The Palindrone Perspective

Sarah Palin vrs. Ashley Judd

2009-02-10T07:08:00.000-08:00

Keith Olbermann questions: "Sarah has an Alaskan heart? Cold and desolate?"

Palin's Claim of Predator Control is False-From a Former Alaskan Board of Game Hunter:

2009-02-07T09:21:00.000-08:00

There is a lot of confusion about Sarah Palin and her support of aerial wolf hunting. We are former 20+ year Alaska residents, and my husband, a hunter, was appointed to the Alaska Board of Game by former Alaska Governor Tony Knowles in 2000. The 7 member Board makes wildlife management decisions for the state. The current Board has approved aerial wolf control. http://www.boards.adfg.state.ak.us/gameinfo/index.php

We made the 10 minute video, End Aerial Wolf Hunting, in Jan of 2008 using testimony from Alaska Department of Fish & Game staff, a master hunting guide, and Board of Game members. http://current.com/items/88811075/end_aerial_wolf_hunting.htm Although the video has not been updated since the ballot initiate vote in August of 2008, the testimony, documentation, and research has not changed. The video also references a study done by the National Research Council and the American Society of Mammalogists. http://www.alaskawolfkill.com/Palin_Letter.html

This video exposes the fallacy behind Governor Sarah Palin's claim that predator control is based on sound science. Declarations that the program is for the benefit of subsistence hunters are shattered with documentation showing that sport and trophy hunters take up to 73% of prey in areas where aerial wolf hunting has taken place.

A 4 1/2 minute version of the video can be seen here: http://current.com/items/88816799/end_aerial_wolf_hunting_short_version.htm

Five years in the making, this video exposes the truth about the stranglehold the hunting lobby has on wildlife management in Alaska.

Ashley Judd Attacks Sarah Palin for Brutal Killing of Wolves

2009-02-05T06:50:00.000-08:00

Actress Ashley Judd stars in a new campaign targeted at Sarah Palin's alleged "anti-conservation agenda" and her promotion of the killing of wolves and bears in Alaska.

Defenders Action Fund launched the campaign today with a new Website, EyeonPalin.org. In a video, Judd condemns Palin for promoting the aerial killing of wolves and even accuses her of suggesting $150 bounties for the severed forelegs of killed wolves.

"Now back in Alaska, Palin is again casting aside science and championing the slaughter of wildlife," Judds recites somberly.

"Palin even proposed a $150 bounty for the severed foreleg of each killed wolf. And now she is encouraging even more aerial killing. it is time to stop Sarah Palin and stop this senseless savagery."

I read this comment on the Christian Science Monitor and it sure rings true:

"So it’s the WOLVES that are decimating the moose and caribou populations? I guess people are the only ones allowed to feast at the table? How pathetic. I have no issue with getting your own food, in fact I encourage it. But taking out your competitor is typical human behavior. Offering 150 bucks for an appendage takes me back to shouts of “bring me his head!”
They shoot from helicopters, often wounding these animals and leaving them to suffer, trying to drag themselves to cover, while the “hunter” picks off the rest of the pack. And pups? Forget about it! Entire dens are usually beaten to death with a rock or shot in the head. What was it…14 pups in one outing last year? Predator control? I don’t think so."

This is from the Seattle Times I found today and explains what might be the outcome of killing off Predators like Wolves:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008667916_wolves25.html

Wolves last roamed the Olympic Peninsula nearly a century ago. A controversial new study argues the absence of these predators has led to dramatic and often destructive shifts in the area's ecology.

Roosevelt elk splash through the Hoh River in Olympic National Park. Since wolves were eradicated in the early 1900s, some scientists say, overbrowsing by elk has damaged the forest understory and increased riverbank erosion, threatening the ecosystem.

Oregon State University researcher Robert Beschta says the forest understory in the Hoh Rain Forest is unnaturally open, and few young trees have survived to maturity since wolves were killed off and elk multiplied.

But the loss of the stealthy predators in the early 1900s left a hole in the landscape that scientists say they are just beginning to grasp. The ripples extend throughout what is now Olympic National Park, leading to a boom in elk populations, overbrowsing of shrubs and trees, and erosion so severe it has altered the very nature of the rivers, says a team of Oregon State University biologists. The result, they argue, is an environment that is less rich, less resilient, and " perhaps " in peril.

"We think this ecosystem is unraveling in the absence of wolves," said OSU ecologist William Ripple.

More:

Just like Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin continues to be in the news.

Although Ms. Palin may not prefer to be lumped in with Mr. Plumber Mr. Wurzelbacher, both were a part of the Republican presidential campaign, both are active now in Republican politics, and both are getting a lot of news attention.

Palin, as the governor of Alaska and possible presidential candidate, and Wurzelbacher as adviser to the GOP on the economy (not to mention war correspondent, author, country western singer, and plumber).

Defenders of Wildlife

Regardless, on Monday, the environmental advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife went after Governor Palin for her support of a predator-control program in Alaska.

The reason they’re focusing on her? It’ll make news. According to a statement from the group, she’s a high profile target.

“Sarah Palin isn’t fading into the background, so neither are we,” said Defenders Action Fund President Rodger Schlickeisen in a statement. “Given her known political aspirations, the American public deserves to know what she’s doing in Alaska, and about her extreme anti-conservation policies.”

The policy in question is aerial hunting. Specifically, shooting wolves from helicopters. Defenders calls it cruel. Palin calls it wildlife management.

Eye on Palin

Defenders launched a new website (EyeonPalin.org) and actress Ashley Judd is cause’s spokeswoman.

“I am outraged by Sarah Palin’s promotion of this cruel, unscientific and senseless practice which has no place in modern America,” Ms. Judd said in a statement. “Because she is apparently determined to continue and expand this horrific program, I am grateful that Defenders will aggressively fight to stop her. I am proud to be a part of that effort.”

Predator control

Palin doesn’t see it that way. Although the practice might seem akin to throwing dynamite in a lake for catching trout, in Alaska, they call it predator control.

She says the new commercial perverts the issue.

“The ad campaign by this extreme fringe group, as Alaskans have witnessed over the last several years, distorts the facts about Alaska’s wildlife management programs,” Palin said in a statement.

“Alaskans depend on wildlife for food and cultural practices which can’t be sustained when predators are allowed to decimate moose and caribou populations. Our predator control programs are scientific and successful at protecting vulnerable wildlife.”

“Shame on the Defenders of Wildlife for twisting the truth in an effort to raise funds from innocent and hard-pressed Americans struggling with these rough economic times,” the statement concluded.

I don't care for Sarah's policies, but this is horrible! I feel badly for her!

2008-12-13T23:47:00.000-08:00

Whoever did this is very dangerous! No matter what we feel, violence is never ever the answer! Shame on whoever did this! Why resort to these barbaric tactics? You are just as bad, or even worse than Palin, because you are a hypocrite. What in heavens is this world coming to.

Sarah Palin Church Fire: Palin's Home Church Burned In Arson Incident

RACHEL D'ORO | December 13, 2008 08:25 PM EST |

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin's home church was badly damaged by arson, leading the governor to apologize if the fire was connected to "undeserved negative attention" from her failed campaign as the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Damage to the Wasilla Bible Church was estimated at $1 million, authorities said Saturday. No one was injured in the fire, which was set Friday night while a handful of people, including two children, were inside, according to Central Mat-Su Fire Chief James Steele.

He said the blaze was being investigated as an arson but didn't know of any recent threats to the church. Authorities didn't know whether Palin's connection to the church was relevant to the fire, Steele said.

"It's hard to say at this point. Everything is just speculation," he said. "We have no information on intent or motive."

Steele would not comment on the means used to set the fire.

Pastor Larry Kroon declined to say whether the church had received any recent threats.

"There are so many variables," he said. "I don't want to comment in that direction."

Palin, who was not at the church at the time of the fire, stopped by Saturday. Her spokesman, Bill McAllister, said in a statement that Palin told an assistant pastor she was sorry if the fire was connected to the "undeserved negative attention" the church has received since she became the vice presidential candidate Aug. 29.

"Whatever the motives of the arsonist, the governor has faith in the scriptural passage that what was intended for evil will in some way be used for good," McAllister said.

The 1,000-member evangelical church was the subject of intense scrutiny after Palin was named John McCain's running mate. Early in Palin's campaign, the church was criticized for promoting in a Sunday bulletin a Focus on the Family "Love Won Out Conference" in Anchorage. The conference promised to "help men and women dissatisfied with living homosexually understand that same-sex attractions can be overcome."

The fire was set at the entrance of the church and moved inward as a small group of women were working on crafts, Steele said. The group was alerted to the blaze by a fire alarm.

Outside temperatures were minus 20 as firefighters battled the blaze.

Steele said a multi-agency task force was being assembled to investigate the fire.

Wasilla, the governor's hometown, is 40 miles north of Anchorage.

Olbermann and Martha talk about Sarah Palin turkey activities

2008-11-26T15:39:00.000-08:00

Palin pardons turkey while others slaughtered

2008-11-21T06:33:00.000-08:00

From Associated Press
November 21, 2008 9:22 AM EST

WASILLA, Alaska - Gov. Sarah Palin has granted the traditional Thanksgiving pardon to one lucky turkey, but the video that shocked some viewers captured what was happening in the background.

As she answered questions Thursday at Triple D Farm & Hatchery outside Wasilla cameras from the Anchorage Daily News and others showed the bloody work of an employee slaughtering birds behind the former Republican vice presidential candidate.

On the video, Palin didn't comment about the slaughter as she answered questions, saying she's thankful that her son's Stryker brigade is relatively safe in Iraq and the rest of her family is healthy and happy. She said she's glad to be back in Alaska.

"This was neat," she said of the outing. "I was happy to get to be invited to participate in this. For one, you need a little bit of levity in this job, especially with so much that has gone in the last couple of months that has been so political obviously that it's nice to get out and do something to promote a local business and to just participate in something that isn't so heavy-handed politics that it invites criticism. Certainly we'll probably invite criticism for even doing this, too, but at least this was fun."

****SEE VIDEO IN NEXT POST!****

Sarah Palin Turkey Incident: Does TV Interview While Turkeys Are Slaughtered In The Background

2008-11-20T22:15:00.000-08:00

Some videos you just have to see to believe. On Thursday, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin appeared in Wasilla in order to pardon a local turkey in anticipation of Thanksgiving. This proved to be a slightly absurd but ultimately unremarkable event. But what came next was positively surreal. After the pardon Palin proceeded to do an interview with a local TV station while the turkeys were being SLAUGHTERED in the background!! Seemingly oblivious to the gruesomeness going on over her shoulder, she carries on talking for over three minutes. Watch the video below to see for yourself. Be warned, it's kind of gruesome.

Palin Keeps Attacking Obama!

2008-11-16T17:07:00.000-08:00

Huffington Post
Sam Stein
November 13, 2008 11:04 AM

Palin Keeps Attacking Obama: "No Present Button":

The presidential campaign is over, but Sarah Palin -- still at the epicenter of media attention -- continues to take digs at Barack Obama.

Speaking at the Republican Governor's Association meeting on Thursday in Miami, the Alaska Governor spoke primarily about the responsibilities of Republican executives in supporting domestic initiatives like tax cuts and budgetary prudence. But then she offered an obvious swipe at the President-elect.

Governors, she said make "tough decisions to best serve the people who hire us. And we are held accountable every day. The buck stops on our desk. We are not just one of many voting yea or nay or present. No. There is no present button in our office, is there? We have to make the tough decisions."

The line about voting "present," of course, is a clear jab at Obama -- lifted from an attack line that the McCain campaign (and the Clinton camp) used repeatedly on the trail. The crowd, it seemed, got the joke.

The dig comes, moreover, after Palin has continued airing concerns about Obama'a associations and readiness to be commander-in-chief in recent interviews.

It's hard to understand just what type of strategy Palin is deploying here. Her popularity rating plummeted as the campaign progressed, in part because of her attacks on Obama, in part because, after the campaign ended, aides to McCain painted her as vapid and out-of-her-league.

As such, she needs to push back against these negative narratives. And so we see her taking all of these national interviews after mostly avoiding press on the trail. But by continuing to take swipes at Obama, Palin seems to be doing little more than reinforcing the image that she is hyper-partisan and bitter over the election outcome.

UPDATE: Reader JMZ points out that in many states legislation can pass without the governor's signature -- the political equivalent of voting present (governors don't have to watch as their vetoes are overturned).

And Arnold Schwarzenegger, what a phony-baloney, two-faced slime-bag, he backpedaled from his campaign-trail joke that Obama has "scrawny little arms":

"Look, I've seen him playing basketball. He's a better basketball player than I am. But I think that no one should take that joke that seriously, because Columbus, Ohio, is the place where they have the world championships in lifting and in body building every year. And so ... you talk about body and legs and skinny and all -- pumping up, and all of those kind of things. So this was not meant to be an insult in any way. It was meant to be to lighten up the place and to make everyone laugh a little bit."

Rosie O'Donnell: "I'd Like To Have A Beer With" Sarah Palin

2008-11-16T17:05:00.000-08:00

Huffington Post Extra | November 14, 2008 10:43 PM

At last night's Broadway opening of Billy Elliot, Rosie O'Donnell spoke out to "Extra" for the first time since Barack Obama was elected president - expressing her excitement about his historic win and even praising the woman who could have been vice president. Admitting she'd like to meet Governor Sarah Palin, O'Donnell comments, "I'd like to have a beer with her. I'd like to meet her kids. She seems like a pretty nice woman. Although I have to say, I am thrilled her party did not win. [But] you got to give it to her for spunk."

She continues, "I think I probably would like her [Palin] if I met her....She had an amazing life for herself and her family in Alaska. Very successful. Before you knew it, she was the most famous person in the country..." As nice as Palin might seem, O'Donnell exclaims, "If [John] McCain won...I would be in the depression unit of the ICU."

About Obama's victory, O'Donnell says, "It's really beyond what I had hoped could happen...I can't really recall feeling the way that I did about our country. About the promise of democracy....Seems as though the last eight years have been nothing but a dark, funky depression...Hope is possible and change is here. Way to go America!"

Reacting to the passing of Proposition 8, which overrides the decision to recognize same- sex marriages in California, O'Donnell comments, "I was married four years and I was annulled three years ago, so for me this fight is not new. Prop 8 is nothing new for me. This has been a long journey...and eventually the world will catch up."

Rosie O'Donnell's primetime show, Rosie Live, airs on NBC on November 26th.

Here Comes President Sarah!

2008-11-14T06:05:00.000-08:00

Are you sitting down?

According to a recent poll, two-thirds
of Republicans said Sarah Palin would
be their choice for president in 2012.

According to a veteran Republican pollster
there is now a "Sarah Palin wing" of the
party which he describes as "grassroots,
anti-intellectual, small town, and culturally
conservative."

Not mentioned is Palin's dedication to
an aggressive form of "christianity" her
spiritual leaders call "spiritual warfare."

Here's where this gets ominous.

Remember when Sarah Palin had an African
preacher - a self-described witchcraft fighter
- lay hands on her in her church in Alaska?

The biggest evangelistic "christian" church
in Nigeria has declared that many children
are in fact witches.

Insane?

Yes, but this pronouncement has resulted in
thousands of children being beaten, tortured,
rejected by their families and villages, and
and even murdered.

What is the connection between this whacko
Christian cult, the African pastor who
fights witches and visited Alaska to bless
Palin, and Palin's dedication to spiritual
warfare?

I don't know, but it merits research.

All I have now is the shortest clip on this,
but it's a start.

- Brasscheck

P.S. Freedom of religion, sure.

But freedom FROM religion too.

The Founding Fathers were equally interested
in both.
- Brasscheck
==============================
Brasscheck TV
2380 California St.
San Francisco, CA 94115

Source: "Saving Africa's Witch Children"

In some of the poorest parts of Nigeria, where evangelical religious fervor is combined with a belief in sorcery and black magic, many thousands of children are being blamed for catastrophes, death and famine: and branded witches.

Denounced as Satan made flesh by powerful pastors and prophetesses, these children are abandoned, tortured, starved and murdered: all in the name of Jesus Christ.

This Dispatches Special follows the work of one Englishman, 29-year-old Gary Foxcroft, who has devoted his life to helping these desperate and vulnerable children. Gary's charity, Stepping Stones Nigeria, raises funds to help Sam Itauma, who five years ago, rescued four children accused of witchcraft. He now struggles to care for over 150 in a makeshift shelter and school in the Niger Delta region called CRARN (Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network).

Gary and Sam introduce Dispatches to some of the rescued children who have been through unimaginable horrors, such as Ekemeni, aged 13, who was tied up with chicken wire and starved and beaten for two weeks, and Mary, aged 14, who was burnt with acid before her mother attempted to bury her alive. Other children display the hallmarks of witch-branding - acid burns and machete scars. Uma Eke, aged 17, has been left brain-damaged after having a three-inch nail driven into her skull.

Hospitals refuse to treat children associated with sorcery, so Sam's centre does its best to provide medical aid.

Influential preachers from the more extreme churches brand the children witches or wizards and exploit their desperate parents by charging them exorbitant amounts of money in return for exorcising the spirits.

The film features extraordinary access to some of the preachers who openly discuss their work.

One preacher who calls himself 'The Bishop,' says he has made a fortune by carrying out 'deliverances' on children. He admits having killed 110 people in the past. Dispatches films him as he administers a mixture of pure alcohol, a substance known as 'African mercury' and his own blood to one child accused of witchcraft.

Exorcism is big business. Preachers can charge as much as a year's salary for an average Nigerian to treat children. They often hold the child captive until the parents can pay up. The Niger Delta area is oil rich - but very few have access to oil wealth; the average life expectancy is around 47.

Shocking and tragic, Dispatches reveals the plight of the thousands of innocent children who suffer intolerable cruelty at the hands of so-called Christian pastors. As Gary, Director of UK Charity Stepping Stones Nigeria, says:

"It's an absolute scandal. Any Christian would look at the situation that is going on here and just be absolutely outraged that they were using the teachings of Jesus Christ to exploit and abuse innocent children."

You can find out more about the work of Stepping Stones Nigeria at http://www.steppingstonesnigeria.org

Sarah Palin Will Never Be President -- Trust Me

2008-11-12T00:53:00.000-08:00

The Huffington Post
Frank Schaeffer
Posted November 11, 2008 | 03:00 PM (EST)

The small smear of red on the otherwise blue electoral map looks more like a minor bloodstain on a dirty Band-Aid than anything resembling a national political party. Who voted for McCain/Palin in bigger numbers than they even voted for Bush/Cheney? Only one shrinking group: uneducated white folks in the deep south and a few folks in Appalachia. Take away the white no-college-backwoods-and/or-southern McCain/Palin vote and the Republicans would have been approaching single digit electoral college oblivion.

Sarah Palin will never hold national office nor will any Republican at the presidential level for a long time to come. Why? Because America has uneducated jerks in it but is not a nation of uneducated jerks. The Republicans are done, hoisted on the petard of their own "southern strategy."

The Republican Party is only a step away from becoming the fringe of the fringe, identified more with cross-burning weirdoes wearing hoods, folks like the Alaska secessionist party, all those gun owners stocking up on assault weapons before the "Socialist/United Nations/Obama/Muslim" conspiracy comes to fruition, than with anything remotely like a serious national political force.

The Republican Party--and I speak as a former lifelong Republican who, up through the 2000 primary campaign supported John McCain and even worked for him by arguing his case on various conservative and religious radio stations--is now the toy of the Rush Limbaugh windbags. These folks include outright crazies (such as Sarah Palin's Assemblies of God pals who are waiting for Spaceship Jesus to rescue them and/or rooting out "witches" from their midst), white racists and a few not-very-bright attention seekers, including Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity etc.

Read their blogs! Listen to their talk radio! You'll be in the twilight zone of front page tabloid fantasy on a par with Bat Boy Attacks! headlines. Bill Buckley roll over.

The Religious Right, the racists, the anti-gay hate-mongers are now not only marginalized but thoroughly out of step with even members of their own former constituency. For instance the Gordon College student newspaper (Gordon is an influential Evangelical College north of Boston) endorsed Obama this year. Many young evangelicals voted for the Democrats. James Dobson, Fox News, Limbaugh et al. were utterly powerless to do more than stir up hate. They are losing the next generation of their "base."

Meanwhile many former Republicans--like me--ran to Obama as fast as our legs could carry us and away from our willfully "we're not an elite" moronic former party. Republican commentators such as David Brooks and George Will mourned the loss of the Republican center. Others noted the Republicans have become anti-intellectual. "Anti-intellectual?" They wish! How about simply anti-literate?

Meanwhile the fringe of the fringe is holding meetings where they'll talk to themselves and look at the "facts" of their alternative universe in order to figure out "what went wrong." These are the same "leaders" (like William Kristal) who think Sarah Palin has a big political future!

Sarah Palin will never be president because the right wing of the Republican Party has perfected the art of believing their own bullshit, starting with the idea that is-Africa-a-country-or-a-continent?-Palin has a future. Palin and her fans don't know it yet, but having reduced itself to a grim angry joke, the Republican Party has also divorced itself from American politics and, along with that dirty used Band-Aid, is destined for the garbage can.

What's the best defense against the rube/Palin voters derailing the Republican Party forever? If the statistics of who voted for whom are correct, the education of white people in the deep South and their economic empowerment is the best answer. Maybe it will take a black Democratic president to figure out some affirmative action program that can get our southern born-again white underclass into colleges and thereby save the Republican party.

Frank Schaeffer is the author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back. Now in paperback

Palin Calls Bloggers "Kids in Pajamas"

2008-11-12T00:50:00.000-08:00

Huffington Post
Linda Bergthold
Posted November 10, 2008 | 11:55 PM (EST)

In Sarah Palin's interview with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren Monday evening, she referred to bloggers as "kids in pajamas sitting in the basement of their parents' homes" spewing out mean and inaccurate things about her. Well, I am no kid, I am definitely not wearing pajames and I am living in my own house, thank you! And I am seriously depressed about the prospect of this person having a political future.

In the course of the interview with Greta Van Susteren, a softball thrown with great affection by Fox, Palin manages to rebut all the attacks on her without ever providing much, if any, facts to support her position. She never asked for the clothes or the stylists. They just appeared. Nor the clothes for her "eight" member family (eight? I thought she had 5 kids...). She never thought Africa was a country. She was just concerned about Darfur and they discussed "Africa there...the country and the continent". She always knew what countries were in NAFTA. She never thought the crowds were there because of her, it was just because of what she stood or -- just a mom trying to change things.

Pardon me, but I am nearly nauseous by now. There is no acknowledgment by Ms. Palin that she might not have been ready for this job. That there were things she did not know and should have known. That the media intensity revealed her weaknesses -- only that it was mean and unfair.

She deftly avoided the question about 2012, but in a very frightening way to those of us who do not believe God tells what doors to open, she explained that God would reveal to her if she should run. God would tell her if there was a door open with a tiny crack, and she would, "by god", just push through it.

She is also a feminist in the sense of "Feminists for life", which for those of us who believe in the power of women, is not exactly our definition. I actually think she believes women should earn as much as men. But she does not believe government should help women and their families with children, especially special needs children, with any particular programs. Individuals and their communities should do that. Well -- Governor Palin? They do not. And when they do not, why are you in favor of punishing those families when they find they can't make it. They can't support the 24 hour needs of those children without some support. Are they supposed to go out on the street corner and put out a sign that says, "Please feed my special needs child?"

Oh my. We are in for a set of charming interviews over the next few days. The only losers will be the Republican party of "meanies" who have attacked Palin. No one is going to challenge her. No one is going to ask her to be accountable for the leaks from the campaign about her diva personality, her tirades against her staff, her acceptance of all those clothes and makeup and hairdressing, her lack of knowledge of basic facts about American government or foreign affairs. She can just deny it all, smile, wink and we are all ok with it.

Are we?

America Speaks Out About Sarah:

2008-11-11T07:01:00.000-08:00

~Sarah Palin and first dude need to learn to become good parents by providing stability to their children. Their children should not have to be dragged around the country so that their parents can enjoy the limelight. She says she will do what God wants her to do; she says her family comes first!!! It is obvious that her ambitions come first. She said the campaign was a "brutal ride" yet she is thinking about 2012 and again subjecting her chidlren and grandchild to another ride. Hockey mom and Todd need to grow up; he needs to teach his future son-in-law about being a father and that hunting, fishing, and kicking whatever does not make a man. Todd needs to encourage Levi to continue his education i(not be a drop-out) n order to provide a better life for his family. It is not enough to be Pro-Life, parents needs to nurture and care for their children and always put their needs first.

~Re: "what is good for her family"-I am waiting for some gutsy, intrepid interviewer to pin her down on her failure to obtain proper medical care for her downs syndrome infant. Therapeutic intervention during the FIRST TWO MONTHS OF LIFE are critical to lifetime functioning of individuals with downs syndrome. This baby's been dragged from pillar to post for the first six months of his life. Where is the responsible adult charged with obtaining state of the art medical/therapeutic testing and care for him?

From an LA Times article:
Pediatric practitioners see it as particularly important that parents like Sarah and Todd Palin seek out and secure services quickly for their children with disabilities, since early intervention can be crucial to improving the function of those with Down syndrome. One study probing the effectiveness of early intervention found that a two-month delay in treatment was associated with lower gross motor, fine motor, language and social outcomes by the time the baby reached 18 months. Another study showed that newborns with Down syndrome who received immediate language intervention had better language development than those who didn't get it until 3 months or 6 months of age.

~I had expressed that you hardly ever saw the Obama children on the campaign trail, because they were in Chicago attending school. They returned their children back to school and they stayed in Chicago with relatives to maintain stability in their everyday lives. I used to complain about her kids always being on the stage with her. Why was that so necessary? They should have been in shcool everyday. Those candidates will visit several cities in one day. Even if she had a tutor, it would have still been difficult to school them on the road. She did not put Country First or those children first. The only thing that is first to Sarah Palin is Sarah Palin. She does not care about education, just look at her own. Attended 5 different colleges, keep switch until you can find one easy enough to pass. That speaks volumes!

~Pearls & Hate Mongering in Florida

Sarah Palin came to Florida and clearly attempted to stir hate. She knew what she was doing and did this with not just malice, but forethought. Replace her at the Governor"s Conference in Miami with Charlie Chris or any other Governor. Do not be part of this crime of silence, pretending that her calling out terrorist and stirring fragile crowds from the podium of power is acceptable in Florida or America.

Did the RNC pay for the pearl necklace she wears and $150,000 in clothing, or was the necklace included in the known amount of frivolous abuse of funds? Why was her sudden home building right at the time of the Hockey Rink? This brings into question why the rink was built, how the contract was issued and what labor and supplies flowed over to her new home, from the Hockey Rink construction that the Alaskan people are still paying for today.

For me it is all about the hate she stirs without even a filtered thought. This woman is simply not qualified to be a national candidate, attention seeking, a disgrace to the highly intelligent woman of the Republican Party and endangers it future. This is my opinion as a 52 year old white woman in America.

~Well, if she wanted to make amends with Alaska, she's doing a piss-poor job of it. She is making it obvious to everyone in Alaska that she is no longer concerned about her state. Fame and fortune await her. Hopefully the Alaskan legislature will do the right thing and continue their investigations into her malfeasance such as her bilking Alaska of per diem and travel costs she's not entitled to. Then there's the pesky problem of that huge house on a lake her husband and a few buddies built in to months right at the time when the Wasilla sports center was being built. Yeah right.

~Sarah is a big red flag waving in our face that forcefully shows us how dangerous, impervious, and mean spirited the far right is. The more she talked the more extreme and incompetent we learned she was. And to have millions of people be "energized" by her is appalling. And yes, I do fear she will be back. She loved all the attention and "the base" thinks she's the cat's meow.

~I believe we are witnessing the re-packaging and re-branding of Sarah Palin by the GOP. It has already begun with her numerous network and cable interviews.

If she is truly a devoted mother, she will spend most of her time in caring for her son with DS. I know parents with DS children who have devoted all their time and energy for the care and education of their children. I can't believe that she and her husband have the time for politics. I can understand if she entered politics so she can further the cause of DS. But as governor she hardly lifted a finger to help the cause. In fact she cut down funding for special education programs in the State of Alaska.

She has tasted the power of being in the national limelight and she likes it. Another power hungry,
m o r a l l y -p e r v e r t e d GOP politician hiding behind religion.

~ The clothes DO stand for what's wrong with the world and the direction this country is headed in. And they stand for what's wrong with her- her hypocrisy.

When she's trying to appeal to "Joe Six Pack", Joe the Plumber, and regular hockey moms and claims she's just a regular small town gal....how many "regular" hockey moms buy $150K in threads from Neiman Marcus? Shows what a big phony she is.

But of course, there's lots of sad things going on in the world...like people losing their homes. So we should ignore this. And ignore the statement that it makes that while these bad things are happening to people, she's out shopping and buying Piper a $7,000 bag!

Palin puzzled by late-campaign focus on wardrobe

2008-11-11T06:48:00.000-08:00

By GENE JOHNSON (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
November 11, 2008 6:29 AM EST

WASILLA, Alaska - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says she was puzzled by the amount of attention her wardrobe got at the end of her unsuccessful vice presidential run.

In an interview that aired on Fox News Channel on Monday, Palin said she neither wanted nor asked for the $150,000-plus wardrobe the Republican Party bankrolled.

"I did not order the clothes. Did not ask for the clothes," Palin said. "I would have been happy to have worn my own clothes from Day One. But that is kind of an odd issue, an odd campaign issue as things were wrapping up there as to who ordered what and who demanded what."

Amid speculation she'll run for president in four years, Palin blamed Bush administration policies for the defeat last week of the GOP ticket and prayed she wouldn't miss "an open door" for her next political opportunity.

"I'm like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the open door," Palin said in a wide-ranging interview with Fox's Greta Van Susteren. "And if there is an open door in '12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door."

"It's amazing that we did as well as we did," Palin, who was Sen. John McCain's running mate, said of the election in a separate interview with the Anchorage Daily News.

"I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a $10 trillion debt in a Republican administration? How have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration? If we're talking change, we want to get far away from what it was that the present administration represented and that is to a great degree what the Republican Party at the time had been representing," Palin said in a story published Sunday.

Palin has scheduled a series of national interviews this week with Fox, NBC's "Today" show and CNN. She also plans to attend the Republican Governors Association conference in Florida this week.

Palin has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2012. She also could seek re-election in 2010 or challenge Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Still uncertain is the fate of Sen. Ted Stevens, who is leading in his bid for another term but could be ousted by the Senate for his conviction on seven felony counts of failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts, mostly renovations on his home. If Stevens loses his seat, Palin could run for it in a special election.

Palin and McCain's campaign faced a storm of criticism over the tens of thousands of dollars spent at such high-end stores as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus to dress the nominee. Republican National Committee lawyers are still trying to determine exactly what clothing was bought for Palin, what was returned and what has become of the rest.

Her father, Chuck Heath, said Palin spent part of the weekend going through her clothing to determine what belongs to the Republican Party.

"She was just frantically ... trying to sort stuff out," Heath said. "That's the problem, you know, the kids lose underwear, and everything has to be accounted for. Nothing goes right back to normal."

Palin says she thought election would be closer

2008-11-11T06:45:00.000-08:00

From Associated Press
November 11, 2008 8:40 AM EST

WASHINGTON - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says she thought the election day contest between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain would be closer. But she added that, in retrospect, "it's really not so much a surprise" that Obama's margin of victory was so large.

In an interviewed aired Tuesday on NBC's "Today," the Republican vice presidential candidate said three factors contributed to her party's defeat:

-"We didn't get the Hispanic vote."

-"We were outspent so tremendously."

-"The anti-incumbency sentiment that was spread across the land and our ticket representing the incumbency."

Obama, Palin said, "did a great job articulating his ability to usher in change. Our ticket represented too much of the status quo."

McCain's loss to Obama last week came an Electoral College landslide that dramatically reorders the divided political map that's been the norm during the last two elections. Obama won in traditionally Republican states like Indiana and gained ground in just about every demographic group, including the fast-growing Hispanic bloc that Republicans have courted.

Asked about rumors of problems between herself and running mate McCain toward the end of the campaign, Palin said: "We had a great relationship. ... There was never any inkling of tension between the two of us."

Still, Palin said, "If your skin isn't thick enough, you're not ready for public office."

Palin says she was puzzled by the amount of attention her wardrobe got at the end of her run, as well as by recent campaign leaks that blamed her for the controversy. "I'm flabbergasted that anyone would say I spent money on clothes for me or my family," she said. "Neiman Marcus and Saks: I've never been in those stores."

In an interview that aired on Fox News Channel on Monday, Palin said she neither wanted nor asked for the $150,000-plus wardrobe the Republican Party bankrolled.

"I did not order the clothes. Did not ask for the clothes," Palin said. "I would have been happy to have worn my own clothes from Day One. But that is kind of an odd issue, an odd campaign issue as things were wrapping up there as to who ordered what and who demanded what."

Palin and McCain's campaign faced a storm of criticism over the tens of thousands of dollars spent at such high-end stores as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus to dress the nominee. Republican National Committee lawyers are still trying to determine exactly what clothing was bought for Palin, what was returned and what has become of the rest.

Amid speculation she'll run for president in four years, Palin said she prayed she wouldn't miss "an open door" for her next political opportunity.

"I'm like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the open door," Palin told Fox's Greta Van Susteren. "And if there is an open door in '12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door."

"I didn't know that it would be as brutal a ride as it turned out to be," she said in the NBC interview.

"When those darts and those arrows started flying," she added, "I knew still (that) we were on the right path in terms of offering ourselves up, me and my family, in terms of service to our country."

Palin also said it wasn't fair for people to suggest she brought the ticket down.

"I think the economic collapse had a heckuva lot more to do with the campaign's collapse than me personally," the governor said.

Her husband, Todd, when asked about the controversies swirling about the family, said: "To be honest, we were so busy with the campaign that there wasn't much TV time."

Said the governor: "There were a lot of times I wanted to shout out, 'Hey, wait a minute, it's not true.' It's pretty brutal. You take the good with the bad ... It is, like Todd says, all a part of this beast called politics in America."

Palin has scheduled a series of national interviews this week with Fox, NBC's "Today" show and CNN. She also plans to attend the Republican Governors Association conference in Florida this week.

Why Was Alaska Voter Turnout So Low?

2008-11-10T22:57:00.000-08:00

Alaska's voting turnout puzzling
LESS THAN '04? Total isn't in yet but appears below expectations.
By RICHARD MAUER
rmauer@adn.com
Published: November 8th, 2008 04:30 AM

Did a huge chunk of Alaska voters really stay home for what was likely the most exciting election in a generation?

That's what turnout numbers are suggesting, though absentee ballots are still arriving in the mail and, if coming from overseas, have until Nov. 19 to straggle in.

The reported turnout has prompted commentary in the progressive blogosphere questioning the validity of the results. And Anchorage pollster Ivan Moore, who usually works with Democrats, said Friday that "something smells fishy," though he said it was premature to suggest that the conduct of the election itself was suspect.

With 81,000 uncounted absentee and questioned ballots, some of which will be disqualified, the total vote cast so far is 305,281 -- 8,311 fewer than the last presidential election of 2004, which saw the largest turnout in Alaska history. That was the election where Alaska's selection of George Bush for a second term was a foregone conclusion, though there was an unusually hot Senate race between Sen. Lisa Murkowski and former Gov. Tony Knowles.

Four years later, the lead-in for the 2008 election was extraordinary:

• Unheard of participation in the Democratic caucuses and strong Republican interest in theirs as well.

• A huge registration drive by Democrats and supporters of Barack Obama that enrolled thousands of first-time voters.

• Obama's historic candidacy.

• Gov. Sarah Palin's unprecedented bid for vice president as an Alaskan and a woman.

• A race in which Republican Ted Stevens, a 40-year Senate veteran, was facing voters as a recent convicted felon against Anchorage's popular mayor, Mark Begich, a Democrat.

• A Congressional race in which Republican Don Young, in office almost as long as Stevens, was seeking re-election after a year in which he spent more than $1 million in legal fees defending against an FBI investigation of corruption involving the oil-field services company Veco Corp. Young's opponent, Democrat Ethan Berkowitz, had been filmed on the state House floor in 2006 demanding an end to Veco's corrupt practices weeks before the FBI investigation became known. The news clip played over and over as legislators and then Stevens were indicted and convicted, boosting Berkowitz's status.

"Everyone had a reason to vote," said Shannyn Moore, whose blog on one of the most popular liberal Web sites in the country, the Huffington Post, suggested the Alaska election was "stolen."

"Then people were what, listening to the news and couldn't pull away from their TVs to go vote at the last minute?"

Even conservatives appeared to be short counted, Moore said. The latest tally showed that the McCain-Palin ticket had almost 55,000 fewer votes than Bush-Cheney in 2004, she said.

Moore's blog, posted Thursday, has already been reposted or commented upon around the Internet. But even Democratic Party officials are saying she's jumping the gun.

"Nobody is charging 'shady,' " said Bethany Lesser, spokeswoman for the Alaska Democratic Party. But she said she's also confused about why more Republicans didn't support Palin, let alone Democrats coming out for Obama, Begich and Berkowitz.

"When I look at that vote, where are the people who are her people?" Lesser said.

While Democrats were charged up by Obama's candidacy and volunteered to help in Alaska, some of that effort was redirected after Palin's nomination, when it became obvious that Alaska would vote strongly Republican for president. Lesser said that Obama volunteers in Alaska spent time telephoning voters in swing states like North Carolina and Ohio rather than spend all their time getting out the vote in Alaska.

One volunteer, Jane Burri, said she was asked to address postcards to swing state voters in between registering Alaskans to vote while she attended an Obama rally in Anchorage in October.

"I remember I wrote, 'It's a really cold day in Alaska but we're sitting out there, writing to you, because we need your help,' " Burri said. She wrote that Alaska, with only three electoral votes, didn't amount to much, "but your vote counts."

Moore, the Anchorage pollster, had predicted a victory for Begich and Berkowitz, as did David Dittman, who usually polls for Republicans.

Moore said he's seen anecdotal evidence of both strong support for Democrats, and also low turnout at the polls, so he's waiting for the final count before reaching any conclusions.

Still, with the increase in registration and population since 2004, the total vote this year should have been around 330,000 to 340,000 had it been just an ordinary election, Moore said

"Given that interest in this election could not, under any circumstances, have ever been greater this year than it was in other years, it's almost inconceivable to imagine that the number of votes cast would drop" from 2004, he said. "It smells to me like you had a really, really, really weird turnout where all the Palin mothers and all the Ted Stevens supporters came flooding en masse out of the woodwork to make a point, and the Dems somehow sat on their hands and enjoyed the presidential news as it filtered up from the Lower 48 through the day."

Dittman says that seems to have been what happened, though it probably wasn't Democratic Party members who stayed home -- rather independents who may have been leaning that way because of the corruption charges against Young and Stevens.

Polls published just before the election that suggested strong victories for Begich and Berkowitz, plus cold weather and warnings of long lines at polling places, might have suppressed turnout, Dittman said.

"They didn't see any reasons to endure," he said.

McHugh Pierre, a spokesman for the Republican Party, said Republicans also had reason to not show up.

"A lot of people were torn: How do I morally vote for someone who is guilty of seven felonies?" he said, referring to Stevens' conviction a week before the election. "They don't show up to vote."

Director Gail Fenumiai of the Alaska Division of Elections said someone sent her Moore's blog, but she hadn't had a chance to read it -- she's too busy organizing the effort to count the absentee ballots and the review panels that will look at the questioned ballots. She urged patience before making a judgment on the election process.

"People just need to wait until the last ballot is counted," Fenumiai said.

Palin Once Greeted McCain Staff Wearing Only A Towel

2008-11-05T22:11:00.000-08:00

From Newsweek's Special Election Project comes the real Sarah Palin. She met staff members in a towel:

At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said.
She raised William Ayers before the campaign signed off on it:

Palin launched her attack on Obama's association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue. McCain's advisers were working on a strategy that they hoped to unveil the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and top adviser Mark Salter was resisting.
And she spent far more on clothes than was reported:

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family--clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

Finally, Steve Schmidt (who reportedly picked Palin as VP) would not let her speak on election night.

McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.

Palin Didn't Know Africa Is A Continent, Says Fox News Reporter

2008-11-05T22:06:00.001-08:00

Okay, thought this was over, but oh my! I need to add some things, I don't want this woman running for president in 2012!

Huffington Post | Nicholas Graham | November 5, 2008 07:40 PM

Now that the 2008 election is over, reporters are spilling all the juciest, and previously off the record, gossip from the campaign trail. Much of it is about the infighting between Palin and McCain's staff, as Newsweek's treasure trove of post-election gossip reveals. However, perhaps one of the most astounding and previously unknown tidbits about Sarah Palin has to do with her already dubious grasp of geography. According to Fox News Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron, there was great concern within the McCain campaign that Palin lacked "a degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate, a vice president, a heartbeat away from the presidency," in part because she didn't know which countries were in NAFTA, and she "didn't understand that Africa was a continent, rather than a series, a country just in itself."

***UPDATE*** Fox News Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron appeared on The O'Reilly Factor tonight and described in much fuller detail the truly astonishing behavior, and lack of knowledge, of Sarah Palin on the campaign trail, as well as the nasty infighting that resulted from, some would say, Palin's "diva" behavior. (Earlier today, Palin said reports of her "diva" behavior and any tension within the campaign were "absolutely false.")

Cameron relates how McCain aides were terrified of Palin's lack of knowledge of international and national issues, and even basic civics. Cameron reports that Palin was unfamiliar with the concept of "American exceptionalism," and that not only did she not understand that Africa was a continent rather than a single country but also that during debate prep Palin was unable to name all the nations in North America.

Palin was apparently a nightmare for her campaign staff to deal with. She refused preparation help for her interview with Katie Couric and then blamed her staff, specifically Nicole Wallace, when the interview was rightly panned as a disaster. After the Couric interview, Palin turned nasty with her staff and began to accuse them of mishandling her. Palin would view press clippings of herself in the morning and throw "tantrums" over the negative coverage. There were times when she would be so nasty and angry that her staff was reduced to tears.

CHANGE HAS COME TO AMERICA!!!!!

2008-11-04T22:01:00.000-08:00

I can breath now!!!! Been holding my breath for so long! So long, Sarah, go back to Wasilla!

Sarah Palin Is A Socialist

2008-11-03T22:14:00.000-08:00

Our Greatest Fear

2008-11-02T20:19:00.001-08:00

Palin Prank Call Reveals Her Incompetence

2008-11-01T23:17:00.001-07:00

This is the full recording of the prank call placed by Canadian comedians. Unbelievable that it happened and that she is not catching on to something wrong during the call.

Who Are The Women Against Sarah Palin?

2008-11-01T01:32:00.000-07:00

Susan Sawyers
Huffington Post
October 31, 2008

"Ms. Palin frightens me both for my country and for my grandchildren."
-- Jane B., 73

In late August, Lyra Kilston, 31, and Quinn Latimer, 30, two not-very-political editors for Modern Painters magazine, found themselves suddenly immersed in the Presidential campaign. Enraged over the selection of Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential nominee, they sent an e-mail to 40 friends.

"We are not against Sarah Palin as a woman, a mother, or, for that matter, a parent of a pregnant teenager, but solely as a rash, incompetent, and all together devastating choice for Vice President," the New Yorkers wrote. "She was chosen by John McCain specifically because he believes that American women will vote for any female candidate regardless of their qualifications. He is wrong."

They encouraged their friends to look beyond the patina of politics and focus on the woman selected to fire up the female vote.

To their great surprise, they had 10,000 e-mail responses in ten days. They wanted to give voice to as many responses as they could, showing that they were not alone. With the help of a friend, they designed a website that, like them, is artful in execution and deliberate in tone.

It's just a few days until the election and the accidental activists are up to 200,000 responses. They continue to pour in, at a rate of about one per minute.

Running a blog is a job in itself. Fortunately for the duo, who continue to work their full-time jobs, Kilston's parents, Steve and Vera Kilston, help moderate (they read through everything that comes in) and quantify (categorize, i.e. an average of two percent of the responses are from pro-Palin people). The senior Kilstons' analytical skills (her father is an astronomer and mother is an engineer) come in handy.

Sympathizers to the two-month old blog, like MoveOn.org Executive Director Eli Pariser, offered strategic and financial support early on; and New Media Producers, Kathryn Velvel Jones and Charlie Oliver, took the viral-letter to the next level and added audio and video to a live webathon broadcast.

So how did these two downtown hipsters get into the political fray, where they now spend about three hours each day? Latimer's father, Irv Katz, remembers her as more than the introspective poetry student, who studied at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. "She was always fearless," Katz said. "One of her favorite activities as a kid growing up in Southern California was jumping horses."

Kilston, like Latimer, hadn't been involved in politics until now, but she is a thinker. What's more, "her middle name is Liberty," said her father, so perhaps their activism is no accident.

"The idea of being a conservative-feminist is difficult to wrap my mind around. I see Christianity and the right-wing platform as inherently sexist, yet I also wonder if I am defining feminism too narrowly," said Kilston, whose philosophical frame of mind comes from her education at Evergreen College and Bard. "Palin's political views are in every way a slap in the face to the accomplishments that our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers have fiercely fought for."

"Some of our critics claim that we are angry because we only support women who share our ideology, and that we dislike Palin because she is conservative," said Kilston. Not true, say both women. The responses to their message haven't only come from the "liberal elite," but from people living in small towns and big cities, from women who are anti-choice or Independents and Republicans, as well. "Sarah Palin is impulsive, irrational and ill-informed--not a leader I would trust with a nation I hold so dear. McCain's lack of judgment in choosing Sarah Palin is why I am a Republican voting Democratic in this election," wrote Lisa B., 46, from Arizona on their blog.

The groundswell of thoughtful responses to their electronic letter paints a portrait of a group of women who are against Sarah Palin, not just because she is a woman who they believe stands to undermine the progress and freedoms that are enjoyed by Americans today, but because they are afraid of people in the future who will continue to challenge these freedoms. The initiation into political activism for two women who grew up in California in the 1980s, post-Vietnam, post-Roe v. Wade, is one to which they will remain committed beyond the election. Latimer is moving to Switzerland to live with her boyfriend for the year. "If Obama wins," she said, "it's a great reason to come back to the United States. If he doesn't, I may be gone for good."

A Letter to Sarah Palin from God

2008-11-01T01:27:00.000-07:00

Ellis Weiner
Huffington Post
Posted October 31, 2008

NOTE: The following words occurred to me, seemingly out of nowhere, in the innermost recesses of the mind of my brain. I can only conclude that they came from God. I present them, therefore, not as a "writer" but as a medium, a messenger transmitting the divine text and converting it, as best I can, from a mode of pure thought into the publicly-accessible form of the written word. E.W.

Dear Sarah:

I would ask, "How are you, child?" but for two things. One, who knows better than I, Who Am That I Am, how you are? And two, my purpose in communicating with you here is not to ask how you are, but to tell you how you are.

You are a disappointment to Me, Sarah.

You seem to think, as do many of your co-religionists, that what you profess to believe -- and, indeed, what you may actually in fact believe -- is more important than what you do. You seem to be under the impression that advertising an ardent belief in Me (or Us, if you prefer) absolves you of any responsibility to act in accordance with what you know -- or, at least, what you should know -- constitute My values and precepts.

The list of your transgressions is extensive, and includes:

- That, while you know full well My admonition to Love Thy Neighbor, you spread calumny and derision about half of the population, presuming to declare who is and who is not "the real America."

- That, while you are fully aware of My Commandment forbidding you to bear false witness, you utter lies and deceptions on a routine basis, verily, you seem unable to speak publicly without lying. You have lied about opposing the Bridge to Nowhere; you have lied about firing the librarian and police chief of Wasilla; you have lied about your previous statements regarding climate change; you have lied about Alaska's contribution to your nation's oil and gas production; you have lied about Barack Obama's position regarding habeas corpus; you have lied about your use of a TelePrompter at the Republican convention; and in manifold other ways have you lied, and lied, and lied.

- That, while you are entirely acquainted with My intention to bestow upon Man dominion over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, yet you play fast and loose and get cute with, and otherwise wink at, the danger posed to all living creatures (including Man) by climate change; and you profess to be unsure as to whether these perils are caused by Man, while all reputable study affirms this analysis beyond dispute.

- That, while you are surely acquainted with My Son's admonition that you "beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye," yet you persist in criticizing Obama's (modest, progressive) taxation plans as constituting "socialism," and abjure it as an evil, whilst never acknowledging that your own Republican Party put in place laws that have resulted in the most egregiously "socialistic" takeover of the nation's banks in history; moreover, your own state of Alaska--particularly under your administration--is the most socialist of all the fifty states, in its collective taxing of the oil industry and its distribution, to every man, woman, and child in the state, a check upwards of three (3) grand each year.

- That, while you proudly profess to believe in "freedom," you have lately complained that if newspapers criticize you for "negative campaigning," they are abridging your First Amendment rights under the Constitution--as though "freedom" means only your ability to say anything that enters in unto your head (regardless of how baseless or slanderous) but does not apply to the press.

Of the sheer stupidity of this last assertion I, Who Am Eternal, shall say nothing, for I love all my creations, regardless of how ignorant, unsophisticated, or just plain dumb. Similarly, I will pass over your inability to answer the simplest question in a coherent sentence, your meanness of spirit, and the great selfishness and want of taste you display in subjecting your poor children to the travails, exhaustion, and abuse of a national presidential campaign.

Rather, Sarah, it is your hypocrisy and mendaciousness that mightily offend Me. I am, as you know, a just and compassionate God. But even I (blessed be Me and blessed be My Name) have a limit to My patience. Thus, I find not only that you are unqualified to be Vice-President of the United States. I find that you are a human person deficient in those basic qualities (honesty, decency, compassion, modesty, personal integrity, a respect for knowledge, and a concern for truth) that are pleasing unto Me and which ought to constitute the character of the righteous woman.

You are not just a bad candidate. You are a bad person. I only hope you will awaken to this fact, acknowledge the error of your ways, and take steps to atone for these transgressions before the Day of Judgment, when I shall be forced to render a decision concerning your eternal fate.

Yours in Me, etc.,
God

cc. Jesus Christ

Palin: First Amendment Rights Threatened By Criticism

2008-11-01T01:13:00.000-07:00

October 31, 2008 02:02 PM
ABC News reports:

In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by "attacks" from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.

Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

Salon's Glenn Greenwald explains why this argument is frighteningly wrong:

If anything, Palin has this exactly backwards, since one thing that the First Amendment does actually guarantee is a free press. Thus, when the press criticizes a political candidate and a Governor such as Palin, that is a classic example of First Amendment rights being exercised, not abridged.

This isn't only about profound ignorance regarding our basic liberties, though it is obviously that. Palin here is also giving voice here to the standard right-wing grievance instinct: that it's inherently unfair when they're criticized. And now, apparently, it's even unconstitutional.

According to Palin, what the Founders intended with the First Amendment was that political candidates for the most powerful offices in the country and Governors of states would be free to say whatever they want without being criticized in the newspapers. The First Amendment was meant to ensure that powerful political officials would not be "attacked" in the papers. It is even possible to imagine more breathaking ignorance from someone holding high office and running for even higher office?

Hope Over Fear: The most optimistic presidential candidate always wins!

2008-10-29T23:45:00.000-07:00

Obama's infomercial moved me to tears. I have never felt moved by a presidential nominee in my lifetime, let alone by any contemporary American political figure.

Palin spent more than $51,000 in taxpayer funds to remodel the governor’s Anchorage office suite

2008-10-28T21:43:00.001-07:00

Boston Herald
By Laura Crimaldi
Sunday, October 26, 2008

GOP vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin spent more than $51,000 in taxpayer funds to remodel the governor’s Anchorage office suite and spruce up her mansion and office in Juneau, a Herald review of expense records shows.

Palin spent most of the funds, $45,137, in April to build and furnish three offices inside her suite at the Robert B. Atwood Building in Anchorage, records show.

In June 2007, Palin spent $5,380 for labor and materials on a 72-inch wooden display case in her Juneau office. The case houses a football and basketball signed by players from championship high school teams, native artwork, a Klondike Trail mug and other items, said gubernatorial spokesman William D. McAllister.

Another $1,205 was spent in February 2007 on blinds for an arched window and stairwell at the governor’s mansion in Juneau.

The McCain-Palin campaign said it would characterize the remodeling expenses as “routine.”

“Gov. Palin has a long record of cutting wasteful spending, using her veto pen to eliminate nearly a half-billion dollars from the budget,” said Jeff Grappone, New England communications director. “She sold the state’s luxury jet, scrapped the governor’s personal chef and got rid of the personal driver.”

On the campaign trail, Palin has touted that record.

“I came to office promising to control spending by request if possible and by veto if necessary,” she said in her convention address.

The money spent for remodeling has not been previously publicized. Alaska government watchdogs said it did not change their opinion of the governor, who is well-regarded in a state infamous for its profligate pols.

“The lady’s literally done a good job up here,” said Donna Gilbert, president of the Interior Taxpayers’ Association in Fairbanks, who noted a mayor in Fairbanks once spent $50,000 on a bathroom.

However, state Sen. President Lyda Green - a Republican who has clashed with Palin over policy - said the cost to remodel the Anchorage offices was “extravagant.”

“As far as I am concerned, that’s excessive to spend that much on four cubby holes,” Green said.

The work on the Anchorage site created new offices for Kelly Goode, Palin’s legislative director, and Roseanne Hughes, director of external communications, McAllister said. The third office is reserved for “traveling staff,” who divide their time between Anchorage and Juneau, which are located 571 miles apart, McAllister said.

A Palin staffer said the Juneau mansion’s new blinds were installed to provide privacy.

“The residence manager determined that the blinds were necessary to prevent observation from the street of the family members,” administrative director Linda J. Perez said in an e-mail.

Mike McBride, past president of the Alaska Voters Organization, did not take issue with the expenses. “It’s not a tremendous amount of money. Things in Alaska cost substantially more than they do in other parts of the country,” McBride said. “It’s not an unreasonable number.”

Is Sarah Palin a Socialist Herself?

2008-10-28T20:57:00.000-07:00

LIKE, SOCIALISM
The New Yorker
by Hendrik Hertzberg
NOVEMBER 3, 2008

Sometimes, when a political campaign has run out of ideas and senses that the prize is slipping through its fingers, it rolls up a sleeve and plunges an arm, shoulder deep, right down to the bottom of the barrel. The problem for John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the Republican Party is that the bottom was scraped clean long before it dropped out. Back when the polls were nip and tuck and the leaves had not yet begun to turn, Barack Obama had already been accused of betraying the troops, wanting to teach kindergartners all about sex, favoring infanticide, and being a friend of terrorists and terrorism. What was left? The anticlimactic answer came as the long Presidential march of 2008 staggered toward its final week: Senator Obama is a socialist.

“This campaign in the next couple of weeks is about one thing,” Todd Akin, a Republican congressman from Missouri, told a McCain rally outside St. Louis. “It’s a referendum on socialism.” “With all due respect,” Senator George Voinovich, Republican of Ohio, said, “the man is a socialist.” At an airport rally in Roswell, New Mexico, a well-known landing spot for space aliens, Governor Palin warned against Obama’s tax proposals. “Friends,” she said, “now is no time to experiment with socialism.” And McCain, discussing those proposals, agreed that they sounded “a lot like socialism.” There hasn’t been so much talk of socialism in an American election since 1920, when Eugene Victor Debs, candidate of the Socialist Party, made his fifth run for President from a cell in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where he was serving a ten-year sentence for opposing the First World War. (Debs got a million votes and was freed the following year by the new Republican President, Warren G. Harding, who immediately invited him to the White House for a friendly visit.)

As a buzzword, “socialism” had mostly good connotations in most of the world for most of the twentieth century. That’s why the Nazis called themselves national socialists. That’s why the Bolsheviks called their regime the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, obliging the socialist and social democratic parties of Europe (and America, for what it was worth) to make rescuing the “good name” of socialism one of their central missions. Socialists—one thinks of men like George Orwell, Willy Brandt, and Aneurin Bevan—were among Communism’s most passionate and effective enemies.

The United States is a special case. There is a whole shelf of books on the question of why socialism never became a real mass movement here. For decades, the word served mainly as a cudgel with which conservative Republicans beat liberal Democrats about the head. When Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan accused John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson of socialism for advocating guaranteed health care for the aged and the poor, the implication was that Medicare and Medicaid would presage a Soviet America. Now that Communism has been defunct for nearly twenty years, though, the cry of socialism no longer packs its old punch. “At least in Europe, the socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives,” McCain said the other day—thereby suggesting that the dystopia he abhors is not some North Korean-style totalitarian ant heap but, rather, the gentle social democracies across the Atlantic, where, in return for higher taxes and without any diminution of civil liberty, people buy themselves excellent public education, anxiety-free health care, and decent public transportation.

The Republican argument of the moment seems to be that the difference between capitalism and socialism corresponds to the difference between a top marginal income-tax rate of 35 per cent and a top marginal income-tax rate of 39.6 per cent. The latter is what it would be under Obama’s proposal, what it was under President Clinton, and, for that matter, what it will be after 2010 if President Bush’s tax cuts expire on schedule. Obama would use some of the added revenue to give a break to pretty much everybody who nets less than a quarter of a million dollars a year. The total tax burden on the private economy would be somewhat lighter than it is now—a bit of elementary Keynesianism that renders doubly untrue the Republican claim that Obama “will raise your taxes.”

On October 12th, in conversation with a voter forever to be known as Joe the Plumber, Obama gave one of his fullest summaries of his tax plan. After explaining how Joe could benefit from it, whether or not he achieves his dream of owning his own plumbing business, Obama added casually, “I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” McCain and Palin have been quoting this remark ever since, offering it as prima-facie evidence of Obama’s unsuitability for office. Of course, all taxes are redistributive, in that they redistribute private resources for public purposes. But the federal income tax is (downwardly) redistributive as a matter of principle: however slightly, it softens the inequalities that are inevitable in a market economy, and it reflects the belief that the wealthy have a proportionately greater stake in the material aspects of the social order and, therefore, should give that order proportionately more material support. McCain himself probably shares this belief, and there was a time when he was willing to say so. During the 2000 campaign, on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” a young woman asked him why her father, a doctor, should be “penalized” by being “in a huge tax bracket.” McCain replied that “wealthy people can afford more” and that “the very wealthy, because they can afford tax lawyers and all kinds of loopholes, really don’t pay nearly as much as you think they do.” The exchange continued:

YOUNG WOMAN: Are we getting closer and closer to, like, socialism and stuff?. . .

MCCAIN: Here’s what I really believe: That when you reach a certain level of comfort, there’s nothing wrong with paying somewhat more.

For her part, Sarah Palin, who has lately taken to calling Obama “Barack the Wealth Spreader,” seems to be something of a suspect character herself. She is, at the very least, a fellow-traveller of what might be called socialism with an Alaskan face. The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.” Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist. ♦

McCain adviser: Palin is ‘a whack job.’

2008-10-28T20:55:00.000-07:00

The infighting within the McCain campaign has become increasingly public, with growing frustration directed at Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK). Last week, CNN reported that one McCain source called Palin “a diva” who “takes no advice from anyone.” Politico’s Mike Allen reports another McCain adviser’s criticism of Palin:

***In convo with Playbook, a top McCain adviser one-ups the priceless “diva” description, calling her “a whack job.”

Asked to respond to reports that she is “going rogue,” Palin declared them “absolutely, 100 percent false,” adding, “John McCain and I, and our camps, are working together to get John McCain elected.” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow noted Palin’s word choice: “Your camps, plural? A McCain camp and a Palin camp? That does not sound good.”

John Cleese on Sarah Palin

2008-10-28T20:25:00.000-07:00

The former Monty Python star answers Vinvin's questions and shares his unsparing thoughts and views about vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.

Alaska's Largest Newspaper Endorses Obama

2008-10-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

Palin's rise captivates us but nation needs a steady hand
Anchorage Daily News
Published: October 25th, 2008 07:37 PM

Alaska enters its 50th-anniversary year in the glow of an improbable and highly memorable event: the nomination of Gov. Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate. For the first time ever, an Alaskan is making a serious bid for national office, and in doing so she brings broad attention and recognition not only to herself, but also to the state she leads.

Alaska's founders were optimistic people, but even the most farsighted might have been stretched to imagine this scenario. No matter the outcome in November, this election will mark a signal moment in the history of the 49th state. Many Alaskans are proud to see their governor, and their state, so prominent on the national stage.

Gov. Palin's nomination clearly alters the landscape for Alaskans as we survey this race for the presidency -- but it does not overwhelm all other judgment. The election, after all is said and done, is not about Sarah Palin, and our sober view is that her running mate, Sen. John McCain, is the wrong choice for president at this critical time for our nation.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, brings far more promise to the office. In a time of grave economic crisis, he displays thoughtful analysis, enlists wise counsel and operates with a cool, steady hand. The same cannot be said of Sen. McCain.

Since his early acknowledgement that economic policy is not his strong suit, Sen. McCain has stumbled and fumbled badly in dealing with the accelerating crisis as it emerged. He declared that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" at 9 a.m. one day and by 11 a.m. was describing an economy in crisis. He is both a longtime advocate of less market regulation and a supporter of the huge taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailout. His behavior in this crisis -- erratic is a kind description -- shows him to be ill-equipped to lead the essential effort of reining in a runaway financial system and setting an anxious nation on course to economic recovery.

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Sen. Obama warned regulators and the nation 19 months ago that the subprime lending crisis was a disaster in the making. Sen. McCain backed tighter rules for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but didn't do much to advance that legislation. Of the two candidates, Sen. Obama better understands the mortgage meltdown's root causes and has the judgment and intelligence to shape a solution, as well as the leadership to rally the country behind it. It is easy to look at Sen. Obama and see a return to the smart, bipartisan economic policies of the last Democratic administration in Washington, which left the country with the momentum of growth and a budget surplus that President George Bush has squandered.

On the most important issue of the day, Sen. Obama is a clear choice.

Sen. McCain describes himself as a maverick, by which he seems to mean that he spent 25 years trying unsuccessfully to persuade his own party to follow his bipartisan, centrist lead. Sadly, maverick John McCain didn't show up for the campaign. Instead we have candidate McCain, who embraces the extreme Republican orthodoxy he once resisted and cynically asks Americans to buy for another four years.

It is Sen. Obama who truly promises fundamental change in Washington. You need look no further than the guilt-by-association lies and sound-bite distortions of the degenerating McCain campaign to see how readily he embraces the divisive, fear-mongering tactics of Karl Rove. And while Sen. McCain points to the fragile success of the troop surge in stabilizing conditions in Iraq, it is also plain that he was fundamentally wrong about the more crucial early decisions. Contrary to his assurances, we were not greeted as liberators; it was not a short, easy war; and Americans -- not Iraqi oil -- have had to pay for it. It was Sen. Obama who more clearly saw the danger ahead.

The unqualified endorsement of Sen. Obama by a seasoned, respected soldier and diplomat like Gen. Colin Powell, a Republican icon, should reassure all Americans that the Democratic candidate will pass muster as commander in chief.

On a matter of parochial interest, Sen. Obama opposes the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but so does Sen. McCain. We think both are wrong, and hope a President Obama can be convinced to support environmentally responsible development of that resource.

Gov. Palin has shown the country why she has been so successful in her young political career. Passionate, charismatic and indefatigable, she draws huge crowds and sows excitement in her wake. She has made it clear she's a force to be reckoned with, and you can be sure politicians and political professionals across the country have taken note. Her future, in Alaska and on the national stage, seems certain to be played out in the limelight.

Yet despite her formidable gifts, few who have worked closely with the governor would argue she is truly ready to assume command of the most important, powerful nation on earth. To step in and juggle the demands of an economic meltdown, two deadly wars and a deteriorating climate crisis would stretch the governor beyond her range. Like picking Sen. McCain for president, putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time.

But Wait ... By Palin's Definition, Mohamed Atta Isn't A Terrorist

2008-10-25T23:18:00.000-07:00

RJ Eskow
Huffington Post, Posted October 24, 2008 | 07:03 PM (EST)

This campaign gets stranger and stranger -- and more and more frightening. Brian Williams asked Sarah Palin a fairly straightforward question, based on her repeated use of the phrase "domestic terrorist" to characterize Bill Ayers. Williams asked: "Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under this definition, Governor?"

Palin tried several evasive maneuvers before alighting on this answer:

"I would put in that category of Bill Ayers anyone else who would seek to campaign, to destroy our United States capital and our Pentagon and would seek to destroy innocent Americans."
Forget the tortured syntax for a moment. What is truly and deeply frightening in this exchange is the lengths to which Palin will go to avoid disparaging abortion bombers. She is so desperate not to characterize the Eric Rudolphs of this world as terrorists that she forges a severely narrow definition of the act: You have to target the Capitol or the Pentagon to qualify.
That even lets Mohamed Atta off the hook, since he attacked the World Trade Center. Like the doctor's offices and medical clinics struck by abortion terrorists, it's a civilian target. We know that Sarah Palin doesn't believe that Islamic militants who kill civilians aren't terrorists. That leaves only one way to interpret these words: She either supports the bombing of abortion clinics or she wants the political support of those who do (and then there's that reference to "innocent Americans," which seems to suggest that clinic staff or patients are not innocent).

Can anybody think of another explanation?

Either interpretation would seem to reinforce what I call the black-helicopter theory -- that this campaign is deliberately stoking extremism. As for the idea she might have sympathy or at least tolerance toward these attacks -- well, let's hope not. But she had already said these words as she writhed in the unforgiving claws of what should've been a straighforward question:

"Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities that it would be unacceptable to -- I don't know if you're going to use the word terrorist there, but it's unacceptable, and it would not be condoned, of course, on our watch."
So the strongest things she's willing to say about bomb attacks on abortion clinics (which have caused deaths as well as destruction) is that they're "unacceptable" and wouldn't be "condoned."
I guess that's something.

So, here we have a Vice Presidential candidate and potential President who has close ties to a separatist party founded by a man with violent hostility toward the U.S. government. She accepts blessing from a "witch-fighting" pastor, when "expelling witches" is its own form of terrorism (witch-hunting may sound quaint to American ears, but it's a living and hideous practice that claims hundreds if not thousands of women and children each year).

Let's face it: The $150,000 in clothing, the highly paid make-up artists, the potentially illegal use of Alaskan state funds to fly her family on junkets ... all that's trivial next to the extreme views suggested by these comments. This is not a game of "gotcha" based on a poor choice of words or associations. This is a pattern -- the pattern of a deeply disturbing individual, one who is not only unqualified to be President but who also holds some profoundly un-American opinions.

And John McCain chose her -- or, more precisely, must take responsibility for her selection. It's his name on the campaign bus. His acceptance of Palin betrayed stunning indifference to the responsibilities of leadership. That is all we need to know about him.

It's no wonder the young woman who claimed to have been attacked and mutilated by a large black Obama supporter turns out to have performed the act on herself (which the mirrored "B" on her face should have made obvious). But before the truth was revealed, we're told she got a phone call from Sarah Palin. This is a campaign that will try turning any lie to its advantage.

Self-mugging: The perfect metaphor for John McCain's campaign.

Sure, there's a strange fascination in listening to Sarah Palin speak. Every sentence seems to pass through an surrealistic archway, as if its grammatical rules had been designed by M. C. Escher. Will it turn into a flock of birds, a school of fish, become its own wall or ceiling or stairway? But underneath this tangled skein of language, a picture is beginning to emerge. It's a frightening picture and an ugly one.

It's a picture that the most expensive makeup artist in the world can't hide.

Perceptions of Palin Grow Increasingly Negative, Poll Says

2008-10-25T22:55:00.000-07:00

By Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 25, 2008; Page A03

A majority of likely voters in a new Washington Post-ABC News national poll now have unfavorable views of the Alaska governor, most still doubt her presidential qualifications and there is an even split on whether she "gets it," a perception that had been a key component of her initial appeal.

Palin's addition to the GOP ticket initially helped McCain narrow the gap with Obama on the question of which presidential hopeful "better understands the problems of people like you," but at 18 percentage points, the Democrat's margin on that question is now as big as it has been all fall. Nor has Palin attracted female voters to McCain, as his campaign had hoped.

Obama is up by a large margin among women, 57 to 41 percent in the new Post-ABC tracking poll. The senator from Illinois just about ties McCain among white women -- 48 percent back Obama, 49 percent McCain -- a group that President Bush won by 11 points four years ago and one that had shifted significantly toward the GOP this year after the Palin pick.

In polling conducted Wednesday and Thursday evenings, after the disclosure that the Republican National Committee used political funds to help Palin assemble a wardrobe for the campaign, 51 percent said they have a negative impression of her. Fewer, 46 percent, said they have a favorable view. That marks a stark turnaround from early September, when 59 percent of likely voters held positive opinions.

The declines in Palin's ratings have been even more substantial among the very voters Republicans aimed to woo. The percentage of white women viewing her favorably dropped 21 points since early September; among independent women, it fell 24 points.

More broadly, the intensity of negative feelings about Palin is also notable: Forty percent of voters have "strongly unfavorable" views, more than double the post-convention number. Nearly half of independent women now see her in a very negative light, a nearly threefold increase.

The shift in Palin's ratings come with a pronounced spike in the percentage of voters who see her as lacking the experience it takes to be a good president. Voters were about evenly divided on that question a month and a half ago, but toward the end of September a clear majority said she was not qualified. In the new poll, 58 percent said she is insufficiently experienced.

Among a recent spate of conservative defections from McCain, one leading Republican was particularly pointed about the impact of Palin's professional background on his decision. Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School and former solicitor general under Ronald Reagan, asked that the McCain-Palin campaign remove his name from several committees in large part because of "the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."

A Post-ABC poll earlier this week reported that the Palin pick deeply damaged voters' confidence in the types of decisions McCain would make as president.

Perhaps more fundamentally for Palin's national political future, though, is that voters in the new poll are evenly divided about whether she understands their problems. Three weeks ago, 60 percent said she did; now it is 50 percent yes, 47 percent no.

Both Democratic and independent women are half as likely as they were in late September to see Palin as empathetic. Among independent women, the percentage who view Palin as in tune with people like themselves slipped from 73 to 50 percent.

Palin's struggle to connect deepens McCain's own deficit on the issue. On the question of who is more empathetic, 55 percent of voters said Obama, 37 percent McCain. And McCain picks up few of those who view Palin as disconnected.

But the gap is smaller on overall favorability, one of the factors that buoys the GOP ticket as Election Day approaches, despite generally negative poll numbers: 63 percent of likely voters have favorable impressions of Obama, 55 percent of McCain. Among the crucial segment of independent voters, the two rivals have identical 58 percent favorable ratings.

Taking the tickets together, 53 percent of likely voters express favorable views of both Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., 41 percent of both McCain and Palin. Those numbers are very close to current vote preferences in the latest Post-ABC tracking poll: Fifty-three percent said they would vote Democratic if the election were held today; 44 percent would opt for the GOP.

Stop Stealing My Obama/Biden Yard Sign, THAT IS ANTI-AMERICAN!

2008-10-25T12:56:00.000-07:00

Abortion clinic bombers not terrorists, Palin says

2008-10-25T12:41:00.001-07:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who has accused Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists," has refused to call people who bomb abortion clinics by the same name.
When asked Thursday night by NBC television presenter Brian Williams whether an abortion clinic bomber was a terrorist, Palin heaved a sigh and, at first, circumvented the question.

"There's no question that Bill Ayers by his own admittance was one who sought to destroy our US Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist," Palin said, referring to a 1960s leftist who founded a radical violent gang dubbed the "Weathermen" -- and who years later supported Obama's first run for public office in the state of Illinois.

"Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities that it would be unacceptable to... I don't know if you're gonna use the word 'terrorist' there," the ardently pro-life running mate of John McCain said.

Early this month, after the New York Times ran an article highlighting the ties between Obama and Ayers, Palin told a campaign rally in Colorado that Obama "sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Attacks on doctors who practice abortion and on family planning clinics in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s left several people dead and scores wounded.

Eric Rudolph, the extreme right winger who planted a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, which killed one person, was sentenced three years ago to two life terms in jail for an abortion clinic bombing in Alabama in which a policeman was killed.

Palin's Makeup Artist Is McCain's Highest Paid Staffer For First Half Of October

2008-10-25T12:35:00.000-07:00

If Palin's $150,000 shopping spree had Republicans disgusted, then the report that her makeup stylist cost $22,800 for the first two weeks of October should have them livid. The stylist, Amy Strozzi, was apparently paid more than any other McCain staffer during that period.

Ms. Strozzi, who was nominated for an Emmy award for her makeup work on the television show “So You Think You Can Dance?”, was paid $22,800 for the first two weeks of October alone, according to the records. The campaign categorized Ms. Strozzi’s payment as “Personnel Svc/Equipment.”

In addition, Angela Lew, who is Ms. Palin’s traveling hair stylist, got $10,000 for “Communications Consulting” in the first half of October. Ms. Lew’s address listed in F.E.C. records traces to an Angela M. Lew in Thousands Oaks, Calif., which matches with a license issued by the California Board of Barbering and Cosmetology. The board said Ms. Lew works at a salon called Hair Grove in Westlake Village, Calif.

W Magazine’s blog reported earlier this month that “the Guv has been traveling with a hairstylist named Angela, who usually works out of a salon called the Hair Grove,” and that she was directed to the salon by none other than Cindy McCain, whose own hair stylist, Piper, works at the Hair Grove as well. (Related: To Look Good, How Much Is Too Much?)

The campaign’s payment on Oct. 10 to Ms. Strozzi made her the single highest-paid individual in the campaign for that two week period. (There were more than two-dozen companies that got larger payments than Ms. Strozzi). She easily beat out Mr. Scheunemann, who received $12,500 in the first half of October, and Ms. Wallace, who got $12,000. Ms. Lew was the fourth highest paid person in the campaign during that span.

In September, Ms. Strozzi, who was first identified by the Washington Post this week as Ms. Palin’s makeup artist, was also paid $13,200 for “communications consulting.” But several individuals were paid more by the McCain campaign that month, including Mike DuHaime, the political director, who received $25,000 for “Gotv Consulting,” and Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s senior advisers, who got $13,224 in salary.

Ms. Lew collected $8,825 in September for what the campaign labeled in its report as “GOTV Consulting.”

There has been much attention this week, of course, on the $150,000 Republican National Committee spent outfitting Ms. Palin in September at high-end department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, as well as for makeup services.

The campaign finance reports filed on Thursday night, which showed the McCain campaign and the R.N.C. had about $84 million left in the bank on Oct. 15, did not immediately appear to show any similar payments in the first half of October.

A Visit to Sarah Palin's "More American" Part of the Country

2008-10-25T12:21:00.000-07:00

Something to really think about. Watch the whole thing.

Palin says she's an advocate for special needs children, but she hasn't backed up her rhetoric with actual proposals

2008-10-23T21:50:00.000-07:00

Ben Adler
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday October 07 2008 14.10 BST

What disability agenda?

Since being nominated as John McCain's vice-president, Sarah Palin has reiterated what has become a consistent theme for her in this campaign: because of the birth of her son, Trig, with Down syndrome, four months ago, she would be an advocate for children with disabilities.

But Palin has not offered an agenda for special needs children.

Palin first rolled out her disability appeal to great applause at the Republican National Convention when she said: "To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters. I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House."

During last week's debate with Joe Biden, when asked what areas she would focus on as vice-president, she again raised the issue of children with disabilities. "John McCain and I have had good conversations about where I would lead with his agenda," Palin said. "That is energy independence in America and reform of government over all, and then working with families of children with special needs. That's near and dear to my heart also."

But what does that really mean? Advocates for people with disabilities can point to plenty of areas where they see a need for greater government support: healthcare, special education, protection from discrimination in the workplace. But Palin has neither championed these issues in the past nor made specific pledges to address them now.

Jim Dickson, vice-president for government affairs of the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), says he has "mixed feelings", about Palin's highlighting of disability issues in her convention speech. "I was very moved by what she said," said Dickson. "But Trig is only four months old. She doesn't know what she's in for. She has no prior record in terms of her mayor's role or governor's role on disability issues. Nothing stands out."

For instance, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the federal law that mandates equal educational opportunity for children with disabilities, has been consistently under-funded since its passage in 1975, according to education experts. But the McCain campaign does not propose any increase in overall federal education funding. And his bullet point plan makes no mention of special education. Obama calls for fully funding IDEA as part of his eight-page disability platform (pdf).

In general, disability rights advocates give both campaigns high marks for unprecedented outreach to the disability community. For the first time, both have staffers dedicated to cultivating the disability vote, and both have pledged to appoint a White House staffer to focus on disability issues.

The one issue where there is a major distinction, and disability advocates side with Obama, is the Community Choice Act. That bill, proposed by senator Tom Harkin and co-sponsored by Obama, would make government funds for institutional care available for home-based services so that more disabled people could remain in their homes. McCain opposes the bill because of concerns about cost. Palin, meanwhile, has come under fire for not supporting a bill that would have expanded children's health insurance in Alaska.

This does not mean that the McCain-Palin ticket has a desultory record on disability issues. Though Palin lays claim to the issue, McCain is actually the half of the ticket with a record of leadership on disability rights. McCain was an original co-sponsor of the landmark anti-discrimination law, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Dickson also praised McCain for having supported legislation to open voting accessibility to people with disabilities. McCain and Obama both supported the ADA Amendment Act, a bipartisan bill that just passed Congress, which will help clarify the protections in the ADA.

There are plenty of ways, from IDEA funding to expanded health coverage to Community Choice, that Palin could promise to serve the interests of people with disabilities. But so far Palin's pledge to lead on disability issues because of her personal connection to the community has not been developed into more than mere rhetoric. And unless she specifies what exactly she would do for disabled children as vice-president, she risks creating the impression that all she is really seeking with that rhetoric is political reward.

Sarah Palin And Special Needs Children

2008-10-23T21:46:00.000-07:00

October 15th, 2008 by Ron Chusid

Sarah Palin has received support from women who identify with Palin but fail to consider whether Palin supports policies which support their needs. Terry Gross discussed this question on Fresh Air today with Anchorage Daily News columnist Michael Care. On a closely related topic, I received this submission from a special needs mom who questions Palin’s claims to be an advocate for parents of special needs children:

GOVERNOR PALIN, WHAT’S YOUR PLAN?

I am an expert at raising a child with special needs. My son is an adult, 26 years of age.

Governor Palin, you have said repeatedly that you will be an advocate for parents of special needs children. It is now time for you to tell us what you mean by that statement. It is not enough that you chose to have a baby with special needs. There are thousands of us who made the same choice - and others like me who did not know until our children were born (or later even) that they had special needs. There are also hundreds of thousands of people with developmental disabilities on decades-long waiting lists for services across the country - and others who are completely unable to access services for their children because they don’t fit some arbitrary criteria.

Specifically, I want to know the following:

1. Do you support increased funding to and the expansion of Medicaid Waiver programs to ensure that people with special needs can live and work in the community?

2. Do you support making certain that all services are portable, across the states and counties - that people don’t have to get at the “end of the line” when they move to another state?

3. Will you increase funding to special education, and improve special education programs so that less parents have to “opt out” of sending their special needs children to public school because “homeschooling” is better than “no schooling?”

4. If John McCain were President, and he were to propose drastic cuts in Medicaid, what kind of advocacy would you do for special needs parents to prevent funding cuts that would put us back to the 1960’s?

5. What did you do in Alaska to improve the lives of people with special needs? Did you increase services? Did you increase funding to special education? Did you end waiting lists? Have you served on nonprofit boards that serve children with special needs? How often did the local papers in Alaska write about your advocacy for the families of Alaska who have special needs children? Do all families in Alaska have access to local, community-based programs and treatment regardless of their income because of your advocacy efforts?

6. Are you in favor of spending more time, money and attention on the horrific status of mental health treatment and services across the nation?

7. Would you be in favor of ensuring that services are provided to people with disabilities who need them, in spite of their IQ’s not being in the right “range”? Specifically, how would you address this problem?

8. If Roe v. Wade were overturned, what special programs might you institute to support the high influx new parents of special needs children who might not have otherwise given birth to those children because they felt they could not manage for whatever reason?

Governor Palin, the media has had the opportunity to ask you these questions but have not done so. You have seized that opportunity with photo ops and heartstrings to simply say that you will be an advocate for us, without being questioned. You complain that the media is against you and yet you have not taken the time to explain to the hundreds of thousands of we special needs parents who need a champion for our cause so much, exactly what your record is on special needs advocacy and what we can expect in the future if you were Vice President. It’s time now to answer the question: What is your plan?

A special needs mom in Aurora, CO

Thursday's "Saturday Night Live" election special

2008-10-23T21:36:00.001-07:00

Sarah Palin Says Only Small Towns Are Pro-America

2008-10-22T21:32:00.001-07:00

"He wants to put that girl who winks in the second position," ~Carl Reiner

2008-10-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

A new ad from the Jewish Alliance for Change featuring movie and TV stars such as Carl Reiner, Danny Devito, and Jerry Stiller.

Is Sarah Palin Smarter than a third grader?

2008-10-21T21:23:00.000-07:00

Tonight Keith Olbermann, alarmed that his "Special Comments" were occurring with such frequency that they were no longer special, offered a "Campaign Comment" about Sarah Palin's continued confusion over the role and powers of the Vice President.

Yesterday, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) sat for an interview with KUSA, an NBC affiliate in Colorado. In response to a question sent to the network by a third grader at a local elementary school about what the Vice President does, Palin erroneously argued that the Vice President is "in charge of the United States Senate":

Q: Brandon Garcia wants to know, "What does the Vice President do?"

PALIN: That's something that Piper would ask me! ... [T]hey're in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.This is pretty eye-opening.

The Little Girl Who Silenced the World at the UN-IF ONLY SARAH PALIN COULD BE LIKE HER!!!

2008-10-20T21:18:00.000-07:00

This young girl's speech is way more powerful than any of Sarah Palin's speeches! Born and raised in Vancouver, Severn Suzuki has been working on environmental and social justice issues since kindergarten. At age 9, she and some friends started the Environmental Children's Organization (ECO), a small group of children committed to learning and teaching other kids about environmental issues. They traveled to 1992's UN Earth Summit, where 12 year-old Severn gave this powerful speech that deeply affected (and silenced) some of the most prominent world leaders. The speech had such an impact that she has become a frequent invitee to many UN conferences.

Women for McCain/Palin:

2008-10-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

THE BEST PALIN WEBSITE EVER!

2008-10-18T18:58:00.001-07:00

This is the best website on Palin EVER! It's interactive and fun for the kids! Clever, clever...you betcha!

Go here: http://www.palinaspresident.us/

Be sure to click on the various doors, windows, computer, phone... you'll figure it out!

Fey on Palin

2008-10-18T18:37:00.000-07:00

Tina Fey joins David Letterman and talks about her negative impression of Sarah Palin...

Sarah Palin: A Spiritual Thermometer

2008-10-18T18:00:00.000-07:00

Huffington Post
Eli Davidson October 16, 2008

The hair on the back of my neck stands up straight as a Polar bear looking for her cub anytime I hear Sarah talkin'. How dare she whip up hatred based on unfounded lies when she tells so many lies herself? I yelped with glee when the bipartisan commission found her guilty of abusing her power. I watched Keith Olberman's show 3 extra times just to gloat. Ha! They are widening their investigation of her. All along I have been saying that she was unqualified, and I love that the Republican pundits want her off the ticket. Impeachment isn't good enough for Sarah. I want to send her to that little island so that she can look at Russia all day long. This isn't a side of myself that I am used to seeing.

My reactions to her are so vehement that they leap out before I know it.

Sarah Palin Is Bad For My Social Life.
Last night I slammed the door on a man. A guy who made me laugh and was willing to go to art galleries, scuba dive and salsa with me. That may be an easy find in your town...but I live in L.A.

His offense?

A luke warm defense of Sarah Palin. (I was right to give him the boot...right?) Up until she moseyed down from Alaska, I could continue a somewhat civilized conversation with those of the Republican persuasion. All that stopped when Sarah hit the tarmac. Standing in my living room being suddenly single - all because of Sarah - I knew that I was off track.

If You See It You Be It
There is a great phrase in 12 Step Programs. "If you see it, you be it." Translation: I can't see a trait that I don't have inside myself. Reality: Somewhere deep inside me there lurked my own Sarah Palin. How could I be like Cruella De Palin? She shoots wolves from helicopters and legislates against Polar Bears? My heart began pounding as I looked more closely. She had exposed me to the parts of myself that I had hidden the Arctic of my consciousness. My fury at her unleashed the 'Tasmanian Devil' of my own rage.

I want to live in compassion, kindness and unconditional loving. I watch the power of positive regard transform lives on an almost daily basis. My intention is to use everything for learning, upliftment and growth and upliftment. The "Palin Effect" has shown where I am falling flat in terms of practicing acceptance and compassion. I couldn't stand the intolerance of the Bush administration. There I was - being intolerant. I knew I needed to do something about it.

How could I use Sarah Palin to learn and grow? It just seemed too big a hurdle at first. What if I could use Sarah Palin to take my own spiritual temperature? What if I could use her to become a more compassionate person?

Spiritual Thermometer
I equate warmth with the glow of caring and cold with the chill of hate. The great spiritual teachers have had the ability to see past a person's ego and actions. A true 'guru' sees the great beauty of a person's spirit even if they disagree with their actions. They hold the warmth of kindness for a fellow human being regardless of the situation or circumstance. How could I use the example of Buddha, Jesus or Mohamed to raise the temperature of my compassion?

Looking at my hardened heart I saw I had a block of the ice of indignation and blame for Palin and her party. I don't have to like her or McCain. I don't need to become apathetic or stop speaking up.

Ron Hulnick, Ph.D. raised an incredible issue at a recent University of Santa Monica event. He proposed that I look closely at the statement: "I am upset because _______." Do I accept that outer circumstances have the power to make me happy or unhappy? Regardless of what is happening outside I am the one's in control of my reactions. As impossible as it seems these days, the outer world doesn't make me upset. My perception or inner filter or button is what makes me cringe.

The Soul of Sarah Palin
The more I can view Sarah and Company as spiritual being having a human experience the more I raise my spiritual temperature of loving. There is a place in me that can love her even if I dislike her and everything she stands for. I have more to contribute to our nation and our world if I can bring myself to let go of the blame and find that authentic place of unity where Ms. Palin and I are one. I may fail miserably, but I know that I will gain a great deal in honoring the divinity in me by looking for the soul of Sarah Palin.

Palin: “I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?"

2008-10-18T17:46:00.000-07:00

From Rednecks For Obama-Posted by admin on 2008 October 3 (http://obamaredneck.com/)

That was a tiring “debate” to watch, the one between Biden and Palin. Whenever she spoke I felt like I was being beat over the head with a cornpone stupid stick. She babbled incoherently, lied, contradicted herself many times per minute, and tried to gussy it all up in some kind of small town act trying to appeal to rednecks, but I’m pretty sure most rednecks are smart enough to see through all that.

There was one moment though, near the end, that none of the pundits seem to have noticed in the post debate banter. It was when she said

I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?

Biden’s face kind of fell on that remark, because of course, his first wife Nelia and daughter Naomi were killed in a car crash just before Christmas in 1972. [edit: A clarification on a point brought up by a reader. Senator Biden's second and current wife, Jill, is a professor, and that is who Governor Palin was talking about. Biden knew Palin wasn't talking about Nelia, but the wording of the comment still brought up the pain of remembrance.] Senator Biden became more combative after that, and brought it home near the end with remarks about his understanding of parenthood.

Look, I understand what it’s like to be a single parent. When my wife and daughter died and my two sons were gravely injured, I understand what it’s like as a parent to wonder what it’s like if your kid’s going to make it.

Palin didn’t know how to respond to this heartfelt passion, so she followed with more incoherent babbling until she regained her composure somewhat, and went on a campaign rant about John McCain being a maverick. And that’s when Biden really hit back with a heated rebuttal with regard to McCain’s maverickness.

The pundits all thought she did well, but surely it’s only because the bar of expectations was so incredibly low for her. Look at some of these sentences!

In fact, 96 percent of his votes have been solely along party line, not having that proof for the American people to know that his commitment, too, is, you know, put the partisanship, put the special interests aside, and get down to getting business done for the people of America.

I do take issue with some of the principle there with that redistribution of wealth principle that seems to be espoused by you.

I had to take on those oil companies and tell them, “No,” you know, any of the greed there that has been kind of instrumental, I guess, in their mode of operation, that wasn’t going to happen in my state.

What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?

Education credit in American has been in some sense in some of our states just accepted to be a little bit lax and we have got to increase the standards.

Also, John McCain’s maverick position that he’s in, that’s really prompt up to and indicated by the supporters that he has.

Okay, but that’s more about style than substance, you say. Maybe, or maybe it’s an indication of her scramble-headedness, that there are times, a lot of times per minute when she just doesn’t think straight. You sure you want to have her being Commander in Chief? McCain looks like he’s been having some microstrokes lately. He doesn’t have to die for her to be president, he just has to be mentally incapacitated.

But there’s a lot of substance in her babbling that’s just plain wrong, and still more of it that’s self-contradictory. I don’t have time to go into a lot of it right now, but just look at her statement about the “white flag of surrender.” That is a complete misunderstanding of a timetable for withdrawal. The timetable is for the Iraqi troops, not for Al Qaeda! If we stay there forever, they’ll never have a reason to man up and take charge, unless it’s to go against us. But if we give them a timetable for when we’re going to leave, they’ll have an idea of how long they have to get prepared.

And then there’s all that malarkey about Wall Street being greedy and corrupt. Come on, lady! You just said you wanted to give rich people some big tax breaks so maybe they’ll give middle class folks some jobs. And what is it with these “hungry markets” that are “hungry” for oil? What’s their problem, are there places in the US where you can’t buy oil with money?

To me it just seems like she’s pandering to rednecks as if they’re stupid and provincial. But I’ll tell you what, a country boy can survive, and bein’ a naïve dumbass ain’t a part of his survival skills. I got yer cornpone right here, lady!

Palin Supporters-They are apPALINg!

2008-10-16T22:59:00.000-07:00

Former Wonder Woman: Be Very Afraid of Palin

2008-10-15T21:55:00.001-07:00

Philadelphia Magazine

Lynda Carter, who played Wonder Woman on television in the 1970s, slammed Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as the "anti-Wonder Woman."

Carter made her remarks in response to a question from Philadelphia Magazine about comparisons between Wonder Woman and Gov. Palin (Alaska), the GOP's first veep nominee.

"She’s judgmental and dictatorial, telling people how they’ve got to live their lives," Carter added. "And a superior religious self-righteousness … that’s just not what Wonder Woman is about. Hillary Clinton is a lot more like Wonder Woman than Mrs. Palin. She did it all, didn’t she?"

Carter said that it was "anti-American" to try to force religious views on others.

"I like John McCain," Carter said. "But this woman — it's anathema to me what she stands for. I think America should be very afraid. Very afraid. Separation of church and state is the one thing the creators of the Constitution did agree on — that it wasn’t to be a religious government. People should feel free to speak their minds about religion but not dictate it or put it into law."

Sarah Palin Claims New Hampshire as Part of the Great Northwest! Oh my!!!

2008-10-15T21:46:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin drew some boos and shouts of confusion today, when while speaking in New Hampshire she mistakenly claimed that the Granite State was part of the "great Northwest."

"I like being here," she told the crowd in Laconia, "because it seems like here and in our last rally too -- other parts around this great Northwest -- here in New Hampshire you just get it." ( OMG, Robyn, I guess you folks in the Laconia area get it! Scary! Why didn't you bring the rotten organic tomatoes!)

Palin Abused Power:

2008-10-15T21:43:00.000-07:00

Bush Strategist: McCain Knows He Put Country At Risk With Palin Pick

2008-10-15T00:47:00.000-07:00

Huffington Post-October 14, 2008 01:18 PM

Matthew Dowd, a prominent political consultant and chief strategist for George W. Bush's reelection campaign eviscerated John McCain on Tuesday for his choice of Sarah Palin as vice president.

Dowd proclaimed that, in his heart of hearts, McCain knew he put the country at risk with his VP choice and that he would "have to live" with that fact for the rest of his career.

"They didn't let John McCain pick the person he wanted to pick as VP," Dowd declared during the Time Warner Summit panel. "When Sarah Palin got picked instead of Joe Lieberman, which I fundamentally believed would have given John McCain the best opportunity in this race... as soon as he picked Palin, that whole ready versus not ready argument was not credible."

Saying that Palin was a "net negative" on the ticket, he went on: "[McCain] knows, in his gut, that he put somebody unqualified on the ballot. He knows that in his gut, and when this race is over that is something he will have to live with... He put somebody unqualified on that ballot and he put the country at risk, he knows that."

The other panelists were surprised, a bit, by Dowd's bluntness. Not least because McCain's well-known campaign motto is "country first."

"No, I don't agree," said Mark McKinnon, a former McCain aide, after chiding Dowd for claiming particular insight into McCain's soul.

"Well," responded Dowd, "that's even more disturbing than my thought" -- the implication being that it would be truly frightening if McCain didn't know how bad Palin truly was.

Time columnist Joe Klein summed up what seemed to be the panel's Palin consensus.

"It was a gimmick," he said of the pick. "It was one of the most disastrous decisions I have seen in a presidential campaign since I've begun covering them."

Later in the session, Hilary Rosen, the Huffington Post's Washington editor at large, noted that the Palin pick had been successful in energizing the Republican base -- and McCain himself. But Dowd wasn't biting.

"To me it is like Halloween," he said. "You get energized by eating all that candy at night but then you feel sick the next day."

'The View': Sarah Palin in Cheney in a dress!

2008-10-13T20:26:00.000-07:00

Palin mistakes fans for protesters at Va. rally

2008-10-13T20:07:00.000-07:00

AP Press-By BOB LEWIS, Associated Press Writer

RICHMOND, Va. - Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin mistook some of her own fans for hecklers Monday at a rally that drew thousands.

A massive crowd of at least 20,000 spread across the parking lot of Richmond International Raceway, and scores of people on the outer periphery more than 100 yards from the stage could not hear.

"Louder! Louder!" they began chanting, and the cry spread across the crowd to Palin's left. Some pointed skyward, urging that the volume be increased.

Palin stopped her remarks briefly and looked toward the commotion.

"I hope those protesters have the courage and honor to give veterans thanks for their right to protest," she said.

Some in the crowd tried to shout toward her what was really being said, but she couldn't hear them.

On a sunny day in which many had stood in place for more than three hours without shade, at least 25 people collapsed from heat-related illnesses and three were hospitalized, according to the Henrico County fire department.

Palin had campaigned with John McCain earlier Monday in Virginia Beach, only the second time the GOP ticket has campaigned in Virginia since June. Democrat Barack Obama or his running mate, Joe Biden, together visited the state eight times during that span.

Virginia has been solidly Republican for 40 years but is now a battleground, with both sides locked in a very close race for the state's 13 electoral votes.

Addressing the crowd, Palin largely avoided her recent criticisms of Obama. Instead, she acknowledged the emotion that has built up on both sides, particularly since the financial collapse.

"There is a lot of anger. There is anger at the inside dealing and anger at lobbyists and anger at the greed on Wall Street. There is anger at the Washington elite and there is anger at voter fraud," she said.

She promised a spending freeze if she and McCain win, and evoked cheers of "Drill, Baby, Drill!" in calling for greater domestic mining and oil drilling. The crowd roared when she criticized Biden for remarks he made in Ohio that the United States had little interest in coal-fired electrical power.

The afternoon's loudest ovation came when country music star Hank Williams Jr. offered a rendition of his hit "Family Tradition" that opened by assailing "the left-wing liberal media."

Palin later appeared in northern Virginia, raising half a million dollars at a fundraiser in McLean. About 400 people attended the $1,500 per person event Monday evening at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner. The money goes to the Republican Party since the McCain campaign can't raise any more money under federal rules.

Palin said voters will not be fooled into thinking that McCain's election would be the equivalent of a third term for President Bush. She said McCain "took the gloves off" at his campaign appearances Monday and shouldn't be faulted for pointing out differences in the two tickets' records.

About 40 Democratic protesters waved signs at rush-hour commuters in busy Tysons Corner before the event.

Tina Fey told TVGuide she'll be "done" if John McCain and Sarah Palin win the election next month.

2008-10-13T19:58:00.000-07:00

TV Guide | October 13, 2008 11:38 AM

The "SNL" veteran who has come back to play the Republican Vice Presidential candidate (and whose own show, "30 Rock," is still nowhere to be seen), said, "We're gonna take it week by week. If she wins, I'm done. I can't do that for four years. And by 'I'm done,' I mean I'm leaving Earth."

Fey also said it's a busy but exciting time for "SNL."

"Election time is always good for [SNL] and this is a bonkers election," she said. "And that lady is a media star. She is a fascinating person, she's very likeable. She's fun to play, and the two bits with Amy [Poehler], that was super fun," Fey says.

TIME Mag: Troopergate Report Shows Palin Administration "Shockingly Amateurish"

2008-10-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

Friday's report from special investigator Stephen Branchflower to Alaska's Legislative Council answered some basic questions about the political and personal bog known as Troopergate.

Did Governor Sarah Palin abuse the power of her office in trying to get her former brother-in-law, State Trooper Mike Wooten, fired? Yes.

Was the refusal to fire Mike Wooten the reason Palin fired Commissioner of Public Safety Walt Monegan? Not exclusively, and it was within her rights as the states' chief executive to fire him for just about any reason, even without cause.

Those answers were expected, given that most of the best pieces of evidence have been part of the public record for months. The result is not a mortal wound to Palin, nor does it put her at much risk of being forced to leave the ticket her presence succeeded in energizing.

But the Branchflower report still makes for good reading, if only because it convincingly answers a question nobody had even thought to ask: Is the Palin administration shockingly amateurish? Yes, it is. Disturbingly so.

The 263 pages of the report show a co-ordinated application of pressure on Monegan so transparent and ham-handed that it was almost certain to end in public embarrassment for the governor. The only surprise is that Troopergate is national news, not just a sorry piece of political gristle to be chewed on by Alaska politicos over steaks at Anchorage's Club Paris.

A harsh verdict? Consider the report's findings. Not only did people at almost every level of the Palin administration engage in repeated inappropriate contact with Walt Monegan and other high-ranking officials at the Department of Public Safety, but Monegan and his peers constantly warned these Palin disciples that the contact was inappropriate and probably unlawful. Still, the emails and calls continued — in at least one instance on recorded state trooper phone lines.

The state's head of personnel, Annette Kreitzer, called Monegan and had to be warned that personnel issues were confidential. The state's attorney general, Talis Colberg, called Monegan and had to be reminded that the call was putting both men in legal jeopardy, should Wooten decide to sue. The governor's chief of staff met with Monegan and had to be reminded by Monegan that, "This conversation is discoverable ... You don't want Wooten to own your house, do you?"

Monegan consistently emerges as the adult in these conversations, while the Palin camp displays a childish impetuousness and sense of entitlement.

One telling exchange: Deputy Commissioner John Glass, who worked under Monegan, told Branchflower he was "livid" after a Palin staffer, Frank Bailey, went outside the chain of command and called a state trooper in far-off Ketchikan to complain about Wooten. Why had Bailey called the trooper? Because, Bailey said, this trooper had gone to church with Sarah Palin back in Wasilla, so he felt "comfortable" talking to him about Wooten. Glass, too, tried to sound the warning that continuing to pressure anyone and everyone in the matter would end in "an unbelievable amount of embarrassment for the Governor and everybody else".

(See photos of Sarah Palin on the campaign trail)

Another amateurish sign: Todd Palin's outsize role in the mess. Branchflower said it was out of his jurisdiction to pass judgment on the First Gentleman, but his report paints an extralegal role for Todd Palin that would have made the Hillary Clinton of 1992 blush. In the report, the head of Gov. Palin's security detail says that Todd spent about half of his time in the governor's office — not at a desk (he didn't have one), but at a long conference table on one side of the office, with his own phone to make and receive calls. It became a shadow office, the informal Department of Getting Mike Wooten Fired.

It was at that long table that Todd Palin first scheduled a meeting with Walt Monegan, days after his wife's administration began. He showed Monegan three huge binders of evidence against Wooten, including a picture of a dead moose that had been shot illegally. After Monegan came back saying that there was no new actionable information, Todd began a very visible campaign of stewing and fuming, trying to get access to personnel files, calling up and down the Public Safety org chart.

The report also raises the suggestion that the final incident that led to Monegan's firing was perhaps the most (unintentionally) hilarious part of the whole saga. In the run-up to Alaska's 2008 Police Memorial Day event, Monegan visited Palin in Anchorage and brought along an official portrait of a state trooper in uniform, saluting in front of the police memorial in Anchorage, for Palin to sign and present at the event. The trooper? Mike Wooten.

Palin signed the photo and didn't say anything, according to Monegan's testimony, but later cancelled her attendance at the event, sending Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell in her place. The head of her Anchorage office followed up with a call to Monegan berating him for his insensitivity. (Monegan swears he didn't know it was Wooten in the picture, and that he didn't even know what Wooten looked like.)

Shortly after that incident, Monegan's fate was cast. But even then, Palin's staffers were blithely adding more evidence to Troopergate. When Monegan's potential successor, Chuck Kopp, asked Bailey, the Palin staffer, why Monegan was being fired, he was told simply: "Todd is really upset with Monegan."

So what does this say about the possible Vice-President of the United States? Certainly not as much as her enemies would have hoped. She was only directly involved in a small bit of the pressure campaign — a meeting or two and a couple of emails. She can thank Monegan for not having her hands dirtier; it was he who told her to keep herself at "arm's length" from any Wooten conversations.

But even though she won't likely face any legal repercussions, the amateurism and cronyism of her brief administration hardly leaves Palin sitting pretty. Troopergate's final verdict may be even more damaging than a rebuke: her administration was, at least this regard, just as self-motivated as the Washington fat cats and lobbyists she hopes to unseat.

The Hockey Mom, Palin, Was Booed At Philadelphia Flyers' Hockey Game

2008-10-12T08:51:00.000-07:00

Gov. Sarah Palin is roundly booed while dropping first puck at Philadelphia Flyers New York Rangers hockey game. Note the fans in the bkgd and how the PA blasts the music to wash out the reaction.

Palin Supporter Brings Racist Monkey "Obama" Doll to Rally

2008-10-12T08:44:00.000-07:00

A Sarah Palin supporter brings a racist monkey doll wearing an Obama sticker to a campaign rally. After the man realizes he's been caught on camera, he hides the doll, passing it off to a child. Watch closely:

This is so RIDICULOUS, it is sad...

2008-10-12T08:31:00.001-07:00

At a town hall meeting, a woman tells McCain she is scared of Obama because "he is an Arab"...

How many killed animals is Sarah Palin responsible for?

2008-10-10T21:47:00.001-07:00

Evil Sarah, Wolf Killer

2008-10-10T21:40:00.001-07:00

Meet Sarah Palin’s radical right-wing pals

2008-10-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

Madonna Goes Off on Sarah Palin in NYC

2008-10-09T20:41:00.000-07:00

I don't care for her profanity, but at least she is speaking out...thanks, Madonna!

Palin Says Obama Would Diminish "The Prestige Of The United States Presidency"

2008-10-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

Politico | Andy Barr | October 9, 2008 02:40 PM

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin attacked Barack Obama Thursday for not being honest about his association with 1960's radical William Ayers.

"Barack Obama hasn't told the American people the total truth about that, about his association with Ayers," Palin said on conservative radio host Laura Ingraham's show. "Doggonit he fails to tell the American people with candor and with truthfulness what his associations are and we have to know."

Palin blamed the media for not providing what she characterized as the same level of scrutiny to Obama that it has applied to her and running mate John McCain.

"I don't see the other ticket being asked to be truthful and give details," Palin said.

"Some in the mainstream media are saying that well we're taking the gloves off unfairly. No. You know there are only, what, 26 days to go. We gotta start getting answers to these questions that are paramount here so that voters have a choice in front of them that is based on truthfulness and candor. They deserve it."

The Alaska governor told Ingraham's listeners that if those questions were being answered, voters would find Obama "out of the mainstream," adding that the Illinois senator would diminish "the prestige of the United States presidency."

Is Palin Trying To Incite Violence Against Obama?

2008-10-09T20:26:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey Feldman
Posted October 7, 2008 | 09:19 AM (EST)
Huffington Post

MCCAIN CAMP TALKS 'CHARACTER ASSASSINATION,' SUPPORTERS SHOUT FOR REAL ASSASSINATION!

At her last rally in Florida, Sarah Palin told the audience that Barack Obama "palled around with terrorists" adding,"I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America." Upon hearing the Republican VP candidate's concern that Sen. Obama might be a terrorist, a voice in the crowd cried out 'Kill him!'

McCain Campaign Amplifies Violent Rhetoric, GOP Crowds Threaten Obama's Life
The Washington Post's Dana Milbank reported an incident at a Palin rally that should open America's eyes to the central role violent rhetoric now plays in the McCain campaign. Milbank describes how Palin told the crowd in Florida that Obama has close associations with a terrorist who sought to bomb the Pentagon and the U.S. Capital, in response to which the crowd responded with a threat on Sen. Obama's life:

"Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers...And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she continued.

"Boooo!" the crowd repeated.

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

Palin went on to say that "Obama held one of the first meetings of his political career in Bill Ayers's living room, and they've worked together on various projects in Chicago." Here, Palin began to connect the dots. "These are the same guys who think that patriotism is paying higher taxes -- remember that's what Joe Biden had said. "And" -- she paused and sighed -- "I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America, as the greatest force for good in the world. I'm afraid this is someone who sees America as 'imperfect enough' to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country." (link)

Palin's new rhetorical strategy signifies an alarming new development in the 2008 Presidential election, and one that has been not only been documented by such high profile newspapers as the Washington Post, but confirmed by the McCain campaign itself.

"It's a dangerous road, but we have no choice," a top McCain strategist recently admitted to the Daily News. "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose." (link)

The 'dangerous road,' however, is not just a generic attack on Sen. Obama's trustworthiness or honesty. Rather, the McCain campaign has chosen to stand before campaign rallies and accuse Sen. Obama of hiding sympathies with domestic terrorists--to accuse their opponent, essentially, of being a terrorist.

With the McCain campaign now using the Palin stump speech to accuse Sen. Obama of hiding a terrorist agenda, the McCain campaign has staked its future on rhetoric that skirts the boundary between character assassination and incitements of actual violence against their opponent.

Meanwhile, while McCain is not yet accusing Obama of terrorism in his own stump speech, the crowds at his rallies are.

In a recent video clip from MSNBC, McCain asked a rally, "Who is the real Barack Obama?" In response to McCain's rhetorical question, a voice from the crowd can be clearly heard to shout in response, "Terrorist!" (link)

Since the start of the election campaign well over a year ago, voters have been subject to ongoing smear campaigns in emails and push polls accusing Sen. Obama of ties to and sympathies with domestic and foreign terrorist groups. No matter how many times these smear campaigns have been exposed, they continued. Now that John McCain and Sarah Palin have echoed these accusations--the idea that Sen. Obama is secretly a terrorist has the stamp of approval of a presidential campaign, but of a multi-term U.S. senator and a U.S. governor.

One wonders at this point how the various agencies charged with the responsibility of protecting the Presidential candidates from violence will respond to this latest tactic from the McCain campaign. If, for example, a McCain supporter threatens the life of Sen. Obama by shouting 'Kill him!' at a Palin rally, should Sen. Obama's Secret Service contingent launch an investigation? Having been accused of terrorist ties by the McCain campaign, will Sen. Obama's name be put on the 'No Fly' list, effectively making it impossible for him to engage in normal airline travel?

An even more basic question, perhaps: Is Gov. Palin trying to incite violence against Sen. Obama as part of an ill-conceived campaign strategy to change the topic from the economy at any cost?

Time will tell how law enforcement will respond, but one thing is already certain: the more Palin and McCain incite calls for violence against Sen. Obama, the more their chances of achieving a victory in November disappear.

Palin Nods Head as McCain Loses It and Calls Americans 'My Fellow Prisoners'

2008-10-08T21:52:00.000-07:00

Brigitte Bardot: Sarah Palin Is "A Disgrace For Women"

2008-10-07T23:22:00.000-07:00

AFP | October 7, 2008 02:24 PM

Paris-French film legend-turned-activist Brigitte Bardot took a swipe at Sarah Palin on Tuesday, saying the US vice presidential candidate was a disgrace to women.

"I hope you lose these elections because that would be a victory for the world," Bardot wrote in an open letter to Republican John McCain's running mate in the November vote.

"By denying the responsibility of man in global warming, by advocating gun rights and making statements that are disconcertingly stupid, you are a disgrace to women and you alone represent a terrible threat, a true environmental catastrophe," wrote Bardot.

The screen icon from the 1960s, who now heads an animal rights foundation, went on to assail Palin for supporting Arctic oil exploration that could jeopardize delicate animal habitats and for dismissing measures to protect polar bears.

"This shows your total lack of responsibility, your inability to protect or simply respect animal life," Bardot wrote.

In a final salvo against Palin, the 74-year-old ex-star picked up on Palin's depiction of herself as a pitbull wearing lipstick and said she "implored" her not to compare herself to dogs.

"I know them well and I can assure you that no pitbull, no dog, nor any other animal for that matter is as dangerous as you are," Bardot wrote.

AP: Palin Stretches The Truth

2008-10-07T23:12:00.000-07:00

BETH FOUHY | October 7, 2008 07:44 PM EST |

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin tells audiences the election is about the "truthfulness and judgment" needed to be president. But the Alaska governor often stretches the truth herself.

She has exaggerated the nature of Barack Obama's personal ties to a former 1960s radical and falsely claimed the Democratic presidential candidate plans to raise most people's taxes.

On Tuesday, she tried rebutting the Illinois senator's criticisms of Republican presidential candidate John McCain over health care and Social Security. She said Obama was misleading and wrong, but she herself told less than the full story.

To be sure, most of Palin's assertions about Obama echo claims McCain himself has made or lines from Republican TV ads.

At a rally Tuesday, Palin tried to link Obama to the failure of housing giant Fannie Mae by noting that two Obama supporters once led the troubled company. The government seized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, another housing finance company, last month to prevent their collapse from worsening the global credit crisis.

"What's next, claiming that he didn't know two of his biggest supporters were running Fannie Mae, the subprime mortgage giant?" Palin said. "That has done harm to the American economy."

She referred to Jim Johnson, who chaired Fannie Mae from 1991-1998, and Franklin Raines, his successor who stepped down in 2004 in an accounting scandal.

But Palin exaggerated Obama's ties to Raines and Johnson while omitting any mention of a closer relationship between a top McCain aide and the failed housing giants.

Raines and Johnson support Obama but do not have strong ties to him or his campaign. Johnson briefly headed Obama's vice presidential search last spring but resigned amid controversy over loans he got with help from an executive of Countrywide Financial Corp., a lender damaged by the mortgage meltdown.

Meanwhile, until August, Freddie Mac paid $15,000 a month to a lobbying firm headed by McCain campaign manager Rick Davis. The payment came on top of more than $30,000 a month Davis was paid directly by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from 2000-2005 to head the Homeownership Alliance, an advocacy group.

Davis has not taken any compensation from his lobbying firm since 2006, the McCain campaign said.

Palin has made other questionable assertions:

_She suggests Obama was disrespectful of U.S. soldiers when he said U.S. troops in Afghanistan were just "air-raiding villages and killing civilians."

The partial quote is misleading. The Illinois senator said once, in August 2007, when pressing to send more troops to Afghanistan: "We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops" so they aren't just "air-raiding villages and killing civilians."

Shortly before his comment, an Associated Press analysis showed that more civilians in Afghanistan had been killed by Western forces than by militants.

_Her claim that Obama would raise most people's taxes. "The phoniest claim in a campaign that's full of them is that Barack Obama is going to cut your taxes," she tells supporters.

Obama has promised a tax cut for those making less than $250,000 per year _ about 90 percent of all taxpayers. Only those making over $250,000 would get tax increases under Obama's proposal.

McCain has pledged not to raise any taxes.

Speaking to reporters aboard her campaign plane, Palin defended her tough talk. When asked if whether her claims suggest Obama is dishonest, Palin said, "I'm not saying he's dishonest. But in terms of judgment, in terms of being able to answer a question forthrightly, it has two different parts to this _ that judgment and that truthfulness."

At a fundraiser Tuesday, Palin also pushed back against an Obama TV ad suggesting McCain's health care plan would force employers to drop coverage for millions.

"Every middle class American family will have a $5,000 credit, tax credit, to buy the health care coverage that you choose and Barack Obama's calling that a tax," Palin said. "I don't know how he can capture this and spin it into being a tax on Americans. No, it is a credit."

In fact, McCain's plan would tax health care benefits people receive from employers in order to finance the $5,000 tax credit. Obama's ads argue the new tax would raise the cost of insurance for employers, forcing millions off the rolls.

In the journal Health Affairs, economists projected McCain's plan would lead 20 million people to lose employer-sponsored insurance, while 21 million people would gain coverage through the individual market.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found McCain's tax credit would be more generous than the current tax break initially but could fall behind in later years. The center also found his plan would increase the deficit by $1.3 trillion over 10 years.

Palin also defended McCain against an Obama campaign TV ad on Social Security that began running last month in Florida and elsewhere. The ad says McCain supported Bush's plan to privatize Social Security and claims McCain supports cutting Social Security benefits in half and "risking Social Security on the stock market."

Palin disputed that.

"We will protect the retirement programs that Americans depend on, above all Social Security," Palin said. "No presidential election cycle is complete ... without the Democratic candidate coming down here to Florida especially and trying to stir up fear and panic on this issue of Social Security."

McCain did support Bush's unsuccessful Social Security plan to allow current workers to voluntarily divert some of their Social Security taxes into private stock accounts. Now, McCain says "nothing is off the table" in ensuring the soundness of the program. But none of what McCain supported would apply to current Social Security recipients.

The benefit cut comes from a separate Bush provision that would have changed how benefits keep up with inflation; independent analysts concluded this change could cut benefits by 50 percent for higher income beneficiaries who retire in 2080.

The CUTEST Sarah Palin song EVER!!!!

2008-10-07T23:01:00.000-07:00

Sarah's Beauty Pageant Days:

2008-10-07T00:05:00.000-07:00

First came the swimsuit competition, then the talent (flute) portion, and now Sarah Heath Palin's evening gown competition video from Miss Alaska 1984 has hit the web.

Dressed in a blue sequined gown, she first goes to the microphone and says:
"God has made us this promise: If we will commit our works to Him, we will succeed. Our lives can be enhanced by applying this, and by thinking optimistically. In Alaska we have mosquitoes. We also have the most beautiful mountains in the world. The choice is ours as to which we'll focus on."

Questions Linger About Palin Taxes

2008-10-06T23:58:00.000-07:00

New York Times
October 6, 2008, 3:19 PM
Questions Linger About Palin Taxes
By LESLIE WAYNE

Now that tax attorneys have had a chance to review Gov. Sarah Palin’s tax returns, which were released late last week, a new round of questions are being raised on tax-related websites.

One big issue that tax attorneys are pointing to is the fact that the Palins did not report as income the $43,490 that the state gave the family to cover travel expenses for Mr. Palin and the Palin children. Had the Palins reported these payments as income, the couple would have had to pay taxes on it.

These tax attorneys note that neither Mr. Palin nor the children were employees of the state. Nor were they traveling on behalf of the state. There was some discussion that perhaps some portion of Mr. Palin’s travel expenses might be excludable as income if there was a bona-fide business reason for his presence and if he assisted Mrs. Palin in her official duties.

But there was also uniform agreement that it would be hard to make a case for the not reporting the payments to the children as income.

“The children’s travel payments are clearly taxable income,’’ said Jack Bogdanski, a tax professor at the Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland and a former advisor to the Internal Revenue Service. “The money paid for Todd Palin’s travel might possibly turn out to be tax-free, but it would be quite a stretch.”

Bryan T. Camp, a tax law professor at Texas Tech University School of Law, said “There is no suggestion that either Todd or the kids are employed by the State of Alaska. Maybe they should be.” Mr. Camp added “The issue is whether Palin gets the $43,000 tax free – no income tax, no Social Security tax, no Medicare tax, not a dime.” His conclusion: The payments are taxable.

So if that is the case, how much might the Palins owe? Mr. Bogdanski said that, at the least, the family should have reported the $24,728 in children’s travel reimbursements. He calculates a tax bill of $6,000, based on a tax rate of between 25 and 28 percent. There would also be additional interest payments since last April 15.

The other area attracting attention is Mr. Palin’s snowmobiling racing and whether it is a legitimate business (which allows the Palins to deduct snowmobiling expenses) or whether it is a hobby, for which no deductions will be allowed.

The Palin’s deducted $9,000 in business losses from snowmobiling. This tax-loss would not be allowed if the activity is a hobby. The I.R.S. rule is that if an activity produces a profit in three of the past five years, is a businesses and not a hobby. But the Palins released tax returns for only two years, so it is impossible to tell. One year showed a $9,000 loss, the other year a slight profit.

Another I.R.S. test is whether making a profit — and not just having fun in the snow — was the “predominate, primary or principal objective” of Mr. Palin’s snowmobiling.

As Mr. Camp writes, the tax question is: “Why does he do it? Love of sport or love of lucre?”

Watch: Palin Speech Makes Stock Market Fall!

2008-10-06T23:55:00.000-07:00

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Fla. Sheriff Plays calls Obama "Barrack Hussein Obama" at Palin Rally

2008-10-06T23:49:00.000-07:00

October 6, 2008
(CBS)
From CBS News' Scott Conroy:

Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott took the stage moments ago as one of the introductory speakers at a rally here for Sarah Palin. After delivering brief remarks in support of Palin, Sheriff Scott flipped the switch and used Barack Obama’s middle name in order to incite the crowd of thousands of people who have already gathered here.

“On Nov. 4, let’s leave Barack Hussein Obama wondering what happened,” the law enforcement officer said.

UPDATE: Palin campaign spokesperson Tracey Schmitt issued the following statement on Sherriff Scott’s remarks: “We do not condone this inappropriate rhetoric which distracts from the real questions of judgment, character, and experience that voters will base their decisions on this November.”

According to his web site, Scott became sheriff in 2005.

“People could say running for sheriff took either courage, ignorance, or a combination of both,” Scott said on the web site.

Many of the thousands of people in attendance roared their approval at Sheriff Scott’s dig at the Democratic nominee, whose Kenyan father shared the same exact name as his son.

After Sheriff Scott left the podium, local radio host Mandy Connell took the stage next. She too drew a loud ovation when she said Obama “hangs around with terrorists.”

This is the best commentary on Sarah yet!

2008-10-06T23:40:00.000-07:00

On Countdown tonight, Keith Olbermann offered a "Special Comment" about Sarah Palin's remarks that Obama was "pallin' around with terrorists."

In slip up, Palin calls Afghanistan “our neighboring country”

2008-10-06T23:35:00.000-07:00

Reuters
Posted by: Jason Szep

SAN FRANCISCO - Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin called Afghanistan “our neighboring country” on Sunday in a speech that could revive questions over her tendency to stumble into linguistic knots.

Three days after a mostly gaffe-free debate performance, the Alaska governor fumbled during a speech in which she praised U.S. soldiers for “fighting terrorism and protecting us and our democratic values”.

“They are also building schools for the Afghan children so that there is hope and opportunity in our neighboring country of Afghanistan,” she told several hundred supporters at a fundraising event in San Francisco.

The gaffe could add fuel to comedians and late-night talk show hosts who have seized on her linguistic infelicities to portray her as someone not to be taken seriously.

Later in a speech in Omaha, Neb., Palin poked a little fun at herself when talking about one comedian in particular — actress Tina Fey whose dead-on impression of Palin’s looks, voice and body language has been a hit.

Fey, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Palin, has parodied her as a rambling, perky politician unfamiliar with world issues for three straight weeks on the comedy show “Saturday Night Live”.

“I was just trying to give Tina Fey more material — job security for Saturday Night Live,” Palin said.

The skits have become a sensation since an awkward interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric in which Palin failed to coherently express her views about Russia, the U.S. government’s $700 billion financial bailout package, and the newspapers or magazines she reads.

In recent days, the 44-year-old self-described “hockey mom” has described the Couric interview as “less than successful”, and apologized to crowds of supporters for her shaky performance, saying she was “annoyed” and “impatient” because she wanted to talk about other issues like energy independence.

Gwen Ifill says: Palin "blew me off" during debate!

2008-10-06T23:24:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post | Rachel Weiner | October 5, 2008 at 01:09 PM

On "Meet the Press" Sunday morning, vice presidential debate moderator Gwen Ifill said Palin "more than ignored" some of her questions -- she "blew me off." She added that Palin decided to "give a stump speech" instead of a debate, and that there's "little a moderator can do" to stop that. Watch:

Here she goes again, misquoting again, Sarah?

2008-10-05T19:49:00.001-07:00

Palin Misquotes Albright: "Place In Hell Reserved For Women Who Don't Support Other Women"

By Nico Pitney
pitney@huffingtonpost.com
October 5, 2008 01:16 AM

At a rally on Saturday in California, Sarah Palin offered up a rather jarring argument for supporting the Republican ticket. "There's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't support other women," the Alaska Governor said, claiming she was quoting former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

The statement came after Palin had recounted a "providential" moment she experienced on Saturday: "I'm reading on my Starbucks mocha cup, okay? The quote of the day... It was Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State [crowd boos] and UN ambassador. ... Now she said it, I didn't. She said, 'There's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't support other women.'"

Actually, Albright didn't say that. The accurate quote is, "There's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't help other women." (Sources made the same point to CBS's Scott Conroy.)

Palin seemed to realize that the line could be viewed as grating. As the audience cheered, she remarked: "Okay, now, thank you so much for receiving that well. I didn't know how that was gonna go over. And now, California, let's see what a comment like I just made, how that is turned into whatever it'll be turned into tomorrow with the newspaper."

Albright responded to Palin's remarks in a statement to the Huffington Post on Sunday. "Though I am flattered that Governor Palin has chosen to cite me as a source of wisdom, what I said had nothing to do with politics. This is yet another example of McCain and Palin distorting the truth, and all the more reason to remember that this campaign is not about gender, it is about which candidate has an agenda that will improve the lives of all Americans, including women. The truth is, if you care about the status of women in our society and in our troubled economy, the best choice by far is Obama-Biden."

AP: Palin's Ayers Attack "Racially Tinged"

2008-10-05T19:46:00.001-07:00

Huffington Post
DOUGLASS K. DANIEL | October 5, 2008 08:52 PM EST |

WASHINGTON — By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and doesn't see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.

And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.

First, Palin's attack shows that her energetic debate with rival Joe Biden may be just the beginning, not the end, of a sharpened role in the battle to win the presidency.

"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo. A deliberate attempt to smear Obama, McCain's ticket-mate echoed the line at three separate events Saturday.

"This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America," she said. "We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism."

Obama isn't above attacking McCain's character with loaded words, releasing an ad on Sunday that calls the Arizona Republican "erratic" _ a hard-to miss suggestion that McCain's age, 72, might be an issue.

"Our financial system in turmoil," an announcer says in Obama's new ad. "And John McCain? Erratic in a crisis. Out of touch on the economy."

A harsh and plainly partisan judgment, certainly, but not on the level of suggesting that a fellow senator is un-American and even a friend of terrorists.

Story continues below

In her character attack, Palin questions Obama's association with William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground. Her reference was exaggerated at best if not outright false. No evidence shows they were "pals" or even close when they worked on community boards years ago and Ayers hosted a political event for Obama early in his career.

Obama, who was a child when the Weathermen were planting bombs, has denounced Ayers' radical views and actions.

With her criticism, Palin is taking on the running mate's traditional role of attacker, said Rich Galen, a Republican strategist.

"There appears to be a newfound sense of confidence in Sarah Palin as a candidate, given her performance the other night," Galen said. "I think that they are comfortable enough with her now that she's got the standing with the electorate to take off after Obama."

Second, Palin's incendiary charge draws media and voter attention away from the worsening economy. It also comes after McCain supported a pork-laden Wall Street bailout plan in spite of conservative anger and his own misgivings.

"It's a giant changing of the subject," said Jenny Backus, a Democratic strategist. "The problem is the messenger. If you want to start throwing fire bombs, you don't send out the fluffy bunny to do it. I think people don't take Sarah Palin seriously."

The larger purpose behind Palin's broadside is to reintroduce the question of Obama's associations. Millions of voters, many of them open to being swayed to one side or the other, are starting to pay attention to an election a month away.

For the McCain campaign, that makes Obama's ties to Ayers as well as convicted felon Antoin "Tony" Rezko and the controversial minister Jeremiah Wright ripe for renewed criticism. And Palin brings a fresh voice to the argument.

Effective character attacks have come earlier in campaigns. In June 1988, Republican George H.W. Bush criticized Democrat Michael Dukakis over the furlough granted to Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who then raped a woman and stabbed her companion. Related TV ads followed in September and October.

The Vietnam-era Swift Boat veterans who attacked Democrat John Kerry's war record started in the spring of 2004 and gained traction in late summer.

"The four weeks that are left are an eternity. There's plenty of time in the campaign," said Republican strategist Joe Gaylord. "I think it is a legitimate strategy to talk about Obama and to talk about his background and who he pals around with."

Palin's words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee "palling around" with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn't see their America?

In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers' day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.

Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as "not like us" is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.

The fact is that when racism creeps into the discussion, it serves a purpose for McCain. As the fallout from Wright's sermons showed earlier this year, forcing Obama to abandon issues to talk about race leads to unresolved arguments about America's promise to treat all people equally.

John McCain occasionally says he looks back on decisions with regret. He has apologized for opposing a holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr. He has apologized for refusing to call for the removal of a Confederate flag from South Carolina's Capitol.

When the 2008 campaign is over will McCain say he regrets appeals such as Palin's? ___

EDITOR'S NOTE _ Douglass K. Daniel is a writer and editor with the Washington bureau of The Associated Press.

Palin's neighbor who hasn't voted since McCarthy, is voting Obama!

2008-10-04T09:18:00.000-07:00

Back home, Palin lives model life in Last Frontier
By GARANCE BURKE (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
October 04, 2008 10:45 AM EDT

WASILLA, Alaska - To people in this hard-scrabble region tucked between two soaring mountain ranges, Gov. Sarah Palin is a working-class heroine. As the Republican vice presidential candidate's star rises nationally, she's increasingly held up as the model for life in the Last Frontier.

Palin and her husband, Todd, a champion snowmobiler racer, have all the trappings of that life: a coveted permit to fish salmon-rich Bristol Bay, a vast gun collection, a vintage float-plane and a fleet of gas-powered vehicles to roar through the wilderness.

"Everyone hunts and fishes here, but it's just that few people look so good doing it as Todd and Sarah," said David Parks, a 27-year-old Republican who has known Sarah Palin since he was a child and is volunteering for her campaign. "What attracts people is they have the plane, the snow machines and the whole lifestyle."

Others, though, object to the governor's readiness to equate her conservative values with the Alaskan way of life.

"Sarah's got all the toys to be marketed as the Alaska wilderness woman, but the reality is that she's been in that uppercrust for a while," said John Gourley, who with his wife, Jennifer, raised three children in a generator-powered cabin near Wasilla. "Plus, she's a trophy hunter, and I tend to respect people who shoot a moose because they need the meat."

Gourley said he hasn't voted for a presidential candidate since liberal Sen. Eugene McCarthy but now plans to vote for Democrat Barack Obama.

Even before McCain chose Palin as his running mate, she had appeared in magazines like Vogue - where she's shot in a long wrap, striding on the tundra - and in local brochures aimed at new arrivals to Wasilla that tout "tours of local dog mushing kennels and local farms, trips to glaciers and musk ox farms are part of the local fun."

"First Dude" Todd Palin is also a local celebrity, having won four medals in the Iron Dog, a grueling 55-hour snowmobile race that follows the 2,000-mile Iditarod Trail from Wasilla to Fairbanks.

"They're competitive people, and you can judge their level of sport by how hard they go at it all," said his longtime racing partner, Scott Davis. "You're trying to raise a family and run a company and race and be in politics? That takes a lot of dedication."

The family's seasonal working arrangement - common to many rural Alaskans - has earned them a relatively affluent life in the sprawling Matanuska-Sisutna region 40 miles north of Anchorage, where many roads are still dirt and some houses lack indoor plumbing.

"A huge part of Sarah Palin's appeal is that people see her as an ordinary person," said Dianne Woodruff, the lone nonpartisan member of Wasilla's Republican-dominated city council. "Truthfully, though, she's been a very fortunate ordinary person."

As governor, Palin draws a $125,000 annual salary. Todd Palin's self-employment in 2007 brought him $66,893 in gross receipts from fishing and snowmachine racing, though tax returns released Friday show an overall net income of only $5,874 after deductions. He also earned $43,519 working part-time on the North Slope for BP Exploration.

In the past two decades, the Palins have owned 43 vehicles, including at least 17 snowmobiles. In 2000, the most recent year for which information is available, there were 33,576 registered snowmobiles for a total of 221,600 Alaskan households, which means the average household did not have even one snowmobile, according to the Division of Motor Vehicles and the U.S. Census Bureau.

Their large lakeside home - worth $526,800, according to the most recent assessment - sits on more than two acres and looks onto the jutting Chugiak Mountains and groves of white birch.

Tied to the deck is their red-and-white Piper Cub plane, an outdoorsman's favorite that can be outfitted with skis in winter to fish on frozen lakes.

Local Democrats caution that just because Sarah Palin can butcher a moose doesn't mean she's prepared to be vice president.

But this is Alaska. Palin bagged her first bunny when she was 10, and her family proudly circulated a photograph of Palin posing over a caribou she shot a day after she was nominated for vice president.

Dare I believe Obama can win?

2008-10-03T17:00:00.001-07:00

By Courtney E. Martin
Fri Oct 3, 4:00 AM ET
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Like so many Americans, I feel as though I am holding my breath.

Could the quiet seed of joy that was planted in my heart the day I heard Barack Obama speak for the first time take root and grow without fear of the brutal storms of disappointment?

Could a leader that evokes awe in me actually win a presidential election? Could the beauty – and logic – of his words win over the majority of this country's voters? Could they see past the lies and distractions to the center of a human being who sincerely wants to invoke citizens' higher selves?

Could a system that seems so broken, so moneyed, so corrupt actually serve to help the American people elect an authentic, complex thinker? Could it be that – despite all that is wrong with the electoral process – there is enough right to allow a thoughtful candidate to get through the muck and emerge earnest and excited to lead?

Could the inspirational, not aspirational, America that I was raised to believe in – Eleanor Roosevelt with her Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Martin Luther King Jr. with his dream, and John F. Kennedy with his "ask not" encouragement – be the America that I live in?

And finally, and perhaps most profoundly, could this country reflect the best within me?

There is part of me, I admit, that is fearful and self-focused and, worst of all, cynical. She understands why people stay home from the polls. But there is another part of me that is courageous and compassionate and, best of all, idealistic. If Senator Obama is elected, I feel as though that best part of me – the best part of all of us – will be given permission to lead.

As Nov. 4 nears, I feel heavy with internal struggle and dangerous anticipation.

I have never voted for a presidential candidate who has won, much less in an election that wasn't considered potentially corrupt. I have never gone to sleep on Election Day with a sense of accomplishment, with the satisfying congruency of my values and those of the country's leader merging as one.

I have never woken up the next day without a deep, wide sadness, without a sense that my country doesn't reflect my dearest beliefs, that it actually mocks my youthful enthusiasm for the political process and commitment to following my political heart.

Now I watch Obama, a leader who articulates my own ideas and intuitions with the most eloquent grace, on the brink of a presidential miracle. His words about the critical nature of cohesive community, about injustice, about personal responsibility ring so true in my ears. But I'm scared to believe.

I don't think that Obama is a "messiah." I know that he has flaws, that he will fail in many ways, that the space between his ideals and his actions will often gape with a discomfiting hypocrisy, or at the very least, inefficiency.

But I am almost certain that he is good deep down, that he believes, as I do, that we could do better, that we could be better, that we are – when stripped of bureaucracy and alienation and skepticism – already better.

It is not his inevitable fall from grace that I fear. It is the possibility that on Nov. 4, I will find out that my acute craving for a kind and complex leader is not shared by the majority of Americans. That conclusion to this breathtaking story would tempt me, not just to be alienated from American politics, but from the American people. I fear that the worst part of me would bully the best part with cruel words: "I told you so. Hope is dangerous and naive."

But what would Obama himself say to that sentiment? I imagine he'd stay calm, in his top-of-the-lake-on-a-still-day kind of way. He'd remind me that his candidacy was never about him, but about me, about all of us. That it isn't his victory that confirms America's greatness, nor his defeat that disproves it; it's our own capacity to be resilient and committed to change every day, in all sorts of quiet, nonpresidential ways.

If Obama is elected, if I am invited to rejoice with the majority of Americans, the best part of me will have a chance to smile triumphantly at the worst.

Sometimes you believe in someone and they inspire you right back. Sometimes kindness and wisdom triumph over fear and brutality. Sometimes this country is as amazing as your wildest imagination of it.

• Courtney E. Martin is the author of "Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters" and a columnist for The American Prospect Online.

Welcome To Sarahland

2008-10-02T22:17:00.000-07:00

Art Brodsky
Posted October 2, 2008 | 11:22 PM (EST)
Huffington Post

Welcome to Sarahland. It's a magical place, where the sun always shines, everything is just perfect and where reality is simply an optional mode of existence.

We all got a little tour tonight through Sarahland, as Alaska's Republican governor Sarah Palin, who successfully buried a bipartisan investigation of her actions firing the state's top cop, pledged to the altar of bipartisanship.

In Sarahland, answering questions asked to you is optional. You say what you want to say, regardless of what that old-school questioner has to offer. Want to talk about education, or taxes? Go right ahead. It doesn't matter what the question is. She cheerfully admitted she won't answer the question the moderator, Gwen Ifill, wants to ask or even stick to the topics Ifill wants the candidates to discuss.

Have a few talking points you want repeat endlessly, regardless of whether they are true? Go right ahead. Talk about Barack Obama's not funding the troops. Talk about Barack Obama's raising taxes. Talk about the importance of drilling (Drill, Baby, Drill.) Why should facts be able to intrude on one's permanent sunny disposition? What does it matter if John McCain also voted against funding the troops if you can wink at the camera and sound like down-home gotcha Alaska? What does it matter if you continually mis-state Obama's tax play if you can recite homilies about the greatness of America without getting down to specifics and wave the bloody image of the "white flag of surrender"? What does it matter if John McCain opposed alternative fuels? One just plows ahead on perkiness.

In Sarahland, one gets props for pronouncing correctly the names of foreign leaders, even if they are not the right leaders to be discussing. In Sarahland, one can interpret the Constitution as one wishes, regardless of whether that interpretation has any merit. In Sarahland, inconvenient truths like taxing of health benefits can simply be wished away.

In Sarahland, every question is an opportunity for the pageant contestant to look perky, to take her best shot and to exude confidence - even if nothing the contestant says has anything to do with the discussion at hand. In Sarahland, winks and nods and aphorisms are enough to carry a spunky person through the worst of times - like an hour and a half of being schooled by someone older, smarter and more polished and more informed.

Sarahland occasionally welcomes visitors to its borders. Pat Buchanan must have had his passport stamped, because he came out and said flatly that Palin won the debate. Sarahland bears an important similarity to another cult in this country, although in its cultishness only, not in the merits. Ask anyone who has a piece of fruit stamped on a computer, and you will have someone who will readily acknowledge the existence of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field. At least those people have the judgment to recognize the existence of that field. In Sarahland, there is no such measure of being self aware.

The good thing about Sarahland is that any rules can apply that one wants to apply. Sarah Palin clearly won the debate. She stuck to her talking points, she made eye contact with the audience. She didn't look panicked, at least not too often. She used her pageant and TV training to bluff and blunder her way through answers.

For those of us who haven't had our passport stamped, however, the evening turned out very differently. We saw the difference between a pro and am amateur. That might have been Joe Biden's best night ever. He matched Palin emotion for emotion, Main Street for Main Street. And he trumped her everywhere else -- on experience, on facts, on analysis of domestic and foreign situations.

Biden in fact could have taken Palin out at any number of occasions during the debate. He didn't smack her "management" experience with the said note that she left her town $20 million in debt. He didn't note the earmarks she requested contributed to that spending she abhors. He didn't note that the pipeline she supports goes through Canada. He stayed on message, hitting on John McCain's record. He did make her look absolutely lost when Palin tried to give her version of the Reagan, "there you go again" line by scolding Biden on looking too much to the past, and not to the future to find solutions to problems. Biden, correctly, replied that to find the solutions to global warming, you have to look at the causes. He said that the policies of John McCain wouldn't differ from those of George Bush. One has to know the past to deal with the future. It's a wise view of the world, one not familiar in Sarahland.

Look at the split screen when Biden delivered his closing statement. For a moment or two, he broke through the reality distortion field and Palin saw what she was competing against -- someone who was better than she is in every way. It was but a glimmer, then it was back to Sarahland, where everything is peachy keen, you betcha.

Joe's Tears: the Political Power of Paternal Love

2008-10-02T22:11:00.000-07:00

Leah McElrath Renna
Posted October 2, 2008 | 11:16 PM (EST)
Huffington Post

Joe Biden did more for the equality of the sexes with his honest display of paternal emotion during the vice presidential debate than Sarah Palin's presence on the executive ticket has or will ever do.

Biden visibly teared up when he rebutted the idea that "just because I am a man" he didn't understand what it was like to wonder whether or not a child would "make it" in recovering from a life-threatening medical situation. At the time, he was likely recalling the tragic automobile accident that killed his wife and daughter and severely injured his two sons. It was an authentic, moving and powerful moment. It was, in fact, the strongest expression of real paternal love we have seen from a public official in recent memory and maybe ever.

By bringing that reality to a national political stage, Biden demonstrated that -- for all of us, not just feminists -- the personal is political, that women alone do not have the sole responsibility for caring about the future of our children and that the concern of fathers is a largely untapped pool of political energy. In his acceptance speech, Barack Obama paved the way for this when he talked about fighting for equal pay for equal work because he wants "my daughters to have the same opportunities as your sons" -- and said this while looking with protective ferocity straight into the camera. He has continued this message on the campaign trail with great impact.

Political equality for women will not come from the minimization or idealization of motherhood -- but rather from recognizing fatherhood as a significant factor in our culture and politics.

Thank you, Joe, for bringing us to the next level and keeping it real.

AP Investigation: Palin practiced small-town politics to help friends, neighbors and , herself

2008-10-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

WPIX News
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE

WASILLA, Alaska (AP) _ Though Sarah Palin depicts herself as a pit bull fighting good-old-boy politics, in her years as mayor she and her friends received special benefits more typical of small-town politics as usual, an Associated Press investigation shows.

When Palin needed to sell her house during her last year as Wasilla mayor, she got the city to sign off on a special zoning exception — and did so without keeping a promise to remove a potential fire hazard.

She gladly accepted gifts from merchants: A free "awesome facial" she raved about in a thank-you note to a spa. The "absolutely gorgeous flowers" she received from a welding supply store. Even fresh salmon to take home.
She also stepped in to help friends or neighbors with City Hall dealings. She asked the City Council to add a friend to the list of speakers at a 2002 meeting — and then the friend got up and asked them to give his radio station advertising business.
That year, records show, she tried to help a neighbor and political contributor fighting City Hall over his small lakeside development. Palin wanted the city to refund some of the man's fees, but the city attorney told the mayor she didn't have the authority.

Palin claims she has more executive experience than her opponent and the two presidential candidates, but most of those years were spent running a city with a population of less than 7,000.

Some of her first actions after being elected mayor in 1996 raised possible ethical red flags: She cast the tie-breaking vote to propose a tax exemption on aircraft when her father-in-law owned one, and backed the city's repeal of all taxes a year later on planes, snow machines and other personal property. She also asked the council to consider looser rules for snow machine races. Palin and her husband, Todd, a champion racer, co-owned a snow machine store at the time.
Palin often told the City Council of her personal involvement in such issues, but that didn't stop her from pressing them, according to minutes of council meetings.

She sometimes followed a cautious path in the face of real or potential conflicts — for example, stepping away from the table in 1997 when the council considered a grant for the Iron Dog snow machine race in which her husband competes.
But mostly, like other Wasilla elected officials at the time, she took an active role on issues that directly affected and sometimes benefited her. Her efforts to clear the way for the $327,000 sale of the Palin family home on Lake Wasilla is an example.

Two months before Palin's tenure as mayor ended in 2002, she asked city planning officials to forgive zoning violations so she could sell her house. Palin had a buyer, but he wouldn't close the deal unless she persuaded the city to waive the violations with a code variance.

The Palins, who were finishing work on a new waterfront house on Lake Lucille about two miles away, asked the city for the variance. The request was opposed by one planning official and some neighbors.
"I would ask that the Wasilla Planning Commission apply the exact same rules in this situation that it would apply to other similar requests so that our community can see that being a public figure does not give anyone special benefits," urged neighbor Clyde Boyer Jr. in a 2002 note to the city.

The Palins' house was built by the original owner too close to the shoreline and too close to adjacent properties on each side, including a carport that stretched so far over it nearly connected the two houses.

The Palins didn't create the zoning problems, but they should have known about them when they bought the house, wrote Susan Lee, a code compliance officer with the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, in response to the Palins' request. The borough, similar to a county government, makes recommendations to the city, which has final say.

Lee, in recommending the city reject the request, noted that the exception was needed to resolve an "inconvenience" the Palins experienced while trying to sell their house. In 1989, another borough planner told a previous owner that a variance for the carport couldn't be approved because it didn't meet required conditions and was a potential fire hazard.

But in August 2002, Wasilla Planner Tim Krug approved a "shoreline setback exception" for the Palins' house being built too closely to the water. He sent an e-mail to the mayor saying he was drafting another variance for the side of the house built too close to the property line, but that he understood from her that the other side "will be corrected and the carport will be removed."

Krug asked Palin to let him know if he was wrong in his impression that the carport would be removed.

A few minutes later, the mayor e-mailed back: "Sounds good."

On Sept. 10, 2002, the seven-member Wasilla Planning Commission unanimously approved a variance for both sides of the property, with language covering "all existing structures." Less than a week later, the Palins signed a deed to sell the house to Henry Nosek.

The carport was never removed.

Nosek said Sarah Palin didn't do anything more than any other citizen would have done.

"I sincerely don't feel that Sarah used her position as mayor at the time to get that accomplished," said Nosek, who no longer lives in the home.

James Svara, professor of public affairs at Arizona State University and author of "The Ethics Primer for Public Administrators in Government and Nonprofit Organizations," suggested such behavior is part of small-town politics.

"Small towns are first-person politics, and if people are close, it's hard to separate one's own personal interest and one's own personal property from the work of the city," Svara said. The key questions from an ethics standpoint include whether the politician makes a potential conflict of interest known and removes himself or herself from actions related to it, he added.

"I think in a small town there is a greater likelihood that people will accept that you will pay careful attention to friends and neighbors," he said, adding that there may be some local gossip about it, but not a lot of public scrutiny. "At the national level, there will be far more people watching, there will be far more pressures to come forward to try to influence the outcome."
___
Associated Press writer Sharon Theimer in Washington contributed to this report.

This is a Palin absolute watch-This is the SCARIEST uncut video on Palin I have ever seen.

2008-09-30T22:02:00.000-07:00

Please watch both videos. Very disturbing!

Synopsis-
Thomas Muthee, the man who led a movement that hounded a woman out of her hometown because Muthee believed she was supernaturally causing car crashes, has moved on. His new target: Sarah Palin. On October 16, 2005, Thomas Muthee delivered a sermon at the Wasilla Assemblies of God, the subject of which was "Why Palin?" Why Elect Sarah Palin Governor of Alaska? Ignore for the moment that church electioneering is against federal tax law. Let's focus on Thomas Muthee's reasons to vote for Sarah Palin. #1. Vote for Sarah Palin because she is one way for "God's Kingdom" to "invade," "infiltrate" and "influence" society. #2. Vote for Sarah Palin to install the Christian God and the Ten Commandments in control of the Public Schools. #3. Vote for Sarah Palin to combat and rebuke the forces of witchcraft. #4. Vote for Sarah Palin to end the separation of church and state in the United States of America. Thomas Muthee spoke it. Sarah Palin watched him speak it in the audience. Then she took the stage and as Muthee laid hands on her and she bowed her head, together they prayed for it. Is this what YOU want for America?

Palin, A Journalism Major, Can't Name A News Source She Reads

2008-09-30T21:55:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post
Sam Stein
September 30, 2008 08:15 PM

Sarah Palin said she does not support the morning after pill as a form of contraception, strongly implied that homosexuality was a choice, and could not name a single source of news that she turns to for information, in yet another installment of her interview series with Katie Couric.

Appearing on CBS Evening News, the Alaska Governor seemed calmer than she had been in previous sit downs. But while she only occasionally provided the type of befuddled responses that had even conservatives scratching their heads, her interview was nevertheless shaky.

Asked what newspapers and magazines she reads, Palin - a journalism major in college - could not name one publication.

"I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media," she said at first. Couric responded, "What, specifically?"

"Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years."

"Can you name a few?"

"I have a vast variety of source where we get our news," Palin said. "Alaska isn't a foreign country, where it's kind of suggested, 'wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?' Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America."

Later, when pressed on a variety of cultural issues, Palin provided red meat for religious conservatives. But her answers seemed to fall on the far edge of mainstream political thought. She said she was "unapologetically" pro-life when asked if she opposed abortion even for a 15-year-old raped by her father.

"[I would] counsel that person to choose life despite the horrific, horrific circumstances," she said, before moderating her position a bit: "If you're asking, though, kind of foundationally here, should anyone end up in jail for having an ... abortion, absolutely not. That's nothing I would ever support."

Asked whether she believed that the morning after pill should be outlawed, Palin did not directly address the question, saying only: "Personally, and this isn't a McCain-Palin policy, I would not choose to participate in that kind of contraception."

And quizzed about her position on gay-rights, Palin cited a homosexual friend whom she is close with before noting that she "made a choice" about her sexuality.

"I have," she said, "one of my absolute best friends for the last 30 years who happens to be gay and I love her dearly. And she is not my gay friend. She is one of my best friends who happens to have made a choice that isn't a choice that I would have made."

These positions may, in the long run, endear Palin even more to her conservative following. But combined with her failure to name a source of news she turns to, they are also bound to have people buzzing up through Thursday night's vice presidential debate.

Palin Claimed Dinosaurs And People Coexisted:

2008-09-29T19:21:00.000-07:00

The LA Times reports:

Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago -- about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct -- the teacher said.

After conducting a college band and watching Palin deliver a commencement address to a small group of home-schooled students in June 1997, Wasilla resident Philip Munger said, he asked the young mayor about her religious beliefs.

Palin told him that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time," Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks," recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska.

The idea of a "young Earth" -- that God created the Earth about 6,000 years ago, and dinosaurs and humans coexisted early on -- is a popular strain of creationism.

Though in her race for governor she called for faith-based "intelligent design" to be taught along with evolution in Alaska's schools, Gov. Palin has not sought to require it, state educators say.

In a widely-circulated interview, Matt Damon said of Palin, "I need to know if she really think that dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago. I want to know that, I really do. Because she's gonna have the nuclear codes."

Tina Fey As Sarah Palin: Katie Couric SNL Skit (VIDEO)

2008-09-29T19:15:00.000-07:00

Tina Fey returned to Saturday Night Live to reprise her widely hailed impersonation of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

The sketch mocks Palin's recent interview with CBS News' Katie Couric (played on SNL by Amy Poehler), touching on Palin's trip to New York and her comments about Russia and the financial bailout.

FEY AS PALIN: "Like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this. We're saying, 'Hey, why bail out Fanny and Freddie and not me?' But ultimately what the bailout does is, help those that are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy to help...uh...it's gotta be all about job creation, too. Also, too, shoring up our economy and putting Fannie and Freddy back on the right track and so healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reigning in spending...'cause Barack Obama, y'know...has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans, also, having a dollar value meal at restaurants. That's gonna help. But one in five jobs being created today under the umbrella of job creation. That, you know...Also..."

Jack Cafferty: If Sarah Palin Being One Heartbeat Away "Doesn't Scare The Hell Out Of You, It Should"

2008-09-26T21:37:00.000-07:00

Jack Cafferty
Huffington Post | September 26, 2008 05:24 PM

Jack Cafferty unloaded on Sarah Palin's "disastrous" interview with Katie Couric Friday afternoon on CNN, telling Wolf Blitzer, "There's a reason the McCain campaign keeps Governor Palin away from the press."

After showing a clip of Palin stumbling over Couric's question about the bailout and offering an answer connecting the bailout to healthcare, Cafferty asked, "Did you get that?"

He warned the viewers: "If John McCain wins this woman will be one 72-year-old's heartbeat away from being President of the United States. And if that doesn't scare the hell out of you, it should."

Later, Cafferty continued, calling the clip "one of the most pathetic pieces of tape I have ever seen from someone aspiring to one of the highest offices in this country."

Cafferty's concerns were echoed by "a growing number of Republicans," according to Politico's Alexander Burns and David Paul Kuhn:

A growing number of Republicans are expressing concern about Sarah Palin's uneven -- and sometimes downright awkward -- performances in her limited media appearances.

Conservative columnists Kathleen Parker, a former Palin supporter, says the vice presidential nominee should step aside. Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing on the conservative National Review, says "that's not a crazy suggestion" and that "something's gotta change."

Tony Fabrizio, a GOP strategist, says Palin's recent CBS appearance isn't disqualifying but is certainly alarming. "You can't continue to have interviews like that and not take on water."

"I have not been blown away by the interviews from her, but at the same time I haven't come away from them thinking she doesn't know s--t," said Chris Lacivita, a GOP strategist. "But she ain't Dick Cheney, nor Joe Biden and definitely not Hillary Clinton."

SARAH PALIN LINKS IRAQ to 9-11:

2008-09-26T04:39:00.000-07:00

Palins Pastor-"If you criticize Bush, you are going to hell..." and the press talked about Obama's pastor? Why are people looking over this!

2008-09-26T03:36:00.000-07:00

Palin's Church May Have Shaped Controversial Worldview
AP-Huffington Post-stumble digg reddit del.ico.us news trust mixx.com
September 2, 2008 12:17 PM

Three months before she was thrust into the national political spotlight, Gov. Sarah Palin was asked to handle a much smaller task: addressing the graduating class of commission students at her one-time church, Wasilla Assembly of God.

Her speech in June provides as much insight into her policy leanings as anything uncovered since she was asked to be John McCain's running mate.

Speaking before the Pentecostal church, Palin painted the current war in Iraq as a messianic affair in which the United States could act out the will of the Lord.

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God," she exhorted the congregants. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

Religion, however, was not strictly a thread in Palin's foreign policy. It was part of her energy proposals as well. Just prior to discussing Iraq, Alaska's governor asked the audience to pray for another matter -- a $30 billion national gas pipeline project that she wanted built in the state. "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said.

Palin's address, much of which was spent reflecting on the work of the church in which she grew up and was baptized, underscores the notion that her world view is deeply impacted by religion. In turn, her remarks raise important questions: mainly, what is Palin's faith and how exactly has it influenced her policies?

A review of recorded sermons by Ed Kalnins, the senior pastor of Wasilla Assembly of God since 1999, offers a provocative and, for some, eyebrow-raising sketch of Palin's longtime spiritual home.

The church runs a number of ministries providing help to poor neighborhoods, care for children in need, and general community services. But Pastor Kalnins has also preached that critics of President Bush will be banished to hell; questioned whether people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would be accepted to heaven; charged that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and war in Iraq were part of a war "contending for your faith;" and said that Jesus "operated from that position of war mode."

It is impossible to determine how much Wasilla Assembly of God has shaped Palin's thinking. She was baptized there at the age of 12 and attended the church for most of her adult life. When Palin was inaugurated as governor, the founding pastor of the church delivered the invocation. In 2002, Palin moved her family to a nondenominational church, but she continues to worship at a related Assembly of God church in Juneau.

Moreover, she "has maintained a friendship with Wasilla Assembly of God and has attended various conferences and special meetings here," Kalnins' office said in a statement. "As for her personal beliefs," the statement added, "Governor Palin is well able to speak for herself on those issues."

Clearly, however, Palin views the church as the source of an important, if sometimes politically explosive, message. "Having grown up here, and having little kids grow up here also, this is such a special, special place," she told the congregation in June. "What comes from this church I think has great destiny."

And if the political storm over Barack Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright is any indication, Palin may face some political fallout over the more controversial teachings of Wasilla Assembly of God.

If the church had a political alignment, it would almost surely be conservative. In his sermons, Kalnins did not hide his affections for certain national politicians.

During the 2004 election season, he praised President Bush's performance during a debate with Sen. John Kerry, then offered a not-so-subtle message about his personal candidate preferences. "I'm not going tell you who to vote for, but if you vote for this particular person, I question your salvation. I'm sorry." Kalnins added: "If every Christian will vote righteously, it would be a landslide every time."

Months after hinting at possible damnation for Kerry supporters, Kalnins bristled at the treatment President Bush was receiving over the federal government's handling of Hurricane Katrina. "I hate criticisms towards the President," he said, "because it's like criticisms towards the pastor -- it's almost like, it's not going to get you anywhere, you know, except for hell. That's what it'll get you."

Much of his support for the current administration has come in the realm of foreign affairs. Kalnins has preached that the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq were part of a "world war" over the Christian faith, one in which Jesus Christ had called upon believers to be willing to sacrifice their lives.

What you see in a terrorist -- that's called the invisible enemy. There has always been an invisible enemy. What you see in Iraq, basically, is a manifestation of what's going on in this unseen world called the spirit world. ... We need to think like Jesus thinks. We are in a time and a season of war, and we need to think like that. We need to develop that instinct. We need to develop as believers the instinct that we are at war, and that war is contending for your faith. ... Jesus called us to die. You're worried about getting hurt? He's called us to die. Listen, you know we can't even follow him unless you are willing to give up your life. ... I believe that Jesus himself operated from that position of war mode. Everyone say "war mode." Now you say, wait a minute Ed, he's like the good shepherd, he's loving all the time and he's kind all the time. Oh yes he is -- but I also believe that he had a part of his thoughts that knew that he was in a war.
As for his former congregant and current vice presidential candidate, Kalnins has asserted that Palin's election as governor was the result of a "prophetic call" by another pastor at the church who prayed for her victory. "[He made] a prophetic declaration and then unfolds the kingdom of God, you know."

Even Palin expressed surprise at that pastor's advocacy for her candidacy. "He was praying over me," she said in June. "He's praying, 'Lord make a way, Lord make a way...' And I'm thinking, this guy's really bold, he doesn't even know what I'm gonna do, he doesn't know what my plans are, and he's praying not, 'Oh Lord, if it be your will may she become governor,' or whatever. No, he just prayed for it. He said, 'Lord, make a way, and let her do this next step.' And that's exactly what happened. So, again, very very powerful coming from this church."

In his sermons, Pastor Kalnins has also expressed beliefs that, while not directly political, lie outside of mainstream Christian thought.

He preaches repeatedly about the "end times" or "last days," an apocalyptic prophesy held by a small but vocal group of Christian leaders. During his appearance with Palin in June, he declared, "I believe Alaska is one of the refuge states in the last days, and hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to the state to seek refuge and the church has to be ready to minister to them."

He also claims to have received direct "words of knowledge" from God, providing him information about past events in other people's lives. During one sermon, he described being paired with a complete stranger during a golf outing. "I said, I'm a minister from Alaska and I want you to know that your wife left you -- you know that your wife left you and that the Lord is gonna defend you in a very short time, and it wasn't your fault. And the man drops his clubs, he literally was about to tee off and he dropped his clubs, and he says, 'Who the blank are you?' And I says, 'well, I'm a minister.' He says, 'how do you know about my life? What do you know?' And I started giving him more of the word of knowledge to his life and he was freaked out."

Kalnins has, of course, preached on a bevy of topics ranging from humility to "overcoming bitterness." But the more controversial remarks reported above were not out of the norm, appearing in numerous sermons spanning the four years of available recordings.

As for Palin, her views on these topics is more opaque. In the wake of the controversy over Jeremiah Wright, a debate has raged about whether political figures should be held responsible for the comments of their religious guiders. Clearly, however, Kalnins, like many national conservative religious leaders, sees Alaska's governor as one of his own. "Gov. Sarah Palin is the real deal," he told his church this past summer. "You know, some people put on a show...but she's the real deal."

Christian Groups, including James Dobson, sponsor blatant racist Obama waffles-I think we just went back 150 years!

2008-09-26T03:25:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin Discusses Russia With Katie Couric

2008-09-25T22:56:00.000-07:00

2008-09-25T22:46:00.001-07:00

Palin defends Alaska-Russia foreign policy remark

2008-09-25T22:15:00.000-07:00

By AMY WESTFELDT, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin defended her comment that the proximity of Russia to her home state of Alaska gives her foreign policy experience, explaining in a CBS interview aired Thursday that "we have trade missions back and forth."

Palin, the 44-year-old Alaska governor, has never visited Russia and had never traveled outside North America until last year. She also had never met a foreign leader until her trip this week to New York. In the interview, she did not offer any examples of being involved in any negotiations with Russia.

Palin's foreign policy experience came up when she gave her first major interview, on Sept. 11 to ABC News. Asked what insight she had gained from living so close to Russia, she said: "They're our next-door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."

The comment met with derision from Palin's critics and was turned into a punch line for a "Saturday Night Live" skit featuring actress Tina Fey. Appearing as Palin, she proclaimed, "I can see Russia from my house!"

In the interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric, Palin said: "It's funny that a comment like that was, kind of made to ... I don't know, you know? Reporters ..."

Couric said, "Mock?"

"Yeah," Palin said, "mocked, I guess that's the word, yeah."

When Couric asked how Alaska's closeness to Russia enhanced her foreign policy experience, Palin said, "Well, it certainly does because our ... our next-door neighbors are foreign countries." Alaska shares a border with Canada.

Palin didn't answer directly when Couric inquired about whether she had been involved in any negotiations with the Russians.

"We have trade missions back and forth," she replied, although Russia is not among the state's top 20 export partners. As she continued, Palin brought up Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

"It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where — where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is — from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to ... to our state," she said.

Palin has two trade specialists working for the governor's office. The top countries receiving Alaskan goods are Japan, Korea, China, Canada and Germany, according to 2006 export data, the most recent figures published, with seafood accounting for 50 percent of exports.

Palin spokesman Bill McAllister said she met with Iceland's president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson last fall, and they discussed energy issues. She also has met with various trade delegations during her two years in office.

Asked why she only obtained a passport last year, Palin said, "I'm not one of those who maybe came from a background of, you know, kids who perhaps graduate college and their parents give them a passport and give them a backpack and say go off and travel the world. No, I've worked all my life. In fact, I usually had two jobs all my life until I had kids. I was not a part of, I guess, that culture."

Earlier Thursday, Palin held a rare exchange with reporters outside a ground zero firehouse in New York, and declined to endorse the candidacy of indicted Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens. On trial for seven counts of making false statements stemming from allegations that he concealed gifts on Senate financial documents, Stevens is running for re-election to keep the seat he has held since 1968.

Asked if she supports Stevens' re-election, Palin said: "Ted Stevens' trial started a couple of days ago. We'll see where that goes."

Outside the firehouse just across from the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Palin took just a handful of reporters' questions. She has yet to have a news conference in the month since Republican presidential candidate John McCain chose her to be his running mate, and has submitted to only three major interviews — with ABC, Fox News Channel and CBS.

Palin was asked if she thought the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan was helping to mitigate terrorism.

"I think our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan will lead to further security for our nation. We can never again let them onto our soil," she said.

Wrapping up a trip to New York, the governor toured a visitors center dedicated to those who died in the attacks. She later walked past a bronze memorial built into the wall of a firehouse, which commemorates the 343 firefighters who died on Sept. 11. She touched the wall several times.

"To come here and see these good New Yorkers who are not only rebuilding this area but rebuilding America, it's very inspiring," she told reporters.

During the tour, Palin asked several questions about progress rebuilding the trade center site, victims' families and particularly the health problems suffered by ground zero workers, said Jennifer Adams, CEO of the tribute center. Health advocates believe thousands of people became ill from exposure to toxic dust from the ruins of the trade center site.

Palin's parents went to New York in January 2002 to help control the rat population in Staten Island's Fresh Kills landfill as part-time contract workers with the Agriculture Department, her mother, Sally Heath, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Their task for two weeks was to control the rats so that they did not disturb the debris from the World Trade Center that was being brought there and searched by forensic teams for human remains.

2008-09-25T22:13:00.001-07:00

State will sue over polar bear listing, Palin says

2008-09-25T21:36:00.000-07:00

By DAN JOLING
The Associated Press
Published: May 22nd, 2008 01:26 AM
Last Modified: May 22nd, 2008 10:10 AM

The State of Alaska will sue to challenge the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species, Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday.

She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state's northern and northwestern coasts.

Palin argued there is not enough evidence to support a listing. Polar bears are well-managed and their population has dramatically increased over 30 years as a result of conservation, she said.

Climate models that predict continued loss of sea ice, the main habitat of polar bears, during summers are unreliable, Palin said.

The announcement drew a strong response from the primary author of the listing petition.

"She's either grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading, and both are unbecoming," said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. "Alaska deserves better."

Siegel said it was unconscionable for Palin to ignore overwhelming evidence of global warming's threat to sea ice, the polar bear's habitat.

"Even the Bush administration can't deny the reality of global warming," she said. "The governor is aligning herself and the state of Alaska with the most discredited, fringe, extreme viewpoints by denying this."

As marine mammals, polar bears are regulated by the federal government, not the state. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne last week made the listing decision and said it was based on three findings.

"First, sea ice is vital to polar bear survival. Second, the polar bear's sea-ice habitat has dramatically melted in recent decades. Third, computer models suggest sea ice is likely to further recede in the future," he said.

Summer sea ice last year shrank to a record low, about 1.65 million square miles, nearly 40 percent less than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000.

Polar bears rely on sea ice for hunting ringed seals. In recent years, summer sea ice has receded far beyond the relatively shallow, biologically rich waters of the outer continental shelf, giving polar bears less time in prime feeding areas.

The bear's numbers rebounded after the 1970s, but conservation groups contend that was in response to measures taken to stop over-hunting.

Polar bear researchers fear recent effects of the loss of sea ice on Alaska polar bear populations. A 2006 study by the U.S. Geological Survey concluded that far fewer polar bear cubs in the Beaufort Sea were surviving and that adult males weighed less and had smaller skulls than those captured and measured two decades previously -- trends similar to observations in Canada's western Hudson Bay before a population drop.

A U.S. Geological Survey study completed last year as part of the petition process predicted polar bears in Alaska could be wiped out by 2050.

Kempthorne said last week he considered every point Palin made, and rejected them. However, he sought to limit the economic effect of the decision with the inclusion of "administrative guidance" that said the listing would not be used to create back-door climate policy outside the normal system of political accountability. He said that the threat to polar bears did not come from the petroleum industry.

In response, conservation groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council are trying to overturn Kempthorne's administrative actions and seek limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

Palin and other state officials called arbitrary a decision to list a healthy species judging by what they deem uncertain modeling of future climate change and unproven long-term impact of any future climate change on the species.

State Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Irwin said it could have wide economic effects.

Has Sarah Palin Been Picked as the Titular Head of the Coming Police State?

2008-09-25T21:18:00.000-07:00

By Naomi Wolf, Huffington Post. Posted September 24, 2008.

Palin will help to establish a true and irreversible 'fear society' in this once free once proud nation.

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah "Evita" Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order to understand "Palin Power." A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable, weak figurehead at the fore. Then they will hold elections -- but they will make sure that the election will be corrupted and that the next affable, weak figurehead is entirely in their control. Remember, Russia has Presidents; Russia holds elections. Dictators and gangs of thugs all over the world hold elections. It means nothing. When a cabal has seized power you can have elections and even presidents, but you don't have freedom.

I realized early on with horror what I was seeing in Governor Palin: the continuation of the Rove-Cheney cabal, but this time without restraints. I heard her echo Bush 2000 soundbites ("the heart of America is on display") and realized Bush's speechwriters were writing her -- not McCain's -- speeches. I heard her tell George Bush's lies -- not McCain's -- to the American people, linking 9/11 to Iraq. I heard her make fun of Barack Obama for wanting to prevent the torture of prisoners -- this is Rove-Cheney's enthusiastic S and M, not McCain's, who, though he shamefully colluded in the 2006 Military Tribunals Act, is also a former prisoner of war and wrote an eloquent Newsweek piece in 2005 opposing torture. I saw that she was even styled by the same skillful stylist (neutral lipstick, matte makeup, dark colors) who turned Katharine Harris from a mall rat into a stateswoman and who styles all the women in the Bush orbit -- but who does not bother to style Cindy McCain.

Then I saw and heard more. Palin is embracing lawlessness in defying Alaskan Legislature subpoenas -- this is what Rove-Cheney, and not McCain, believe in doing. She uses mafia tactics against critics, like the police commissioner who was railroaded for opposing handguns in Alaskan battered women's shelters -- Rove's style, not McCain's. I realized what I was seeing.

Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal. The strategy became clear. Time magazine reported that Rove is "dialed in" to the McCain campaign. Rove's protege Steve Schmidt is now campaign manager. And Politico reported that Rove was heavily involved in McCain's vice presidential selection. Finally a new report shows that there are dozens of Bush and Rove operatives surrounding Sarah Palin and orchestrating her every move.

What's the plan? It is this. McCain doesn't matter. Reputable dermatologists are discussing the fact that in simply actuarial terms, John McCain has a virulent and life-threatening form of skin cancer. It is the elephant in the room, but we must discuss the health of the candidates: doctors put survival rates for someone his age at two to four years. I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election. She will be working for Halliburton, KBR, Rove and Cheney into the foreseeable future -- for a decade perhaps -- a puppet "president" for the same people who have plundered our treasure, are now holding the US economy hostage and who murdered four thousand brave young men and women in a way of choice and lies.

How, you may ask, can I assert this? How can I argue, as I now do, that there is actually a war being ramped up against US citizens and our democracy and that Sarah Palin is the figurehead and muse for that war?

Look at the RNC. This is supposed to be McCain's America. But you see the unmistakable theatre of Rove's S and M imagery -- and you see stages eight, nine and ten of the steps to a dictatorship as I outlined them in The End of America. Preemptive arrest? Abusive arrest? "Newly released footage, which was buried to avoid confiscation, shows riot cops arresting and abusing a giant group of people for nothing."

Journalists were arrested -- for reporting. Amy Goodman and ABC producers were arrested. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake and others were forced to lie face down as armed agents tied their hands behind their backs. The riot police wore the black S&M gear of the Rovian fantasy life and carried the four foot batons cops carry in North Korea. All this is not John McCain's imagery or strategy: it is Karl Rove's.

In McCain-Palin's America, citizens who are protesting are being charged as terrorists. This means that a violent war had been declared on American citizens. A well known reporter leaked to me on background that St Paul police had dressed as protesters and, dressed in Black -- shades of the Blackshirts of 1920 -- infiltrated protest groups. There were also phalanxes of men in black wearing balaclavas, linking arms and behaving menacingly -- alleged "anarchists." Let me tell you, I have been on the left for thirty years and you can't get three lefties to wear the same t-shirt to a rally, let alone link arms and wear identical face masks: these are not our guys. Agent Provocateurs framing protesters and calling protest "terrorism" constitutes step ten of a police state:

"In what appears to be the first use of criminal charges under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County Prosecutors have formally charged 8 alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism… [they] 7 1/2 years in prison under the terrorism enhancement charge which allows for a 50% increase in the maximum penalty."

"Paid, confidential informants… infiltrated the RNCWC on behalf of law enforcement. They allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotage airports in St. Paul. Evidence released to date does not corroborate these allegations with physical evidence or provide any other evidence for these allegations than the claims of the informants. Based on past abuses of such informants by law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild is concerned that such police informants have incentives to lie and exaggerate threats of violence and to also act as provocateurs in raising and urging support for acts of violence."

Under the Palin-Rove police state, you will see escalating infringements on your access to a free internet:

"Sarah Palin was baptized at Wasilla Assembly of God…Last Sunday our research team released a video, a ten-minute mini-documentary, focusing on the Wasilla Assemblies of God and the video seemed on the verge of a massive "viral" breakthrough when YouTube pulled it down, citing 'inappropriate content'. At the point the video was censored by YouTube it had been viewed by almost 160,000 people. The short of it is that YouTube has censored a video documentary that appeared to be close to having an effect on a hard fought and contentious American presidential election…"

Under the coming Palin-Rove police state, you will witness the plans now underway to bring Iraqi troops to patrol the streets of our nation. This is not McCain's fantasy: it is Rove's and Cheney's.

Under the Palin-Rove police state, there will be no further true elections. Mark Crispin Miller has done sensational and under-reported investigating t o establish that -- as I warned -- indeed the GOP staffers on the US Senate Judiciary Committee have been .

The evidence is also buried on the Website of the Majority House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

WASHINGTON -- Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe. >From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications witho ut a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics.

Do you think that spying like this will ever end under a Palin-Rove regime? Dream on. If she and McCain are elected, then every single strategy memo and speech and debate prep note from every opposition candidate from now and on into forever will be read by the regime in power while it is still in the computers of the challengers.

Under the Palin-Rove police state, citizens will be targeted with state cyberterrorism. Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda, a former Reagan official, warned me three years ago that the Bush team went after a Republican who had crossed them through cyberstalking: they messed with his email, messed with his phones and I believe messed with his bank account -- he became a cyber-pariah, unemployable and haunted. With modern technology, there really is less place to hide from the state than there was in East Germany in the Cold War era. I remember feeling a chill: of course. That is the wave of the future once we breach the protections around citizens of FISA and the fourth amendment. That way lies the abyss for us all.

Am I trying to scare you? I am. I am trying to scare you to death and ask you to scare your Republican and independent friends most of all. How do you know when it is war on citizens? When there are mass arrests, journalists are jailed, the opposition is infiltrated, rights are stripped and leaders start to ignore the rule of law.

Almost everyone I work with on projects related to this campaign for liberty has been experiencing computer harassment: emails are stripped, messages disappear. That's not all: people's bank accounts are being tampered with: wire transfers to banks vanish in midair. I personally keep opening bank accounts that are quickly corrupted by fraud. Money vanishes. Coworkers of mine have to keep opening new email accounts as old ones become infected. And most disturbingly to me personally is the mail tampering I have both heard of and experienced firsthand. My tax returns vanished from my mailbox. All my larger envelopes arrive ripped straight open apparently by hand. When I show the postman, he says "That's impossible." Horrifyingly to me is the impact on my family. My childrens' report cards are returned again and again though perfectly addressed; their invitations are turned back; and my daughters many letters from camp? Vanished. All of them. Not one arrived. Try explaining that to a smart thirteen year old. Try explaining it in a way that still makes her feel secure and comfortable.

I am not telling you this because it's about my life. I am telling you this because it is about your life -- whoever you are, Conservative or Liberal, independent or evangelical. Your politics will not protect you in a police state. History shows that nothing protects you in a police state. This is not about my fear and anxiety: it is about what awaits you and everyone you love unless you see this for what it is:

Scharansky divided nations into "fear societies" and "free societies." Make no mistake: Sarah "Evita" Palin is Rove and Cheney's cosmetic rebranding of their fascist push: she will help to establish a true and irreversible "fear society" in this once free once proud nation. For God's sake, do not let her; do not let them.

Whoopi and Barbara Walters talk about Palin's Religious Beliefs

2008-09-23T22:53:00.000-07:00

The women on the view talk about "God's will" and separation of church and state. What does Palin mean by "The Iraq War is God's War!"?