Courtesy of Robert Greenwald at Brave New Films. Just to be clear, I wasn’t born in San Francisco, but in Cali, Colombia and if Mr. Beck wants to deport me to North Korea, that’s okay because I’ve never been and have always wanted to visit.

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With former Vice President Dick Cheney scheduled to appear on Sunday on on ABC’s This Week with guest anchor Jonathan Karl where the former Vice President is expected to repeat his long-standing criticism of the Obama Administration’s national security policies, Vice President Joe Biden played pre-emptive offense in a taped segment with Dick Gregory of NBC’s Meet the Press. NBC released this excerpt of the interview:

DAVID GREGORY: Let me ask you about some of the criticism that’s been leveled at this Administration by former Vice President Dick Cheney. He has argued that this Administration has failed to treat the fight against terrorists as war. He cites the decision related to Khalid Sheik Muhammad to offer him a civilian trail as one example. Giving the Christmas Day Bomber the privileges of the American criminal justice system is another example. The decision to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison. What do you say?

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Let me choose my words carefully here. Dick Cheney’s a fine fellow. He’s entitled to his own opinion. He’s not entitled to rewrite history. He’s not entitled to his own facts. The Christmas Day Bomber was treated the exact way that he suggested that the Shoe Bomber was treated. Absolutely the same way. Under the Bush Administration there were three trials in military courts. Two of those people are now walking the streets. They are free.

There were 300 trials of so-called terrorists and those who engage in terror against the United States of America who are in federal prison and have not seen the light of day. Prosecuted under the last Administration. Dick Cheney’s a fine fellow, but he is not entitled to rewrite history without it being challenged. I don’t know where he has been. Where was he the last four years of the last Administration?

DAVID GREGORY: What about the general proposition that the President according to former Vice President Cheney doesn’t consider America to be at war and is essentially soft on terrorism? What do you say about that?

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I don’t think the Vice– the Former Vice President Dick Cheney listens. The President of the United States said in the State of the Union, “We’re at war with Al Qaeda.” He stated this– and by the way, we’re pursuing that war with a vigor like it’s never been seen before. We’ve eliminated 12 of their top 20 people. We have taken out 100 of their associates. We are making, we’ve sent them underground. They are in fact not able to do anything remotely like they were in the past. They are on the run. I don’t know where Dick Cheney has been. Look, it’s one thing, again, to– to criticize. It’s another thing to sort of rewrite history. What is he talking about?

DAVID GREGORY: You have often said, when I’ve asked you and others, that you never impugn a man’s motives. But why do you think Dick Cheney is speaking out and being so critical of the President and the Administration so publicly?

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I don’t know. I– I– I’m not gonna guess about his motive. All I know is he’s factually, substantively wrong. On the major criticisms he is asserting. Why he’s insisting on that. He either is misinformed or he is misinforming. But the facts are that his assertions are not accurate.

DAVID GREGORY: You would not be this outspoken or critical when you’re out of office. Is that fair to say?

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Well, I– I– I would hope I– look, it’s one thing to be outspoken. It’s another thing to be outspoken in a way that misrepresents the facts. And I– I guess– again, I– it’s almost like Dick is trying to rewrite history. I can understand where the– why that would be– you know, an impulse. And maybe he isn’t– literally, I’m not being facetious. Maybe he’s not fully informed of what’s going on. I mean, the progress we have made. There has never been as much emphasis and resources brought against Al Qaeda. The success rate exceeds anything that occurred in the last Administration. And they did their best. I’m not– I’m not impugning their effort. It’s simply not true that the President of the United States is not prosecuting the war against Al Qaeda with a vigor that’s never been seen before. It’s real. It’s deep. It’s successful.

The Vice President’s candor and frank assessment is a welcomed development. Dick Cheney and much of the GOP has been attempting to “rewrite history” and they need to be called on it.

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A clip from the World Economic Forum with Lawrence Summers in conversation with Charlie Rose.

Lawrence Summers, Director of the U.S. National Economic Council, laments the financial lobbyists on Capitol Hill, where they outnumber members of congress 3 to 1. “Our challenge now is to put in place a new system,” he says, “that will hold and substantially reduce the risk of crisis for a generation.”

Nice of Larry to find religion this late in life. You can, apparently, teach an old dog new tricks.

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Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos has commissioned a poll that seeks to gauge the political views and socio-religious beliefs of the GOP base. Some of the results are quite simply stunning. Thirty-nine percent of Republicans want Barack Obama impeached, 36 percent do not believe that President Obama was born in the United States, 63 percent believe that he is a socialist, 21 percent believe that ACORN stole the 2008 Presidential election, 31 percent believe that Barack Obama is a racist who hates white people, 23 percent want their state to secede from the Union, 31 percent want all contraceptives banned, only 8 percent believe openly gay men and women should be allowed to teach in public schools, 77 percent believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible.

It is curious that of the nearly two score of blog stories on the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll, not one looked at the sample though to be fair to Ezra Klein he at least did have the thought that “maybe just maybe the sample might off” cross his mind. A poll is only as good as its sample and this poll oversamples older (37.09 percent of the sample is over the age of 60), southern (42.24 percent of the sample hails from the old Confederacy plus Kentucky) men (56.16 percent of the sample are men). It is a great poll if we wanted to get insight into the views old southern men who vote Republican. While that’s certainly the stereotype, the face of the GOP is broader than that.

Last May, the Gallup Organization did find that the Republican base was heavily white, conservative and religious based on a poll of 26,314 national adults, aged 18 and older, a sample size more than ten times larger than the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll.

More than 6 in 10 Republicans today are white conservatives, while most of the rest are whites with other ideological leanings; only 11% of Republicans are Hispanics, or are blacks or members of other races. By contrast, only 12% of Democrats are white conservatives, while about half are white moderates or liberals and a third are nonwhite.

The results show clearly that the Republican Party today is first and foremost a political entity dominated by white Americans. Eighty-nine percent of rank-and-file Republicans are non-Hispanic whites, leaving just 5% who are Hispanic (of any race), 2% who are black, and 4% of other races.

Further, by well over a 2-to-1 ratio, whites who identify as Republicans claim a conservative, rather than a moderate or liberal, ideology (or have no opinion when asked about their ideology).

The ethnic mix the Daily Kos/Research 2000 did get right. Their sample is divided between 89.21 percent white and 10.78 percent non-white. This is certainly a problem for the GOP. While the rest of the country is increasingly multi-racial, the GOP remains overwhelmingly white. Just under four percent of Republicans are African-Americans. A little more five percent of the GOP is Hispanic but about half of those are Cuban-Americans. And only two percent are Asian.

But the poll oversamples men by about four percentage. While the GOP does face a gender gap, the composition within its own party is fairly even split. It is independents that account for the gender gap when election time rolls around. As Gallup noted in May 2009:

Women’s affinity for the Democratic Party looks even stronger when independents’ partisan leanings are taken into account. By this measure of party identification, Democrats currently enjoy a 22-point advantage over Republicans, with 57% of women identifying as Democrats or saying they are independent but leaning Democratic, compared with 35% who identify with or lean to the Republican Party.

But where the poll is really off the mark is in its age breakdown and its regional distribution. The Institute of Southern Studies correctly I think points to the distortion that this bias creates:

the poll has one big flaw: 42% of those polled came from Southern states — way out of proportion with their share of Republican voters nationally.

This over-sampling of Southern Republicans (846 total) skews the national results, but it also means the data is especially rich in giving us a picture of the views held by GOP voters in the South.

And the picture is unmistakable: On almost every issue, Southern Republicans are far to the right of their national GOP brethren. In fact, GOP Southerners appear to be the driving base for some of the most extreme views circulating in the Republican Party today.

To measure this, normally we’d compare the Southern results to the national average and see what the difference is. But since the poll disproportionately surveyed Southerners to start with, instead I looked at how the Southern answers compared to the next most conservative region.

For example, here are four questions the poll asked Republicans about President Obama, with the Southern poll numbers compared to the next-highest region (in each of these cases, the Midwest):

QUESTION: Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not?
South: 42% yes
Next-highest region: 38% yes
Southern difference: +4%

QUESTION: Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not?
South: 43% no
Next-highest region: 33% no
Southern difference: +10%

QUESTION: Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?
South: 67% yes
Next-highest region: 61% yes
Southern difference: +6%

QUESTION: Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?
South: 28% yes
Next-highest region: 22% yes
Southern difference: +6%

Here are the demographics used in the sample versus a more accurate picture of the composition of the GOP as compiled from various sources.

In short, the Daily Kos poll has a bias that oversamples Southerners who are more extreme in their views (the poll also drastically undersamples the generally more moderate Republicans in the Northeast by over eight percentage points) and thus paints the GOP as more extreme than they really are. The Daily Kos poll is an inaccurate reflection of the national GOP but likely an accurate picture of the views of its Southern base which does accounts for over one third of its electoral strength nationally.

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Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich predicts the national unemployment rate will still be around 10 percent one year from now. He explains that the Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies the “unemployed” as those actively seeking work, a demographic he believes will increase as the state of the economy improves. He also cites that employers will first extended hours to current employees before hiring new workers. With the average work week currently at 33 hours, that provides employers some flexibility in managing their headcount.

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The Economist has an interesting post with an intriguing slideshow presentation on the evolving relationships in the US Senate. The graph, created by Andrew Odewahn, an information-design expert, maps the voting relationships in the US Senate since 1991.

Back in 1991-93, there were a surprising number of senators who constituted linked nodes between the main clouds of Republicans and Democrats. Howell Heflin, Richard Shelby, Bob Packwood, William Cohen, Mark Hatfield and Arlen Specter all had significant links across party lines, and it was still possible for Jesse Helms to be off in his own far-right world. Nowadays, it’s impossible to get far to the right of mainstream Republicans, because half of the Republicans are already there. By the 104th Congress, following the “Republican revolution” of 1994, the middle space was almost entirely unoccupied, and through the next three congresses only Jim Jeffords, Lincoln Chafee and Arlen Specter dared brave the chasm between the parties. In George Bush’s first term, following September 11th, bipartisanship again became an option, and cross-party links proliferated. But by the current Congress, things had gone back to the bad old days of the mid-90s: every single connection between the main clouds of the two parties now runs through Ben Nelson, Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins.

If this were a Facebook community, for the vast majority of either party, the legend next to any member of the other party would read: “You have 0 friends in common.” What Barack Obama was attempting to do by visiting the Republican issues retreat was to smack himself down in the middle of that divide. The social divide is, of course, most striking because it appears not to correspond to any reasonable ideological divide; as Mr Obama told the Republican senators, the health-care reform that passed the Senate on party lines is an extremely moderate bill, the most conservative and private-sector-friendly version of universal health insurance imaginable. But that doesn’t really matter; the clash in the Senate isn’t about policy. It’s a war between two cliques. It’s not clear whether aggressive friendliness can overcome the drive towards social self-segregation. But the Democrats no longer have 60 votes in the Senate, and if the country is going to get anything done in the next three years, the only way forward is to try and make some friends.

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The Obama Administration is relying on the US Congress to deliver an ambitious agenda focusing on financial regulation, healthcare, energy and employment.

What are the global implications of implementing the 2010 legislative agenda?

Discussion Leaders
Brian Baird, Congressman from Washington (Democrat), 3rd District, USA
Susan M. Collins, Senator from Maine (Republican), USA
Barney Frank, Congressman from Massachusetts (Democrat), 4th District; Chairman, Financial Services Committee, USA
Lindsey O. Graham, Senator from South Carolina (Republican), USA
Edward J. Markey, Congressman from Massachusetts (Democrat), 7th District, Chairman, Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, USA

The panel is moderated by Michael Oreskes, Senior Managing Editor, Associated Press (AP), USA

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THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please, everybody be seated. Thank you. Thank you, John, for the gracious introduction. To Mike and Eric, thank you for hosting me. Thank you to all of you for receiving me. It is wonderful to be here. I want to also acknowledge Mark Strand, president of the Congressional Institute. To all the family members who are here and who have to put up with us for an elective office each and every day, thank you, because I know that’s tough. (Applause.)

I very much am appreciative of not only the tone of your introduction, John, but also the invitation that you extended to me. You know what they say, “Keep your friends close, but visit the Republican Caucus every few months.”

Part of the reason I accepted your invitation to come here was because I wanted to speak with all of you, and not just to all of you. So I’m looking forward to taking your questions and having a real conversation in a few moments. And I hope that the conversation we begin here doesn’t end here; that we can continue our dialogue in the days ahead. It’s important to me that we do so. It’s important to you, I think, that we do so. But most importantly, it’s important to the American people that we do so.

I’ve said this before, but I’m a big believer not just in the value of a loyal opposition, but in its necessity. Having differences of opinion, having a real debate about matters of domestic policy and national security — and that’s not something that’s only good for our country, it’s absolutely essential. It’s only through the process of disagreement and debate that bad ideas get tossed out and good ideas get refined and made better. And that kind of vigorous back and forth — that imperfect but well-founded process, messy as it often is — is at the heart of our democracy. That’s what makes us the greatest nation in the world.

So, yes, I want you to challenge my ideas, and I guarantee you that after reading this I may challenge a few of yours. (Laughter.) I want you to stand up for your beliefs, and knowing this caucus, I have no doubt that you will. I want us to have a constructive debate. The only thing I don’t want — and here I am listening to the American people, and I think they don’t want either — is for Washington to continue being so Washington-like. I know folks, when we’re in town there, spend a lot of time reading the polls and looking at focus groups and interpreting which party has the upper hand in November and in 2012 and so on and so on and so on. That’s their obsession.

And I’m not a pundit. I’m just a President, so take it for what it’s worth. But I don’t believe that the American people want us to focus on our job security. They want us to focus on their job security. (Applause.) I don’t think they want more gridlock. I don’t think they want more partisanship. I don’t think they want more obstruction. They didn’t send us to Washington to fight each other in some sort of political steel-cage match to see who comes out alive. That’s not what they want. They sent us to Washington to work together, to get things done, and to solve the problems that they’re grappling with every single day.

And I think your constituents would want to know that despite the fact it doesn’t get a lot of attention, you and I have actually worked together on a number of occasions. There have been times where we’ve acted in a bipartisan fashion. And I want to thank you and your Democratic colleagues for reaching across the aisle. There has been, for example, broad support for putting in the troops necessary in Afghanistan to deny al Qaeda safe haven, to break the Taliban’s momentum, and to train Afghan security forces. There’s been broad support for disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al Qaeda. And I know that we’re all united in our admiration of our troops. (Applause.)

So it may be useful for the international audience right now to understand — and certainly for our enemies to have no doubt — whatever divisions and differences may exist in Washington, the United States of America stands as one to defend our country. (Applause.)

It’s that same spirit of bipartisanship that made it possible for me to sign a defense contracting reform bill that was cosponsored by Senator McCain and members of Congress here today. We’ve stood together on behalf of our nation’s veterans. Together we passed the largest increase in the VA’s budget in more than 30 years and supported essential veterans’ health care reforms to provide better access and medical care for those who serve in uniform.

Some of you also joined Democrats in supporting a Credit Card Bill of Rights and in extending unemployment compensation to Americans who are out of work. Some of you joined us in stopping tobacco companies from targeting kids, expanding opportunities for young people to serve our country, and helping responsible homeowners stay in their homes.

So we have a track record of working together. It is possible. But, as John, you mentioned, on some very big things, we’ve seen party-line votes that, I’m just going to be honest, were disappointing. Let’s start with our efforts to jumpstart the economy last winter, when we were losing 700,000 jobs a month. Our financial system teetered on the brink of collapse and the threat of a second Great Depression loomed large. I didn’t understand then, and I still don’t understand, why we got opposition in this caucus for almost $300 billion in badly needed tax cuts for the American people, or COBRA coverage to help Americans who’ve lost jobs in this recession to keep the health insurance that they desperately needed, or opposition to putting Americans to work laying broadband and rebuilding roads and bridges and breaking ground on new construction projects.

There was an interesting headline in CNN today: “Americans disapprove of stimulus, but like every policy in it.” And there was a poll that showed that if you broke it down into its component parts, 80 percent approved of the tax cuts, 80 percent approved of the infrastructure, 80 percent approved of the assistance to the unemployed.

Well, that’s what the Recovery Act was. And let’s face it, some of you have been at the ribbon-cuttings for some of these important projects in your communities. Now, I understand some of you had some philosophical differences perhaps on the just the concept of government spending, but, as I recall, opposition was declared before we had a chance to actually meet and exchange ideas. And I saw that as a missed opportunity.

Now, I am happy to report this morning that we saw another sign that our economy is moving in the right direction. The latest GDP numbers show that our economy is growing by almost 6 percent — that’s the most since 2003. To put that in perspective, this time last year, we weren’t seeing positive job growth; we were seeing the economy shrink by about 6 percent.

So you’ve seen a 12 percent reversal during the course of this year. This turnaround is the biggest in nearly three decades — and it didn’t happen by accident. It happened — as economists, conservative and liberal, will attest — because of some of the steps that we took.

And by the way, you mentioned a Web site out here, John — if you want to look at what’s going on, on the Recovery Act, you can look on recovery.gov — a Web site, by the way, that was Eric Cantor’s idea.

Now, here’s the point. These are serious times, and what’s required by all of us — Democrats and Republicans — is to do what’s right for our country, even if it’s not always what’s best for our politics. I know it may be heresy to say this, but there are things more important than good poll numbers. And on this no one can accuse me of not living by my principles. (Laughter.) A middle class that’s back on its feet, an economy that lifts everybody up, an America that’s ascendant in the world — that’s more important than winning an election. Our future shouldn’t be shaped by what’s best for our politics; our politics should be shaped by what’s best for our future.

But no matter what’s happened in the past, the important thing for all of us is to move forward together. We have some issues right in front of us on which I believe we should agree, because as successful as we’ve been in spurring new economic growth, everybody understands that job growth has been lagging. Some of that’s predictable. Every economist will say jobs are a lagging indicator, but that’s no consolation for the folks who are out there suffering right now. And since 7 million Americans have lost their jobs in this recession, we’ve got to do everything we can to accelerate it.

So, today, in line with what I stated at the State of the Union, I’ve proposed a new jobs tax credit for small business. And here’s how it would work. Employers would get a tax credit of up to $5,000 for every employee they add in 2010. They’d get a tax break for increases in wages, as well. So, if you raise wages for employees making under $100,000, we’d refund part of your payroll tax for every dollar you increase those wages faster than inflation. It’s a simple concept. It’s easy to understand. It would cut taxes for more than 1 million small businesses.

So I hope you join me. Let’s get this done. I want to eliminate the capital gains tax for small business investment, and take some of the bailout money the Wall Street banks have returned and use it to help community banks start lending to small businesses again. So join me. I am confident that we can do this together for the American people. And there’s nothing in that proposal that runs contrary to the ideological predispositions of this caucus. The question is: What’s going to keep us from getting this done?

I’ve proposed a modest fee on the nation’s largest banks and financial institutions to fully recover for taxpayers’ money that they provided to the financial sector when it was teetering on the brink of collapse. And it’s designed to discourage them from taking reckless risks in the future. If you listen to the American people, John, they’ll tell you they want their money back. Let’s do this together, Republicans and Democrats.

I propose that we close tax loopholes that reward companies for shipping American jobs overseas, and instead give companies greater incentive to create jobs right here at home — right here at home. Surely, that’s something that we can do together, Republicans and Democrats.

We know that we’ve got a major fiscal challenge in reining in deficits that have been growing for a decade, and threaten our future. That’s why I’ve proposed a three-year freeze in discretionary spending other than what we need for national security. That’s something we should do together that’s consistent with a lot of the talk both in Democratic caucuses and Republican caucuses. We can’t blink when it’s time to actually do the job.

At this point, we know that the budget surpluses of the ’90s occurred in part because of the pay-as-you-go law, which said that, well, you should pay as you go and live within our means, just like families do every day. Twenty-four of you voted for that, and I appreciate it. And we were able to pass it in the Senate yesterday.

But the idea of a bipartisan fiscal commission to confront the deficits in the long term died in the Senate the other day. So I’m going to establish such a commission by executive order and I hope that you participate, fully and genuinely, in that effort, because if we’re going to actually deal with our deficit and debt, everybody here knows that we’re going to have to do it together, Republican and Democrat. No single party is going to make the tough choices involved on its own. It’s going to require all of us doing what’s right for the American people.

And as I said in the State of the Union speech, there’s not just a deficit of dollars in Washington, there is a deficit of trust. So I hope you’ll support my proposal to make all congressional earmarks public before they come to a vote. And let’s require lobbyists who exercise such influence to publicly disclose all their contacts on behalf of their clients, whether they are contacts with my administration or contacts with Congress. Let’s do the people’s business in the bright light of day, together, Republicans and Democrats.

I know how bitter and contentious the issue of health insurance reform has become. And I will eagerly look at the ideas and better solutions on the health care front. If anyone here truly believes our health insurance system is working well for people, I respect your right to say so, but I just don’t agree. And neither would millions of Americans with preexisting conditions who can’t get coverage today or find out that they lose their insurance just as they’re getting seriously ill. That’s exactly when you need insurance. And for too many people, they’re not getting it. I don’t think a system is working when small businesses are gouged and 15,000 Americans are losing coverage every single day; when premiums have doubled and out-of-pocket costs have exploded and they’re poised to do so again.

I mean, to be fair, the status quo is working for the insurance industry, but it’s not working for the American people. It’s not working for our federal budget. It needs to change.

This is a big problem, and all of us are called on to solve it. And that’s why, from the start, I sought out and supported ideas from Republicans. I even talked about an issue that has been a holy grail for a lot of you, which was tort reform, and said that I’d be willing to work together as part of a comprehensive package to deal with it. I just didn’t get a lot of nibbles.

Creating a high-risk pool for uninsured folks with preexisting conditions, that wasn’t my idea, it was Senator McCain’s. And I supported it, and it got incorporated into our approach. Allowing insurance companies to sell coverage across state lines to add choice and competition and bring down costs for businesses and consumers — that’s an idea that some of you I suspect included in this better solutions; that’s an idea that was incorporated into our package. And I support it, provided that we do it hand in hand with broader reforms that protect benefits and protect patients and protect the American people.

A number of you have suggested creating pools where self-employed and small businesses could buy insurance. That was a good idea. I embraced it. Some of you supported efforts to provide insurance to children and let kids remain covered on their parents’ insurance until they’re 25 or 26. I supported that. That’s part of our package. I supported a number of other ideas, from incentivizing wellness to creating an affordable catastrophic insurance option for young people that came from Republicans like Mike Enzi and Olympia Snowe in the Senate, and I’m sure from some of you as well. So when you say I ought to be willing to accept Republican ideas on health care, let’s be clear: I have.

Bipartisanship — not for its own sake but to solve problems — that’s what our constituents, the American people, need from us right now. All of us then have a choice to make. We have to choose whether we’re going to be politicians first or partners for progress; whether we’re going to put success at the polls ahead of the lasting success we can achieve together for America. Just think about it for a while. We don’t have to put it up for a vote today.

Let me close by saying this. I was not elected by Democrats or Republicans, but by the American people. That’s especially true because the fastest growing group of Americans are independents. That should tell us both something. I’m ready and eager to work with anyone who is willing to proceed in a spirit of goodwill. But understand, if we can’t break free from partisan gridlock, if we can’t move past a politics of “no,” if resistance supplants constructive debate, I still have to meet my responsibilities as President. I’ve got to act for the greater good — because that, too, is a commitment that I have made. And that’s — that, too, is what the American people sent me to Washington to do.

So I am optimistic. I know many of you individually. And the irony, I think, of our political climate right now is that, compared to other countries, the differences between the two major parties on most issues is not as big as it’s represented. But we’ve gotten caught up in the political game in a way that’s just not healthy. It’s dividing our country in ways that are preventing us from meeting the challenges of the 21st century. I’m hopeful that the conversation we have today can help reverse that.

So thank you very much. Thank you, John. (Applause.) Now I’d like to open it up for questions.

(more…)

Al Jazeera’s Faultlines programme looks at the Obama Administration, a year into office.

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According to reporters Mark Halperin of Time and John Heilemann of New York Magazine, senior members of the McCain campaign staff considered telling McCain if he were elected president that he would have to replace Sarah Palin as Vice President because she was “mentally limited” and “attitudinally limited”.

In the year plus since the 2008 presidential campaign, the former Vice Presidential candidate and now former Governor of Alaska has yet to refute such arguments. She is, indeed, a terrifying figure who still commands wide popular support because the rather inarticulate politician somehow articulates what is perceived by many as “commonsense conservatism.”

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