Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin endorsed Bowling Green eye surgeon Rand Paul in Kentucky's U.S. Senate race Monday, saying he wants to "shake up the status quo" in Washington.

The endorsement gives Paul, son of former Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, an inroad into Kentucky's conservative Republican base that might otherwise be skeptical of an outsider candidate. The younger Paul has never before run for elected office.

"I'm proud to support great grass roots candidates like Dr. Paul," Palin said in a statement. "While there are issues we disagree on, he and I are both in agreement that it's time to shake up the status quo in Washington and stand up for commonsense ideas."

But for a plan that promises such a utopia, the problems with the FairTax are legion. The stated rate of the FairTax is too low to achieve the promised revenue neutrality. The amount by which it is claimed that prices would fall under a FairTax system has been grossly exaggerated. There is nothing to prevent an income tax from being reinstituted, giving us a two-headed hydra of an income tax and a consumption tax. And not only would state and local governments have to pay a national sales tax to the federal government, the federal government would have to pay sales taxes to itself on all its new purchases. Since I have already written extensively about the problems with the FairTax, I will stop with its problems here and focus on why the FairTax, like the Flat Tax, is not true to its name.

Also in the wake of the Massachusetts special election, the nation’s most popular conservative political figure Sarah Palin announced she would be campaigning for her former running mate in Arizona in March. Palin told Facebook followers that she’s going to “ride the tide with commonsense candidates” and help “heroes and statesmen” like McCain.

Facing mounting conservative opposition in his home state and polls showing him virtually tied with possible GOP challenger and former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, McCain welcomed the boost: "Sarah energized our nation and remains a leading voice in the Republican Party."

But the original plan for implementing a $2.1 million cut in state revenues wouldn't have gone unnoticed. It called for closing swimming pools in six state parks — a plan that she said was "unacceptable" because so many vacationers use swimming pools."Whatever your summer vacation destination, if there's not a pool open, many people won't go there," she said. "As we began apportioning the cuts, we thought early on we would not be able to operate swimming pools. Then we went back to the drawing board."

The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more deceitful than the conservative. The liberal is more hypocritical than the conservative.

Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro's friend and benefactor; and by winning the friendship, allegiance, and support of the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or tool in this political "football game" that is constantly raging between the white liberals and white conservatives.

Politically the American Negro is nothing but a football and the white liberals control this mentally dead ball through tricks of tokenism: false promises of integration and civil rights. In this profitable game of deceiving and exploiting the politics of the American Negro, those white liberals have the willing cooperation of the Negro civil rights leaders. These "leaders" sell out our people for just a few crumbs of token recognition and token gains. These "leaders" are satisfied with token victories and token progress because they themselves are nothing but token leaders.

  "Regardless of state law, the Constitution does not permit any change in the qualifications or the term-length for members of Congress. Accordingly, state term-limits statutes are unconstitutional. U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 US 779 (1995). The same constitutional principles apply to attempts to recall members of Congress. If members of Congress could be recalled, how is it that no member of Congress has ever been recalled? Rather than wasting energy and time on an impotent recall effort, citizens understandably frustrated with a dysfunctional Congress might consider another and more practical response which is explained in the following post."

The fact that Fed Chairman Ben Bernake is likely to  be re-appointed as chairman of the Federal Reserve should deeply disturb all of us, much more so than the election of Obama as president.

Bernake, unlike Obama, has established a   track record of failure that is obvious to politicians from polar opposite sides of the spectrum.

Call Senators Vitter and Landrieu and urge that he be stopped.

Times being what they are, it would be really easy for a conservative like myself to simply hurl grenades at Democrats (metaphorically speaking).

This simply won't do.

It's a given that the Democrats will not hang on to power forever. Sooner or later they will get run out of town.

And when that happens,  if we end up with people like Lindsey Graham and Olympia Snowe running things, we may as well stay home.

Senator Lindsey Graham says that he doesn't want the Republican party to be the party of "Angry White Men."

So- the opposition party is running the  country and growing government like never before- and Graham doesn't think that there's anything to be angry about?

He's also said  that he doesn't want the G.O.P. to be the "Ron Paul Party."

Would he prefer it become the "George W. Bush Party?" Helluva lot of good that did.

 The common answer nowadays is that we become the "Party of Ronald Reagan," and that is correct.

There's only one small problem: we know what Reagan would do in 1980: we have no idea what he would do in 2009. I have no doubt were he living, he'd have the answers- but there's no way of knowing what those answers would be.

Moreover, Dr. Paul's Campaign for Liberty  seems to be the sole force on the right that is having ANY modicum of success reaching college age people.

Food for thought.

But to Texas separatists like Miller and Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Kilgore of Mansfield, secession is no laughing matter. Nor is it exclusive to the nation’s second-largest state.

Fanned by angry contempt for Washington, secession movements have sprouted up in perhaps more than a dozen states in recent years. In Vermont, retired economics professor Thomas Naylor leads the Second Vermont Republic, a self-styled citizens network dedicated to extracting the sparsely populated New England state from "the American Empire."

Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal urged his party in an interview Tuesday to shift to offering health care solutions instead of just rejecting what President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress are proposing.

“I think now is the perfect time to pivot and to say, not only here’s what we’re against, and not only here’s how we’re going to contrast ourselves, but here’s what we’re for,” Jindal said in an interview Tuesday with POLITICO.

There are many reforms I support that share bipartisan support, like portability of insurance, prohibiting discrimination against pre-existing conditions, pooling by small businesses, and other measures to reduce costs and make health care more affordable and accessible for all Americans. But we must be very careful that we don’t destroy the things that make America’s medical care the best in the world, all in the name of fixing the problems that exist.

 I am confident we can find many areas of agreement if we sit down and go through the bill you support, as well as the solutions I have co-sponsored, and try to find some common ground, and I look forward to scheduling a meeting in the near future to discuss much-needed reforms to our health care system. Thank you again for your invitation.

Louisiana, scene of one of the biggest environmental reconstruction projects in U.S. history, could become a major player in emerging cap-and-trade markets by selling "carbon credits" tied to the restoration of its Mississippi River delta. "We can tap that market to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars without making any modifications to our projects whatsoever," said Garret Graves, Jindal's top adviser on the coast and levees.

Here's how it could work:

In coming decades, Louisiana and the federal government plan to spend billions of dollars planting cypress trees, piping mud into dying wetlands and diverting rivers to flush out salt water.

The bottom line is this: if the same standard used to prevent ACORN from receiving federal contracts were applied to many large corporations -- Boeing, financial institutions like AIG and CitiCorp, not to speak of private military contractors like Blackwater -- they would all have been barred as federal contractors long ago. But instead of being blacklisted, many of them actually received billions of taxpayer dollars to bail them out.

But what was striking was the new legitimacy that Rep. Paul (Texas) has gained since Obama’s bailouts have taken hold. Given the high disapproval ratings on both the economy and the war, it could be said today that the country is moving to Paul’s positions by osmosis. Paul opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He opposed the bailouts. He opposed the entire Keynesian perspective that the Obama administration has adopted lock, stock and barrel.

Morning Joe — no radical libertarian — pulled out an old script to read in amazement how the housing crisis had played out exactly as Paul said it would back in 2003 (emphasis mine). Paul advocates Austrian economics, and as he gathers continuing respect, Austrian economics gains a new authenticity as well.

Paul, like Palin, was considered a pariah when America’s support for Obama was in the 70s and all three networks were head over heels for Obamanomics. But as the sweet and authentic Mary Travis of Peter, Paul and Mary unfortunately passed away this week, I was remembering how the charmed old labor songs that the Weavers used to sing took flight when I was a teenager. Bob Dylan was the pariah then; now he’s everywhere — selling Pepsi and women’s underwear on TV during football games, playing bar mitzvahs. You can’t get rid of the guy.

The Medicare Prescription Drug Discount Card program, a temporary discount card put in place by the Medicare bill, has already proven to save participating seniors—especially lower-income seniors who are also eligible for subsidies—between 50 percent and 78 percent.[1] With such significant savings already reaching seniors, policymakers supporting drug importation should pause and consider its consequences.

While an open, worldwide market for drugs would have long-term economic and other benefits, it would require wrenching policy changes in many countries and far higher prices in many poorer countries.

Now, for refutation, let's look at the sentence which follows in her own article: "Economists, both liberal and conservative, agree that drug prices will not drop in the United States as much as they will rise abroad." Is it just me, or does this imply that importation will lead to lower prices in the US?

Even if that isn't the implication, it's true. Importation will lead to a higher supply of available drugs. Therefore, prices will be lower than otherwise. Simple supply and demand analysis. Will prices abroad rise? Yes. Importation would be an increase in demand for other countries. So, prices rise. Simple supply and demand again.

"Liberals and conservative" economists agree?  So do many Democrats and Republicans- many of whom have been bought off by big pharma. You can read more here.