Sarah Palin Coming to Hamilton for Cancer Centre Fundraiser

I would speak for FREE! I could certainly do it with less faux pas and embarrassing opportunities to be mocked on the comedy channel!

I bet they figure if they get a woman, it'll be supported more. They just picked the wrong woman! 

There are an awful lot of glorious Canadian women that could do a true service.

And little petey up there better keep HIS big mouth shut. Without a signature line, I'm guessing HE doesn't have breast cancer. Who is he, Mr. Pallin? ehhehehehhehhehe As for different opinions "than your own" hey buddy, we're talking about a whole NATION, not just the posters' opinion!!!

Why don't you donate your $100 to anal cancer....

Well, it seems you have bought into the Sarah Palin character assasinations, hook line and sinker. The caricatures you see of this woman are not who she really is. To me, she is the one person who just might rescue America from the current administrations efforts to destroy the US constitution by spending us into oblivion. When, I watched this video I saw a rude, line jumping, nut case with an agenda to bash Palin, try to confront her in a hostile matter. I heard Sarah very gratiously respond to this woman nonetheless. You may not like her answer, but she responded kindly and without the hostility that was unleashed on her. She could have easily ignored this rude woman, but she did not. The fact is most Americans do not want a Canadian system. We want to choose our own destiny and not have the government decide our every move. That is why almost 2 million Americans marched on Washington last Sept 12th, even though they were totally ignored by the press. The current US congress is pushing through bill after bill, without even reading them, even though they are being bombarded with letters and phone calls to read the bills and listen to the American people.

Obama is now the lowest polling first term president in the history of polling. As he continues to lose support, he will be a lame duck in his first term, and he will feign some illness so he will have an excuse not to run again since he will lose. Get use to seeing a lot more of Sarah Palin. She will be the first women US president. And try to find out who she really is, not the person the liberal press loves to hate. The NYT put 11 reporters on researching the facts in her book, and could not find any fabrications. Not one reporter ever vetted Obama's books, which are full of unanswered questions and lies. Palin released her health records, including details of her 5 childbirths. Obama has not released any of his. What illness is he hiding?  Palin released all of her school records. Reporters were sent to Wasilla to interview her kindergarten teacher. Yet, we have not seen any of Obama's school records, and no one has ever asked any of his teachers what kind of student he was. What is this man hiding? Was he just another average student, instead of the "genius" the press promotes?  The truth will eventually come out and Obama will be disgraced. In the meantime, I am thrilled that Sarah Palin is out there, speaking out and speaking up. As the mother of a special needs child, I am sure she will put women and children's health issues at the forefront of her administration. I can't wait. And I can't wait to hear what she has to say in Hamilton.

By the way, all politicians get paid to speak. Obama routinely appears at party fundraisers where people must cough up thousands to see him. Bill Clinton has made millions in speaking engagements, and lets not forget how much Al Gore has made, over 40 million last year, flying around the world with his global warming pseudo science. He has perfected the art of self promotion. And Barack Obama spent the two years he was supposed to serving as my senator, flying all over the country, selling his book of lies and promoting himself for president. He hardly even bothered to show up to vote, so that his votes could not be used against him. So why is it criminal when Sarah Palin does the same thing? Why is it that men are applauded for doing the same thing that women are always berated for?

Run Sarah Run!

Just another note: this thread is NOT about Obama and politics. Please don't make it out that way. This is a Canadian thread about a fund raiser.

She doesn't speak to American values either. That's why she and McCain were not elected. Her ideas (if she has any) were rejected.

Go Canada! You guys rock.

Actually, there are many "lies" and misrepresentations in Palin's book:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/17/going-rogue-the-18-bigges_n_359837.html

A look at some of her statements in "Going Rogue," obtained by The Associated Press in advance of its release Tuesday:

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PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking "only" for reasonably priced rooms and not "often" going for the "high-end, robe-and-slippers" hotels.

THE FACTS: Although travel records indicate she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) overlooking New York City's Central Park for a five-hour women's leadership conference in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000. Event organizers said Palin asked if she could bring her daughter. The governor billed her state more than $20,000 for her children's travel, including to events where they had not been invited, and in some cases later amended expense reports to specify that they had been on official business.

PALIN: Boasts that she ran her campaign for governor on small donations, mostly from first-time givers, and turned back large checks from big donors if her campaign perceived a conflict of interest.

THE FACTS: Of the roughly $1.3 million she raised for her primary and general election campaigns for governor, more than half came from people and political action committees giving at least $500, according to an AP analysis of her campaign finance reports. The maximum that individual donors could give was $1,000; $2,000 for a PAC.

Of the rest, about $76,000 came from Republican Party committees.

She accepted $1,000 each from a state senator and his wife in the weeks after the two Republican lawmakers' offices were raided by the FBI as part of an investigation into a powerful Alaska oilfield services company. After AP reported those donations during the presidential campaign, she said she would give a comparative sum to charity after the general election in 2010, a date set by state election laws.

PALIN: Rails against taxpayer-financed bailouts, which she attributes to Obama. She recounts telling daughter Bristol that to succeed in business, "you'll have to be brave enough to fail."

THE FACTS: Palin is blurring the lines between Obama's stimulus plan – a $787 billion package of tax cuts, state aid, social programs and government contracts – and the federal bailout that Republican presidential candidate John McCain voted for and President George W. Bush signed.

Palin's views on bailouts appeared to evolve as McCain's vice presidential running mate. In September 2008, she said "taxpayers cannot be looked to as the bailout, as the solution, to the problems on Wall Street." A week later, she said "ultimately what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy."

During the vice presidential debate in October, Palin praised McCain for being "instrumental in bringing folks together" to pass the $700 billion bailout. After that, she said "it is a time of crisis and government did have to step in."

___

PALIN: Says Ronald Reagan faced an even worse recession than the one that appears to be ending now, and "showed us how to get out of one. If you want real job growth, cut capital gains taxes and slay the death tax once and for all."

THE FACTS: The estate tax, which some call the death tax, was not repealed under Reagan and capital gains taxes are lower now than when Reagan was president.

Economists overwhelmingly say the current recession is far worse. The recession Reagan faced lasted for 16 months; this one is in its 23rd month. The recession of the early 1980s did not have a financial meltdown. Unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent, worse than the October 2009 high of 10.2 percent, but the jobless rate is still expected to climb.

___

PALIN: She says her team overseeing the development of a natural gas pipeline set up an open, competitive bidding process that allowed any company to compete for the right to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48.

THE FACTS: Palin characterized the pipeline deal the same way before an AP investigation found her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited a company with ties to her administration, TransCanada Corp. Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders during the process, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.

___

PALIN: Criticizes an aide to her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, for a conflict of interest because the aide represented the state in negotiations over a gas pipeline and then left to work as a handsomely paid lobbyist for ExxonMobil. Palin asserts her administration ended all such arrangements, shoving a wedge in the revolving door between special interests and the state capital.

THE FACTS: Palin ignores her own "revolving door" issue in office; the leader of her own pipeline team was a former lobbyist for a subsidiary of TransCanada, the company that ended up winning the rights to build the pipeline.

___

PALIN: Writes about a city councilman in Wasilla, Alaska, who owned a garbage truck company and tried to push through an ordinance requiring residents of new subdivisions to pay for trash removal instead of taking it to the dump for free – this to illustrate conflicts of interest she stood against as a public servant.

THE FACTS: As Wasilla mayor, Palin pressed for a special zoning exception so she could sell her family's $327,000 house, then did not keep a promise to remove a potential fire hazard on the property.

She asked the city council to loosen rules for snow machine races when she and her husband owned a snow machine store, and cast a tie-breaking vote to exempt taxes on aircraft when her father-in-law owned one. But she stepped away from the table in 1997 when the council considered a grant for the Iron Dog snow machine race in which her husband competes.

___

PALIN: Says Obama has admitted that the climate change policy he seeks will cause people's electricity bills to "skyrocket."

THE FACTS: She correctly quotes a comment attributed to Obama in January 2008, when he told San Francisco Chronicle editors that under his cap-and-trade climate proposal, "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket" as utilities are forced to retrofit coal burning power plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Obama has argued since then that climate legislation can blunt the cost to consumers. Democratic legislation now before Congress calls for a variety of measures aimed at mitigating consumer costs. Several studies predict average household costs probably would be $100 to $145 a year.

___

PALIN: Welcomes last year's Supreme Court decision deciding punitive damages for victims of the nation's largest oil spill tragedy, the Exxon Valdez disaster, stating it had taken 20 years to achieve victory. As governor, she says, she'd had the state argue in favor of the victims, and she says the court's ruling went "in favor of the people." Finally, she writes, Alaskans could recover some of their losses.

THE FACTS: That response is at odds with her reaction at the time to the ruling, which resolved the long-running case by reducing punitive damages for victims to $500 million from $2.5 billion. Environmentalists and plaintiffs' lawyers decried the ruling as a slap at the victims and Palin herself said she was "extremely disappointed." She said the justices had gutted a jury decision favoring higher damage awards, the Anchorage Daily News reported. "It's tragic that so many Alaska fishermen and their families have had their lives put on hold waiting for this decision," she said, noting many had died "while waiting for justice."

___

PALIN: Describing her resistance to federal stimulus money, Palin describes Alaska as a practical, libertarian haven of independent Americans who don't want "help" from government busybodies.

THE FACTS: Alaska is also one of the states most dependent on federal subsidies, receiving much more assistance from Washington than it pays in federal taxes. A study for the nonpartisan Tax Foundation found that in 2005, the state received $1.84 for every dollar it sent to Washington.

___

PALIN: Says she tried to talk about national security and energy independence in her interview with Vogue magazine but the interviewer wanted her to pivot from hydropower to high fashion.

THE FACTS are somewhat in dispute. Vogue contributing editor Rebecca Johnson said Palin did not go on about hydropower. "She just kept talking about drilling for oil."

___

PALIN: "Was it ambition? I didn't think so. Ambition drives; purpose beckons." Throughout the book, Palin cites altruistic reasons for running for office, and for leaving early as Alaska governor.

THE FACTS: Few politicians own up to wanting high office for the power and prestige of it, and in this respect, Palin fits the conventional mold. But "Going Rogue" has all the characteristics of a pre-campaign manifesto, the requisite autobiography of the future candidate.

___

AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this report.

As for the poll numbers:  Ronald Reagan's was 49% in this first year (and he didn't have 2 wars and a financial collapse).  The recession when Reagan became president WAS NOT as bad as the one right now.

There is no reason for her coming her.  

Beesie -- that's exactly what I thought -- she'll bring in the money, although the hospital is sleeping with the devil to do so.  I abhor that she's getting any money, but I guess it's about the greater good...  I would be tempted to go just for the guffaws. Maybe to protest?  When is this circus?  My fav CBC shows will have a field day!!! 

She must be desperate for money to take on such a speaking engagement.  Or her handlers are as stupid as she for booking her into it -- what are they thinking???

Vivre-- the clip is from a Canadian comedy show -- the "rude" woman is one of the comedian's many personnas.  She is just as "rude" and provocative to Canadian politicians.  BTW -- Canadians don't want a US system, or anything like it!  I'm b*tchy today so I'll stop typing now.

As a retired hospital fundraising executive, I have to disagree somewhat with Beesie (which is most unusual!!!).  There is a saying on the celebrity circuit that no publicity is bad publicity.  Well, not true when it comes to respected charities.  When you're trying to raise $$ through a speaking event, you want to be able to advertise only good things about the speaker, else your charity does indeed get tarnished by her/his reputation.  The last thing any charity needs is throngs of protesters outside the venue, or nasty letters to the editor (or attendees with tomatoes in their handbags).

I can only hope that she allows her speech to be vetted....and I hope the organizers make sure she knows  that St. Peter's provides end-of-life discussions with its patients, and that it's funded by (in her eyes) an evil socialist government, and, and, and.....

As for the hospitals making a profit:  I understand that 1,000 tickets hope to be sold, @ $200.  The organizers are hoping to make extra $$ by charging for photos taken with her, and of course hoping to have the event sponsored entirely.  I've been involved in speaking events which featured Peter Jennings, Elizabeth Dole, Christopher Patten and others.  Never, ever would they have agreed to "photo ops with guests for a fee".  And we would never have suggested it.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH

$200??????????????? You've got to be kidding me! The only politician I would spend $200 to hear is Pierre Trudeau!

Okay, then let her speak in YOUR country!

I was diagnosed on a Wednesday and had my double mast the following Tuesday (only day surgeon has OR). That was fast, don't you think?

We happen to not think that privatized, for-profit healthcare would be good for Canada as we are rolling along just fine the way we are. Why are the US people trying to make this a political thread?

Those of us who have commented have just felt she wasn't an appropriate role model or speaker. That is my opinion from my free country Canada.

S'okay Anne -- we have our little pissing contests up here too!  We're not homogeneous when it comes to politics, but we have a bit more choice insofar as we have more than 2 political parties which I think results in less polarization.

And I'm sure that there are some Canadians on this forum who would be delighted to see Palin, and pay $200, and pay extra for a photo with her.  I'm not one of them (or had you already guessed??).

Cheers, Linda