Palin: Our Warriors Deserve Better

Today Governor Sarah Palin once again takes a stand for our brave men and women who are serving in harm’s way. As a former commander in chief, she clearly understands the needs of those serving in our military.

 

Every American should be alarmed at Barack Obama’s priorities, which are illustrated starkly and astonishingly in his cuts to national defense. Those of us with family members in the military, especially, cannot help but be shocked and disappointed by the Commander in Chief’s decision to cut our troops and the benefits they have earned. It’s amazing when you consider all the government waste and the fact that the compensation and benefits of politicians (including the President) only increase, never decrease.

In a recent newsletter, Congressman Allen West points out:

The Obama administration’s proposed defense budget calls for military families and retirees to pay sharply more for their healthcare, while leaving unionized civilian defense workers’ benefits untouched. As well, we are looking at cutting close to 130,000 uniformed troops, but cutting only 7,000 Department of Defense civilians.

In addition, the Obama administration is looking to create a BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) commission to examine changing the military retirement system. If you do the analysis, you find that less than one percent of the American adult population draws a retirement from serving in the United States Military. The idea of taking out the United States economy budget woes on our military is despicable.

The most alarming points about the healthcare plan include: 

– Increases between 30 percent to 78 percent in TRICARE annual premiums for the first year.  After that, the plan would impose five-year increases ranging from 94 percent to 345 percent.  That’s more than three times current levels….

– The new plan also hits active duty personnel by increasing co-payments for pharmaceuticals and eliminating incentives for using generic drugs.

– Veterans will also be hit with a new annual fee for the TRICARE for Life program, on top of the monthly premiums already being paid. In addition, some benefits will become “means-tested,” making them similar to the welfare system than as a benefit for Military service.

 

Congressman West is right. This is “despicable.” Instead of reforming our insolvent entitlement programs (which the President’s own debt commission recommended) and instead of taking a cleaver to all the waste, fraud, and abuse of our tax dollars perpetrated and perpetuated by the crony capitalism of the permanent political class in DC, this administration makes our brave men and women in uniform bear the brunt of our deficit woes. It’s shameful. The President’s actions are shameful!

For all his talk about slashing troops in the name of making the military “more efficient,” I believe Barack Obama will find these numbers will fall on their own. I predict our troops will cut their own numbers by not voluntarily enlisting at the levels we’ve previously seen or by getting out of the service as quickly as possible because of their Commander in Chief’s lack of support and lack of a clear mission for them.  More

UPDATED: BIG Hollywood Takes On HBO’s ‘Game Change’

In true Breitbart style, the heavy-hitters at BIG Hollywood are exposing the lies in the HBO ‘Game Change’ movie that is scheduled for release on Saturday. The BIG Hollywood page of the newly redesigned Breitbart.com website is today featuring a series of articles that challenge the fictionalized account of the McCain/Palin 2008 campaign. Here are some excerpts of their hard-hitting articles.

John Nolte reviews (h/tp C4P) a copy of ‘Game Change’ that was somehow leaked to Breitbart News:

To understand just what a heinous piece of propaganda HBO has produced on behalf of President Obama, we have to go back in time to paint a complete contextual picture. HBO announced “Game Change” in early March of last year. This was after a difficult year for the president, when his approval ratings were in worse shape than they are now. This was also a time when many believed, including myself, that Governor Palin would enter the 2012 race to challenge Obama.

In other words, it’s just a fact that when HBO decided to pull the trigger, the possibility was very real that Palin could become president of the United States. So what did HBO chooseto do as a response? Here are the facts:

1. HBO chose to adapt into a feature film the 10 percent of a 350-plus page book that focused on a vice presidential candidate.

2. HBO chose not to adapt into a feature film that portion of the book focusing on what might have given us some insight into the man currently residing in the Oval Office.

3. HBO chose a book written by two men who were not on the campaign trail with Governor Palin, who made a conscious choice of their own to tell only the side of the story coming from those who refused to go on the record. Those willing to go on the record, those willing to stake their reputations on their side of the story, were all but ignored by these authors.

4. HBO chose to give left-wing partisans, who openly support Obama, millions of dollars to bring their vision of his likely challenger to life.

5. HBO chose as a release date (their absurdly dishonest protests aside) the Saturday after Super Tuesday. Think about this: If it’s March of 2011, and you’re remaking “The Hidden,” and you’re thinking ahead to the most likely day the alien might be one step away from obtaining power, what better day to rush in with your flamethrower than the Saturday after Super Tuesday?

The five points I’ve listed above are not opinions; they are facts. They are conscious choices made during the political reality of the time by multi-millionaires like Hanks, Roach and Strong backed by one of the most powerful multi-national corporations on the planet. If there was any justice in the world, HBO would now have to register as a super PAC, and the corrupt mainstream media would treat it with the same contempt and foreboding it does any super PAC backing Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich.

[…]

Did you know that the very same person with extraordinary poise and aplomb, weathering unprecedented media attacks intentionally designed to distort her record and who she is as a human being, breaks and melts down into a fetal position while under pressure? Did you know that the very same person who has never lost her smile or grace, even as her family, including her Down Syndrome son, has been publicly attacked and freak-showed in the cruelest ways imaginable, is a petty, charmless, phone-throwing shrew who demands the firing of others for her own mistakes?

And did you know that the same woman who has been unfailingly loyal to Sen. McCain so scared him with her ruthless ambition that he told a Steve Schmidt begging him to get her under control, “That’s not gonna do it, Steve. She might start turning on me.”

I had personally considered the lack of warmth and charisma displayed by Julianne Moore as a lack of ability in portraying Governor Palin accurately.  However, Nolte sheds some new light on Moore’s portrayal of Governor Palin:

There’s no doubt HBO and its many enablers in the entertainment media will contest this point based on the few short moments we’re allowed to see the Governor with her family and with parents of Down Syndrome children. But even during these scenes, Moore’s one-note performance only shifts into a lower gear. Her hypnotic, unnerving lack of a core is always right below the surface. No matter what the situation, there’s always a dark, calculating vacancy somewhere in this alien’s eyes. And the reasons for this are obvious. HBO and Moore found it imperative to deconstruct Palin’s strengths – her warmth, charisma and extraordinary ability to connect with everyday Americans.

Read the entire article here.

Jeffrey Scott Shapiro writes:

Despite the premise of “Game Change” – that Sarah Palin cost John McCain the 2008 presidential election – Gallup polls prove HBO’s assertion categorically false. Palin wasn’t the reason the Republicans lost the election. She’s the only reason they had a fighting chance up until the time McCain suspended his presidential campaign in late September.

Gallup polls from the last presidential race prove that once Palin joined the ticket on Aug. 29, 2008, McCain’s ratings steadily climbed to a point where the Republican ticket even outshined Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

In the two weeks before Palin joined the McCain ticket, the Arizona senator drifted in the low 40 percentile range, mostly around 41, 42 and 43 percent, while Obama held as much as an 8 point lead at about 49 and 50 percent. Four days after Palin joined the ticket, however, McCain’s numbers climbed to 45 percent and Obama’s sank to 47 percent, narrowing the gap significantly from eight points to two.

Between Sept. 4-6, McCain and Palin actually overshot the Obama ticket by 3 percent with the Republicans in the lead at 48 percent and the Democrats at only 45. McCain consistently held that lead until Sept. 15, and then the candidates balanced out with Obama enjoying a mere three-point lead, and no lead at all from Sept. 22-24, when the numbers were tied at 46 percent.

[…]

Some were intrigued as to how McCain’s decision would play out in the polls, but once he suspended his campaign in late September he never recaptured the lead he enjoyed with the breaking news of recruiting Palin.

It was downhill from there.

McCain’s campaign was taken out of suspension, but it never actually got back off the ground. From then, the gap between McCain and Obama only widened, leaving the Republicans at a severe disadvantage. McCain’s numbers remained steady around 42 and 43 percent throughout October, but Obama’s continued climbing, and by October 31, McCain’s standing had dropped to 40 percent and Obama’s had reached 53 percent – a devastating 13-percent gap.

After the election, on Nov. 7, 2008, an article published by Rasmussen reported that an overwhelming majority of Republican voters said that Palin actually gave McCain’s campaign a boost. “Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Republican voters say Alaska Governor Sarah Palin helped John McCain’s bid for the presidency, even as news reports surface that some McCain staffers think she was a liability.” Exit polls showed the same thing.

Read the rest of the article here.

In an earlier article, Ben Shapiro wrote:

HBO’s new smear job on Sarah Palin, “Game Change,” claims Palin is an idiot and a head case, a selfish and self-aggrandizing centralizer of power. As we’ve discussed multiple times, that’s sheer nonsense.

The biggest slander of all, though, is that Palin is responsible for John McCain’s 2008 election defeat – or at least the size of the election defeat.

It’s not just false, it’s supremely false. In Pew’s exit poll in 2008, voters who said Palin was a factor in their vote went for McCain by a whopping 56-43 margin. The left focused on the portion of the poll showing that 60 percent of Americans were concerned about Palin’s ability to take over for McCain, but that didn’t impact the vast majority of their votes, as they said. For those who really did vote based on Palin, they voted heavily for McCain.

[…]

There is no evidence to suggest that Palin was a real drag on the ticket, contrary to the media’s narrative. The evidence suggests rather that Palin fired up the base. Those who didn’t like Palin didn’t like McCain before his vice presidential selection process wrapped. The difference is that many who didn’t like McCain all that much loved Palin. She didn’t push McCain to victory. But she prevented what could have been one of the great electoral blowouts of all time.

Read the rest of that article here.

Larry O’Connor writes:

HBO and the creators of the anti-Palin fairy tale called “Game Change” not only filled their attack film with misinformation, half-truths and outright lies, they also exposed themselves by leaving in an ugly slander that has already been investigated and debunked by the United States Secret Service over three years ago.

Breitbart News has acquired a preview copy of the HBO TV film scheduled to be released this Saturday by the cable giant, and we can reveal to you today that it includes one of the most egregious and irresponsible slanders to Sarah Palin and to the American voters who support her.

[…]

The “kill him!” legend began with Dana Millbank at the Washington Post on October 6. Milbank reported that an unnamed voice screamed from the crowd, “kill him!” at the mention of Bill Ayers, NOT Barack Obama.

But the legend grew and was linked and repeated by blogs and journalists all the way up (down?) to Frank Rich at the New York Times who transformed the target of the unsubstantiated “kill him!” report from Ayers to candidate Obama.

At the time of the allegation, Obama had a Secret Service detail assigned to him and these folks don’t take a death threat reported in the New York Times lightly. They investigated it and found: “The agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Scranton said allegations that someone yelled “kill him” when presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s name was mentioned during Tuesday’s Sarah Palin rally are unfounded.”

It takes a lot of of nerve to let your myopic hatred of Palin, and the passionate Americans who supported her in 2008, blind you to reality in such a way that you freely allow a legend that has beenshot down in such a thorough way to make its way into your already slanted and cartoon-like portrayal of one of the most complex women in our country. But that’s what these people have done.

Actually, I take that back. This took no nerve at all. They figured everyone, at this point, knew for a fact that Palin rallies in 2008 were nothing short of Klan meetings without the hoods. After all, those are the same scary, everyday Americans who gave birth to the racist, hate-filled Tea Party movement.

Yes, “Game Change” proves again that the left’s hatred of Palin, and the American’s who don’t hate her, throws them into such a blind rage that their lies, no matter how easily debunked, are justified as long as it meets the noble end of stopping that dangerous woman from Wasilla.

Read the rest of the article here.

Stacy Drake writes:

HBO claims that “Game Change, the book, was applauded by audiences and pundits on both ends of the political spectrum.” Really? If this is true, just like the writers of the book, HBO doesn’t name any of their sources to back it up. There are plenty of people on the record however, who did not applaud John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s work.

Howard Kurtz wrote that the authors not identifying their sources was a “recurring weakness” in the book, and later added: The most cooperative sources may have gotten to spin the narrative their way, and no one – such as Steve Schmidt, the former McCain aide who has publicly criticized Palin – was pressed to be on the record.”

Don Campbell from USA Today called it: “A gossipy, behind-the-scenes presidential campaign book once again illustrates how the public is poorly served by some in the political press corps.”

Doug Sosnik, a Democratic consultant said: ”It’s disgusting.”

Michael Smerconish wrote: “It reads like fiction. Indeed, many of those above claim that it is.”

I wouldn’t classify that as being “applauded.” And no, HBO, Heilemann and Halperin did not “thoroughly” source their research. To this date, only one person they used as a source for the Palin chapters has come forward to admit to talking with them. That was Steve Schmidt, who just did so last weekend.

There were people who were close to Palin during the 2008 campaign who took issue with Heilemann and Halperin’s work, however. During a conference call with reporters, Jason Recher, who worked for Governor Palin during the 2008 campaign, said that the book did not reflect reality. From the Associated Press: “Palin wasn’t the primary focus of the book, and he said he told screenwriter and co-executive producer Danny Strong that the book “absolutely, unequivocally” did not accurately reflect his time with the McCain campaign.

During the same conference call, Randy Scheunemann, who also worked as an adviser to Palin during the presidential campaign said: “If the book was very misleading, the movie’s going to be far worse.” Other current and former aides to Palin who attended the conference call, criticized Heilemann and Halperin “for writing about Palin when they weren’t physically there covering the things that were reported in the book.”

The LA Times reported: Bush White House veterans Recher and McMarlin traveled with Palin during the 2008 campaign and have been at Palin’s side during nearly every public appearance she has made in the last year or so. Recher said he reviewed daily schedules and plane manifests from the campaign and concluded that neither author of “Game Change” was ever present, and that Schmidt was present on only five of 200 bus or plane trips taken by Palin during her two months of campaigning.

Though facts are reconstructed all the time by historians, authors and others, McMarlin and the others took issue with a book and movie crafted by people who did not witness the events they recounted. “It’s like me telling you what happened at your wedding by talking to your caterers,” McMarlin said. “It just doesn’t happen.”So, this is the standard that HBO uses to produce it’s “fact-based dramas?”

Read the entire article here.

For additional links to articles and information about the movie, see our Game Change Movie page.

UPDATE:

Ben Shapiro posted the following article today (Tuesday):

It took long enough. After weeks of chatter about anti-Sarah Palin bias in the HBO movie “Game Change,” former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) finally attacked the film:

I won’t watch it. I know it’s based on a book that’s totally unfair and untrue, especially to Sarah Palin. I want to repeat if I could my admiration and appreciation for Sarah Palin, she energized our party … she energized more people than I did. She’s a good and decent person and this continuing maligning of her by the liberal left is reprehensible to me.

McCain actually ranted at the film – a surprising turn after McCain’s top advisers continually blamed Palin for the McCain/Palin loss in 2008. He continued:

You’ve gotten your revenge, you won. I say that to the liberal left. You won. Can’t you at least give her some respect, a person who ran hard, who did what she believes in, who energized our Republican base, instead of trying to continue to malign her, a good and decent family person and someone who I will always appreciate?

And it didn’t stop there. McCain even went after the book on which the film was based, and the author – Mark Halperin – personally:

You know something, this guy — he might as well have been a paid member of the Obama election campaign if you look at his coverage … he still is, he still is, he still is, I’m not making it up.

Read the rest of the article here.