Theodore's World

Alaskans to media: Bring it on
Republican delegates confident Palin has nothing to hide
wnd
ST. PAUL, Minn. – Alaska delegates heading home after a giddy week here watching Sarah Palin enter the world stage as John McCain’s running mate will face a bevy of reporters probing every nook and cranny of their popular governor’s life and work, but their attitude is: Bring it on.

“Let ’em come,” said delegate Dave Lewis an operations analyst in Eagle River, Alaska. “I don’t think their digging is going to do anything more than present a picture of who Governor Palin is, what she has done and where she can take us.”

Palin, along with her husband, Todd, joined John and Cindy McCain on stage last night at the Republican National Convention after the Arizona senator formally accepted his nomination in a speech highlighting his career in the Navy, five years as a POW in Hanoi and 26 years in Congress.
McCain told the delegates last night he had “found just the right partner to help me shake up Washington.”
The delegates voted earlier in the evening to make official the convention’s nomination of Palin, whose own speech, Wednesday night, fired up the GOP faithful and drew widespread praise.

“It’s been surreal for us,” Lewis said, summing up the week. “When do you ever get a chance to come from a small state where the next vice president of the United States is your governor? It is just great.”

Lewis said Alaskans are “looking forward to the rest of the country and the world understanding what a fine governor we’ve had, what a fine person, and how much she can contribute not only to the ticket but to changing the things that Sen. McCain talked about tonight.”
Responding to the harsh media spotlight on Palin, Alaska delegate Mead Treadwell, a venture capitalist in Anchorage who has worked with the governor in numerous capacities, argued it’s possible to “find things about anybody if you tell half the story.”

‘”But when you see the full story, I don’t think they are going to lay a glove on her,” he said.

Among the issues raised is Palin’s firing of Alaska’s public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, who claims he was let go because he refused to dismiss the governor’s brother-in-law, a state trooper going through a messy divorce with her sister. Palin denies any wrongdoing.
If Palin raised some questions about a trooper, it was to protect her family,” Treadwell said.
Other members of the state’s delegation contend it’s clear Monegan should have fired the trooper for gross misbehavior, such as driving drunk on the job and Tasing a young teen.
Treadwell sees the personal issues brought up against Palin – such as unwed daughter Bristol’s pregnancy – as off-limits, noting his mother was in Bristol’s shoes, and he wouldn’t be around if she had taken a different course.
Questions have been raised about whether the campaign properly vetted Palin, but McCain staffers contend they were aware of the matters raised by media and fierce critics of the new vice presidential candidate.
Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah noted in an interview with WND at the convention that Palin was vetted by former White House counsel Arthur Culvahouse.

“He’s one of the best attorneys in the country, one of the toughest guys. You don’t get by him with anything,” Hatch said.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that an in-depth interview meeting with Culvahouse didn’t take place until Aug. 27, one day before McCain decided on Palin. But campaign advisers said they had collected information about Palin before the meeting, including details of the firing of the safety commissioner, Monegan.

In his speech last night, McCain praised Palin as a leader with “executive experience and a real record of accomplishment.”

“She’s tackled tough problems like energy independence and corruption,” McCain said. “She’s balanced a budget, cut taxes and taken on the special interests.”

McCain said Palin “knows where she comes from, and she knows who she works for. She stands up for what’s right, and she doesn’t let anyone tell her to sit down.”

“I’m very proud to have introduced our next vice president to the country,” McCain said. “But I can’t wait until I introduce her to Washington. And let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd: Change is coming.”

While Palin’s “Washington outsider” image resonates as a campaign theme, for even many of her supporters it underscores the question of whether she is qualified to handle foreign policy issues.
Treadwell – who has worked with Palin on international relations and environmental and energy issues – said the governor is very bright and repeatedly has demonstrated she’s a quick study who does her homework before confronting any issue.

“I think it’s going to be great that we have a vice president who knows and understands people,” he said. “People say a “heartbeat from the presidency.” She’s got the heartbeat of America.”

Treadwell said he did not support Palin in her run for lieutenant governor, and “I’ve learned the hard way not to underestimate this woman.”

He has worked with her on numerous diplomatic endeavors, including one on energy two weeks ago with Arctic parliamentarians. Treadwell said he also has teamed with Palin on U.S.-Russia relations and talks with the president of Iceland on geothermal resources.
The governor conducts sessions such as these like any other meeting, according to Treadwell.

“She does her homework, she comes into the meeting, she says, ‘How can we make a deal, what’s in our common interest?’ And we move on.”

Treadwell said he was with Palin in another meeting to help elect an Alaska senator.

“I had read something that morning, I passed it across the table, and she said, ‘Yeah,'” acknowledging she had digested its contents,” Treadwell recalled. “It was one of the more obscure policy wonk things that you might get in the mail in Washington, and she’d been up to it.”
Treadwell called her “a student of politics and a student of what’s right.”

She has challenged oil companies when they don’t produce, but her approach is to help them become more competitive, he said.
Also, her attempt to lower health care costs, instinctively, was to say let’s be more competitive, he pointed out.
Treadwell, who serves on the board of a small airline in Alaska, said Palin’s challenge to the airline industry in the state is, “You guys can’t have a monopoly.”

“Now that’s a refreshing kind of Republican,” he said. “That’s a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. And I think you’re going to find Sarah Palin is a very, very good colleague.”

As the convention wound down last night amid popping balloons and confetti-strewn aisles, former House speaker Newt Gingrich summed up the mood. Speaking to the Fox News Channel’s Greta van Sustren, he said he’s been to seven conventions, and this one was the “happiest,” because of Palin.

“I think the very audacity of Palin has given everyone a sense that McCain is the real thing,” Gingrich said, “and we’re going to go out and fundamentally change Washington, and we’re going to do it with energy and courage.”

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Wild Thing’s comment………
I love it!
One of the radio talk shows requested for only people living in Alaska to call and they would put their calls through right away. One after the other called the host to tell him ( Bill Bennett) how he or she and their entire State loved Sarah. How they referred to her as…. Sarah. How their son played Hockey with her son. How they would see her at the grocery store and visit like any of us would, all the things that so many politicians soon forget when they are elected to office including Gov.’s of a State.
It was so refreshing to hear each called share how they knew her and some moment that they could share to let others have a glimpse into Sarah Palin.
This article touched me the same way. I love how the delegates feel the way they do like a real team. I love things like that.

….Thank you Mark for sending this to me.

Sarah Palin: it’s go west, towards the future of conservatism
Times Online
Her thrilling convention speech showed that the Governor of Alaska is a force to reckoned with. But she might be more than that.
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.

Wild Thing’s comment…………
Interesting and a really good write up. Sarah is stating what is on peoples minds. She says what we have wanted to hear from politicans for a long time. It sure fells good.

….Thank you Mark for sending this to me.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani at the 2008 Republican National Convention.

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Wild Thing’s comment……..
In case some of you missed Rudy’s speech at the RNC convention. He gave one heck of a speech. LOL And I love how he zaps the left. hahaha He did it in such a wonderfully mocking way. It couldn’t have been more perfect if he had just sat there laughing every time Obama’s name came up. They (libs) hate humor, and they hate being belittled. Rudy did both in such a wonderful way.
He had the Convention electrified. I didn’t think his speech could be topped…and then right after his speech Sarah Palin gave hers and she brought the house down. What an awesome night that whole evening was.

Obama Calls Penn State The “Nittaly Lions”

Wild Thing’s comment……..
This guy is an elitist intelligentsia moron! 57 states; “Nitally” Lions; breathalizers for asthma sufferers. Can this guy be more clueless? No resume, no accomplishments, no experience, no original ideas, no understanding of how the economy works, no understanding of how the world works, no balls, nothing but abstract empty rhetoric devoid of real substance.
Rush Limbaugh played this on his show today.
The hell with Obama! The realization that they are fighting a lost cause just smacked the dems and their surrogates across the face.
Their “Change” theme has just been usurped by people who actually have accomplished something.
Keep wowin’ ‘em in Pennsylvania!
And a few days ago he called Governor Palin’s home town Wasilly, instead of Wasilla.
Just one more thing. If Obama really cared about Americans he would take more care in knowing who he was talking to and talking about, more care in where he was and for God’s sake how many States there are.
He is stupid, he could care less, he just uses this country. Go the heck back Kenya jerk and take your wife with you.
Hey Obama we don’t forget and we won’t let you forget what you said :

“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Biden Gaffe: Lt. Governor of Alaska?

Wild Thing’s comment……..
LOL oh my haha just keep talking Biden.

….Thank you Cheryl for sending this to me.

Obama enlists Clinton to help counter Palin
Star Tribune
Rapid-response team of female surrogates is being readied to take on the Republican ticket.
Sen. Barack Obama will increasingly lean on prominent Democratic women to undercut Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. John McCain, dispatching Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to Florida on Monday and creating a rapid-response team to deploy female surrogates to battleground states, Obama advisers said Thursday.

Clinton’s campaign event in Florida, her first for Obama since the Democratic convention, will include a forceful response to the searing attacks and fresh burst of energy that Palin injected into the race with her convention speech on Wednesday, Obama aides said.

With the McCain-Palin team courting undecided female voters, including some who backed Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Obama aides said they were counting on not only Clinton but also Democratic female governors to criticize Palin — and, by extension, McCain. Those governors include Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas.
Within the Obama campaign and among Democratic officials nationwide, talks are well under way about how the party should treat Palin in the campaign — and what Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden, need to do to regain the offensive after the Republican convention.
Some Democrats were urging Obama’s campaign not to underestimate the potential power of Palin’s speech.
On liberal talk-radio shows and on left-leaning blogs, some Democrats said the Obama campaign should fight back hard to avoid being caricatured as Sen. John Kerry was four years ago when he ran against President Bush. Some party strategists warned that Palin’s personal narrative as a “hockey mom” with a special-needs child would appeal to some undecided women.

“What McCain has done with Governor Palin’s nomination is aim right at a demographic that Obama needs to address quickly: noncollege-educated women,” said Mike McCurry, a former spokesman in the Clinton White House.

Advisers to Obama predicted that the buzz over Palin would fade and that the race would quickly turn back into a contest between McCain and Obama, despite the McCain campaign’s efforts to compare Obama’s experience unfavorably to Palin’s. At the same time, even as Democratic researchers pore over Palin’s record in Alaska, the rapid-response team is settnig up in Chicago to dispatch female surrogates around the country.
David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s chief political strategist, said Obama would not raise questions about Palin’s experience. Axelrod said the campaign would work instead to impress upon voters the seriousness of the race and continue to try to link the McCain-Palin team to Bush.

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Wild Thing’s comment……..
A what? A who? hahaha Rapid-response team of female surrogates to fight off Palin. hahaha This is rich!
They know they’re in trouble. WOW my very first thought is here is a man that wants to be President and he is sending our WOMEN to fight his battles for him. LMAO
Yeah, c’mon girlie-boy, show us how you’ll stand up to Iran by taking on the GOP.
I realize they are going up against a woman and that is the reason or part of it, but still. This is just too funny. Actually the contrasts between Sarah and Clinton will be striking. I think it was Rush that said Sarah is what guys want as a wife while Clinton reminds them of their ex wife. I’d say for females, Sarah would be someone they want to be friends with while Clinton is a woman at work they can’t stand. heh heh
So what is Hillary Clinton supposed to say in Florida ?
1.. She’s not as experienced as Obama….
2. She has not given us her full background…
3. She hasn’t released her birth certificate..
4.. She’s married and has 5 children, that’s not very Feminist…
5. Barack and Joe are the right team to lead America even though i was well qualified too…Darn !!

Lawsuit questions Obama’s eligibility for office: citenship claim at issue
http://obamacrimes.com/
Pennsylvania’s former deputy attorney general and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter Philip J. Berg has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Pennsylvania accusing presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of lying about his U.S. citizenship, which would make him ineligible to be president.
Mr. Berg is one of a faction of Clinton supporters who haven’t heeded the party’s call for unity, filing the suit just days before the opening of the Democratic National Convention, which will nominate Mr. Obama as the party’s presidential candidate.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia last week, also names the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission and says Mr. Obama´s mother went to Kenya late in her pregnancy and ended up giving birth there. It also claims that later in life, Mr. Obama declared himself a citizen of Indonesia.
The Obama campaign has firmly said the Illinois Democrat is a natural-born citizen. Last month, the campaign posted on Mr. Obama’s Web site a copy of his “certification of live birth.” It says he was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961, two years after Hawaii was named the 50th state.
Mr. Berg said he was contacted about filing the lawsuit by a member or associate of the group PUMA, which was formed to support Mrs. Clinton shortly after she withdrew from the race. Its mission includes denouncing the Democratic Party and Mr. Obama’s nomination.

“I really do not believe he is a natural-born citizen,” said Mr. Berg, adding that he is not connected with Mrs. Clinton or her campaign.

OBAMA AND DNC SERVED TODAY WITH BERG LAWSUIT:
Clinton Democrats
For Immediate Release: – 09/04/08
SERVICE OF LAWSUIT CHALLENGING SENATOR OBAMA’S RIGHT TO BE A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT BECAUSE HE DOES NOT MEET THE QUALIFICATIONS HAS BEEN COMPLETED
( Lafayette Hill , Pennsylvania – 09/04/08) – Philip J. Berg, Esquire, the Attorney who filed suit against Barack H. Obama challenging Senator Obama’s eligibility to serve as President of the United States, has received confirmation from his Process Service Company that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Senator Barack Obama were served today, September 4, 2008, with the legal documents pertaining to Berg vs. Obama, Civil Action No. 08-cv-4083. The DNC was served at 12:00 p.m. and Senator Obama was served at 1:00 p.m. The U.S. Attorney’s Office accepted service on behalf of the Federal Elections Committee (FEC) on or about August 22, 2008.

Here’s the reference:
* * For copies of all Court Pleadings, go to
obamacrimes.com
http://obamacrimes.com
For Further Information Contact:
Philip J. Berg, Esquire Suit Filed & Served
555 Andorra Glen Court, Suite 12
Lafayette Hill , PA 19444-2531
Cell (610) 662-3005 No. 08-cv-4083
(610) 825-3134
(800) 993-PHIL [7445]
Fax (610) 834-7659
philjberg@obamacrimes.com

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Wild Thing’s comment……..
There was a question as to McCain and Obama being citizens. McCain was cleared long ago but not Obama. Puma has been going after this like crazy ever since the votes were stolen from Hillary and it looks like it is starting to be taken seriously. Maybe , maybe not, this legal stuff is always confusing to me.
Nobody threw the suit out about Obama, the judge simply delayed it until Obama could be served. Well, now he is served, and whether it goes anywhere or not, it will shake up the game.
I wonder how the server got through the secret service? Maybe when Obama said he would do the interview with O’Reilly or was that taped and done awhile back , not sure.
Just out of curiousity, if the candidate had to remove himself from the race at this point, how would they choose another candidate?
OK I just checked with some research and found this:

Per the Rules of the DNC:
“Filling a Vacancy on the National Ticket: In the event of death, resignation or disability of a nominee of the Party for President or Vice President after the adjournment of the National Convention, the National Chairperson of the Democratic National Committee shall confer with the Democratic leadership of the United States Congress and the Democratic Governors Association and shall report to the Democratic National Committee, which is authorized to fill the vacancy or vacancies.”

I doubt though this is going anywhere other then to upset Obama and throw him off balance for awhile. My thinking is this particular suit could be thrown out since Berg ‘claims’ the RNC has the source documents proving the claim. Since Berg doesn’t have them he really doesn’t have any hard evidence.
BUT if the ‘claims’ are true and the RNC does have the hard evidence could be a different ballgame later.
Too much drama for me. I like things a lot cleaner. See the enemy, aim and shoot. Feel the recoil and clean the gun. hahaahahhaa Sorry could not resist only kidding , but all this drama is just too much. LOL
I haven’t posted on this because it all seems like a soap opera and not real. His mom was a citizen so wouldn’t that make him a citizen too. (?)
Also Obama is a guy who wants GIs to read foreign terrorists captured abroad their Miranda Rights. He doesn’t want to monitor terrorist communications. He wants to end enhanced scrutiny of visa applicants from Muslim countries. He is a ZERO in the War on Terror. That to me ranks higher on the food chart. Besides I would rather run against Obama then Hillary. I want us to win and I think we can now going up against Obama. Also Hillary has too many dead associations in her life. Yikes ( eyes rolling here) haha

Palin’s hometown crowd: “She thumped ’em”
AP
Scott Myers led the cheering section Wednesday as Sarah Palin, the hometown girl, accepted the Republican vice presidential nomination at the GOP convention.
Myers, holding two small American flags, shouted, “Go, Sarah! Yes, Sarah! Go Sarah! Yes, Sarah!” as more than 100 people crowded the Tailgaters sports bar and grill to watch the late afternoon speech.
Myers, 70, said Palin is family, and she takes care of the people of Wasilla like her own.
He said she’s hardworking, just like his mother, she’s juggling two jobs, and she can take whatever is dished out.

“She’s a true blue, dyed-in-the-wool honest person and everyone is scared to death of her,” said the resident of nearby Palmer who described himself as a conservative Republican. “Now I’ve got someone to root for again.”

Myers wasn’t alone in his unabashed enthusiasm for Palin during her speech.
Minor Smith, 57, a North Slope worker from Wasilla, who was baptized in the same church as Palin and knows her husband, Todd, said he wasn’t worried that Sarah Palin would crumble under the pressure. In fact, he said, it’s just the type of fight she likes.

“She is perfectly able to defend herself. She’s a little tiger,” he said of the woman he got to know at church picnics. “She loves this stuff. This is what she lives for.”

Palin was born in Idaho, but moved to Wasilla as an infant with her parents, Chuck and Sally Heath.
The giddy crowd flashed their McCain-Palin shirts – what they call “Sarah wear” – and swapped stories about the Palin and Heath families they all had heard a thousand times before.
When Palin took the stage, they leapt to their feet like the hometown team was taking the field for the Super Bowl.
Carol Bearman, 42, said she was visting from the Prince William Sound community of Valdez to go moose hunting. Bearman said Palin was tough, like every Alaska woman.
Bearman noted that many pundits predict that Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden will have no trouble dismantling the green Palin during debates.

“They all say Biden is going to eat her up and spit her out. I think the opposite is going to happen,” Bearman said after Palin’s speech.

The crowd cheered at just about every sentence during Palin’s speech, and frequently jumped to their feet, singing a chorus of “Go girl! and “Yes, Sarah!”
Some of the biggest responses came when Palin introduced her family and when the camera stayed on her parents.
She also drew wild applause when making jabs at presidential candidate Barack Obama and other Democrats and when she defended the people that come from small-town America.

“They love their country in good times and bad,” Palin said, prompting Myers to jump to his feet, clapping and yelling, “Yay!” while others cheered wildly.

She also got a loud laugh when making the joke about the only difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull – lipstick.
Smith – who showed up at the bar to watch a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game – said he wasn’t surprised that Palin was the picture of confidence during her first national speech.

“She believes this stuff. It’s Sarah being Sarah,” he said.

Mike Swanson, 53, and J.P., his 51-year-old wife, both donned “Go Sarah” T-shirts to show their support. J.P. said she remembers teaching 18-year-old Sarah Palin how to do telephone repair work and said she was impressive even then.
However, she said she can’t help worrying about her just a little bit, like a mother, she said.

“She’ll be all right. We’re damn proud of her,” she said.

Her husband added it won’t be long before the rest of the country gets to know the real Sarah Palin, too.

“I’m sure the rest of the country will be proud of her, too, real quick,” he said.

At the end of Palin’s speech, the bar crowd jumped to their feet and gave her standing ovation.

“She thumped ’em,” Myers said.

Wild Thing’s comment………..
What a great write up, so many good things they say about Sarah Palin. I love it. It is wonderful when a good person gets a high five.
It is just so great to be able to post about all these people that love America too , and appreciate Palin and what she has meant and will continue to mean to our country.

….Thank you Mark for sending this to me.

Just a few parts of his speech……

“My fellow Americans, when I’m President, we’re going to embark on the most ambitious national project in decades. We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don’t like us very much. We will attack the problem on every front. We will produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells offshore, and we’ll drill them now. We will build more nuclear power plants. We will develop clean coal technology. We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas.”

“I’ve been an imperfect servant of my country for many years. But I have been her servant first, last and always. And I’ve never lived a day, in good times or bad, that I didn’t thank God for the privilege.
Long ago, something unusual happened to me that taught me the most valuable lesson of my life. I was blessed by misfortune. I mean that sincerely. I was blessed because I served in the company of heroes, and I witnessed a thousand acts of courage, compassion and love.”

“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.
When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn’t know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone. And then he told me to get back up and fight again for our country and for the men I had the honor to serve with. Because every day they fought for me.”

THIS ONE IS AWESOME!

“I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn’t my own man anymore. I was my country’s.”

“I’m not running for president because I think I’m blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God.”

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Wild Thing’s comment………

The whole speech was very sincere, thoughtful and well-spoken. Not fire and brimstone. It was a humble speech and combined with Sarah Palin’s line in her speech about having a “servant’s heart” shows that this ticket knows who they are without guile or pretension.
He told of his stay in the Hanoi Hilton, and how that experience shaped him. I liked when he told from his heart about how America saved him and how he went from a self, and the all about me looking for excitement kind of guy to a man that wanted to serve the country that saved him…….. that touched me and when the camera panned again to the Vets once again I looked into their eyes. As I watched the faces of the Veterans they are most important to me, more then anything, and it was very moving. Tears in their eyes and upon their cheeks, eyes that held untold stories and some shared, but memories and the never to be forgotten depth in them. McCain is a MAN and a hero, he is a man of deep conviction. And a man of passion and will fight back. He will fight back if we are attacked again, being a wimp like Kerry and Obama is foreign to him.
McCain as we know is against waterboarding, but after hearing him speak I understand better why. One time months ago Jack said on here that his being against waterboarding might be due to his being a POW and what he went through. I think he is right and soooooooo I am offering to be in charge of the torture of Islamists and waterboarding. Then McCain won’t have to think about it and we can still get information we need. There that is settled then, if he would only take me up on it.
Obama bragged on how he gave up a job on Wall Street, McCain in sharing with us when he was a POW ….and with his voice getting a bit choked up he said, “And they broke me.”
McCain told us who he is and how he thinks about his country…our country and I believe him. He spoke from his heart and his heart loves America.
Some of his politics I don’t appreciate, I disagree with and I have posted about it, I can never forgive him regarding the POW MIA Senate Hearings with Kerry and his comment about the Swifties . His stand on amnesty is very upsetting, but I have to be honest, I have posted more then most blogs I have seen about the illegals and how upset about illegals I am and the amnesty. I worked hard both times to get them not to pass the Bush, Kennedy, McCain, amnesty bill under Bush. My thought on this is that before Bush won his first term, when I worked very hard to get him elected, in rallies,etc. ( sidenote: we were not living in Florida back then during his first run for Pres.) I knew very well that Bush favored illegals and amnesty. That was a huge issue with me. It still is today but the reality is that I voted for Bush both times and campaigned for him both times knowing how he felt about illegals.
My point is…. here I am once again hoping a man wins that is for illegals and will surely push his amnesty if elected. I don’t know the answer and I am not asking a question. hahaha I just need to say it out loud because I realize we may never have someone to vote for that is against amnesty like we are here at this blog and many other blogs.
One thing for sure after this speech he gave I will not question his love for his country. His thinking on some things, yes, and his past actions yes, but in comparison it’s an implicit contrast with Obama, who puts himself first. Who is a totally dangerous man for America not only about illegals but in every way. McCain has proven he has walked the talk on many other things then those things I disagree with.
And who knows with Palin as his VP she may influence him to be more conservative. One can hope anyway and I do so love looking at the glass half full, how can we not! We live in America and we are so blessed to be Americans.
The last five minutes was fantastic. The ending, where he continued to talk while the delegates were cheering ever louder, was inspiring. AWESOME!!!!!
God bless the McCain family and God Bless the Palin family. Both families have sons serving our country.