Video: Sarah Palin’s Keynote Speech at National Tea Party Convention

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin delivers the closing keynote address at the first-ever National Tea Party Convention, held in Nashville, TN. February 6, 2010:

Related

• Third party is the wrong party for Tea Partiers – Mark Tapscott, Washington Examiner
• Nashville Shows Tea Party Is America’s Third Great Awakening – Glenn Reynolds, Washington Examiner
• Breitbart, Farah argue Birtherism at Tea Party convention – Ed Morrissey, Hot Air

NY-23: Palin Endorses Hoffman

If the pop culture obsessed soundbite media wasn’t following the November 3rd special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district they will be  now that Sarah Palin has endorsed Doug Hoffman:

The people of the 23rd Congressional District of New York are ready to shake things up, and Doug Hoffman is coming on strong as Election Day approaches! He needs our help now.

The votes of every member of Congress affect every American, so it’s important for all of us to pay attention to this important Congressional campaign in upstate New York. I am very pleased to announce my support for Doug Hoffman in his fight to be the next Representative from New York’s 23rd Congressional district. It’s my honor to endorse Doug and to do what I can to help him win, including having my political action committee, SarahPAC, donate to his campaign the maximum contribution allowed by law.

Our nation is at a crossroads, and this is once again a “time for choosing.”

The federal government borrows, spends, and prints too much money, while our national debt hits a record high. Government is growing while the private sector is shrinking, and unemployment is on the rise. Doug Hoffman is committed to ending the reckless spending in Washington, D.C. and the massive increase in the size and scope of the federal government. He is also fully committed to supporting our men and women in uniform as they seek to honorably complete their missions overseas.

And best of all, Doug Hoffman has not been anointed by any political machine.

Doug Hoffman stands for the principles that all Republicans should share: smaller government, lower taxes, strong national defense, and a commitment to individual liberty. Read the rest…

My quick and dirty analysis: There’s no downside for Palin here, no one expects Hoffman to win so if he gets beat Palin isn’t going to get the blame. On the other hand if Hoffman wins the upside is huge… it’ll be the shot heard around the world that shakes up the party establishment and forces them to take Palin and grassroots activist seriously.

As an aside, Hoffman’s campaign has raised $210,000 in the past seven days… That’s before Palin’s endorsement last night.

You can donate here.

Related

• Rogue Stars Rising – The Green Room

Weekend Briefing – Saturday, October 10, 2009

I’m going to be tied up with family all weekend but here’s a collection of must read links:

• CBO: Budget deficit hit record $1.4T in 2009 – Associated Press
• Proposals to create jobs add up to second stimulus – Associated Press
• A Nobel for Obama – New York Sun
• Barack Obama’s peace prize starts a fight – Times Online
• McCain Vs. Palin For The GOP’s Soul – Investors Business Daily
• What I Heard in Honduras – Rep. Jim DeMint, Wall Street Journal
• California Budget Is Already in the Red 10 Weeks After Passage – Bloomberg
• Report: Reining in lawsuits would cut deficit – Washington Times
• CBO’s Analysis of the Effects of Proposals to Limit Costs Related to Medical Malpractice (“Tort Reform”) – CBO Director’s Blog
• Save the Greenback, Mr. President – Larry Kudlow, CNBC
• Paying the Health Tax in Massachusetts – Wendy Williams, Wall Street Journal
• CBO Stands for Cooked Books Office – Rep. John Shadegg, Red State
• What happened to global warming? – BBC News
• As Republicans Predict a 2010 Surge, Democrats Dig In – New York Times
• Taliban growth weighs on Obama strategy review – Reuters

Feel free to add your links in comments.

Sarah Palin: Dollar’s Troubles Show Need for Energy Independence

Two days ago the British newspaper The Independent published a rather dubious report by Robert Fisk claiming that  oil-producing Arab states along with China, Russia, Japan and France were conspiring on a plan to dump the dollar for oil trading, a move which would seriously weaken our currency and influence abroad.

The Arab states named in the report have issued denials… there may still be a grain of truth in the report though as  both Russia and China have been very vocal in their calls to end the Dollar’s reign in international trading:

Leaving aside the viability of the unified GCC currency – Oman and the Emirates have made clear they don’t want to play – the story has a ring of truth about it.

Russia and China have both been vocal in their call to end the hegemony of the greenback in international trade. The single GCC currency, if and when it happens, would be more likely to use a currency basket than a direct dollar peg. With the possibility of intervention now back in its arsenal Japan will clearly do what it feels necessary to protect its deflationary economy from an over-strong currency. France, of course, would take any opportunity to give Washington one in the eye.

In that light it is no surprise that the dollar has taken a bit of a beating since the news broke. It has lost one euro cent and half a yen overnight, adding to the losses it had already made on Monday in the absence of any helpful comment from G7.

Regardless The Independent’s report should server as a stark reminder to our elected leaders of need for sound fiscal policy, a strong stable dollar and real energy independence.

Sarah Palin makes the case on her Facebook page:

All of this is a result of our out-of-control debt. This is why we need to rein in spending, and this is also why we need energy independence. A weakened dollar means higher commodity prices. This will make it more difficult to pay our bills – including the bill to import oil.

In his book Architects of Ruin, Peter Schweizer points out that the Obama administration is focusing primarily on “green energy,” while ignoring our need to develop our domestic conventional energy resources.[5] We’re ignoring the looming crisis caused by our dependence on foreign oil. Because we’re dependent on foreign nations for our oil, we’re also at their mercy if they decide to dump the dollar as their trade currency. We can’t allow ourselves to be so vulnerable to the whims of foreign nations. That’s why we must develop our own domestic supplies of oil and gas.

Though the chant of “Drill, baby, drill” was much derided, it expressed the need to confront this issue head-on before it reaches a crisis point.

Bottom line: let’s stop digging ourselves into debt and start drilling for energy independence.

Gas prices have dropped considerably since the last oil shock made energy independence a front burner issue in the minds of most Americans… The coming debate on Cap and Trade may help bring the issue of energy independence back to the forefront but I suspect it’ll be lost in amongst the debates on the new taxes, costs, and mandates Cap and Trade create.

Whether we like it or not our economy is powered by oil and natural gas… and there is simple no reason not to tap into a significant domestic reserves of both.

Related

• UN calls for new reserve currency – AFP

Palin Already a Best Seller.

This should drive liberals nuts… Sarah Palin’s book hasn’t even been released yet and it’s already a best seller:

Sarah Palin’s forthcoming memoir, “Going Rogue,” has reached the top spot on the Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com sales rankings – more than a month and a half before it will hit bookshelves on November 17th.

The ranking is based on preorders of the book by the former Republican presidential candidate and Alaska governor who resigned in July, before the end of her gubernatorial term.

Palin, working with author Lynn Vincent, finished “Going Rogue” more quickly than initially planned, prompting the book’s release date to be moved up from the spring. It took the pair about four months to write the 400-page memoir, which her publisher describes as “her words, her life.”

I wonder how they’ll rationalize this?

Sarah Palin’s Memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” to be Release November 17th

Sarah Palin has finished her memoir, the 400 page book titled “Going Rogue: An American Life,” is set to be released on November 17th:

Sarah Palin’s forthcoming 400-page memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” will hit bookshelves just in time for the holiday shopping season.

More than 1.5 million copies of Palin’s first book are expected in stores by Nov. 17, according to publisher HarperCollins. That’s as many copies as publishers printed of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s memoir, “True Compass,” after his death last month.

Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate, completed her manuscript weeks ahead of schedule and four months after signing the book deal. The book had been slated for release in the spring.

“Gov. Palin has been unbelievably conscientious and hands-on at every stage, investing herself deeply and passionately in this project,” Jonathan Burnham of HarperCollins told the Associated Press. “It’s her words, her life and it’s all there in full and fascinating detail.”

Palin told Alaska’s Anchorage Daily News in May that her memoir will provide an unfiltered forum as “there have been so many things written and said through mainstream media that have not been accurate.”

Palin, 45, reportedly did most of the work on her memoir in San Diego, Calif., after resigning the Alaska governorship in July with more than a year left in her first term.

I just pre-ordered my copy from Amazon.

Sarah Palin: No Health Care Reform Without Legal Reform

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is once again wading into the debate on health care reform via her Facebook page.  Last week she raised questions about the end of life counseling provisions contained in the proposed legislation… provision that have since been removed from the Senate Finance Committee bill.

This week she raises questions about one of the biggest weaknesses in the current House Senate reform proposals:

President Obama’s health care “reform” plan has met with significant criticism across the country. Many Americans want change and reform in our current health care system. We recognize that while we have the greatest medical care in the world, there are major problems that we must face, especially in terms of reining in costs and allowing care to be affordable for all. However, as we have seen, current plans being pushed by the Democratic leadership represent change that may not be what we had in mind — change which poses serious ethical concerns over the government having control over our families’ health care decisions. In addition, the current plans greatly increase costs of health care, while doing lip service toward controlling costs.

We need to address a REAL bipartisan reform proposition that will have REAL impacts on costs and quality of patient care.

As Governor of Alaska, I learned a little bit about being a target for frivolous suits and complaints (Please, do I really need to footnote that?). I went my whole life without needing a lawyer on speed-dial, but all that changes when you become a target for opportunists and people with no scruples. Our nation’s health care providers have been the targets of similar opportunists for years, and they too have found themselves subjected to false, frivolous, and baseless claims. To quote a former president, “I feel your pain.”

So what can we do? First, we cannot have health care reform without tort reform. The two are intertwined. For example, one supposed justification for socialized medicine is the high cost of health care. As Dr. Scott Gottlieb recently noted, “If Mr. Obama is serious about lowering costs, he’ll need to reform the economic structures in medicine—especially programs like Medicare.” [1] Two examples of these “economic structures” are high malpractice insurance premiums foisted on physicians (and ultimately passed on to consumers as “high health care costs”) and the billions wasted on defensive medicine.

Gov. Plain is right about the need for tort reform… One has to wonder why it isn’t a center piece of the health care reform proposals now before Congress the two intimately linked. Gov. Palin quotes extensively extensively from research by Dr. Stuart Weinstein of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons who notes:

Excessive litigation and waste in the nation’s current tort system imposes an estimated yearly tort tax of $9,827 for a family of four and increases healthcare spending in the United States by $124 billion. How does this translate to individuals? The average obstetrician-gynecologist (OB-GYN) delivers 100 babies per year. If that OB-GYN must pay a medical liability premium of $200,000 each year (which is the rate in Florida), $2,000 of the delivery cost for each baby goes to pay the cost of the medical liability premium.

It’s no surprise that tort reform isn’t a priority for the Obama Administration and congressional Democrats, as the Washington Examiner’s David Freddoso noted last week they’re beholden to trial lawyers:

An Examiner analysis of the 15 firms on the National Law Journal’s “2008 Plaintiff’s Hot List” shows that for 2009, their employees have contributed $636,305 to federal politicians and PACs. Only $4,875 of that amount has gone to Republicans, meaning that the nation’s top trial lawyers are giving more than 99 percent Democratic this year. The PAC for the American Association of Justice, the top trial lawyer lobbying group, has been marginally more balanced, giving Democrats a mere 96 percent of its $627,000 in contributions.

These trial lawyers are especially concentrating on the Senate. Members of those same 15 firms have given $236,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this year. And trial lawyers know that the Senate is controlled by one of their own — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who faces a potentially difficult re-election. Reid has taken in some $54,000 from the top 15 firms. According to OpenSecrets, he has taken $978,000 from the legal industry as a whole.

Related

• Gov. Rick Perry: Tort reform must be part of health care reform – Washington Examiner
• Pull the Plug on ObamaCare – Peggy Noonan

Poll Question: If the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary were being held today who would you vote for?

I’m not crazy about Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee so they’re not even on my short list. I love Sarah Palin but I think she’s been to damaged by partisan attacks to be viable candidate… Ditto for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, he’s to much of a lighting rod.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal are both rising stars but I think they’re still a little “green” to be viable challengers in 2012. I don’t know enough about John Huntsman to make an informed judgment… That leaves Texas Gov. Rick Perry… He has proven record and most importantly he’s not on any of the media short lists.

Pres. Obama Backs Offshore Drilling… Just Not in U.S. Waters

I was going to comment on this Wall Street Journal editorial yesterday but I didn’t get to it… In short the Obama Administration has finally embraced offshore oil drill, unfortunately it’s not in the U.S.:

You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a “preliminary commitment” letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits, and last year ahead of the November elections, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Congress let a ban on offshore drilling expire.

I’m going to defer to Sarah Palin here because rather than offer substantive commentary I’m tempted to say something inflammatory like… if this doesn’t take the cake for asinine, moronic moves by an American administration I don’t know what does… Oops, anyway here’s Gov. Palin:

For years, states rich with an abundance of oil and natural gas have been begging Washington, DC politicians for the right to develop their own natural resources on federal lands and off shore. Such development would mean good paying jobs here in the United States (with health benefits) and the resulting royalties and taxes would provide money for federal coffers that would potentially off-set the need for higher income taxes, reduce the federal debt and deficits, or even help fund a trillion dollar health care plan if one were so inclined to support such a plan.

So why is it that during these tough times, when we have great needs at home, the Obama White House is prepared to send more than two billion of your hard-earned tax dollars to Brazil so that the nation’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, can drill off shore and create jobs developing its own resources? That’s all Americans want; but such rational energy development has been continually thwarted by rabid environmentalists, faceless bureaucrats and a seemingly endless parade of lawsuits aimed at shutting down new energy projects.

Gov. Palin is right, the simple reality is whether we like it or not oil and natural gas fuel our economy… While it’s good to see the Obama Administration supporting offshore oil drilling, their efforts would be better directed at encouraging the tapping of domestic resources and creating jobs for Americans rather than $2 billion of taxpayer money overseas.

Score One For Sarah Palin

Score one for Sarah Palin, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, issued a statement earlier today saying that concerns raised about the end-of-life provisions in the House health care bill are entirely legitimate. Sen. Grassley’s statement goes on to say that the Finance Committee has “dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely” because of those fears and also because of concerns that they could be “implemented incorrectly.”

Here’s Grassley’s statement:

The bill passed by the House committees is so poorly cobbled together that it will have all kinds of unintended consequences, including making taxpayers fund health care subsidies for illegal immigrants. On the end-of-life issue, there’s a big difference between a simple educational campaign, as some advocates want, and the way the House committee-passed bill pays physicians to advise patients about end of life care and rates physician quality of care based on the creation of and adherence to orders for end-of-life care, while at the same time creating a government-run program that is likely to lead to the rationing of care for everyone. On the Finance Committee, we are working very hard to avoid unintended consequences by methodically working through the complexities of all of these issues and policy options. That methodical approach continues.  We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly. Maybe others can defend a bill like the Pelosi bill that leaves major issues open to interpretation, but I can’t.

Related

• Finance Committee drops end-of-life provision – The Hill
• Score One for Sarah Palin on the Healthcare Reform Death Panels – U.S. News
• Concerning the “Death Panels” – Sarah Palin

Next Page »