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Sarah Palin: She and Fox deserve each other

Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, will return to her broadcast roots and take her conservative message to Fox News as a regular commentator, the cable channel announced Monday.

“I am thrilled to be joining the great talent and management team at Fox News,” Palin said in a statement posted on the network’s Web site. “It’s wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news.”

Fox said that according to the multiyear deal, Palin will offer political commentary and analysis on the cable channel, as well as Fox’s Web site, radio network and business cable channel.

She also will host occasional episodes of Fox News’ “Real American Stories,” a series debuting this year that the network said will feature true inspirational stories about Americans who have overcome adversity.

“Governor Palin has captivated everyone on both sides of the political spectrum and we are excited to add her dynamic voice to the FOX News lineup,” Bill Shine, executive vice president of programming, said in a statement.

Palin, 45, is hugely popular with conservatives and has more than 1.1 million Facebook followers.

She stepped down as Alaska governor in July, 17 months before the end of her first term in office and less than a year after she vaulted to overnight fame as John McCain’s running mate.

The bombshell resignation stunned even supporters and fueled widespread speculation on her next career step — with predictions ranging from seeking the presidency in 2012 to hosting a conservative talk show. She told Barbara Walters in November that a 2012 presidential bid was not on her radar but added she wouldn’t rule out playing some kind of role in the next presidential election.

Since resigning, Palin has had colossal success with her best-selling memoir “Going Rogue,” released four months after she left office. She finished a nationwide tour in December after hitting some of the political battleground states from the 2008 election and drawing thousands of fans.

Palin majored in journalism with an emphasis on broadcasting at the University of Idaho and worked part-time as a weekend sportscaster in 1988 for KTUU-TV in Anchorage, using her then-maiden name Heath. The station’s sports director, John Carpenter, said the young broadcaster left after a few months because of the low pay.

Carpenter said he was sorry to see her go. She was a hard worker who enjoyed the entire process, not just being in front of the cameras, he said.

“She knew sports, she could talk sports, she looked OK on TV,” Carpenter said. “She had the aptitude, no question.”

Palin’s upcoming commentary career had her Facebook fans giddy with excitement Monday.

“Tell ‘em like it is girl!!!!!!,” one person wrote on a post.

“I look forward to seeing you on Fox….but I hope it doesn’t prevent you from running in ‘12!,” another wrote.

MSNBC’s Keith Olberman on Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s great turkey pardon FUBAR:

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the corrupt bribe-taker who quit rather than face the music, started a blog today.
But it shut down a few hours later so they could clean off all the comments from people who told DeLay just what they thought of him.
The blog is back up but comments are now moderated but you can find them on another site.
And one other thing. DeLay told Mike Barnicle on MSNBC’s Hardball that he doesn’t write his own blog.
“I’m not a writer,” he said. “I have ideas and others write them for me.”
Hmmmmm.

Mary Cheney, the openly gay daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, is pregnant.

President George W. Bush’s talk of energy independence sure sounds good as a TV sound bite but, as they say, reality bites.

From the Chicago Tribune:

If America is addicted to oil, as President Bush said Tuesday night in his State of the Union speech, the treatment plan he sketched out is likely to be long and costly.

And even if the country achieves the goals Bush set in his speech, the United States would remain heavily dependent on oil imports from volatile regions for years to come.

Bush proposed making ethanol, a corn-based fuel that currently is more expensive and less efficient than gasoline, competitive with gas within six years.

“Six years is really ambitious,” said Mark Edelman, an economist at Iowa State University. “That’s really going to take some ramping up of research and funding.”

Edelman said Bush’s proposed $59 million increase in research funding to $150 million in 2007 is significant but that many of the most promising ethanol technologies “at this point are pretty much in the beginning stages of research,” Edelman said.

If that goal is met, and other breakthroughs are achieved, the United States would cut its reliance on oil from the Mideast by 75 percent by 2025, Bush said in his speech.

That’s a big cut, but not nearly as large as it sounds. The United States gets only 20 percent of its oil from the Middle East, according to the Department of Energy. Far more oil comes from Africa and Venezuela, where governments also are either unstable or unfriendly to the United States.

But while journalists were unimpressed, Americans were downright angry:

Americans reacted with skepticism and anger at President Bush’s fifth State of the Union address Tuesday night, reflecting a national mood that reflects serious reservations about the controversial war in Iraq, revelations about the administration’s secret domestic spying program, and missteps following Hurricane Katrina.

At an Uptown neighborhood bar in New Orleans, both Republicans and Democrats paused to watch with at least one common hope: Rebuilding the Gulf Coast will be a top issue for the federal government.

But neither Tom Short, 75, a Republican and a Korean War veteran, nor attorney Todd Hebert, 38, a Democrat, found much to cheer about in Bush’s address.

After Bush mentioned the Gulf Coast in one or two sentences deep into his speech, Short exclaimed, “Did I miss something? I think that’s a crying shame.”