PALIN ADDRESSES GRIDIRON CLUB

IN A NOD to the intense interest in last year's Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin, the Gridiron Club’s board dropped a 100 year old rule—often violate—that comments made at the dinner were off the record and could not be reported. Instead, twittering was allowed, although not during speeches or songs. Palin tweets herself and noted in her dinner remarks that she had “the Twitter thing going.”

Palin was surrounded by reporters at the pre-dinner reception held on an evening when Washington was in the midst of an early snow storm. The former Alaska governor was dressed in a stylish black dress and carried what she told Chicago Sun Times correspondent Lynn Sweet was a purse made from an otter.

[The Gridiron Club, founded in 1865, is the oldest and most prestigious journalist organization in Washington DC. The annual Gridiron Dinner is attended by the media elite, at which the president is traditionally the speaker. This year, President Barack Obama was the first president to refuse to address The Gridiron Dinner since Grover Cleveland.

[Last night, Saturday December 5th, the black tie dinner at the ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel had double the attendance of recent years—for instead of Obama, the speaker was Sarah Palin. The tradition of the dinner is that the speaker pokes fun at himself and the attendees. Sarah was such a hit there were dozens of the most liberal elite journalists in America laughing their heads off, many wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. Here's her speech. It is as clever as it is funny.]

Good evening. It's great to be in Washington. I am loving the weather [it was snowing]. I braved the elements and went out for a jog! Or, as Newsweek calls it, a cover-shoot. I feel so at home here in DC. I can see the Russian Embassy from my hotel room!

It's a privilege to be here tonight at the Washington DC Barnes & Noble. Tonight, I'll be reading excerpts from my new book. Perhaps you've heard of it? "Going Rogue."

Yukon wasn't sure if I'd go with that title and somebody suggested I follow the East Coast self-help trend and go with, "How To Look Like A Million Bucks...For Only 150 Grand."

Todd liked, "The Audacity of North Slope." [She nods to him as he's at the head table]

Hey, I considered not having a title at all. I've said it before, but you Beltway types just don't seem to get it. You don't need a title to make an impact. But anyway, let's get started.

I'll begin my first reading on Page 209.

It was pitch black when we touched down in Arizona late on August 27, 2008. The next morning we drove to John McCain's ranch in Sedona. John was waiting on the porch. Before he can say a word, I tell him, I'm quoting now,

"I know why I'm here, and I'm ready. But, I'm worried. The cost of credit protection for the largest U.S. banks is rising precipitously. Have you given any thought to the run on the entities in the parallel banking system? Do you realize the vulnerability created when these institutions borrow short term in liquid markets to invest long term in illiquid assets?"

John said, "you betcha!" I thought, "you betcha?" Who talks that way?

Well, sometimes you just have to trust your instincts. When you don't, you end up in places like this. Who would have guessed that I'd be palling around with this group? At least now I can put a face to all the newspapers I do read.

It is good to be here and in front of this audience of leading journalists and intellectuals. Or, as I call it, a death panel.

To be honest, I had some serious reservations about coming to visit your cozy little club. The Gridiron still hasn't offered membership to anyone from my hometown paper in Wasilla, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley Frontiersman. And my dad thought it was just a plain bad idea to leave the book tour for some football game.

He might have a point! [She waves to her parents at a table at the back of the room] Hi, Dad! Hi, Mom! They crashed the party, you know.

I've been touring this great, great land of ours over the last few weeks. I have to say, the view is much better from inside the bus, than under it!

But really, I am thrilled to be with you. And I'd like to thank the Gridiron for the invitation and Dick Cooper for his introduction.

To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, this has to be the most extraordinary collection of people who have gathered to viciously attack me since the last corporate gathering at CBS.

Despite what you have read, or more likely, despite what you have written, I do feel a real bond with all of you. I studied journalism, earned a communications degree and for a time only wanted to be a journalist. I was even a television sportscaster back home.

I'm guessing some of you probably got your start the exact same way... once there was television.

Let me get back to the book.

I know that many of you are still upset because I wouldn't play that silly Washington game. You know, the one where all of you read a book in its entirety, from the first page of the index to the last.

But think about it, because you actually had to read the whole book in the vain hope of finding your name, you now know all about Denali, mom, dad, ungulate eyeballs, slaying salmon on the Nushagak and Ugashik near Alegnigak, where we make agootak and moose chili!

You're welcome.

Still, I want to do something very special for this audience of Washington elite. So, I'll read from the index--which I chose not to include in the hardback. Would you believe me if I said I didn't include it because we wanted to save trees?

Under A we have...

Alaska, media not understanding. Pages 1-432.

Under B...

Biased media. Pages 1-432

And under C...

Conservative media. See acknowledgments.

I'll stop there.

I know this can be a long night, and as I understand it, we're going to break with a Gridiron tradition. Normally, the Democrat speaker would deliver a speech after me. But instead, John McCain's campaign staff asked if they could use that time for a rebuttal.

A lot has been made of a few campaign relationships. The closeness. The warm fuzzy feelings. John and I both agree all those staffers should just move past it. It's history.

Let's just say, if I ever need a bald campaign manager, it appears all I'm left with is James Carville.

I don't want to say that I've burned a bridge, but I know all about canceling a bridge to nowhere.

That Democrat speaker I referred to is, of course, the one-and-only Barney Frank. And I'm the controversial one?

Barney, the nation owes you and the government a debt. A huge, historic, unbelievable debt.

But, it's good to be here with you, Mr. Chairman. Because by Chairman, I don't just mean the House Financial Services Committee. As far as I can tell, Barney's also the Chair of AIG, CITI, and the Bank of America.

I don't want to say that the U.S. Government is taking over the role of the private sector, but I have to admit, on the flight here, thumbing through a magazine and looking at a photo of President Obama with the President of China, the person next to me pointed at it and said, "Hu's a communist."

I thought they were asking a question.

Still, when I see this administration in action, I can't help think of what might have been. I could be the Vice President overseeing the signing of bailout checks. And Joe Biden would be on the road, selling his new book, "Going Rogaine."

Speaking of books.... Did I mention mine? "Going Rogue" Makes a great stocking stuffer. Available now at a bookstore near you. Hey, I have to pay for my campaign vetting bill somehow.

Really, the response has been great. So I'll close by reading a final passage. Page 403:

...I've been asked a lot lately, "Where are you going next?'

Good question! Wherever I go I know that, as with anyone in the public eye, I'll continue to have my share of disagreements with those in the media. Maybe even more than my share. It will come as no surprise that I don't think I was always treated fairly, or equally.

But despite that, I respect the media very much. It's important. A free press allows for vigorous debate! And that debate is absolutely vital for our democracy. So as hard as it can sometimes be, we must all look past personal grievances.

We must move beyond petty politics. And we must allow these incredibly talented and hard-working women and men to ask the hard questions and hold us, and our government, accountable. Because their mission is as true as the sun rising over the Talkeetna and Susitna Mountains...

Okay—so none of that is actually in the book. Not a word.

But I do believe it! And I believe we live in a beautiful country blessed with so many different people who want the best for their children, families and for our great nation. I'm so proud to be an American.

And that is what I'll be talking about when I travel to where I'm headed. No better place than here to announce where I'm going. I'm going to Iowa! I'll be there tomorrow from noon to 3:00 pm at the Barnes & Noble on Sergeant Road in Sioux City. Come early. Long lines are expected.

Thank you everyone. God Bless the U.S.A!

PREPARING THE TURKEY SHOOT

IT'S QUITE EASY TO SEE who's causing liberals and Marxists the most pain. They sputter and spend an enormous amount of time and resources in an effort to demonize those who cause them so much agony. We can easily observe that Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh cause liberals to suffer severe, chronic heartburn and draw full migraine headaches they can't wait to share with their neighbors.

Paragons of American liberty Micheal Savage and Mark Levin also pierce the frothing leftist "message" balloons, but who's counting mighty eagles now that the chirping chickens are indeed coming home to roost...

Rodeo clown or not, Glenn Beck at his most outrageous is no louder than those two hilarious party-sniffers Chris "Leg-tingling" Matthews and the salacious King of Rage, Keith Olberman. The reason Beck has captured the right wing zeitgeist so thoroughly is that he is providing a valuable service by connecting the long string of dots no one else wants to connect.

Unlike the increasingly feckless Bill O'Reilly, Beck is showing incredible stones by being one of the very few individuals willing to snatch back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz that characterizes this administration.

Which brings us to that old leftist canard—Global warming, Man-Made or Political Rubbish? The "real" facts show that more and more climatologists are stepping from the shadows of the Al Gore-scare to contradict the rush to blame man on global warming, or even to admit that dangerous unnatural warming is even occurring across the planet.

MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen mocked man-made global warming fears in a July 2, 2009 radio interview on WRKO's Howie Carr program. Lindzen noted that man-made climate fears were "divorced from nature" and he said the scientific foundation for climate fears is "falling apart."

"How did we get a population that can be told something that contradicts their senses and go crazy over it?" Lindzen asked on the program. Lindzen recently co-signed an open letter to Congress with a team of scientists warning: "You Are Being Deceived About Global Warming. Earth has been cooling for ten years.'

When asked about climate fears, Lindzen dismissed the notion that "ordinary" Americans are buying into former Vice President Al Gore's climate views.

"We are too smart for that. You look at the polls, ordinary people see through this, but educated people are very vulnerable," Lindzen quipped. Lindzen also noted that people are being told that if they change a lightbulb, they are "saving the Earth", they are "virtuous, they are smart."

"Now you are told if you that if you don't understand global warming is going on, you are dumb, but if you agree to it, you are smart," Lindzen explained.

That sounds familiar.

MORE TENTH AMENDMENT MOVEMENT

ON FRIDAY JULY 10, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin signed House Joint Resolution 27 (HJR27), sponsored by State Rep. Mike Kelly. The resolution “claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.”

The House passed the resolution by a vote of 37-0 (3 not voting) and the Senate passed it by a vote of 40-0.

Six other states have had both houses of their legislature pass similar resolutions—Tennessee, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma and Louisiana—Alaska joins Tennessee as the second to have such a resolution signed by the Governor.

A GROWING MOVEMENT

Passage of this resolution appears to be part of what is now a growing state-level resistance to the federal government on various levels. Similar 10th Amendment resolutions have been introduced in 37 states around the country, and various states are considering single-issue legislation in direct contravention to federal laws.

Most recently, the Arizona Legislature passed a measure for public approval on the 2010 state ballot that would give Arizona voters the opportunity to nullify, or opt out, of any potential national health care legislation.

Since 2007, more than two dozen states have passed legislation refusing to implement the Real ID act of 2005. In response, the federal government has recently announced that they want to “repeal and replace” the law due to a rebellion by states.

Pending legislation in states around the country also includes preventing state law enforcement officials from enforcing federal laws, refusing federal gun regulations, refusing to send a state’s national guard to any duty other than what the constitution authorizes, legalizing marijuana for various purposes and more.

A FIRST STEP

While HJR27 is strongly-word in support of the principles of limited, constitutional government that the 10th Amendment represents, it is a Joint Resolution and does not carry with it the force of law. But supporters say that this is an important first step to get their message out not only to grassroots supporters, but to the media, and legislators in other states as well.

Read the final version of the resolution below:

Relating to the Sovereign Powers of the State

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF ALASKA:

WHEREAS the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”; and

WHEREAS the Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more; and

WHEREAS some federal actions weaken states’ rights protected by the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and

WHEREAS the Tenth Amendment assures that we, the people of the United States of America and each sovereign state in the Union of States, now have, and have always had, rights the federal government may not usurp; and

WHEREAS art. IV, sec. 4, Constitution of the United States, reads, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” and the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”; and

WHEREAS the United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 112 S.Ct. 2408 (1992), that the United States Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states; and

WHEREAS all states, including Alaska, find themselves regularly facing proposals from the United States Congress that weaken states’ rights protected by the Tenth Amendment;

BE IT RESOLVED that the Alaska State Legislature hereby claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States; and be it

FURTHER RESOLVED that this resolution serves as Notice and Demand to the federal government to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.

COPIES of this resolution shall be sent to the Honorable Barack Obama, President of the United States; the Honorable Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Vice-President of the United States and President of the U.S. Senate; the Honorable Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives; the Honorable Lisa Murkowski and the Honorable Mark Begich, U.S. Senators, and the Honorable Don Young, U.S. Representative, members of the Alaska delegation in Congress; all other members of the 111th United States Congress; the presiding officers of the legislatures of each of the other 49 states; and the governors of each of the other 49 states.

FRIVOLOUS COMPLAINTS AGAINST PALIN

WITH THE DISMISSAL TODAY of eight complaints in one ruling, the evidence continues to redeem the the great surge of feeling many of us had when we first heard Gov. Sarah Palin speak to the American people that night at the Republican National Convention in Denver. The governor today welcomed the news that yet another ethics complaint against her has been officially found to lack merit and has been dismissed.

Notably, Michael Geraghty, investigator for the State Personnel Board, concluded that there is no need for a hearing on the complaint filed in March by Andree McLeod, who has been a vocal critic of the governor since being denied employment with the state last year.

This is the 13th ethics complaint against the governor or her staff that has been resolved with no finding of a violation of the executive ethics act. A few more are pending.

"While the complaint process under the ethics act can be a useful tool for holding state officials accountable, it's obvious that political opponents of the governor have been abusing the system, attempting to turn their resentments into legal issues," said Bill McAllister, the governor's communications director. "We're grateful that the personnel board and its investigators have taken a rational approach to these matters, finding that the vast majority of the complaints did not even warrant the collection of evidence because they failed to assert any violation of the law."

McLeod's complaint, amended several times since it was first filed, made eight separate allegations against the governor. McLeod said that there were two matters showing an improper connection between the governor's office and her political action committee; that two comments made by McAllister about the governor's travel plans were political in nature; that the governor's trip to Evansville, Indiana, for a right to life event used state resources, and that she improperly accepted gifts there, including chocolate, baked goods and a hockey stick from a youth hockey group; that the governor's daughter, Bristol, used state resources in her efforts on behalf of the Candies Foundation; and that the governor's press release concerning her selection as a vice presidential candidate was improper. Geraghty found all of the allegations to be baseless and not worthy of an investigation.

Read more here.

While we're on this topic, let me speak plainly. For all her supposed flaws and refreshing common sense which suffers in short supply these days, I still like this woman. I hope to see her taking aim at a few mooseheads along the campaign trail, circa 2012. Who knows? I might even vote for her again, given the right opportunity. As for those who scorn her and laugh at her precious Jesus of Nazareth, well, we at the Two-Fisted Quorum have regrettably seen it all before.

Let's see those same yippie yappers cringe at the Mohammed of Medina (who according to the Qu'ran was made victorious by terror) with the same feckless generosity of spirit they reserve for Gov. Palin and her family. Nope. Didn't think so.

LEGEND ALICE COOPER GATHERS NO MOSS

ALTHOUGH LEGENDARY ROCKER Alice Cooper has been often quoted in the squishy media as a supporter of the Republican Party, Cooper set the record straight during a recent interview with Canada's Hour. "I'll be honest, I go from Democrat to Republican," he said.

"I vote for the person, not the party. Regarding this past year's elections, Cooper said of former US Vice President hopeful Sarah Palin, "I think she's totally a breath of fresh air. When they say she has no experience, maybe that's what Washington needs. I still don't know who I'm going to vote for. But in a shooting war, I want a pit bull, not a poodle. I'm gonna go for the hawk."

“If you’re a right-wing rock journalist,” says Alice Cooper, “I’m in your corner all the way.”

Alice enjoyed a brief flurry of blogosphere glory last year, after standing up to one of Australia’s smarmiest television personalities. Glib puppet Andrew Denton was easily flustered when Alice could back up his support for the war in Iraq. Denton made some typically wrong assumptions about the rock star—not that Alice was offended.

“I revel in that kind of thing,” says Alice. “It angers me so much when I realize that people are jumping on some anti-Bush bandwagon. I’ve been misquoted lately on that. Some people are claiming that I said certain rockers were traitors to America. I think they’re traitors to rock ’n roll. When I was a kid, I’d put The Yardbirds on when my parents talked about politics. Rock ’n roll was my escape from politics. It still is. Why do you think we’re rock ’n rollers? We’re morons.”

Cooper also defies expectations with his Christian beliefs. The Sunday school teacher preaches what he practices on 2005’s Dirty Diamonds. Other rockers dream of running with the devil. Alice dreams of vengeful mayhem in songs like “Run Down The Devil.” Stryper or Bono could never come up with lyrics like, “I want to take him to the Mercury grill/I hope he’s ready for the big blast/ He’ll be my ultimate road kill/I’ll kick his future up his past.”

Alice isn’t afraid to take those same beliefs on the road, lecturing baffled death-metal acts that end up sharing the bill on world tours. And did you catch that part where Alice says that rock ’n rollers are morons?

Thanks to Blabbermouth.

WHY AMERICA, WHY?

The fine line between the nanny state hypothesis of the Left and the police state of the Right was drawn even fuzzier today. The Big Round-up appears closer than ever. But to some of us, this is no surprise. Clinging to the last shreds of constitutional glory left to us by this modern state, we tremble even as this shred is melting away from our clutches with every despicable new sway of the three branches representing "we the people" not so much by the book as off the books, preparing this century for the lures of warfare, chaos, much bloodshed and weeping.

POLCE STATE ALERT—Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla., has introduced to the House of Representatives a new bill, H.R. 645, calling for the secretary of homeland security to establish no fewer than six national emergency centers for corralling civilians on military installations.

The proposed bill, which has received little mainstream media attention, appears designed to create the type of detention center that those concerned about use of the military in domestic affairs fear could be used as concentration camps for political dissidents, such as occurred in Nazi Germany.

Heed the warning of a former Hitler Youth who sees America on the same path as pre-Nazi Germany in "Defeating the Totalitarian Lie" by Hilmer Von Campe.

The bill also appears to expand the president's emergency power, much as the executive order signed by President Bush on May 9, 2007, that gave the president the authority to declare an emergency and take over the direction of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments without even consulting Congress.

World News Daily has also reported that DHS has awarded a $385 million contract to Houston-based KBR, Halliburton's former engineering and construction subsidiary, to build temporary detention centers on an "as-needed" basis in national emergency situations.

According to the text of the proposed bill, the purpose of the National Emergency Centers is "to provide temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster." Three additional purposes are specified in the text of the proposed legislation:

To provide centralized locations for the purposes of training and ensuring the coordination of federal, state and local first responders;

To provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response and recovery efforts of government, private, not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations;

To meet other appropriate needs, as defined by the secretary of homeland security.

The broad specifications of the bill's language, however, contribute to concern that the "national emergency" purpose could be utilized by the secretary of homeland security to include any kind of situation the government wants to contain or otherwise control.

Rep. Hastings created controversy during the 2008 presidential campaign with his provocative comments concerning Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. "If Sarah Palin isn't enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention," Hastings said, as reported by ABC News. "Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through."

H.R. 645, which seeks to allocate $360 million for developing the emergency centers, has been referred to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and to the Committee on Armed Services.

DURING THE COURSE OF A CAMPAIGN

HERE IS AN ENERGETIC article posted by former Obama, Edwards, and Clinton speechwriter, Wendy Button, on why she has abandoned the Democratic Party, will change her registration to Independent, and is now supporting John McCain for president.

Here's a taste:

Governor Palin and I don’t agree on a lot of things, mostly social issues. But I have grown to appreciate the Governor. I was one of those initial skeptics and would laugh at the pictures. Not anymore. When someone takes on a corrupt political machine and a sitting governor, that is not done by someone with a low I.Q. or a moral core made of tissue paper. When someone fights her way to get scholarships and work her way through college even in a jagged line, that shows determination and humility you can’t learn from reading Reinhold Niebuhr. When a mother brings her son with special needs onto the national stage with love, honesty, and pride, that gives hope to families like mine as my older brother lives with a mental disability. And when someone can sit on a stage during the Sarah Palin rap on Saturday Night Live, put her hands in the air and watch someone in a moose costume get shot—that’s a sign of both humor and humanity.

Has she made mistakes? Of course, she’s human too. But the attention paid to her mistakes has been unprecedented compared to Senator Obama’s “57 states” remarks or Senator Biden using a version of the Samuel Johnson quote, “There’s nothing like a hanging in the morning to focus a man’s thoughts.”

But thank God for election 2008. We can talk about the wardrobe and make-up even though most people don’t understand the details about Senator Obama’s plan with Iraq. When he says, “all combat troops,” he’s not talking about all troops—it leaves a residual force of as large as 55,000 indefinitely. That’s not ending the war; that’s half a war.

I was dead wrong about the surge and thought it would be a disaster. Senator John McCain led when many of us were ready to quit. Yet we march on as if nothing has changed, wedded to an old plan, and that too is a long way from the Democratic Party.

I can no longer justify what this party has done and can’t dismiss the treatment of women and working people as just part of the new kind of politics. It’s wrong and someone has to say that. And also say that the Democratic Party’s talking points—that Senator John McCain is just four more years of the same and that he’s President Bush—are now just hooker lines that fit a very effective and perhaps wave-winning political argument…doesn’t mean they’re true. After all, he is the only one who’s worked in a bipartisan way on big challenges.

Read it all. But, if there are those who think that I haven't been clear about why I support the McCain-Palin ticket, let me point the finger at someone else. Let me allow you to read the exceedingly rational essay by Dr. Walid Phares. His words speak for me.

AMERICANS REFUSE TO COUNT THE COSTS

THIS IS A SIZZLING FIND. Taking on the hapless MSM, this fellow more than amply exudes the passion of his convictions.

REJECTING THE MEDIA KOOL-AID

THE FOX NEWS WATCH crew compare the relative lack of media reportage of those Joe Biden's recent and rather frightening remarks with the wall to wall coverage of Sarah Palin's new wardrobe during the same time frame as proof positive of media bias in this election. Note that three of the five talking heads are liberal types, but most agree that notions of non-bias are greatly exaggerated...

IN DEFENSE OF FRESH SARAH PALIN

In Prince Georges County, MD, Obamabots strike again

OUR ESTEEMED ALAN GREENSPAN, appointed by Ronald Reagan was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve for more than 18 years before retiring two years ago. In recent testimony given to the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, it was no surprise that he voiced shock over recent financial events and called conditions deplorable, saying that he and others who believed lending institutions would do a good job of protecting their shareholders are in a “state of shocked disbelief”.

Blatant phoniness is the lynchpin of worldly success. Can you say, how now brown cow?

Never one to miss a symphonic beat, Greenspan also blamed the problems on heavy demand for securities backed by subprime mortgages by investors who failed to worry that the home equity boom might come to an end. But the self-actualized, Ayn Randian, Greenspan didn’t think that the finance industry should be forced to play by the same honest rules governing the rest of society. Let's not inhibit creativity he might have surmized. So, pressing forward, what we earned for our trust were a gaggle of egregiously creative players who found out-of-the-box ways to lose our money.

Rattlesnakes! Set up a circulative system where there are huge rewards and zero penalties for the breach of fiduciary duty and then all he can do is express surprise when the loot & pillage crowd shows up to party? This is not rocket science. Greenspan is either lying or incompetent, or both. While people in a widening circle around him were not subtle in voicing concerns about the housing bubble, he steadfastly refused to acknowledge it, and far too many of us went along for the ride thinking this must be the American way we kept hearing so much about. If he of all people didn’t notice the quickening noose, then he was horribly unqualified to be in his position. Even I knew the scenario was a high trapeze act. And I only had my own household details to consider, knowing I was not alone in this game. Fortunately, I was smart enough to stay away from the lure of an ARM.

In 2004, a deliberately cautious Mr. Greenspan supported and encouraged the ARM industry, touting them as "perhaps" a better deal. Alrighty then. Let's all beat it down to the bank and snap up one of those.



Yet, as night follows day, the media hounds and their political taskmasters make tiresome fun of Governor Sarah Palin, saying she is too inexperienced to know which end goes up, which end down with regard to anything their highly educated minds can think will tar her image. But the unmitigated misery of what these “learned” men have wrought, is telling. What has their so-called vaunted experience done for us? John McCain warned us about fraud in the FM-FM scams, and now Sarah Palin, who has successfully fought Alaskan cronyism and the carpetbaggers of Big Oil, balancing the Alaskan budget, and growing the surplus to offer resource checks to every single citizen under her wing in the process, forming a team that are just the whistleblowers and "sub-par" experience we need in Washington right now.

Old conventional political wisdom dictates that vice presidential picks don’t change the outcome of a race. When Sarah Palin received larger fanfare than John McCain a month ago, the pundits cautioned, “people vote for President, not for Vice President.” But the crooked pollsters cannot help themselves, so in spite of all the evidence contrary to their own vetted interests one crook recently had this to say, “Speaking of Palin, 55% think she’s unqualified to serve as president if the need arises, which is a troublesome number given McCain’s age.

Other polls reflect this perception problem for the McCain-Palin camp as well. Pew released its latest poll that echoes many of the NBC/WSJ findings about voters’ perceptions of Palin and their effect on McCain. Pew’s headline doesn’t mention Palin specifically, “Well, vice presidential candidates may not win elections, but this year it’s looking increasingly likely that Sarah Palin may help lose one. Notably, opinions of Palin have a greater impact on voting intentions than do opinions of Joe Biden, Obama’s running mate.”

And the beat goes on, over and over again. Sarah Palin hatred is the dessert of the day every day in the blue-lined MSM and its crooked buddies, the pollsters. But let's say that McCain wins thanks to Sarah Palin.

Well, Eliza Doolittle is more than a poke at the upper class snobs. She's a firebrand, ready for bear. But the governor is hardly in need of some high-falutin' "upper class" accent meant to camouflage a nasty disconnect with the common people, but maybe, just maybe she COULD USE a few extra changes of professional clothing to help during this grueling campaign track where candidates tend to change several times a day to keep fresh so that the attack dog press won't smear her as a frumpy backwater trailer trash candidate.

Wait a sec, they've already done that...

PLAYING FAIR IN OBAMA'S SANDBOX

OKAY, LET'S WALLOW a moment or two in the racist sandbox with the Obot bullies and the scooby logs...

Democrats wail that the RNC has spent $150K on Governor Sarah Palin's wardrobe.

Reality check: The Barack Obama campaign spent on narcissistic styrofoam columns, and how much did it cost to rent the stadium? And besides, doesn't this elite crowd usually gush weak-kneed and in awe when over-priced wardrobe mavens, but I guess it is uppity, yes, that's right—uppity—for an Alaskan mom of five unmercifully vilified as white trash by these same spinheads looking for codewords in all the wrong places. They should look in the mirror.

Apparently some pizza parlor owner in Detroit feels that McCain has abandoned her Great State of Michigan so she will collect McCain signs for free pizza. Great business move?

Reality check: If they’re stolen, she should be charged with receiving stolen property. There have been so many McCain signs stolen around certain parts of the country that it’s become a live feed. A young couple was stopped by police and 22 McCain signs were found in their car, in addition to contraband, known elsewhere in code, as illegal drugs. In her defense, the pizza lady said that she only meant for disgruntled McCain supporters to bring in their OWN signs, but it doesn't take a Harvard graduate to sense that those free slices would offer strong encouragement to any Obot already sipping on the munchie-express kool-aid.

And how much is Obama actually spending on this RACE for the presidency? Three-quarters of a BILLION DOLLARS! And how much of hat did he give to ACORN to engage in voter fraud? Over $800 million dollars.

Reality Check: Need we say more?

And while the Uber Left, including those irascible Code Pinkers in this country moan and groan about the soldiers in Iraq, the dead natives, let's see:

Reality Check: Body count In the last six months:
292 killed (murdered) in Chicago;
221 killed in Iraq.
Chicago…. Who Runs it:
Senators: Barack Obama & Dick Durbin
Rep: Jesse Jackson Jr.,
Illinois Gov: Rod Blogojevich,
Illinois House leader Mike Madigan,
Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan (daughter of Mike),
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley (son of Mayor Richard J. Daley)

If American coalition troops toppling Saddam Hussein and his thug Ba'ath party sons had actually been greeted with goodwill and cheers, American soldiers would have long be gone by now. But guess what, civil war among Sunni, Shia, and al-Qaeda broke out. In other words, Saddam Hussein was the sticky stuff that kept that awful nation together THROUGH HIS MURDEROUS OPPRESSION OF HIS ENEMIES WHO WERE LEGION. So presto, remove the glue and we have Iraqis killing other Iraqis along the way to the coliseum in killing the infidels pet-named the Great Satan and the Zionist Little Satan who had dared step onto their holy sandbox. Yep, that neatly summarizes the past five years in the sandbox.

The image posted on the Code Pink Wikipedia page sums up how words can many many different things to many different people. Brilliant idea #27686109. Let's take words out of the American language. Let's allow deeds speak for themselves. Ha! What a miserable election cycle this has been...

Now comes media darling Barack Obama who seems clueless to the nuances in the region. But what if Hillary had won the election?

SHUT UP ALREADY, PALIN IS QUALIFIED

ALL THE NOISE FROM THE LEFT leaves me with one realization when speaking of vice-presidential candidates and their levels of experience and readiness: the Left is not very swift. I found this at another website.

Need a reason that the Republican VP candidate is more qualified for President that the democrat presidential candidate?

Question: What is America ’s first line of missile interceptor defense that protects the entire United States?
Answer: 49th Missile Defense Battalion of Alaska National Guard.

Question: What is the ONLY National Guard unit on permanent active duty?
Answer: 49th Missile Defense Battalion of Alaska National Guard

Question: Who is the Commander in Chief of the 49th Missile Defense Battalion of Alaska National Guard?
Answer: Governor Sarah Palin, Alaska

Question: What U.S. governor is routinely briefed on highly classified military issues, homeland security, and counter terrorism?
Answer: Governor Sarah Palin, Alaska

Question: What U.S. governor has a higher classified security rating than either candidate of the Democrat Party?
Answer: Governor Sarah Palin, Alaska. According to the Washington Post, she first met with McCain in February, but nobody ever found out. This is a woman used to keeping secrets. She can be entrusted with our national security, because she already is.

FORMER HILLARY SUPPORTERS BACK PALIN

GOVERNOR SARAH PALIN met with a group of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s former supporters Tuesday evening at a special fund-raising reception organized for them on behalf of the Republican ticket.

The reception, which organizers said brought in more than $500,000, was part of an extended evening of fund-raising for Ms. Palin and Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign at the Grand Hyatt in New York that officials estimated raised more than $8 million.

Ms. Palin, along with her husband, Todd, mingled and posed for pictures with the group of about 20, before appearing at the larger finance event, which McCain campaign officials said was the last time Mr. McCain would personally appear at a fund-raiser before the election. It was also the first time the pair had appeared together for donors.

More than 1,000 people paid $1,000 each for tickets to the main fund-raiser. Nearly 250 people who contributed $25,000 got dinner beforehand with Mr. McCain.

Read it all.

Just when you thought the world was coming to an end with all this national poll and electoral map blather, another day on the political circuit delivers a crucial crunch punch for the GOP. Where once upon a time on a midnight clear, the Obama machine had dismissed a certain segment of the Democratic Party base, saying that Hillary's supporters were not needed by this new younger, more urban and suburban coalition of the willing, and they'd have enough votes without them, the tables have turned. Those fat old poor white women who were told they could go pound salt are now the critical swing voters. Thankfully November 4 is only three weeks away. May the best campaign win (and we all know what that means).

NYC PROCLAIMS PEACE ON EARTH

WELL NOT EXACTLY, but some folks did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, and perhaps one of them posted this video shot during a McCain-Palin march in NYC, which ingeniously pretty much sums up the way I feel.

SIGNS OF LIBERTY IN QUESTION

Why is the University of Mary Washington inhibiting free speech at today's Obama-Biden rally?

NOT ALL COUNTRIES guarantee their citizens the right to virtually unbridled freedom of speech. The United States does. Would someone please tell the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama? And the dozing guardians of liberty at the University of Mary Washington?

Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, is scheduled to speak at a rally at the university today. The public is invited to this forum, on property it, the public, owns. However, signs and banners will not be allowed, according to the organizers and compliant campus officials. Suddenly, UMW is a First Amendment-Free, or at least a First Amendment-Crippled, Zone, subject to the self-serving preferences of politicos.

Why does an Obama rally—or a McCain rally or a Nader rally—justify taking a little off the top of Americans' most fundamental rights?

A UMW spokeswoman says that the Obama campaign required the sign-and-banner ban. That campaign tells us that the ban is for "security" reasons. But a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service, responsible for protecting presidential candidates, says that the service has no objection to signs at rallies, provided that no "part of the sign could be used as a weapon"—e.g., a heavy metal pole or a sharpened stick. Finally, the McCain campaign tells us, "We encourage people to make signs at our events."

Regarding today's event, one would expect better from a campaign bearing the name of a former professor of constitutional law. (See Ambrose Bierce's definition of a lawyer: "one skilled in circumventing the law.") And one would expect much better from a university that, in pursuit of a day of celebrity, a boost in prestige, and profits from its book store's planned commemorative Obama T-shirts (now scotched), shaves away an American liberty purchased by men who turned white snow red and dry dirt wet with their sacrificial blood. This is a lot to swap for a mess of pottage. Remarks the Rutherford Institute's John Whitehead, who has turpentined the Bush administration's civil-rights record, "The Secret Service has a better free-speech viewpoint than the college."

The First Amendment guarantees the freedoms of religion, speech, the press, peaceable assembly, petition of the government. Will one who aspires to the title Defender of the Constitution begin inhibiting these First Freedoms even before he is ushered into office—at a public university?

Read it all.

l was disgusted when l read last night that the Obama team are picking up buslaods of homeless in Ohio to register them, and at the same time vote! But don't tarry here, folks. There's much more to uncover in this startling and punitive grasp for absolute power by the Obama camp. Doesn't take a weatherman to know whivch way the wind blows. My prediction is that within one year of an Obama presidency, the same people who elected him will be howling for his impeachment.

The handwriting is on the wall, the internet is also under fire since it's just a little too free for some people. Here’s a frightening page that will interest. Its author accuses the Google’s Blogger folks of shutting down, or freezing anti-Obama blogs it hosts. Read with intelligence. Connect the damn dots. Wake up America!

Wife and I went to another DC event last night sponsored by one of the partners at her office. Several staunch Republicans I have known for years, senior citizens and a couple of thirty-somethings, have all either defected to Obama or declared that they will sit this one out. These people know government. They are Washington lobbyists, and those Republicans who now are voting for Obama claim to be protecting their jobs. I suspect the senior partners who have said they will vote for neither candidate, are doing so less because McCain is too liberal for them, but because they don’t want to go on the record. What in the cheesecake is happening to this country?

I feel like the Big Takeover is upon us. This is simply far too much change way too quickly. Something drastic, some Brave New World Order stealth maneuver seems to be happening…

Here's some friendly advice to our Obama-supporting friends—when your interests are aligned with those of Iran's President and Hitler-wannabe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it's time to consider a re-assessment of priorities.

Democrat activists this week gave Ahmadinejad a huge gift that keeps on giving in his circle of despots by sabotaging a major bipartisan anti-Iran rally. More important to these cracked activists than Iran, apparently, was the slick opportunity to marginalize popular Republican vice-presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin.

To recap, the rally was organized by wide coalition of mostly Jewish organizations, including the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the respected non-partisan umbrella group that seems to be the closest thing the American Jewish community has to single and unified voice. They assembled an impressive protest of the presence of Ahmadinejad at the United Nations, to sound the alarm over his nuclear weapons program, and to urge world leaders gathered this week in New York to act strongly—and soon—to prevent a nuclear Iran which seems to be in the sole business of threatening Israel, America, and the world.

The organizers secured a number of high-profile speakers, including Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, recent Democrat presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton and Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. It is not yet clear whether Clinton was coordinating with Democrat strategists, but when she found out Palin was also invited, she bailed out. Too bad-having America's two highest profile female politicians together on the same stage condemning the misogynistic (among its many attributes) Iranian regime would have been a powerful image.

Following Clinton's lead, two of the sponsoring organizations-led by left-wing Democrat activists-demanded that Palin be barred from speaking lest the rally be a "partisan" event. The organizers pleaded with both Joe Biden and Barack Obama to speak, but both declined. Although Congressman Robert Wexler, a prominent Obama surrogate, was available to speak, the Democrats (including members of Congress) relentlessly pushed to have the Palin invitation rescinded.

Their argument was part naked pretext and part veiled threat: that maintaining the invitation just might prompt the IRS to investigate all sponsoring organizations' non-partisan tax-exempt status-an interesting understanding of "partisan" considering the invitations to Clinton, Obama, Biden and Wexler. (Perhaps this gives a clue how an IRS run by Obama lieutenants might treat political opponents). In an effort to maintain an appearance of Jewish unity against the evil of Iran, the organizers were forced to cave; Palin was given the boot. Game over. The Democrats won.

And so did Ahmadinejad. This had the makings of rally with impact. Besides being a tremendous show of bipartisan unity opposing Iranian aggression, the massive media attention paid to Palin's appearances would have brought the Iranian danger to the forefront of American consciousness. The rally was also attended by Iranian dissidents, human rights activists, gays, Christians, Jews and Iraqis, all of whom suffer at the hands of the mullahs' regime. Their under-reported causes could have used the publicity boost. Deflating the event by removing its star power did all these groups a huge disservice. We're sure Ahmadinejad cannot believe his good fortune. Thank you, Democrats!

Don't the Democrats vainly claim to be the party of the powerless and the voice of the voiceless? Fighters for human rights and protectors of liberty? They shouldn't flatter themselves. How did they help those causes this week? By strong-arm tactics, stifling dissent and sacrificing their "principles" for some perceived marginal political gain? Aren't those the sorts of things they're supposed to be protesting against? Perhaps they should tell us which principles they won't trample in order to gain fleeting political advantage.

Read it all. And now because of his own draconian positions, wavering back and forth as he tends to do, Obama wants all NRA ads banned from the airwaves. The Obama camp has been threatening television and radio stations to keep them from airing anti-Obama ads. The latest target is the NRA and stations in Pennsylvania.

Earlier this week, the National Rifle Association's Political Victory Fund released a series of radio and television spots to educate gun owners and sportsmen about Barack Obama's longstanding anti-gun record. In response to the NRA-PVF ads, a clearly panicked Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) are doing everything they can to hide Obama's real record by mounting a coordinated assault on the First Amendment.

This camapign has gone to desperate and outrageous lengths to try to silence the NRA by bullying media outlets with threats of lawsuits if they run NRA-PVF's ads. Here is Obama's letter to station managers.

Obama cannot and should not be trusted. Let me remind you of what our Founding President had to say on this critical topic:

“If the Freedom of Speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

—George Washington

MCCAIN-OBAMA DEBATE AGREEMENT

THE TWO CAMPAIGNS AGREED on a framework for four General Election debates, to be sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. Key elements of the agreement are:

First Presidential Debate
Date: September 26
Site: University of Mississippi
Topic: Foreign Policy & National Security
Moderator: Jim Lehrer
Staging: Podium debate
Answer Format: The debate will be broken into nine, 9-minute segments. The moderator will introduce a topic and allow each candidate 2 minutes to comment. After these initial answers, the moderator will facilitate an open discussion of the topic for the remaining 5 minutes, ensuring that both candidates receive an equal amount of time to comment.

Vice Presidential Debate
Date: October 2nd Site: Washington University (St. Louis)
Moderator: Gwen Ifill
Staging/Answer Format: To be announced.

Second Presidential Debate
Date: October 7
Site: Belmont University
Moderator: Tom Brokaw
Staging: Town Hall debate
Format: The moderator will call on members of the audience (and draw questions from the internet). Each candidate will have 2 minutes to respond to each question. Following those initial answers, the moderator will invite the candidates to respond to the previous answers, for a total of 1 minute, ensuring that both candidates receive an equal amount of time to comment. In the spirit of the Town Hall, all questions will come from the audience (or internet), and not the moderator.

Third Presidential Debate
Date: October 15
Site: Hofstra University
Topic: Domestic and Economic policy
Moderator: Bob Schieffer
Staging: Candidates will be seated at a table Answer
Format: Same as First Presidential Debate
Closing Statements: At the end of this debate (only) each candidate shall have the opportunity for a 90 second closing statement.

All four debates will begin at 9pm ET, and last for 90 minutes. Both campaigns also agreed to accept the CPD’s participation rules for third-party candidate participation.

My only question is this. We all know John McCain is somewhat short in stature, and Barack Obama appears to be a tall man, but how short does that make Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd? Huh? Compare the photo at the top of this entry with the one just above it.

ALASKA'S OCTOBER SURPRISE WILL FLOP

THANKS TO JIM NANCE FOR THIS BIT of political volleyball gone bad. According to Nance, writing over at Desert Conservative the Democrats will toss another smoke bomb at Governor Sarah Palin in October in hopes of ripping her off the mojo she's earned as a housecleaning politician not a shady dealer (like their own Candidate Y).

As if the Barack Obama biography doesn't reek from an entire career spent skinning the cat...

On Oct. 10th, the Alaskan Democrats hyped up investigation of Palin will release its report. Obviously, these yahoos will do anything to damage Palin. Here are some points about the kangaroo court running the investigation of Palin:

1. The Democrat State Senator pushing the investigation has said that the report will be an October surprise and will be quite damaging to Palin. But one is forced to wonder how does he know the conclusion unless the outcome is already planned by him?

2. The lead investigator and the Democrat State Senator in-charge of the investigation have conflicts of interest because both are friends with the commissioner who resigned. Neither the senator nor the investigator disclosed this fact before the investigation started.

3. There is a picture of the three top Democratic investigators meeting in Obama’s Alaska headquarters.

4. The lead investigator has expanded the investigation beyond its authorized scope and has opened a tip line to get any rumors and gossip of dirt to add to his report.

5. The investigator is planning to use testimony from known anti-Palin political enemies who are offering hearsay that is not supported by any other evidence.

6. The final report will be written by the same Democratic State Senator that has already has found Palin guilty before he has received a report from the lead investigator.

7. The investigator is conducting secret depositions that Palin’s lawyer will not be able to see until after the report is released by the bias Democrat State Senator.

8. This whole thing is about a trooper who has already admitted to using a taser on his own 11 year-old step-son but he has never been charged on assault charges or disciplined for that tasering.

9. Supposedly, the lead investigator is to be independent but the Democrat in-charge of the investigation is directing him on which witnesses to question.

10. The head investigator might have lied in testimony to the committee on Sept. 12th. He said he has received no evidence that Todd Palin has called for the trooper’s firing. Yet, on national TV the resigned commissioner has pushed that claim. This indicates that the investigator is attempting to hide his attacks on Palin until Oct 10th. This proves that the investigator is part of the Democrats’ attempt to destroy Palin.


Democrat in-charge of the committee:
Senator Kim Elton
Senator_Kim_Elton@legis.state.ak.us
State Capitol, Room 506
Juneau, AK 99801-1182
907-465-4947
fax: 907-465-2108

Democrat in-charge of investigation
Senator Hollis French
Senator_Hollis_French@legis.state.ak.us
State Capitol, Room 417
Juneau, AK 99801-1182
907-465-3892
866-465-3892
fax: 907-465-6595

Idiots and confidence men, all of them!

ABC NEWS HEAVILY EDITS PALIN

A TRANSCRIPT OF THE UNEDITED interview of Sarah Palin by Charles Gibson clearly shows that ABC News edited out crucial portions of the interview that showed Palin as knowledgeable or presented her answers out of context. This unedited transcript of the first of the Gibson interviews with Palin is available on radio host Mark Levin's website. The sections edited out by ABC News are in bold. The first edit shows Palin responding about meeting with foreign leaders but this was actually in response to a question Gibson asked several questions earlier...

This hardly secretive mass conspiracy to elect Barack Obama against all odds of qualification and suitability should alarm every persuasion of voting American. Please do not be hookdwinked by this conspiracy. Do your research. Remain clearheaded. Then vote your gut. This is too important an election to leave to the so-called media pundits and corrupted machine operatives. Vote intelligently. Vote with strength of character.

Readers of the The Two-Fisted Quorum no doubt have an inkling of my position, but the ballot box is open to all. So please, cast your vote, but cast with it an eye to the future of this country. Beware if you dare stand tall for our nation of false promises that soon find their undisclosed location swept under the carpet, bombing like so much the hot air which immediately proceeded it.

Read it all...

Guess Who I Am?

I am under 45 years old,
I love the outdoors,
I hunt,
I am a Republican reformer,
I have taken on the Republican Party establishment,
I have many children,
I have a spot on the national ticket as vice president with less than two years in the governor’s office.

Did you guess?

I am Teddy Roosevelt in 1900.

Oh, about that button. This year's "New Democrats" have reveled in the fact that they have scored a few pages out of the GOP playbook, after having vigorously pursued a scorched earth primary season which ended in a coup to install a staggering Barack Obama as its presidential nominee, and according to the Hillary blogosphere, literally beating back the minions of the Clinton campaign with rather unwholesome and undemocratic thug tactics. There is strong substantiated talk that Karl Rove set the whole mission in motion, resigning his post with the Bush White House in order to infiltrate the Democrats in somewhat of a Trojan Horse maneuver with Democratic Party strategist and Obama campaign managerDonna Brazile

Brazile most recently added more combustion fuel to the Obama-Palin lovefest by coining the awkward phrase that "Jesus was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor."

But not to be outdone, it wasn't long until another acerbic wit suggested that "Well, let's see. Al Capone was a community organizer. FDR was a governor."

So you see, voting in this election is more an act of faith than any hard evidence that either political party has your best interests in mind, so I think it is time that we think along the lines of JFK's famous dictum about who's best for the country. For me that leaves an easy choice. But then I realize that intelligence and faith are frequently found to be mutually exclusive, and this election cycle seems to insist on proving that this is not the most compelling season to hide behind open-ended slogans and empty suits. I'd prefer to leave those things to the community organizers of the world.

Okay, let's have some SNL fun.

KRAUTHAMMER PUNKS GIBSON

Gibson's pre-emptive strike against Governor Palin

"At times visibly nervous . . . Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of 'anticipatory self-defense.' "

—New York Times, Sept. 12

Informed her? Rubbish.

The New York Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong.

There is no single meaning of the Bush Doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration—and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different.

He said to Palin, "Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine."

She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, "In what respect, Charlie?"

Sensing his "gotcha" moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, Gibson grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine "is that we have the right to anticipatory self-defense."

Wrong.

I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush Doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, "The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism," I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto treaty, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush Doctrine.

Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to the joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush declared: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." This "with us or against us" policy regarding terror—first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan—became the essence of the Bush Doctrine.

Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq War was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of preemptive war. It's not. It's the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly is dependent on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in the world is the survival of freedom in all the world."

This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy's pledge in his inaugural address that the United States "shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson's 14 points.

If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume—unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise—and that he was speaking about the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration.

Not the Gibson doctrine of preemption.

Not the "with us or against us" no-neutrality-is-permitted policy of the immediate post-9/11 days.

Not the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration.

Presidential doctrines are inherently malleable and difficult to define. The only fixed "doctrines" in American history are the Monroe and the Truman doctrines which come out of single presidential statements during administrations where there were few other contradictory or conflicting foreign policy crosscurrents.

Read it all in Charles Krauthammer's Washington Post punking of ABC's snarky Charles Gibson.

PALIN RUMORS DEBUNKED

A FELLOW NAMED CHARLIE MARTIN has set up a page listing and confirming or debunking all the rumours about Gov. Sarah Palin. I know it's a tough job but really, let's have some civility around here. This is America, my friends. I suggest anyone writing about this woman in the future to check with this page, ah yes, gather gather a few details, before repeating something that is blatantly false. Thanks to The Audacity of Hypocrisy and Deception for offering this information.

Here are some of the debunked rumors:

1. No she wasn’t a member of the (wild-eyed libertarian) Alaska independence Party, although her husband once was
   
2. No, she was never a Pat Buchanan supporter; even when Buchanan claims she was, she was on the board of Steve Forbes’a campaign in Alaska.
   
3. No, she’s not anti-semitic. In fact, she has an Israeli flag in her office. (Contrary to popular belief, the usual Evangelical thinks Israel has a right to exist, granted by God.)
   
4. No, she’s doesn’t believe that the Iraq War was directed by God. Yes, she did pray that proceeding with the war was God’s will. (Ever hear the phrase “Not my will, but Thine, be done”?)
   
5. No, Buchanan doesn’t support her now; in fact he’s supporting Obama. (Buchanan did think her speech was amazing, but then so do 80 percent of the people who saw it.)
   
6. yes, she was pregnant when she got married
   
7. Yes, barring immaculate conception, Bristol appears to have had sex with her fiancee. No, Bristol didn’t receive only “abstinence-only” sex ed.
   
8. yes, she did fire the public safety guy—but he said in the Anchorage paper that, for the record, she never, and no one else in her administration ever, tried to make him fire her ex-brother-in-law
   
9. and yes, the state trooper (her sister’s ex-husband) she was worried about did: tase her 10 year old nephew; drive his state patrol car while drinking or drunk; did threaten to “bring her down”; and did threaten to murder her father and sister if they dared to get an attorney to help with the divorce.
   
10. No, she didn’t cut funding for unwed mothers; yes, she did increase it by “only” 354 percent instead of 454 percent, as part of a multi-year capital expenditures program. No, the Washington Post doesn’t appear to have corrected their story. Even after this was pointed out in the comments on the story.
    
11. No, she didn’t cut special needs student funding; yes, she did raise it by “only” 175 percent.
    
12. yes, she did ask the librarian if some books could be withdrawn because of being offensive; no, they couldn’t; yes she did threaten to fire the librarian a month later; no, that wasn’t over the books thing but instead over administrative issues;
    
13. no, the librarian wasn’t fired either; yes, the librarian was a big supporter of one of her political opponents;
    
14. yes, the librarian was also the girlfriend of the Chief of police mentioned above; no, this is not the first time in the history of civilization that someone has been threatened with being fired over a political dispute
    
15. yes, she was an Assembly of God Holy Roller. No, she doesn’t attend an AoG church now. Yes, she did leave the AoG because they were getting too weird for her.
    
16. yes, she apparently believes in some variant of Intelligent Design
    
17. no, she didn’t try to force the schools to teach it; she said if someone brought it up, it was an appropriate subject for debate.
    
18. No, she doesn’t believe in “abstinence only” education. Yes, she thinks abstinence is an effective way of preventing pregnancy. Duh. Yes, she believes kids should learn about condom use in schools.
    
19. yes, she kills animals and eats them, and wears their skins
    
20. yes, she has on occasion tried to get money from the federal government.
    
21. yes, she did finally turn down the money for the bridge. Yes, that meant changing her mind about it.
    
22. yes, she was vetted extensively, not just in three days — I’ve got links to press reports about people coming to Wassila on 29 May, and we had her on our Veepstakes at PJM from the first day we ran it.
    
23. Yes, Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech was written by a speechwriter. Duh. No, none of Obama’s, McCain’s, nor Biden’s speeches were impromptu off the cuff things either.