From the NY Times piece “Palin’s Route to Resignation – Missteps and Ignored Advice”:

In late March, a senior official from the Republican Governors Association headed for Alaska on a secret mission. Sarah Palin was beset by such political and personal turmoil that some powerful supporters determined an intervention was needed to pull her governorship, and her national future, back from the brink.

The official, the association’s executive director, Nick Ayers, arrived with a memorandum containing firm counsel, according to several people who know its details: Make a long-term schedule and stick to it, have staff members set aside ample and inviolable family time to replenish your spirits, and build a coherent home-state agenda that creates jobs and ensures re-election.

Like so much of the advice sent Ms. Palin’s way by influential supporters, it appeared to be happily received and then largely discarded, barely slowing what was, in retrospect, an inexorable march toward the resignation she announced 10 days ago.

Some people can handle the spotlight. Others cannot. Palin is the latter.

I keep meaning to write about Sen. Lydia Chassaniol’s speaking to the Council of Conservative Citizens, but I’ve not gotten around to it. I wanted to write something lengthy, and most of my blogging efforts lately have been nothing more than links.

Over at Jackson Jambalaya, blogger Kingfish has written a pretty good piece about them.

I’m not a Kingfish fan, but I’ll give it to him when he’s right. It takes little more than commonsense to take a look at the CCC’s website and know what they are truly about. Too many conservative politiicians ignore commonsense.

Here’s an excerpt from Kingfish’s blog post:

This organization is not a conservative group as conservatives believe in a limited government that is color-blind, free-market capitalism, strong national defense, and civil liberties for all. Racism has no place in conservatism or the Republican Party. Mississippi Republicans have NO BUSINESS WHATSOEVER speaking at one of these events and the chairman needs to condemn this group in no uncertain terms as racism and anti-Semitism have no place in the Republican big tent.

Chairman Brad White should forbid any Republican from speaking at one of these events. A group like this shouldn’t get the attention it has recently as it is a fringe group but since a Republican State Senator decided to welcome them, the onus is on the Republican Party to show these guys the door and make it clear the Council is not welcome to Republicans or true conservatives. William F. Buckley and others threw out the Birchers when it became clear the Birchers were not true conservatives. Mr. White, Governor Barbour, and others should do the same and show the Council of Conservative Citizens the door.

Gov. Barbour will not apologize. He refused to ask them to remove his photo from their website. It would not surprise me to find he’s a member.

This group is the modern-day KKK. They are racist, period. And anyone who supports their cause in any shape, form or fashion does not have the integrity to lead in any capacity.

To listen to Sen. Chassaniol defend her appearance there is laughable, and it is a sad statement on the GOP that so many of its members flock to CCC events and the GOP leadership stays mum about it.

By the way, if you have any doubt about the CCC being a racist organization, consider this statement from the Mississippi chapter’s website:

We believe the United States is a European country and that Americans are part of the European people. We believe that the United States derives from and is an integral part of European civilization and the European people and that the American people and government should remain European in their composition and character. We therefore oppose the massive immigration of non-European and non-Western peoples into the United States that threatens to transform our nation into a non-European majority in our lifetime. We believe that illegal immigration must be stopped, if necessary by military force and placing troops on our national borders; that illegal aliens must be returned to their own countries; and that legal immigration must be severely restricted or halted through appropriate changes in our laws and policies. We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called “affirmative action” and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races.

This comes from a section of their website called “Our Principles” and it is the second principle.

We have made great strides in race relations, but we have not done enough. As long as our “leaders” continue to give these groups credibility, this kind of hatred will continue to grow.

Dr. Marvin King has a piece on President Obama’s approach to reforming health care:

Essentially, Obama has threatened to make life worse for the health care bureaucracy unless they come to the bargaining table. The goal is to squeeze savings wherever possible to pay for expanding health care to every American. The total cost of such a plan could exceed $1 trillion and these small steps (really these steps are quite major) will help pave a smoother road for congressional negotiators. Politically, this will make it harder for Republicans to resist reform efforts on the grounds that it is anti-medical industry. Getting the drug industry and the hospitals on board are two of the major constituents in this debate. Who knows if reform will actually happen, but these are positive steps.

Personally, I’m glad to see the president going directly to the parties who run the industries, encouraging changes in their practices before using government to force changes.

This shows a style of governing that is much needed in this time, and it’s good to see the private sector taking responsibility for making positive changes that affect the general population.

Leo Babouta over at Zen Habits believes we should lust after life, not stuff:

Our obsession with stuff has become unhealthy. When we have a void in our lives, we buy things. When we have problems, we buy things. And these things are becoming more and more expensive, bigger, shinier … more wasteful.

This obsession with stuff leads to owning a lot, having a lot of clutter … and yet this stuff doesn’t fill our lives with meaning.

It leads to deep debt, from buying so much, and needing bigger houses and storage spaces to contain everything. Financially, we’re worse off than ever, because of this obsession with stuff.

We buy things when we’re depressed, we buy things for others to show how much we love them … and in this way, stuff has separated us from actually dealing with our emotions, blocked us from truly connecting with others.

Let’s replace that lust for stuff with a lust for life.

He’s right. And I’ll plug his book now, The Power of Less, as a good way to do this.

Hulu has announced that ABC will start providing content, including Grey’s Anatomy.

Today marks the official start of a new relationship: the launch of ABC content on Hulu. Things kick off with five episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, the primetime drama set at Seattle Grace Hospital, where surgical interns try to navigate the challenges of romance and friendship as they scrub in for complicated medical cases. The videos posted on Hulu will mirror the episodes most recently aired on TV, which includes the two-part Season 5 opener, two episodes from the middle of the season, and another pair that lead up to the heart-wrenching finale.

That brings me one step closer to cutting the cable cord and using only Hulu, Boxee, my AppleTV and other Internet offerings for my home entertainment.

From Wil Wheaton’s post everything’s drawn and super 80s:

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know this*, but even if you do, I’m telling you this story right now because it’s a perfect excuse to point out, once again, that my wife is awesome. It is also a perfect excuse to repost the Literal Version of Take On Me, which is almost as awesome as she is.

I’d never seen the Literal Version. It’s hilarious!

Dumb.

Dumber.

From Jim Craig at Ipse Blogit:

It seems like I’ve spent my whole life hearing about the National Rifle Association and the “right to bear arms.” As we’ve discussed before on this blog, the NRA has reached it’s high water mark by convincing the United States Supreme Court that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to carry firearms, and that the language about the need for a “militia” to protect the community did not limit the reach of the Amendment.

I don’t agree, but so be it.

But now, there’s a new movement, to protect the right to carry knives. No, I am not joking.

I didn’t know there was a knife-control agenda anywhere. I thought public safety on airplanes was just commonsense.

From Op-Ed Columnist – The Obama Haters’ Silent Enablers – NYTimes.com:

What is this fury about? In his scant 145 days in office, the new president has not remotely matched the Bush record in deficit creation. Nor has he repealed the right to bear arms or exacerbated the wars he inherited. He has tried more than his predecessor ever did to reach across the aisle. But none of that seems to matter. A sizable minority of Americans is irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies — indeed, of the 21st century itself. That minority is now getting angrier in inverse relationship to his popularity with the vast majority of the country. Change can be frightening and traumatic, especially if it’s not change you can believe in.

Interesting piece. Worth the read.

I know it is difficult to discuss gun control legislation in the South, where the NRA reigns supreme and the mention of “gun control” is automatically linked with an attack on hunters’ rights.

But I think Jim Craig made an excellent point on gun control in light of the DC shootings and Justice Scalia’s recent opinion on DC gun laws:

How about a movement to amend the Constitution to explicitly provide for control of non-hunting, non-pistol weapons? Let’s have an open debate with those who think there’s an inalienable right to own semi-automatic firearms or armor-piercing bullets.

Now that’s a debate I’d like to see. And I bet law enforcement agencies would welcome it too.