Sarah Palin's interview with Robin Roberts on ABC News' Good Morning America & Nightline

Article at:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sarah-palin-good-morning-america-2012-presidential-run/story?id=12418168



Part 1: Palin for President? Sarah Palin on future and possibly entering the 2012 race. 12/17/2010
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/part-palin-president-12428592



Part 2: Palin on Motherhood Former VP candidate on marriage and raising five kids. 12/17/2010
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/part-palin-motherhood-12428604

In 2006 Sarah Palin defeated an incumbent governor of her own party in order to get the Alaska GOP gubernatorial nomination. After winning that nomination battle against longtime GOP U.S. Senator and sitting governor -and pork-loving blow-hard- Frank Murkowski, father of recently-re-elected U.S. Senator -and permanent sour face- Lisa Murkowski, Palin then got to run against the Democrat, another recent former Alaska governor, Tony Knowles.
And won.

As of two years ago, there was not a single LIVING Democratic politician in the entire United States who had ever run that sort of gantlet to get elected governor of their respective state. Just saying...

While it's easy for people to throw stones at Palin, especially from a distance, doing what she did, as mayor of a small and otherwise obscure city in Alaska that even most well-informed people in the Lower 48 had NEVER heard of, was and is pretty amazing.

That no LIVING Democrat has done anything like that is the proof.

I've always liked women with moxie, and Sarah Palin has that in abundance. As far as I'm concerned, whatever else she may lack, that particular quality will always help compensate for an awful lot, and endear her with average American voters, who quickly tire of pretentious, self-promoting phonies like John Kerry or John Edwards, whose innate shallowness, self-deception and disconnectedness to most of the country's genuine concerns eventually shines thru, no matter how talented or skillful their speechwriters.

The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza chimed in on Sarah Palin's political future on Friday from his WaPo blog, The Fix, pondering aloud, "Why Sarah Palin could struggle in 2012."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/house-tax-cut-vote.html?wprss=thefix

Transcripts of his Friday morning "Live Fix" online and video chats are at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2009/08/19/LI2009081903062.html

Here's the interactive schedule for the Washington Post's reporters, columnists and bloggers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/liveonline/

Yes, you're right, South Florida, in the year 2010, soon to be 2011, the Miami Herald and South Florida Sun-Sentinel have nothing even close to this in terms of breadth of quality or quantity. Why?

Now, that's a good question.
Why don't the publishers of these two newspapers want to address those issues with concerned readers in South Florida?

Sarah Palin's Alaska: http://tlc.discovery.com/tv/sarah-palin-alaska/

http://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin

http://twitter.com/sarahpalinusa

http://www.sarahpac.com/

http://www.foxnews.com/topics/politics/sarah-palin.htm


America by Heart -Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag
by Sarah Palin
http://www.harpercollins.com/books/America-Heart-Sarah-Palin/?isbn=9780062010964

http://files.harpercollins.com/AudioFile/9780062026910.mp3

YouTube videos mentioning Sarah Palin are added daily, almost hourly, regardless of whether they are pro or con. This chron link should provide you a way of seeing the most recent additions.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_filter=1&search_query=%22Sarah+Palin%22&search_type=videos&suggested_categories=25%2C43%2C23&uni=3&search_sort=video_date_uploaded

See also:
http://abcnews.go.com/nightline
http://abcnews.go.com/gma
http://www.youtube.com/user/ABCNews

Wry and insightful caffeinated news worth a second look: ABC News Nightline's "Champions of Breakfast?" Starbucks vs. Dunkin' Donuts

ABC News Nightline, March 18, 2009
Champions of Breakfast?
In the recession, Dunkin' Donuts goes head to head with Starbucks.
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7108261

Transcript:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/nightlinedailyline/2009/03/the-breakfast-w.html

https://www.dunkindonuts.com/

http://www.starbucks.com/

Worth a second look: ABC News Nightline's Slice of Heaven: Pizza Wars; Best pizza in Broward County

ABC News Nightline: It's On!: Pizza Wars, December 8, 2010

ABC News Correspondent John Berman on a "Slice of Heaven,"
December 8, 2010: The fight for slice supremacy as the humble pie becomes a recession powerhouse.

Story at: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/pizza-wars-12350508

When I lived in Evanston and Wilmette in the mid-1980's, I used to go with friends to an Unos after every third Cubs game we went to at Wrigley Field.

The best pizza in Evanston back then was Carmen's, on Church Street, which wasn't cheap, but was delicious. http://www.carmenspizza.net/

In the Washington, D.C. area, where I lived for 15 years, I was partial to Armand's Pizza, usually the one on Mass. Avenue on Capitol Hill, that was located next to The Heritage Foundation and near the U.S. Senate buildings and Union Station, or the one in Tenleytown on Wisconsin Avenue near American University.

Not surprisingly, my friends and I were partial to their all-you-can-eat deals with salad.
http://www.armandspizza.com/newsite/index.html

From this you can deduce that my favorite kind of pizza is Chicago Deep Dish style.

There are currently no Unos in South Florida, which is a shame. Only wish there was one here in Hallandale Beach at the Village at Gulfstream Park or in nearby Hollywood.
http://www.unos.com/

2010 BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes Best Pizza:
Readers voted Joe Jamz Pizza & Baked Goods in Hollywood as the best pizza in Broward County.
Joe Jamz Pizza & Baked Goods, 320 S. Federal Highway, Hollywood, FL (954) 927-7707
http://joejamz.com/
http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/bestof/2010/award/best-pizza-1148826/

The newspaper chose Sicilian Oven in Lighthouse Point.
Sicilian Oven, 2486 N. Federal Highway, Lighthouse Point, FL
(954) 785-4155
http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/bestof/2010/award/best-pizza-1148935/

http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/restaurants/search/?cuisine=Pizza

From high atop Mount Koppel, Ted Koppel opines in the WaPo on the dearth of -yes- serious news. Just like last year. And the year before that...

From high atop Mount Koppel, Ted Koppel opines in the WaPo on the dearth of -yes- serious news. Just like last year. And the year before that... And at that forum in Aspen...

Just some quick but obvious questions that come to mind that Ted Koppel has never publicly asked in the past, and so never has had to answer from the privileged vantage point of his former insider position.

Why ABC News never got a cable TV component.
Disney's fault? If not, whose?

Why CBS News also didn't. Viacom's fault?
If not, whose?

If either or both had happened and they did the opposite of what Koppel decries below in tomorrow's Washington Post, what all readers here, presumably, would want in the abstract, would enough people watch it to be profitable, or more than a niche?
Or would it just more money down a black hole?
Just wondering...

The Washington Post
Ted Koppel: Olbermann, O'Reilly and the death of real news By Ted Koppel
Sunday, November 14, 2010;

To witness Keith Olbermann - the most opinionated among MSNBC's left-leaning, Fox-baiting, money-generating hosts -suspended even briefly last week for making financial contributions to Democratic political candidates seemed like a whimsical, arcane holdover from a long-gone era of television journalism, when the networks considered the collection and dissemination of substantive and unbiased news to be a public trust.

Read the rest of the Op-Ed at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/12/AR2010111202857.html

Reader comments at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/12/AR2010111202857.html

Ted Koppel on the Information Overload
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv99WA0xyNk


Ted Koppel accepts the Lifetime Achievement Award at
the 28th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards (2007)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZtIphNl0Gs

Examining a music phenomenon: ABC News Nightline's Chris Connelly interviews pop sensation Justin Bieber: "The Business of Being Bieber"

The Business of Being Bieber 07:55
We're backstage with teen idol and pop sensation Justin Bieber.
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/business-bieber-11474697




When I saw last Tuesday that ABC News Nightline would be doing a segment that night on teen singer Justin Bieber, I must admit that I was of two minds about actually watching it.

The first was the old default attitude that I grew-up with as a guy coming of age in the 1970's, one that had usually proven so accurate, which was that if 95% of a singer's fan base consisted of young teenage girls, with posters in their bedrooms of unicorns, or, if they were REALLY wild, posters of unicorns AND whomever the singer/group was -Bay City Rollers, perhaps?- chances were pretty good that most self-respecting teenage guys would NOT respect them as an artist.

History is replete with examples proving this music & social theorem so there's no point in my
kicking that can all over again.
And certainly every news video I've seen of Bieber over the past year prior to last Tuesday, if I even paid attention to it, showed that his fan base was... well, about as expected, albeit perhaps with less unicorn posters these days, and in the U.K., probably also including posters of girl group, The Saturdays. http://www.thesaturdays.co.uk/

On the other hand, for all of Bieber's apparent popularity, and knowing who he was, I'd never actually listened to one of Bieber's songs, since I don't actually listen to Miami's FM radio stations and couldn't name one of his songs to save my life, though I could, to save my life, name the entire Dolphins' or Orioles' 1972 roster, or recount key plays, good and bad, from closely following the Dolphins since 1970 and the Hurricanes from 1973, in-person at the Orange Bowl, complete with commentary on the sights and sounds around me.

Yeah, if my life depended on it, I could even tell you which teams baseball Hall-of-Famer Grover Cleveland Alexander pitched for and why the legacy of his greatness and toughness can never be challenged.
Or tell you that the semi-fictionalized biopic on him, starring Ronald Reagan and Doris Day, was much better and more accurate than 75% of the sports-themed films made in the past thirty years. http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=319902&titleId=12906

(Or more honest and heartfelt than anything Alex Rodriguez will ever say or do.)

But Justin Bieber, well, he might as well have been the 2010 Slovakian contestant for the Eurovision Song Contest.
Except, of course, that I might've actually heard of THEM, for reasons that I've previously discussed here in discussing my music interests and education, such as it is.

---------
In fact, in a March 7th post about Timoteij, I even included the original version Kristina Pelakova did of Horehronie, this catchy song that I was humming to myself over-and-over
after first seeing the national entry video.

I found myself humming it while stuck at red lights or in check-out lines at stores, which, living around here, means that I was doing a LOT of humming.
And once it's in your head, that's it -it's there forever.
But then who doesn't love great singing with flutes and drums?
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/look-out-world-here-comes-timoteij.html

That post of mine five months ago also included an interesting fan video of the song that featured a scenic travelogue of that part of central Slovakia, with its verdant hills and beautiful mountains, which, then as now, seems so very, very far from here and our gridlocked traffic next to oh-so ugly buildings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0CaeDo-wEY

Here's Kristina Pelakova performing Horehronie at Eurovision in Oslo back in May with her dancers and musicians.



(I mentioned in March that a former housemate of mine now work for the U.S. State Dept. in Slovakia, so I'm a little more conscious of things going on there than I was before.)
--------

On the other hand, any thirteen-year old kid who has the self-confidence to pull a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey when he meets and auditions for one of his idols, Usher, can't be all bad.
I will give him props for that!

And at sixteen, for better or worse, he seems intent on ignoring YES Men and is going to do things his way, however that winds up in the end years from now.
Kudos to the kid.

----

Chris Connelly bio: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=4853214

Kristina Pelakova: http://www.eurovision.tv/event/artistdetail?song=24973&event=1503

Background on the song, Horehronie, and the effect of it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/will-adams/slovakias-eurovision-2010_b_577593.html

This is when I really, really miss Peter Jennings

July 7th, 2009

3 p.m.

Don't know how it is wherever you are in the world,

but here in South Florida, there seem to be more than

a normal amount of glitches and dead spots on ABC's

telecast this afternoon of the Michael Jackson memorial,

especially compared to the CNN telecast.

Talking over the action so many times!

ABC News is my favorite of the four networks, and I prefer

Charlie Gibson's newscast to the others, but it was only

a few minutes into their broadcast this afternoon when it

really hit me that this was exactly the sort of situation

where Peter Jennings always out-shined everyone,

with his ability to weave a story together in ways both

profound and spot-on.

Always, always coming up with that great thought or

bit of insight that would really hit you where you lived,

and stay with you long after the telecast was over.

Which, of course, is why I always watched him.

I never missed Peter Jennings more than today.