But they hate her so passionately because they fear her, as bullies everywhere hate and fear anyone who stands up to them. Instead of retreating in the face of their attacks, she rhetorically reloads, and lets them have it with both barrels. In their world, polarizing a target is supposed to destroy that target, not strengthen it.

The definition of polarize in a social context is: “cause to concentrate about two conflicting or contrasting positions” or “become polarized in a conflict or contrasting situation”. Synonyms include: disunite, separate, part, divide.

Liberals would have you believe that this is the effect that Sarah Palin has on the Republican Party, and to some extent this is true. She has shown a propensity for separating the wheat from the chaff within the GOP.

But more importantly, she has the ability to separate a lot of rank-and-file Democrats from the liberal loons that have taken over their party. Who do those Democrats who live in flyover country have more in common with, Sarah Palin or Nancy Pelosi? Illegal immigration? Advantage Palin. Islamization? Advantage Palin. Abortion? Advantage Palin. 2nd Amendment and Christianity? Palin hands down.

The far left knows this, and that’s why they are desperate to silence her. But Saul Alinsky should have added one more rule. #14 should have said “Shut up while you’re ahead, and don’t overplay your hand.” It might have saved some of them from making complete asses of themselves in the wake of the Tucson shootings. Or not. Since some of them continued to squeal like a bunch of stuck hogs about political rhetoric, even in the face of polls showing that the majority of Americans knew they were full of hooey, and then trying to force a debate about gun control.

We can have a debate about any issue that they choose, but to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin and the American people will win, and the liberal left will lose. The more polarized we become, the more isolated they will be. And when the Sit Down and Shut Up shoe is on the other foot, they are going to rue the day that they decided to take on Sarah Palin.

It’s Snowing In The Pines

For the first time in seventeen years here in Northwest Georgia, according to the local meterologists. We got over three feet of snow earlier that year, in the middle of March. That was back when global warming was still known as seasons.

Christmas, for all of it’s hustle and bustle, is a time of reflection, and of recollection. So I have spent some time visiting with the ghosts of Christmas past today, remembering friends and loved ones who are no longer here, and giving thanks for all of those who still are.

I have also spent some time reflecting on the Reason for the Season, and acknowledging that without his grace and mercy, I would not be here. I spent Christmas of 2001 in an ICU, due to complications from chemotherapy.

 I was admitted on the Friday before Christmas, with an embolism that it took doctors 13 hours to find. They spent the next four days trying first to save my leg, and then to save my life. I spent the next four days in a drug and pain induced haze, more dead than alive, too weak to open my eyes and too tired to care.

When the doctors gave me a clot buster to try to unblock the artery, I started bleeding out through my kidneys, so they had to stop it. But I continued to lose blood anyway, and they couldn’t figure out why. I received 14 units of blood over the course of that four days. The more they gave me, the faster my counts dropped, and my pulse and blood pressure dropped so low they were virtually nonexistant.

I could hear everything that was being said around me, but I could feel myself drifting away. The farther I drifted, the more I wanted to keep going, but I could feel the power of prayer pulling me back. I was close enough to feel a sense of peace unlike anything I’ve ever know, and I didn’t want to let it go, but it was not my time.

Late in the evening on Christmas Eve, my vital signs started to improve slightly, and I was able to sit up long enough to eat a few spoonfuls of applesauce and drink some water. By Christmas day, I was eating turkey and dressing from the hospital cafeteria, and proclaiming it the best I had ever had.

Every day since then has been a bonus, every Christmas a gift. I am always mindful of that, and it has carried me through some difficult days. My prayer for all who are reading this is that your days be filled with laughter, your hearts be filled with compassion and gratitude, and your lives be filled with joy and wonder.

Merry Christmas from Dixie, to everyone tonight.

crossposted on The Dixie Highway

Palin Derangement Syndrome has reduced the “talent”  at MSNBC, and most of their guests, to a bunch of screeching monkeys, jumping up and down and beating their brow. And CNN can’t help but reveal themselves as a bunch of braying  jackasses at the mention of her name.

On Sarah Palin’s recent trip to Haiti, on behalf of Samaritan’s Purse, she made the decision to exclude all other news coverage of her visit except FOX, and declined to answer questions after a brief statement to the press.

Now, someone not infected with PDS might come to the conclusion that she did not want to turn her visit into a three-ring media circus, with all of the focus on her and her “hairdresser”. A normal person might be less concerned with whether this trip might benefit her politically, and understand that her celebrity might bring attention and assistance to the Haitian people. A sane Democrat might conclude that, for Haiti, at this point all puclicity is good publicity.

Obviously, there are no sane Democrats, or even any normal people at MSNBC. The always apoplectic Ed Schultz, comparing apples to oranges, thinks that people should be offended that she is using this as a photo op “at this late date”. Ed obviously didn’t get the memo about his soul sisters at CNN having their panties in a bunch because she didn’t invite their cameramen and photographers to the photo op.

Meanwhile, the Hee Haw network had to interrupt their hard-hitting, in depth reporting on the purse that a Florida school board member swung at the man who was holding her fellow board members at gunpoint with the breaking news that Sarah Palin is a big meanie. Apparently they were upset because she wouldn’t let them dog her every step, and shout questions about where she gets her nails done, and what kind of gum she chews.

One intrepid reporter spun his coverage to imply that she excluded not only the media, but Haitians as well. He even concludes his report by saying “We never saw her, while she was here, with a single Haitian.” Poor fool didn’t realize that his own network was making him look like the southbound end of a northbound donkey by showing actual pictures of suffering Haitians the whole time he was talking. But the look on his face when his own anchor called him on it was priceless. I can’t decide what he reminds me more of when he’s standing there opening and closing his mouth, Barack Obama without his binky, or that fish on Sarah Palin’s Alaska right before she smacked it with a billy club. What do you think?

There were two points made in the comments that I would like to address, from a Blue-Collar Redneck center-right perspective. The first one is that most of Rush’s listeners would see this piece as “an appeal to emotion”, because it isn’t a side-by-side policy comparison. And the second is that the difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is shades of grey.

The point that they seem to be missing is that not all of us see the world starkly defined as either black or white. We see shades of gray in every issue, and see the merits of the arguments of both sides, without completely agreeing with either of them.

We understand that there are a lot of vehicle choices between a Hummer and a Volt. We see the merit in reducing our dependence not just on foreign oil, but on oil period. But we also see the Cap and Tax legislation for the detrimental effect it will have on the poor and the middle class, both financially and physically.

We understand the religious connotations of the word “marraige” to many people in this country, and respect their objections. But many of us agree with the concept of civil unions, and could care less if Adam marries Eve, or if he marries Steve. What we don’t understand is how conservatives can defend “the sanctity of marraige” on the one hand, while roundly condemning Hillary Clinton for not ending hers on the other.

We don’t necessarily agree with government subsidized, unfettered abortion, but most of us don’t think a woman should go to jail for having one. And we understand that the only way that pro-lifers are going to prevail is BY appealing to emotion, because there were abortions before Roe v. Wade, and there would still be abortions if it is overturned. That is a battle that must be won in the field of hearts and minds, not in the legislative arena.

We understand that Obamacare is a fiscal disaster waiting to happen, even though we don’t disagree with some of the provisions in it.  We feel like we are being regulated to death by an out of control government, but we don’t trust the “free market” to always force corporations and industries to “do the right thing”. 

We don’t appreciate being called racists because we disagree with or don’t support Obama, but we didn’t particularly care for being called unpatriotic or unAmerican every time we disagreed with George W. Bush and the GOP either. And conservatives would be making a huge mistake if they assume that we are going to make a lifetime commitment to the Republicans, for better or worse, just because we have divorced ourselves from the Democrats.

In most elections, we agree with the policy positions of one candidate more than the other, but don’t agree completely with either. So we make our voting decisions using both reason and emotion. We judge our candidates not just by the color of their position papers, but by what we perceive as the content of their charachters.

Unlike Kevin, I was not an early Hillary Clinton supporter. I was a John Edwards supporter in the beginning (I know, I know), but as the field narrowed and I started paying more attention to the debates, she grew on me. I came to admire her toughness and her grit, and I never once felt that she looked down on people like me.

For that reason, it was very easy for me to transfer my support to Sarah Palin, when she came on the scene. I admire the same qualities in her that I admire in Hillary Clinton. I like the fact that she is full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes. She says exactly what she thinks, and she doesn’t back down from a fight. If she runs in 2012, I will support and defend her to my last breath, regardless of whoever else is on the ticket. If she wins, I will argue whatever policy differences I might have with her. But in the meantime, I will stand with Sarah in her fight against Obama and the rest of the far left, and against the GOP establishment.

Speeches by conservative personalities Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin echoed off the marbled edges of the World War II monument, far from the stage at the Lincoln Memorial during the “Restoring Honor” rally today in Washington, D.C. 

But their words seemed secondary to the statement made by the crowds of young families pushing strollers, seniors citizens determined to battle distance and heat, veterans sporting service pins, and plain old flag-waving Americans.

He then goes on to say:

Across the Mall, which was pinpointed with people well past the Washington Monument, there likely were thousands and thousands of individual motivations propelling people to travel here and make their stand.

Some might try to dismiss the outpouring as an event promoted on cable TV and fanned by the heated rhetoric of a talk show host. But to see the resolve etched on the faces is to know there’s something deeper.

That something deeper is the heart and the character of the American people. We have been bullied and berated by our self-proclaimed Smarter Betters, who are often dismissive, even derisive, towards us.

The SBs have appealed to us as a Christian nation for years to subsidize those who are less fortunate with our tax dollars, both at home and abroad, only to turn around and ridicule and denigrate us for those same values. They demand that we be tolerant of their cause du jour, even as they demonstrate their lack of tolerance for our opinions .

For all intents and purposes, the Obamacrats have declared war on the American people. The American people said NO to health care health insurance reform, and they shoved it down our throats, coating an already bitter pill with an unseemly display of bribery and arm-twisting.

The majority of the American people want the border secured, and agree with Arizona’s SB1070. The Obamacrats sued Arizona and started trying to grant backdoor amnesty to what they consider the undocumented Democrats.

A plurality in New York, and across the country, say no to an ostentatious mosque at Ground Zero. The Obamacrats response is another lecture, and another attack.

On issue after issue, they are losing the argument in the court of public opinion. The American people are making a statement, and making a stand, as Mr. Luciew said. That resolve that he saw on people’s faces at the rally was replicated in the faces of those across America watching the event on CSPAN or via livestream on the internet, and the many millions across the country who agree with them. It is a reflection of a quiet anger that is sweeping the country, and a steely determination to right a ship that is listing dangerously to port, and taking on water.

But they have truly awakened a sleeping giant, and now they are scrambling wildly trying to figure out a way to get the genie back in the bottle. If they think they are going to be able to accomplish that with venomous vitriol and hysterical hypocritical haranguing, they are sadly mistaken.

We have been jarred from our complacency, and we are not only Fired Up and Ready To Go, we are Fed Up and Ready To Vote.

Clearly there are a lot of questions to be sorted out in this affair. But one of them turns out to be this: How did one of the most intellectual presidents in history, a constitutional law professor with a government-provided staff of legal experts and policy geniuses and an ability, rarely if ever matched, to speak in lofty tones, manage to get himself in a position where he will end up following the lead of an ex-governor who has been constantly set down by the left as but a one-time beauty queen without brains and who has been watching the whole fracas from a lake-side camp at Alaska?

No wonder they’re so angry and vulgar.  Their Precedent and their positions have been refudiated by the majority of the American people. The Hillbilly from Wasilly has outmaneuvered both him and them on issue after issue. The race card is maxed out , and nobody cares what they think anymore. Does Obamacare cover Opressive head explosions, or a cream for that rash?

Other excellent suggestions in the comments include:

Oppressive Regressives (ht DeniseVB)

Suppressive-Regressive-Oppressives. (ht Bev)

O-pressives (ht ycats)

Oppressive Compulsives (ht MRM)

depressive-progressives? (ht Michelle)

I think all of those are great suggestions, so I shuffled the first letters around a little bit and came up with O-Pressive DORCS.

We probably need to come up with something pithy to call the self-appointed “ruling elite”.  One of my friends refers to them sarcastically as our “smarter betters”. Calling them SBs works just fine for me, since that is what they are. But I’m sure some of you could improve on that suggestion. Any ideas?

The name itself seems to produce a visceral reaction across the political spectrum. When I joined TeamSarah and started posting as PalinDemocrat, the near universal reaction among conservatives was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and quite a bit of foaming at the mouth. And the reaction on many PUMA blogs was not much better. It was even decreed on one of them that PalinDemocrat was an oxymoron, and I might as well call myself an atheist Christian.

 Personally, I don’t see the conflict. I am not an Obamacrat, and I never will be. But I was raised Democrat the way many people are raised Baptist, or Episcopalian. Everybody in my family was a Democrat, as were most of the people in my circle of friends and acquaintances. For most of them, it boiled down to “Republicans represent the rich man, Democrats represent the working man.”.

That is no longer the case, and hasn’t been for a very long time. As near as I can tell, neither major party has any interest in representing working people. The Democrats might pay lip service in an election year, and throw an occasional bone to the unions. But the reality is that they all serve corporate masters, in many cases the same ones. If they had to wear logos for all of their corporate sponsors, in proportion to the funding that they receive, their suit jackets would all weigh at least 50 pounds.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, has walked a mile in many of our shoes. She has worked her way up wearing a blue collar around a red neck, and she was willing to take on corruption in both parties to do it. The elites in both parties fear her because they know that she can relate to ordinary Americans in a way that they can’t, or won’t.  

She has been the largest and most effective (and in many cases the only) speed bump on the road to Obamanation.  I don’t and nor do I have to agree with her on every issue to support that effort. And I don’t feel any particular need to abandon my political identity because my party has been hijacked by radical racists and nasty misogynists.

So at the end of the day I have decided that I will remain PalinDemocrat for as long as it suits me, but the list of Democrats I will be supporting and voting for in the near term will be very short indeed.  I can count them on one hand. Or more accurately, on one finger, one which will be directed toward the Obamacrat Party for the foreseeable future.