Sarah Palin receives a flight jacket from Lt. Gen. Craig E. Campbell as a token of thanks for supporting the Alaska National Guard during Operation Santa Claus 2008 Dec. 6 in Kivalina, Alaska. Operation Santa Claus, an Alaska National Guard community relations and support program, provides toys, books and school supplies for young people in communities across the state. General Campbell is Alaska’s adjutant general. (U.S. Army photo/Spc. Paizley Ramsey)

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin helps Santa pass out gifts during Operation Santa Claus 2008 Dec. 6 in Kivalina, Alaska. Operation Santa Claus, an Alaska National Guard community relations and support program, provides toys, books and school supplies for young people in communities across the state. (U.S. Army photo/Spc. Paizley Ramsey)

Sarah Palin finally is on Rush.

This is a mom, and the best part of the interview:

HH: Last question, Governor. Have you and Todd heard from your son? And how is it on your nerves having your son deployed?

SP: That little stinker, I guess he’s called his girlfriend a couple of times, but can you believe he hasn’t called his momma yet? He’s over there. They were just leaving Kuwait heading into Iraq, and I am just so extremely proud of Track, my son, and all of the men and women, of course, serving in the military. I’m proud that my son made this independent and very wise decision as such a young man at 18, deciding you know, he realized there’s something he can do to help, to contribute, to help protect our nation, and I couldn’t be more proud of him and all those who choose to serve in our military. They’re serving for the right reasons. God bless them, God love them.

That little stinker

Here is a picture of Sarah Palin that is a Pulitzer winner. As a semi-pro photographer, you cannot do much better than this.

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin examines the New York Fire Department memorial on the side of Engine Company 10 next to the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan Sept. 25, 2008. During the governor’s unscheduled stop at ground zero, she took questions from reporters traveling with her for the first time since she joined the GOP ticket.
(Henny Ray Abrams/AP Photo)

I am showing this photo as an editorial example of fine photography. It truly is outstanding.

Top notch investigative work by a group of bloggers has discovered that the Palin smear campaign traces back to close associates of Barry Obama. Michelle Malkin summarizes it better than I could.

First, read this. Read the whole thing. Rusty Shackleford — with help from Jane of Armies of Liberation, Stable Hand, the Jawa team, Dan Riehl, Ace of Spades, and Patterico – traced a Palin-bashing YouTube video to a Democrat public relations firm, Winner and Associates, and one of its employees, Ethan S. Winner. They believe the voiceover for the ad — which spreads the lie that Sarah Palin belonged to a fringe third party, the Alaska Independence Party — was done by a professional whose voice they believe was also featured in several Obama ads and other spots produced by Obama top strategist and astroturfer extraordinaire David Axelrod’s firm.

The press has inundated Alaska with reporters and will have shortly interviewed every single person belonging to the 20% that do not rate Sarah Palin highly. Many of the reporters have flocked to the state capital of Juneau. Yes, Alaska has a state capital and it is Juneau.

Shocking, well, shocked reports are hitting the press about the inner workings of the Alaskan state government. No one should be shocked, however, since it is obvious that the Alaskan government operates pretty much like every other state government in the nation. Spend some time learning about your state government if you do not believe me.

The problem with state governments is called “Washington Syndrome“. It is highly contagious, infecting 90% or more of those exposed. It can also be genetically inherited.

The symptoms of “Washington Syndrome” are as follows:

• At the time the city was designated the capital, it made geographic or commercial sense. The location has not made sense, however, for a long time.
• The major industry of the capital city is government. The people of the metro area either work for the government or for businesses that support governmental operations like bars, law firms or caterers.
• The government of the city where the capital is located is treated as the red-headed stepchild. It is assumed that the sole purpose of the city government is to support the functions of the capital.
• Many of those who work in the capital maintain personal residences in other places. They have developed mechanisms that compensate them for traveling to and from their legal residences.
• Many of those who work in the capital maintain residences in and around the capital city’s metro area. They have developed mechanisms that compensate them for living away from their legal residences. Many of these same people spend more time in the capital than they do at their legal residences.
• Activities and beliefs that are normal, popular, seen as virtuous and desirable outside the capital are seen as abnormal, repulsive and criminal in the capital.
• Activities and beliefs that are abnormal, criminal, repulsive and unpopular outside the capital are seen as normal, virtuous and desirable in the capital.
• Those who work in the capital are willing to gossip, spread rumor and innuendo, and lie regardless of who they support. The capital functions on the ability to betray or avoid betrayal.
• The capital’s city is often charming in its own right but tourism is focused on the capital itself.
• The capital is the center of the universe and anything that happens outside the capital is viewed solely as to its effects on the capital.

There are many more symptoms than can be listed here. Diagnosis is easy since self-importance and delusions of grandeur are often so pronounced that the ordinary voter can distinguish them. The condition weakens in some cases after exposure to the capital ceases but other cases remain quite active for decades after.

For those of you having trouble understanding the Presidential campaign, here’s a little help. The use of “code words” to conceal your true meaning has complicated things. Here are those “code words” and their real meanings.

• community organizer = black
• Jesus = Barry Obama
• pig = women opposing Barry Obama, Sarah Palin
• sweetie = any woman Barry Obama wltf
• children = Barry Obama’s children
• retard = Sarah Palin’s child
• family = Barry Obama’s successful American wife and children
• black = Barry Obama’s Muslim / white upbringing in Indonesia, Hawaii and Kansas, Yale education, rich white friends
• lies = refusal to use “code words”
• hope and change = Chicago machine rule and Biden’s spending a generation in the Senate

I am not a Second Amendment blogger. I do not own a firearm or hunt. No objection to either but was not brought up that way.

Palin hunts. It seems that her hunting goes for food. Good. She eats what she kills. I approve.

Politico

Democrat Joe Biden, in what he intended as self-deprecating remark, observed, “There’s a gigantic difference between John McCain and Barack Obama and between me and I suspect my vice presidential opponent.” …

What do you suppose he said the difference was? Energy policy, executive experience, age?

“She’s good looking.”

That’s the gigantic difference between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.

Joe, I know what you meant to say, and I don’t think it’s going to turn out to be gigantic at all. [/sarcasm]

A collection of remarks on Twitter from right after her speech.

• Little known fact: Sarah Palin is weak sauce indeed. All she did was regurgitate std GOP blather. Not a single new idea in the whole speech.
• i dont like sarah palin. she has no more experience than obama, and she would suck as prez, which she will be cause mccain’s gonna die soon.
• Initial reactions to Sarah Palin’s speech: this woman’s bitterness and her scowl indicates, I think, that she has never had an orgasm
• Bottom line: I do not want to live in Sarah Palin’s America.
• That’s… if you write fan fiction, please write me some of that. I’d love to read Sarah Palin/Cindy McCain femslash.
• 1st impression of Sarah Palin is that’s she’s a prime bitch. Good thing I had no plans to vote Republican anyway.
• is disgusted by what Sarah palin has to say and her horrid way she sounds.
• Currently trying to resist the urge to vomit after listening to sarah palin’s speech.
• Rude sarcasm, that sums up Sarah Palin’s speech in two words and does it justice.
• Sarah Palin’s “speech”? Just a string of cheap shots, nothing more. What an amateur!

Time is getting a lot of press over its revelation that Sarah Palin, as mayor, tried to ban some books from the local library and threatened to fire the librarian.

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving “full support” to the mayor.

Stein is, curiously, the LOSER that Palin beat in the mayor’s race. Nothing from the librarian and no cites for the “news reports from the time”.

Just a fact free diatribe from a LOSER and Time presents it as fact.

Palin would not have been the first mayor to be approached by voters and asked about the books that the library stocked. I suspect you could find hundreds if not thousands of similar stories. Even state governments and [gasp] Congress have fallen into that trap. No books were banned.

A small town mayor responded to the concerns of her fellow villagers. Just like mayors all over the world do every single day.

She did not fire the librarian. We do not know what was going on since the “news reports from the time” are not quoted or cited and the librarian was not found for comment.

This isn’t journalism. It’s tabloid trash.

People dismiss the women who participate in beauty pageants as mindless drones enslaved to makeup and plastic surgery.

I beg to differ. I would suggest that the fact that Sarah Palin participated in beauty pageants enhances her qualifications for the office of Vice President.

It’s called a competition for a reason. The girls and women compete. That takes a certain amount of training and “game day” preparation.

You don’t just decide to compete and walk on. You have to study, learn what is expected, and learn how to present yourself in the way the judges expect. And every pageant is different.

It takes drive and determination. It takes adaptability and an ability to think on your feet. You learn a set of skills, practice them and then present them in a public forum where you are judged on that presentation.

I have flatly stated here and in other venues that the things that make a woman successful in beauty pageants are those qualities and traits that make them successful in the military. I have devoted an entire category of posts to those women I have discovered have been both beauty pageant participants and have served in the military.

Several of these women have been awarded medals for their courage under fire. Facing beauty pageant judges might be very similar to surviving an al-Qaeda ambush.

Please do not underestimate Sarah Palin on the basis of her participation in beauty pageants. The character traits she developed during those experiences are exactly those we ought to have in our Vice President and President.

Jay Rosen pointed me to this Talking Points Memo.

Marshall makes a couple of points:

1. Mark Halperin quotes George Stephanopoulos as saying that McCain has sent 10 people to Alaska to do more background work on Sarah Palin. He also says “Democrats say… the McCain campaign didn’t even go through Gov. Palin’s local newspapers.”
2. ABC News Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper reports that folks with the Alaskan Independence Party claim Palin was a member in 1994. Tapper describes the party as a “fringe” party even though it managed to get Walter Hickel elected governor in 1990.

Well, let’s see. Noted liberals Marshall, Halperin and Stephanopoulos, as well as “Democrats” have intimate knowledge of the working of the McCain campaign. Sure. [/sarcasm]

And, Palin may have belonged to a political party that was strong enough in Alaska to elect a governor.

Out of all that, one charge that amounts to balderdash, belonging to a political party with some power in her home state. God forbid, she might have joined the Democratic Party.

As for the supposed team of crack McCain operatives sent to Alaska, [giggle]. No, really [giggle].

More content free prose from the left.

Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden hardly come from blue-blood backgrounds; Biden, now famously, is an Irish-Catholic son of Scranton, Pa., and Obama was raised by a single mother. But the fact that Palin, even as a governor, remains grounded in a recognizable American lifestyle — warts and all — has not gone unnoticed among Republicans, as the first wave of opposition research has been unloaded on her.

“Authenticity is the most important characteristic for someone seeking public office,” said Nick Ayers, executive director of the Republican Governors Association. “Any news that comes out about her is not going to hurt her because it reinforces the point that she is authentically one of us.”

Unlike running mates from both parties, dating back decades, the Palin family isn’t part of the moneyed elite or the governing class. Neither wife nor husband is the scion of a well-connected family. Sarah Palin attended a state school, and her brushes with the law are of the same nettlesome kind that drive recreational fishermen crazy in all 50 states.

Politico
By CHARLES MAHTESIAN