Keeping score: Sarah Palin 2, Obamacare 0 as Death Panels removed again

Via the New York Times, it appears that the Obama regime will revise a controversial Medicare regulation, removing references to end of life planning connected to the annual physicals funded under Obamacare.

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While administration officials cited procedural reasons for changing the rule, it was clear that political concerns were also a factor. The renewed debate over advance care planning threatened to become a distraction to administration officials who were gearing up to defend the health law against attack by the new Republican majority in the House.

Although the health care bill signed into law in March did not mention end-of-life planning, the topic was included in a huge Medicare regulation setting payment rates for thousands of physician services. The final regulation was published in the Federal Register in late November. The proposed rule, published for public comment in July, did not include advance care planning.

An administration official, authorized by the White House to explain the mix-up, said Tuesday, “We realize that this should have been included in the proposed rule, so more people could have commented on it specifically.”

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Maybe you remember this Facebook post by Sarah Palin, in August 2009. I frankly don’t care what you think about Sarah Palin’s politics, her qualifications for public office or her personality. One thing you can’t deny about the former Alaskan Governor, Vice Presidential Candidate, Fox News Analyst, reality show star and private citizen.

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The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

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When she can change the national debate over major legislation with a single Facebook post or Tweet from her Twitter account, you have to admit that the woman has gravitas.

It appears that the firestorm she stirred two summers ago wasn’t as much sound and fury, signifying nothing as people thought it was.

The hockey mom remains an unpredictable and formidable force in American politics.

 

What’s next for Bob Riley: A 2012 run at the White House?

Published today in the Mobile Press-Register, a story from George Talbot discussing the buzz about outgoing Alabama Governor Bob Riley’s plans for the future. Five words that accurately describe the former rancher, Alabama business school graduate, US Congressman, and two-term Governor: Folksy.  Intelligent. Capable manager. Staunch conservative. Political opportunist.

There’s one more that friends and political observers like to toss around: Reaganesque.  This one fits primarily because Riley’s political interests were sparked by the charismatic President who served from 1981 through 1988. Riley was first elected to Congress in the 1996 election, served a self-imposed three-term limit and left in 2003.

His 2002 election as Governor was by a 3,000 vote margin, the closest in the history of the state.

Riley’s reputation as a capable manager is impeccable. His handling of the Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina disasters was praised by local and federal emergency management officials, and his management of the Gulf Oil Spill crisis of 2010 was similarly lauded. To this day, Riley remains a fierce antagonist of current Oil Spill Claims Czar Kenneth Feinberg and his handling of compensation payments to affected residents and business owners.

At 66, Riley says he’s still got some “racing” in him:

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A national run for Riley, 66, would in some ways be easy. His children are grown and his schedule is open. Experts are predicting the Republican primary could swell to include a dozen or more candidates. In such a large field, the race essentially becomes a beauty contest.

Early voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina would quickly narrow the contest to three or four candidates. Make the cut, and you could be on the fast track to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

For now, however, the road leads home to Ashland.

“I’m tired. I’m ready for a break,” Riley said between meetings in New York. “Patsy told me I need to do something, or else I’ll get bored. And I told her I’d like to try doing nothing awhile and just see.”

He is tinkering with the idea of a cross-country motorcycle trip -- perhaps to Alaska -- in springtime. The long ride would allow him to clear his mind and make a decision about his future. But for now there’s still work to be done.

“I had an old track coach who taught me to run through the tape, not to it,” he said. “I’ve still got a little race left to run.”

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Wait. What? A road trip to Alaska?  What could he possibly hope to achieve by visiting Alaska?

Should Riley decide to enter the race, he’ll almost certainly be up against a formidable opponent in the form of neighboring Southern Governor, Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, whose potential 2012 run was analyzed here, back in June 2010. Or perhaps Barbour would be content to team up with Riley and use his considerable political network to give the Reaganesque Riley a leg up in the 2012 beauty contest.

 

 

Media Assault: Proof that 2010 was the Year of the Conservative Woman

Want proof that 2010 was the year of the conservative woman? Look no further than the Culture and Media Institute’s report that the mainstream media mounted a full scale assault on the conservative women who led the Tea Party’s Tsunami on November 2.

Conservative women shatter the liberal narrative.  Women are supposed to be liberal.  They’re supposed to be Democrats.  The women of 2010 are precisely the kind of success story that the feminists of the left are supposed to be all for.  They are multitasking monsters of success—managing successful careers, successful small businesses, successful marriages, successful families and successful political campaigns.

The problem that the left and its propaganda wing have with all this success is that it’s producing conservative women instead of liberal ones.  This comes as no surprise to the right—people who are successful due to their own efforts tend to be politically conservative. But it comes as a stone cold shocka to the left, whose pigeon-holing view of the world holds that people of certain demographics are expected to behave in a certain way.  Blacks, Hispanics and women are supposed to be liberal, dammit!

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Earlier in 2010, CBS reported that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was ridiculing the Republican Party over its women. “As Democrats head into what is expected to be a tough election year for them, the party says it has a solid lead over Republicans in one respect – its number of women candidates.”

As it turned out, the GOP fielded about 100 female House candidates, and ended up expanding the number of women in its House ranks by more than 40 percent. In California, it ran strong conservative women candidates for governor and the Senate. In Nevada, Sharron Angle ran a tough campaign against the sitting Senate Majority Leader. And it was remarked more than once that women were driving much of the Tea Party enthusiasm. It was the “Year of the Republican Woman,” not that the media would let on.

When they weren’t ignoring it, liberal journalists were flailing about in attempts to understand and explain the meaning of conservative women’s sudden rise in politics. After all, as Taylor Marsh wrote in The Huffington Post Sept. 30, “This is what the Republican Tea Party stands for today, the marginalizing of women on the most extreme terms. Something all Independents thinking of joining their ranks should note.” On the same site, this time on Election Day, writer Marcia G. Yermin wondered, “Why does the ‘Mama Grizzly’ phenomenon, and right-wing women candidates staking a claim to the feminist legacy, leave me both incredulous and aggravated?”

From the Daily Caller story that covered this report:

The report’s author, Matt Philbin, told The Daily Caller that many media outlets, but specifically Politico and MSNBC, have a double standard when it comes to how they report news regarding conservative female politicians as opposed to liberal female politicians.

“She’s [Bachmann] dangerous to them. I think, like Sarah Palin, they find her dangerous. Women are supposed to be liberal,” Philbin said. “They’re supposed to vote Democrat, just as blacks and Latinos are supposed to vote Democrat. Having a strong conservative woman that voices conservative concerns and understands conservative economics is very disconcerting to the left and to the media.”

Debbie Lee, a member of the Tea Party Express and founder of America’s Mighty Warriors, a non-profit that helps families of fallen soldiers, said she agrees that the media is harsher on conservative women than liberal women.

“I think we’ve seen a huge prejudice with attacks against conservative women. We don’t see that with the liberal, left-leaning women that are in there,” Lee told TheDC. “I think it is a pattern, a concerning pattern, when the media continues to attack conservative women, but, on the other side, lets things slide and doesn’t have the same consistency [for liberal women].”

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Philbin’s analysis is particularly insightful.  The left and the media are, quite frankly, scared witless of people like Bachmann and Palin. Because they also shatter the left’s demographics=politics narrative, people like Allen West and Tim Scott are also a threat. But perhaps no one shatters the narrative better than New Mexico’s Susana Martinez and South Carolina’s Nikki Haley.  These two are minority women, and they’re GASP! conservatives!

Having been married to a conservative woman for more than two decades, one of the things I’ve seen from this group surprises me the least, but shocks the left:  They don’t take the smears and media heat in silence and submission. When these women are attacked, they fight back in ways that would make a “papa grizzly” whimper and slink away.

Sarah Palin’s influence has grown as the result of the media attacks on her.  You can expect women like Michele Bachmann, Nikki Haley and Susana Martinez to see their influence grow as well.  The more the media and the left assault these people, the more others like them—and there are millions and millions more like them—see the smears as an attack on their own values.

A thirty- to fifty-something woman, having established herself through successful endeavor after successful endeavor, isn’t simply going to sit idly and have her conservative sisterhood derided and ridiculed by white liberals like Chris Mathews and Keith Olbermann.  Everything these women have accomplished, they’ve accomplished through their own determination and hard work. They’re not going to let the left dictate their behavior to them any more than my wife lets me dictate her behavior.

These women have achieved success because they are principled, disciplined and determined.  The attacks mounted by the left and its propaganda mouthpieces at MSNBC, CNN and Politico show the threat these women are to their narrative, and show that 2010 was indeed the Year of the Conservative Woman.

You go, girls!

Oh My: Did George W. Bush say Sarah Palin isn’t qualified to be President?

From the New York Daily News comes this bombshell of a revelation. Given the passion of the former Alaska governor and Tea Party power broker’s followers, this is the equivalent of sticking a broom handle into a hornets’ nest.

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WASHINGTON - Two years of retirement haven't dulled George W. Bush's political zest - and President Obama and Sarah Palin are among his under-the-radar targets.

The 43rd President has told friends the ex-Alaska governor isn't qualified to be President and criticizes Arizona Sen. John McCain for putting Palin on the 2008 GOP ticket and handing her a national platform.

"Naming Palin makes Bush think less of McCain as a man," a Republican official familiar with Bush's thinking told the Daily News.

"He thinks McCain ran a lousy campaign with an unqualified running mate and destroyed any chance of winning by picking Palin."

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I have reservations about the accuracy of this report. While Bush and McCain are superficially friends, the two are old political rivals dating back to the 2000 Presidential primary campaign. But Bush, like his father, is unlikely to question McCain’s “manhood” by criticizing the choice of running mate, and is even more unlikely to have allowed comments questioning Palin’s qualifications to reach the public ear, whether he holds that opinion or not. Questions about the quality of the McCain 2008 Presidential campaign are equally suspect.

The 2008 election was Obama’s to lose, not McCain’s to win. It wouldn’t have mattered if McCain had a solid gold campaign staff and strategy, the mainstream media had Obama already penciled in as the 44th President of the United States. McCain’s choice of Palin for Vice President had no impact at all, if exit polling examined after the election are accurate.

This appears to be a political “false flag” operation, designed to stir up an otherwise united Republican front going into the lame duck session of Congress. While the Palinistas are guaranteed to get fired up about this, perhaps its best if few take the bait.

Bush is certain to be asked about this as he kicks off his book tour this week. Stay tuned—my best is that he denies ever making the comments and questions the source of the material.

Schooled by Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell, all in one day!

Via Michelle Malkin: In this morning’s radio debate:

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Read:

Delaware GOP Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell questioned on Tuesday whether the Constitution provides for the separation of church and state.

The comment came during a debate on WDEL radio with Democratic opponent Chris Coons, who argued that local schools should teach science rather than religion, at which point O’Donnell jumped in. “Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” she asked.

The audience at Widener Law School was taken aback, with shouts of “whoa” and laughter coming from the crowd.

Coons then pointed to the First Amendment, which states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

“You’re telling me the First Amendment does?” O’Donnell interrupted to ask.

Following the next question, Coons revisited the remark — likely thinking he had caught O’Donnell in a flub — saying, “I think you’ve just heard from my opponent in her asking ‘where is the separation of church and state’ show that she has a fundamental misunderstanding.”

“That’s in the First Amendment?” O’Donnell again asked.

“Yes,” Coons responded.

O’Donnell was later able to score some points of her own off the remark, revisiting the issue to ask Coons if he could identify the “five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment.”

Coons named the separation of church and state, but could not identify the others — the freedoms of speech, press, to assemble and petition — and asked that O’Donnell allow the moderators ask the questions.

“I guess he can’t,” O’Donnell said.

Yep, when he got caught with his own intellectual pants down, Coons runs to the moderators for cover.

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Having the bearded Marxist intellectual get schooled by the uppity peasant girl is sweetness in and of itself.  But it gets even better, folks. 

Via Cuffy Meigs:

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OMG, will this blithering idiot ever shut up?!

Seeking to channel the sign-bearing, flag-waving enthusiasm of the "tea party" movement into ballot-box victories, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told hundreds of supporters Monday they couldn't "party like it's 1773" until Washington was flooded with like-minded conservatives.

I mean, 1773?! WOW. Glad I wasn't the only one who caught this latest Palin gaffe:

And finally, channeling the Insane Clown Posse:

I mean, hell, it must be extremely embarrassing to have your obvious ignorance of 5th grade American history revealed by the likes of the Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas and PBS anchor & presidential debate moderator Gwen Ifill. HAHAHAHAHA, what a freakin' dumb ass! What happened in 1773, indeed!

oh, wait:

Boston Tea Party, 1773

Like they were saying: Ummmmm...

PS: In case you're thinking Palin got lucky, here's the video of her remarks ... which clearly refer to the original Boston Tea Party.

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Comedy Gold.  The left gets schooled on history by Sarah Palin and schooled on the Constitution by Christine O’Donnell, all in one, nifty, tidy, ready-to-ship news cycle.

Five Myths about Sarah Palin (plus one more)

A surprisingly good read from Matthew Continetti in the Washington Post.  He lists five things you thought you knew about the unconventional political dynamo from Alaska, and does a fair job of destroying the narrative:

 

1. Palin cost McCain the election.
2. Resigning as governor was rash.
3. Palin and the Tea Party are destroying the GOP.
4. Palin is extreme.
5. Palin is unelectable.

 

Continetti’s – and the Post’s – journalistic fairness is a rare treat.  But there’s one other thing you thought you knew about Sarah Palin that’s no less a myth  than any of the above.

Neither the left nor the talking heads on MSNBC and CNN have properly estimated her. 

Sarah Palin has been taught a cruel lesson by the way she was treated by the media in the 2008 campaign, and that lesson is that when you play by their rules, the media determines whether you win or lose.  So, what Mrs. Palin has done is create her own set of rules, and shove them down the throat of those who would relish the opportunity to “interview” her again.

Palin has bypassed the mainstream media altogether, and is now speaking directly to the American people in ways that the media can’t control or attenuate.  She is a very tough, very smart and very instinctual woman.  When you hear the media talking heads explain what "Palin needs to do,” rest assured that she will most likely do exactly the opposite, and speak her message directly into the ears of the American people.

You betcha.

Page linked by Texas for Sarah Palin.  Thanks!

Featured in the news: Anonymous Mexican blogger getting the truth out about the drug war

• Anonymous Mexican blogger safely posts unfiltered news from country's raging drug war.  This is truly awesome, and very brave.
• Manufacturing Liberals. They are what they are because of what they’ve been taught.
• N.H. legislator resigns over Palin remark.  Despicable, no-class liberal leaves in disgrace.
• Obama begins move to the middle.  Umm.  No.  Not gonna happen.  Gibbs  is a genuine idiot.
• Will 'tax the rich' save the economy?  CNN carrying water for a jobs-killing tax increase.
• Nick Saban, other coaches discuss agents with NFL. Criminalizing inappropriate contact and financial penalties would stop the nonsense.
• MSNBC's Chuck Todd Baffled by Wall Street's Anti-Obama Sentiment: The President 'Has Not Done' Much to Business.  Dude.
• Kucinich to Gibbs: You've Read the Liberals Wrong.  No, he got it right.  But by all means Congressman, please be sure to run in 2012.
• CNN's Sanchez: Reid's Racist Gaffe Emblematic of Angle's Incompetence.  This is the guy who couldn’t believe Iceland had a volcano because it was so cold there…
• BP may have already, inadvertently, killed the Gulf oil well. “Victims” of their own success.

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

Sarah Palin would have sold out the Folly Theater

In one for the "snicker file,"  Hotline On Call reports that Robin Carnahan had to slash prices to like, below dealer invoice levels in order to fill up the Folly Theater in Kansas City:

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Pres. Obama is the best fundraiser the Dem Party has, but his drawing power is way down from its peak during the '08 campaign.

Obama is heading to MO and NV today to raise money for Sec/State Robin Carnahan (D), running for an open Senate seat, and Senate Maj. Leader Harry Reid.

But Carnahan's campaign wasn't able to completely sell out the Folly Theater, where Obama will appear for a grassroots event on Carnahan's behalf, at the prices they wanted. Tickets once priced at $250 are now going for $99, while $35 tickets are half off.

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The Folly  Theater seats 1,078, so you'd think it wouldn't be too hard to get a sellout.  After all, it's the POTUS, right?

Alas, the President's rock star status seems to have dimmed somewhat.

I bet there's one rock star who could have sold that sucker out.  Last May, in Wichita, Sarah Palin spoke to almost three times as many people at a fundraiser for an elementary school.  Obama can't get a measly 1,000 to show up at a fundraiser for a candidate for the US Senate, but Mama Grizzly can get three  thousand butts in the seats for a school charity?

LOLZ

Gimme some feedback in the comments.