Speed Bumps

September 2nd, 2008

Good golly – remember the ancient days of yesteryear, when we were thrilled at the Obama speech? What was that … less than a week ago?

Between then and now all eyes have turned north to Alaska, eyeing pictures of the new Pub Veep standing astride a dead caribou — to New Orleans, where a hurricane named Gustav has brought renewed concern about levee’s and disheartenment to those who’ve worked so hard to restore her — and now to the tried-and-true election year question of planned parenthood and abortion.

The Republicans have nothing to offer the American public but a furtherance of Grover Nordquist’s “bathtub” theory; they have no interest or intention in governing, so they’re at a loss when they face off with Obama, a man intent on creating a functional government. So what can they do as the nation looks up into the sunshine and begins to hope??

They can throw a handful of cultural marbles in its path, dump the nation on its ass and have them staring down at the pavement again … hopefully, for another several weeks of blessed distraction and homespun issues. Long enough to cut into Obama’s eight point lead and continue to paint him as an elitist …

when was the last time he killed and dressed HIS own dinner?? What a wimp!

… while all of us ponder the virtues of caribou stew, popping out children as cavalierly as one assembles a dog team, and raising them to pop out their own — the ultimate illustration of what abstinence education will offer.

Sara’s the October Surprise, the Polar princess, the speed bump. She is cult of personality, aimed at Wal-Mart moms and the highest example of female maverick’dom in the Republican mindset; Mac’s own Paris Hilton in librarian glasses and skin-tight pants suit, and fit for duty much as are the Big Bunnies that shill for car ads. She has the compliance of Harriet Miers, the naivety of George Bush, the experience of a gnat [DO open this link] and the ideology of Dick Cheney.

And although I am outraged at the cynicism of this choice, Rovian for sure … and still stunned that the Republicans can be this obvious while my fellow citizens effort to consider this as something other than a sick joke … I think Palin presents a series of speed bumps with the potential of land mines.

We are squarely in Republican territory here … and nobody plays the hypocrite card better; assault Palin on her parenting, or her daughters pregnancy and you’re an anti-life cretin; morals, using their own yardstick, be damned.

Barack and Joe have been very careful, feet firmly planted on the High Road — they “get it.” Of course they do. Now, can they weave their way through this trap? Rather than bash Sara for her obvious shortcomings, Obama said she is an “up and coming public servant.” She is, indeed — so is the scout leader of your local troop. And at the convention yesterday, Karl Rove [?!] called Joe a “big, blowhard doofus.” Bidens response was uncharacteristically Joe, who answered tongue-in-cheek: “He’s a great American.” High Road — Joe’s getting the hang of it.

We can only hope that Americans have developed a distaste for soap opera and the parallel universe the Right occupies. And this also gives Hillary Clinton an opening to refute the “feminism” of Sara’s stand, and give the Dem party an attack dog … just as long as it isn’t a MAN saying the words, doncha know! Speaking for myself, I’d think a newborn with Downs and a daughter in trouble might make her think twice about splitting her time between family and political ambition — but that’s just me. Waaaay too reality-driven, I’d suppose.

I’ve collected excellent reads on why Palin is a joke, a distraction and a danger, below, including a 10-point piece by Alternet that spells it out — George Lakeoff gives us the cognitive dissonance issues at the end; you’ll find articles on her corruption, links to the Babygate issues, yadda. There’s a lot here — and even more available; go over to Huffy if you want to investigate further. Here’s the lede’s on the main page:

Prediction Market Starts Betting That Palin Will Withdraw …
Top GOP Governor: I’ve heard no discussion about removing Ms. Palin from the ticket …
Report: McCain Camp Stalling Palin Investigation…
‘Fringe’ Alaskan Secessionist Party: Palin Was A Member…
Almost Recalled As Mayor…
Directed Fundraising For Indicted Senator’s 527…
Troopergate Scandal…
Calls Iraq A War For Oil…
Admits She Hasn’t ‘Really Focused On Iraq’…
Alaska National Guard General: Palin Plays No Role In National Defense…
17 Year-Old Daughter Pregnant…
Husband’s DUI…
Bristol Palin’s Baby Daddy [Johnston] Revealed
Johnston’s MySpace Page: Calls Himself A “Redneck,” Says He’s In A “Relationship,” But Doesn’t Want Kids
McCain Fought Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs

Speed bumps, distractions and drama?? Pffffffffft! Landmines!

If we stay on the High Road, we’ll bypass them. We need NOT to get baited into a “reality” response — these people actually think Palin IS more experienced than Obama. We can’t win by playing their game — we’ve got to play our OWN!

Later this week, we’ll look at the protester violence in Minnesota [including the arrest of Amy Goodman from Democracy Now.] There was similar police activity, not quite so egregious, in Denver. THAT looks like Pluto in Capricorn to me … and we’ll be looking at this kind of thing for quite a while, so get over the willy’s.

Jude

Republicans Rush In
Richard Cohen, WaPo
Tuesday, September 2, 2008

One of the great sights of American political life — a YouTube moment if ever there was one — was to see the doughboy face of Newt Gingrich as he extolled the virtues of Sarah Palin, a sitcom of a vice presidential choice and a disaster movie if she moves up to the presidency: “She’s the first journalist ever to be nominated, I think, for the president or vice president, and she was a sportscaster on local television,” Gingrich said on the “Today” show. “So she has a lot of interesting background. And she has a lot of experience. Remember that, when people worry about how inexperienced she is, for two years she’s been in charge of the Alaska National Guard.”

It’s a pity Gingrich was not around when the Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known by his nickname Caligula, reputedly named Incitatus as a consul and a priest. Incitatus was his horse.

John McCain’s selection of Palin, which I first viewed with horror, could now be seen in a different light. Based on various television interviews over the Labor Day weekend — and a careful reading of the transcripts — it is possible that this is McCain’s attempt to make fools of his fellow Republicans. He has succeeded beyond all expectations.

Gingrich’s point about Palin being commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard has been echoed throughout the GOP. In fact, even Cindy McCain pointed out — rightly enough — that Alaska is across the Bering Strait from Russia and so Palin, by deduction, has been on the front lines of the Cold War . . . had it not ended in 1989.

Still, you have to admit that in all that time, especially since Palin became governor about two years ago, no Russian invasion force has come across the strait, maybe because she was in charge of the Guard, maybe because she herself is a hunter and an athlete. The record is unclear because no high-ranking Russian appeared on any of the weekend talk shows to say how they had considered an invasion of Alaska and then backed off when Sarah Palin became commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard. Who could blame them?

Just to show that he would not ask of others what he would not do himself, McCain came before Chris Wallace to sing Palin’s praises. He said that he had “watched her record . . . for many, many years” which is, a prudent man might say, more years than she’s had a record. McCain, as a fellow military man, did not mention Palin’s tenure as the supreme commander of the entire Alaska National Guard, maybe because he thought it speaks for itself. If that’s the case, he’s right.

Probably the most depressing thing about Palin is not her selection but the defense of it. It has produced a parade of GOP spokesmen intent on spiking the needle on a polygraph. Looking right into the camera, they offer statement after statement that they hope the voters will swallow but that history will forget. The sum effect on the diligent news consumer is a feeling of consummate contempt for the intelligence of the American people — a contempt that will be justified should Palin be the factor that makes McCain a winner in November.

One of the more heroic efforts at Palin worship came from the commentator-columnist William Kristol, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dan Quayle. He had to use the code word “traditional” three times in a single sentence to make his point: “It’s a pretty amazing story of personal success, being at once a traditional woman who broke all of these traditional barriers, kind of the best of both worlds, if you believe in traditional values.”

About the only Republican who seemed totally sincere about Palin was Grover G. Norquist, an anti-tax obsessive who once likened the argument that the estate tax affected only a very few people to the argument — made by no one I can think of — that the Holocaust also affected a relatively few people. “I mean, that’s the morality of the Holocaust,” he said only five years ago. Norquist called the selection of the anti-tax Palin a “wise” choice.

In 1959, the novelist Terry Southern published “The Magic Christian,” a darkly comic tale based on the premise that people will do anything for money. The choice of Palin proves that people will also do anything for political power — including rising early on a holiday weekend to make fools of themselves. ++

Heckuva Job, Palie
Ellis Weiner, HuffPo
August 30, 2008

Remember the Children’s Crusade known as the Coalition Provisional Authority? Sure you do. They were the good-looking, whip-smart, thoroughly inept young guys ‘n’ gals for whom reconstituting the newly-invaded Iraq was a total freakin’ goof, a lark delivering both a paycheck and some desert cred they could wave in the face of Cardwell and Persiflage and all their other chums at the dinner parties back in Georgetown. And, of course, a noble exercise in service, okay? Something between an Outward Bound session to placate Dad so he’d (finally) buy you the S-Type, and a summer camp production of Kismet.

From Thomas E. Ricks’ definitive Fiasco:

No clear strategy, very little detailed planning, poor communications, high personnel turnover, lots of young and inexperienced political appointees, no well-established business processes,” concluded retired Army Col. Ralph Hallenbeck, who worked at the CPA as a civilian contractor dealing with the Iraqi communications infrastructure. Personnel was an especially nettlesome issue. Hallenbeck said that in addition to being young and inexperienced, most of the young CPA people he met during his work as a contractor were ideologically minded Republicans whose only professional experience was working on election campaigns back in the United States.

Is it coming back to you? It’s been five years, so take your time. Or try this: “Heckuva job, Brownie.”

Ring a bell? The Arabian horse guy in charge of making sure people stepped over the dead bodies as they left the Superdome?

This — the military referring to C.P.A. as meaning “Can’t Produce Anything;” New Orleans citizens drowning in their attics while FEMA chiefs try to get each other on the phone — is what you get when you get Republicans in government.

When a party that only believes in politics but doesn’t believe in governing ends up with power, you get catastrophe, scandal, and corruption. You get career government people trying to do their jobs, thwarted by Young Republicans for Self-Dealing; you get serious professionals in, say, the Justice Department hamstrung and fired by well-connected Regency University grads who don’t “believe in” evolution; and you get thousands, if not millions, of innocent shmucks — in Louisiana, in Iraq — endangered, abused, and sometimes killed.

Now comes Gustav, timed as though by God His Own Bad Self to coincide with the GOP convention in Minneapolis. There is talk that the Republicans will adjust their festivities to turn the event into a telethon, to raise money to help the sure-to-be-devastated region.

Perfect: On Labor Day, the Party that hates Labor and demonizes the very idea of labor unions, turns to the population whose wealth it has funneled up to the already-wealthy. “We’re the party of millionaires and billionaires. Won’t you give us money we can give to those poor people whose homes we’ve somehow been unable to rebuild in three years?”

Still, while Gustav’s arrival as the Ghost of Katrina Past delivers a certain literary satisfaction, we cannot help but sense that something’s missing.

Where is our new Brownie? Where is the next monumental insult to the idea of competence in the public sphere? We, the public, are a poor old battered wife: we feel that, unless the Republican Party isn’t smacking us around (and then blaming us for it), it doesn’t love us any more. To whom can we turn for the next round of abuse?

We turn, like the feller sang, North! To Al-asss-ka!

Here comes John McCain (hear, or at least read, his theme song here and Who’s That Girl?

Why, that’s Alaska Governor Sarah Palin: huntress, mom, beauty queen, former mayor of a town whose entire population of 9,000 could fit in Dell Diamond (2003’s “Best Double-A Ball Park in the Country”) with 2,000 seats left over, and so on. Nice lady, perky, mooseburgers, hockey mom, creative with the kids’ names (Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig–the only gang of siblings in the U.S., if not the world, whose first names sound like a law firm), and a purebred Republican, from her desire to teach creationism in schools to her role at the center of an ongoing criminal investigation into the abuse of power of the Governor’s office.

What’s she up for? Like, Labor secretary?

That’s right: For Veep.

It is, as usual with these people, to laugh, and then to shoot the self in the head. If all being V.P. meant was pretending to preside over the Senate and going to funerals, it would be one thing. But she’d be understudy to a leading man who is already 72 and hasn’t yet been subjected to the brutalization of the office (with a Congress run by the opposite party, yet).

Not to mention the cancer, the medical history print-out longer (if you can imagine such a thing) than Infinite Jest, and the fact that some Pacemakers, it turns out, can be hacked remotely. (Seriously. Cf. Of course, McCain doesn’t wear one. Yet.) As Chris Kelly said elsewhere in these pages, McCain is twenty-two years older than the state of Alaska itself.

It is plain to everyone who is not a Republican propagandist, apologist, or true believer, that Sarah Palin is grotesquely unqualified to be one heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

And that’s what makes her the Woman of the Hour. That’s what makes her the next Brownie. That’s what makes her the latest, and perhaps greatest, (willing) human sacrifice to the drooling GOP god of Political Expediency.

Or, no, sorry, that’s not quite correct. We’re the sacrifice. “We” meaning, the U.S. of A., our government, the institution which, theoretically, at least, we empower and pay taxes to, to serve and work for us.

Not that McCain will be elected. But if he were, and if he were then to suffer some medical misfortune, we’re the ones who would suffer. Sarah Palin wouldn’t suffer. She’d be the President of the United States, if you must know.

Watching her campaign — or even just stand on a stage — with McCain will be a study in archetypal imagery, evoking everything from Anna Nichole Smith and her Crypt Keeper hubby to all those scenes, from Columbo to Monk, in which the doddering elder tycoon is led shuffling around the mansion by the sexy young nurse with a calculating gleam in her eye (and a hot, blue-collar boyfriend/husband waiting impatiently back home).

Join us, then, as we stroll down Memory Lane this week. Gustav is coming to remind us of Katrina. President Bush will speak Monday night to remind us that George W. Bush actually was once President of the U.S. And Sarah Palin will be front and center to remind us of Brownie, and of the sorority sisters and frat rats sunning and funning in Baghdad for the CPA, and of every other country club crony, campaign contributor, legacy hire, lobbyist’s son and loyalist’s “niece” and church-group nitwit inserted into a public office at your, my, and the nation’s expense. ++

Sarah Palin: Average Hockey Mom or Spawn of Satan?
Sean Carman, 236.com
8/30/08

Well, John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate on Friday, sending all of us political columnists to Google in search of something to say about the “average hockey mom” who can drop a bear at 150 yards with a bolt action if her scope is well-sighted and also happens to be the living embodiment of the hot librarian fantasy shared by all the men and half the women in America. What the selection means for yours truly is that the canned columns I had worked up on Mitt Romney, Joe Lieberman and Condaleeza Rice are out the window. Thanks a lot, John McCain.

Like the other 30% of America paying attention to the presidential race, I have been
feverishly learning as much as possible about the former PTA president who says that she doesn’t know what the Vice President does, really, and hasn’t thought very much about Iraq, but hopes that, now that her son is going to be deployed there, we at least have some sort of plan.

Earth to Sarah Palin: Your job as Vice President is not to hope we have some sort of plan for Iraq. It is to help develop one. Hopefully they’ll explain that to her at some point.

I thought it was a nice touch that, as Palin stood at the podium in Ohio yesterday, waiting to begin her first speech to a national audience, and she looked uncertain for a second about when to start, McCain leaned forward with his Cheshire Cat smile and helpfully said, “No hurry.”

Yes, that’s the sort of advice an experienced politician needs — when to stop graciously receiving applause and begin speaking. It’s good they’ve chosen someone with experience, who knows how to take charge of a situation.

It was undoubtedly the sort of on-the-job training McCain advisor Charlie Black was referring to when he said Palin will be, “learning foreign policy at the foot of a master for the next four years.” But why at his feet? Do they not plan to give Palin a chair? If I were her, I would demand my own chair. Sitting on the carpet at the feet of John McCain for four years while he preaches about how we have no exit strategy for Iraq sounds degrading, and also really dull.

Although the image does make me think that Palin could become McCain’s Shahrazad, telling a captivated McCain endless stories of fascinating adventures in Alaska so he can never quite bring himself to remove her from the ticket once this whole “throw a curve to Obama” strategy becomes the Republican embarrassment of the Century.

“And yet that story was not nearly as interesting as The Story of the Time Sarah Palin Made Love to a Polar Bear While Her Husband Was Winning the Great Northern Snow Machine Race . . .”

Oh wait, I forgot. She hates Polar Bears and wants to see them go extinct. Well, you get the idea.

Because I believe this is an historic election, and that Palin’s selection could determine its outcome, I’ll share with you the best Palin video I’ve found on the internet, a KTVA news story about the state trooper controversy. Check it out at the end of this piece.

Apart from its sordid tale of Palin’s abuse of power as Governor in carrying out a personal vendetta against her sister’s ex-husband, compare the Palin in the white sun visor who, about half-way through, denies speaking with Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan (whom she fired for his refusal to can state tropper Mike Wooten) to the Palin shown elsewhere in the piece. Clearly, she’s had some work done. They thinned her nose, took something off her cheeks, and gave her a complete personal appearance makeover.

Unless the Alaska local news was just interviewing some random woman in a sun visor about whether she’d spoken to Monegan about Wooten, always a possibility. I grew up in Wyoming, which is not unlike Alaska, and where the local news was always interviewing the wrong people and getting the stories all wrong, which was a great source of entertainment, but that’s another story.

My point was, Palin appears to have turned herself into a Barbie doll to advance her political career. Which, of course, will make feminists everywhere line up to vote for her. Especially Hilary supporters.

The other gem in the KTVA news piece is the anxiety-ridden, beady-eyed Palin speaking at some sort of art gallery function about why, before supposedly firing Monagen for failing to address rural alcohol issues (her cover story) she had, two weeks before, praised his work on the issue and nominated him to be Director of the Alaska State Beverage Control Commission. Oops. Palin’s frantic explanation comes about two-third of the way through piece and it is priceless. It’s so rare these days that you find footage on the internet of a national politician looking like a cornered rat.

My political instincts — which are never right, by the way — tell me McCain’s selection of Palin is going to explode in his face, like the best kind of slow-motion political train wreck. This could be the most entertaining political development of the last 20 years. And it could get better. Maybe Palin, before she was a beauty queen, danced at the Great Alaska Bush Company. Maybe that’s how she met her husband, the North Slope oil rig operator Todd Palin. An eager nation can only hope.

But the other part of me fears for our country if this woman gets anywhere near the White House. I also think that if America elects this pair, it’s game over and I’m moving to Canada. Or Spain. Or anywhere that will take me.

[open link for YouTube] ++ [recommended - J]

Top Ten Most Disturbing Facts and Impressions of Sarah Palin
AlterNet Staff, AlterNet
September 2, 2008

It’s not hard to stir up negative publicity when you advocate gunning down wolves from airplanes and deny the human causes of climate change.

Sarah Palin was named John McCain’s vice presidential nominee just three days ago, yet it seems that weeks have passed in terms of the mountains of controversy it has stirred up. An overwhelming amount of negative publicity and sometimes shocking information has come out about her and her relatively short political career.

Choosing Palin has been called alternately a brilliant stroke that reinforces McCain’s maverick image and a desperate, irresponsible “Hail Mary” pass in the face of an almost sure defeat in November. The fundamental question being raised: Why Palin? True, her personal narrative has lots of color: former fisherman, NRA hunter, mother of five, small-town mayor, short-term governor of a state with a small population, etc. But that does not qualify her to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Anathema to Moderates, Liberals and Progressives

George Lakoff, in an accompanying article, lists some of the issues swirling around Palin:

She is inexperienced, knowing little or nothing about foreign policy or national issues; she is really an anti-feminist, wanting the government to enter women’s lives to block abortion, but not wanting the government to guarantee equal pay for equal work, or provide adequate child health coverage, or child care, or early childhood education; she shills for the oil and gas industry on drilling; she denies the scientific truths of global warming and evolution; she misuses her political authority; she opposes sex education and her daughter is pregnant; and, rather than being a maverick, she is on the whole a radical right-wing ideologue.

Part of the shock that many are grappling with: How could a 72-year-old man with bouts of cancer choose someone who appears to be completely unqualified to become president? Thus, McCain’s age and health become central issues in the campaign, as does his judgment, although it may be tricky for Democrats to raise these issues without creating some backlash.

As Democratic strategist Paul Begala notes: “It is interesting that McCain passed over Tom Ridge, a decorated combat hero, a Cabinet secretary and the former two-term governor of the large, complex state of Pennsylvania; Mitt Romney, who ran a big state, Massachusetts, a big company, Bain Capital, and a big event, the Olympics; and Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Texas senator who is knowledgeable about the military, good on television and — obviously — a woman.”

Not Good in the Polls

Republican pollster Frank Luntz, working with the AARP, did some focus groups of “undecided” voters and found some bad news for John McCain:

They don’t like his choice of Sarah Palin for vice president. Only one person said Palin made him more likely to vote for McCain; about half the 25-member group raised their hands when asked if Palin made them less likely to vote for McCain. They had a negative impression of Palin by a 2-1 margin … a fact that was reinforced when they were given hand-dials and asked to react to Palin’s speech at her first appearance with McCain on Friday — the dials remained totally neutral as Palin went through her heart-warming(?) biography, and only blipped upward when she said she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere — which wasn’t quite the truth, as we now know.

Then there was this, from a woman named Teresa, who went to the Democratic convention as a Hillary delegate and is leaning toward voting for McCain — obviously the target audience for the Palin pick: “His age didn’t really bother me until he picked Palin. What if he dies in office and leaves us with her as president? Also she leans toward the rigid right, and I always thought he was a moderate. … You know, I change my mind almost every day, but right now I’m wondering where the John McCain I really liked in 2000 went. What happened to the moderate? This John McCain has the look of someone who is being manipulated — probably by Karl Rove.”

A commentator to the article appearing on the Time Magazine blog BlankSlate wrote:

Only someone in the throes of a serious mental condition could have make a pick this astonishing. This focus group confirms the Rasmussen Reports polling that, among undecided voters, the Palin pick makes 6 percent more likely to vote for McCain and 31 percent less likely to vote for McCain. About 59 percent of these undecided voters do not think Palin is qualified to be president. It is a stunt gone terribly amiss. And the hilarious thing is that the right wing really believes that this is going to turn everything around. Amazing, amazing, amazing.

Local Media Unhappy with Palin

Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor & Publisher, checked out the Alaska newspapers to see how they felt about their governor. He found that they were nervous to say the least:

The pages and Web sites of the two leading papers up there have raised all sorts of issues surrounding Palin, from her ethics problems to general lack of readiness for this big step up. Right now the top story on the Anchorage Daily News Web site looks at new info in what it calls “troopergate” and opens: “Alaska’s former commissioner of public safety says Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s pick to be vice president, personally talked to him on two occasions about a state trooper who was locked in a bitter custody battle with the governor’s sister.”

A reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, Gregg Erickson, even did an online chat with the Washington Post in which he revealed that Palin’s approval rating in the state was not the much-touted 80 percent, but rather 65 percent and sinking — and that among journalists who followed her, it might be in the “teens.” He added: “I have a hard time seeing how her qualifications stack up against the duties and responsibilities of being president.”

His paper found a number of leading Republican officeholders in the state who mocked Palin’s qualifications. “She’s not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?” said Lyda Green, the president of the state senate, a Republican from Palin’s hometown of Wasilla. “Look at what she’s done to this state. What would she do to the nation?”

And from the editorial in the Anchorage Daily News: “It’s stunning that someone with so little national and international experience might be heartbeat away from the presidency.”

What’s Next?

With the Republican National Convention delayed by Hurricane Gustav’s arrival on U.S. shores, there must be lots of discussion and soul-searching going on in Republican circles as to how the Palin candidacy will hold up over the next two months. The biggest question perhaps is whether the McCain inner circle, perhaps in a major concession to the extreme right wing, which hasn’t been friendly to McCain, has made a drastic error to woo its support. Or in fact, as some would suggest, McCain is crazy like a fox. Under that scenario, Palin will weather the initial avalanche of negative publicity that paints her far outside of the political mainstream, and she undermines many of McCain’s efforts to appear to be the maverick moderate. Palin becomes a strong campaigner, and her extreme positions get lost in her efforts to support McCain.

AlterNet editors have collected a list some of the major issues that are bubbling up about Palin. Here are our top 10 most disturbing facts, rumors and impressions of Sarah Palin, gathered in the past two days:

1: Palin supports gunning down wolves from planes

Sarah Palin is no friend of wildlife. And let’s not blame this on her being a hunter. Plenty of subsistence hunters respect animals. But Palin reportedly came out against legislation introduced by Rep. George Miller, a member of the House Natural Resources Committee, that would “end Alaska’s policy of allowing people to shoot wolves from airplanes.”

Miller is among a large number of folks who believe the practice is not only cruel, it’s unnecessary (proponents say it is to keep caribou and moose numbers up for other hunters) and a violation of federal law banning airborne hunting.

Palin has also tried to make gunning down wolves (and even bears) from the air easier and financially rewarding.

As the Huffington Post reported:

Last year, the state offered a $150 bounty as an incentive for pilots and aerial gunners to kill more wolves. And leading up to this week’s statewide vote on Measure 2 to stop the aerial shooting of wolves and bears, Palin’s Board of Game spent $400,000 of public money on brochures and radio ads to influence the election. She not only took an inhumane and unsporting position at odds with the principles of wildlife management and fair chase, but did it in an undemocratic and underhanded way.

Palin has been said to have a “failing record” on wildlife — including being in favor of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — and she has opposed efforts to protect beluga whales in the Cook Inlet (whose numbers have dropped to just 375) because it might adversely affect the oil and gas industries.

2: Palin doesn’t believe global warming is man-made

At every campaign stop, McCain says that human activity is the driving force behind global climate change.

For the first time in its history, the GOP caught up to the rest of the planet by accepting the reality of man-made climate change in its 2008 platform. It reads, “The same human activity that has brought freedom and opportunity to billions has also increased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere,” and “increased atmospheric carbon has a warming effect on the earth.”

But Palin is among the conservative fringe that rejects the scientific consensus. According to the Washington Post, “Sarah Palin told voters there she wasn’t sure climate change wasn’t simply part of a natural warming cycle.” Palin told the conservative Web site NewsMax, “I’m not one … who would attribute it to being man-made.”

This may help explain why Palin announced this year that Alaska would sue the Department of the Interior over its decision to add the polar bear to its list of endangered species. If people are “over-reacting” to global warming, as Palin has said, then the polar bears’ rapidly dwindling habitat should be fine and those bears can fend for themselves. As Palin explained in an op-ed in the New York Times, “I strongly believe that adding them to the list is the wrong move at this time. … The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, has argued that global warming and the reduction of polar ice severely threatens the bears’ habitat and their existence. In fact, there is insufficient evidence that polar bears are in danger of becoming extinct within the foreseeable future.”

3: Palin is the candidate of powerful far right-wing cabal; her nomination seals their support for the little-wanted McCain

As Max Blumenthal reports:

Last week … the country’s most influential conservatives met quietly in Minneapolis to get to know Sarah Palin. The assembled were members of the Council for National Policy, an ultra-secretive cabal that networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy.

CNP members have included Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Grover Norquist, Tim LaHaye and Paul Weyrich. At a secret 2000 meeting of the CNP, George W. Bush promised to nominate only pro-life judges. … This year, thanks to Sarah Palin’s selection, the movement may have finally aligned itself behind the campaign of John McCain.

What happened at the secret meeting was the topic of online commentary by one of its attendees, top Dobson/Focus on the Family flack Tom Minnery.

Minnery described the mood as CNP members watched Palin: “And I have to tell you, that speech — people were on their seats applauding, cheering, yelling … That room in Minneapolis watching on the television screen was electrified. I have not seen anything like it in a long time.”

Minnery added that his boss, Dobson, has yearned for a conservative female leader like Margaret Thatcher to emerge on the American scene. And while Palin is no Thatcher, “she has not rejected the feminine side of who she is, so for that reason, she will be attractive to conservative voters.”

The members of the Council for National Policy are the hidden hand behind McCain’s Palin pick. With her selection, the Republican nominee is suddenly — and unexpectedly — assured of the support of a movement that once opposed his candidacy with all its might. Case in point: While Dobson once said he could “never” vote for McCain, he issued a statement last week hailing Palin as an “outstanding” choice. If Dobson’s enthusiasm for Palin is any indication, he may soon emerge from his bunker in Colorado Springs to endorse McCain, providing the Republican nominee with the support of the Christian right’s single most influential figure.

4: Palin staunchly opposes abortion, even in cases of rape and incest

Sarah Palin is strongly anti-choice, but she has taken her views on abortion to an extreme that may prove unpopular even among Republicans. Palin only supports abortion if the mother’s health is in danger. Rape and incest don’t register with her as legitimate reasons to honor a woman’s right to choose — not even if the women is her own daughter. In 2006, when her daughter Bristol was only 14, Palin said that she would not support choice even if her daughter were raped.

She made that announcement at a time when Alaska was plagued with a rape rate more than twice as high as the national average.

“This is absolutely outside the mainstream. Even in South Dakota they rejected (outlawing abortion in cases of rape) in ‘06 because it has gone too far and everyone can identify that in a case of rape or incest a woman should have the chance to make the decision with their family or doctor,” Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro Choice America, told the Huffington Post. “Women voters are going to reject both her and John McCain, and I think we see it specifically because we reach out to Republicans and independent pro-choice women. They live in the suburbs and exurbs. They are very much part of the mainstream America. And woman in general will reject that ticket.”

5: Palin takes unnecessary risks with the health of her own child, supports failed abstinence-only programs

Amid the now-disproven rumors that the Palins’ fifth child, Trig, was the son of her 17-year-old daughter, are reports that Sarah Palin seriously endangered her child during labor. Palin was in Texas delivering a speech when she allegedly began to leak amniotic fluid. Instead of immediately checking into a hospital, Palin finished her speech. She then flew to Anchorage, Alaska, where she drove to a hospital 45 minutes away to give birth.

Palin’s apparent need to rush to Alaska for the delivery helped fuel rumors she was faking the pregnancy to cover for her daughter. Now that the story has proven to be false, it nevertheless raises questions about Palin’s judgment. In this case, she seems to have taken unnecessary risks in the delivery of her child. As the past eight years have shown us, the last thing we need is a reckless politician in office.

And speaking of unsound judgment, her daughter’s pregnancy demonstrates seriously poor decision making — not on the part of Bristol but by conservative politicians like Palin and McCain, who have decided that the best way to ensure kids learn about sex is by depriving them of information. Palin is a firm supporter of abstinence-until-marriage sex education, despite the fact that numerous studies show that abstinence-only sex education does not delay sexual activity and may in fact lead to unsafe sex practices.

It would be cheap to trade on the irony that a firm backer of abstinence-only sex ed is now the mother of a pregnant teen. But it does need to be noted that many pregnant teens do not have the financial and emotional supports that Bristol appears lucky to have. Palin’s abstinence-only stance on sex ed, like McCain’s, is wrong because it puts everyone’s kids in danger.

6: Palin is under investigation for allegedly abusing her power as governor to help her sister in a messy divorce

Politicians are supposed to recuse themselves, or step away from matters, when there is a conflict of interest. Yet according to the Washington Post and other news outlets, Palin “has been embroiled in a bitter family feud that has drawn in the state police, the attorney general, the governor’s office and the state legislature.” In fact, a “bipartisan state legislative panel has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate whether Palin improperly brought the family fight into the governor’s office,” the newspaper reports.

At issue is whether Palin and her staff pressured and then fired the public safety commissioner, Walter Monegan, because he did not fire Palin’s ex-brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, from the state police after he apparently threatened her sister and other family members, including her father, in 2005. The Post reported that Palin heard Wooten “threatening to kill their father” for helping his daughter obtain a divorce. Palin, who did not call the police that day, later reported the incident.

Upon becoming governor, Palin and her staff asked Monegan to fire Wooten, but the state’s top cop replied that the matter had been investigated and had been closed. In July, Palin fired Monegan. The state legislature subsequently launched an investigation into whether she had improperly used her office’s power. A report is due in October.

The so-called troopergate incident apparently is not the first time Palin fired police officers for failing to follow her wishes, according to Andrew Sullivan at TheAtlantic.com.

Sullivan cites an Anchorage Daily News report from December 1997 when, as mayor of Wasilla, Palin faced a recall “in response to Palin’s controversial firing of Police Chief Irl Stambaugh.” Sullivan reports that Stambaugh and another city official, the library director, Mary Ellen Emmons, were fired for “not fully supporting her efforts to govern.”

“Both had publicly supported Palin’s opponent, longtime mayor John Stein, during the campaign last fall,” the Sullivan report said. “When she was elected, Palin questioned their loyalty and even initially asked for their resignations.”

7: Palin lied about her plans for the “Bridge to Nowhere”

When accepting the GOP’s nomination for vice president, Sarah Palin took credit for killing a controversial bridge project in Alaska dubbed the Bridge to Nowhere: “I told Congress, ‘Thanks but no thanks on that Bridge to Nowhere,’” she exclaimed to a cheering audience in Ohio. But it turns out that her relationship with the bridge wasn’t that cut and dry.

The Gravina Island Bridge would have linked the town of Ketchikan to its international airport, which is extremely difficult to get to by car, as it is on Gravina Island (there is currently a ferry in place to shuttle people to and fro). The bridge was to be federally funded but was quickly labeled a pork barrel project by many conservatives in Washington, including McCain.

So maybe it was an eagerness to please her new boss that caused Palin to lie to the American people right out of the gate. Who can say? But thanks to reports from the Washington Post and the Anchorage Daily News, we are now aware that that is exactly what she has done.

It turns out that initially Palin was a big fan of the bridge — although it could be that Palin wasn’t so much a fan of the bridge as she was a fan of telling Ketchikan’s 14,000 residents that she was while on the campaign trail in September 2006. “She was the only candidate who was saying, ‘We’re going to build that bridge,’” former governor Tony Knowles, a Democrat who lost to Palin in the 2006 general election, told the Washington Post. “She’s taking a position now which certainly wasn’t what it was when she was campaigning.”

After a long fight about how much federal assistance should be granted to Alaska for the bridge, Congress decided to grant Alaska a lump sum of $454 million to spend on general infrastructure projects, instead of specifically earmarking federal money for what had become a very unpopular project.

Even then, though, there where plans for the bridge. It wasn’t until September 2007, a year after her promise to the people of Ketchikan, that Palin finally shut down the project, citing overspending. As Keith Ashdown, an investigator with Taxpayers for Common Sense, told the Post: “She made the final decision to kill a very bad project, so she deserves credit for that. But she didn’t do it as an ideological opponent of earmarks. She did it as someone who had to balance the books.”

Palin lied to her constituents about getting the bridge done, and now she is lying to the American people about what her position was in the first place. It looks like Palin isn’t the type of politician who would clean up Washington after all.

8: A so-called political reformer, Palin has big money ties to Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who has been indicted for political corruption

Former Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil was known for political witticisms, including “Dance with the one that brung ya.” That refers to being loyal to your supporters through the thick and thin of political life. According to the Washington Post’s The Trail, from 2003 to 2005, Palin was one of three directors of “Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.,” a 527 group that could raise unlimited funds from corporate donors. A “527″ refers to a section of the tax code governing such campaign groups.

“Palin, an anti-corruption crusader in Alaska, had called on Stevens to be open about the issues behind the investigation,” the Post reported. “But she also held a joint news conference with him in July, before he was indicted, to make clear she had not abandoned him politically.”

Stevens, who is running for re-election this year, was inducted by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., this summer for failing to disclose sizeable gifts from a now-defunct Alaskan oil company, including assistance with renovating a vacation home.

The Post report said that Stevens agreed to lend his name to the campaign committee, but it did not say how much was raised or how the funds were distributed. A report on the group at the CampaignMoney.com Web site also does not list funds raised or spent.

It is not inconsistent that Palin would have been able to muscle major oil companies into making financial concessions for the benefit of Alaskans as governor — and would have raised funds from those same corporations, the largest doing business in the state, as a director of a 527 group. Such clout is part and parcel of modern campaigns and governing. While much remains unknown about Palin’s role as a fundraiser for Steven’s 527, her role as a white knight reformer of Alaskan politics has some shades of gray — as anyone who follows money in politics in small states will affirm.

9: Palin exploits her son’s Iraq service for political gain

Taking the stage alongside John McCain last Friday, it took no time for Palin to play the 9/11 card. “On September 11th of last year,” she announced, “our son enlisted in the United States Army. … And on September 11th, Track will deploy to Iraq. … And Todd and I are so proud of him and of all the fine men and women serving this country.”

Palin’s public pride in her son served a purpose, one the media dutifully picked up. As campaign operatives rebuffed charges that Palin is unprepared, they reached for her son’s military service. Confronted with her admission that she has “not paid much attention” to the war in Iraq, one guest told Hardball’s Chris Matthews that, as a military mother, “she pays attention to it with her heart.”

Maybe so, but Palin is hardly alone. The 2008 presidential race is remarkable in that three of the candidates have sons in the active duty military. But standard practice seems to be not to discuss it publicly.

Take John McCain. His son Jimmy returned from Iraq in February. “We have two sons in the military,” he told Sean Hannity, “but we never talk about it, if that’s all right.” Similarly, Joe Biden, whose son Beau will deploy to Iraq in October, has kept uncharacteristically quiet about it.

So what gives Palin license to wear her son’s military service on her sleeve?

Simple: She’s a mom.

Palin’s uber-motherhood is already the stuff of legend and controversy. With five children, including an infant with Down syndrome, now she’s dealing with her teenage daughter’s pregnancy. In a game that has traditionally shredded male candidates on the slightest hint that they are not tough enough for the job, Palin is the Right’s version of what a strong woman should look like. That she’d be given a pass for exploiting her son’s military service on emotional grounds is one thing. For her campaign to construe it as somehow making her more qualified to be commander-in-chief is absurd.

10: During her time as mayor, Palin drove a town deep into debt

According to Politico, “Palin, who portrays herself as a fiscal conservative, racked up nearly $20 million in long-term debt as mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla. That amounts to $3,000 per resident. She argues that the debt was needed to fund improvements.” ++

Sarah Palin’s Trouble with the Police
Robert Parry, Smirking Chimp
September 2, 2008

You have to admire the Republican chutzpah. Still confronting a national scandal about packing the Justice Department with “loyal Bushies,” they pick a vice presidential candidate who – in her two executive jobs in Alaska – ousted top law-enforcement officials because they were insufficiently loyal or not malleable enough.

One of those firings has put Gov. Sarah Palin at the center of an ongoing legislative investigation that presumably will require her to testify about whether she was behind efforts by her husband and senior staff to pressure the state’s public safety commissioner to fire her ex-brother-in-law from the state troopers.

When the commissioner, former Anchorage police chief Walter Monegan, refused to go along, he was summarily ousted by Palin without much explanation.

Unless the Republicans can figure out a way to block Palin’s sworn deposition, she will have to either admit that she used her political influence to wage a family vendetta or she must face the risk that her continued denials of involvement will be contradicted by her own staff or by some other evidence.

However, if Palin admits that she did use her government office to punish a personal enemy – or that she fired the public safety commissioner because he refused to join in her family feud – the Republicans may have trouble continuing to sell Palin as a reform-minded governor.

Instead, Palin would appear to fit more neatly with Bush administration operatives who engineered the firing of nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006 and who employed ideological litmus tests in deciding who to hire for career jobs at the Justice Department.

As Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, famously put it: the motive for purging the federal prosecutors was to eliminate those who were deemed not “loyal Bushies.”

Some of the U.S. Attorneys, such as New Mexico’s David Iglesias, had balked at political pressure before Election 2006 to bring what the prosecutors considered flimsy voter-fraud cases against prominent Democrats.

Now it appears that Sarah Palin shares the Bush administration’s view about putting cronies in key law-enforcement jobs, making hers act like “loyal Palinistas.” As mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla and as governor of Alaska, she fired two top law-enforcement officials when they didn’t show sufficient loyalty or obedience to her.

Ousting the Chief

In 1996, after winning the election to be mayor of Wasilla then with a population of about 5,000, Palin sought to oust six department heads because they had signed a letter supporting the previous mayor, their old boss. Palin ultimately fired two of them, including the police chief.

Wasilla’s ousted police chief, Irl Stambaugh, sued Palin in 1997 for alleged contract violation, wrongful termination and gender discrimination The police chief claimed Palin fired him not for cause but for being disloyal and because he was a man whose size – 6 feet and 200 pounds – intimidated her.

However, a federal judge dismissed Stambaugh’s lawsuit.

So, having escaped any serious damage for punishing Wasilla’s police chief for a supposed lack of political loyalty, Palin had little reason not to throw her weight around when she became Alaska’s governor in December 2006.

By then, Palin was deeply involved in her family’s vendetta against her sister’s ex-husband, trooper Mike Wooten. Through complaints to his superiors, Palin already had helped engineer Wooten’s five-day suspension from the state police earlier in 2006 for various examples of personal misconduct.

In January 2007, a month into Palin’s term, her husband, Todd, invited Palin’s new public safety commissioner Monegan to the governor’s office, where Todd Palin urged Monegan to reopen the Wooten case. After checking on it, Monegan informed Todd Palin that he couldn’t do anything because the case was closed.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Monegan said that a few days later, the governor also called him about the Wooten matter and he gave her the same answer. Monegan said Gov. Palin brought the issue up again in a February 2007 meeting at the state capitol, prompting his warning that she should back off.

However, Monegan said Gov. Palin kept bringing the issue up indirectly through e-mails, such as comparing another bad trooper to “my former brother-in-law, or that trooper I used to be related to.”

Monegan also began getting telephone calls from Palin’s aides about trooper Wooten, including from then-chief of staff Mike Tibbles; Commissioner Annette Kreitzer of the Department of Administration; and Attorney General Talis Colberg.

Questioning ‘the Process’

Colberg acknowledged making the call, after an inquiry from Todd Palin about “the process” for handling a threatening trooper, and then relaying back the response from Monegan that the issue had been handled and nothing more could be done.

Monegan also told the Post that he warned each caller about the risk of exposing the state to legal liability if Wooten filed a lawsuit.

However, Todd Palin continued collecting evidence against Wooten and lobbying for his dismissal. The governor’s husband acknowledged giving Wooten’s boss, Col. Audie Holloway, photos of Wooten driving a snowmobile while he was out of work on a worker’s compensation claim.

Alaska’s Deputy Attorney General Michael Barnhill told the Post that a member of the governor’s staff, personnel director Diane Kiesel, also made at least one call to Col. Holloway about the snowmobile incident. [Washington Post, Aug. 31, 2008]

On July 11, 2008, Palin abruptly fired Monegan, saying only that she wanted to take the public safety department in a different direction.

Monegan then went public with his account of the mounting campaign against Wooten from the governor’s family and staff. Monegan told the Anchorage Daily News that Todd Palin showed him the work of a private investigator, who had been hired by the family to dig into Wooten’s life and who was accusing the trooper of various misdeeds, such as drunk driving and child abuse.

Though Palin insisted she wasn’t involved in the pressure campaign, a review by the Attorney General’s office found that half a dozen state officials had made about two dozen phone calls regarding Wooten.

A tape recording of one conversation – between Palin’s chief of boards and commissions Frank Bailey and police Lt. Rodney Dial in February 2008 – revealed Bailey saying, “Todd and Sarah are scratching their heads, ‘Why on earth … is this guy still representing the department?’”

Expanded Investigation

On Aug. 2, the state legislature launched its own investigation into whether Palin “used her public office to settle a private score.” A bipartisan panel appointed special prosecutor Steve Branchflower to investigate and report back in a few months.

After Palin learned of Branchflower’s appointment, she questioned whether the investigation would be fair and objected to a comment from Democratic state Sen. Hollis French about the possibility that the case might lead to the governor’s impeachment.

Palin’s spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said, “Publicly elevating this to ‘impeachment’ raises doubts as to how fair a process some senators may intend for this to be.” [Anchorage Daily News, Aug. 2, 2008]

However, with Palin now Sen. John McCain’s choice to be the next Vice President of the United States – and with much of the national news media hailing McCain’s “bold” choice of a fellow “maverick” and “reformer” – it’s unclear how far the state investigation will be allowed to go.

Still, there is a risk to McCain’s campaign that a deposition will either draw out from Palin an admission that she abused her office to pursue a personal vendetta or she will put herself at risk of having a sworn statement contradicted by others.

For a Republican Party that impeached – but couldn’t ultimately remove – President Bill Clinton for lying about a sex act, there might be some discomfort about having to justify any false statements by Sarah Palin.

But the Bush administration has demonstrated how well it knows how to frustrate investigations into Republican wrongdoing. For seven years, the administration has deployed its expansive claims of executive privilege and other obstructive tactics to thwart all kinds of fact-finding, including the probe into the firing of the nine U.S. Attorneys.

Presumably, a similar cloak of protection will now descend around Sarah Palin’s shoulders. ++

AGGRESSIVE DRILLING AHOY
McCain’s Energy Intentions
Jane Sasseen, Der Spiegel
09/01/2008

With his choice of Palin as running mate, McCain sends a strong message on domestic drilling.With Palin as his running mate, the Republican maverick’s strategy at the convention — and in his campaign afterward — becomes clearer.

At his four-day fete in Denver, Democratic Presidential contender Senator Barack Obama sought to reframe the Presidential race around the lunch-bucket economic issues he thinks give him the strongest appeal to squeezed middle-class voters. Now, as the spotlight turns to the Republican convention in St. Paul-Minneapolis, rival Senator John McCain takes his turn at trying to define the race around the issues on which he hopes he has a winning hand.

Much of McCain’s campaign, of course, is based on his record on national security issues. But with the economy in the tank, he knows he has to make the sale on the economic front, as well. So at the top of the Arizona Senator’s Twin Cities To-Do List will be heightened efforts to convince working-class and independent voters that the Republican alternative he’s offering — low taxes, less government, and aggressive energy drilling — will do more to improve the economy and their lives than the spate of initiatives offered up by his rival.

With his surprise pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, McCain may just have made that task a good deal easier. Soaring oil prices have caused energy to emerge as a central issue in the race.

Already, McCain has made headway with voters with his full-throated backing for expanded offshore drilling, along with increased expansion of nuclear power, coal, and other energy sources. Analysts say that position, compared with Obama’s focus on a longer-term strategy to boost alternative energy, is one reason McCain was able to even the race out before the conventions began.

“A lot of voters are saying we want cheaper gas and we don’t care how we get it,” says Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “They’ll take the clean stuff and the not-so-clean stuff, as well.”

The McCain camp will keep that issue front and center in St. Paul, as it believes energy will provide a critical differentiation for voters as the debate over the rival economic policies heats up. Palin could be a key asset in that fight.

Daniel Clifton, Washington policy analyst for the Strategas Group, believes the pain caused by $4-a-gallon gasoline could make energy the core economic issue of the election, even more than housing or jobs. With Palin’s aggressive support for opening the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to more drilling, and a husband who works on the North Slope, she “personifies the choice being offered,” Clifton says. “Not only does she stand for energy independence and opening up different sources, her background also helps [Republicans] make the case that expanding drilling could also help create jobs.”

At the convention and beyond, the Palin pick should also help McCain’s efforts to win greater support from women voters, which he’ll need if he hopes to win. Already, his campaign has made a big bid to woo the unhappy Hillary Clinton voters who have vowed not to vote for Obama. McCain has met with some of them personally, and Palin openly made a pitch to them after accepting the nod from McCain in Dayton, Ohio, on Aug. 29.

She could be particularly appealing to the struggling working-class women whom Obama has so far failed to win over. Since last spring, Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, McCain’s chief pollster, identified these “Wal-Mart Women”—those who shop at the discounter once a week or more—as a key swing group in the election. Many voted for Bush in 2004. But now they’re hard-hit by the downturn, and their loyalties are up for grabs by the candidate who can best convince them he can bolster economic security.

“Palin will have enormous appeal to the Wal-Mart moms,” says Clifton. “That could be a very big deal.”

When he hits the prime-time airwaves for his acceptance speech on the night of Sept. 4, McCain will also have to fend off the Democrats’ newly aggressive attempts to brand his policies as little more than a third term for the Bush Administration. Separating himself more clearly from the Bush record will be critical, given the President’s approval ratings, which are near historic lows, and recent polls showing that nearly 80 percent of those surveyed feel the country is headed in the wrong direction.

But making that distinction clear for the millions of voters tuning in to the proceedings from home will also require some tricky choreography in the Twin Cities. The Republican base — many of whom will be sitting in the audience at the Xcel Energy Center –still gives Bush high marks.

So once Bush clears out of the arena after his speech on Sept. 1, expect McCain and his surrogates to ramp up criticism of the excessive spending and the huge government deficits that have characterized the Bush years. Attacking “Washington” for its buckets of red ink and pledging to eliminate the deficit by the end of a first McCain term — a pledge many analysts say is highly unrealistic — may be the safest way of differentiating himself from Bush on the economic front without attacking the President head on.

“McCain’s challenge overall on economic issues will be to convince core Republican voters that he’ll continue to represent traditional positions of lower taxes and less government, while also reaching out to swing voters and convincing them he can make America a land of opportunity again,” says Brian Nienaber, a vice-president at Tarrance Group, a Republican polling and strategy firm.

That commitment to shrinking government, along with his pledge to keep all the Bush tax cuts in place while lowering corporate taxes and offering up expanded tax credits for families with kids, will also feature heavily in his efforts to contrast his economic programs and experience with those of his rival — and to continue to raise questions about the Illinois Senator.

“McCain will need to paint Obama as a big-government guy, who will take money out of your wallet, while using the convention to argue that he himself is a proven leader who has gotten things done,” says Nienaber.

Funny. That’s not what we heard in Denver. ++

Defenders of Wildlife
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 29, 2008

Shocking Choice by John McCain

WASHINGTON– Senator John McCain just announced his choice for running mate: Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. To follow is a statement by Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund.

“Senator McCain’s choice for a running mate is beyond belief. By choosing Sarah Palin, McCain has clearly made a decision to continue the Bush legacy of destructive environmental policies.

“Sarah Palin, whose husband works for BP (formerly British Petroleum), has repeatedly put special interests first when it comes to the environment. In her scant two years as governor, she has lobbied aggressively to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, pushed for more drilling off of Alaska’s coasts, and put special interests above science. Ms. Palin has made it clear through her actions that she is unwilling to do even as much as the Bush administration to address the impacts of global warming. Her most recent effort has been to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the polar bear from the endangered species list, putting Big Oil before sound science. As unbelievable as this may sound, this actually puts her to the right of the Bush administration.

“This is Senator McCain’s first significant choice in building his executive team and it’s a bad one. It has to raise serious doubts in the minds of voters about John McCain’s commitment to conservation, to addressing the impacts of global warming and to ensuring our country ends its dependency on oil.” ++

Dem Congresswoman: McCain VP pick shows ‘colossally bad judgment’ David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Raw Story
Friday August 29, 2008

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) spoke by phone to NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Friday morning about Senator John McCain’s selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Wasserman Schultz was a strong backer of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries and is known for her interest in women’s issues. She told Mitchell, “If John McCain thinks that he can substitute Sarah Palin for Hillary Clinton in the minds of Hillary Clinton supporters he’s sadly mistaken. I know Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton.”

“She’s been governor of Alaska for eighteen months, and before that she was the mayor of a town of 8,000 people,” Wasserman Schultz continued. “She’s already under investigation by her state’s legislature. … They voted to spend $100,000 on an investigation, because she is accused of firing a state commissioner who refused to fire her sister’s husband. … This is not the kind of change that we need.”

Mitchell pointed out that there may have been “some family abuse” on the part of Palin’s sister’s husband and that “she might have been protecting a victim who needed help” in firing the commissioner.

Mitchell then asked, “What about the pull of gender politics? Will there be a … large number of women — independents, Republicans, people who you all wanted to bring into the Democratic tent — in suburban towns and cities around this country, who will like the idea of a woman on the ticket?”

“Women in this country don’t want a candidate on the ballot just because of the parts that she has,” Wasserman Schultz replied. “They want a woman candidate running for president or vice president because they support equal work for equal pay, they support a woman’s right to make her own reproductive choices, they support access to children’s health care, they want to make sure that we improve the quality of public education. Sarah Palin is against all of those things. So it’s not just electing a woman for the sake of getting a woman in there.”

Mitchell then quoted from the official McCain campaign announcement, which calls Palin a “tough executive [who's] ready to be president … has a record of delivering on change and reform [and] has challenged the insolence of the big oil companies while fighting for new energy sources.”

“Sarah Palin is inexperienced, unethical and wrong on all the issues that Americans care about,” Wasserman Schultz replied. “Do we have the confidence that if, God forbid, something happens to John McCain that Sarah Palin is going to know what to do and is going to have her hands on the tiller of American foreign policy? What makes her ready to be commander in chief? This is just an example of colossally bad judgment on the part of John McCain.”

“The other thing … that’s important to note,” concluded Wasserman Schultz, “is there has been a culture of corruption hanging over the state of Alaska. … Senator Ted Stevens, Congressman Don Young, Governor Sarah Palin, they are all cut from the same cloth. The last place we need to pull an elected official who wants to be vice president is the state of Alaska right now. They need to clean up their act.”

[Open link for] This video is from MSNBC’s News Live, broadcast August 29, 2008. ++

McCain Running Mate Sarah Palin Misled GOP
Alex Spillius, The Telegraph UK

THE LIE TO SOMEWHERE! Sarah Palin “told Congress” nothing. Today, she tells voters a lie
Daily Howler
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

THE LIE TO SOMEWHERE: Even after all these years, it’s maddening to watch the career liberal world try to debunk blatant deceptions by conservatives and GOP pols. Could “liberal” and Dem leaders be more inept? Frankly, it’s hard to imagine.

We refer to Sarah Plain’s recent claims about her vast political greatness—about the way she told the Congress to take that bridge and shove it. Because our side is so inept, Palin has felt free to offer variants of this statement in her appearances with McCain:

PALIN (8/29/08): I told Congress, Thanks but no thanks on that Bridge to Nowhere.

From that statement, citizens get the idea that Palin high-mindedly “told Congress” to pull the plug on that much-derided bridge project—to stop wasting all that tax-payer money. That isn’T close to what actually happened. But your career liberal player are simply too dumb—too undisciplined—to explain it. And so far, the mainstream press hasn’t done better.

Duh. Palin was elected governor in November 2006. One year earlier, in November 2005, the “bridge to nowhere” earmark ceased to exist. The New York Times ran a news report by Carl Hulse under the headline, “Two ‘Bridges to Nowhere’ Tumble Down in Congress.” (There had actually been two “bridges to nowhere,” though one had gotten the bulk of the mocking publicity). Here’s how Hulse began:

HULSE (11/17/05): Two ‘Bridges to Nowhere’ Tumble Down in Congress

Congressional Republicans decided Wednesday to take a legislative wrecking ball to two Alaskan bridge projects that had demolished the party’s reputation for fiscal austerity.

Straining to show new dedication to lower spending, House and Senate negotiators took the rare step of eliminating a requirement that $442 million be spent to build the two bridges, spans that became cemented in the national consciousness as ”bridges to nowhere” because of the remote territory and small populations involved.

The change will not save the federal government any money. Instead, the $442 million will be turned over to the state with no strings attached, allowing lawmakers and the governor there to parcel it out for transportation projects as they see fit, including the bridges should they so choose.

Palin had nothing to do with this act by the Congress, which occurred thirteen months before she took office. (Palin was elected in November 2006, took office the following month.) But this congressional action, in November 2005, cancelled the original earmark, which had directed the state of Alaska to use those particular federal funds to build that particular bridge. Under the terms of this new act, the state would still receive the funds—but the state could now use the money as it pleased. It could use the money to build the bridges. Or it could spend it on something else.

Again, this all happened thirteen months before Palin became governor. And let’s make it very, very clear: Congress stopped playing a role in this matter that day, in November 2005. From that point on, no one had to “tell Congress” anything about the Bridge to Nowhere, because Congress had removed itself from decision-making about the project. Congress had stopped directing how those funds should be used. In November 2005.

Two years later, in September 2007, Palin finally decided to use those funds for other state projects, not for the Bridges to Nowhere. But this had absolutely nothing to do with “telling Congress” anything. With her baldly deceptive, self-glorying statement, Palin is making voters think that she somehow stood up to the Congress—put a stop to their wasteful spending, told them to take their bridge and shove it. In fact, she did nothing of the kind. As best, she’s baldly misleading the public. At worst, she’s lying through her teeth.

Sorry, but Palin “told Congress” nothing at all about the Bridge to Nowhere. Today, she’s telling the public a lie, about her own moral greatness. But this is the way our brightest liberal site explained this latest act of deception. The post came complete with a snarky headline—and with a bungled explanatio0n of the way this story works.

Go ahead—review the ineptitude shown in that piece. Multiply that by sixteen years, and you’ll know why it’s been so easy to lie about Democratic candidates— why it has been so easy, for all those years, to disinform regular voters.

THE TIMES BUNGLES TOO: Speaking of those mainstream journalists, the New York Time tries to untangle this story today, in a news report by David Kirkpatrick. Unsurprisingly, the Times bungles too.

“Account of a Bridge’s Death Slightly Exaggerated,” says the headline in our biggest, dumbest newspaper (our emphasis). But Palin’s account isn’t “slightly exaggerated.” Her account is simply wrong on its basic claim—the claim that Palin “told Congress” what it could do with the Bridge to Nowhere.

Let’s review: In the key part of Palin’s self-glorying statement, she pictures herself “telling Congress thanks but no thanks” about the Bridge to Nowhere. In fact, she did nothing of the kind. Kirkpatrick includes some minor details which seem to highlight Palin’s disingenuity on this matter, right through her gubernatorial race, when the best way to spend those federal funds had become a state-level issue. But in this passage, he fails to grasp the key fact which drives this whole story—the key fact which makes Palin’s claim an act of deception, not a “slight exaggeration:”

KIRKPATRICK (9/1/08): And she expressed support for the Bridge to Nowhere earmark as well. “I do support the infrastructure projects that are on tap here in the State of Alaska that our Congressional delegations worked hard for,” Ms. Palin said when asked about that bridge and another in an October 2006 television debate while campaigning for governor.

But there was no “Bridge to Nowhere earmark” in October 2006, when Palin was campaigning for governor. As Hulse explained in real time, the earmark—the direction to spend federal money to build the bridge—had been already cancelled. The state of Alaska still had a big pot of federal money—money it could spend as it pleased. But the “earmark” for the bridge had been killed—meaning that no one, including Palin, had to “tell Congress” anything.

Sarah Palin “told Congress” nothing. Today, she’s telling the public a lie. But the liberal world is too dumb to explain this. And the mainstream press? Readers! Must you ask? … ++

Head for the High Road
The Democrats need to be careful about the intensity of their criticism of Sarah Palin.
Bob Herbert, New York Times
September 1, 2008

The Palin Choice and the Reality of the Political Mind
George Lakoff, HuffPo
September 1, 2008

This election matters because of realities — the realities of global warming, the economy, the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, civil liberties, species extinction, poverty here and around the world, and on and on. Such realities are what make this election so very crucial, and how to deal with them is the substance of the Democratic platform (PDF).

Election campaigns matter because who gets elected can change reality. But election campaigns are primarily about the realities of voters’ minds, which depend on how the candidates and the external realities are cognitively framed. They can be framed honestly or deceptively, effectively or clumsily. And they are always framed from the perspective of a worldview.

The Obama campaign has learned this. The Republicans have long known it, and the choice of Sarah Palin as their vice presidential candidate reflects their expert understanding of the political mind and political marketing. Democrats who simply belittle the Palin choice are courting disaster. It must be taken with the utmost seriousness.

The Democratic responses so far reflect external realities: she is inexperienced, knowing little or nothing about foreign policy or national issues; she is really an anti-feminist, wanting the government to enter women’s lives to block abortion, but not wanting the government to guarantee equal pay for equal work, or provide adequate child health coverage, or child care, or early childhood education; she shills for the oil and gas industry on drilling; she denies the scientific truths of global warming and evolution; she misuses her political authority; she opposes sex education and her daughter is pregnant; and, rather than being a maverick, she is on the whole a radical right-wing ideologue.

All true, so far as we can tell.

But such truths may nonetheless be largely irrelevant to this campaign. That is the lesson Democrats must learn. They must learn the reality of the political mind.

The Obama campaign has done this very well so far. The convention events and speeches were orchestrated both to cast light on external realities, traditional political themes, and to focus on values at once classically American and progressive: empathy, responsibility both for oneself and others, and aspiration to make things better both for oneself and the world. Obama did all this masterfully in his nomination speech, while replying to, and undercutting, the main Republican attacks.

But the Palin nomination changes the game. The initial response has been to try to keep the focus on external realities, the “issues,” and differences on the issues. But the Palin nomination is not basically about external realities and what Democrats call “issues,” but about the symbolic mechanisms of the political mind — the worldviews, frames, metaphors, cultural narratives, and stereotypes. The Republicans can’t win on realities. Her job is to speak the language of conservatism, activate the conservative view of the world, and use the advantages that conservatives have in dominating political discourse.

Our national political dialogue is fundamentally metaphorical, with family values at the center of our discourse. There is a reason why Obama and Biden spoke so much about the family, the nurturant family, with caring fathers and the family values that Obama put front and center in his Father’s day speech: empathy, responsibility and aspiration. Obama’s reference in the nomination speech to “The American Family” was hardly accidental, nor were the references to the Obama and Biden families as living and fulfilling the American Dream. Real nurturance requires strength and toughness, which Obama displayed in body language and voice in his responses to McCain. The strength of the Obama campaign has been the seamless marriage of reality and symbolic thought.

The Republican strength has been mostly symbolic. The McCain campaign is well aware of how Reagan and W won — running on character: values, communication, (apparent) authenticity, trust, and identity — not issues and policies. That is how campaigns work, and symbolism is central.

Conservative family values are strict and apply via metaphorical thought to the nation: good vs. evil, authority, the use of force, toughness and discipline, individual (versus social) responsibility, and tough love. Hence, social programs are immoral because they violate discipline and individual responsibility. Guns and the military show force and discipline. Man is above nature; hence no serious environmentalism. The market is the ultimate financial authority, requiring market discipline. In foreign policy, strength is use of the force. In fundamentalist religion, the Bible is the ultimate authority; hence no gay marriage. Such values are at the heart of radical conservatism. This is how John McCain was raised and how he plans to govern. And it is what he shares with Sarah Palin.

Palin is the mom in the strict father family, upholding conservative values. Palin is tough: she shoots, skins, and eats caribou. She is disciplined: raising five kids with a major career. She lives her values: she has a Downs-syndrome baby that she refused to abort. She has the image of the ideal conservative mom: pretty, perky, feminine, Bible-toting, and fitting into the ideal conservative family. And she fits the stereotype of America as small-town America. It is Reagan’s morning-in-America image. Where Obama thought of capturing the West, she is running for Sweetheart of the West.

And Palin, a member of Feminism for Life, is at the heart of the conservative feminist movement, which Ronee Schreiber has written about in her recent book, Righting Feminism. It is a powerful and growing movement that Democrats have barely paid attention to.

At the same time, Palin is masterful at the Republican game of taking the Democrats’ language and reframing it — putting conservative frames to progressive words: Reform, prosperity, peace. She is also masterful at using the progressive narratives: she’s from the working class, working her way up from hockey mom and the PTA to mayor, governor, and VP candidate. Her husband is a union member. She can say to the conservative populists that she is one of them — all the things that Obama and Biden have been saying. Bottom-up, not top-down.

Yes, the McCain-Palin ticket is weak on the major realities. But it is strong on the symbolic dimension of politics that Republicans are so good at marketing. Just arguing the realities, the issues, the hard truths should be enough in times this bad, but the political mind and its response to symbolism cannot be ignored. The initial Democratic response to Palin — the response based on realities alone — indicates that many Democrats have not learned the lessons of the Reagan and Bush years.

They have not learned the nature of conservative populism. A great many working-class folks are what I call “bi-conceptual,” that is, they are split between conservative and progressive modes of thought. Conservative on patriotism and certain social and family issues, which they have been led to see as “moral,” progressive in loving the land, living in communities of care, and practical kitchen table issues like mortgages, health care, wages, retirement, and so on.

Conservative theorists won them over in two ways: inventing and promulgating the idea of “liberal elite” and focusing campaigns on social and family issues. They have been doing this for many years and have changed a lot of brains through repetition. Palin will appeal strongly to conservative populists, attacking Obama and Biden as pointy-headed, tax-and-spend, latte liberals. The tactic is to divert attention from difficult realities to powerful symbolism.

What Democrats have shied away from is a frontal attack on radical conservatism itself as an un-American and harmful ideology. I think Obama is right when he says that America is based on people caring about each other and working together for a better future — empathy, responsibility (both personal and social), and aspiration. These lead to a concept of government based on protection (environmental, consumer, worker, health care, and retirement protection) and empowerment (through infrastructure, public education, the banking system, the stock market, and the courts). Nobody can achieve the American Dream or live an American lifestyle without protection and empowerment by the government. The alternative, as Obama said in his nomination speech, is being on your own, with no one caring for anybody else, with force as a first resort in foreign affairs, with threatened civil liberties and a right-wing government making your most important decisions for you. That is not what American democracy has ever been about.

What is at stake in this election are our ideals and our view of the future, as well as current realities. The Palin choice brings both front and center. Democrats, being Democrats, will mostly talk about the realities nonstop without paying attention to the dimensions of values and symbolism. Democrats, in addition, need to call an extremist an extremist: to shine a light on the shared anti-democratic ideology of McCain and Palin, the same ideology shared by Bush and Cheney. They share values antithetical to our democracy. That needs to be said loud and clear, if not by the Obama campaign itself, then by the rest of us who share democratic American values.

Our job is to bring external realities together with the reality of the political mind. Don’t ignore the cognitive dimension. It is through cultural narratives, metaphors, and frames that we understand and express our ideals. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves