On allegations that she requested that unofficial Jon Corzine ally Chris Daggett drop out of the New Jersey race, the former governor replied:
So, to the good people of New Jersey, please know that Daggett’s claims are false. I’ve never even suggested he should drop out of the race.
…wait for it, wait for it…
But, come to think of it…
Ouch. You want to keep playing, Daggett?
Moe Lane
(H/T: Hot Air Headlines.)
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Via her Facebook account, of course:
Mark my words - tomorrow is the game changer! Tune in to hear common sense solutions that bury the false accusations that conscientious members of Congress have no solutions to meet America’s health care challenges.
If you’re like me, shaking your head wondering why all the miscommunication between Washington and the American people who have been saying, “Please hear what we’re saying about our desire for health care reform,” then tomorrow will be a refreshing time of clarity for all.
As she notes, preview here. This will be interesting to see for two reasons; first off, as Dan Riehl notes this should provide Rep. Boehner’s address with a bit more traffic than these things usually get. I’ll be interested to see whether or not it’ll be a significant spike, but it should be something. Second: if you were holding out hope that former Governor Palin was going to play third-party advocate… you might as well stop. This is her way of saying that NY-23 is a special case, not a general one; and that she’s still in, and in with, the GOP.
[Insert tired, yet labored Halloween cliche here.]
Moe Lane
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Sarah Palin is giving a big endorsement. She’s out swinging for Doug Hoffman, noting he is not a tool of the establishment.
The big loser here is Tim Pawlenty. At the first of this month, he made a great deal out of his new leadership PAC. He made great hay out of going out for real conservatives and not just the same old, same old.
“You know I haven’t been following that, I haven’t studied the race at all,” he said. “It’s not that I would or wouldn’t, I just don’t know anything about it. I haven’t taken the time to study their positions, their records, so I haven’t taken a position on it.”
That is disappointing and further bolsters the Pawlenty stereotype as milquetoast establishment.
(Via Hot Air) The Democrats in this Politico piece about former Gov. Palin and the VA/NJ races are spouting nonsense about her long term appeal*, of course - they’re aware as I am that she’s going to be very much in demand in Congressional races where the Democratic incumbent is holding down a seat in a district that McCain or Bush won. Of which there are quite a few; but Democratic strategists can perhaps not be blamed for not wanting to say something along the lines of ‘Well, THAT WOMAN is going to go through all those Southern/Western Blue-on-Red districts like a buzz-saw, so you might as well get used to it.’ The people who need to hear that most will want to hear it least.
That being said, I don’t expect her to participate in the NJ gubernatorial election, although VA’s may yet still see a presence if the McDonnell campaign goes sour. Virginia’s at best lightly purple, even now; New Jersey’s pretty definitely blue. Christie doesn’t have a margin for taking chances right now.
Moe Lane
*As might be perhaps witnessed by interest in her book
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
I posted on this three months ago - and in those three months: if there has been anything done by the current government in investigating this hate crime that would merit an update, I haven’t found it. Somebody attempted to murder several women and children via arson, and it’s becoming depressingly clear that that person (or persons) has gotten away with it clean.
This offends me. It should offend you. If it doesn’t, I don’t really care what your excuse is.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
From the diaries, by Erick.
Once again, Barack Obama proves he is not fit to serve as commander-in-chief to our armed forces. In a continuing despicable act, Obama is refusing to honor WWII veterans who fought for our nation in it’s darkest hours.
From the McClatchy News Service:
WASHINGTON — In a strongly worded message to Congress outlining its priorities for a military spending bill, the Obama administration today said it disapproved of including money for pensions for 26 elderly members of the World War II-era Alaska Territorial Guard.
The Guardsmen are among those assigned to protect Alaska from the Japanese during World War II.
….Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who along with Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, sponsored the fix [to the pensions], called the administration move “deeply disappointing, bordering on insensitive.” The legislation honors 26 elderly Native people who are the few remaining survivors of a military unit that served the country with valor, Murkowski said.
“The administration’s justification, which is that the legislation will set the precedent of treating service as a state employee as federal service, defies logic and history,” she said in a statement. “Sixty-two years after the Territorial Guard was disbanded, the Obama administration minimizes the contribution of this gallant unit to America’s success in World War II by calling its service ’state service.’ “
I’m translating this into English, of course - but not too much; Boehner made it clear Monday that the White House was disinterested in getting anything except a rubber-stamp on health care.
Earlier this year, GOP leaders sent a letter to the president in May stating that they would like to work with the administration to find “common ground” on healthcare reform.
But the administration responded with a tersely worded letter indicating that they had healthcare reform under control.
Former governor and VP candidate Sarah Palin wrote a pretty good op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on the health care situation - one where she points out, repeatedly, that we’re being asked to blindly fund a government program that will affect every aspect of our life and will not save us money in either the short or long term. As Ace of Spades notes, this is not going to cover new ground for the people already intimately familiar with the debate - but for those who aren’t, it will give a good idea of conservative objections to Obamacare, not to mention providing the alternatives that the Democrats are pretending that the Republicans aren’t providing. All in all, useful and timely.
And, as an added, special bonus, it includes the written equivalent of a smack on the nose:
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.
Not a single politically aware person does not remember John McCain’s surprise announcement of Sarah Palin as his running mate on August 29, 2008. The Democrat National Convention was wrapping up, Obama had made his grand speech, but all the political world was abuzz over the impending selection of Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty as McCain’s running mate. The surprise and expertly choreographed announcement of Sarah Palin was one of a few grand McCain campaign moments.
The conservative world, conditioned by a generation of horribly biased media now enchanted by the charismatic Obama, was braced for the media onslaught that would immediately descend on McCain’s choice, no matter who it was.
And still, we were utterly unprepared.
John Ziegler takes us through the experience, and what a year has taught us about Sarah Palin, the media, and the political landscape we now find ourselves in. Ziegler, you will recall, famously exposed in the movie Media Malpractice the true extent of media complicity in the 2008 election of Barack Obama. Previously he helped sink John Kerry’s 2008 chances by bringing to the public eye Kerry’s silly “stuck in Iraq” statement in 2006.
Read the whole thing here:
Promoted from diaries. And while I’d like to believe that someone was paying attention, alas… - Moe Lane
Many times commenters quickly pick up and spread the latest news on threads. Today someone at Hot Air mentioned something, that while off topic on that thread, is going to be the topic of news this weekend!
Sarah Palin has another Facebook Note up today . She goes for the jugular with this one:
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. …
My newspaper column went up after midnight last night and already one lefty is frothing at the mouth.
What did I do? Nothing more than quote Democrats’ own words.
Oh, and I pointed out that Sarah Palin won the healthcare debate after using the phrase “death panels.”
You can check out the column here. Here’s an excerpt:
Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel’s brother and one of Obama’s health-care advisors, wrote in a January 2009 white paper that health care should be rationed in a way that “promot[es] and reward[s] social usefulness.” He said age could play a factor in determining who can and cannot access health-care resources.
Emanuel also wrote, “[S]ervices provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens [in the body politic] are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”
Obama addressed this too, saying, “Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. … And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance.”
. . . .
We will spend money we don’t have to pay for health care, or we will prioritize who gets treatment. It is an inevitable fact of life that the more the government outlays to keep you alive, the more your life becomes subject to a cost/benefit analysis.
Be sure to read the whole column and take note of the leftist crying in the comments.
Mind you, this is just from one version of the multiple health care rationing bills that the Democrats tried - and failed - to rush through Congress, but one step at a time.
The Senate Finance Committee will drop a controversial provision on consultations for end-of-life care from its proposed healthcare bill, its top Republican member said Thursday.
The committee, which has worked on putting together a bipartisan healthcare reform bill, will drop the controversial provision after it was derided by conservatives as “death panels” to encourage euthanasia.
Also, note the use of the term ‘conservatives.’ A rather odd term of art there, but if the article were to use the name ‘Sarah Palin’ it might suggest that a portion of the Democrats’ health care rationing scheme could have been neatly derailed by two Facebook posts by that woman. Which can’t be allowed to happen at all, at all: why, the very idea is absurd! Everybody knows that you have to graduate from an Ivy League school in order to be permitted to have any influence at all in public domestic policy debates.
Seriously. It’s in the Constitution somewhere. Look it up.
Moe Lane
PS: To answer Allahpundit; it’d be a potential win for the President if Gibbs had only kept his mouth shut. In other words: no, it’s not a win for the President, too.
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Yeah, that was really dumb of that Left-blogger, huh? Spreads a malicious rumor (via a CNN Trig Truther with an extremely bad track record at accurately reporting on the former Governor) that the Palins are divorcing, gets debunked pretty much immediately*, has his real name and job (not to mention his habit of attacking children) tracked down and revealed, and faster than you can say “no ‘public figure’ defense” he’s being threatened with a libel suit.
All in all, I don’t think that this was the intended result.
Not being an attorney, I don’t know whether the public figure defense does or does not apply here; but if it does go to trial, this Gryphen fellow will almost certainly lose. I am given to understand that judges tend not to be sympathetic to people who lose libel cases when it comes to determining who pays for court costs - but if the Online Left wants to keep subsidizing the Palins’ legal team’s administration of some long-overdue negative feedback to the misogynistic crew currently obsessing over that woman: well, I guess that it’s just going to happen, that’s all.
Karma. It’s what’s for dinner.
Moe Lane
*This is apparently a real quote:
“Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd? I may be just a renegade hockey mom, but I’m not blind!”
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Promoted from the diaries by Jeff. While I’ve registered my disagreement with sentiments like those contained in this diary, and have publicly expressed my desire for Ms. Palin to disappear from the public political eye as quickly as possible now that she has left the office to which she was elected, this diary is both well-written and expressive of the enthusiasm that far-from-insignificant number of die-hard Palin fans share, and it represents a point of view I recognize as every bit as valid as my own on the matter. -JE
Back in the mid 1990’s The Chrysler Corporation went public with a really new and exciting business model. The company best known for the K-car and inventing the mini-van at that point in time, had spent a lot of time behind the scenes to totally remake the company. They threw everything out, and started fresh. New “cab-forward” styling on their cars, and a brand new pickup truck, the first completely new truck in 25 years, and a completely refocused management, design, and manufacturing team.
Chrysler became the most exciting car company around. Envied by the other manufacturers. It really was the rebirth of a company that since the it’s formation had always been recognized as one of the best at engineering. This brought Chrysler back in a big way. Record sales, especially in trucks, helped Chrysler show healthy profits. If fact, Chrysler became so successful, Mercedes-Benz would soon come knocking with a bundle of cash and an offer!
Sean Parnell has been sworn in as the new Governor of Alaska. Good luck, Governor Parnell.
I think more eyes are on former Governor Sarah Palin though. In her farewell address she said what so many have been thinking: that she sees private life as an opportunity to do more for her causes than she could as Governor.
I wish her and her family luck as they move on to the next stage of her career, away from running for office and toward a different kind of activism. She can write columns, make speeches, raise money, travel the country, and get cheers instead of ethics complaints. She can be herself without being second guessed, and most importantly without having her children under constant attack. She can be a perpetual ‘rock star’ without any of the disadvantages that come with appearing on a ballot ever again.
I hope she’s a great help to Republican candidates in 2010 and beyond, with peace and comfort to her family as she does so.
To: Linda Kellen Biegel, a.k.a “Celtic Diva”
Re: Ethics Violation
As you can see from the attached photograph, this federal employee is in clear violation of Sec. 2635.101 of the Standards Of Ethical Conduct For Employees Of The Executive Branch, Subpart A, “General Provisions” - which states:
(8) Employees shall act impartially
and not give preferential treatment to
any private organization or individual.
Millions of people around the world witnessed this federal employee wearing clothing with visible manufacturer’s logos. I call your attention to his Majestic jacket prominently displaying a large Chicago White Sox logo (We can discuss his Asics shoes at a later date). He brandished this logo jacket while acting in his official capacity as President of the United States and official starter of Major League Baseball’s 2009 All Star Game, where he became the fourth U.S. president to ceremoniously throw the first pitch.
Politico apparently has a sadist running its assignments, because he or she sent out reporters to interview a bunch of ‘conservative’ Democrats to find out whether they’d be willing to let that woman campaign with them - and got everything from uncomfortable silences to Congressmen actually running away. At least, that’s what I’m going to characterize ‘lunging for elevators’ and suddenly remembering that they had meetings that they had to get to right now. And why would this be? Because there’s no right answer to that question:
For these Democrats, many of them part of the right-leaning Blue Dog Coalition, Palin presents a quandary: She’s deeply unpopular within their own party, but in the socially conservative, often rural districts or states they represent, the plain-spoken, wader-wearing Alaska governor has a following.
…hence the running away. There are a lot of Democrats who will be relying on both the largess of the national party and the forbearance of their majority-Republican districts to stay in office past next November. Embracing that woman will infuriate the former, but too-vehemently rejecting her (as in, rejecting her at all) will hurt them with the latter. Even if you buy into the professional pundits*’ narrative on that woman, it must be admitted that she is popular with precisely the voter demographic that is currently sending a lot of ‘conservative’ Democrats to Congress. So… well, nobody ever died of shame, right? So Running Away really is the best answer, especially if you’re not actually mentioned by name.
I’m not going to claim that this was that woman’s plan all along. In fact, I actually think that the original story got garbled. But it’s funny to watch them scatter like this.
Moe Lane
*Who also, by the way, were usually astounded about how that man could keep getting his way on the war, not to mention re-elected.
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Soon to be former Governor Palin’s column on cap and trade is in many ways emblematic of her public persona: firmly held free-market/conservative positions, a quasi-folksy style that appeals to some and annoys others, and the ability to make liberals froth about that woman in ways that would impress a Taliban illegal combatant. Which is probably directly related to her PAC raising an additional 200K after her resignation speech (H/T: Hot Air Headlines): it should be interesting to see how much she brings in when she starts actively stumping for GOP candidates in 2010*.
Moving back to the article, it is itself fairly familiar, to those following the attempts of the Democrats to inflict cap-and-trade on America without having to take responsibility for it afterward. It takes the reasonable note that, in a situation where we need to put more into the economy, cap-and-trade will take out more from it: more jobs lost, more regulations imposed, more costs to do business:
That’s right, five months — not six — bacause as Allah notes at Hot Air — SarahPAC wasn’t fully operational until the end of January:
“By comparison, Romney’s PAC raised $1.4 million through the end of May, but then fundraising is pretty much Mitt’s full-time gig these days and he already has a polished team around him left over from the primaries. Let’s see what happens in the second half when he and Palin go toe-to-toe.”
Not only that, but as Meg Stapleton told Politico:
SarahPAC was actually ‘dark,’ meaning it took in no money, from a period in mid-April until early June as Palin focused on raising money for her legal-defense fund instead.
Most of the money the Palin PAC raised came from small donors:
Actually, the first half of this article from Peggy Noonan is not all that bad. But Ms. Noonan goes astray somewhere in between blaming Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for everything from all the ills of the Republican Party to the Kennedy assassination.
This is the part I cannot abide:
“Here’s why all this matters. The world is a dangerous place. It has never been more so, or more complicated, more straining of the reasoning powers of those with actual genius and true judgment. This is a time for conservative leaders who know how to think.
Here are a few examples of what we may face in the next 10 years: a profound and prolonged American crash, with the admission of bankruptcy and the spread of deep social unrest; one or more American cities getting hit with weapons of mass destruction from an unknown source; faint glimmers of actual secessionist movements as Americans for various reasons and in various areas decide the burdens and assumptions of the federal government are no longer attractive or legitimate.
The era we face, that is soon upon us, will require a great deal from our leaders. They had better be sturdy. They will have to be gifted. There will be many who cannot, and should not, make the cut. Now is the time to look for those who can. And so the Republican Party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do.”
Just how are the Democrats meeting these standards, Ms. Noonan? How is the boy-wonder president that you were so infatuated with not so long ago doing on that score? Not so great, eh?
Ms, Noonan, if you are so concerned all these catastrophe coming to be, try concentrating fire on those in power right now who are acting to bring them about as a matter of policy.
