Domestic Terrorism in Alaska

What have we become when in the midst of the Christmas season, outrageous and disgusting “political acts” like this take place?

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s home church was badly damaged by arson, leading the governor to apologize Saturday if the fire was connected to “undeserved negative attention” from her campaign as the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Damage to the Wasilla Bible Church was estimated at $1 million, authorities said. No one was injured in the fire, which was set Friday night while a handful of people, including two children, were inside, according to James Steele, the Central Mat-Su fire chief.

He said the blaze was being investigated as an arson. Steele said he didn’t know of any recent threats to the church, and authorities did not know whether Palin’s connection to the church was relevant to the fire.

“It’s hard to say at this point. Everything is just speculation,” he said.

I hope you’re right, Chief, but I doubt it.

May God bless them and give them strength during this trying time.

Riffin’ on Palin

Apparently I was a topic of conversation at the GOP Governors' Meeting...

 

by lamayor

Camille Paglia, always a fun read and an engaging polemicist, riffs on our erstwhile veep candidate in Salon.  Though she is certainly not a conservative, I’ve always found her to call ’em honestly, and she certainly passes my “Would Be Fun to Have a Beer With” test. 

In a columnthat cheerfully centers on the advent of President Hope-ama, Paglia offers a hearty defense of Sarah Palin and a rebuke of her critics. 

I like Sarah Palin, and I’ve heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage.  As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is – and quite frankly, I think the people who don’t see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma.

See, part of Palin’s appeal is that she represents the best of us, even if the MSM and the libs don’t see it. 

Palin grew up in suburbia, played sports, entered a pageant or two, married her high school sweetheart, went to college (probably even struggled a bit and couldn’t decide on a major), graduated, and joined the working world.  She then had kids, raised a family, and along the way, figured she could make a difference.  From the PTA to veep candidate in less than 20 years, yet she never forgot her values – or to use the old phrase, she remembers where she came from.

She is everything that feminism should proud of – college-educated, career oriented, successful, and a wife and mother.  Hillary is certainly a talented woman, but it’s fair to say that she partly owes her lofty perch to being Bill’s wife.  Sarah, though, is a walking Virginia Slims ad – She’s come a long way, baby!  And the Left hates her for it.  Why?

So she doesn’t speak the King’s English – big whoop!  There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes.  She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist.  I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns – that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism.  Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.

She’s pro-life.  She hunts.  She went to (gasp!) a state school in flyover country.  She’s pretty (hot).  She goes to a Pentecostal church.  She’s from Alaska.  And goshdarn it dontcha know, she sounds like an extra from Fargo.  Worse yet and unforgivable (make sure the kids are out of the room before continuing, please) – she is a conservative Republican!  How dare she represent the modern I-Can-Have-It-All woman?!  This isn’t why Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, the ERA movement, Planned Parenthood, and the rest of Feminism, Inc. burned their bras, for Goddess’s sake! 

As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee – what navel-gazing hypocrisy!  What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry’s nod for veep four years ago? . . .  Whatever knowledge deficit Palin has about the federal bureaucracy or international affairs (outside the normal purview of governors) will hopefully be remedied during the next eight years of the Obama presidencies. (Oh Lord, please no! – ed.)  

. . . Sarah Palin should stick to her governorship and just hit the rubber-chicken circuit, as Richard Nixon did in his long haul back from political limbo following his California gubernatorial defeat in 1962.  Step by step, the mainstream media will come around, wipe its own mud out of its eyes, and see Palin for the populist phenomenon that she is.

I agree.  With a little seasoning our Sarah can be a formidable force.

Need to feed your Palin jones?  Here she is riffing on Austin radio.