Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Thank You, House Republicans [Mark R. Levin]
I have read the posts here and elsewhere. Sometimes these things are made to look more complicated than they really are. From an economic perspective, if the problem is liquidity and credit, there simply is no need for the federal government to assume massive amounts of debt on its book by assuming loans in anticipation that their holders or borrowers will default. This seems to me like a brand new expanse of government power that is not justified (if it ever is) by the arguments made on its behalf. The government controls monetary policy through supply and interest rates, among other things. It can further ease money supply and credit, thereby increasing the flow of capital. The government controls tax policy. It can increase liquidity and the flow of new money into the economy both from within the country and from foreign sources by eliminating the corporate income tax and the capital gains tax even on a mid-term basis. No matter what is done, some financial institutions will fail, as they did in the 1981-82 recession and have since. And the Fed and Treasury and other instrumentalities of government will have to determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether to intervene and how to intervene. They will also have to determine whether other policies require modifying, such as the McCain proposal today, in which he suggests increasing federal insurance for individual depositors from $100,000 to $250,000. Other smart suggestions include modifying the mark-to-market rule requiring financial institutions to downgrade the valuation of assets. If the goal is to prevent panic in the economy by investors and depositors, then increase credit, liquidity, and the flow of capital, and deal with problem institutions that are significant enough in size that their demise could resonate to the wider economy. But the Soviet-style, top-down five year plan a la Paulson's proposal, and to a significant extent the proposal that was voted down yesterday, could easily do more damage to both the economy and our governmental structure. So, in this respect, I must depart from NRO's editorial.
Also, count me among those few here who want to thank the House Republicans for taking a bold stand against what had been a stampede on a scale I have never before witnessed on matters of huge consequence. Conservatism is more than a quaint belief-system to be embraced and debated over donuts at Starbucks. It is more than a list of talking points. It is the foundation of the civil society. The liberal uses crises, real or manufactured, to expand the power of government at the expense of the individual and private property. He has spent, in earnest, 70 years evading the Constitution's limits on governmental power. If conservatives don't stand up to this, who will? If they don't offer serious alternatives that address the current circumstances AND defend the founding principles, who will? The House Republicans have done both. And I, for one, thank them.
Incidentally, if you want to buy a home or car today you can. And if your credit is decent, you can get loans at a good rate. Last week we were told that if a deal was not struck by last Friday, our economy would collapse. It has not. That is not to say the evidence of economic troubles or worse should be ignored. It is to say that now is a time for reasoned decisions based on tried and true principles, not for abandoning them. I notice that the socialist, who, for the last 30 years, has insisted that private institutions make risky loans based on non-economic factors, still has not abandoned his policies. Socialism does not work. We shouldn't support more of it.
09/30 11:07 AM
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Attack! Our politicians at work! Time for the good old practice of Tar and Feathering !
The brewing of the financial collapse from the housing bubble and burst
I hope this doesn't offend as it is partisan, but contains a lot of facts that are pertinent. Where would you disagree with these issues?
Moral Response to Financial Crisis from US Bishops
WASHINGTON-Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, New York, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, urged the Bush Administration and Congress, September 26, to consider the moral aspects of the current financial crisis.
He stressed responsibility, accountability, awareness of advantages and limitations of the market, solidarity, subsidiarity and the common good, in the search for just and effective responses to the economic turmoil, while considering its human impact and ethical dimensions.
The text of the letter follows.
September 26, 2008
Dear Secretary Paulson, Majority Leader Reid, Minority Leader McConnell, Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Boehner:
The economic crisis facing our nation is both terribly disturbing and enormously complicated. I write to offer the prayers of the U.S. Catholic Bishops and express the concerns of our Conference as you face difficult choices on how to limit the damage and move forward with prudence and justice. As pastors and teachers, my brother bishops and I do not bring technical expertise to these complicated matters. However, we believe our faith and moral principles can help guide the search for just and effective responses to the economic turmoil threatening our people.
- Human and Moral Dimensions: This crisis involves far more than just economic or technical matters, but has enormous human impact and clear ethical dimensions which should be at the center of debate and decisions on how to move forward. Families are losing their homes. Retirement savings are at risk. People are losing jobs and benefits. Economic arrangements, structures and remedies should have as a fundamental purpose safeguarding human life and dignity. The scandalous search for excessive economic rewards even to the point of dangerous speculation that exacerbates the pain and losses of the more vulnerable are egregious examples of an economic ethic that places economic gain above all other values. This ignores the impact of economic decisions on the lives of real people as well as the ethical dimension of the choices we make and the moral responsibility we have for their effect on people.
- Responsibility and Accountability: Clearly, effective measures are required which address and alter the behaviors, practices and misjudgments that led to this crisis. Sadly, greed, speculation, exploitation of vulnerable people and dishonest practices helped to bring about this serious situation. Many blameless and vulnerable people have been and will be harmed. Those who directly contributed to this crisis or profited from it should not be rewarded or escape accountability for the harm they have done. Any response of government ought to seek greater responsibility, accountability and transparency in both economic and public life.
- Advantages and Limitations of the Market: Pope John Paul II pointed out that “the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs…But there are many human needs which find no place on the market. It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied.†Both public and private institutions have failed in responding to fundamental human needs. A new sense of responsibility on the part of all should include a renewal of instruments of monitoring and correction within economic institutions and the financial industry as well as effective public regulation and protection to the extent this may be clearly necessary.
- Solidarity and the Common Good: The principle of solidarity reminds us that we are in this together and warns us that concern for narrow interests alone can make things worse. The principle of solidarity commits us to the pursuit of the common good, not the search for partisan gain or economic advantage. Protection of the vulnerable – workers, business owners, homeowners, renters, and stockholders – must be included in the commitment to protect economic institutions. As Church leaders we ask that you give proper priority to the poor and the most vulnerable.
- Subsidiarity: Subsidiarity places a responsibility on the private actors and institutions to accept their own obligations. If they do not do so, then the larger entities, including the government, will have to step in to do what private institutions will have failed to do.
This is a challenging time for our nation. Everyone who carries responsibility should exercise it according to their respective roles and with a great sensitivity to reforming practices and setting forth new guidelines that will serve all people, all institutions of the economy and the common good of the people as a nation. This includes not just the leaders of the economic life of our country. It means the political leaders and all those whose own expertise can contribute to a resolution of the current situation.
Our Catholic tradition calls for a “society of work, enterprise and participation†which “is not directed against the market, but demands that the market be appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the state to assure that the basic needs of the whole society are satisfied†(Centesimus Annus). These words of John Paul II should be adopted as a standard for all those who carry this responsibility for our nation, the world and the common good of all.
Sincerely,
Most Reverend William F. Murphy
Bishop of Rockville Centre
Chairman, Committee on Domestic Justice and
Human Development
Monday, September 29, 2008
Roubini Call Bailout a Disgrace
Roubini has been pretty direct about this all along. We'll see if he's just a pessimest or if he's more honest about the trouble than anyone else.
Pelosi's Pep talk for historic bailout vote
In a stunning moment of bipartisanship, Pelosi rallies the troops from both sides of the aisles...NOT!
Pelosi making history; good job!
Pelosi making history; good job!
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Another success, 40 Days for Life (updated)
5 babies saved Saturday in LA:
From blog: DAY 7: A star appears…
"John Anthony is helping lead the 40 Days for Life vigil at Family Planning Associates, the busiest abortion facility in Los Angeles. He knew Saturday would be a difficult day, and was praying as many volunteers as possible would be on hand to stand witness.
Those prayers were answered — and then some — with the arrival of actor Eduardo Verastegui, the start of the movie Bella, and several of his friends.
“Eduardo arrived a little after 8 am and did not stop counseling, praying and encouraging women to choose life for their babies — with love, tenderness, humility and compassion — until a little after noon,” John Anthony said. “God is good — five babies were saved that morning!”
But that isn’t the end of the story. John Anthony said it wasn’t just abortion-minded mothers that caught Eduardo’s attention. “The day had a dramatic ending when eight nurses from the clinic came outside to meet Eduardo!” He spoke with the nurses and gave them copies of his new Spanish language pro-life video, “Dura Realidad.”
---
UPDATE: so far 48 babies saved!
From blog: DAY 6: 48 and counting…
"One of the many inspiring stories I heard while out here was from Josh Brahm, the dynamic young man who is coordinating the 40 Days for Life campaign in Fresno, California. Josh shared a story with me that I’d like to share with you.
Here it is in his own words…
I stood outside of Planned Parenthood for about 6 and a half hours today, most of those hours alongside my wife, who is 9 months pregnant. A young, attractive girl started walking toward me from the Planned Parenthood driveway. I smiled at her thinking she was a Planned Parenthood employee.
The young woman said she wanted to ask me some questions, and I told her that I’d be glad to answer any questions she could think of. She asked why we were out here. At that point I knew she wasn’t a Planned Parenthood employee, because she would have known exactly why we’re out here! I told her that we were there to peacefully pray for an end to abortion. I introduced myself and asked for her name, and she shook my hand saying her name was Ashley.
Then she said, “Well, I changed my mind.” I figured maybe she had become pro-life, so I asked her what she meant by that. Ashley responded, “I was going to have an abortion, but I’m not going to now.” My eyes widened, I gave her a huge smile and told her that she was my new favorite person! (Except for my wife, of course!)
Ashley explained further that she saw a news story on TV about us this morning and knew she couldn’t have an abortion. I hadn’t seen that coverage yet, so I asked her what it was about the story that changed her mind. She said that she saw men and women praying and holding signs and Bibles, and she knew that she couldn’t go through with the abortion.
Ashley is 16 years old and 5 weeks pregnant. Her parents wanted her to have the abortion and have now kicked her out of their house and taken her cell phone. She’s living with a friend now. I began to tell Ashley about the local pregnancy care center and how much help we personally can offer her as well. I told her, “You’re not alone.”
Josh, thanks to you and your wife for faithfully leading this effort in Fresno, and Ashley — I was so honored to get to meet you while there. Your courage is truly inspiring.
This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad!"
Yours for Life,
David Bereit
National Campaign Director
40 Days for Life
From blog: DAY 7: A star appears…
"John Anthony is helping lead the 40 Days for Life vigil at Family Planning Associates, the busiest abortion facility in Los Angeles. He knew Saturday would be a difficult day, and was praying as many volunteers as possible would be on hand to stand witness.
Those prayers were answered — and then some — with the arrival of actor Eduardo Verastegui, the start of the movie Bella, and several of his friends.
“Eduardo arrived a little after 8 am and did not stop counseling, praying and encouraging women to choose life for their babies — with love, tenderness, humility and compassion — until a little after noon,” John Anthony said. “God is good — five babies were saved that morning!”
But that isn’t the end of the story. John Anthony said it wasn’t just abortion-minded mothers that caught Eduardo’s attention. “The day had a dramatic ending when eight nurses from the clinic came outside to meet Eduardo!” He spoke with the nurses and gave them copies of his new Spanish language pro-life video, “Dura Realidad.”
---
UPDATE: so far 48 babies saved!
From blog: DAY 6: 48 and counting…
"One of the many inspiring stories I heard while out here was from Josh Brahm, the dynamic young man who is coordinating the 40 Days for Life campaign in Fresno, California. Josh shared a story with me that I’d like to share with you.
Here it is in his own words…
I stood outside of Planned Parenthood for about 6 and a half hours today, most of those hours alongside my wife, who is 9 months pregnant. A young, attractive girl started walking toward me from the Planned Parenthood driveway. I smiled at her thinking she was a Planned Parenthood employee.
The young woman said she wanted to ask me some questions, and I told her that I’d be glad to answer any questions she could think of. She asked why we were out here. At that point I knew she wasn’t a Planned Parenthood employee, because she would have known exactly why we’re out here! I told her that we were there to peacefully pray for an end to abortion. I introduced myself and asked for her name, and she shook my hand saying her name was Ashley.
Then she said, “Well, I changed my mind.” I figured maybe she had become pro-life, so I asked her what she meant by that. Ashley responded, “I was going to have an abortion, but I’m not going to now.” My eyes widened, I gave her a huge smile and told her that she was my new favorite person! (Except for my wife, of course!)
Ashley explained further that she saw a news story on TV about us this morning and knew she couldn’t have an abortion. I hadn’t seen that coverage yet, so I asked her what it was about the story that changed her mind. She said that she saw men and women praying and holding signs and Bibles, and she knew that she couldn’t go through with the abortion.
Ashley is 16 years old and 5 weeks pregnant. Her parents wanted her to have the abortion and have now kicked her out of their house and taken her cell phone. She’s living with a friend now. I began to tell Ashley about the local pregnancy care center and how much help we personally can offer her as well. I told her, “You’re not alone.”
Josh, thanks to you and your wife for faithfully leading this effort in Fresno, and Ashley — I was so honored to get to meet you while there. Your courage is truly inspiring.
This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad!"
Yours for Life,
David Bereit
National Campaign Director
40 Days for Life
DAY 5: God is at work!
Second SNL Palin Skit
(Kinder than the actual interview. It's missing the daggers flying out of Couric's eyes.)
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Video: Discovery Channel: I Love the World
Lego version:
Super Mario version:
Disney version:
Robots version:
Friday, September 26, 2008
Bono praises McCain, Obama and Americans
"This is the most inspiring thing I've ever been involved in in my life, and it's working. It really is working. And that's why I'm on your show this morning. I just want to thank Americans."
(CNN) -- Global activist and U2 frontman Bono attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York to push world leaders to join his ONE campaign in fighting disease, poverty, and hunger. He talked to CNN's John Roberts on "American Morning" about recent successes and what's next.
ROBERTS: All this talk has been about the economy collapsing, $700 billion bailout. Congress is absolutely absorbed with that. Did that in any way affect what you were trying to do this week? Are people more focused on this economy than in helping out developing nations?
BONO: We got good news this week. I know normally I'm on your program with bad news -- the whingeing rock star -- but it's great. There's a disease, malaria -- it's 3,000 African kids die every day of mosquito bites. Sounds mad, but it's true. And people have committed and it looks like the funds are on the table so that that disease will be no more by 2015. That makes people like me punch the air and everyone who wears a ONE T-shirt and all our white band campaigners on college campuses all over the country -- it was a great day for them yesterday so we're celebrating that. I know it's extraordinary, that while you're having this meltdown on the markets, that people could even concentrate on this stuff, but I'm really grateful that they did. We had both [presidential] candidates make very powerful statements about the necessity for nonmilitary tools, for instance, in foreign policy. This is an America that both candidates want to show to the rest of the world -- the greatness of America.
ROBERTS: So you're hearing what you want to hear from these candidates?
BONO: Yeah. And you couldn't imagine a few years ago that you would have candidates so close to an election talking about this stuff, so yeah. Video Watch Bono say how he uses his star status on politicians »
ROBERTS: You were talking to Christine Romans outside the studio, who just did that piece for us a few minutes ago on what else could you do with $700 billion. What could you do with $700 billion?
BONO: We wouldn't be asking for that kind of money. These are serious matters, people have lost their jobs. But I think the bill for the whole world -- so America would be like a third of it -- for $25 billion you could absolutely change the world. You could put kids in school, most kids in school. You could eradicate diseases like malaria, as we're saying. We could change the water supplies. But what's important is that people who want to change the world, want to see their country, they see it as a patriotic act to show the world innovation of America, technology of America, pharmacology of America....
[T]oday I'm punching the air because malaria will be no more by 2015. And it's Americans, people from the private sector -- Peter Chernin, Ray Chambers, all kinds of people, Bill Gates, your mayor of this city, [Michael] Bloomberg, is an amazing guy. He's working on this stuff. I just want Americans to know that side of their country because I'm a fan of America. And, again, you would have candidates, you know, like John McCain taking time out this week to talk to us, Barack Obama before. This is fantastic....
(rest of article)
(CNN) -- Global activist and U2 frontman Bono attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York to push world leaders to join his ONE campaign in fighting disease, poverty, and hunger. He talked to CNN's John Roberts on "American Morning" about recent successes and what's next.
ROBERTS: All this talk has been about the economy collapsing, $700 billion bailout. Congress is absolutely absorbed with that. Did that in any way affect what you were trying to do this week? Are people more focused on this economy than in helping out developing nations?
BONO: We got good news this week. I know normally I'm on your program with bad news -- the whingeing rock star -- but it's great. There's a disease, malaria -- it's 3,000 African kids die every day of mosquito bites. Sounds mad, but it's true. And people have committed and it looks like the funds are on the table so that that disease will be no more by 2015. That makes people like me punch the air and everyone who wears a ONE T-shirt and all our white band campaigners on college campuses all over the country -- it was a great day for them yesterday so we're celebrating that. I know it's extraordinary, that while you're having this meltdown on the markets, that people could even concentrate on this stuff, but I'm really grateful that they did. We had both [presidential] candidates make very powerful statements about the necessity for nonmilitary tools, for instance, in foreign policy. This is an America that both candidates want to show to the rest of the world -- the greatness of America.
ROBERTS: So you're hearing what you want to hear from these candidates?
BONO: Yeah. And you couldn't imagine a few years ago that you would have candidates so close to an election talking about this stuff, so yeah. Video Watch Bono say how he uses his star status on politicians »
ROBERTS: You were talking to Christine Romans outside the studio, who just did that piece for us a few minutes ago on what else could you do with $700 billion. What could you do with $700 billion?
BONO: We wouldn't be asking for that kind of money. These are serious matters, people have lost their jobs. But I think the bill for the whole world -- so America would be like a third of it -- for $25 billion you could absolutely change the world. You could put kids in school, most kids in school. You could eradicate diseases like malaria, as we're saying. We could change the water supplies. But what's important is that people who want to change the world, want to see their country, they see it as a patriotic act to show the world innovation of America, technology of America, pharmacology of America....
[T]oday I'm punching the air because malaria will be no more by 2015. And it's Americans, people from the private sector -- Peter Chernin, Ray Chambers, all kinds of people, Bill Gates, your mayor of this city, [Michael] Bloomberg, is an amazing guy. He's working on this stuff. I just want Americans to know that side of their country because I'm a fan of America. And, again, you would have candidates, you know, like John McCain taking time out this week to talk to us, Barack Obama before. This is fantastic....
(rest of article)
Thursday, September 25, 2008
A tribute to the generosity of Americans (Bono)
Ah… the life of the single issue protagonist. Here’s a peep inside our brain, a scene setter.
The ONE campaign has two and half million members, who urge us to make the case for increased aid as a key plank in America’s new foreign policy. ONE T-shirts have been turning up in town hall meetings for 18 months now, haranguing, hassling, but ultimately endearing themselves to all the presidential campaigns. They want the world to see what America has to offer the billion people who live on less than a dollar a day - practically speaking: medicine, new seed varieties, technology, know-how; policy speaking: what should America do more of? what should America do less of?
They want the world to understand that America is not just a country but an idea, a contagious idea, committed to promoting the inalienable right that all men and women are created equal; that your street address should not be a death sentence in what Warren Buffet refers to as the “ovarian lotto”; that love thy neighbour is not advice, but a command.
ONE members are thrilled that Barack Obama and John McCain both have an open door policy with the our campaign. But I must admit, today, as I step through one of those doors to talk with Senator McCain and Governor Palin, the Irish rockstar in me is a little nervous about the circus rolling over the town rather than through it. We know the flash bulbs and hysteria around the presidential campaign make it hard to concentrate on the substance of the ideas we’ve got to discuss ie development as an essential third plank of foreign policy, along with diplomacy and defence.
It’s a tribute to the generosity of Americans that they let this Irishman get away with quoting back at them The Declaration of Independence like it’s the liner notes to my favourite Bob Dylan album (but it sort of is). Anyway we’ve now met with nearly a dozen of the presidential candidates in the course of their campaigns and of the four candidates left, three have declared their positions at onevote08.org/ontherecord, if you want to check them out....
Just a couple of years ago it would have been impossible for the issue of extreme poverty to play even a tiny role in the American political season. So far this year, all candidates have made positive noises, rooted in the most pragmatic of thinking about how America reintroduces itself to the world after the election. When even the defence minister pitches your roving rockstar the idea that an increase in aid is essential, you know something’s happening.
(Bono of U2, blogging for FT.com from the Millennium Development Goals summit and surrounding meetings in New York)
Here's the rest
The ONE campaign has two and half million members, who urge us to make the case for increased aid as a key plank in America’s new foreign policy. ONE T-shirts have been turning up in town hall meetings for 18 months now, haranguing, hassling, but ultimately endearing themselves to all the presidential campaigns. They want the world to see what America has to offer the billion people who live on less than a dollar a day - practically speaking: medicine, new seed varieties, technology, know-how; policy speaking: what should America do more of? what should America do less of?
They want the world to understand that America is not just a country but an idea, a contagious idea, committed to promoting the inalienable right that all men and women are created equal; that your street address should not be a death sentence in what Warren Buffet refers to as the “ovarian lotto”; that love thy neighbour is not advice, but a command.
ONE members are thrilled that Barack Obama and John McCain both have an open door policy with the our campaign. But I must admit, today, as I step through one of those doors to talk with Senator McCain and Governor Palin, the Irish rockstar in me is a little nervous about the circus rolling over the town rather than through it. We know the flash bulbs and hysteria around the presidential campaign make it hard to concentrate on the substance of the ideas we’ve got to discuss ie development as an essential third plank of foreign policy, along with diplomacy and defence.
It’s a tribute to the generosity of Americans that they let this Irishman get away with quoting back at them The Declaration of Independence like it’s the liner notes to my favourite Bob Dylan album (but it sort of is). Anyway we’ve now met with nearly a dozen of the presidential candidates in the course of their campaigns and of the four candidates left, three have declared their positions at onevote08.org/ontherecord, if you want to check them out....
Just a couple of years ago it would have been impossible for the issue of extreme poverty to play even a tiny role in the American political season. So far this year, all candidates have made positive noises, rooted in the most pragmatic of thinking about how America reintroduces itself to the world after the election. When even the defence minister pitches your roving rockstar the idea that an increase in aid is essential, you know something’s happening.
(Bono of U2, blogging for FT.com from the Millennium Development Goals summit and surrounding meetings in New York)
Here's the rest
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Better bailout plan?
"One likely way the new folks could proceed is to stay away from the tar pit of trying to bail out institutions directly and instead opt for an indirect approach. Specifically, the government might choose to bail out homeowners instead. Suppose all homeowners were allowed to refinance their existing mortgage at some low subsidized rate that was
also extended to all new buyers, say 4 percent. One catch--the government would have recourse to the borrower and not just the house in the case of default. This is a huge broadening of the plan originally suggested by Martin Feldstein. Not everyone would take this up because it would mean they would have to pay the money back and not just default on their mortgage. So, it would quickly separate the good mortgages from the bad ones that are creating problems in the system.
For those who did take up the plan, a wave of prepayments would begin that would trigger positive cash flow and reduce the risk to all that derivative paper the financial service industry now holds. Prices on that paper would quickly rise and firms would enjoy both more liquidity and more capital. For those who did not refinance, the expectation would be that the house was so far under water that it will ultimately produce a loss. This would help clarify precisely just how much the losses were in the system and on each of the many securitized products and mortgage derivatives as well.
But the biggest advantage is that it avoids the quagmire in which the political class now finds itself. No need for direct bailouts, no need to warehouse paper, no need to hire geeks to figure it all out, and no instant billionaires who simply gamed the system. Better yet for those up for election, no political complaints since it is the voters themselves who were being bailed out."
Lawrence B. Lindsey, a former governor of the Federal Reserve, was special assistant to President Bush for economic policy and director of the National Economic Council at the White House. His most recent book is What a President Should Know . . . but Most Learn Too Late (Rowman and Littlefield).
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/604avgrb.asp?pg=2
also extended to all new buyers, say 4 percent. One catch--the government would have recourse to the borrower and not just the house in the case of default. This is a huge broadening of the plan originally suggested by Martin Feldstein. Not everyone would take this up because it would mean they would have to pay the money back and not just default on their mortgage. So, it would quickly separate the good mortgages from the bad ones that are creating problems in the system.
For those who did take up the plan, a wave of prepayments would begin that would trigger positive cash flow and reduce the risk to all that derivative paper the financial service industry now holds. Prices on that paper would quickly rise and firms would enjoy both more liquidity and more capital. For those who did not refinance, the expectation would be that the house was so far under water that it will ultimately produce a loss. This would help clarify precisely just how much the losses were in the system and on each of the many securitized products and mortgage derivatives as well.
But the biggest advantage is that it avoids the quagmire in which the political class now finds itself. No need for direct bailouts, no need to warehouse paper, no need to hire geeks to figure it all out, and no instant billionaires who simply gamed the system. Better yet for those up for election, no political complaints since it is the voters themselves who were being bailed out."
Lawrence B. Lindsey, a former governor of the Federal Reserve, was special assistant to President Bush for economic policy and director of the National Economic Council at the White House. His most recent book is What a President Should Know . . . but Most Learn Too Late (Rowman and Littlefield).
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/604avgrb.asp?pg=2
This the fellow that Ron Paul is endorsing
Chuck Baldwin is the candidate for the Constitution Party.
I was considering voting for him if McCain had not picked a strong Pro-Life candidate. Is it too late to return to a Constitutional based government?
I was considering voting for him if McCain had not picked a strong Pro-Life candidate. Is it too late to return to a Constitutional based government?
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Conclusions of Sarah Palin's email hacker
"I read though the emails… ALL OF THEM… before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor…. And pictures of her family....
Earlier it was just some prank to me, I really wanted to get something incriminating which I was sure there would be, just like all of you anon out there that you think there was some missed opportunity of glory, well there WAS NOTHING, I read everything, every little blackberry confirmation… all the pictures, and there was nothing...."
(Wired Magazine blogs)
Earlier it was just some prank to me, I really wanted to get something incriminating which I was sure there would be, just like all of you anon out there that you think there was some missed opportunity of glory, well there WAS NOTHING, I read everything, every little blackberry confirmation… all the pictures, and there was nothing...."
(Wired Magazine blogs)
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Maintaining The Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life
[from the Values section of the 2008 Republican platform]
Faithful to the first guarantee of the Declaration of Independence, we assert the inherent dignity and sanctity of all human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. We oppose using public revenues to promote or perform abortion and will not fund organizations which advocate it. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity and dignity of innocent human life.
We have made progress. The Supreme Court has upheld prohibitions against the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion. States are now permitted to extend health-care coverage to children before birth. And the Born Alive Infants Protection Act has become law; this law ensures that infants who are born alive during an abortion receive all treatment and care that is provided to all newborn infants and are not neglected and left to die. We must protect girls from exploitation and statutory rape through a parental notification requirement. We all have a moral obligation to assist, not to penalize, women struggling with the challenges of an unplanned pregnancy. At its core, abortion is a fundamental assault on the sanctity of innocent human life. Women deserve better than abortion. Every effort should be made to work with women considering abortion to enable and empower them to choose life. We salute those who provide them alternatives, including pregnancy care centers, and we take pride in the tremendous increase in adoptions that has followed Republican legislative initiatives.
Respect for life requires efforts to include persons with disabilities in education, employment, the justice system, and civic participation. In keeping with that commitment, we oppose the non-consensual withholding of care or treatment from people with disabilities, as well as the elderly and infirm, just as we oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide, which endanger especially those on the margins of society. Because government should set a positive standard in hiring and contracting for the services of persons with disabilities, we need to update the statutory authority for the AbilityOne program, the main avenue by which those productive members of our society can offer high quality services at the best possible value.
[GOP 2008 Platform: Values]
Faithful to the first guarantee of the Declaration of Independence, we assert the inherent dignity and sanctity of all human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. We oppose using public revenues to promote or perform abortion and will not fund organizations which advocate it. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity and dignity of innocent human life.
We have made progress. The Supreme Court has upheld prohibitions against the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion. States are now permitted to extend health-care coverage to children before birth. And the Born Alive Infants Protection Act has become law; this law ensures that infants who are born alive during an abortion receive all treatment and care that is provided to all newborn infants and are not neglected and left to die. We must protect girls from exploitation and statutory rape through a parental notification requirement. We all have a moral obligation to assist, not to penalize, women struggling with the challenges of an unplanned pregnancy. At its core, abortion is a fundamental assault on the sanctity of innocent human life. Women deserve better than abortion. Every effort should be made to work with women considering abortion to enable and empower them to choose life. We salute those who provide them alternatives, including pregnancy care centers, and we take pride in the tremendous increase in adoptions that has followed Republican legislative initiatives.
Respect for life requires efforts to include persons with disabilities in education, employment, the justice system, and civic participation. In keeping with that commitment, we oppose the non-consensual withholding of care or treatment from people with disabilities, as well as the elderly and infirm, just as we oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide, which endanger especially those on the margins of society. Because government should set a positive standard in hiring and contracting for the services of persons with disabilities, we need to update the statutory authority for the AbilityOne program, the main avenue by which those productive members of our society can offer high quality services at the best possible value.
[GOP 2008 Platform: Values]
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Kind of gutsy for a student
This is pretty gutsy for a young lady in college, but somehow I could see Sarah Palin doing the same in college if she was bullied.
Ron Paul's view on current economic troubles
I did not support Ron Paul because I didn't think he was a credible candidate, but I do think he has very credible views about the problems with our government. His concerns about the fiscal state of the government and the troubles caused by the Federal Reserve are worth consideration. Love, Mike
update: I didn't word that very well. I think Ron Paul is a very credible person and he's honest as well, which is unusual and somewhat rare in the public square. I didn't think he was a viable candidate, because I thought he only ran on his ideological positions without a serious effort to drawn in more voters and present a "pragmatic" plan to implement the vision and begin a process that would achieve the goals that he proposes. I think his knowledge and views should be considered and respected, especially in light of the inevitable economic reality that is becoming harder to ignore. I guess I meant to say that I did not think he was credible as a candidate, but he was credible as the leader of an important political movement. To actually win the nomination, I think he would have had to incorporate the difficult political skills that are needed to reach out and impact the greater public.
update: I didn't word that very well. I think Ron Paul is a very credible person and he's honest as well, which is unusual and somewhat rare in the public square. I didn't think he was a viable candidate, because I thought he only ran on his ideological positions without a serious effort to drawn in more voters and present a "pragmatic" plan to implement the vision and begin a process that would achieve the goals that he proposes. I think his knowledge and views should be considered and respected, especially in light of the inevitable economic reality that is becoming harder to ignore. I guess I meant to say that I did not think he was credible as a candidate, but he was credible as the leader of an important political movement. To actually win the nomination, I think he would have had to incorporate the difficult political skills that are needed to reach out and impact the greater public.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Elections 2008 - CL Flyer
As the Holy Father taught in Deus Caritas Est, “The direct duty to work for a just ordering of society is proper to the lay faithful” (no. 29). This duty is more critical than ever in todayʼs political environment, where Catholics may feel politically disenfranchised, sensing that no party and too few candidates fully share the Churchʼs comprehensive commitment to the life and dignity of every human being from conception to natural death. Yet this is not a time for retreat or discouragement; rather, it is a time for renewed engagement. (“Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.)
WHAT WE HOLD
MOST DEAR
MOST DEAR
As lay Catholics struggling to be faithful to the call of our bishops, we have arrived at the following judgments.
We recognize that the opportunity to vote causes what lies closest to our hearts to surface. The experience of the fact of Christ present in the Church we hold most dear. We do not hope for salvation from politics or politicians. Nevertheless, we understand the critical importance that politics plays in our common American life.
For this reason two concerns matter most to us and we will vote according to which candidates and parties demonstrate an authentic care for these concerns.
1 Freedom of Religion. Political power must recognize faithʼs undeniable contribution to the defense and broadening of human reason and its promotion of authentic human progress. This is a guarantee of freedom for everyone, not only for Christians. And this freedom must include the freedom to speak, convince, act and build in the public square; religious freedom relegated to oneʼs private life is not religious freedom at all.
2 the Common Good. Those who hold political power must do so as a service to the common good of the entire nation.
We consider the recognition and defense of three self-evident truths regarding human beings the minimum commitment to the common good: the right to life from conception to natural death; the irreplaceable value of the family, founded on the marriage between a man and woman; and the right of every human being to be born into and educated by that family formed by his or her parents.
For the common good we further seek politicians and political parties that value subsidiarity, a partnership between the public and private sectors facilitated by a robust non-profit sector. At the same time, we seek persons engaged in politics who recognize that subsidiarity can never annul the solidarity we owe to all our brothers and sisters living in this nation. There is no care for the common good that ignores basic human needs of millions in our nation.
These judgments will determine our support for particular candidates and political initiatives in the upcoming elections.
September 2008
Communion and Liberation USA
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Google Changes On Abortion Ads
by Christopher Nickson
Settling out of court in the UK, Google will now allow ads from religious groups about abortion.
When the Christian Institute in the UK wanted to place an anti-abortion ad with Google, it was told that the company did not accept advertising from sites containing "abortion and religion-related content."
But once threatened with British equality laws they had no choice but to give in and settle rather than go to court, so in Britain at least, there will now be ads from religious groups about abortion on Google, alongside those for abortion clinics.
A Google spokesperson told the BBC:
"The issue of abortion is an emotive subject and Google does not take a particular side.
"Over the last few months we have been reviewing our abortion ads policy in order to make sure it was fair, up-to-date and consistent with local customs and practices.
"Following the review we have decided to amend our policy, creating a level playing field and enabling religious associations to place ads on abortion in a factual way."
In response, the Christian Institute heralded the decision as a victory for free speech.
http://news.digitaltrends.com/news-article/17893/google-changes-on-abortion-ads
Settling out of court in the UK, Google will now allow ads from religious groups about abortion.
When the Christian Institute in the UK wanted to place an anti-abortion ad with Google, it was told that the company did not accept advertising from sites containing "abortion and religion-related content."
But once threatened with British equality laws they had no choice but to give in and settle rather than go to court, so in Britain at least, there will now be ads from religious groups about abortion on Google, alongside those for abortion clinics.
A Google spokesperson told the BBC:
"The issue of abortion is an emotive subject and Google does not take a particular side.
"Over the last few months we have been reviewing our abortion ads policy in order to make sure it was fair, up-to-date and consistent with local customs and practices.
"Following the review we have decided to amend our policy, creating a level playing field and enabling religious associations to place ads on abortion in a factual way."
In response, the Christian Institute heralded the decision as a victory for free speech.
http://news.digitaltrends.com/news-article/17893/google-changes-on-abortion-ads
Palin: From PTA to VP nominee [about the documentary]
Drew Griffin
CNN Special Investigations Unit
Immediately after Gov. Sarah Palin’s surprise unveiling as GOP vice presidential nominee — I was shocked that so many people – including pundits, e-mailers, talk show hosts and politicians — knew so much about her.
When I was given this assignment to produce an hour-long documentary on the Alaska governor, I had no idea who she was. To be perfectly honest I didn’t even know the governor of Alaska was a “she.”
But apparently everyone else did, and they all had an opinion about her.
Of course the opinions were equally divided based on your political leanings. Democrats began e-mailing reporter types with their talking points: evil, vindictive, lightweight, a conservative Christian out to tell us how to breed, teach and read. In a word, dangerous.
Republican talking points included: outside-the-beltway, corruption fighter, executive experience. A real person grounded in family, country and apple pie. (Make that moose burgers). And, it turns out, the celebrity antidote to the Obama star factor.
Sarah Palin turns out to be much more human than either the Republicans or Democrats would have you believe.
What struck me most about Palin is how accidentally she fell into this business.
Sens. John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all deliberately entered politics as a career.
Palin entered the tiny world of her politics as a PTA mom-turned-city-council-member-turned mayor.
I am not naïve enough to believe she had no political ambition beyond Wasilla and the great state of Alaska.
But I am convinced her meteoric rise started with a mom’s simple involvement in her children schools. And if nothing else, that is refreshing in national politics.
http://siu.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/16/palin-from-pta-to-vp-nominee/
CNN Special Investigations Unit
Immediately after Gov. Sarah Palin’s surprise unveiling as GOP vice presidential nominee — I was shocked that so many people – including pundits, e-mailers, talk show hosts and politicians — knew so much about her.
When I was given this assignment to produce an hour-long documentary on the Alaska governor, I had no idea who she was. To be perfectly honest I didn’t even know the governor of Alaska was a “she.”
But apparently everyone else did, and they all had an opinion about her.
Of course the opinions were equally divided based on your political leanings. Democrats began e-mailing reporter types with their talking points: evil, vindictive, lightweight, a conservative Christian out to tell us how to breed, teach and read. In a word, dangerous.
Republican talking points included: outside-the-beltway, corruption fighter, executive experience. A real person grounded in family, country and apple pie. (Make that moose burgers). And, it turns out, the celebrity antidote to the Obama star factor.
Sarah Palin turns out to be much more human than either the Republicans or Democrats would have you believe.
What struck me most about Palin is how accidentally she fell into this business.
Sens. John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all deliberately entered politics as a career.
Palin entered the tiny world of her politics as a PTA mom-turned-city-council-member-turned mayor.
I am not naïve enough to believe she had no political ambition beyond Wasilla and the great state of Alaska.
But I am convinced her meteoric rise started with a mom’s simple involvement in her children schools. And if nothing else, that is refreshing in national politics.
http://siu.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/16/palin-from-pta-to-vp-nominee/
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Monday, September 15, 2008
Governor Sarah Palin on The Alaska HDTV Show
Nice visit with Governor Palin in Juneau.
(highly recommended by nine-year-olds)
Source: Hike of the Week Urban Hike with Sarah Palin
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
Videos: Palin Interviews with Charlie Gibson
Video: Charlie Gibson first interview Sarah Palin [9/11/08]
Excerpts: Charlie Gibson first interview Sarah Palin [9/11/08]
Some media responses [1st interview]:
How Did Palin Do? Two Views
The ABCs of Sarah Palin
Excerpts: Charlie Gibson's Second Interview With Sarah Palin
Video: Gov. Sarah Palin: The Full Interview [so it says] [includes questions about Wasilla taxes, spending, and the sports arena]
Video: Palin on Domestic Policy [government spending, abortion, stem cell research, etc.]
More texts/topics here:
Excerpts: Charlie Gibson Interviews GOP Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin
[reform, bridge to nowhere, Hillary Clinton, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, homosexuality, guns, sexism, banning books, troopergate, economic policy]
YouTube versions:
Sarah Palin ABC Interview With Charlie Gibson Part 1
Sarah Palin ABC Interview With Charlie Gibson Part 2
Sarah Palin 20/20 ABC Interview With Charlie Gibson Part 1/4
2 of 4 - Gov. Sarah Palin's 20/20 interview with Charlie Gibson 9/13/08
Sarah Palin 20/20 ABC Interview With Charlie Gibson Part 3/4
Sarah Palin 20/20 ABC Interview With Charlie Gibson Part 4/4
Excerpts: Charlie Gibson first interview Sarah Palin [9/11/08]
Some media responses [1st interview]:
How Did Palin Do? Two Views
The ABCs of Sarah Palin
Excerpts: Charlie Gibson's Second Interview With Sarah Palin
Video: Gov. Sarah Palin: The Full Interview [so it says] [includes questions about Wasilla taxes, spending, and the sports arena]
Video: Palin on Domestic Policy [government spending, abortion, stem cell research, etc.]
More texts/topics here:
Excerpts: Charlie Gibson Interviews GOP Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin
[reform, bridge to nowhere, Hillary Clinton, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, homosexuality, guns, sexism, banning books, troopergate, economic policy]
YouTube versions:
Sarah Palin ABC Interview With Charlie Gibson Part 1
Sarah Palin ABC Interview With Charlie Gibson Part 2
Sarah Palin 20/20 ABC Interview With Charlie Gibson Part 1/4
2 of 4 - Gov. Sarah Palin's 20/20 interview with Charlie Gibson 9/13/08
Sarah Palin 20/20 ABC Interview With Charlie Gibson Part 3/4
Sarah Palin 20/20 ABC Interview With Charlie Gibson Part 4/4
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
The Perfect Storm
The Perfect Storm – My View
by Mike Lawless
September 10, 2008
We are all observing the same spectacle and we’re all trying to understand how this could have taken place. Sure, a lot of it makes sense, McCain taking advantage of the opportunity created by the splintered Democratic Party carefully trying to mend the damage done by the racist and sexist overtones to the Obama-Hillary contest. There has been an undercurrent of discontent in the Conservative ranks from the Primaries between the Social and Fiscal Conservative factions personified by the Huckabee-Romney split. So along comes Sarah Palin, who provides an acceptable compromise between the fiscal and social cons as witnessed by support across the board from Evangelicals, Pro-Life organizations to National Review and Club for Growth. Two birds with one stone is good, obviously, uniting the party and pouring salt into the wounds left from the cautious divorce between the Democratic power base and the Clintons.
But there is something larger happening in this Palin phenomenon. There is a rise in the temperature of the race and a frenzied panic from the media and the Left side of the political spectrum. The selection of Sarah Palin has managed to bring almost the entirety of the simmering Culture War as epitomized by the prominent culture battle for Life. All of the various battles within the war of cultures, including all the hot button issues of abortion, faith and especially outspoken Christian faith, women’s rights and feminism, sexism, racism, country vs. city and guns, of course, seem to have combined into a front page, all out culture war with Sarah Palin as the catalyst. If you think the Obama vs. Hillary battle was heated, I think it will pale in comparison to what is coming. It has started with the attacks against Palin, but is starting to escalate with the counter attacks from her supporters. This cycle is expanding not contracting, it will likely be even more elevated as we progress towards Election Day. The emergence of Sarah Palin onto the national stage has brought out all the rage of the Culture War and the people are engaged and in many cases enraged from nearly every corner of the Nation.
I think this choice of Sarah Palin may win McCain the election, but I think that her selection has and will ignite a Culture War centered on Pro-Life vs. Abortion rights as we have not witnessed before. Also, the Pro-Life issue appears to be at the tipping point where it garners the advantage in political power; some of which may be from the inevitable result of the secular progressives having fewer or keeping fewer of their own children. Demographics changes are real and unavoidable. Any group that does not have offspring will reduce their impact; it’s ironically Darwinian.
It’s not so much Sarah’s Pro-Life views that are causing this effect, it is actually her life, her family, her 20 year marriage to one man, her Down Syndrome son and pregnant daughter and the manner in which they have embraced life on a real level, that when played out on the most public of stages has created the Perfect Storm. It doesn’t appear the fireworks are going to die down any time soon. It seems to only be ready to expand as the campaign will inevitably confront the impact of this election with Supreme Court Justice selections and a range of potential legislation and policies. It has forced the country to engage, debate and battle the most divisive social issues that are front and center with this new political celebrity and along with it all the pent up battles of social class, ideology and conflict.
by Mike Lawless
September 10, 2008
We are all observing the same spectacle and we’re all trying to understand how this could have taken place. Sure, a lot of it makes sense, McCain taking advantage of the opportunity created by the splintered Democratic Party carefully trying to mend the damage done by the racist and sexist overtones to the Obama-Hillary contest. There has been an undercurrent of discontent in the Conservative ranks from the Primaries between the Social and Fiscal Conservative factions personified by the Huckabee-Romney split. So along comes Sarah Palin, who provides an acceptable compromise between the fiscal and social cons as witnessed by support across the board from Evangelicals, Pro-Life organizations to National Review and Club for Growth. Two birds with one stone is good, obviously, uniting the party and pouring salt into the wounds left from the cautious divorce between the Democratic power base and the Clintons.
But there is something larger happening in this Palin phenomenon. There is a rise in the temperature of the race and a frenzied panic from the media and the Left side of the political spectrum. The selection of Sarah Palin has managed to bring almost the entirety of the simmering Culture War as epitomized by the prominent culture battle for Life. All of the various battles within the war of cultures, including all the hot button issues of abortion, faith and especially outspoken Christian faith, women’s rights and feminism, sexism, racism, country vs. city and guns, of course, seem to have combined into a front page, all out culture war with Sarah Palin as the catalyst. If you think the Obama vs. Hillary battle was heated, I think it will pale in comparison to what is coming. It has started with the attacks against Palin, but is starting to escalate with the counter attacks from her supporters. This cycle is expanding not contracting, it will likely be even more elevated as we progress towards Election Day. The emergence of Sarah Palin onto the national stage has brought out all the rage of the Culture War and the people are engaged and in many cases enraged from nearly every corner of the Nation.
I think this choice of Sarah Palin may win McCain the election, but I think that her selection has and will ignite a Culture War centered on Pro-Life vs. Abortion rights as we have not witnessed before. Also, the Pro-Life issue appears to be at the tipping point where it garners the advantage in political power; some of which may be from the inevitable result of the secular progressives having fewer or keeping fewer of their own children. Demographics changes are real and unavoidable. Any group that does not have offspring will reduce their impact; it’s ironically Darwinian.
It’s not so much Sarah’s Pro-Life views that are causing this effect, it is actually her life, her family, her 20 year marriage to one man, her Down Syndrome son and pregnant daughter and the manner in which they have embraced life on a real level, that when played out on the most public of stages has created the Perfect Storm. It doesn’t appear the fireworks are going to die down any time soon. It seems to only be ready to expand as the campaign will inevitably confront the impact of this election with Supreme Court Justice selections and a range of potential legislation and policies. It has forced the country to engage, debate and battle the most divisive social issues that are front and center with this new political celebrity and along with it all the pent up battles of social class, ideology and conflict.
Better than Glory and Praise ;) [music video]
Aarnoud de Groen plays Bach's Fugue in g-minor (BWV 542)
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Palin on Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, etc. [video]
Listen to what she says about Ron Paul, and the Republican political machine at the end.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Sunday, September 7, 2008
A historical perspective of Palin impact on the cultural left
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/534rlysq.asp
Why They Hate Her
Sarah Palin is a smart missile aimed at the heart of the left.
by Jeffrey Bell
09/15/2008, Volume 014, Issue 01
For months John McCain has apparently been hoping to use his selection of a running mate to shake up the presidential race. By picking Alaska governor Sarah Palin, McCain has accomplished that--and very likely a lot more than that, more than he or anyone else could have imagined.
I'm not talking about the widely remarked fact that if Palin performs well, and regardless of whether McCain wins or loses, she becomes a future Republican presidential prospect. Given the end of the remarkable 28-year run of the Bush family--present on six of the last seven GOP national tickets, a record that could stand forever--and McCain's own status as a pre-baby boomer, this was baked in the cake no matter what younger Republican politician McCain chose to elevate.
But even apart from its political implications, the rollout of the Sarah Palin vice presidential candidacy may be regarded decades from now as a nationally shared Rorschach test of enormous cultural significance.
From the instant of Palin's designation on Friday, August 29, the American left went into a collective mass seizure from which it shows no sign of emerging. The left blogosphere and elite media have, for the moment, joined forces and become indistinguishable from each other, and from the supermarket tabloids, in their desire to find and use anything that will criminalize and/or humiliate Palin and her family. In sharp contrast to the yearlong restraint shown toward truthful reports about John Edwards's affair, bizarre rumors have been reported as news, and, according to McCain campaign director Steve Schmidt, nationally known members of the elite media have besieged him with preposterous demands.
The most striking thing in purely political terms about this hurricane of elite rage is the built-in likelihood that it will backfire. It's not simply that it is highly capable of generating sympathy for Palin among puzzled undecided voters and of infuriating and motivating a previously placid GOP base, neither of which is in the interest of the Obama-Biden campaign. It also created an opening for Palin herself to look calm, composed, competent, and funny in response.
In her acceptance speech last Wednesday night, anyone could see the poise and skill that undoubtedly attracted McCain's attention months ago, when few others were even aware that he was looking. But it was precisely the venom of the left's assault that heightened the drama and made it a riveting television event. Palin benefited from her ability to project full awareness of the volume and relentlessness of the attacks without showing a scintilla of resentment or self-pity.
This is a rare talent, one shared by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. For this quality to have even a chance to develop, there must be something real to serve as an emotional backdrop: disproportionate, crazy-seeming rage by one's political enemies. Roosevelt was on his party's national ticket five times and Reagan sought the presidency four times. Each became governor of what at the time was the nation's most populous state. It took Roosevelt and Reagan decades of national prominence and pitched ideological combat to achieve the gift of enemies like these. Yet the American left awarded Sarah Palin this gift seemingly within a microsecond of her appearance on the national stage in Dayton, Ohio. Why?
The most important thing to know about the left today is that it is centered on social issues. At root, it always has been, ever since the movement took form and received its name in the revolutionary Paris of the 1790s. In order to drive toward a vision of true human liberation, all the institutions and moral codes we associate with civilization had to be torn down. The institutions targeted in revolutionary France included the monarchy and the nobility, but even higher on the enemies list of the Jacobins and their allies were organized religion and the family, institutions in which the moral values of traditional society could be preserved and passed on outside the control of the leftist vanguard.
Full human liberation always remained the ultimate vision of the left--Marx, for one, was explicit on this point--but the left in its more than 200-year history has been flexible and adaptable in the forms it was willing to assume and the projects it was willing to undertake in pursuit of its anti-institutional goals. For more than a hundred years, the central project of the global left was socialism.
It's hard to credit today, but as recently as the 1940s most Western political elites believed government ownership of business and national planning were the keys to economic modernization. Even when socialism's economic prestige was eroded by the West's capitalist boom after World War II, socialism retained credibility as a means of income redistribution.
It was the turbulent 1960s that proved a strategic turning point for the left. The worldwide social and cultural upheavals that culminated in 1968 were felt as a crisis of confidence by institutions in the West. Some institutions (universities, for example) defected to the rebels, while others saw their centuries-long influence on the population greatly weaken or drain away virtually overnight.
In the short run, most political elites weathered the storm. A big reason, the left gradually realized, was that socialist economics had become an albatross. Increasingly, the democratic parties of the left in Western countries downplayed socialism or even decoupled from it, leaving them free to pursue the anti-institutional, relativistic moral crusade that has been in the DNA of the left all along.
This newly revitalized social and cultural agenda made it possible for the left to shrug off the collapse of European communism and the Soviet Union nearly two decades ago. Even in countries like China where the Communist party retained dictatorial power, socialist economics became a thing of the past. Attempts to suppress religion and limit the autonomy of the family did not.
For the post-1960s, post-socialist left, the single most important breakthrough has been the alliance between modern feminism and the sexual revolution. This was far from inevitable. Up until around 1960, attempts at sexual liberation were resisted by most educated women. In the wake of the success of Playboy and other mass-circulation pornographic magazines in the 1950s, men were depicted as the initiators and main beneficiaries of sexual liberation, women as intolerant of promiscuity as well as potential victims of predatory "liberated" men.
With the introduction of the Pill around 1960, things abruptly began to change. Fears of overpopulation legitimated a contraceptive ethic throughout middle-class society in North America, Europe, Japan, and the Soviet bloc. China, which discouraged contraception and welcomed population gains under Mao Zedong, flipped to the extreme of the One Child policy in 1979, shortly after pro-capitalist reformers took charge and fixed on strict population control as an integral and unquestioned part of the package of Western-style development.
The fact that the Pill was taken only by women gave them a greater feeling of control over their sexual activity and eroded their social and psychological resistance to premarital sex. "No fault" divorce, a term borrowed from the field of auto insurance, in reality amounted to unilateral divorce and began to undermine the idea of marriage as a binding mutual contract oriented toward the procreation and nurturing of children. Contrary to nearly every prediction, the ubiquity of far more reliable methods of contraception and the growing ideological separation of sex from reproduction, coincided with a huge increase in unwed pregnancies.
Though earlier versions of feminism tended to embrace children and elevate motherhood, the more adversarial feminism that gained a mass base in virtually every affluent democracy beginning in the 1970s preached that children and childbearing were the central instrumentality of men's subjugation of women. This more than anything else in the menu of the post-socialist left raised toward cultural consensus a vision in which the monogamous family was what prevented humanity from achieving a Rousseau-like "natural" state of freedom from all laws and all bonds of mutual obligation.
If this analysis is correct, the single most important narrative holding the left together in today's politics and culture is the one offered--often with little or no dissent--by adversarial feminism. The premise of this narrative is that for women to achieve dignity and self-fulfillment in modern society, they must distance themselves, not necessarily from men or marriage or childbearing, but from the kind of marriage in which a mother's temptation to be with and enjoy several children becomes a synonym for holding women back and cheating them out of professional success.
On August 29, in the immediate aftermath of the announcement by the McCain campaign, all that was widely known of the governor of Alaska was that she was married with five children, the last one of whom had been carried to term with Down syndrome, and that she was pro-life. No one knew that her oldest daughter was pregnant. No one knew much about what she had done as governor or in her previous career. No one knew how she had been drawn into politics, or that her sister had had a reckless husband and a contentious divorce. Above all, with the possible exception of John McCain, no one knew that Sarah Palin was both a married mother of five and a brilliant political talent with a chance not just to change the dynamics of the 2008 election but to rise to the top level of American politics, whatever happens this year.
The simple fact of her being a pro-life married mother of five with a thriving political career was--before anything else about her was known--enough for the left and its outliers to target her for destruction. She could not be allowed to contradict symbolically one of the central narratives of the left. How galling it will be to Sarah Palin's many new enemies if she survives this assault and prevails. If she does, her success may be an important moment in the struggle to shape not just America's politics but its culture.
Jeffrey Bell, author of Populism and Elitism: Politics in the Age of Equality (1992), is completing work on Social Conservatism: The Movement That Polarized American Politics. He is a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Why They Hate Her
Sarah Palin is a smart missile aimed at the heart of the left.
by Jeffrey Bell
09/15/2008, Volume 014, Issue 01
For months John McCain has apparently been hoping to use his selection of a running mate to shake up the presidential race. By picking Alaska governor Sarah Palin, McCain has accomplished that--and very likely a lot more than that, more than he or anyone else could have imagined.
I'm not talking about the widely remarked fact that if Palin performs well, and regardless of whether McCain wins or loses, she becomes a future Republican presidential prospect. Given the end of the remarkable 28-year run of the Bush family--present on six of the last seven GOP national tickets, a record that could stand forever--and McCain's own status as a pre-baby boomer, this was baked in the cake no matter what younger Republican politician McCain chose to elevate.
But even apart from its political implications, the rollout of the Sarah Palin vice presidential candidacy may be regarded decades from now as a nationally shared Rorschach test of enormous cultural significance.
From the instant of Palin's designation on Friday, August 29, the American left went into a collective mass seizure from which it shows no sign of emerging. The left blogosphere and elite media have, for the moment, joined forces and become indistinguishable from each other, and from the supermarket tabloids, in their desire to find and use anything that will criminalize and/or humiliate Palin and her family. In sharp contrast to the yearlong restraint shown toward truthful reports about John Edwards's affair, bizarre rumors have been reported as news, and, according to McCain campaign director Steve Schmidt, nationally known members of the elite media have besieged him with preposterous demands.
The most striking thing in purely political terms about this hurricane of elite rage is the built-in likelihood that it will backfire. It's not simply that it is highly capable of generating sympathy for Palin among puzzled undecided voters and of infuriating and motivating a previously placid GOP base, neither of which is in the interest of the Obama-Biden campaign. It also created an opening for Palin herself to look calm, composed, competent, and funny in response.
In her acceptance speech last Wednesday night, anyone could see the poise and skill that undoubtedly attracted McCain's attention months ago, when few others were even aware that he was looking. But it was precisely the venom of the left's assault that heightened the drama and made it a riveting television event. Palin benefited from her ability to project full awareness of the volume and relentlessness of the attacks without showing a scintilla of resentment or self-pity.
This is a rare talent, one shared by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. For this quality to have even a chance to develop, there must be something real to serve as an emotional backdrop: disproportionate, crazy-seeming rage by one's political enemies. Roosevelt was on his party's national ticket five times and Reagan sought the presidency four times. Each became governor of what at the time was the nation's most populous state. It took Roosevelt and Reagan decades of national prominence and pitched ideological combat to achieve the gift of enemies like these. Yet the American left awarded Sarah Palin this gift seemingly within a microsecond of her appearance on the national stage in Dayton, Ohio. Why?
The most important thing to know about the left today is that it is centered on social issues. At root, it always has been, ever since the movement took form and received its name in the revolutionary Paris of the 1790s. In order to drive toward a vision of true human liberation, all the institutions and moral codes we associate with civilization had to be torn down. The institutions targeted in revolutionary France included the monarchy and the nobility, but even higher on the enemies list of the Jacobins and their allies were organized religion and the family, institutions in which the moral values of traditional society could be preserved and passed on outside the control of the leftist vanguard.
Full human liberation always remained the ultimate vision of the left--Marx, for one, was explicit on this point--but the left in its more than 200-year history has been flexible and adaptable in the forms it was willing to assume and the projects it was willing to undertake in pursuit of its anti-institutional goals. For more than a hundred years, the central project of the global left was socialism.
It's hard to credit today, but as recently as the 1940s most Western political elites believed government ownership of business and national planning were the keys to economic modernization. Even when socialism's economic prestige was eroded by the West's capitalist boom after World War II, socialism retained credibility as a means of income redistribution.
It was the turbulent 1960s that proved a strategic turning point for the left. The worldwide social and cultural upheavals that culminated in 1968 were felt as a crisis of confidence by institutions in the West. Some institutions (universities, for example) defected to the rebels, while others saw their centuries-long influence on the population greatly weaken or drain away virtually overnight.
In the short run, most political elites weathered the storm. A big reason, the left gradually realized, was that socialist economics had become an albatross. Increasingly, the democratic parties of the left in Western countries downplayed socialism or even decoupled from it, leaving them free to pursue the anti-institutional, relativistic moral crusade that has been in the DNA of the left all along.
This newly revitalized social and cultural agenda made it possible for the left to shrug off the collapse of European communism and the Soviet Union nearly two decades ago. Even in countries like China where the Communist party retained dictatorial power, socialist economics became a thing of the past. Attempts to suppress religion and limit the autonomy of the family did not.
For the post-1960s, post-socialist left, the single most important breakthrough has been the alliance between modern feminism and the sexual revolution. This was far from inevitable. Up until around 1960, attempts at sexual liberation were resisted by most educated women. In the wake of the success of Playboy and other mass-circulation pornographic magazines in the 1950s, men were depicted as the initiators and main beneficiaries of sexual liberation, women as intolerant of promiscuity as well as potential victims of predatory "liberated" men.
With the introduction of the Pill around 1960, things abruptly began to change. Fears of overpopulation legitimated a contraceptive ethic throughout middle-class society in North America, Europe, Japan, and the Soviet bloc. China, which discouraged contraception and welcomed population gains under Mao Zedong, flipped to the extreme of the One Child policy in 1979, shortly after pro-capitalist reformers took charge and fixed on strict population control as an integral and unquestioned part of the package of Western-style development.
The fact that the Pill was taken only by women gave them a greater feeling of control over their sexual activity and eroded their social and psychological resistance to premarital sex. "No fault" divorce, a term borrowed from the field of auto insurance, in reality amounted to unilateral divorce and began to undermine the idea of marriage as a binding mutual contract oriented toward the procreation and nurturing of children. Contrary to nearly every prediction, the ubiquity of far more reliable methods of contraception and the growing ideological separation of sex from reproduction, coincided with a huge increase in unwed pregnancies.
Though earlier versions of feminism tended to embrace children and elevate motherhood, the more adversarial feminism that gained a mass base in virtually every affluent democracy beginning in the 1970s preached that children and childbearing were the central instrumentality of men's subjugation of women. This more than anything else in the menu of the post-socialist left raised toward cultural consensus a vision in which the monogamous family was what prevented humanity from achieving a Rousseau-like "natural" state of freedom from all laws and all bonds of mutual obligation.
If this analysis is correct, the single most important narrative holding the left together in today's politics and culture is the one offered--often with little or no dissent--by adversarial feminism. The premise of this narrative is that for women to achieve dignity and self-fulfillment in modern society, they must distance themselves, not necessarily from men or marriage or childbearing, but from the kind of marriage in which a mother's temptation to be with and enjoy several children becomes a synonym for holding women back and cheating them out of professional success.
On August 29, in the immediate aftermath of the announcement by the McCain campaign, all that was widely known of the governor of Alaska was that she was married with five children, the last one of whom had been carried to term with Down syndrome, and that she was pro-life. No one knew that her oldest daughter was pregnant. No one knew much about what she had done as governor or in her previous career. No one knew how she had been drawn into politics, or that her sister had had a reckless husband and a contentious divorce. Above all, with the possible exception of John McCain, no one knew that Sarah Palin was both a married mother of five and a brilliant political talent with a chance not just to change the dynamics of the 2008 election but to rise to the top level of American politics, whatever happens this year.
The simple fact of her being a pro-life married mother of five with a thriving political career was--before anything else about her was known--enough for the left and its outliers to target her for destruction. She could not be allowed to contradict symbolically one of the central narratives of the left. How galling it will be to Sarah Palin's many new enemies if she survives this assault and prevails. If she does, her success may be an important moment in the struggle to shape not just America's politics but its culture.
Jeffrey Bell, author of Populism and Elitism: Politics in the Age of Equality (1992), is completing work on Social Conservatism: The Movement That Polarized American Politics. He is a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
A Palin cone of silence? ...
Update: The McCain campaign issued this response today after [Ed Morrissey] asked them for clarification:
"Gov. Sarah Palin spoke directly to 40 million people on Wednesday night. Only in the warped worldview of the beltway media establishment would that constitute a ‘cone of silence’. We will conduct our campaign our way and on our timeline."
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/05/a-palin-cone-of-silence/
"Gov. Sarah Palin spoke directly to 40 million people on Wednesday night. Only in the warped worldview of the beltway media establishment would that constitute a ‘cone of silence’. We will conduct our campaign our way and on our timeline."
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/05/a-palin-cone-of-silence/
A view from a balanced and respected politician
Barbara Boxer, the epitome and spokesperson for mainstream America. Sorry for the sarcasm. Barbara Boxer is pompous, sarcastic and extreme in her disconnectedness from the moral and family centered roots of this country. It's laughable for her to label Sarah Palin as if she's some kind of authority on what America wants and needs in political philosophy and judgement. The approval and accomplishments of the current Congress is pathetic and could only hope to have Palin's ability.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
How does she do it?
From a recent Time interview with Governor Palin:
"You have five children. You must be incredibly busy."
"I'm just very blessed. My husband loves being a dad as much as I love being a mom. I've got great help there. But also my immediate family and my extended family, for the most part, are Alaskans, they're here, helping with a network, a support system. I got a couple of aunts outside in Washington state too who are very, very helpful to me. So logistically speaking it's not impossible what I'm doing. I've got great assistance. And having big kids in addition to the little ones... the big kids help out so much with the little one."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1837536-2,00.html
"You have five children. You must be incredibly busy."
"I'm just very blessed. My husband loves being a dad as much as I love being a mom. I've got great help there. But also my immediate family and my extended family, for the most part, are Alaskans, they're here, helping with a network, a support system. I got a couple of aunts outside in Washington state too who are very, very helpful to me. So logistically speaking it's not impossible what I'm doing. I've got great assistance. And having big kids in addition to the little ones... the big kids help out so much with the little one."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1837536-2,00.html
Sarah Barracuda !
Sarah Palin blasted a hole through the hull of the Obama/Biden 2008 Campaign Cruise Ship.
This is the most powerful speech by a newcomer at a major political party since Ronald Reagan. This one will go down in the history books as the Palin Fall campaign. The "Reform" message of McCain now has credibility. Let the Fall battle begin, but now we have a new warrior, a sort of Joan of Arc, that will not be deterred by Mr. Biden, a stereotypical status quo politician. Go Sarah!
This is the most powerful speech by a newcomer at a major political party since Ronald Reagan. This one will go down in the history books as the Palin Fall campaign. The "Reform" message of McCain now has credibility. Let the Fall battle begin, but now we have a new warrior, a sort of Joan of Arc, that will not be deterred by Mr. Biden, a stereotypical status quo politician. Go Sarah!
Gov. Sarah Palin [LINKS]
[50+ listed below -- selected articles]
Alaska Governor Palin Picked as McCain Running Mate
Bio page [votesmart.org]:
Instant Reaction to the Palin Selection as GOP VP Pick
Sarah Palin on Glenn Beck [video]
Ms. Alaska
Profile of Alaska's Sarah Palin: Governor, Reformer, Mother
Republicans: Palin's an "awesome pick"
Gov. Sarah Palin - GOP's dream V.P. candidate
Friends: VP choice has 'very strong' values
... Democrats, including presidential nominee Barack Obama's campaign spokesman Bill Burton, questioned her relative inexperience, but Palin has beat back similar criticism before. In 1996, at 32, she was elected mayor of Wasilla, located about 40 miles north of Anchorage. She ousted a three-term incumbent for the position and focused her tenure on reducing taxes.
"I was just your average hockey mom in Alaska, coaching some basketball on the side," Palin said during a rally in Dayton, Ohio, where her selection was announced. "My agenda was to stop wasteful spending, cut property taxes and put the people first." ...
She competed in the Miss Alaska contest after being chosen Miss Wasilla in 1984, according to the Daily News. Adrian Lane, a longtime family friend who lives in Wasilla, said he remembers her playing basketball at a young age with all the boys in the neighborhood.
"People misread her," Lane said. "She's strong. People aren't going to run over her."
Hicks: Let Palin and Obama play hoops for the big prize
Palin named her first child Track because he was born during the track season, she said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal about her exercise habits. ``Running is my sanity,'' she told the paper.
Before she became pregnant with her fifth child she was running seven to 10 miles almost every day, she said in the interview. Now she runs about three miles every other day.
In the interview she said she uses her time running to think about her speeches. ``I usually write my best speeches and letters while out running,'' she said. ``That is my inspired time.''
bloomberg.com
Sarah Palin: A True Maverick
Sarah Palin in Wikipedia
Commentary: Palin is brilliant, but risky, VP choice
Palin has a strong anti-abortion record. She is a member of Feminists for Life , a group that works to make health-care and child-care resources available to ``pregnant or parenting students,'' according to the group's Web site.
bloomberg.com
She has a 4-month-old son with Down's Syndrome, and her older son is soon to be deployed to Iraq.
She will have a lot to say about many relevant issues.
Her approval rating is 80% among Alaskans. She is the most popular governor in the United States.
Fishing photo
The Most Popular Governor
Palin: “My Baby Will Not be Neglected”
AK’s Palin [yes, she's pro-life -- Radical Catholic Mom]
The Day After: Thoughts About Palin [Radical Catholic Mom]
Hubby Called Abt Palin [Radical Catholic Mom]
Sarah Palin speech
BBC: McCain unveils 'The Barracuda'
SF Chronicle: Picking Sarah Palin called gamble for McCain
Sarah Palin: Homeschooler
Campaigns Shift as McCain Choice Alters the Race
Palin jumps into campaign fray [Anchorage Daily News]
How Palin Got Picked
Let Palin Be Palin
Teen daughter of GOP VP pick is pregnant
Palin’s 17-Year-Old Daughter is Pregnant
Obama Says Palin Pregnancy “Off Limits”
A Story Palin Should Tell
The Palins' statement
Evangelicals rally behind Palin after pregnancy news
Palin Pick Offers Enthusiasm Despite Newly Learned Family Woes
Stephanopoulos: Three Questions Republicans Are Asking Themselves About Palin
Palin And The Alaska Independence Party
Anti-abortion group says Palin 'walks her talk'
Hurricane, Palin Roil the Start of GOP Convention
Palin: Pioneer, maverick -- and now game-changer
Palin is GOP's beacon [2007]
Sarah Palin: Shooting Star?
Republicans Rally Around Palin as McCain's Running Mate
Fred Thompson comments on Palin
Palin reports throw curve to campaign
Palin could distract from McCain's message for GOP
A Full-Fledged Feeding Frenzy On Sarah Palin
Sarah [the book]
What's It All About?
That's It! I'm Fed Up! Disgusted! Angry! Steamed!
[from a stay-at-home dad of 5 children]
Mayor Palin: A Rough Record [Time]
------------------
After VP acceptance speech at GOP convention:
Sarah Palin's Breakout Night [Time]
Political Wisdom: Sarah Palin’s Big Night [WSJ]
Open Mic Night at MSNBC [Peggy Noonan]
Democrats Rush To Define Palin by Policy, Not Personality [Fox News]
Sarah Palin's speech draws an audience of 37 million [LA Times]
Alaska neighbors love their hockey mom VP candidate
Text of Palin VP Acceptance Speech [9/3/08]
A Convention That Sparked the GOP [Time]
'A Servant's Heart' [Peggy Noonan]
Sarah Palin and Her Discontents [National Review]
------------------
In Palin’s Life and Politics, Goal to Follow God’s Will
And no, she’s not a religious extremist, either
Sliming Palin [Newsweek]
Palin May Lift More than McCain in November
Camille Paglia on Sarah Palin's Debut ... [feminism]
Alaska Governor Palin Picked as McCain Running Mate
Bio page [votesmart.org]:
Instant Reaction to the Palin Selection as GOP VP Pick
Sarah Palin on Glenn Beck [video]
Ms. Alaska
Profile of Alaska's Sarah Palin: Governor, Reformer, Mother
Republicans: Palin's an "awesome pick"
Gov. Sarah Palin - GOP's dream V.P. candidate
Friends: VP choice has 'very strong' values
... Democrats, including presidential nominee Barack Obama's campaign spokesman Bill Burton, questioned her relative inexperience, but Palin has beat back similar criticism before. In 1996, at 32, she was elected mayor of Wasilla, located about 40 miles north of Anchorage. She ousted a three-term incumbent for the position and focused her tenure on reducing taxes.
"I was just your average hockey mom in Alaska, coaching some basketball on the side," Palin said during a rally in Dayton, Ohio, where her selection was announced. "My agenda was to stop wasteful spending, cut property taxes and put the people first." ...
She competed in the Miss Alaska contest after being chosen Miss Wasilla in 1984, according to the Daily News. Adrian Lane, a longtime family friend who lives in Wasilla, said he remembers her playing basketball at a young age with all the boys in the neighborhood.
"People misread her," Lane said. "She's strong. People aren't going to run over her."
Hicks: Let Palin and Obama play hoops for the big prize
Palin named her first child Track because he was born during the track season, she said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal about her exercise habits. ``Running is my sanity,'' she told the paper.
Before she became pregnant with her fifth child she was running seven to 10 miles almost every day, she said in the interview. Now she runs about three miles every other day.
In the interview she said she uses her time running to think about her speeches. ``I usually write my best speeches and letters while out running,'' she said. ``That is my inspired time.''
bloomberg.com
Sarah Palin: A True Maverick
Sarah Palin in Wikipedia
Commentary: Palin is brilliant, but risky, VP choice
Palin has a strong anti-abortion record. She is a member of Feminists for Life , a group that works to make health-care and child-care resources available to ``pregnant or parenting students,'' according to the group's Web site.
bloomberg.com
She has a 4-month-old son with Down's Syndrome, and her older son is soon to be deployed to Iraq.
She will have a lot to say about many relevant issues.
Her approval rating is 80% among Alaskans. She is the most popular governor in the United States.
Fishing photo
The Most Popular Governor
Palin: “My Baby Will Not be Neglected”
AK’s Palin [yes, she's pro-life -- Radical Catholic Mom]
The Day After: Thoughts About Palin [Radical Catholic Mom]
Hubby Called Abt Palin [Radical Catholic Mom]
Sarah Palin speech
BBC: McCain unveils 'The Barracuda'
SF Chronicle: Picking Sarah Palin called gamble for McCain
Sarah Palin: Homeschooler
Campaigns Shift as McCain Choice Alters the Race
Palin jumps into campaign fray [Anchorage Daily News]
How Palin Got Picked
Let Palin Be Palin
Teen daughter of GOP VP pick is pregnant
Palin’s 17-Year-Old Daughter is Pregnant
Obama Says Palin Pregnancy “Off Limits”
A Story Palin Should Tell
The Palins' statement
Evangelicals rally behind Palin after pregnancy news
Palin Pick Offers Enthusiasm Despite Newly Learned Family Woes
Stephanopoulos: Three Questions Republicans Are Asking Themselves About Palin
Palin And The Alaska Independence Party
Anti-abortion group says Palin 'walks her talk'
Hurricane, Palin Roil the Start of GOP Convention
Palin: Pioneer, maverick -- and now game-changer
Palin is GOP's beacon [2007]
Sarah Palin: Shooting Star?
Republicans Rally Around Palin as McCain's Running Mate
Fred Thompson comments on Palin
Palin reports throw curve to campaign
Palin could distract from McCain's message for GOP
A Full-Fledged Feeding Frenzy On Sarah Palin
Sarah [the book]
What's It All About?
That's It! I'm Fed Up! Disgusted! Angry! Steamed!
[from a stay-at-home dad of 5 children]
Mayor Palin: A Rough Record [Time]
------------------
After VP acceptance speech at GOP convention:
Sarah Palin's Breakout Night [Time]
Political Wisdom: Sarah Palin’s Big Night [WSJ]
Open Mic Night at MSNBC [Peggy Noonan]
Democrats Rush To Define Palin by Policy, Not Personality [Fox News]
Sarah Palin's speech draws an audience of 37 million [LA Times]
Alaska neighbors love their hockey mom VP candidate
Text of Palin VP Acceptance Speech [9/3/08]
A Convention That Sparked the GOP [Time]
'A Servant's Heart' [Peggy Noonan]
Sarah Palin and Her Discontents [National Review]
------------------
In Palin’s Life and Politics, Goal to Follow God’s Will
And no, she’s not a religious extremist, either
Sliming Palin [Newsweek]
Palin May Lift More than McCain in November
Camille Paglia on Sarah Palin's Debut ... [feminism]
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
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