by Smitty
DG may be slipping in his dotage:
Isn’t it obvious that the baseball is any national or international event, the girl with the (base) balls is Sarah Palin, and the shmuck is a Barely Halfwit Outfielder?
Category: Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin’s Speech In New Orleans
by Smitty (h/t Gateway Pundit)
Sarah’s speech is a point-for-point flogging of the Administration. The folksy delivery will cause lefty heads near you to ‘splode, to keep the volume low. President Sleeveheart has already publicly whined about her by name on the nuclear topic. If you follow that link, BHO claims the JCS ‘is comfortable’ with his nuclear policies. Sure.
On the topic of criticism of the Lefty agenda, your attention is drawn to The Valley of the Shadow. VotS has an interesting historical sketch of the Democratic non-command of international policy, going back to LBJ. Well worth your time.
Update: Tabitha Hale has a roundup of the New Orleans conference, including Rick Perry video.
Gov. Gary Johnson and Other Popular Super-Cool Guys at SRLC
NEW ORLEANS –It’s pretty neat to get to spend time with a cool guy like the governor of New Mexico, who reminds us that Republicans need to focus on fiscal discipline:
The governor’s also promoting the Our America Initiative, and you should check that out. People ask me, what’s the secret to getting to hang out at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference with cool people like Gary Johnson? Step One: Get to know Ali Akbar . . .
Tabitha Hale of FreedomWorks and New Media activist Lyndsey Fifield at the Blogger Bash that Ali put together through his consulting firm Republic Modern. And a few minutes later . . .
Dr. Melissa Clouthier and Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La.) with Ali — a completely random meeting in the hallway of the Hilton.
A slightly less random meeting in Hilton hallway, as Newt Gingrich is introduced to Carl Cameron’s producer. Also not completely random . . .
Gov. Sarah Palin poses with a cardboard cutout of her favorite blogger.
Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity and . . .
. . . me! Yes, folks, I’m about to hit the road to New Orleans to cover the four-day Southern Republican Leadership Conference, which will feature not only the above-named superstars, but also RNC Chairman Michael Steele, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Rep. Mike Pence and many, many more.
No word yet on whether Louisiana Republican Stormy Daniels will attend the conference, but Dave “Not a Total Douchebag” Weigel has the lowdown on the SRLC 2012 presidential straw-poll. So if there’s a write-in vote for Stormy . . .
Well, business before pleasure, eh? And that means it’s time to rattle the tip-jar for the Shoe Leather Fund. Just picked up a rental car ($364.09) and it’s 1,075 miles to New Orleans. That’s 18 hours one-way, so if I sleep four hours in the car on the side of the road along the way, I might have an hour or two to get a quick shower before the Blogger Bash starts at 5 p.m. Thursday. Gonna need a lot of coffee ($2 a cup) and cigarettes ($5 a pack) to do this kind of driving, to say nothing of the gas money (2,150 miles at 20 miles per gallon at $3 per gallon = $322.50).
Mrs. Other McCain thinks I’m crazy, and she’s probably right, but I think y’all are good for $700 or so between now and Monday, and you haven’t let me down so far.
UPDATE 12:15 p.m. CDT: I’m in Meridian, Miss., poaching the lobby computer at a Hampton Inn. Slept three hours in the car this morning at the Alabama welcome center on I-59 just south of the Tennessee border.
Now about 200 miles from New Orleans. I could drive that in less than two hours, if the Mississippi State Police would stay out of my way, but . . . . Well, that could be a hassle. So I’m figuring I’ll be in the Quarter by 3 p.m.
Thanks to Michael, Sharon, Jeff, Barry, Carlos, Gregory and Jennifer for hitting the tip jar already. Excuse me if this update is kind of brief. The desk clerk is giving me the evil eye, like maybe I’m not a registered guest or something. Gotta run.
UPDATE 3:45 p.m.: LIVE FROM ORLEANS PARISH!
As If the Media Needed Another Reason to Hate Sarah Palin
She’s now getting rich in their line of work:
[S]he has tunneled her own route into the public consciousness and gone into the Sarah Palin Across America business. And what a business it is.
She was paid a $1.25 million retainer by HarperCollins. Her book, “Going Rogue,” has sold 2.2 million copies, according to its publisher, and she has another [booki] tentatively scheduled for this fall.
She now has an actual television career, including appearances as a pundit on Fox News, her gig as the host of “Real American Stories” four times a year, and a coming eight-part series on TLC called “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” which will cost, according to some media reports, $1 million an episode . . .
Other people have crossed the border from politics to media to very good effect — George Stephanopoulos, Patrick Buchanan and Chris Matthews, to name a few — but the transition was far more gradual. Ms. Palin turned on a dime and was a ratings sensation from the word go: her first paid appearance, as a commentator on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Jan. 12, was good for an extra million viewers.
You know that has to burn. Imagine you’re one of those White House correspondents who has scored a $100,000 deal for a Barack Obama book. You’re at the top of the heap, as D.C. journalism is reckoned, and then you turn on Fox News and see Sarah Palin — smiling, cheerful and paid a lot more than you.
Burn, burn, burn!
UPDATE: New York Times Correction of the Day:
Note: an earlier version of this column had an item about a blog post by a personal-injury lawyer, Eric Turkewitz, announcing that he had been appointed the White House law blogger. Blogospheric chatter indicates a high likelihood that this post was an April Fool hoax.
Sarah Palin Channels Nevada Heat, Breaks Window In Alaska
by Smitty
The headquarters of Alaska’s Democratic Party was vandalized over the weekend and the state party chair thinks the incident was influenced by Sarah Palin.
He then offers mad propz to Sarah Palin’s rhetoric-fu, quoting Patti Higgins, state chair of the Alaska Democratic Party
“In the beginning I didn’t think she knew what she was doing, but now I think she does.”
Rumors of a meeting with SecDef Robert Gates about weaponizing these powers for use in Afghanistan were not denied by an un-named Pentagon spokesman who was less than off the record.
Update: Mommylanche!
Tea Party With Sarah Palin: Scenes from the Showdown in Searchlight, Nev.
Word. Sarah Palin speaks! Notice the flags fluttering furiously. It was incredibly windy Saturday. I was backstage and one of my buddies let me get a nice perch at stage left to get photos and video, but the wind was more powerful than the sound system at the rally, which made Palin nearly inaudible on the video.
Palin is mobbed by media after her speech. Notice the boom mike overhead. The only interview she granted was to Griff Jenkins of Fox News. Earlier, I had seen the CNN correspondent at the rally, and tried to talk to him — my usual glad-handing style, “Hey there! How ya doin’?” — but he seemed very sour and hostile. Was it me, or was he just bummed about being stuck on the Tea Party beat?
“Hundreds of people, at least dozens” — gee, I wonder why they would say that? I just got off the phone with Smitty, who told me about that comment. What was my own estimate of the crowd size? Well, Bob Engstrom of Human Events had told me that the organizers had figured they could accommodate about 6,000 in the main area in front of the stage, while law enforcement was concerned that a crowd of 10,000 might completely overwhelm their traffic-control efforts.
The traffic was overwhelming — have you ever tried to get to a big SEC football game? The traffic on U.S. 95 reminded me of trying to get to Legion Field in Birmingham for an Alabama-Tennessee game (back in the day before ‘Bama started playing nearly all its home games at Tuscaloosa).
Victoria Jackson and Joe the Plumber have a chat before going onstage. Notice the Tea Party Express bus in the background. The crowd was sufficiently large that, when the buses arrived, they couldn’t park them where they had planned, because that space directly behind the stage was already full of people.
Read the fine print. Someone felt the need to clarify the terminology . . . NTTAWWT.
Further clarification from Doug Rodrigues of Reno who explained to me that he has a personal grudge against Marxism. Rodrigues is of Portugese/Chinese/Hawaiian ancestry — which is to say 100% American — and one side of his family came from the former Portugese colony of Macau. Shortly after the Communist revolution in China, Rodrigues’ grandfather left Macau for a trip to the Chinese province of Canton to check on the family’s land there. The grandfather was never heard from again and the land . . . well, so much for that, eh? All of which makes it easy to understand why Doug isn’t too keen on socialism and has a serious commitment to liberty. Oh, yeah, and he had a couple more things to say along the lines of enforcing the borders and no hyphens, please.
OK, since our good friends in the MSM have raised the issue of attendance estimates, I’ll post my three best crowd shots and you can click on any of these photos to see it full-size.
From stage left, looking toward the left (west). Notice the teeny-tiny dots on the hills in the distance? Those are people. Also notice the U.S. flag toward the right side . . . .
Also from stage left, facing about 20 or 30 degrees further right (northwest). The U.S. flag at the top left side of this photo is, I believe, the same flag in the right side of first photo. So that could help you get a sense of the area shown between these two photos, and there were thousands more people to the right (north/northeast) of that area, to say nothing of the people who were still out on Highway 95 trying to get through the two-mile-long traffic jam both ways to get into the rally.
This third photo was taken from a hill close to the highway, looking west toward the site, and someone with a technical or mathematical aptitude can click on the photo to see it full size and estimate the area by reference to the size of the trucks, RVs, etc.
Somebody put this sign on the gate to the rally site.
This 1970 Dodge Charger matches the Gadsden Flag perfectly!
As soon as I saw this jacket, I knew I had to get a picture. Semper Fi!
Andrea Shea King, the Radio Patriot, is on the Tea Party bus this time.
One of these people is a pharmacist I interviewed, and who was extremely critical of ObamaCare.
Another dangerous right-wing extremist!
According to Democrats and their media henchpeople, these are either (a) fake Astroturf stooges, bought and paid for by Corporate America, or (b) vicious ignorant kooks. Or perhaps both.
The FaceBook Page That Rocked The Teleprompter Weighs In
by Smitty
Stand strong together! The implications of Obamacare will reach into every aspect of our lives, from the value of our paycheck, to the quality of our health care, to the opportunities that will be stripped from Americans as we’re shoved under the enormous burden of more government growth and control. We must stop this now.
Secretly, BHO is thankful that she’s not calling for impeachment. Yet.