——

Other than focusing the narrative on former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the only other news here is how bad Julianne Moore’s accent is and that the tele-film will broadcast this coming March.

As far as the film itself, I don’t have much to add other than what I wrote last March when the project was first announced:

We’ll see how closely the film sticks to the book, but Governor Palin disputed how “Game Change” portrayed her and being as that it was one of the very few books I had time to read last year, it was easy to see why. Written by Mark Halperin of Time Magazine and MSNBC, and John Heilemann of the New Yorker, the lack of sourcing, the use of so many “anecdotes” based on tales told by ”deep background” types, allowed the authors to craft their reporting in a way that was obviously meant to reaffirm the mainstream media’s biased narrative of the 2008 campaign — especially when it came to destroying Palin and enshrining President Obama. I don’t think Palin’s a perfect person by any stretch of the imagination but I don’t think Barack Obama is perfect either, but after reading “Game Change” — other than an out-sized opinion of himself — you most certainly come to the conclusion that the calm, cool, smart, thoughtful, steady, ready-for-history Barack walks on water.

“Game Change” savages Palin with innuendo, gossip, and unnamed sources in order to portray her as some sort of supreme head case and diva who you would never believe was capable of amassing a resume that made her much more prepared to be president than the floundering failure ruining our economy right now. And I’m not the only one saying so. No less than the New York Times, the Atlantic and The Poynter Institute expressed concerns over the book’s gossipy lack of sourcing.

The one dynamic HBO probably didn’t count on was Palin’s decision not to run for the 2012 nomination. The film’s promotion and the cable news chatter that’s sure to follow seems timed to hit on, before, and around March 6, which is Super Tuesday. 

Was that part of HBO’s plan?

If it was, oh well.

In “Holidays in Heck,” O’Rourke warns us he’s hung up his war correspondent flak jacket for family vacation fun. He has an odd definition for this term, though. We find him hiking in 95-degree weather, landing on an aircraft carrier and reporting from Red China. He hasn’t completely abandoned making political statements out of his encounters. Seeing the dangers firsthand of F-16 piloting, he finds conservative virtues of courage and responsibility in the otherwise RINO Sen. John McCain. O’Rourke confidently predicts that the low-level capitalism he finds in Hong Kong will eventually overthrow the top-level communism.

There is evidence that O’Rourke has shifted to are-we-there-yet parenting mode. He is now chasing kids at Disneyland. Women with guns are no longer Sandinistas but his quail-shooting wife. But O’Rourke retains enough of his war correspondent persona to give this new one comic bite.  The man who once faced artillery shells is ill-equipped to deal with riding Space Mountain or waking up at the tender age of 63 to feed the babies.

Still, one wishes for the political O’Rourke, especially in the age of Obama. Now more than ever we need the journalist who loudly celebrated the victory of anti-communist candidates in Nicaragua in front of Ed Asner, or the jeering travel companion of Old Lefties visiting Brezhnev’s Soviet Union.

O”Rourke has been compared to H.L. Mencken. “Holidays in Heck” emphasizes this connection. Toward the end of his life, Mencken stopped jeering at politicians and began writing reminisces of newspaper days, just when perfect enemies such as Adolf Hitler were available. The same has occurred with O’Rourke. He has always defined his enemy as ’60s wannabes and big government Democrats. In President Obama, he has both, and the president’s kamikaze-like determination to socialize as much as possible before he gets the boot provides O’Rourke the ultimate foil.

This is the worst possible moment to navel watch.

Sarah Palin IS The Undefeated.

 By the time you finish watching this superbly scripted and produced two-hour documentary about the former Alaskan Governor, if you don’t come to that conclusion, you were either asleep during the film or you still  believe that “Community Organizer” trumps true executive experience and success as qualification to serve as America’s Commander-In-Chief.

Dim the house lights…

It is 2008 and Republican Presidential candidate John McCain introduces Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate to a crowd of thousands of enthusiastic supporters.  The beautiful, poised, confident Governor takes the stage at the Republican National Convention to thunderous applause and delivers an electrifying speech with a level of charisma, wit, and passion not seen since Ronald Reagan, that catapulted this relatively unknown Alaskan Governor onto the National political stage making her almost instantly and simultaneously one of the most revered and one of the most reviled politicians in recent memory.

In stark contrast, the film then cuts over to a dramatic 3-minute montage of pure, unadulterated hatred from the left for this VP candidate which history will record as one of the most vicious campaigns to annihilate a public figure.  It was vulgar.  It was brutal.  It was violent.  It was main stream.  It was textbook Alinsky.  And yet, she is still standing…undefeated.

"Civility" from the left...

The attacks from the liberal pundits, journalists, talk show hosts, celebrities and patrons of social networking sites and the blogosphere were completely abhorrent and offensive.  So much so that the film’s writer/director, Stephen Bannon, told us at the private screening of the rough cut of the film, he would have to do a lot of creative editing to mask some of the more vulgar and violent footage to get the film to a PG-13 rating for National distribution, yet still convey the same astonishing level of the left’s pathological hatred for Palin.  If you have even an ounce of human decency or compassion, viewing this brief sampling of the almost maniacal attacks on Sarah Palin should make your blood boil.  What has she ever done to deserve this?  Does her mere existence threaten people so much they feel she must be destroyed completely before they are satisfied?

Their latest display of depravity or desperation as it were, with the release of over 24,000 of her private emails from her tenure as Alaska’s Governor, has even drawn criticism from those who would never vote for Palin).  The timing couldn’t be better, though, as we are finding (much to the dismay of the corrupt MSM) that she was every bit the dedicated, hard-working Governor depicted in Bannon’s documentary.

But then we see the words from Matthew 7: 17-20 appear on the screen almost as if to calm our souls and bring all of this into perspective.  We are reminded with this passage that this truly is a spiritual battle between good and evil…right from wrong.   Not just for Governor Palin, but for all of us…for our Nation.

“Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” ~ Matthew 7:20

By the end of this film, you will know who Sarah Palin really is.

With opening credits rolling we hear a single, solitary female voice singing an a capella rendition of The Minstrel Boy (a favorite among Irishmen who fought in the Civil War), with never-before-seen home video footage of a happy, care-free American girl blossoming into a beautiful, accomplished young lady growing up in a small town tucked away in the beautiful, vast, wild, expanses of “The Last Frontier”.  As the singer concludes her song with the words “thy song was made for the pure and free and shall never sound in slavery”, the story that chronicles the political career of Alaska’s own pioneer and patriot, Sarah Palin, begins.

Mayor of Wasilla

With commentary from conservative heavy-hitters Mark Levin, Andrew Breitbart, and Tammy Bruce, conservative activists, former staffers, and others, Stephen Bannon does a brilliant job telling the story of Palin’s rise from obscurity in the lower 48 to stardom on the National political stage.  The seed was planted shortly after the Exxon Valdez disaster that Good Friday, 24 March 1989.  It was when she saw the devastation caused to the community, to the people, to the Alaskan economy that she decided “If I had a chance to serve the people, I would do so”.

As the film takes us through the fascinating journey that is Sarah Palin’s highly successful political career in Alaska, it is clear to see she has always been a tough-as-nails executive who understood her role as a servant for the people during her time as Mayor of Wasilla, as Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission Chairwoman, and as Alaska’s most popular Governor.  We see her take on the Republican establishment, big oil, corruption, ethics reform, and tax reform and stare down the ugliness and smears she faced from her political foes and the mainstream Alaskan media with uncommon valor and a fierce, tenacious spirit.  She, like a Marine, always ran toward the danger instead of away from it and took on the huge issues nobody else dared to.  With every new challenge the naysayers claimed there was no way she could do the job, that she was not strong enough, that she lacked the “gravitas”, and didn’t have a good understanding of the issues.  She proved them all wrong…and remained undefeated.

She didn’t just talk the talk…she walked the walk.  When it came to fighting corruption within her own Administration, she said “In politics you’re either eating well or sleeping well”.  She always chose the latter.

With one legislative success after another and overwhelming bipartisan support, Governor Sarah Palin’s popularity was at a record high 88% according to Gallup’s empirical data — the highest approval rating on record for a sitting US Governor.  With that kind of approval rating, Sarah stated “My administration must be doing something right”.  She enjoyed those high approval ratings right up to the day her Blackberry rang and Senator McCain asked “Would you like to help me change history”?

And so began their campaign for the White House.

At the 2008 Republican National Convention

So, too, began another campaign — the one launched by the statists to destroy her.  Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals teaches its disciples that you must take a person’s strengths and “isolate them”.  And that is exactly what they did.  It was an organized strategy and the media gladly participated.  Bannon’s film, The Undefeated, reveals exactly what they “isolated” and as John Nolte, Editor-In-Chief of BigHollywood, so aptly put it, is “doing the job the corrupt MSM won’t”.

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While the 2008 Presidential election did not turn out as planned, Sarah Palin won the hearts of millions of Americans, and as Mark Levin noted, the excitement and enthusiasm generated by Palin was the beginning of the awakening of conservatives across the country — the beginning of what is now the TEA Party movement — and very reminiscent of what happened during the Reagan Revolution.  Americans were seeing for the first time since Reagan, a true conservative leader who had a heart for America and for the people.  “Ronald Reagan would have loved the TEA Party” said Levin.  Like Palin, Reagan was called an outsider that couldn’t win.  People said he was “too conservative”, “a right-winger”, “an extremist”.  And he was just what America needed.

Upon her return to Alaska to resume her duties as Governor, Palin was plagued with one trumped up ethics charge after another which cost her staff dearly.  Each charge was dismissed but rarely, if ever, reported by the media.  As the Palins were a middle-class family and had to pay their own legal fees (which had amassed to over $500,000), the intent of her opponents was to force her family into bankruptcy.  Governor Palin knew that with all the negative press and increasing opposition contributing to her declining popularity, she would not be able to pass one single piece of legislation for the people of Alaska.  She knew her constituents were paying the price and suffering simply because their Governor’s name was “Sarah Palin”.  Her decision to step down, as in all her decisions, was in the best interest of the people.  She said “Life is about choices.  You can choose things that tear you down or build you up”.  She always made the right choice for the people in spite of the harsh criticism she knew she would receive.  “Thank God Sarah refuses to accept the premise of her destruction” stated one of her supporters in the film.  Her spirit cannot not be defeated.

In the final scene, as Sarah is speaking at the 2011 Tax Day Rally in Wisconsin, her hair and glasses soaked from the falling snow but the crowd every bit as fired up as they were the day she took the stage at the 2008 Republican National Convention, Sarah Palin states with the same passion and conviction present in every single speech she delivers “We’re here, we’re clear…get used to it.  God has shed His Grace on thee.  Mr. President…Game on!”

We are left to ponder the words of Thomas Paine:  “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”

This is a must-see film that “Palinistas” will absolutely love and will allow Palin skeptics to see what the media has so successfully isolated — hidden in plain sight.  I dare you to go see it.

Too Big to Fail, which premieres on HBO on May 23, 2011, features a star studded cast recounting the events that led to the financial crisis and bailouts by the U.S. government in 2008. It is a mini-series packed into a 98-minute made-for-television movie where several essential characters are quickly introduced and where finance and economics are casually discussed. It may help if one has a baseline of knowledge about the crisis before watching the movie. If one doesn’t know who Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner are or what Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and AIG are, it may prove slightly difficult to follow.

Although the Director, Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile), was limited to telling a very long and complicated story in a very short amount of time, he was able to skillfully pull it off. Perhaps this is because the screenwriter, Peter Gould (Breaking Bad), deftly adapted Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 2009 prize winning New York Times Bestseller, Too Big to Fail.

The cast was right out of a Robert Altman film, there was a large number of well known actors including William Hurt (Paulson – Sec. Treasury), James Woods (Fuld – Lehman Bros), Paul Giamatti (Bernanke – Chair, Federal Reserve), Bill Pullman (Dimon – JPMorgan Chase), Ed Asner (Buffet – Berkshire Hathaway), Billy Crudup (Geithner – President, Federal Reserve), Matthew Modine (Thain – CIT Group), Tony Shalhoub (Mack – Morgan Stanley), Topher Grace (Wilkinson), Cynthia Nixon (Davis), and many others. They all looked and played their parts very well with the exception that there seemed to be no effort made toward sounding like the people they played. It was difficult to get past the notable voices of the actors. Paul Giamatti sounds like Paul Giamatti and nothing like Ben Bernanke. Hurt sounded nothing like Paulson. Crudup nothing like Geithner. Perfection wasn’t necessary, but it seemed as though there was little to no effort made at all by the actors to at least sound a little more like the real people they were portraying and less like themselves.

The story opens on a  shot of Ronald Reagan. It is news footage of a speech he gives on deregulation. Credits play as we see an image of Clinton signing a piece of legislation as the audio of newsmakers make mention that this is Congress’ bill being singed. Alan Greenspan is seen and states, “Don’t regulate for regulation’s sake,” which is followed by Bush proclaiming everyone should live out the American dream and own their own home. Miscellaneous clips talks of high profits and subprime loans, and then mortgage meltdown and government bailout.

At this point, I am thinking this film is going to be about blame… and that blame is going to be deregulation ushered in by Reagan, the Republican Congress during the Clinton years, Bush 43, and Reagan through Bush’s Federal Reserve appointee, Alan Greenspan.

This prompts me to check the cast and crew to see who they support and if they are bringing their agenda to this story in their hopes to rewrite history and put Republicans in a negative light and Democrats in a positive light before the election in 2012. And, of course, the Director and the Writer are both ardent Obama supporters. All those at HBO support Obama like Co-President Eric Kessler, Co-President Richard Plepler, President of HBO entertainment Sue Naegle, President of HBO Films Len Amato and Executive Producers Paula Weinstein, Carol Fenelon, and Ezra Swerdlow. Even the Cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau and Casting Director Alexa Fogel have contributed to Obama’s 2008 campaign. And the Obama supporting list of actors is long too: Topher Grace, William Hurt, Matthew Modine, Cynthia Nixon, and Amy Carlson. As if that’s not enough, there are many other ardent left-wingers like Paul Giamatti, Bill Pullman, Tony Shalhoub, and Ed Asner.

Then the story opens on James Woods playing Dick Fuld, Chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers… an ardent Democrat and Obama supporter. James Woods stands out as the political maverick in the cast. In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Woods is quoted as saying, “I’ve always said that the next Obama slogan should be, ‘Barack Obama: Putting America Out of Business,’ because that’s what he’s doing.” So I decided to turn off my bias filter and give this story a chance.

As the story unfolded, I saw that the villains in this film weren’t the Republicans, rather it was a single villain… the total and complete financial collapse of our nation, or as Bernanke puts it, “[replaying] the depression of the 1930s. Only this time… far, far worse.” So, regardless of any one American’s political affiliation watching this film, total and complete financial collapse is an enemy we can all collectively desire to defeat.

The heroes, however, that’s a little more complicated. The actual heroes of the story are Republicans Henry Paulson (Secretary of the Treasury), Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve), and Independent Timothy Geithner (President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York). They artfully maneuver their way through the minefield of economic collapse. Bear Stearns has already collapsed, Lehman Brothers is on the brink, Merrill Lynch next, and with all this going on, AIG – the safety net for all these creditors – was in the process of imploding from its own lack of liquidity and inability to meet its obligations. If AIG falls, all the banks fall. People would pull their money out of their banks and there would be no George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) trying to stop the “run on the bank” by convincing his depositors to take only what they need from his honeymoon stash. America, as we know it, would be in ruins.

Every maneuver in their quest to stabilize the markets is met with unpredictable reactions. Once they believe they’ve averted disaster, the pundits, investors, and citizens react differently than expected. It’s a reminder of Nobel winning economist F.A. Hayek’s precept that, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

But in the end, as we all know, it was capital injections in the form of a Troubled Asset Relied Plan (TARP) that would “save the day.” In short, the plan would see the U.S. government purchase assets and equity from all financial institutions, even if they didn’t need it, in order to stabilize and strengthen the financial sector. As Bernanke put it, the upside would be stabilizing banks faster, the downside would be nationalizing a few banks. Their plan to soften the blow was that they would force private banks to participate in this plan under law, but that the government would not have a voting interest or the ability to tell the banks how they use the money injected into their coffers… leaving the question to the viewer, “They will lend it out, won’t they?”

But, was TARP the right solution? If one believes it was, then the heroes of this story are without a doubt Republicans Paulson and Bernanke. But, if one believes it wasn’t the right solution, then the Republicans are just kicking the can down the road. Regardless, the story is a quest for a private solution, according to Paulson.

As Republican public relations guru Jim Wilkson (Topher Grace) says at one point, “You just can’t hand the banks massive piles of cash. Nobody’s going to go for it. To the Republicans, it’s nationalization. To the Democrats, it’s a bailout. And the banks are going to go ballistic.”

The story is well crafted and builds suspense out of the unexciting topics of finance and economics. There were parts that bothered me, like making the Republican Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox, look like an immature boob, or Republican presidential candidate Senator McCain look like he is clueless on economic matters contrasted by Senator Obama’s grip on the subject, or simplistically blaming deregulation while omitting the fault of Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, or that derivatives and subprime loans were born during Clinton’s presidency, or more importantly that in 2006 Republicans pleaded with the Democratically-controlled Congress to begin taking measures by pulling the reigns back on Fannie and Freddie to mitigate the impending economic disaster.

Those criticisms, however, were offset by so many of the lines delivered by Topher Grace’s character, Jim Wilkson, who best resembled the attitudes and feelings of most Americans during this time. At one point, it is suggested that the government purchases up the toxic assets of the banks, to which he responds, “Ohhh, call it cash for trash,” he also calls nationalization “the N-word” and that it is un-American, and he suggests that the government running the banks would be like the government running the Post Office, which they “run like a dream.” Another character addresses the issue that the government having the ability to dictate compensation would be the biggest “brain drain this country has ever seen.” And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is characterized as something like the head of the Mafia. Her character comes across as an elitist snob, which I particularly enjoyed.

The movie was a surprise. Although it wasn’t 100 percent balanced, it was enough for this right-winger to actually enjoy it. And the filmmakers did a pretty decent job packing in a lot of characters and a lot of story into a short amount of time. If Obama-loving HBO can pull off the upcoming Sarah Palin story, Game Change, and the Dick Cheney movie, Angler, with the same deftness and fairness, I will be pleasantly surprised.  Better yet… I will be astonished.

“You disrespected me …” says Don Corleone to a favor-seeker.

That’s one of President Obama’s favorite phrases from Marlon Brando’s Godfather.

The, by now very boring, Judeo-Christian civilization has raised us to “disrespect” criminals, bullies who rule the world by force and force alone and cold-blooded killers such as the Islamic Jihad.

Somehow our President is willing to give a pass to Don Corleone because … well … “The Don” is performed by the same actor who portrayed John McCain’s favorite movie hero, Emiliano Zapata.

Marlon Brando.

Hmmm … no wonder so many conservatives don’t entirely trust John McCain.

The hidden part of Senator McCain is Progressive, a movement that grows increasingly revolutionary.

However, that was all part of a good revolution, the Mexican one, right? It had a whole cast of “good guys” like Pancho Villa, correct?

So if McCain can admire Pancho Villa and Zapata, what’s wrong with the Czars of the Obama administration admiring Che Guevera and Mao Zedong?

Both McCain and Obama obviously admire Marlon Brando. He’s The Star of their favorite movies.

Besides, candidate Obama promised to “fundamentally transform the United States of America”.

That’s revolutionary, isn’t it?

Hollywood pictures and two-party politicians are a revealing combination, aren’t they?

Therefore we have Worldwide Progressive Production Company’s film version of a story entitled Destiny of Mankind, and they’re shooting it out of a movie studio called United Nations.

A bit like United Artists … but … well, United Nations creates only documentary films and the UN scriptwriters have never been busier nor more successful!

With Obama in the White House “stepping on the gas” so to speak, the United Nations domination of the United States, if you’ll forgive the allusion, looks like a “downtown” from Obama’s favorite “corner” of not a basketball court but of his “Todlin’ Town”.

In other words, The Chicago Way!

Now America comes to what amounts to President Obama’s version of a Brando/Pacino-like, Chicago Don and elects him to help America out of trouble.

It is not entirely a coincidence that the German Communist playwright, Bertolt Brecht, set two of his major plays, In The Jungle of Cities and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, in Chicago.

That American city’s legendary reputation as a gangster’s heaven obviously struck Brecht as the best metaphor for his own Europe, struggling between not “two men”, as the subtitle of Jungle describes it, but between the increasingly influential lies and blackmail of both Nazism and Brecht’s beloved Communism.

In The Jungle of Cities is a love story presented in the metaphors of boxing.

The love-hate between dueling ambitions.

In light of that, America’s and Chicago’s First Lady Michelle Obama seemed to be saying, in “love-hate”, that after having endured such “disrespect” from the United States, she and possibly her husband didn’t have to respect America until, of course, her husband was then chosen as America’s own Godfather.

Even then respect isn’t necessary for a Constitution they both have felt is so limited and limiting when put in relation to their bottomless, Brechtian ambitions.

It is payback time!

No, the payback isn’t racist.

It is Marxist!!

A kind of Rainbow Revenge.

As someone might have advised the Obamas, “Vengeance is best served up cold … with a smile”.

Such strategies are taught at the President’s alma mater of Harvard by the Progressive likes of Professor Henry Kissinger – the tireless salesman of a New World Order – seconded by Rhodes Scholars such as William Clinton and, of course, heavily funded by Obama’s own personal Godfather, George Soros.

Paul Volcker has written of George Soros:

“George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become ‘open societies,’ open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but—more important—tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.”

So far, at least from my own “different mode of thinking”, the most belligerent of these “emerging nations” Soros is lecturing to, with the invaluable help of his ideological Godson, President Barack Obama, is America.

The Obama Nation is helping America to emerge as just another corner of the Marxist New World Order.

Ironically Marlon Brando, although surrounded in his life by Marxists and, as a favorite actor of both Obama and McCain, a legendary, bipartisan favorite, was mainly concerned about only helping America’s First Nations become the priority among “emerging nations”.

However, Jihadist Islam, at least for myself at any rate, has obviously become the angriest and most impatient corner of an emerging, would-be nation.

Muslim Jihadists’ dedication to the virtual destruction and permanent end of Israel is where Mr. Brando would have to part company with the Progressives and their non-combative policy toward Ahmadinejad’s Iran

Despite the seemingly anti-Semitic remarks offered by Marlon Brando, the actor had unswervingly supported Israel’s sovereignty.

One thing Obama and McCain must agree upon is the main common denominator of the films Godfather and Viva Zapata, and that is Marlon Brando.

However, without Elia Kazan as his own, artistic Godfather, Marlon Brando would have been without Viva Zapata and On The Waterfront.

The “Mob” that Kazan demonized in On The Waterfront is made up of the very Union Bosses that traipse in and out of Godfather Obama’s White House regularly.

If you want to get a profoundly good look at President Obama’s brand of Union leader, see On The Waterfront again. Concentrate on the brilliant performances by Lee J. Cobb and Rod Steiger.

Johnny Friendly, and that mob boss’ lawyer, Charley Malloy, and the thugs surrounding them are the real stuff of Godfather Obama’s SEIU friends, ACORN, his Czardom and the true architects of his “fundamental transformation of the United States of America”.

They are Johnny and Charley with Ivy League degrees.

That description, indeed, is Al Pacino’s version of a Godfather, Michael Corleone, a graduate of Dartmouth.

As a graduate of Dartmouth myself, I learned that in Soviet Russia the Politburo is actually a modern version of an old-fashioned oligarchy.

Since then, and because of performing repeatedly in the creations of Bertolt Brecht, I’ve discovered that a Politburo is the traditionally Soviet word for a Communist Cosa Nostra.

However, the American Politburo, that ruling elite which is now led by Godfather Obama, instead of admiring Stalin, as you would expect?

They all look up to Mao Zedong.

Mao has ultimately become the greatest inspiration for the American Progressive Movement.

Mao is The Godfather of all Godfathers!

Surely Hollywood and its tortured geniuses would have eventually cast Marlon Brando as Mao, don’t you think?

After performing Emiliano Zapata, Napoleon Bonaparte and Don Corleone, the only challenge remaining for Marlon Brando, the ultimate fulfillment of his symbolic ascendancy as the Left’s Greatest Screen Star would have been to portray the indisputable and now increasingly popular Communist Emperor, Mao Zedong.

Please think about that till I get back to you with Part Two of Marlon’s Mao.

In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: Republican Senators, John McCain, President Obama, Soledad O’Brien, Hanes Underwear, Charlie Sheen, Martin Lawrence, Rapper Lil Wayne, and Kendra Wilkinson.

But Palin ain’t buying it by the barrel, she’s got a whole pipeline of pure grade indigo flowing from the North Slope as she pumps up the volume on her NY Times #1 bestselling memoir.

When I got about halfway through the book I set it down, stepped outside of my Washington, DC townhouse and went for a run around the U.S. Capitol. Listening to the Outlaws, Marshall Tucker Band, and Lil Bow Wow (my daughter slipped that one in there) on my iPod, the recurrent thought in my mind was that this woman is far more qualified to be president of the United States than the current occupant of the White House.

When I completed the journey that is Going Rogue, I wrote down five things:

–She is a positive role model for all Americans
–She is an executive, takes on hard problems and makes tough decisions
–She has tremendous energy, balance and intellect
–America shafted itself in this last election
–Alaska is lucky to have her

Oh, and a sixth, Sarah Palin could be the next president of the United States.

Her book washes away all doubts that any reader might have had about her readiness to be president. She comes across as exceptionally bright, dedicated, and passionate about public service. Her moral compass is strong, pointing true North in this case. And she has a wicked sense of humor.

The most salient take-away from Going Rogue for me was what I admired most in her campaign, which was that she had been in charge as either a mayor or a governor whereas none of the other candidates on either ticket had. Having been a commander several times in the military I know that there is a huge difference between being a hardworking and important staff officer and an ‘alone at the top’ commander. No matter how fancy the title, executive officer or Senator, at the end of the day, you are recommending to someone who actually makes the decision.

As a Governor, mayor or commander, you have the unparalleled responsibility to actually make decisions that have ramifications. There is little training that can prepare you for all those heads turning in your direction when it is decision time. You can’t blithely abstain on a vote or hide behind the guy in front of you, because you own the decision. Case in point is Obama’s inexcusable delay in making a decision on Afghanistan. His indecision, cloaked as ‘sleeves-rolled-up-pensiveness’, is an indicator that he was, at a minimum, unprepared to be commander in chief. What we see in his speech at West Point is a minimally slimmed down version of what General Stan McChrystal submitted to the president on August 30th. So now big Stan has nine months to do what he said it takes 12 months to accomplish.

Palin, on the other hand, demonstrates decisiveness and vulnerability. Is she prepared for the enormous breadth of responsibility of president? I think she’s ready for the hard part, which is making tough decisions. She’s no “Ruminator-in Chief”, that’s for sure, and if the American people think a second year back bench senator was ready to be president, I’m not sure we’ve got the right rubric out there.

Palin is real. She takes counsel of her fears and continuously comes back to her foundation of family, God, state and nation for reassurance and guidance. She has strong moral guideposts that she uses to navigate the shark infested political waters. Reading about the decisions Sarah Palin faced at multiple levels of government reminded me of something my command sergeant major in the 82nd Airborne Division used to say when we faced a tough decision together: “Sir, when you’re right, don’t worry about it.”

Palin is right on many issues such as energy policy, defense, business, and size of government. She gets it and my hope is that she firms up her base and then reaches out to moderates across this country. She has a gritty determination borne in the salmon hauls and caribou hunts that make her pioneer tough.

I am left wondering why the McCain campaign bottled her up and didn’t let the maverick, well, be a maverick. McCain made an unconventional pick and instead of hiring a Wall Street stockbroker to manage her I’m perplexed, and disappointed, that he didn’t let this one-woman campaign juggernaut do her thing. If she was accustomed to traveling all over Alaska campaigning essentially by herself or with her family by her side, surely she could have done without all of the layers of control. I believe that Sarah Palin is precisely what the American people are seeking: an honest, intelligent, passionate, practical conservative who is nonpartisan and a tough decision maker.

Oddly, as I read Going Rogue and learned the real story behind the mainstream media assault upon this patriot, I was briefly reminded of the first time I met Hillary Clinton. She was in her first year as New York’s junior senator and my impression of her was largely shaped by what I read in the newspapers or saw on television, meaning mostly negative. When she came into the Pentagon for a 45 minute briefing from my boss, I was one of four people in the room: the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, Senator Clinton, her assistant Uma Abedin, and me.

Over the next 90 minutes, she not only ignored her schedule, but she demonstrated a keen intellect, undeniable sincerity, and genuine interest in the many complex topics discussed. I came away from that meeting with an entirely different viewpoint on Senator Clinton than had been painted for me in the media. I tucked away the lesson to always remember that there is a phalanx of reporters, journalists and hate mongers who are trying to tell us all what to think.

And so it was with Sarah Palin, someone I actually supported. I think Palin recognizes that the extreme members of both parties and media put each of them through the Mixmaster, in some part because they are women, and she extends an olive branch to Clinton for a chat over a cup of coffee.

No matter what your political leanings, you better believe that Sarah Palin will step forward when the time is right. She has spine and she is called to public service. She’s been bloodied in the faux battles of presidential politics and yet she’s still standing, making tough decisions. She seems to have an iron core spirit and a will to make our country better.

And like that pipeline of ink, she seems to have an indomitable will that when attacked, unfortunately for her opponents, she doesn’t break. Her resolve seems to strengthen.

As her father said, “Sarah’s not retreating; she’s reloading.”

We should hope so, because she’s precisely the kind of leader America needs.

During his campaign for the White House President Obama said, “We have seen Afghanistan worsen, deteriorate. We need more troops there. We need more resources there… I would send two to three additional brigades to Afghanistan.”

He promised to send another ten to fifteen thousand troops to help those already there. He also declared that the war in Afghanistan was the proper front in the war against terror. Now that he is Commander-in-Chief, his vision seems to be less clear.

The military commanders gave the President four troop deployment options earlier this week but he refused all four. Not for military reasons but because of some hooey about the corruption of the government in Kabul and their inability to run a fair election. Mr. President, if our support for governments was based on whether they are corrupt or not and could run a fair election, we would have pulled federal funding from Chicago years ago. The problem with pulling out of Afghanistan, or Chicago for that matter, is that they would fall into violent anarchy. We have already seen that happen in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Current thinking on what to do in Afghanistan is based on two faulty assumptions:

The first is that wars are clear and concise events with specific outcomes and easy to find exit points. When John McCain told us the truth about how long we might be in Iraq, we didn’t want to hear it. We have been in Japan and Germany for over sixty years and in the Philippines for much longer. I wonder if back during the Spanish- American War leftist were telling the President that the Philippines were tribal islands and would never be able to be organized into a stable democratic government?

The second faulty assumption is that if we walk away from Afghanistan, simply pull all of our troops out, the war it then over. How long would it be before the Taliban was running things again and Al Qaeda was using it as a base of operations?  We will be fighting the same people again in the future, perhaps armed with nuclear weapons from Iran or Pakistan. Our national attention span has shortened to Twitter-like dimensions while our enemies think in terms of centuries.

The real problem for President Obama is that is if he deploys more troops and commits to staying, Afghanistan is no longer Bush’s war but his. Not even a year into his term and he is already worried about his legacy rather than doing what is best for the country. He is worried that his presidency will get bogged down in the battle for liberty instead of being able to focus on strengthening ACORN and the SEIU.

The left doesn’t mind waging long, costly, and non-winnable wars, so long as they are they start them themselves. Look at the war on poverty and the war on drugs. Our cities are littered with the lives ruined by those wars. We have thrown enough money into those two rat holes to finance Iraq and Afghanistan for the next fifty years and toss in twenty years of free government health care to boot. Do we have an exit strategy from the Welfare State, Mr. President?

Credit where credit is due, and let’s face it. We Americans, right, left or center, take a churlish pride in a good slam dunk epithet. Not the hardcore racial third rail stuff, mind you. Just the playful sort. You know. Moonbat. Libtard. Tinfoil hat. In fact, tinfoil hat kind of backfired on Righties. Originally used to denigrate Lefties who adhered to psychotic conspiracy theories like 9/11 Truth, the term was embraced in full by the far Left as demonstrated by Markos Moulitsas’ Tinfoil Hat KOS conventions, smashing successes which attracted major left-leaning LibDem politicians over the past few years.

So Lefties revel in their psychoses. What else is new? Yet I seriously doubt teabagger is an epithet conservative Republicans will embrace. Who would? But then it occurred to me. Who’s doing the real oral servicing here? We Tea Partiers, who object tooth and nail to every major scam and power grab liberal Democrats and the President are trying to shove down our throats? Or liberal left-wing mouthpieces who can’t open wide and fast enough for Obama’s Chocolate Munchkin Donut Drop?

Let’s face it. When the White House emails you on the air to correct you, there’s some serious dunking going on there. Funny. Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, who foisted that term in full measure on the public consciousness in mid-April, spent two and a half hours in secret with the President and some other major Obama microphones a few days ago. From what little we hear, the President spent some time railing against FOX News and Glenn Beck, but lips have been sealed very tight around the rest of what went on there. Could it be it was “time to take the dough nuts”?

Personally, I wouldn’t want that getting out either. But I think there was some hardcore slam-dunking going on there, and I’m not talking LeBron James. Whatever is was, I’m sure it would all give Chris Matthews a tickle up his nose. Ironic how the President injected himself orally into this debate, given the circumstances:

“You Democrats, y’all be dunkin’ for yourselves. Those Republicans, they just dunk what they’re told!” Oh really? Like Republicans are just opening wide for Dede Scozzafava? Arlen Specter? Lindsey Graham? John McCain? LOL! Ya, as if. Last I checked, there was a full-fledged rebellion going on in the GOP regarding who dunks who. Conversely, the new mouthpieces over at the NEA can’t seem to service the President fast enough:

“We have received a call from a house that is vanilla to dunk some donuts that are chocolate. Let’s get those lips and brushes moving, people!”

Speaking of servicing, from EIF we have a list of “organically” inspired shows. Need more be said? So the next time some lefty libtard moonbat tinfoil hat Obama mouthpiece like Janeane Garofalo, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Anderson Cooper or even George Stephanopoulos talks about teabaggers,  just keep in mind whose lips are sealed and whose are always wide open, very receptive and ready to form an airtight seal.

When they do, please remind them not to talk with their mouths full. It’s very rude.

Speaking of sealed lips (not to mention wallets), I myself re-registered this week as an Independent after 29 years as a Republican. Never voted Democrat in my life. But I did not leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left me. I will not lean across the aisle in order to teabag Obama and the Left on the massive frauds of amnesty, climate change, the government takeover of health care, and all the other budget-busting and power-grabbing LibDem Lefty scams that will have us all teabagging the government in abject serfdom for the next thousand years.

I am a free man. I will not be a teabagging mouthpiece for anyone. Unlike some people