Governor Sarah Palin: Don’t Fund Obamacare!, Update: Senator Cruz Responds

Via Facebook:

Forced enrollment in Obama’s “Unaffordable Care Act” is weeks away. This beast must be stopped — by not funding it. Today, Todd and I joined with many of our fellow citizens to urge those in the U.S. Senate to not fund Obamacare.

We The People must continue to make our voices heard and hold those elected to serve this great nation accountable. Those in the Senate and those seeking to serve there must stand strong against this devastating program before it reveals its true face now recognized by both sides of the aisle as the bureaucratic and economic beast that will deny our families, our businesses, and our sick the ability to access health care.

The time for rhetoric and ceremonial votes in Congress is over. The time to take serious action to stop Obamacare is now. Join us in urging Senators — Don’t Fund Obamacare! Just remember — if you fund it, you own it!

– Sarah Palin

P.S.: Click here to join us in signing this petition: http://www.dontfundobamacare.com/

Update:

Ted Cruz is happy to have Governor Palin’s backup:

Momentum is building! Glad to have @SarahPalinUSA join our fight to #DefundObamacare: http://t.co/RNAWBPwKGQ Are you with us? #DontFundIt

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) August 27, 2013

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RedState Posts Demeaning Photoshop of Governor Palin, Denies When Confronted — Updated

Little men syndrome

Update V from Gary P Jackson: Welcome Twitchy readers and thanks to Michelle Malkin, Lori Ziganto, Jenn Taylor, and the entire Twitchy Team for standing up to those who would attack Governor Palin and lie about it.

By Stacy Drake
Follow Stacy on Twitter

Monday evening, RedState published an article titled “Palin’s Third-Party Solution is Part of The Problem.” The point of the article was to show why they think she was wrong to suggest dumping the GOP if Republicans help pass the amnesty bill in Congress.

The author repeats the same line we’ve been told for years about why you can’t leave the GOP because it wouldn’t “do anything more than ensure a permanent majority on the Left.” What the author fails to see (and what any Conservative Californian can tell you) is that if the amnesty bill passes, the GOP will be a permanent minority anyway, so whatever(!) with the content of the article.

The main problem with the piece however, is the choice of the image RedState uses (as the top featured post on the front pages, by the way) to go along with the article.

Take a look:

I suppose that’s a funny picture… If you have the mentality of an emotionally underdeveloped frat boy, but to most adults, it isn’t. In fact, considering the attire and position of the person who owns the body that they Photoshopped Governor Palin’s head on to, it’s obvious that this was posted to demean her. The author did refer to her as merely a “celebrity” after all, and there certainly is no respect for her at Eric Erickson’s house. Never mind the fact that she was the first female vice presidential candidate in your party’s history, guys.

So, where did RedState pick this photo up from? The left-wing publication, The Fiscal Times:

The Fiscal Times were the people who originally Photoshopped the picture. They did it to go along with a series of parody articles about famous political types writing to Santa Claus. The person who Photoshopped the picture, used this photo of Governor Palin, taken at a Grand Rapids book signing in 2009:

What did Erick Erickson have to say when people confronted him about this on Twitter? He denied it:

Yes it is!

As a professional graphic artist, and someone who uses Photoshop on a daily basis, I can tell you exactly what the person for The Fiscal Times did. They took the original picture (seen above), selected Governor Palin’s head and some (not all) of her hair. They then copied and pasted that image onto the photo with the lady and Santa Claus.

They rotated the image to match where the lady’s head would be situated, and then added some red tones and adjusted the light levels to match the scenery better. Note the blue hue on the altered image is still there even after the color correction. That’s because in the real image, Governor Palin had a blue curtain behind her, and The Fiscal Times artist doesn’t know the proper use of overlays. Or feathering for that matter, but I digress.

Here are the images side by side. I tilted the original so that they are aligned. Since I’m not on the clock, I didn’t attempt to recreate the color alterations:

I didn’t need to however. It’s blatantly obvious that this is the same image. I placed one image over the other while adjusting the transparency, just to make double sure. Yep, everything matches. The hair (minus the parts excluded by Fiscal Times’ artist), the earrings, eyes, etc.

Before Erickson denied that this was a fake photo, Michelle McCormick asked Ben Howe to remove the picture. Howe also denied it was a Photoshop but first stated:

.@DLoesch Loesch, tell your boys at Red State to take down that picture of the GOP's first female VP. WTF?? http://t.co/PpKvkxXQek

— Michelle McCormick (@TexMex817) July 2, 2013

@TexMex817 I'll talk to the other contributors. Maybe we can find a way to leave that post up all tomorrow too. @DLoesch

— Ben Howe (@BenHowe) July 2, 2013

Michelle continued with no response from Dana Loesch whatsoever, and no further response from Ben Howe:

@BenHowe @DLoesch just use a different picture, please. One that's not photoshopped and so damn demeaning

— Michelle McCormick (@TexMex817) July 2, 2013

@BenHowe @DLoesch thanks, Perez Hilton

— Michelle McCormick (@TexMex817) July 2, 2013

@BenHowe @RedBrightandTru @DLoesch it's a photoshopped picture from a satire website, Ben. She didn't pose for that

— Michelle McCormick (@TexMex817) July 2, 2013

@BenHowe @DLoesch I'm not asking you to remove the post, I'm asking you to remove that picture. It's a fake and it's demeaning

— Michelle McCormick (@TexMex817) July 2, 2013

Howe’s denial:

@texmex817 Well, on record now. Apparently @benhowe husband & father thinks that's ok. SMH. @dloesch

— RedBrightandTrue (@RedBrightandTru) July 2, 2013

@RedBrightandTru what is? Having a picture that she posed for on a website? Yes. You caught me. @TexMex817 @DLoesch

— Ben Howe (@BenHowe) July 2, 2013

She never posed for that picture and instead of taking that into consideration, the boys at RedState dig in. They demean Governor Palin and everybody who defends her, but I guess that’s nothing new.

The folks at ShePAC also weighed in on Facebook, writing:

“LIKE” IF YOU AGREE: @EWErickson @BenHowe – we all disagree at times, but lets be respectful. The left demeans conservative women enough – conservatives don’t need to follow their lead. Please change the demeaning photo-shopped image currently on RedState’s homepage. Let’s lead by example fellas.

As of now, the image is still posted at RedState. ShePAC was ignored by Erickson and Co.

Update by Doug Brady: Dan Riehl at Riehl World View gets to the heart of Erickson’s issue:

I swear, RedState should do a fund raiser to get Erick Erickson a penile implant in hopes that he’ll one day get over his fear and loathing of strong women. Were he a serious editor he never would have allowed the post in question to go up, let alone have defended it. And it isn’t just the photoshop that’s the problem, although the moron evidently can’t even spot one of those.

The other problem with the RedState piece, as Riehl goes on to explain, is that Governor Palin never called for the establishment of a third party, which is the basic premise of Erickson and company’s article. I’ve watched with amusement these past several days as many on the Left have twisted Governor Palin’s innocuous response to a Twitter question on FNC as a call to found a new “Freedom Party“.

I watched the interview and that never happened (though I wouldn’t necessarily mind if it had). Here’s the video, courtesy SarahNET the question, from Josh Painter, comes at the end:

She simply pointed out the obvious: That if the GOP continues to abandon their principles, stiff-arm their base, and accept political advice from Chuck Schumer, they’ll go the way of the Whigs as conservatives will eventually be forced to abandon them. The kiddies at RedState are as unfamiliar with the English language as they are with the concept of photo shopping. Read Dan Riehl’s entire piece here.

Update II by Stacy Drake: After overwhelming evidence, Erick Erickson deleted his tweet denying the picture his site used was a Photoshop job. That’s okay because we made sure to get a screenshot of it last night. I have replaced the tweet embed with a copy of that screenshot above.

Update III by Doug Brady: (h/t Michelle McCormick) Jen Kuznicki has written an excellent article on this.

Here are a couple excerpts:

Anger erupted on twitter after RedState’s Peter List posted a photoshopped cleavage picture of Sarah Palin on his Diary, but the content of his post misstated her position, and shows how little he knows about the current fight going on in the GOP.

For all its buzz, RedState is a fairly static presence on the web. For instance, you can miss reading it for about 2 years, and then jump back in, and they are saying the same thing, with the same people, pointing out the same circumstance, and frankly, being really nasty and angry in the comment section.

List says that Palin’s third party solution is part of the problem. He knows she didn’t come up with a third party plan, and if he knows anything about boots-on-the-ground grassroots work, he would know that the third party idea is prevalent in the GOP rank and file. In his misleading post, List points to another RedState writer and how he has laid out the way to take over the GOP.

Is List ‘taking over’ the GOP? It seems to me that if you are going to preach it, you ought to do it. If he is in the fight, good, but I do not see the insight in his post that would prove such. For him, and his clique at RedState, I’ll lend a hand to show what has happened to warrant what many see as a possible alternative. And I’d like to stress the fact that Palin didn’t say she’s going third, she said, ‘if’ the current GOP establishment keeps on doing what they are doing, it certainly is a factor.

[…]

UPDATE: List responded to an email, saying that he honestly thought the picture of Palin was a flattering, real picture of her, and ran out of time to replace the pic before the whole thing blew up. I’m not sure I buy that. To have a pic of Santa in July is odd.

Odd to say the least. Be sure to read Kuznicki’s entire piece. It’s insightful and well worth your time.

Update IV by Doug Brady: This is hilarious. More brilliance from this misogynist moron who, presumably, has the prestigious Erick Erickson seal of approval:

Think I have to be done dealing with the cultists for today. They make me lose hope in humanity.

— Ben Howe (@BenHowe) July 2, 2013

Translation: I acknowledge that I’m demonstrably full of shit, but those evil conservatives who noticed are “cultists” for pointing it out.

And we’re supposed to take this cretin or Erick Erickson, who approves of his BS, seriously? I think not.

Stacy Drake, Doug Brady, Michelle McCormick, and Gary P Jackson contributed to this article

Obama’s Suspected Pedophile Belgium Ambassador Attacked Gov. Palin’s ‘Parenting Skills’ in ’08

This is your representation in Belgium, America.

By Stacy Drake

Follow Stacy on Twitter

Just yesterday, Doug Brady posted a story titled “Another day, another Obama Administration scandal.“ Today is no different.

Via Guy Benson at Townhall:

Did the State Department keep a known (or at least heavily suspected) pedophile on the job, try to block the investigation, then “water down” the final report? State denies any undue influence on internal probes, and the ambassador is decrying the allegations “smears.” Who is he? The New York Post unearths a name with deep financial ties to President Obama and Democrats:

A DS agent was called off a case against US Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman over claims that he solicited prostitutes, including minors. “The ambassador’s protective detail and the embassy’s surveillance detection team . . . were well aware of the behavior.” Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy ordered the investigation ceased, and the ambassador remains in place, according to the memo. Gutman was a big Democratic donor before taking the post, having raised $500,000 for President Obama’s 2008 campaign and helping finance his inaugural.

Why did Kennedy “order the investigation ceased”? The Post story also notes that Clinton’s Secretary of State Cheryl Mills — you remember her, too, right? — personally involved herself in a separate investigation, effectively shutting it down.

Charming behavior from Hillary’s State Department, no? They kept a man “in place,” representing our country while knowing, or at the least, “heavily” suspecting that he was a child predator. It’s disgusting.

It’s also highly ironic (and a bit disturbing) considering Ambassador Gutman’s comments about Governor Palin, back in 2008:

On the Laura Ingraham Radio show, Friday, attorney Howard Gutman — an original member of the national finance committee for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. — very directly criticized the parenting of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin…

Gutman said the issue wasn’t one of gender, but one of parenting -– regardless of the gender of the parent.

“This has nothing to do with gender, whether Todd Palin was the nominee or Sarah Palin was the nominee,” Gutman said. “If my daughter had just come home at 17 years old and said, ‘Mom, Dad, I’m pregnant, we have a family problem,’ I wouldn’t say, ‘You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to take this private family problem…and you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go on the international stage and broadcast this to the world.’”

Gutman continued, “this wasn’t a working mother issue, this was a parent issue…The proper attack is not that a woman shouldn’t run for vice president with five kids, it’s that a parent, when they have a family in need, a Down’s baby who needs them — mother or father.”

“So you are judging her parenting skills,” Ingraham said. “You’re saying you don’t think she’s a good parent for doing this job.”

“I’m saying the proper criticism is not that it’s a woman or man – it doesn’t matter whether it’s Todd or Sarah,” Gutman said. “Think of how many politicians have said it’s not the right time in my family’s life for me to run.”

Fast-forward to 2013 and this arbiter of “good parenting” is most likely a pervert and a pedophile. Gutman’s suspected behavior and the State Department shutting down the investigation into it, is really just par for the course with the Obama administration. In 2008, Team Hope and Change sold itself to the American people as defenders of the Constitution and the champions of civil liberties, who possessed the moral core to “to build new bridges across the globe.”

During a piece of Obama theater during the ’08 campaign, he told Europe:

Now is the time to build new bridges across the globe as strong as the one that bound us across the Atlantic. Now is the time to join together, through constant cooperation, strong institutions, shared sacrifice, and a global commitment to progress, to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It was this spirit that led airlift planes to appear in the sky above our heads, and people to assemble where we stand today. And this is the moment when our nations – and all nations – must summon that spirit anew.

What a a bunch of bull. He was lying to them the same way he lied to Americans. It was all for show. If he cared at all about “building bridges” around the world, he wouldn’t have allowed a suspected deviant like Gutman to remain stationed at one of those “strong institutions,” and there would have been a real investigation into this man’s activities.

This is your representation in Belgium, America.

(H/T: Michelle)

Jen Kuznicki: [Rove Operative] Peter Wehner Attacks Phyllis Schlafly

By Stacy Drake
Follow Stacy on Twitter

In a great read from last April, Jen Kuznicki pointed out Peter Wehner’s association and infatuation with Karl Rove. Today, she calls him out for attacking Phyllis Schlafly. Take a look:

Boy, the list of female conservatives being attacked by Pete Wehner is growing longer…

Wehner refutes Schlafly’s assertion that the Hispanic vote is not something the GOP should be concentrating on by saying,

The notion that there’s “not the slightest bit of evidence” that Hispanics are going to vote Republican is quite wrong. George W. Bush won roughly 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004.

But Wehner is either purposefully ignoring her point, or he’s vacant.

Schlafly said, “The Hispanics who come in like this are going to vote Democrat. And there is not the slightest bit of evidence that they are going to vote Republican.” Meaning, those who are being talked about as able to “come out of the shadows” because of another attempt by Congress to fix a broken system, are not likely to vote Republican. Why? Wehner knows why, just as Heather MacDonald has pointed out, “ It is not immigration policy that creates the strong bond between Hispanics and the Democratic party, but the core Democratic principles of a more generous safety net, strong government intervention in the economy, and progressive taxation.”

But then, Wehner is a proponent of big government, as in his generous tribute to Peter Berkowitz, who wants libertarians and conservatives alike to accept that big government is here to stay, so get over it already.

Schlafly is unwavering in her fight for limited government and the civil society. She is viewed by most who know little of her, as a social conservative, something the Bushies, including Jebby and Rove and Wehner want nixed from the Republican party. So, it is easy to see why he attacks her today.

He has attacked Sarah Palin, just as he attacks Schlafly, but with the years of experience, wisdom and intelligence that both of these women exude, I can imagine it must somehow threaten his thought process enough to attack them. But it is his thought process that is deeply flawed and blind to reason.

When a person like Wehner, who sees nothing wrong with big government, tries to push his view, he comes upon a troublesome hurdle, namely, that since the demographics of the last election show a nation who wants big government, well by golly, Republicans can offer it. The problem with that, is that the nation can no longer remain what it was meant to be. And that helps one understand just how much Wehner holds America in regard. For if you cannot appeal to all people with the intent of the founding, the goodness of the individual, the preciousness of family, and the good Lord above, the country is completely lost. But hey, Pete’ll take it.

[…]

The Bushies like Wehner and Rove are pushing the party in a direction the grassroots does not want it pushed. Mostly because we grassroots warriors are the closest to our constituencies. We cannot go out, because of this push for amnesty and Toomey’s backing of gun legislation and so on, and ask for their votes when they are ticked off that these Republicans are throwing away our core principles. To ignore what your own people, who have voted for you in the past, know about their party is disastrous.

Please go here to read the entire piece.

Governor Palin’s Tweet About the IRS Listening In Confuses the Left

By Stacy Drake
Follow Stacy on Twitter

On Friday, Governor Palin sent out the following tweet in response to the IRS being closed on the Friday before Memorial weekend:

The IRS is closed for the day, feel free to use your phones.

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) May 24, 2013

If you click on the tweet link, you can see the horde of leftists who ignorantly replied to the Governor with snarky comments about how she “confused scandals.” See, they thought that she had confused the fact that Obama has been spying on journalists, with the fact that the IRS (under his leadership) has been singling out conservative groups for extra scrutiny and harassment. Perhaps they wouldn’t be confused if the man they voted for wasn’t currently entangled in so many scandals with so many agencies.

The confusion on their part, lead to this post over at the Huffington Post Thursday called, “Sarah Palin Sends Confusing Tweet About IRS, Phones.” The author wrote:

It’s unclear how the IRS is connected to anything having to do with phones, but it’s possible Palin may have been confusing that scandal with the drama over the Department of Justice secretly seizing two months’ worth of Associated Press phone records in 2012.

Research is your friend, HuffPo. Perhaps this article written in the Wall Street Journal might be able to “clear” things up for the uninformed, knee-jerk haters on the left. It states:

The Internal Revenue Service unit under fire for its reviews of conservative organizations has a long history of targeting groups with extra scrutiny, including foreclosure-assistance charities, credit-counseling services and New York Jewish charities, interviews with current and former employees show.

The scrutiny has included such tactics as listening to telephone calls between groups and their clients, according to one group’s lawyer. In the case of tea-party organizations, IRS officials studied social-media postings to gauge political activity.

Further down the page, they include:

In the mid-2000s, the IRS revoked or terminated the tax-exempt status of more than a dozen credit-counseling firms after finding they operated as businesses that weren’t providing counseling or education. The agency developed a more stringent process for reviewing applications in the years following, including guidelines that advised IRS workers to seek to learn whether counselors collected complete financial information.

“Look for evidence in the organization’s forms, transcripts of telephone calls, and elsewhere,” said an IRS instruction memo.

IRS agents also listened in on calls between credit counselors and their clients to measure the interaction, said Jeffrey Tenenbaum, an attorney for nonprofits who said he sat in on some calls in the company of IRS agents.

I guess those on the left have to have this stuff spelled out for them. Yes people, not only was Obama’s DOJ spying on the media, his IRS was spying on members of conservative groups, and they even used phones to do it!

New CIA Director John Brennan Takes Oath on Draft Constitution—Sans Bill of Rights!

By Stacy Drake

From Olivier Knox at Yahoo News:

Hours after CIA Director John Brennan took the oath of office—behind closed doors, far away from the press, perhaps befitting his status as America’s top spy—the White House took pains to emphasize the symbolism of the ceremony.

“There’s one piece of this that I wanted to note for you,” spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at their daily briefing. “Director Brennan was sworn in with his hand on an original draft of the Constitution that had George Washington’s personal handwriting and annotations on it, dating from 1787.”

[…]

The Constitution itself went into effect in 1789. But troublemaking blogger Marcy Wheeler points out that what was missing from the Constitution in 1787 is also quite symbolic: The Bill of Rights, which did not officially go into effect until December 1791 after ratification by states. (Caution: Marcy’s post has some strong language.)

That means: No freedom of speech and of the press, no right to bear arms, no Fourth Amendment ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and no right to a jury trial.

There’s no telling what Brennan actually put his hand on during the private ceremony.

** A bit of what Marcy Wheeler had to say ~ Gary: [emphasis mine]

That means, when Brennan vowed to protect and defend the Constitution, he was swearing on one that did not include the First, Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth Amendments — or any of the other Amendments now included in our Constitution. The Bill of Rights did not become part of our Constitution until 1791, 4 years after the Constitution that Brennan took his oath on.

I really don’t mean to be an asshole about this. But these vows always carry a great deal of symbolism. And whether he meant to invoke this symbolism or not, the moment at which Brennan took over the CIA happened to exclude (in symbolic form, though presumably not legally) the key limits on governmental power that protect American citizens.

Governor Palin at Southeastern University National Leadership Forum

Governor Sarah Palin speaks at Southeastern University’s National Leadership Forum Photo: Ernst Peters The Ledger

By Stacy Drake and Gary Jackson

Here’s some photos and tweets regarding Governor Palin’s speech at the 7th Annual National Leadership Forum at Southeastern University:

Such an honor to interview @SarahPalinUSA at our #SEUforum today! Thank you @kentingle for the privilege!! pic.twitter.com/v8aYzLJnp8

— ChristinaGard (@ChristinaGard) March 9, 2013

#SEUForum #Palin RT @EricBombay: Sarah palin. http://t.co/MpiZ2cHGTb

— RedBrightandTrue (@RedBrightandTru) March 8, 2013

Sarah Palin is here. And I'm doing her audio. Ok. #seuForum http://t.co/rr7HWpIrdO

— Debbie Oliveira (@debbiekolive) March 8, 2013

Sarah Palin here at SEU Forum! #seuforum #leadershipconference http://t.co/OqOnz2Q1uB

— TJ Booker (@Ironmanfaf) March 8, 2013

"Culture matters; start influencing [it] positively" @SarahPalinUSA #SEUForum

— Seth Thomas Spencer (@sethtspencer) March 8, 2013

"The haters are gonna hate. The critics are going to criticize, might as well dance." -Sarah Palin. #SEUForum #SarahPalin

— Leah Berman (@BeahLerman) March 8, 2013

Governor Palin at #SEUForum. @ Bush Chapel http://t.co/GLnryiKKEQ

— Tomy Cummins (@Gunnizle) March 8, 2013

Governor Palin spoke about leadership and positively influencing culture, telling attendees: “Culture matters, start influencing it positively.”

From The Ledger:

LAKELAND | Former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin was fired up about God and country when she spoke Friday at Southeastern University in Lakeland. And she was dressed for the part.

The 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate visited the Sunshine State at the request of the organizers of the school’s seventh annual leadership forum. She was quite a presence on the stage, in a lipstick-red suit and fierce high heels.

Her passionate talk was peppered with such vibrant cries as “Cling to your God, your guns, your Constitution!” and pleas for the next generation to change the country’s moral fiber. “That will make our foundation crumble if we choose to ignore it,” she said.

Not one to tiptoe around sensitive topics, Palin got right to the point on reasons she said the country is in crisis.

“Today, look around, and don’t you wonder sometimes if, as a nation, we have forgotten God altogether? This is a crucial question,” she said.

Palin said the school asked her to talk about hope and resilience. She said she would but “not that Washington, D.C., ‘hopey-changey’ blah, blah, blah stuff, but real hope.”

Mostly, the 49-year-old hammered such topics as the corruption of Washington, D.C. — “It’s a hotbed of cronyism” — and federal spending — “The federal government is bloated, corrupt and out-of-control.”

[ … ]

Palin said Friday she was happy to visit a Christian school, and she encouraged students to go forth and spread the word. She encouraged them to “infiltrate” the nation. Study journalism, she said. Get into Hollywood and the sports world.

“Get out there and influence culture,” she said.

Palin closed her talk with a battle cry.

“The future of the country depends on what you do,” she said. “God bless you.”

After the speech, Palin answered questions from Southeastern professor Christina Gard, who was Miss Alaska in 2004. It was then Palin said something that brought the strongest applause.

Asked how she dealt with critics, Palin said it’s important to know who you are, and that’s why she speaks out for God publicly in a country where she said it’s often frowned upon or against the law to talk about religious beliefs.

“God deserves so much better than what we give him,” she said. “What has happened when we can’t say his name in public?“

Below are photos courtesy Ernst Peters at The Ledger:

More photos here.

Politico’s Credibility Problem

By Stacy Drake
Follow Stacy on Twitter!

Last week, Politico’s Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen sat down to talk about the recent changes over at Fox News. As anyone could guess, these two individuals used the topic of the day to trash Governor Palin and others they decided to lump into the narrative.

Posted on Politico’s website under the video of the two talking, they wrote (emphasis):

Republicans and Fox News are moving to purge the controversial political creatures they created.

Interesting choice of words but when you’re getting ready to marginalize someone, “creature” is a good way to start. They go on (emphasis):

Both were damaged badly in 2012 by loud, partisan voices that stoked the base — but that scared the hell out of many voters. Now, the GOP, with its dismal image, and Fox News, with its depressed ratings in January, are scrambling to dim those voices. To wit:

Fox ousted contributors Sarah Palin and Dick Morris, two of the most obnoxiously partisan figures on the network’s air.

One could write an entire post on those few sentences alone. This is the left-wing media performing a textbook example of distorting every aspect of the subject to try and control what their readers walk away from the article and video believing. Too bad we aren’t all suckers, eh guys?

First of all, does anyone who knew a thing about Governor Palin BEFORE the 2008 presidential election believe for one second that she is a “most obnoxiously partisan figure?” The democrats in Alaska certainly didn’t think so. But, this is 2013, and the leftist press has now spent many years now distorting who Governor Palin is, so this is really just par for the course.

Secondly, Governor Palin was not “ousted” from FNC. If she were “ousted,” Fox wouldn’t have been in negotiations to renew her contract. But, the phonies in the media have their narrative and they’re sticking to it regardless of facts.

Not that long ago, Andrew Kaczynski @ Buzzfeed tweeted out the following:

Fox News gets rid of Palin and hired @ErickErickson who is smarter, more insightful, & more important to the GOP now. http://t.co/uMesEijL

— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) January 29, 2013

I responded to him (a little angry at the time, I might add):

@BuzzFeedAndrew Hack… You don't "get rid" of someone you offer a new contract to.

— Stacy Drake (@Stacy_Drake) January 29, 2013

His smart-alec response to me and another individual who had challenged him on this:

@Stacy_Drake @BernadetteIL I always offer people I am trying to keep less money.

— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) January 29, 2013

My response to that:

@BuzzFeedAndrew I offer people I'm trying to get "rid of" directions to the door… BTW, you know the details of those negotiations?

— Stacy Drake (@Stacy_Drake) January 30, 2013

And guess what? He never responded to my question about knowing any details of those negotiations. The reason for that is because he doesn’t know the details, and he is simply repeating the left-wing media’s narrative to reinforce the notion to his followers. They’re all full of it.

As just a reminder, Scott Conroy, who broke the story about Governor Palin not renewing her contract with FNC wrote (emphasis):

After a three-year run as a paid contributor to the nation’s highest-rated cable news channel, Sarah Palin and FOX News have cut ties, according to a source close to the former Alaska governor.

“It’s my understanding that Gov. Palin was offered a contract by FOX, and she decided not to renew the arrangement,” the source close to Palin told RCP. “She remains focused on broadening her message of common-sense conservatism across the country and will be expanding her voice in the national discussion.”

[…]

Bill Shine, Executive Vice President at FOX, subsequently issued a statement to the New York Times confirming the news, saying, “We have thoroughly enjoyed our association with Governor Palin. We wish her the best in her future endeavors.”

Governor Palin decided to part ways, not the other way around. Fox didn’t get “rid of” her, and she certainly wasn’t “ousted.” But we all know that facts are irrelevant to most in the media when it comes to Governor Palin.

The one thing that Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen did have correct in the first part of this article, was when it stated:

Fox News, with its depressed ratings in January…

It’s true that FNC’s numbers were down in January. Did anyone bother to tell Vandehei and Allen that Governor Palin was NOT on Fox during that month? That was the first month she didn’t appear on the network, yet these two “journalists” end that same paragraph by writing:

…are scrambling to dim those voices.

So, FNC’s numbers are down the first month that Governor Palin doesn’t appear on the network, and these two use that fact to claim the network needs to “dim” her voice due to Fox’s poor ratings. That doesn’t make any chronological sense!

Then the segment shifts to the ever present anonymous republican establishment type, who gave these two some juicy quotes to feast on in regards to the battle between conservatives and the GOPe. They write (emphasis):

One high-profile Republican strategist, who refused to be named in order to avoid inflaming the very segments of the party he wants to silence, said there is a deliberate effort by party leaders to “marginalize the cranks, haters and bigots — there’s a lot of underbrush that has to be cleaned out.”

I think calling fellow party members “cranks, haters and bigots” to the left-wing press is a pretty good way to “marginalize” them. But this has become common with the anonymous cowards in the GOPe who work directly with the media to attack Conservatives and reformers. The article continues:

For establishment Republicans, this is all about survival, after two straight elections that saw extremely conservative candidates blow Senate races Republicans should have won…

See how that works? The anonymous GOP strategist feeds the leftist “journalists” some red meat, and “reporters” respond by selling another false narrative that directly benefits the republican establishment. According to them, it’s the Conservatives who are costing republicans election after election, not squishy moderates like Mitt Romney. Where’s the logic?

A columnist by the name of Kellyanne Conway at USA Today recently wrote:

For outside groups such as American Crossroads’ reinvented “Conservative Victory Fund” to intervene in races is not new. It was attempted just last year, and with spectacular failure.

Conservative senate candidate in Missouri Todd Akin and his Indiana counterpart Richard Mourdock? are the easy soundbites from the 2012 GOP losses, but those memorable names hide many more failed Senate candidates who had all the king’s horses and all the king’s men — and all the king’s money — and lost: Josh Mandel (Ohio), Connie Mack (Fla.), Denny Rehberg (Mont.), Rick Berg (N.D.), Heather Wilson (N.M.), Tommy Thompson (Wis.), George Allen (Va.), Linda McMahon (Conn.) and Linda Lingle (Hawaii).

Names seldom mentioned because it doesn’t benefit the left or their cocktail buddies in the republican establishment to do so.

The Politico piece goes on (emphasis):

Roger Ailes, the channel’s chairman and CEO, has a politician’s sense of his base — Fox viewers… He created not only the most-watched cable news channel in the country — he created political celebrities, several of whom dominated Republican politics in the 2012 cycle.

At various points, many of those celebrities, all with Fox contracts, were at or near the top of Republican presidential polls: Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Palin and Mike Huckabee. But by the end of campaign, Fox could seem like an alternate universe, one in which the Benghazi killings were the most important story in America and Mitt Romney, contrary to public polls and Fox’s own polls, was on his way to winning the election.

I’m not writing this piece to defend FNC in any way, but the line about Benghazi made my blood boil. What happened at the American diplomatic mission in Libya should have been the most important story in the nation, and on every network. The fact that it wasn’t tells you everything you need to know about the media in this country. Americans that were serving our country at the behest of President Obama, were killed while the Commander in Chief did nothing. And then, the administration blamed the entire event on a 15 minute Youtube clip that nobody had seen. If Hillary Clinton were a Republican, there is no way anyone would be talking about “Hillary 2016″ after Benghazi. Her career would have been rightfully over, but I digress.

Vandehei and Allen continue:

Ailes has aggressively, and shrewdly, toned things down post-election. Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly were among the first conservatives to call for a rethinking of the GOP’s opposition to comprehensive immigration reform. And then Palin and Morris got the boot, sending an unmistakable message about the new expectations for the channel’s contributors.

Here again, insinuating that Governor Palin wasn’t offered a new contract and didn’t decline it by choice. This isn’t journalism, it’s dishonesty. But we live in an era that many in the media have no ethics and no appreciation for the truth. Everything is politics to them, and anytime they can push a negative meme about Governor Palin, they will do so.

The article concludes by talking about Karl Rove and the ongoing battle between Conservatives and Rove’s wing of the party. It ends by stating (emphasis):

But a senior Republican operative said the party has two huge, unresolved impediments to the top leaders’ grand plans: “suicide conservatives, who would rather lose elections than win seats with moderates,” and the “many groups on the hard right that depend on direct mail fundraising that requires a high degree of audacity, and borderline shrillness.”

Throw in a third obstacle: loudmouth personalities and candidates who, once created, are hard to control.

Translation: Self-made, principled reformers can’t be controlled by the GOPe or manipulated by the left-wing media, therefore must have their character completely assassinated by both as often as necessary. They must blur the lines between self-made, principled reformers and nutty candidates that said self-made, principled reformers never endorsed. Throw in some words like “bigot” here and there, and maybe just maybe, people will stop listening to them.

The media can wish Governor Palin had been “ousted,” they can keep writing articles about how “irrelevant” she is, after doing so for over four years now, but it doesn’t change reality. And that is that every day more and more Americans see their deception for what it is and decide to stop listening to the “loudmouth personalities” who make up the LSM.

Governor Palin Praises Jim DeMint For His Service Echoes Desire to See Tim Scott Succeed Him

By Stacy Drake

Jim DeMint announced that he will be leaving the U.S. Senate to head the Heritage Foundation. A press release from the Senator states:

Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) announced that he will leave the Senate at the beginning of January to become the next president of The Heritage Foundation, the largest and most respected conservative think tank in America.

“It’s been an honor to serve the people of South Carolina in United States Senate for the past eight years, but now it’s time for me to pass the torch to someone else and take on a new role in the fight for America’s future.

“I’m leaving the Senate now, but I’m not leaving the fight. I’ve decided to join The Heritage Foundation at a time when the conservative movement needs strong leadership in the battle of ideas. No organization is better equipped to lead this fight and I believe my experience in public office as well as in the private sector as a business owner will help Heritage become even more effective in the years to come.

“I’m humbled to follow in the footsteps of Ed Feulner, who built the most important conservative institution in the nation. He has been a friend and mentor for years and I am honored to carry on his legacy of fighting for freedom.

“My constituents know that being a Senator was never going to be my career. I came to Congress as a citizen legislator and I’ve always been determined to leave it as citizen legislator. South Carolina has a deep bench of conservative leaders and I know Governor Haley will select a great replacement.

“One of the most rewarding things I’ve done in the Senate is work with the grassroots to help elect a new generation of leaders who have the courage to fight for the principles of freedom that make this country so great. I’m confident these senators will continue the legacy of conservative leaders before them.”

You can read the entire press release here.

We wish all the best to Jim DeMint in his new role. Governor Palin sent out the following tweets regarding the news.

We look forward to Jim DeMint's new leadership at the Heritage Foundation, and we're all grateful for his past leadership in the Senate.

—
Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) December 06, 2012

A great choice! RT @PeterHambyCNN DeMint has made it known in Columbia that he wants Tim Scott to be appointed to his seat, sources tell CNN

—
Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) December 06, 2012

Above is an adaptation from an earlier post of Stacy’s from Conservatives4Palin You can click here for any updates.

~ Gary

It should be noted that Sarah endorsed Congressman Tim Scott in 2010. He would be an excellent choice to replace Senator DeMint.

From 2010:

I’m very proud to add my support to Tim Scott’s campaign to represent South Carolina’s 1st congressional district. Tim has a remarkable success story. He grew up in poverty and was raised by a single-mom who struggled to provide. With help from a mentor and his brave mom, Tim learned to appreciate the value of hard work and American opportunity. He went on to become a business owner and has served in public office with integrity on the county and state level.

Tim is a pro-life, pro-2nd Amendment, pro-development, Commonsense Conservative who’s been endorsed by the Club for Growth because of his solid commitment to the principles of limited government and fiscal responsibility.

He will represent the Palmetto State with distinction in DC, so I encourage you to vote for Tim in his run-off election next Tuesday, June 22nd. Please visit Tim’s website at www.votetimscott.com and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

~ Sarah Palin

Andrew Halcro’s Anti-Palin Obsession Still Alive and Kicking

By Stacy Drake

*Follow Stacy on Twitter

Last Friday, Andrew Halcro took to his blog to suggest that he had a big story set to release on Monday concerning an alleged FBI investigation of the Matanuska Creamery, or as he calls it,”Palin’s Milkman.” Andrew has a long history of distorting the facts on this issue, he also has an old axe to grind. For those of you who don’t know, Governor Palin beat Halcro during the Alaska Gubernatorial race in 2006. He received a whopping 9% of the vote and she went on to become state’s governor. As Rebecca Mansour once wrote:

At least John Binkley, Frank Murkowski, and Tony Knowles had the dignity to lose graciously.

That wasn’t the case with Mr. Halcro.

Monday night, as predicted by anyone who knows about Andrew, he released an innuendo-filled, fact deficient screed to the Alaska media. He began:

The Palin-era dairy bailout seemed like such a bad idea back in 2007. Bailing out an industry that couldn’t stand on its own two feet. Appointing unqualified cronies to key positions and then allowing them to give away state agriculture loans without guarantees or proper collateral. But today, rumors abound that the FBI has come knocking.

Several of my longtime confidential sources stated last week that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is knee-deep in trying to unwind some of the financial activity surrounding the use of federal government grants awarded to the Matanuska Creamery.

“Something is going on with an FBI investigation regarding the federal grant funds. The FBI has been contacting folks about checks they were given with cash back,” read an email I received from one long time dairy source.

“It appears the FBI Investigation is focused on one of the major shareholders,” a follow-up email read from yet another agriculture insider.

In a phone interview with andrewhalcro.com, Anchorage FBI Special Agent Eric Gonzalez refused to admit or deny that the Bureau was investigating the Matanuska Creamery. Saying it was agency’s policy not to publicly comment, Gonzalez offered nothing by way of confirmation.

What does a supposed (yet not even confirmed) investigation of “major shareholders” have to do with Governor Palin? Answer: absolutely nothing.

He refers to it as the “Palin-era dairy bailout” but that’s a simplistic and misleading characterization of the issue. Halcro loves to act as though Governor Palin tried to bail out the dairy to save it and because it closed down, she failed. He even likes to act as though she tried to take it out of the hands of the people who were running it and hand it over to her friends as some sort of crony kickback, as you will later read. All of that is categorically false.

As Ian pointed out after reading some of the emails from the Palin administration released to the media back in June, 2011:

It is true that the Mat-Maid Dairy closed about a year after the Governor stepped in to prevent the dairy from being closed. What is also true is that the Governor also wanted the dairy to close if a successful financial plan could not be created. The reason why she fought the earlier attempt to close the dairy is because the state had already made commitments that would have been broken had the dairy closed immediately. The Governor essentially wanted the dairy to close if an alternative financial plan could not be realized but she wanted to close it in a way so that the state did not break any commitments it had made to farmers that would be violated by the sudden closure of the dairy.

How do we know these were the Governor’s intentions? #Palinemails:

Dairy farmers were told their last day to deliver milk is June 27th. The state just broke its word again if we were to roll over for the board ‘ s ridiculous vote to shut it down without proper notice…Farmers will be dumping their milk in the parking lot of DNR if we don’t step in and show the leadership they’re craving and deserving

We need to regroup and get good business minds in there to figure out close – out plan in next yr or so, or re -vitalization plan for Ag.

If the Governor did indeed want the dairy to stay open, she wouldn’t have talked about how they needed to “figure out [a] close-out plan.”

One of her staffers sent her an e-mail after the dairy closed that strongly supports the account that I have outlined regarding the Governor’s intentions for the Mat-Maid dairy:

Nice job governor! Despite the critics, namely halcro, mat-maid closes its books with money in the bank and there’s still equipment and facilities to sell. Alaskans should know YOUR decision to put a new board in place, 600.0 to help w the transition, essentially granting an extention to the livelihood of farmers after the previous mngmnt and bd decided to abruptly close the doors, etc.

If the Governor never intended for the dairy to close, why would one of her staffers send her an e-mail congratulating her for the plant “clos[ing] its books with money in the bank?” If the Governor indeed wanted the dairy to survive, the staffer would not have sent her an e-mail saying how great it is that the dairy closed.

So, Governor Palin wanted the dairy closed just as everybody else but being a responsible executive, did it in a way that wouldn’t create a lot of unintended consequences and victims. She didn’t want the state to break its commitment to the farmers because keeping her word actually means something to the Governor.

Now, keep in mind that the Mat-Maid diary issue had been going on in Alaska for a long time. It was something that should have been taken care of years ago, but no other administration touched it because it was a messy and contentious job, and attention seekers like Halcro would undoubtedly be on the sidelines complaining the entire time while Mat-Su farmers’ livelihoods were at stake.

Governor Palin was the only governor willing to correct the situation, and she did it in a way that wouldn’t hurt the farmers who had nothing to do with corrupt practices of those running the dairy. She wanted to keep the Mat-Maid operations going temporarily, then to move it to a sort of managed bankruptcy that gradually phased out the state government’s involvement and moved this service to the private sector. This is what the Palin administration did and to claim she had any other intention is grossly dishonest.

But Halcro does claim that Governor Palin had other intentions. He actually has the chutzpah to accuse her of engaging in cronyism. He states:

After Mat-Maid’s overseer the Creamery Board had recommended shutting down the state owned dairy to prevent major financial losses to taxpayers, then-Gov. Sarah Palin began a public assault on the board and Mat-Maid executives. She falsely accused them of being dishonest and mismanaging the dairy. The Valley milk farmers, who stood to lose if a state bailout didn’t happen, were Palin’s neighbors and friends.

Over the next six months Palin fired Mat-Maid’s management. Fired the Creamery Board. Installed her friends and neighbors to run the daily operations of Mat Maid and the state agency that grants agriculture loans. Accumulated record financial losses, after the transition, by keeping Mat-Maid open. And then allowed her appointed friends to loan themselves hundreds of thousands from the agriculture revolving loan fund to start a new dairy.

Today the end is near, and the story line continues to highlight how Palin’s populist bailout has grown into a financial and possibly criminal disaster.

[…]

At the end of the day, the Palin-era dairy bailout will stand the test of time as a very costly and ill conceived attempt at government subsidized cow capital cronyism.

The Creamery Board wanted to shut down because they were trying to cover up their own corruption. Palin rightly fired the management because of these business practices, not because she was trying to give her “neighbors and friends” some sort of gift. And just who are these “neighbors and friends” Halcro is speaking of? Basically, any dairy farmer in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, as if she knew them all on a personal level. To call any farmer from her home district a “crony” is absurd. Please note that the Mat-Su Valley is one of the only places in Alaska were any of this sort of farming occurs.

The funny irony of all of this is that Andrew Halcro owns an Avis Car Rental business in Anchorage.

He does his business at a publicly financed and maintained airport. You don’t see him complaining taxpayer money going to help he and his fellow car rental business (or shall I call them his “neighbors and friends“) owners, now do you? The people funded the airport, which directs traffic directly to his kiosks, allowing him to profit. This isn’t really a big deal considering the nature of his business, it’s just when someone projects themselves as carrying an ideological sword, while at the same time benefiting from that which they condemn, it’s certainly telling of that person’s character.

This latest hit-piece from Halcro shouldn’t surprise anyone. The man is a known liar and fraud. Case in point, in 2009 C4P noted the time Andrew edited something Governor Palin had told a reporter for his radio program:

The “Bob and Mark Show” has called out Andrew Halcro for editing and distorting an answer given by Governor Palin to a reporter. Halcro edited the audio so that it appears as if Governor Palin gave a hesitant answer. However, closer inspection shows that Halcro edited the answer by one of Governor Palin’s assistants and inserted it in front of Palin’s response:

1. The voice Halcro used is a male voice!

2. The response given by Palin’s assistant was a nearly two minute answer.

Bob and Mark added that Halcro “gets paid to hate Sarah Palin.”

Halcro no longer gets paid to hate Sarah Palin (I don’t think), but there’s no doubt that he still does. His bitter resentment stemming from the 2006 election hasn’t faded in the least. He hasn’t moved on or grown as a person at all. Instead, he uses his “insider information” about people (none of which being Governor Palin) allegedly being investigated by the FBI, and turns it into another opportunity to bash the Governor by misleading people about what she really did during her tenure. It’s sad, it’s pathetic, and it’s disingenuous. If people abused federal grant funds, let those people pay the consequences. Their actions are no reflection of Governor Palin’s service to her constituents while in office, or what she was doing by dealing with this complex issue in a responsible manner.

By the way, if any of you plan on visiting Anchorage in the future, I recommend renting a car from Hertz, Thrifty, Enterprise, or any company other than Avis. There’s no reason to give this deranged hypocrite your money.