Fighting Smears Against Sarah Palin

SEE IMPORTANT NOTE AT BOTTOM!

Sarah Palin's critics absolutely hate pictures like this one because it reminds them what's lacking so often in their own lives. Such a picture illustrates who Sarah Palin is and what she has a loving wife and mother.

I'm writing all this week on my blogs (especially this one) about Lorenzo Benet's book (Trail Blazer: An Intimate Biography of Sarah Palin) about Sarah, who she is, why she evokes such hatred from some people, and why is she's so tough that she's become indestructible. She knows what's going on; and we know. The left-wing media wants to destroy her because they are hooked on Bambi Obama, who isn't half the human being Sarah is.

In answering criticisms about Sarah we need to be very brief and direct. When something is a lie, such as "Bristol is really Trig's mother," we need to say: "That is a lie spread by the Obama Campaign through its loyal servants at The Daily Kos (Markos Markos)." Period. We should not "play nice." We need to be ferocious in our counterattacks. "Take no prisoners."

When a feminist says, "Sarah wears clear glasses to make her look intellectual," we should say: "Sarah has been near-sighted since childhood, like her daughter Piper, and she's worn glasses since she was 10." Period.

When someone says, "Well, Sarah implied they sold [former Alaska Governor] Murkowski's jet on E-Bay," we reply: "She never said it. She never implied it. They tried to sell it on E-Bay and, when they didn't get the offers they wanted, they sold it through a broker. It was sold -- period -- and Sarah never used it."

On the bogus situation known as Troopergate: "Oh yeah, that was the state police officer who was abusive toward his wife (Sarah's sister) and tasered their 11-year-old son. He deserved to be fired."

I believe we need to stay on a positive message as much as possible. Benet's book (Trail Blazer) is not perfect, but it does a good job in explaining where Sarah got her spine of steel.

Some of the charges against Sarah are exaggerations. Most of them are outright lies. We need to characterize the smear artists as liars haters of Christian Americans, which they generally are. They have no understanding or respect for a self-made, self-reliant woman like Sarah Palin. We need to expose them for exactly what they are: loathsome smear artists.

NOTE: Some people are telling me that certain conservative web sites don't like the Benet book, apparently because they believe (wrong-headedly) that it's not sufficiently reverential. My response:

On on my blog (http://draftpalin2012.blogspot.com) and through other communications I'm QUOTING and paraphrasing segments of the Benet book, mainly ones that present Sarah, Todd, AND THEIR EXTENDED FAMILIES, in very good lights. If those who "don't like" the book are doing otherwise, then you can safely assume they're just blowing ideological smoke. It's a good book, not a great one, and it's not done in adoration of Sarah. In terms of substance, it's not as good as the one I'm writing, but it presents a great deal of new information. It cites -- and names names -- of people who know Sarah best, including her parents, her sisters, her friends, her neighbors, and some of her political and media critics.

It does what a biography is supposed to do.

It's not supposed to be a "love letter," and it's not.

It's written in "People Magazine" style, one that I like because it's so readable.

Sarah's Family: A Special Love

Those of us who grew up in suburban America know little about the realities of human life that Sarah Palin learned at an early age . . .

"There is an old photo of young Sarah as a mere toddler, standing in a blue jumper in Skagway yard dangling two shrimp from her tiny hands. Her clothes are soaked, and her pearl skin is filthy, her brown hair tousled. 'That was Sarah for you, [neighbor] Moore said, 'She wasn't your typical little girly-girl.'" (Lorenzo Benet, Trail Blazer: An Intimate Biography of Sarah Palin) I can't recommend the book highly enough.

In fact , this volume is teaching me many new things about the nature of life, and that's rare when someone has been on the earth as long as I. As a young child, Sarah, her parents (Chuck, Sr, and Sally Heath), her brother Chuck, Jr., and her older sister Heather and younger sister Molly grew up in Skagway, Alaska, one hundred miles north of the capital city of Juneau. What was life like there?

A friend and neighbor of Sarah's family puts it this way: "Skagway had no beauty parlor, no barber shop, and if your car broke, you fixed it yourself; if your washer broke, you fixed it.. . . You wore many hats: carpenter, plumber, electrician, and boat mechanic; you did all your own stuff. We had just two grocery stores in town -- there was no fresh milk, and the produce ship came twice a month. Banana skins were yellow, but our kids grew up thinking they were black, so we ate a lot of banana bread."

The Heath neighbor who tells that story was one of 11 children. His family engaged daily in something that could verge on a desperate struggle for survival. The father and mother had to do everything necessary to provide food and shelter for their children.

What if a family didn't hunt and fish? Then, it would not get nearly enough protein. As Sarah's neighbor puts it, "The wild game and fish -- that's food and not just a hobby." In short, it wasn't recreational hunting. It was sustenance hunting, as it still is in much of Alaska.

The way Sarah grew up -- and in fact, the lifestyle she still pursues -- is one that's incomprehensible to the over-socialized, over-suburbanized. over-secularized elites that dominate the media (Katie Couric? Rachel Maddow?) and entertainment worlds (Ashley Judd? David Letterman?). People in those cultures are detached from the basic realities of life in a way that Sarah and her family never have been.

If we want to understand people, it's essential to know where they grew up -- and what lessons their world taught them. In Alaska, people have to construct their own social safety net.

The Benet book on Sarah is really good because she and her family were in Alaska in the 1960s and early 1970s when it was still America's "wild frontier." The early years in Skagway when Sarah was 4-5 years old were a little extreme by our standards, but Alaska still has a lifestyle that was pretty standard for much the world into the 20th century. If people survived, they had to do it pretty much on their own. There was no "going down the mall," because there was no mall. If you wanted meat, you had to go out and shoot something.

Some of the suburban liberals who criticize Sarah believe she's "not like them." In a way, they're right. She's tougher and much closer to life on a fundamental level, one where family and community is very close to one another -- and dependent on neighbors not just for company but for survival.

A lot of modern people -- I'd include myself -- don't have great survival skills. If the grocery closed down and there was no one to reply the washer and dryer, we would be largely helpless. We wouldn't have learned the basic skills that were almost second-nature to our ancestors. Instead, we live on top of support system whose existence is one of which we're hardly aware. We're a lot less self-reliant than Sarah and many of the people around her.

Sarah Palin, Abortion, Planned Parenthood

The following is a press release from Gov. Sarah Palin on the subject of abortion: My comments are below the release.

February 11, 2009, Juneau, Alaska - Governor Sarah Palin today issued the following statement in response to reports that contributions are being made to Planned Parenthood in her name:
“The abortion issue has been with us for decades and has pitted well-meaning people of differing ideologies against each other. Where we can find common ground is in the belief that no one wants a single abortion.

“But when there is a clash of values, I always will come down on the side of life. Making donations to Planned Parenthood in my name might be interesting theater in these politically charged times, but it is not going to change my views or the views of many other Alaskans who believe every life is precious.

“Anti-hunting groups are employing the same tactic of using my name to promote their cause right now. Again, interesting theater.”

Steve says:

I've sort of "said my say" on the abortion issue, but if I go back to Elaine Lafferty's article on Sarah as a "brainiac" and a "feminist," I believe she nails it. For those to whom pro-abortion ('"pro-choice" it turns out is a semantic game, where only one "choice" is acceptable) is a critical single-issue, Sarah will never be acceptable.

However, I do get the sense that Sarah wants to move beyond the endless cultural food-fight over the abortion issue. Good for her. I have a hunch that the "big issue" in 2012 and perhaps 2016 is going to be how to deal with the sick elderly to keep their illnesses from bankrupting the country. The Stimulus Bill, as Sen. Coburn pointed out, is a first step in that direction.

Tom Daschle is an assisted suicide enthusiast, and even though he's dead meat politically, his initial nomination shows which way the wind is blowing. As the poet put it, there are some who are "half in love with easeful death."

I admire the way Sarah is seeking to re-frame the abortion issue: She says, “The abortion issue has been with us for decades and has pitted well-meaning people of differing ideologies against each other. Where we can find common ground is in the belief that no one wants a single abortion."

"No one" may be excessive. Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and other worthies, such as the gentle ladies in NARAL, appear never to have seen an abortion they don't like.

Technology is confronting us with issues (octuplets anyone? gender selection?) that, as a society, we're ill-equipped to deal with. We need a modern St. Thomas Aquinas to give us some coherent foundation for making moral decisions.

Sarah Palin: Right on Abortion

"Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." (Jesus, KJV)

I sent the following out to some people who were parsing (slicing and dicing) the abortion issue and whether it could cost Sarah Palin the presidency). Your thoughts are welcome.

Yes, some women (a sliver of urban and suburban females) will always hate -- yes, that is the right word -- Sarah for affirming life. However, I don't think it is possible to put life issues completely on the back burner.

The new "Stimulus" bill contains health provisions that point in the direction of denying adequate care to the very sick elderly. Daschle, Obama's first choice for HHS, advocates as much in his book.

There is a belief, widespread in the Democratic Party, that providing care for the elderly -- who, after all are going to "die anyway" -- is too expensive. In short, having sick old people around is an inconvenience.

Who is to say such liberals are wrong? Well, I for one will say it, but if we are all going to say so, we need some philosophical (or theological?) basis for doing so.

Let me be very blunt my friends: Don Fowler, "Mr. Democrat" from South Carolina and a former head of the DNC, said in late August that Sarah Palin's main qualification for the V-P slot was "that she didn't have an abortion [with Trig]."

I wanted in vain for Hillary Rodham Clinton and other female Democrats to chastise Fowler. If they disagreed with him, they didn't say so. Thus, I assume they weren't disturbed by his outrageous comments.

Here's the issue: What living things are valuable? And which ones should be disposed of in the most expeditious way possible?

Sarah Palin, portrayed as some kind of simpleton by many liberal feminists, has wrestled with that question. She believed and believes that her youngest son, Trig, is a child of God and that he has profound value.

Many feminists, including those who hate Sarah, believe no such thing. They apparently believe the Trigs of this world would be worthless -- burdens, inconveniences, ueseless cellular masses. Sarah does not believe such things.

If I may look into her heart, she would say that if she did have such secularist, selfish views, then life itself -- her life, your life, everyone's -- would be devalued. We would be in the situation Thomas Hobbes described where life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and . . . short."

If the Trigs of the world don't have a right to "go to term," then why in fact should their lives after birth be sustained? After all, the ancient Greeks, who invented democracy and moral philosophy, practiced infanticide.

Granted, they didn't have sonograms or abortion clinics. However, were they just being more honest than we are?

Yes, the octuplets have been born in CA. But some of them are not going to have what we would regard as a decent life. So, why should they have a right to live? Why not just toss them in with the rest of the hospital garbage?

Our own squeamishness (or horror?) at the thought of infanticide is not exactly a moral imperative. It's critical that on abortion and end-of-life issues we not fall into what's happened for more than 30 years . . . a mindless exchange of slogans.

On this issue generally, I do not want any more constitutional amendments -- on life, on marriage, or on any other issue. But that doesn't mean I don't side with Sarah, who realizes that the devaluation of life that's been going on for nearly four decades could turn into a catastrophe for our society and culture.

Thankfully, Sarah does not side with Nancy Pelosi in the view that one solution to our economic problems is to have a lot fewer Black and Hispanic babies.

It was one of Dostoevsky's characters (in The Brothers Karamazov) who said, "If God [i.e., any sense of ultimate value] is dead, everything is permitted." And yes, he did mean EVERYTHING.

Sarah Palin Outshines Hillary Clinton

Scroll down to previous columns on NY congressional candidate Jim Tedisco, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, and Bill Clinton TOMORROW: WHY SARAH PALIN IS RIGHT ON ABORTION -- AND HER CRITICS ARE DEAD WRONG.

For his book, “A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (and Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media,” author Bernard Goldberg interviewed Rush Limbaugh.Goldberg asked Rush, among other things, what he thought about Palin Derangement Syndrome. “Why such hatred, especially from liberal feminists? Was it simply her politics or was something else at play?”

Here’s what Limbaugh has to say: “Something else. She was the only effective Republican candidate anywhere in this entire campaign – among all candidates, for all offices. Sarah Palin is what militant feminists have been suggesting all women can become. But she had the gall to have a Down Syndrome child and be opposed to abortion, which is the sacrament to feminist liberalism. She was the Clarence Thomas of the Anita Hill hearings. Her electoral future had to be destroyed.”

Steve Says: When I went to a (wonderful) Catholic elementary school, the nuns told us, "You never mistread girl. GOD will be very angry if you do." They got our attention. Bill never went to that school. His abuse of women, especially middle-class women (Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, and many others) in vulnerable positions, has been the bad habit of a lifetime.

Bill Clinton lives in the world chillingly described by a character in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, where everything is relative. As one character puts it, "If God [any sense of ultimate value] is dead, everything is permitted." In Bill's world and, I'd submit, in Hillary's, everything is permitted . . . as long as you don't get caught. If you do get caught, you apologize -- and then, when the coast is clear, you go do it again.

Okay, when she was at Wellesley, Hillary wrote her senior thesis on labor organizer Saul Alinsky (a better man than many people think), and he offered her a job with his community development organization. His total budget for a year was $100,000 (including his salary). He labored almost exclusively with the working poor, including Blacks and first generation immigrants. He hated the "welfare state."

Hillary response to the job offer? She said, No thanks and went off to Yale Law School, one of those places that usually leads to whole truckloads of money and power. Yes, Hillary "loves" the poor, but only at a distance.

As for Bill, I am not against people making money, even though I don't. He parlayed the presidency into a fortune of $100 million. ONE HUNDRED MILLION. He sold out to everyone, especially rich foreigners, who had a large bag full of cash.

Okay, during the end of the primary season, there was a guy who told a group I was in that he had been unemployed for 17 months (yikes). But he had scraped together $25 that he was sending in "to help pay off Hillary's debt."

One problem, the money was being re-directed to her 2012 Senate re-election campaign. The whole thing disgusted me. I told the group, "Bill should write a check" (I think it was $9 million they owed). That $9 million would have been the same for him as us kicking in ten bucks. The Clintons are one of the wealthiest families in America -- and trust me, they will get a while lot wealthier.

Sarah will never be Hillary's intellectual equal, but unlike HRC, she knows the basic difference between right and wrong. And in life that matters more than anything else. When Hillary and Bill started slobbering over Obama, it made me physically ill. As one of Shakespeare's cynical lines has it, "Nothing lost save honor."

Susan Rice, named ambassador to the U.N. the same day as HRC got the State job, was the person in the Obama Campaign in charge of smearing Hillary. I kept waiting for the two to embrace.

What did Obama promise HRC for endorsing and campaigning for him? Guess. I know what Susan Rice got for her misdeeds.

A Sarah Palin is a person whose life is suffused with character and values. She would not feel comfortable with a Suan Rice or a Hillary Clinton. Sarah does not regard politics as a nasty game whose only purpose is self-advancement. It matters deeply to Sarah that someone like Barack Obama is not dedicated to national security, freedom, tolerance, and opportunity. Those factors matter not at all to someone like Hillary. They don't show up in a bank account or on a resume.

Yes, Hillary Clinton is a book-smart, but essentially trivial, human being, but that doesn't make her any less dangerous. She has spent a lifetime putting her own interests ahead of those of the nation. Right now, she's too old to learn new tricks.

HILLARY IS NO SARAH PALIN

"I have a lifetime of experience. Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience. Barack Obama has a speech [against the Iraq War] he delivered in 2002." (Hillary Rodham Clinton) I'll keep adding to this column on Wednesday and finish the "Hillary comments" on Thursday. I'd very much like to get your comments on a deeply flawed human being, Hillary R. Clinton.

I have many friends who were Hillary Supporters. One former friend, Robin, listened to my positive comments on Sarah Palin after she was named McCain's running mate. Robin then said, "Steve, I don't like all the praise of Palin because it makes Hillary sound bad by comparison." That's when Robin, a woman incapable of taking a clear-eyed look at HRC, became a former friend. "Yes, Robin, HRC is no Sarah Palin -- not by a longshot."

My sad impression is that most Hillary Supporters don't want to discuss the woman's actions in any serious way. Apparently, they feel that if they look deeply into this woman's heart and soul, they'll end up like the madman in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, who finally recognizes the evil of what he's done and blurts out, "The horror! The horror!" Horror and Hillary are more than alliterative.

John Edwards, another mindless left-wing Democrat, limply said of his affair that he had become "egotistic" and "narcissistic." John Edwards, meet Hillary Clinton, a card-carrying narcissist.

Hillary Clinton has spent a lifetime accepting, rationalizing, and even defending (yikes) her husband's chronic adultery and abusive behavior toward women, including Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, and Kathryn Willey. Of course, that didn't stop the gentle ladies of NOW and NARAL from endorsing Bill . . . or Hillary. Abuse of women is apparently okay as long as you're "right on the issues." Of course, without a demand for basic decency all the "issues" become practically irrelevant.

Many Hillary Supporters are now spending their lives defending HRC's decision to value her career over her country. In fact, what do you call a woman who values career more than the nation? Why, for services rendered, you call her "Madame Secretary of State," that is Secretary of . . . the Country.

As a member of Alaska's Oil and Gas Commission, Sarah Palin cited the head of the Alaska Republican Party (Randy Ruedrich) for an ethics violation. Such acts continue to make her enemies in the state, one long synonymous with political corruption. . Hillary Clinton has NEVER done anything remotely comparable in her long career. The sad reality is that most of Hillary's supporters have much higher standards for themselves than they do for their tinsel candidate.

I fear that if Mrs. Clinton appeared without clothes, such supporters would be marveling over how good she looks in a pants suit.

In the election, Clinton was a major factor in helping Obama carry Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. To say that she must have had a good (but of course, unstated) reason for doing so is to give her credit she in no way deserves. Over a lifetime, she has always done what is best for Hillary. Period.

During and after the election, I regularly asked people why HRC had supported her tormentor -- her abuser -- Obama. Perhaps for the same reason she'd always supporter her marital abuser, Bill, "the Big Dog?" No one ever gave an answer that made Mrs. Clinton seem like anything other than a moral weakling.

More than one Hillary backer told me, "Well, she had to. They [unnamed] threatened her. They threatened her MOTHER. They threatened CHELSEA." There is not one scrap of evidence any such thing ever happened. Moreover, anyone who would cave into threats has no business aspiring to the presidency.

People like Hillary Clinton are despicable. The fact that she's a woman is not exculpatory. Anyone who's so easily intimidated should not be occupying a high position of any kind.

Help Palin, Elect Jim Tedisco

TOMORROW (WEDNESDAY) I'LL HAVE A COLUMN TITLED "HILLARY IS NO SARAH PALIN." Hillary Clinton has spent a lifetime accepting, rationalizing, and even defending (yikes) her husband's chronic adultery and abusive behavior toward women. Many Hillary Supporters are now spending their lives defending HRC's decision to value her career over her country. Sarah Palin is a woman who turned in her own Party's state chairman for ethics violations. Hillary Clinton has never done anything comparable in her career. The sad thing is that most of Hillary's Supporters have much higher standards for themselves than they do for their tinsel heroine.

"It's better to light one little candle than to curse the darkness" (Father Keller, "The Christophers," in radio addresses during the 1970s). PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING AND THEN GO TO JIM TEDISCO'S WEB SITE.

Dear Fellow Bloggers and Online Activists: One of the most important political contests of our time is unfolding in New York's Hudson Valley area (Albany, Saratoga Springs areas). It pits Republican State Assembly leader Jim Tedisco against a super-wealthy liberal Democrat who can't wait to get to Washington to support the Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda. The race is in New York's 20th congressional district, and it's for the seat formerly held by Kirsten Gillibrand, recently appointed to fill Hillary Clinton's U.S. Senate seat.

The election of Jim Tedisco will send a powerful message to Obama and his congressional allies. It will demonstrate that the American people are no longer content to have a left-wing government borrow trillions of dollars, use the money mainly to pay off their political supporters, go hat in hand to Communist China for financing, and send the bill to our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Jim Tedisco led the fight against disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer's cynical plan to grant drivers licenses to illegal aliens. He represents the classic American values we all grew up believing were synonymous with our country.

What can you do to help?

You can go to Jim's outstanding web site and learn more about him. Also, you can participate in the "$20 for the 20th [District]" effort by donating $20. If you can't afford that much, give what you can -- even a dollar would be much appreciated.

Moreover, you can help Jim's message "go viral" by quickly disseminating either this e-mail or a message of your own to friends, family, and political allies. Those of you with blogs or group web sites can post the information -- as soon as possible -- for your visitors to see and share with their own contacts.

Significantly, the leader of Jim's online effort is Ali Akbar, whom many of you will recall from the effort to elect John McCain and Sarah Palin. Ali is a young GOP activist with an unusual name, but most of all, he's one of us. He's among the hundreds of veterans of the last campaign who are helping us begin dominate the Web . . . and turn this country back in the right direction.

The primary reason I back Ali so strongly in his efforts is that he knows how to win. He fights fair, but he fights hard. If you need to contact Ali, you can do so at: Ali@jimtedisco.com.

Please help us in this national effort. Let's make history . . . rather than waiting for others to do so.Go to Jim's web site, sign up, and contribute either $20 or as much as you can afford -- and remember, even a dollar will be appreciated. Then, put up on your blog or web site the links and banners I'll make available in the next 24 hours. (I'll be putting them up today on my sites, including: http://stevemaloneygop.blogspot.com and http://draftpalin2012.blogspot.com.

Finally, if you want to opt-out of the effort to elect Jim Tedisco, you can do so by hitting reply and putting one word -- "Remove" -- in the subject area. Note; The following statements by Jim Tedisco demonstrate exactly what this good man stands for. God bless America!

Tedisco says, “I am running for Congress to bring the same passion, energy and proven record of public service I have demonstrated as an Assemblyman to residents of the 20th Congressional District. As Republican Leader of the State Assembly, I led the fight for tax relief, a real property tax cap, a stronger economy, more jobs and fiscal responsibility. I opposed Eliot Spitzer when he tried to steamroll New Yorkers with higher taxes and more wasteful spending. I also led the fight against his unlawful plan to give drivers licenses to illegal aliens and worked to keep the Schenectady Free Health Clinic open and operating when he tried to take political retribution against me for opposing his plan."

My friends, this guy -- Jim Tedisco -- is the real deal. Let's light thousands of candles on his behalf. Please do everything you can to help him.