During her speech to the first ever National Tea Party Convention in Nashville on Saturday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin discouraged the very idea of a national organization, urging the movement to stay leaderless and decentralized. This was the most important and valuable part of Palin’s speech.

As for the rest of it—Sarah sounded pretty much like the same old Republican Party.

Despite the many independents that make up the movement, the tea parties in large part represent a long overdue reexamination of conservative principles. A big-spending Democratic president seems to have awakened grassroots conservatives enough to finally lament the big spending of the last Republican president, and plenty of incumbents from both parties face voter backlash in 2010 and possibly beyond, particularly if they supported bailouts, stimulus, national healthcare, or other massive debt-incurring legislation.

The tea partiers are right to acknowledge and denounce Bush’s big-government growth of Medicare, the implementation of No Child Left Behind, and Dubya’s other expansions of the domestic state. But what they still seem to forget is what made conservatives so tolerant of big government during that time—an almost religious preoccupation with supporting the Iraq War.

Today, defense spending remains the largest part of the federal budget, dwarfing the bailouts, stimulus, healthcare, and other government programs that offend tea partiers most, and President Obama is still expanding that budget and escalating our wars. One would think cost-conscious voters would at least question Obama’s wisdom in continuing Bush’s exorbitant foreign policy. Yet few tea partiers are asking such questions, and according to Palin, Obama’s primary weakness is that he’s not enough like George W. Bush.

Following up her tea party speech on “Fox News Sunday,” Palin said of Obama, “If he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies, I think people would perhaps shift their thinking a little bit and decide, Well, maybe he’s tougher than …he is today, and there wouldn’t be as much passion to make sure that he doesn’t serve another four years.”

What is Palin trying to say? That tea party anger towards Obama would lessen if the president was to “toughen up,” becoming even more intent on waging war? Does Palin believe that the massive domestic spending conservatives don’t like would be tolerated so long as Obama increases the massive foreign spending conservatives do like? Isn’t this exactly what happened under Bush?

Read the entire article

State Rep. Tim Scott of North Charleston enters GOP congressional primary race, joining Buckhannon, Campbell, Jenerette, Kobrovsky, Thurmond, Witte. (And maybe Ken Glasson)

Flashback to the crowded debate stages of 2007 and early 2008. Sigh.

Here is the story of how Bigham's family has dealt with their loss. See the whole account in The State newspaper at
www.thestate.com/local/story/1138263.html

Mills Bigham was a 19-year-old Marine in Iraq when he made his first kill.

While on a foot patrol, someone hurled a grenade at Bigham's squad. Bigham, who was at the point, turned and fired.

"I pulled the trigger quickly, twice. Pop ... pop," the Columbia Marine wrote in his journal.

Two bullets hit the attacker's chest, knocking him to the ground. Within minutes, he was dead. The grenade was a dud.

Bigham checked the attacker's identification.

He was 12.

Less than four years later on Oct. 19, Lance Cpl. Mills Palmer Bigham sat in his red Chevy Tahoe, put a .410-gauge shotgun to his forehead and pulled the trigger one last time.

He was 23.

So here it is: my trip to the Secession Camp # 4 wood shed. I have been dubbed a "heritage violator." I hang my head. I hang my head.

Read the whole newsletter at Oct06 Pages.pub. It's a hoot!

HERITAGE WATCH
This months Heritage violator is long over due to be called out for his anti-Confederate hate speech. He and the fish wrapper he writes for take every opportunity they get to attack anything dealing with our Confederate Heritage. He is Will Moredock who writes for the City Paper. To call that rag a newspaper would be a stretch. They have no interest in fairness or the other side of the story and continually twist facts in an effort to make anyone who supports our Southern Heritage look bad. His most recent misrepresentation came when he simply copied the misinformation that another fish wrapper, The State newspaper, published and supplied to AP, regarding the Hunley project and Senator Glen McConnell. Moredock, rather than checking out the story simply lifted all the distorted information he could read and threw in a few of his own uninformed comments. He even had the nerve to accuse The Post and Courier of covering up the story because they correctly did their own research, rather than copy The State’s distorted story. The Post and Courier produced a for more accurate picture of the Hunley project which showed many of The State’s figures to be distorted. That however didn’t deter Moredock from attacking the Hunley project, Senator McConnell and even The Post and Courier. After all if he had any interest in the truth he wouldn’t be writing for the City Paper. It seems crystal clear that the label Confederaphobic is far more appropriate for Mr. Moredock than journalist. There is one truth we have learned from Mr. Moredock though and that’s what to wrap fish with.

• Olivia Gossett

Olivia Gossett style stalked Kwan Fuller at Gaga Day in the Square last week.
Where did you get your outfit? "Some of it is thrift, and some of it is from other places. Just from all over, really."
Who or what is your style inspiration? "Edie Sedgwick and Audrey Hepburn."

For now, you can read this report by yours truly for AOL News. Click on over to check it out.

Here's a taste:

While there are certainly neo-confederates in attendance — such as Jim Hanks, the former head of the South Carolina branch of the League of the South — there are plenty of others who in no way are affiliated with those preoccupied with the Late Unpleasantness.

Take for instance conference speaker Yuri Maltsev, a professor of economics at Carthage College in "the People's Republic of Wisconsin." Maltsev feels he knows the dangers of an over-extended and debt-ridden empire all too well: He was born and raised in the former Soviet Union.

"The Soviet Union was definitely 'too big to fail,'" he said. "It had 11 time zones, one-sixth of the world's surface. And it failed miserably. I think that what would be interesting to discuss is 'too big not to fail' because bigness is not necessarily a good thing. Bigness in many cases leads to excessive centralization, depriving people of their liberty.

"We have a government that is spending like a drunken sailor," Maltsev added. "This is a slander against a drunken sailor because he spends his own money."

42 percent of Republicans aren't really patriotic. They pretend to love America only when they approve of the president. These traitors don't believe in democracy, in our nation's founding ideals, or in our flag. To them, those colors run. They are cowards.

Note, secession sentiment is MUCH stronger in the South than elsewhere — 33 percent want out, compared to just 52 percent who want to stay. In the Northeast, "just" 10 percent want out, in the Midwest, its 18 percent, and in the West, it's 16 percent. Can we cram them all into the Texas Panhandle, create the state of Dumbfuckistan, and build a wall around them to keep them from coming into America illegally?

See the entire Kos poll and commentary at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/2/2/832988/-The-2010-Comprehensive-Daily-Kos-Research-2000-Poll-of-Self-Identified-Republicans

This is really scary.