Why Sarah Palin Makes Us Proud: Gumption

February is Sarah Palin Month, and a good time for blogging about this remarkable American. Another good source of regular news for Sarah's supporters is Texans 4 Palin, which I've been reading for a while and added to my blog list on the sidebar.


No one "embraces change" with the legitimacy that Sarah Palin does. Her history is of a woman who makes deliberate decisions that fit the needs of the future.

She is not shackled to yesterday's best plan, she's attentive to new information and is not surprised by the unexpected.

"The next campaign" is not her mindset. She neither runs nor holds office for her ego - she has been a candidate only at those places and times that running for office made sense as a movement toward repairing something broken. Her history proves her integrity: she stays always focused on making things right.

So when, as Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, she found that it was not sufficient to combat unethical behavior within the industry when questionable activities and ethical disinterest were rampant among the Republican party leadership, she did the ethical thing: she first resigned, and announced why. Then she filed good-faith complaints against those who were engaged in shady dealings.

And the minute she determined that the most fixable "brokenness" in the Alaska Governorship was the incessant filing of frivolous complaints against her in effort to push her off of the public stage, she elegantly and simply fixed two problems at once by doing the smart thing.

Just the way the Roadrunner would take a simple step to the right at the very last minute, and watch in bemusement as Wyl E. Coyote jumped right off the cliff.

The political class twittered that her resignation would be the "end of her career". They had no clue what her career was.

It wasn't - and isn't - "being a politician".

The media wanted to censor her, ridicule her, play her for a chump. From the White House Press Corps to JournoList, they bent their ethics to try to keep their "access".

She took a simple step to the right and made a Facebook page. Suddenly even the President was spending time explaining why he wasn't going to take advice from Sarah Palin.

There's access - and there's access.

Sarah Palin has the kind of access every ordinary American is born with. That's why she terrifies the Progressives. She's untouchable, and she is proof the species is not only not extinct, but is alive and thriving. A species of American that thrives without slogans, without marketing campaigns, and without "thought leaders".

A person whose self is whole and inviolable. Who can't be manipulated. Who doesn't seek favor from those who set her up for a fall and who then are angry that she's unaware of their ridicule. And she wouldn't be interested even if she were.

Sarah Palin's interest is not in "Being First Woman President". Her interest is in fixing a broken government. And she will never have to throw her hat into the ring again to do that. I hope she will - but she will only do so when it makes sense from inside her own home and her own head and her own heart as the surest means of fixing the broken stuff she's interested in fixing.

That's real integrity. That's real leadership. That's plain old American gumption.

And that's one reason why Sarah Palin is a Great American.


....

Photo: "Sarah in Pink Jacket at Villages Book Signing" from The Sarah Palin Information Blog Photo Gallery

God Bless The Weekend: Saving our Endangered Days Off Together

Those who wish to pretend that Christianity is not the root of all that is best in Western culture, or that America was not founded and formed as a Christian nation forget, or have not understood, that the Holy Sabbath mandated in the 10 Commandments is the only reason workers in the Western world have a day off every week - and workers in countries that never adopted Christianity as a majority faith still cannot expect to be given one day off to have for their own.

For thousands of years in Jewish and Christian societies, everyone - even the poorest, even indentured servants and slaves (before the Christian world - and no other - freed all slaves and set the precedent the rest of the world has not yet caught up with) - even in those times, everyone was entitled to a day off every week.

For centuries, American States had "Blue Laws" that prohibited the sale of certain non-essential merchandise on Sundays. These laws protected businesses from the need to compete for Sunday business, and were thus welcomed by merchants as well as their employees.

The concept of taking Saturday and Sunday together in the weekend as we know it arose in America in various locations where Christians and Jews united to respect both Sabbath and Shabbat. As Jewish immigration increased and the Industrial Revolution led to greater demand for constant labor, America's devout Jewish population needed the same protection for their religious observance. In the tumultuous early days of the 20th century, Jewish leaders joined with labor unions to promote the five-day work week - and the standard weekend - as a uniform practice across industry.

Consistent two-day weekends enabled people of all major American faiths (and those of other religions, and non-believers) to share this time off: Jews as well as Christians, Seventh Day Adventists as well as Baptists, Catholics as well as Mormons. All Americans could perchance meet each other through shared leisure time, and common endeavors for their free hours.

By assuring that the day off was the same for everyone and every class of people, a common culture promoted community, neighborliness, family life and time to rest, relax and enjoy life together.

The American Weekend is endangered: another unnoticed consequence of the persistent drive to de-Christianize the USA.
33 out of every 100 Americans has to work on Saturday or Sunday or both (according to a 2004 study on the detrimental effects of non-traditional work schedules). Those people, and their families, may "not mind" the schedule, but they lose out on the shared family and community leisure time and activities that are much of the joy in life.

If you have ever worked different shifts from that your spouse or friends work, or had to have different days off than the rest of the world, you know how much you miss out on. Not having Saturdays and Sundays off, or at least one of the weekend days, isolates us from everyone we care about.

In today's "not an employee" employment climate, where 40 hour work weeks and paid holidays or paid vacation are more rare than ever before, fewer and fewer can afford to take a day off without pay to make a short trip with their family, camp out overnight, or go to a wedding, or spend the day in the park playing volleyball.

So if you love your weekends, if you are "working for the weekend", and want to keep having Saturday and Sunday to spend with the people you love best, thank the Christian way of life, and thank your company for continuing to adhere to the traditional weekend.

You don't have to be a believer to save the weekend by supporting those businesses who close on Sundays, like McCoy's Building Supply Centers, Chick-Fil-A and Hobby Lobby, and those local businesses in your own town.

If you know of businesses that close on Sundays, feel free to post in the comments.

A Question About Tax Philosophy, and The State of The Union Address

Bear with me here. There's something that has bothered me all year, and I'd like to figure it out.

Suppose I believe that it's a good thing to pay taxes in order for the government to provide services that make our society a better place, and that in fact it is the government's job to do this.

Suppose, theoretically, that I've decried special tax deductions loopholes & tax shelters for the wealthy to prevent them having to pay the full allotment of tax due on their income and assets. Suppose I have built a career on supporting this outlook.

Let's suppose that my income for one year is already $5.5 Million, and of that, I will pay about 33% in taxes (including Self Employment taxes), which is about the same percentage that nearly every self-employed person will pay on their income, even those who only made $50 Thousand. So while it looks like a lot to say I paid $1.5 Million in taxes, it's actually not any more, percentage-wise, than, say, Joe the Plumber pays.

What if I were to have a windfall of $1 Million, and the current tax laws (which I claim are unfairly tilted toward the wealthy) will allow me to shuttle that money into my favorite tax-free charities without paying any tax on it.

In the process, I don't get a "charitable deduction", but I get something even better: I get lots of free publicity as a benefactor to these charities, and I don't have to claim the windfall as income.

If I chose not to use the loophole (which I have despised), and did claim the windfall as income, and then made the donations directly, I'd have to pay an extra $14,700. But, instead, I redirect it and "save" the money for the charities, instead of "giving" it to the government.

So in this fantasy, I, a millionaire several times over, who is campaigning to close loopholes and raise taxes on "the rich", take the loophole and avoid paying any taxes at all on $1 Million dollars.

Now, pretend all that is true, and that it isn't me, but the President of the United States.

Welcome to reality.

And 10 months after the one person in the entire universe who should be setting an example & willingly paying every penny in tax that could possibly be owed took the rich man's loophole and avoided paying a single penny of tax on the $1.4 Million Nobel Peace Prize, and took a Foreign Tax Credit of $59,000, while reporting an income - not net worth but one year's income - of $5.5 Million, Mr Obama came before the House for the State of the Union Address, and spoke thusly on 1/25/11:

"For example, over the years, a parade of lobbyists has rigged the tax code to benefit particular companies and industries. Those with accountants or lawyers to work the system can end up paying no taxes at all. "

"So tonight, I’m asking Democrats and Republicans to simplify the system. Get rid of the loopholes. Level the playing field."

"And if we truly care about our deficit, we simply can’t afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. "

"Before we take money away from our schools or scholarships away from our students, we should ask millionaires to give up their tax break. It’s not a matter of punishing their success. It’s about promoting America’s success."

Not even the conservative media picked on on this, at the time or any time since. The entire world seems to feel that avoiding paying taxes is ok as long as it is legal even if it is a trick or a "loophole", even if one is the Head Tax Collector. Even if one is the President of the United States and made a campaign of complaining about loopholes for the rich.

No it isn't illegal. It doesn't violate the rules.

But isn't this odd? Am I odd for thinking it odd?







Photo: a flock of wild turkeys in Central Texas

Hiding In Plain Sight, or, Self-Reliance is Alive and Well and Living in Real America

In "The Lost Demographic" Merv at Prairie Pundit shares an eye-opening article about statistical analysis that made me laugh out loud:

" About a year ago, executives at CNBC were alarmed to discover that they’d suddenly lost one-third of their audience. They couldn’t figure it out; news programming, as a rule, attracts the 25- to 54-year-old demographic.

"So the network delved into the data with the Nielsen Company and made a startling finding: That missing one-third was, in fact, still there. They were no longer being counted as viewers, because they’d turned 55.

“They had just turned invisible,” says Alan Wurtzel, president of research at NBC Universal. “ Read it all...

This says a lot about ... a lot. All analysis is dependent on the assumptions one starts out with. Data can be clean as a whistle and clear as a bell, the researcher can be smart as a whip, but if the operating assumptions are wrong, the results will always be as wrong as wrong can be.

And the production of valid assumptions can't be formulized. Effective assumptions are ultimately reliant on very non-scientific intuition, hunches, and educated guesses by people with a talent for seeing connections and thinking for themselves.

One writer with a talent for noticing the connections is David P Goldman, who, under his nom de plume Spengler writes in the Asia Times that "Longevity gives life to Tea Party":

"In fact, the Tea Party is a triumph of economic rationality over lack of talent: its reason for being is so compelling and so clear that it has succeeded despite the silliness of some of its candidates. ..."

"Elite commentators tend to dismiss the Tea Party as a mob of engaged boos. On the contrary, pollster Scott Rasmussen, reports, the Tea Partiers tend to be older than 45, married, wealthier and better educated than the general population, and concerned first of all with federal spending and deficits.

"The most important thing to know about such people is that there are more of them than ever before in American history." Read it all...

True grassroots events such as the Tea Party occur not because of group-think or external engineering - just the opposite, in fact.

The self reliant person is not a loner or a loose cannon, but a hero and a leader: one whose decision to stand or act is made by trusting himself to succeed, whatever it takes, without waiting for someone else to join in the task or tell him what to do. One who knows it is up to him.

The Tea Party is the result of multitudes of healthy, successful individuals independently looking at our national problems, independently reaching the conclusions that (1) their own assumptions are valid and (2) the mandated or reported group-think position cannot produce correct results because it relies wholly on inaccurate assumptions.

Once the assumptions are correct, then data analysis can begin to produce accurate results.

Making such an admission comes hard for people caught up in the sheepfold. But not for the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and the rest of us ordinary Americans of every color and heritage who are accustomed to thinking our own thoughts, selecting our own assumptions and doing our own research to reach our own accurate and trustworthy conclusions.

...And Pat Austin Blows It All Away

Leave it to an English teacher to show us how to use metaphor and simile properly. Pat leads by example and gives a good humored way to let the wind out of the " 'double barrel'effort of the left to paint every phrase and nuance as a cue to some nut job extremist or as a sign that Republicans are crazed gun toters "

Pat's latest post at "And So It Goes in Shreveport" is titled "Shooting from the Hip" and she lines up her targets and knocks 'em all down with the pragmatism only a high school teacher by choice can bring to the shooting match.

Great aim!

"You framed the imagery. Own it."

The media and progressives finally went too far. I'm a nice blogger. My little rants are polite, factual and reasonable. I don't call names and try not to embarrass or upset the people I love, including those dear to me who are progressive in their politics. I blog as a way of recovering and developing my own voice after years of writing as a corporate spokesperson, as a way of sharing things I think are important to my grandchildren, and mostly because I like to write.

I've been blogging about these persistent irrational calls for "civil discourse" for months, and my posts fell into the great unread ocean of opinion (except for, of all things, a marketing agency coordinating the campaign!). But now the media, the progressives in both parties, and the Democrat-controlled government have shown their hand, and the whole world sees their manipulation for what it is.

And now, thankfully, some other people have said it better than I ever could, in the wake of these progressive abusers' attempts to co-opt the death of decent Americans as an opportunity to further their own outrageous agendas.

Don Surber in The Daily Mail (Linked by Doug Ross ) article "I do not want civil discourse" writes:

"I have been screamed at for 10 years.

"It’s my turn now. I am not going to scream back. But I refuse to allow anyone to dictate what I say or how I say it. I refuse to allow the same foul-mouthed, foul-spirited foul people who dumped on me to now try to tell me what I may or may not say.

"My free speech matters more than the feelings of anyone on the left. You don’t like what I say?
Tough.

"I will not allow people to label my words Hate Speech or try to lecture me on civility. I saw the lefty signs. The left’s definition of civil discourse is surreal.” Read it all...


And back in November, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit gave a link to "Stop Shouting"'s "My Rebuttal to a Progressive who Admonished Me to Play Nice ...." who said she spoke only for herself, but whose words gave voice to us all. I have borrowed her words for the title of this post:

"I am tired of being told what I can and can not say.

"What is “acceptable”, while my ideas and values are mocked and trampled.

"Enough. I have had enough.

...

"Oh yes, your side “went there”. Not only was there no outcry about the “violent imagery”, there were claps and cheers of agreement.

"You framed the imagery. Own it."

The sanest man in America. P.J. O'Rourke, sees behind the curtain: "in the tremors and hysteria of the Times we’re seeing the sad end of liberalism."

The truth will out, always. And that is good news for the continued liberty of the American People.

````

Here are my own posts on the irrational "Civility" marketing campaign, and its blatant puurpose as a way of destroying conservative and legitimate free speech:

Friday, June 4, 2010
About That "Civility" Business
"The bores of Civility would so appreciate it if we would just wait in the hall until they call for us and mind our tone and trust them to make the best decisions for us. ..."

Sunday, July 25, 2010
The Progressive Habit of Firing People For Rumors About Their Opinions
"I don't know what this new system of facade management is called but American it is not...."

Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The Civility Mirror Crack'd
"How pitiful that Mr Leach was unable to speak of understanding others until after erecting a full set of barriers that exclude the vast majority of the world's population who still find value in contests of strength, in competition in business, in the capacity to achieve an effective deterrence and a successful defense - all engaging the "violence and aggression" that Mr Leach arbitrarily and specifically declares "of course unacceptable" as though there has been some recently attained great consensus of 8 billion people to simultaneously deny their natural, normal, healthy and essential humanity in favor of this year's emergent etiquette fiction."

Sunday, August 15, 2010
def·i·ni·tion: a statement of the meaning of a word
"We see this misappropriation of standard English words in many of the calls for "civility" - which itself has been co-opted to describe a peculiar system of "anger management" intervention rather than the full historical breadth of meaning - as these calls claim new objections to specific traditional words they want deleted from opponents' lexicon, yet do not establish a process that allows dissenters to impose similar restrictions on their own vocabulary. "

Sunday, January 16, 2011
Dr Martin Luther King Jr's Answer to Calls for Civility
"We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber."
Quote from Dr Martin Luther King Jr

Dr Martin Luther King Jr's Answer to Calls for Civility

On Calls for Civility:

"In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion?

"Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion?

"We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber."

Dr Martin Luther King Jr "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (1963)

On the Consitution, Freedom of Speech, and Freedom of the Press:

"All we say to America is, "Be true to what you said on paper." If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn't committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren't going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on."

Dr Martin Luther King "I've Been To The Mountaintop" (1968)

On Perspective:

"You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?" And I was looking down writing, and I said yes. And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman.

"I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, you drown in your own blood — that's the end of you. It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died.

"Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one
from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what the letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it.

"It said simply, "Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the Whites Plains High School." She said, "While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze."

"And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn't sneeze."

Dr Martin Luther King "I've Been To The Mountaintop" (1968)


Read up on the life of life of Dr. King. Try Barnes and Noble coupon codes for possible savings.