An Inconvenient Truth: Politics of the Palins

Discussion on the overthrowing of the US or advocating for state succession prior to 9/11 may not have landed in the ear buds of national security folks. At that time, they were far less interested in listening to our telephone calls, filming our associations, searching our e-mails and acting inside environmental and political organizations as agent provocateurs. But 9/11 changed all that.

Through social manipulation, fear descended upon America like a huge poisonous cloud. Green lights, amber lights and Orwellian neighbor watching replaced the tenor of American trust and ease. Fear, fear, fear was pounded into us day after day both overtly and covertly and done so successfully, it clouded the vision and reason of some of our best and brightest. The media had a field day. Fear is easy to write about.

But fear didn't start with Bush and 9/11. The stage was set long before and evolved to near perfection. It's name: Karl Rove.

The paranoia of Richard Nixon is legendary. This paranoia led to extensive crimes of fear; actions culminating in the first resignation of a US president over "Watergate" and resulting in Congress passing the FISA laws; laws which George Bush ignored even before Congress gave him not one but two bigger and better ways to do it.

Interestingly, some of those in Nixon's administration--later landing in Ford's--landed in George H. W. Bush's administration and still later in the administration of his son, George W. Bush, particularly notable is Dick Cheney, our two-term Vice President. It seems to be an inter-generational case of GOP party paranoia, Cheney bearing the torch.

Nixon, through the Watergate investigation, was found to have a very long (eventually over 3,000 names of people and organizations) "list of enemies". The list reads like a who's who of people and groups including entertainers Carol Channing, Bill Cosby, and Barbara Streisand, , football player Joe Nameth, most of the leading US newspapers and many, many columnists, television station executives, corporation CEOs ironically including then Phillip Morris Corp., George Weissman, virtually every major union leader, and membership or issue oriented groups including Common Cause and the National Student Association. Of course, there were a lot of academics as well, including the famous Daniel Ellsberg, professor, MIT, and then director of the Federation of American Scientists, Jeremy Stone.

Perhaps some can laugh it off in the case of paranoid Nixon, but President Bush has his list too, one begun when he was running for Governor of Texas that has Rove's watermark on it. This article from 2005 discusses the list in blunt terms. The list is said to be far more extensive now and is said to contain private information on congress members which explains a great deal about why the Patriot Act got passed twice (generally without so much as an audible whimper by most members) through congress. It's called blackmail in common parlance.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela made it to the list and it literally took an act of Congress, passed in July of this year, to get him off it.

In other cases, it appears that, like Nixon, one criteria for making it on the list may be criticism of George Bush; certainly more of a personal problem than a security problem. Then there's the Princeton constitutional scholar who sharply criticized Bush and of course he landed on the list. I'm probably on the list, and you may be, too.

Rove, of course, also goes back to the Nixon days and Watergate. Star prosecution witness in Watergate, John Dean, certainly implicated Rove in Watergate saying, "Based on my review of the files, it appears the Watergate prosecutors were interested in Rove's activities in 1972, but because they had bigger fish to fry they did not aggressively investigate him." Shortly after Rove was mentioned, he was picked up by George H.W. Bush who was then Chairman of the Republican National Committee (later under Ford, Director of the CIA) and with Bush's support and that of other GOP power brokers, Rove moved forward through the GOP party structure. He had a talent. It may have started simple--from information gathering by going through trash cans (something he actually recommended in those days as a tactic against an opponent)--but in the end, Rove had manipulated our own government agencies, our own congressional representatives, probably our court system, and certainly put the people of America under intense scrutiny.

Rove has been the negotiator of all things problematic for the Bush administration. Often dubbed "Bush's Brain", Rove knows the players and the countryside better than most and is a master at the set up and fall. He is ruthless and cool as a cucumber. Rove's brand of politics and his methods of creating the crisis he wants is legendary. There is nothing Bush that doesn't have Rove's fingerprints on it.

Enter the Palins

While the Palin family might appear to look like the average American family, they are anything but. Sarah and Todd are joined at the hip in political decision making and he takes an active hand--one that is highly criticized by many--in Sarah's political employment as evidenced by the subpoena now issued to Todd with the nod of local GOP members over the telephone calls made by him in "Troopergate". But it is far more refined than this. Todd's involvement in the governing affairs of his elected wife as this excellent article from Startribune.com posits, is legendary in Alaska.

Todd Palin is Sarah's Karl Rove--with an interesting twist.

These local Alaskan men of the statehouse who voted to issue that subpoena against Todd Palin may have hell to pay. The republican voting for the issuance of the subpoena is from Wasilla.

Todd Palin and the Alaskan Independence Party

From 1995 to 2002, Todd Palin was a member of the often radical Alaskan Independence Party (AIP) which openly and loudly calls for Alaska's succession from the United States. Early reports that Sarah was also similarly aligned as a "member" of AIP appear to be untrue on their face. I use the word appear based on Registrar of Voters records (page down at the site) indicating that since she registered to vote in 1982, her GOP party affiliation has never changed. Clearly, however, she has attended party meetings giving a welcoming speech in 2006, and another (taped) in March of 2008:


On September 3, 2008, AIP released a statement on Sarah Palin, over the name of Lynette Clark, wife of AIP Vice Chairman Dex Clark, clarifying their error in her regard as a member of AIP. However, this video of the Dex Clark, in addressing the AIP party suggests otherwise beginning at mark 6:00 (note he refers to Palin as Governor, so this had to be recorded post November 4, 2006, and appears to have been recorded (based on AIP site's information) on Oct 3-4, 2007 in Chattanooga, TN, at the 2nd Secessionist Convention). The pertinent text reads:

"There's a joke -- she's a pretty good-lookin' gal -- there's a joke around, that we're the coldest state with the hottest governor. And there's a lot of talk about her moving up. She was an AIP member, before she got the job as the mayor of a small town. That was a nonpartisan job. But to get along to go along, she eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics ... And she's pretty well sympathetic, because of her former membership."

This 17 seond video exchange with the former chairman of AIP, Mark Chryson, indicates that Palin did attend the AIP party convention in 1994, and the Los Angeles Times reports, Palin and her husband attended the party's 1994 convention at a Best Western in Wasilla, Alaska, said former Chairman Mark Chryson, a computer repairman who is now the party's webmaster.



Lynette Clark met Palin for the first time in 2006 at the AIP convention where she was speaking and is quoted in a Dave Talbot article in Salon.com as saying of this first meeting, "As I was listening to her, I thought she sounds like what we've been saying for years. I thought to myself, 'My God, she sounds just like Joe Vogler."

The AIP to which Todd Palin belonged for those seven years (he is allegedly registered as an independent now) was begun by a former Kansan-become-Alaskan, Joe Vogler (1913-1993) who was well known for his fiery rhetoric and his sheer open hatred for America.

"I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."
--Joe Vogler

"...[T]the fires of Hell are glaciers compared to my hate for the American Government, and I won't be buried under their damn flag."
--Joe Vogler, tape 18, March 29, 1991, University of Alaska

Vogler disappeared in 1993. His remains were found in a gravel pit--located from a tip--in 1994. A convicted theif, Manifried West, took responsibility for the murder alleging he was killed during an explosives sale gone bad. Shades of McVeigh? Dex Clark claims Vogler was asassinated.

In a September 6, 2008 article on Sarah palin in Newsweek entitled An Apostle of Alaska, it was reported:

To the extent Palin has a governing philosophy, it was shaped by her political mentor, former governor Wally Hickel. The 89-year-old Hickel is a member of the Alaska Independence Party, which espouses, among other things, greater autonomy or even separation from the United States.

Hickel served as Secretary of the Interior during the first Nixon administration. He was fired by Nixon after a letter was published critical of the president's position on the Vietnam War. It was Hickel that first appointed now-indicted Ted Stevens to the US Senate upon the death of his predesessor.

Hickel served his first Alaska governor term as a republican, his second as a member of the Alaskan Independence Party. He was campaign chairman of Palin's run for governor though now says he will not vote for her in the presidential election given her support of a Canadian Company to build the Prudahoe, Alaska natural gas line.

*****

While Sarah Palin was busy hocking pork from Washington first as a tiny town mayor where she hired lobbyists, later working for now-indicted US Senator (R-AK) Ted Stevens' 527, then through the governor's position to garner more money for her welfare state, Todd was part of an organization that by any standard would be called radical. Were it a liberal organization, it would clearly be on the "watch and listen" list of Rove and Bush and homeland security would be all over it. Even more interesting, they may be on the watch list but no one could ever find out as it is a secret list.

Interestingly, the McCain campaign first claimed that during Palin's vetting, she was examined by the FBI a rather odd statement. Later, this claim was refuted by the FBI as they do not get involved in political campaign vetting. So, it would appear that neither Todd or Sarah was examined through security processes. If they were, no one is talking.

What is so interesting is the relative quell on the issue from the media. Early statements that Palin was a member of the AIP by network news and some print, were retracted or corrected. It's been all quiet on the media front since that time which seems peculiar in any respect.

I think it is more than clear that had Michelle Obama belonged to the AIP, she would be portrayed in the worst of ways and the affiliation would be mentioned in near every article under the sun.

So the next time you hear some media mechanics by Rove or other Rovian, just keep that in mind. But remember: They are probably framing you for a fall of their own creation.