Liberty's Lamp Held High as Beck Interviews Palin

Glenn Beck interviews Sarah Palin with the Statue of Liberty in the Background.

Video: Sarah Palin on Glenn Beck 01/13/10. Transcript.



A word to Sarah Palin: You are being called to serve. Take liberty's lamp and lead us.

Glenn Beck said

she is one of the only people that I can see that can possibly lead us out of where we are. I don't know yet if she's strong enough, if she's well enough advised, or if she knows she can no longer trust anyone. I don't know if she can lead and not lose her soul.

That is where I'd like to go for the next hour, to find out if this is the woman that can lead us and not lose her soul.

Glenn, I think the answer to your question is yes.

I'm climbing the thing and bringing the torch back to her.

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"I would be perfectly happy to go back to Wasilla, Alaska, with my five children and my grandson and raise a happy, healthy family loving our great outdoors – doing the things we do in Alaska. But, if I believe that in some capacity I can help this great nation, I'm going to be willing to sacrifice and to change some things in my lifestyle in order to, in order to serve. That doesn't have to mean, though, top dog. That doesn't have to mean really – entail having any kind of title." - Sarah Palin

That's One Way to Counter the Liberal Media

Those of us who know the battle scars of strafing runs to the comments section of media web pages like the Anchorage Daily News, The Washington Post and The New York Times to combat the hateful liberal bias and outright slandering of Sarah Palin understand the frustration of how difficult it is to counter a media so liberally biased that it requires a battalion sized list of contributors and researchers at sites like Conservatives4Palin and a web full of volunteers and bloggers to counter the smears.

We've done well. The proliferation of conservative and pro-Palin websites is amazing considering that you can find dozens of sites that now promote the Palin cause while looking back on the days where it was the Alaskan Bloggers, the ADN and the Huffington Post versus a bunch of nobodies with no websites. These were the days when Rachelle Friberg, Adrienne Ross, Lisa Graas, Josh Painter, Karen Allen, Ron Devito and Gary P. Jackson were no names scratching out posts and comments about Sarah Palin in a sea of nonsense filled with AstroTurfers and liberal flamers who must have used the phrase "she's dumb" hundreds of thousands of times.

This blogger joined Team Sarah to promote the cause and strategize with like minded people. Marjorie, Emily, Jane and Bill kept it together. I know some of the people who today are now fellow Palin bloggers from there. After the election, TS was the only place to vent and raise the rabble to fight the liberal media. A lot has changed. We now outnumber the Alaskan Bloggers, Team Sarah continues to increase membership and Conservatives4Palin has become the unsheathed sword that has been slaying the libelous while promoting the truth about Sarah Palin.

We are ordinary barbarians who have built an army that would have made William Wallace proud.

Twitter has allowed many of us to link to professional writers like Matthew Continetti, Mary Katharine Ham, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter and SE Cupp and professional broadcasters like Sean Hannity, Tammy Bruce, Eddie Burke, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and Greta Van Susteren. More professional writers like Amanda Carpenter, Andrea Tantaros, Lori Calabrese and Jedediah Bila have put forth their talent as well. These individuals have used the media to counter the smears against Sarah Palin. Great Americans all, they have been instrumental in keeping the Palin cause clean, even when the mainstream media and detractors in the blogosphere would try to muddy it up. The internet is filled with video clips and links to articles where these great individuals have stood up for Sarah Palin on the Washington Times, Fox News and radio stations around America.

And now we have the nuclear weapon of the media. Our great leader has become a Fox News contributor. It's as if we have been out in the field firing away with all our might and she steps up front and says, "try this."

Boom!

The smear campaign has tried everything it could do to destroy Sarah Palin. The media would put out reports about her appearing at a campaign meeting in a towel or that her hair was thinning out. There were rumors that she was resigning as Alaska governor because of a pending federal indictment. That iceberg melted quickly when the FBI stated there was no such thing. From day 1 of the smear campaign, myth after myth and lie after lie have been debunked.

They stabbed her with their steely knives, but they just could not kill the beast.

Where do we stand today? A couple of books have come out. One says she is mentally unstable and another says she was "nonplussed" about running for VP because it was "God's Plan." Hmmm, a mentally unstable person who writes a book, single-handedly guides the health care debate with a posting on Facebook and who is now a Fox News contributor? Sounds pretty sick to me, considering the diagnosis of mental illness was coming from a bunch of nuts anyway. And as for God's plan, after seeing how many times she was hit with the medicine ball, how vetted she was and how much she endured with the lies and rumors swirling along with almost two dozen frivolous ethics complaints filed against her, it's probably safe to say that the universe isn't toughening her up just so she can beat Todd and the kids at a game of scrabble.

Are the smear merchants running out of of ammo? Considering their next move is to "unsheathe their Johnston" and count on Levi to do some smearing during the Tripp custody case, one can only wonder if the box of tricks that once included maternity questions about babies with special needs, federal indictments that don't exist, a wedding ring which was supposed to be at the bottom of a lake that showed up on Palin's finger during the Oprah interview and a picture of toenails and a toy moose isn't getting a little empty by now.

Let's face it. They have a bunch of whining disgruntled campaign officials who will probably never work on another campaign again and a naked young man who they now expect to go forth because America needs him to save it from that dastardly Sarah Palin.

We have Sarah Palin and Fox News. In Texas Hold 'em that's known as pocket aces. And they're suited too!

America's Decline is Reversible

"At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the question is not whether we will preside over the creation of a New World Order, but whether America's decline is irreversible." - Patrick J. Buchanan

"You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness." - Ronald Reagan


As we reflect on the first decade of the new millennium, we are struck by all the bad things that have happened to our nation since the ball dropped that fateful New Years Eve ten years ago. From the moment the first plane hit the World Trade Center, it's conceivable to reflect back and consider that everything has gone to hell in a hand basket since then. The only question now is: what can we do we to stop the decline and put our nation back on the track that our Founders intended for it?

Our nation has been in a steady free fall ever since we lost our way when our nation divided along ideological lines over how we should conduct the War on Terror. Our political leaders were amiss in explaining to us why we were conducting the war the way we were, and the people themselves were amiss in their unwillingness to cross party lines and support our president in the general concept that national defense is first priority.

Instead, liberals used the opportunity to return to power by ginning up the notion that George W. Bush was some kind of an evil warmonger or a bumbling fool. Yet, during his years in office following the 9/11 attacks, we were not attacked again. Mistakes were made both on the security front and on the domestic front. Politicians deserve full blame for those. But, the American people need to look themselves in the mirror and stop their whining, complaining and criticizing and realize that if they would have supported the war effort more and cheer led our president to success, maybe they themselves and our nation would be better off for the self improvement effort.

If the government of our nation was failing us, then we the people should have stepped up and fixed it. Instead, we bought into a myth called hope and change. We punished the Republican party for doing a bad job by replacing them with an even more incompetent and ideologically off based Democrat party. We fell for the media lies during the Obama presidential campaign. We were lazy. We didn't do our research and we didn't do our homework. We said kick the bums out and let the new bums fix it.

But, we are beginning to see the end of this type of thinking. We are actually seeing the American people waking up and finally taking matters into their own hands. America, for some reason, has always had a knack for allowing itself to be brought to the precipice of destruction and then suddenly becoming shocked into the action necessary to recover. That is happening now.

The sheep have allowed themselves to be herded into the shearing pen and are now clamoring to get out. The liberals thought it would be an easy fleecing, but they are finding the sheep are not as docile as originally thought. Imagine the surprise when over a million of them showed up in Washington on 9/12/09 with signs and Gadsden flags.

This time around, we are not waiting for the messiah to come and save us. We are taking matters into our own hands. We are recruiting candidates at the local levels that share our governing philosophy, our values and our vision for what America should look like. We know what the shining city on a hill should look like and we're not waiting for anyone to build it for us this time. Grab a shovel and a hammer and lets go.

It's time.

We have proven that we can take back Virginia and New Jersey. We have stood firm as the media and the remnants of the Obama campaign did everything they possibly could do to try to destroy the one person who understood where we were coming from, how we felt and where we want to go. From the ashes of a destroyed governorship, Sarah Palin rose like a phoenix, from the wreckage arriving to cast the ashes back in their eyes. "She is," as noted on Conservatives4Palin.com, "perfectly positioned as the right candidate at the right moment in history to lead America's return to the honest, common sense conservative policies of Ronald Reagan."

As the American people realize they need to exchange "federal government run top down micromanagement" of our lives for a return to self reliance and local support systems, they are going to need a leader that understands that. This is not the time for a strong federal government, except in the area of national defense. Our domestic problems will not be solved by complex bureaucracies, public sector economies, industries that are regulated into submission and promoting immoral and unethical behavior in the name of sophistication or tolerance.

It is time to call a spade a spade.

No stack of court cases will ever stop us from being a Christian nation. If something is wrong with our culture, we should step up and speak out. We are not the morality police, but rather defenders of our own morality. The real "morality police" are the ones who tell us we can't put up the ten commandments in our buildings and who are fighting now to keep God out of the public square.

No stack of statutes defining government regulations can stop unethical behavior better than having a poorly or corruptly run business fail. There are millions of honest, ethical and competent people who are ready to allow the free market to reward them for the work necessary to really fix our financial and housing situation. But as long as government continues to regulate, stimulate and bail out these industries, the only ones who will be trying to solve the problems are the same ones who got us into the problems.

Let these businesses fail. Americans are big boys and girls. We can sustain a couple of years of harshness needed to allow new investment groups led by innovative thinkers to buy up the assets and allow the marketplace to dictate how these industries really need to be run. The days of the "curruptocrats" greasing the legislature so they can game the regulatory system must end. Those who need to grease the system are not friends of the capitalist system. They should either fail or be rooted out.

Stimulus and bailouts are methadone. Constructive destruction and controlled bankruptcy is detoxification. If we don't detox, we will never come clean.

The time is right for small government, socially Darwinist free enterprise principles and the proper use of the energy industry (drill, dig and develop alternatives simultaneously) to be the strategy that we can use to reawaken this industrial giant one more time.

Is America's decline reversible? Let's just say that our steps into a thousand years of darkness can stop right now. Yes, we are waking up and we are ready to build this thing from the bottom up. But we can't do it until the top comes down first. Before August 2008, this blogger thought there was no one out there that could help us do that.

What a lucky break for America that John McCain chose Sarah Palin to be his running mate.

Palin Passes Kobayashi Maru

reprinted and edited from a post I did on Team Sarah July 7, 2009 (three days after Palin announced her resignation as Alaska governor)

The Kobayashi Maru is a test in the fictional Star Trek universe. It is a Starfleet training exercise designed to test the character of cadets in the command track at Starfleet Academy. The Kobayashi Maru test was first depicted in the opening scene of the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and also appears in the 2009 film Star Trek. This provided context for how the main character ensign (later admiral) James T. Kirk deals with the possibility of unwinnable situations in general and death in particular.

The civilian vessel Kobayashi Maru is in a simulated battle with the Klingons. The ship is disabled and the approaching cadet crew must decide whether or not to attempt rescue of the Maru crew - potentially endangering their own ship/lives - or leave the Kobayashi Maru to certain destruction. The difficult decision to assist "Maru" revolves around the issue of the disabled ship's location being in the Klingon Neutral Zone, as entering the zone would be in violation of the Organian Peace Treaty. (The test itself is to see how a starfleet captain would handle a no-win scenario.)

James T. Kirk takes the test three times while at Starfleet Academy. Prior to his third attempt, Kirk "surreptitiously reprograms the simulator so that it is possible to rescue the freighter." This fact finally comes out, later in the movie, as Kirk, Saavik and others appear marooned, near death. Saavik's response is, "Then you never faced that situation. Faced death." Kirk replies, "I don't believe in the no-win scenario." Despite having cheated, Kirk was awarded a commendation for "original thinking." - Wickipedia

Like Kirk, Palin doesn't believe in the no-win situation.

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Leigh Scott wrote :

Then, as Sarah Palin announced her resignation, it hit me. Sarah Palin is Captain Kirk. Why? Because she just passed the Kobayashi Maru.

The article is a good read and supports my point about how Sarah Palin has beaten a no-win situation where she would be hacked at by ankle biting ethics complainers until she was bankrupt and could no longer conduct the state of Alaska's business effectively.

Resigning was the most dangerous political move she could make, but it was also the shrewdist. As we watch her complete an enormously successful book tour, we see the brilliance and genius of Sarah Palin who now commands 6 figures for speeches, will make millions on the book, will be exposed to the types of donors needed to fund SarahPac and will be able to speak freely about her political opinions without the risk of being slapped with an ethics complaint because she is "neglecting the business of the state" for doing all the above from her desk in Anchorage.

It's clearer now more than ever that had she stayed on as governor of Alaska, she would have been destroyed by the media and the ankle biters.

She has followed all the principles outlined in my web page: Fight For the Right. The web page was designed originally as my suggestion as to how the conservative movement should rebuild itself. Written shortly after the 2008 election, it outlined what I believed were the key ingredients to a return to power for the Republican party and the conservative movement. It then goes on to ask:

Rank and file: Are we ready?

Congressional leaders: Are you ready?

Sarah?

Ironically, the page was not designed to tell Sarah Palin how to revive the movement or sell Sarah Palin to the movement; it was directed at everyone in the movement. But as Sarah Palin fulfilled more and more of the "requirements" on this page, references to her were added to support the original theories. I also added the Courageous Conservatism section after the Carrie Prejean incident. It was around that same time that Palin gave the "If I die, I die" speech.

It's amazing how Sarah Palin has such a "shared world view" or a "unity of thought" with this blogger. These were the same characteristics that attracted me so strongly to Ronald Reagan. Sarah Palin is quickly becoming an example that supports everything that I wrote on that page.

One of the things I wrote about (and included quotes from Andrew Breitbart to support this) was our need to infiltrate the pop culture. The years of ridiculing that George W. Bush took from pop culture, the shots at conservative values that are constantly being taken, and finally the Tina Fey caricatures led me to believe that we conservatives needed to get writers and actors to infiltrate Hollywood and use the techniques of the left for our purpose. The days when conservative Dan Aykroyd called called liberal Jane Curtain, "Jane, you ignorant slut" came to mind, but I chose to leave it out of the page.

I never dreamed that Sarah Palin herself would take to a Hollywood set and handle this part for me.

Which brings us to Captain Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru again. One can't help but to think that biographers should make a note that the video below is going to be a major player in a historical discussion of how Sarah Palin overcame the ridicule. It's also really cool that part of beating the political Kobayashi Maru included a roasting of the actor who played the character who defeated the original Kobayashi Maru.



Ronald Reagan used humor to defuse the ridicule that was directed at him, too.

Conservatives4Palin.com could not have made a more accurate assessment of the positive effect that Palin's appearance on the Tonight Show had.

Sarah Palin’s book tour has ended, and its cessation coincides with the end of the media’s vile attempt to de-legitimize her. That doesn’t mean the smears will come to a halt or the condescension will lessen, it means that this character assassination will no longer be taken seriously by serious political observers or by the portion of the American public at large who can be described as anything other than “Palin-hater.” What Gov. Palin did at the Gridiron and on Conan put an end to such foolishness.

Set a course for the shining city on a hill. Warp factor 4, Mr. Sulu.

Shining Brightly in the Snow

I’m truly humbled by the response to my book tour by everyday Americans, and if traveling by plane means that I can meet more of these wonderful people, I’ll travel by plane (or bus or train or canoe or dog sled or whatever it takes). - Sarah Palin

And because you feel this way about us, we will wait in the dead of night, sleep in our cars, in the pouring rain, the blinding snow or whatever it takes to meet you, too.



I arrived at the BJ's parking lot in Fairfax, VA around 1 am. I tweeted some and then took a two hour nap in the "Right Wing Express," otherwise known as my car, the one with the "Sarah kicks (picture of a donkey)" and "Palin 2012" bumper stickers. Not exactly a dog sled, but a pretty good liberal tweaker while riding by on the highway.

Whe I awoke around 4 am, the crowd was getting in line as temperatures hovered around 40 degrees. Dressed in layers, I situated my chair and chatted on the phone with a friend of mine who works the night shift as a newspaper distributor. The conversation was full of politics: discussions about climategate, how hypocritical liberals are and what Palin's chances for 2012 were.

Light rain began to fall prior to dawn, so I headed back to the car, tweeted some more, got my umbrella and headed back to my chair. It was cold, and the temperature was dropping.

As the dark sky morphed into a cloudy daylight, the rain fell heavier and heavier. Umbrellas were open everywhere. It was miserable, except for the mood of the people. There was no complaining. There was no disconnect between the people. This was not a mightier than thou leader that people would have thoughts of like "I bet she's sleeping in some warm bed somewhere while we freeze." Instead, the conversation was about how distastefully the media treated Sarah about "the plane." We talked about how great the plane was because, as I pointed out to another gentleman in the crowd, "did you see her schedule? It's crazy."

There were discussions of how many seconds would be needed per person for Sarah Palin to sign her name. It wasn't about us, it was about how hard Sarah was working. It wasn't about "give me the autograph, I waited hours for it." It was about "let's follow the rules and move quickly out of respect for Sarah's time."

At a little after 8 am, the rain changed to snow. As the snow fell heavier and the temperature had dropped even more, the crowd still grew as did the anticipation. BJ's employees gave out wrist bands. More people joined the line. The police and BJ officials saw to it that those of us who did not have the book yet or a BJ's membership were given the opportunity to take care of those issues without losing their place in line.

The one police officer who kept me informed so I knew when it would be my turn to get my membership and pick up my books performed his duty with good humor and professionalism despite being covered in snow.

When I returned to the line armed with my books, a man named Jimmy and I talked about Sarah Palin's qualifications. She's not part of that Washington establishment. People are turned off by the establishment. She's one of us. She's a mother of five. If America is to elect its first woman president, it will have to be someone of good moral character and without the blemishes of scandals and affairs. He said that her resignation helped her put the time in necessary to meet the people and learn more about foreign policy. I mentioned how she was demonstrating that on her Facebook page.

The line moved and we were now on the sidewalk heading for the door. Ironically, it was during a conversation about Fox News that we were having that I heard people toward the back of the line yelling out "it's Greta Van Susteran!" Greta had emerged from a car and was walking away, passing the line behind me toward a side entrance into BJ's.

The line moved quickly. Inside, it was a matter of about 5-10 minutes that I was at the table with my books prepared for signature. Todd Palin said hello and we shook hands. I said "it's a pleasure to meet you." Then I stepped over to Sarah and she looked at my shirt, with a picture of her on it and the words "Say it ain't so, Joe." She was all energy and enthusiam. We shook hands. I had touched greatness.

"Honored to meet you," I said. She smiled and had that raised pitch in her voice, as she took immediate notice and reacted enthusiastically saying "I love your shirt!" I said "thanks, I wore it to your rallies" as she was signing two books. I thanked her and moved on. It was so quick, but worth every hour standing in the elements. She was radiant and she was genuine.

(UPDATE: CLICK HERE TO SEE SARAH PALIN LOOKING AT MY SHIRT. END UPDATE)

I met her parents. Chuck and Sally. They were so personable. They also loved the shirt. What a cool couple of people!

I lost my bearings at that point and didn't know which way I was supposed to go. Flashes were going off, people were taking pictures and I was momentarily lost. I tried to make a mental note of the name of a person from twitter who recognized me, but I was still leaving the moments from when I was in Sarah Palin's presence.

I went to get bags to wrap my books in to protect them from the snow. The lady who worked at customer service was excited. She asked me to show her Sarah's signature, which I did. She thought that was so awesome.

I left the store in the full glow that I had finally achieved the one thing I never did when Reagan was alive.

I quickly put the books in the car to protect them from the three inches of snow that had already fallen. I got my brush out of the trunk, cleared the car and warmed it up. I tweeted and texted. All hell broke loose. The texts were flying back in. My friends were calling. I was alone in my car, yet it was mayhem.

As I drove back to Richmond, VA, I spoke to my business partner who couldn't have been happier for me. I spoke to a couple of other friends. The text messages were pouring in, but I couldn't read them while driving. As I neared the northern suburbs of Richmond, the snow changed to rain. There was no snow in Richmond. If you wanted snow, you had to go where the lady from the north was.

Prior to the trip, I told a friend of mine what I was doing. He asked me if I ever got up that early to go to Black Friday or to get to a store for a sale. I told him, "if I'm going to get up that early to go to any store, Sarah Palin better be there, otherwise forget it."

While on line, someone came back from the parking lot and said there was a small group of protestors, about 3 or 4 I surmised (UPDATE: TPM reported 4 protestors). (END UPDATE) One of the guys I was talking with said "this is great snow for packing snowballs."

"That's perfect," I said. "Where are the liberals?" We laughed.

(UPDATE) One of the first things I noticed about Governor Palin when I first saw her was her hat. She has been getting a lot of compliments about it. (END UPDATE)

On my way home, the "Right Wing Express" passed a car with an Obama bumper sticker on it. There were two 30ish year old white men inside. I showed them Going Rogue against my driver side window. The driver gave me the finger and the passenger waved, shaking his head "no, no." We were all laughing, ribbing each other. I gave them a thumbs up, pointing to the book, shaking my head affirmatively, laughing. It was great.

It's all about the great moments. It's all about the light that shines brightly in the snow.


The Hat that everyone loved


The shirt that Sarah loved


Need I say more?

I'm in this video briefly at the 1:46 mark and 2:43 mark

Sarah Palin arrives at BJ's in Fairfax, VA in the snow



Fairfax, VA Palin book signing links:

Palin fans out for a look and a book in Fairfax
Alaska? Feel like home for Gov Palin?
Sarah Palin Brings First Snow, Signs Books
Fairfax Goes Rogue
Sarah Palin Looks Nice In Fairfax The Gridiron Transcript: Biden Selling Book: Going Rogaine
Madame Meets Virginia!
Pictures: Palin book signing pics
Video: Fans wait in snow for Palin book signing
Video: Beck: Palin "looks really hot in that hat"

Other People's Experiences

My Colorado Springs Signing Extravaganza - Julie Smith
december 9 2009: meeting governor palin in colorado springs - The Design Conservative
Sarah in the Springs - Michelle Malkin
Going Rogue with Governor Palin in Rochester, NY--Pics & Video - Adrienne Ross

Conservative Girl With a Voice
Meeting Sarah: Part One
Meeting Sarah: Part Two