A HarperCollins insider told The Daily Beast that the book sold a staggering 300,000 copies on the first day alone, which was Tuesday. “Sales are phenomenal, and we are convinced that the book will continue to sell phenomenally for some time to come,” says the insider. They’re not prevaricating: As of 2:30pm today, the book was #1 on Amazon, ahead of both Stephen King’s new novel, Under the Dome, and Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. The latter sold 1 million copies on its first day, but that figure included the UK, and top fiction generally trumps non-fiction.

The books are selling so well the publisher is printing out an additional 100k of em:

Sarah Palin’s memoir just hit the stands today but demand for “Going Rogue: An American Life” is so strong that HarperCollins Publishers is going back to press for an additional 100,000 run, bringing the total number of hard-covers in print to 1.6 million copies.

~~~

Three major booksellers declined to release sales figures for “Going Rogue” on Tuesday. However, a spokeswoman for Amazon.com… Inc.’s Web site noted in an email that the title “is already one of our bestselling nonfiction books of 2009.”

And a few numbers the lefties will not like, and will try to turn around is these:

As Sarah Palin blankets the media on a whirlwind book promotion tour, the former vice-presidential contender is clearly back on America’s radar screen. Despite being characterized by many as a divisive force in her party and the nation, Americans are much more likely to give Palin a positive rating (47 percent favorable) than another prominent female leader — Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (28 percent favorable). Moreover, about six in 10 Americans (61 percent) think Palin has been treated unfairly by the press, according to the latest Fox News poll.

And one nut (out of many) on the left is just a bit obsessed.

While the global economy is recovering from the worst recession since World War II, the United States flounders in the same doldrums of New Dealism that kept America locked in The Great Depression while the rest of the world enjoyed growing prosperity.

Crude is $79.92, Gold is $1,147.72, Platinum is $1,43.10; India has just contracted to buy two metric tons of Gold, China is sucking in most of copper, aluminum, and iron ore on the market; the United States languishes in the doldrums of skim milk Marxism, while other nations are forging into un-before known prosperity, we have economic pundits forecasting hyper inflation; and the AP worries whether Sarah Palin has errors in her new book Going Rogue, rather than examining the integrity and writing skills of the Great Ditherer.

The Great Ditherer has come by his nick name honestly, in the 89-90 school year he was elected by the Law students to be the President of he Harvard Law Review. A position that was to become symbolic, for other than gushing reviews from the New York Times over his “irresistible” writing skills, he contributed nothing and wrote absolutely nothing, other than one ineffectual unsigned case note, and since that brilliant contribution he has not written a legal article in nearly 20 years.

In reality, Obama was probably elected to the position, for much the same reason that he was elected to the Presidency of the United States, to appease White Liberal ambivalent guilt feelings over their wealth and prestige. Thus Obama became their Token Negro in the front office to lessen elite guilt, for how can you be a Liberal without demonstrating your uncompromising fairness without having Negro window dressing. Thus an irresistible writer was elected to a prestigious position and was expected to do… nothing. Thus the role of Great Ditherer was becoming more defined for a talent that thrived on being noted as a mediocrity and reinforced by the Ivy League Liberal Elite of Harvard. A precedent was set that the young Obama could finally grasp, the concept of dithering.

On November 28, 1990, Obama was issued a six figure contract by Poseidon Press, an imprint of Simon and Shuster for a memoir titled In Black and White. A memoir is the easiest of all books to write, there are no references, nor footnotes, the truth can be stretched as long as the writing is at least plausible. The manuscript was to be completed by June 15, 1992, thus Obama had 18 months to complete the manuscript and was advanced $75,000 of a $150,000 contract. A contract that is virtually unheard of unless you are Liberal window dressing. For some reason, the University of Chicago Law School loaned Obama an office to write his manuscript.

On October 20, 1992, after almost two years of earnest dithering, Poseidon terminated the contract for noncompliance.

Obama pleaded with Simon and Shuster that he and Michelle were in debt with student loans and that he had already spent the advance: in effect, he expected a bailout. Again, fate and liberal guilt allowed Obama to skate.

Soon after this debacle, Obama secured a $40,000 advance from Times Books to write the same book. In a fabricated story by the New York Times, Barack and Michelle went to Bali on a romantic interlude for four months so that he could unlock and write the book. The truth has now emerged that Barack went to Bali by himself for one to three months and at the very least spent his time dithering once again, for the sum total of his writing excursion was…. nothing. Thus the behavioral pattern of the Great Ditherer was becoming even more formalized and entrenched.

Of course the discrepancies in the Legend of the Anointed One aren’t as important as the new book of a former Vice Presidential candidate.

In 1993, Michelle realized that the Great Ditherer had once again lived up to his nick name and after having read, To Teach by William Ayers, and approving of the novel like journalistic style she approached their “friend and Hyde Park neighbor, Bill Ayers” about writing the Dreams book.

Christopher Anderson in his new coffee table book that portrays life with the Obamas, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage succinctly describes how the book Dreams of My Father was written in this quote from Michelle, “[The Obama Family] oral histories, along with his partial manuscript and a trunk load of notes were given to Bill Ayers.”

Thus an admitted and unrepentant terrorist, who told an undercover FBI agent that 20 to 25 million Americans would have to be exterminated in camps to establish a Marxist Utopia here in the United States is the one who actually writes the “irresistible” prose for the President.

While the AP hounds from hell are lunging past one another to shred the slightest variance from fact in Sarah’s ghost written autobiography, the most obvious and foul story of malfeasance is ignored. Thus the MSM contributes to its own demise of intellectual and journalistic integrity.

Jack Cashill, a professor at Purdue and a blogger at American Thinker has written convincing arguments concerning the similarities of Dreams and Ayers’ previous writing, similarities that are like fingerprints for seasoned writers. I follow Dr Cashill’s opinions on this matter and I have drawn most of my notes from his work.

Then you have the AP hiring 11 fact checkers to comb through her book.

Or Newsweek using a photo of Sarah in running shorts, taken for Runners World magazine, for it’s cover in an obvious attempt to minimize her.

And last but not least, a book review of her book by the Washington Post written by someone who didn’t read her book.

As Doctor Zero muses:

Shouldn’t a book review from someone who admits to not reading the book count as letter of resignation by a serious publication?

Most certainly.

The lengths the left is going to drag Sarah through the mud just proves how very scared they are.

Pre Order Going Rogue HERE

Peter Heck, a public high school teacher, penned an articulate case of the mainstream media’s obsessive Palin bashing. Quite frankly, the writing is on the wall and it what it says scares the MSM.

Since the moment she burst onto the national scene, there has been an unparalleled effort amongst the so-called sophisticated elites to destroy Sarah Palin. Unparalleled, but not unprecedented.

In the 1970s, the dominant left feared the rise of another radical right-wing governor of a western state — you might remember his name: Ronald Reagan — and they utilized a full arsenal of tactics to try to slow his meteoric rise. Comparing their words and actions then to their current anti-Palin crusade now is stunning.

Of course the tone and actions of today’s Democrats are off the charts. I’m sure Reagan was not hung in effigy, nor was his personal contact information made public. But that was then, this is now. Hopefully, in the end, the result will be the same:

After all, everyone knows how the Reagan story ended: the annihilation of a bumbling predecessor, a clear conservative agenda that revitalized the American economy and ended the Cold War, a landslide re-election of embarrassing proportions, and a legacy as one of America’s greatest Chief Executives. Considering then the striking parallels between the “Gipper” and the “Pitbull with lipstick,” maybe the left’s deranged animosity towards her is simply born out of a fear of the inevitable.

2012 cannot come soon enough.

Sarah Palin has completed her memoir - Going Rogue: An American Life.

Coming to a bookstore near you on November 17th.

You can pre-order the future New York Times Bestseller at Amazon.com

While Iran smolders, Afghanistan burns, Obama heads to...Denmark

H/T: SoCal Chris:

The idea that we might ration health care to seniors (or anyone else) is political anathema. Politicians do not dare breathe the R word, lest they be accused—however wrongly—of trying to pull the plug on Grandma. But the need to spend less money on the elderly at the end of life is the elephant in the room in the health-reform debate. Everyone sees it but no one wants to talk about it. At a more basic level, Americans are afraid not just of dying, but of talking and thinking about death. Until Americans learn to contemplate death as more than a scientific challenge to be overcome, our health-care system will remain unfixable.

Compared with other Western countries, the United States has more health care—but, generally speaking, not better health care. There is no way we can get control of costs, which have grown by nearly 50 percent in the past decade, without finding a way to stop overtreating patients.

~~~

But how do you decide which treatments to cut out? How do you choose between the necessary and the unnecessary? There has been talk among experts and lawmakers of giving more power to a panel of government experts to decide—Britain has one, called the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (known by the somewhat ironic acronym NICE). But no one wants the horror stories of denied care and long waits that are said to plague state-run national health-care systems. (The criticism is unfair: patients wait longer to see primary-care physicians in the United States than in Britain.) After the summer of angry town halls, no politician is going to get anywhere near something that could be called a “death panel.”

There’s no question that reining in the lawyers would help cut costs. Fearing medical-malpractice suits, doctors engage in defensive medicine, ordering procedures that may not be strictly necessary—but why take the risk? According to various studies, defensive medicine adds perhaps 2 percent to the overall bill—a not-insignificant number when more than $2 trillion is at stake. A number of states have managed to institute some kind of so-called tort reform, limiting the size of damage awards by juries in medical-malpractice cases. But the trial lawyers—big donors to the Democratic Party—have stopped Congress from even considering reforms. That’s why it was significant that President Obama even raised the subject in his speech last week, even if he was vague about just what he’d do. (Best idea: create medical courts run by experts to rule on malpractice claims, with no punitive damages.)

But the biggest cost booster is the way doctors are paid under most insurance systems, including Medicare. It’s called fee-for-service, and it means just that. So why not just put doctors on salary? Some medical groups that do, like the Mayo Clinic, have reduced costs while producing better results. Unfortunately, putting doctors on salary requires that they work for someone, and most American physicians are self-employed or work in small group practices. The alternative—paying them a flat rate for each patient they care for—turned out to be at least a partial bust. HMOs that paid doctors a flat fee in the 1990s faced a backlash as patients bridled at long waits and denied service.

~~~

One place to start is to consider the psychological aspect of health care. Most people are at least minor hypochondriacs (I know I am). They use doctors to make themselves feel better, even if the doctor is not doing much to physically heal what ails them. (In ancient times, doctors often made people sicker with quack cures like bleeding.) The desire to see a physician is often pronounced in assisted-living facilities. Old people, far from their families in our mobile, atomized society, depend on their doctors for care and reassurance. I noticed that in my mother’s retirement home, the talk in the dining room was often about illness; people built their day around doctor’s visits, partly, it seemed to me, to combat loneliness.

~~~

Other initiatives ensure that the elderly get counseling about end-of-life issues. Although demagogued as a “death panel,” a program in Wisconsin to get patients to talk to their doctors about how they want to deal with death was actually a resounding success. A study by the Archives of Internal Medicine shows that such conversations between doctors and patients can decrease costs by about 35 percent—while improving the quality of life at the end. Patients should be encouraged to draft living wills to make their end-of-life desires known. Unfortunately, such paper can be useless if there is a family member at the bedside demanding heroic measures. “A lot of the time guilt is playing a role,” says Dr. David Torchiana, a surgeon and CEO of the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization. Doctors can feel guilty, too—about overtreating patients. Torchiana recalls his unease over operating to treat a severe heart infection in a woman with two forms of metastatic cancer who was already comatose. The family insisted.

~~~

Our medical system does everything it can to encourage hope. And American health care has been near miraculous—the envy of the world—in its capacity to develop new lifesaving and life-enhancing treatments. But death can be delayed only so long, and sometimes the wait is grim and degrading. The hospice ideal recognized that for many people, quiet and dignity—and loving care and good painkillers—are really what’s called for.

Conservatives have said for a long time that we need tort reform, as the author agrees. We also agree that many times there are way too many tests run, a byproduct of the malpractice suits against doctors. Fix one and the other will fix itself.

But then the author ventures into the real meat of his story. People just need to learn to die and get out of the way.

But the thing is we DO NOT want the government making that decision. If a person wants to die and stop treatment that should be up to them, no outside entity or bureaucrat should make that decision and NO encouragement to end their life should be given.

What should we expect with a kind of system the Newsweek author wants?

I want you to say a prayer for Jayden this morning. Who is Jayden you ask? He is the son of Sarah Capewell, a mother in Britain whose baby boy was born too early. Jayden, born 21 weeks and 5 days into Sarah’s pregnancy, was denied life-saving care by a government system which decided arbitrarily he was unsustainable; decided it was not in his ‘best interests’ to survive.

Had Jayden been born just two days later, doctors would have given him the care he deserved. Instead, based on statistics and numbers, Sarah was told there would be no oxygen administered, no treatment rendered. Doctors did not care his tiny heart was beating strong or that he was breathing on his own. It didn’t matter, because a board somewhere who had never met Sarah or Jayden decided that her baby was not worth saving, nor could the costs be justified in an already burdened public medical system. Jayden is a beautiful baby boy and his mother loved him so.

I know his mother loved him. I also know the torture and horror and hope she had. I know exactly how she felt the instant her son was born. I know the screams and begging in her head as she wondered his fate over the first few hours of his life. But there is a part of her story I don’t know: I don’t know what it would have felt like to have to doctors refuse my child care. I don’t know the heartbreak of holding my baby while no one would help, until he struggled for and took his last breath.

Michelle Moore, the writer of the above post, gives an example of a baby who was born just as prematurely as Jayden….her own.

It didn’t take long for her to become the darling of the NICU. All the nurses loved her. 18 years ago it was unbelievable a baby this early and this tiny would survive. They cared for her gently. They held her hand; they soothed her when she cried. They all pulled for her to make it thru the first 72 hours; later, the first week.

Her eyes were fused shut; she was like a puppy. She didn’t open them until more than two weeks after she was born. Thankfully the wonderful nurses documented it for me. She just couldn’t open her eyes while I was there, but during one of the few times I went home to steal a nap or a shower. I will never forget sitting there for 15-18 hours every single day … just willing her to live with my mind.

My mom always encouraged strength in me; my will is as unbending as Kelsey’s. She lived because she was born strong and willful and because I wanted it so badly.

The truth is she lived because she got the care every baby deserves. Like Jayden, Kelsey’s saving grace was her strong heartbeat and lack of any serious defects, tested for and rejected over and over in the first several hours after her birth. Like Kelsey, it is very likely Jayden only needed the opportunity to grow, to get stronger. He probably would have required oxygen for a while, but more than anything he just needed the opportunity to “finish.” I have no doubt Kelsey would not have lived for two hours, breathing on her own after birth. She had problems all the way up until she went home with keeping her oxygen right, but never did they tell me, “We give up. It’s just not in her best interests to keep going.”

And 18 years later that premature baby is graduating high school. Read the whole post, its well worth it, and gives us more then enough reasons to fight back against the kind of health care Obama and company wants us to have.

President Obama’s health care “reform” plan has met with significant criticism across the country. Many Americans want change and reform in our current health care system. We recognize that while we have the greatest medical care in the world, there are major problems that we must face, especially in terms of reining in costs and allowing care to be affordable for all. However, as we have seen, current plans being pushed by the Democratic leadership represent change that may not be what we had in mind — change which poses serious ethical concerns over the government having control over our families’ health care decisions. In addition, the current plans greatly increase costs of health care, while doing lip service toward controlling costs.

We need to address a REAL bipartisan reform proposition that will have REAL impacts on costs and quality of patient care.

As Governor of Alaska, I learned a little bit about being a target for frivolous suits and complaints (Please, do I really need to footnote that?). I went my whole life without needing a lawyer on speed-dial, but all that changes when you become a target for opportunists and people with no scruples. Our nation’s health care providers have been the targets of similar opportunists for years, and they too have found themselves subjected to false, frivolous, and baseless claims. To quote a former president, “I feel your pain.”

So what can we do? First, we cannot have health care reform without tort reform. The two are intertwined. For example, one supposed justification for socialized medicine is the high cost of health care. As Dr. Scott Gottlieb recently noted, “If Mr. Obama is serious about lowering costs, he’ll need to reform the economic structures in medicine—especially programs like Medicare.” Two examples of these “economic structures” are high malpractice insurance premiums foisted on physicians (and ultimately passed on to consumers as “high health care costs”) and the billions wasted on defensive medicine.

Dr. Stuart Weinstein, with the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, recently explained the problem:

”The medical liability crisis has had many unintended consequences, most notably a decrease in access to care in a growing number of states and an increase in healthcare costs.

Access is affected as physicians move their practices to states with lower liability rates and change their practice patterns to reduce or eliminate high-risk services. When one considers that half of all neurosurgeons—as well as one third of all orthopedic surgeons, one third of all emergency physicians, and one third of all trauma surgeons—are sued each year, is it any wonder that 70 percent of emergency departments are at risk because they lack available on-call specialist coverage?”

Dr. Weinstein makes good points, points completely ignored by President Obama. Dr. Weinstein details the costs that our out-of-control tort system are causing the health care industry and notes research that “found that liability reforms could reduce defensive medicine practices, leading to a 5 percent to 9 percent reduction in medical expenditures without any effect on mortality or medical complications.” Dr. Weinstein writes:

“If the Kessler and McClellan estimates were applied to total U.S. healthcare spending in 2005, the defensive medicine costs would total between $100 billion and $178 billion per year. Add to this the cost of defending malpractice cases, paying compensation, and covering additional administrative costs (a total of $29.4 billion). Thus, the average American family pays an additional $1,700 to $2,000 per year in healthcare costs simply to cover the costs of defensive medicine.

Excessive litigation and waste in the nation’s current tort system imposes an estimated yearly tort tax of $9,827 for a family of four and increases healthcare spending in the United States by $124 billion. How does this translate to individuals? The average obstetrician-gynecologist (OB-GYN) delivers 100 babies per year. If that OB-GYN must pay a medical liability premium of $200,000 each year (which is the rate in Florida), $2,000 of the delivery cost for each baby goes to pay the cost of the medical liability premium.”

You would think that any effort to reform our health care system would include tort reform, especially if the stated purpose for Obama’s plan to nationalize our health care industry is the current high costs.

So I have new questions for the president: Why no legal reform? Why continue to encourage defensive medicine that wastes billions of dollars and does nothing for the patients? Do you want health care reform to benefit trial attorneys or patients?

She goes on to write that in Texas, after enacting caps on lawsuit awards against providers, malpractice claims dropped 41%.

Texas Gov. Perry:

In 2003, I declared the medical liability crisis an emergency item, and the legislature responded, passing sweeping reforms that protected the patient, but also shielded doctors and hospitals from unscrupulous trial lawyers eager to make a quick buck at the system’s expense.

We capped non-economic damages at $250,000 per defendant, or up to $750,000 per incident, while placing no cap on more easily determined economic damages, such as lost wages or cost of medical care due to injury.

We ended the practice of allowing baseless, but expensive, lawsuits to drag on indefinitely, requiring plaintiffs to provide expert witness reports to support their claims within four months of filing suit or drop the case.

These measures were supported by the people of Texas, who in September of 2003 approved a ballot measure, Proposition 12, authorizing all of these changes.

Changes were seen immediately, and continue to be felt. All major liability insurers cut their rates upon passage of our reforms, with most of those cuts ranging in the double-digits. More than 10 new insurance carriers entered the Texas market, increasing competition and further lowering costs.

As a result, Texas doctors have seen their insurance rates decline by, on average, 27 percent.

The number of doctors applying to practice medicine in Texas has skyrocketed by 57 percent. In 2008, the Texas Medical Board received 4,023 licensure applications and issued a record 3,621 new licenses.

In all, in just the first five years after reforms passed, 14,498 doctors either returned to practice in Texas or began practicing here for the first time.

In her own state of Alaska they enacted the “losers pay” rule which most certainly deters frivolous claims.

So why is it that Congress and Obama hasn’t even addressed Tort reform? Well, lets take a look at Trial Lawyer contributions:

An Examiner analysis of the 15 firms on the National Law Journal’s “2008 Plaintiff’s Hot List” shows that for 2009, their employees have contributed $636,305 to federal politicians and PACs. Only $4,875 of that amount has gone to Republicans, meaning that the nation’s top trial lawyers are giving more than 99 percent Democratic this year. The PAC for the American Association of Justice, the top trial lawyer lobbying group, has been marginally more balanced, giving Democrats a mere 96 percent of its $627,000 in contributions.

Oh, and then add on the fact that many of our elected politicians in Congress are attorneys themseves and you can now understand why they don’t do a damn thing about it. Because their greedy, grubby hands are deep in the pocket of these lawyer associations and they don’t want to do anything to piss them off.

But keep going Sarah! She is driving the debate from Facebook and forcing these yahoo’s to answer.

More here.

When Sarah Palin made her “death panels” charge, the radicals once again came scurrying out of the woodwork. Obama sent his minions out to debunk what he calls disinformation (otherwise known the TRUTH). In this case, Obama sent out his own version of Dr. Mengele. Ezekiel Emanuel, a physician and brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and a longtime proponent of denying care to citizens based on the value of their worth to society (if you’re old and sick, you have no value).

The radicals came out yesterday, the beltway elitist “Republicans” came out today. In an editorial at National Review Online the editors, in the infinite wisdom, decide to attack Sarah Palin. Not Obama, the most far-left President in history, as he and his cohorts are in retreat over their socialist bill. No, they attack Palin:

To conclude from these possibilities to the accusation that President Obama’s favored legislation will lead to “death panels” deciding whose life has sufficient value to be saved — let alone that Obama desires this outcome — is to leap across a logical canyon. It may well be that in a society as litigious as ours, government will err on the side of spending more rather than treating less. But that does not mean that there is nothing to worry about. Our response to Sarah Palin’s fans and her critics is to paraphrase Peter Viereck: We should be against hysteria — including hysteria about hysteria.

Just one more bit of evidence that proves the beltway elite, either Republican or Democrat, are just completely out of touch with the people. She controlled this debate, from facebook of all places, and forced that provision OUT of that bill. Washington Post’s Anne Kornblut was amazed:

We are back to is she crazy or is she crazy like a fox debate about Governor Palin. We all wrote her off a month ago. We said she would have no platform if she was not governor of Alaska.

~~~

Here she is actually driving the debate whether its honest or not, whether what she is saying is true or not and as you point out she is doing it from Facebook when this White House was supposed to be the “Facebook White House.

And Andy McCarthy did a great job in taking NRO to task for it’s misguided ire:

I don’t see any wisdom in taking a shot at Governor Palin at this moment when, finding themselves unable to defend the plan against her indictment, Democrats have backed down and withdrawn their “end-of-life counseling” boards. Palin did a tremendous service here. Opinion elites didn’t like what the editors imply is the “hysteria” of her “death panels” charge. Many of those same elites didn’t like Ronald Reagan’s jarring “evil empire” rhetoric. But “death panels” caught on with the public just like “evil empire” did because, for all their “heat rather than light” tut-tutting, critics could never quite discredit it. (”BusHitler,” by contrast, did not catch on with the public because it was so easily refuted.)

The editors implicitly concede that Palin is on to something. Indeed, from an Obamaesque perch, they find themselves admonishing both “Sarah Palin’s fans and her critics.” With due respect, there’s a right side and a wrong side on this one. Above the fray is not gonna cut it.

Sure, the editors acknowledge, there’s lots of reason to be worried that we’re speeding down the road toward euthanasia and that Obamacare could make things worse. But it’s somehow “to leap across a logical canyon” to suggest that death panels are imminent or that they are what Obama wants.

On the latter, who cares what Obama personally wants? I don’t see why we should play into the personality cult that the Left is hoping will overcome the deep substantive flaws in the president’s policies. I happen to think that something like death panels is exactly what is desired by Obama — who is an abortion extremist, who supported a form of infanticide when he was an Illinois state legislator, and who has wondered aloud about the value of end-of-life care provided for his own grandmother. But Obama’s personal feelings are beside the point. What matters is what’s in the bill.

In suggesting it’s hyperbole to say death panels are — or were — in the bill, the editors engage in a little hysteria of their own, describing the function of such panels as “deciding whose life has sufficient value to be saved.” But few people worried about death panels think the process will be anything so crude. It will be what Mark Steyn described in his column this weekend: the bureaucrats won’t pull the plug on you; they will gradually restrict your access to various forms of treatment while you wither away prematurely. Maybe if Palin had called them “Dying on the Vine Panels” our opinion elites would have been more understanding — though I doubt it, Palin derangement syndrome having proved itself more infectious than Bush derangement syndrome.

The editors further suggest that Palin could be wrong — not that she is wrong, but she could be. After all, they reason, “it may well be that in a society as litigious as ours, government will err on the side of spending more rather than treating less.”

Really? First of all, there is no more to spend. Second, the editors themselves admit at the very beginning of the editorial that “rationing is inevitable in medicine. Not everything that might be in a patient’s best interest can be done in a world of finite resources.” The whole point of health-care “reform” is to enable something other than the combination of individual liberty and market forces — namely, government bureaucrats — to do the inevitable rationing. Third and finally, as I discuss in my column this morning, the Obamacare proposal has a remedy for “a society as litigious as ours”: it systematically cuts off access to the courts so that the decisions of the executive branch are final. The bill is designed to insure against litigation pressure to spend more rather than treat less.

I think Palin was right to argue her point aggressively. Largely because she did, a horrible provision is now out of this still horrible Obamacare proposal. To the contrary, if the argument had been made the way the editors counsel this morning, “end-of-life counseling” would still be in the bill. We might have impressed the Beltway with the high tone of our discourse and the suppleness of our reasoning, but we’d have lost the public. I respectfully dissent.

Sarah Palin embodies the conservative of today, the conservatives that hold fast to our best conservative traditions and reminds us that yes indeed….another Reagan just might come along. The Conservative Comeback:

In one week Sarah Palin had a portion of the bill tossed out and along with the help of townhall protesters has put ObamaCare on life support. Can anyone point me to a National Review article that has made headlines to damage this bill? Hell, can anyone show me anything they wrote that made headlines during the campaign? Actually, that’s not fair. They did make headlines when Christopher Buckley endorsed Barack Obama. Oh, and when Kathleen Parker called on Palin to resign. Keep up the great work.

Those wishy-washy conservatives that pepper the landscape of NRO will only lead to a future best described by Dan Riehl:

What is it going to take for conservatives to finally accept that William F. is dead, the heirs to the throne, with too few exceptions, are a bunch of 2nd and 3rd generation elitist brats who belong to the Inside the Beltway set? They are not a part of the conservative movement that must re-define American politics, just as Reagan did, if there is to be anything like conservatism going forward in the nation’s political discourse.

~~~

A combination of American heroes, including the late William F. Buckley and, even more importantly, Ronald Reagan brought new voices and ideas to Washington over two decades ago. Unfortunately, as happens, the seedlings of failure always come hidden within the fruits of great success.

The sprouts of Buckley and Reagan took root, flourished for a time and now seem tired-old and dying on thick-ish vines. If we can’t root these weeds up and out, we should at least smother them in dung and fertilizer so as to prepare a bedding for what must come next.

Their continued feeding and nurturing through donations by conservatives is, not just a mistake, but an utter waste of resources we can ill afford to squander by supporting oily-leaved, slippery eyesores such as NRO.

Please, if you “oily-leaved, slippery eyesores” (wonderful description btw Dan) hate winning that much then get out of the ballpark and let the real conservatives play.

UPDATE

Obama dishonesty on full display at Saturday’s townhall

Will Mr Obama respond w full quotes and citations?
Will he even read the bill?
Will he just try the general rhetoric road that continues to fail in stopping the loss of support for the Democrats’ plan?

Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these “unproductive” members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care.

The President made light of these concerns. He said:

“Let me just be specific about some things that I’ve been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t, it’s too expensive to let her live anymore….It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, etc. So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything.” [1]

The provision that President Obama refers to is Section 1233 of HR 3200, entitled “Advance Care Planning Consultation.” [2] With all due respect, it’s misleading for the President to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients. The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context.

Section 1233 authorizes advanced care planning consultations for senior citizens on Medicare every five years, and more often “if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual … or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility… or a hospice program.” [3] During those consultations, practitioners must explain “the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice,” and the government benefits available to pay for such services. [4]

Now put this in context. These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is “to reduce the growth in health care spending.” [5] Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care? As Charles Lane notes in the Washington Post, Section 1233 “addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones…. If it’s all about alleviating suffering, emotional or physical, what’s it doing in a measure to “bend the curve” on health-care costs?” [6]

As Lane also points out:

Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren’t quite “purely voluntary,” as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, “purely voluntary” means “not unless the patient requests one.” Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive — money — to do so. Indeed, that’s an incentive to insist.

Patients may refuse without penalty, but many will bow to white-coated authority. Once they’re in the meeting, the bill does permit “formulation” of a plug-pulling order right then and there. So when Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) denies that Section 1233 would “place senior citizens in situations where they feel pressured to sign end-of-life directives that they would not otherwise sign,” I don’t think he’s being realistic. [7]

Even columnist Eugene Robinson, a self-described “true believer” who “will almost certainly support” “whatever reform package finally emerges”, agrees that “If the government says it has to control health-care costs and then offers to pay doctors to give advice about hospice care, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending.” [8]

So are these usually friendly pundits wrong? Is this all just a “rumor” to be “disposed of”, as President Obama says? Not according to Democratic New York State Senator Ruben Diaz, Chairman of the New York State Senate Aging Committee, who writes:

Section 1233 of House Resolution 3200 puts our senior citizens on a slippery slope and may diminish respect for the inherent dignity of each of their lives…. It is egregious to consider that any senior citizen … should be placed in a situation where he or she would feel pressured to save the government money by dying a little sooner than he or she otherwise would, be required to be counseled about the supposed benefits of killing oneself, or be encouraged to sign any end of life directives that they would not otherwise sign. [9]

Of course, it’s not just this one provision that presents a problem. My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens….An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” [10] Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.” [11]

President Obama can try to gloss over the effects of government authorized end-of-life consultations, but the views of one of his top health care advisors are clear enough. It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing, and more evidence that the top-down plans of government bureaucrats will never result in real health care reform.

[1] See http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/08/president-obama-addresses-sarah-palin-death-panels-wild-representations.html.
[2] See http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf
[3] See HR 3200 sec. 1233 (hhh)(1); Sec. 1233 (hhh)(3)(B)(1), above.
[4] See HR 3200 sec. 1233 (hhh)(1)(E), above.
[5] See http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf
[6] See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080703043.html].
[7] Id.
[8] See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/10/AR2009081002455.html].
[9] See http://www.nysenate.gov/press-release/letter-congressman-henry-waxman-re-section-1233-hr-3200.
[10] See http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/Where_Civic_Republicanism_and_Deliberative_Democracy_Meet.pdf
[11] See http://www.scribd.com/doc/18280675/Principles-for-Allocation-of-Scarce-Medical-Interventions.

[Mata Musing: Naked Emperor is one upping themselves here, as they were also responsible for digging up all of Obama's historic statements on what he *really* wants for America's health care... a single payer system.]

Naked Emperor posted their “EthicsGate” YouTube link, and the Alaskan Bloggers again ganged up to get it removed from YouTube. This would be the same group that whined when Palin fingered them, and are now circling the wagons around the “divorce rumor” source; outed kindergarten/elementary school assistant teacher with a penchant for vicious gossip, Jesse Griffin… aka Gryphen.

There’s a notice/disclaimer on their site:

Well, it may be a “national story” anyway. Because a renegade poster – underbird – put the video back up. To protect Curt and Flopping Aces from any impropriety, I’m merely going to provide the link to the YouTube for now…. which may or may not be working.

I’ll leave it up to Curt if he wants to replace it with an embedded version. I suggest you click on the link quick… as those portrayed are most certainly not happy at being outed.

[Mata Musing: welll, I guess Curt wanted it embedded afterall! LOL]

Just as a reminder … the players in the ethics complaints also appearing in the video. You’ll find them recurring over and over. Refresh your memories by reading the Alinsky Perfected series.

Troopergate’s Legislative Investigation, led by Kim Elton, Alaska Dem Senator… close friends with Obama Sr. advisor, Pete Rouse. Plus former Gov. Tony Knowles, forming a neat political triangle.

Linda Kellen Biegel, Deputy Treasurer of Alaskans for Truth

Kim Chatman, “independent concerned Alaskan”…

Valerie Henning (wife of Zane Henning, who filed a complaint)

Sondra Thompkins, “independent concerned Alaskan”…

And the blogger/radio media cheerleaders who gave them face and air time, Shannyn Moore; Jeanne “Mudflats” Devon (big supporter of Andree McLeod); and Camille Conte (aka CC), chairman of the Alaskans for Truth and host of “Demo Memo” radio show where they discussed revenge strategy on air, trumped up stories together about rape stats that did not reflect the truth.

UPDATE: Aug 3rd, PM

Jeanne “Mudflats” Devon has taken to her own Alinsky brand of ammo for damage control in response to Naked Emperor’s video… by embedding the video herself as bold “proof” the “cabal” fears not it’s public view.

I found it particularly Interesting she uses a player that does not allow that same video to be shared, or allow the user to pick up the embed code. Was that deliberate, in order to keep the video confined to her own adoring following? Or was she unaware that YouTube has a share-friendly version? Who knows… much more important, who cares. But it was a notable observation that belies her “here it is, I’m not afraid!” attempt.

Ms. Mudflats weaves a rather listless and condescending tale – which she calls a parable – of good guy “village scribes” (aka the Alaskan progressive blogging cabal) and “those guys” from the hills.

You know the ones. Every once in a while, one of them wanders through town, all disheveled and wide-eyed and muttering something about how the Ruler of the Land is illegitimate because he was actually born on some other planet, and how his alien socialist kin are going to take over the world, and turn us all into mindless drones, and how we’re all either too stupid to see the real truth, or we’re in cahoots with the aliens on the mother ship. THOSE guys.

I think you get who plays the bad guy here… I suppose the fact escapes her that most conservatives critical of their gutteral “reporting” are just as critical of the on-the-edge birthers. But that wouldn’t make for as interesting of an already long and boring tale, would it?

To make a lengthy “parable without a moral” story shorter (and thereby considerably more palatable), Mudflats uses the classic Alinsky “ridicule” tack as her defense. That boils down to something like this… and I paraphrase her three paragraphs… “sure we know each other… duh”.

Knowing each other was never the issue. What was the issue was orchestration, aiding and abetting to waste Alaskan taxpayers tax dollars to “… be a pain in her [Palin's] butt” (that’s somewhere around the 10 minute mark, I believe…).

It was also uplifting to hear their elected officials encourage the cabal to play dirty – especially considering the irony that is was the cabal who first began to play in the dirt with leaks and smut during the Legislative Investigation. That would be the investigation headed by a guy who just happened to end up in the Obama admin.

Then of course, there’s all that back and forth between the “independent” Kim Chatman with Celtic Diva (aka Linda Kellen Biegel, with already one failed complaint to her name). And how CD – not too bright a light bulb evidently – documents her research on the legal defense fund, passes the data on to Chatman who files the complaint, and then “breaks” the news. All unethically with the confidentiality rules, of course.

Naw… no orchestration there.

It’s a small town. One expects those of like mind to know each other, and be active in the same political organizations.

By the same token, it’s just as large an expectation to assume these same political comrades coordinate their political attacks and agenda. And *therein* lies the story the above video tells.

Now that we have the bottom feeders inextricably linked, the next question is did that obvious local coordination for peevish and expensive complaints get as high as Pete Rouse, David Axelrod and Obama?

The release is in response to a ludicrous rumor being spread by Alaskan CNN stringer Dennis Zaki. Zaki, who previously bought into rumors of Trig Truth, picked up these allegations from the same source – the rabidly anti-Palin, Trig Truth-espousing anonymous blogger “Gryphen” of the blog “Immoral Minority”. Gryphen is a friend of Zaki’s, along with fellow Team Truth members Shannyn Moore, Phil Munger, and “AKMuckraker” of the Mudflats.

The rumor was already being picked up and spread around the echo chamber of the Alaskan Team Truther blogs…not only by Zaki, but by fellow Trig Truther “Doctor Phil” Munger of Progressive Alaska.

And they document quite well why the story is so bogus, including statements from Palin and her spokesperson plus pictures of Sarah and Todd definitely being cozy with each other at the same function that these idiots were reporting they were not speaking to each other.

So what do you think the MSM would do about this?  Ignore it maybe?  I mean Team Sarah put the rumor down quickly right?

No, they blame Sarah for answering these false charges.

By having her spokeswoman repeat the charges to rebut them in a public form, Palin effectively guaranteed coverage from the mainstream media that otherwise would not report claims attributed to unnamed sources on an anonymous blog.

OK, Sarah, listen to me. You ignored my very nice open letter, but this is important. You have to fire Meg Stapleton, or give her something easier to do. There are no “so-called journalists” reporting this rumor, but now, they’ll all get to report Stapleton’s denial on your behalf.

Yeaaaah.

Was Mr. Martin around during the campaign? The rules are different when it comes to the media covering Governor Palin. Mr. Martin, do you remember this?

- Palin banned books.
- Palin said that she believed that dinosaurs and humans co-existed.
- Palin charged victims for rape kits
- Trig Palin is not the governor’s son.

And where did all of these things, among others, originate? Blogs, usually with unnamed sources.

Actually Sarah and her team do a fantastic job of putting out these wildfires quickly. Politico can claim that “real” journalists wouldn’t have reported on a story from blogger till they get red in the face but the fact remains many of the stories put out during the 2008 election CAME from bloggers.

Sarah saw how the McCain campaign (specifically Steve Schmidt) handled internet rumors during the campaign. The whisper campaign by the left wing blogs went unanswered, then seeped into the msm, and by then it was too late. People couldn’t differentiate fact from fiction. Was she a book banner? Did she join a secession movement? Is Trig really her baby?

I find the charges from the “real” journalists to be quite telling actually. Sarah cannot win with them. If she doesn’t answer the rumors then the rumors have to be true. If she does answer them then she just helped get the story mainstream…she should of just kept her yap shut.

They are so afraid of this woman.

Meanwhile, Rick Moran believes this may have all been a set up:

I might add that Alaska Report has a about as good a record as Gawker in breaking news – which is better than some MSM outlets but far from perfect. And Gryphen, who apparently started the whole divorce rumor, is even worse.

Nevertheless, once both those sites hit the internet with the story, the blog feeding frenzy on the left began, with a couple of MSM outlets joining in.

As someone who doesn’t consider himself a journalist but who has been around newsrooms for many years, let me just say that if this had come across my desk, I would have smelled a set up. It’s too pat, the pieces fit too nicely together (an “explanation” for why she resigned) not to raise alarms with real journalists. So I think there is at least the possibility, that either someone in the Palin camp with an ax to grind with the media – or, less likely, Palin herself – whispered a few words to a birdie they were sure would get the word to people who would publish it.

The definition of “pwn” is “1. An act of dominating an opponent, and 2. Great, ingenious; applied to methods and objects.” If this was a set up by the Palin camp, it worked magnificently. Now, most of the lefty blogosphere has egg on their face.

Several Alaska bloggers hounded the former Alaskan governor with bogus ethics complaints while she was in office – Alaska Report being one of them. Could a little payback be at play here?

Not far fetched at all, and it just proved to many people how friggin mad those Alaskan bloggers are. The same ones who made bogus ethics claim one after another.

The left is in full freak out mode as they watch their supposed messiah fall to earth. Not only are the poll numbers dropping they see his promises made becoming broken promises. They are freaking out and view Sarah as one of the big threats to their dreams, so she….must….be….stopped.

Pretty funny actually.

Andree McLeod – better known as the serial whiner and state departments’ fashion fascist – had her sixth complaint dismissed. This was, of course, another charge that Sarah absconded with state funds illegally as a governor when she should have…. according to Ms. Mcleod…. transferred the gubernatorial duties to the Lt. Gov. while campaigning.

Makes a body casually wonder if McLeod was the least bit perturbed by this last Presidential campaign when no less than three sitting Senators… one with less than 150 working days under his belt (ahem)… were also out on the road campaigning while still collecting their Senate salaries. But we’ll probably never know. And frankly, I don’t *want* to know what Ms. McLeod thinks about that… or anything else, for that matter.

But back to the content of the complaint dismissal…. once again investigated by Thomas Daniel of Perkins-Coie.

Summarizing:

Andree’s whine: Palin had “full intent” of foregoing Governor duties while campaigning because she signed two travel authorizations that stated “Conclusion of State Business” and another that stated “Return to Duty Status. In between, she collected full salary. Per McLeod, she should have transferred power to the Lt. Governor in her absence and… of course… more nonsense about taking Alaska money while she was engaging in events for personal gain. When it comes to Andree’s complaints, Seinfield comes to mind… yada yada yada.

Daniel findings: The Governor and Lt. Gov are on a fixed salary, regardless of hours worked, and is exempt from overtime. They are paid for performance, not hours worked. Additionally, state law are not considered employees of the state, as it relates to personnel w laws that govern sick days, overtime etal. Nor are the Gov or Lt. Gov mandated to resign office if they are seeking other elected positions in state or federal government as other state employees in the classified or partially exempt class are required to do.

Even if Palin had done no services as Governor on the campaign trail, she was still entitled to full payment of her salary… rather like all our Senate candidates. However, as Daniel notes, McLeod’s argument doesn’t hold water as there is ample evidence that Sarah was multi-tasking on the road with her Alaskan duties…. which was one of the reasons that her assistant, Ms. Perry, traveled with her on the road for conducting state business.

This should have been evident to the obviously dense and short memoried McLeod as she, herself, had assailed Kris Perry in two of her prior complaints for supposed misappropriation of funds in her travels with Sarah (McLeod complaints #13 and #14) Not only did McLeod try that route before, Perry was also named in Anthony Martin’s complaint #10 with similar whining.

Doesn’t anyone bother to check what’s already been resolved in this group? Relive the memories for all three complaints yourself in the Alinsky Perfected Pt III series. And perhaps we should send this Alinsky Perfected series link to Andree so she can remember what the hell she does from month to month…

Needless to say, per the Obama-linked investivative counsel, Palin was neither required to transfer power via any procedure, nor resign, and was entitled to her full compensation at all times.

INRE McLeod’s insistence that Palin step aside and allocate the job to the Lt. Gov, Daniel’s offers no opinion saying that’s a state constitutional question, and not an ethics issue. In other words, it’s above his pay grade.

I guess McLeod will have to lobby for a job in the Parnell admin’s AG office in order to pursue charging Sarah for violations of the Alaskan State Constitution….

This leaves only one complaint left to resolve…. That being Ms. Chatman’s complaint about the Alaska Trust Fund for Palin’s legal defense. To revive your memories on Pt VI of the Alinksy Perfected series, this is the one where the complainant filed the paperwork, and almost immediately called the media for a press release, violating ethics confidentiality rules.

This comes via Sarah Palin’s Facebook page.

Press Release

Kristan Cole, Trustee
The Alaska Fund Trust
July 22, 2009

Thank you for being here today. My name is Kristan Cole, Trustee to the Alaska Fund Trust. And this is the Trust’s attorney in Alaska, Jon Givens.

I am here to address the unusual letter that was leaked yesterday, the contents of which are unprecedented in the history of our country, suggesting that a legal defense fund could somehow be unethical. This is particularly notable, and concerning, in light of the fact that the Trust, on my instructions, has not paid even one penny to Gov. Palin or her lawyers. I issued that instruction because I was aware the Board was reviewing this matter.

This Trust was created by a team of expert lawyers from around the country. It was thoroughly vetted for compliance with federal and state law and trust law. So far Mr. Daniel is the only lawyer in the country who has questioned a legal defense fund despite the fact that his firm has set up legal defense funds for other office holders. Because his initial review was unprecedented and contained factual errors it was my understanding that Gov. Palin’s legal team, including Mr. Van Flein, were in on-going discussions with Mr. Daniel. The matter was not final.

I want to be clear on a point that has been misrepresented: The Governor is not and was not involved with the Trust. The Governor has never worked on or with the Trust. The Governor has not even accepted or requested one penny from the Trust or quite frankly anything of me. And I have never expected anything from her. Really it’s quite the contrary; as I, and many other caring folks across the country have only sought to help with this legal burden.

The first and only time I have spoken with the Governor about the Trust was yesterday to alert her that I was responding to this violation of the law and leak of preliminary and confidential materials from the complainant.

There is a loophole in Alaska law. Alaskans can file frivolous complaints against the Governor – violate the law and alert the media they are doing so, all the complaints can be dismissed and yet the Governor has to personally pay for representation. Legislators covered themselves with a law that warrants automatic dismissal of a complaint if it is leaked to the public.

It has been quite obvious to me, and to other every day citizens like me, that over the last several months that something needed to be done to help the Palins with the overwhelming crush of frivolous ethics complaints.

In their own humble way, the Palins never asked for help. The Governor never even asked anyone to contribute to this legal expense fund. This trust, and the thousands and thousands of dollars raised, were the results of hard working Americans and their outpouring of support. It is disgraceful that anyone would assume that the thousands of people who sent in $5, $10 or $50 intended to “influence” the governor’s official actions in Alaska! And this in a state where a half dozen legislators have been convicted of corruption as well as the previous governor’s chief of staff. Not one ethics complaint was filed against these individuals who were convicted, but this governor is harassed for having her picture taken with a fish, wearing a jacket, answering press questions and giving a speech.

A few select people have abused our ethics act. The public release of a preliminary document in violation of state law follows that pattern. The people of this state are losing hope that the ethics act has any real purpose anymore and that’s incredibly sad as ethics are so important. Mr. Daniel’s preliminary assessment, unprecedented in history and harshly criticized by legal scholars, does nothing to restore credibility to this process.

Numerous individuals thought to help the Palins – not just me. But when I was asked, I was doing research of my own and determined that I would put my name on a Trust already going through an intense legal process throughout the country to ensure that this one was airtight and complied with every possible law under the sun. And this one does. It is one of the most restrictive and transparent trusts of its kind. The validity of the Trust is strong. It is unprecedented in every way imaginable… all donations must be under $150, no donations from lobbyists, and nothing accepted from foreign nationals to name a few. No trust has ever been found to be a violation of ethical standards for any governor, former president, senator, or house member, or former member of Congress. But this Trust which has more severe donation and donor limits than any trust in the history of legal defense trusts might violate ethical rules?

Some Trust funds are formed and accepted to defend politicians in true Courts of Law with regard to some very serious criminal charges. And yet, this Fund was created by others to help the Palins pay for their legal bills due to frivolous complaints – each of which has been dismissed thus far. I will let my attorney speak to the legal issues but I wanted to take this opportunity to speak to yesterday’s blatant violation of the law.

You know, we have witnessed time and again the blatant abuse of process when it comes to people filing these complaints and illegally discussing them and leaking them to the press- but this latest move further crosses the line and we are all reviewing action for the reputational harm caused by Ms. Chatman based upon the leak of Tom Daniel’s preliminary thinking on the matter – a product that may have ultimately been remarkably different and perhaps even dismissed. Where is the accountability for those who blatantly disregard the requirement to keep the issue confidential?

There are many questions which need to be asked following my read of what was leaked.

And, if I may digress – this is how backwards our laws are – I had to go online and read the preliminary letter about the Trust and me because Mr. Daniel and Mr. Van Flein cannot violate the confidentiality of the Ethics Act (even though it appears the complainant has)and therefore cannot even forward the preliminary letter to me. Now that I have read it, I still hope to inform Mr. Daniel of the important information that Mr. Van Flein had requested from me to be shared with Mr. Daniel.

What was the reason for my involvement? The preliminary letter suggests that perhaps I served as Trustee so I could get some job with the state. This is amazingly wrong and so incredibly hurtful. That is the last thing I want. I did this because it believed it was the right thing to do for our Governor. I love Alaska. I have lived here 40 years and I have always served the state when asked – and despite the fact that I am entitled to public monies in the form of expenses, per diem and wages – I have declined every single penny. I have served as a volunteer on others boards, and commissions (The Real Estate Commission and the Agricultural Revolving Loan Fund Board) under a previous Governor so volunteer work has been part of my life for a long time. I was approached to serve as Trustee for the legal defense fund. I did not seek out this position just as I have never sought out any other position but was willing to step up to the plate and serve when asked because that’s what we all do when asked to serve our country, our state and our communities isn’t it? We do it because it’s the right thing to do and by all of us serving where we can, we all benefit. My sons and my husband have served our country. I have served our state and our community here in the Mat Su Valley with the hope that we are making a difference where we can.

So how unfair is it that the Governor can be told she was wrong for putting together the Fund, soliciting Funds, accepting the Funds and spending the Funds when she hasn’t been involved at all—-And no money has been spent on her legal defense?

If the Governor only accrued the bills because she is a public figure then why is it wrong for a Trust to collect funds to defend her as a public figure? Alaska law specifically states that there is only a problem if there is “intent” to influence the Governor. How can there be intent to influence a Governor in Alaska with a $5 voluntary donation from Kansas? To date, approximately 90% of the contributions are from Outside Alaska and many are $5, $10 and $20 donations. Not one penny has been paid to any law firm or entity for the Governor’s financial gain. If the Governor has not solicited or accepted personal gain, how can she be in violation of soliciting and accepting monies for personal gain?

Let’s review what has been deemed lawful. Creation of the PAC and fundraising was deemed lawful. Writing a book was deemed lawful. All other legal defense funds similar, but not as restrictive as this one, have been deemed to be lawful. The very firm who put together Senator Kerry’s legal defense fund which was deemed lawful was put together by the very law firm that Mr. Daniel is employed by. These are inconsistent conclusions and defy common sense. That is why this matter was not final and Mr. Daniel and Mr. Van Flein were discussing these issues.

Potential future gain, based upon no active solicitations, in one of the most stringent legal expense funds in the country does not merit a situation much less a violation. Mr. Daniel says that because the Trust was an “official” Trust he felt it violated the law. This overlooks the necessity of having one “official” fund. The unofficial funds are the very ones that had the potential to harm the public by unscrupulous people.

We knew that in fairness to Alaskans and Americans, this site needed to be official because of the potential scams that could arise. How ethical would it be for a pensioner in Iowa or a single mother in New Hampshire to have their donation diverted by someone who had no intention of helping the Governor and may keep the money for themselves or other equally harmful things?

But let’s think through the same logic, if a foreigner wanted to set up his or her own fund, collect a handsome payoff, and accept $5 million donations from rogue groups even, as long as that person did not tell the Governor, that would be okay? That is the conclusion that is being reached here in Mr. Daniel letter and flies in the face of good logic, common sense, and the good necessity of protecting the public.

Every aspect of the Alaska Fund Trust follows the law. Precedent allows for it. The Palins haven’t been involved with it. It is unfortunate that some in the media were so quick to point the finger at the Governor for something others are responsible for and have established to assist her in the fight against these outrageous attacks. And this acceptance that the law can be continually violated for pure political gain … is wrong.

To say hell hath no fury may be an understatement when it comes to this one… You might also recall Ms. Mcleod (photo to left) was also the same wacko that appointed herself the state government employees fashion facist… complaining there was just “too much cleavage” being shown by the staffers.

Just a week before she walks out of the Alaskan gubernatorial offices, Sarah, on July 20th, 4:40pm Alaskan time, tweeted:

AKGovSarahPalin: In violation of Ethics Act more allegations were filed today by serial complainer;gave to press be4 we could respond;ridiculous, wasteful…

Didn’t take me long when I saw that yesterday to figure out who best fit the profile of “serial complainer”. Conservatives4Palin was on top of it the same day, but it didn’t make a more national medium until it’s appearance today on Salon by, none other than Rachel D’Oro. She is, of course, the same reporter that’s feeding the BS to AP about the Chatman ethics complaint being a done deal as “guilty” in my Pt VI series.

D’Oro’s dribblings today:

The latest complaint alleges she abused her office by accepting a salary and using state staff while campaigning outside Alaska for the vice presidency. It’s the third complaint filed against the Republican since she announced July 3 that she was stepping down.

~~~

In her complaint, Andree McLeod said that two days before Palin was named John McCain’s running mate, she signed travel documents that stated “conclusion of state business.” A similar document soon after the election stated “return to duty status.”

McLeod said Palin’s signature on the documents demonstrated a “willingness to forgo her duties as governor” to travel on the national campaign. She added that she filed the complaint now only because she was waiting for a final document from the state in response to a public records request.

McLeod said that given that temporary absence, Palin should have turned over the governor’s responsibilities to Parnell as required by the state constitution.

“The reason this is so serious is because the transfer of power should have taken place but did not,” McLeod said Tuesday.

UPDATE: It seems that Ms. D’Oro, an Alaskan resident as well as an AP hack, continues to get her facts wrong. The newest Handee Andree complaint is clarified by Palin counsel, Thomas Van Flein, on Facebook.

FOR RELEASE: JULY 20, 2009
Another Ethics Complaint Filed Against the Governor

July 20, 2009, Anchorage, Alaska – Once again, an ethics complaint has been filed and publicly released in violation of state law. This is the sixth complaint filed by Ms. McLeod. In addition, she has filed a lawsuit against the Governor’s office and multiple public records act requests.

All of her prior complaints that have been ruled on have been dismissed.

The Ethics Act serves important state interests in ensuring ethical state government and was intended to prevent the various forms of corrupt misconduct that had plagued the Legislature in prior years and which resulted in the prosecution of legislators and others. It is unfortunate that the law has been abused and trivialized in the current manner.

Today’s complaint, filed just six days before the Governor leaves office, alleges that Governor Palin violated the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act by failing to submit complete gift disclosure forms in a timely manner, and obtained “free” services. The apparent primary goal of this complaint has been achieved, namely, an effort to keep the complainant’s name in the paper. We anticipate another dismissal of this complaint as with the complainant’s other complaints. This is the fourth ethics complaint filed against the Governor since the announcement of her resignation on July 3. In every case, the complainers violated the confidentiality provision of the Ethics Act in making their complaints public knowledge.

THOMAS VAN FLEIN—Personal Attorney for Governor Palin

END UPDATE

Mcleod evidently needs to move fast since Palin steps down on Sunday, so this sixth smear attempt comes only days after her fifth filing was thrown out the door almost upon arrival.

As is usual with our bizarre societal obsessions, one has to wonder if Mcleod isn’t out for her own last seconds of her 15 minutes of fame. For timed with her sixth filing of complaints was a Vanity Fair profile feature of Mcleod, calling her Sarah’s “worst nightmare”.

To McLeod, the fact that all the complaints have been dismissed is merely proof that the review board is in Palin’s pocket. “They’re appointed by the governor,” she says. “They’re not independent. I used to work for a board for the state. Boards like this that are made up of volunteers who are easily manipulated.”

As I pointed out in the Troopergate series, and again in the Alinsky Perfected II/III pieces, the three personnel board members are all appointees of Mcleod’s prior boss, Frank Murkowski. Vanity Fair’s Christopher Batement, apparently less informed on facts that dedicated to slipping sly little demeaning remarks about Palin in his feature on McLeod, let this truth go by with nary a clarification.

Batement did, however, follow it up with a quote from the AG’s office stating repeatedly to his questions that Palin’s not been found guilty of anything…. only to follow it up with his own personal observation: “In fact, he said it enough times that I started to wonder if he was trying to convince himself.”

… or perhaps he was trying to get it thru Bateman’s thick skull?

Work quick, Mcleod. Because your next attacks on the soon to be ex-governor will no longer be paid for by your neighbors, and will cost you dearly in a counter lawsuit. And I say it’s about time.

Chatman, complainant #18 in Part III of my Alinsky Perfected series, accuses Sarah of “…misusing the governor’s office for personal gain by securing unwarranted benefits and receiving improper gifts through the Alaska Fund Trust” April 27th. Since that time, the Personnel Board has, as their normal procedure, hired an investigative counsel to determine probable cause prior to any Board hearing or determination.

Thomas Daniel of Perkins Coie in Anchorage assumed that task, and issued his confidential report to the Board on July 14th.

Within 7 days, D’Oro releases an AP story, mysteriously in possession of a report that, by ethics complaint provisions, is mandated as confidential information until released publicly by the Board with waiver by the Governor. The headline screams “guilty”… “Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin implicated in ethics investigation of legal defence fund”

Mata Musing: As Mel from Conservatives4Palin notes, the AP has since changed their headline to read instead… “Investigator rules against Palin in ethics probe”. Yeah… there’s an improvement to reflect the facts… *not*.

From the story with the ever morphing headline….

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – An independent investigator has found evidence that Gov. Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, may have violated ethics laws by trading on her position as she sought money for lawyer fees, in her latest legal distraction as she prepares to leave office this week.

The report obtained by The Associated Press says Palin was securing unwarranted benefits and receiving improper gifts through the Alaska Fund Trust, set up by supporters.

An investigator for the state Personnel Board says in his July 14 report that there is probable cause to believe Palin used or attempted to use her official position for personal gain because she authorized the creation of the trust as her legal defence fund.

ummmmm… not quite. And of course they did not provide a link to the leaked investigative report to the Board.

By releasing this to the press, Ms. Chatman’s intent appears not to be waiting for Board recommendations and actions but to drive a media kangaroo court of justice for Sarah Palin.

So let’s look at that confidential report, now part of now public domain via ADN, and see what warrants a headline that screams “guilty”.

Daniel’s investigative task is solely meant to establish probable cause that may, or may not, lead to a hearing to determine a violation and penalty, or dismissal. They [investigative counsel] can only recommend corrective actions. It was specific excerpts that D’Oro chose to highlight in her story that drives her intent to find Palin guilty in the court of public opinion.

The analysis, beginning on page two of the above linked “confidential” report, discusses not only the two pronged complaint of using the gubernatorial seat for personal gain, but also the establishment and receipt of funds collected thru the legal defense fund. And the only probable cause “guilt” Palin is suspected of is giving permission for the defense fund to use her photo and address her as “Governor”, and that she would “personally benefit” from any funds she received from that fund…..

…. if she had received any such gifts.

Fact is, Ms. Palin has not taken a dime from the legal defense fund.

Per the report INRE the first charge, investigation of the origins of the Alaska Trust Fund – set up legally to emulate those of John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, etal – was in order.

As Daniel notes in his final summaries, legal defense funds are common practice for federal office holders. The Alaska Trust fund adheres to similar, if not identical, restrictions as those for members of Congress. However while donors may, with all rights, make contributions to Sarah as a national stage politician, her picture as Alaskan governor muddies the waters legally, and intrinsically ties the fund to the state of Alaska, and thereby their laws.

Alaska ethics laws, or other statutes, make no provisions for state officials to create legal defense funds as Congress members can. And in fact, Mr. Daniel notes this as a flaw that should be addressed stating:

Perhaps there should be, but that is a matter for the legislature to address. My job is to apply the statute as currently written.

Thus Daniel did recognize that Palin could indeed stand to benefit from these funds. And of course, that was the purpose of the fund to begin with… no one will argue the obvious.

But he concluded this benefit was not as easy, saying:

The more difficult question is whether the first part of the statute is satisfied – did the Governor “use, or attempt to use, an official position” in order to obtain this personal gain?

~~~

If third parties created the legal defense fund completely on ther own, free from any direction, influence or guidance from the governor, it would not seem that the governor “used her position” in violation of the statute.

The legal defense fund was created by Kristan Cole, also functioning as trustee of the fund, in concert with other Palin supporters who felt Sarah should not have to pay for escalating legal bill for frivolous assaults. Daniel interviewed Ms. Cole, as noted in the report, who confirmed that it was she and supporters who set up the fund, not Palin.

The lone statement that made this not totally dismissable for Daniel was that Ms. Cole stated she asked for Palin’s approval to create the fund as her “official” legal defense fund, and for permission to use her photo. Palin gave this approval. Per the report, that was the extent of Palin’s involvement.

When strictly interpreting the statute, and Daniel’s assumed that an ordinary citizen would not enjoy the success for fund solicitatation that a public figure the stature of Sarah could. So he concluded that Palin’s photo and title gave some probable cause to her position being used for personal benefit.

But obviously, we’re teetering on the borderline of reason and legalities. ala the nature of the donations. Can they separate each as being related to her position as Alaskan governor or as a national political figure? Then combine that with her disassociation with the fund other than to say “yes” to the use of a picture, and “thanks” for an official site that couldn’t be advanced as a fraudulent scam on well meaning supporters. More on creation of these legal defense funds below the subheading “Investigator addresses “fairness” of Alaskan law”.

The next charge by Ms. Chatman had to do with accepting “gifts” … i.e. the donated funds… that were “intended” to influence her performance as Governor. This would be what we know as lobbyist dinners, trip and entertaining of Congress in exchange for favorable votes on legislation.

Two avenues of this were written off as absurd. First, the donors to the fund were from everywhere, and limited to a maximum of $150. This amount is interpreted by the AG as “…unlikely to be intended to influence judgment”. Somehow I’m pretty sure that $150 is way too low a price to buy any modern politician so it’s not believable that any individual donor could expect political favors in return.

Second would be the combination of those donations as a gift – the result of a “series” of $150 donations. Meaning the trust would be receiving multiple $150 donations, and providing them as a gift in a large, substantial lump sum. This requires that single large donation to be reported as a “gift”. This in no way violates the ethics act unless that payment of combined trust gift funds could be inferred to assume influenced performance from an elected official.

Because the trust was the giver, it was also unlikely that there are any avenues for “influence” that can benefit a single trust entity.

There was only one way for any appearance of impropiety for a gift from the legal defense fund to Palin… the trustee, Kristan Cole, herself.

Cole and Palin go back some time, as good friends in intimiate rural states usually do. And it’s highly unlikely that a mere acquaintance, with little concern personally for the Palin family’s financial crisis, would go thru the hoopla of setting up a legal trust fund. So in order to dig as deep into appearance of impropriety, he also took into account the relationship between Kristan and Palin.

Palin appointed Ms. Cole as chairman of Board of Agriculture and Conservation, had appointed her to the board of the Royalty Oil and Gas Commission, and she also serves on the Creamery Board, a “private corporation owned by the State of Alaska”… huh? uh, nevermind.

Because of their past, Mr. Daniel decides it’s “reasonable” that the trustee… not the donors or the trust itself… *may* bear looking at in an attempt to gain influence. On this, Daniel says:

I cannot read Ms. Cole’s mind and therefore it is possible that her formation of the legal defense fund is entirely altruistic without an expectation of anything in return. But as explained above, the standard for interpreting this section of the Ethics Act is an objective one. The circumstances around the creation of the trust fund suggest that the organizers will expect “that when policy decisions are made in the future, the [governor] will be favorably disposed to give more weight to [their] viewpoint”.

In addition, my role as an independent counsel for the personnel board is only to decide whether there is probable cause to believe a violation of the Ethics Law has occurred – not to reach a definitive conclusion. See AS 39.52.320 The ultimate determination fo whether the governor has violated the Ethics Act can only be made by the personnel board after a formal hearing and a report by a hearing officer. See AS 39.52.360-370

Apparently a minor little sentence that Ms. D’Oro missed when composing her various “guilty” headlines…

But wait… let’s look at Ms. Kristan Cole and those shadowy associations that Mr. Daniel brings up as “reasonable” probable cause.

As the ADN article on this BS yesterday notes, those appointments were all made prior to the legal defense fund’s creation… therefore they are completely unrelated. It should also be noted these are volunteer positions.

However Daniel cannot afford to leave any stone unturned in a thorough investigation. Quite frankly, had he left out the relationship between Palin and Cole, there would be an uproar about the quality of his work.

But that was then, and this was now. I’m not sure what favors a volunteer board member or chair of these particular entities can expect from a governor specifically, and I certainly question just how high up in the food chain of importance they would be for policy as volunteers. But I’m darned sure they could expect few favors from an embattled governor under the microscope 24/7, and can expect absolutely no favors from an ex-governor.

Somehow I would expect even Daniel’s third and only possibility of “gifts for influence” probable cause would get thrown out at a formal hearing as irrelevant because of the nature and timing of the appointments.

There’s an interesting Section C on it’s own… Mr. Daniel addressing the fairness of a governor who is unable to set up a legal defense fund for charges that have been dismissed or cleared. And he had a chat with the AG’s office to find out why the State wasn’t paying for Palin’s expenses on these cleared ethics charges. The short AG answer was that they only pay for officials’ defense when they are charges incurred while carrying out state duties, while the theoretical essense of ethics charges is that the state official was acting to their own personal benefit. So even the innocent get stuck with the bill.

After some checking into it, the AG’s office said they could reimburse Palin for hiring legal defense, perhaps with a *capped* limit, from state funds… as long as it met certain conditions. [See pg 8, paragraph 2 for specifics that aren't paramount here]

You do see what this means, yes? I’ll spell it out..

Reimbursing Palin’s legal defense from the state’s funds nails the taxpayers *twice*! First for processing and investigating probable cause on all these BS complaints, and a second time to pay for Palin’s lawyers after she’s been cleared.

Palin is already on record that she’s unhappy with the bill the taxpayers are shoulding so that her political opposition can wage an agenda war to destroy her. I highly doubt she would be happy seeing them get stuck with additional bills involuntarily.

And about that formal hearing… Mr. Daniel’s recommendations of corrective actions are found on page nine. And apparently nothing smacked of serious juju here because he feels this doesn’t even meet the needs for a hearing.

I can recommend that corrective action be taken to resolve this complaint without the necessity of a formal hearing on the matter See AS 39.52.330 My recommendation is that the governor should refuse to accept payment of her legal fees and costs from the Alaska Fund Trust and withdraw her authorization for the trust to be recognized as her “official” legal defense fund. I also recommend that she seek reimbursement from the state for the cost of defending the ethics complaints that have been dismissed.

I also recommend that the legislature consider amending the Ethics Act to require the state to reimburse a public official for reasonable legal fees and costs incurred to defend against an Ethics Act complaint that is dismissed.

I’m not sure how this trust fund nonsense plays out when Sarah is no longer governor, and I’m sure she’ll be speaking with attorneys on this. But I just can’t see her dumping these costs on the Alaskans. And if she does, I would truly be disapointed.

The last state of this “confidential” report states:

Notice of this decision will be communicated to the governor and to Ms. Chatman. However this decision is confidential pursuant to AS 39.52.340, unless confidentiality is waived by the governor.

Ms. Palin has *not* waived confidentiality, and addresses Ms. Chatman in their response on this leak of the report.

Mrs. Palin’s private attorney Thomas Van Flein says it’s too early for the AP to judge the outcome of the investigation. “I have been working with the investigator regarding supplemental information,” he said. “The matter is still pending.”

“Whatever you have seen was released in violation of law,” he said. “There has been no Board finding of an ethics violation and there is a detailed legal process to follow before there is a final resolution.”

Mrs. Palin may turn the tables on the leakers in the future, too.

“All options are open in terms of legal remedies,” Mr. Van Flein said.

Kim Chatman, who filed the complaint, spoke to the Associated Press on the record ahead of the report’s release, an action prohibited by the ethics procedures. Palin’s aides believe Ms. Chatman leaked the report as well.

“It is a clear violation of Alaska law that Mr. Daniel explicitly reviewed with Ms. Chatman prior to her illegal actions,” Mr. Van Flein said. “We will be contacting the appropriate authorities for review and action.”

If Kim Chatman sets up a legal defense fund, would anyone care let alone donate? You go, Sarah. Because Ms. Chatman is out to get you… it is she who signed on to the unbelievably offensive Juneteenth lawsuit, accusing Palin of being a racist, in order to get it into Alaska’s federal court system. Ms. Chatman, herself caucasian, is married to a black American.

But that’s another story in progress, and to come in the “trials and tribulations of Sarah category.

Now… this story isn’t over, and Mel at Conservatives4Palin keeps updating his post today with tweets and FB updates.