On television today a Democratic operative pointed out that when Obama holds a rally 25,000-30,000 people show up, whereas when McCain holds one he only draws 10,000-15,000.

The Republican spokesman replied, 'That's because McCain's supporters are at work.'

::rimshot::

Glenn Beck: Obama's #1 foe

October 3, 2008 - 13:27 ET

Stanley Kurtz

GLENN: We have Stanley Kurtz on the phone. He writes regularly for publications like the National Review, Weekly Standard, has a Ph.D. from Harvard, also is in the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He's with us now. This is the guy that he was supposed to be on WLS in Chicago and the reason why I wanted to have him on is because the Obama campaign did everything they could to stop him from that broadcast and I don't like anybody trying to shut down anybody's voice, especially Stanley Kurtz, who has credibility here and has something to say. Now, we told you earlier this week that we found something and we couldn't get all the documentation and that's what Stanley's been working on, couldn't get all the documentation of a lawsuit, a class action lawsuit in 1994, 1995 against Citigroup or CitiBank. Stanley is here to bring us up to speed on what this is. Stanley, welcome to the program.

KURTZ: Glenn, thanks for having me.

GLENN: Sure. What is this class action lawsuit that we stumbled onto?

KURTZ: Glenn, I haven't been following that lawsuit as closely as I've been following Obama's larger ties to this group ACORN . I think the lawsuit you're talking about was on behalf of ACORN against a bank trying to --

GLENN: From 1994, 1995. I'm sorry, sir, I thought somebody had briefed you on this one. We found documentation this week that Barack Obama was the attorney, I believe the lead attorney on a class action lawsuit in Illinois back in '94 and '95 about unfair practices in the Chicago area and it was settled out of court and we can't get any more information. So is this the same lawsuit that you've been looking at?

KURTZ: Probably. But as I say, Glenn, I haven't been focused on that lawsuit as I have for Obama's general support for ACORN. And ACORN, of course, was not just in that particular suit but in general was running a campaign for years against Chicago area banks trying to intimidate them essentially into making high-risk loans to customer with poor credit. That suit was certainly part of the picture but it was only a part of a much larger and very frightening picture that is very much at the root of the current economic crisis.

GLENN: Tell us, because a lot of people are like ACORN, and they may not understand. Tell us who ACORN is. Tell us some of the things that they have done.

KURTZ: Well, Glenn, ACORN is a group of community organizers, probably the most militant group of community organizers. ACORN grew out of something called the National Welfare Rights League which was another militant group in the Sixties. They used to flood into welfare offices, kind of shut them down with protests and demand a great expansion of welfare coverage. And in recent decades that has morphed into ACORN. And ACORN leaders see themselves as unreconstructed far leftist, unafraid to use radical and militant tactics. They follow Saul Alinsky's direct action, which is another name for these intimidation tactics.

For example, if ACORN wants a bank to start making these high-risk loans, they might break into the office of a banker and flood it with protestors and basically scare the heck out of the guy trying to get him to change the bank's loan policy. They will even go and protest at the homes of bankers, scare their families. They'll flood protestors into the lobby of a bank, scare the customers away and, of course, in that way intimidate the banks into doing what they want. And so ACORN uses these Alinsky-ite intimidation tactics. Of course, those are tactics that were studied by Obama, and Obama has had a very close relationship with ACORN for many, many years. He never -- that was never --

GLENN: It's not just an association. He was actually training new people, was he not?

KURTZ: That's right, Glenn. Back in the late Eighties when Obama was doing his initial organizing work in Chicago, well, he worked for another group called the developing communities project which was part of the Gamma Leo Foundation, which is yet another radical Alinsky-ite group which used very similar tactics and also deployed them against banks. But in the course of his work for that group, he ran into a woman named Madeline Talbott. Madeline Talbott at that time was a high official of ACORN and eventually became the head of Chicago ACORN, and Madeline Talbott had first viewed Obama as sort of a competitor from another community organizer group, but as she got to know him, she became she impressed. She saw him as a partner and she invited him to train her personal staff. So then Obama went away, went to law school and he came back from law school to Chicago. And at that time Talbott remembered him, remembered the good work he had done training her staff and that is why ACORN approached Obama to start doing some of its legal work. Not only the case you were mentioning but the work for ACORN on the motor voter bill that Obama did and --

GLENN: Why is the motor voter idea a bad idea? How is ACORN -- give me a little bit here before we come back to some of the other financial stuff. Give me just a slice of how ACORN is involved in voter fraud.

KURTZ: ACORN does an awful lot of voter registration work, some of it directly, some of it through sort of an offshoot of ACORN. Now, they claim that this offshoot is nonpartisan but in fact what they do is to go into neighborhoods that they feel confident will vote Democratic and they try to register voters, but they are, shall we say loose about the legality of what they do and there seem to be a lot of names coming back that aren't quite legitimate, maybe even illegal aliens that are being registered and ACORN tends to favor and Obama tends to favor any legislation that will make it easier. I think in Ohio now, is it Ohio? One of these states is now passing legislation that allows same-day registration, which makes it almost impossible to check on how legitimate the person is who has registered. ACORN favors --

GLENN: Wait, is that an ACORN move?

KURTZ: I don't think that's an ACORN move but that's the sort of thing that ACORN and Obama have always supported legislatively. I don't know that ACORN is specifically doing that. But effectively they try for analogous legislative moves and sometimes they just do that on the street, so to speak, whether it's legal or not, all in behalf of these Democratic candidates. In fact, ACORN, an ACORN organizer put out an article in a journal called Social Policy. Her name was Tony Foulkes. And she -- the whole article described how ACORN was able to register voters and get them to the polls to elect Barack Obama as state senator and then senator, but she had to frame the whole article very carefully because technically that would all be illegal. ACORN's not supposed to be supporting any particular politician and, in fact, it's very shaky because when Obama was on some of these foundation boards, he was channeling money to ACORN. So it would have been quite illegal for ACORN to become his precinct workers. So they pretend they are acting as individuals rather than as representatives of ACORN. But what you have here is kind of very shady nexus that even if it ends up being just the edge of what's legal verges on conflict of interest for Obama when he was on his foundation boards channeling money to ACORN which would then go out and register voters that they thought would vote for Obama, pass out literature. They would claim to be working as individuals but a lot of people think they were basically working as ACORN members.

GLENN: Stanley, you say -- by the way, we're talking to Dr. Stanley Kurtz. He writes for the National Review, Weekly Standard, Wall Street Journal, he is also with Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. You said earlier about ACORN, a very Saul Alinsky organization. Who is Saul Alinsky and who is the role that Saul Alinsky has played in Barack Obama's life?

KURTZ: Well, Saul Alinsky, Glenn, was really the man who created this notion of being a community organizer. This was back in the Thirties and Forties, and he wrote a series of books in which he was very unashamed about saying, hey, I'm a radical. One of the famous ones was called Rules for Radicals. And Obama really became a student of Alinsky's work, an expert on it, learning his notions of power, his notions of organizing, and it was Alinsky who originated this idea of what he calls direct action, which was this use of intimidation tactics intentionally militant and scary, both to intimidate politicians and business leaders into doing what these radical groups wanted and also frankly as a kind of organizing tactic because going out and confronting and intimidating people is very exciting and gets a lot of members into your organization. So Obama became a student of all this. And as I was saying earlier, after his initial stint of training the personal staff of this Madeline Talbott who was an expert in this direction action intimidation stuff, when he came back to Chicago from law school, Talbott had him doing leadership training seminars for ACORN. Now, we don't know whether he was focusing on these direct action tactics, but he was certainly giving a lot of training to the up and coming leadership of ACORN and these were essentially, you could say the officers in the army that Madeline Talbott was setting out against these banks to try to force them to make these high-risk loans. They were getting a lot of training from Barack Obama. And as I mentioned earlier, Obama was actually funding this activity through his position as a board member on the Woods Fund and also at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, even though that was focused on education, another board that Obama was on.

GLENN: Wait, can you go in there, just for a minute can you just go on what -- because this is to his link with William Ayers and what they were trying to teach in school. What exactly was that connection?

KURTZ: Well, back in 1995 Bill Ayers who, of course, is notorious as one of the founders of the Weather Underground and himself a Weather Underground terrorist in the Sixties who helped to bomb the Pentagon and he and his comrades planned the bombing of the Capitol and other bombings again that were used to intimidate the families of federal prosecutors who were moving against groups like the Black Panthers and such. So Bill Ayers, very notorious along with his wife Bernardine Dohrn who was another major leader of the Weather Underground terrorist organization. Bill Ayers, he went on the lamb after a decade or two and finally resurfaced and became a professor of education and people say that Bill Ayers reformed himself, but the truth is he never repudiated any of his bombings and he never repudiated his philosophy. And actually if you read his education work, you'll see it's extremely radical. It's based on the idea that the United States is an intrinsically racist and oppressive country. Essentially it's a close cousin of Jeremiah Wright 's philosophy. And Bill Ayers created an education philosophy that was centered around teaching students to resist America's racist and oppressive.

GLENN: Right. It explains why Barack Obama didn't hear this from his pastor because he's used to hearing it. He thinks that's normal. He hearsay this a lot. He's surrounded by poem who think this way. Agree?

KURTZ: That's absolutely right. And Barack Obama, we don't know how many, if any, education books by Ayers Obama read, but we know that he read and recommended publicly in the Chicago Tribune a book on juvenile justice by Bill Ayers which was very radical which embodied many of these ideas and which included a lot about education. So Obama was very aware of this in reality, and Bill Ayers, when he heard in late 1994 that a very well-to-do Republican philanthropist named Walter Annenberg had decided to give $500 million to different groups around the country to improve education in America's cities, as soon as Bill Ayers heard that, he wrote a grant proposal and succeeded in winning $50 million from this conservative philanthropist. Of course, this is a great example of how radical professors are often able to capture money from moderate or conservative donors without their realizing what's going on. And so he gets this $50 million to be used on a 2:1 basis to get matching funds. So in the end this foundation that Bill Ayers creates gets about $150 million. And when Ayers gets this grant, they set up a foundation and someone has to be chosen as chairman of the board and lo and behold, who gets chosen but Barack Obama.

GLENN: Okay. Stanley, I am out of time unfortunately. I'd love to have you back next week because this is going to continue. Do you have time? Can you come back? Because I want to get back into this and what specifically -- because you've been -- they have been trying to keep you out of the paperwork and you've been hunting for all of the paperwork and you've uncovered some amazing things in that and also on ACORN as a developing story. Can I invite you back, sir?

KURTZ: Sure, Glenn.

GLENN: Okay, great. Stanley Kurtz. Stu, let's see if we can get Stanley to rebook again next week. We just need more time with him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From the Glenn Beck show. I added the links for historical understanding.

Feisty Palin stands her ground in Biden debate

By JIM KUHNHENN

Associated Press

October 3, 2008

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Under intense scrutiny, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin stood her ground Thursday night against a vastly more experienced Joe Biden, debating the economy, energy and global warming, then challenging him on Iraq, "especially with your son in the National Guard."

The Alaska governor also noted that Biden had once said Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wasn't ready to be commander in chief, "and I know again that you opposed the move that he made to try to cut off funding for the troops and I respect you for that."

Biden responded that John McCain, too, had voted against funding, and said the Republican presidential candidate had been "dead wrong on the fundamental issues relating to the conduct of the war."

The clash over Iraq was the most personal, and pointed, of the 90-minute debate in which Palin repeatedly cast herself as a non-Washington politician, part of a "team of mavericks" that she said was ready to bring change to a country demanding it.

From the opening moments of the debate, Biden sought to make McCain out as a straight-ahead successor to an unpopular President Bush. "He voted four out of five times for George Bush's budget, which put us a half-trillion dollars in debt and over $4 trillion in debt since he got here," he said of McCain.

Palin merely accused Biden of reciting the past rather than looking to the future. "Americans are cravin' that straight talk" that McCain offers, she said.

The two running mates debated for 90 minutes on a stage at Washington University, their only encounter of a campaign with little more than one month to go.

Recent polls show Obama with a small but perceptible lead, and Republican officials said earlier in the day that McCain had decided to pull out of Michigan, conceding the state to the Democrats. At the same time, his own aides said the campaign may soon begin to advertise in Indiana -- a state that has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1968.

Palin faced enormous challenges of her own, though. After five weeks as McCain's ticket-mate, her poll ratings had begun dropping and even some conservatives have questioned her readiness for high public office.

Her solo campaign events are few, and she has drawn ridicule for some of her answers in the few interviews she has granted -- including her claim that Alaska's proximity to Russia gives her an insight into foreign policy.

After intense preparation -- including two days at McCain's home in Sedona, Ariz., there was only one obvious stumble, when she twice referred to the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan as "Gen. McClellan." His name is David McKiernan.

Biden's burden was not nearly as fundamental. Although he has long had a reputation for long-windedness, he is a veteran of more than 35 years in the Senate, with a strong knowledge of foreign policy as well as domestic issues.

For much of the evening, the debate unfolded in traditional vice presidential fashion -- the running mates praising their own presidential candidate and denigrating the other.

Palin said Obama had voted to raise taxes 94 times -- an allegation that Biden disputed and then countered. By the same reckoning, he said, McCain voted "477 times to raise taxes."

They clashed over energy policy, as well, when Palin said Obama's vote for a Bush administration-backed bill granted breaks to the oil industry. By contrast, she said that as governor, she had stood up to the same industry, and noted that McCain had voted against the bill Obama supported.

Biden said that in the past decade, McCain had voted "20 times against funding alternative energy sources and thinks, I guess, the only answer is drill, drill, drill."

"The chant is, 'drill, baby drill," Palin countered quickly, unwilling to yield to Biden on that issue -- or any other.

On the environment, Palin declined to attribute the cause of climate change to man-made activities alone. "There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet," she said, adding that she didn't want to argue about the causes.

Biden said the cause was clearly man-made, and added, "If you don't understand what the cause is, it's virtually impossible to come up with a solution."

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Personally, I prefer the "lipstick" over the "dip-stick!"  

Palin Gets Rave Reviews for Debate

On Thursday night, Sarah Palin showed that she has the "right stuff" to be one heartbeat away from the presidency.

Under fire for rambling answers in recent television interviews, Palin went into last night's debate the underdog against the sharp-tongued Joe Biden.

But Palin, in style and substance, demonstrated she can hold her own on the national stage.

Pollster Frank Luntz's focus group on Fox News watched the St. Louis debate. The group was evenly divided between Kerry and Bush supporters from the 2004 election. After the debate Luntz asked if she won, and his group almost unanimously said she had.

The New York Post cover Friday shared a similar sentiment , roaring: "PIT BULL SARAH SHOWS HER BITE."

The Post began "Sarah Palin used folksy language, winks, smiles and sharp elbows to try to put seasoned rival Joe Biden on the defensive in last night's vice-presidential debate."

The Post's star columnist, Andrea Peyser, offered effusive praise.

"I walked in last night expecting a train wreck from our gal of the moment. Instead, I saw fireworks," Peyser wrote. "Sarah rules," she continued, adding, "In her first, and last, vice-presidential debate, Sarah Palin was strong. Articulate. Folksy. And warm."

During the verbal fisticuffs, Palin made clear she is not one of the good old boys.

"It's so obvious that I'm a Washington outsider and I'm someone who's just not used to the way you guys operate," Palin said.

Palin employed a similar "outsider" strategy to defeat the incumbent Republican governor in Alaska.

Even the liberal New York Times had to admit, albeit grudgingly, that Palin scored points in the first and last vice presidential debate.

The Times began its coverage this way: "Gov. Sarah Palin made it through the vice-presidential debate on Thursday without doing any obvious damage to the Republican presidential ticket. By surviving her encounter with Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and quelling some of the talk about her basic qualifications for high office, she may even have done Senator John McCain a bit of good, freeing him to focus on the other troubles shadowing his campaign."

Across the blogoshere, positive reviews for her debate performance were pouring in for the first woman on a national Republican ticket.

Michael Goodwin, writing in the New York Daily News, declared Palin had a "slim" victory over Biden.

"She sometimes sputtered nonsense, seemed like a Thanksgiving turkey stuffed with facts and was no match for his knowledge and experience on foreign affairs," Goodwin wrote. "But Sarah Palin demonstrated a remarkable political skill Thursday night: She looked into the camera and talked to people as one of them, while Joe Biden talked mostly to the moderator as a teacher to a student.

"On her ability to connect with the audience, and because the expectations for her were so pitifully low, Palin was the victor."

And Steve Huntley in the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "Appearing assertive and confident in her national debate premiere, Palin battled Sen. Joseph Biden on a broad range of issues - the Wall Street meltdown, taxes and spending, Iraq, foreign relations, which candidate best represents change - and more than held her own."

Not every one so pleased about Palin's performance, especially among the pro-Obama cheerleaders in the major media.

Chris Matthews of MSNBC said Palin seemed like she was appearing at a spelling bee and CBS was quick to post an instant survey claiming "independents" believed Biden had won the debate.

© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Received in email:

Personally, I prefer the "lipstick" over the "dip-stick!"  

Noonan: Biden No Match for Palin

Friday, October 3, 2008 11:51 AM

By: Jim Meyers 

Sarah Palin “saved John McCain again” with her performance at Thursday night’s debate with her vice presidential rival Joe Biden, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan declares.

“She is the political equivalent of cardiac paddles,” Noonan writes on Friday.

“Zap! We’ve got a beat! She will re-electrify the base.”

Noonan states in her column, which carries the subhead “Joe Biden was no match for ‘Joe Six-Pack,’” that Palin “killed. She had him at ‘Nice to meet you. Hey, can I call you Joe?’ She was the star. He was the second male lead, the good-natured best friend of the leading man.”

Palin’s style was “classic ‘talk over the heads of the media straight to the people,’ and it is a long time since I’ve seen it done so well,” Noonan opines.

“Joe Biden seems to have walked in thinking that she was an idiot and that he only had to patiently wait for this fact to reveal itself. This was a miscalculation.”

The heart of Palin’s message, according to Noonan, was that “Joe Six-Pack” and “soccer moms” should unite “to fight the tormentors who forced mortgages on us. She spoke of ‘Main Streeters like me.’ A question is at what point shiny, happy populism becomes cheerful manipulation.”

© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

And here, for your reading pleasure, is the Peggy Noonan column from the WSJ

Palin and Populism

The downside of appealing to Joe Six-Pack.

By PEGGY NOONAN

She killed. She had him at "Nice to meet you. Hey, can I call you Joe?" She was the star. He was the second male lead, the good-natured best friend of the leading man. She was not petrified but peppy.

The whole debate was about Sarah Palin. She is not a person of thought but of action. Interviews are about thinking, about reflecting, marshaling data and integrating it into an answer. Debates are more active, more propelled—they are thrust and parry. They are for campaigners. She is a campaigner. Her syntax did not hold, but her magnetism did. At one point she literally winked at the nation.

As far as Mrs. Palin was concerned, Gwen Ifill was not there, and Joe Biden was not there. Sarah and the camera were there. This was classic "talk over the heads of the media straight to the people," and it is a long time since I've seen it done so well, though so transparently. There were moments when she seemed to be doing an infomercial pitch for charm in politics. But it was an effective infomercial.

Joe Biden seems to have walked in thinking that she was an idiot and that he only had to patiently wait for this fact to reveal itself. This was a miscalculation. He showed great forbearance. Too much forbearance. She said of his intentions on Iraq, "Your plan is a white flag of surrender." This deserved an indignant response, or at least a small bop on the head, from Mr. Biden, who has been for five years righter on Iraq than the Republican administration. He was instead mild.

The heart of her message was a complete populist pitch. "Joe Six-Pack" and "soccer moms" should unite to fight the tormentors who forced mortgages on us. She spoke of "Main Streeters like me." A question is at what point shiny, happy populism becomes cheerful manipulation.

Sarah Palin saved John McCain again Thursday night. She is the political equivalent of cardiac paddles: Clear! Zap! We've got a beat! She will re-electrify the base. More than that, an hour and a half of talking to America will take her to a new level of stardom. Watch her crowds this weekend. She's about to get jumpers, the old political name for people who are so excited to see you they start to jump.

Her triumph comes at an interesting time. The failure of the first bailout bill was an epic repudiation of the Washington leadership class by the American people. Two weeks ago the president of the United States, the speaker of the House, the secretary of the Treasury and the leadership of both parties in Congress came forward and announced that the economy was in crisis and a federal bill to solve it urgently needed. The powers were in agreement, the stars aligned, it was going to happen.

And then the phones began to ring, from one end of Capitol Hill to the other. And the message in those calls was, essentially: We don't trust you to fix the problem, we suspect you may have caused it. Go away.

It was an epic snub, aimed at both parties. And the bill tanked.

We have simply, as a nation, never had a moment like this, in which the American people voted such a stunning no-confidence in America's leaders in a time of real and present danger. The fate of the second bill is unclear as I write, but the fact that it has morphed from three pages to roughly 450, and is festooned with favors, will do nothing to allay public suspicions about the trustworthiness of Congress. This, as a background, could not have helped Mr. Biden.

We have never seen an economic meltdown like this? We've never seen a presidential meltdown like this. George W. Bush's weakness is not all lame-duckship. In the last year of his presidency Ronald Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow and helped change the world. In the penultimate year of his presidency, Bill Clinton sent U.S. troops, successfully, into Kosovo.

After the first bailout failed, Mr. Bush spoke like a man who was a mere commentator, not the leader in a crisis.

We witness here a great political lesson. When you are president, it matters—it really matters—that a majority of the people support and respect you. When you squander that affection, you lose more than mere popularity. You lose the ability to lead when your country is in crisis. This is a terrible loss, and a dangerous one, for the whole world is watching.

Young aides to Reagan used to grouse, late in his second term, that he had high popularity levels, that popularity was capital, and that he should spend it more freely on potential breakthroughs of this kind or that. But Reagan and the men around him were wiser. They spent when they had to and were otherwise prudent. (Is there a larger lesson here?) They were not daring when they didn't have to be. They knew presidential popularity is a jewel to be protected, and to be burnished when possible, because without it you can do nothing. Without the support and trust of the people you cannot move, cannot command. You are left, like Mr. Bush, talking to an empty room.

We saw this week, too, a turn in the McCain campaign's response to criticisms of Mrs. Palin. I find obnoxious the political game in which if you expressed doubts about the vice presidential nominee, or criticized her, you were treated as if you were knocking the real America—small towns, sound values. "It's time that normal Joe Six-Pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency," Mrs. Palin told talk-show host Hugh Hewitt. This left me trying to imagine Abe Lincoln saying he represents "backwoods types," or FDR announcing that the fading New York aristocracy deserves another moment in the sun. I'm not sure the McCain campaign is aware of it—it's possible they are—but this is subtly divisive. As for the dismissal of conservative critics of Mrs. Palin as "Georgetown cocktail party types" (that was Mr. McCain), well, my goodness. That is the authentic sound of the aggression, and phony populism, of the Bush White House. Good move. That ended well.

We must take happiness where we can. Tina Fey's Sarah Palin has become, in that old phrase, a national sensation, and Ms. Fey is becoming, with her show "30 Rock," and now the Palin impression, one of the great comic figures of her generation. Her work with Amy Poehler (as Katie Couric) in last weekend's spoof on "Saturday Night Live" was so astoundingly good—the hand gestures, the vocal tone and spirit—that it captured some of the actual heart of the Palin story. Ms. Poehler as Couric: "Mrs. Palin, are you aware that when cornered you become increasingly adorable?" Ms. Fey as Palin mugs, adorably.

To spoof someone well takes talent, but to utterly nail a political figure while not brutalizing him takes a real gift, and amounts almost to a public service. After all, to capture someone is a kind of tribute: it concedes he is real, vivid, worthy of note. We are not as a nation manufacturing trust all that well, or competence, or leadership. But some things we do well, and one is comedy. Ms. Fey plays characters who are sour, stressed and who, on "30 Rock," live in a world that is cynical, provisional and shallow. But to observe life so closely takes a kind of love.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The appeal of Sarah Palin is that she makes us think that she's one of us. No, that's not right. We know she's one of us. She's not Washington Elite. She makes us think of her as a sister, aunt, cousin, best friend.

She's a 40-something, hockey mom, businesswoman, mother of five. She just saw her oldest son off to war. Her family isn't perfect; her youngest son has Down's Syndrome and her oldest daughter is 17, unmarried, and pregnant. She isn't ashamed to show her love for her husband. She went to several colleges before she finally graduated (I can relate to that!). She's a pilot. She's a lifetime member of the NRA, hunts, and can field dress a moose. With her husband she's run a fishing business.

Did I mention that she has a job outside the home? As the Governor of Alaska?

I don't know whether she has studied psychology or not, but she's a master at it. She took control of the debate from the start and probably sent Joe into a mental tailspin when she said "Nice to meet you. Hey, can I call you Joe?" Classic move. Asking if she could call him "Joe" put them on a level playing field where they weren't political rivals, but friends. Biden couldn't beat her down as he probably planned without looking like a complete ass, not to mention probably feeling like one. I’m sure he wasn’t expecting that move and it sent him into a tailspin.

She's confident, upbeat, positive, and happy. What a change from the negativity of the Democratic Party! That is probably the number one reason I left the Democratic Party years ago. Nothing the Republicans did was right, especially if they were in power. I'm sorry, but no one is always wrong. The Democrats would have you believe that they are the saviors of the United States because they are smarter than anyone else and know what is best for the country. I'm sure the Republicans think the same, but I have never felt as if I was looked down on as I do from the Limousine Liberals. I feel like the current Democratic leadership looks down on the “Jane and Joe Sixpacks” of America, almost like we are children who must be taken care of.

In the debate she referred to "Main Streeters like me." And we believe it. She's one of us. She sees problems that need to be fixed, and like a mother, wants to fix them. Mothers are like that. Even women who aren’t mothers are like that. They see a need and they figure out how to fill that need or fix the problem. That’s just the way we as women are wired. Sarah doesn’t speak down to us; she speaks to us as if we are equals. She talks as if she knows what we are thinking and feeling. She talks as if she believes that if she could talk to each of us we could come to an understanding on the issues that are important to us – Jane and Joe Sixpack, Americans.

As I said, she’s a master of psychology. She knows that people like people who are like them. And she is like us. She’s one of us and feels our pain and our joy. She understands the fears of mothers sending their children off to war. As a former businesswoman, she understands how the economy impacts the small business. As a taxpayer, she understands our frustration at seeing Washington mishandle the revenue that is taken from our paychecks. We understand the need to pay for the infrastructure; we just want to see that the money is spent appropriately. Sarah gets it. She understands it because she has been on both ends as a taxpayer and as a governor.

The differences between Sarah and I are many. I don’t have children. I have never run a business. I don’t have a college degree. And I have never run for office. The differences are unimportant. I believe in her. I believe she’s open and honest and what you see is what you get. She’s confident, poised, and likable. She’s attractive and intelligent and not afraid to show it.

Will I vote for her? If you have to ask, you haven’t read this post or any other about her. I'm about to be one of the "jumpers" Ms. Noonan wrote about. I not only would vote for her, I already have. Because of my job, voting on Election Day will be problematic, so I requested an absentee ballot. I already filled it in and mailed it to the Supervisor of Elections.

Because she is like me, I like and trust her. And every time I hear her speak, I like and trust her more.

Sarah Creamed Biden Says Dick Morris

I wanted to have a video of a Newsmax telephone interview with Dick Morris, but the code doesn't appear to be working. A problem similar to one I have with YouTube. My little trick to embed YouTube video isn't working for Newsmax, so I'll give the URL for the video.

Morris, former campaign strategist for former president Bill Clinton, says that Sarah has saved McCain again.

I can only hope. I just don't think Obama is the right person for the job and the more I learn, the more concerned I get.




Apparently, the embed worked after all, so I removed the URL. As a "bonus" you get video for other Newsmax video news.

Everything You Want to Know About the $700 Billion Plan

By Anand Chokkavelu and Brian Richards October 2, 2008

In case you just woke up from hibernation (welcome back, by the way), here's a quick recap of the events that have crippled our financial and credit markets and forced the government's hand ... all in the last month:

Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM), Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE), and AIG (NYSE: AIG) were all bailed out by the government, while Lehman Brothers was left to fail. Just three weeks ago, we called these events the biggest financial story of the past 50 years 

Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM) was seized in the largest U.S. bank failure ever and handed over to JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM).

The government agreed to backstop Wachovia's (NYSE: WB) loan portfolio to speed a sale to Citigroup (NYSE: C). A few days later, Wells Fargo trumped Citi's offer and required no government backstop.

The stock market was sent into hyper-reactive mode, spurring ridiculous day-to-day volatility. The VIX, or Volatility Index, hit its highest level ever.

We both cried. On more than one occasion.

The financial markets have been especially volatile this past week, as market participants wondered if U.S. government legislation would come in to shore up the credit markets. The plan, led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, asks for -- cue Dr. Evil impression now -- $700 billion to buy the more toxic assets from the Wall Street balance sheets.

The $700 billion bailout plan is by no means an act of charity; this money will be invested, not spent. These assets would not be value-less (in fact, it's possible the government makes a profit), but it could take years to unlock their worth for the American taxpayer.

The ramifications of not passing this legislation are serious. Credit markets will freeze, businesses will take a hit, and, most of all, consumers will be pinched.

Problem is, the ramifications of passing it are serious, too. (Rock, meet hard place.) There was a loud uproar this week from Main Street over this legislation: about the piling on to our national debt, about further devaluing the dollar, about increased governmental intervention in the private sector.

Even we Fools disagree vehemently on which is the right course of action. Heck, we can't even agree on whether it should be called a bailout, a rescue plan, or a stabilization necessity.

To help you figure it out for yourself, we've put together our best thoughts from both perspectives. Read below and educate yourself, Fool!

Understanding the Bailout

Morgan Housel: "What Part of the Bailout Plan Did You Miss? " (Sept. 30)
Morgan Housel: "National Debt: The Race Toward $10 Trillion " (Sept. 30)
David Forrest and Bill Mann: "Fool Blog: No Depression? Really? " (Sept. 30)
David Lee Smith: "Some Tough Questions on the Bailout " (Sept. 23)

The "For" Argument

Morgan Housel: "Market Meltdown: What Happens From Here " (Sept. 30)
Anders Bylund: "How to Be Finnished With This Crisis " (Sept. 30)
Morgan Housel: "The Bailout: Myths, Half-Truths, and Inconsistencies " (Sept. 29)
Scott Schedler: "How We Can Fix a Crisis We Did Not Create " (Sept. 26)

The "Against" Argument

Alyce Lomax: "Fool Blog: 6 Thoughts on the Bailout Buzz " (Sept. 30)
Alyce Lomax: "Bailout: The Sucker Punch " (Sept. 25)
Chuck Saletta: "What This Bailout Means to You " (Sept. 22)
Alyce Lomax: "Fool Blog: Paulson's Mother of All Boondoggles " (Sept. 22)

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Just in case you're like me and getting more and more confused by the minute with all the information, pro and con, about the bailout, or whatever it's being called today, here is an article I received from the Motley Fools. More information that might just serve to confuse even more, or maybe something that might just explain the whole mess to you.

I still don't like the idea of bailing out any company whose management chose to make risky moves. I think any company, large or small, has to be able to make it on their own without taxpayer intervention. And this is what this is: taxpayer intervention. Sometimes it's time for the market to shake some of the detritus out.

I'm not cold-hearted, and against helping my fellow man. If a company's management makes too many bad decisions, maybe it's time for them to look for another line of work. This bailout smacks of someone wanting everyone to be winners and not have any losers. It's not a game where everyone plays and no score is kept so that everyone is a winner. In the real world, someone has to win and someone has to lose.

It’s a form of natural selection. In nature, only the strongest survive. And, as they say, Wall Street can be a jungle. Is it up to Congress to play God and decide that every business must be bailed out? Or which business should be saved? There is usually a reason that the weak don’t survive.

In too many cases on Wall Street, too many people made one too many bad decisions because they were greedy. I am definitely not in favor of bailing out the greedy. Unfortunately, good people suffer because others are greedy.

Those are the people I would rather bailout of a bad situation.

Bailout

The Senate is about to vote on the latest version of the Emergency Economic Recovery Bill.

Anyone care to vote on the outcome? This is not whether you think it's a good bill or not, or whether you think it should pass or not, just whether you think the Senate will pass it.

Leave your vote (yea or nay) in comments. If you want, add more comment, but be sure Yea or Nay is on the first line.

Update: I was right, it passed 75-24. On to the House vote, probably Friday, I understand.

Okay, since no one was able to get their vote in, you now have until the vote on Friday to answer the question:

Will the House pass this bill? Yea or Nay

Remember, this is not if the bill should pass or not, just whether you think the House will pass it. If you want to comment, go ahead, just make sure to put your vote Yea or Nay on the first line of your comment.

I'll go first:

Yea

There's enough pork attached to this bill, and probably more to be added to the House version, that the House will pass it. That's one of the things that was "wrong" with the first version: it didn't have enough pork attached for the House to approve it. 

After all, isn't the point of being elected is to bring home the pork to the people back home so those same people can be even more burdened with Federal debt??

Update: As expected, the bill passed the House and has been signed by the President.

I hope this wasn't a huge mistake.

Obama, Taxes And 'Facts'

By Brent Bozell

October 1, 2008

Ever since liberal media types felt robbed by the Bush-Quayle campaign's "lies" about Michael Dukakis in 1988, we've been suffering through the media elite's attempts to "police" the facts in advertisements. "Correction" squads are insisting that John McCain can't say Barack Obama will raise taxes, no matter how much that announcing Democrats will raise taxes is like announcing the sun will rise.

In 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle suggested Bill Clinton would raise taxes on the middle class. Quayle said in the vice-presidential debate that everyone making over $36,000 could face a tax hike. Media "experts" accused the GOP of mangling "facts." President Clinton was elected -- and passed the largest tax increase in American history, right down to the middle class.

"It was Quayle who repeatedly twisted and misstated the facts," CNN reporter Brooks Jackson had pronounced after the vice-presidential debate. On ABC, Jeff Greenfield proclaimed: "Independent examination of this charge by, for example, press organizations, has found it, to say the least, misleading."

Do you think "independent" was a good adjective to describe the adoring chorus of Clinton correspondents in 1992?

After the fact -- which is to say, when Clinton was safely elected -- some in the press developed a sudden sense of guilt.

Cut to Feb. 18, 1993, when USA Today admitted: "Looks like Dan Quayle was right. Last year's vice-presidential debate ... produced an accurate prediction from Quayle about the Clinton budget plan ... The final plan, according to Clinton officials, will hit those making $30,000 and above."

This is the sticky thing about campaign proposals. They are simply proposals. When a president is elected, the entire campaign manual can be thrown out the window. Predictions about what a politician will do are predictions, not facts. Obviously, some predictions can be wilder, like the suggestion that Ronald Reagan would start a massive war. (Liberals never tire of that one.) Predicting a massive tax hike under Democrats does not qualify as a wild prediction.

This goes not just for debates but also for commercials. The Bush-Quayle campaign issued a TV ad in the fall of 1992 that used their own numerical estimates of how much Clinton would raise taxes, and all the networks leaped on it like starving men on a crust of bread. NBC's Lisa Myers said "facts" were not on the GOP side: "President Bush's new ad portrays Bill Clinton as a big taxer and a danger to the middle class ... That's misleading. In fact [here we go with that nettlesome word again], Clinton has proposed cutting taxes to the sort of people in this ad." In 20-20 hindsight, the fact is that Lisa Myers ended up with egg on her face.

Eric Engberg, the infamous CBS blowhard, was worse, and his producer encouraged Steven Colford of Advertising Age to denounce the ad starkly: "I think it's lying." If anyone was lying about Clinton, it ended up being CBS. Engberg continued: "Clinton's ad squad, aware that the unanswered attacks look true, struck back within 24 hours." He aired a Clinton claim that "George Bush has had the worst economic record of any president in the past 50 years" -- but this time, he simply refused to assess the accuracy of that ludicrous groaner (two words: Jimmy Carter) or anything else in the Clinton response.

In 2008, reporters and columnists touting Obama are repeatedly citing numbers by something called the Tax Policy Center -- and you'll never hear that this is a project operated by two liberal-Democrat think tanks -- to suggest Obama will actually cut middle-class taxes more than John McCain. That, of course, assumes that President Obama will follow his plan to the letter, and that a newly elected liberal House and Senate will rubber-stamp his alleged tax cut for "95 percent" of Americans. That, by the way, is a serious math error. Please explain how it's possible to cut 95 percent of Americans' taxes when the Tax Foundation reports that 40 percent of Americans don't pay any income tax. If you think you can, I'd like to interest you in a sub-prime mortgage. This math apparently is too sophisticated for the guardians of "fact," who are nowhere to be found.

When Democrats claim they'll be more generous in tax-cutting, does anyone believe a liberal-dominated Washington is going to do less taxing and spending than the Bush administration?

There's nothing wrong with the media suggesting that the Republican candidate is refusing to accept the genuineness of the Democratic candidate's proposal. But if they suggest McCain is lying or misleading voters, they're in danger of walking off yet another cliff of credibility if and when President Obama and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi get to cook their own ever-expanding federal budget pie.

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L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.