Gov. Palin greets supporters at C4P Meetup

These Associated Press guys are sharp as a tack, aren't they?
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Heh, AP just reported that Sarah Palin made a "surprise" appearance at a suburban Des Moines restaurant:

And she was greeted there Friday night with chants of "Run, Sarah, run!"

Hundreds of fans jammed into the Iowa Machine Shed, with the backroom of the farm-themed restaurant overflowing, as people from as far away as Texas, Florida and California strained for a glimpse of the former Alaska governor.

Accompanied by her husband, Todd, she worked the room, shaking hands, posing for pictures and hugging babies.

That would be the Conservatives 4 Palin Meetup, AP. And Gov. Palin, like Elvis, has left the building, without making a speech. That comes tomorrow.

- JP

SarahPAC: About that Hard-Working Governor Behind the Emails...

"We need your help collecting and archiving excerpts."
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The folks at SarahPAC know a good idea when they see it:

Conservatives4Palin.com has come up with the great idea of encouraging readers to do their own archiving of Governor Palin’s emails:

Setting the Record Straight: About the Hard-Working Governor Behind the Emails

The media went crazy thinking they were going to find a smoking gun on Governor Palin by forcing the State of Alaska to release 24,199 pages of email communications during her time in office. They were wrong and have admitted as much. After the media spent so much time and effort, they discovered no “bombshells,” which of course they were hoping for all along....

The media is cherry-picking small excerpts to highlight, but they are leaving the bulk of the 24,199 pages out of their reports. That’s where you come in…

We need to gather links from the email database that prove what kind of leader Governor Palin really is. We need to find the stuff the media doesn’t want the public to know about. We want to show the stuff they aren’t reporting but is still available online. The media wanted to “expose” what kind of executive Governor Palin was while in office… So, let us oblige them! We need your help collecting and archiving excerpts.

Read more here about how you can get involved. We encourage everyone to join in. We'll link to the finished results here.

Sauce for the goose and sauce for the gander.

- JP

David Riddick: A tectonic shift in the Telegraph's coverage of Gov. Palin

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David Riddick, C4P's contributor from across the big pond, detects what he says is a tectonic shift in the London Daily Telegraph's treatment of Governor Palin by two of their Stateside correspondents, Alex Spillius and Toby Harnden:

Spillius and Harnden, even though residents in the USA have never, to my knowledge, made any attempt to use actual shoeleather to research Palin or sought to arrange an interview. Instead they have been content to parrot talking points from the NYT and WaPo or dinner party put downs from the great and the good of the Beltway.

But that video has affected the mercury in the political barometer.

Citing Spillius' latest offering, The Aged P explains the importance of such articles:

Firstly, for the Brits, it allows a foreign audience to see Palin as a serious political figure rather than a one minute wonder out of a Jerry Springer show.

But it has a much deeper significance for the USA. Spillius, Harnden and Co. purvey gossip and rumour from the political players of DC and their hangers on. For Spillius to write something like this means that there has been a shift of the tectonic plates.

Washington has started to take Sarah Palin much more seriously – and it’s beginning to show.

Read David Riddick's full post at Conservatives4 Palin.

- JP

Doug Brady on Alaska Judge's Smackdown of Andree McLeod

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Doug Brady at C4P comments on Monday's decision by an Alaska District Court judge to deny Cloward-Piven practitioner Andree McLeod's appeal of a ruling denying yet another of her numerous records requests:

The Court's verdict has fully vindicated Todd Palin's role as a close advisor and First Gentleman or, as we've come to know him, First Dude of Alaska. None other than serial ankle-biter Andree McLeod and her left-wing attorney Donald Mitchell (whom the court chastised in subsequent footnotes for multiple rule violations), claimed that by copying Todd Palin in any government related email, the Office of the Governor "waived" the deliberative process privilege and that therefore all the emails should be publicly released.

Not surprisingly, The Court didn't buy this absurd argument and, in meticulously reviewing Alaska law, federal law, and the common law, resoundingly rejected Mitchell and McLeod's meritless arguments. They even went so far as to say that McLeod's team "ignored reality and common sense."

[...]

The Court concluded that "common sense and Federal law require finding that Todd Palin could properly have acted as an advisor to the Governor."

Doug observes that while it is common knowledge among Sarah Palin's supporters that ignorance of reality and common sense is a classic symptom of leftism in general and Palin Derangement Syndrome in particular, it is now duly recorded in the annals of the Alaska state judicial system. Read his full commentary at Conservatives for Palin.

- JP

Lessons in Blogging

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There are lessons in blogging here and here. Some of the lessons may not be quite the same ones as the instructor had in mind:  
 
When you stand up for Sarah Palin and respond to unfair attacks on her with a point-by-point discussion of issues, don't expect a rebuttal in kind. Rather, expect an attack on your character, just like Sarah Palin's character has been attacked. Also expect the attacker to cloak the attack with words to the effect of, "now I'm not suggesting you are any of these things, but I've been told these things about you."

Your attacker will also attack your blog, call it a "fan" blog and hold you accountable for all of the comments your readers make on your site. Just because you support a particular candidate or potential candidate, you are a fan, not a supporter who made the decision to support a political figure based on that person's record and good character, as well as his or her stated and demonstrated positions on the issues.

Call us whatever names you wish to. Attack our character, and attack our blogs. It will not deter us from responding to attacks on Sarah Palin which we consider to be unfair. When we see them, if we have the time and resources to do so, we will call out those who make such attacks.

Sometimes a little good can come from a bad situation. In times past, Texas for Sarah Palin and Conservatives 4 Palin haven't always been on the same chapter and verse. While we share many of the same goals, we have taken different paths to try to accomplish them. There have been some arguments and strained relations between the two blogs.

But over the more recent months, the two blogs have been moving closer to one another. It began when we put our differences aside and cooperated in a common fundraising effort for Gov. Palin's defense fund. More recently, we have exchanged links and each website has begun to acknowledge some of the posts which have been published on the other.

With the recent attacks on both TX4P and C4P, I stand in solidarity with my colleagues at C4P. Both blogs have been fierce defenders and supporters of Sarah Palin. From now on, when C4P or any other Palin support blog is attacked in an unfair manner, I will rise in support of that blog, blogger and contributors.

Perhaps the best thing to come out of this entire dustup is that it serves as a reminder that Palin and Palin-friendly bloggers have a golden opportunity to at last become a true community of websites which will focus on those things that unite us rather than those which divide us.

We don't enjoy engaging in blogwar with any bloggers with whom we share common beliefs, common principles. So this will be my final words on the latest dustup. I agree that we all have more productive things to do with our time and our websites. As a step in that direction, I will accept that responsibility for the comments readers make on my blog. I am removing all comments from recent posts which only served to escalate the war of words. Perhaps other steps can be taken, and perhaps we can all ratchet down the hostility. I hope that we can all move on to what should be our common purpose -- defeating the radical leftists who have taken over one major political party, are working to manipulate the other major party and to transform this nation we all love into what is the antithesis of the republic the founders sacrificed all they had to establish.

- JP

Some advice for former McCain campaign staffers.

My RedState.com colleague Moe Lane lays it out for you:

"If you are a McCain staffer who did not talk to VF, I suggest that you find some way to demonstrate that you aren’t one of the people in the first paragraph. Because until we know who talked, the default assumption is going to be that you may have talked. This will not wreck your career, but it will blight it if the base has anything to say about it. On the bright side, a simple and declarative denial will do; of course, if your denial is a lie and we catch you at it, brush up on your typing skills."

Remember, RS is an activist site. So is Conservatives for Palin. I don't speak in any official capacity for either one. But believe me when I tell you that you really don't want either or both to mobilize against you.

It's time to go on the record. We're waiting to hear from you.

Update: Is it time to call up the troops for a revival of Operation Leper? Stay tuned...

- JP

Bloggers raise money for Palin defense fund

A coalition of bloggers is appealing to supporters of Gov. Sarah Palin for donations in a week-long effort to raise more than $500,000 to help her pay her legal bills.

Spearheaded by web site Conservatives4Palin, the bloggers launched their fundraising webathon Monday in a coordinated effort to help retire the Alaska governor's legal debts.

The webathon is using professional-quality videos which call the ethics complaints filed against the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate "petty politics and frivolous attacks" and a "thermometer" graphic that displays how close the bloggers are to reaching their goal.

The legal fund, called the Alaska Fund Trust was created in April to cover Governor Palin's expenses in defending herself against those allegations.

In a telephone interview with Anchorage television station KTUU Monday, Fund trustee Kristan Cole says the webathon is having an impact:

"Any time the governor is mentioned, the volume goes up tremendously and so the volume -- given this new information going out this morning, and the videos that are on the Web site -- we have seen the volume go up tremendously as we do anytime the governor is mentioned,"

According to the thermometer graphic displayed on the bloggers' websites, $54,645, or about 11 percent of their goal of $500,000, was raised on the first day.

"We are happy to help in any way that we can," Rebecca Mansour, one of the site's main contributors, said. "This is a completely grassroots effort. We are just trying to get the message out just to help them advertise."

Although Cole declined to say how much money has accumulated in the fund so far, she said the fund's first disclosure report, scheduled to be released next month, will reveal that information.

- JP