The Cancers in America: the Nurses Unions

“One of the most tantalizing mysteries in California’s 2010 gubernatorial election involved the connection between one of the state’s poorest women and one of its wealthiest.

How did an undocumented, Mexican-born housekeeper, Nicandra Diaz Santillan, end up in the national spotlight, boldly confronting her former boss, billionaire GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman?

The short answer: with the help of a union.

The longer answer is that at the height of the gubernatorial race, as campaign ads blared on Spanish-language television, the aggrieved housekeeper was determined to tell Californians her story of being abruptly fired by Whitman after nearly a decade on the job.

In early September, Diaz turned to a friend who knew a member of the powerful, Oakland-based California Nurses Association, The Chronicle has learned.

The union called in two lawyers for Diaz: Marc Van Der Hout, a longtime immigration attorney in San Francisco, and celebrity feminist attorney Gloria Allred, a fierce workplace rights litigator who arranged for Diaz to tell her story in a live-webcast news conference.

Asked to confirm her organization’s role in Diaz’s case, Rose Ann DeMoro, the nurses union executive director, said Monday, “I won’t deny it, but I prefer not to comment directly on the case.”

Whitman, a former eBay CEO, has alleged that Diaz was used by unions backing her Democratic opponent, Jerry Brown, and engaged in “the politics of personal destruction.” Her campaign said the California Nurses Association’s role was suspected after its spokesman, Chuck Idelson, turned up at a widely watched Diaz news conference – and refused comment on the matter.

But several sources close to the matter, speaking on condition that they not be named, have now confirmed the union’s role in Diaz’s emergence, a moment labor leaders hailed as a watershed in the immigrant-rights movement – and political opponents have called a classic campaign dirty trick.

The housekeeper and mother of three would not comment for this story, and has not given interviews to the news media outside of the news conferences at Allred’s side.

Devastated by dismissal

But sources familiar with the matter say Diaz, a Union City resident who has lived in the country for more than a decade, was emotionally and financially devastated by her sudden firing by Whitman in 2009, for whom she had worked since 2000.

Diaz made her decision to come forward with her story as Whitman’s gubernatorial campaign was in high gear; the wealthy candidate, who touted herself as “tough as nails” on illegal immigration before the June primary, had blanketed the airwaves with millions of dollars in ads through the summer of 2010 – including ads on Spanish-language television.

But in the same period, the California Nurses Association – which endorsed Brown – mounted Spanish-language ads likening Whitman’s immigration policy to former Gov. Pete Wilson’s, and portraying Whitman as the wealthy “Queen Meg” candidate trying to “buy” California. At one point, the union sent 1,500 nurses to march outside the same Atherton mansion where Diaz had worked.

Wanted representation

Diaz “was aware of us, and our protests of Whitman,” said one union insider closely involved with the issue. “She wanted legal representation – and she wanted justice. She wanted to be able to tell her story.”

One union insider said the first reaction to news that one of Whitman’s former housekeepers wanted to go public was an elated “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

But, “we were concerned about her immigration status – and concerned about her,” the source said.

Diaz was carefully vetted and interviewed by union insiders, and counseled “for days” regarding the implications of going public as an undocumented worker, sources said.

But “she really wanted to do it,” said one source. “She was like steel.”

Diaz insisted Whitman always knew she was undocumented; she said Whitman had been contacted by government officials regarding problems with her Social Security number.

Whitman insisted she hired Diaz through an agency and always believed her to be a legal resident; when she learned she was not, she had no choice but to let her go, Whitman said.

But the nurses union leadership did for Diaz what Whitman did not – they got her legal help.

Diaz’s emergence was a turning point in Whitman’s ambitious 18-month gubernatorial campaign – one in which the candidate personally invested $145 million, and became the largest self-funded candidacy in American history.

News conference a factor

Pollsters say one key factor in helping to derail Whitman’s carefully planned drive – and the resulting 13-point landslide victory for Brown – was Diaz herself.

In the housekeeper’s tearful televised testimony during an explosive news conference at Allred’s side – one of the most searing moments of the gubernatorial race – Diaz said she was treated “like garbage,” and coldly fired after nine years with a voice mail message from Whitman: “You don’t know me, and I don’t know you.”

Last week, Whitman and her husband, Dr. Griffith Harsh, agreed to pay $5,500 to close out Diaz’s claim for unpaid back wages, though they admitted no guilt.

Even in the wake of calls by candidate Whitman and conservative pundits like Bill O‘Reilly for her deportation, Diaz is now pursuing an application to become a permanent legal resident, Van Der Hout said last week.

Diaz “is not in hiding … and she is not fearing arrest,” he said. “She has a compelling case because of her long history in the United States and her family ties … and I am optimistic that she will eventually obtain lawful status.”

Labor groups have now begun a fund to help support the still-unemployed worker, and California Labor Federation head Art Pulaski recently hailed the undocumented housekeeper as a hero who might now serve as a galvanizing force in the movement for comprehensive immigration reform.

DeMoro, in an open letter to Diaz this month published by National Nurses United, publicly thanked the housekeeper for “your courage in taking a difficult stand that undoubtedly changed history.”

The above article was written in the San Francisco Chronicle by Carla Marinucci.

Lefties Report “Blaphemy Resolution Passes U.N. Committee”

The Lefties in this case means the  Huffington Post with its article  written by Adele M. Banks “Religion News Service”.

“A resolution combating the “vilification of religions” was adopted Tuesday by a United Nations committee, but religious freedom advocates who oppose the measure say support for it continues to diminish.

The resolution by Islamic countries is scheduled to be considered by the U.N. General Assembly in December.

The vote — 76 yes, 64 no, and 42 abstentions — received fewer affirmative votes than last year, said Freedom House, a human rights group that has worked against the resolution.

“We are disappointed that this pernicious resolution has passed yet again, despite strong evidence that legal measures to restrict speech are both ineffective and a direct violation of freedom of expression,” said Paula Schriefer, director of advocacy at Freedom House.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent bipartisan panel, said the measure’s diminished support shows some countries think the resolution can do more harm than good.

“Religious intolerance is best fought through efforts to encourage respect for every individual’s human rights, not through national or international anti-blasphemy laws” said USCIRF Chair, Leonard Leo.

Days before its passage, the Organization of the Islamic Conference relabeled the resolution as condemning “vilification of religions” instead of “defamation of religions,” but U.S. officials and advocates continued to oppose it.

“We are disappointed to see that despite our efforts and discussions on this resolution, the text once again seems to take us farther apart, rather than helping to bridge the historical divides,” said John F. Sammis, an official of the U.S. Mission to the U.N., told the committee
considering the resolution. “Most importantly, the resolution still seeks to curtail and penalize speech.”

Roger Kimball’s “Democracy: Use It Or Lose It”……what a great title!

Yes, what a great title…”Democracy:  Use It Or Lose It”……One certainly needs training to develop understandings and attitudes to create and maintain democratic communities.   Americans no longer offer such trainings.  Instead, they con their young to believe themselves to be great, whether the have earned anything or not……an empty lesson….and often a dangerous one.

Roger Kimball writes the following article at Pajamas Media, to which the “Use It” declaration is attached.:

My friend William F. Buckley Jr., who died at the end of February 2008, would have turned 84 today.  I won’t say anything here by way of reminiscence, but merely note the continuing pertinence of his central political concerns.

In the summer of 1951, when Bill was in his middle twenties, he wrote a piece for Human Events in which he limned two critical dangers facing American liberty: the external threat of Communist imperialism and the homegrown threat of “government paternalism.”

I would argue that the fall of the Soviet colossus signaled not the end but the metamorphosis of the former threat, its distribution over a more amorphous field of action. The latter threat, it will be obvious to anyone with eyes to see, has gone from crisis to crisis.  The threat of government paternalism is today more patent than ever, as anyone who has tried to buy an incandescent lightbulb or who has had an up-close and personal encounter with a TSA representative at the airport well knows.

Indeed, government paternalism, a.k.a., the proliferation of misguided bureaucratic regulation (a.k.a., the rise of soft-totalitarianism of the sort Tocqueville described in his famous passages on “Democratic Despotism“), is on the march, with sad, disturbing  consequences for the body politic.  At Instapundit today, Glenn Reynolds links to this sobering video from “Bankrupting America.” Watch it. Then wonder why Nov 2nd wasn’t even more of a victory for the tea partiers.

I know that Bill Buckley loathed all that government intrusiveness. His opinion of what went on in airports was, if anything, even more disparaging than mine.  And of course he would have been outraged if confronted with the peek-and-pat procedures just rolled out by our hapless Department of Homeland Security.

Nevertheless, I believe Bill would have been greatly heartened by what happened a couple of Tuesday ago.  And would, I feel sure, have wholeheartedly endorsed the observations Glenn Reynolds made about the new TSA procedures in his Popular Mechanics column. Is the intrusiveness legal? Yes. Is it a good thing? Hardly.

Reynolds makes a few key points. In the first place, quoting the  economist Steven Horwitz, he notes that “stepped-up air security might cost more lives than it could save, by encouraging large numbers of Americans to drive — which is vastly more dangerous — where they otherwise would have flown.”

Even more pertinent, however, is his observation that “the only time a terrorist attack on a U.S. airliner has been defeated (as opposed to fizzling when a shoe bomb failed to detonate) was on Flight 93. That’s when the passengers themselves took action.”

Exactly.  “Security,” as Reynolds notes, “has always been about everyone, not just the professionals. … To fight terrorism, we need a populace that is informed, motivated, vigilant and prepared, not one that is seething and feeling powerless and resentful. Yet our current security approach seems almost designed to produce the latter, rather than the former.”

Here’s the take-away from his column: “Terrorism is a widely dispersed threat, hard to pin down, constantly evolving in approach. It can only be countered by something else that’s widely dispersed, capable of quick change, and dedicated to success. Luckily, we have something like that.  It’s called democracy. Let’s use it.”

Use it, friends, or lose it. We’re at a crossroads. November 2nd showed that  we needn’t go like sheep down the road to serfdom. Let’s hope that a critical mass of citizens hearken to Bill Buckley’s advice from 1959.

“What,” he asked, “is the indicated course of action?” What should we do.  Call it, Bill said, “a No-Program, if you will.” It revolves around the effort to “to maintain and wherever possible enhance the freedom of the individual to acquire property and dispose of that property in ways that he decides on” and to deal with problems like unemployment “locally, placing the political and humanitarian responsibility on the lowest feasible political unit.”

“I will not,” Bill wrote,  “cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.”

To which I will only add, Amen.

Stratfor Analysis of North Korean Attack: “Is North Korea Moving Another Red Line?

Much in life is quite simple…..whether in the neighborhood or on the international scene.  Size of the scene  is the primary difference between the two.   A bully down the block or on the playground isn’t much different from the bully in East Asia, or the one next door to Columbia or Josef Stalin and his buddies  in the good old USSR and Eastern Europe  for   decades…..or even some folks on the Left in the American Congress.

Bullies abide by  law only when politically necessary for it is the bully who is maneuvering to become  the law.  Democracies and their bureaucracies, and other less bully establishments  usually are at sea when confronted by these thugs.  Almost always they slip into pretend mode and either buy them off or insist the freer thinking, more honest parties are  mistaken or are  the enemy of peace.  

In America with its college student president , we are told America creates the bully thugs.  If we were a poorer peoples, they tell us, by being taxed more and send our earnings  to the rest of the world, the bullies would disappear.  

Most bullies in America run the federal workers’ unions.  Most buy votes for the Democrat Party.

North Korea is an experienced  brat-bully on the world scene brandishing a gun or two in front of the girls on the playground who want to be left alone.   It is one of the world’s many  Marxist brat-bullies.

Stratfor is an excellent source for those in the non-bully world to find out what is going on…..without this angle or that persuasion dotting every  ’i’ and crossing every  ’t’.

Do inquire at Stratfor for further information.  

“Is North Korea Moving Another Red Line?”

“The incident is the latest in a series of provocations by Pyongyang near the NLL this year following the sinking of the South Korean warship ChonAn in March. Over the past several years, the NLL has been a major hotspot. While most border incidents have been low-level skirmishes, such as the November 2009 naval episode, a steady escalation of hostilities culminated in the sinking of the ChonAn. The Nov. 23 attack on the South Korean island of Yeonpyeongdo represents another escalation; similar shellings in the past were for show and often merely involved shooting into the sea, but this attack targeted a military base. It also comes amid an atmosphere of higher tensions surrounding the revelation of active North Korean uranium enrichment facilities, South Korea’s disavowal of its Sunshine Policy of warming ties with the North and an ongoing power succession in Pyongyang.

Over the years, North Korea has slowly moved the “red line” regarding its missile program and nuclear development. It was always said that North Korea would never test a nuclear weapon because it would cross a line that the United States had set. Yet North Korea did test a nuclear weapon in October 2006, and then another in May 2009, without facing any dire consequences. This indicates that the red line for the nuclear program was either moved, or was rhetorical. The main question after the Nov. 23 attack is whether Pyongyang is attempting to move the red line for conventional attacks. If North Korea is attempting to raise the threshold for a response to such action, it could be playing a very dangerous game.

However, the threat North Korea’s nuclear program poses is more theoretical than the threat posed by conventional weapons engagements. Just as it seems that a North Korean nuclear test would not result in military action, the ChonAn sinking and the Nov. 23 attack seem to show that an “unprovoked” North Korean attack also will not lead to military retaliation. If this pattern holds, it means North Korea could decide to move from sea-based to land-based clashes, shell border positions across the Demilitarized Zone or take any number of other actions that certainly are not theoretical.

The questions STRATFOR is focusing on after the Nov. 23 attack are as follows:

• Is North Korea attempting to test or push back against limits on conventional attacks? If so, are these attacks meant to test South Korea and its allies ahead of an all-out military action, or is the North seeking a political response as it has with its nuclear program? If the former, we must reassess North Korea’s behavior and ascertain whether the North Koreans are preparing to try a military action against South Korea — perhaps trying to seize one or more of the five South Korean islands along the NLL. If the latter, then at what point will they actually cross a red line that will trigger a response?
• Is South Korea content to constantly redefine “acceptable” North Korean actions? Does South Korea see something in the North that we do not? The South Koreans have good awareness of what is going on in North Korea, and vice versa. The two sides are having a conversation about something and using limited conventional force to get a point across. We should focus on what the underlying issue is.
• What is it that South Korea is afraid of in the North? North Korea gives an American a guided tour of a uranium enrichment facility, then fires across the NLL a couple of days after the news breaks. The South does not respond. It seems that South Korea is afraid of either real power or real weakness in the North, but we do not know which.

Read more: Is North Korea Moving Another ‘Red Line’? | STRATFOR

Why Are We Always Suckered By North Korea?

 The Wall Street Journal’s article by Michael J. Green and William Tobey had the verb, “fooled” instead of “suckered” in its title.   I think “suckered” suggets the more accurate tone.   Just my opinion…..but we are suckers, don’t you think?

“Over the past decade, intelligence analysts have consistently predicted North Korea’s path to nuclear weapons and noted the increasing evidence of its missile and nuclear proliferation. The failure has been that of policy makers and pundits who denigrated the analysis, ignored it, or clung to the fallacy that North Korea would abide by a denuclearization deal.

In 1994, Clinton administration negotiators acknowledged that North Korea might be experimenting with uranium enrichment, but they chose to focus on an agreement called the Agreed Framework freezing the North’s plutonium production at the Yongbyon facility. Intelligence agencies followed the uranium trail, but policy makers ignored it. As North Korea’s most senior defector, Hwang Jang Yop, told us in 2004, the regime negotiated the Agreed Framework with every intention of “confronting the U.S. with a nuclear deterrent” before the reactors were complete and inspections became necessary.

In 2002, the Bush administration received compelling intelligence about active North Korean efforts to procure the equipment and materials necessary for a highly enriched uranium (HEU) facility. The experts had put together multiple-source information like a Rosetta Stone in an amazing piece of sleuthing. The exact state of the program was still unclear, but estimates were that it could be up and running within the decade. This was right on target, as we now know.

The North’s clandestine HEU program was a blatant violation of the Agreed Framework, and in response the Bush administration suspended shipments of heavy fuel oil to North Korea. Critics immediately accused President Bush—not Kim Jong Il—of destroying the nuclear deal, even though the evidence demonstrated that the North had been assembling the HEU program since at least the 1990s.

By 2007, North Korea tested a nuclear device and the six-party talks were bogged down. U.S. negotiators were keen to shoehorn the talks back into the original Agreed Framework, with its focus on freezing the Yongbyon reactor, but the intelligence on the HEU program stood in the way. Negotiators set the issue aside, publicly and privately questioning the original assessment.

The New York Times and others aided this effort by reporting that the top U.S. intelligence expert on North Korea had “downgraded” his assessment on the North’s HEU program in testimony to Congress in February 2007. In fact, he was simply reporting that the U.S. knew less about it—not surprising given that Pyongyang was alerted to our insights and could better hide its efforts.

Meanwhile, North Korean negotiators warned our delegation in Beijing in March 2003 that unless the U.S. ended its “hostile policy,” Pyongyang was prepared to “demonstrate its deterrent,” “expand its deterrent” and “transfer its deterrent.” True to its word, Pyongyang did all three.

When stories leaked that the two of us were sent in February 2005 to inform Japan, Korea and China that uranium hexafluoride likely originating in North Korea had shown up in Libya, we were accused by outside experts and sources in the State Department of exaggerating the intelligence. After the CIA publicly noted North Korean complicity in a Syrian reactor construction project that Israel bombed in September 2007, the U.S. negotiating team successfully argued within the U.S. government to set aside the proliferation issue in order to focus on obtaining North Korean agreement on “verification protocols” to account for the plutonium at Yongbyon.

As a result, U.S. sanctions were lifted and North Korean illicit funds that had been frozen in a bank in Macao were returned, but no protocols were signed. Instead, North Korea conducted a second nuclear test. Meantime, evidence mounted that Myanmar was next in line seeking nuclear capabilities from Pyongyang.

It should be obvious by now that Pyongyang seeks acknowledgment as a nuclear state and intends to continue leveraging its proliferation threat to enjoy perpetual concessions from the U.S. North Korean officials have told outsiders that if America is concerned about proliferation, we should negotiate an “arms control agreement” with the North as mutual nuclear weapons states.

This would validate Pyongyang’s weapons status and leave the door open for repeated escalation of the North’s own weapons programs or proliferation, as U.S. credibility and deterrence steadily eroded. The existence of a highly enriched uranium facility makes this dynamic even more dangerous.

The Obama administration has said that the bombardment of Yeonpyeong is not a crisis, which is probably wise if the aim is to avoid granting the North even more leverage. On the other hand, it would be a colossal mistake to return to negotiations as if provocations are merely the price of doing business with Pyongyang. The focus right now should be on containment, interdiction and pressure. The inability to do so on a sustained basis until now was a failure of policy, not intelligence.”

Mr. Green served as a senior official on the National Security Council Staff from 2001-05 and is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Mr. Tobey served from 2006-09 as a deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration and is now a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Why Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals

 

By Dennis Prager (Archive) · Tuesday, November 23, 2010

According to polls — Pew Research Center, the National Science Foundation — and studies such as Professor Arthur Brooks’ Gross National Happiness, conservative Americans are happier than liberal Americans.

Liberals respond this way: “If we’re unhappier, it’s because we are more upset than conservatives over the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves.”

But common sense and data suggest other explanations.

For one thing, conservatives on the same socioeconomic level as liberals give more charity and volunteer more time than do liberals. And as regards the suffering of non-Americans, for at least a half-century, conservatives have been far more willing to sacrifice American treasure and American blood (often their own) for other nations’ liberty.

Both of these facts refute the liberals-are-more-concerned-about-others explanation for liberal unhappiness.

So, let’s look at other explanations.

Perhaps we are posing the question backward when we ask why liberals are less happy than conservatives. The question implies that liberalism causes unhappiness. And while this is true, it may be equally correct to say that unhappy people are more likely to adopt leftist positions.

Take black Americans, for example. It makes perfect sense that a black American who is essentially happy is going to be less attracted to the left. Anyone who has interacted with black conservatives rarely encounters an angry, unhappy person.

Why?

Because the liberal view on race is that America is a racist society. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, a black American must abandon liberalism in order to be a happy individual. It is very hard, if not impossible, to be a happy person while believing that society is out to hurt you. So, the unhappy black will gravitate to liberalism, and liberalism will in turn make him unhappier by reinforcing his view that he is a victim.

The unhappy gravitate toward the left for a second reason. Life is hard for liberals, and life is hard for conservatives. But conservatives assume that life will always be hard. Liberals, on the other hand, have utopian dreams. At his brother Robert’s funeral, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy recalled his brother saying: “Some men see things as they are and say ‘why?’ I dream things that never were and say ‘why not?’”

Utopians will always be less happy than those who know that suffering is inherent to human existence. The utopian compares America to utopia and finds it terribly wanting. The conservative compares America to the every other civilization that has ever existed and walks around wondering how he got so lucky to be born or naturalized an American.

Third, imagine two Americans living in essentially identical socioeconomic conditions. Both earn $45,000 a year, both have the same amount of debt on their homes and both have the same number of dependents. One seeks governmental assistance wherever possible; the other eschews any governmental help. Which one is likely to be the liberal and which one is likely to be the happier individual?

This is not a question only an oracle can answer. The one who yearns for governmental help is the one who is likely to be both liberal and less happy. Conservatism, which demands self-reliance, makes one happier. The more one feels that he is captain of his or her ship (as poor as that ship may be), the happier he or she will be.

A fourth explanation for greater unhappiness among liberals is that the more people allow feelings to govern them, the less happy they will be. And the further left one goes, the more importance one attaches to feelings.

It is liberal educators and liberal parents who have clamored for protecting young people from the pain of losing games. The liberal world came up with the idea of giving trophies to kids who lose; they don’t want their children feeling bad. Conservatives, on the other hand, teach their kids how to lose well. They are less worried about their children feeling bad.

A couple of years ago, I gave a speech on happiness to the students and faculty of a prestigious high school in the Los Angeles area. The subject was the need to act happy even when one isn’t feeling happy — because it is unfair to others to inflict our bad moods on them and because we will never be happy if we allow our feelings to dictate our happiness.

From what I experienced that day and learned later, liberal students and faculty generally loathed my speech; conservative students generally loved it (there was no conservative faculty to speak of). Why? Because conservatives are far more likely to be comfortable with the idea that feelings are not as important as behavior.

Those who know that feelings must not govern us, but that we must govern our feelings, are far more likely to be happy people.

The upshot of all this? There is an amazingly simple way to defeat the left: Raise children who are grateful to be American, who don’t complain, who can handle losing and who are guided by values, not feelings. In other words, teach them how to be happy adults.

 (Thanks to  Mark Waldeland for sending this Thanksgiving Day information about happiness.  And thank you Dennis for presenting the information in the first place.)

 

The Palin Presidential Run

John Hinderaker writes the following note about Sarah Palin  at  today’s PowerLine:

“The extent to which Sarah Palin–a non-office holder, the veteran of less than a single term as Governor of Alaska, an unsuccessful Vice-Presidential candidate who, polls tell us, incurs the disapproval of most voters–dominates the news these days is remarkable. If you run your eyes down the headlines of any on-line newspaper, you will most likely see multiple Palin stories. Take today’s Washington Post, for example: An Excerpt from Sarah Palin’s New Book (which is actually an anti-Palin cartoon), Sarah Palin’s “Snuff Film” Has Animal Rights Activists Angry, Who Will Be Next Year’s Bristol?, Attack on Michelle Obama Shows Palin’s Ignorance of History, Palin Fires Back at “Blue-Blood” Barbara Bush.

Is there any precedent for this level of obsession with a politician who, by any objective standard, should be a secondary figure at best? I can’t think of one in my lifetime. Consider the other losing Vice-Presidential candidates of recent years: Sargent Shriver, Bob Dole, Walter Mondale, Geraldine Ferraro, Lloyd Bentsen, Dan Quayle, Jack Kemp, Joe Lieberman and John Edwards. A couple of them I had to look up. Several were important for other reasons. But it would have been absurd to think of any of them dominating the headlines two years after losing their Vice-Presidential races.

Some say, of course, that Palin’s omnipresence is due to her unique political genius. Perhaps. But take another look at those Post headlines, which are pretty typical of the coverage Palin gets. I’m not sure it is a mark of genius to generate a steady stream of negative publicity.

Palin’s backers say that the Left constantly attacks her because it is afraid of her. I think most liberals detest Palin, but I don’t think they fear her. On the contrary, I’m pretty sure most liberals fervently hope that she will be the Republican nominee in 2012, and they put the spotlight on her in part because they think it weakens the GOP and the conservative movement if she is our most visible spokesman.

Liberals also are trying to promote the theme that there is a deep split in the Republican Party, and they use Palin for that purpose. In that regard, the most significant of the Post’s current Palin headlines is the one about her exchange with Barbara Bush:

In an interview Wednesday with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, Sarah Palin fired back at former first lady Barbara Bush, opting to make a class issue out of Bush’s comments earlier in the week. Bush told CNN’s Larry King in an interview that aired Monday that she hoped Palin would stay in Alaska. From Palin’s interview with Ingraham:

“I don’t want to concede that we have to get used to this kind of thing, because I don’t think the majority of Americans want to put up with the blue-bloods — and I want to say it will all due respect because I love the Bushes — the blue-bloods who want to pick and choose their winners instead of allowing competition,” Palin said.

This is the kind of intramural spat that the liberal media love to play up. It serves their purposes to portray the Republican Party as divided between “establishment” or “country club” Republicans and Tea Party upstarts led by Governor Palin. Some conservative activists are too willing to fall in with this liberal theme. In truth, there is not a single “country club” Republican among the party’s Presidential contenders, and there are precious few in Congress. I think Palin understands this, and I blame Barbara Bush for her gratuitous swipe at one of her party’s leaders. In some social circles, attacking Sarah Palin is more or less mandatory. But Mrs. Bush is a public figure, the wife of a former Republican President, and should not have advanced the interests of the Democratic Party by indulging in a cheap crack on the Larry King show.

Sarah Palin can be a great asset for the Republican Party and the conservative movement, but only if the Democrats’ plan to use her to create a needless schism in the movement fails. Palin has generally been scrupulous about not criticizing specific Republicans, but occasionally falls into stereotyped attacks on unnamed “establishment” Republicans. Worse, in my view, are the anti-Palin Republicans, some of whom talk about her as though she were a vampire to be warded off with a clove of garlic. Palin is not my first choice as a Presidential nominee, but so what? The conservative movement is not, and cannot be, a one-person show. Conservatives of all stripes need to resist the liberal media’s effort to stir up intramural brawls in our ranks.”

Comment:  Sarah Palin has already been a great asset for the Republican Party.   But, I  prefer she not run for the presidency in 2012 probably for the same reasons most reasonable conservatives offer.   She appears a  bit flighty in her energy and quick answers…..which is a minor human flaw, but a potential big one when it comes to national politics.

She is an ideal activist, wholesome appearing, attractive, quick thinking, genuine talking and believable as a good citizen, mother, female leader and doer.  She is a deep believing , living conservative. 

She is the antiHillary….especially in the world of honesty.  Hillary is butch, insensitive, robotic, sloganned, a bright mechanic of the feminized society, intolerant, touchy and bossy…..not at all feminine, not at all attractive, the humorless, American Krupskaya.   She commands the perfect female commander  profile sculpted by the butches who ran NOW for all those years, and their allies at university…….the Lesbian Ideal.

But, if the measure is to be based on the old adage, “Handsome is as handsome does”, Hillary is ugly…..her conniving, contriving, her lies, her tempers, her pretenses, her language, her phony smiles and laughs…..her memorizations…..she isn’t authentic.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is a paper doll right out of the pages of Soviet womanhood, vintage 1952.

Out of nowhere in 2008 explodes Sarah Palin, neither lady nor butch…..but female with all of the female attributes…..starting with charm and genuousness with a bit to tease and mystery added and with a million dollar, genuine smile……type AAA.    She is a woman, a mother, a wife and not a husband hater……nor does her husband want to run away from her.   She doesn’t have to play American…..she is one for all to see and admire……and in New York City, to hate.

Is Sarah flawed?…….yes, and aren’t we all!!    Vulnerable as a presidential candidate?…yes, and we saw her badly crippled by her media enemies two years ago.   Can she lead?…..yes as a campaigner for an idea, a cause, a person, but not for herself.  I believe she isn’t as commanding  a person for the job as Chris Christie. 

Obama is deeply flawed in so many categories, not least of which is his ignorance of the country he is supposed to lead.  He has no notable personality, no sense of humor,  and is manifestly dishonest and disingenuous.  Being a Marxist still makes him automatically abhorrent to  many voters.  But America is heading for deep, deep trouble over the next five years.  The country needs a true problem solver and inventor of sound, not flaky Obamalike solutions and knows how to sell ideas well.  Opponents to the  conservative candidate will be nasty and brutal in 2012.   I don’t think Ms. Palin can be called the antiObama, the one who merely by her  presence intimidates the flawed Obama.

We need a candidate who is better disciplined in finding the right solutions for and appropriate paths toward recovery as a Nation at this critical time  than the likeable Mrs. Palin. 

The goal essential to begin America’s recovery is the defeat of Marxist Obama and his followers…..Unity among Republicans will be key for the defeat of Obama must be excposing and complete.