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Now that Senator Barack Obama is the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for POTUS, here's a place where Obama supporters can post their opinions and newsbits on how Obama's campaign against Republican presumptive nominee, Senator John McCain is progressing. For starters, here is a McLame gaffe about his efforts to assist the victims of Katrina [NOT] - in a remark made in - of all places - Louisiana: Katrina Revisited By David Kurtz Talking Points Memo June 4, 2008 "Still in Louisiana today, following his epic speech in Kenner last night, John McCain was asked by a local reporter why he had voted against creating a federal commission to investigate the Katrina disaster. McCain's response? "I've supported every investigation and ways of finding out what caused the tragedy. . . ." The problem is that's just not true. He voted against such a commission -- twice. If you needed a reminder of McCain's most painfully ironic connection to the Katrina debacle, here's President Bush on the morning Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast, celebrating McCain's birthday in Arizona - [photo available via the link below]: Here's the link: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/ Cleo -- "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke "I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." From "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven", W.B. Yeats -- Edited by CleopatraVIII at 06/05/2008 5:41 AM PDT
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(779 of 779)
Sep 7, 2008 5:02 PM
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> Report: McCain Once Shoved Woman In
> Wheelchair
>
> Story Again Raises Questions About McCain's Rage
> Problem
>
>
> On Sunday, McClatchy Newspapers published a
> story on Sen. John McCain's oft-discussed temper,
> detailing one incident in which McCain allegedly
> shoved a woman in a wheelchair.
>
> According to McClatchy's report, in 1996, McCain was
> met in the Senate office halls by a group of family
> members of POW-MIAs who had been pressing him to
> pursue more information on their relatives.
>
> Six people present have written statements describing
> what they saw. According to the accounts, McCain
> waved his hand to shoo away Jeannette Jenkins, whose
> cousin was last seen in South Vietnam in 1970,
> causing her to hit a wall.
>
> As McCain continued walking, Jane Duke Gaylor, the
> mother of another missing serviceman, approached the
> senator. Gaylor, in a wheelchair equipped with
> portable oxygen, stretched her arms toward McCain.
>
> "McCain stopped, glared at her, raised his left arm
> ready to strike her, composed himself and pushed the
> wheelchair away from him," according to Eleanor
> Apodaca, the sister of an Air Force captain missing
> since 1967.
>
> McCain's staff wouldn't respond to requests for
> comment about specific incidents.
>
>
> It's impossible now to determine whose recollection
> of these events is accurate.
>
> But Democrats clearly continue to see McCain's
> temperament as a potential electoral liability.
>
> Appearing on CNN's Late Edition on Sunday, Sen.
> Barbara Boxer argued that McCain's hot-streak is a
> legitimate campaign issue that should dissuade voters
> from electing him commander in chief.
>
> --
> "The change, it had to come / We knew it all
> along...."
I've heard anecdotes like this -- no proof.
--
wicky/effi
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(778 of 779)
Sep 7, 2008 4:10 PM
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Report: McCain Once Shoved Woman In Wheelchair
Story Again Raises Questions About McCain's Rage Problem
On Sunday, McClatchy Newspapers published a story on Sen. John McCain's oft-discussed temper, detailing one incident in which McCain allegedly shoved a woman in a wheelchair.
According to McClatchy's report, in 1996, McCain was met in the Senate office halls by a group of family members of POW-MIAs who had been pressing him to pursue more information on their relatives.
Six people present have written statements describing what they saw. According to the accounts, McCain waved his hand to shoo away Jeannette Jenkins, whose cousin was last seen in South Vietnam in 1970, causing her to hit a wall.
As McCain continued walking, Jane Duke Gaylor, the mother of another missing serviceman, approached the senator. Gaylor, in a wheelchair equipped with portable oxygen, stretched her arms toward McCain.
"McCain stopped, glared at her, raised his left arm ready to strike her, composed himself and pushed the wheelchair away from him," according to Eleanor Apodaca, the sister of an Air Force captain missing since 1967.
McCain's staff wouldn't respond to requests for comment about specific incidents.
It's impossible now to determine whose recollection of these events is accurate.
But Democrats clearly continue to see McCain's temperament as a potential electoral liability.
Appearing on CNN's Late Edition on Sunday, Sen. Barbara Boxer argued that McCain's hot-streak is a legitimate campaign issue that should dissuade voters from electing him commander in chief.
--
"The change, it had to come / We knew it all along...."
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(777 of 779)
Sep 7, 2008 1:11 PM
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I find myself thinking again that the "experience" blather is a total red herring that the GOP will soon have to set aside.
The last time a U.S. Senator ran for office was when JFK was campaigning in 1960. Generally the skinny on Senators not running is due to the many compromises they must make in order to pass legislation. Not on whether or not they have "executive" experience.
JFK was tagged as "inexperienced" by a Nixon no older than he was because Nixon had served as the Veep to a former Commander in Chief who'd been one of the major players who'd won WW II - in contrast to our present patchwork hero who never made Admiral.
"Experience" in politics was formerly regarded as the ability to get things done. To have gained mastery of the practice and process of politics being the "art of the possible".
All this talk of "executive" experience emanates from the mindset of the business majors who have run this country and its government into the ground and, of course, the desire to place an inarguably intellectual lightweight without a scintilla of national and international policy making experience a heartbeat away from the Presidency.
It's a cheap trick that I tend to doubt will work with the "base", many of whom have probably never laid eyes on, much less dealt with an "executive" in their lives.
Just like Rove's "country club" tag on Barack died a quick and merciful death for lack of relationship of that experience to their personal selves and lives.
Finally, this ridiculous notion can be dashed by aggressive assertion by the Obama campaign of the simple fact that very few Presidents, Congressmen and Senators have ever sat in an executive suite.
And a reminder that Wall Street, our economy and the Dollar are collapsing under the weight of policies made by those with so called "executive" experience galore.
Must leave now to do some work. Nice talking with you.
Have a great Sunday!
Cleo
--
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." From "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven", W.B. Yeats
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(776 of 779)
Sep 7, 2008 12:44 PM
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Republicans -- "How White, How Mean-Spirited, How Thin-Lipped They Are..."
"Is Anyone Really Buying This?"
By Nora Ephron
It was a giddy five days, wasn't it? I remember it well. There were blogs, and jokes on the Internet, and bets were made about how long it would last, how soon there would be a resignation. I made one of those bets myself. I said, within the month. Gone within the month. But five days passed and the vice-president was still there.
I'm referring, of course, not to our short happy fling with Sarah Palin, which ended last night with her completely terrifying speech in Minnesota, but to the week that Dick Cheney shot a friend in the face, didn't even go to the hospital to see him, and somehow, after a week, was still standing, as powerful as ever.
These Republicans don't go away, and they never admit a mistake, and sometimes, when I remember this, I wonder how I ever forgot it, much less how I ever bet against it.
I also forget how white they are, and mean-spirited, and thin-lipped. I watch them and I think, is anyone buying this? Does anyone think we're better off today? That we're "winning" the war? That teaching creationism is simply a matter of exposing students to both sides of the question?
That it's sexist to wonder whether a mother who just months ago committed to a Down syndrome child ought to be running for vice-president? Does anyone think that executive experience trumps wisdom and intellect? And who are these people who rise to their feet and cheer loudest when they hear the words "Off-shore drilling"?
--
"The change, it had to come / We knew it all along...."
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(775 of 779)
Sep 7, 2008 11:54 AM
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Shakin...now you're the boss.
The WHO, Won't Get Fooled Again!
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83
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(774 of 779)
Re: UK Times: Palin's Vendetta Against Brother-in-Law
Sep 7, 2008 11:49 AM
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> > > "So Sambo beat the bitch!"
> >
> >
> > I hope the mainstream press shows some spine for a change, and reports on this further, and digs deeper into this
>
>
> Here's a hopeful sign. This expose appears in today's UK Times
> Vendetta row can’t hold Sarah Palin back - The
> governor and her husband are accused of hounding her > brother-in-law.
Good.
Then there are these two reports as well, about the investigation into her corruption and abuse of power:
A) McCain Trying to Illegally Derail Palin's Troopergate Investigation
http://www.newsweek.com/id/157439
B) Palin Investigation on Fast Track, Results to Be Released Three Weeks Early
"These Results Could Be Very Damaging To Palin"
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5734511&page=1
--
Edited by MeetTheNewBoss at 09/07/2008 9:23 AM PDT
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(773 of 779)
UK Times: Palin's Vendetta Against Brother-in-Law
Sep 7, 2008 11:28 AM
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> > Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is
> "Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean"
>
> > "So Sambo beat the bitch!
>
>
> I hope the mainstream press shows some spine for a
> change, and reports on this further, and digs deeper
> into this
Here's a hopeful sign. This expose appears in today's UK Times from whence the expostures of McLame's infidelities and crass treatment of his first wife Carol and Hillary's overblown puffing of her experience solving the crisis in Northern Ireland made their way into the MSM over here.
Something tells me Rove's known about this nasty little piece of work for quite some time and that she was literally hand-picked from the getgo as McLame's "Cheney in Chief".
Vendetta row can?t hold Sarah Palin back - The governor and her husband are accused of hounding her brother-in-law. Tony Allen-Mills reports from Wasilla, Alaska
By Tony Allen-Mills
UK Times online
Sunday, September 7, 2008
"WASILLA, ALASKA - As a former senior adviser to Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, John Bitney helped America?s newest political celebrity throughout her successful 2006 election campaign, became the spokesman for her incoming administration and was ultimately named her chief liaison to the Alaskan legislature.
Bitney grew up with Palin, played in a high school band with her and, like many other Alaskans, was awed by her rapid rise from a moose-infested rural backwater to the pinnacle of power in her state.
He was one of her oldest and most loyal friends but when Palin abruptly sacked Bitney in July last year, she somehow failed to tell him. The first he learnt of it was when his state-issued mobile phone stopped working as he was driving to his office. He used another phone to check in and discovered that his name had been removed from the state employee directory.
His offence, according to senior Republican sources in Anchorage, was to fall foul of Palin?s 43-year-old husband, Todd. It was an early sign that the self-styled ?first dude? of Alaskan politics was playing an unexpectedly prominent role in his wife?s administration.
As Palin took America by storm last week, with Republicans swooning over her irresistible Cinderella story, her blue-collar husband appeared to be adapting naturally to the role of supportive spouse and proud father of their five children ? among them Bristol, 17, an unmarried mother-to-be who early next year is due to present them with their first grandchild.
Todd?s story has become part of the rapidly expanding Palin legend. He is part Eskimo, runs a summer fishing business and has won Alaska?s most gruelling snowmobile race ? the 1,971-mile Tesoro Iron Dog ? four times. Last year he hit a metal drum at 60mph, was thrown 70ft and broke an arm on landing. He climbed back on and finished fourth.
Yet Palin?s surprise addition to the Republican presidential ticket has triggered mounting scrutiny of Todd?s largely unpublicised role in a series of acrimonious disputes that threaten to belie the wholesome, friendly image of the woman known here as ?Wasilla?s sweetheart?.
?He has become a kind of shadow governor,? noted Andrew Halcro, a Republican businessman running as an independent who was trounced by Palin in the 2006 governor?s election. ?We need to get the facts about how power is being used in the governor?s office.?
Halcro told The Sunday Times that over the past 20 months, confidential e-mails sent by the governor and other officials had been routinely copied to Todd; and that other senior Republicans were stunned that John McCain?s advisers had made no serious attempt to investigate Todd?s role in other controversies before his wife was put on the ticket. ?They did no vetting, and some of these issues are not going away,? Halcro said.
Bitney now works for another senior Alaskan Republican and would not comment on Palin last week. However, his former colleagues believe he incurred Todd?s wrath because he became romantically involved with the ex-wife of one of the ?first dude?s? friends. Bitney once told colleagues: ?Todd?s words have so much weight.?
A similarly murky family matter is at the root of Palin?s biggest problem, which has already become known as Troopergate. Initially a private squabble spawned by the collapsing marriage of Sarah Palin?s sister, Molly, this bizarre tale of love turned bad has dragged in half the Alaskan government, cost the state?s public safety commissioner his job, wasted tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and raised serious questions about Palin?s judgment.
Despite strenuous efforts by the McCain campaign to dismiss the affair as media trouble-making, documents obtained by The Sunday Times last week laid bare a poisonous vendetta. They show that Palin and her husband went to remarkable lengths to portray her former brother-in-law, Michael Wooten, an Alaska state trooper, as ?a ticking timebomb? and a ?loose cannon?.
After Wooten and Molly separated in 2005 and began a bitter child custody battle, Palin wrote a startling three-page e-mail to Colonel Julia Grimes, then head of the state police force, denouncing her brother-in-law for everything from threatening to murder her father ? ?Wooten?s words were: ?I?ll kill him. He?ll eat a f****** lead bullet? ? ? to driving on duty while drunk; using a stun gun on his 11-year-old stepson; shooting a moose without a permit; failing to pay a $5 fine for improper rubbish disposal; and using illegal steroids. ?
Wooten is my brother-in-law, but this information is forwarded to you objectively,? wrote Palin, who at the time was still considering a run for governor the next year.
After an internal inquiry, Grimes concluded in March 2006 that Wooten was guilty of ?unacceptable and at times illegal activity?. His punishment was merely a 10-day suspension ? later reduced after a union appeal to five days ? and a warning that he would be dismissed if he offended again.
Had the matter rested there, there would have been no Alaskan Troopergate. When she wrote the 2005 e-mail, Palin was a private citizen who had resigned as Alaska?s chief oil and gas industry watchdog and who had yet to commit herself to a campaign for governor. Yet even after she was elected governor, the vendetta continued.
Less than a month after his wife took office, Todd Palin visited Walter Monegan, Alaska?s public safety commissioner, and presented him with a new dossier on Wooten?s alleged wrongdoings, compiled with the help of a private investigator hired by the Palin family.
Monegan warned that Wooten had already been subject to disciplinary proceedings and that sacking him would amount to political interference in a judicial process. Over the next year the governor and several of her aides complained repeatedly that nothing was being done about Wooten, who remains a state trooper and who denied this weekend that he had been drunk on duty and that he had threatened to kill Palin?s father.
When Palin eventually fired Monegan last July, ostensibly because of budgetary differences, she triggered a formal state ethics investigation to establish whether the commissioner was being punished for the Wooten affair. Monegan has since questioned publicly whether the Palins? pursuit of Wooten ?was truly motivated by public safety concerns, or was it vindictiveness??
Last week Palin?s spokeswoman insisted that Todd had simply sought to ?inform? Monegan about the Wooten case and that the governor was ?rightly expressing concern? about the trooper?s behaviour.
For many Alaskans, the Troopergate saga is no more than a petty distraction that Palin?s enemies are inflating to hurt her. Yet even Republicans who wish their governor well are nervous that the affair will not easily go away.
Halcro has long since recovered from his 2006 election thumping. He has come to like and admire Palin, and openly acknowledges her uncanny ability to connect with voters.
?My first thought about her [during the 2006 campaign] was that she was totally unqualified,? he said. ?She had no grasp of public policy but there?s no doubt she was very likable.?
When he watched Palin mesmerise the Republican convention last week, Halcro said he felt proud to be Alaskan. ?It was hard to sit in my living room and not feel tingles all over.?
Yet Halcro admitted he was also concerned by signs that Palin is neither the sweetheart that America has embraced, nor a candidate who can comfortably withstand the pressure of a national presidential campaign.
?You want to get excited by all this vice-president fuss: yes, it?s fabulous for Alaska,? he said. ?But there?s this voice in the back of my head saying, ?Wait a minute, this is the White House we?re talking about. She?s got to stop stretching the truth?.?
Palin?s problem is that Troopergate is far from an isolated affair. As a sharp-elbowed high school basketball player, she acquired the nickname Barracuda and she has been displaying a ruthless streak ever since.
?At the first sign of disloyalty, she?ll throw you under the bus,? said Halcro. ?Once you cross her, you?re off the list for ever,? warned Hollis French, a Democratic state senator.
As the newly elected 32-year-old mayor of Wasilla in 1996, Palin lost no time in dumping city employees who had supported her opponent. She fired the public works director, the city planner, the museum director and the chief of police, Irl Stambaugh, who filed a lawsuit claiming wrongful dismissal.
There was another row over her treatment of Mary Ellen Emmons, the town librarian, who reacted scornfully when Palin raised the possibility that certain unnamed books should be banned from the library. Emmons was sacked but reinstated after protests.
Todd Palin?s role in all of this remains a topic of intense speculation among his wife?s political rivals. Curiosity about the governor?s marriage was also fanned last week by a report in the National Enquirer that Sarah Palin had once had an affair with her husband?s partner in a snowmobile business that has since been wound up. The McCain campaign has denounced the allegations as a ?vicious lie?.
Nor have the Palins dispelled internet speculation about their fifth child, Trig, who was born last April with Down?s syndrome. Reports that Palin may not have been Trig?s mother have been widely discredited but questions continue to be asked about the governor?s behaviour on the day Trig was born.
Visiting Dallas for an energy conference, Palin experienced minor contractions and her amniotic fluid started leaking. Yet the 44-year-old governor boarded an eight-hour flight back to Anchorage without informing the crew that she was eight months pregnant. Her baby was born eight hours after her arrival.
As the campaign unfolds over the next two months, the Palins are certain to experience hostile scrutiny unlike any they have endured in Sarah-friendly Alaska. Halcro, among others, wonders if she will prove up to it.
?She?s not big on constructive criticism,? he said. ?She?s got a fairly thin skin and I don?t know how she?ll handle the day-to-day questions on the campaign trail far from home. This could get kind of ugly.?
THE E-MAIL POINTING THE FINGER
An e-mail entitled ?Trooper Integrity, Character? sent by Sarah Palin to the commander of Alaskan state police on August 10, 2005, lists the supposed defects of Michael Wooten, a state trooper and then her brother-in-law.
It says: ?Wooten drinks excessively and has showed extremely poor judgment and disregard for others? safety with his practice of drinking and driving, including on Jan 19 2005 drove home drunk; Jan 23 2005 drove home drunk after Super Bowl party in Anchorage; Feb 6 2005 in Anchorage leaving pro wrestling event very drunk as he drunk beer straight from the bottle . . . Feb 13 drove drunk in Big Lake . . . next day so hungover had to call in sick . . . March 13 drank at least three beers in car . . . scaring wife and kids who begged him to stop . . . left a friend?s home in his Trooper car, waving with beer in hand . . . I forward this information to you objectively.?
Here's the link:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/
Cleo
--
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." From "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven", W.B. Yeats
--
Edited by CleopatraVIII at 09/07/2008 8:34 AM PDT
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Sep 7, 2008 10:50 AM
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> Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is "Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean"
> "So Sambo beat the bitch!
I hope the mainstream press shows some spine for a change, and reports on this further, and digs deeper into this
--
Meet the New Boss, Barack Obama -- who is NOT like the Old Boss, George Bush -- who is / was an immoral, mean-spirited, vicious, brainless, arrogant prick. Not to mention a criminal -- who WILL be brought to justice.
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Palin's Reputation in Alaska - Redux
Sep 7, 2008 10:47 AM
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Thanks! Did you see this one posted in this thread early yesterday morning?
Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is "Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean"
by Charley James
LA Progressive
September 5, 2008
"So Sambo beat the bitch!
This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama?s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat?s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.
"It was kind of disgusting," Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the "lower 48" about life near the North Pole.
Then, almost with a sigh, she added, "But that?s just Alaska."
Racial and ethnic slurs may be "just Alaska" and, clearly, they are common, everyday chatter for Palin.
Besides insulting Obama with a "Step-N-Fetch-It, darkie musical" swipe, people who know her say she refers regularly to Alaska's Aboriginal people as "Arctic Arabs" how efficient, lumping two apparently undesirable groups into one ugly description as well as the more colourful "mukluks" along with the totally unimaginative "f**king Eskimo's," according to a number of Alaskans and Wasillians interviewed for this article.
But being openly racist is only the tip of the Palin iceberg. According to Alaskans interviewed for this article, she is also vindictive and mean. We're talking Rove mean and Nixon vindictive.
No wonder the vast sea of white, cheering faces at the Republican Convention went wild for Sarah: They adore the type, it's in their genetic code. So much for McCain's pledge of a "high road" campaign; Palin is incapable of being part of one.
Tough Getting People Who Know Her to Talk
It's not easy getting people in the 49th state to speak critically about Palin - especially people in Wasilla, where she was mayor. For one thing, with every journalist in the world calling, phone lines into Alaska have been mostly jammed since Friday; as often as not, a recording told me that "all circuits are busy" or numbers just wouldn't ring.
I should think a state that?s been made richer than God by oil could afford telephone lines and cell towers for everyone.
On a more practical level, many people in Alaska, and particularly Wasilla, are reluctant to speak or be quoted by name because they're afraid of her as well as the state Republican Party machine. Apparently, the power elite are as mean as the winters.
'The GOP is kind of like organized crime up here,' an insurance agent in Anchorage who knows the Palin family, explained. "It's corrupt and arrogant. They're all rich because they do private sweetheart deals with the oil companies, and they can destroy anyone. And they will, if they have to."
"Once Palin became mayor," he continued, "She became part of that inner circle."
Like most other people interviewed, he didn't want his name used out of fear of retribution. Maybe it's the long winter nights where you don't see the sun for months that makes people feel as if they're under constant danger from "the authorities."
As I interviewed residents it began sounding as if living in Alaska controlled by the state Republican Party is like living in the old Soviet Union: See nothing that's happening, say nothing offensive, and the political commissars leave you alone. But speak out and you get disappeared into a gulag north of the Arctic Circle for who-knows-how-long.
Alright, that's an exaggeration brought on by my getting too little sleep and building too much anger as I worked this article.
But there's ample evidence of Palin's vindictive willingness to destroy people she sees as opponents. Just ask the Wasilla town administrator she hired before firing him because he rebelled against the way Palin demanded he do his job, or the town librarian who refused to hold the book burning Walpurgisnacht Mayor Palin demanded.
Ironically, Palin was pushed into hiring the administrator by the party poobahs who helped get her elected after she got herself into trouble over a number of precipitous firings which gave rise to a recall campaign.
"People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day," states Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla resident and one of the few Alaskans willing to speak on-the-record, for attribution, about Palin.
In fact, Kilkenny actually circulated an e-mail letter about Palin that was verified and printed by The Nation. [Note - that e-mail, which has been verified by Snopes as the genuine article, is posted on these boards in one of the proliferating Palin threads - Cleo.]
For good measure, Palin booted the Wasilla police chief from office because, she told a local newspaper, he "intimidated" her.
Running on Extreme Fringe Evangelical Views
Sarah Palin drew early attention from state GOP apparatchiks when, during her first mayoral campaign, she ran on an anti-abortion platform. Normally, political parties do not get involved in Alaskan municipal elections because they are nonpartisan.
But once word of her extreme fringe evangelical views made its way to Juneau, the state capitol, state Republicans tossed some money behind her campaign.
Once in office, Palin set out to build a machine that chewed up anyone who got in her way. The good, Godly Christian turns out to be anything but.
"She doesn't like different opinions and she refuses to compromise," Kilkenny notes. "When she was mayor, she fought ideas that weren't hers. Worse, ideas weren't evaluated on their merits but on the basis of who proposed them."
Sound familiar? Palin may well be Dick Cheney reincarnate.
Something else has a familiar Republican ring to it: Her tax policies, and a "refund surpluses but borrow for the future" attitude.
According to Kilkenny and others in Wasilla as well as Juneau, Palin reduced progressive property taxes for businesses while mayor and increased a regressive sales tax which even hits necessities such as food.
The tax cuts she promoted in her St. Paul speech actually benefited large corporate property owners far more than they benefited residents. Indeed, Kilkenny insists that many Wasilla home owners actually saw their tax bill skyrocket to make up for the shortfall.
Two other Wasillians with whom I spoke said property taxes on their modest, three bedroom homes rose during the Palin regime.
To an outsider, it would seem hard to do, but an oil-rich town with zero debt on the day she was inaugurated mayor was left saddled with $22 million of debt by the time she moved away to become governor - especially since nothing was spent on things such as improving the city?s infrastructure or building a much-needed sewage treatment plant. So what did Mayor Palin spend the taxpayer's money on, if not fixing streets and scrubbing sewage?
For starters, she remodelled her office. Several times over, as a matter of fact.
Then Palin spent $1 million on an unnecessary, new park that no one other than the contractors and Palin seemed to want. Next, Sarah doled out more than $15 million of taxpayer money for a sports complex that she shoved through even though the city did not own clear title to the land; now, seven years later, the matter is still in litigation and lawyer fees are said to be close to at least half of the original estimated price of the facility.
She also worked hard to get voters approval of a $5.5 million bond proposal for roads that could have been built without borrowing. Anchorage may not be the center of the financial universe but, like good Republicans everywhere, Sarah Palin knows how to please Alaskan bankers and bond dealers.
For good measure, she turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots.
Sarah Barracuda
En route to the governor's igloo, Palin managed to land what Anne Kilkenny says is the plumb political appointment in the state: Chair of Alaska's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (OGCC), a $122,400 per year patronage slot with no real authority to do anything other than hold meetings. She took the job despite having no background in energy issues and, as it turned out, not liking the work.
"She hated the job," an OGCC staff member who is not authorized to speak with the news media told me. "She hated the hours and she hated what little work there was to do. But she couldn?t figure out a way to get out of the thing without offending Gov. Murkowski" and the state Republican Party regulars, some of whom were pissed off they didn?t get appointed.
But ever the opportunist, Palin quickly concocted a way. First, she waged a campaign with the local news media claiming that the position was overpaid and should be abolished - despite the fact that she lobbied Murkowski hard to get it.
Then, mounting what she saw as a white horse, Palin raised a cloud of dust by resigning from the OGCC and riding away with an undeserved reputation as a "reformer."
But when a local reporter dared to suggest that the reformer Empress has no clothes, Palin tried to get her fired.
"She came at me like I was trying to steal her kids," said the targeted reporter, who now works for an oil company in Anchorage. "I heard she had a wild temper and vicious mean streak but it's nothing like you can imagine until she turns it on you."
Not surprising since some of her high school classmates still openly call her "Sarah Barracuda," Kilkenny insists.
Still, as a Republican Party hack Palin managed to get herself elected running under the false flag of a "reformer."
And what did she bring to the job? No legislative experience other than a city council of a village of 5,000 people, which is smaller than some high schools in Chicago.
Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; after all, she needed to hire a city administrator to run Wasilla. No executive experience, except for almost being recalled as mayor. A philosophy of setting public policy based on one word: No.
And what has she done since winning the job?
According to Kilkenny, nothing. Well, nothing other than suggesting the state?s multi-multi-million dollar, oil-generated surplus be distributed to residents and finance future state needs by borrowing money. Gee, doesn?t that sound precisely what George Bush did with the surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton in 2001 and we all know in what great shape Bush's economic policies left the nation.
It may explain why, when asked by reporters, including me, what she thought about Palin being picked to be McCain?s running mate, her mother-in-law replied with a sardonic, "What has Sarah done to qualify her to be vice president?"
Of course, when the woman - said by many I spoke with to be well-respected in Wasilla - was running to succeed Palin as mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her, so that may explain the family tension.
As Governor, Palin gave the legislature no direction and budget guidelines, according to the chair of a legislative committee. But then she staged a huge grandstand play of line-item vetoing countless projects, calling them pork.
"They were restored because of public outcry and legislative action," the aide said. "She vetoed them mostly because she had no idea what they were or why they were important."
But it was enough to get McCain, who is mostly unobservant of the world around him anyway, to think Palin has a reputation as being "anti-pork".
In fact, Juneau observers note that Palin kept her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork ladled out by indicted Sen. Ted Stevens. She only opposed the "bridge to nowhere" after it became clear that it would be politically unwise to keep supporting it, these same insiders assert. Then, Palin fell back on her old habits and publicly humiliated him for pork-barrel politics.
As for being "ready on day one" to be commander in chief, despite the repeated public claims she's made, the Alaska National Guard commander said that, "she has made no command decisions, other than sending some troops to help fight a few brush fires and march in parades at county fairs."
"Sambo Beat the Bitch"
"Palin is a conniving, manipulative, a**hole," someone who thinks these are positive traits in a governor told me, summing up Palin's tenure in Alaska state and local politics.
"She's a bigot, a racist, and a liar," is the more blunt assessment of Arnold Gerstheimer who lived in Alaska until two years ago and is now a businessman in Idaho.
"Juneau is a small town; everybody knows everyone else," he adds. "These stories about what she calls blacks and Eskimos, well, anyone not white and good looking actually, were around long before she became a glint in John McCain's rheumy eyes.
Why do I know they're true? Because everyone who isn't aboriginal or Indian in Alaska talks that way."
"Sambo beat the bitch" may be everyday language up in the bush. Whether it - and the outlook, politics and worldview Palin reflects when she says such things in public - should be part of a presidential campaign is another thing altogether.
The comment says as much about McCain as it does about Palin, and it says a lot of things about Americans who overlook such statements (as well as her record) and vote anyway for McCain."
Here's the link:
http://www.laprogressive.com/
Have great Sunday,
Cleo
--
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." From "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven", W.B. Yeats
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Sep 7, 2008 10:16 AM
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Great column by Frank Rich
McCain Lied, Palin Lied, They All Lied -- About Vetting, About Earmarks, About the Bridge, About Everything
"It's All a Sham"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/opinion/07rich.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
By Frank Rich
New York Times
SARAH PALIN makes John McCain look even older than he is. And he seemed more than willing to play that part on Thursday night. By the time he slogged through his nearly 50-minute acceptance speech ? longer even than Barack Obama?s ? you half-expected some brazen younger Republican (Mitt Romney, perhaps?) to dash onstage to give him a gold watch and the bum?s rush
Still, attention must be paid. McCain?s address, though largely a repetitive slew of stump-speech lines and worn G.O.P. orthodoxy, reminded us of what we once liked about the guy: his aspirations to bipartisanship, his heroic service in Vietnam, his twinkle. He took his (often inaccurate) swipes at Obama, but, in winning contrast to Palin and Rudy Giuliani, he wasn?t smug or nasty.
The only problem, of course, is that the entire thing was a sham.
As is nakedly evident, the speech?s central argument, that the 72-year-old McCain will magically morph into a powerful change agent as president, is a non sequitur. In his 26 years in Washington, most of it with a Republican in the White House and roughly half of it with Republicans in charge of Congress, he was better at lecturing his party about reform than leading a reform movement.
G.O.P. corruption and governmental dysfunction only grew. So did his cynical flip-flops on the most destructive policies of the president who remained nameless Thursday night. (In the G.O.P., Bush love is now the second most popular love that dare not speak its name.)
Even more fraudulent, if that?s possible, is the contrast between McCain?s platonic presentation of his personal code of honor and the man he has become. He always puts his country first, he told us: ?I?ve been called a maverick.? If there was any doubt that that McCain has fled, confirmation arrived with his last-minute embrace of Sarah Palin.
We still don?t know a lot about Palin except that she?s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter?s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction.
She didn?t say ?no thanks? to the ?Bridge to Nowhere? until after Congress had already abandoned it but given Alaska a blank check for $223 million in taxpayers? money anyway.
Far from rejecting federal pork, she hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002, 20 times the per capita average in other states).
Though McCain claimed ?she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,? she has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard. As for her ?executive experience? as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: ?It?s not rocket science. It?s $6 million and 53 employees.?
Her much-advertised crusade against officials abusing their office is now compromised by a bipartisan ethics investigation into charges that she did the same.
How long before we learn she never shot a moose?
Given the actuarial odds that could make Palin our 45th president, it would be helpful to know who this mystery woman actually is. Meanwhile, two eternal axioms of our politics remain in place. Americans vote for the top of the ticket, not the bottom.
And in judging the top of the ticket, voters look first at the candidates? maiden executive decision, their selection of running mates. Whatever we do and don?t know about Palin?s character at this point, there is no ambiguity in what her ascent tells us about McCain?s character and potential presidency.
He wanted to choose the pro-abortion-rights Joe Lieberman as his vice president. If he were still a true maverick, he would have done so. But instead he chose partisanship and politics over country. ?God only made one John McCain, and he is his own man,? said the shafted Lieberman in his own tedious convention speech last week.
What a pathetic dupe. McCain is now the man of James Dobson and Tony Perkins. The ?no surrender? warrior surrendered to the agents of intolerance not just by dumping his pal for Palin but by moving so far to the right on abortion that even Cindy McCain seemed unaware of his radical shift when being interviewed by Katie Couric last week.
That ideological sellout, unfortunately, was not the worst leadership trait the last-minute vice presidential pick revealed about McCain. His speed-dating of Palin reaffirmed a more dangerous personality tic that has dogged his entire career. His decision-making process is impetuous and, in its Bush-like preference for gut instinct over facts, potentially reckless.
As The New York Times reported last Tuesday, Palin was sloppily vetted, at best. McCain operatives and some of their press surrogates responded to this revelation by trying to discredit The Times article.
After all, The Washington Post had cited McCain aides (including his campaign manager, Rick Davis) last weekend to assure us that Palin had a ?full vetting process.? She had been subjected to ?an F.B.I. background check,? we were told, and ?the McCain camp had reviewed everything it could find on her.?
The Times had it right. The McCain campaign?s claims of a ?full vetting process? for Palin were as much a lie as the biographical details they?ve invented for her. There was no F.B.I. background check. The Times found no evidence that a McCain representative spoke to anyone in the State Legislature or business community.
Nor did anyone talk to the fired state public safety commissioner at the center of the Palin ethics investigation. No McCain researcher even bothered to consult the relevant back issues of the Wasilla paper. Apparently when McCain said in June that his vice presidential vetting process was basically ?a Google,? he wasn?t joking.
This is a roll of the dice beyond even Bill Clinton?s imagination. ?Often my haste is a mistake,? McCain conceded in his 2002 memoir, ?but I live with the consequences without complaint.?
Well, maybe it?s fine if he wants to live with the consequences, but what about his country? Should the unexamined Palin prove unfit to serve at the pinnacle of American power, it will be too late for the rest of us to complain.
We?ve already seen where such visceral decision-making by McCain can lead. In October 2001, he speculated that Saddam Hussein might have been behind the anthrax attacks in America.
That same month he out-Cheneyed Cheney in his repeated public insistence that Iraq had a role in 9/11 ? even after both American and foreign intelligence services found that unlikely. He was similarly rash in his reading of the supposed evidence of Saddam?s W.M.D. and in his estimate of the number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. (McCain told MSNBC in late 2001 that we could do with fewer than 100,000.)
It wasn?t until months after ?Mission Accomplished? that he called for more American forces to be tossed into the bloodbath. The whole fiasco might have been prevented had he listened to those like Gen. Eric Shinseki who faulted the Rumsfeld war plan from the start.
In other words, McCain?s hasty vetting of Palin was all too reminiscent of his grave dereliction of due diligence on the war.
He has been no less hasty in implying that we might somehow ride to the military rescue of Georgia (?Today, we are all Georgians?) or in reaffirming as late as December 2007 that the crumbling anti-democratic regime of Pervez Musharraf deserved ?the benefit of the doubt? even as it was enabling the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
McCain?s blanket endorsement of Bush administration policy in Pakistan could have consequences for years to come.
?This election is not about issues? so much as the candidates? images, said the McCain campaign manager, Davis, in one of the season?s most notable pronouncements. Going into the Republican convention, we thought we knew what he meant: the McCain strategy is about tearing down Obama.
But last week made clear that the McCain campaign will be equally ruthless about deflecting attention from its own candidate?s deterioration.
What was most striking about McCain?s acceptance speech is that it had almost nothing in common with the strident right-wing convention that preceded it. We were pointedly given a rerun of McCain 2000 ? cobbled together from scraps of the old Straight Talk repertory.
The ensuing tedium was in all likelihood intentional. It?s in the campaign?s interest that we nod off and assume McCain is unchanged in 2008.
That?s why the Palin choice was brilliant politics ? not because it rallied the G.O.P.?s shrinking religious-right base. America loves nothing more than a new celebrity face, and the talking heads marched in lock step last week to proclaim her a star.
Palin is a high-energy distraction from the top of the ticket, even if the provenance of her stardom is in itself a reflection of exactly what?s frightening about the top of the ticket.
By hurling charges of sexism and elitism at any easily cowed journalist who raises a question about Palin, McCain operatives are hoping to ensure that whatever happened in Alaska with Sarah Palin stays in Alaska. Given how little vetting McCain himself has received this year ? and that only 58 days remain until Nov. 4 ? they just might pull it off.
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Edited by MeetTheNewBoss at 09/07/2008 7:32 AM PDT
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Sep 7, 2008 10:14 AM
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> I discovered after posting the list that the Palin people contend that she doesn't have a list of the books she wanted banned
Not that they would lie or anything -- or that they would lie at her behest....... : )
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Meet the New Boss, Barack Obama -- who is NOT like the Old Boss, George Bush -- who is / was an immoral, mean-spirited, vicious, brainless, arrogant prick. Not to mention a criminal -- who WILL be brought to justice.
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Sep 7, 2008 10:10 AM
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> Not shocked by the list of banned books Palin was
> trying to cull from her city's library...just ever
> disgusted.
I discovered after posting the list that the Palin people contend that she doesn't have a list of the books she wanted banned.
Nevertheless, she was still seeking to censor the availability of material that offended her evangelical Christian sensibilities - and would have been expected to use that list, that reflects the titles that evangelicals have traditionally wanted banned.
Her Bush-like comprehensive ignorance of the Constitution and rights of citizens in a secular society can also been seen in her willful blindness to the fact that the U.S. courts have deemed the teaching of creationism and "intelligent design" to be Unconstitutional.
This election has been deemed a fight for America's soul and preservation of our democratic form of government.
With Palin's entry into the mix - after 8 years of the same anti-science, anti- enlightenment ideology from BushCo - it is becoming a bigger struggle between the urges toward darkness and enlightenment on the battleground of the human psyche itself.
Have a great Sunday,
Cleo
--
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." From "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven", W.B. Yeats
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(767 of 779)
Racism and Media Support of Entrenched Elites Making It Tough for Barack
Sep 7, 2008 9:48 AM
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Hi Rainy and all! Hope all's well!
Yes, watching McLame and Saracuda lying their heads off face-on to the RNC convention camera and smiling not only like they didn't give a damn, but like they didn't have to give a damn was a surreal experience for me too! God!
And the MSM and the talking heads are all HELPING them get away with it!
Barack's two biggest enemies in this campaign are the inertia that supports entrenched power and resists change, and the similarly rationalized but far uglier racism grounded in irrational fear and hatred of "the other".
We saw in the primaries how Barack's taking on entrenched figures from Washington's elite was such an uphill slog due to both society's resistance to change and the racism of "underinformed" voters that were reflected in media coverage of and commentary about him as well.
Hoping that a good investigative journalist will take on the subject of how deeply the factor of resistance to upending entrenched power impacts electoral politics, here's a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist tackling the factor of racism and how it can be overcome (finally!) in this Presidential election.
This writer too believes that Barack's stressing of programs and policies that will be of particular benefit to low income white voters and a burgeoning youth vote are the keys to a victory for him in November.:
The American Debate: It's little discussed, but Obama's race may be decider
By Dick Polman
Philadelphia Inquirer National Political Columnist
September 7, 2008
"Let us swing the door ajar and invite the elephant into the room. One big reason Barack Obama is locked in a tight race, rather than easily outdistancing his opponent, is because he is black.
That factor is rarely discussed in polite political conversation. People tend to dance around it, talking instead about Obama's perceived inexperience, or his youth, or his perceived airs, or his liberal voting record.
And racist sentiment rarely shows up in the polls, because a lot of people don't want to share their baser instincts with the pollsters; they'll save that instead for the privacy of the voting booth.
But the incremental evidence - anecdotal and even statistical - has become impossible to ignore.
Union organizers in the key state of Michigan complain in the press that, as one puts it, "we're all struggling to some extent with the problem of white workers who will not vote for Obama because of his color."
An aging mine electrician from Kentucky is quoted as saying, "I won't vote for a colored man. He'll put too many coloreds in jobs." An elderly woman in a New Jersey hair salon is overheard complaining about Barack and Michelle Obama the other day, about how blacks supposedly have larger bones than whites, and about how she's fleeing America if Obama wins.
Jimmy Carter, while attending the Democratic convention, cited race as a "subterranean issue," yet at times this year it has been bared for all to see. Case in point, Pennsylvania.
On the day of the Democratic presidential primary, 12 percent of the white Democratic voters told the exit pollsters that race mattered in their choice of candidate; of those whites, 76 percent chose Hillary Rodham Clinton over Obama. The same pattern surfaced in other states, including the key autumn state of Ohio.
This is worth pondering a moment longer. If 12 percent of Democratic voters are willing to tell exit pollsters, eye to eye, that race was an important factor, to Obama's detriment, isn't it fair to assume that the real percentage (including those who kept their sentiments private) was actually higher?
And what might this portend for the general election, when the white electorate will be broader, and hence significantly less liberal, than in Democratic contests?
Here's one hint. Last June, the Washington Post-ABC News poll devised a "racial sensitivity index," based on a series of nuanced questions that were designed to measure the varying levels of racial prejudice in the white electorate. [A report on this study was posted that month in the "Why I'm For Senator Barack Obama" thread - Cleo.]
The pollsters came up with three categories, ranging from most to least enlightened. The key finding: Whites in the least-enlightened category - roughly 30 percent of the white electorate - favored John McCain over Obama by a ratio of 2-1.
A few prominent Democrats did broach this sensitive topic at the Denver convention. Dee Dee Myers, the former Bill Clinton aide, shared her concerns at one political forum, and with good reason.
She worked for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley in the 1980s, when it appeared that Bradley was a cinch to win his U.S. Senate contest despite his race. The final round of polls showed him winning comfortably. He lost.
"I lived through that," Myers said. "We're whistling past the graveyard if we think that race was not a factor in the Democratic primaries. Today's young voters will get us past these attitudes," but it will take time. As for millions of older voters, "they talk about having 'culture' problems [with Obama], but to separate culture from race is impossible."
And Markos Moulitsas, who runs the liberal Daily Kos blog, said: "It's human nature. A lot of people want to cling to the comfortable world that they've always lived in. The Obamas don't look like what First Families have always looked like. This will be one of the factors in the fall, because a lot of people simply want to stick with what they've known in the past."
The race obstacle is not necessarily fatal, of course, because in the end it may be trumped by other factors - such as McCain's age, or nagging concerns about handing the nuclear football in an emergency to a "hockey mom" as GOP vice presidential candidate whose chief national security credential is the proximity of Alaska to Russia.
But clearly Obama needs to tread carefully, arguably by stressing lunch-pail economic issues and continuing to present himself as a "post-racial" candidate. He will need to dispel these white suspicions, if only because whites will continue to dominate the electorate - they constituted 77 percent of all voters in 2004 - even if he manages to inspire an historic black turnout.
He has to bond somehow with blue-collar whites, yet he cannot show too much passion, because, as Democratic strategist Joe Trippi explained to me, "those whites don't like to see a black guy getting angry, it's a dangerous thing for an African American candidate to do."
I'm not suggesting that racism would be the sole explanation for an Obama loss. Nor am I seeking to insult those who object to Obama purely on the issues.
But if Obama winds up losing after having posted a seemingly solid polling lead on election eve, we may well find ourselves pondering the words of Henry David Thoreau, who wrote in 1854 that "public opinion is a weak tyrant, compared with our own private opinion."
Here's the link:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/
A great Sunday to you and all,
Cleo
--
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." From "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven", W.B. Yeats
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Edited by CleopatraVIII at 09/07/2008 6:55 AM PDT
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