Allahpundit has an excellent article about all the Presidential-prep stuff Sarah Palin is doing, and some of the normal Presidential-run stuff she’s not doing. Do read the whole thing, but to boil it down – she’s getting together the means of a massive, grass-roots campaign, spreading campaign cash around in key States, but she isn’t building the normal political infrastructure of a campaign. Is she getting in? Is she just thinking about it? Or is she just getting in to it differently than most establishment candidates?

As for me, I’m still not sure she’s in. There is certainly a lot of prep work being done, but I still don’t see the definitive information which would make me think she’s going to go for it. In fact, of all the 2012 prospects, Mitt Romney is the only person I count as “in” (and even he’s still got some wiggle room to gracefully withdraw if the polls in mid-2011 don’t favor him).

On the other hand, as I’ve said before, if Palin runs, she gets the Republican nomination. To be sure, a great deal of the GOP establishment would be against her (but not all, she’s built some bridges to some parts of it) and the MSM would go in to an orgy of anti-Palin screeches…but, she’d win it, if she sought it. Only someone more “outsider” than Palin could take it away from her.

The fact that the liberal establishment entirely and the GOP establishment partially despises her is the key to understanding why she’d win: the people are heartily sick of the establishment. Allahpundit notes that a lot of GOP prospects are setting up to run on a “competence” platform against Obama’s manifest failures. A good idea, but it doesn’t capture the mood of the electorate, especially the GOP electorate. Obama was said to be competent – he was going to replace the supposedly incompetent Bush, remember?

What is wanted is someone who will be on the side of the people – just as the Democrat primary in 2008 revolved around who was least like Bush (and that was why I picked Obama out as the Democrat nominee as early as September of 2007), the 2012 GOP primary will revolve around who is least like the people in government. Romney has many good points; so does Pawlenty. Mitch Daniels has been a superb governor of Indiana. Any one of them, nominated by the GOP, would get my enthusiastic support against Obama – but can any one of them credibly present themselves as outsiders who will go to DC to clean out the crooks who have wrecked our nation?

Not hardly. To find someone with her ability to do this, you’d have to go to Christie in New Jersey (the only man, I think, who could possibly derail Palin in the primaries), or to Allen West in Florida (but he’s not even managed to win a House seat…his time will come, but not before 2016, at the earliest). Outsiders. Anti-government. People vs Powerful. The Second American Revolution.

That is what 2012 will be – and if Palin runs, she wins.

From Fox News:

The six-month election recount that turned former “Saturday Night Live” comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

That’s the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.

The final recount vote in the race, determined six months after Election Day, showed Franken beat Coleman by 312 votes…

It was clear, early on, that Democrats were doing a replay in Minnesota of what they had done in 2004 in Washington – a close race with the Democrat slightly behind, and they just kept finding votes until they had enough to put the Democrat slightly over the top. They also tried this in Florida in 2000, and failed.

The preservation of our democratic way of governance requires absolute security of the vote – there must never be even the slightest shadow of the doubt that the person holding the seat won it fairly. Right now, there is no such certainty in the 2008 Minnesota result and the only recourse is for the Senate to expel Franken and thus allow the people of Minnesota to use their constitutional means of selecting a Senator to legitimately hold the seat.

A new, fair ballot would be the best means – even if it ends up returning Franken to serve out the rest of his term (though he should be thoroughly investigated to ensure he did nothing criminal as regards the 2008 vote). This is not a small issue; this is not just politics as usual – this is the viability of a government of, by and for the people. It doesn’t take many fraudulent elections before all of them are mere criminal conspiracies. We must do the right thing here.

Just can’t take the heat for what they’ve done.

From the New York Times:

In a private meeting with White House officials this weekend, Democratic governors voiced deep anxiety about the Obama administration’s suit against Arizona’s new immigration law, worrying that it could cost a vulnerable Democratic Party in the fall elections…

Which is correct. Poll after poll shows the American people strongly support Arizona’s actions. Given the number of hispanics in Arizona and the polls in that State, there is likely a large minority of hispanic voters who back the bill. Obama and his politicized Justice Department are gambling that stern action against Arizona will bring hispanic voters to the polls for Democrats in November – Democrat governors are realizing that even if this is the case (and its not a certainty, at all), it won’t be enough to overcome the level of voter support for the measure.

Obama is playing this as if the 2008 result meant that the American people had openly opted for leftist governance. He seems to have forgotten that his win was predicated upon running away from overt leftism – he won, as it were, as a post-partisan healer who could bring the reforms so long sought by the American people.

Running center and governing left has turned the Democrat’s massive 2008 victory to ashes – now sensible Democrats are seeking to reduce the damage. Obama, on the other hand, is doubling down – and could be turning a bad loss in November in to a political catastrophe.

Question: Is Obama smart enough to see it? Is he humble enough to accept reproof from his peers?

Time will tell.

From Catholic Exchange:

If the average Kenyan knew that their favourite son, Barack Obama, had declared June the Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender Pride Month, they would simply not believe it. Nor would they believe that in his proclamation for Fathers’ Day, he’d said that nurturing families comes in many forms, including being raised by two “fathers” – even if neither of them is the true father.

To top it all, Hillary Clinton recently told “LGBT members of the State Department family” that gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay and that her first concern for Africa is how LGBT persons are treated on the continent. “Our regional bureaus are working closely with our embassies on this issue. The Bureau of African Affairs has taken the lead by asking every embassy in Africa to report on the conditions of local LGBT communities. And I’m asking every regional bureau to make this issue a priority. ”

This was greeted with thunderous applause in Foggy Bottom. But I wonder if she would dare to make this announcement in Nairobi…

Thought we were supposed to respect “the other”? Ah, who am I kidding? We know darn well that “multi-culturalism” only applies to kowtowing to foreigners who threaten to behead people. If you’re not a violent Islamist, then your culture and values are something to be ground down by the global left. Anyone want to take bets of whether or not Hillary will say that advancing gay rights is a priority in Saudi Arabia?

The hypocrisy of the left is only matched by its dishonesty. Lecturing us on consumption, they fly first class to swank resorts. Lecturing us on respecting foreigners who refuse to integrate in to our society, they then turn about and demand that foreigners toe the liberal line.

My view: I think I’ll let the Africans work it out for themselves. You know, having a deep and abiding respect for the people of that continent who have suffered so much and yet retained strong families, sustain a rapidly growing Christian culture and remain cheerful in the face of adversity Americans have never seen.

In fact, I see a time when we here in America might learn a bit from the Africans. I look forward to the redemption of a promise made by a Kenyan priest to my parish – that they are so overflowing with seminarians that we will soon have our shortage of religious orders filled by enthusiastic Africans. And maybe a few of them will be able to spare the time to instruct Hillary Clinton in how to respect other cultures.

From the New York Times:

The sovereign debt crisis would seem to create worry enough for European banks, but there is another gathering threat that has not garnered as much notice: the trillions of dollars in short-term borrowing that institutions around the world must repay or roll over in the next two years.

The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund have all recently warned of a looming crunch, especially in Europe, where banks have enough trouble raising money as it is.

Their concern is that banks hungry for refinancing will compete with governments — which also must roll over huge sums — for the bond market’s favor. As a result, credit for business and consumers could become more costly and scarce, with unpleasant consequences for economic growth…

This is why Keynesian pinheads are calling for more money printing by central banks. Desperate to avoid a liquidity crisis which will simply crush the world economy at a blow, banksters and bureaucrats are hoping to sucker the world in to picking the pockets of the working poor and middle class for another round of banker bail outs. I bet they get at least part of what they want – they will steal more from us, but I don’t know if they’ll muster the political will to fend off the crash for, say, another year.

And “fend off” is all they can do – they can’t stop it. The fact of the matter is that there is too much debt. Heck, there was too much debt before the 2008 crash, and all we’ve done since then is pile huge amounts of new debt on our economic grave yard. The more they do this, the worse the crash will be, the longer it will last and the longer it will take to build our way out of it.

So, they might get part of what they want and they might put off the day of reckoning by six months. Or, they might not – so much debt has to be rolled over that even a great deal of printing might not do the trick. It might, as it turns out, signal the collapse. Only time will tell on this – as we can’t audit the Federal Reserve, we don’t really know what they – and the rest of the world’s central banks – are up to.

There is not much we, the people can do about this at the moment. The party in power is made up of people who are blind to the facts, or bought by the banksters. We’re just along for the ride – but we can pledge ourselves to never allow this to happen, again. Debt is bad – and we must, in the long run, prohibit our government from borrowing against our future. That is the long-term financial fix.

The change we can believe in – from the Daily Caller:

…By all accounts, the president is starting small. Abengoa Solar, which received $1.45 billion from the Department of Energy, admits on its website that it will use the money to build a plant in Arizona that will create only 85 permanent jobs.

The company appeared to attempt to soften the news by estimating that “98 percent of the jobs…will be American jobs.”…

Whew! That was a relief, I was worried that as many as 3 of the jobs would go to foreigners!

This is the kind of ridiculous garbage Obama and his Democrats push – you just watch, if any Democrat Congressman had to vote on this, he’ll have ads out saying he “voted to provide ‘green jobs'”. No word on the cost, the number or, indeed, if they serve any larger purpose. Just money going out really in the form of bribes, all designed to advance an agenda and protect a political party.

November can’t come fast enough.

That was about 81 days ago, right? Three vacations in less than three months:

The first family’s summer vacation plans will include a trip to Maine.

The White House says the Obamas will travel next Friday to Mount Desert Island, which is home to Acadia National Park. There will be no public events for the president during the three-day trip…

Nice gig, if you can get it – more vacation than work. And, let me tell you, the air travel is really first rate!

This from the man who said he wouldn’t rest until the Gulf oil leak was fixed. Obama’s promises have all turned out to have an expiration date – and I guess as time goes on, that expiration date comes ever sooner. If he keeps going on at this rate, then a promise made in next year’s SOTU will be broken before the end of the speech.

HAT TIP: Gateway pundit

They just don’t get it, at all – from the Washington Post:

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, the “tea party” movement must be honored.

In an effort to replicate the tea party’s success, 170 liberal and civil rights groups are forming a coalition that they hope will match the movement’s political energy and influence. They promise to “counter the tea party narrative” and help the progressive movement find its voice again after 18 months of floundering.

The large-scale attempt at liberal unity, dubbed “One Nation,” will try to revive themes that energized the progressive grassroots two years ago…

First of all, its an incredible thing for the MSM to suddenly come ’round and say that the progressive movement has been “floundering” for 18 months. They aren’t “floundering” – they are doing precisely what they’ve wanted to do. That its unpopular with the people and a complete failure in practice is just a fact of life. This isn’t floundering, its failure.

Outside of that, the left also doesn’t understand that grass roots efforts must rise from the grass roots. No surprise they don’t get it – remember, our President was a “community organizer”. That is liberal-speak for “you’re not smart enough to figure out what you want or need, so I’ll graciously stoop to your level and tell you what to do”. To a complete leftists, there’s just no way to conceptualize a system in which regular folks set the agenda – regular folks don’t have what it takes to do it, in their view.

But, they are gravely threatened by a bunch of knuckle-dragging, toothless hicks in the TEA Party movement. They don’t understand how it came to be. Projecting from their own methods, they figure it simply must be the creation of some nefarious gathering of right wing groups. So, their program of countering the TEA Party is to “duplicate” what they think happened – and so we’ve got “One Nation” (one wag has already suggested that they take as their slogan “one people, one nation, one leader”…but “ein volk, ein Reich, ein fuhrer” has already been used. No doubt to the dismay of our progressive friends).

This will fail as badly as the absurd “Coffee Party” failed – and it has been noted that the WaPo article acts as if the Coffee Party idea never even existed. In the report, this is about the left finally starting to counter the TEA Party…as if they hadn’t gone through a half dozen expedients so far in the attempt to defuse the popular revolution embodied in the TEA Party. The left is alien to America because it doesn’t take in to consideration the fact that Americans run their own lives – or, at least, want very much to, if they can just get the government off their backs.

Found this video linked over at The Distributist Review and it is an excellent, short explanation of what our consumerist culture is all about.

The maker of the video seems to be of leftist ideology, at least to some extent, and so figures that the government should protect us from consumerism. This is a bit like asking a tiger to protect the sheep from the wolf. The only way to kill off consumerism is for a change of heart on the part of the people – a rejection of get-rich-quick; a rejection of mindless celebrities determining our judgments of good and bad; a rejection of borrowing money to pay for un-necessary items.

We’re in the soup not because of some nefarious plot – we’re in it because we eagerly jumped in to it. We wanted everything and we wanted it now – when some stupid ad came on telling us that we “deserve” some grand thing, we said, “yes”. Just as when some grafting politician said we needed welfare, social security, medicare and all manner of “free” government goodies we jumped at it. We need to jump back.

Change can happen, but it has to happen in each of our hearts – a humble begging of forgiveness for our errors, a determination to do better, and we’re half way there. It is up to us – we can choose to decline and die, or we can choose to advance and live. Its really all up to us.