The White House speaks out of both sides of its mouth, as they say. As I was browsing the aggregators this morning, I noticed these two headlines grouped together. It struck me as kind of funny.

Breitbart — White House mocks Sarah Palin from podium

Even the White House’s top spokesman is getting in on the act of mocking former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin for looking to talking points written on her palm during a speech to “tea party” activists. Robert Gibbs showed the words “hope” and “change” on his hand as he started his daily briefing with reporters on Tuesday. Many in the room, where President Barack Obama had spoken just moments before about the need for bipartisanship, groaned at the political shot.

The Caucus — Obama Urges Setting Aside ‘Petty Politics’

President Obama declared today that “a sense of purpose that transcends petty politics” must be forged by Democrats and Republicans to create more jobs, reduce the deficit and find at least some common ground on health care.

“We can’t afford grandstanding at the expense of actually getting something done,” Mr. Obama said as he made a surprise appearance at the daily White House briefing….

Here’s a bit of philosophy from Answers.com:

The 16th-century French writer Michel de Montaigne, who is generally credited with inventing the essay, proclaimed, “Saying is one thing and doing is another.” And before him, St. Francis of Assisi, who embodied this principle, is widely credited with saying, “Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.”

Actions speak louder than words.

A Photoshopped image of Barack Obama as a shoeshine boy polishing Sarah Palin’s pumps has been the hot gossip topic for the past several days. The picture was actually created back during the last presidential campaign to emphasize the fact that Sarah Palin had more executive experience than Barack Obama. The accompanying text read:

They say losing political candidates usually go back to the job they are most qualified for. Here is our buddy Barry doing what he is most qualified for!!!!!

The joke drew a lot of traffic at that time, and then was mostly forgotten. Recently, in light of the continuing disappointments of the Obama presidency, it has been resurrected as a viral email with the new caption:

“It appears he has found his niche.”

The subject leaked into the mainstream news media when a 73-year-old Colorado Department of Transportation supervisor used her work computer to forward the email to at least four other CDOT employees on Dec. 22. One of the recipients complained to authorities, and the sender now faces disciplinary action next week, which could be anything from a written reprimand to being fired. The MSM has been having a field day with this:

NBC 9 News, Denver — CDOT investigates employee for inappropriate email

Fox 31 KDVR, Denver — Obama shoeshine e-mail has CDOT worker in hot water

ABC 7 News, Denver — Doctored Obama Photo Has CDOT Supervisor In Hot Water

For the last two days, the buzz has erupted in the Blogosphere, due to a blunder committed by a formerly prominent blogger. In an iconic example of irresponsible posting, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs stereotyped the Colorado DOT employee without any background investigation:

Here’s yet another ugly little upwelling of racism from the right wing base, as a Colorado Department of Transportation employee forwards an email to her co-workers containing a photoshopped image of President Barack Obama giving Sarah Palin a shoeshine.

Patterico’s Pontifications quickly called Charles Johnson on his mistake:

Charles Johnson denounces the “right-wing racism” of the photo. Just one problem: the [CDOT] worker is a registered Democrat….

Kudos to Patterico for the needed correction. It would not have been too difficult for CJ to find. It was part of the NBC 9 News, Denver report cited above.

More:

JustOneMinute — That “Racist” Shoe Shine Photo – Don’t Give Me A Heart Attack — Worth reading, a good bit about famous shoeshine boys in history, including James Brown, Rush Limbaugh and Rod Blagojevich!

Instapundit — DEMOCRAT EMAILS racist photoshop of Obama

Left Coast Rebel — The Obama Shoe-Shine Boy Sarah Palin Picture Controversy

My personal thoughts on all of this:

1. I love a good fracas.
2. Although I agree with her political assessment of the relative talents of the two subjects, I don’t feel sorry for the CDOT worker. Computers at work should be used for work, period. They should not even be used to send your spouse an innocuous email asking him or her to buy a loaf of bread on the way home. When you are getting paid to work, you should be working.
3. One of the great strengths of the Blogosphere as a source of news is illustrated in this episode. It is interactive and mutually vetting of errors. If a CJ makes a mistake, along comes a Patterico to correct it. Among all of us bloggers, we get at the truth much better than the biased mainstream media.
4. Intended or not, bloggers are inheriting the mantle of the dying mainstream media. We should all try to verify our information before posting.
5. And, did I mention, I love a good fracas?

The leftist elite establishment has blinded the people in this nation through its educational institutions, mainstream media outlets, and the entertainment industry to garner power for a repressive society. While Brother O and his Bread and Circuses Administration zealously dismantle the sleeping middle class, Americans have become unwitting accomplices to a growing underclass.

During education’s ongoing paradigm shift to a postmodern pedagogy in the mid-1980s, a fellow graduate student recognized that tenure and promotion in the academic world depended on the ability to “quack like a duck,” i.e., absorb and regurgitate the academy’s leftist world view and withhold personal opinions. In other words, outspoken conservatives are both persona non grata and underemployed in academia.

The duck motif not only extends to “journalists” in the mainstream media, but as Rush Limbaugh recently discovered, it extends to the National Football League (NFL), a league he greatly admires.

“[T]he NFL … is the most politically correct environment I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Dennis Miller on The O’Reilly Factor. “I don’t even know why Limbaugh would want to be in [it] quite frankly.”

Like many outspoken professors and journalists, Limbaugh now suffers from the pangs of outrageous injustice, being denied his dream for criticizing and mocking the nanny notions of the statist-minded elite. Limbaugh will not be afforded the opportunity that he has earned through achievement to work in the profession he loves for no reason other than his outspoken conservative views are abhorred by the leftist elite establishment.

Since it was leaked that Limbaugh was part of a group intending to buy the St. Louis Rams football team, the propagandists in the mainstream media have worked feverishly to malign his reputation, undermine his creditability, and destroy his character. They overturned rocks for race-baiting poverty pimps and scoured the NFL for nitwit jocks or any feckless team owner they could find to denounce Limbaugh as a bigot and racist before the nation.

The attack and subsequent defamation of Limbaugh adds to the list of media assaults on outspoken conservatives in order to prevent the resurgence of Reagan conservatism from entering the mainstream of American politics and undoing the leftist elites’ socialist agenda. The leftist elite establishment fears the resurgence of a conservatism of individualism, not of country clubs and boardrooms. The establishment dreads the Reagan conservatism championed over talk radio and at town hall meetings and tea parties, which respects the law and reflects the values and traditions of the people.

Statists demagogues live in constant terror of individualists who are independent, loosely connected to groups, and don’t know their place. They commission media propagandists, ready at their beckon call, to seek out and destroy them. The statist diktat is not to refute an opponent’s argument, it is to “wipe him from the face of the earth,” Sarah Palin, Clarence Thomas, and Robert Bork are noted recipients of the left’s scorched-earth and personal destruction politics.

The mainstream media have been frantically trying to deflate Sarah Palin’s ascendancy to the leadership of a national conservative movement since her dazzling acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in September 2008. Had she been a Democrat and espoused the statist ideology of Brother O or Hillary Clinton, Palin’s astounding rise from housewife, to mayor, to governor, to vice presidential candidate would have been praised by propagandists, extolled by environmentalists, lionized by leftists, and fawned over by feminists throughout the nation.

People who use common sense and apply the principles of the Constitution obstruct progressive governance, which explains why the media upended Robert Bork’s nomination and tried to stop Clarence Thomas’ confirmation to the Supreme Court. The media permitted and perpetuated the malicious, baseless allegations of the Democrat smear merchants to damage the reputations and destroy the creditability of both men.

Such reprehensible media campaigns, waged to disgrace both men, “did not resemble an argument so much as a lynching.” Bork was depicted as a judicial tyrant, his wife was falsely accused of being a Holocaust denier, and even his movie viewing habits were called into question. Likewise, Thomas was caricatured as a freakish feel-copping porno pervert in order to humiliate him, strip him of his dignity, and dishonor him for life.

The NFL’s management, owners, and players union along with most of the mainstream media and entertainment industry detest and despise Limbaugh as much as they do Palin, Thomas, and Bork. Yet Limbaugh persists in his love for the National Football League regardless of whether the sentiment is mutual.

Like the pedestaled wife of a fawning cuckold, the NFL graciously accepts Limbaugh’s lavish praises, glowing endorsements, and personal expenditures, yet abhors the very thought of embracing him. When the NFL’s leftist elite establishment denied Limbaugh limited ownership in a football franchise, it denied all outspoken conservatives and sent a subtle message to its owners, coaches, and players to suppress conservative opinion and quack like a duck.

The environment is ripe to don the special sunglasses, face the unadorned reality, and see the hideous leftist potentates and mindless moguls for the despicable fascists they truly are. In the grand scheme of things, the significance of the NFL pales in comparison to that of the USA. The country needs a wake up call, and the time has come for Limbaugh to stop chewing bubble gum and phone it in.
 

“The McCain-Palin Tradition” composed and sung by Hank Williams JR
Campaign rally version

“The McCain-Palin Tradition” composed and sung by Hank Williams JR
Johnny Lee Clary version

Note: Johnny Lee Clary is a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, who left the Klan and became an evangelist and motivational speaker. Before you get all hyper, remember that Sen. Robert Byrd was also a member of the klan. From an article in the Washington Post:

In the early 1940s, a politically ambitious butcher from West Virginia named Bob Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to form a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. After Byrd had collected the $10 joining fee and $3 charge for a robe and hood from every applicant, the “Grand Dragon” for the mid-Atlantic states came down to tiny Crab Orchard, W.Va., to officially organize the chapter.

As Byrd recalls now, the Klan official, Joel L. Baskin of Arlington, Va., was so impressed with the young Byrd’s organizational skills that he urged him to go into politics. “The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation,” Baskin said.

The young Klan leader went on to become one of the most powerful and enduring figures in modern Senate history. Throughout a half-century on Capitol Hill, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) has twice held the premier leadership post in the Senate, helped win ratification of the Panama Canal treaty, squeezed billions from federal coffers to aid his home state, and won praise from liberals for his opposition to the war in Iraq and his defense of minority party rights in the Senate….

Palin has a long track record of being an effective campaigner. She is adept at exposing her opponents’ flaws.
Her political skills, as well as her ideological positions, were the reason she made an excellent choice as McCain’s running mate. You’ll see it here. Take the time to watch this to the end.

I see in her the grit, resolve and complete lack of political pretense that brought Teddy Roosevelt to power a century ago.

People around the world are asking, “Who is Sarah Palin?” I thought you might appreciate an analysis from someone who has worked with John McCain’s pick for Vice President.

Before I wrote Why Men Hate Going to Church, I was a full-time television producer in Anchorage, Alaska. I did quite a bit of political consulting in election years. Sarah came to me in 2002 and asked me to produce media for her Lt. Governor campaign. I knew right away she was a different kind of politician. She was confident but not arrogant. She was down-home approachable, yet sophisticated. She seemed utterly uninterested in the trappings of power, yet ambitious to wield power for good. As cameras rolled for her first commercial, I knew that Sarah Palin was a gifted communicator.

And she was a savvy negotiator. At our first meeting she made it clear she would be running a shoestring campaign. She told me she liked my work and wanted me to produce her electronic media, but she had no fat cat donors to bankroll her run.

I don’t cut my rates for anybody. But I did what Christians are supposed to do: I went home and prayed about the decision. Frankly, I didn’t expect an answer. God doesn’t usually prompt me regarding my business decisions. But in the case of Sarah I had an immediate impression that I should help her, and that I was not to worry about the money. I called Sarah the next day and signed on for her long-shot campaign.

Sarah has been a guest in my home. She’s had dinner with my family and I’ve been to her house in Wasilla to film one of her commercials. We’ve worked together through the pressures of the campaign season. We took a moment to stop and pray when the campaign got tough. Sarah also encouraged me to complete my first book, and came to a book signing at Barnes and Noble in Anchorage in 2005 (see photo).

Her rapid rise in politics is a direct result of her unwavering moral compass. Sarah makes her decisions based on one criterion: what’s the right thing to do? In 2003, Gov. Frank Murkowski offered her an appointment to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. (I advised her not to take the position. She ignored my advice, and took the job anyway.) Shortly after taking her seat on the commission, she noticed that one of her fellow commissioners, Randy Reudrich, was doing political business on state time. Reudrich was (and still is) chairman of the state Republican party. Randy controls the flow of money to Republican candidates.

Once a year all political appointees in Alaska are required to sign a conflict of interest statement. Part of the statement requires commissioners to report any violation by their colleagues. Sarah felt she had no choice but to tell the truth about Reudrich’s abuses, even though she would be turning in a fellow Republican. In the days following her allegations many who follow Alaska politics (myself included) thought Sarah had committed political suicide. But her courageous stand against corruption endeared her to the citizens of Alaska.

In 2006 Sarah Palin decided to run for governor. You have no idea what a quixotic mission this was. To win elections in Alaska a candidate must gather the backing of at least one powerful group: the oil industry, the media or the labor unions. Sarah had none of these. Nevertheless, she won the Republican nomination handily. In the general election, the power groups stepped up their opposition. The media dismissed her as a lightweight (and too conservative). The oil industry and labor unions backed her Democratic challenger. Even her own Republican Party (under the control of Reudrich) offered only token support. In the end only one group stood behind her: the people. She rolled to victory and began cleaning house.

Sarah tightened the states ethics laws. She sponsored an ingenious new tax regime on the oil industry, sweeping away a law passed a year earlier under the taint of corruption. And she jump-started Alaska’s long-stalled dream of a natural gas pipeline to the Lower 48 states. Instead of begging the big oil companies to build a pipeline (as her predecessor had) she opened the process for competitive bidding. Today, Alaska has two groups competing to build the line, with a possible third group waiting in the wings. She enjoys an 80+ percent approval rating here in Alaska.

Most politicians learn early in their careers to carefully parse every word that flows from their mouths. Not Sarah. She has a tendency to speak her mind, and say things that might one day come back to haunt her. More than once I’ve rolled my eyes and thought to myself, Sarah, why did you say that? But our governor keeps following that moral compass –- and comes up smelling like a rose. All the controversy that’s swirling around her this week is vintage Sarah. I’ve seen this movie before, and it always ends the same way: with Sarah Palin standing taller than ever.

The last time I saw Sarah was about two months ago. She was here in my hometown of Chugiak, with her newborn son Trig, walking around a local craft fair on a Sunday afternoon. I was struck by the simplicity of it: the Governor of Alaska, visiting a craft fair with no media entourage, no security guards, no big crowd. Just a mother and son enjoying a beautiful Alaska summer day. We had a nice talk about everything except politics.

As far as her religious beliefs go, Sarah is your garden-variety evangelical Christian. She’s a woman of genuine faith, but not a zealot or weirdo. She has not hidden her faith during her term as governor, but neither has she worn it on her lapel. I think that’s a good thing.

So, is she ready to lead the free world? I have no doubt Sarah Palin would be a tough-as-nails negotiator during any political crisis. She’s stood up to corruption in her own party. She’s stared down Exxon and won. Heck, even she got me to lower my production rates! I see in her the grit, resolve and complete lack of political pretense that brought Teddy Roosevelt to power a century ago. I think she’s ready to be Vice President, and will be prepared to assume the Oval Office if the need arises.

© 2008 David Murrow, all rights reserved

[The article has been cross-posted with permission from David's weblog Church for Men Blog.]

An article in the British press accurately describes Sarah Palin’s decade-long political rise — from company owner in Alaska’s influential fishing industry, to mayor of the state’s fifth largest town, to chairmanship of Alaska’s powerful Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, to governor.

All of the US reporters had access to the same data as this Brit, and completely failed to describe the political significance of each rung on Palin’s ladder to prominence. In one concise article, he has captured the unique character of this frontier state, the nuances of its corrupt political machine, and the demographics of support that Palin marshalled to attack that corruption.

She is revealed as a savvy strategist who for ten years made clever choices guided by an unwavering moral compass to achieve her purposes — a power player and not a neophyte. Perhaps American journalists wear sexist blinders that filter the facts and lead to spurious conclusions. Possibly Brits have been preconditioned from the Celtic Queen Boddicea to Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to recognize leadership in women.

In any event, every voter should read all of this article to understand the depth of Palin’s experience and her potential for operating effectively in national politics. From the Telegraph — some excerpts:

Sarah Palin is not such a small-town girl after all
By James Bennett  |  09/09/2008

It is clear that few in America, let alone Britain, have any idea what to make of Sarah Palin. The Republicans’ vice-presidential candidate confounds the commentators because they don’t understand the forces that shaped her in the remote state of Alaska….

The first myth to slay is that she is a political neophyte who has come from nowhere. In fact, she and her husband have, for decades, run a company in the highly politicised commercial fishing industry….

Her rise from parent-teacher association to city council gave her a natural political base in her home town of Wasilla. …. …Wasilla is the fifth-largest city in Alaska, which meant that Palin was an important player in state politics.

Her husband’s status in the Yup’ik Eskimo tribe … connected her to another influential faction: the large and wealthy (because of their right to oil revenues) native tribes.

All of this gave her a base from which to launch her 2002 campaign for lieutenant (deputy) governor of Alaska.

She lost that, but collected a powerful enough following to be placated with a seat on, and subsequently the chairmanship of, the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which launched her into the politics of Alaska’s energy industry….

She set an agenda that centred on three mutually supportive objectives: cleaning up state politics, building a new gas pipeline, and increasing the state’s share of energy revenues.

This agenda, pursued throughout Palin’s commission tenure, culminated in her run for governor in 2006. By this time, she had already begun rooting out corruption and making enemies, but also establishing her bona fides as a reformer.

With this base, she surprised many by steamrollering first the Republican incumbent governor, and second, the Democratic former governor, in the election.

Far from being a reprise of Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Palin was a clear-eyed politician who, from the day she took office, knew exactly what she had to do and whose toes she would step on to do it.

The surprise is not that she has been in office for such a short time but that she has succeeded in each of her objectives. She has exposed corruption; given the state a bigger share in Alaska’s energy wealth; and negotiated a deal involving big corporate players, the US and Canadian governments, Canadian provincial governments, and native tribes – the result of which was a £13 billion deal to launch the pipeline and increase the amount of domestic energy available to consumers. This deal makes the charge of having “no international experience” particularly absurd.

In short, far from being a small-town mayor concerned with little more than traffic signs, she has been a major player in state politics for a decade, one who formulated an ambitious agenda and deftly implemented it against great odds.

Her sudden elevation to the vice-presidential slot on the Republican ticket shocked no one more than her enemies in Alaska, who have broken out into a cold sweat at the thought of Palin in Washington, guiding the Justice Department’s anti-corruption teams through the labyrinths of Alaska’s old-boy network.

….John McCain was familiar with this track record and it is no doubt the principal reason that he chose her….

If you want to understand Sarah Palin, imagine an amalgam of Boddicea the liberator of her oppressed people and Thatcher the skillful and popular politician.

Some clever reader has taken a comment posted at the Wall Street Journal and transformed it into a questionnaire that is now a viral email. As a series of questions it is very revealing, so we will offer it here in that format. If you have not yet seen it, we don’t want to spoil it for you, so the answer is “below the fold.” Enjoy.

Who Am I?

I am under 45 years old,
I love the outdoors,
I hunt,
I am a Republican reformer,
I have taken on the Republican Party establishment,
I have many children,
I have a spot on the national ticket as vice president with less than two years in the governor’s office.

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