Game Changer

Will the battle of 2008 turn out to have been won on the playing fields of Alaska?

by Jessica Gavora
The Weekly Standard
http://www.weeklystandard.com/
09/15/2008, Volume 014, Issue 01

"Al I ever really needed to know I learned on the basketball court."

That's Sarah Palin, circa 2004, when she was merely, as the Obama campaign would say, "the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience."

More than once on her way to becoming a national political phenom as John McCain's running mate, Palin has said she owes it all to playing hoops. But she's not just talking about basketball.

She's talking about girls' basketball.

In Alaska.

In the seventies.

It was a time and a place before identity politics. Before feminists made young female athletes the bright, shiny faces of their graying crusade; before Nike cut treacly, black and white commercials featuring sweaty and empowered young women; and before the law mandated that all six-year-old girls, regardless of race, color, creed, or total lack of interest, strap on shin guards and spend each and every Saturday kicking around a #3 soccer ball.

I know because I was there. While Sarah Palin was calling plays as point guard for the Wasilla Warriors, I was posting low as center for the West Valley Wolfpack, just a few hundred miles north in Fairbanks.

It was a different world. We didn't play basketball to pad our college applications or fulfill some bureaucrat's notion of "gender equity." We played because the winters were long and cold and dark. There was nothing else to do. Maybe as a result, basketball was deadly serious business. Away games were played at the end of eight-hour bus rides or harrowing plane landings in frozen, remote villages. Our opponents were tough, and the fans were unforgiving. And even though the law that feminists like to credit with all female athletic success, Title IX, was then unenforced in high school sports, we girls wouldn't have dreamed of taking second place to the boys--nor did we.

Palin earned her now-famous nickname on the hardcourt--"Sarah Barracuda." Her enemies have tried to belittle her by pointing to her stint as a beauty queen, but it is clear that Palin's background in sports, more than any other experience, is what has made her the existential threat to liberal feminism (and possibly the Democratic ticket) that she is today.

In a basketball-crazed state, Wasilla was and is a basketball-crazed town. Palin, the Anchorage Daily News wrote when she was running for governor, was "practically canonized" for her role on the 1982 state championship team. It is a story she repeated often to the Alaska media as she made her name in politics: The Wasilla Warrior girls were the underdogs coming into the state tournament that year. Nobody thought they could win. But they beat squads from much larger Anchorage schools to capture the big prize.

As a candidate in Alaska, Palin sold herself unselfconsciously as a chick jock. In one op-ed, she went out of her way to set herself apart, as chick jocks like to do, from the supporting actors who are nonetheless the highest link in the high-school-girl food chain: the cheerleaders. She has never, she wrote, "been coordinated, peppy or dramatic enough to have ever been on a pom-pom squad."

"I know this sounds hokey," she told an interviewer in 2006, "but basketball was a life-changing experience for me." The problem for today's feminists is that the life lessons Palin learned from basketball have made her their biggest nightmare.

Instead of turning her into a gender-obsessed, hair-trigger enemy of the patriarchy, basketball taught Palin a different set of virtues: To insist on equal opportunity, not equal results. To know herself and what she is capable of. And to never, ever see herself as a victim.

Like a good politician, Palin pays lip service to Title IX, but the law that she supports is Title IX as it was originally written--a grant of equal opportunity for girls and women--not the quota law it has become.

Instead of teaching her to view the world through the prism of gender, as feminists would have it, sports taught Palin the opposite lesson. "Sports taught me that gender isn't an issue," she said shortly after becoming governor. "In fact, when people talk about me being the first female governor, I'm a little absent from that discussion, because I've never thought of gender as an issue."

The modern feminist theory of girls and women in athletics is that we are all lingering victims--even in 2008--of the patriarchy. The theory explains away girls' and women's lower interest in athletics with the assertion that years of being shut out of athletics (never mind that the years in question were four decades ago) have conditioned females not to like sports as much as men. It's not that we don't like to play sports as much as the guys, it's just that we don't yet know that we like to play sports as much as the guys. We need to be educated about our interests, and it is the government's responsibility to ensure that schools create women's teams--and/or eliminate men's teams--until we come to our senses and behave just like the boys.

Palin takes this theory of the victimized female, prisoner of false-consciousness, and drives a stake through its heart. She didn't need anyone to teach her that she was an athlete back in the seventies, and she won't allow anyone to call her a token female today.

For all their talk of the sameness of the sexes, what feminists want for female athletes today is preferences, quotas mandated by the federal government and handed out by schools. But what Sarah Palin has achieved no one has given her; she has manifestly earned it.

It's difficult to overstate how entrenched--and how male--was the political culture that Palin upended in Alaska. The state's governing Republican troika of Senator Ted Stevens, Congressman Don Young, and Governor Frank Murkowski (known simply as Ted, Don, and Frank) together had more than a century on the public payroll--in a state less than 50 years old--when Palin challenged Murkowski in the Republican primary in 2006. For decades, they had relied on the not-unpersuasive argument that failing to return them to Washington would be fatal to a small state like Alaska with only three snouts in the federal trough.

But it turns out that playing basketball taught Sarah Palin the importance of a quality more valuable than seniority: competitiveness. Instead of shrinking before the political machine that was responsible for delivering billions of federal dollars to the residents whose votes she sought, Palin challenged it head on. Not content with exposing her own Republican party chairman for ethics violations, she defeated a sitting governor of her own party and called the FBI investigation of Stevens and others for official corruption an "embarrassment" to Alaska.

"Competition defines and refines a person," she wrote in 2004. "Character is revealed. It's really nothing to be afraid of."

But liberal feminists are, in fact, afraid of Sarah Palin. For the first time, they face real competition in their claim to speak for women. For decades, feminist groups have insisted they are the voice of American women, when in fact they are the voice of a narrow, liberal fringe. It's an argument that has convinced the media and has cowed politicians of both parties. And it's an argument that Sarah Palin is busy blowing clean out of the water.

If she wins, that hissing sound you will hear will be the air wheezing out of modern feminism. And even if she doesn't win, she will have given America--and, more important, American politicians--the example of a female former athlete who knows who she is and what she wants and doesn't need Big Brother to protect her from the old boys network.

And to think it all began in a gym in Wasilla.

Jessica Gavora, a native Alaskan, is a writer and speechwriter.

Sarah Palin: True Grit

By George Marlin
http://thecatholicthing.org/index.php
Monday, 01 September 2008

When John McCain named Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, as his vice presidential running mate, I was sitting in New York City’s oldest saloon, Pete’s Tavern, watching with my father and four of his long-time friends.

The initial reaction of these retired city cops and longshoremen was positive. A gun-toting beauty queen, mother of five, married to a blue-collar union member and small business entrepreneur, who by hard work and audacity beat a corrupt political establishment – what’s not to like? They’d all be proud to have a granddaughter with these achievements.

While the octogenarians were nodding approval, I heard snickers from the white-collar lunch-time crowd. One woman said, “A mother of five? Guess there’s nothing else to do in Alaska besides making babies.” There were other snide comments about her hairstyle, eyeglass frames, and lifelong NRA membership.

The loudest snicker, of course, came from the Obama camp: “Today John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.”

I was not surprised. After all, during the primary season, Obama himself complained that small-town Americans embraced guns and religion out of bitterness. Obama and his inner circle make these gaffes because they suffer from the same disease as their party for half a century – elitism.

The Democratic Party that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s was dominated by social engineers who embraced Adlai Stevenson because he was, in Michael Barone’s judgment, “the first leading Democratic politician to become a critic rather than a celebrator of middle-class culture – the prototype of the liberal Democrat who would judge ordinary Americans by an abstract standard and find them wanting.”

Stevenson’s elitism and contempt for the blue-collar worker engendered a new generation of politicians whose roots were grounded not in the “fragmented local politics which Franklin Roosevelt and his contemporaries had grown up with,” but instead in the “centralized national politics which had grown up with the large central government produced by Roosevelt’s New Deal and wartime politics.”

Blue-collar workers, mostly Catholics, fled the party. Mario Cuomo explained that they “felt alienated by a new Democratic Party which [they] thought neither understood nor related to [them].”

The new generation of Democratic elites may underestimate the power Governor Palin brings to the Republican ticket – particularly among blue-collar, pro-life Catholics in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio, and among the pro-gun western states. One person who does not is the last woman nominated for vice president, Democrat Geraldine Ferraro.

The daughter of immigrant blue-collar parents, Ferraro was born in the small town of Newburgh, New York, moved to the Bronx at eight after her father died, and worked her way through college and law school. When nominated for vice president, she was forty-eight, the mother of three, and married twenty-four years.

Was Ferraro’s political resume a little thin as nominee? Yes. Previously, she had worked for her cousin, Nick Ferraro, as an Assistant D.A. and served only three terms in Congress representing “Archie Bunker” neighborhoods.

This did not stop Mondale from praising Ferraro as highly qualified. In fact, he boasted that “she had a strong family life, deep religious convictions, and working Americans of average income will find her a vice president who knows them and will fight for them.” The New York Times editorialized:

Where is it written that only senators are qualified to become President?...Or where is it written that mere representatives aren’t qualified, like Geraldine Ferraro of Queens?...Where is it written that governors and mayors, like Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco, are too local, too provincial?...Presidential candidates have always chosen their running mates for reasons of practical demography, not idealized democracy…. What a splendid system, we say to ourselves, that takes little-known men, tests them in high office and permits them to grow into statesmen. . . . Why shouldn’t a little-known woman have the same opportunity to grow?. . . .the indispensable credential for a Woman Who is the same as for a Man Who – one who helps the ticket.

For once, I side with The Times.

There is, however, one big difference: Palin is pro-life while Ferraro was pro-choice. Yet in a New York Post interview, Ferraro not only brushed off the claim that Palin was unqualified, but “reject[ed] the idea that all the so-called Hillary voters would be repelled by Palin’s staunch anti-abortion views. These voters know the Senate will have a veto-proof Democratic majority, so that lessens the potency of that issue.”

During this campaign, Senator Obama must be vigilant that he, his loquacious running mate, and his arrogant handlers do not make condescending remarks about Palin’s abilities. An off-comment can easily backfire and highlight Obama’s own scant experience and qualifications for high elective office.

I have no doubt Palin is up to the job. When State Senator Obama was, only few years ago, dodging sensitive votes in the Illinois Legislature to avoid political setbacks, Sarah Palin, unconcerned with the political fallout, was fearlessly taking down Alaska’s corrupt Republican establishment and Big Oil. And when Obama was sitting around fashionable Hyde Park in Chicago, philosophizing with the unrepentant Weather terrorist, William Ayers, Palin was in the Alaskan outdoors working with her hands, hunting bear and catching salmon to feed her family.

Palin will succeed because unlike the vainglorious Obama, she has true grit.

Average Americans will realize, as my father and his buddies did at Pete’s Tavern, that she is that rarity in politics – a real person who’s made it into office. John McCain hit a home run this selection of a representative of the silent majority, Sarah Palin.


- George J. Marlin is the author of The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact.

Crescent of Betrayal

By Jamie Glazov
http://www.frontpagemag.com/
Monday, September 08, 2008

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Alec Rawls, the author of Crescent of Betrayal, a soon-to-be published book about the giant Mecca-oriented crescent that the Park Service is planning to plant at the Flight 93 crash site in Pennsylvania . Given the urgent public need to know, WND books has allowed Mr. Rawls to make a preliminary draft of his book available for free download until the print edition comes out in 2009. Mr. Rawls is working with Tom Burnett Sr., father of Flight 93 hero Tom Burnett Jr., to stop the planting of the crescent. Helping them are about a hundred bloggers who post a weekly “Stop the Crescent Memorial” blogburst, usually written by Mr. Rawls.

FP: Alec Rawls, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Rawls: Great to talk to you. FrontPage does a great job exposing Islamist threats, so the memorial debacle is right up your alley.

FP: Tell us about what this Crescent is all about and how you got involved.

Rawls: Some of your readers will remember the original controversy that erupted when the winning Crescent of Embrace design was unveiled in September 2005. A publicity shot released by architect Paul Murdoch showed what appeared to be a bare naked Islamic crescent and star flag stamped atop the crash site. It is obvious when you see a side by side comparison of Murdoch's publicity photo and an Islamic crescent and star:

Original Crescent of Embrace publicity shot, left. Wikipedia's "typical" Islamic crescent and star, right, colored red and viewed from the same angle. The memorial plaza that sits roughly in the position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag marks the Flight 93 crash site. For the full original publicity shot, as it appeared in Pittsburgh Post Gazette, click here.

A set of five poster-sized design images were available on-line, and people started poring through them. Within two days, a group of commentators at the Little Green Footballs website had verified that the giant crescent actually points to Mecca. When I heard that, I had to verify it for myself, and actually refined the calculations a bit. I found that a person standing midway between the tips of the crescent and facing into the center of the crescent would be facing 1.8° north of Mecca, plus or minus a tenth of a degree.

If anyone wants to verify the Mecca orientation for themselves, it takes literally two minutes. Just use the Mecca direction calculator at Islam.com to print out a graphic of the direction to Mecca from Somerset PA (ten miles from the crash site). Place it over the crescent site plan on your computer screen and you'll see that the "qibla" line (the Muslim prayer direction) bisects the crescent.

A person standing between the tips of the crescent and facing into the center of the crescent (red arrow) will be facing almost exactly in the qibla direction (towards Mecca). Click for larger image.

A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a mihrab, and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. Some mihrabs are pointed arch shape, but the architypical mihrab is crescent shaped.

The planned memorial is actually a terrorist memorial mosque. Of the dozen typical mosque features, every one is represented in the crescent design, all on the same epic scale as the half mile wide mihrab. Laid out over three miles of property, this will be the world's largest mosque by a factor of a hundred. It is also full of terrorist memorializing features.

FP: This is mind-boggling. Who is behind all of this? What are the objectives of those who are orchestrating this? What is the meaning here?

Rawls: All I know about the architect is what he did. He proves intent by endless repetition of his Islamic and terrorist memorializing geometries. Clearly, he wants his accomplishment to be undeniable once it is a fait accompli.

Why would Murdoch want to build a memorial to al Qaeda’s heroes instead of ours? The most likely explanation is that he is on the side of al Qaeda. Flight 93 taught us the nature of our terror war enemies: that they hide amongst us, pretending to be trust-worthy friends. That fits Murdoch’s behavior exactly. I would guess that he converted to Islam at some point, became a radical Islamist, and is now acting as a freelance jihadi. But it is also possible that he is some kind of nihilistic leftist who just saw a chance to strike a blow against America and has the artistic genius to pull it off.

Murdoch is really not the hard part of the story to understand. We hosted an open design competition in time of war and literally invited the entire world to enter. Of course we should have expected that there would be entries from the other side, secretly aiming to memorialize the terrorists. Much harder to understand is the willful blindness of dozens of people now in government, academia and the media who are actively and self-consciously covering up evidence of an enemy plot. They don’t accept my conclusion that this is a terrorist memorial mosque, and use that as an excuse to lie about the evidence.

For instance, in February 2006 I talked to a reporter from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette—Paula Ward—who told me that she and other reporters had happened onto the several independent verifications of the Mecca orientation of the crescent when it was first discovered, back in September 2005. She told me that the newspaper held a special meeting of editors and reporters where the editors decided the Mecca-orientation discovery should not be published.

This would and should have been headline news across the country, and would have spelled the end of the crescent design. It would have been the second airplane flying into the Trade Center . With one airliner (the crescent and star flag configuration), people could think that maybe it was an accident. But everyone knew instantly when the second airliner hit the Trade Center that the nation was under attack. The Post Gazette made a conscious editorial decision to hide the second airliner hitting the Flight 93 memorial: the Mecca-orientation of the crescent.

That was a key moment. Instead of being exposed as an al Qaeda sympathizer, Murdoch was simply told to try to make his design look less objectionable. It’s like gate security catching a terrorist with a bomb and telling him to go back outside and see if he can hide it better the second time. All he did was add some completely irrelevant disguise.

The original crescent design was described as a broken circle. The so-called redesign is still described, right on the Park Service’s own website, as a broken circle. In the original, the broken off part was removed completely, leaving only the crescent. Now there is an extra arc of trees, floating out behind the mouth of the crescent, that explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle. The unbroken part of the circle (the crescent) remains exactly as it was. It is still a giant Islamic shaped crescent, still pointing to Mecca.

Animation superimposes the Circle of Embrace redesign on the original Crescent of Embrace design, then removes everything but the changes (flashing). To activate the animation, click here.

FP: Why is it important to stop this effort?

Rawls: The first thing is to stop an enemy plot. This is a symbolic attack on America , every bit as ambitious in its own way as the 9/11 attacks. The Wahabbists build mosques to claim territory. By claiming the Flight 93 crash site, Paul Murdoch is trying to turn Flight 93 into an al Qaeda victory.

But there is another reason to stop this besides stopping a national disaster. Exposing the re-hijacking of Flight 93 will give the whole country a shocking look at the truth suppressing culture of the mainstream left that has taken over the media, academia, the Democrat party, and much of our government bureaucracy. These people see everything in terms of what they think it is most advantageous for them to see, not in terms of what is really there. The litany of willful blindness to Murdoch’s plot will wake a lot of people up to how relentlessly dishonest our media has become. “They covered up what???”

This is a crucial lesson for America today, when the media is right now engaged in a massive cover up of Barack Obama’s suspect loyalties. For people to learn about Obama’s relationship with unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers, they have to watch a McCain ad. They’ll never hear about it from the mainstream media. Ditto for Obama’s Nation of Islam connections, or his close relationship with his Luo kinsman Raila Odinga, now Prime Minister of Kenya, who like Obama calls himself a Christian, but was revealed by Kenya ’s Muslim leaders to actually be a secret Muslim. He signed a secret Memorandum of Understanding with Muslim leaders where he recognizes Islam as the only true religion and promises to impose Sharia law, yet no mainstream western newspaper has ever reported that Obama’s kin and confidant is known to be lying about being a Christian.

If the media succeeds in keeping the truth about the Flight 93 memorial suppressed, it will be disgusting to have a terrorist memorial mosque stabbed into the heartland of America , but it won’t physically kill us. If the media succeeds in shepherding into the presidency a man of hidden loyalties who is sympathetic to Iranian nuclear ambitions, it will be putting a gun to our collective heads and pulling the trigger.

Flight 93 is supposed to be the symbol of our woken vigilance, yet those who are charged with the memorialization of Flight 93 are actively covering up the most explosive evidence of an enemy plot. If that can shock people into realization of how pervasively they are being deceived by our Democrat dominated institutions, it can raise the fighting spirit of Flight 93 itself. That is the ultimate objective here: to wake people up to the fight we are in, not just against our Islamofascist enemies, but also against the domestic soporifics who find it advantageous to pretend that Islamofascism is a smear instead of a reality.

FP: What can be done to stop this project?

Rawls: Expose what the truth suppressors are trying to suppress. One of things we have going for us is the immediately repulsive graphics released by the Memorial Project itself. Do we really want every visitor to the Flight 93 memorial to look up and see an Islamic crescent soaring in the sky above the symbolic lives of the 40 heroes?

This artistic rendering of the minaret-like Tower of Voices comes direct from the architect. The 40 wind chimes, literally dangling down below the symbolic Islamic heavens projected in the sky above, represent the lives of the 40 heroes.

That graphic ought to be front page news across America , but in fact, very few people have ever seen it. It has been available, but it has never been published. Congressmen are in the dark too. Anyone can send this picture to their Congressman, point out the obviously worrisome symbolism, and request a Congressional investigation.

Anyone can send the simple graphical proof of the Mecca orientation of the giant central crescent to their local newspaper and insist that this is a national news story, not just a local Pennsylvania story. I have succeeded in driving quite a bit of local Pennsylvania news coverage by running half a dozen half-page color advertisements in the Somerset newspaper, but the information needs to get out to the whole country. Anyone who wants to run an ad in their own neck of the woods, just email me (alec@rawls.org) and I’ll help with ad copy.

One thing anyone can do is sign our online petition, where people can also sign up to be contacted about activist opportunities. At the other extreme, if anyone has the really big bucks, I believe I can get us a very reasonable price on one of the most valuable pieces of property in the world.
They can’t build their damned terrorist memorial mosque if they don’t own the property, and the Memorial Project has treated the owner of the crash site so despicably that the property remains unsecured. (They wanted to take the land at a fraction of its market value, and accused the property owner of trying to extort “blood money” from the deaths of the heroes because he wanted them to commission an independent appraisal of the property value, as the Park Service’s own guidelines require.)

If we can buy the land, then we can announce that we will sell the land to the Park Service only if an independent investigation of our factual claims about the memorial demonstrates these claims to be false, as the Memorial Project keeps insisting they are. We want the facts to be scrutinized. The defenders of the crescent design are desperate to avoid scrutiny. The question is, can our left-wing elites succeed in keeping such explosive truths suppressed? I am confident they cannot, but it is going to take a broad based effort to overcome their truth-suppressing power.

FP: Alec Rawls, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Rawls: Thank you.

- Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.

Today's Tune: Johnny Horton - North to Alaska

(Click on title to play video)

McCain Finds the Right Wingman

And she's a woman.

by Stephen F. Hayes
The Weekly Standard
http://www.weeklystandard.com/default.asp
09/15/2008, Volume 014, Issue 01

Minneapolis- Last Tuesday, as the hordes of media that had begun to dissect every moment of her political career and personal life were distracted by speeches from Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman in nearby St. Paul, Sarah Palin sat quietly with her family for an hourlong dinner in the Skywater restaurant of the Minneapolis Hilton. It was a rare respite from the intense scrutiny she was subjected to over the first week of her new life in the national spotlight.

Over the previous several days she had been portrayed as a naïf, a rube, and a bad mother. Journalists had peppered the McCain campaign with legitimate questions about her experience and her record as governor. But these same news organizations--including some of the world's most prestigious--devoted much of their time to exploring irrelevant aspects of her personal and family life.

One television network showed a family picture of the Palins with the belly of Palin's pregnant daughter Bristol spotlighted. Another showed several high school pictures of Bristol Palin's boyfriend, Levi. In the fourth paragraph of a front-page New York Times story we learned that Palin's husband, Todd, had been arrested on DUI charges in 1986. A writer for the Atlantic Monthly hyped an unfounded Desperate Housewives-type rumor that Palin's last child, Trig, was actually her daughter's. A major U.S. newspaper demanded the McCain campaign share medical records relating to Palin's amniotic fluid.

There were erroneous reports that Palin had supported Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign (she supported Steve Forbes), that she had been a member of the Alaska Independence Party (she hadn't), and that she had "slashed" funding for Alaska's special needs children (she had increased it).
Top McCain staffers were in the uncomfortable position of having to make decisions about which of the reports to take to Palin and which ones to ignore. She'd had to answer detailed questions about her personal life in the paperwork she filled out during the (expedited) vetting process, so McCain advisers assumed that they would have already known if there were truth to rumors about her family members and her background. Some felt that she should know as much as possible about the charges being made against her so she could help in quickly knocking them down. Others worried that raising sensitive issues one after another would distract her from the all-important convention speech she would give Wednesday night.
Some of it was unavoidable. Palin was told about the US Weekly cover that read "Babies, Lies & Scandal," and was well aware that the tabloid reporting had gone well beyond the tabloid media. But for the most part, Palin spent her time in Minneapolis hunkered down with the speechwriter Matthew Scully, a veteran of the Bush White House as well as the 1996 Dole campaign and Dan Quayle's vice-presidential office. When I told Mark Salter, McCain's longtime aide and speechwriter, that I'd heard Palin spent several hours with Scully writing and rewriting her speech, he corrected me: "Hours and hours and hours and hours." The broad framework of the speech was Scully's and much of the language about McCain and Obama had been in the draft he had written before knowing who would be delivering it. But Palin talked Scully through her recent career, made changes to the text, and added passages. "No one knows their own record like a candidate," says a senior McCain adviser involved in prepping Palin.

After the Tuesday dinner with her family, Palin headed upstairs for a full rehearsal of her speech--wanting to deliver it at approximately the same time of night that she would be giving it at the convention. It was one of several run-throughs.

When McCain arrived in Minneapolis on Wednesday, he stopped by the campaign war room and spoke to his staff. "They're not doing right by our vice president, they're not doing right by the American people," McCain said, according to a source in the room. "We're gonna fight back, we're gonna get 'em." McCain pounded his fist into his hand as he spoke, the source said, and made it clear that he would be aggressively challenging those who are attacking Palin.

Going into the speech, McCain aides felt good. They had watched many hours of tape from speeches Palin had given in her race for governor and in office. "We were a little nervous to see what she actually did," says a senior McCain adviser, "but we were very confident."

The five-day saturation coverage of all things Palin made her acceptance speech a highly anticipated national event. An estimated 37 million people tuned in to see what she would say and how she was holding up. It was nearly the same number of Americans who watched Barack Obama six days earlier, in a speech that had received three months of buildup.

Palin focused on Americans who live and work in small towns, on the blue-collar workers who love their country and hate Washington politicians. It was like hundreds of other speeches from this presidential race--stretching back two years to the earliest rhetoric from both Republican and Democrat candidates--except in one very important respect.

As she put it: "I grew up with those people."

They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food, and run our factories and fight our wars.

They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town.

I was just your average hockey mom and signed up for the PTA--


The Michigan delegation--all wearing hockey jerseys--went crazy, and some held up "Hockey Moms for Palin" signs. She stopped for a moment and improvised: "I love those hockey moms. You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a Pit Bull? Lipstick." The crowd roared.

So I signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better.

When I ran for city council, I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and I knew their families, too.

And those voters, Palin noted, like small town voters across the country, worry that politicians are all alike--that they're inauthentic and insincere and will say whatever it takes to get elected.

Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.

And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves.

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.

We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

As for my running mate, you can be certain that wherever he goes, and whoever is listening, John McCain is the same man. I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment. 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. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people.

In a race that sometimes feels like little more than a contest to see which side will be most closely associated with "change," this was a big moment. With three senators on the two tickets, Palin offered herself as spokesman for the rest of the country and, in effect, vouched for McCain's regular-guy credentials. "It felt like watching a pilot in the storm. Sure, she had navigational help and a good crew but she took control at the beginning and the landing proved it," said Tucker Eskew, a veteran of the 2000 campaign and the Bush White House, who is now working for Palin. "She owned that speech."

As Palin spoke, Scully stood on the floor of the convention hall, holding his laptop and a rolled-up McCain-Palin sign. He nervously fingered the sign and glanced up at the press section to gauge the reaction to Palin's most cutting and dramatic lines, not knowing that he would shortly be the focus of the response from the Obama campaign.

"The speech that Governor Palin gave was well delivered, but it was written by George Bush's speechwriter and sounds exactly like the same divisive, partisan attacks we've heard from George Bush for the last eight years. If Gov. Palin and John McCain want to define 'change' as voting with George Bush 90 percent of the time, that's their choice, but we don't think the American people are ready to take a 10 percent chance on change," said Bill Burton, Obama campaign spokesman.

The statement said more about the Obama campaign's inability to respond to Palin than it did about Palin.

Jim VandeHei and John Harris, top editors at Politico, which does as much to shape conventional wisdom these days as the New York Times, had initially called McCain's pick of Palin "desperate." After the speech, they wrote that while the pick was "risky .  .  . in the space of one 36-minute speech by Palin, McCain proved that his choice was not a lapse into temporary (or even permanent) insanity."

A longtime McCain adviser points to the Palin selection as one of two "pivot points" in McCain's run for the presidency. The first came when he rejected his campaign team's advice to move away from his support of the war in Iraq in the summer of 2007.

With the nomination in hand, McCain decided that he wanted his vice-presidential selection to be bold and leaned toward picking Joe Lieberman. But after an extensive look at the practical realities of selecting Lieberman and listening to the arguments for and against taking that dramatic step, McCain realized it wouldn't work. He turned his sights to three other candidates: Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, and Sarah Palin. Romney was always a default candidate, but never a likely pick. Pawlenty had several backers among McCain's top advisers and, though McCain likes Pawlenty, he saw the pick as too conventional. There was a bold if risky choice remaining: Sarah Palin.

McCain had been impressed by Palin during a 15-minute conversation back in February and spoke to her again on August 24. She did not have a strong advocate among McCain's top advisers, and more than one cautioned him about the risks of picking someone with such limited experience. And as he had on Iraq, McCain listened to that advice, considered the politically safe choice, and then rejected it in favor of something bolder and riskier.

The early results have been promising, and McCain's team is confident that she will be a major asset over the next two months.

"You do not get to 80 percent approval by not being a good politician," said a senior McCain adviser. "I don't care how red your state is or how blue it is--if it's Alaska or California--you don't get to 80 percent without being good."

Palin will spend much of her time over the next eight weeks in small towns in battleground states. McCain advisers believe that the overwhelming media coverage over her first week has made her quite a draw and that average Americans will flock to someone who represents their sensibilities and their views. She grew up with them.

- Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (HarperCollins).

AHMADINEJAD'S NEW ENEMY: WOMEN

By Amir Taheri
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com
Posted: 4:36 am
September 6, 2008

In one of his last sermons before his death, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini warned of "three threats" to his vision of Islam: the US, the Jews and women.

Two decades later, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thinks he has the United States and the Jews in hand - and is moving on the third "enemy."

Women were the first to demonstrate against Khomeini's regime with a mass rally in Tehran on March 8, 1979 - less than a month after the mullahs had seized power. Over the next decade, the authorities imprisoned hundreds of thousands of women for varying lengths of time, and executed thousands.


Shirin Ebadi: Nobelist faces threats for backing women's rights.

But women continued to fight a regime that deemed them subhuman. Their resistance prevented the mullahs from abrogating pre-revolutionary laws limiting gender discrimination. Thus, women succeeded in keeping their right to vote and win public office.

They also retained a veto, granted by the shah, on their husbands' Islamic right to take up to four permanent wives and countless temporary concubines.

Last June, Ahmadinejad sought to remove that veto, launching a campaign with quotations from the Prophet and the 12 Imams of Shiite Islam to prove that men who took many wives would have a fast track to paradise.

To make polygamy practically impossible, a law predating the revolution required men seeking added wives to prove that they're financially capable of running more than one household. Since few can meet that condition, the number of Iranian men with more than one wife had fallen to a few hundred before the mullahs seized power.

And most of those polygamists were mullahs or wealthy bazaar merchants associated with them.

Last month, Ahmadinejad presented a draft bill designed to "re-Islamicize" the status of women. He claimed that the shah had used laws inspired by "Zionist-Crusaders" to deal with women's issues.

His new law would restore men's Islamic right to divorce their wives without even informing them. Men would also be absolved from paying alimony.

In exchange, they'd be required to pay a mahrieh (a severance payment, whose amount is set in the marriage contract) to a wife they wish to divorce. But the draft law also plans a hefty government tax on the mahrieh. So a divorced woman left with no alimony and no resources except her mahrieh could end up losing most of that to the government. "This text is designed to return women to the dark ages," says Sousan Tahmaspi, a spokesperson for the campaign against the law.

To prevent the law's passage, women have been holding meetings nationwide, and launched a campaign to collect a million signatures in support of gender equality.

This week, their campaign seemed to have produced some results: The speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, Iran's ersatz parliament, opted to delay formal debate on the measure.

"The text has not been withdrawn," a spokesman for Ahmadinejad said Monday. "It will be debated when we have a calmer atmosphere." To get that "calm," the regime has launched a crackdown against women's-rights groups. This week, four leading campaigners (Pari Ardalan, Nahid Keshavarz, Maryam Hussein Khah and Zhaleh Javaheri) got sentenced to six months in prison in what their lawyers call "kangaroo courts." A fifth campaigner, Zeinab Bayazidi got a four-year sentence.

And at least five women's-rights advocates have gone missing. One, Solmaz Igdar, was abducted on her way home in Tehran, her family says.

The Khomeinist propaganda machine seeks to portray the women's movement as part of a plot by "Zionists and Crusaders" to undermine Islam. In recent days, government media have published claims linking Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who has spoken in support of the women's movement, to the Bahai faith, a religion banned by the regime. This is a deadly threat: To abandon Islam for another faith carries a death sentence.

"Free people everywhere should speak out in support of Iranian women," says Tehran feminist Haydeh Karimi. "The proposed law is the thin end of a wedge. Ahmadinejad wants women out of universities and public life. He thinks he can curb mass unemployment by forcing women out of work, giving their jobs to men."

Today's Tune: Chris Isaak - Two Hearts (Live)

(Click on title to play video)

How a Tumor Is Changing My Life

By Robert Novak
Chicago Sun-Times
http://www.suntimes.com/index.html
September 06, 2008

WASHINGTON - FEBRUARY 12: Columnist Robert Novak speaks to reporters after he testified for the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial February 12, 2007 in Washington, DC. Novak's column was the first to disclose the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the public. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The main reason I am writing this column is that many people have asked me how I first realized I was suffering from a brain tumor and what I have done about it.

But I also want to relate the reaction to my disease, mostly compassionate, that belies Washington's reputation.

The first sign that I was in trouble came on Wednesday, July 23, when my 2004 black Corvette struck a pedestrian on 18th Street in downtown Washington while I was on my way to my office.

I did not realize I had hit anyone until a shirt-sleeved young man on a bicycle, whom I incorrectly thought to be a bicycle messenger, jumped in front of my car to block the way. In fact, he was David A. Bono, a partner in the high-end law firm Harkins Cunningham. The bicyclist was shouting at me that I could not just hit people and then drive away. That was the first I knew about the accident. Mr. Bono called the police, and a patrolman soon arrived.

After I said I had no idea I had hit anyone until they flagged me down and informed me, Mr. Bono told The Washington Post, "I would not believe that." Fortunately, the investigating officer, P. Garcia, was a policeman who listened and apparently believed me. While Mr. Bono and other bystanders were taking on aspects of a mob, shouting "hit-and-run," Officer Garcia issued a right-of-way infraction against me, costing me $50, instead of a hit-and-run violation that would have been a felony. Following Officer Garcia's instructions, I promptly paid the $50 fine at Third District Police Headquarters in Northwest Washington, in cash and in person.

Officer Garcia's justification in believing me was soon confirmed by the diagnosis of my brain cancer, in which I have lost not only left peripheral vision but nearly all my left vision, probably permanently. Several people have asked me whether the person I hit was crossing in front of me on my left. I answer, "I never saw him."

The person I hit, identified by police as Don, with no fixed address, was taken to George Washington University Hospital, where police said, "There are no visible injuries."

On the next day, Thursday, July 24, there were more clues that something was seriously wrong. I lost my way to my dentist's office in Montgomery County and never found it. I also had trouble finding my way back to my office. After returning from a speaking engagement in North Carolina on Friday, I found it difficult locating my office in the 13-story building where I have been a tenant since 1964.

My wife Geraldine and I left Washington Saturday to spend the weekend with our daughter, Zelda, and her husband, Christopher Caldwell, and their children at their summer house at Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass. When Geraldine noticed that I was having trouble following her in the Boston airport, she suggested I go to a hospital emergency room. I always resist such suggestions and did so this time, but fortunately Zelda prevailed. The CT scan at Salem Hospital showed a brain mass. I returned to the summerhouse and went into seizure the next day.

When Zelda said to call 911, I again resisted, but she again prevailed. I promptly suffered another seizure in the ambulance, the second of three seizures that day. I gained admittance to the high-quality Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, which has an excellent oncology staff. A biopsy was performed, which showed a large, grade IV tumor. In answer to my question, the oncologist estimated that I had six months to a year to live. Being read your death sentence is like being a character in one of the old Bette Davis movies.

I believe I was able to withstand this shock because of my Catholic faith, to which I converted in 1998.

I then called Dr. Donald Morton of the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, Calif., who removed a cancer from my lung in 1994 and has been a friend and close medical advisor.

He told me that different people react to serious cancers in different ways and reminded me that I was a three-time cancer survivor.

Dr. Morton recommended Dr. Allan H. Friedman, a master surgeon who is chief of neurosurgery at the Duke University Medical Center.

After studying my CT scan and MRI, Dr. Friedman said a resection -- that is, a removal of the tumor -- was possible by surgery. Dr. Friedman had performed a similar operation this summer on Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

In today's world, it is up to the "informed patient" to make many decisions affecting treatment. Dr. Morton recommended that I go ahead with surgery by Dr. Friedman.

My dear friend, the Democratic political operative Bob Shrum, asked Sen. Kennedy's wife, Vicki, to call me about Dr. Friedman. I barely know Mrs. Kennedy, but I have found her to be a warm and gracious person. I have had few good things to say about Teddy Kennedy since I first met him at the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, but he and his wife have treated me like a close friend. She was enthusiastic about Dr. Friedman and urged me to opt for surgery at Duke, which I did.

The Kennedys were not concerned by political and ideological differences when someone's life was at stake, recalling at least the myth of milder days in Washington. My long conversation with Vicki Kennedy filled me with hope.

The irony of my going to Duke to save my life can only be appreciated by somebody who knows that I am a fanatic University of Maryland basketball fan with no use for the Duke Blue Devils and their student basketball fans, who certainly have not turned the other cheek toward me.

The ingenious taunts by the students at Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium are usually directed against opposing players, but I am one fan who also has been the target of the "Cameron Crazies."

During my last visit there to watch a game won by Maryland, students raised a placard with two pictures: one of Benedict Arnold and one of me. "Two Traitors, " said the headline.

But I was treated with immense courtesy and skill by the great Duke neurosurgical team. Dr. Friedman operated on me for over four hours, starting at 7:30 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 15. He later showed me before-and-after pictures, revealing that the 3-by-1.5-inch tumor had been removed. Of course, cancer cells remain, requiring a rigorous regimen of radiation and chemotherapy, managed by the Duke team and conducted at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington.

Al Hunt, who has become a close friend, though we disagree about almost everything, says it will be very difficult for me to inveigh against Duke in the future. I do believe he is correct. Al and his wife, Judy Woodruff, have been staunch pillars of support during this ordeal and helped arrange our living accommodations at Duke.

I am now at home in Washington, awaiting further therapy. Dr. Friedman recommended that I try to get back to at least parts of my normal life. He suggested reading, but also that I try to write columns, which is the reason I've composed this piece.

There are mad bloggers who profess to take delight in my distress, but there's no need to pay them attention in the face of such an outpouring of good will for me. I had thought 51 years of rough-and-tumble journalism in Washington made me more enemies than friends, but my recent experience suggests the opposite may be the case.

But Joe and Valerie Wilson, attempting to breathe life into the Valerie Plame "scandal," issued this statement: "We have long argued that responsible adults should take Novak's typewriter away. The time has arrived for them to also take away the keys to his Corvette."

Thanks to my tumor, the Wilsons have achieved half of their desires. I probably never will be able to drive again, and I have sold the Corvette, which I dearly loved. Taking away my typewriter, however, may require modification of the First Amendment.

Support for me and promises of prayers sent for me poured in from all sides, including political figures who had not been happy with my columns. I'm told that President George W. Bush has not liked my criticism, particularly of his Iraq war policy. But the president is a compassionate man, and he telephoned me at 7:24 a.m. on August 15, six minutes before I went into surgery. The conversation lasted only a minute, but his prayerful concern was touching and much appreciated.

Thoughts on McCain's Speech

RealClearPolitics
HorseRaceBlog

By Jay Cost
« A Strange Night
HorseRaceBlog Home Page
September 05, 2008


Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin wave to supporters at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota September 4, 2008.
(Rick Wilking/Reuters)

I typically do not engage in exegesis of candidate speeches, but given the reaction to McCain's address from many quarters, I think a dissenting view might be worth hearing. That plus the uniqueness of the speech's substance inclines me to make a more fuller comment than I otherwise would.

On the first viewing of McCain's speech, I was pretty much in line with Tom Bevan's thoughts on it: it was good enough, but far from great.
Later in the evening, though, I felt compelled to go back and review it. I couldn't get a few of the lines out of my head, which made me wonder if I had misjudged it.

I have to say that it grew on me by leaps and bounds. Over two weeks of speechifying and politicking, it was my favorite.

Obviously, McCain is not an eloquent speaker. He's a plain speaker with a blunt, flat delivery. The speech was written for a man with that kind of style, which made it extremely direct. So, everybody got the gist of the McCain candidacy last night. That's a very good thing for any candidate: his message got across.

The speech also had its charming moments. His ad lib in response to the protesters was just great. With that third interruption, I really thought McCain was going to lose the crowd. His "please, please, please" seemed plaintive and desperate for a moment, but then he wowed me: "Please don't be distracted by the ground noise and the static." He then cracked a big, genuine grin, and followed it up with, "I'm gonna talk about it some more, but Americans want us to stop yelling at each other...OK?" And then another ear-to-ear grin. That was pure McCain. Good humored and bipartisan. As moments go, that was the best of either convention.

And we simply have to give McCain credit for this kind of gutsiness.

On an October morning, in the Gulf of Tonkin, I prepared for my 23rd mission over North Vietnam. I hadn't any worry I wouldn't come back safe and sound. I thought I was tougher than anyone. I was pretty independent then, too. I liked to bend a few rules, and pick a few fights for the fun of it. But I did it for my own pleasure; my own pride. I didn't think there was a cause more important than me.

Then I found myself falling toward the middle of a small lake in the city of Hanoi, with two broken arms, a broken leg, and an angry crowd waiting to greet me. I was dumped in a dark cell, and left to die. I didn't feel so tough anymore...

A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I'd been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I'd been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.

Who does this in a nomination speech?

Typically, presidential candidates use their time in combat to reinforce the warrior virtues. Recall, "I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty!"
McCain basically turned that on its head last night. It was not his heroism or leadership in war that shows he's ready to command. Instead, it was the horror of war that made him understand how great our country is, and why it is worth fighting for. He was a cocky jerk prior to his captivity, but the brutality of that experience broke his selfish, independent spirit. It was the idea of America that saved him, and - per the speech - he was reborn her humble, imperfect servant.

Delivered in his blunt style, these passages reinforced the idea of McCain being honest even when it isn't expedient. He's willing to talk straight about anything, including his own frailties.

But this was not confession for its own sake. Last night - McCain did three things: (a) Reminded us that he's a maverick; (b) Told us what the maverick would do if we elect him; (c) Told us why he's a maverick. [So, contrary to some pundits, it was actually a very well-organized speech.] The confession at the end was the "why." He fights for the country, not for a party, because it was in Hanoi that his country saved him. Country first, party second.

This might not resonate with strong partisans who see their party as the protector of the national interest, but there is a huge subset of voters who see politics the way McCain describes it. Get average people talking, and sooner or later you'll hear them say, "Nobody stands for all of us. Everybody stands for their narrow faction."

Ultimately, this speech was very Jacksonian to me. It was Jackson, as much as anybody, who made the president the representative of all the people. This notion can be oversimplified, for sure, but at its root it is accurate. The president should not speak for a mere faction, but should articulate the true public voice. I don't know whether McCain can actually do that, but he clearly sees this task as his top priority, which puts him a notch or two above many previous nominees of both parties.

Final point. Contrary to some critiques I read, McCain's middle "laundry list" section of the speech definitely defied Republican orthodoxy at key points. There might be plenty of reasons not to like this speech, but lines like this are not the things we hear from Republicans:

-I know some of you have been left behind in the changing economy and it often seems your government hasn't even noticed. Government assistance for unemployed workers was designed for the economy of the 1950s. That's going to change on my watch.

-We will prepare them for the jobs of today. We will use our community colleges to help train people for new opportunities in their communities.

-For workers in industries that have been hard hit, we'll help make up part of the difference in wages between their old job and a temporary, lower paid one while they receive retraining that will help them find secure new employment at a decent wage.

That middle one is actually quite noteworthy. Just a few months ago, I heard the exact same policy proposal...during a keynote address of a Democratic think tank! I thought to myself, "Now...that's a good idea! Why doesn't somebody do that?"

THE RIGHT THEMES

MCCAIN SETS HIS COURSE

By Rich Lowry
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com
September 5, 2008


Ready to fight: McCain’s out to beat Obama on change.

As rhetoric, it wasn't particularly stirring - deliberately written to stay within John McCain's plain-spoken comfort zone. As a performance, it was so-so. But as a basis of the fall campaign, it puts McCain exactly where he needs to be - Johnny the Fighter, on a last mission to protect the people's interest in Washington.

McCain joined his traditional theme of patriotic service to a message of change and work-a-day populism given new oomph by his pick of the GOP's new popular hero, Sarah Palin. He buttressed these themes with his personal narrative, of sacrifice in Vietnam and of service to country rather than party in Washington.

The election isn't a contest of dueling speeches, and McCain ought to be grateful for it. He's notoriously uncomfortable with big set-speeches from a teleprompter. So convention planners put him out at the end of a long runway where he spoke from a minimalist waist-high podium. If the set-up aided in his connection to the crowd or in his delivery, it wasn't obvious.

Then again, McCain's message wasn't always congenial to these delegates. You never would've known that he's a Republican running when Republicans have held the White House for the last eight years. There was a nod to President Bush for keeping us safe at the top; after that, McCain made the case for getting "this country moving again" - typically an out-party message.

The reaction in the hall was tepid to his diagnosis of how the GOP has lost the trust of the public, and to his pledges to work cooperatively with all well-intentioned comers in a nonpartisan manner. But his real audience was out in the country, where traditional GOP politics is a tough sell this year.

Remarkably free of derisive references to his opponent, the speech was meant not so much to bury Obama as to co-opt his appeal. The heart came at the end of his description of Palin, when McCain said, "Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-noth- ing, me-first-country-second Washington crowd: Change is coming."

He followed up with a definition of "maverick": "What it really means is, I understand who I work for: I don't work for a party. I don't work for a special interest. I don't work for myself. I work for you."

McCain was trying to take his politics of honor - often abstract and personal - and make it about people's everyday lives. Uncharacteristically, he talked of peoples' struggles "to buy groceries, fill your gas tank and make your mortgage payment."

The selection of Palin last week and this speech signal the McCain campaign is now trying to capture the populist fighting spirit that fueled Hillary Clinton's late-primary charge against Obama.

Politically, this is shrewd. At a time of popular disgust with Washington, it's a theme that is very saleable and (as last night showed) can be made to fit McCain's unique traits. But there needs to be policy meat on the bones. His speech was the most substantive one of a largely policy-free convention - but its general passages on domestic policy won't make much of an impression.

If the speech was often dull, it was utterly sincere. "Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight," McCain urged at the end, as the delegates rose for a rousing finish.

This is the ground McCain has staked out. His clash with Obama over who can best fight for change will be the bloody crossroads of this election.

In the Bronx, a Parting Shot

Only 2,700 Fans Saw Lou Gehrig's Last Home Run, But It Left an Echo

By JONATHAN EIG
The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com
September 5, 2008; Page W4

At the end of this baseball season, we will say goodbye to Yankee Stadium. My favorite memory of the ballpark comes from a game played 70 years ago this month. I wasn't there, but I have a picture of it in my mind, and I will cling to it when they tear up the sod and knock down the walls this winter.

On Sept. 27, 1938, a cool and cloudy day in the Bronx, Lou Gehrig stepped into the batter's box to hit against Dutch Leonard of the Washington Senators. It was a meaningless Tuesday afternoon game. All but 2,700 of the stadium's seats were empty.

Leonard threw, Mr. Gehrig swung, and the ball flew into the right-field bleachers, giving the Yankees' Iron Horse the 493rd home run of his career. It would be his last.

Baseball's legendary individual performances are well known: In 1921, Babe Ruth hit 59 home runs -- more than eight entire teams. In 1941, Ted Williams hit for a .406 average. In 2001, say what you will, Barry Bonds broke Mark McGwire's home run record and Babe Ruth's slugging-percentage record. Those were great feats. But for my money, nothing compares to 1938.

That year, Gehrig played with advanced symptoms of a brutal and deadly disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known today as Lou Gehrig's disease. He not only appeared in every one of the Yankees' 157 regular-season games, he played brilliantly, hitting .295, with 29 homers, 114 runs batted in, a .410 on-base average, and a .523 slugging percentage. Alex Rodriguez this year has produced roughly equivalent numbers.

Throughout the entire season, Gehrig knew something was wrong with his body; he just didn't know what. He arrived in St. Petersburg for spring training after filming a singing-cowboy movie called "Rawhide" (check it out on Netflix; it's a hoot). He entered the season as the highest-paid player in the game, with a one-year contract for $39,000, and saying that he thought his body, always the game's most solid, ought to hold at least a few more years. He was 34 and had played for 13 years without missing a game.

His first swings of spring were feeble. He popped a few high and dribbled some into the dirt before his hands began to ache. "I'll get the feel of this thing in a hurry," he told a reporter that day.

He never did, though. All that spring he felt clumsy. He tripped. He dropped easy throws. He developed blisters and bone bruises on his hands, and began taping foam to the bottom of his bat handle to reduce the pain.

In hindsight, all of these are likely symptoms of ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that attacks the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, shutting down messages from the brain to the body's muscles. Most victims survive only two or three years after diagnosis. Gehrig's muscles were withering away. As he tried to compensate, he probably squeezed the bat more tightly than usual, causing the blisters and bruises.

Most people with ALS don't know they have it for the first year. At this moment, there are about 5,000 people in the United States walking around without a clue. A year or so from now, when they are diagnosed, they will look back and say, "Oh, yeah, so that's why I had trouble with the belt on my son's car seat." Gehrig was no different -- except that he was a professional athlete who was being watched and criticized every day. Nevertheless, he kept going. What else could he do? He assumed the malfunctions were a result of age, or a virus, or perhaps his imagination.

By late April, reporters were commenting that Gehrig seemed to have lost strength. Maybe he should have been working out instead of cavorting all winter in Hollywood, sportswriters sniped. His manager, Joe McCarthy, moved him out of the cleanup spot in the batting order into the sixth position.

Though his body was growing weaker by the day, Gehrig was so well-conditioned and so gifted an athlete that he managed to adapt. He started slapping at the ball instead of trying to crush it, and his batting average climbed. He put in an order with Hillerich & Bradsby Co. for some lighter bats, which helped him regain some of his power.

When I was researching my biography of Gehrig, I interviewed Charlie Wagner, who pitched for the Red Sox in 1938. He said Gehrig "could still get up and bump that ball," but he seemed to be stumbling when he ran. Gehrig was surprisingly speedy, and you can probably win a bet by asking someone to name the Yankees' all-time leader in triples. It's Gehrig, who hit 163 of them. But in 1938 he looked like he was running in snow shoes. He talked to reporters about his troubles. He seemed mystified, even angry at times. But he never lost his temper, never blew up at the reporters who zinged him, never criticized his manager for moving him out of the cleanup spot.

The Yankees went on to sweep the Cubs in the 1938 World Series. Gehrig managed four singles in four games. The next year, he tried again to play, but only briefly. By then it was clear that something was seriously wrong. He was diagnosed in June of 1939. On July 4, he made his famous farewell speech at Yankee Stadium, calling himself "the luckiest man on the face of the earth." He bowed out with the grace, dignity, and humility that had defined his career.

He died two years later, just shy of his 38th birthday. Gehrig will be recalled for his speech, which was surely the most touching moment in Yankee Stadium's history.


Lou Gehrig, “Farewell to Baseball Address”
July 4, 1939; Yankee Stadium

But I prefer to remember him before he was stooped by disease. I prefer to picture him on that long-sleeved autumn day in September 1938. What comfort he must have felt when ball met bat, the resonance of it running from his hands up into his arms. The fans heard the sound. They watched the ball fly high and deep, and when it ponged into the near-empty bleachers they looked back to the field and saw good-old Lou, head down, trotting around the bases one last time. Never before had such a life-and-death struggle played out on a baseball diamond. For that day, at least, Gehrig was the winner.

They can tear down the park, but they can't take that away from me.

Jonathan Eig is the author of "Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig" and "Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season."

Write to Jonathan Eig at jonathan@jonathaneig.com

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB122057123966901511.html?mod=sports

Sarah Palin: it's go west, towards the future of conservatism

Her thrilling convention speech showed that the Governor of Alaska is a force to reckoned with. But she might be more than that

Gerard Baker
The London Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/
September 5, 2008

The best line I heard about Sarah Palin during the frenzied orgy of chauvinist condescension and gutter-crawling journalistic intrusion that greeted her nomination for vice-president a week ago came from a correspondent who knows a thing or two about Alaska.

“What's the difference between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama?”

“One is a well turned-out, good-looking, and let's be honest, pretty sexy piece of eye-candy.

“The other kills her own food.”

Now we know, thanks to her triumphant debut at the Republican convention on Wednesday, that Mrs Palin not only slaughters her prey. She impales its head on a stick and parades it around for her followers to jeer at. For half an hour she eviscerated Mr Obama in that hall and did it all without dropping her sweet schoolmarm smile, as if she were handing out chocolates at the end of a history lesson.

There's a powerful danger in the sheer thrill that has followed her astonishing performance that we could get carried away with John McCain's running-mate. Some of the coverage has a hyperbolic tone to it. Not since Paris handed that apple to Aphrodite has a man's selection of a woman had such implications for the future of our civilisation.

So let's stipulate one obvious and important piece of wisdom about US elections. The choice of a vice-presidential candidate rarely makes much of a difference. The pundit class waxes historical in the excitement of the moment but usually the vice-presidential choices go back to playing second banana. However mawkishly we dwell on the mortality of the presidential contenders, it is they who determine the voters' decision.

This one, to be fair, could be different. For at least the next few weeks the press will follow Mrs Palin's present and dig deeper into her past, still hoping for some morsel of stupidity or evidence of cupidity to doom her. But in the end, barring such a discovery, this is still an Obama-McCain contest.

But let me try to explain why Mrs Palin, whatever impact she might have in November, may be a figure of real consequence in our lives.

It's partly about what she represents and partly about what she has already done, but mostly about where she and her ilk might take the Republicans - and possibly America.

It never ceases to amaze me how the Left falls again and again into the old trap of underestimating politicians whom they don't understand. From Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to George Bush and Mrs Palin, they do it every time. Because these characters talk a bit funny and have ridiculously antiquated views about faith, family and nation, because they haven't spent time bending the knee to the intellectual metropolitan elites, they can't be taken seriously.

So the general expectation was that Mrs Palin would stumble on to the stage in high heels, clutching her sprawling, slightly odd family (five children! how weird), mispronounce the name of the Russian Prime Minister, mutter a few platitudes about God, and disappear for ever to a deafening chorus of sniggers.

No one paid much attention to the fact that she had been elected governor of a state. Or that she got to that office not because, unlike some politicians I could mention, her husband had been there before her, or because she bleated continuously about glass ceilings, but by challenging the entrenched interests in her own party and beating them. In almost two years as Governor she has cleaned out the Augean stables of Alaskan Government. You don't win a statewide election and enjoy approval ratings of more than 80 per cent without real political talent.

Never mind all that. She didn't have a passport! She was a former beauty queen! It was so axiomatic that she was a disaster that I was told by lots of savvy men - with deliciously unconscious sexism - that the real problem was what the choice said about Mr McCain and his judgment: cynical, irresponsible, clueless. It was as if Mrs Palin wasn't really a human being at all, but an article of Mr McCain's clothing that showed his poor taste, like wearing brown shoes with a charcoal suit.

So here's why she matters.

First of all she offers an opportunity for an ailing Republican party to reconnect with ordinary Americans. She's conservative, but her conservatism is not that of the intolerant, uncomprehending white male sort that has so hurt the party in recent years. She is much closer to a model of the lives of ordinary Americans - working mother, plainspoken everywoman juggling home and office - than any Republican leader in memory.

The contrast with Mr Obama is especially powerful. The very fact that Mrs Palin didn't go to elite schools but succeeded nonetheless - the very ordinariness with which she so piquantly jabbed Mr Obama on Wednesday - is what will make her so appealing to Americans. And as a pro-life conservative she debunks in one swoop the enduring myth that all women subscribe to the obligatory nostrums of radical feminism.

But there's more to it than that.

The Republicans have decided that they are not going to make the mistake Hillary Clinton made and run against the effervescent Mr Obama on the premise of experience.

Experience hasn't got Americans into a very comfortable place. They want change. Before he signed up to some of the less attractive Republican attitudes this year, Mr McCain's career had embodied that change - the anti-establishment candidate running against his own party. Now he is joined by a woman who, in her short career, has done the same thing.

Democrats think that Mr McCain, with the social conservative Mrs Palin, will launch an old-fashioned culture war at them, using her appealing manner to drive a populist assault on the familiar Republican issues of God, guns and gays.

Perhaps this Manichean interpretation will prove true. But I suspect that it misses the real appeal of the Republican team. The opportunity for McCain-Palin is not reaction, but reform - a reform rooted in a distant conservatism that could be due for a comeback

Hailing from Arizona and Alaska, the Republican ticket has a chance to rekindle a western conservatism different from the old Yankee paternalist sort or the Bible Belt version. They like their guns out there (some still kill their own food) and they are pro-life and deeply pro-America, of course. But at a time of grave challenges, the themes of economic freedom and opportunity, the resistance to the idea that government holds all the answers, could resonate with voters.

This is an election, as the Democrats have realised all along, about an America on the cusp of change. With the moose-hunting, establishment-taunting Mrs Palin at his side, Mr McCain might represent a bigger change than the one that his opponents are offering.

Background

Outsider Palin electrifies Republicans
'She's like a moose going after a cabbage'
Comment: Sarah Palin passed this test but there will be more
This is Alaska's Margaret Thatcher

Why Obama's "Community Organizer" Days Are a Joke

By Michelle Malkin
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/
September 05, 2008

Rudy Giuliani had me in stitches during his red-meat keynote address at the GOP convention. I laughed out loud when Giuliani laughed out loud while noting Barack Obama's deep experience as a "community organizer." I laughed again when VP nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin cracked: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Team Obama was not amused. (Neither were the snarky left-wingers on cable TV who are now allergic to sarcasm.) They don't get why we snicker when Obama dons his Community Organizer cape. Apparently, the jibes rendered Obama's advisers sleepless. In a crack-of-dawn e-mail to Obama's followers hours after Giuliani and Palin spoke, campaign manager David Plouffe attempted to gin up faux outrage (and, more importantly, donations) by claiming grave offense on the part of community organizers everywhere. Fumed Plouffe:

"Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed. Let's clarify something for them right now. Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies."

Let me clarify something. Nobody is mocking community organizers in church basements and community centers across the country working to improve their neighbors' lives. What deserves ridicule is the notion that Obama's brief stint as a South Side rabble-rouser for tax-subsidized, partisan nonprofits qualifies as executive experience you can believe in.

What deserves derision is "community organizing" that relies on a community of homeless people and ex-cons to organize for the purpose of registering dead people to vote, shaking down corporations and using the race card as a bludgeon.

As I've reported previously, Obama's community organizing days involved training grievance-mongers from the far-left ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). The ACORN mob is infamous for its bully tactics (which they dub "direct actions"); Obama supporters have recounted his role in organizing an ambush on a government planning meeting about a landfill project opposed by Chicago's minority lobbies.

With benefactors like Obama in office, ACORN has milked nearly four decades of government subsidies to prop up chapters that promote the welfare state and undermine the free market, as well as some that have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and voter fraud. Since I last detailed ACORN's illicit activities in this column in June (see "The ACORN Obama knows," June 19, 2008), the group continues to garner scrutiny from law enforcement:

Last week, Milwaukee's top election official announced plans to seek criminal investigations of 37 ACORN employees accused of offering gifts to sign up voters (including prepaid gas cards and restaurant cards) or falsifying driver's license numbers, Social Security numbers or other information on voter registration cards.

Last month, a New Mexico TV station reported on the child rapists, drug offenders and forgery convicts on ACORN's payroll. In July, Pennsylvania investigators asked the public for help in locating a fugitive named Luis R. Torres-Serrano, who is accused "of submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registration forms he collected on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now to county election officials." Also in July, a massive, nearly $1 million embezzlement scheme by top ACORN officials was exposed.

ACORN's political arm endorsed Obama in February and has ramped up efforts to register voters across the country. In the meantime, completely ignored by the mainstream commentariat and clean-election crusaders, the Obama campaign admitted failing to report $800,000 in campaign payments to ACORN. They were disguised as payments to a front group called "Citizen Services, Inc." for "advance work."

Jim Terry, an official from the Consumer Rights League, a watchdog group that monitors ACORN, noted: "ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain. Now it looks like ACORN is using the same type of convoluted accounting scheme for Obama's political gain." With a wave of his magic wand, Obama amended his FEC forms to change the "advance work" to "get-out-the-vote" work.

Now, don't you dare challenge his commitment to following tax and election laws. And don't you even think of entertaining the possibility that The One exploited a nonprofit supposedly focused on helping low-income people for political gain.

He was just "organizing" his "community." Guffaw.