Memories of Wasilla

Lawrence Henrey in The American Spectator.

Wasilla comes into play because, having sobered up, I suddenly found myself with quite a lot of money on hand, in cash. That's one of the cultural markers of Alaska: having a lot of money. Having a lot of money young. And, in Alaska, just about everybody flies. So I decided to take flying lessons, something I had always wanted to do.

A friend of the band put me in touch with a flying instructor named Mark. Mark told me to meet him at the Wasilla airport Sunday at 9 a.m....

...I cruised the entire town in a matter of minutes, seeing no airport. So I stopped at the Iditarod Cafe, an all-American kind of diner and grill festooned with souvenirs of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, and asked where the airport was.

"Right out there," said the man behind the counter, pointing to the back door.

I opened the back door, stepped out, and nearly got beheaded by a roaring tail-dragger, taxiing on the gravel....

He's got some points to make, too. Read it all.

The Comparison Was Inevitable

Margaret Thatcher was a 49-year-old mother of two when she became Conservative Party leader in 1974.

Read Barbara Amiel in The Wall Street Journal.

Sarah Palin Bio Video

Here's the video they didn't have time to show last night.

The Transcript

As opposed to the prepared remarks released before the speech yesterday, these are the actual words, including improvisation and crowd reaction, of the Sarah Palin GOP convention speech.

At the Chicago Sun-Times, courtesy of Federal News Service.

The Week

It has been—or it will have been tomorrow morning—one week since John McCain announced his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. It has been one long eventful week culminating in The Speech last night, the video of which I posted this morning at 3:12 AM.

After doing so I scrolled down to review the week's posts. The effect was such that I wanted to freeze that moment in time, beginning at the bottom with a few comments on the Obama speech and ending at the top, this morning, with The Speech. The very next post, this one as it turns out, would mar the effect. So I took a snapshot. A snapshot of a single week Friday, August 29, to Thursday, September 04, 2008.

A week in history. The links may fade over time as internet links do, and this blog too will eventually pass, but that moment, as it happened, as we remember it, will last forever.

The Speech

Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin
at the Republican National Convention
September 3, 2008

Out Of The Ballpark

Over the grandstands.

Into orbit.

It's all over but the voting.

Update: Haven't found reliable video yet.
The Strib has the MP3. Rip and write one for the ages.

Puffington Host has an MSNBC video, but I can't get it to embed here. Go over there and watch it. Soak up a little socialist bandwidth. It's all Sarah Palin anyway.

In Other News

We briefly interrupt our all-Palin-all-the-time blogging for two off-topic stories.

First, Spengler in the Asia Times on How Obama Lost the Election.

On television, Obama's spectacle might have looked like The Ten Commandments, but inside the stadium it felt like Night of the Living Dead. The longer the candidate spoke, and the more money he promised to spend on alternative energy, preschool education, universal health care, and other components of the Democratic pinata, the lower the party professionals slouched into their seats.

Worth reading in its entirety, but not necessarily now; it will keep very well without refrigeration until November 5th.

Second, Sherry Jones, author of The Jewel of Medina, a historical novel about the prophet Muhammad and his child bride, has found a publisher.

Random House, which paid Jones $100,000 for "The Jewel of Medina" and a second book, spiked the novel about Muhammad and his third wife, Aisha, after concerns were raised by non-Muslims that the contents might spark violence.

Random House said at the time that "credible and unrelated sources" had warned that the book "could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."

To hell with them.

OK. Back to Palinmania. Sa-RAH. Sa-RAH. Sa-RAH...

Tarmac Wedding

"I now pronounce you man and wife. Geez, glad that's over."

Robert Stacy McCain has the video.

It's just the raw feed from AP and you can't hear a thing over the jet engines, but the body language was obvious. McCain picked up the young couple's hands, held them together, and said a few words to make them both blush.

If he'd been standing on a boat instead of a tarmac it would have been legal.

Sizing Up Sarah

A cynical Alaskan in the American Thinker:

She reminds me personally of our Alaska wolverine which will fight anything in its path if it sees fit to do so. No respect at all for size or position.

Horrifying the Margaret Sanger Left

George Neumayr in The American Spectator.

This much is clear: the Palin family is horrifying to the Margaret Sanger left. In Palin, it envisions messy, unplanned Middle America coming to the White House. First off, Palin has too many children, a dismaying five. Second, she bore a child late in life who has Down syndrome, and knew this beforehand. Finally, she has a daughter who is pregnant out of wedlock, plans to have the child and marry the father -- all of which smacks of the 1950s rather than the Sexual Revolution and its tidy solutions.

Warning From A Pro

Peggy Noonan has been there and knows.

Palin's friends should be less immediately worried about what the Obama campaign will do to her than what the McCain campaign will do. This is a woman who's tough enough to work her way up and through, and to say yes to a historic opportunity, but she will know little of, or rather have little experience in, the mischief inherent in national Republican politics. She will be mobbed up in the McCain campaign by people who care first about McCain and second about themselves. (Or, let's be honest, often themselves first and then McCain.) Palin will never be higher than number three in their daily considerations.

Fred Thompson

On Sarah Palin:

I think I can say without fear of contradiction that she is the only nominee in the history of either party who knows how to properly field-dress a moose... with the possible exception of Teddy Roosevelt.

She and John McCain are not going to care how much the alligators get irritated when they get to Washington, they are going to drain that swamp!

They Can't Help Themselves

Michelle Malkin outlines the four stages

1. infantilization
2. sexualization
3. demonization
4. dehumanization

of Conservative Female Abuse.

There's something about outspoken conservative women that drives the left mad. It's a peculiar pathology I've reported on for more than 15 years, both as a witness and a target. Thus, the onset of Palin Derangement Syndrome in the media, Democratic circles and the cesspools of the blogosphere came as no surprise. They just can't help themselves.

OK, He's Not Quite...

...as ugly as the Democrats had hoped.

He's a superhunky bad-boy ice hockey player from cold country; she's a chestnut-haired beauty and popular high school senior.

The all-American teen twosome will make GOP vice presidential pick and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin a grandma at age 44 — just in time for Christmas.

I expect we'll see him at the convention tomorrow night, standing by his girl. If he knows what's good for him.

More Like Northern Exposure

Nathan Thornburgh reports from Wasilla, Alaska:

So his name is Levi.

That's about the only thing that I didn't know about Bristol Palin's pregnancy. The rest of the details I picked up almost without trying, while talking about other things with townsfolk — some who know the governor and her family well, some who don't. It was, more or less, an open secret. And everyone was saying the same thing: the governor's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, the father is her boyfriend, and it's really nobody's business beyond that.

I happen to agree.

(Via Instapundit)

Shipshape

After a fashion.

Sarah Palin’s 17 Year Old Daughter, Bristol Palin, Is Pregnant

So much for the Disney-movie aspect of all this.

Another Palin Slide Show

At the NY Daily News.

These are the supposedly "funny" and "rugged" photos that might embarrass her. I doubt it. The most photogenic candidate in U.S. presidential campaign history does not take a bad snapshot.

I attended a harvest party at the local vineyard this evening, where I purposely avoided the topic of politics (still too soon) but it came up anyway. The women seemed guardedly excited by the VP candidate and the men decidedly enthusiastic. Maybe the polls won't reflect this for a few weeks yet, but if my own small rural town is any indication there is the quiet rumbling of the earthquake preceding the landslide.

Barring the unforeseen, this election will change history.

There Is A Biography

Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment on Its Ear by Kaylene Johnson.

Amazon has only a couple of used copies going for something over $100, but you can buy it direct from the publisher, Epicenter Press, for $19.95 with free shipping.

I've ordered one, of course, but I don't expect to see it for weeks yet.

Meanwhile you can read the first chapter for free here (PDF).

The GA Connection

AOPA:

Considering that GA is the primary form of long-distance transportation in the forty-ninth state, it’s not surprising that Gov. Palin has taken a stand on the user fee issue. In May 2007, she signed a resolution in opposition to the FAA’s plan to increase avgas taxes, impose user fees, and slash airport funding. AOPA and the Alaska Airmen’s Association had worked together to move the resolution through the Alaska legislature.

There is a family connection as well. Palin’s husband, Todd, is an AOPA member and Super Cub owner.

Palin Mania Continues

Sarah Palin with son Track, husband Todd
and daughters Willow, Bristol and Piper

The British tabloids seem to have the best election coverage. Maybe it's their disinterestedness. Or their lack of inhibition.

From the Times

Sarah Palin: conservatives find the girl of their dreams

And from the Daily Mail

Why John McCain's beauty queen running mate has a grizzly bear on her office wall

Certainly we all want to get to the bottom of that.

Just Two More

And then we're going to knock off and go do some work.

Charlie Martin on McCain's OODA loop.

And late night comedian Craig Ferguson on becoming an honorary citizen of Alaska.

Steyn On Palin

In The Corner.

First, Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, "all-American", but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin' Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who's done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of "community organizer" and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy.

Second...

He's got half a dozen points.

Where's What's-His-Name?

A quick glance at the front pages shows it's all Palin, all the time.

How Palin Got Picked

Stephen F. Hayes has the back story.

On Wednesday of last week, Palin flew with her top aide, Kris Perry, to Flagstaff, Arizona, where she met with Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter from McCain's campaign. The following day this group traveled to McCain's home in Sedona and met with the candidate and his wife, Cindy. McCain took Palin outside to his deck and offered her the job....

Palin flew with Salter and Schmidt to Middletown, Ohio, and checked into the Manchester Inn. (She registered under the name Upton.)

No one on Palin's staff back in Alaska had any idea that she was going to explode onto the national political scene the following morning. "The only reason I ever thought anything is because I was asked by reporters if she was vetted by the McCain campaign," said McAllister. "And I told them no. The only thing I knew about was some biographical materials that they requested for the convention itself, for her speech." Some of her staff believed she was still in Alaska and planning to be at the State Fair on Friday....

As late as Thursday night, only a handful of McCain advisers and staffers knew whom the candidate had selected. Many of them assumed, like most of the political world, that it would be Pawlenty. Among those still in the dark was Maria Comella, a former spokesman for Rudy Giuliani, who had been brought aboard the McCain campaign to serve as the top press aide to McCain's running mate. She would not learn who her new boss would be until Friday morning.

Many political observers are astonished the secret held. The McCain campaign is not. "The key to keeping secrets is not telling people," says Matt McDonald...