1. A Few Things for Your Day

2. Optimism

3. The Unprecedented Killing of Anwar al-Awlaki

4. Maybe Stephanie McCrummen Just Likes Using the N Word

5. Reagan Did Not Wait Until The Last Minute

6. Bank of America, CARD Act, Dodd-Frank, and soaking the poor.

7. Disgraced ‘green jobs czar,’ ‘truther’ and admitted communist to lead extremist ‘American Autumn’

8. EPA Shutting Three of its Doors Permanently for $300,000 Savings

1. A Few Things for Your Day

I have varied thoughts on varied matters this morning and have a busy day with some family stuff, so I’m just going to bullet point some issues here and the Morning Briefing can fill out most of the stuff.I merely quoted Sarah Palin on Friday. She told Jake Tapper the end of September was her drop dead date. I have never seen so much vitriol from the supporters of one candidate for merely noting that the candidate herself said September was her drop dead date. She apparently told others she might take till October. But she herself said September was her “drop dead date.” For the past 72 hours, Sarah Palin’s most ardent supporters have been beating the hell out of me on twitter for lying. All I did was quote the woman. Some are also attacking Jake Tapper claiming he put those words in her mouth. Actually, the exchange was on tape and it was all Sarah Palin. This may be the first time I’ve ever been attacked for quoting someone accurately (Editor’s note: I had said “quoting a candidate accurately,” but then she missed her own “drop dead date” to become a candidate, didn’t she?!).The Washington Post is furious that Rick Perry’s dad used a piece of land to hunt on that had a big rock up near a gate that had the N-word on it. I can’t really tell what they are furious about. Rick Perry’s dad painted over the N-word. At one point they turned the rock over. The seven people who saw the rock knew it wasn’t the Perry family’s doing. What an ironic juxtaposition — the man who wants to let the brown kids into our schools on subsidy and wants to build a trans-national highway from Mexico to Canada hates the black kids or something. I hear Rick Perry once uttered gesundheit after someone sneezed. Maybe he is a closet Nazi too and all those black people and hispanic people he appointed to powerful positions in Texas were all smoke and mirrors.Herman Cain jumped into the fray on the Perry attack expressing moral outrage or something. I think he might have been doing his impression of Al Sharpton in the level of outrage he was willing to drum up to be outraged over what Hugh Hewitt called a “drive by slander.” Maybe he should have been outraged at the reporter for the hit job instead of at Rick Perry for Perry’s daddy painting over a racial slur.If the Washington Post is going to attack Rick Perry for his daddy painting over a racial slur and the paint fading over time, I hope the Romney campaign is ready to batten down the hatches when the Washington Post levels a broadside over Mormonism’s late embrace of black people. You know they will do it. The Washington Post goes into the sewer every chance it gets to whip up racial division to benefit Barack Obama.Speaking of Barack Obama, he wants Congress to take up the jobs bills. But he’s failing to point out that the Senate Democrats don’t have the votes. That’s right. The Democrats do not have enough Democrat votes.Lastly, supposedly we’ll know today whether or not Chris Christie just might get in the race. If not, like Sarah Palin, the buzz will continue until we get the Iowa Caucuses and he’s not there. We’ll also hear some buzz about Mike Huckabee reconsidering. I think it is too late for anyone else to get in now. They may still. But only Huckabee and Palin would have a pre-existing base of support to draw from. Still, even for them I think it would be late. And besides, can we all just go on and admit that Chris Christie’s actual record is a far cry from the rhetorical record that gives conservatives a tingle up their leg?Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Optimism

I’ve been dwelling on this for a couple of weeks. Call it, if you will, the “Carville Rule” named for the consultant who came up with it (at least I’ll give James credit). It is simply that the most optimistic candidate wins.Listening to the debates, listening to the speeches, and listening to the general nature of this election, I have to tell you I don’t think there is much optimism out there. And I don’t just mean optimism among the voters and nation as a whole. There is little optimism in the candidates.As Peggy Noonan noted this weekend, there is some serious patriotism building up in the men and women at work across this country. Right now they just want someone to rally to. They don’t need Reagan, but they need someone with Reagan’s sense of the American ideal.They haven’t found that person.Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. The Unprecedented Killing of Anwar al-Awlaki

I’m not a lawyer and I don’t even play one after staying at a Holiday Inn Express or when posting on RedState so what follows doesn’t pretend to be a legal analysis but more of a historical perspective on what Mr. al-Awlaki’s untimely end may signify.I’ll preface this by saying that I think the killing of al-Awlaki to be right and proper. I’m not Ron Paul, Kevin Williamson, or Glenn Greenwald. That does not mean that I’m without a bit of queasiness.To the best of my knowledge the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki is the first time in our history that a US citizen, serving under arms against his country, has been specifically placed on a “hit list” and then hunted down and killed.Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Maybe Stephanie McCrummen Just Likes Using the N Word

This is perhaps the most bizarre attack on Rick Perry to come so far.Hugh Hewtitt has a very good take down of it. It shows the extent to which the Democrats will go to attack Republicans. Stephanie McCrummen, a Washington Post based reporter formerly stationed in Nairobi has a history of fanning racial flames out of context.Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. Reagan Did Not Wait Until The Last Minute

The 2012 presidential election season has not been a normal one in many ways. History teaches us that every election season brings something new we haven’t seen before – but also that progress in electioneering, as in most walks of life, is more gradual than people are wont to predict. The candidate who says “this time, everything is different” or “the old rules don’t apply” or promises “new politics” or “fundamental change” is almost always selling a bill of goods to his or her supporters, and often to himself or herself. As conservatives, with a belief in experience as mankind’s best and only teacher, we should know better. One need only look back to 2010, when a popular wave brought victory mostly to candidates with the attributes and experience of traditonally successful candidates (Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey) and defeat to candidates who were genuinely unorthodox or similar to past losing campaigns (Sharron Angle, Carly Fiorina, Christine O’Donnell). The terrain shifted and new opportunities were created, but the basic rules of the game remained the same.Please click here for the rest of the post.

6. Bank of America, CARD Act, Dodd-Frank, and soaking the poor.

Congratulations, Congressional Democrats: you’ve managed to soak the working poor again.Bank of America will start charging debit-card users $5 a month to pay for purchases. The move comes as the cards increasingly replace cash and as banks look for ways to offset the loss of revenue from a new rule that will limit how much they can collect from merchants.Via Instapundit. You see, what happened here is that Senator Dick Durbin took a break from throwing minority kids out of private schools to extend his legislative magic to the field of merchant debit card fees. The plan? Force the banks to give up their greedy, greedy profits by limiting merchant-to-bank transaction fees, thus saving the merchants money, which they would then pass along to the customer in the form of lower prices. Which sounded… actually, it sounded stupid in theory, even then. It sounds really stupid now because Durbin and the rest of Team Jackass didn’t consider the possibility that their Congressional mishandling of the economy from 2007 to 2001 might have resulted in a poor economy in 2011.Please click here for the rest of the post.

7. Disgraced ‘green jobs czar,’ ‘truther’ and admitted communist to lead extremist ‘American Autumn’

Van Jones resigned as President Obama’s so-called “green jobs czar” in 2009. Or as we put it then, “Truth ousts Obama’s ‘Truther’ czar.”The Jones resignation was an attempt to stop the damage to Obama from the revelations that Jones signed the “9/11 truther” statement — which alleges government complicity in the 9/11 terror attacks, the fact that Jones was an admitted communist and video of Jones calling Republicans a**holes. You can watch a CNN video report concerning those issues at Right Side Politics.In spite of, or perhaps because of, his extremist left-wing views America’s far left just cannot get enough of Van Jones.Please click here for the rest of the post.

8. EPA Shutting Three of its Doors Permanently for $300,000 Savings

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is suddenly on the side of budget restraint and savings and wants you to know that they are looking out for your dollar.Please click here for the rest of the post.