Worcester County Freedom Trail

I’ve never seen House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dance so fast. She’s spinning her siren song of woe, how the Republicans and greedy Wall Street capitalists have caused this financial mess.

We all know it was due to bad Democrat legislation (starting with the CRA in the 1970s), greedy individuals looking for a too-good-to-be-true mortgage, and horrendous Democrat oversight. Who can possibly believe that any banker in his right mind would make not one, but hundreds of thousands, of bad loans and expect to keep his job?

Now Pelosi’s blaming the Republicans for the fact that the bail-out vote didn’t go through. Actually…that one we’ll take credit for. Good for those that voted against the bail-out and it’s reliance on us God-fearing, gun-toting middle Americans for the cash to make it happen.

From Catholic Citizenship:

With the escalating attention on the upcoming Gloucester School Committee public hearing to gather information and parent perspectives on the “pregnancy pact,” a new web site offers contact information on school committee members and talking points to emphasize abstinence education.  The web site — www.parentsforteenhealth.com — was forwarded to us by one of our Catholic Citizens and is an excellent example of the laity taking it upon themselves to foster grassroots activism and promote Catholic Christian values in the public square.  Though the site appears to be non-denominational, the message is one echoed by Pope Benedict XVI, that parents have the right to educate their children in accordance with Catholic values.  Promoting a culture of life to our children is critical if we hope to empower and educate future generations against the indoctrination by the radical sex lobby.

The Gloucester School Committee meeting will begin at 6:00 PM on Oct. 1, 2008, and could go as late as 10:30 PM or continue the following day.  The hearing will be held at Gloucester City Hall.

Bill O’Reilly announced the results of the poll that’s currently running on his web site:

“Who is most responsible for the economic meltdown?”

- 56%  Congress

- 20%  People who borrowed too much

- 19%  Bad companies

-  5%   Bush administration

Btw, there is one line that should be included in any kind of legislation that arises from the current mortgage meltdown:

“Under no circumstances are the taxpayers of the United States responsible for funding defaulted mortgages, failed financial institutions, or the pet projects of the legislators that put us in this mess in the first place.”

The House has more cajones than I thought! After more than three hours of debate, the $700 billion bail-out package was rejected by a 228-205 final vote.

And here’s an interesting little tidbit from the Herald that places a lot of the blame squarely in the lap of our own Congressman Barney Frank.

“I want [Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae] to help with affordable housing, to help low-income families get loans and to help clean up this subprime mess. Otherwise, why should they exist?”

- Rep. Barney Frank, earlier this month.

The Subprime Panic of ’08 and its $1 trillion (and rising!) price tag is too big to blame on any one man. But if we had to, it would be Newton’s own Rep. Barney Frank.

As Winston Churchill might have put it, never before has one man done so much that was so wrong, or shafted so many on behalf of so few.

Entire business sections of newspapers, including this one, have been dedicated to explaining how we got into this mess, and still the typical taxpayer is asking “So what happened?”

The answer is actually quite simple: Freddie and Fannie happened. And they couldn’t have without the ferocious support of Barney Frank.

Freddie and Fannie were supposed to be safe suppliers of mortgage money for relatively low-risk loans. If you could qualify for a loan, F&F would make sure the banks had access to the money to make that loan, cheap money because it was backed by the American taxpayers.

But liberals like Barney Frank wanted more. They wanted the low cost of low-risk loans to be extended to higher-risk borrowers with lower incomes, fewer assets or less-solid credit. Barney and friends used the regulations of the Community Reinvestment Act to threaten lenders into making these loans. And banks, trying to meet Frank’s demands, expanded riskier lending schemes like subprime mortgages.

That’s when Freddie and Fannie stepped in. As Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute put it: “They fueled Wall Street’s efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools.”

Lenders asked themselves, why should I care how shaky these borrowers are or risky the loans if a government-backed body is going to buy them up anyway?

The loans were made, the housing market bubbled, contributions from F&F flowed to Democrats like Chris Dodd and Barack Obama, and everyone was happy. Until they weren’t.

Without Freddie and Fannie’s reckless expansion, the housing bubble doesn’t happen. Without the implied promise behind F&F’s money, investment banks don’t dive into the derivatives market.

Instead, we did it Barney’s way.

Not only has Frank spent his career stopping any real reform of Fannie and Freddie, he repeatedly insisted they weren’t backed by the taxpayers. “There is no federal liability whatsoever,” Frank said in 2000.

No liability? You know this is going to hit the taxpayers squarely in the pocketbook. I call that liability.

Btw, for the next few days, ignore the gyrations going on on Wall Street. Now that the s— has hit the fan, everyone wants the government (our tax dollars) to bail them out: brokerage houses, mortgage firms, pension funds, etc. Think of it as Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride for a few days, then we’ll see how it all shakes out.

A nice report from Worcester activist Desiree Awiszio, who attended the Bill Kristol reception and dinner at the Worcester Economics Club on Friday.

Bill’s background was summed up, he was introduced to applause, and then spoke. He mentioned he was visiting his son who goes to Harvard and mentioned to people in Cambridge that he’s going to Worcester for a speech tonight. Their reaction was something like, “Worcester, what’s out there….pretty far away from what’s happening, quite a drive, maybe you should plan the drive out there sooner, give yourself more time, it’s so far out.” In other words, to the Boston beltway people, their world is inside route 128. These are the elitists, just like the inside the beltway crowd in D.C., ie, nothing important happens outside their little circle. Bill said it took 45 minutes for the drive, no big deal.

Bill also said he taught at the Kennedy school in 1984-1985 and lived with his wife and family in Belmont which was Tip O’Neil’s district. Bill voted for Reagan in ‘84 and also whoever ran against Tip. He asked his wife the next morning how many votes the Republican got who ran against Tip. His wife said, there was no Republican running. Bill said he knows he voted for someone running against Tip. Bill said it turned out he voted for the communist on the ballot. (big laugh in the room). Bill said that’s a true story.

Bill said Massachusetts is a pretty state, a nice state, if you like one party states, like Russia. (another big laugh).

He talked about how conventional the Presidential races were in the past, and how this time, we really don’t know how it will turn out, and if anyone says they know, that’s guesswork. He said candidates in the past were conventional choices. This time, first time in decades, no VP or President is running for the top office or re-election. Bill said the Obama campaign thinks this is 1980 in reverse, that it’s a throw the bums out scenario and he just has to be acceptable. Bill said to note how Obama has been the last few weeks, ie, reserved, doesn’t say much to be confrontational, etc. He’s trying to be steady so people will accept him. He said McCain who has been in D.C. is the one who is shaking things up, makes the bold pick with Palin, champions being the reformer, etc. Bill said the race was close between Reagan and Carter and then after the last debate about 9 days before the election, Reagan made the sale and it opened up for him. Kristol thinks the debates will be very important. The McCain campaign thinks in the end, with the world situation, with troops in the field, with two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the one in Iraq going very well, with financial issues here at home, that people will want someone steady and experienced, and a doer, not a talker. He did think what McCain did these past few days with the financial crisis and going to D.C. and what he’s been saying was very smart. It totally threw Obama off balance. Now the polls show it. McCain got a 3 point bump just in one day. Obama says, “call me if you need me”. McCain says, “let’s go fix this”. Again, the doer, not the talker.

Bill also said there’s about 20% who are undecided or whose support is soft. It’s not known what way they will swing and by how much.

Bill talked about John Kerry a little. He said he saw Kerry in the green room for a show recently and told him that he lived in Mass when Kerry first ran for Senate and voted for Ray Shamie to beat Kerry. (I remember voting for Ray as well.)  He said Kerry had this long serious look on his face, very dower, and said to Bill, “Shamie was unqualified”. Bill then said, “Kerry doesn’t have much of a sense of humor if you hadn’t noticed”.

Bill talked about demographics and the women’s vote. He said if Obama loses, people will look back and conclude it’s because he didn’t put Hillary on the ticket. Reagan did with Bush ‘41, Kennedy did with Johnson. It unites the party around the two big vote getters even if there wasn’t the smooth relations initially. Bill said 1 in 5 Hillary voters will not vote for Obama. He said if that drops to 15%, Obama could win, and if it goes to 25%, McCain will win. Thus the big push we see for Hillary voters and women voters. There was a recent poll that showed only 58% of Hillary voters across the board will vote for Obama. This was the same as in June, and thus Obama has not increased the support at all. Bill said leaving Hillary off the ticket was weak on Obama’s part. He know’s why he did it, due to his fear of three co-Presidents, but it’s weak. He said if he had picked her, he probably would have been comfortably ahead, and McCain would not have picked Palin, because it looked like he would be “playing catch-up” by also putting a woman on the ticket. McCain would have picked someone more conventional. Bill said that Obama’s weak decision opened the door for McCain to be bold. We would have a totally different race today otherwise.

Bill also said McCain is being bold with what he’s doing on Capital Hill with the rescue plan. He said he’s taking a lot on himself and this is dynamic.

The $700B bailout of our failing financial institutions has disaster written all over it. Kudos to the conservatives who are slowing the process down and trying to think through the consequences (something the Democrats didn’t bother to do back when they were forcing banks to make risky loans in the first place). Paulson and Bernanke are way too eager to make a deal after doing little to nothing for the last year. And now we find out that there are disastrous consequences written into the fine print of this deal.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Taxpayers are naturally suspicious that political insiders and contributors on Wall Street are going to make out like bandits once Washington starts spending the $700 billion in the financial market rescue. But Democrats have already decided to spin off potentially billions of taxpayer dollars from the bailout fund to their own political buddies — not on Wall Street but on nearby K Street.

The House and Senate Democratic drafts contain an indefensible and well-hidden provision. It would mandate that at least 20% of any profit realized from the sale of each troubled asset purchased under the Paulson plan be deposited in either the Housing Trust Fund or the Capital Magnet Fund. Only after these funds get their cut of the profits are “all amounts remaining . . . paid into the Treasury for reduction of the public debt.”

Here’s the exact, amazing language from the Democratic proposal, breaking out how the money would be divided and dispensed:

“Deposits. Not less than 20% of any profit realized on the sale of each troubled asset purchased under this Act shall be deposited as provided in paragraph (2).

“Use of Deposits. 65% shall be deposited into the Housing Trust Fund established under section 1338 of the Federal Housing Enterprises Regulatory Reform Act . . . ; and 35% shall be deposited into the Capital Magnet Fund . . .

“Remainder Deposited in the Treasury. All amounts remaining after payments under paragraph (1) shall be paid into the General Fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt.”

What we have here essentially are a pair of government slush funds created in July as part of the Economic Recovery Act that pump tax dollars into the coffers of low-income housing advocacy groups, such as Acorn.

Acorn, one of America’s most militant left-wing “community activist groups,” is spending $16 million this year to register Democrats to vote in November. In the past several years, Acorn’s voter registration programs have come under investigation in Ohio, Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Washington, while several of their employees have been convicted of voter fraud.

Along with other potential recipients of these funds, including the National Council of La Raza and the Urban League, Acorn has promoted laws like the Community Reinvestment Act, which laid the foundation for the house of cards built out of subprime loans. Thus, we’d be funneling more cash to the groups that helped create the lending mess in the first place.

This isn’t the first time this year that Democrats have tried to route money for fixing the housing crisis into the bank accounts of these community activist groups. The housing bill passed by Congress in July also included a tax on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to raise an estimated $600 million annually in grants for these lobbying groups. When Fannie and Freddie went under, the Democrats had to find a new way to fill the pipeline flowing tax dollars into the groups’ coffers.

This is a crude power grab in a time of economic crisis. Congress should insist that every penny recaptured from the sale of distressed assets be dedicated to retiring the hundreds of billions of dollars in public debt that will be incurred, or passed back to taxpayers who will ultimately underwrite the cost of the bailout.

The idea that special-interest groups on the left or right should get a royalty payment for monies that are repaid to the Treasury is a violation of the public trust. We’re told the White House and House Republicans are insisting that the Acorn fund be purged from the bailout bill. The Paulson plan is supposed to get us out of this problem, not start it over again.

Blame the financial crisis on those who deserve the blame: the pols and lobbyists and community organizers who forced us into this situation to begin with. Excellent analysis from Investors Business Daily:

As the financial crisis spreads, denials on Capitol Hill grow more shrill. Blame an aloof President Bush, greedy Wall Street, risky capitalism — anybody but those in Congress who wrote the banking rules.

Such denials won’t hold against the angry facts banging on their doors. The only question is whether the guilty party can keep up the barricade until Election Day.

A visibly annoyed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected suggestions that Democrats share blame for the meltdown. “No,” she snapped at reporters who dared ask.

Stick to our narrative, she scolded: The bursting of the housing bubble was another story of market failure and deregulation.

“The American people are not protected from the risk-taking and the greed of these financial institutions,” she said, while calling for investigations of the industry.

Only, the risk-taking was her idea — and the idea of all the other Democrats, along with a handful of Republicans, who over the past 30 years have demonized lenders as racist and passed regulation after regulation pressuring them to make more loans to unqualified borrowers in the name of diversity.

They were the ones who screamed — “REDLINING!” — and sent banks scurrying for cover in low-income neighborhoods, where they have been forced to lower long-held industry standards for judging creditworthiness to make the subprime loans.

If they don’t comply, they are threatened with stiff penalties under the Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA, a law that forces banks to make home loans to people with poor credit risks.

No fewer than four federal banking regulatory agencies are responsible for enforcing the law. They subject lenders to racial litmus tests and issue regular report cards, the industry’s dreaded “CRA rating.”

The more branches that lenders put in poor neighborhoods, and the more loans they make there, the better their rating. Those lenders with low ratings can not only be fined, but also blocked from mergers and other business transactions needed to expand.

The regulation grew to monstrous proportions during the Clinton administration, obsessed as it was with multiculturalism. Amendments to the CRA in the mid-1990s dramatically raised the amount of home loans to otherwise unqualified low-income borrowers.

The revisions also allowed for the first time the securitization of CRA-regulated loans containing subprime mortgages. The changes came as radical “housing rights” groups led by ACORN lobbied for such loans. ACORN at the time was represented by a young public-interest lawyer in Chicago by the name of Barack Obama.

HUD, in turn, pressured Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase more subprime mortgages, and Fannie and Freddie, in turn, donated to the campaigns of leading Democrats like Barney Frank and Pelosi who throttled investigations into fraud at the agencies.

Soon, investment banks such as Bear Stearns were aggressively hawking the securities as “guaranteed.” Wall Street’s pitch was that MBSs were as safe as Treasuries, but with a higher yield.

But they weren’t safe. Everyone in the subprime business — from brokers to lenders to banks to investment houses — absolved themselves of responsibility for ensuring the high-risk loans were good.

The mortgage lenders didn’t care, because they were going to sell the loans to other banks. The banks didn’t care, because they were going to repackage the loans as MBSs. The investors and traders didn’t care, because the MBSs were backed by Fannie and Freddie and their implicit government guarantees.

In other words, nobody up and down the line — from the branch office on main street to the high-rise on Wall Street — analyzed the risk of such ill-advised loans. But why should they? Everybody was just doing what the regulators in Washington wanted them to do.

So everybody won until everybody lost, including the minorities the government originally mandated the banks to serve.

The original culprits in all this were the social engineers who compelled banks to make the bad loans. The private sector has no business conducting social experiments on behalf of government. Its business is making profit. Period. So it did what it naturally does and turned the subprime social mandate into a lucrative industry.

Of course, it was a Ponzi scheme, because they weren’t allowed to play by their rules. The government changed the rules for risk.

In order to put low-income minorities into home loans, they were ordered to suspend lending standards that had served the banking industry well for centuries. No one wants to talk about it, so they just scapegoat Wall Street. Even John McCain has joined the Democrat chorus on this.

The FBI is now investigating 24 large mortgage lenders for alleged abuses. But who will investigate the pols and the lobbyists and the community agitators who made the bad decisions that ultimately forced businesses to make their bad decisions?

The current financial crisis is a blatant failure of socialist policies gone bad. It started long ago, when the swan song of the Democrat party was housing for all, back in the days of the Carter administration. Let’s review a little history starting with a great Terry Jones article in Investors Business Daily:

For those looking for a real start to today’s financial meltdown and government rescue, you need to go back — way back — to 1977, and the Jimmy Carter presidency.

It was then, for the best and purest of reasons, that well-meaning Democratic members of Congress brought the Community Reinvestment Act into being.

The main idea, as the late Democratic Sen. William Proxmire said on the Senate floor in 1977, was “to eliminate the practice of redlining by lending institutions.”

That term — “redlining” — seems quaint today. But in the 1970s, it was widely seen as the cause of housing disparities between white and black Americans.

The redlining theory went thus: Banks set up shop in low-income areas, took deposits, then lent the funds to richer areas — leaving poor and minority communities starved of housing and capital.

President Carter, a reformist former governor from the racially aware “New South,” embraced the 1977 CRA as a way to end the supposed practice of redlining.

Coming as it did just years after other major civil rights legislation — including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 — community activists and others viewed it as essential to bringing African-Americans into the American dream.

At the time, the U.S. was in the middle of what came to be known as stagflation. After the first oil embargo in 1973 sent prices spiraling upward, the economy struggled to emerge from a vicious two-year recession in 1974 and 1975.

By 1977, inflation hit 7% — on its way to 14% in 1980. A year earlier, in 1976, 30-year mortgage rates crested 9% for the first time ever.

Meanwhile, the jobless rate stood at 7% — 14% for blacks. Many African-Americans felt frozen out of homeownership. As home prices soared, affordability became a crisis for black families.

In such a nasty economic environment, it’s easy to see why something like the CRA got passed.

Good intentions, bad results.

Unfortunately, this well-intended law eventually led to a housing boom based on shoddy loan practices, a subsequent bust, and the financial mess we are in today.

Now we have the government pushing to use our tax dollars to save government institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (yes, and AIG). When will this socialist mess stop? Get government out of the capital markets and let the markets do what they do best. I’d like to see some clear-headed thinking from our presidential candidates. Looks like they’re still trying to figure out which way to go. From today’s Telegram:

As the current power brokers in Washington grapple with the prospect of a $700 billion taxpayer bailout of the nation’s financial sector, there is a natural tendency for those who hope to take power next January to score political points by appearing wise and decisive on the issue. Such campaign posturing should carry little weight in voters’ decisions on Election Day.

The reality is that the current mess in U.S. financial and investment markets took years of bipartisan mismanagement to create. The Clinton administration loosened lending rules and increased mandates for getting more Americans into homes they could not truly afford. The Bush administration erred in not insisting on adequate regulation and oversight. And, truth be told, generations of Americans in all socioeconomic strata have been complicit, indulging their apparently insatiable appetites for all manner of consumer goods on credit, as well as giving brokers the green light to take more and more risks with their investments.

As for the responses of Barack Obama and John McCain to the woes of the nation’s financial institutions, neither has handled the issue with much skill.

Mr. McCain declared the fundamentals of the economy were sound, a point borne out by the market’s stability by week’s end, but hardly the response voters needed to hear. He first opposed bailouts, then changed his mind. Mr. Obama was characteristically vague about what he might do, but nonetheless assailed his opponent for an alleged lack of leadership.

This is big news, especially for those of us who are serious about gaining firmer control of our energy future. Should have been front page news in the Telegram, but at least it made it to page 3.

Democrats have decided to allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week, conceding defeat in a months-long battle with the White House and Republicans set off by $4 a gallon gasoline prices this summer.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., said yesterday that a provision continuing the moratorium will be dropped this year from a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running after Congress recesses for the election.

Republicans have made lifting the ban a key campaign issue after gasoline prices spiked this summer and public opinion turned in favor of more drilling. President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling in July.

Democrats had clung to the hope of only a partial repeal of the drilling moratorium, but the White House had promised a veto, Obey said.

The House is expected to act on the spending bill today. The Senate is likely to go along with the House.

While the House would lift the long-standing drilling moratoriums for both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, a drilling ban in waters within 125 miles of Florida’s western coast would remain in force under a law passed by Congress in 2006 that opened some new areas of the east-central Gulf to drilling.

Just last week, the House passed legislation to open waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to oil and gas drilling, but only 50 or more miles out to sea and only if a state agrees to energy development off its shore. It quickly became clear the measure would not get the 60 votes needed in the Senate.

Republicans called that effort a sham that would have left almost 90 percent of offshore reserves effectively off-limits.

A great column from State Committeeman Matt Kinnaman:

Wildly waving their wet noodles, liberals can’t hurt the Alaskan moose hunter, and it’s driving them nuts. What is it about Sarah Palin? From the tabloid rack, she jumps out: a pregnancy-faking, weirdo, lying cultist, while immediately alongside, another smiley Obama puff piece coos softly “Why they Love their Man.” And as their polls slide, the Left whimpers, “Why doesn’t America get it?”

Why? Because as the Obama team fiddles and flouts over itself, Sarah Palin storms the scene with a much stronger story. Pro-gun, pro-life, pro-active, low-tax, self-reliant people know one when they see one. They saw the shot of Palin on her Harley next to Obama on his bicycle, and no volume of attack verbiage can alter the narrative. This is not the change Obama was waiting for.

You want leadership? Consider what Palin did to her own Alaskan Republican Party. After two terms as Mayor of Wasilla, she ran for Lieutenant Governor in 2002 and lost. In 2003 she was appointed by Governor Frank Murkowski to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Instead of disappearing into the forgotten forest of political apparatchiks, she swung an axe and shined a bright light on hidden conflicts of interest perpetrated by two of Alaska’s most powerful Republicans.

One was Randy Ruedrich, a fellow oil and gas commissioner getting $118,000 a year for the post, while also serving as Alaska’s Republican Party chairman. Palin looked this sweet deal over and saw a party chairman raising money from members of the industries he regulated. She decided these ethics simply stunk. So she opened the windows, blew the whistle and Ruedrich was forced to resign, paying a $12,000 fine on the way out.

Now remember, Palin was appointed to her position by Governor Murkowski. Randy Ruedrich was not just her party chairman; he was also known as an architect of Murkowski’s political ascent. He was total inner circle. The audacity of hope, you say? Anybody can mouth a phrase. How about the audacity of actually cleaning up your own party’s mess? That’s the real deal.

Consider this: if her ethics fight against the big boys failed, Palin’s future political prospects were toast. She’d be lucky to be driving the Zamboni at the Wasilla ice rink. Undeterred, Appointee Palin also went after Alaska’s Republican Attorney General Gregg Renkes, exposing the underbelly of Renkes’ influence on an international trade deal from which he stood to personally profit. Renkes resigned.

So let’s make sure we’ve got this straight: Sarah Palin, out of office, gets back into the game through the good graces of the governor, who appoints her to a commission. In this position, Palin promptly digs up dirt on her own party, which promptly gets the governor’s buddy—and her party chairman—thrown out, and in quick order, the attorney general too. Nobody does this. But Sarah Palin did.

Palin is feminism’s new Wonder Woman. She’s riding a career rocket. She’s knocking men out of the ring. She’s a successful executive. She smokes out old-boy corruption. But something turns the Left against her.

Could it be the way Palin has used her power of choice? When she gave birth to a Down syndrome child, she joined a distinct minority. In America, nine out of ten babies receiving a positive Down syndrome screening are aborted.

The leader of the Democratic Party of South Carolina, Carol Fowler, was reduced to a sarcastic and sad analysis, saying that Sarah Palin’s highest qualification for office “seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

Palin says this about her disabled son: “We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed.”

When Barack Obama was implored by a town meeting questioner about reducing abortion, Obama’s clinical inner compass pointed towards cool pragmatism: “…look, I’ve got two daughters, 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

Embracing her Down syndrome infant, while simultaneously nurturing an unmarried pregnant teenage daughter, Sarah Palin perceives blessing in these challenges, not punishment. In the deepest sense, this is American greatness. Liberal pundits and politicians don’t get it, but the heart of America does.