Andy Barr's Strange Definition of "Fans"

First of all, I would like to boldly state that I take offense when people refer to Palin supporters as "fans." The notion that we are "fans" infers that we are not serious in what we do. It also infers that Governor Palin is not serious, as if she is just some celebrity with a fan-club. Nonsense. We are serious activists with a serious cause. Governor Palin is a serious leader, during a serious time. Don't let them diminish any of our efforts by downplaying our motives.

That said, Andy Barr wrote a piece recently for Politico titled "Palin fans tire of 2012 question." The title itself insinuates that supporters or "fans" (because that's what the leftist media calls us) of Governor Palin are tiring of the governor, and are running to Andy Barr to go on record about it. Rubbish.

As you look through the list of people he cites as alleged "fans," you will notice that they all have something in common. Every one of them are current or former GOP officials. Since when has Sarah Palin had a large number of "fans" within the Republic establishment, on any level? Um, try never.

Barr writes (emphasis):

And the frustration is starting to build: key early state players are tiring of trying to read the tea leaves about whether she’s in or out. They’ve reached the point where they just want to know the answer.

“Trying to figure out Sarah Palin reminds me of the ancient practice of extispicy, divination by examining entrails for meaning,” said former New Hampshire GOP chairman Fergus Cullen.

“I’ve become convinced that there is no grand strategy behind Palin’s activity,” Cullen added. “There is no rhyme. There is no reason. The only common theme to her schedule of activities, statements and appearances is her seemingly unending ability to attract media coverage."

Now, there is nothing to say that a former GOP official couldn't be a supporter of Governor Palin. I'm sure she would appreciate the support, and I know her real supporters would as well. However, in Mr. Cullen's case, he appears to be a pretty big "fan" of somebody else. Back in May of this year, Cullen wrote a piece for the New Hampshire based Union Leader called "Why I’m giving Mitt Romney the benefit of the doubt." In it, he writes:

Conservatives rightfully celebrated the defeat of Hillarycare in 1994, but then they failed to move market-based alternatives to big-government healthcare. Meanwhile, people had the audacity to keep getting hurt and sick. Others worried about affordable coverage and staying insured. Swelling costs threatened federal, state, and local budgets. The issue didn’t heal itself. It metastasized politically while most Republicans did little.

An exception was Mitt Romney, who tried to address the public’s desire to bring predictability to insurance, cover the uninsured, lower costs, and protect taxpayers. We can, and should, debate aspects of his approach and whether it’s worked, but Romney deserves more credit and less criticism than he’s getting for addressing an enormously complicated issue, and the benefit of the doubt for trying when others would not. Governors and Presidents are elected to lead. Romney did.

It’s not enough for Republicans to say they want to repeal Obamacare. It’s not enough for Romney’s opponents to shoot at the Massachusetts model. Candidates need positive plans to replace Obamacare with something better, that relies on market forces instead of government, that expand coverage and lower costs.

Does he sound like a Sarah Palin supporter to you? Me neither.

Nice try Andy, but you are going to have to coordinate your story better with the headline writers at Politico to get a bogus meme like this to stick. At the very least, next time pick a Romney "fan" who hasn't been so public with their support.

We Palin supporters aren't 'tiring' and we aren't running to reporters to talk about our feeeeelings. We know what we're doing, and if Governor Palin wants to drive the press mad for awhile making them wait on her decision, it's fine by me.

Andy Barr Gets the "Who" Very Wrong in His Rolling Thunder Coverage

Andy Barr offered us another fine example of excellence in journalism during his coverage of the Rolling Thunder event on Sunday, in Washington DC. He writes in the first paragraph (emphasis):

Only one advance staffer was on hand to wrangle the fans and reporters hoping to get close to the former vice presidential nominee, who arrived at Sunday’s Rolling Thunder rally on a motorcycle driven by her daughter Willow.

Wait, what? Willow Palin is 16 years old. The woman who drove Governor Palin to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial looks young, but she certainly looks old enough to vote.

I actually know the name of the woman driving and it isn't "Willow Palin." She lives in my city where she does NOT attend High School, but in fact, owns a small business. I'm not going to publish her name here however, due to the fact that she has not released it through any media agency or otherwise in connection with the Rolling Thunder event.

That said, the best part of the Andy Barr piece is that he already posted a correction about who was driving the motorcycle. At the end of the article, he wrote (emphasis):

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mistakenly indicated that Sarah Palin was driving a motorcycle when she arrived. Willow Palin was.

He really got this obvious, yet basic fact wrong TWICE!

A San Diegan who is not Willow Palin and Governor Palin riding to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial during Rolling Thunder event in Washington DC, 2011.

I'm not going to launch into some tirade by insinuating some sort of bias on Andy Barr's part here. Clearly it wasn't Andy's, nor his editors political leanings at work here. This is actually the same problem I alluded to the other day when I wrote the piece about ABC's horrendous reporting. This is pure laziness and sloppiness on the part of Barr and his editors.

It's bad enough that we as Americans have to deal with the constant diet of bias from the leftist media mills. But when they can't even get the basic who, what, where, when, why, and how of a story correct, it makes you wonder why they exist at all. We're accustomed to reading news and filtering out the bias, just to grab on to a fact or two. As it turns out, that might not be a good idea either.

Rabidly Biased Politico Promotes Anti-Palin Lunatics

It's one thing to be a run of the mill, left-wing press agency. However, on Monday Politico took their bias to a whole new (yes, rabid) level. On a morning when gas prices were approaching record highs, the EPA blocked drilling in the Arctic, Obama escalated America's role in Libya, and the IMF predicted that the Chinese economy will surpass our own in a few short years, this bastion of journalistic hackery chose instead to promote a group of nuts "on a mission" to destroy Governor Palin, as their top story. As William Jacobson noted:

Under the guise of reporting on the anti-Palin movement, Politico manages to dredge up almost every crank accusation against Palin. The fourth word in the first sentence of the article just happens to be "promiscuous." How nice.

In the course of the article, Politico manages to compare Palin to Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Hitler, and Father Coughlin, but only because such people were controversial and celebrities, of course. And Politico did not make the connection itself, it merely quoted someone making the connection, that's how real reporters do it, right?

Politico even refers to Rebecca Mansour, an aide to Palin who helps with SarahPAC, as an "attack dog," with an embeded link in Mansour's name in the Politico article to the viciously anti-Palin Palingates website. This is beyond contemptible even for Politico.

Politico's writer, Ken Vogel sets out in this piece to legitimize crackpot websites like "Palingates" and authors like Joe McGinniss to make them mainstream for his own readers. After interviewing all of these individuals, Vogel indicates that legitimization is actually what these anti-Palin writers wish to accomplish:

A number of forthcoming books promise to delve deeply into — and, they believe, give mainstream credibility to — some of the more salacious Palin rumors and conspiracy theories that have sprouted in the anti-Palin blogosphere and on supermarket tabloid stands but have mostly been rejected by the mainstream media.

Well that settles any question about how "mainstream" Politico even considers itself.

The first person Vogel tries to pass off as a credible critic "on a mission," is the ever present Sherry Whitstine. Now I know Sherry is a fruitcake because I've had the unfortunate experience of having a back-n-forth with her online. This woman if full of anger and is a classic hater in every sense of the word.

Back in March of 2009, the aforementioned Rebecca Mansour wrote a piece noting that she had received an email from Whitstine in which Sherry referred to Governor Palin as "the whore that rides the beast." She wrote:

Today I encountered the most frightening case of Palin Derangement Syndrome (PDS) I've witnessed to date.

[...]

The "whore that rides the beast"? So now Gov. Palin is the "Whore of Babylon"?
If you have Google Toolbar and have it set to suggest search terms as you type, you can type in the words "whore of babylon" and "whore of babylon sarah palin" will pop up as a leading search -- even before "whore of babylon catholic church," and my fellow Catholics have been called the "Whore of Babylon" for centuries before Sarah Palin was ever born. This is the level of insane vicious hatred we're dealing with, friends.

[...]

People who are critical of Gov. Palin have the same First Amendment rights as the rest of us. However, people who behave in this manner of PDS-vileness should not be taken seriously by any news outlet or any other serious-minded person. Their behavior regarding Gov. Palin and her family discredit them from the word "go."

One would tend to think, but here we are two years later looking straight at a news outlet taking Whitstine very seriously, and even promoting her agenda for her.

The next person Vogel highlights as a credible foe, is far-left writer and Trig Truther, Geoffry Dunn. Dunn has been around for a long time and has made numerous claims about Governor Palin that are not true. Dunn used to write for HuffPo where his anti-Palin shtick was welcome, but now must look elsewhere to post due to his loony conspiracy theories. The Huffington Post banned Trig Truther posts from their site, which humorously now makes them much more credible than Politico. Go figure.

Next, Vogel turns to Frank Bailey's upcoming book which was actually written by Jeanne Devon. (Click here to see Jeanne in a mask attending an anti-Palin rally set up by the Democrat party)
I've read the transcript, and I can tell you that Bailey's book is garbage. We covered it extensively here and elsewhere.

What article promoting anti-Palin loons would be complete without a section cut out for Griffin? Griffin, who was fired from his teaching job for his online nuttiness, has a long record of deranged behavior regarding Governor Palin, amongst other things. It's truly mindbogglingly that any journalist would even admit to talking to Griffin, much less cite him as a reference.

Vogel then sets out to promote world reknown stalker, Joe McGinniss' new anti-Palin, Trig Truther book. McGinniss, also known for referring to Palin supporters as the "hounds of hell," has been given credibility by the mainstream press before, only later did they regret it. The man is crazy and giving him more than two seconds of airtime clears away any doubts of that.

Politico has never been a very unbiased source for news, but what they did on Monday will further denigrate their credibility. Giving proven liars, disgruntled losers, stalkers, and suspected psychopaths a platform to promote their agenda driven products, is NOT news. It certainly isn't worthy of a four page spread, splashed across readers screens, front and center at the beginning of a busy news week. The article was shameful, and only proves that those of us who have been preaching to our neighbors to not trust the media, are correct. Would Politico ever highlight and promote people who write books and blog articles about Barack Obama's alleged homosexuality or any other number of strange conspiracies about the President? Heck no, nor should they.

The title of the Vogel piece reads "Mission for anti-Palin movement: Expose her." Considering the article is full of baseless conspiracies and outright lies, the only one 'exposed' here is Politico. The nuts cited in the piece exposed themselves a long time ago.

I could end by asking Politico to be professionals and plea with them to stop their politics of personal destruction in regards to Governor Palin. That would be an empty plea considering so many writers over there are highly motivated to do just that. Perhaps we should just stop reading this garbage. I don't read the National Enquirer, and after what Politico did with this article, I don't see much difference between the two.

Mark Levin weighs in and coins a new name for the political rag - "Pervertico"

The Strategy of the Media's Bias

The Associated Press and Politico found it necessary to report Bristol Palin's honest wages to the broad public, via their respective front page. Whether their reporting was honest, is another matter. It's hard to tell considering that Rachel D'Oro (a name longtime C4P readers are familiar with), author of the first MSM piece, used the Trig Truther freaks at "Palingates" as a source. Using terms like "rakes it in" and getting a "payout," these so-called "news" articles are clearly designed to sell a narrative that the media has been pushing about Bristol's mother for a long time. There is nothing wrong with what Bristol did for the foundation she worked for. This "story" belongs nowhere near a front page, much less a news publication. It isn't a story, it's one young woman's life. Running this piece, with vile conspiracy theorists as the source, is disgraceful behavior by an already close to illegitimate press.

Kelsey has more on Bristol here.

For many years I believed that the media had a blanket left-wing bias towards all Conservatives. It has been proven lately that there is more of a strategy at play, in regards to what the media reports and what they don't, versus knee-jerk ideology. Take for instance this story that popped up a few days ago on Mother Jones:

Send a public records request seeking documents from his 12-year stint as Arkansas governor, as Mother Jones did recently, and an eyebrow-raising reply will come back: The records are unavailable, and the computer hard drives that once contained them were erased and physically destroyed by the Huckabee administration as the governor prepared to leave office and launch a presidential bid.

In 2007, during Huckabee's campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, the issue of the eradicated hard drives surfaced briefly, but it was never fully examined, and key questions remain. Why had Huckabee gone to such great lengths to wipe out his own records? What ever happened to a backup collection that was provided to a Huckabee aide?

Huckabee is now considering another presidential run, and if he does enter the race, he would do so as a frontrunner. Which would make the case of the missing records all the more significant. These records would shed light on Huckabee's governorship—and could provide insight into how a President Huckabee might run the country. Meanwhile, observers of Arkansas' political scene—including one of Huckabee's former GOP allies—say the episode is characteristic of a politician who was distrustful and secretive by nature.

A truly fascinating piece of information, especially for a "GOP front-runner," is it not? Yet, there were no corresponding stories from AP and the only thing Politico had on it was a link buried on Ben Smith's blog page. Why didn't the media cover this? Doesn't the public have a right to know what kind of behavior a potential candidate for the presidency took part in? Can you imagine if Governor Palin ever would have done such a thing? I would bet every dollar I have ever made, and ever will make, that that story wouldn't be buried in a link in the blog section. It would be Top Story news, in every media publication, and on every network.

Speaking of 'what ifs'... What if Governor Palin had said this:

Bachmann, who's flirting with a presidential run, was in the early-primary state of Iowa last week for the Rediscover God in America conference. Bachmann was born in Iowa, as she told the crowd. But she couldn't leave it at just being an ordinary Iowan:

"I'm actually even more than just an Iowan," she told her audience. "I'm a seventh-generation Iowan. Our family goes back to the 1850s, to the first pioneers that came to Iowa from Sognfjord, Norway."

[...]

Unfortunately, the story doesn't hold water, as researcher Chris Rodda ably points out at OpEdNews.

"I was watching her speech, and it was when she said that she was a seventh-generation Iowan that I knew something was wrong," Rodda tells City Pages. "She's in her fifties--there's no way there could be seven generations between her and ancestors in the 1850s."

So Rodda, who has a background in genealogical research, decided to do a little digging. Without too much trouble, she found that Bachmann is actually a fourth-generation American, not seventh, as she claimed. And that's just the start.

Bachmann's immigrant ancestors didn't make a pilgrimage straight to the promised land of Iowa. From Quebec, they went to Wisconsin. That's where the 1860 census found them. From there, they moved to the Dakota Territory.

Bachmann claims that her people "kept going, and they persevered" through floods and crippling winters. Well, kind of. After enduring those trials in the unforgiving Dakota Territory, they actually turned tail and retreated to the relative ease and safety of...Iowa.

"Okay," Bachmann apologists may be saying at this point, "but history is hard and stuff! Maybe this was just an honest mistake."

Not a chance, Rodda says.

"The only historical sources where she could have found some of the details of her story--like the 13-week ocean passage--also clearly show that her family went to Wisconsin, not Iowa," Rodda says. "She couldn't have known those things without knowing that the whole premise of her speech was a lie."

You really can't blame Bachmann for that though. Tuesday night on O'Reilly, she stated (4:32 mark) that she just reads whatever is on the teleprompter. She also indicated during the interview that she isn't "afraid" of media attacks on her. After the mainstream media let a whole speech full of pandering distortions, slide on by without mere mention, I wouldn't be afraid if I were Bachmann either. At least, not at this point.

I think my Twitter buddy, Val said it best today:

Liberals & Dems SHOULD fear @SarahPalinUSA in 2012, b/c she is thee ONLY candidate who will NOT have an October surprise!

Clearly that has a lot to do with the strategy being implemented by the media, in this pre-primary season.

Here we have three possible contenders for the GOP nomination in the upcoming presidential election of 2012. While all three claim the mantle of "Conservative," one is treated very differently than the others. The reason for this is something I eluded to in my last blog post. The media and the left will promote and omit news that will help them in the long-run. For Governor Palin, there will be no "October surprise." Every little detail of her life is already out in the open. She would be the most intensely scrutinized candidate in our nation's history. With the other two possible candidates, that is simply not the case.

Let's face it, the other two Republicans here don't have the same name recognition as Governor Palin. Huckabee has been largely unscrutinized for years, and most people outside the world of politics, don't know who Michele Bachmann is. Governor Palin and her family are recognizable faces to rake over the coals.

With Governor Palin, the leftist media is forced to throw everything at her, as soon as they can. They do whatever they can think of to try and damage her in any way possible. With the others, they can afford to wait. This is after all, a strategy with the re-election of Obama in mind. The left, and their partners in the press know what's at stake. They don't want to face Governor Palin in a general election, but the others look like walk in the park in comparison. They will save their bias and garbage reporting for a more strategically significant date. At the right time, they will unload all the information they held from the public on these candidates, given the opportunity. Let's not give it to them.

Frank Bailey's Betrayal of Sarah Palin

The story of the leaked manuscript of former Palin aide Frank Bailey is getting a lot of traction as the mainstream media finds ways to maximize and defend the indefensible. Andy Barr and Ben Smith from Politico have taken it upon themselves (obviously without legal council) to run a story repeating distorted claims by a troubled ex-employee, with the goal of smearing Governor Palin in mind. Barr and Smith ponder why it is that no publisher has signed on to print Bailey's manuscript, which he has been trying to sell for almost 18 months. On top of the legal ramifications, there are many reasons.

They do note that Bailey chose an anti-Palin writer and a "critic" of Governor Palin to help pen the text. What they didn't state is that "critic," a man by the name of Ken Morris, is a known leftist who has a history of pulling obsessive stunts directed towards Governor Palin, and that the other writer, Jeanne Devon, is a legend in the Alaskan left-wing blogoshpere for her unhinged, freakish behavior aimed at hurting the governor. These aren't just people who disagree with her politics. These are people who have spent a lot of time, money, and integrity trying to damage Governor Palin.

Now, just who is Frank Bailey? Other than what's on the surface - that being his connection as a former employee of the former Governor of Alaska. What was his role in her administration and why did he chose to publicly stab his former employer in the back? The Politico article notes:

A Palin ally, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that Bailey and Palin corresponded and that the former aide had access to Palin’s passwords and her email account. But the Palin ally said that the content should be viewed through the lens of Bailey being “the quintessential disgruntled employee” who had been denied senior jobs he sought, cut out of Palin’s vice presidential campaign, and been caught up in the “Troopergate” scandal.

This man felt as though he had been denied a senior post in the administration. I have read his manuscript by the way, and can tell you that this guy thought he was doing a bang-up job for the governor. However, the evidence doesn't support his assertion. After all, Bailey was the only member of Governor Palin's administration who had ever been recommended to receive ethics training by a state investigator. I am not going to release any detailed information that isn't public already, but there are some pretty pointed lies within this manuscript that only take a few minutes on Google to figure out.

While working for Governor Palin, part of Bailey's job was to set up and maintain her email accounts. He had direct access, by way of knowing her password codes, to all of her messages. What he did with that access was highly unethical, a serious breach of trust, if not the law. If indeed all the emails are actually hers in the first place.

Throughout the manuscript, Bailey voices frustration about feeling shut out. That indicates that the governor's staff knew Frank's limits and understood his character. So, here we have a "quintessential disgruntled employee” teaming up with far-left activists for profit. After a public spat between the writers and the leaker of the manuscript, the media is seeking to pick up the pieces, for their own profit essentially. And nothing would give the press more power to do so than to lend credibility to Bailey's manuscript. The first line that stood out for me in the Politico piece was when they wrote:

"But in Bailey’s manuscript it’s her own apparent words that do the greatest damage."

Having read the manuscript as I mentioned above, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the majority of the emails contradict the claims made by Bailey, via Devon and Morris. The filler in-between the emails is full of innuendo and colorful words designed to make it seem as though Governor Palin possesses any number of negative character traits. What I found in reading her actual messages was a normal person, with normal emotion, usually with a great sense of humor. It was quite a stretch for these writers to insinuate the things that they did.

Next up, the guys from Politico write:

"Much of the proposed book’s text focuses on the topic that, he writes, ultimately consumed her governorship: The maintenance of her public image, an obsession with rumors about her family, and her frustration with her portrayal in the media."

Governor Palin is a politician. Public image is sort of a vital aspect of consideration in that field. That's just a reality. But to say that it "ultimately consumed her governorship" is defamatory and wrong. Sure, you can release a very small percentage of my own emails, toss in some adjectives, and lead readers to come to the conclusion that all I care about is the status of the restroom renovations at my office. Yes, it's true. I have dedicated many emails to various individuals about water pressure, light fixtures, and automatic hand dryers. It's amazing that I still know how to do artwork at all.

Then Barr and Smith make this assertion:

"In the months before she resigned the governorship, when her poll numbers began to slip, Palin’s advisers sought to bolster her spirits by making the unsubstantiated case that she was being targeted by the Obama White House and Democratic National Committee."

Just watch the 11 minute clip I linked under the word "behavior" (in the Jeanne Devon paragraph) and see if Governor Palin was wrong to assume that Democrats were coordinating attacks against her. It wasn't to "bolster her spirits" but rather to try and put their finger on just why Democrat operatives kept filing charges against her, then (in violation) leaking their charges to the press.

Barr & Smith then go on to repeat claims (and post stolen emails) asserting that Governor Palin doesn't like the media very much.... What a revelation! Must I repeat why? At this point, I don't think any honest person could blame her for distrusting the press.

After reading this manuscript, my only conclusion is that Frank Bailey is a horrible person. A good person, as Frank likes to sell himself as, doesn't have the capacity to do what he did. Even if Governor Palin was twice the monster he and his leftist allies made her out to be, he still had no right to attempt to have this pile of garbage published. She provided him with a job, which allowed him to provide for his family. At any time, he could have walked away if he felt he worked for someone he could not morally support. Anyone who cannot see this man for what he is, is being willfully ignorant. They are turning a blind-eye to the obvious motives that drove him to betray his former boss.

UPDATE: Now Sushannah Walshe at the Daily Beast has weighed in on the manuscript, and repeated an absurd accusation by Bailey that "Palin Broke Election Law." Walshe writes:

Bailey accuses Palin of blatant illegal activity. During her 2006 campaign for governor, Bailey alleges that Palin broke election law by working with the Republican Governors Association to shoot a campaign commercial. State candidates are not legally allowed to work with groups like the RGA, which ran ads at the time on her behalf, though supposedly "independent" of the Palin gubernatorial campaign.

The suggestion that Governor Palin broke any election laws is simply not true. Ian Lazaran (who has also read the manuscript) wrote about this the other day:

Even assuming the e-mails are authentic for the sake of argument, the bigger problem for Bailey is that he fails to produce even one e-mail from the Governor to support his argument that she coordinated with the RGA in the production of the ad. He even fails to quote anything that the Governor allegedly said that would support his argument that she coordinated with the RGA to produce the ad at issue. What Bailey essentially does is accuse the Governor of breaking a campaing law without citing to an e-mail that she allegedly wrote or to anything that she allegedly said that would support his claim.

The Knowles campaign complained about the RGA ad and the Alaska Democrat Party filed a complaint against Palin alleging illegal coordination with the RGA in the production of the ad. The complaint was subsequently dismissed. The funny thing is that the e-mails that Bailey claims to have come from Governor Palin after the ad ran are clearly exculpatory. The two e-mails that allegedly come from Governor Palin show someone who doesn't have the foggiest idea about why the Tony Knowles' campaign and the Alaska Democrat Party would be making such an allegation.

Now why would Governor Palin write what she did in these e-mails if she really did coordinate with the RGA to produce an illegal ad? If she was guilty, wouldn't she be sending her closest confidantes e-mails about how to cover up the misdeed?

Bailey's explanation for these Palin e-mails is that the Governor was purposefully playing dumb and trying to cover up her tracks. Why would she play coy when communicating with people she absolutely trusted? In order to believe Bailey's theory, one would also need to believe that the Governor envisioned a day when one of her confidantes would turn on her and that she prepared for such a scenario by making sure the e-mails she sent to the confidantes she expected to turn on her were purposefully dishonest.

In this video, her campaign spokesman Curtis Smith says he wrote in his diary about the degree of animosity that he held towards the RGA for producing the ad at issue (at around the 10:30 mark):

In Bailey's mind, Smith must have purposefully played dumb in his diary in the same way Governor Palin purposefully played dumb in her e-mails in order to protect himself from the day Frank Bailey would release an incoherent manuscript that failed to produce substantiated evidence that a wrongful act was committed.

Once again, we have a member of the media, who is willing to repeat the claims of this horrible character, that were written into an unpublished manuscript, by known leftists. This is not a "tell-all" book as they keep saying, but rather a 'tell whatever we like' piece of fiction.

Ben Smith Tries Too Hard To Sell Anti-Palin Narrative

Ben Smith, former Journolist participant and writer for recently discredited Politico, tried really hard yesterday to spin some bad news out of the outstanding speech Governor Palin gave in Orlando. His post, suggestively titled "Rubio avoids Palin picture" says:

Marco Rubio and Sarah Palin appeared on the same stage at an RNC rally in Orlando today, but Rubio — who spoke shortly before Palin — did not appear onstage with her, Beth Reinhard notes:

"Rubio leaves stage before Palin — no pictures. Campaign says he's preparing for tmrw's debate."

If he'd wanted the picture, debate prep could have waited a few minutes.

According to my source, former Democrat and registered Independent, Pat Riccio (who attended the event), Rubio spoke at least forty minutes before Governor Palin's headline speech. I'm not too sure how Ben Smith gauges his time, but in my world forty minutes is a lot longer than a "few." Smith also doesn't note that there were four other speakers in between Rubio and Governor Palin. According to Mr. Riccio, Rubio left right after delivering his short speech and "didn't sit down for one second" afterward. So, essentially Rubio 'avoided' taking pictures with all of the other speakers as well. Marco Rubio is busy running a campaign for the Florida Senate seat. I'm pretty sure Ben Smith isn't familiar with all the logistics that go into planning every minute of the day by his people.

Once again, the media is guilty of trying to spread the meme that Governor Palin is "too polarizing" and is someone who fellow Republicans are trying to "distance" themselves from. Must I point out how foolish the LSM looks trying to push this stuff considering Governor Palin is headlining GOP events? Another thing Mr. Riccio told me when I spoke with him by phone (take note Jonathan Martin on how to validate your coverage through honest sourcing) is that the crowd was "there to see Palin." They were selling 'Palin 2012' T-shirts in the parking lot and many in attendance were not just Republicans, but Independents as well as some Democrats. You see, Governor Palin actually appeals to a vast group of voters - which is something the LSM will never write about.

The funny thing about all of this is the fact the man the media spends their time shilling for, Barack Obama, is actually polling much worse in states like Florida than Governor Palin. According to the most recent Sunshine State News commissioned poll from Florida, Governor "Palin's net favorable rating in Florida" are "stronger than Obama's by eleven points." With Obama's numbers continuing their downward spiral, maybe Ben Smith should have posted a story about all the people who left the Democrat rally in Minnesota before the president gave his speech.

No, Sarah Palin Did Not Compare Obama to Hitler

What is it with the left and their friends in the media? Why is it that they cannot apply reason when processing information in regards to Sarah Palin? I'm just going to presume that it's a political tactic designed to confuse possible future voters. Otherwise, I'd be left to believe that we have an unhealthy number of ignorant people in our society.

Last night, Governor Palin posted a link to a Thomas Sowell article called, "Is U.S. Now On Slippery Slope To Tyranny?" In which Mr. Sowell said the following:

When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics.

Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions.

"Useful idiots" was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.

Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.

In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.

I think the point Mr. Sowell was trying to make is clear. Throughout history, despots have used "useful idiots" to grow their regime's power and influence. He provided TWO examples of historical reference to back up his claim, by listing both Adolf Hitler and V.I. Lenin in the beginning of his post.

Yet somehow, the media missed this obvious point as the following article written by Andy Barr in Politico today proves, called "Sarah Palin praises column linking Obama, Hitler" (please note that the original title of this article was "Sarah Palin praises Hitler column" but I guess that meme wasn't working for them) It says:

Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin on Friday encouraged her supporters to read an article comparing the BP escrow fund to Nazism.

[...]

The article Palin points to was published on Monday and was widely criticized for writing that, like Adolph Hitler, President Barack Obama is stripping away the freedom of his citizens without mass protest.

Wait a second... Where did Lenin go? Why didn't I see 1,000 tweets directed at Governor Palin from left-wing drones on Twitter (known as #p2) saying she compared Obama to Lenin? Where is the article form Politico or any other media outlet with the reference to Lenin? Perhaps it's because they have a little soft spot for the former Communist dictator, and although Lenin is responsible for millions of deaths, it just doesn't have the same punch as a reference to Hitler in their minds. I don't know...

If the mental midgets on the left and in the media (sorry for the repetition) weren't playing politics here and bothered to read the rest of Mr. Sowell's piece, they would be able to see what his point was. Such as this:

With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.

If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don't believe in constitutional government.

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

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

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

Franklin D. Roosevelt! Now that's THREE historical references that Mr. Sowell makes in his article talking about governmental power grabs. Yet, there where no "lamestream" articles with headlines that read "Sarah Palin praises column linking Obama, FDR."

Well, we know that would never happen because FDR is a hero to the American left. Time magazine even mocked up a cover superimposing Barack Obama's face on an old FDR photo, back in November of 2008.

Mr. Sowell's piece ends this way:

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

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

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

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

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

Useful idiots, indeed... They give away their identity by calling out Governor Palin for merely linking to this well written, well thought out article by my own favorite intellectual, Thomas Sowell. To try and pass a perceived notion of what she was linking to, rather than actually discussing the points made in the piece, the left proves themselves incapable on any honest debate.

For the record, Governor Palin replied tonight to all of this on her Twitter page. She said:

"Lamestream media: I never compared Obama to Hitler. Quit making things up"