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Karl Rove mockingly dismissed the value of Sarah and Todd Palin's endorsements on a private conference call today, noting that their backing of Newt Gingrich in Alaska "demonstrated that endorsements don’t mean snot." BuzzFeed obtained the dial-in information for the conference call with Barclays Capital clients and employees, in which Rove outlined the state of the Republican race for the presidency and the path forward for the candidates. It’s no secret that Rove, who orchestrated President George W. Bush’s presidential wins, is no fan of the Palins, and has repeatedly sparred over with the former Alaska Governor since she entered...

During the '08 Popularity Contest, many Conservatives tried to warn the country about the future Chairman Obama's collection of mutants that were his followers. There was Frank Marshall Davis, the commie who was his father figure. There was Jeremiah Wright, the Black Liberation theologian who couldn't decide who he hated more, "them Jews" or "Amerikkka". Calypso Louie Farrakhan, the afro-fascist extrodinaire who heads the New Black Panther Party, gave Obama two thumbs up, as did the freaks at the $oros-funded Moveon.Dork and the Con Artists Formerly Known As ACORN. Unfortunately, America didn't listen to the Conservative Movement. The Republican candidate,...

Numerous preemptive obituaries are being written for Governor Rick Perry’s campaign. These efforts are premature because they fail to understand and appreciate the fickle winds of political fortune. Governor Perry has substantial political assets that make him a potent candidate and that will give him another chance to prove himself to Republican voters. Each candidate brings their own set of positives and negatives to the game: Mitt Romney has money to burn, establishment support, business experience, and passable debating skills. He also has a record far to the left of the majority of Republicans, a history of changing his position...

I believe that the ruling class politicians see Palin as a real threat to their status quo, and her postponement of announcing her candidacy as a hindrance to their stopping her. One way to force her hand earlier than she intends is to move up the primaries. Anybody else see a pattern here?

In a statement, CNN announces its line-up for the September 12 Tea Party Express co-sponsored debate in Tampa: Gov. Rick Perry, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Gov. Mitt Romney, Rep. Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and Jon Huntsman. The network adds that Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin were invited: "Giuliani declined the debate invitation, while a Palin representative has yet to respond to it."

No person should be above the law, especially those sworn to uphold our constitution and legal foundation. As you know, the public reaction to the behavior of our elected officials often establishes what is generally accepted and tolerated in our society. Given the serious nature of the incident earlier this month, we believe you should step down from your position as a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice until the investigative process is complete. Clearly, under the law, you enjoy the presumption of innocence. However, the continuing reports of your violent and abusive behavior, including verbal abuse and apparent choking, are deeply...

What does he want? Revenge. For what? Being born. This is the way famous gunslinger Doc Holliday answers equally famous lawman and good friend Wyatt Earp’s inquiry - in their depiction in the movie Tombstone - into why their sworn enemy, Johnny Ringo, is such a misanthrope. Sadly, this description would be equally accurate in explaining the actions of another Arizona transplant filled with endless rage: Senator John McCain. I first encountered the seething side of McCain when I was writing my 2008 book, The Real McCain, which was critical of him while pointing out a then-controversial fact, one no...

This thread is only for freepers who want Sarah Palin to be President in 2012. Please all (TROLLS)other stay out.

The issue isn’t Bristol’s dancing, but her popularity. And because of who Bristol is, that means the issue is the popularity of her mother. The unexpectedly large number of people voting for Bristol contradicts the going mood of the gallery of bubble-wrapped Palin-haters who really believed that Palin was being booed that night in the audience at DWTS, and that all of America was booing her, too. Like the old story of Pauline Kael, flabbergasted by Nixon’s landslide in 1972 when she didn’t know a single person who voted for him, the average Palin-hater has existed until now in safe...

In the New York Daily News on Wednesday, S.E. Cupp theorized "The reason Palin has become such a lightening [sic] rod, a kingmaker and a punching bag, a celebrity and a power player, is simple. It's because she's so gosh darn happy.For her fans, like the ones I had the pleasure of meeting in Chicago, she's refreshingly upbeat and resilient, the bubbly friend from childhood who was always great at cheering you up and cheerleading you on. But for her detractors, nothing raises the ire of cynical liberals more than a happy-go-lucky, totally unburdened, freethinking and self-assured conservative woman who...

After Lisa Murkowski's gracious concession last night, Joe Miller is Alaska's Republican senate candidate. What drama! As a relatively new Alaskan, I watched this contest unfold in the last few months from my vantage point in southeast Alaska, Murkowski territory. What was Palin doing, I wondered, when she endorsed the long shot Joe Miller? I was even more amazed when the Tea Party Express group earlier this summer announced its support for Miller, one of only two candidates in the nation it was actively supporting.(The other is Sharron Angle. The group is now also helping Christine O'Donnell.) Why spend scarce...

According to Dave Neiwert, Eliminationist theorist in chief, when he looked at the crowd at the Restoring Honor rally, he was sure the next Timothy McVeigh was out there: Well, Glenn Beck's eyes certainly weren't dry. He started weeping while telling the crowd that somewhere out there was "the next George Washington". Dunno about you, but when I saw pan shots of the crowd -- which was one of the whitest crowds in D.C. in recent memory -- I mostly thought I saw "the next Timothy McVeigh." I just saw people peacefully exercising their constitutional rights of assembly and free...

Don’t blame it all on Arizona. The Grand Canyon State simply happened to be in the right place at the right time to tilt over to the dark side. Its hysteria is but another symptom of a political virus that can’t be quarantined and whose cure is as yet unknown. If many of Arizona’s defenders and critics hold one belief in common, it’s that the new “show me your papers” law is sui generis: it’s seen as one angry border state’s response to its outsized share of America’s illegal immigration crisis. But to label this development “Arizona’s folly” trivializes its...

(snip) But for all its diversity of land and people, Arizona is also a lunatic magnet. As I drove, I listened to the radio blather of a state in mob-rule frenzy of cranky old men. Once in Phoenix, I saw on television that sign in a car’s rear window, the new image of Arizona to the rest of the world: “I’m Mexican. Pull me over.” Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed the state's the immigration law last Friday in Phoenix. The Associated Press Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed the state’s immigration law last Friday. This week, Jon Stewart called Arizona the...

To those of you who go into every Sarah Palin thread with your anti-Palin talking points and repeating everything you hear on ABC, NBC or CBS. I have a question for you personally. This is a personal question. What are you doing to further our cause in a time of grave national and international crisis ? Have you traveled to dozens of states in the last few months ? (Sarah Palin has) also, How is the view from the peanut gallery ? and How is the breakfast with your Democratic friends down at the local Holiday Inn ? Please get...

(snip) I know the answer. It's my fault. It's because of me, and tens of millions of other Americans just like me. We create the demand for illegal immigrant labor not because of anything we do but because of all the things that we will not do -- at any wage. Even as someone who juggles several jobs, I have to admit that my work ethic -- especially for hard, physical labor -- is a distant second to that of my immigrant grandfather who came from Mexico legally in the early 1900's. My grandfather was a farm worker who would...

FORT WORTH, Texas | Former President George W. Bush turned to his faith amid the tough times during his eight years in office, he said Saturday at a religious school's banquet. "I don't see how I could be president without prayer," he told the crowd of more than 1,100 at the Fort Worth Christian School event at a downtown hotel. "The prayers of the people ... sustained me, comforted me and strengthened me in a way I could have never predicted before becoming president, and for that I am extremely grateful." Bush, who has had many speaking engagements since moving...

WASHINGTON -- Former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney met for coffee in their first reunion since President Barack Obama's inauguration more than a year ago. Bush and Cheney met Thursday in the Washington area, Cheney's office said in a statement, declining to give the location. ABC News aired video of Bush shaking Cheney's hand in front of Cheney's Virginia home. The meeting came the day after Cheney left a Washington hospital, where he was treated after a mild heart attack. Bush has kept out of the spotlight since leaving office. Bush took Obama up on the...

Contest rules: Create a "Palin Derangement Syndrome" Logo that Freepers and like minded folks can use in replies to all of the stories we are going to see on Sarah over the next three years. The logo must very professional and convey the idea of the "Palin Derangement Syndrome". Contest Winner Reward: You become famous, a living legend here on the FR, and maybe a guest on Hannity (okay, the Hannity part is pushing it but who knows ..) However, I do this this can be effective, and we simply use the winning logo as the official "Palin Derangement Syndrome"...

Depictions ‘took place entirely in her imagination,’ says Wallace. NBC NEWS and NEWS SERVICES NEW YORK - Former McCain campaign senior adviser Nicolle Wallace says Sarah Palin's book "Going Rogue" is "based on fabrications," and that the basis for Palin’s depictions of her and former McCain campaign director Steve Schmidt as villains "took place entirely in her imagination." In a statement to The Rachel Maddow Show, the former McCain spokesperson repeatedly used the word "fiction" to describe Palin's narrative and echoed criticisms by other former McCain staffers. "She [Palin] probably has a legitimate complaint that things could have been better...

When Ron Paul says the following, you know something is seriously screwed up. “Mr. Privates” himself is now calling for a National health care system, as there is absolutely no way the privatization route will work on this one. Paultards will now implode. Dr. Paultard was on CNN yesterday and went stone “WTF?” on the issue of health care. In fact, his statements go so far against his views on pretty much everything that your Editor now has a headache: “Even though I have my ideal system I would like to see, with the government out completely — because that...

Once again, an ethics complaint has been filed and publicly released in violation of state law. This is the sixth complaint filed by Ms. McLeod. In addition, she has filed a lawsuit against the Governor's office and multiple public records act requests. All of her prior complaints that have been ruled on have been dismissed. The Ethics Act serves important state interests in ensuring ethical state government and was intended to prevent the various forms of corrupt misconduct that had plagued the Legislature in prior years and which resulted in the prosecution of legislators and others. It is unfortunate that...

[C]omparisons do a disservice to Reagan, who not only served two full terms as governor of California, but also spent decades studying the issues and immersing himself in conservative philosophy. His writings and radio commentaries make this abundantly clear. He proved people wrong because they objectively were wrong. This does not mean that whenever the media writes off or attacks a conservative politician that he or she is the next Reagan **** to win and govern effectively you have to do more than "galvanize the party base" and "convince conservatives" -- you also have to convince independents and even some...

WASHINGTON – Former first lady Laura Bush says she's pleased that President Barack Obama nominated a woman for the Supreme Court. "I think she sounds like a winner and a good nominee," Bush said of Sonia Sotomayor, the federal appeals judge Obama picked.

Ted Rall is hopping mad. The syndicated columnist and president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists is denouncing President Obama as "useless" and "dangerous," and he's demanding that Obama "step down now." Long afflicted with Bush Derangement Syndrome, Rall has his knickers in a knot now because he thinks Obama has a plan for "preventive detentions." He claims to have seen "reports in U.S. state-controlled media" saying so. While these reports imply that "Obama's shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists," Rall is certain that, in practice, "Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and...

On Sunday talk shows, he says the 'big tent' party of Reagan and the late Jack Kemp has been replaced by rigid conservatism. BY MARK TRUMBULL Sen. Arlen Specter (D) of Pennsylvania and leaders of the party he bolted last week surprisingly struck a chord of near agreement in discussing the future of the Republican Party Sunday. The question of whether the party can stage a revival without welcoming Northeastern moderates came to the fore on television talk shows Sunday morning. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Senator Specter blamed the inner workings of the conservative movement for his own departure,...

Who's poised to lead the Republican party out of the woods? John McCain seems convinced that one GOP notable is not the person for the job, someone he's quite familiar with - his former running mate. On Monday's "Tonight Show," Jay Leno asked the Arizona Senator to name the new guiding lights of the Republican party, and McCain was quick to rattle off a list of "young, dynamic" governors around the country. Palin wasn't one of them. McCain singled out Lousisana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Florida Gov. Charlie Christ, Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty, and Mitt Romney, McCain's chief rival for the Republican...

Got this spam a few minutes ago in my FReepmail: Hello Friend, I have been a long admirer of yours here at the Free Republic. So I thought I’d take the time to write a personal letter to only you to inform you about Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty. Please keep this letter between just us. After Paul dropped out of the 2008 GOP primary; he started the Campaign for Liberty. It has since grown into the largest Constitutionalist, Austrian economics advocacy group in America with over 140,000 members. Their latest project is to pass H.R. 1207: the audit the...

The father of Sarah Palin’s grandchild accused the Alaska governor on Wednesday of lying about him and his family. Levi Johnston said during an interview on CBS’s “Early Show” that he moved into the governor’s house a few weeks before Bristol Palin gave birth to their child. Palin’s camp has denied the claim, but Johnston insisted the governor is not telling the truth. “They said I didn't live there,” he said. “I was like, 'OK, well, whatever you want to call it. I had my stuff there.'” Asked if the Palin was lying about him, Johnston simply said: “Yes.” Palin...

The systematic leftist smear campaign of Republican leaders is criminal and slanderous. And yet everyone on the right puts up with it (on the right) in the spirit of what? - free speech? Vile pornographic slander is what it is. They take our finest people and attempt to destroy them. IT HAS TO STOP. Absent of morality, we must live in a culture where stupidity, anti-Americanism, promiscuity, racism, betrayal, ridicule is heralded. Hollywood personalities, "cultural icons" are in and out of drug addiction centers and applauded for their courage. Music "icons" spew racist bile, degrade women, and denounce America. Debased...

The Palin family continues to grab headlines, and once again it has nothing to do with politics. This time it surrounds Sarah Palin's sister-in-law, Diana Palin, who was arrested on Thursday for allegedly burglarizing a house. Not once, but twice in a matter of days. And she reportedly brought her 4-year-old daughter along for the heists, according to the Anchorage Daily News. (snip)

COLUMBIA — Less than 10 hours before deadline, Gov. Mark Sanford sent a letter to the Obama administration Friday to accept on behalf of South Carolina all but $700 million of the nearly $8 billion in federal stimulus money the state stands to receive to jump-start its economy. While many across the state can rest easy that food stamps and jobs rebuilding South Carolina roadways are on the way as the federal cash starts flowing, schools are still in trouble. The two-term Republican governor warned the public school system, the intended primary recipient of the $700 million over two years,...

France's president grins, schoolboy-like, as he welcomes Barack Obama to his country where Americans in recent years have not always felt so appreciated. An eager French colonel admonishes his men to keep their heads high as Obama strides past. Teenagers blush and beam at the chance to brush fingers with the American leader. The French — and especially their President Nicolas Sarkozy — are clearly out to set aside past strains and please the Obamas on their first presidential visit. For Nicolas Sarkozy, the trip, for a NATO summit on the French-German border, didn't come a moment too soon. The...

Well, I apologize. I was wrong. The DSCC screed I posted earlier today was not the anti-Rush rant of the day; just an opener. It appears that the entire Democratic Party has decided to make this some sort of deranged crusade. The good news is, if they're tilting with Limbaugh, it's taking time away from scheming more ways to waste our money. This broadside is from the Democratic National Committee:

The Palin Derangement Syndrome (PDS) on the radical left is getting worse. A blogger on the LimeLife.com site is now attacking Gov. Palin for wearing glasses. She didn’t quite call her “four eyes,” but used the slightly more snarky “spectacled one” to describe the former vice presidential nominee and governor of America’s 50th state. Those Leftist writers are so sophisticated. What are they going to do next? Trip retarded kids who are crossing the street? The blog posting breathlessly stated, “Sarah Palin will never be relegated to memory - probably because she never goes away. The spectacled one is back...

Actual evidence of an ODS pandemic, however, is sketchy. In fact, most references to ODS are from conservatives warning against “irrational rage,” as the blogger Neo-Neocon did at Pajamas Media just five days after Obama won the election. Similarly, David Horowitz invoked ODS in December to condemn a “fringe group” that had succumbed to “sore loserism” by floating the idea that a forged birth certificate had been used to hide Obama’s foreign birth, which allegedly made him ineligible for the presidency. ABC’s Jake Tapper is the only mainstream journalist who claims to have diagnosed a genuine case of ODS, using...

I am sick and tired of reading letters from President George W. Bush apologists and revisionists like Claudia Sullivan ("Why doesn't anyone laugh at Obama?" Saturday) and Rebecca Lusignolo-McGlone ("Bush handled office with class, dignity," Friday), as well as some of the conservative Forum columnists. Sullivan claimed that everything that Bush did or said wrong was made up by the media, which in reality gave Bush a pass on almost everything he said and did. No president has gotten more support and coverup from the media than Bush. Lusignolo-McGlone claimed Bush was truthful and honorable, and for that, he has...

There has been much talk of the 8 year BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) from the left but I think it's time we admitted there are DS's on the right and we have to look no further than our own backyard here at FR to find the most glaring example, McCain Derangement Syndrome. McCain wasn't my preferred candidate. In fact, I'd have to go all the way back to Reagan to find my own preferred candidate victorious. But you never get everything you want in politics so many times you have to work with you got and make the best of...

Here is video of Chris Matthews reacting to President George W. Bush's Farewell Address last night. It is a perfect example of "Bush Derangement Syndrome," in which attacks Bush as a "tabula rasa" when he took office who was nothing more than a spoiled rich kid who got the Presidency the same we he got his first car - his Dad gave it to him. He even compares Bush to a "hermit crab." It is amazing to listen to this rant, which shows what Bush has been up against the entire eight years of his Presidency. Matthews is far beyond...

On the evening of Nov. 26, the biggest names in Bollywood walked the red carpet at the Bombay premiere of “The President Is Coming,” a comedy about six 20-somethings vying to win the right to shake hands with President Bush. Among those in attendance at the star-studded premiere Wednesday evening was Bollywood’s “new heartthrob” Imraan Khan, who proudly posed for paparazzi donning a T-shirt with Mr. Bush’s face sandwiched between the words “International Terrorist.” Mr. Khan - a member of India’s Muslim minority - chose not to mock international terrorists who kill in the name of Allah. He and...

"Troopergate" Report: "A Proper and Lawful Exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority"by Mark Rhoads If you are surprised that a committee of partisan Democrats and anti-Palin Republicans from the good-old Alaska legislature would release a report critical of Gov. Palin, then you must have been astonished that the sun came up this morning. If this is the worst that they have on Palin, it is not going to sway many voters one way or another. There are four findings. Two are inconsequential and one of those deals with a workman's compensation case for Trooper Wooten, Gov. Palin's ex-brother-in-law. The...

In an effort to catalog and document this recent outbreak of PDS, I am attempting to gather some choice quotes [especially from reporterettes and Hollowood bimbos] and put faces to the smears. My hope is that this could act as a prophylactic for those at greatest risk to the condition. So many have suffered. Its time that we take action to stop the spread of this horrendous condition.

At the Broward Democratic Party's monthly meeting Tuesday night, it started right at the beginning — with the invocation, delivered by Mike Moskowitz, the state committeeman for the county. He called for a "blessing on the elk and moose in Alaska who have been decimated by Sarah Barracuda" and included a prayer that Palin doesn't turn her sights on the squirrels in Washington, D.C

Atlantic photographer and her 'McCain Derangement Syndrome'Rick Moran September 15, 2008 This is an incredible story that pulls back the curtain on the media in a way that has never been done before. Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic Monthly wrote a very unflattering portrait of John McCain for the publication. To take the picture of McCain for the piece, the Atlantic hired Jill Greenberg, a free lance photographer. The controversy arose when Greenberg informed her blog readers that she actually tried to take pictures of McCain in the most unflattering light possible. The New York Post has the story: "Greenberg...

Ok.... I know the DUmmie Funnies is the usual outlet for this, but this example of LIBERAL DERANGEMENT SYNDROME is just too damn funny to let pass! This is an article on KOS titled: "It's not that Obama's not fighting back. IT'S THE FASCIST MEDIA!!!" You need to understand this. Obama is fighting back. Biden is fighting back. We're all fighting back. They go to hundreds of events. They make countless jabs at McCain, Palin and Bush. If you get the chance to watch their events, you will see Obama and Biden whoop McCain's ass all over the place. Except...

How odd that President Bush, once a darling of conservatives, will come to be loathed by most of them. Bush's legacy, all but set in stone as his days in office dwindle, will not only be the crippling war in Iraq, which he will leave to his successor to end, but stunning changes in government. He just signed an astonishingly vast housing law, dismaying many conservatives. After threatening a veto, he privately, without the press to record the moment, signed a measure supposed to keep as many as 400,000 homeowners out of foreclosure (although more than 3 million are in...

On September 13-14, 2008, Lawrence Velvel, the dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, plans to convene a 'convention' at the school's facilities; the attendees of which will plan strategies to prosecute members of the Bush administration for war crimes. "This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," stated Velvel in a press release. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends...

Just checking.

"This is death by a thousand cuts." That's what they keep saying about Hillary Clinton. Think of what this week was for her. She awoke each day having to absorb new sentences in a paragraph of woe: Three more primary losses, not even close. Now it's eight in a row. A slide in the national polls. Staff shakeup: soap-opera-watching campaign manager out, deputy out. Bill's former campaign manager, David Wilhelm, jumps for Barack Obama. Josh Green, in a stunning piece that might be called a meticulously reported notebook dump, says, in The Atlantic, that Mrs. Clinton made personnel decisions based...

Earlier this morning, I noted that some Democrats have discovered that the Clintonian Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy meme may actually have been drizzly pap. In the Los Angeles Times today, Jonathan Chait reluctantly comes to that conclusion. He writes that the conservatives who have long railed against the lies and dirty tactics of the Clintons have been somewhat vindicated by the primary campaign tactics of Bill and Hillary: Going into the campaign, most of us liked Hillary Clinton just fine, but the fact that tens of millions of Americans are seized with irrational loathing for her suggested that she might not...