How Bottom Feeders Work and Why We Always Get Jack

Everyone is making a big deal over the allegations of Sexual Harrassment against Herman Cain. The key to understanding this is to know how our litigation system works. Those who own businesses are charged by attorneys by the hour for their defense. Those who go up against businesses are either solicited or welcomed when they call an attorney who know they can make a buck off the case either way.

I know a guy and, although not a party to the suit, was assisting him with the defense of such suit. His company had Errors and Ommission insurance. A consumer went to an attorney to file bankruptcy to get out of an obligation. The attorney questioned her about my friend's company's approach. She, in broken English, claimed to the attorney that she was told if she didn't pay the debt that people would be breaking down her door and that a sheriff would come to her house. In rural counties, sheriffs are also police officers.

The attorney immediately phrased his questioning in such a way that she, again in broken English, answered that she had felt as if she was threatened. There is no voice recording of the conversation. Neither the defendant nor the defendant's attorney could name the agent they were alleging the violation against. It was strictly made up. At best, it was poorly documented and if it really did happen, slipped past a supervisor and six other people who may have been able to hear that conversation. In fact, the representative who was assigned to the account was not there on the date the complaint alleges, and there are no notes on the account that an incoming call was ever fielded on that date as well.

The defendant's attorney figured getting $500.00 to file a bankruptcy wasn't enough. He found a way to make an additional $3,000 on the case. That's not bad for for filing a claim on behalf of a false witness. In America's tort and legal system, being a dirt bag makes you money, but doing the right thing costs you too much, so you don't even bother.

The outcome: the company could have fought the case and won at the cost of about $100,000. Instead, it paid about $2,500, settled the debt and had its E&O insurance company pay the attorney who defended the company and recommended all of this strategy another $2,500. This sounds like a good deal, right?

About a week after the case was settled, the E&O insurance company dropped the company. Had the company exercised its right to defend itself and racked up over $100,000 in legal expenses, the E&O insurance company would have had to pay that. But because it would have cost the business another $2500 out of pocket to meet the deductible, they went with the original recommendation. Crony #1 sued on behalf of the lying bearer of false witness and crony #2 (the defendant's attorney) convinced the company to keep the costs down.

The moral of the story is that the attorney for the plaintiff made $3000. The attorney for the defendant made $2500. The E&O insurance company made off with three years of premium to the tune of about $7,500. The victim had their debt settled in the amount of about $2,500. The company that did nothing wrong, had their insurance dropped, and got a major blemish on Google (the case was dismissed and the settlement agreement stated that there was no wrong doing but its still on Google!). Now the company has to try to market itself with a Google blemish and will now be shopping around for another E&O carrier who will clearly raise their rates big time.

Who made out on this deal? Bottom feeding attorneys and a lying plaintiff. Who got screwed? The company that was trying to do the right thing. The next time, they should make the insurance company pay for every dime they can. Drag the case out. Bring the legal fees into the hundreds of thousands. I bet you only then will the insurance company feel good about pursuing a counter suit against the original bottom feeder. But they recommend against it so they don't have to take the risk. And they drop you any way.

Our system is severely dysfunctional. America as we know it is gone. Don't expect it to come back anytime soon.

Now you know why Herman Cain settled his case. Now you know why it came back to haunt him.

Why would anyone want to run for president or run a business in this day and age? Business decisions require the proper assessment of risk versus reward. There is no reward to attempting to be successful in business. Nor is there any reward in running for president. Everything today is all risk and no reward, unless you're a crony who gets paid no matter what the outcome is - even if both the defendant and the plaintiff get jack out of the deal.

The political parties and the permanent political class in Washington are the players in this game. We the people, regardless of party, are the ones who get jack. How's Jane Roe doing these days, anyone know?

My Take on Grizzly Fest '11

Listen to Grizzly Fest here:

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Sudden and Relentless Reform Begins Now

When I wrote Palin Exposes Problems in GOP by Not Running, it was originally written as a stand alone piece - my analysis of how glaringly obvious the weaknesses in the Republican Party were when they are not shrouded by the light of a potential Palin presidency. Roderic Deane graciously invited me to discuss the piece on his BlogTalk Radio show as he and others were organizing Grizzly Fest '11.

Since I am spending tomorrow with my son, it's highly unlikely I will be able to listen to Grizzly Fest live or participate in the forums. I will be certain to listen to the podcast at my first opportunity. This is an important online summit that should be viewed by not only Palin supporters, but by conservatives, Tea Partiers and Republicans across the greater coalition that will be working to unseat President Barack Obama in 2012 as well.

Which brings me to what I would like to focus on if I was able to attend the summit. I would hope that some of the people who read this post take an interest in discussing the role of the Palin movement in shaping the future of the Republican Party. As a lifelong Republican, a part of me laments how party insiders and the party establishment seem to be resisting candidates who stand for Constitutional conservatism, smaller government and who would like to see an end to cronyism and the disproportionate influence the permanent political class has in not only Washington, DC, but within the party itself.

Consider this post and my post about the problems in the Republican Party as my contribution to the summit.

Grizzly Fest '11 is an opportunity for a disheartened Palin supporter like myself to move forward enthusiastically with the next step the Palin movement will be taking. Rather than wander leaderless in the wilderness like I was before Palin hit the national scene, I can take heart that because of Governor Palin's work over the last three years, we have been motivated to form a movement that would have propelled her to the presidency had she chosen to run. Grizzly Fest represents an opportunity to unite in an effort to save our country and to continue to support Governor Palin in her efforts.

I believe our movement has grown tremendously over the last three years to the point where we could have gotten Governor Palin elected president had she ran. Although we will not get to test that theory this go around, if you believe that we are a movement strong enough to get someone elected president then you have to believe we are strong enough to effect the change necessary in both our government and the Republican Party in order to renew and restore America.

Over the course of the last three years - as a result of this blog, Blogtalk Radio and the new media interaction between Palin supporters on Twitter, Team Sarah and Conservatives4Palin, I have had the opportunity to communicate with great people like Frank Aquino, Jedediah Bila, Tammy Bruce, Roderic Deane, Ron Devito, Adrienne Ross, Thomas Schmitz, Jackie Siciliano and many others active in the Palin movement and who are actively participating in Grizzly Fest. A bi-product of being part of such a large movement like ours is that when I mention people, I miss so many others because there isn't enough bandwidth here on Blogger to list you all.

One person who has been able to capture the essence of the Palin movement in the blogosphere is Josh Painter who put together the blogroll which is featured on his site Texans For Sarah Palin and which is the source for the Sarah Palin-Friendly Blogs which are listed on the Grizzly Fest website. It's a great honor to see this site listed there.

This post is more than just a shameless reciprocation to the folks over at Grizzlyfest.com, however. It is an affirmation that we have built something that will continue to further the cause of bringing the shine back to the city on a hill. Because of Sarah Palin, we are a powerful voice instead of a bunch of broken men and women who would have been watching the end of the conservative movement three years ago had John McCain not chosen her to be his running mate.

Our futures and the future of our great nation will depend on our continuing to grow the movement and our deepening relationships among ourselves and others who will come into the fold as we and Governor Palin continue to speak out and hold Washington's feet to the fire.

As much as I've gotten to know many of you who might be reading this, what really blew my mind is that I have come to know Sarah Palin supporters that I didn't even know existed until after she decided not to run. This validates my theory that had she announced, millions of us would have poured out of the wood work much to the dismay of her detractors. The media, which has gone to contortionist lengths to mock her and downplay the level of support she has, will soon find that they will no longer be able to hide our numbers and  Palin's effectiveness as a leader from the rest of America.

If they think she and we are gone just because she's not running, they have another thing coming.

As our country continues to flounder economically, the Palin army has an opportunity to continue to grow and network with each other. We can stand for free market principals. Who knows, we can even be profitable in our endeavors to get into the media, pop culture or academics because of our affiliations with each other. We don't have to go broke crusading for what needs to be done to fix our great nation. We can't afford to wait for the government to get out of our way. We need to build our way back from the ground up.

I'm not saying this to be opportunistic. I'm saying this because it is a fundamental belief of mine that if we are going to stop the liberals, we must beat them at their own game and infiltrate the media, the culture, academia and ultimately the halls of government itself. Think about how liberal these institutions have become and then ask yourself how that happened.

Look at what the liberals did with their party after the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention. There's a lesson for us. If they were able to turn the Democrat Party into the liberal party, we can infiltrate the Republican Party and make it the conservative party. In all areas, we can use our ideas and their playbook to defeat them. Look at what Andrew Breitbart has been able to do both commercially and politically. There is no reason why we need to go broke and continue to be victims of a socialist agenda while pushing forth with what's truly right for America.

We need to become a free market country again. We can begin with ourselves and our party. We can build from the grass roots up. We can lay the foundations of economic prosperity by putting more boots on the ground, more boots to the butts of statists and cronies and someday by putting a pair of our boots on the floor underneath the desk in the oval office.

It's our nation. Let's work toward making it better again. Let's bring the words integrity and merit back into the lexicon of those who represent us in Washington and who decides government's role in our economy. Regulating, handing out and bailing out is not free enterprise. Statism severely hinders the mobility the society needs so that individuals are not stuck in their economic status or class.

We are a lean mean fighting machine! Let's show government that fat with taxpayer money, drunk with power and stupid with ideas is no way to go through life.


I will be talking about Grizzly Fest on my BlogTalk Radio show Wednesday Nov 2, 2011 at 11pm Et 8pm Pt. If anyone involved would like to be a guest on my show to talk about Grizzly Fest, please email me with subject line: "Want to Talk Grizzly Fest" at reagantman@gmail.com.

Backing the Imperfect Candidate

Let’s be realistic. No large army of supporters which has spent three years fighting to elect our next great one is going to come running out of the wilderness yelling “Candidate X is our man and he’s going to save our nation.” The anticipated great one, Sarah Palin, has chosen to postpone her greatness for another time. The current field of candidates all bring pieces of the puzzle to the table, but are also flawed in some way. The only way to thoroughly review the candidates is to look at their positions on the issues and determine who is the closest in best articulating the conservative philosophy and then going with the least imperfect one.

Rick Perry brings a strong record on jobs, taxes and energy to the table, but his vision is a bit a sloppy and his record on immigration makes it tough to embrace him as a standard bearer. He is a good man with good credentials, but there are issues with immigration and cronyism. Michele Bachmann is a strong conservative, but she has spent more time doing what she does best - fighting for us as a Tea Party leader in Congress - than building the type of support for the presidency in the same way Palin has.

Mitt Romney is an intelligent business thinker, but he is not a core conservative. Most of all, he is a symbol of the establishment – and no matter how electable he looks on paper, conservatives are looking for someone who is not representative of business as usual. Rick Santorum is a core conservative. But, without an infusion of charisma, money and good poll numbers, it’s going to be hard to get him to the top. Jon Huntsman is a moderate, plain and simple. Ron Paul is dead on when it comes to economic policy, but his isolationism on foreign policy is way too far from where the Republican Party needs to be on issues of national security.

Newt Gingrich is a Reagan conservative and The 21st Century Contract With America makes some strong arguments. However, even if he is not establishment in the sense that some other Republicans are, he too comes with baggage. His past marital infidelity and his lack of discipline raise questions. He will have to move up in the polls and he will have to raise a lot more money if he is to be viable. Herman Cain comes in as a political outsider with some new ideas. But stumbles on the trail and questions about his foreign policy credentials makes it harder for him to close the deal as well. All the candidates seem to be missing something or other when you go through them.

Don’t look for the Palin army to coalesce around one candidate just yet after being staggered by her announcement not to run. Palinistas have always wanted one thing since day one and that is the total package. Swallowing anything less than Sarah Palin as president is going to require a lot of water and good gag reflex control. But at some time, we are all going to have to walk into a voting booth and make a decision even if it looks like there’s a name missing on the ballot. When we do pick our nominee, we are going to have to accept imperfection. This is because there is no candidate in the race that gives us the confidence that Sarah Palin would have about vision, ideas, character and discipline.

Had Palin run, some would have pointed out imperfections in her as well. We would have had to explain her resignation and point out that she, too, is human and made mistakes on the campaign trail in 2008. But, drawing a blank on what newspapers you read or what Supreme Court decisions you take issue with when you are answering other rapid fire questions successfully from a trained journalist who is intentionally working you into a “gotcha” moment is easier to accept as a voter than past marital infidelities, being unsure about one’s position on abortion or releasing a questionable campaign ad, providing tuition breaks for illegal immigrants, supporting a health insurance mandate for one’s state, staying on the bus when the regular people wanted you to come talk to them, calling for the withdrawal of all American troops from around the world or working for a president that you now want to unseat.

No human being is perfect. We can’t look for perfection in candidates. We can only look for and hope to find one who most closely represents what we believe. Will we get everything we want? No. But, with Sarah Palin in the race, we’d have come damn close.Without her, we're going to have to look more long term.

Ronald Reagan was the rare case of a candidate so closely representing the views of so many that he rose to the level of greatness. But even he, in retrospect, had flaws – granted they were seriously overshadowed by all of the great things he did while president. Greatness is defined by what you do, not by what you don’t do or can’t do. For someone like Sarah Palin, her defining greatness will not come from sitting this one out. Instead it will come from what she does in the future. In the meantime, there is no other Reagan and we must learn to accept that.

All things must be considered when making a decision. While there is nothing jumping out to cause any unity in thought on candidates amongst Palin supporters and undecided Republicans, they agree on what they don’t want. This is the main reason for not being able to settle on an alternative candidate to Palin. Unfortunately, there are enough imperfections in all the candidates to make it hard to choose.

It’s not yet time for an endorsement. Sarah Palin hasn’t endorsed anyone either. We can take a look at the more conservative candidates like Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry or Rick Santorum and consider whether or not we can live with one of them as the nominee. But that’s all we have. We can endorse now and have Palin endorse differently. We can wait to see who Palin endorses. Or, we can end up in agreement later on in the nominating process.

We can’t predict the outcome of any of that. What we can do, is be free to choose our own candidates. Without overt direction from Governor Palin (she may want us to be freed up to choose our own candidates), her supporters are beginning to migrate over to other candidates slowly while looking to Palin for “shadow leadership” on issues as they continue to support her as a voice for their beliefs. While Sarah Palin is not running for president, when she speaks at conferences or gives analyses on Fox News, she’s still dead right on the issues – which is primarily the reason her supporters are finding it difficult to accept her not running. If there was a better candidate in the field, they would have already gotten behind him or her.

There should be no mistake about the issues within the Republican Party. Regardless of whom any of us choose to support, if that candidate wins the presidency it will still be necessary to continue moving forward with Sarah Palin’s message and a concentrated effort on renewing and reforming the Republican Party. We will not defeat crony capitalism by allowing the Republican Party to go back to its old establishment ways once it regains power. We cannot accept a return to business as usual once Obama is out.

We are going to have to keep working at sudden and relentless reform long after our flawed - but better than Obama - candidate wins the presidency. Sarah Palin will help us by continuing to lead that fight. Until then, that hole will remain open until she accepts the calling to run at some point in the future or until another who has a similar potential for greatness arrives on the scene. Maybe, whoever we nominate will hear our voices.

The cause lives on.


Patrick's World USA will not air this week on Blogtalk Radio. The show returns for its regularly scheduled Wednesday night broadcast next Wednesday at 11pm ET 8pm Ct. We invite Palin supporters everywhere to listen in LIVE to the Grizzly Fest online forum on Saturday, Oct. 29th from 2-5 p.m. ET, and to share their own ideas in their dedicated forums.

Did Sarah Palin Postpone Her Destiny?

Only time will tell, but unless a new leader of her caliber emerges within the next decade, she will continue to be called upon.

When pondering the concept of picking a candidate in a Palin-less race, I have come to the conclusion that we are just not going to get what we need to renew and restore America this go around. In 2008, it was this writer's opinion that if the Republicans won the election, whoever got the nomination would be someone who could stop the bleeding but who would not be the truly bold leader needed to lift America's spirits and motivate it back into greatness. Now that things are even worse now, the sentiment is still the same regarding the 2012 field. Nonetheless, we still must win the election.

We can look for stronger leadership after we win. We can look at renewing and reforming the Republican Party so that it turns away from the stale establishment politics of the permanent political class and embraces the grass roots more. We can move the GOP toward creating a better and more fertile environment for citizen politicians and conservatives who bring common sense ideas to the table.

We can start with raising and discussing these issues at the GOP Convention in 2012. We can follow up with that by encouraging Sarah Palin to run for president in the future and to make it clear that renewing and restoring America cannot happen unless we renew and restore the Republican Party. This must happen if the GOP is to avoid giving cause for the rise of a third party. As a Republican, I encourage the party to avoid this.

For Sarah Palin, this means the letters, the tweets and the online encouragement isn't going to stop. We needed her now more than ever, but that doesn't mean we won't need her in the future. There just isn't anyone else out there right now that can take hold of this tiger and tame it completely like she can. Bold leadership is always going to be in demand as long as its absence continues to leave the gaping hole we have now.

Anyone associated with the Republican establishment and those in the party who would rather sacrifice principle simply for the sake of winning will continue to have a problem with the conservative movement. The pale pastels of safety are easier to pursue than the bold colors that are truly needed at this time to not only defeat Obama, but to make sure that liberals never gain that much traction ever again. It may seem safe to elect moderates, but when conservatism isn't applied by those moderates when they get into power, their policies fail and the people always turn to the other party, the Democrat Party.

Mitt Romney's biggest challenge with the conservative movement is that he is symbolic of the Republican establishment. The establishment wants to vote safe at a time when we need sudden and relentless reform. This is what's wrong with the GOP and explains why Romney's poll numbers remain steady rather than going up. The rank and file are looking for a bold and dynamic leader who is going to challenge the status quo in order to renew and restore America while ending socialism and crony capitalism outright.

That search will not stop until that leader steps up or until we find someone who will. Nothing less than top shelf leadership will suffice.

With Sarah Palin not in the presidential race, it's been extremely difficult to find a candidate that fits the bill. This blogger understands that we have to beat Obama, but who we beat him with is totally up in the air. There isn't one candidate that screams out "I'm the one" the way Palin did. We have Herman Cain. We have Newt Gingrich. We have Rick Santorum. We have Michele Bachmann. They seem to be the best of the bunch, but they all have flaws. At some point we are going to have to overlook flaws, unfortunately, this election cycle.

Luckily for us, none of our candidates are as flawed as Obama is. That ought to buy us some time when we win. Winning the election in 2012 is only step one. Step two is learning how to be the party and power yet still be dissatisfied enough to want to work even harder toward finding better leaders to help renew and restore the country. We can start with the Tea Party. We can start with Congress. But someday, someone who believes she doesn't need a title may have to take one on in order to finish the job.

Palin Exposes Problems in GOP by Not Running

More and more, people are starting to see that Sarah Palin's decision to not run has left a gaping hole in the Republican field. Ever since she hit the campaign trail in 2008, the left wing media has pummeled her and the Republican establishment has been silent – and in some cases complicit. While Republican establishment types cringed behind closed doors fearing a run or weaved their fears tactfully into articles and commentaries leading up to the 2012 race, millions of regular everyday Americans were becoming fans on her Facebook page, with many of them giving time and/or money to support her. Even the most ardent of Palin supporters are finding out now that there was a lot more support for her than even they thought. Now that she’s not running, we’re learning a lot more about the GOP.

We know about Organize4Palin and the thousands of “boots on the ground” activists they had positioned to be ready to spring into action in case she did run. We have seen a massive proliferation of conservative and pro-Palin blogs and websites on the internet over the past three years. Prior to her withdrawal, it was this observer’s understanding and expectation that the media and the establishment would be astounded by the number of Palin supporters that would just come pouring out of the wood work as soon as she announced. There was nothing secret or hidden about the agenda. It was out there, wide open for the media, the Republican establishment and for anyone else who wanted to see it – unless of course they didn’t want you to see it.

By her not running, we’re finding out about the depth of her support anyway. We’re finding that Palin supporters aren’t the uneducated folks the media led us to believe they were. There were thousands of people talking to each other on the internet about her, networking and organizing for her with the kind of effectiveness that professional political consulting firms would die for. There were attorneys, business owners, writers, business owners, professional people as well as regular working people all giving of themselves in one way or another.

While some may want to view Palin supporters as star struck fans chasing windmills, the fact of the matter is that your regular Palin supporter is a well studied, well informed voter who was much more deeply aware of the issues and the web that was being weaved to get her into the presidency than the media or the GOP establishment would want you to know. They knew how big the army was getting, and it is big.

What will hurt the GOP in the long run is that they may be losing many of these supporters who are new to the process when it would be easy to bring them into the party tent if it was more receptive to them. These potential Republican voters who are new to political activism, yet highly educated from researching issues due to their interest in Palin, are finding out along with the rest of us what the real Republican Party looks like; and they don’t like what they see.

They’re not dreamers blinded by their allegiance to Sarah Palin. It’s the media, those that didn’t want to her to win and the GOP establishment who are blinded by their hatred and fear of her so much that they refused to acknowledge the size and strength of her following and now risk alienating them because of this. The political vacuum that has been left as a result of her decision is evident in the way many conservatives are finding it hard to back a candidate; and the ones who are backing candidates are doing so with much softer support than Palin would have gotten.

Sarah Palin articulated a pure brand of conservatism that resonated completely with the values that most people agree with when polled on the issues. It’s more than just the charisma or her ability to give a great speech that fires people up. She resonates on all levels. The media and the GOP establishment preferred to ignore that rather than to embrace it.

A few fat cats ran a campaign to draft Chris Christie and party leaders acted as if there was this massive groundswell for him. The media gave this round the clock coverage until he gave the press conference to announce he wasn’t running and then it was over. There was no crying or gnashing of teeth. That level of heartache is only reserved for those with a deeply devoted and widespread following.

Running parallel to the Christie story was the far less reported one about the millions of Palin supporters and legions of activists throughout America who were clamoring for her to run. While the story of a few Republican Party insiders trying to convince Christie to run was ginned up, millions of people waiting for a Palin decision were ignored. Despite the lack of media coverage and attention from the Republican Party, the tidal wave of shock and disappointment over her announcement not to run was felt by millions of people across the country instantly because she announced her decision on the Mark Levin Show. It is, after all, talk radio and the new media where most of those who seek real news coverage go.

How this will ultimately affect the Republican Party is yet to be seen. We are already starting to see some of the effects. Reaction to what is happening with the current GOP field has not been positive. A variety of concerns are bubbling to the surface. There is the concern that establishment favorite Mitt Romney may not be able to earn the support of the Tea Party. There is the concern that even some of the more conservative candidates have glitches that prevents them from drawing the enthusiasm of the base the way Palin did. There is the concern the candidates will beat each up so badly that the nominee would be damaged coming out of the gate.

Robert Eugene Simmons, Jr. at American Thinker goes as far as to say that because Palin’s not in the race, Obama is going to win.

The calculus is fairly simple: the media and GOP establishment want Romney to be the nominee. Once a progressive is at the head of the Republican ticket, low turnout for Republicans will hand a narrow victory to Obama.
…
In 2008 the Democrats dodged a bullet because they hadn't counted on a Palin VP nomination galvanizing a dispirited Republican party. Without Palin, or another charismatic authentic conservative, Obama would have swept the election in a landslide.

The activism and excitement Governor Palin brought into the 2008 campaign spilled over much more easily into the Tea Party movement following the election than it would have without her. Over the course of the last three years, she has pulled millions of people (including young people, working people, women and minorities) who have never been politically active into the conservative movement. Surely she has her standard middle class white male followers, but her support is so diverse that there are even gay organizations that support her and gays who are not into identity politics who just happened to mix in heterogeneously with the rest of the people behind her. There are Democrats who would give their left arm for such a diverse base.

Kevin Ainsworth at Conservatives4Palin points out a serious issue with the political system.

She was the one everybody was waiting to enter the GOP contest and would have been the frontrunner. Having become the nominee, thanks to your help and support, she would have probably beaten Obama and become President as you all so desperately wanted. But at what cost? People and companies donating $1 billion will want something for that money. To get the money in the first place for the campaign they would probably have put conditions on it. Let’s face it – they would not have wanted her talking about crony capitalism for a start! She would have been shackled during the election and then would not have been free to do all those things you dream about and which she believes in once she was elected.

There is a theme in Ainsworth's article which is showing up in a lot of writing coming from Palin supporters recently following her announcement. It’s something the GOP really ought to pay attention to. The notion of “we the people” is a concept that holds incredible weight, which stands as a great sales pitch for the Republican Party to use in order to draw millions back into the tent and which presents a way to grow deep roots into the political culture by empowering those who would otherwise be cynical of a process that keeps candidates beholden to special interests.

In its greed and lust for power, the Republican Party has chosen to alienate these voters by using the politics of crony capitalism and big money donors as its strategy for gaining and holding power. Some will contend that this is a reality of modern politics and that trying to win elections by rejecting this formula is a death blow for any wannabe candidate who seeks elected office on a populist message based on the will of the people as exercised through grass roots activism. Accepting this, though, means that you don’t believe that the Palin model is doable with the right amount of effort and support, nor do you believe that the fight by regular people to have a say is worthwhile.

Even worse, accepting the electoral model status quo means accepting the systemic problems that allowed socialism and progressivism to flourish in the first place. As long as the system favors the powerful over the little guy instead of balancing it for all, the pool of disenchanted poor and working class who respond to everything with knee jerk emotions will be a recruiting haven for liberals, statists and socialists.

For decades, Americans have sat at the broken red light waiting for someone else to fix it. When Palin decided that she would run that light and millions followed her, the notion of “sheep no more” was born.

Just as frustrated motorists will all join in running the broken red light as soon as the front guy goes, so will frustrated citizens join a political movement that aims to buck the status quo if there is a trustworthy leader with the right support to follow.

The establishment has become like those cars that won’t run the light and we poor saps who get stuck behind a bad nominee will end up having to lay on the horn for another four years until either Palin runs next time around or someone else realizes that neither Obama nor an establishment Republican is willing or able to fix it.

"Unless there is a radical change in policy -- implemented by  a new president -- the US may be transformed into an Europeanized business model that saps entrepreneurship and shifts the ownership of wealth from the ordinary citizen to oligarchs in industry and banking like the cabals who pull the strings in the EU," Bernie Reeves writes at American Thinker.

The Republicans have alienated a large voting bloc by being silent or even complicit in their criticism of Palin for running that metaphorical red light. They should be capturing that enthusiasm and bottling it for future electoral victories. My late father said “the older you get the dumber you get.” How the Republican Party mutated into the party it is today, especially after Ronald Reagan invigorated it and handed it a new generation of voters, leads me to believe that my dad was right.

Despite whatever reason Palin decided not to run (whether it be for the security of her family or simply because she feels she can make more money while being more successful effecting change as a private citizen), there surely was no encouragement for her to decide the other way coming from the Republican establishment. Rather than go to Wasilla, they went to Trenton instead. They chose to shun her and fear her rather than to embrace her as the catalyst necessary for reviving the party and bringing in new members.

If everyone, including the party establishment, got behind her early on and stood up for her, she may have felt more of the calling. Instead, she may be thinking "why bother" knowing that she would be out there swinging in the breeze if she had run and won the nomination in a party that continues to be hostile to her. If they really knew how big of a voting bloc they were ignoring, they wouldn’t have insulted our intelligence by treating her and her followers like they were lightweights.

It wouldn’t be fair to blame the Republican Party outright for Palin’s decision to not run. It was her decision after all. But, it’s not unreasonable to blame the Republican Party for their absence while her supporters and the more fair minded (many of whom vote Republican) were out there defending her.

It’s fair to be critical of the party for not being more encouraging toward her and for not working harder on creating a political environment where more people like her feel more confident about running for political office. Maybe by not running, she will end up being more effective in bringing about change when her absence in the race makes the Republican Partys’ heart grow fonder and they realize that without her there, the RINO dishes keep piling up in the political sink and the conservative ones are still spotty.

We must understand first and foremost that the progressive movement has flourished for decades in an environment created by crony Republicans whose only real difference with the Democrat Party is that they prefer crony capitalism over crony socialism. For them it’s not about big government versus small government; it’s about who gets to run the government. While the center right cronies exchange power back and forth with the center left cronies each election cycle, “we the people” get left holding the bag even though it’s “we the people” who they keep getting to pull the levers or press the touch screens for them.

The days of just waltzing into the voting booth and voting Republican may be over if serious changes are not made in regards to what the Republican Party really stands for and the types of leaders it really wants to support. We may have to pull that lever this one last time just to get rid of Obama, but once Obama’s gone it has to be time for a serious discussion about whether the GOP wants to return to just business as usual without the socialism or if in fact they can be serious about executing the will of “we the people.”

We can believe all we want in small government and individual empowerment and responsibility. But, until we reform the GOP and assume the power necessary to effect change within the party, we will never be able to reform Washington and assume the power necessary to effect change within our government.

It's "we the people" who should be able to decide who our nominee is and which direction the Republican party should go. This means challenging the establishment and reforming the party in such a way that it can embrace candidates like Palin instead of allowing them to feel like their family’s security is at stake or that the shackles of running for office outweigh the freedom of earning money on the open market. There is only so much crap even deeply committed patriots are willing to put up with before they say no to running. As a result, we get leaders with glitches instead of leaders with principles.

Some see the GOP as a party of the circular firing squad. Others see it as a party of blue bloods who keep shooting themselves in the feet to prevent themselves from running toward a more non-conventional candidate who just happens to have her pulse on the real feelings and desired direction of the American people. Because of this, we will once again go through the exercise of nominating someone who bores us to death but who is less of a statist than the other guy.

There’s a reason why the party establishment fears reform candidates like Palin or refuses to give “we the people” the appropriate say. All the big money that goes into funding the supposedly pro-capitalism party comes from people who are afraid that they can’t succeed without having their hand on the till in one way or another. They build their crony networks which in turn corrupts the capitalist system because they operate under the assumption that you can’t beat city hall. If they won’t allow people like Palin to change this, they will be right in their self-fulfilling manifestation of why it has to be that way.

Let’s face it. If you try to build a business on your own these days you either have to grease the system or beat it in order to be successful. Try beating the Federal government’s regulatory agencies, the IRS and the EPA and tell me whether or not it’s easier to just divvy up with the boys. You can understand why cronies do it. You just can’t understand why they won’t fix it. Therein lies the frustration and the finger pointing. The cronies are too comfortable to change and the American people are growing impatient with their being intransient.

The Founding Fathers would be beside themselves with grief if they were here now to see how badly our system of government has deviated from their intentions. The system that is supposed to be working with us now works against us. Many of us know that if it was the way they intended it to be, we’d be free and prosperous. That’s worth fighting for. That’s worth building a movement around. The call for restoration and renewal is not a slogan. It’s a clarion call for a political party that would like to be able to win elections again with the support of the people rather than with contempt for the people.

Socialism doesn’t work. It doesn’t have a source renewable revenue source. It drains from the rich and then collapses when the rich are no more. Crony capitalism doesn’t work. It keeps the wealth and power in the hands of a few at the expense of the many. Cronyism is born of cynicism. So is socialism. Some become exclusive members of the system and some work to collapse it. There is another alternative: fix it, renew it and restore it. This is where “we the people” come in. This is the alternative the Republican Party needs to offer if it is to avoid going the way of the Whigs.

Limited government, personal responsibility, a strong family unit, a belief in God and free market capitalism will work only if people are willing to stand up for it the way Sarah Palin has been standing up for it. There are millions of us out there. The idea that we can grow wealth across along socioeconomic lines in a free market economy is not a fantasy. A rising tide will lift all boats. Sarah Palin tells us that sudden and relentless reform is the only way to make this happen.

By not embracing this sudden and relentless reform, the Republican Party acts against its own best long term interests. Sarah Palin and her ideas are a meal ticket for the Republican Party. Her base would be an instant source of membership growth, if only the party would listen. Imagine how great the Republican Party would be if it embraced its Reagan roots and was in sync with Palin in fighting for energy independence, smaller government and an end to crony capitalism.

Everyone keeps bringing up Sarah Palin as a possible third party candidate. You want to know why? She is a third party. Her movement is big enough to put real numbers on the board had she decided to run that way. But she’s smart and she’s patriotic. She would rather give the Republican Party more time to reform itself appropriately than hand the election to Obama by splitting the vote.

Only time will tell where the Republican Party will go following Palin’s withdrawal from the race. Had there been a better candidate or even a comparable alternative, her supporters would have flocked to that candidate by now in much the same way Reagan supporters flocked to her in 2008. “We the people” know what we want and whether it’s Palin or someone who represents what she does, that’s the candidate “we the people” are looking for.

With her absent from the Republican field, we are getting to see a lot more about the current state of the GOP. Although she is still out there fighting for the cause, you can tell that by not having her plank in the race, the structure is weakened. What we’re not hearing in the debates from that 9th podium behind which stands no candidate is louder than what we are hearing from the other 8. The GOP establishment might have been scared of the spider, but they may just find out that there a lot more bugs now that the spider is not there.

The Naked Communist

When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, many wondered how it was possible that America could actually elect a radical progressive to the presidency. But for those of us who have been studying politics for a long time, the only thing that was surprising about it was how wide out in the open the progressive and socialist movements were as soon as Obama had captured the attention of an adoring public and as soon as it was evident that the media was going to go along.

Since the turn of the last century, the progressive and socialist movements have operated under cover. They weaved themselves into what appeared to be more mainstream causes like the labor movement, the environmental movement and the peace movement. Their intention from the very beginning was to infiltrate the institutions, the culture, the academia, the government and the media. Slowly and methodically, progressives gained powerful positions in journalism, in universities and in elected office.

Bill Steiger-wald of the Tribune Review published an interview with David Horowitz, who wrote the book The Shadow Party with Richard Poe. "What they want is a form of socialism," Horowitz said. "They don’t articulate it as such, but if you read their statements and as we show in the book, their agenda really is socialist." The Shadow Party was funded by George Soros and has been in operation since prior to 2004.

It goes beyond that, though. During the 1960's, the radical movement led by Saul Alinsky was designed to marginalize normalcy. The bedrocks of our society such as the family and the belief in God came under attack by progressives and radicals just as the anti-war hippie movement was ratcheting up. The ability to get young people to question their religious and social beliefs led to an acceptance among those in the counter-culture of alternative lifestyles. Despite their pleas for fairness, the goal was not to gain acceptance for alternative lifestyles, but rather for alternative lifestyles to gain prominence over conventional lifestyles. It wasn't enough to be tolerant of alternative lifestyles; it was more important to despise traditional lifestyles.

Originally, progressives would have continued their burrowing underground which was already weakening the surface soil of our cultural and political lives had Hillary Clinton gone on to win the nomination in 2008. The movement's strategy can be likened to the question "how do you boil a frog?" The answer: slowly, so that the frog doesn't realize it and jump out of the pot.

Barack Obama was a lightning bolt to the progressive movement. He brought a level of excitement that the Left had never seen before. His presidential candidacy was on fire and people were hanging on his every word. The liberals' political messiah had arrived and the moment could not be wasted. In their excitement, socialists and progressives saw the Obama movement as the legitimizer.

Once Barack Obama was able to confront Joe the Plumber with "don't you think the wealth needs to be redistributed?" and there was no blow back, the closets were opened and the commies all came pouring out. They were openly socialist now. There was no longer a need to window dress it in liberal speak. The progressive movement became so excited that in their premature infatuation with Obama, they shot the works rather than continue their patient pursuit of socialism.

So while many in the Republican party and the conservative movement continued to believe that the silent majority, the grown ups if you will, would always outnumber the freaks, the undercurrent was eroding the political ground underneath them. The radicals had spent decades working for their moment and they thought they got it in 2008 when Barack Obama beat a gentile John McCain and a muzzled Sarah Palin. The conventional thought even in that election was to take the high road and the American people would ultimately vote for the grown ups.

It didn't happen this time.

Suddenly, the conservative movement was forced to wake up and confront what was really happening. In their excitement, the Left turned the heat up too quickly on the frog. Conservatives figured it out. They learned the Alinsky rules for radicals. They read the opponent's playbook and put themselves on equal footing again so that they could take them on and beat them at their own game. The emergence of the Breitbart "Big" sites, the rise in the number of conservative blogs and websites and the use of new media like Facebook and Twitter became the method by which the Right would now be able to more effectively take on the Left.

The Tea Party became the movement that would push back on the Shadow Party and the progressive movement. Ordinary citizens who were now properly alarmed by what these sinister leftists were up to got off their couches and took to rallies and town hall meetings across the country. The frog had jumped out of the pot.

Now that we know how it happened and why it still happens, we can work toward defeating it. It's important for everyone to know that there are deep roots to this movement. Everyone needs to watch the video at Voting American. It will open your eyes. It's not conspiracy theory and it's not alarmist. It's based on information gathered by a man who attended a communist meeting over 15 years ago. The video explains how the communist goals, first discovered by Cloen Skousen who wrote "The Naked Communist" in 1958 were being achieved.

CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ["]united force["] to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike. 

It's pretty frightening when you realize how many of these goals have already been achieved.

The goal of attaining a socialist new world order requires undermining and collapsing the American system. The first step is to fundamentally transform America into a European social style democracy. The European model is characterized by a society where roughly half the people pay into the system and the other half take from the system. Considering that nearly half of all Americans now pay no income tax, you could say they probably have already achieved this first goal.

Palin Continues to Lay it Down During String of Successful Speeches

Sarah Palin articulated all of the positions that would have suited her greatly as a presidential candidate had she run during her speeches this past week in St. Louis, Virginia and South Korea. She continues to lay out exactly what needs to be done to save our country. Those speeches obviously would have been more powerful had she still been a potential candidate or an announced candidate; however, they still held enough punch to keep everyone aware of what we need in a candidate in order to fix our country.

Governor Palin continues to keep the issues of energy independence, crony capitalism, repealing Obamacare and electing commonsense conservatives to Congress on the table. It hurts to know that she will not be seeking the presidency. But what will hurt even more is if we don't continue to run with the themes and positions that she continues to take. These ideas cannot lose steam and eventually fall off the table.

In the coming weeks, we will need to decide on which candidate to back. Tonight is the debate at Dartmouth College. We will be looking to see which candidate comes closest to keeping to the philosophical tenets of Palin conservatism. The key word here is "comes closest." We're not going to get perfection. Perfection by my political definition is not running.

The best way to explain this is by using sports analogies. If Palin is a strike in bowling, the candidate the GOP nominates needs to be at least 8 or 9 pins down. Palin not in the race is like the Yankees not being in the playoffs for me. I still love the sport, but the games aren't as much fun. At this point, the best we can root on is an Obama loss to a Tea Party acceptable Republican nominee that is the closest we can find to Palin on the issues.


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A Fair and Balanced Assessment of Sarah Palin's Decision

During her speech at Liberty University in Virginia over the weekend, Sarah Palin spoke about mean emails that she had received from supporters who were upset over her decision not to run for president. It's understandable that the diverse group of people who have been behind her since as early as 2007 and 2008 would have such a diverse range of responses. As a holder of a B.A. in political science and years of intense interest in politics, this blogger can only try to look over the Palin saga of the last three years and come to some intellectually honest, fair and balanced conclusions as to what happened and what is happening.

I didn't join the Palin army for the warm fuzzies. I didn't join the Palin army because I wanted to be in a fan club or because I wanted to join a social group. I joined the Palin army because I thought she represented exactly what America needed at a time when it needed it most. I have my political biases. I'm a conservative Republican which makes me a partisan. But I also look at reality and the reality was that we were no longer a nation where Democrats and Republicans took turns sharing power while loving the same system.

As a political scientist, it has always been my assertion that our political system was great not just when conservatives won, but when the system breathed in such a way that it allowed Americans of all political persuasions to feel as if they had a stake in the game and where people across the spectrum felt as if they could always count on the American experiment to allow them the freedom to speak their opinions even if I thought they were wrong. This has changed.

Prior to 2008, there were far less people than now who were aware of The Shadow Party, the Alinsky radical movement and the goals of the New World Order and progressive movements. Without a leader like Palin to speak to the truth and without the Tea Party to pull forth the interest of voters to investigate more deeply, chances are we would be much further along in losing our republic and the basic tenets upon which it has stood for over 200 years than we are now.

Our movement has helped to slow the progression of socialism and systemic transformation. We saved the conservative movement from dying a quick and painful death following the 2008 election. But, the progressive and socialist movements continue to advance, even out in the open now, despite this.

When you see things like Fast and Furious, Solyndra and Occupy Wall Street literally playing out under our noses at a time when Obamacare is still the law of the land, you have to realize that they're not stopping because a bunch of people are holding Tea Party rallies or working toward electing Constitutional conservatives to office.

The American progressive movement can claim that they have achieved their first goal: to create a European style socialist-democracy in America. This for them is the stepping stone to collapsing our system and bringing about a new world order where the United States answers to a "democratically selected" world body that is run by socialists, environmentalists and those who believe the United States influence in the world has waned.

These people actually believe that we can live in a collectivist society which can be perpetually funded by the redistribution of wealth from the producers to the non-producers. They have not been able to convince partisans like me or even anyone with an objective viewpoint that the engine of redistribution can run perpetually based on the contributions of the wealthy. Margaret Thatcher put it best when she said that eventually you will run out of other people's money.

Yet, the progressives continue to blindly believe in a Utopia that is unsustainable. Even worse, they continue to create forms and functions to grow their movement so that they can capitalize on the emotions of the people to turn against the capitalist system and comply with its dismantling.

That, folks, is blind derangement.

It has been said that there are those who believe Palinistas have been so blinded by their emotions that they are likened to people blindly in love who will think nothing ill of their beloved. For some in the movement this may be true, but for far different reasons than those which blind the Utopians of the progressive movement. The emotions that drive Palinistas are derived in a deep seeded patriotism and love of country. Those who are my age or older can remember a time when those emotions were real and justified by the actions and successes of a man named Ronald Reagan. Just because it seems we can't have that again doesn't mean that we shouldn't have tried.

Rather than speak for other Palinistas, however, let me set aside this criticism and give it to you straight from where I sit. When America was at the brink of financial disaster as it looked down the silos of Soviet ICBMs, Ronald Reagan saved us. The props and the players are different today than it was then, but the dire nature of the situation is just as bad.

Sarah Palin represented a charismatic leadership which embodied our highest aspirations for our nation and she demonstrated by both her record in Alaska and by her articulation of the conservative philosophy that she had what was necessary to defeat our current enemies both within and abroad. She brought hope to a table that was about to collapse under the weight of socialism, big government and regulation. She has not walked away from that table, but she has chosen not to flip it and reset it the way it needs to be reset. She has said though that she will continue to help all of us flip that table. Together, we may be able to do it, but it will not happen as quickly and it will not be as effective if she was to get the title necessary to have access to that table.

She was our "Manchurian candidate" just as Obama's was theirs. Only she would be going in with a noble purpose and a transparent agenda to renew and restore America. We needed to beat the liberals at their own game. We created new media outlets to push our positions and opinions. We elected Tea Party candidates to the House of Representatives. We inspired bloggers and activists to challenge academia and the culture so that they no longer had a unilateral hold on American thought.

We were in the process of doing everything we needed to do to infiltrate the system and fix it. We learned that from the liberals who infiltrated academia, the media, government and Hollywood. We learned how the Rules for Radicals work. We realized, just as the characters on the "To Serve Man" episode of the Twilight Zone were being fooled by a promise of a false Utopia, that the Obama manifesto of hope and change was a cook book. Until our voices could be heard, millions of Americans, metaphorically speaking, walked into the spaceships and were carted off to become food for the aliens. These are the Obama voters who are now unemployed or who are having their homes foreclosed upon.

Now that you understand why I became a Palinsta, you need to understand why she is not going to save us right now. Some of us may feel as if we have wasted three years of our lives fighting for her. Others may feel that its still been worth it because they can understand and respect her decision. The range of emotions goes across the gamut.

We are hearing all kinds of opinions. She played us. She really was considering running. She resigned her governorship for the money. She resigned her governorship for the sake of the country. She gave in to the smear campaign. She is stronger than the smear campaign and she has another plan of attack. She's got skeletons in her closet. It's impossible she has any skeletons because she's the most vetted politician in history.

We can go back and forth on any number of these issues. But, the bottom line is this: Sarah Palin is not running for president. For whatever reason she has chosen not to run, it doesn't matter anymore. We are on our own. Not in the sense that she has abandoned us. She hasn't. She is still going to fight for the cause. But, we are on our own in a sense that we will not be able to elect a leader to do everything we know needs to be done. Therefore, we all must do it without a title and without regard for whatever happens and whoever ends up in the White House.

There is an organization of Palin supporters called The Earthquake. I am a member of that group. We want to draft Sarah Palin and get her to reconsider her decision. I know the political science textbook says she can't walk back or reverse her decision. I know leaders make decisions and stick to those decisions no matter what. I'm not trying to dispute the group or piss them off. Miracles can happen. But I want to be very realistic here.

The Earthquake movement reminds me of the day when I went to Belmont Park and lost all my money. The day was over. I had 2 dollars in my pocket and then was one more race. So I bet that last 2 bucks on a trifecta bet with very high odds. I wasn't expecting to hit that triple but I wasn't giving up on horse racing either. If it hit, it hit. If it didn't, I was already reconciled to the fact that my day was over.

This is not bitter dregs. I really enjoyed myself that day at Belmont Park. The memories I have of being there that day with my now late father are forever etched in my heart. Being a part of the Palin army has put me in touch with a lot of great people. I will always be part of this movement to take back America. I have great memories of it as well. My political life will always be on a path different from one that it would have taken had Sarah Palin never come to the forefront.

In the coming days, weeks, months and even years, the ramifications and the results of Palin's decision will be made clearer. People like Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck contribute greatly to the cause. In that vein, one would expect Sarah Palin to continue contributing greatly to the cause as well. 

Although I know I will not come home with the prize of a shining city on a hill the same way I knew I would not come home from Belmont Park that day with pockets full of money, I also know there are race cards run every day at tracks across America and there are political races run every year in November. Palin may or not be the horse the next time around. We will never have another Ronald Reagan. But, someday we will have another great one whether its Palin or someone else. I just hope to be alive to see it; and I hope there is still an America left for them to lead.

We May Have to Refurbish Instead of Renew and Restore

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Öd’ und leer das Meer.
-T.S. Eliot



Having been lucky enough to have lived in a time when leadership was defined by a man named Ronald Reagan, it's always been understandable to this writer that those who would come after him could never live up to his greatness. Selecting candidates in primaries and general elections since then has been more like horseshoes than hand grenades. Reality has always told this blogger that Reagan was a once in a lifetime deal. Coming close to the spike was more likely than getting another ringer.

Renewing and restoring America is a chore only for a great leader. While we can never rely on one politician to "save us," the dynamics necessary to make this happen require an army millions strong and a leader that can use that power to transcend the usual ebbs and flows of normal politics. Without that next great one, we may end up merely refurbishing this thing instead of renewing and restoring it.

Robert Eugene Simmons pens a piece at American Thinker that takes a bit more of a grim view than I do, but ultimately the gist of what he is saying makes a point that has to be understood. While it's a stretch to contend that Obama will win now that Palin has withdrawn, he correctly puts forth, using Herman Cain as an example, "the liberal media will troll through every relationship, every business deal, every word he has ever spoken. If that fails, the lies will start." He makes a valid point when he writes "[i]f Palin had been in the race, the smear tactics would have failed" because they have already thrown everything they have at her.

Simmons' theory is the media will destroy all of Romney's opponents first, handing him the nomination so that they can turn on him the way they turned on McCain in 2008. It's a well thought out piece, but I still believe we can beat Obama without Palin. Regardless of whether it's Romney or someone else, the Republican nominee will have an electorate not as easily lied to by the media as they were four years ago. There is no lie the media can tell the American people today that will erase the unemployment checks, the foreclosure notices and the obvious decline in the American standard of living.

What happens to our country after Obama loses is another thing. Socialism will continue to fester underneath the surface (see Occupy Wall Street). Crony capitalism cannot just be taken down with a speech in Iowa; it's got to be taken down by the person who gave the speech. If the person who is supposed to be taking it down isn't running, do you really think any of these other Republican candidates are going to be able to do it?

Obama will bring about his own demise. His policies are disastrous. The country is sick of "hope and change," and any political scientist worth his weight in salt will tell you that the American people always vote their pocketbook unless there is a serious issue of national defense (a la FDR).

But lets face facts here. We're not going to get a brand new shiny city on a hill like we originally hoped. Instead, we'll probably get a refurb. We can push back the socialism with the defeat of Obama. We can even start creating jobs again and get the economy back on track. But if you think the systemic problems are going to get fixed, I have a bridge to nowhere I'd like to sell you.

Anthony James at Tea Party Tribune sums up the point when he writes:

In the nearly three years since Obama’s victory, American conservatives have remained sane largely by keeping our focus on that bit of light at the end of the tunnel. That bit of light is also the most brightly shining superstar in all of American politics. We were able to bide our time and suffer the horrific indignities of the Obama administration by clinging to the hope, the desperate belief, that come 2012 we would have a chance to watch Governor Sarah Palin do for America what she had done for Alaska as president of a Nation once again allowed the opportunity to draw itself up to its full height.
...
We also knew that of all the candidates who might win in 2012 for the Republican ticket, only Sarah had a well known history of hunting down those of her predecessors who had run afoul of the law and having them fitted for state-issued jumpsuits. Nothing less would have been appropriate in Alaska under Governor Palin, and nothing less will be remotely acceptable now for America.

We know the next political relationship will be better than the one we have now, but it will not be the one we want. We will have to settle for something less than Palin for president. The Obama nightmare may come to an end, but the dream is on hold, too. Survival is better than destruction. But, abundance is no longer on the table.

We know she's not going anywhere. She will still be active in the cause. She is still an influential voice. We will never stop agreeing with her. We will never stop loving what she has done for our country. But she needs to understand that no one other than her is worthy enough for her army even if they do go out and vote for someone else because they have to.

Sarah Palin has a brighter future ahead of her than America does right now. It will not be until she brings that brightness back to America as our elected leader that our country will ever be renewed and restored. We will be here for her. But for now, it's like watching television when there really isn't anything on.

The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept…
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

Palin Takes the Money and Runs

It's hysterical to watch the left and all the Palin haters crow about how Sarah Palin dragged this thing out for three years just so she could make money. What's even funnier is that those haters are saying we supporters are the suckers for going along with it. Let me straighten them out on something here. The reason why Sarah Palin is making so much money now and having such an impact on the political discourse is because of the haters, not because of her supporters.

The last time I checked, it wasn't a Palin supporter who hand selected the weakest and smallest parts of interviews with Charles Gibson and Katie Couric after dumping hours of footage of her answering over a hundred questions in substantial fashion on the floor. The last time I checked, it wasn't a Palin supporter who colluded with Pete Rouse to fast track the Troopergate investigation so it would time out with her vice presidential run. The last time I checked, it wasn't a Palin supporter making rape jokes about her daughter and the NY Yankees third baseman.

The last time I checked, it wasn't a bunch of pro-Palin bloggers who mocked Trig and spread salacious lies about Bristol and Todd. The last time I checked, it wasn't nearly two dozen Palin supporters who filed frivolous ethics complaints against her while she was governor of Alaska. The last time I checked, it wasn't a pro-Palin talk show host who named her worst person in the world and called her an idiot more than 50 times on the air.

The last time I checked, it wasn't a pro-Palin news organization that spread lies about her record in Alaska with claims that she made Wasilla residents pay for their own rape kits when she was mayor. The last time I checked, there weren't any pro-Palin members of Journolist, a ListServ of so called mainstream media folks who colluded to print and broadcast smears of Palin as objective news.

The last time I checked, it wasn't pro-Palin lunatics sending her death threats, stalking her or moving in next door to her to write an unsubstantiated hit piece about her. The last time I checked, it wasn't a Palin supporter who told Bristol her mother was a whore. I could go on and on, but you get the picture by now.

Those who forced her hand when she resigned the governorship, who lied about her on their news shows on television, who printed garbage in mainstream media publications and who threatened her and her family either directly or through harassment and intimidation are responsible for Sarah Palin leaving a $125,000 a year job and becoming wealthy as the result of her books, her speeches, her documentary series and her appearances on Fox News.

To all the haters out there, I just want you to know that as deeply saddened as I am by Sarah Palin's decision to not run for president, I take consolation in the fact that she is a hard to find example of someone who gets screwed over by scumbags and is still able to get rich.

I scratch my head everyday when I look at how messed up our culture is here in America. In America, if you work hard and live right, you're a freak. You don't advance on your merit. Our system is now based on cronyism. Your reward for doing the right thing in America is a pink slip or a barrage of criticism from friends and family because you stand for something. For most people, they see the dirt-bags of America doing well by taking shortcuts, handouts or just plain by doing something something and making a fortune off it because it ends up on YouTube.

Finally, someone gets a break. Who better than Sarah Palin than to heave those heavy bags of money up the driveway there in Wasilla while the people who have done absolutely nothing with their lives sit in their dingy basements writing bullshit about her because they have nothing better to do with their miserable lives. They are poor, they are ignorant and they are worthless to society. Yet their words make it up the media flagpole. Go figure.

Most of all, thanks to Sarah Palin as Gary P. Jackson points out, the truth about people in the media and bad apples in the conservative movement has been exposed.

Something else, by exposing the dirt-bags and hate mongers, Sarah also showed us some in the media that have turned out to be honest, straight up guys. People who we may have never trusted because of the media outlets they work for. We are better off for that as well. We now know who we can and can’t trust, and know there is no one media outlet that has the monopoly on honest reporters or low-lifes.

Not only has Sarah Palin brought out the bad apples like a gauze pad with antiseptic applied to an infection, she has also brought out legions of people who were never politically active before she hit the scene. Today's youth and older people who weren't that familiar with conservatism are learning more and more about the philosophy because of her in much the same way people of Reagan's time did.

Her influence will be felt for years because she has rallied conservatives and brought many new people into the fold. Yeah, haters, I guess we got taken. The hating of Sarah Palin has not only put a lot of money in her pocket, it put a lot of knowledge into the heads of many who still might just be buying into the nonsense being spewed by left wing radicals posing as mainstream journalists.

The conservative movement will continue to expand as more and more Americans come to realize how badly the progressive movement has messed up America. For decades, progressives have been infiltrating our body politic. One woman decided to speak out. Although she got creamed for it, she still came out stronger and the movement came out stronger.

We weren't duped. Those who voted for Obama and who continue to this day to spew forth his class warfare nonsense and his love of big government are the ones who have been duped. The real idiots are those who think we can piss away all our money on crony socialism (otherwise known as Stimulus programs) and then claim that it's Bush's fault we're in the boat we're in now. Mark Levin said the government sabotages private industry to create the justification to regulate them and then everyone demonized those industries. If you don't believe that, then you're the one being duped.

The next time someone tells you that Sarah Palin did all this for the money, tell them as well she should! There is no better way to stick it to the scumbags who messed with her and her family than to walk off with a wad of cash and an army of devoted followers over two millions strong. Good for her.

The Time is Gone

The time is gone, the song is over, Thought I'd something more to say. -Pink Floyd "Time"



Without the one who could fully renew and restore our nation in the White House, we continue to risk our futures on candidates who are unproven or who may give it their best efforts to fix things only to have them ruined down the road when the parties exchange power again. As conservatives, we have never relied on the government to be our provider. But the time is gone when we can truly return our government to its Constitutional roots.

Monstrous government can be made smaller. Regulations can be rolled back. Policies can be implemented to undo what Obama has done. The next president will have that task. But have no illusions. The days of small Constitutional government aren't coming. There may be years of smaller government followed by years of bigger government, but that's the cycle of our political system. We must look at our own lives and our own families and decide how we are going to move forward now.

It's about the money. No, not Sarah Palin's money, our money. While we are conservatives who have never believed in government doing things for us, we must accept the fact that our government will always at some level be a hindrance rather than part of the solution to our efforts to fully defend ourselves from the flaming arrows of life's controllable misfortunes.

If we are to survive in the America we know and love, we must create it and nurture it in our own corners of the world. This means a continued faith in God and a perpetual effort at bettering ourselves spiritually and financially.

This writer intends on perservering in my professional life toward a goal of being financially well off enough to be able to solve earthly problems and to secure myself against the ravages of taxation, bureaucracy and regulation. Seeking wealth is not an exercise of greed. It is an exercise of self defense. I encourage all my readers to learn all they can about success and to go after it.

Sisyphus was no fool. Neither are we Palin supporters. We are fully aware that our political fate is to roll the rock to the top of the shining city on a hill only to have it keep rolling back so that we can undertake the effort again and again. We must accept this life knowing that the only solutions are to accept this political reality and to move forward with faith in God and a love of self improvement. It's not the kill. It's the thrill of the chase that keeps me going.

The Sarah Palin chase is over, but no one can ever take away the thrill. We fought like banshees to defend her from the haters and the media. I actually thought we did a great job. But in the end, it was the abuse to her family and her desire to protect her family from any more abuse which was the thing that weighed her against running. I was wrong. The smear campaign did work. Sarah could have fought with us by her side, but in the end it wasn't Sarah she was concerned about. It was her kids.

Some day I hope that Sarah Palin comes back and destroys the mainstream mafia and the sick evil people that I can't stand living in the same country with. But I couldn't blame her if she just amassed a bunch of wealth and told everyone to go screw off.

I love my country. But like someone who has an addicted or troubled family member, there are times when you can't kill yourself for that person. You can love them. You can do what you can to help them. But you can't lose yourself to their disease. I cannot lose myself to the disease our country is afflicted with.

It's time to move forward and get on my with my life. Blogging and supporting conservative causes will always be in my blood. I will do it when I have the time. My time must be spent more wisely now. I made extra time to support Sarah Palin and the cause because it has always been a business decision.

I've always believed that I could be successful without her, but I also believed that the road to that success would be made right if I could live in a country where you earned based on your merit and you were not stopped by bureacratic roadblocks at every light, every tax form, every permit form, every legal ruling and every idiotic law that environmental whackos have enacted to raise the costs of everything and that crony lawyers have put into place to keep themselves fat at the trough of tort law.

Good luck everyone and may God be with you. There's a hard road ahead. We're on our own now.


-Listen to Patrick's World USA tonight on Blogtalk Radio. Dr. Gina Loudon is my special guest.

Ignoring Sarah Palin

Ever since Sarah Palin hit the national stage, the Democrat Party, the mainstream media and the Republican establishment have gone out of their way to diminish her despite her record and popularity. She was immediately received by the rank and file as a bolt of life saving energy for the GOP, which until that moment was snoozing through John McCain rallies and watching the conservative brand shrivel into a crumpled piece of paper that candidate Obama was just about to sink into a garbage pail like someone playing office basketball.

Her stellar record in Alaska meant nothing to dumpster divers and DNC sanctioned left wing bloggers who would create narratives out of thin air to plant doubts into the minds of the electorate and blot out the incredible accomplishments of someone who has achieved far more than any of her detractors. After being smeared by the mainstream media on the 2008 presidential campaign trail, she returned to Alaska only to find that her life was being re-written in some Kafka-esque way by malcontents and partisans who feared that she would be back in 2012.

Governor Palin’s resignation short circuited the intentional strategy to prevent her from accomplishing anything that she could use on her resume in 2012 by grid locking and overwhelming the Alaska government with numerous frivolous ethics complaints. At the same time, they knew that they could personally bankrupt her with the costs of defending herself from these ridiculous complaints.

Her enemies were surprised and even outraged when she resigned because she outsmarted them by going outside the box to extricate herself from a no win scenario. Although it was politically risky and gave her detractors the ability to spin this brilliant strategy move as “quitting,” the political damage from that was nothing compared to what would have happened had she stayed on.

Although the arguments of today about a Palin presidency are still tainted by caricatures designed to confuse those who don't follow politics closely and fears that have been planted into the minds of some conservatives and Republicans who are gullible enough to believe them, the original smear campaign is not the reason why there are Republicans who seem to be blindly looking past the one person who embodies everything they believe in while they search for a savior or the next Reagan somewhere else.

There are agenda driven establishment Republicans who look at what she did to destroy cronyism in Alaska. They look at her record. They look amongst their crony selves. Then they look back at her record in Alaska again. Of course they’re not going to want her to run. The establishment knows that Palin is a pit bull and they’re all wearing Milk Bone underwear.

That's why this has little to do with a smear campaign started by left wing journalists and some childish malcontent bloggers up in Alaska who wrote stuff like "Trig’s not hers" or that she was having unsubstantiated affairs. This has to do with the good ole boy network.

The only remaining victims of the psychological operation undertaken by the media and the leftovers of the 2008 Obama campaign who participated in the original smear campaign are the "trembling tigers" - non-establishment conservatives and Republicans who like Sarah Palin and agree with her on the issues, but see her as too damaged to win. The lingering effects of this wasted smear campaign can still be felt in arguments across kitchen tables and cocktail tables. But, for the most part, these people can be won over with facts, a strong presidential campaign on Mrs. Palin’s part and a viewing of the movie The Undefeated.

Liberals still fear her, don't get me wrong; but now they count on the Republican establishment to stop her since their efforts have failed. The original smear campaign against Sarah Palin was never designed for the liberal base. The smear campaign was designed for us, the conservative base. It was designed to plant doubts about Sarah Palin in our heads, not in the heads of those who are already pre-disposed to vote against her anyway.

The Republican establishment never stood up for her after the media and the Left continued to denigrate her following the 2008 election. Now we know why. If we don't fight the GOP establishment, then we allow the liberals a back door way of getting what they couldn’t get out of their defunct efforts to lie about her and distort her image.

Sarah Palin is a successful business woman, political activist, public speaker, author, writer and political analyst. If the smear campaign had worked, she’d be bankrupt and living in a trailer park somewhere in Alaska watching herself on the TV show “Where are they now?” She will continue to be widely successful from this point forward because she was savvy enough to unshackle herself from a rigged political and media game following the 2008 campaign.

The time is coming for the Republican Party to choose a nominee to defeat Barack Obama. Some were clamoring for Chris Christie to get into the race before he finally said no. The media covered that with vigor; yet the same clamoring for Sarah Palin to get into the race continues every day with minimal coverage. If you have a handful of Republican establishment fat cats pushing for Christie to get in that gets covered. When millions of regular everyday people are calling on Palin to run, you get nothing from the media. The unwashed masses don’t carry around big bags of money like the fat cats do.

Those who look past Palin are either afraid of her or they don't realize how effective she really can be in taking on the permanent political class in Washington. The flavor of the month candidates that the establishment keeps trying to pick for us keep falling short. They don't match what the people want the way Palin does. They will try to do everything to distract us from her. If you look at how the American people poll on the issues, Palin is a perfect fit. The new strategy to stop Palin now is to simply ignore that and hope the people don't see it while encouraging them to back other candidates by ginning up the notion that she's not running.

They will continue to use the false perceptions that she’s damaged goods or the meme that people are growing impatient with her holding out on making a decision to run. They will claim she's unintelligent and politically polarizing. They will not talk about her record, though. The truth often gets in the way of a good attempt at mind fogging.

It's time for the American people to start asking themselves the right questions. Are the negatives associated with Sarah Palin real or are they imagined? Do we automatically disqualify candidates who have real records with no mitigating blemishes if they are falsely accused of things they are not or have not done? Do we grow impatient with someone because they won’t make a huge personal decision on our time frame?

Aren’t good people hated by bad people and don’t we have a lot of bad people in our country? Is someone who believes the same things that a majority of Americans believe when polled polarizing? Is someone who missed a question or two during a three hour interview unintelligent if they are able to write books, give speeches and maintain a high presence in the national spotlight?

To quote Todd Palin “see The Undefeated.” If you look at what she accomplished in her career in Alaska leading up to her selection for VP in 2008, you will find the keys to a Palin presidency.

Who is better suited to end Obamacare? Who is better suited to end crony capitalism? Who is better suited to revive our economy by unleashing the industrial giant in the energy sector, reforming entitlements and the tax code, eliminating corporate income tax and reducing the enormous regulatory burden on American businesses? Who is more suited to keep us safe from foreign aggressors and terrorists than someone who has taught her political army how to keep their powder dry and pick battles wisely? Who is more suited to make the proper military decisions than someone who has sent her own son into combat?

If money was no object, why would anyone want to pick the second best suit on the rack or the second best car on the lot if you can have the one you really want? Or even worse, why would anyone let the establishment salesman talk them into buying one that isn't anything like what you're looking for?

It's time to do our own research. We know the media lies and that the establishment is running a smoke screen in the hopes that not enough voters see the real Sarah Palin. We can't let our fellow citizens be fed misinformation. If someone is looking for a cat, you don't let them ask the mouse which one to pick.

There is so much about Governor Palin's record that is being overlooked by the mainstream media and the establishment. To draw attention to it now would be devastating to those who are holding their breath hoping they can slip through the rest of this month without a Palin announcement to run.

Watching the Republican establishment try to sell their candidates or get Chris Christie or Jeb Bush into the race reminds me of that CarFax commercial. I'm waiting for someone to ask an establishment Republican pundit why their candidate's record doesn't stack up to Sarah Palin's and hearing "but this is Deal-o-rama!"

If Sarah Palin runs, she will prove to the electorate why she is the best choice. How she campaigns and how she communicates will get that message across. There are plenty of activists ready to jump in and help her. There's a lot of money sitting on the sideline waiting for her to make a decision. There is a country waiting to help her save it.

If Sarah Palin decides not to run, we will have to choose the next best thing. But there is still hope we will be able to choose the genuine article. "The current thinking in GOP election law circles is that the first hard cut-off for entering the race is Oct. 28, when presidential candidates who hope to appear on the ballot in the New Hampshire primary would be required to submit a filing fee from a federally registered presidential campaign committee, according to Politico which is reporting that calls were made by an attorney for SarahPac to early primary states to find out about filing deadlines.

The anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s announcement for the presidency is November 13. That will be too late. Palin will be in North Korea for the World Knowledge Forum between October 11 to 13. Her window to announce will be between October 14 and 28. By the end of the month, we will know Palin's intentions whether she announces them or not. There's no reason to jump ship now after waiting this long.

The question of whether or not we want Sarah Palin to run has already been decided. The media and the GOP establishment won't admit it, but the answer to that is a resounding yes. As Pamela Geller says, "There are millions of us waiting on Sarah. Millions. Go, Sarah, go! Run, Sarah, run!"


Listen to Patrick's World USA on Blogtalk Radio tonight at 11pm ET 10pm CT 8pm PT. Dr. Gina Loudon is my special guest.