I have no idea where this “higher calling” came from, but I suspect it could only have come from two sources. The first one is God. I don’t know what God said to Sarah Palin, but I suspect it might have been something like this:

“Sarah. I am a patient God. But, you have tried my patience. You are an embarrassment to my ideals, to yourself, to the people of your state, and to your country. Me, and my wolves and moose, would like you to please resign and devote the rest of your life in spiritual embrace of a better life. Oh, by the way, I knew a Sarah, and you are no Sarah.”

The other possibility of her “higher calling” is from the Sultan of Greed. I also haven’t talked to him about Sarah Palin’s “Higher Calling,” but this is a possibility of that conversation:

“So, Sarah, what do you earn as governor?”

“About $125,000.”

“Would you like to earn more? Lots more?”

“You betcha! Half my salary is already taken up on clothes and jewelry so I can be the best darned governor in these here greatest United States of America!”

“Resign as governor, sign with me, and I’ll get you a book deal worth millions.”

“But I’ve never written nothing before.”

“All you’ll have to do is talk into a tape recorder. We’ll correct some of your facts, add some stuff, take out some stuff, and make you sound as if you were Hillary Clinton but without all that liberal nonsense.”

“Maybe you could put in a lot of pictures. If there were a lot of pictures, I wouldn’t have to have as many words.”

“We’ll give you the best writers and fashion photographers. You’ll be in the Best Sellers list the day our—I mean your—book is published.”

“You would do that for li’l ole me?”

“Not only would my team do that, we’ll get you speaking engagements.”

“But I already give speeches. All the conservatives want my opinions.”

“It isn’t your opinions they crave, but that’s another story. I can get you speeches at maybe a hundred thousand each.”

“And it’s all mine!”

“Minus expenses, administrative fees, and commissions.”

“You’re taking a cut of my wisdom?”

“Trust me, Babe, we don’t want your wisdom, but that’s how this business works. You want to ride, you have to pay the operator. Now, about punditry.”

“But, Sultan, I’m not so good with puns. Maybe—”

“Not jokes, Darlin’! We’ll get you a radio gig. Couple of hours a day. You just say whatever you want into a microphone.”

“That sounds tough. I might have to spend time researching issues, and reading something, like maybe a newspaper.”

“You ever listen to talk radio?”

 ”No research and reading?”

 ”It’ll only hurt your credibility. Once we get you a radio contract, we’ll move you onto TV.”

 ”Do you think I’ll be able to do TV?”

 ”You’re a beauty queen. Miss Wasilla. America’s favorite hockey puck.”

 ”Hockey mom.”

 ”Whatever. You’re photogenic, nothing else matters. First, we get you a gig as a paid guest commentator on Fox—”

 ”Like, wow, that’ll be the ultimate!”

 ”Sweet Cheeks, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet! Make the audience salivate when they see you on air, and we’ll get you a regular slot. An hour, maybe more every week night.”

 ”Wow! Like my idols Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly? Will Fox pay for my wardrobe? That’s important. My contract has to have a wardrobe and jewelry clause. And makeup. I’ll need my own makeup artist. And hairdresser. I can’t be seen not looking like a superstar.”

 ”No problem, Honey Bunch. Fox will probably throw in a personal trainer to make sure you don’t gain any weight. It knows talent when it sees it.”

 ”And I can make millions, just like Rush and Glenn and Bill, the greatest Americans ever!”

 ”Not as much as them the first year, of course. Maybe only a couple of million. But, hey, aren’t I the Sultan of Greed? Am I not the one to lead you to the promised land, where you can rant all you want about high-paid celebrities and the government-controlled media? Did I not lead you to believe you have a higher calling than being a governor? Sign with Greed International, and we’ll get you anything you want!”

“Can you make my ethics problems go away?”

“Hey, Doll, you’ll be bathed by the media. Ethics won’t be a problem.”

“Sounds just gosh-danged wonderful, Sultan, but do you know what I want, what I really really want?”

“Whatever you want, we’ll get. You’re a money machine. So what can we get you?”

“Maybe a full time babysitter for Todd and the kids. They might be lonely without a wife and mother.”

[Walter M. Brasch is a university professor of journalism, social issues columnist, and the author of 17 books. His current book is Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush, available from amazon.com, bn.com, and other stores. The book was a winner in the politics/social issues category of USA Book News awards, and a finalist in the Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group awards. His weekly column was this year's winner in contests sponsored by the Pennsylvania Press Club and the Society of Professional Journalists; his column received honorable mention in competition sponsored by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Forthcoming in August is the third edition of Sex and the Single Beer Can: Probing the Media and American Culture. You may contact him at brasch@bloomu.edu or through his website, www.walterbrasch.com]

Biden acknowledged administration officials were too optimistic earlier this year when they predicted the unemployment rate would peak at 8 percent as part of their effort to sell the stimulus package. The national unemployment rate has ballooned to 9.5 percent in June — the worst in 26 years.

“The truth is, there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited,” said Biden, who is leading the administration’s effort to implement it’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan.

“Now, that doesn’t — I’m not — it’s now our responsibility. So the second question becomes, did the economic package we put in place, including the Recovery Act, is it the right package given the circumstances we’re in? And we believe it is the right package given the circumstances we’re in,” he told me.

So we can all continue to hurry up and wait, because ”more time is needed for the stimulus to work.”

Isn’t that special.

This Fourth of July, let’s give America the birthday present she cannot do without. Let’s give the people back their Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence sets forth a worldview that, back in the 18th century, served as the foundation of our new nation. This foundation was composed of the principle of human equality and the rights of self-determination implied by the famous phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Back then, this foundation was sufficient to support the society we hoped to build, one free of the economic monopolies, religious authoritarianism and military brutality embodied, respectively, in the English nobility, the Church of England and England’s Redcoat soldiers. As large as these forces loomed over the colonists in the New World, these were forces still dwarfed by the Atlantic Ocean, the American wilderness and the sheer number of people they aimed to dominate.

In a day of bayonets, wooden hulls and musket balls, mere consciousness of the principle of human equality was enough to give the people confidence in their ability to rewrite the social contract, even if it had to be written in their own blood. “Give me liberty or give me death,” Patrick Henry cried. In his day, he could calculate the odds of success as reasonable against an enemy that was still on a human scale. He could look his enemy in the eye and say to King George with confidence, our equality is self-evident.

When we won our independence, we dismantled all the power platforms setting some human beings above others. Against the concentration of wealth and power of the classist aristocracy, we built the one-person, one-vote principle. Against the psychological oppression of religious authoritarianism, we constructed the doctrine of separation of church and state. And against the physical domination of mercenary armies, we instituted civilian control of the military.

But then we lost our way.

After the Civil War, corporations stole the principle of equality and put it in the service of nonhuman monetary engines antagonistic to our democratic political process. During World War II, the military-industrial complex grew into a powerful privatized industry no longer answerable to the people. After the civil rights movement, the corporations and the military-industrial complex offered the authoritarian religious right political legitimacy in exchange for their votes. It took us far too long to recognize the Republican Party as embodying the same feudal alliance of authoritarian platforms we once revolted against.

Simply put, for more than two centuries, we did nothing to defend ourselves against the anti-democratic forces in society that were themselves constantly seeking ever-increasing sophistication and power. Thus, while economic monopolists, religious authoritarians and military industrialists developed subtle strategies for placing the people under their control, the people remained content with a merely “self-evident” equality. As a result, today we harbor serious doubts about our equality, our ability to rewrite the social contract, and the future of our democracy.

Fortunately, our understanding of the principle of human equality, the rights of self-determination that flow from it, and the people’s power to rewrite their social contract need not remain in its 18th century “self-evident” condition. A logical explication of these truths exists. We can give America the birthday gift she so desperately needs if only we will make thinking seriously about the democratic worldview our responsibility. Our original articulation of the democratic worldview changed the course of history in 1776. In 2009, it is high time we upgrade that worldview to meet the sophistication of our 21st century society. In so doing, we will once again expose the ideologies of authoritarian supremacy advanced by economic monopolists, religious authoritarians and mercenary militarists as directly in conflict with the people’s rights and humanity’s well-being. Equipped with this new understanding, we will find the true direction of change that America is wishing for as her birthday candles all blow out.

John Hank Edson is an attorney and the author of “The Declaration of the Democratic Worldview” (Democracy Press, 2008). You can learn more about The Declaration of the Democratic Worldview at http://democracypress.net .

Copyright © 2009 San Francisco Chronicle

The top speculation is that Palin is resigning so that she can focus solely on running for the Republican nomination in 2012. But there’s plenty of other speculation too.

The full text of Palin’s resignation speech is available here. Stay tuned…

UPDATE: Via Think Progress:

Max Blumental reports on The Daily Beast that Sarah Palin may have quit her job today because she was trying to avert a major, yet-to-be-disclosed corruption scandal.

The support of Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, could give momentum to one of the most-contentious aspects of legislation taking shape in Congress to fix the health system. To help pay for covering the 46 million uninsured, lawmakers have proposed mandating that all but small employers provide insurance for workers or help pay for it.[...]

“We are for an employer mandate which is fair and broad in its coverage,” said the letter, signed by Wal-Mart Chief Executive Mike Duke. Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, also signed the letter, along with John Podesta, who led President Obama’s transition team and is chief executive of the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think tank.

The National Retail Federation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce were not thrilled with Wal-Mart’s stance on the issue.

He’s gettings calls all the way around the conservative realm to walk (or fly) away. Apparently Mark Sanford was really getting around.

UPDATE: The State has more on the calls for Sanford to resign.

Norm Coleman has finally conceded. It’s about freakin time!

Madoff was sentenced today to 150 years in prison “for operating one of the largest frauds in Wall Street history, an operation that ensnared millionaires, private foundations, a Nobel Prize laureate and hundreds of small investors who lost their life savings to an investment guru they had trusted completely.”

In pronouncing the sentence — the maximum he could have handed down — Judge Denny Chin turned aside Mr. Madoff’s own assertions of remorse and rejected the suggestion from Mr. Madoff’s lawyers that there was a sense of “mob vengeance” surrounding calls for a long prison term. Mr. Madoff’s crimes, the judge said, were “extraordinarily evil.”

“Objectively speaking, the fraud here was staggering,” Judge Chin said. “It spanned more than 20 years.”

Jack Healy reports in the NY Times that before Madoff was sentenced he “stood up in a federal courtroom in Manhattan and turned to face the people who lost their life savings to his huge Ponzi scheme. “I’m sorry,” he told them. “I know that doesn’t help you.””

Madoff was sentenced at the end of “an emotional 90-minute hearing in which victims of the $65 billion fraud urged the judge to show no mercy and described how their lives had been upended by Mr. Madoff.”

A friend of mine was a victim of Madoff’s scheme. He didn’t lose everything as some did, yet I know he’s relieved that Madoff at least had the book thrown at him.