“Dur, Alaska is Close to Russia” (and other discredited liberal taunts)

Liberals have been mocking the McCain campaign’s references to Governor Sarah Palin’s role in relations with Russia by pointing out their proximity. Well, it turns out that Governor Palin has been involved in trade and cooperative environmental/resource-gathering with Russia (source).

In addition to negotiating trade and cooperation with Russia, Governor Palin has been involved with negotiations with Japan, Korea, China, Canada and Germany (and those are just the top five! [source]).

I found these results by googling “alaska trade”. I didn’t have to log in to anything and required only an internet browser and Adobe Acorbat Reader (which is free), so I can certainly see why the media has been as yet unable to discover these obscure facts.

2012: President Palin?

We’ve all been thinking about it. With Sarah Palin as the Vice Presidential nominee and (hopefully) the Vice President of the United States in 2008, it would only be a matter of time before Governor Palin herself was on the top of the ticket.

“Palin for President 2012″ is a blog that says it is starting a movement to elect Sarah Palin the President in 2012. There’s not much on the website or blog yet but I will be closely monitoring the site. Any friend of Sarah Palin’s is a friend of ours. Sign me up!

You can find their blog here, and if you know any other websites/groups/blogs that want to elect Palin the President in 2012, leave a comment and I’ll add them to the blogroll at right on the page P4A: Palin 2012.

Martha Stewart, You’re Next: Oprah Faces Revolt

Let the peasants talk back and see how they repay the Queen of Daytime TV?

Oprah is facing an insurrection at her own website of hundreds of members of the community who are unhappy with her blacklisting of Sarah Palin from her show. 

While I haven’t read enough to say there’s a general consensus, the majority of what I have read supports the idea that Oprah’s base, white middle-class women in the flyover states, are pretty upset with Oprah’s judgement. 

The call for people to boycott Oprah’s show and her sponsors has gone up. Only time will tell whether anyone heeds the call. 

Note: to see the thread linked above, you must have an account and be logged in at Oprah.com.

Real Facts About Governor Palin

Earth to Journalists.

A fellow by the name of Charlie Martin has compiled a big list of the rumors flying around Sarah Palin as well as a brief discussion of which are true, which are false, and the details of those that are ambiguous.

I urge you to send this list to undecided voters, left-wing hate blogs, and the mainstream media. The undecided voters may take umbrage to the way Governor Palin is being mugged by the media, and there’s an off chance that the blogs and the media might have a passing interest in the truth after spending a week slamming her.

Oprah Won’t Interview Palin

After using her show and her massive podium to promote the presidential ambitions of Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey has finally discovered the idea of neutrality. She will not have Sarah Palin, the first woman to be nominated on a national ticket in nearly a quarter century, and the first woman to be nominated in a Republican ticket, on her daytime talk show that caters to women.

Why Oprah would consider Sarah Palin of no interest to her television audience is beyond me. Oprah has made no secret of her support for Barack Obama. She is a Chicago-style maven. Barack Obama is a Chicago-style politician. It’s not rocket science.

The problem as I see it is that Oprah is saying that she doesn’t want to use her show as a “platform” for any of the candidates. After months of using her massive power and appeal to promote Barack Obama, she’s decided that it’s a bad thing to provide a venue for discussion about any other candidate.

I think Oprah is passing up an opportunity here, but ultimately it’s smart. She could have Governor Palin on the show and grill her on the issues, but that would risk her looking like a rabid partisan, something that her audience would not approve of. Or she could have Governor Palin on the show and chit-chat about her experience as a working mother, and risk allowing the governor to set the record straight on some of the more outrageous scandals that have been circulating around her, and Oprah wouldn’t want that.

It would be refreshing if Oprah would be honest with us instead of giving us some nonsense about not using her show to support a candidate. But what do you expect from a Chicago-style media mogul?

Sarah Palin vs. Hillary Clinton: the True Battle?

The New York Times has an interesting hypothesis: that the true battle this fall could very well be Sarah Palin vs. Hillary Clinton. 

This raises an interesting question for Hillary Clinton. Does she want to work very hard to elect Barack Obama? On the chance (however slight) that he doesn’t make a complete disaster out of his presidency, Hillary will be another 4 years away from running for President. But on the other hand, if Obama utterly fails and ends up damaging the nation even more, Hillary will be one of the people who put him there. There’s only so much that saying “I told you so” can help.

But to make matters more complicated for her ambitions, if Hillary doesn’t break her back to elect Obama and he loses, the far-leftists who make up Obama’s base won’t lift a finger to elect her in 2012. It’s a very interesting conondrum in an election where white working women (or “Wal-Mart moms” as Democrats condescendingly refer to them) could swing certain battleground states. 

But the true danger, I think, is Barack Obama running against Sarah Palin. The reasons for this are twofold: because it raises Governor Palin to an even higher level; and because more people find Sarah Palin favorable than find Obama or McCain or Biden favorable. The more people learn about Sarah Palin, the more they seem to like her (unless they’re liberals). If he tries to go after her, even if she goes after him, it will backfire–we’ve seen this already in the past week. I could go on for days about how people only find Governor Palin’s attacks on Obama’s smug self-worship to reaffirm their distaste for his antics, but that’s for another post. The long and short of it is that the usual tricks aren’t going to work against Governor Palin. 

But can Obama trust the Clintons to try to move against her, given the way he threw Hillary under the bus?

I don’t know Rachel Lucas, but I do know she’s awesome

Anyone who comes up with such gems as:

…must be without a doubt quite awesome. Go check out RachelLucas.com!

Governor Palin’s Speech Gets 37.2 Million Views

According to THR.com, Governor Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention pulled in 37.2 million views.

Barack Obama’s speech (one week ago today), Barack Obama delivered a speech that brought in 38.4 million views.

One wonders if the media will spin this as ‘people just trying to get to know her’ after the adulation that the Obamessiah got last week for his huge number of viewers. When it comes right down to it, that this unknown politician earned so many views even without the 12-month hype that Obama has received is pretty impressive.

Governor Palin: “I will be honored to accept your nomination for Vice President”

Governor Palin’s speech tore the convention center down tonight. I’ve linked part one of her speech, from which you can find the subsequent parts. I can’t think of anything that Governor Palin left unsaid. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, the next Vice President of the United States!

A Nation Waits

Fox News reports that Governor Palin’s motorcade (she has her own motorcade–I’m so proud) is en route to the convention center. I’m waiting with baited breath for Governor Palin to take to the podium. This will likely be my last update before the speech (and I won’t likely be updating during the speech) so if you want to share your comments on the speech, please do so.