From Iowa Comes The Quote of the Day

Sarah knows how to field-dress a moose. I know how to castrate a calf. Neither of those things has anything at all to do with this election. But since we know so much about Sarah’s special skills, I wanted to make sure you knew about mine too.
--Iowa Lt. Gov Patty Judge, from iowapolitics.com, 9/15/2008

SNL Skit--Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton

Clear the desk of liquids.

This is a Crack Up! (5min and worth every sec!)

Read transcript from a Wasilla Town Meeting, May 1996



So, yeah, she's experienced:) ... Perhaps only in the Jimi Hendrix sense though.

Anchorage has Huge Anti-Palin Rally! Women Speak!

This is a rather amazing story, and a hat tip to reader amyj! It really is a sight! Bookmark the site they have some very interesting things to say!

The Anchorage Daily News covers the rally here.

Organizers of the rally received threatening messages on their telephones after a local radio host, and Palin supporter, read their telephone numbers taken from a rally flyer over the air.

Television coverage then covered radio.

And here's a wonderful video with interviews of the rally!



Congrats Anchorage! Nice job!

Photo Credit: http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/alaska-women-reject-palin-rally-is-huge/

UPDATE:
USA Today covered it, here.
Television coverage, channel 2, here.

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.

McCain/Palin Awash in Lobbyist Trouble and Pork

GOP VP candidate Palin has said that the lower 48 doesn't understand Alaska. Yup, yup. She is so very right. So let's embrace her thinking--her life--for a moment, shall we? Let's get to know the independent economic frontier politics of the self-reliant earmarkless, next-best-thing-to-the-Virgin-Mary Palin.

Earmarks, Reform: Yup, Yup.

Recently, there has been a spat about earmarks. It started with the infamous bridge. We now have that settled. She lied.

Reformer Palin has brought a new meaning to the word Maverick and so has McCain.

Palin supported the bridge before it was nixed and when the writing was on the wall, and congress (led by McCain) kept citing the bridge as an example of bizarre earmarks and withdrew its support, she did too... but kept the money. No, she didn't tell them... well you know. We have heard the lie a thousand times now.

Then when that lie wouldn't work, enter McCain. McCain said as Governor of Alaska, population of 670,000 in 2006, Palin asked for no ear marks.

BUUUUUUZ. Sorry, John, wrong answer, but nice try. Your gal Palin was porkin' at the trough.

Here is a list of earmarks specifically requested by Governor Palin in 2008 before her miraculous rapture to the VP position as reformer and Maverick, candidate of "change"--31 earmarks for $197.8 million. Go Sarah! We're lovin' this change!

Okay, so that won't work either. While McCain was talking to the ladies on The View, Sarah was taping an interview with Charlie Gibson (a series of three broadcasts). So, enter Palin to try out yet a new line.

In the last interview with Charlie Gibson, 9/12/08--on the same day that McCain insists she requested no earmarks as governor--Palin insists that earmarks aren't all that bad! As long as those earmarks are up front, no problem. We just need transparency. No back room deals for her! As long as you do it the way she does... 'hey, stuff your earmarks and get out of my face'. Given her love for slaughtering living things, I wouldn't push it. As McCain brags, she can field dress a moose. Apparently a new qualification for the second highest office in the land. Given she hasn't a clue on foreign policy, good that John is makin' stuff up.

Here is what she last said about her earmarks. Go here for the whole transcript of this press interview:

GIBSON: Governor, this year, requested $3.2 million for researching the genetics of harbor seals, money to study the mating habits of crabs. Isn't that exactly the kind of thing that John McCain is objecting to?

PALIN: Those requests, through our research divisions and fish and game and our wildlife departments and our universities, those research requests did come through that system, but wanting it to be in the light of day, not behind closed doors, with lobbyists making deals with Congress to stick things in there under the public radar. That's the abuse that we're going to stop. That's what John McCain has promised over and over for these years and that's what I'm joining him, also, saying, you're right, the abuse of earmarks, it's un-American, it's undemocratic, and it's not going to be accepted in a McCain-Palin administration. Earmark abuse will stop.

And I guess John missed this precious little bit of Palin prognostication:

"The federal budget, in its various manifestations, is incredibly important to us, and congressional earmarks are one aspect of this relationship," she wrote in a newspaper column.
--LA Times, 9/3/2008

The fact is that the state of Alaska (a welfare state) hauls in more welfare pork dollars per capita than any other state in the union by far. Arizona less than any.

So there you have it. The the snout and butt of the federal pork scheme. Ironically, Palin really is where the lipstick should be (her state is number one) and McCain where the tail should be, and fast becoming the butt of of his running mate's reality.

But McCain picked her cuz gee, that gal is a real reformin' type. She just kicks butt. You know, that aeroplane thing on the intertubes and all and the bridge and everythin'. Yee haw, what a gal!

On Lobbyists: Yup, yup!

Palin doesn't like lobbyists. You know those long Alaska nights have a way of just sort of easin up on the memories of the past. But come spring, new fresh daisies of information come to light. Oops.

Sarah was busy hiring lobbyists who worked in the same firm as now convicted jail-sentenced Abramhoff (who is tied to McCain through hearings, records of the corruption hearings sealed by McCain) to get her little Wasilla 6,000-person town earmarks to the tune of $26.9 million including a rail project (here we go again!) from Wasilla to now-indicted US Alaska Senator Steven's town.

Oh, did I mention Palin was Director of and worked for Sen. Stevens' 527, "Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.," (no, that is not my humor!) a 527 group that could raise unlimited funds from corporate donors and was a signatory to its incorporation?

Prior to being indicted, Sen. Stevens endorsed Palin for Governor, something she was absolutely thrilled about and bragged about on her Governor's site until, um, he was indicted and even then she stood by him through thick and thin until...

On the day Palin was named VP candidate, Stevens' treasured endorsements vanished from her site. Vanished. Bye-bye. Don't need that there right now. But thanks to the net, you can still see it here.

And speaking of reform, and particularly of lobbyists, let's just talk for a wee moment about Palin's faithful leader, McCain and his take on--or perhaps from--lobbyists. This was released just hours ago. Hardly a lefty rag. You can read the pdf here. McCains awash--snout to butt--in lobbyists. So maybe we should have a future discussion on parasites, because the ol boy sure is awash in them.

A more thorough take (and actually a better net news paper) on his well-known lobbyist problem is here from a few months back. The list of lobby problems and McCain is absolutely endless. Google it, and you will see. My eyes are spinning, and so is my wallet.

Yep, that's our ol' reformer boy! That Maverick son of a gun with sidekick "Yahoo Palin"! Those rough riders gonna bust some butt in Washington alright!

Unfortunately, that butt will be yours and mine.

Finally, an amusing take on what you hear from the hallowed malls of American on the McCain/Palin Ticket and their really nifty version of reform, change and about the (sound of the whip) Mavericks:

So you go my little reform girl! You really are change! What a freaking Maverick! I'm tellin' ya, Palin and McCain just embody the kind of honest reform we need--the integrity this country needs--right now! No more lies, you just get out there and boldly ask for earmarks to study crab mating habits girlfriend! Get it out in the light! We folks from the midwest are behind ya! We really wanna know about crab mating habits! I swear, it's all we talk about! I'm tellin' ya I've never seen anything like this real reform! This is truly amazing! The woman is a true red, white and blue inspiration! McCain is a God for finding this amazing Betsy Ross! McCain knows exactly what we need! He da man!

Oops.

Excellent Piece on "Justice Palin"

Read this all the way to the end. I think you will get a kick out of Slate's Dahlia Lithwick and her take on this topic.

Great New Video On McCain

Hat tip to IT!

Defenders of Wildlife Release Killer Palin Add!

Every single day, I probably get at least 100 mesages and news hits sent on the wolf killing Palin supports. I wrote about it here. It is a cruel and disgusting practice.

I can tell you that this add will help. Animal lovers are in abundance, as are wildlife advocates. And they most assuredly are not all democrats.

What do you think?

Please post it on your blog!

Coming Up Next Week: Fox 'Interviews' Palin

Just shocking, isn't it? Now gee, ask yourself why they chose Fox.

That should be interesting to watch. Anyone with a political ear knows Fox for their lack of credible reporting and their bending of the "news" in favor of entertainment news. Remember the several journalists that refused to write lies and took their news bosses to court? Those were Fox reporters. They had been told to bend the facts, they refused, they were fired. The courts sided with Fox in the case indicating that their bosses could demand they lie. Sigh.

Now, let's look at who is going to be doing the interview: Sean Hannity of Fox's Tuesday-Wednesday 9pm political news show, "Hannity & Colmes".

And what has Hannity said about Palin?

“She is a rock star, a rising star, a reform governor with more experience than Barack Obama ever dreamed of having,” he said the day she was chosen by John McCain."
--New York Times, 9/12/2008

These comments were made by Hannity without any review of Palin's positions, history or verifiable record.

Today, Hannity remarked on Palin's obvious flub on 'The Bush Doctrine'. Here's what he said:

“She answered it perfectly,” Hannity said. “I know the left-wingers. They just were looking for any little thing they can get. She understood what the Bush Doctrine was and what the Bush policy was and she answered it, I think, correctly.”
--News Hounds, 9-12-2008

If you have not seen interviewer Gibson's question, and Palin's "deer in the headlights" and incorrect response, watch this very short piece:

When I was watching the interview, I was personally flabbergasted at this gaff. This isn't too much sugar in cookies or even a typical McCain geographical flub or a Bush "Doh!" moment. This is a serious issue of national defense and security policy.

Let me put this is perspective for you. It is the Bush Doctrine that explains our invasion of Iraq. Remember all that great, provable evidence on how Iraq had WMDs? Well, that made it okay to invade Iraq. Not only was the information not true, but the administration knew it. But the point of the Bush Doctrine was to say, if and when we believe there is a potential credible threat to the security of the United States, we have the right to attack before we are attacked. In other words, if we get info that No. Korea is planning something and we feel it is a credible threat (and of course there is the other thing wrong with this--the credible threat part) we can attack. This is, of course, a radical departure from prior US policy. Can you just imagine what John Kennedy could have caused if he had used this approach with Cuba potentially launching the US into a war with the then Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

And this isn't being asked of someone on the street who isn't potentially in the position of having to make national security decisions v. decisions that might be equally important, but not to the extent that it could start a war or world war.

Remember what Palin, herself, said in 2006, published in 2007:

Alaska Business Monthly: We've lost a lot of Alaska's military members to the war in Iraq. How do you feel about sending more troops into battle, as President Bush is suggesting?

Palin: I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe. Every life lost is such a tragedy. I am very, very proud of the troops we have in Alaska, those fighting overseas for our freedoms, and the families here who are making so many sacrifices. [emphasis mine]

--Alaska Business Monthly, March 1, 2007

Let me try this another way. I am a lay expert in land use. When I am in a room listening to a land use presentation, I come away with a very different perspective than someone hearing the information. Why? Because I know the language, I know the laws, and the subtleties of this discipline. Could I garner what an M.D. could at a medical conference? Of course not. That is not my area of expertise. Could I match the understanding of a car mechanic or a computer programmer on the topic? Nope. My eyes, heart and brain will register one big zero. My zero moment.

The video shows you Palin's "zero moment".

Foreign affairs is not her area of expertise AND she has no interest in it. Had she, she could have no doubt run circles around interviewer Gibson. She didn't because she couldn't.

So, instead of putting Palin in front of the Sunday bunch who all know their policy, she is put in front of a self-proclaimed supporter at a news station that asks their employees to lie and dumbs-down real news to the level of entertainment.

Now, don't you feel better and have even more confidence than ever?

So, How Did Palin Do? What's the Historical Precedent?

From my perspective, it is evident that anyone who takes news seriously could have done equally as well as Palin (without the intense coaching she received). Hawkish? Gee, an understatement. She could as easy as anyone send kids to war. Terse? Yes. Her body language was tense. I'd be scared too if I didn't know what I was doing.

Here's what some in the the media thought.

It is important to remember a couple of things. Palin doesn't know foreign policy and no amount of disputing that will change it.

She doesn't. Period.

Palin is being taught and is memorizing positions, positions she cannot assume from ANY kind of experience let alone the bizarre claim she is in control of her state's National Guard (a half-truth and she has not interacted with them once as Governor) and, as several have claimed "she lives next to Russia".

Palin has had two weeks to memorize this mess, including names of foreign countries and their leaders, conflicts, history etc. There is NO question that Biden could run her in circles, and Omaba can too; the former being highly experienced for several decades, and the latter having been in congress, then campaigning for almost 20 months. McCain and Biden are more matched, one being the presidential candidate and the other a vice presidential candidate. But clearly, on foreign affairs, Obama has the greater knowledge when compared to Palin. That is just a fact. When compared to McCain, Obama is the less experienced.

So what does history say about all this?

Let's take a walk through the last 50 or so years to see who and how others got their foreign affairs and other experience leading them to be either president or vice president. You might be very surprised. And the results of some of their experience may be reflected in the success or failure of foreign policy. This is a brief primer, but will give you some color on the last 50 years.

*****

Eisenhower went from the military to the White House (the only general in the 20th century to do so). His running mate and VP, Richard Nixon, had been a member of the house and senate. Before Nixon's eventual rise to his later shamed presidency, Nixon lost a bid for California governor.

Next was Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (Kennedy defeated Nixon's first White House attempt, but it was a very close race). Kennedy was both a house and senate member prior to election as president. Johnson, likewise, was a house and later a senate member prior to the assassination of Kennedy and his rise to the presidency. Later it was Johnson and Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey was mayor of Minneapolis before going on to the US Senate. Humphrey lost his bid for the presidency to Richard Nixon in 1968 as the Vietnam war was was raging. Humphrey later returned to the Senate and was a member upon his death.

Nixon, as described above, was a house and senate member before being Eisenhower's VP then president. His running mate, Spiro Agnew, had been Governor of Maryland (after a rather troubled series of lower municipal and judge positions). Agnew resigned in October 1973 under the weight of criminal charges of tax evasion and money laundering, only the second president in US history to do so. Later, ironically, Nixon resigned as well, though for very different reasons. Prior to Nixon's resignation, Gerald Ford became VP. Ford had been in the house for over two decades. Upon Nixon's resignation, Gerald Ford became president, the first to do so under the 25th Amendment. He is also the only person in American history to hold both the VP and presidency without being elected to either office. Ford also pardoned Richard Nixon for his involvement in Watergate, an extremely controversial move. He is the only president in history to give sworn testimony before congress (this regarding the Watergate/Nixon pardon debacle). Incredibly (in historical reflection), Nixon's Chief of Staff, Donald Rumsfield, became Secretary of Defense under Ford. Enter Dick Cheney as Ford's Chief of Staff and who also managed Ford's 1976 presidential campaign which Ford lost to Jimmy Carter. Henry Kissinger, a Nixon security advisor, was elevated to Secretary of State under Ford. Brent Scowcroft was a security advisor under Ford. Thus began a GOP dynasty many are familiar with to this day. George H.W. Bush (later president) because CIA Director.

Ford's incoming Vice President was Nelson Rockefeller. Rockefeller served in positions under President Roosevelt including Asst. Sec. of State (1944-45) for Latin American affairs, and served under Eisenhower as Special Assistant. He chaired the President's Advisory Committee on Government Organization through part of the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations (1952-58). Rockefeller later became a four-term governor of New York.

Ford lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter. Carter served in the Georgia State Senate and was later the Governor of Georgia. Ford's Vice President was Walter Mondale. Mondale, prior to VP, was a Minnesota State Attorney General, and was appointed to the Senate to fill Hubert Humphrey's position when becoming the Vice President. Previously, he had also worked on Humphrey's campaign. He was later returned by the voters to the US Senate. After being elected to VP on Carter ticket, he was the first VP to have an office in the White House.

Ronald Reagan, a radio and film star turned California Governor, defeated Carter/Mondale and became president in 1981 including a second term extending to 1989. He had worked on the Goldwater campaign after leaving GE (and the democratic party) in 1962 saying (you TECers should get a kick out of this!) "I didn't leave the party, the party left me." While California governor for just a month, he tried to nik into the Nixon's acceptance for president, but failed. He took office in 1981. Reagan's VP was George H. W. Bush who had been in the House for two terms and while running in the presidential primary, lost to Reagan but became his VP ticket companion. He also served as the US Ambassador to the UN, and was on the Council for Foreign Relations for two years between 1977-1979. (also see his involvement with Nixon and Ford, above.)

George H. W. Bush was elected in 1989 with running mate Dan Quayle. Quayle served two terms in the House and two in the Senate from the state of Indiana. Interestingly, one of the main contentions against Quayle was his lack of experience. It was Quayle who was on the other end of the famous " Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" remark delivered in the Vice Presidential debate between him and VP candidate Lloyd Bensten running with Michael Dukakis.

Bill Clinton defeated George H. W. Bush for a two-term presidency. Clinton worked with the McGovern campaign in his early years. He ran for and lost a bid for the House in 1974, later working as a Senatorial Asst. to Senator J. William Fullbright. He was elected to the State Attorney General position in Arkansas two years later in 1976 and Governor of Arkansas in 1978 (at this time, Arkansas had a two-year Gubernatorial term). In 1980, he lost the bid for re-election as Governor of the state. Clinton ran for and won the presidential election in 1992 against George H.W. Bush. His Vice President was Al Gore. Gore had served four terms in the House, and one in the Senate. In 1988, Gore ran against Joe Biden, Dick Gephardt, Paul Simon, Jesse Jackson and Michael Dukakis in the democratic primary taking third place. Due to a serious accident of his son that nearly took his life, Gore declined to run for president in 1992. He is reported as being very persistent to take the position of VP with Clinton for this reason, but ended up agreeing.

In the 2000 election, Al Gore lost to George W. Bush in an election where ballot box shenanigans paralyzed the country and where the Supreme Court, for the first time in US history, actually took action. This action is attributable to the success of George W. Bush as president for the first term. Bush first ran for a House position in 1978, but lost. He worked on his father's campaign from 1988 to his loss to Clinton in 1989. Bush then went on to challenge Ann Richards for Governor of Texas winning two consecutive terms. In the first year of his second term, he decided to run for president. He ran in the primary against Elizabeth Dole, John McCain, Stever Forbes, Dan Quayle, Pat Buchannan, and Lamar Alexander, going on to win the election twice. Bush's Vice president of two-terms, Dick Cheney, has a long history dating back to Nixon and Ford (see above). He also served five terms in the house. In 2004, Senator John Kerry ran for president on the democratic ticket, but failed to win the seat. He was, at the time, serving his third term as US Senator. Kerry ran, but lost, his bid for a congressional house seat in 1972. He made a successful big as Lieutenant Governor in Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the US Senate where he remains. John Edwards, Kerry's running mate, was elected to the Senate in 1998, then becoming Kerry's VP choice.

So, here we are to Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin. First Barack Obama. Obama served three consecutive terms in the Illinois state senate. He lost in a bid for the US House in 2000. In 2004, Obama resigned from the Illinois state senate to join the position he was elected to as the Jr. US Senator from Illinois, taking the oath of US Senator in January of 2005. In the senate, he served on the following committees: Foreign Relations, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs (through 2006). In January of 2007, he took additional assignments on Health Education, Labor and Pensions, and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs also serving as Chairman of the Senate subcommittee on European Affairs. Joe Biden was elected Senator (DE) in 1973 and has served in that capacity to this day (35 years, six terms). He has served as the chairman of the foreign affairs committee for seven years, since 2001 having been on the committee for two decades. Biden is highly respected by both sides and considered to know foreign policy in minute detail, even by his opponents. He has also served on the US Committee of the Judiciary and was its Chairman from 1987 to 1995. He remains on the committee. Biden ran in democratic primaries for president twice, in 1988 and 2008, failing each time to get his party's nomination. He was chosen by Obama as a VP running mate for the democratic party in 2008. John McCain was elected to the House by his Arizona district voters in 1982 and returned to the position in 1984. He ran for US Senate in 1986 and has served four senate terms on the following Senate Committees: Senate Armed Services Committee, Commerce Committee and the Indian Affairs Committee. He was involved as a suspect in the the the "Keating Five" (Lincoln Savings and Loan) scandal and later oversaw an investigation into a scandal over Indian Gaming (Jack Abramoff) which is still continuing to this day. In 1999, McCain announced his bid for the presidency which he lost, George Bush eventually winning both the party and national elections, then returning to the US Senate. He campaigned hard for George Bush in 2000 and 2004. Sarah Palin was elected to her city council in 1992 and re-lected in 1995, then as mayor of the small (approx 6000 persons) town in two consecutive terms. Termed out, she could not run again. In 2002, she ran, but lost, in a race for Lieutenant Governor (primary). In 2006, Palin ran a successful campaign for Governor where she remains.

So, here we are. You be the judge of whether the candidates have acceptable experience for their positions.

If I had to compare her to anyone, it would be Spiro Agnew.


.

Quote of the Day!

Tony Sachs of the Huff Post gets the prize. Read it all here.

"Before long, Obama and Biden will have to defend themselves against accusations that they're smart."

Church Times:Akinola in the News Again

Akinola back in the news again continuing to deride the west. Here's a slice:

The West’s tendency to accom-modate cultural trends within the Chris­tian religion is one of the big problems facing the world, he sug­gests, parodying Christian leaders failing to proclaim the gospel as flut­tering: “‘Oh no, no, no, just acqui­esce. Just be gentle. Just be polit­ically correct. Just be moderate. Just be tolerant.’ Now that’s arrant non­sense.”

I'm sure this piece needs absolutely no comment from me.

Palin and Gibson: Her First Interview--OMG!

Watch it here. and watch it twice or more, not once.

We are in such danger.

The woman is clueless on foreign policy. She made it very clear. She didn't even know what the Bush Doctrine Was! Oh my God, please help us.

She looks scared to death, and should. She has no idea what she is doing.

Count how many times she doesn't answer the questions... just count them.

We are in such deep do-do if the GOP wins and this woman is a breath away from the presidency.

Added: if she says "nucular" the wrong way one more time I'm going to slap her! Gads, the most destructive force on earth and she cannot say it.... argh. Dear, it is Nuclear...(newcleeur for you no-nukes in your state Alaskans) or ˈnü-klē-ər if you live next to one which spews hundreds of curies into the air each time they go down for service.

I am shocked. Even I expected her to do better.

Oy... McCain on Earmarks... Funny and Short!

Palin: Strong Woman or Bellicose Bully? Fear and the Future

If you have not read this yet, please read it first, then come back and finish here. The posts are somewhat related.

A bit has been written about Palin's experience and management style. The fateful line, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities," caused concern and consternation from virtually everyone that has been a community organizer. It was a derisive statement, condescening and delivered with an aire of superiority and snub. Probably not coincidentally, after Palin's slam, McCain cancelled his next day visit to a Habitat for Humanity build site.

This article speaks to Palin's mayoral style and is clearly a heads-up on what we could expect, one of several reasons I am concerned.

But the part of the article that really bothered me was this about about Wasilla Police Chief, Irl Stambaugh, who she fired in her first term of office after requesting his resignation and that of nine others to prove their loyalty:

"Stambaugh was 6-foot-2, 240 pounds. Because he'd heard that Palin had felt intimidated by him during a meeting, he made sure to sit when talking with her, and to use a soothing voice. By early December, things had calmed down, and Stambaugh felt the threat of being fired had passed."

I cannot speak for another single woman (or man for that matter) in saying I am not the least bit unnerved by anyone I come up against, male or female. I am secure in who I am, and I know my subject. I don't need to tear into someone to make my point. Is the mark of a strong, capable man or woman fear of a physical characteristic of another?

Many of you reading this, being former Father Jake readers, know that on that site "bullying" was several times discussed. In fact, it was a common thread through many reader comments. So what do some psychologists see as typical behavior in bullies?

" ... Nevertheless, says Levinson, 40 years of consulting have given him some idea of what they do and why. They over-control, micromanage, and display contempt for others, usually by repeated verbal abuse and sheer exploitation. They constantly put others down with snide remarks or harsh, repetitive, and unfair criticism. They don't just differ with you, they differ with you contemptuously; they question your adequacy and your commitment. They humiliate you in front of others."

--Psycology Today, September/October 1995

"Some current findings are consistent with such older views as the idea, inspired by the work of Alfred Adler, that the bully is compensating for deep feelings of inferiority."

''We find that bullies have a strong need to control others,'' said John Lochman, a psychologist at Duke University Medical School. ''Their need to be dominant masks an underlying fear that they are not in control, and they mask the sense of inadequacy by being a bully.''

--New York Times, 4/7/87

In adults, it does not appear that bullying reduces productivity, nor does it seem to indicate that it stops one from rising to higher levels as the bully respects the power above them and are attracted to it:

"So tyrants spread misery, and from the outside it looks as if they are doing a fine job. It does not help matters, psychologists say, that people who enjoy abusing power frequently also revere it and are quick to offer that reverence to the even-more-powerful. Bullying bosses are often experts at ''managing up.''

"Subordinates know viscerally the high cost of going around a boss, even if it is simply to file a complaint with the human resources department. You are trouble. You are a whiner. You have called out the manager behind his back."

--New York Times, June 22, 2000

What we have seen in Sarah Palin since her rise is unnerving to me. I watch her and I just see something wrong; something looks out of sort. She looks and acts terse (fear). Add her hostility and grate, and I immediately want to go the other direction out of sight and sound. I could not name it until today--bully. Sarah Palin is a bully, and a bellicose one, at that. To me, Sarah Palin is dangerous, and especially so in the east wing a minute away from the west wing and calls on nuclear weapons and war. Her religious background doesn't make me feel any better about that, in fact it causes me even greater concern.

*****

We have just lived through the most bizarre eight years of any two-term president. Our economy is a mess and growing more unstable by the day. There is now a list of 79 banks in trouble and not small ones, either. While homeowners are losing their homes, Freddick Mac and Fannie Mae have been declared DOA, a topic Palin, BTW, clearly hashed in her recent remarks making economists almost unanimously cry in alarm, 'She is clueless!' Yup, yup. Not much better on the McCain end where he has admitted he doesn't understand the economy.

We have warred ourselves into an untenable present and a more miserable and unstable future. We have virtually eviscerated our beloved Constitution. We have a president that doesn't talk to congress and presidential advisors that have the nation in a paranoid neck hold. We actually talk about torture instead of be repulsed by it.

How possibly, I wonder, could it get worse?

In a word, Palin.

Repeated comments by people that know her and/or have worked with her have focused on her reprisal and abandonment. Read: not a team player. Now add bully and fearful, and her potential for screwing up what little foreign policy we have left is overwhelming, let alone domestic environmental, energy and social policies left standing after eight long years of political assasination under Rove and Cheney.

I'm not sure I really need to understand more of what I already know about her policies derived both from her words, her actions and her inactions and her clear lack of knowledge on issues of import to this country. What little she has said (over and over and over again) is carefully scripted and honed by those that have already given us what we have. Most of it--other than the fact she is married and has five kids--seemingly borders on near pathological distortion. Her political about-face from assaulter to the "poor me" assulted is a calculated move to keep her out of the sunlight of transparancy; her lines given because she doesn't know enough to birth her own.

As a woman, I find myself puzzled over the outstreatched reach to Sarah; a pawing of other women resembling teenagers at a 60's Beatle concert a few short breaths from a mere faint. I don't see respect (and what would that respect be for? Two x chromasomes?) in the apparent leagues that follow, but near idolotry. I prefer the meat of ideas to the doily of charisma--something she obviously has a lot of.

I am very troubled by her potential rise to a presidency with absolutely no solid person in the wings to back her up. In this years race, the GOP platform needs to be a "three for all": John McCain, Sarah Palin and a third solid rock that could back her up if something were to happen to McCain. I hold this horrible image of Sarah at the desk in the Oval Office saying, "Oh shit! Now what do I do?" (as she hands the famous football off to the "first dude" who is well known to be heavily involved in her affairs as governor.) I mean, he might be a snowmobile racing champion, and I'm pretty sure he's got the diaper thing down, but...

On the issue stands I am familiar with--and the important things in her life--I am not in agreement with a single one as far as I know. I hate hunting if not subsistance. I don't like guns. Her support for aerial gunning of wolves (and she has said any means to kill them is fine with her) indicates a cold heartlessness that will get no nod from me, let alone her absolute and obvious loathing of science. Palin knows little about any energy other than oil--you know, the energy source that is the major cause of carbon output that causes global warming that she doesn't attribute to humans?

Palin isn't pro choice. She doesn't agree with stem cell research. She is an advocate of abstinance only (of course, condoms are okay, but she does not believe in abortifactints which include birth control pills, IUDs, IUS use, etc.). She obviously loaths the endangered species act as she is suing to delist the polar bear, and working vigorously to keep the baluga whale and three species of seals off the list.

Palin might have a clue about Alaska's economy, but no clue about the other 49 states. I'm not comfortable with her giving welcoming messages to an organization that her husband belonged to that wanted to succeed from the US and is akin to anti-us as the KKK is to segregation. Her office, as Governor, has not helped the aboriginal people of Alaska at all, in fact helped to harm them. She is not a Maverick, unless that is a part of working for Ted Stevens the now-indicted Alaska Senator and hiring lobbyists to get a lot of money for Alaska which is, in fact, a welfare state; they contribute nothing to the US national economy.

Palin supports the grueling Ididarod race which I find incredibly abusive to the animals forced to participate in it to the glory of the human. Dogs die in this "race". Palin is anti-gay marriage and her life-long church until 2002 is involved in "praying the gay away". Her former pastor (where she still attends and speaks on occasion) has said that anyone that supported Kerry will probably go to hell. None of that seems at all within the range of reason to me.

She let a Sheriff charge women for their rape kits which is so bizarre and cold it just makes my waiste-length hair stand on end. She is doing everything to stall an ethics investigation into herself after saying she would fully cooperate.

Perhaps it's just me. What's there not to like, right?

As for her experience as the vaulted mayor of a town of 5,000 (at the time), I think her own words express my feelings quite well:

"When asked how she would run the city without experienced department heads, she responded, 'It's not rocket science. It's $6 million and 53 employees.' "

Exactly, Sarah. You sum it up pretty nicely.

Palin Slaps Rape Victims in the Face

UPDATE: 9/19/08, Read more here.

Please watch this and pass it on. Another do-nothing on rape, Sarah Palin.



Alaska is the number one state in the nation for sexual assault. In 2000, Alaska Governor Tony Knowles signed a bill protecting women from being forced to pay for their forensic rape kit in the event of sexual assault. The sponsor of the bill, democrat Eric Croft, said the bill was in part "aimed at Wasilla". Palin was mayor of Wasilla at this time.

At the time of the bill's passage, women were charged between $300 and $1200 for the rape test kit. Insult heaped upon humiliation.

And where was Palin at this time?

Palin was mayor of Wasilla and had fired their police chief, appointing in his place Charlie Fallon who operated directly under Palin. Fallon is reported by the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman as indicating:

Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon does not agree with the new legislation [to ban a rape victim from paying for the kit] , saying the law will require the city and communities to come up with more funds to cover the costs of the forensic exams. [enclosure mine] In the past weve charged the cost of exams to the victims insurance company when possible. I just dont want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer, Fannon said. [emphasis mine]

So, in brief: Palin knew about it. Palin did nothing to change it in Wasilla. Palin appointed a Police Chief that supported this insult to assaulted women.

Yep, she is a great voice and an active advocate for women.

Read more here, here, and here.

Jesus Christ Quits Christianity: Writing Autobiography

Read it here.

Cal Family Council and Prop 8: Fiscal Mismanagement

Of course, this is good news for those of us opposing 8. Of $3million, only $500,000 actually went to any work. The rest lined pockets at the end of the day.

Read here.

Michigan GOP to Block Forclosed Home Voters

It's going to happen, again? Is there never an end to this? Ohio is considering the same action. Suppose this is the newer, better "felons" list approach?

Read here. This is really very serious. I have friends in foreclosure situations that have remained in their homes for months. How could they know whether or not the people are or are not still in their homes?