#sillysarahfailin' endorses #donaldtrump!

THE GOP "DISSING" OF SARAH PALIN AT THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION IN TAMPA, FLORIDA.

I KNOW SARAH PALIN LACKS THE INNATE ABILITY TO FEEL SHAME, BUT DOES ANYONE ELSE FELL SORRY FOR HER, THAT AS THE LAST VEEP CANDIDATE BEFORE PAUL RYAN, SHE'S PRETTY MUCH persona non grata AT THE GOP NATIONAL CONVENTION?

THE SELF DESCRIBED "GRIZZLY MAMA" FROM WASILLA HAS GOT TO BE SOMEWHERE POUTING AND USING HER "BULLDOG LIPS WITH LIPSTICK" TO LICK HER WOUNDED EGO.

WHAT A SIGHT THAT IS TO BEHOLD -- BEING SHUNNED BY ONE'S OWN PARTY HAS GOT TO BE "A BITTER PILL TO SWALLOW" EVEN FOR SILLY SARAH!

JOHN MCCAIN DEFENDS HIS PICK OF SARAH PALIN, MAKES IT CLEAR HE ALSO DISAGREED WITH DICK CHENEY OVER USE OF TORTURE. OUCH! THOSE TWO ARE "TORTURING" US.

McCain defends Palin selection following Cheney criticism

Revisiting the last presidential race, Sen. John McCain defended his 2008 selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate after former Vice President Dick Cheney called the decision a "mistake."

The 2008 Republican presidential nominee, asked Monday about Cheney's comments, told Fox News that "everybody has their own views" and said he remains "proud" of the 2008 team's performance.

"I'm always glad to get comments four years later," McCain said, with a hint of mild sarcasm. "Look, I respect the vice president. He and I had strong disagreements as to whether we should torture people or not. I don't think we should have. But the fact is that I'm proud of Sarah Palin, I'm proud of the job she did, I'm proud of the job she continues to do."

Cheney addressed the 2008 vice presidential nominee selection in an interview over the weekend with ABC News.

"I like Governor Palin. I've met her, I know her. She's an attractive candidate. But based on her background she'd only been governor for what, two years. I don't think she passed that test ... of being ready to take over, and I think that was a mistake," he said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/30/mccain-defends-palin-selection-following-cheney-criticism/#ixzz2276bAe1h

Former Vice President, Dick Cheney On The Importance Of Picking A Vice Presidential Candidate: John Mccain Picking Of Sarah Palin Was A "Mistake"! OUCH!! I Know. That Was Why John Mccain Lost My Support And Vote. Watch Video.

Sensing That She Has ZERO Chance Of Being President Of "These Here United States", Sarah Palin Does All Of Us A BIG Favor And Bows Out Of Contest. GREAT!

Below's the former Alaska governor's letter, as obtained by ABC News:

After much prayer and serious consideration, I have decided that I will not be seeking the 2012 GOP nomination for President of the United States. As always, my family comes first and obviously Todd and I put great consideration into family life before making this decision. When we serve, we devote ourselves to God, family and country. My decision maintains this order.

My decision is based upon a review of what common sense Conservatives and Independents have accomplished, especially over the last year. I believe that at this time I can be more effective in a decisive role to help elect other true public servants to office -- from the nation's governors to Congressional seats and the Presidency. We need to continue to actively and aggressively help those who will stop the "fundamental transformation" of our nation and instead seek the restoration of our greatness, our goodness and our constitutional republic based on the rule of law.

From the bottom of my heart I thank those who have supported me and defended my record throughout the years, and encouraged me to run for President. Know that by working together we can bring this country back -- and as I've always said, one doesn't need a title to help do it.

I will continue driving the discussion for freedom and free markets, including in the race for President where our candidates must embrace immediate action toward energy independence through domestic resource developments of conventional energy sources, along with renewables. We must reduce tax burdens and onerous regulations that kill American industry, and our candidates must always push to minimize government to strengthen the economy and allow the private sector to create jobs.

Those will be our priorities so Americans can be confident that a smaller, smarter government that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people can better serve this most exceptional nation.

In the coming weeks I will help coordinate strategies to assist in replacing the President, re-taking the Senate, and maintaining the House.

Thank you again for all your support. Let's unite to restore this country!

God bless America.

Sarah Palin

Click here for more.

Spokesman For Lady Margaret Thatcher: "Sarah Palin Is Nuts." Well ... Duh!

Sarah Palin snub by Margaret Thatcher aides infuriates US rightwing
Rush Limbaugh joins supporters accusing Thatcher's circle of disgracing former PM with 'Palin is nuts' comment
By Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent

A firestorm on the US right has erupted after the Guardian reported that Sarah Palin will be denied a meeting with Lady Thatcher on the grounds that it would be "belittling" for her to meet the darling of the Tea Party movement.

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host, devoted the opening section of his radio show to denouncing the "preposterous" Guardian report, as Palin supporters accused Thatcher's circle of disgracing the former prime minister.

The US conservative right reacted furiously after the Guardian reported that Thatcher's aides had decided it would be inappropriate for her to meet Palin, who is planning to visit London next month en route to Sudan. Palin has been touring US historical sites (an excursion that saw her slip up this week on the subject of Paul Revere, the American patriot who made a famous "midnight ride" to warn of approaching British forces).

One Thatcher ally told the Guardian: "Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts."

The former prime minister's friends say she will show the level she punches at when she marks the centenary of the birth of Ronald Reagan by attending the unveiling of a statue of the late president outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square on independence day, 4 July. The Thatcher ally added: "Margaret is focusing on Ronald Reagan and will attend the unveiling of the statue. That is her level."

The response from the US right was swift. Limbaugh opened his show on Wednesday with a lengthy denunciation of the Guardian after the New York Daily News and a host of US publications picked up on the comments.

"There's a story out there today, and it's an illustration of how things happen, how things are said and reported," Limbaugh told his listeners. "This is preposterous, and I have personal knowledge of this."

Limbaugh said he knew Thatcher well and embarked on a lengthy description of how he had driven her round a Florida golf course on a golf cart: "I have been with her in social and professional settings as well. It's obvious that her health is not today what it was, but back in the day, Margaret Thatcher would in no way allow an aide to refer to anybody, Sarah Palin notwithstanding, as 'nuts'."

La Donna Hale Curzon, the host of Sarah Palin Radio, accused the Thatcher circle of disgracing the former prime minister. "Margaret Thatcher would never call a fellow Conservative, let alone Gov Palin 'nuts'," Hale Curzon tweeted. "Thatcher's handlers have disgraced the Iron Lady."

The ally who criticised Palin said the Thatcher circle would not change their minds despite the backlash. "Margaret will not be meeting Sarah Palin. If necessary we will make sure that Margaret has an off day when Palin is in London."

Critics of Palin revelled in the backlash against Thatcher's circle, whose dismissive views of Palin undermine her claim that she is the victim of a witch-hunt by left-leaning mainstream media. Palin regards Thatcher as one of her heroines.

Andrew Sullivan, of The Dish blog, which chronicles Palin's weaknesses, wrote : "As usual, the tired old bigoted comedian Rush Limbaugh took offence that anyone could call Sarah Palin 'nuts,' even though she is quite obviously a few sandwiches short of a picnic, and her grip on reality is, shall we say, tenuous. And as usual, Limbaugh blamed it on the left, ie the Guardian's Wintour/Watt blog.

"What he doesn't understand is that Palin's nutsiness is not a partisan matter in Britain, or anywhere else in the world. It is an obvious truth marvelled at by all. Palin's emergence as a serious figure in American politics has made the country a laughing stock across the world. The idea that a stateswoman like Thatcher, in advanced dementia, would be used by such a crackpot is simply unseemly."

Leonard Pitts: "On History, Sarah Palin Is Just Like A Lot Of Us". How Effing SAD!

On history, Sarah Palin is just like a lot of us
Written by Leonard Pitts

It would be the easiest thing in the world to make this about Sarah Palin.

She makes mistakes like Apple makes iPhones, so there is a temptation to catalogue her recent bizarre claim that Paul Revere's midnight ride in April 1775 was to “warn the British.” (He actually rode to alert patriots Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British troops were coming to arrest them) as superfluous evidence of intellectual mediocrity. The instinct is to think her historical illiteracy speaks ill only of her.

But the thing is, she is not the only one.

You may think that statement is meant to encompass the likes of Glenn Beck (who said conservatives started the civil rights movement), and Michele Bachmann (who said the Founding Fathers ended slavery) and it is. But the troubling thing is, it also encompasses many of the rest of us as well. Where history is concerned, this is fast becoming a nation of ignoramuses and amnesiacs.

The alarm bell has been ringing for years. Consider Losing America's Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century, a 2000 study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a Washington-based advocacy group. Researchers found that the majority of seniors at the nation's best colleges could not identify the words of the Gettysburg Address or explain the significance of Valley Forge. They did not know, the study concluded, because they had not been taught. History, the study said, was no longer a requirement in the nation's top schools.

And then, there is a 2006 assessment by the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics, often called The Nation's Report Card. It found that nearly 40 percent of 12th-graders could not identify the purpose of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and only 14 percent could identify and explain a factor leading to U.S. involvement in the Korean War.

Some may think that failure insignificant. History is but the dust of yesteryear, is it not? It is just rote memorization of names and dates and something about the Smoot-Hawley Act. If kids are bored by that, who can blame them? And who cares? We all should. No child should be able to finish public school, much less college, without a firm grasp of American history. Because history is not dust. Nor is it myths we tell to comfort and acquit ourselves.

Nor is it a lever we twist in order to gain political advantage. No, our history is the master narrative of who we are.

It is a narrative of slaves and soldiers, inventors and investors, demagogues and visionaries, of homicide, fratricide and genocide, of truths held self-evident and of government of the people, by the people and for the people. It is a narrative of Europeans leaving Europe yearning to breathe free and the children of slaves leaving the South yearning for the same.

And we allow all that to be forgotten at our own peril. How can our children write the next chapter of a story they don't even know? So, while it is comforting to think Palin's gaffe speaks only to her own considerable limitations, it is also short-sighted. The evidence suggests she is less an exception to, than a reflection of, a nation that is in the process of forgetting itself.

Heck, we are all Sarah Palin now.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald. His email address is lpitts@miamiherald.com.

What An Embarrassment. Watch Video.

Yep,the embarrassment continues:

Sarah Palin Accuses POTUS Barack Obama Of "Pussy-Footing" For Not Releasing Dead Osama Bin Laden Photos, But ...

... does it take a "pussy" to know about "pussy footing"?

Read more here.

Don't kill the messenger, I'm just asking a question!

Let's Continue With "Sarah Palin, [The] 'Blood Libel' Hypocrite".

Sarah Palin, Blood-Libel Hypocrite
Sarah Palin opposes collective blame for monstrous crimes, unless they're committed by Muslims.
By William

Sarah Palin is outraged. In a Facebook post this morning, she responds to critics who have suggested that her target map of Democrats, which put a crosshairs-like symbol over the district of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., may have contributed to the Tucson shooting. Palin writes:

After this shocking tragedy, I listened at first puzzled, then with concern, and now with sadness, to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event. President Reagan said, "We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions." Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state, not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle, not with law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies … journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

Sarah Palin (left) and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Click image to expand.Sarah Palin (left) and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. That's what Palin believes. Each person is solely accountable for his actions. Acts of monstrous criminality "begin and end with the criminals who commit them." It's wrong to hold others of the same nationality, ethnicity, or religion "collectively" responsible for mass murders.

Unless, of course, you're talking about Muslims. In that case, Palin is fine with collective blame. In fact, she's enthusiastic about it. Palin was the first national politician to join the jihad against what she called the "planned mosque at Ground Zero" (which wasn't a mosque and wasn't at Ground Zero, but let's cut her some slack). In her statement, issued six months ago on the same Facebook page where she now denounces collective blame, she wrote this:

To build a mosque at Ground Zero is a stab in the heart of the families of the innocent victims of those horrific attacks. … I agree with the sister of one of the 9/11 victims (and a New York resident) who said: "This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pieces by Islamic extremists. I think that it is incredibly insensitive and audacious really for them to build a mosque, not only on that site, but to do it specifically so that they could be in proximity to where that atrocity happened."

The last bit is a falsehood—proximity wasn't the motive for choosing the site—but again, let's cut Palin some slack. They key phrase to focus on is "a mosque." Palin used it twice—once in the quote, and once in her own words—so it can't be passed off as inadvertent. Her objection wasn't just to a specific imam or sect, much less to an identifiable terrorist. It was to any Islamic house of worship near Ground Zero.

Palin has never retracted this position. Indeed, she has persisted in her opposition to any mosque near Ground Zero. Her position is that the act of monstrous criminality on 9/11 doesn't end with the criminals who committed it. Its stigma extends to any mosque near the site. All Muslims should yield to that stigma. All Muslims are responsible.

"Blood libel," as defined by The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, is historically targeted not at a country but at a religion. Palin's campaign against any Muslim house of worship near Ground Zero, based on group blame for terrorism, fits that definition more closely than does any current accusation against the Tea Party.

It didn't matter to Palin that the imam behind the "mosque" (which was actually an Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero) had denounced terrorism. Shortly after 9/11, the imam, Faisal Abdul Rauf, appeared on 60 Minutes and was asked this question:

Ed Bradley: What would you say to people in this country, who, looking at what happens in the Middle East, would associate Islam with fanaticism, with terrorism?

Abdul Rauf: Fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam. That's just as absurd as associating Hitler with Christianity or David Koresh with Christianity. There are always people who will do peculiar things and think that they are doing things in the name of their religion. But the Quran—you know, God says in the Quran that they think that they're doing right, but they're doing wrong.

Palin ignored the imam's denunciation of violence. Now she repudiates the massacre in Tucson and expresses outrage that anyone would associate her with it.

In today's Facebook post, Palin writes: "Recall how the events of 9-11 challenged our values and we had to fight the tendency to trade our freedoms for perceived security. And so it is today." Indeed. But when the events of 9/11 challenged our values, Palin surrendered. A decade later, she remains willing to trade freedom, not for security, but for "sensitivity" to her supporters' anger at Muslims generally. She's willing to issue blood libels and sacrifice people's freedoms. She just doesn't want the same done to her.

After Arizona Shooting, Everyone Is Pointing Fingers At Everyone Else, So Here's Sarah Palin's "Blood Libel" -- Whatever That Means. Watch Video.

Sarah Palin: "America's Enduring Strength" from Sarah Palin on Vimeo.

With Elections Over, POLITICO.Com Reports Top GOP Officials Plot To Derail Sarah Palin's 2012 Presidential Ambitions, Palin Responds. Read And Watch.

First you read, then you watch below:



Editor's comment: It sounds like the GOP Honchos are either terrified of Sarah, or figure she is incapable of winning a general election -- or BOTH!

Five Myths About Sarah Palin.

Five myths about Sarah Palin
By Matthew Continetti

Think you know Sarah Palin? The former Alaska governor has been in the spotlight ever since John McCain named her as his running mate on Aug. 29, 2008. Yet, while practically everybody has an opinion about Palin, not all of those opinions are grounded in reality. Many of them are based more on a "Saturday Night Live" caricature than on the living, breathing, 46-year-old mother of five. The real Sarah Palin is a complex woman who has risen in no time from obscurity to the stratosphere of American politics, fusing celebrity and populism in novel ways. Now that she's laying the foundation for a possible presidential run in 2012, it's worth taking a moment to separate the facts about Palin from the fables.

1. Palin cost McCain the 2008 election.

She didn't. CNN's 2008 national exit poll, for example, asked voters whether Palin was a factor when they stepped into the voting booth. Those who said yes broke for McCain 56 percent to 43 percent.

Before Palin's selection, remember, McCain suffered from an enthusiasm gap. Republicans were reluctant to vote for the senator from Arizona because of his reputation as a maverick who'd countered his party on taxes, immigration, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and "cap and trade" climate legislation. But Palin's conservative record in Alaska and antiabortion advocacy changed the Republican mood. With her by his side, McCain's fundraising and support from conservatives improved. It wasn't enough to beat Barack Obama -- but McCain probably would have lost the presidency by a greater margin if he had, say, selected independent Sen. Joe Lieberman as his running mate, further alienating the GOP base.

Yes, it's possible that Palin's conservatism and uneven performance on the campaign trail shifted some voters to Obama's column. But even if Obama picked up some anti-Palin votes, he surely didn't need them: The economy was in recession, Wall Street was in meltdown, and the incumbent Republican president was incredibly unpopular. In the end, it's impossible to know how McCain would have performed if he hadn't selected Palin -- politics does not allow for control experiments.

2. Resigning as governor was rash.

No one expected Palin's resignation on July 3, 2009, just 2 1/2 years into her term. Her hastily composed and clumsily delivered farewell address left many observers confused about her motives. Some of her critics were only too eager to fill in the gaps with conjecture and hearsay (She's being investigated by the FBI! Sarah and Todd must be headed for divorce!). If there was one thing everybody knew for sure, it was that Palin's career in politics was over.

But none of the rumored scandals ever broke. The Palins remain married. And as for Sarah Palin's career, it's taken off. She plays a far greater role in American public life than she did before she left office.

When Palin returned to Alaska after the 2008 campaign, she confronted three problems. The political coalition on which she had based her governorship -- a combination of Democrats and renegade "Palinista" Republicans -- had collapsed. Her critics were using Alaska's tough ethics laws to launch investigations into her behavior, sapping her finances and her energy. Finally, every time she traveled to the Lower 48, Alaskans criticized her for putting her political interests above the state's.

Palin's solution was to resign. Her agenda stood a better chance of passing if then-Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who shared Palin's goals, succeeded her as governor. As a private citizen, meanwhile, Palin could make enough money to pay her legal bills. And she would no longer be accused of neglecting her official duties.

Some might say that Palin's resignation was shortsighted and showed that she was not ready for the demands of executive office. But if Palin had remained governor, she would have been denied opportunities to rally the tea party and fight in the battle over the Obama agenda. She would have been stuck on a regional stage. Instead, she's back on the national one.

3. Palin and the tea party are destroying the GOP.

You've heard the spiel: The Republican Party is in the midst of a civil war between moderate incumbents and far-right challengers backed by Palin and the tea party. Driving Charlie Crist from the GOP and defeating establishment figures such as Robert Bennett, Lisa Murkowski and Mike Castle spells electoral doom for the party. The only chance Republicans have for long-term success is to move to the center in a bid to win over millennials and Latinos.

But demographics aren't destiny, and no one knows what the future holds. The reality, right now, is that Palin and the tea party are saving the GOP by dragging it back to its roots and mobilizing conservative voters.

Remember, by the time Palin arrived on the national scene, the Republican Party was depleted, exhausted and held in disrepute. An unpopular war in Iraq, an economy in recession and GOP corruption had driven away independents. Meanwhile, massive government spending and a liberal immigration policy had dispirited conservatives.

This is where Palin came in. In the wake of Obama's historic victory, she and countless other grass-roots activists could have abandoned the GOP and turned the tea party into a conservative third party. They didn't. They decided instead to refashion the Republican Party from the ground up, pressuring it to live up to its limited-government ideals. Now, two years after Obama's win, Republicans are poised to reap major gains in the midterm elections. Palin and the tea party haven't hurt the GOP one bit.

4. Palin is extreme.

On many of the most important issues of the day, Palin holds positions that are squarely in the center-right of American political discourse. And many of those positions, not incidentally, are held by a large segment or even a majority of the public. For instance, neither the public nor Palin believes the stimulus worked. And while most Americans may not share Palin's views regarding "death panels," many join her in opposing Obama's health-care overhaul.

Over the past two years, Pew and Gallup surveys have tracked the public as it has moved to the right -- not on just one or two issues but on a whole constellation of them. Even on the controversial topics of abortion, guns and same-sex marriage, Palin is not as far away from the center as some suppose. A May 2009 Gallup poll, for example, found that a majority of Americans identified as "pro-life" rather than "pro-choice." In October 2009, Gallup measured record-low support for gun control. The public is divided on same-sex marriage, with about half the country joining Palin's (and Obama's) opposition.

5. Palin is unelectable.

Without question, a Palin 2012 campaign would be an uphill battle. Palin is unpopular -- massively so among Democrats, decisively so among independents. Even many Republicans don't believe she's ready to be president.

But opinions can change. Look at the political resuscitations of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Hillary Rodham Clinton. If Palin works hard and runs an impressive campaign, wavering Republicans and skeptical independents may give her a second look.

To earn that second look, she may need to find a big idea. It's hard to become president without one. Reagan had supply-side economics and the end of detente with the Soviets. Bill Clinton had the third way. George W. Bush had compassionate conservatism and the freedom agenda. Obama had national unity and hope and change.

At the moment, however, Palin still expresses her agenda mainly in negative terms, focusing on her opposition to Obama and the Washington establishment. She hasn't defined her "common-sense conservatism" in positive language. And she hasn't found a unifying, exhilarating theme.

Then again, she just might get along without one. After all, a presidential contest is a choice. The public might not love Palin. But by 2012, Americans might absolutely despise Obama. Two more years of a bad economy and an unpopular Afghan war, and anything is possible. Yes, there's a ceiling to Palin's support. But in 2012, there also will be a ceiling to Obama's.

Whose will be higher?

Matthew Continetti is opinion editor of the Weekly Standard and the author of "The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star." He will be online Monday, Oct. 18, at 1 p.m. ET to chat. Submit your questions or comments before or during the discussion.

Editor's note: For more Outlook coverage on Sarah Palin and the tea party movement, see David Weigel's "Five myths about the tea party" and Steven Hayward's "Would Reagan vote for Sarah Palin?"

Want to challenge everything you think you know? Visit the "Five Myths" archive.

potus bARACK oBAMA, rUSH lIMBAUGH aND sARAH pALIN aRE rELATED. tALK aBOUT "hISSING" cOUSINS.

Dissin' cousins? Obama, Limbaugh and Palin are related

WASHINGTON — Rush Limbaugh calls President Barack Obama "imam," even though he knows the president isn't a Muslim. Sarah Palin has openly doubted the president's "cojones."

Turns out these two conservative firebrands have been dissin' their own cousin.

The online genealogy service Ancestry.com now reports that Obama and Palin are 10th cousins, and Obama and Limbaugh are 10th cousins once removed. In both cases, the ties date to the 1600s.

Obama's distant family ties to former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney surfaced during his presidential campaign. Obama also is a distant cousin of billionaire investor Warren Buffett and actor Brad Pitt, according to Ancestry.com.

Anastasia Tyler, the lead genealogist on the latest project, said in an interview that, "It just shows how all of these politicians, they're on different sides of the political spectrum, but in the end they're all part of what makes America great, and they all go back to deep American roots."

The ties run through Obama's white, Kansas-born mother's side of the family. Obama's Kenyan father's background is harder to document as far back, and likely would have fewer connections to early American settlers. Genealogists say it's typically harder for African-Americans and many minority populations in the U.S. to trace their roots because of a lack of written historical documentation.

Palin's tie to Obama is through early Massachusetts settler John Smith, a protestant pastor in the 1670s who opposed the persecution of Quakers. Smith's wife was the sister of one of the first governors of the Plymouth Bay colony, Thomas Hinckley. Hinckley's father Samuel, it so happens, is the familial link between Obama and Bush.

Obama's and Limbaugh's common ancestor is Richmond Terrell, who settled in Virginia around 1656 and acquired a large amount of land.

One might argue that everyone's related if you go back far enough, but Tyler said that 350 years isn't nearly far enough to connect most Americans to one another.

Eduardo Pagan, a history professor at Arizona State University and the co-host of the PBS show "History Detectives," said that any connection between contemporary figures that exists only hundreds of years in the past is "an interesting curiosity of history" but "doesn't mean anything at all unless someone was raised with that knowledge."

"I don't think that a political perspective — conservative or liberal — dominates in any extended family," he said. "You get a range of opinions, of political views.

"I come down on the side that we are individuals," Pagan said. "There are plenty of historic examples of children who turn out very different than their parents. At a certain level, I'm not sure biology really counts for much of anything in understanding the sweep of history."

Ancestry.com says it has 1.3 million paying subscribers who've built 19 million family trees over the years. The company has publicized many of the celebrity connections it finds.

When Tyler's team began this latest research on Obama about six months ago, researchers were looking for links among political foes in this polarized era of tea party protests and false assertions about Obama's birthplace and religion.

They found that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, is distantly related to conservative author Ann Coulter, as well as to Palin.

They tried but failed to connect Obama to conservative talk show hosts Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, nor could they find a link between Obama and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.


Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/13/101948/dissin-cousins-obama-limbaugh.html#ixzz12FSh76rd

Vanity Fair Magazine Does A "Must Read" On Sarah Palin. Check It Out.

Follow this link to read the article.

Is Sarah Palin "Worst Governor EVER" In Alaska? Watch Video.

Thomas Sowell Bemoans "Useful Idiots", Compares POTUS Barack Obama To Adolph Hitler Sarah Palin "Tweet"s Approval. But Who Are The REAL IDIOTS Here?

Read Thomas Sowell's piece Is U.S. Now On Slippery Slope To Tyranny? below:

And, without constitutional government, freedom cannot endure. There will always be a "crisis" — which, as the president's chief of staff has said, cannot be allowed to "go to waste" as an opportunity to expand the government's power.

That power will of course not be confined to BP or to the particular period of crisis that gave rise to the use of that power, much less to the particular issues.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt arbitrarily took the United States off the gold standard, he cited a law passed during the First World War to prevent trading with the country's wartime enemies. But there was no war when FDR ended the gold standard's restrictions on the printing of money.

At about the same time, during the worldwide Great Depression, the German Reichstag passed a law "for the relief of the German people."

That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people — indeed, powers that ultimately brought a rain of destruction down on the German people and on others.

If the agreement with BP was an isolated event, perhaps we might hope that it would not be a precedent. But there is nothing isolated about it.

The man appointed by President Obama to dispense BP's money as the administration sees fit, to whomever it sees fit, is only the latest in a long line of presidentially appointed "czars" controlling different parts of the economy, without even having to be confirmed by the Senate, as Cabinet members are.

Those who cannot see beyond the immediate events to the issues of arbitrary power — vs. the rule of law and the preservation of freedom — are the "useful idiots" of our time. But useful to whom?


Now read below what Sarah Palin had to say:

his is about the rule of law vs. an unconstitutional power grab. Read Thomas Sowell's article: http://u.nu/6e4ec 11:37 PM Jun 24th via web

Sarah Palin Forced To Return Donations After Ethics Violations.

Palin fund illegal; donors will get money back
By RACHEL D'ORO

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Administrators of a legal defense fund set up for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin have 90 days to return nearly $400,000 to donors, after an ethics investigator determined the fund was illegal.

The Alaska Fund Trust inappropriately used the word "official" on its website, wrongly implying that it was endorsed by Palin in her role as governor, State Personnel Board investigator Timothy Petumenos said Thursday.

But Petumenos also found that Palin - the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee - acted in good faith and relied on a team of attorneys, all but one from outside the state, to make sure the fund was lawful and complied with the Alaska Executive Branch Act.

Palin's attorney, Thomas Van Flein of Anchorage, said he recommended that the fund's status be vetted by state attorneys before it was established, but that advice was not taken.

Van Flein said the trust brought in about $390,000 before Palin stepped down as governor July 26, 2009. More than $33,000 has since been donated, but Van Flein said that money will go toward $87,680 the trust has incurred in administrative and other expenses.

"She supports this process 100 percent, and I think she agreed to this resolution because it was the right thing to do," Van Flein said. "She never instructed anybody to do anything that would not comply with federal law or state law."

Another defense fund was set up Thursday for Palin as a private citizen to pay off the rest of the debt.

Van Flein said Palin herself never received any money from the first trust, which prompted an ethics complaint against her.

"As soon as it was questioned, she froze all action on it, and waited for the independent council to investigate and make a determination," he said.

Petumenos, an attorney, said another problem with the Alaska Fund Trust involved the selection of a public official to administer it. Petumenos' report notes that Kristan Cole holds positions on important boards and commissions, including an appointment by Palin to the Board of Agriculture and Conservation.

Thursday's findings are an outgrowth from a preliminary, confidential report by another board investigator that also implicated Palin. Petumenos said the first investigator, attorney Thomas Daniel, withdrew as independent counsel for the personnel board after Palin challenged the participation of his law firm, which had ties to President Barack Obama, who defeated Palin's former running mate John McCain in the presidential election.

The earlier report was issued less than two weeks after Palin announced she was resigning from office last July.

In announcing her resignation, Palin cited the toll of the ethics probes as one of the reasons she was stepping down. She has said she racked up at least $500,000 in legal fees.

Palin's friends and supporters created the Alaska Fund Trust in April 2009, limiting donations to $150 per person. The ethics complaint was filed soon after by Eagle River resident Kim Chatman, who alleged Palin was misusing her official position and accepting improper gifts.

Palin's former spokeswoman, Meghan Stapleton, posted a message about the defense fund resolution on Palin's Facebook page, thanking supporters for contributing to the trust and adding that people can contribute to the new fund.

Van Flein was asked whether a legal defense fund was proper for Palin, who has reportedly made at least $12 million from her best-selling book and other media deals in the past year.

"To me this is really a public debt that she has taken the burden on privately," Van Flein said. "So I don't expect her - and I don't think the public expects her - to take out her own checkbook for what is really a cost of doing business as a public official."

Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/06/24/1322088/findings-to-be-released-in-palin.html#ixzz0rzxHwL6a

George F. Will: Why [SILLY] Sarah [Failin'] Palin Won't Be President.

Why Sarah Palin won't be president
By George F. Will

The Republican presidential nominee, an Arizona senator, was a maverick, which was part of his charm.

He spoke and acted impulsively, which was part of his problem. Voters thought his entertaining dimensions might be incompatible with presidential responsibilities. For example, he selected a running mate most Americans had never heard of and who had negligible experience pertinent to the presidency. This was 1964.

Barry Goldwater, whose seat John McCain occupies, chose to run with Bill Miller, a congressman from Lockport, N.Y., near Buffalo.

Miller, Goldwater cheerfully explained, annoyed Lyndon Johnson. After the Goldwater-Miller ticket lost 44 states, Miller retired to Lockport, where he practiced law and lived in dignified anonymity until his death in 1983. Although he had served as an assistant prosecutor of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg and spent seven terms in Congress, no one suggested he should be considered for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination.

Yet Sarah Palin, who with 17 months remaining in her single term as Alaska's governor quit the only serious office she has ever held, is obsessively discussed as a possible candidate in 2012. Why? She is not going to be president and will not be the Republican nominee unless the party wants to lose at least 44 states.

Conservatives, who rightly respect markets as generally reliable gauges of consumer preferences, should notice that the political market is speaking clearly: The more attention Palin receives, the fewer Americans consider her presidential timber. The latest Post-ABC News poll shows that 71 percent of Americans — including 52 percent of Republicans — think she is not qualified to be president.

This is not her fault. She is what she is, and what she is merits no disdain. She is feisty and public-spirited, and millions of people vibrate like tuning forks to her rhetoric. When she was suddenly forced to take a walk on the highest wire in America's political circus, she showed grit.

She also showed that grit is no substitute for seasoning. She has been subjected to such irrational vituperation — loathing largely born of snobbery — that she can be forgiven for seeking the balm of adulation from friendly audiences.

America, its luck exhausted, at last has a president from the academic culture, that grating blend of knowingness and unrealism. But the reaction against this must somewhat please him. That reaction is populism, a celebration of intellectual ordinariness. This is not a stance that will strengthen the Republican Party, which recently has become ruinously weak among highly educated whites. Besides, full-throated populism has not won a national election in 178 years, since Andrew Jackson was re-elected in 1832.

After William Jennings Bryan's defeat in 1908, his third as the Democrats' presidential nominee, this prototypical populist said he felt like the man who, thrown out of a bar for a third time, dusted himself off and said, “I'm beginning to think those fellows don't want me in there.”

In 1992, Ross Perot, an only-in-America phenomenon — a billionaire populist — won 19 percent of the popular vote. But because of the winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes, he won none of those. In 1976, Jimmy Carter — peanut farmer; carried his own suitcase, imagine that — somewhat tapped America's durable but shallow reservoir of populism. By 1980, ordinariness in high office had lost its allure.

In 1968, George Wallace, promising to toss the briefcases of pointy-headed intellectuals into the Potomac, won 46 electoral votes with 13.5 percent of the popular vote. He had the populist's trifecta — a vivid personality, a regional base and a burning issue. Actually, he had three such issues — backlash against the civil rights revolution, social disintegration (urban riots, rising crime) and resentment of the progressive projects of Great Society social engineers (e.g., forced busing of other people's children).

Populism has had as many incarnations as it has had provocations, but its constant ingredient has been resentment, and hence whininess. Populism does not wax in tranquil times; it is a cathartic response to serious problems. But it always wanes because it never seems serious as a solution.

Political nature abhors a vacuum, which is what often exists for a year or two in a party after it loses a presidential election. But today's saturation journalism, mesmerized by presidential politics and ravenous for material, requires a steady stream of political novelties. In that role, Palin is united with the media in a relationship of mutual loathing. This is not her fault. But neither is it her validation.

George F. Will is a syndicated columnist with The Washington Post. His e-mail address is georgewill@washpost.com.

George Will: SILLY Sarah Failin' Is Well ... Failin' And Fading.

Sarah Palin and the mutual loathing society
By George F. Will

The Republican presidential nominee, an Arizona senator, was a maverick, which was part of his charm. He spoke and acted impulsively, which was part of his problem. Voters thought his entertaining dimensions might be incompatible with presidential responsibilities. For example, he selected a running mate most Americans had never heard of and who had negligible experience pertinent to the presidency. This was 1964.

Barry Goldwater, whose seat John McCain occupies, chose to run with Bill Miller, a congressman from Lockport, N.Y., near Buffalo. Miller, Goldwater cheerfully explained, annoyed Lyndon Johnson. After the Goldwater-Miller ticket lost 44 states, Miller retired to Lockport, where he practiced law and lived in dignified anonymity until his death in 1983. Although he had served as an assistant prosecutor of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg and spent seven terms in Congress, no one suggested he should be considered for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination.

Yet Sarah Palin, who with 17 months remaining in her single term as Alaska's governor quit the only serious office she has ever held, is obsessively discussed as a possible candidate in 2012. Why? She is not going to be president and will not be the Republican nominee unless the party wants to lose at least 44 states.

Conservatives, who rightly respect markets as generally reliable gauges of consumer preferences, should notice that the political market is speaking clearly: The more attention Palin receives, the fewer Americans consider her presidential timber. The latest Post-ABC News poll shows that 71 percent of Americans -- including 52 percent of Republicans -- think she is not qualified to be president.

This is not her fault. She is what she is, and what she is merits no disdain. She is feisty and public-spirited, and millions of people vibrate like tuning forks to her rhetoric. When she was suddenly forced to take a walk on the highest wire in America's political circus, she showed grit.

She also showed that grit is no substitute for seasoning. She has been subjected to such irrational vituperation -- loathing largely born of snobbery -- that she can be forgiven for seeking the balm of adulation from friendly audiences.

America, its luck exhausted, at last has a president from the academic culture, that grating blend of knowingness and unrealism. But the reaction against this must somewhat please him. That reaction is populism, a celebration of intellectual ordinariness. This is not a stance that will strengthen the Republican Party, which recently has become ruinously weak among highly educated whites. Besides, full-throated populism has not won a national election in 178 years, since Andrew Jackson was reelected in 1832.

After William Jennings Bryan's defeat in 1908, his third as the Democrats' presidential nominee, this prototypical populist said he felt like the man who, thrown out of a bar for a third time, dusted himself off and said, "I'm beginning to think those fellows don't want me in there." In 1992, Ross Perot, an only-in-America phenomenon -- a billionaire populist -- won 19 percent of the popular vote. But because of the winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes, he won none of those. In 1976, Jimmy Carter -- peanut farmer; carried his own suitcase, imagine that -- somewhat tapped America's durable but shallow reservoir of populism. By 1980, ordinariness in high office had lost its allure.

In 1968, George Wallace, promising to toss the briefcases of pointy-headed intellectuals into the Potomac, won 46 electoral votes with 13.5 percent of the popular vote. He had the populist's trifecta -- a vivid personality, a regional base and a burning issue. Actually, he had three such issues -- backlash against the civil rights revolution, social disintegration (urban riots, rising crime) and resentment of the progressive projects of Great Society social engineers (e.g., forced busing of other people's children).

Populism has had as many incarnations as it has had provocations, but its constant ingredient has been resentment, and hence whininess. Populism does not wax in tranquil times; it is a cathartic response to serious problems. But it always wanes because it never seems serious as a solution.

Political nature abhors a vacuum, which is what often exists for a year or two in a party after it loses a presidential election. But today's saturation journalism, mesmerized by presidential politics and ravenous for material, requires a steady stream of political novelties. In that role, Palin is united with the media in a relationship of mutual loathing. This is not her fault. But neither is it her validation.

georgewill@washpost.com