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In 1984, after winning the Miss Wasilla contest earlier that year, Palin finished second in the Miss Alaska beauty pageant which won her a scholarship to help pay her way through college.[5] In the Wasilla pageant, she played the flute and also won Miss Congeniality.

Palin holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Idaho where she also minored in politics.

Her husband, Todd, is a Native Yup'ik Eskimo.[5] Outside the fishing season, Todd works for BP at an oil field on Alaska's North Slope[6] and is a champion snowmobiler, winning the 2000-mile "Iron Dog" race four times.[5] The two eloped shortly after Palin graduated from college; when they learned they needed witnesses for the civil ceremony, they recruited two residents from the old-age home down the street.[5] The Palin family lives in Wasilla, about 40 miles (64 km) north of Anchorage.[7]

She briefly worked as a sports reporter for local Anchorage television stations while also working as a commercial fisherman with her husband, Todd, her high school sweetheart.[5] One summer when she was working on Todd's fishing boat, the boat collided with a tender while she was holding onto the railing; Palin broke several fingers.[5]

On September 11, 2007, the Palins' eighteen-year-old son Track, eldest of five, joined the Army.[7] He now serves in an infantry brigade and will be deployed to Iraq in September 2008. She also has three daughters: Bristol, 17; Willow, 13; and Piper, 7.[8] On April 18, 2008, Palin gave birth to her second son, Trig Paxson Van Palin, who has Down syndrome.[9] She returned to the office three days after giving birth.[10] Palin refused to let the results of prenatal genetic testing change her decision to have the baby. "I'm looking at him right now, and I see perfection," Palin said. "Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?"[10]

Details of Palin's personal life have contributed to her political image. She hunts, eats moose hamburger, ice fishes, rides snowmobiles, and owns a float plane.[11][12] Palin holds a lifetime membership with the National Rifle Association. She admits that she used marijuana when it was legal in Alaska, but says that she did not like it.[13]

Pre-gubernatorial political experience

Palin served two terms on the Wasilla City Council from 1992 to 1996. In 1996, she challenged the incumbent mayor, criticizing wasteful spending and high taxes.[5] The ex-mayor and sheriff tried to organize a recall campaign, but failed.[5] Palin kept her campaign promises, reducing her own salary, as well as reducing property taxes by 60%.[5] She ran for reelection against the former mayor in 1999, winning by an even larger margin.[5][14] Palin was also elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors.[8]

In 2002, Palin made an unsuccessful bid for Lieutenant Governor, coming in second to Loren Leman in a four-way race. After Frank Murkowski resigned from his long-held U.S. Senate seat in mid-term to become governor, Palin interviewed to be his possible successor. Instead, Murkowski appointed his daughter, then-Alaska State Representative Lisa Murkowski.[5]

Governor Murkowski appointed Palin Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission,[15] where she served from 2003 to 2004 until resigning in protest over what she called the "lack of ethics" of fellow Alaskan Republican leaders, who ignored her whistleblowing complaints of legal violations and conflicts of interest.[5] After she resigned, she exposed the state Republican party's chairman, Randy Ruedrich, one of her fellow Oil & Gas commissioners, who was accused of doing work for the party on public time, and supplying a lobbyist with a sensitive e-mail.[16] Palin filed formal complaints against both Ruedrich and former Alaska Attorney General Gregg Renkes, who both resigned; Ruedrich paid a record $12,000 fine.[5]

In 2006, Palin, running on a clean-government campaign, executed an upset victory over then-Gov. Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary.[5] Despite the lack of support from party leaders and being outspent by her Democratic opponent, she went on to win the general election in November 2006, defeating former Governor Tony Knowles.[5] Palin said in 2006 that education, public safety, and transportation would be three cornerstones of her administration.[13]

When elected, Palin became the first woman to be Alaska's governor, and the youngest governor in Alaskan history at 42 years old upon taking office. Palin was also the first Alaskan governor born after Alaska achieved U.S. statehood. She was also the first Alaskan governor not to be inaugurated in Juneau, instead choosing to hold her inauguration ceremony in Fairbanks. She took office on December 4, 2006.

Highlights of Governor Palin's tenure include a successful push for an ethics bill, and also shelving pork-barrel projects supported by fellow Republicans. Palin successfully killed the Bridge to Nowhere project that had become a nationwide symbol of wasteful earmark spending.[10][17] "Alaska needs to be self-sufficient, she says, instead of relying heavily on 'federal dollars,' as the state does today."[11]

She has challenged the state's Republican leaders, helping to launch a campaign by Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell to unseat U.S. Congressman Don Young[18] and publicly challenging Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the federal investigation into his financial dealings.[10]

In 2007, Palin had an approval rating often in the 90s.[11] A poll published by Hays Research on July 28, 2008 showed Palin's approval rating at 80%.[19]

Labels: politics

Labels: politics, watching the skies

US forces will hand over control of Anbar province to Iraqi troops in the coming days, military officials said Wednesday, touting improved security in the region.

'We believe the province could turn over to Iraqi control in just a few days,' Marine General James Conway said.

'The change in the Al-Anbar province is real and perceptible,' said Conway of the majority-Sunni region, which is Iraq's largest.

Labels: politics

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.

Labels: politics, watching the skies

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One of the most appealing features of the Barack Obama candidacy is the idea that Obama is "postracial"--that he is a candidate who is black and does not practice the adversarial politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. This is why his 20-year association with the racist anti-American crackpot Jeremiah Wright was potentially so damaging to him, and why Jesse Jackson's lurid fantasies of sexually mutilating Obama were such a great stroke of luck for the candidate.

But a story in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin raises serious questions about Obama's postracialism. The paper describes an Obama appearance at Unity '08, "a convention of four minority journalism associations":

"I personally would want to see our tragic history, or the tragic elements of our history, acknowledged," the Democratic presidential hopeful said.

"I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it's Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds."

Exactly what Obama is advocating here cannot be determined, but it seems to be something of an endorsement of the idea of "reparations for slavery," which is usually taken to mean cash payments. In this view, the following deeds are insufficient to balance the ledger between America and the descendants of slaves: the Civil War, the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the continuing practice of racial preferences.

The idea of reparations is highly unpopular, and with good reason. Unlike the Japanese-Americans who in 1988 received compensation for their internment by a Democratic administration in the grips of wartime hysteria, no one alive today has ever been a slave. The idea of the government cutting checks to compensate people for a wrong that they did not personally suffer is unlikely to appeal to anyone except perhaps those who stand to receive those checks.

Labels: politics

LAKE LYNN, Pa. -- An 85-year-old great-grandmother from Lake Lynn, Fayette County kept an alleged burglar at bay using a .22-caliber pistol.

According to police, a 17-year-old suspect was attempting to burglarize Leda Smith overnight.

That's when Smith grabbed her gun and told the teen that she would shoot him if he moved, police said.

'I had the gun on him before he turned around and said, 'you've had it,' ' Smith told Channel 11-News.

According to police, Smith ordered the boy to dial 911 and then gave him some advice.

'Dial 911 and don't attempt to throw the phone at me, or do anything bad or I'll just shoot you,' Smith said.

When police arrived, they took the teen into custody.

Charges have been filed against the boy and an alleged accomplice.

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It was a bad crisis for the world. It required tough words but also a smart approach to call on the international community to step in. And I'm very, very happy that the Senator's request for a ceasefire has been complied with by President Medvedev.

Labels: politics

Because of the urbanization of the U.S. population, if the entire eastern or western power grid goes down for more than a week, the cities will rapidly become unlivable. I foresee that there will be an almost unstoppable chain of events: Power -> water -> food distribution -> law and order -> arson fires -> full scale looting
As the comfort level in the cities rapidly drops to nil, there will be a massive involuntary outpouring from the big cities and suburbs into the hinterboonies. This is the phenomenon that my late father, Donald Robert Rawles--a career particle physics research administrator at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories--half-jokingly called "The Golden Horde." He was of course referring to the Mongol Horde of the 13th Century, but in a modern context. (The Mongol rulers were chosen from the 'Golden Family' of Temujin. Hence the term "The Golden Horde.") I can remember as a child, my father pointing to the hills at the west end of the Livermore Valley, where we then lived. He opined: "If The Bomb ever drops, we'll see a Golden Horde come swarming over those hills [from Oakland and beyond] of the like that the world has never seen. And they'll be very unpleasant, believe you me!"

In my lectures on survival topics I often mention that there is just a thin veneer of civilization on our society. What is underneath is not pretty, and it does take much to peel away that veneer. You take your average urbanite or suburbanite and get him excessively cold, wet, tired, hungry and/or thirsty and take away his television, beer, drugs, and other pacifiers, and you will soon seen the savage within. It is like peeling the skin of an onion—remove a couple of layers and it gets very smelly. As a Christian, I attribute this to man’s inherently sinful nature.

Here is a mental exercise: Put yourself in the mind set of Mr. Joe Sixpack, Suburbanite. (Visualize him in or near a big city near where you live.) He is unprepared. He has less than one week's food on hand, he has a 12 gauge pump action shotgun that he hasn't fired in years, and just half a tank of gas in his minivan and maybe a gallon or two in a can that he keeps on hand for his lawn mower. Then TEOTWAWKI hits. The power grid is down, his job is history, the toilet doesn't flush, and water no longer magically comes cascading from the tap. There are riots beginning in his city. The local service stations have run out of gas. The banks have closed. Now he is suddenly desperate. Where will he go? What will he do?

Odds are, Joe will think: "I've gotta go find a vacation cabin somewhere, up in the mountains, where some rich dude only goes a few weeks out of each year." So vacation destinations like Lake Tahoe, Lake Arrowhead, and Squaw Valley, California; Prescott and Sedona, Arizona; Hot Springs, Arkansas; Vail and Steamboat Springs, Colorado; and the other various rural ski, spa, Great Lakes, and coastal resort areas will get swarmed. Or, he will think: "I've got to go to where they grow food." So places like the Imperial Valley, the Willamette Valley, and the Red River Valley will similarly get overrun. There will be so many desperate Joe Sixpacks arriving all at once that these areas will degenerate into free-fire zones. It will be an intensely ugly situation and will not be safe for anyone. In some places the locals may be so vastly outnumbered that they won't survive. But some of the Joe Sixpacks will survive, and then the more ruthless among them will begin to fight amongst themselves for the few remaining resources. They will form ad hoc gangs of perhaps 6 to 30 people.

Once the Golden Horde has been thinned (and honed to ferocity) and they've cleaned out an area, the thugs at the pinnacle of ruthlessness will comprise the most formidable rover packs imaginable. They will move on to an adjoining region, and then another. But the inverse square law will work in your favor: Imagine that you take a jar of marbles turn it upside down on a wooden floor and then lift the jar suddenly upward. The marbles will spread out semi-randomly. But the farther from the mouth of the jar, the lighter the density of marbles. Hence, the rover packs will attenuate themselves into a huge rural expanse that is peopled with well-armed country folks. By the time the looters work their way out 150 miles from the big cities, they will be thinned out considerably. The rover pack is your primary threat in a total collapse, no matter how remote your retreat. Here are your potential adversaries: A squad to company size force (12 to 60 individuals), highly mobile, moderately well armed with a motley assortment of weapons and vehicles, and imbued with absolute ruthlessness. Be prepared.

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To expand on this (which has been the perfectly obvious outcome of this struggle for at least the last year) no one in either the MSM or even the blogosphere has yet realized that W is about to run the table on the way out the door. On his watch: he's achieved and sustained tax cuts that have driven our economy through even $4/gal gasoline and the impacts of 9/11; he's established credibility and a sustainable military presence throughout most of the Middle East; he's taken advantage of the opportunity presented by the second most secular Muslim population in that area and freed them from a dictatorship and supported the establishment of a government that will very probably soon look more like Turkey's than Iran's; he's taken on Afghanistan and the Taliban and found the way to do what Russia couldn't in 10 years; he established "The Bush Doctrine" for dealing with States that sponsor or condone terrorist groups; he will leave office without a scandal of any proportion in his administration; he's given every foreign leader and point of view respect but not dominion; he's named Alito and Roberts to the USSC, and he's remained remarkably steadfast and true to his own agenda in the face of daunting media and political pressure to cave.

Of course he's had his low points, all leaders do. But he stuck to his guns when nobody would have blamed him for standing down and, judging from the apparent nominees as well as the entire field of candidates with whom we were blessed in this campaign, we won't see his like for a long time.

So every intelligent American (and free men everywhere) ought to thank God that W and not Kerry or Gore was at the helm when the nation needed a leader. Fasten your seat belts, folks, it's going to be a bumpy ride from here.

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