No free-speech issue: Judge tosses lawsuit targeting Sarah Palin

From Los Angeles Times:  No free-speech issue: Judge tosses lawsuit targeting Sarah Palin

It was a case of turning lemonade into lemons -- Sarah Palin-style, contends a self-described citizen lobbyist.
Chip Thoma, a longtime Alaska activist, said the former Alaska governor ordered her staff to destroy his reputation after he complained about the large number of tour buses driving by for a peek at the governor’s mansion.
Palin, he said in a federal court lawsuit, saw an opportunity to portray herself as a victim of his traffic complaints. She directed her staff to put out the word that Thoma was not only trying to drive her out of the governor’s mansion, the lawsuit contended, but had stooped to criticizing her daughter Piper’s lemonade stand -- a dagger Thoma insists he never threw.
The former governor’s real motive, he said, was to use him to explain why she was spending so much time away from Juneau; critics had suggested she shouldn’t be collecting per diem pay for living at her home in Wasilla, Alaska.
Though Thoma cited quotes purporting to be from Palin’s own emails to back up his story, a federal judge threw out his lawsuit on Thursday, ruling that the quotes weren’t admissible, and that Thoma’s 1st Amendment rights to free speech weren’t violated.
“Thoma chose to engage on a public issue, and although Thoma believes that he was insulted in response, this does not necessarily rise to the level of a constitutional violation,” U.S. District Judge Timothy M. Burgess said in his order. “Thoma remained free to express his opinion on the traffic issue -- he simply decided not to.”
Thoma, well-known in Juneau for helping lead the campaign to impose greater regulations on the cruise ship industry, decided in 2009 — the year after Palin had shot to fame by running for vice president — to pass out fliers complaining about the tour buses driving past Palin’s official residence.
Thoma’s information on what happened next came via a book, “Blind Allegiance,” co-written by former Palin aide Frank Bailey. The book contains a large number of emails Bailey said he took with him after leaving the job, and several of them, Thoma asserts, suggest that Palin saw Thoma’s anti-bus campaign as a way to turn around the spin on her frequent travels outside of Juneau.
At first, according to court documents that quote the book, Palin was amazed that Thoma, whom she’d never met, was even raising the issue: “Really? Is this a joke? I don’t even know how to take it … except we’ll hear that somehow this is my fault that I let the neighborhood go to hell in a handbasket. Kinda funny!” she supposedly wrote.
But Thoma’s court memorandum says Bailey went on to reveal that Palin and her staff decided to “push this story to the broader media.” They added “made-up speculation” that Thoma was also protesting about Palin’s children playing outside and running lemonade stands, his lawsuit said.
“That [tour bus controversy] is a good issue for us, so … please get it out there,” Palin supposedly ordered her staff.
The staff went to work, Bailey related in his book: “We managed to have published a nasty spin on what started out as bus congestion and pollution and turn this into Sarah’s Juneau crucifixion.”
The governor’s staff is said to have provided “talking points” on the issue to a Palin-friendly blog, Conservatives4Palin, which subsequently published a post, “Juneau Resident Attempts to Close Down Piper Palin’s Lemonade Stand.”
“It seems that Mr. Thoma doesn’t enjoy the Palin children very much,” the post said. Commentators weighed in on conservative blogs, referring to Thoma as “unhinged,” “drug-addicted,” and “sick.”
Palin herself appeared to love it, according to the book’s account cited in court papers: “This is hilarious! And [Piper’s] planning this [lemonade] stand again for the next sunny day.”
She was reportedly critical of her staff for not having gone even further to push the story in the mainstream media. “See, I wanted to get out ahead of this and provide another reason why I need to get out of Juneau more often, instead, Chip got to spin the story his way. I hope we didn’t blow an opportunity,” she complained in one excerpt quoted in the lawsuit.
From a legal standpoint, the purported emails amounted to nothing.
Burgess said he couldn’t consider Bailey’s book as evidence; merely quoting from it in court papers was no more than unsubstantiated hearsay, he concluded. “Thoma provides no evidence to demonstrate that Palin made these comments concerning Thoma or directed others to do so,” the judge said.
Palin denied even knowing Thoma. When she heard about his anti-tour-bus campaign, she told the court, she concluded it was an issue for the city of Juneau to deal with, not state government.
“I recall that I was at the time receiving some criticism for being away from the state capitol in Juneau. I recall commenting that in light of Mr. Thoma’s campaign, it seemed I was also being criticized for my presence in Juneau,” Palin wrote in her affidavit filed with the court.
She said she felt Thoma’s campaign was “ill-considered,” given the money that tourism generates in Alaska, but said she never took action to silence or discredit him.
“I have never said or done anything with the intent of preventing Mr. Thoma from exercising his 1st Amendment rights,” she said.

 

Sarah Palin’s advice to Mitt Romney: 'Go rogue'

From Christian Science Monitir:  Sarah Palin’s advice to Mitt Romney: 'Go rogue'

 Mitt Romney has been getting lots of gratuitous advice from fellow Republicans and conservatives worried about what they see as a presidential campaign that’s slipping toward defeat.

As usual, Sarah Palin is the most direct and colorful. In a statement to the Weekly Standard on Saturday, she put it this way:
"With so much at stake in this election, both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan should 'go rogue' and not hold back from telling the American people the true state of our economy and national security. They need to continue to find ways to break through the filter of the liberal media to communicate their message of reform."
 "America desperately needs to have a 'come to Jesus' moment in discussing our big dysfunctional, disconnected, and debt-ridden federal government," the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate told the conservative magazine.
Are you more (or less) conservative than Mitt Romney? Take our quiz!
To some Republican kibitzers, “going rogue” means unleashing Rep. Paul Ryan, Mr. Romney’s running mate and a relative youngster who seemed to bring some pizzazz to an otherwise staid ticket.
“They not only need to use [Ryan] out on the trail more effectively, they need to have more of him rub off on Mitt because I think Mitt thinks that way but he’s gotta be able to articulate that…. I think too many people are restraining him from telling [his vision],” Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker told a radio interviewer Friday.
Where’s the evidence of Romney’s so-called “bold choice” in picking Ryan? others ask.
“Even in Wisconsin, I think he’s being underused,” Charlie Sykes, the radio host who interviewed Gov. Walker, told Politico. “I guess what’s frustrating is especially now that we’re embroiled in this conversation about the makers versus the takers, where is Paul Ryan? He is eloquent, he knows the numbers, he can frame this in a very compelling way. The fact that he is not front and center on some of this is, I think, a lost opportunity.”
Even in Wisconsin – Ryan’s home state – an NBC poll shows Obama leading Romney by 5 percentage points, and that’s just part of recent polling news the Romney campaign must find troubling

As the Monitor’s Mark Trumbull reported this week, Obama leads Romney in eight out of nine swing states where the two are in tight contests: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin. North Carolina is the only one where Mr. Romney currently has an edge.

Unleashing Ryan may not be the answer, of course. As House Budget Committee chairman, he authored a plan that was controversial – particularly for what it portended for Medicare, the health care program for seniors. He tried to explain it at an AARP meeting this week, but was booed by many in the audience.
Apparently, that wasn’t just a one-time deal in a room full of retirees. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll this week shows Obama leading Romney by 10 points (47-37) in dealing with Medicare.
It’s a law of all organizations – including (maybe especially) political campaigns – that when things are tough, infighting and finger-pointing will ensue. Politico’s must-read scoop last Sunday – “Inside the campaign: How Mitt Romney stumbled” – set off something similar among conservative pundits.
Weekly Standard editor William Kristol called Romney’s comments about “the 47 percent” who presumably would never vote for him because they pay no federal income taxes “stupid and arrogant.” Rush Limbaugh complained that “every Democrat under the sun's retweeting that all over the place,” that too many conservative fellow travelers who once supported Romney “have bailed on him.”
Over at the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, columnist and former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan wrote, “It’s time to admit the Romney campaign is an incompetent one.”
Then she revised her estimation: “This week I called it incompetent, but only because I was being polite,” she wrote. “I really meant ‘rolling calamity.’"

 That left Chris Wallace at Fox News questioning Ms. Noonan’s “conservative bona fides.”
“Sometimes they’re New York City’s idea of conservatives,” Mr. Wallace said of Noonan and others similarly critical of the Romney campaign. Ouch. And here we thought such intramural squabbles were principally the province of Democrats.

Sarah Palin may not be thrilled as 'Game Change' wins Emmys

From Los Angeles Times, Commentary:  Sarah Palin may not be thrilled as 'Game Change' wins Emmys

Sarah Palin will likely have more complaints to lodge about the biographical drama based on her vice presidential run, but the Hollywood community rendered its verdict Sunday night with multiple Emmy awards for “Game Change.”

The HBO film won television’s top award for miniseries or movie, as well as awards for writer Danny Strong, director Jay Roach and actress Julianne Moore, who portrayed the one-time Alaska governor.

“I feel so validated because Sarah Palin gave me a big thumbs down," Moore told the audience after receiving her best actress statuette at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles.

Palin’s rebuttal to the TV movie has been going on for at least half a year. She has even used the film — based on a book by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann — to raise money for her political action committee.

“Fight back against HBO and their liberal fiction ‘Game Change’ by donating to SarahPAC today,” says an appeal on Palin’s website. It also includes a video in which commentators offer praise for Palin and the work she did as Sen. John McCain’s 2008 running mate.

The film, on the other hand, portrays the one-time Alaska governor and reality TV star as overwhelmed by her star turn.  It shows a Palin performing at times but crumbling under pressure and becoming virtually unresponsive to the McCain operatives as the campaign started to go south.

The film received the endorsement of Steve Schmidt, the McCain campaign’s top strategist, and of Nicolle Wallace, a McCain campaign aide who was assigned to help Palin navigate her first national campaign.

The Hollywood filmmakers said they did not intend “Game Change” to be an endorsement of one party so much as they hoped it would get voters to pay closer attention to the candidates and how messages are crafted during a political race. But it was pretty clear that the television industry had no trouble accepting a portrait of Palin as dangerously out of touch.

It remains to be seen if Palin will respond to the film again, as she did when it aired on HBO last spring. Earlier in the Emmy telecast Sunday, Jimmy Kimmel asked how many in the crowd at the Nokia Theatre supported Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

After a smattering of applause, the comedian said: “See, there are 40 Republicans and the rest godless, liberal homosexuals.”

 

Sarah Palin has a question for Obama

From Politico:  Sarah Palin has a question for Obama

Sarah Palin slammed Barack Obama’s foreign policy in a Fox News interview Thursday night, directing a pointed question to the president.
“So how is that U.S. apology tour working out for ya, Mr. President?” she asked in an appearance on “Hannity.”

Palin bashed the administration over ads airing in Pakistan. The spots feature Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton distancing the United States from an anti-Muslim film made in America, a video administration officials have said played some part in sparking demonstrations across the Middle East that resulted in the death of America’s ambassador to Libya.

“Look, if our fearless leaders insist on waving the white flag like this, then they need to bring our troops home from the Middle East, no more blood, no more U.S. treasure spent, not one drop, if those in control of our troops’ lives and our tax dollars going into things like this are going to capitulate — wait, apologize, for a First Amendment right of ours, freedom of speech, that our troops are over there fighting for,” Palin told Sean Hannity. “Sean, our commander-in-chief is contradicting what we believe our troop’s mission is and that is to protect freedom.”
On Friday morning, anti-Western protests broke out across Pakistan, following attempts Thursday by rioters to access the U.S. embassy there. That capped off what The Associated Press called “nearly a week of violent rallies against the film.”

 

Sarah Palin praises new Errol Morris book

From NY Daily News:  Sarah Palin praises new Errol Morris book

One did not get the sense, from the 2008 presidential campaign, that Sarah Palin was much of a reader. Imagine our surprise, then, to find her ebullient review of Errol Morris' new book, "A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald," which the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate posted on the conservative website breitbart.com earlier this week.
"Wilderness" is the noted documentarian's rebuttal to Joe McGinniss' "Fatal Vision," which argued persuasively that MacDonald, a Princeton-educated Army doctor, killed his wife and two daughters on Feb. 17, 1970 in Fort Bragg, N.C. MacDonald claimed that hippies had committed the crime.
After a tortuous legal battle that, at one point, had him bantering about the case on "The Dick Cavett Show," MacDonald was found guilty in 1979 and remains in prison to this day, emphatic about his own innocence.
Palin begins her review of "Wilderness" by noting that "I don’t normally read 'true crime' books, and I’ve certainly never written a review of one." And though she effusively praises Morris' meticulously reasoned explanation of why he thinks MacDonald did not commit the crime for which he has been imprisoned, she has here a motive of her own: to take a couple of swings at McGinniss, who authored 2011's "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin." He researched that book by moving next door to the Palins' home in Wasilla, Ak.
McGinniss famously wrote 1983's "Fatal Vision" with MacDonald's full complicity – the two even lived together during the murder trial. Little did MacDonald suspect that McGinniss would turn against him, portraying him as an unfaithful egomaniac who may have been strung out on diet pills at the time of the murders.
Palin gleefully repeats Morris' charge that McGinniss is "a craven and sloppy journalist who confabulated, lied, and betrayed while ostensibly telling a story about a man who confabulated, lied, and betrayed.” She says that his pursuit of gossip about her own life in Alaska was "sick and vicious."
Writes Palin:

I sympathize with MacDonald and his defense team because I saw firsthand the twisted way McGinniss operates. Before he moved in right next door to spy on us, he stalked us for months, making creepy unwelcomed “visits” to our house, as he tried to manipulatively win our trust the same way he won the trust of MacDonald and his defense team – all so that he could betray us just as he betrayed them.

Among the rumors McGinniss proffered in his book on Palin is that she had a fetish for African-American men, snorted cocaine off an oil drum with her husband Todd and did not really give birth to her youngest son, Trig.
Palin concludes her review by hoping that McGinniss "will understand justice someday, in this life or the next."
Morris, meanwhile, continues his quest to have MacDonald retried. Currently, a Delaware federal judge is in the midst of hearing evidence that MacDonald maintains should earn him a new trial. He has always said that intruders resembling the Manson Family killed his wife and daughters, though material evidence for that claim has been, it must be admitted, rather scant.

 

Sarah Palin weighs in on Jeffrey MacDonald case Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/18/3822450/sarah-palin-weighs-in-on-jeffrey.html#storylink=cpy

From Kansas City Star:  Sarah Palin weighs in on Jeffrey MacDonald case

WILMINGTON -- The Jeffrey MacDonald case has pulled an unusual book critic into its web of conspiracy theorists and strong camps of opinions. Sarah Palin, the former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor, has posted a complimentary review of Errol Morris’ new book about the case, “A Wilderness of Error,” on her Facebook page.
It has her byline on it, too. ( tinyurl.com/8ndxtk8)
In his book published this month by The Penguin Press, Morris offers a fresh look at the MacDonald case.
The Oscar-winning documentarian’s literary style is unusual, including documents, transcripts and other details amid his narrative of a case that spans four decades. Morris offers his readers no conclusion on whether MacDonald is guilty of slaughtering his family, as a jury found in 1979.
But in interviews since publication, Morris has said he thinks MacDonald is the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice, likely innocent and certainly suffering from a botched investigation and prosecutorial misconduct.
Joe McGinniss, another author who has written about the case in the best-selling “Fatal Vision,” concluded otherwise.
And that debate between authors is where Palin comes in.
McGinniss also wrote “The Rogue: the Search for the Real Sarah Palin” after moving in next door to the Palins in Wasilla, Alaska, in May 2010.
Neither the Palins nor the Wasilla townspeople were too thrilled about the new resident or the work he produced. And Palin makes that clear in her review of the Morris book.
She endorses Morris’s description of her “old neighbor” as “a craven and sloppy journalist who confabulated, lied, and betrayed while ostensibly telling a story about a man who confabulated, lied, and betrayed.”
She went on to say:
“MacDonald signed a contract giving McGinniss exclusive rights to his life story, and so McGinniss was given unprecedented access to the defense team – living with them, working with them, eating with them. But when the guilty verdict came down, McGinniss did a one-eighty on them. Apparently, falsely convicted men don’t make for good books. McGinniss decided it was a better story to agree with the jury. MacDonald wasn’t a sympathetic figure. He did himself no favors with some media appearances. So, McGinniss went about writing a book that would convince people the government got the right verdict and we could all pat ourselves on the back and leave Jeffrey MacDonald to rot in his jail cell till Judgment Day.
“McGinniss’ book actually embellished the prosecution’s case – even supplying a motive. According to McGinniss’ theory of the case, MacDonald secretly wanted to break free of his wife and kids and so he murdered them one night in a fit of rage induced by some diet pills he was taking. (Oddly enough, the millions of other people who were also taking those same diet pills somehow avoided murdering their families.)”
Palin, no surprise, has a more glowing report about Morris:
“Morris argues with refreshing clarity that objective truth is real and worthy of being sought after despite the pretentious nonsense preached in faculty lounges about all truth being relative. In fact, he argues passionately that the search for truth is what journalism and justice is all about.” Morris and McGinniss are both in Wilmington this week.
Morris has been in the courtroom, taking volumes of notes.
McGinniss, who was provided unfettered access to MacDonald and his defense team during the trial, has been less visible. He is on the list of possible witnesses.
Morris was outside the federal courthouse on Tuesday, waiting with a crowd of others to see the MacDonald proceedings.
A woman in line ahead of him asked about his book.
With a telling smile, he said he was thrilled with his latest review, a positive one, “from Sarah Palin.”
Palin, some might recall, was the butt of many late-night TV jokes after her inability in 2008 to come up with a list of the newspapers and magazines she read during an interview with Katie Couric.
When asked whether he thought Palin had read his book from cover to cover, Morris said: “Somebody did.”

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/18/3822450/sarah-palin-weighs-in-on-jeffrey.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/18/3822450/sarah-palin-weighs-in-on-jeffrey.html#storylink=cpy

 

Sarah Palin: John Kerry 'Diminished Himself By Even Mentioning My Name' In DNC Speech

From HuffPo Politics:  Sarah Palin: John Kerry 'Diminished Himself By Even Mentioning My Name' In DNC Speech

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) responded to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Thursday, moments after the Democrat invoked her in a jab at GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney during his Democratic National Convention speech.

“I think he diminished himself by even mentioning my name," Palin said in an interview on Fox Business Network. "How does he even know my name? I mean aren’t these guys supposed to be these big wig elites who don’t waste their time on the little people like me -- me representing the average American who, yeah I did say in Alaska you can see Russia from our land base and I was making the point that we are strategically located on the globe and when it comes to transportation corridors and resources that are shared and fought over [in] Alaska and I as the governor had known what I was doing in dealing with some international issues that had to do with our resources that could help secure the nation."

During his DNC address Thursday night, Kerry dinged Romney's foreign policy experience by referencing a famous remark made by Palin in the 2008 presidential race.

"Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from Alaska," started Kerry. "Mitt Romney talks like he's only seen Russia by watching Rocky IV."

Palin appeared to find Kerry's quip somewhat unexpected.

"So it’s funny that he would take a little pot shot like that, but it’s funny he even knows my name,“ she said.
Perhaps Palin chose to forget that the two engaged in a brief verbal skirmish back in 2009, when she was still in office and Republican Mark Sanford, then governor of South Carolina, had disappeared on an unannounced jaunt to visit his mistress in Argentina.

Kerry struck first.

"Too bad if a governor had to go missing, it couldn't have been the governor of Alaska. You know, Sarah Palin," he joked.

Palin later swiped back.

"He looked quite frustrated and he looked so sad," she said. "I just wanted to reach out to the TV and say 'John Kerry, why the long face?'"

 

Flip side of Sarah Palin

From SalonPolitics:  Flip side of Sarah Palin 

What was the biggest difference between the Tampa Republicans and the Charlotte Democrats? That’s easy: substance. Policy substance, that is. Bill Clinton’s tour de force on Wednesday night was a substantive defense of Barack Obama’s accomplishments and attacks on Mitt Romney’s proposals. Obama, too, got a little on the wonky side; the first half of his speech reminded people of a State of the Union, with a laundry list of programs to defend and propose. In Tampa? Not so much. Lots of effect, but a lot less policy.
Paul Ryan, we were all told when he was selected, was a wonk; his selection meant that we were going to have a big ideas debate. And yet his vice-presidential speech was anything but, and what substance he did include was blasted by the fact checkers.
Sort of the way another Republican running mate was blasted for inaccuracies in her convention speech four years ago. Remember how she bragged about opposing the bridge to nowhere, only to have it be revealed that she had first supported it?
OK. Paul Ryan is no Sarah Palin. He is, after all, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, and he certainly knows federal public policy issues far better than the Sage of Wasilla ever has.
And yet Ryan’s reputation for true wonkishness seems to be vastly overstated. He’s less a wonk than a policy naif’s idea of a wonk – just enough “baselines” and “percent of GDP” and charts to make it all look nice, but very little under the hood. As Paul Krugman said recently:

Look, Ryan hasn’t “crunched the numbers”; he has just scribbled some stuff down, without checking at all to see if it makes sense. He asserts that he can cut taxes without net loss of revenue by closing unspecified loopholes; he asserts that he can cut discretionary spending to levels not seen since Calvin Coolidge, without saying how; he asserts that he can convert Medicare to a voucher system, with much lower spending than now projected, without even a hint of how this is supposed to work. This is just a fantasy, not a serious policy proposal.

Krugman is concerned in that post with how Ryan dupes self-proclaimed budget hawks, but Ryan is duping Republicans, too.

 

North Dakota Democrat takes Palin approach on energy

From the Politico:  North Dakota Democrat takes Palin approach on energy

Democrat Heidi Heitkamp emerged from the North Dakota Senate debate with a unique approach: aligning herself more with Sarah Palin than President Barack Obama — at least on energy.
In the first debate with Republican Rep. Rick Berg, Heitkamp insisted she would be an independent voice and took pains to separate herself from top leaders in her party. That tact couldn’t have been clearer when she wholeheartedly embraced Palin’s approach to energy production in her oil rich state.

“I think ‘Drill, Baby Drill’ is the way we need to do it,” Heitkamp said in response to a moderator’s question during a 50-minute North Dakota Broadcasters debate in Bismarck Wednesday morning. “This is an area where I have vehemently disagreed with the administration. They’ve walked away from coal. They’re hostile to oil.”

Heitkamp has good reason to articulate as many Republican-sounding positions as possible. North Dakota’s open Senate seat is critical for control of the upper chamber, and Republicans are trying to link her to Obama as much as possible in a state that almost certainly will overwhelmingly vote for Mitt Romney in November.
Heitkamp entered the debate ready for the line of attack and countered by portraying Berg, a freshman lawmaker, as an ineffective, uncompromising legislator unable to break Washington’s gridlock. Berg had only mentioned Obama once and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid twice when Heitkamp dove into a well-prepared defense.
“Congressman Berg will repeatedly talk about Harry Reid and Barack Obama, and I find it interesting, because this morning, when I woke up and brushed my teeth, I looked in the mirror and I did not see a tall, African-American, skinny man,” she said. “So let’s make it clear that my priorities are North Dakota priorities. That you cannot run this campaign … by simply talking about a political party. You have to talk about ideas.”
But Berg returned to his big picture argument about changing power in the Senate, drilling home the point during an exchange on energy.
“The reality and the problem is, if we’re going to get these things done, we’ve got to change Washington. And we can’t do that without changing the Senate,” he said.
Heitkamp — a former attorney general and tax commissioner — made an effort to underline areas where she’s broken with party orthodoxy.
She called the Senate’s inability to craft a budget “deplorable,” and she came out in favor of a balanced budget amendment — a position many Democrats have derided as “extreme.” After reciting a laundry list of provisions in the health care law she supports, Heitkamp acknowledged “there’s bad” parts that need to be fixed.
She dismissed environmentalist concerns about fracking — the hydraulic technology used to expand natural gas production — as “junk science. “People who say they’re against fracking don’t even know what it is,” she said.
After her line of defense at the top of the debate, she never mentioned the current president again. Yet she did laud former President Bill Clinton for producing the last balanced budget in the country and singed former President George W. Bush for attempting to privatize Social Security.

“My opponent, Rick Berg, has tried to make this race about party. I just don’t think that way. I think about who’s got a good idea, where we can solve the problem. You can’t vote 100 percent with your party and then think you’re going to solve problems with every idea that’s on the table,” Heitkamp said.
Berg repeatedly fingered Democratic leaders for the stalemate on big issues.

The failure of the Senate to pass a budget? Reid doesn’t want his members to have to take a tough vote, Berg argued.

The looming $1.2 trillion across-the-board cuts due to sequestration? “This is sitting in Harry Reid’s hands to move on,” he charged.
The lack of progress on a national energy approach? “Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, he says coal and oil make us sick and are ruining our country.”
While there were no knockout blows by either candidate, Democrats believe Heitkamp got under Berg’s skin when she took on his state legislative record, where he served as majority leader and speaker.
Heitkamp charged that Berg failed to prepare North Dakota for its current energy boom by neglecting to invest in infrastructure projects over the past decade.
She then took it a step further, noting that he hasn’t put ample congressional staff in western North Dakota to help deal with issues caused by the accelerated growth.
That comment produced Berg’s most animated response of the debate, handing him an opportunity to tout the state’s 3 percent unemployment rate — the lowest in the country.
“I will take my record in the North Dakota Legislature against anyone else. We are the No. 1 state in jobs, No. 1 state in budget. A growing budget, a growing economy,” he said, raising his voice among cheers from his supporters. “I am very proud about what we’ve done in North Dakota, and I won’t step down to anyone that attacks us or attacks the North Dakota Legislature.”
Heitkamp and Berg are scheduled to debate again on Oct. 15 and Oct. 25.

 

Sarah Palin goes Eastwood on Obama

From Washington Post, Op ed:  Sarah Palin goes Eastwood on Obama

Sarah Palin utilized one of her three avenues for communication to deliver a policy pronouncement yesterday. Piggy-backing on the notoriety of Clint Eastwood’s empty chair, the author, reality television star, former half-term governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee sent out the following tweet.

America’s kids are going to be stuck paying for Obama’s Empty Chair Style of Leadership #EmptyChairDay

If you click the link you will see a plastic baby chair strapped to an otherwise empty chair. Ah, Palin. She’s such a card. I guess it’s too much to ask that she produce her own detailed plan to reduce the deficit, reform entitlements and create jobs for the millions of Americans who need work. There’s a lot to criticize President Obama for. But having a 140-character policy fight with the president of the United States is pathetic for someone who eschewed actual national leadership.
Palin had an opportunity to run for Obama’s job and she opted to stay rich and unaccountable. That’s understandable. The world outside the Mama Grizzly’s natural habitat of Twitter, Facebook and Fox News is rather unforgiving of the unserious.

 

Time goes by so fast!

Didn't realize I'd missed 6 days of posting here... I'd been doing things for Labor Day long weekend...

Sorry about that!