrupted by power. The evidence of Mr. Zelaya’s abuses of presidential power—and his illegal attempts to rewrite the Honduran Constitution, a la Hugo Chávez—is not only overwhelming but uncontroverted.
As all strong democracies do after cleansing themselves of usurpers, Honduras has moved on.
The presidential election is on schedule for Nov. 29. Under Honduras’s one-term-limit, Mr. Zelaya could not have sought re-election anyway. Current President Roberto Micheletti—who was installed after Mr. Zelaya’s removal, per the Honduran Constitution—is not on the ballot either. The presidential candidates were nominated in primary elections almost a year ago, and all of them—including Mr. Zelaya’s former vice president—expect the elections to be free, fair and transparent, as has every Honduran election for a generation.
Indeed, the desire to move beyond the Zelaya era was almost universal in our meetings. Almost.
In a day packed with meetings, we met only one person in Honduras who opposed Mr. Zelaya’s ouster, who wishes his return, and who mystifyingly rejects the legitimacy of the November elections: U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens.
When I asked Ambassador Llorens why the U.S. government insists on labeling what appears to the entire country to be the constitutional removal of Mr. Zelaya a “coup,” he urged me to read the legal opinion drafted by the State Department’s top lawyer, Harold Koh. As it happens, I have asked to see Mr. Koh’s report before and since my trip, but all requests to publicly disclose it have been denied.
On the other hand, the only thorough examination of the facts to date—conducted by a senior analyst at the Law Library of Congress—confirms the legality and constitutionality of Mr. Zelaya’s ouster. (It’s on the Internet here .)
Unlike the Obama administration’s snap decision after June 28, the Law Library report is grounded in the facts of the case and the intricacies of Honduran constitutional law. So persuasive is the report that after its release, the New Republic’s James Kirchick concluded in an Oct. 3 article that President Obama’s hastily decided Honduras policy is now “a mistake in search of a rationale.”
Police association contractor charged with snooping on ‘Joe the Plumber’
Now lets have the government have all of our medical records and tax records tied together with Obamacare….
A former contractor for the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police has been charged with rummaging through state computers to retrieve confidential information about “Joe the Plumber.”
Brett A. Gerke, 52, of 2329 Woodcreek Place on the Far North Side, is charged with attempted unauthorized use of property.
The Toledo-area resident was popularized as “Joe the Plumber” by Republican John McCain in a presidential debate the night before with Democrat Barack Obama.
Gerke was project manager in the development of the Ohio Local Law Enforcement Information Sharing Network, working on the project between 2004 and 2008 as a contractor for the police chiefs’ association.
Gerke used a test account and password he received to work on the project to search for information on Wurzelbacher and others, authorities say.
He was working as a contractor for the Ohio Department of Insurance at the time of the computer checks. Gerke’s lawyer, Joseph Scott of Columbus, would not comment on the case.
The Dispatch revealed several questionable checks of state computer systems for confidential information about Wurzelbacher after the presidential debate.
Helen Jones-Kelley, then director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, authorized several computer checks on Wurzelbacher that the state inspector general concluded had no legal purpose.
Jones-Kelley, who was suspended by Gov. Ted Strickland after The Dispatch also revealed that she used her state e-mail account to raise campaign funds for Obama, later resigned. Two of her top aides also lost their jobs.
Government Blew Up GI Bill Program for Veterans Too
It’s not just cash for Clunkers, Medicare, Social Security, etc etc…
The U.S. government failed to send promised college tuition checks to tens of thousands of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars before they returned to school this fall, even after being warned that it was inadequately staffed for the job.
The Veterans Affairs Department blamed a backlog of claims filed for GI Bill education benefits that has left veterans who counted on the money for tuition and books scrambling to make ends meet.
Veterans like American University student John Kamin, who received a letter Wednesday from the Army. He was hoping it contained news that his overdue GI Bill college tuition money would soon arrive. Instead, the Iraq war veteran was informed that he may be called back into active duty.
“It felt like salt in the wound,” said the 24-year-old from New York City. He is depleting his savings account and borrowing money from his parents to make up for thousands of dollars the government promised him to complete his political science degree.
“That was really disheartening,” Mr. Kamin said.
He isn’t alone. Out of more than 277,000 veterans who have filed for the college tuition benefits this semester, more than 200,000 claims have been processed and approved, but fewer than 11 percent of the veterans have received the funding, according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA).
The late-payments episode is the latest in a string of embarrassing cases of VA failures for the nation’s veterans.
Earlier this year, it was discovered that three VA medical centers failed to properly sterilize endoscopes, exposing 10,000 patients to infections including the HIV virus.
Last month, the agency sent letters to 600 veterans erroneously telling them they had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Last year, the VA was embroiled in numerous scandals involving tests and medical experiments on veterans in which officials failed to follow certain standards.
For Obama American Decline is a Deliberate Choice
Charles Krauthammer’s brilliance on display once again. By the way he has a medical degree, degrees in political science and economics and is a board certified psychiatrist.
This is yet another of a very long list of sexist attacks against Sarah Palin from the elite media and the far left.
The news-Miner published an apology to Gov. Palin for calling her a broad HERE. Hotair.com rightly asks, “but an explanation of how editors signed off on the caption is also in order — and someone should be out looking for a new job”.
Journalism is it used to be is dead. Now you get more truth from some of the partisan press and at least they are honest enough to tell you that they have a point of view. We here at IUSB have an agenda to, to focus upon and highlight exactly what the elite media culture does not. Only that way can you be more fully informed.
The Power and Importance of New Media
CBS forged documents against president Bush, Monica Lewinski, Kathleeen Willey, Juanita Broaderick, Van Jones, ACORN , whats really in that House health care bill anyways; most of the big stories of our time are not broke by the elite media. They are broken by talk radio, blogs, Matt Drudge, and Fox News.
On Meet the Press this past Sunday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman railed against internet news sources, referring to them as an “open sewer of untreated, unfiltered information.” He continued to mock new media, suggesting that the American public is incapable of deciphering between facts, fiction and opinion, when he said that modems should have a warning label from the surgeon general that reads “judgment not included.” What Mr. Friedman cannot understand is that web-based information sources like blogs, wikis and vlogs (video blogs) are the new beat reporters and investigative journalists of our time.
~snip
In a June 18, 2009, article in Forbes magazine, pollster John Zogby noted that over twice as many Americans trust internet news sources more than television, newspapers and radio. That poll came just eighteen months after a Harris Poll showed that 54 percent of Americans, in general, do not trust the press.
Veteran journalists such as Mr. Friedman want you to distrust new media. But it’s clear that the American people no longer trust the old press corps. Mainstream media’s complete disregard for the Van Jones controversy has highlighted the need for a new breed of watchdog – citizen’s journalists, as well as internet based professional news organizations that can bring back the investigative journalism prowess and objectivity that is lacking in the traditional Fourth Estate.
By the way, he is wrong about the “wikis”. Wikis claim to be public information but the truth is that ideological zealots, PR pros and law firms have managed to get in as “official” editors in the wiki’s to act as “watch dogs”. Wiki’s have become nothing but PR nonsense much of which is just plain inaccurate, but we know AT means well.
ACORN Took Tax and Charity $$$ for Poor and Transfered it to Themselves, Political Allies.
Documents released by a Senate Republican on Thursday show that leaders of the ACORN community organizing network transferred several million dollars in charitable and government money meant for the poor to arms of the group that have political and sometimes profit-making missions.
ACORN’s tax-exempt groups and allied organizations [~snip] used more than half their charitable and public money in 2006 to pay other ACORN affiliates, according to an analysis by the tax staff of Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).
On Thursday, Grassley called the transactions a “big shell game” and said ACORN donors may be surprised by how the liberal group known for helping the poor obtain housing and health care was spending their money. He urged the Internal Revenue Service to take a closer look.
According to the Grassley report, charities “are being used to raise monies which are then funneled to other charities or to other organizations for purposes other than what the donor may have intended. . . . Dollars raised for charitable [purposes] appear to be used for impermissible lobbing and political activity.”
Fearful that they’re losing ground on immigration and health care, a group of House Democrats is pushing back and arguing that any health care bill should extend to all legal immigrants and allow illegal immigrants some access.
The Democrats, trying to stiffen their party’s spines on the contentious issue, say it’s unfair to bar illegal immigrants from paying their own way in a government-sponsored exchange. Legal immigrants, they say, regardless of how long they’ve been in the United States, should be able to get government-subsidized health care if they meet the other eligibility requirements.
State of Michigan to Mom: Stop Babysitting Neighbors Kids
IRVING TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Each day before the school bus comes to pick up the neighborhood’s children, Lisa Snyder did a favor for three of her fellow moms, welcoming their children into her home for about an hour before they left for school.
Regulators who oversee child care, however, don’t see it as charity. Days after the start of the new school year, Snyder received a letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services warning her that if she continued, she’d be violating a law aimed at the operators of unlicensed day care centers.
“I was freaked out. I was blown away,” she said. “I got on the phone immediately, called my husband, then I called all the girls” — that is, the mothers whose kids she watches — “every one of them.”
Snyder’s predicament has led to a debate in Michigan about whether a law that says no one may care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks each calendar year unless they are licensed day-care providers needs to be changed. It also has irked parents who say they depend on such friendly offers to help them balance work and family.
On Tuesday, agency Director Ismael Ahmed said good neighbors should be allowed to help each other ensure their children are safe. Gov. Jennifer Granholm instructed Ahmed to work with the state Legislature to change the law, he said.
Of course the problem is that a nameless, faceless, idiot bureaucrat had to sign off on this action. This is yet another example of how extremists, idiots and others who have no place wielding any power at all are attracted to government and education jobs.
One day after the Herald reported some surprised Bay State inmates – including murderers and rapists – were cashing in $250 stimulus checks, federal officials revealed the same behind-bars bonus was mailed to nearly 4,000 cons nationwide.
A federal watchdog is now probing how the cons were cut the checks. The same cash also may have been sent to fugitive felons, people kicked out of the country and even individuals now deceased.
Here at IUSB Vision we have a category called “Palin Truth Squad“. You can see that we reported that the McCain campaign communications machine became more incompetent after the Palin announcement. It seems that Palin’s book is going to give us at least some of the details.
Later we reported that many of the McCain staffers were “David Frum” types like Steve Schmidt, that had previously overtly slandered religious conservatives and others in the Reagan wing of the party (LINK). Such people are mortified by Palin and by people such as Glenn Beck, John Gibson, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and even Brit Hume. This explains why McCain’s communications machine deliberately kept Palin away from Fox News and these other venues. They gave her a few moments with Carl Cameron at Fox, or perhaps she only did this after she went rogue, but at that time it was too little too late.
What McCain Campaign staffers did was let their emotional hostility of the Reagan wing of the party blind them to a clear asset that could have helped Palin to introduce herself to the country in a venue that would give her the opportunity to define herself clearly.
Palin should have been given interviews with Limbaugh and Hannity first, then Greta, Beck, John Gibson and then O’Reilly, Hume and Wallace so that Palin would have had the opportunity to define herself first and hone her interview skills with progressively tougher interviews in tougher venues.
To send a person who is new and undefined on the national stage to Charles Gibson and Katie Couric who set out with clear intent to destroy her (LINK2, 3, 4) with much tougher gotcha questions than those two ever asked Edwards, Obama or Biden (LINK) was foolish because since those were her first interviews, it would be by those interviews that people would have their first impression of her. As a result the McCain Campaign forfeited its opportunity to define its own Vice Presidential nominee.
If Palin had done the interviews I mentioned first and then did ABC and CBS she would have been ready, but more importantly the American people would already have had a solid first impression and definition of Sarah Palin in mind which would have put her in a much better position for a hostile interview. The result would have been ABC and CBS looking like they were playing a mean spirited gotcha game to get her and those interviews would have ended up helping her with cross pressured voters with a few smart commercials taking shots at ABC and CBS.
This is not just communications 101 folks, this is communications for dummies.
The clincher? Research now shows that cross pressured voters and independents watch Fox News. They might not always agree with Fox but they do watch it so the McCain Campaign stayed away from the audience that the campaign needed to reach the most.
The Wall Street Journal has the first tidbits from Sarah Palin’s new book, Going Rogue:
Ms. Vincent didn’t reveal any details about the book, but did acknowledge it will describe Ms. Palin’s frustration over her treatment by the staffers she inherited from the McCain campaign after her surprise pick as the GOP vice presidential nominee last year. Ms. Palin was booked on grueling interviews with hostile reporters while talk-show hosts such as Glenn Beck couldn’t even get through to her aides. Mr. Beck tells me he was stunned when he picked up the phone one day just before the election to discover Sarah Palin was on the other end of the line. “She explained that she had been blocked from reaching her audience, so she was now ‘going rogue’ and booking her own interviews,” Mr. Beck told me. “I was thrilled she had burst out of the cage they’d built for her and we were finally talking.”
What is Palin to do next?
Sarah Palin should keep building foreign policy credibility with these overseas conferences and when the time comes she needs to start re-introducing herself to the Republican base and then to the American people.
The simple truth is that a sizable chunk of the base is dismissive of her because they were overwhelmed by the elite media and SNL slander that went almost unrefuted because Palin was kept away from non-elite media venues.
Sarah Palin should come up with a phrase or an idea that sets her apart from other Republicans rhetorically and make it hers. For example: referring to the GOP as “The Party of Lincoln”, “What happened to the Party of Lincoln” or “Its time to bring back the Party of Lincoln”. It doesn’t have to be Lincoln (obviously) but it has to be something that distinguishes her from the Romney Brand and the Huckabee Brand that inspires trust.
Talk about real principles or virtues with some good foreign policy and macroeconomic details (avoid the word values because that word has baggage). Get practice in these venues and then move to moderately tougher ones. Since independents watch Fox Palin can kill two birds with one stone with a smart communications strategy. When the time comes to face the hostile NBC or ABC interview, Palin should go in bold, prepared and with one goal, WIN. She doesn’t have to be horribly tough but don’t etiquette herself out of the election like McCain did in the debates.
Former U.S. vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, criticized for her lack of foreign policy experience, emerged in Asia on Wednesday to share her views from “Main Street U.S.A” with a group of high-flying global investors.
In her first trip to the region, the former Alaska governor addressed an annual conference of investors in Hong Kong in what was billed as a wide-ranging talk about governance, economics and U.S and Asian affairs.
“I’m going to call it like I see it and I will share with you candidly a view right from Main Street, Main Street U.S.A.,” Palin told a room full of asset managers and other finance professionals, according to a video of part of the speech obtained by The Associated Press. “And how perhaps my view of Main Street … how that affects you and your business.”
Palin started off her keynote — which was closed to reporters — with a light talk about the links between her state and the southern Chinese territory, then touched later on economic issues and China.
One attendee said she called on China to be a more responsible global citizen, allow greater freedoms and take a more active role in solving pressing world issues.
She also criticized the U.S. Federal Reserve’s massive intervention in the economy over the last year, arguing its actions only exacerbated the crisis, according to another attendee. She also praised the conservative economic policies of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Earlier, she talked of Alaska’s salmon exports and complimented Hong Kong as a “beautiful city,” according to a third attendee. All three people spoke on condition of anonymity, because they did not want to be seen as speaking on behalf of their companies.
Former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin used her first trip to Asia to attack the Federal Reserve for creating asset bubbles and encouraging excessive risk-taking that hurt working-class Americans.
In a wide-ranging, 80-minute speech to fund managers in Hong Kong today, Palin spoke about issues ranging from Alaskan fishing to energy independence to U.S.-Sino ties. She repeated calls for “market-oriented” health-care reform and said governments shouldn’t regulate executive compensation.
The Fed and the government sent a message to companies that “the bigger that you are, the more problems that you get yourself into, the more likely the government is to bail you out,” Palin said in the closed door speech, according to a tape of the event given to Bloomberg News. “Of course the little guys are left out then. We’re left holding the bag, all the moms and pops all over America.”
The speech was Palin’s first major public appearance since quitting as Alaska governor on July 26, less than a year after she ran with John McCain in an unsuccessful campaign against now-President Barack Obama. People at the event said she focused on a wide range of global and domestic issues rather than her own political future.
“She was brilliant,” said a European delegate, on condition of anonymity.
“She said America was spending a lot of money and it was a temporary solution. Normal people are having to pay more and more but things don’t get better. The rich will leave the country and the poor will get poorer.”
Two US delegates left early, with one saying “it was awful, we couldn’t stand it any longer”. He declined to be identified.
This was a foreign policy and economics speech so it is the foreign reaction that counts, but it should be no surprise that the only people who had something bad to say were from the United States. One can just feel the vitriol from the American quote. Many people have such an emotional connection with Barack Obama that they cannot stand to hear any critique of him. This is something I have seen first hand. One should NEVER make an emotional attachment to a candidate or a politician ever. The emotional connection will blind you. The polls make it crystal clear that the independent/cross pressured voters have turned against Obama’s policies, but for those partisans with such a strong emotional investment it is going to take a lot more damage to get them to open their eyes fully. Even the NY Times gave her presentation a good review.
The left wing bias at public universities is so extrenched that Marxism is often taught as the only academic truth. While in the standard liberal arts curriculum Aristotle, Socrates, Francis bacon, Edmund Burke, Cicero, Adam Smith, Thomas Aquinas go almost completely uncovered; advocates for Marx like central control of our lives such as Karl Marx, Judith Butler, C.Wright Mills, Max Weber, and Antonio Gramsci get covered over and over again.
The bias is not that subtle either as most lessons and events start out with idea that the far left premise is true. The bias is usually not as bold and in your face as the following video, but this inceident does not surprise me at all.
Politicizing non political subjects is very common, both in the curriculum and in the text books where professors who write them often include their own social and political opinions and present them as academic truth.
I just took the required non-majors biology lab class last semester and on one of the first homework assignments included a question on a politically charged John Holdren like piece on population control from the text. Of course none of the horror stories about what would happen if we did not have global central control over the economy and human reproduction came true, but that does not stop textbooks and professors from pushing the narrative as fact. I wrote a page long essay about how those theories have been debunked by history and I attacked the appropriateness of such a political narrative in a biology class. The instructor, who was a professor candidate looking for full-time work, seemed to learn her lesson and never posed a question like that again in class. Good for her.
Sarah Palin’s Wall Street Journal Op-Ed is in the previous post HERE.
Politico gets the talking points sent out by the White House:
A source sends on the talking points the White House is circulating to allies in advance of President Obama’s speech, most of them reiterating familiar themes of momentum and security.
But the White House has also chosen specifically to focus on former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, and evidently to make her the face of the opposition, or to respond to her ability to project herself into the debate. She is the only Republican named in the talking points.
Here’s that section:
On Gov. Palin’s Attacks
Every non-partisan organization that has looked at her claims say they are false. And the ideas in her op-ed are both scary and risky. Eliminating Medicare and giving our seniors vouchers instead is a bad idea that we shouldn’t adopt.
Here is the problem. Changing the way Medicare works with vouchers isn’t getting rid of Medicare at all, it just changes its internal structure so its less bureaucratic and likely more efficient. The White House is spinning hard here. Medicare was 10 times over budget in its first 20 years because it was implemented so poorly and here comes Obama with a Oregon like state health plan for the nation that has been tried and demonstrated to be a disaster. Vouchers on the other hand have worked very will with schools and other programs. In fact in Washington DC the program worked so well and saved so much money that the employee and teachers union got the politicians to kill it because it showed just how bad they were performing.
I’m pleased that the White House is finally responding to Republican health care ideas instead of pretending they don’t exist.[1] But in doing so President Obama should follow his own sound advice and avoid making “wild misrepresentations”.[2] Medicare vouchers would give everyone on Medicare the chance to decide for themselves which health plan to use, rather than leave that decision to government bureaucrats. Such proposals are the kind of health care reform that Republicans stand for: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven.
The White House talking points leave the rest of my arguments unanswered. They don’t respond to the idea that all individuals should get the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; that we must reform our tort laws; and that we should allow Americans to buy insurance across state lines. The White House also fails to respond to the Nyce/Schieber study indicating that wages will fall if the government expands coverage without reducing health care inflation rates.
One last thing: after President Obama’s speech tonight, listen for which pundits use the words “false”, “scary”, and “risky” in describing the proposals I put forward. That’s how you’ll be able to tell who the White House counted as “allies” worthy of receiving its talking points. [emphasis ours - Editor]
Our Take- test a voucher program on the uninsured/under-insured first to work any bugs out and then try to fix Medicare so it doesn’t go broke and our seniors can still have a safety net. Doing nothing means certain doom for Medicare and raising enough taxes to fix it as it is now is certain doom for the economy. Does anyone find it amusing that “hope& change” is now arguing for just a whole lot more of the status quo and it is Sarah Palin who is offering up substantive ideas for change?
Politically, Sarah Palin is obviously running for president as she is running against him right now for all intensive purposes. Expect Palin to take Obama and the Democrats on point by point with substantive plans and ideas like this one.
Writing in the New York Times last month, President Barack Obama asked that Americans “talk with one another, and not over one another” as our health-care debate moves forward.
I couldn’t agree more. Let’s engage the other side’s arguments, and let’s allow Americans to decide for themselves whether the Democrats’ health-care proposals should become governing law.
Some 45 years ago Ronald Reagan said that “no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds.” Each of us knows that we have an obligation to care for the old, the young and the sick. We stand strongest when we stand with the weakest among us.
We also know that our current health-care system too often burdens individuals and businesses—particularly small businesses—with crippling expenses. And we know that allowing government health-care spending to continue at current rates will only add to our ever-expanding deficit.
How can we ensure that those who need medical care receive it while also reducing health-care costs? The answers offered by Democrats in Washington all rest on one principle: that increased government involvement can solve the problem. I fundamentally disagree.
Common sense tells us that the government’s attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy. And common sense tells us to be skeptical when President Obama promises that the Democrats’ proposals “will provide more stability and security to every American.”
With all due respect, Americans are used to this kind of sweeping promise from Washington. And we know from long experience that it’s a promise Washington can’t keep.
Let’s talk about specifics. In his Times op-ed, the president argues that the Democrats’ proposals “will finally bring skyrocketing health-care costs under control” by “cutting . . . waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies . . . .”
First, ask yourself whether the government that brought us such “waste and inefficiency” and “unwarranted subsidies” in the first place can be believed when it says that this time it will get things right. The nonpartistan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doesn’t think so: Its director, Douglas Elmendorf, told the Senate Budget Committee in July that “in the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.”
Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He’s asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council—an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs. In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . .”
Given such statements, is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats’ proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans. Working through “normal political channels,” they made themselves heard, and as a result Congress will likely reject a wrong-headed proposal to authorize end-of-life counseling in this cost-cutting context. But the fact remains that the Democrats’ proposals would still empower unelected bureaucrats to make decisions affecting life or death health-care matters. Such government overreaching is what we’ve come to expect from this administration.
Speaking of government overreaching, how will the Democrats’ proposals affect the deficit? The CBO estimates that the current House proposal not only won’t reduce the deficit but will actually increase it by $239 billion over 10 years. Only in Washington could a plan that adds hundreds of billions to the deficit be hailed as a cost-cutting measure.
The economic effects won’t be limited to abstract deficit numbers; they’ll reach the wallets of everyday Americans. Should the Democrats’ proposals expand health-care coverage while failing to curb health-care inflation rates, smaller paychecks will result. A new study for Watson Wyatt Worldwide by Steven Nyce and Syl Schieber concludes that if the government expands health-care coverage while health-care inflation continues to rise “the higher costs would drive disposable wages downward across most of the earnings spectrum, although the declines would be steepest for lower-earning workers.” Lower wages are the last thing Americans need in these difficult economic times.
Finally, President Obama argues in his op-ed that Democrats’ proposals “will provide every American with some basic consumer protections that will finally hold insurance companies accountable.” Of course consumer protection sounds like a good idea. And it’s true that insurance companies can be unaccountable and unresponsive institutions—much like the federal government. That similarity makes this shift in focus seem like nothing more than an attempt to deflect attention away from the details of the Democrats’ proposals—proposals that will increase our deficit, decrease our paychecks, and increase the power of unaccountable government technocrats.
Instead of poll-driven “solutions,” let’s talk about real health-care reform: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven. As the Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon and others have argued, such policies include giving all individuals the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers that allow them to purchase their own coverage; reforming tort laws to potentially save billions each year in wasteful spending; and changing costly state regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top-down government plan, let’s give Americans control over their own health care.
Democrats have never seriously considered such ideas, instead rushing through their own controversial proposals. After all, they don’t need Republicans to sign on: Democrats control the House, the Senate and the presidency. But if passed, the Democrats’ proposals will significantly alter a large sector of our economy. They will not improve our health care. They will not save us money. And, despite what the president says, they will not “provide more stability and security to every American.”
We often hear such overblown promises from Washington. With first principles in mind and with the facts in hand, tell them that this time we’re not buying it.
[Editor's Note: I like Camille Paglia, she is an honest liberal, not a full blown leftist, but an honest, left of center person in almost a traditional sense...OK maybe traditional is the wrong word, but it will have to do for now. I try to not miss her columns and I am kicking myself for missing this one that she wrote in November 2008. Paglia was all for Obama and hoped that he would be a center left president and not a hard left one. She didn't get her wish.
And as truly bright, refreshing and observant as Paglia is, she missed just how far left he was even though it seems that Paglia did some homework and knew Obama's record almost as well as I did. This goes to show that even a considerable intellect as Camille Paglia can be tricked up by an emotional attachment. It was clear in reading her columns that to a degree Paglia was caught up in the emotionalism of the election.
I cannot fault someone for not wanting to vote for John McCain. As great an American hero he is, his political leadership has proved to be flawed and inconsistent on too many occasions.
Ayers comes off in the film as a vapid, slightly dopey, chronic juvenile with stunted powers of ethical reasoning. The real revelation is his wife, Bernardine Dohrn (who evidently worked at the same large Chicago law firm as Michelle Obama in the mid-1990s). Of course I had heard of Dohrn — hers was one of the most notorious names of our baby-boom generation — and I knew her black-and-white police mug shot. But I had never seen footage of her speaking or interacting with others. Well, it’s pretty obvious who wears the pants in that family!
The mystery of Bernardine Dohrn: How could such a personable, attractive, well-educated young woman end up saying such things at a 1969 political rally as this (omitted in the film) about the Manson murders: “Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach. Wild!” And how could Dohrn have so ruthlessly pursued a decade-long crusade of hatred and terrorism against innocent American citizens and both private and public property?
“The Weather Underground” never searches for answers, but it does show Dohrn, then and now, as a poised, articulate woman of extremely high intelligence and surprising inwardness. The audio extra of her reading the collective’s first public communiqué (“Revolutionary violence is the only way”) is chilling. But the tumultuous footage of her 1980 surrender to federal authorities is a knockout. Mesmerized, I ran the clip six or seven times of her seated at a lawyer’s table while reading her still defiant statement. The sober scene — with Dohrn hyper-alert in a handsome turtleneck and tweedy jacket — was tailor-made for Jane Fonda in her “Klute” period, androgynous shag. Only illegalities by federal investigators prevented Dohrn from being put away on ice for a long, long time.
Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.
How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don’t know their asses from their elbows.
Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology — contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.
I like Sarah Palin, and I’ve heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is — and quite frankly, I think the people who don’t see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn’t speak the King’s English — big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns — that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.
As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee — what navel-gazing hypocrisy! What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry’s nod for veep four years ago? And Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, for whom I lobbied to be Obama’s pick and who was on everyone’s short list for months, has a record indistinguishable from Palin’s.
President Obama’s health care “reform” plan has met with significant criticism across the country. Many Americans want change and reform in our current health care system. We recognize that while we have the greatest medical care in the world, there are major problems that we must face, especially in terms of reining in costs and allowing care to be affordable for all. However, as we have seen, current plans being pushed by the Democratic leadership represent change that may not be what we had in mind — change which poses serious ethical concerns over the government having control over our families’ health care decisions. In addition, the current plans greatly increase costs of health care, while doing lip service toward controlling costs.
We need to address a REAL bipartisan reform proposition that will have REAL impacts on costs and quality of patient care.
As Governor of Alaska, I learned a little bit about being a target for frivolous suits and complaints (Please, do I really need to footnote that?). I went my whole life without needing a lawyer on speed-dial, but all that changes when you become a target for opportunists and people with no scruples. Our nation’s health care providers have been the targets of similar opportunists for years, and they too have found themselves subjected to false, frivolous, and baseless claims. To quote a former president, “I feel your pain.”
So what can we do? First, we cannot have health care reform without tort reform. The two are intertwined. For example, one supposed justification for socialized medicine is the high cost of health care. As Dr. Scott Gottlieb recently noted, “If Mr. Obama is serious about lowering costs, he’ll need to reform the economic structures in medicine—especially programs like Medicare.” [1] Two examples of these “economic structures” are high malpractice insurance premiums foisted on physicians (and ultimately passed on to consumers as “high health care costs”) and the billions wasted on defensive medicine.
Dr. Stuart Weinstein, with the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, recently explained the problem:
”The medical liability crisis has had many unintended consequences, most notably a decrease in access to care in a growing number of states and an increase in healthcare costs.
Access is affected as physicians move their practices to states with lower liability rates and change their practice patterns to reduce or eliminate high-risk services. When one considers that half of all neurosurgeons—as well as one third of all orthopedic surgeons, one third of all emergency physicians, and one third of all trauma surgeons—are sued each year, is it any wonder that 70 percent of emergency departments are at risk because they lack available on-call specialist coverage?” [2]
Dr. Weinstein makes good points, points completely ignored by President Obama. Dr. Weinstein details the costs that our out-of-control tort system are causing the health care industry and notes research that “found that liability reforms could reduce defensive medicine practices, leading to a 5 percent to 9 percent reduction in medical expenditures without any effect on mortality or medical complications.” Dr. Weinstein writes:
“If the Kessler and McClellan estimates were applied to total U.S. healthcare spending in 2005, the defensive medicine costs would total between $100 billion and $178 billion per year. Add to this the cost of defending malpractice cases, paying compensation, and covering additional administrative costs (a total of $29.4 billion). Thus, the average American family pays an additional $1,700 to $2,000 per year in healthcare costs simply to cover the costs of defensive medicine.
Excessive litigation and waste in the nation’s current tort system imposes an estimated yearly tort tax of $9,827 for a family of four and increases healthcare spending in the United States by $124 billion. How does this translate to individuals? The average obstetrician-gynecologist (OB-GYN) delivers 100 babies per year. If that OB-GYN must pay a medical liability premium of $200,000 each year (which is the rate in Florida), $2,000 of the delivery cost for each baby goes to pay the cost of the medical liability premium.” [3]
You would think that any effort to reform our health care system would include tort reform, especially if the stated purpose for Obama’s plan to nationalize our health care industry is the current high costs.
So I have new questions for the president: Why no legal reform? Why continue to encourage defensive medicine that wastes billions of dollars and does nothing for the patients? Do you want health care reform to benefit trial attorneys or patients?
Many states, including my own state of Alaska, have enacted caps on lawsuit awards against health care providers. Texas enacted caps and found that one county’s medical malpractice claims dropped 41 percent, and another study found a “55 percent decline” after reform measures were passed. [4] That’s one step in health care reform. Limiting lawyer contingency fees, as is done under the Federal Tort Claims Act, is another step. The State of Alaska pioneered the “loser pays” rule in the United States, which deters frivolous civil law suits by making the loser partially pay the winner’s legal bills. Preventing quack doctors from giving “expert” testimony in court against real doctors is another reform.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry noted that, after his state enacted tort reform measures, the number of doctors applying to practice medicine in Texas “skyrocketed by 57 percent” and that the tort reforms “brought critical specialties to underserved areas.” These are real reforms that actually improve access to health care. [5]
Dr. Weinstein’s research shows that around $200 billion per year could be saved with legal reform. That’s real savings. That’s money that could be used to build roads, schools, or hospitals.
If you want to save health care, let’s listen to our doctors. There should be no health care reform without legal reform. There can be no true health care reform without legal reform.
Contrary to some assertions, Sarah Palin has a strong record supporting Alaskan seniors. For example, Governor Palin successfully obtained approval for a five year extension of a state program that provided monthly cash payments to low-income seniors.
On May 23, 2007, using a rarely invoked emergency regulation, Governor Palin ordered assistance benefits to continue for Alaska’s neediest seniors after the Alaska legislature failed to fund the SeniorCare Program. After her action, the legislature responded, and on July 28, 2007, Governor Palin signed Senate Bill 4 to continue support for low-income Alaskan seniors by adopting the Senior Benefits Program. “This program continues important assistance to Alaska seniors,” Governor Palin said. “I promised that seniors would not go hungry, and we worked with the Alaska Legislature to address this critical need.” It was estimated that 10,700 Alaskan seniors would be able to benefit under the program.
Also under Governor Palin’s tenure, on December 19, 2008, the state stepped in and took over the Mary Conrad Center, an Anchorage nursing home, when the state determined that there was “’immediate danger to the health, safety or welfare’ of its residents.”
So, with this clear record of support and care for Alaska’s seniors by Governor Palin, what is the current criticism about? According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, prior to Governor Palin’s election in November 2006, in April of 2006, in an effort to control rapidly increasing costs for home health care providers, known as the PCA program, Governor Frank Murkowski’s administration implemented a screening process for Alaska Medicaid eligible persons by using a Level of Care assessment (LOC). The LOC assessment was designed for persons who would otherwise require hospitalization or nursing home care and was intended to help weed out fraud and abuse.
By definition, many of these people were ill, elderly or disabled and thus in need of personal care attendants to assist them. Only registered nurse assessors were allowed to evaluate consumers to determine if they qualified for PCA care. The job of assessing consumers was contracted out, but the State of Alaska DHHS determined that the hired contractor had too much backlog. Notably, under federal Medicaid strictures, the State could not get another private business to bid on the contract. So the State was forced to take over the job in November 2007. However, the State DHHS was unable to eliminate the backlog using its own staff, and the backlog then grew. The Federal DHHS temporarily suspended new admissions to the PCA program pending audit compliance to handle the backlog of existing cases and come up with a plan to speed the assessment process. The suspension has been lifted as of August 12.
Further, Gov. Palin’s FY 2009 budget clearly showed her analysis of the issue as of December 2007, and described both the problem and the solution long before the federal government got involved. The backlog issue was discussed and a plan proposed for improvement.
The graph below shows that under Gov. Palin (2007 and 2008) the backlog problem was dramatically reduced, from 30.9% in 2005 to 4.5% in 2008. Looking at these data, one can conclude that Gov. Palin substantially reduced the outstanding percentage of Medicaid assessments by 83%.
% Not Reviewed
FY 2008 4.5%
FY 2007 4.5%
FY 2006 23.18%
FY 2005 30.9%
What is the lesson in all of this? Even with good intentions, the government generally cannot provide better health care services than the private sector. Beware of complex federal laws purporting to offer government health care. For those who want nationalized medicine, take heed of this lesson.
Reporter – Governor Palin what are your future plans?
Palin – I think it should be obvious by now…
You may be tempted to skip over this video because I did not produce a saucey headline to reel you in.
This video is a MUST see as it contains a great macro analysis of the politics of the last 10 years that is really eye opening.
The conversation about Bill Clinton, Sarah Palin and the changing mood of the country is very interesting. While Clinton was one scandal after another, one sexual peccadillo after another, and it was embarrassing for the country, the good thing about Bill Clinton was that he was willing to work with Republicans in the Congress to make real progress when other Democrat leaders were not. For most presidents their first term is when the meaningful work or damage gets done. Bill Clinton’s best term legislatively by far was his second term and he did work with Newt Gingrich and John Kasich very well. What is sad is that Welfare Reform, the piece of legislation Gingrich and Clinton got passed, which was the most popular and effective piece of legislation Clinton signed into law, was mostly undone by Obama and the Democrats with the Porkulus Bill. It wasn’t all roses, national security and nuclear proliferation had more problems under Clinton (save maybe Carter) than any other president in memory.
Pollster Frank Luntz, Palin is going to hammer the elite media :
Media Relations Strategist Andrea Tantaros “Palin accomplished as governor what Obama promised and failed to deliver upon.” :
Limbaugh “Is there another national leader talking this way?” :
O’Reilly on the elite media’s continuing ridiculous attacks on Palin: …Most successful presidents have been former governors just like Sarah Palin, but unlike most of those governors she accomplished her legislative agenda for reform in Alaska in two and a half years.
She exited office in classic Palin style, with folksy picnics at which she bade farewell to her constituents, and with a running series of Twitter reports as she traversed the vast state. In one posted Saturday en route to Fairbanks, she wrote, “We remember all of AK is big/wild/good life; feel freedom here.”
It may be that, after 11 difficult months in the spotlight, Palin longs to feel some of that freedom she wrote about Saturday. But does she have a second act in her repertoire?
“Palin Year One was the introduction of a persona, and the construction (and destruction) of legend around it,” Tucker Eskew, a senior adviser to the Republican during her 2008 vice presidential bid, wrote in an e-mail Sunday. “I think she believes in an America of limitless possibility, so let’s see. Year Two and beyond will be defined by her capacity for reinvention.
“Substantive second acts in American politics are reserved for those who stake a claim and defend it,” Eskew added. “By resigning, she limits her chances for public office and expands her chances for personal good fortune. Somewhere in between public office and personal standing lies her apparent — but elusive — goal of influence.”
Friends worried that she appeared anxious and underweight. Her hair had thinned to the point where she needed emergency help from her hairdresser and close friend, Jessica Steele.
“Honestly, I think all of it just broke her heart,” Ms. Steele said in an interview at her beauty parlor in Wasilla, the Beehive.
This tidbit was seized upon and has bounced through the Internet and blogosphere — a Google search for “Palin hair thinned” now returns nearly 400,000 hits. Lefties such as Eleanor Clift seized on it as some kind of meme that Palin can’t handle stress.
One problem. Steele was never interviewed by anyone, never said these things and is venting her fury on her twitter feed:
I am Sarah Palin’s hairdresser in Alaska! The media is saying Sarah’s hair is thinning this is a lie!!! I never said this and it’s not true! about 12 hours ago from Tweetie
@aktiff08 yes, this is what they are saying!!! They say it was an exclusive from her hairdresser! Makes me sick! about 12 hours ago from Tweetie in reply to aktiff08
Inside Edition contacted me about an interview,I said no because the whole “story” was a lie! Sarah Palin’s hair is not thinning! about 9 hours ago from Tweetie
I have never spoken 2 Inside Edition or told any reporter at the NYTs that Sarah Palin’s hair was thinning to the point of emergency! Liars! about 9 hours ago from Tweetie
I will continue 2 tell people: I never said Sarah Palin’s hair is thinning! The Left is desperate to attack Sarah Palin with stupid lies!!! about 9 hours ago from Tweetie
Media is so desperate to attack Sarah Palin they are saying lies about her hair! I am her HAIRDRESSER!! U will not use me in a LIE media!!!! about 8 hours ago from Tweetie
@Adrienne2012 it’s so werid to hear & read about things that I “said” that are not true! Never said her hair needed emergency attention! about 8 hours ago from Tweetie in reply to Adrienne2012
@aktiff08 at this point I am realizing that the truth doesn’t matter, only the perception of the truth is real any more it’s makes me so mad about 8 hours agofrom Tweetie in reply to aktiff08
I’ve got to say Sarah Palin is very strong! I’m pissed off about these stupid lies about her hair, can’t image dealing wth this stuff daily! about 8 hours agofrom Tweetie
If u think about it saying Sarah’s Palins hair is thinning is the dumbest lie the New York Times and inside Edition can come up with yet! about 8 hours agofrom Tweetie
All uhave 2 do is look at Sarah Palin’s hair 2 see that it’s not thinning it’s gorgeous I work with it all the time she’s fabulous! Luv SP about 8 hours agofrom Tweetie
No less than FOUR NYT reporters were in on this story and line editors also have a job to call sources and verify quotes on important stories. Of course anyone who examines our “Palin Truth Squad” category can see that newspapers making things up about Palin is nothing new [start from the oldest posts in the category and move forward - Editor].
As for those who argued that Palin decided to leave office for fear she would lose in 2010, this poll, which was in the field from June 14-18 suggests otherwise. Palin led Berkowitz 56 percent to 36 percent in a hypothetical general election matchup and carried a solid 56 percent/35 percent favorable to unfavorable score.
The survey was conducted by Global Strategy Group.
When Sarah Palin made her announcement and her speech, her intentions became clear to those who listened and understands how and why politics works. We did ( 1, 2, 3, 4) and now I see someone else did too.
A very entertaining hour with three hunters talking hunting, ranching, machine guns, law and politics. Palin shows just how down to Earth and unpretentious she is.
Warning: If you are one of those pinheads on the second floor with a picture of Karl Marx on your wall, listening to these vids may make blood shoot from your eyes.
CBS did a poll saying that 65% of Americans believe that Sarah Palin is not prepared to be president.
So how do we determine who is right?
There are several tricks that can be used to skew a poll to the left side of exit polls and other actual results. The most common way to make a poll result move further to the left is to poll “registered voters” instead of “likely voters”. Almost anyone who gets a license is registered to vote. Most of them do not vote and don’t pay attention to politics and just parrot the far left views of the elite media.
Another common way to skew a poll to the left is to conduct the poll on a weekend. Another way to skew a poll to the left is to include cell phone numbers in the poll. People who have a cell phone as opposed to a land line are people who are highly mobile. Those who are highly mobile and have no land line are less likely to vote and less likely to pay attention to politics; thus are more likely to simply parrot the view of the elite media.
The final way to rig a poll is in the way that you ask the question. For example “Do taxpayers spend too much money on the medical bills of illegal aliens” vs. “should the children of immigrants be denied all access to hospitals and schools”.
So I examined the PDF with the weakly detailed “internals” of the poll (LINK):
This poll was conducted among a random sample of 944 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone July 9-12, 2009. Phone numbers were dialed from samples of both standard land-line and cell phones.
Upon examining the polls, both used “registered voters instead of likely voters, so both are skewed to the left. Both include cell phone numbers. But the Gallup poll was taken on a Monday and the CBS poll is a weekend poll; hence the CBS poll will be more skewed to the left than the Gallup poll and the numbers reflect that.
Statements from White House reporter and AOL Daily reporter Carl Cannon via the MRC:
In the 2008 election, we took sides, straight and simple, particularly with regard to the vice presidential race. I don’t know that we played a decisive role in that campaign, and I’m not saying the better side lost. What I am saying is that we simply didn’t hold Joe Biden to the same standard as Sarah Palin, and for me, the real loser in this sordid tale is my chosen profession.
From the beginning, and for the ensuing 10 months, the coverage of this governor consisted of a steamy stew of cultural elitism and partisanship. The overt sexism of some male commentators wasn’t countered, as one might have expected, by their female counterparts. Women columnists turned on Sarah Palin rather quickly. A plain-speaking, moose-hunting, Bible-thumping, pro-life, self-described “hockey mom” with five children and movie star looks with only a passing interest in foreign policy — that wasn’t the woman journalism’s reigning feminists had envisioned for the glass ceiling-breaking role of First Female President (or Vice President). Hillary Rodham Clinton was more like what they had in mind – and Sarah, well, she was the un-Hillary.
Cannon went on to catalogue just some of Biden’s mistakes:
Sen. Biden, however, was in a place by himself when it came to bogus claims, absurd contentions, and flights of rhetorical fancy. He threw out several assertions that were so preposterous that – had Palin made them – they would have prompted immediate calls for McCain to dump her from the ticket.
The good senator from Delaware warmed up slowly, erroneously claiming that McCain voted with Obama on a budget resolution, and asserting wrongly that Obama wanted to return to the Reagan-era marginal income tax rates. He also embarked on an appallingly wrongheaded monologue about the constitutional history of the vice presidency. But when the talk turned to national security, presumably Biden’s purported area of expertise, he went completely off the grid.
• “John McCain voted against a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that every Republican has supported,” Biden stated. (Actually, in a 1999 vote in Congress, McCain sided with 50 other Republicans to kill the treaty. Only four joined the Democrats.)
• “Pakistan already has deployed nuclear weapons,” Biden said. “Pakistan’s weapons can already hit Israel and the Mediterranean.” (Pakistan has no known intercontinental missiles. The range of its weapons is thought to be 1,000 miles – halfway to Israel.)
• “When we kicked — along with France — we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t…Hezbollah will control it.’” Biden recalled. “Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.” (Except that the U.S. never kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon or anywhere else. They’ve been entrenched in Lebanon since 1982. Actually, Hezbollah, insofar as it was responsible for the 1983 suicide bombing at the Marine barracks that killed 241 U.S. servicemen, kicked America out of Lebanon, not the other way around.)
• “The president…insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, ‘Big mistake. Hamas will win. You’ll legitimize them.’ What happened? Hamas won,” Biden said. (Only the last two words of Biden’s strange soliloquy are true. The rest are false. For one thing, Fatah controls the West Bank. Biden was thinking of Gaza. Secondly, neither Biden nor Obama predicted the 2006 victory for Hamas in Gaza’s legislative elections. Third, McCain and Obama – but not Biden — signed a letter urging the president to pressure Palestinians to require that candidates adhere to democratic principles before being allowed to run for office. Fourth, Biden served as an election observer and later wrote an article expressing high praise for Bush’s actions. To sum up: One factual error and three fibs in only 31 words. Pretty impressive, in its way.)
• “With Afghanistan, facts matter…we spend more money in three weeks on combat in Iraq than we spend on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan. Let me say that again…” (He did say it again, but that didn’t make it true. It’s wildly and weirdly off the mark. Yes, facts matter. The facts here were that at the time Biden was speaking, the U.S. had spent $172 billion in Afghanistan. The Iraq War consumes between $7 billion and $8 billion every three weeks. Biden’s math was off by 2,000 percent.)
• “Can I clarify this? This is simply not true about Barack Obama. He did not say (he’d) sit down with Ahmadinejad.” (He most certainly did. And among those who criticized him at the time for it was Joe Biden, who told Byron York of National Review that the idea of a president meeting with the likes of the Iranian president or Hugo Chavez was “naVve.”)
Can you believe the gall of these Sarah Palin cultists? Presidential aspirations? This is a woman who named one of her kids “Track,” for God’s sake. (Well, if it really is her kid.)
William Buckley once wrote that he rather would “entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”
But running government is no longer a suitable vocation for the bumbling proletariat. It’s for folks with schoolin’ and such. It’s a job for herculean thinkers with degrees from Ivy League schools. In other words, no one from Alaska need apply.
Former sports reporters certainly won’t do. We need former constitutional scholars. Who else, after all, has a better understanding of how to undermine the document?
Really, where would we be if a bumpkin like Palin were president? With her brainpower, we probably would be stuck with a Cabinet full of tax cheats, retreads and moralizing social engineers. [Like we do now - editor]
If Palin were president, chances are we’d have a gaffe-generating motormouth for a vice president. That’s the kind of decision-making one expects from Miss Congeniality. [Go Biden go! - Editor]
The job of building generational debt is not for the unsophisticated. Enriching political donors with taxpayer dollars takes intellectual prowess, not the skills of a moose-hunting point guard. [LINK]
The talent to print money we don’t have to pay for programs we can’t afford is the work of a finely tuned imagination, soaring gravitas and endless policy know-how. [LINK]
Palin is so clueless she probably would have rushed through some colossal stimulus plan that ended up stimulating nothing. [Except government, lobbyists and donations to politicians LINK - Editor]
If Palin were president, no one doubts this nation would have continued the Bush-era policy of indefinite detention of enemy combatants and the CIA’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights. Be thankful you have a president who makes you think this nation doesn’t. [After promising to end these programs in the campaign Obama has preserved them - Editor]
If Palin were commander in chief — and, again, can anyone imagine anything so preposterous? — the United States still would be fighting endless and expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It’s true that Palin’s first veto as Alaska governor was of a bill that would have blocked state employee benefits and health insurance for same-sex couples, but does anyone doubt her true intentions?
If she were president, brave American soldiers still would be living under the dark specter of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Palin even might have instructed her Justice Department to file a brief in defense of the Defense of Marriage Act. Such is the depth of her depravity. [Obama again, another reversal from the campaign - Editor]
Does anyone believe that Palin possesses the competence to nationalize entire industries without the consent of the people? A housewife from Wasilla isn’t equipped with political brawn to shake down banks and bondholders. [Obama gave them billions so they would not go into bankruptcy - it didn't work and now we own them - Editor]
Palin never would be able to convince Americans that a trillion-dollar government-run health care plan would save taxpayers money or have the rhetorical ability to convince even a single person that a European-style cap-and-trade scheme has any benefit at all. [The EPA announced that cap & trade will have no effect on global warming/cooling etc - LINK Editor]
Palin is such a goofball that she probably believes oil will continue to be a vital American energy source.
And how is anyone as simplistic as Palin going to help change the habits of all these fatsos in America? We need a mommy … but, you know, not a real mommy.
For Palin, though, there is hope.
Just because you’re the target of a revolting elitist hit job doesn’t mean you’re ready to be president. I don’t believe Palin has thought deeply enough about serious issues. She certainly has proved to be unable to defend herself adequately on intellectual grounds.
To this point, at least, Palin hasn’t offered much more than populist sloganeering. Her popularity often seems fueled by charisma alone. [Hope & Change say it for me one more time! - Editor]
So, judging from Barack Obama’s success, she has all the makings of a future president.
Of course you’d never know that from reading hit jobs like Todd Purdum’s sepulchral piece on Palin in the current Vanity Fair. Scurrying around Alaska with his notepad, Purdum still managed to find comically little to indict her with. Anyone with a gripe is given the floor; fans are shut out. This exercise in faux objectivity is exposed at key points such as Purdum’s failure to identify the actual instigator of Palin’s extravagant clothing bills (a crazed, credit-card-abusing stylist appointed by the McCain campaign) and his prissy characterization of Palin’s performance at the vice-presidential debate as merely “adequate.” Hey, wake up — Palin cleaned Biden’s clock! By the end, Biden was sighing and itching to split.
The vicious double standard is pretty obvious. Only the tabloids, for example, ran the photos of a piss-drunk Chelsea Clinton, panties exposed, falling into her car outside London clubs a few years ago. If Chelsea had been the scion of Republican bigwigs, those tacky scenes would have been trumpeted from pillar to post in the U.S. as signals of parental failures or turmoil in clan Clinton. As a Democrat, I detest the partisan machinations that have become standard in Northeastern news management and that are detectable in editorial decisions at major metropolitan newspapers nationwide. It’s why I, like a host of others, have shifted my news gathering to the Web.
Paglia comes to the same conclusion we have a long time ago, journalism as an ethical profession and art form, is dead.
Tammy Bruce interview with Palin insider Rebbecca Mansour
Palin made legislators come to her office to explain to her and justify the pet projects they tried to tack onto spending bills. That is a great way to fight cronyism and corruption. It is also a great way to royally piss off slimy politicians.
This is the heart of the reason why the leftist elite media and Democrats attack her the way they do. In spite of a media onslaught of smears that has been unprecedented in US history, with a reasonably well run campaign she can win.
A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted Monday night found that 53 percent of Americans felt the media coverage of Palin was unfairly negative and that 70 percent said their opinion of Palin hadn’t changed since she decided to step down as Alaska governor.
While it remains to be seen whether Palin will seek the presidency in three years, 19 percent of voters said they would be very likely to vote for her in 2012 and another 24 percent said they would be somewhat likely. [Internals LINK]
UPDATE: Time Magazine has a very fair (amazing) interview with Gov. Palin HERE. Palin says that 2012 is not off the table.
Too many loons manage to become professors. Many of these loons do so because they just cannot make it in the real world. They create groups to hand each other awards and tell each other how great they are, but only if you sling hate at the “right” people.
The latest example of truly mindless, sexist, hate is from Prof. Walter Brasch whose very foolish behavior managed to get him mentioned here and likely in my upcoming book.
Now keep in mind that the following remarks are from a professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University. His remarks are about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin who cleaned up what used to be one of the most corrupt states in the union:
Walter Brasch
You betcha! Half my salary is already taken up on clothes and jewelry so I can be the best darned governor in these here greatest United States of America!
Trust me, babe, we don’t want your wisdom, but that’s how this business works. You want to ride, you have to pay the operator. Now, about punditry.
Sweet cheeks, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet! Make the audience salivate when they see you on air, and we’ll get you a regular slot. An hour, maybe more every week night.
Whatever you want, we’ll get. You’re a money machine. So what can we get you? Maybe a full time babysitter for Todd and the kids. They might be lonely without a wife and mother.
~
Talk about a slap in the face to every working mother in America. On a side note, who is this turkey to be making comments about a woman’s looks? If Hollywood tried to cast an aging pervert who roams the park and flashes people from under a trench coat could they do better than this clown? In either case hateful, sexist and without a residue of journalistic ethics or professional detachment seem to be required resume material for so many professors today.
Prof. Brasch is a quintessential example of what is wrong with not only journalism, but the failures of public university education.
From my endless archives, a few samples of how the major media wrote off Ronald Reagan repeatedly:
Newsweek, 1971, “Ronald Reagan’s Slow Fade,” ended with the judgment that “the somber truth is that Sacramento may mark the end of Ronald Reagan’s political road. . . By every normal measure, Ronald Reagan ought to be entitled to any political future he wants.A close aide said, ‘The Presidency?Oh, he’s not interested.Four more years and I think you’ll see Ronald Reagan riding one of his horses off into the sunset.’” And see Stephen Roberts in the New York Times Magazine: “In 1976, the reasoning goes, Reagan would be 65, and too old to run.” “When a guy’s built on celluloid,” Democratic State Senator George Moscone said, “he goes up fast, but he burns out quickly.”
After the 1976 campaign, Newsweek offered a reprise, “Into the Sunset”: ”The concluding line of Reagan’s convention speech—’There is no substitute for victory’—could also turn out to be a epitaph for his own political career.”
And not to be left out, John Coyne wrote in some magazine called National Review that “Reagan seems somewhat out of step with the new political stirrings, a man very much of the Sixties. . . For a decade he has been a central symbol of everything that is best in what we call the conservative movement, and if his approach and his ideas are obsolete, then so are those many of us who believe in him.And it’s never much fun to be a middle-aged anachronism.”
Everyone should apply the appropriate discount to the Palin commentary and analysis they read today.
Editor’s note: These are the comments I left on Patterico’s blog today (7/5) -
Guys, no one can run any kind of national media or fund raising campaign while stuck in Alaska. No one can start collecting political IOU’s from there also.
Look at how Obama has used TARP and other programs to pick winners and losers of companies who will get our tax dollars and will now cycle some of that money back to his re-election campaign.
Anyone who plans to take Obama on needs to start raising money now. Obama is the wall street corporate/lobbyist owned candidate and lobbying reports from DC is making that pretty clear.
Obama did not hold one hearing for the subcommittee he chaired as a senator, not one. He made a speech to the DNC and used one office to immediately start running for the next. Obama was a do nothing senator.
Palin at least made it clear that she got her legislative agenda passed and instead of just collecting a paycheck and doing nothing she is moving on. – Really some of the comments (seen across the blogosphere) show that some of you just are not thinking.
Governor Palin said today that most of the pundits told her to stay quiet and go with the flow, well my husband and I are commercial fisherman and we know that the only ones who do that are dead fish.
What does she have to do to make it more clear? Perhaps she should have said, “If you want a fight , I’ll give you one?
She also said, “I can now effect change on a different scale”.
John Batchelor, who is considered one of the finest intellects in conservative news radio, has a great piece in the Daily Beast (LINK). Batchelor really gets it and his piece is a must read. Palin is the party nominee, she can step into the void of Republican leadership now and start raising money.
Palin took shots today directly at Obama’s policies and then said that she was “not retreating, we are advancing in a different direction”.
Palin Spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton tells Fox News Sarah Palin is “not running from pressure” and “this is a fighting move”.
It’s on.
In the last election, as the bottom of the ticket she was subject to the mishandling of Steve Schmidt and others on the McCain team. Now we will be able to see how she can perform with Sarah in charge.
We rely on petroleum for much more than just powering our vehicles: It is essential in everything from jet fuel to petrochemicals, plastics to fertilizers, pesticides to pharmaceuticals. According to the Energy Information Administration, our total domestic petroleum consumption last year was 19.5 million barrels per day (bpd). Motor gasoline and diesel fuel accounted for less than 13 million bpd of that. Meanwhile, we produced only 4.95 million bpd of domestic crude. In other words, even if we ran all our vehicles on something else (which won’t happen anytime soon), we would still have to depend on imported oil. And we’ll continue that dependence until we develop our own oil resources to their fullest extent.
Alaska also shows how oil drilling is thoroughly compatible with energy conservation and renewable-energy development. Over 20 percent of Alaska’s electricity currently comes from renewable sources, and as governor I put forward a long-term plan to increase that figure to 50 percent by 2025. Alaska’s comprehensive plan identifies renewable options across the state that can help rural villages transition away from expensive diesel-generated electricity — allowing each community to choose the solution that best fits its needs. That’s important in any energy plan: Tempting as they may be to central planners, top-down, one-size-fits-all solutions are recipes for failure.
