The title of his piece might mislead one into thinking it’s a hit piece on Palin, but it is precisely the opposite. Read on:

politico.com/news/stories/0709/24606.html

The sins of Sarah Palin
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By ROGER SIMON
7/7/09 4:58 AM EDT

Sarah Palin is a sinner. She has violated several commandments and thoroughly deserves the savage beating that she is now getting from political mandarins and media elites.

If it were not for one simple fact, I would say she was through in politics. And that fact is that if the Republicans were picking a nominee today, they would pick Sarah Palin.

No? Don’t believe me? Who would beat her? Tim Pawlenty? Bobby Jindal? Haley Barbour? Mike Huckabee? Mitt Romney?

All of these men might build credible, attractive, even powerful political operations by 2012. But right now? Today? Today, Sarah Palin would be the winner, because more than anyone else, she has won over the hearts and minds of the Republican rank and file. (And tell me that a Sarah Palin-Newt Gingrich ticket would not set conservative hearts aflutter.)

She has done this by sinning, however. Let us list just some of the political commandments she has recently violated:

1. Thou shalt not surprise the media.

Palin announces she is quitting her job as governor of Alaska, and she catches everybody by surprise. What is up with that?

Where were the leaks and the trial balloons? Why weren’t the media alerted so they could have predicted it?

When you do what the media have predicted, you are “savvy.” You are a “skilled” and “adept” politician.

If you surprise the media, however, you are “out of control” and “bizarre” and even “egotistical.” (Though I have always believed that accusing politicians of being egotistical is like accusing ballerinas of dancing on their toes.)

How badly do some in the media take to surprise? Here is CNN’s Rick Sanchez on Palin’s announcement that she was leaving office prematurely. “Is there anything going on with her that perhaps may lead her to want to make this decision, and the one thing that’s still left out there is, hey, could she be pregnant again?” Sanchez asked.

Could be, Rick. Or maybe it was just her time of month, because, hey, that’s why woman politicians make the decisions they do, right?

But you can see why some in the media were shocked and dismayed. Imagine abandoning your office! Imagine quitting and deserting the voters who elected you!

Though this is what Bob Dole did in 1996, didn’t he? Dole resigned his Senate seat to run for president. I remember it. I was standing right there when he did it. And I don’t recall anybody accusing him of being a quitter. Or of being pregnant.

2. Thou shalt not upset the pooh-bahs.

The Republican Party likes to nominate the next guy in line. John McCain in 2008, George W. Bush in 2000 and Bob Dole in 1996 were all the next guys in line. They had “earned” their place in the party hierarchy. (Or, in the case of George W. Bush, his father had earned it for him.)

Today, it is hard to see who the next guy in line is, but the party mandarins, the pooh-bahs, are agreed on one thing: Sarah Palin ain’t it.

She is a dumb hick, a nobody from nowhere. She hunts moose with a chainsaw from the back of a snowmobile or something. Just listen to her resignation speech. It was not slick or polished or written by somebody else. She appeared to deliver it off the top of her head as if she were a real person. What a doofus!

Doesn’t she know that the highest form of political communication today is to exactly regurgitate a speech written for you by a speechwriter who has crafted, vetted and polled every phrase, line and word?

But listen to Palin. Listen to how “rambling” and “disjointed” she is. Once upon a time in American politics, this was known as being “plain-spoken,” but that time has gone. An entire industry of political consultants has grown up to make sure politicians are never plain-spoken.

Sarah Palin does not get this. Which is to say she is not very bright. (Or else she is pregnant, in which case, I apologize.)

3. Thou shalt pander to the few, not speak to the many.

John Weaver, a former McCain aide, told Adam Nagourney of The New York Times that Sarah Palin now has little chance of ever becoming the party’s presidential nominee.

“Somebody has to explain to Republicans how this woman is going to expand her support base,” Weaver said. “Yes, she is the darling of a certain element of our party. But it remains to be seen — in fact, it remains rather doubtful she can grow beyond that.”

She is the “darling of a certain element” of Republicans? It seems to me that with the party collapsing to its most conservative core, that “certain element” could also be called the majority of the Republican Party.

But maybe that is not enough. It is only a “certain element” of the party that finds her energizing, fresh, tough and willing to stand up to the mandarins and the media. Clearly, Palin must “grow” beyond that base to win over … whom? The McCain wing of the Republican Party? Find it, and maybe she can win it over.

Having said all this, I do not think Palin is being crazy like a fox. I don’t think she has planned out what she will do in 2012. I think she has quit her job, is doing what she wants to do and is reserving judgment about her future.

In doing so, she has made herself an outcast to the mandarins, the pooh-bahs and the elites.

So how can she go wrong?

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Roger Simon is POLITICO’s chief political columnist.

I mentioned that my hunch was that Obama wanted a photo-op in Russia, and that he’d be willing to play Let’s Make a Deal for that prvilege. Guess you’d have to say, “That’s some pretty fancy guessin’, rgb”.

nypost.com/seven/07072009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/desperate_deal_177977.htm?page=0

DESPERATE DEAL
OBAMA’S MOSCOW GIVEAWAY
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by Ralph Peters

Last updated: 3:32 am
July 7, 2009
Posted: 2:53 am
July 7, 2009

PRESIDENT Obama went to Moscow desperate for the appearance of a foreign-policy success. He got that illusion — at a substantial cost to America’s security.

The series of signing ceremonies in a grand Kremlin hall and the litany of agreements, accords and frameworks implied that the United States benefited from all the fuss. We didn’t.

We got nothing of real importance. But the government of puppet-master Vladimir Putin (nominally just prime minister) got virtually all it wanted. In Moscow, this was Christmas in July.

Ignore the agenda-padding public-health memorandum and the meaningless “framework document on military cooperation” (we’ve had such agreements before; the Russians always just stiff us). The main course in Moscow was arms control.

President Obama’s ideological bias against nuclear weapons dates back to his undergraduate years. Yet those weapons kept the peace between the world’s great powers for 64 years. A few remarks about deterrence notwithstanding, Obama just doesn’t get it.

He agreed to trim our nuclear-warhead arsenal by one-third and — even more dangerously — to cut the systems that deliver the nuclear payloads. In fact, the Russians don’t care much about our warhead numbers (which will be chopped to a figure “between 1,500 and 1,675″). What they really wanted — and got — was a US cave-in regarding limits on our nuclear-capable bombers, submarines and missiles that could leave us with as few as 500 such systems, if the Russians continue to get their way as the final details are negotiated.

Moscow knows we aren’t going to start a nuclear war with Russia. Putin (forget poor “President” Dmitry Medvedev) wants to gut our conventional capabilities to stage globe-spanning military operations. He wants to cut us down to Russia’s size.

Our problem is that many nuclear-delivery systems — such as bombers or subs — are “dual-use”: A B-2 bomber can launch nukes, but it’s employed more frequently to deliver conventional ordnance.

Putin sought to cripple our ability to respond to international crises. Obama, meanwhile, was out for “deliverables” — deals that could be signed in front of the cameras. Each man got what he wanted.

President Obama even expressed an interest in further nuclear-weapons cuts. Peace in our time, ladies and gentlemen, peace in our time . . .

We just agreed to the disarmament position of the American Communist Party of the 1950s.

The Russians also enjoyed our president’s empathy for their position on missile defense. Apparently, Eastern Europe really does belong to the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.

Not least, Obama fell for the sucker offer of the year: The Russians will generously allow us to fly our troops and weapons through their airspace to Afghanistan.

This ploy is utterly transparent: Putin intends to lull us into dependency on a trans-Russia supply route — giving him a free hand in Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere.

By Putin’s calculus, we’ll complain about further aggression on Russia’s frontiers, but take no action that would jeopardize our new supply line. Meanwhile, we serve as the Kremlin’s proxies, protecting its sphere of influence in Central Asia against Islamist influence from the south and working on the Russians’ Afghan heroin problem.

What did our president get in return? Russia will import more American meat products (which Russia needs). And we can re-open our Moscow office investigating the cases of POWs and MIAs from yesteryear’s wars. Well, I served in that office 16 years ago. Even during the Yeltsin-era “thaw,” the Russians stonewalled us. And Putin’s no Boris Yeltsin.

Our president also got some generalizations about North Korea and Iran, but no hard commitments. Russia — which designed many of Iran’s nuclear facilities — wouldn’t even promise to permanently deny Iran the sophisticated air-defense systems that would make it harder to hit Tehran’s nuke sites.

And you could read something else in President Medvedev’s imperious bearing behind his podium yesterday: Moscow longs for the world to view Russia and the United States as equals again, as joint arbiters of a global condominium, reviving the Kremlin’s Cold-War status (for which Russians feel passionate nostalgia).

They got that, too. And we got nothing, nothing, nothing. Unless you think trading our military superiority for hamburger sales is a winner.

There’s been a debate in the Obama administration between veterans who learned the hard way not to trust the Russians and the new, unblooded idealists. Now we know who won.

Great news for the Russian Federation. Bad news for America. Until an adoring media spins it, of course.

realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2009/07/07/ohio-obama-under-50-approval/

July 7th, 2009
Ohio: Obama Under 50% Approval
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Posted by Tom Bevan | Email This | Permalink | Email Author
President Obama’s job approval in Ohio has dropped significantly in the last two months, dipping under the 50% mark for the first time, according to a new poll by Quinnipiac University. In the last Quinnipiac poll in Ohio taken in early May, Obama enjoyed a healthy 62% job approval rating, with only 31% disapproving. Today, Obama’s job approval stands at 49%, with 44% disapproving – a twenty-five point net drop in just eight weeks.

Not surprsingly, Obama has seen a corresponding drop among voters’ approval of his handling of the economy: two months ago he had a net +21 approval (57/36), today it is -2 (46/48).

July 7th, 2009 at 8:40 am
confloyd,

Not surprised at the “overbloated” stars deciding to run for office. Ever since bambi crashed the oval office, with the exception of Hillary, the qualifications for your leaders have taken a sharp turn towards empyheaded ego-driven idiots. Baldwin will fit right in.
&&&&&&&&

Yes, another “celebrity” candidate unencumbered with experience.

Amen.

Bull ShXt.

So there is a lot of this crap going on, that really needs to stop.

GOOD MORNING ALL