Medved: Palin a "possible Vice Presidential candidate"

I wish I would have found this sooner, but unfortunately tracking talk radio is much more difficult than monitoring the blogosphere and the print media.

Micheal Medved, as many of you know, is one of the nation's most prominent talk show hosts (3.75 million listeners every week), and the subject of Sarah Palin came up on his program last Friday. The broader discussion was about John McCain, congressional earmarks, and the "bridge to nowhere"...but then came this comment:

"The Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, who is a possible Vice Pesidential candidate...great lady...has come out and told her own congressional delegation, all Republicans, 'Stop with the earmarks! It's wrong, it's wrong! Even when it benefits us in Alaska.'" (emphasis mine)

So there you have it, a national conservative radio host confirming that Sarah Palin might just be the next Vice President of the United States (and seeming to like the idea). Yes, it was a brief quote, but it was still heard by hundreds of thousands or listeners. Furthermore, he acknowledged Gov. Palin's status as a leading fiscal conservative.

The snowball just keeps rolling!

Hat tip to the Anchorage Daily News' anti-Palin "Alaska Ear" columnist. If you want to hear the quote, it was on The Michael Medved Show on December 21st, roughly 14 minutes into the broadcast. It is available at michaelmedved.com, but you will need a "Medhead" subscription to access the archives ($4.95 for one month of access).

National Media Attention!

The "Palin juggernaut," as Instapundit.com calls it, simply cannot be stopped. Yesterday, Gov. Palin was mentioned as a possible VP candidate in a news story from the Associated Press. Her potential as a national candidate was explained wonderfully by professor John J. Pitney Jr. , a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College, "The public stereotype of Republican is a wrinkled old guy taking cash under the table. One way for Republicans to break the stereotype is with a female reformer". Our own site was also listed as a web link at the end of the report.

The story was on the the Yahoo! News homepage for most of the day and was picked up by the websites of many media outlets including The New York Times, Fox News, Townhall.com, The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, The Detroit Free Press, The Charlotte Observer, and the Anchorage Daily News (where it was the lead story on the homepage for most of the day.)

As a result, we clocked 3,818 pageloads in 24 hours, smashing our previous record of 2,138 (which was set only two weeks ago). We also hit another milestone by recording our 20,000th pageload since launching in February.

The snowball is rolling, folks, and it's only going to get bigger. Thanks to everyone who has lent support to this movement. Without you, we would not be where we are today...realistically looking forward to Sarah Palin's inauguration as the 47th Vice President of the United States!

Coming Soon...

Don't be fooled by the fact that I haven't been posting much this week; I have been working my tail off preparing new material for the new year. In the next day or two, I will be rolling out a new motto, a new manifesto, and some new graphics for your blogs. In addition, I am in the early planning stages of some potentially huge developments. I would tell you what they are, but I have to hold off until I know whether the pieces fall into place to make them possible.

Stay tuned...

Palin to appear in "Vogue"

DISCLAIMER: This blog has a longstanding policy of refusing to discuss Gov. Palin's looks. This a political post, and any juvenille or non-political comments will be immediately deleted.
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Gov. Palin has received a lot of media attention this year, but the latest national outlet to notice her is unique in that it is NOT a news source, but rather a fashion magazine. According to the Anchorage Daily News, the governor and her three daughters spent Wednesday morning doing a photo shoot for Vogue Magazine. The pictures will appear in Vogue's February issue, which will actually hit shelves in late January.

As it turned out, however, Palin's independent minded nature made it anything but a typical fashion shoot...as she rejected the clothing that the photographers had intended her to wear. "At first they had me in a bunch of furs," she told the Daily News, "Yeah, I have furs on my wall, but I don't wear furs. I had to show them my bunny boots and my North Face clothing." So, instead of guady furs, we will get to see the real Sarah Palin in her real clothes. Bravo, Governor!

This is definitely a positive development, and it is perfectly timed. The February issue will be hitting stores just as the presidential primaries draw to a close and VP speculation begins in earnest. Appearing in Vogue will also introduce the Governor to many readers who may not be following the 2008 race just yet. I'm also hoping that Vogue was keen enough to ask Gov. Palin about a potential VP candidacy (as other media outlets have). If they did, Sarah Palin will suddenly be staring thousands of American women in the face and forcing them to consider the fact that Hillary Clinton may not be the best woman running for national office when November rolls around.

Wow, we're a "juggernaut"!

This was posted on Instapudit.com yesterday morning:

"THE SARAH PALIN JUGGERNAUT is gathering steam!"

Yesterday marked the first time that this site recorded over 2,000 individual pageloads in 24 hours, so thanks to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit and Charleston Daily Mail columnist Don Surber for making this happen!

Palin busts pork...again!

Before I get to the meat of today's column, I 'd like to thank columnist Don Surber of the Charleston (WV) Daily Mail for his endorsement of Sarah Palin for VP. To borrow a phrase from Sean Hannity...Mr. Surber, you're a great American.

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I always thought that Congressmen were the people who should be pursuing congressional earmark reform...I was wrong. As Sarah Palin proved yesterday, it is state governors who can REALLY take a bite out out the problem. You see, Senators and Congressmen can only dole out taxpayer dollars to people who request them.

The State of Alaska usually asks for more than 100 federal earmarks per year. Gov. Palin cut that number in half for 2007, and plans to ask for only about a 12 earmarks for the year 2008 Yes, you read that correctly. In Palin's first two years in office, the yearly number of earmarks requested by the State of Alaska will have declined by almost 90%! (Note: I don't know how much of a percentage that is in actual dollar value, but I'm guessing that its HUGE.)

Aside from taking an axe to earmarks, Gov. Palin's 2008 budget also slows the growth of government dramatically. In contrast to Alaska's recent state budgets, which tended to grow by an eye-popping 14% per year, Gov. Palin's new budget calls for only 4% more general fund spending than last year and 1% more spending on agency operations (at a time when the costs to provide services are skyrocketing). In plain English, that basically means that the growth of Alaska's government has been brought to a screeching halt.

I've previously Sarah Palin has put together an amazing record of accomplishments in her short time in office, and I am now considering trading the term "amazing" for more apporpriate verbage such as "ridiculous" or "mind boggling". We need this woman in federal office ASAP!

Memorial to Church Shooting Victims

I generally avoid posting any non-Palin material. However, many of my readers know that I live just outside of Colorado Springs, CO and will understand why I feel morally obligated to address the acts of senseless brutality which shocked my community earlier today. Churches are supposed to be sanctuaries from the brutal, fallen world in which we live, and to see such a sanctuary shattered makes me want to vomit. I have personally benefitted from services offered by New Life Church, namely their homeschool enrichment program, with which several members of my family are still directly involved. I have also known at least one individual involved with Youth With a Mission (YWAM). So, both shootings this morning touched me in a very deep and personal way, and I send my heartfelt condolences to both New Life and YWAM.

Sarah @ CPAC?

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), is probably the single biggest and most important gathering of conservative activists in the country. This year, the speakers included Dick Cheney and almost every GOP presidential candidate. So, what's on the menu for February of 2008?

"Invited Speakers Include: Vice President Dick Cheney, George Will, Wayne LaPierre, David Horowitz, Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Rep. Tom Tancredo, Rep. Mike Pence, Bob Novak, Mike Huckabee, Gov. Sarah Palin, Rep. Ron Paul, Phyllis Schlafly and many, many more conservative celebrities, policy makers and authors."

That's from CPAC 2008's official Facebook group. Only three other Governors have been invited to my knowledge: Bobby Jindal (LA) and Rick Perry (TX) are both mentioned on the Facebook group, and I have read another post indicating that Haley Barbour (MS) has also been invited. This listing as a potential featured speaker at CPAC is confirmation that Gov. Palin has become one of the brightest stars of American conservatism. I use the past-tense "has become" very purposefully; because "future stars" don't get to speak at CPAC, only "stars".

What a difference a year can make!

Omn December 4th, 2006, Sarah Palin was inaugurated as the State of Alaska's 11th Governor, becoming the youngest person and first woman to hold the office. Since then, the Palin administration has changed the face of Alaskan politics and racked up a staggering list of accomplishments. Here are just a few of them:

Major governmental ethics reform
Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA)
Oil tax reform ("ACES")
Cancellation of the "bridge to nowhere"
Line-item veto of a more than a quarter-billion dollars of wasteful government spending

That's quite a year, and those are just the highlights! Palin also fired the state's agriculture board in order to keep the Matanuska Maid Dairy open; won election as Chairman of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission; and stood up to uniformed environmentalist hard-liners on the issues of global warming, polar bears, and wolf population control.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: In only one year, Sarah Palin has already amassed a record of accomplishments that many two-term governors would envy. And if we want real change in Washington, we need to elect people who know how to force the government to shape up...people like Sarah Palin.

Oh...and be sure to chack out this video report from KTUU TV in Anchorage.