Halfway through Sarah Palin's speech tonight at the RNC, people following the speech noticed she was deviating from the prepared text.
According to sources close to the McCain campaign, the teleprompter continued scrolling during applause breaks. As a result, half way through the speech, the speech had scrolled significantly from where Governor Palin was in the speech. The malfunction also occurred during Rudy Giuliani's speech, explaining his significant deviations from his speech.
Unfazed, Governor Palin continued, from memory, to deliver her speech without the teleprompter cued to the appropriate point in her speech.
Contrast this to Barack Obama who, when last his teleprompter malfunctioned, was left stuttering before a crowd unable to advance his speech until the problem was resolved.
Sarah Palin. Winner.
Don’t know if you watched it, but Palin’s speech was a Grand Slam!
They’ll be lot’s of comments on it in the press and the rest of the media, but I think that she’s Obama’s worst nightmare.She’s better looking, nicer, more articulate, smarter in a savvy way, funnier, and more deadlier than Hillary…..because she’s authentic.And because of all those elements, she’ll make John McCain shine more brilliantly than he possibly could with anyone else.
Peggy Noonan, who has a master's ability to see into the very essential essence of events, has some great comments on her in today’s WSJ……(once you get past Peggy's mea culpa's regarding her own open-mic faux pas). Read it here.....
BY JAMES GORDON MEEK AND DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Updated Wednesday, September 3rd 2008, 10:14 PM
ST. PAUL - Sarah Palin boasts she can take it - and boy, can she dish it out.
Stung by criticism that her resume is too thin to be Republican John McCain's vice president, and with her growing family under the media microscope, the Alaskagovernor lashed back at the "Washington elite" Wednesday night with an in-your-face defense of her small-town credentials.
"I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment," Palin told the GOPfaithful on Wednesday night in St. Paul.
"And I've learned quickly these past few days that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone."
"But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country," she said, bringing a roar of approval from delegates. MORE
ST. PAUL — Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska introduced herself to America before a roaring crowd at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night as “just your average hockey mom” who was as qualified as the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama, to be president of the United States.
Palin mounted a vigorous defense of her qualifications for vice president in her Republican convention speech, portraying her small-town experience as an asset, despite a grueling barrage of accusations that she isn't ready for the job.
Palin has been embraced by the right and pilloried by the left as a staunch conservative. But a look at her record in Alaska shows a politician more flexible in her ideology as she has juggled the needs of governing.
· Biden says criminal violations will be pursued · Democrats have issued subpoenas to Bush aides · 3 staffers have been held in contempt of Congress MORE
Monica Duffy Toft is associate professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Posted September 2008
Russia’s recent campaign against Georgia is a textbook example of how powerful states forged empires in centuries gone by. For those who have forgotten, here’s how it’s done.
MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/Getty Images
Imperial throwback: A detail of a replica of the famous Russian painter Ilya Repin’s workThe Federal Assembly Session, created by Sergey Kalinin and Farid Bogdalov, shows Vladimir Putin (R) dressed as the czar.
Empires like the one Moscow has embarked on creating in this century proved an abject failure in the last. In fact, the colonial and imperial project has been recognized as folly for so long by so many that few today even recall how to go about building an empire. So for those who have forgotten, allow me to offer the recipe.
An empire requires three key ingredients.
First, find a neighboring national minority that can be used as a pretext for intervention. The character of the national minority—be it racial, linguistic, or religious—is less important than that it reside within a state which is relatively defenseless as compared with one’s own. The Ossetians and the Abkhaz have always been friends of Moscow, so absorbing them is far less perilous than, say, incorporating nationalistic Georgians or Ukrainians. Empires understand this, which is why they invariably settle their own populations in the region to not only administer the territory, but serve as a ready cadre of loyalists (à la French pied-noirs in Algeria).
Second, it is absolutely essential that the empire builder have regional military dominance. Such dominance will dissuade others who might be tempted to come to the aid of the unhappy host of the aforementioned neighboring national minority. In the past, possessing artillery was enough, but air power dominance became essential in the mid-20th century. In the current era, it’s nuclear weapons. Add a pinch of insecurity: If you can make the case that you need to acquire a bit more territory because you’ve been assaulted or abused in the past, this will help a great deal. Given Russia’s nuclear arsenal and its military punch in the region, the international community can hardly pry it from its new territorial possessions.
Third, the empire builder also needs something others want. Cash is always a good option. If not cash, then something easily convertible, such as gold, diamonds, or, if the states with the highest capacity or will to intervene are energy importers, energy (gas, petroleum) will do. Russia’s strategy of forming only bilateral agreements with energy-dependent European states is a classic divide-and-rule approach. Unless energy prices drop precipitously or Europe finds other suppliers, Europeans have scant leverage.
Once you’ve assembled your ingredients, it’s time to start cooking up trouble............MORE.....
Would you trust Sarah Palin to negotiate with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions?
Well, why not?
Palin came into the governor's office and found a mess on her desk. The oil deal struck by defeated Republican governor Frank Murkowski wasn't working. Through creative accounting by big oil and ambiguous reporting standards, the Murkowski plan just wasn't giving the State of Alaska the pay-off that was expected. So the former mayor of Wasilla (population 9,000, as the MSM always points out) demanded that the agreement be renegotiated and the terms be nailed down. They laughed when she sat down to negotiate, but in the end she had a new deal that delivered 50 percent of the oil revenues to the Alaska Permanent Fund, and enabled Palin to send a check for $1,200 to every qualified Alaskan citizen.
So enter the PTA community organizer from Wasilla. Without preconditions she took on a company that has a market cap of $205 billion and annual revenues of $291 billion in worldwide operations. Its budget is larger than that those of most sovereign countries, yet she won on her terms. If she can outsmart BP, the company that started the Middle East conflict, she can easily outsmart Ahmadinejad, if need be.
Then to follow up that act, she got the Alaskan Legislature to approve development of the TransCanada gas pipeline, a $40 billion deal that will go 1,715 miles from the treatment plant at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to the Alberta hub in Canada, from which it will be transferred to the United States. This project had been sitting around for 30 years on hold because the big energy companies didn't think it would be profitable, and their corrupt cronies in the legislature obediently kept it on the shelf. Crusading against corruption and negotiating across the aisle, Palin not only got it passed in record time, but opened up the bidding when the U.S. companies were reluctant to jump in. So she went ahead and awarded the contract to low-bidder TransCanada Alaska, a firm that has already built 36,000 miles of pipelines in North America. As a final fillip, the Governor signed the bill at the Alaska AFL-CIO biennial convention.
While Barack Obama's solution to the energy problem is to urge us to check the air in our tires, Palin's solution is to start building a $40 billion gas pipeline, without Federal government assistance. MORE...
It has been interesting the past few days listening and watching the various talking heads (and some family and friends) assess Sarah Palin (but in fact, really using the opportunity to critique John McCain). McCain's selection of her was so outside even the peripheral vision of the media, that their surprise at the choice seems to leave them no option but to criticize his vetting process. The bottom line on evaluating his process and selection will come in November. Thomas Lifson, in the American Spectator, has a critical eye on the media's conundrum situation.......
ByThomas Lifson
Liberals have long lamented the existence of two nations in America. They are right to do so today, but in a way they never meant. It is not the divide between rich and poor which soon will be causing serious pain on the left. Sarah Palin's pending nomination for Vice President is exposing the depth of the cultural divide between Middle America and the leftists who have taken over the education, media, and cultural establishment of our country.
The announcement of Palin's selection by Senator McCain last Saturday reportedly triggered outright laughter in newsrooms across the land, a nearly unanimous opinion that she would be a disaster for McCain. To the sort of people who believe themselves sophisticated citizens of the world and feel a sense of pride at saving the planet by purchasing carbon offsets, a woman who has borne five children is incomprehensible. Add in moose-hunting, a champion snowmobiler husband and a pregnant 17 year old daughter, and the phrases "white trash" and "trailer trash" are deployed.
A desperate race is underway, with the liberal media scampering to define Sarah Palin to the public as a dangerous religious fanatic and naïve hick, some kind of back woods primitive incapable of effectively discharging the awesome job of president, soon to be thrust upon her as John McCain expires right after his inauguration. Tonight, Governor Palin will have her opportunity to speak directly to the American people, and thanks to the blizzard of critical coverage, she will be no doubt attract an enormous audience.
ticated citizens of the world and feel a sense of pride at saving the planet by purchasing carbon offsets, a woman who has borne five children is incomprehensible. Add in moose-hunting, a champion snowmobiler husband and a pregnant 17 year old daughter, and the phrases "
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