Sarah Palin Teaching The US Catholic Church A Thing or Two

Frank Walker, of Pewsitter.com, wrote a great piece: Palin’s New Tack and the Catholic Bishops’ Old Game.  I posted parts of the article:  

Sarah Palin is starting to slowly re-appear on the world scene. Now that she is free of the hopeless McCain campaign and no longer tied up in Alaska, she’s presenting a clear ideology with a potent delivery.  It's a pure antidote to the current American pathology. Many U.S. Catholic leaders, so key to the liberal government’s ascendance, should try to hear what Sarah is ready to teach the country.

Sarah Palin's Determined Message
Sarah Palin is an amazing and interesting politician, but even the boldest conservative writers have asked that she take time off and educate herself. Voices on the right are hopeful and intrigued by her, but they would consider it foolish to suppose she's a viable leader. Republican elites think Palin is the kind of embarrassment that stalks the party and must be handled. The contempt and condescension from the left never seem to erase their horror that she might represent an American majority.

[...]

The Right's disconnect with Sarah Palin comes from entrenched expectations. Political talkers can be steeped in the past. They know each player and strategy. They track every measure. But there is something fundamental and new about Palin that is hard for professionals to detect. She is not manly and that is rare for a powerful woman today. There is no reason why this must be the case, nevertheless Sarah brings her whole self to politics. She won't shut a part away as if it were not good enough. Sometimes she is emotional, even vulnerable, and in the face of something shockingly wrong, stunned; but Palin is rarely daunted, and she's canny. Her purpose on the world scene grows from a compassionate heart. The same devotion that rescued and protected her baby is the force in her leadership.

Today Sarah has re-positioned. Always conscious of the American people and fixed on reaching them directly, Palin is sending her messages in code and short wave, under the radar of the state media machine. As James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles have just demonstrated, this is the only effective way. Their ACORN trojan horse tells the story. America is now an underground movement again.

Speaking in Hong Kong September 23rd Palin called her ideas, "common sense conservatism." To many this may just sound like more populist material, but it's different from the compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush, which generally meant liberalism. Here it suggests Thomas Paine's straightforward calls to action and it builds on her natural style. Before the closed group of business and political people she said:

• "I believe in striving for the ideal, but in realistic confines of human nature."

• "China rightfully makes a lot of people nervous."

• "It's just common sense that government attempts to solve problems like health care will just create new problems."

On having the Fed oversee "systemic risk" in the financial system:

• "The words fox and henhouse come to mind."

How Catholic Church Leaders Can Learn From Palin's "Common Sense."
The honesty and simple wisdom of Sarah Palin is rejuvenating. Many who lead the Catholic Church will hopefully take notice. Today there are bishops worldwide who will go to almost any lengths in the name of social justice. Often when they do, they reveal their allegiances and their worldliness. This week the social justice arm of the USCCB, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, is under intense light again for its openly political, anti-Catholic, and corrupt beneficiaries. In Vienna Cardinal Schoenborn recently tried to squelch a pro-life rally and then forbad clergy to participate. Notre Dame, the pre-eminent American Catholic University, continues to prosecute eighty-eight pro-life demonstrators, including Norma McCorvey, following the Obama honors last spring. In August Boston's O'Malley scandalized the world with a funeral for anti-life pariah Ted Kennedy, and this past week Scotland's Cardinal O'Brien railed in the press about global catastrophes, millions of refugees, and the poor before a climate meeting at the UN.

America's most powerful Catholic hierarchy are so eager to socialize our medicine, that they act as though it were possible to protect the lives of the sick, elderly, and unborn by simply not mentioning them in a massive healthcare takeover bill. In calculated parsings they've called on Catholics to urge Congress to pass a reform now (leaving out explicit abortion funds and references to euthanasia). Some bishops have gone so far as to equate a lack of what is called universal coverage with the evils of abortion.

From their holy offices many bishops are keen to promote uncontrolled immigration, an end to capital punishment for brutal killers, subsidized housing, and free healthcare even at the expense of the Catholic conscience. When we hear bishops condemn abortion today, we must ask ourselves if his Excellency has a sincere interest in what he is saying based upon his actions, or whether he is just using genocide to rally the faithful toward another deadly statist cause.

In her Asian speech Sarah Palin mentioned government re-distribution and its flaws. Considering all the compromises bishops have been making in the name of social justice, perhaps Mrs. Palin in her common sense way could teach from the lives of Christ and St. Mary Magdalene. It was not a small, simple thing for Magdalene to be changed by Jesus. She showed her gratitude with a priceless jar of perfume at the house of the Pharisee. Even with this extravagance, her loving affection, and the entirely humble spectacle the honor and appreciation could never repay. Regardless, the apostle Judas, humiliated by the scene and envious of the "misused" money, took what he saw as a weak moment to publicly challenge, "Why was not this ointment sold and given to the poor?"

[...]

Speaking critically of the current U.S. political climate, Sarah Palin has said, "There is no justice in taking from one person and giving it to another." Some of our bishops might learn a thing or two from Palin. It sounds like she grasps the scriptural story of Mary Magdalene, Jesus, and Judas. I wonder whether some of our bishops do...

Full Article At:

Palin’s New Tack and the Catholic Bishops’ Old Game

How Sarah Palin Made Me a Fan

A very nice piece was posted by Race 4 2008 about how the author and people are realizing the media played a fast one on us about Sarah Palin.  Obama was a complete fabricated fantasy presented to us by the media and so was The Governor.  She is actually the person we new before McCain introduced her which was a popular and good Governor.  In my view, she says what she means and means what she says, no games or ulterior motives.  Her latest description of Obama is amazingly simple and insightful: “Obama is making the poor poorer.”

How Sarah Palin Made Me a Fan

Again I come to you with an article about Sarah Palin. My turnaround regarding the former governor is perhaps as perplexing to you as it is to me. It is certainly so that the paradigm shift in the national dialogue and the sudden urgency that has arisen in the conservative base about the proper role of government has produced something of a change in what I perceive as a proper strategy. It has forced me to reassess what the practical should and could be — and the question of ends and means. But it is more than this, I think. It was certainly Palin’s Hong Kong speech that served as the catalyst for my soul-searching, but it is not that speech alone that has swayed my opinion. Upon evaluating her actions in the calendar year of 2009, I have come to the conclusion that I was honestly wrong about certain aspects of Palin.

When Sarah Palin resigned as governor, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal contended that her resignation had to do with how effective she could really be as governor while dealing with a barrage of frivolous ethics complaints. She essentially, in Fund’s words, was being paid to show up to work to defend herself. The state of Alaska was being drained of its time, money, and energy, and Palin determined that the overall costs of staying to fight outweighed the benefits of simply handing over the reins to now-Governor Parnell. For this, she was maligned as a quitter: if you’re a real fighter, then why don’t you stay around and, you know, fight? And the money wasn’t much, after all, in the grand scheme of things.

Doctor Zero at Hot Air provides the rebuttal that planted the seed within me to start warming up to Palin:

I don’t blame her for refusing to take any more personal or financial pounding from political operatives using Alaska’s odd government ethics system as a weapon. Some have said she was foolish to cite the cost to Alaskan taxpayers as a reason for her resignation, since it was a paltry two million dollars. To me, that doesn’t sound like a criticism – it’s a campaign slogan. Sarah Palin: She Still Thinks A Million Bucks Is A Lot of Money. If she runs for president in 2012, it will be against an incumbent who thinks a billion dollars of graft or waste is a rounding error in one of his big-government schemes. A lot of people will like the idea of voting for someone who doesn’t use rolls of taxpayer dollars to wipe the ink off their hands after signing legislation.

Indeed. Moreover, her newfound status as a national lightning rod made her a chief target for Alaska Democrats who wanted to earn a killing by taking her down. The maverick politician who once boasted a 90% approval rating was no more — and she could never come back in such an atmosphere. I have no reason to believe that Palin desired to govern as anything other than a pragmatic center-right Republican, and it’s rather, well, refreshing, in hindsight, to realize that there is actually a politician out there who would rather just get out of a system in which she can’t do anything productive.

Only a knave or a fool would think that she didn’t realize she’d be branded as a quitter. And yet, she decided that it wasn’t worth her blessed, almighty title to be ineffective. She stated in her resignation address that she could be more effective elsewhere: “Only dead fish go with the flow.”

She seems to have been vindicated. Her decision to leave certainly wasn’t nonsensical, in hindsight: she’s had a lot more of an impact on the national debate from behind her computer chair than she would have from the governor’s mansion. Just like she had more of an impact by resigning from the Oil and Gas Commission than by staying on it, the tool of resignation once again came in handy. From Facebook to Hong Kong, Palin’s words have echoed with force matched only by the president himself.

When Sarah Palin contends in her Hong Kong speech that we don’t want fixes, but rather freedom, it sends my classically liberal heart a-flutter. When she has the audacity to go after the third rail that is the Federal Reserve, my eyebrow raises, and not in a bad way. When she simultaneously condemns protectionism and the human rights record of China, I can’t help but clap my hands. Yeah, yeah, she had a speechwriter. Just like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Mr. Intellectual himself, President Obama. Is Sarah necessarily, strictly speaking, as intelligent as any of the three? Probably not. But what’s her ideology like? It seems to be a lot more like Barry Goldwater’s than Richard Nixon’s. If it turns out that we can’t beat Barack Obama, I’d rather send a message with Sarah Palin than with Mitt Romney.

Now, I’m not turning into John Ziegler or Kristofer Lorelli, here, but my opinion of Sarah Palin is now officially positive. Freed of the McCain campaign’s fumbling and often bizarre calculations, Sarah, I believe, can be set loose to do what she really wants to do. I eagerly await her next speech and her upcoming book. If she can sway me, she can sway others. Go get ‘em, Sarah!

Full Article At:

How Sarah Palin Made Me a Fan

The author Alex Knepper can be contacted at apkkib@aol.com

The Media: An Apology To Sarah Palin

Managing Editor, Rod Boyce, of the Fairbanks Daily News Newsminer wrote a great piece most of the media world  needs to write. I posted part of the Article:

The Daily News-Miner has had its agreements and disagreements with now-former Gov. Sarah Palin at various points during her time serving the state of Alaska. We have tried to maintain respect for the office of governor and to be generally civil when discussing Mrs. Palin, her policies and the actions she took while serving as governor. The same has been true for the time since she left office.

Today I must apologize to Mrs. Palin personally and on behalf of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner for the choice of words used on the bottom of Wednesday’s front page regarding her speaking engagement in Hong Kong this week to a group of global investors.

We used offensive language — “A broad in Asia” — above a small photograph of the former governor to direct readers inside the newspaper to a full story of her Hong Kong appearance. There can be no argument that our use of the word “broad” is anything but offensive. To use this word to describe someone of the stature of the former governor — who is also the former vice presidential nominee of the Republican Party — only adds to the anger that many people appropriately feel.

It wasn’t all that long ago that I wrote a column highly critical of Mrs. Palin for not agreeing to meet again with the editorial board of the Daily News-Miner. I used forceful language to explain my belief about why she would not meet with the editorial board. I did so, however, with civil language. It was a tough column; many people didn’t like it, though many others did. I bring up that column as a way of noting that there is a right way to disagree, a proper way to treat people.

There’s widespread belief that too much meanness exists in political discourse today. The media, already held in low regard, need to be extremely wary of that meanness slopping over into their own work. I am responsible for the content of this newspaper and need to ensure that our employees adhere to acceptable standards of decency.

I will say it clearly again now: We made a terrible mistake.  Mrs. Palin, please accept this apology from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.  And please accept it from me.

I also apologize to our readers, many of whom have been devoted to this newspaper for years and who deserve better.

Rod Boyce is managing editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Full Article At:

Fairbanks Daily News Newsminer