“We will hold you responsible.”

October 10th, 2008

What a remarkable energy curve we’re watching unfold — all that’s been calculated to oppress, withhold, manipulate, obfuscate seems to be losing it’s punch … and we’re seeing through the Swiss-cheese holes in the dust that’s rising over our flailing nation.

Johnny Mac addressed his followers at a town hall this week as “my fellow prisoners” — I know I feel like I’m held captive by a ruthless regime; so thanks, John, for noticing!

John’s in real trouble, now. He’s opened Pandora’s Box in these last days and he can’t control the crowds, who have passed surly and are now wrong-headed. You’ll find additional links in the weekly piece.

On PBS tonight, pundits tried to explain the level of hostility from the Republicans — Obama’s outspending on every level, and the [erroneous] notion that he’s getting all the good press was cited, although we all know it’s not really about that. It’s the dark projections from Palin, with McCain silent and flaccid as a little Pot Sticker [and as pale] … until today. It’s projection of the specter of the stranger, the gang member , the dangerous “other” … it’s bottom-feeding voodoo; there’s no 9/11 to count on now, so the “danger within” will have to do.

And so … yet again … the Republican’s see themselves as maligned and victimized by wild-eyed liberals. And this conversation has gotten damned boring, considering what we’ve had to swallow over the last eight years! Their inability to put themselves in the other guys shoes has them doing that hysterical thing they do so well; I don’t know the answer for it. The poor things are just going to have to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, I guess; it shouldn’t take more than a decade or two to re-establish their party brand.

All this is dangerous as a coiled snake; Bama is a smart dude, and I trust he’s got more protection than he knows what to do with. It is indeed a worrisome thing, violent and dark — so keep Light on this, dearhearts. Crazy is crazy, and explosively so.

Mrs. Palin released her tax returns this week and … low and behold … she underpaid by 25K; but that’s nothing to the Troopergate results, below. None of this will sway the great unwashed that show up for her performances, though — they’re True Believers. I went to the eye doctor today with a friend, and while I was waiting, a frumpy lady came in and asked to see the Sarah Palin frames. The receptionist said they were all out; but they’d reordered, priority.

In other news, oil has dropped to a 13 month low — helpful for those of us living in our cars, I suppose.

The weekend reads are separated into two sections — McCain Watch and Palin Watch. There’s news on both that would shake them apart in a normal election year — but normal is long past us; now, it’s just more fire in the grass, to spread across the nation.

Some fun bits in here too. The first piece gave us the quote in the header — and it’s right on.

To cheer you into your weekend, Obama just broke double digit’s in his national lead — 10 points. And here’s your weekend parting gift: Obama’s answer to Palin’s question, “Who IS Barack Obama?” [That was, by the way, the title of a viral e-mail that branded O as a muslim terrorist.] It’s a lovely response — typical of the man and the movement.

Jude

An Open Letter to John McCain
Frank Schaeffer, HuffPo

Senator John McCain:

If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as “not one of us,” I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.

At a Sarah Palin rally, someone called out, “Kill him!” At one of your rallies, someone called out, “Terrorist!” Neither was answered or denounced by you or your running mate, as the crowd laughed and cheered. At your campaign event Wednesday in Bethlehem, Pa., the crowd was seething with hatred for the Democratic nominee - an attitude encouraged in speeches there by you, your running mate, your wife and the local Republican chairman.

Shame!

John McCain: In 2000, as a lifelong Republican, I worked to get you elected instead of George W. Bush. In return, you wrote an endorsement of one of my books about military service. You seemed to be a man who put principle ahead of mere political gain.

You have changed. You have a choice: Go down in history as a decent senator and an honorable military man with many successes, or go down in history as the latest abettor of right-wing extremist hate.

John McCain, you are no fool, and you understand the depths of hatred that surround the issue of race in this country. You also know that, post-9/11, to call someone a friend of a terrorist is a very serious matter. You also know we are a bitterly divided country on many other issues. You know that, sadly, in America, violence is always just a moment away. You know that there are plenty of crazy people out there.

John McCain, you’re walking a perilous line. If you do not stand up for all that is good in America and declare that Senator Obama is a patriot, fit for office, and denounce your hate-filled supporters when they scream out “Terrorist” or “Kill him,” history will hold you responsible for all that follows.

John McCain and Sarah Palin, you are playing with fire, and you know it. You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us. You are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations.

Change the atmosphere of your campaign. Talk about the issues at hand. Make your case. But stop stirring up the lunatic fringe of haters, or risk suffering the judgment of history and the loathing of the American people - forever.

We will hold you responsible. ++

This post first ran in the Baltimore Sun as an op-ed on Oct 10, 2008.

McCain Watch

John McCain’s Rage is a National Security Concern
YouTube

The Temperament Question
Andrew Sullivan, Daily Dish
09 Oct 2008

Robert Greenwald puts out a video on McCain’s penchant for rage. Former senator and fellow Keating Five member Dennis DeConcini’s anecdote is telling. Having witnessed one of McCain’s explosions firsthand in the Senate dining room, I can personally testify that I have very rarely seen any outburst of temper more explosive and nasty. Now, I have a temper too. I’m not judging the man, whose passions are real and whose service to his country should be honored. But I’m not running to have my finger on a nuclear button and facing down Iran and Russia. Temperament in a president matters. Especially after what we’ve seen these past six weeks, I worry about McCain’s in an international crisis. ++

How the Senator Lost it at a Puerto Rican Casino
Michael Kinsley, The Daily Beast
10/09/08

For this entire presidential campaign, the media have been waiting for John McCain’s famous temper to explode. A few small examples have been reported without anyone trying to make a big deal about it. The rule seems to be that if he can keep it bottled until November 5, he’s home free. But if he explodes in the interim, it becomes an official issue.

This isn’t completely nuts. If he can’t hold it in for just the few months he is under maximum scrutiny, then he has a real problem. Otherwise, hey—Bill Clinton also had a temper, it was said, along with other uncontrollable passions.

Until recently this anger business didn’t bother me much. There is a lot to be angry about. Furthermore, I was not confident that McCain’s anger passed the whose-ox-is-gored test: As an Obama supporter, would I be equally alarmed if my preferred candidate had anger issues? (Which some folks say he does, by the way.) Then I heard the following story.

“DON’T TOUCH ME,” he repeated viciously. “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU’RE TALKING TO?”

It comes in an email from my friend Jeff Dearth, a media investment banker and former publisher of The New Republic. We also went to junior high and high school together in Michigan. He would not make this up. In 2005, Jeff attended a magazine industry conference at a casino hotel in Puerto Rico. (I was there, too, though not a witness to what follows.) The guest speaker was McCain. He put on a terrific performance, breaking up the friendly crowd by referring to journalists as “my base.” (To anyone who remembers this period in McCain’s history, his attempt this year to paint Barack Obama as Britney Spears or Paris Hilton because Obama is now the media darling seems especially cheap.)

McCain’s game is craps. So is Jeff Dearth’s. Jeff was at the table when McCain showed up and happily made room for him. Apparently there is some kind of rule or tradition in craps that everyone’s hands are supposed to be above the table when the dice are about to be thrown. McCain—”very likely distracted by one of the many people who approached him that evening,” Jeff says charitably—apparently was violating this rule. A small middle-aged woman at the table, apparently a “regular,” reached out and pulled McCain’s arm away. I’ll let Jeff take over the story:

“McCain immediately turned to the woman and said between clenched teeth: ‘DON’T TOUCH ME.’ The woman started to explain…McCain interrupted her: ‘DON’T TOUCH ME,’ he repeated viciously. The woman again tried to explain. ‘DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU’RE TALKING TO?’ McCain continued, his voice rising and his hands now raised in the ‘bring it on’ position. He was red-faced. By this time all the action at the table had stopped. I was completely shocked. McCain had totally lost it, and in the space of about ten seconds. ‘Sir, you must be courteous to the other players at the table,’ the pit boss said to McCain. “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? ASK ANYBODY AROUND HERE WHO I AM.”

This being Puerto Rico, the pit boss might not have known McCain. But the senator continued in full fury—”DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU’RE TALKING TO? DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”—and crisis was avoided only when Jeff offered to change places and stand between McCain and the woman who had touched his arm.

What is bothersome about this story, if it’s true, is only partly the explosive anger. More, it’s the arrogance. At the craps table, who cares who he is? And there’s the recklessness of such a performance in a casino full of journalists (unless McCain absolutely couldn’t control himself, which is even scarier). But this gamble paid off. Although there were published reports that McCain had gambled late into the night, which properly treated that matter as charming, this particular episode has gone unreported until now. Maybe no journalist saw it. Or maybe this illustrates the unwritten rule of political journalism that all human-interest anecdotes must reaffirm a previously established belief. Arrogance is something McCain is not known for. Quite the opposite. Logic might dictate that an anecdote showing that, say, Obama has webbed feet would be more interesting than one showing that he is a skinny guy with big ears. But that’s not how it works.

Jeff Dearth is not an extreme partisan or an activist for either candidate. He supports Obama, in part because he is truly alarmed at the thought of the arrogant hothead he saw becoming president. (”I’d happily gamble with Senator McCain again,” he says, “but I definitely wouldn’t gamble on him.”) It alarms me, too. John McCain is the best Republican presidential candidate of my lifetime. But a performance like this would give me pause about supporting a candidate of either party. ++

Ooh, That Smell: McCain and His Mob Waltz with Death
Pete Cenedella, HuffPo
October 10, 2008

Shortly before death, bodies engage in a riot of convulsions and hemorrhages, some disturbingly visible, some internal and unseen. There is a dance of extreme violence that occurs in a living organism as it “rages against the dying of the light,” to paraphrase Dylan Thomas. And then, there is often a moment of calm as death sets in, and the organism relaxes its fierce grip on life. Endorphins flood the body and the grimacing mask of struggle, many times, goes slack. And then you die.

If you’ve ever been at someone’s dying bedside, you know what I mean.

It’s worth holding this imagery in mind when looking at the videos coming back from the campaign trail of recent McCain-Palin rallies. Of course the candidates have gone negative — that’s what candidates do when they have nothing worth saying. It’s not the negative paragraphs larded into the stump speeches that are so disconcerting about the footage we’re seeing. It’s the mob. And the tacit approval of the mob emanating from McCain himself.

Some lowlights: Several McCain supporters on their way into a rally in Pennsylvania actually call Obama a “terrorist,” and one answers the question “Why do you think he’s a terrorist?” with the retort “Look at the bloodlines. Look at his name.”

A voice clearly screams “Off with his head!” in reference to Obama when Sarah Palin hammers away at the Bill Ayers connection. Palin does nothing to discourage the call.

A questioner at one of McCain’s “Town Hall” rallies refers to Obama and Nancy Pelosi as the “socialists” who are “taking over our country.”

A line of McCain supporters on their way in to a rally in Ohio heckle the Obama supporters and journalists across the street with cries of “You need to go die” and “Commie faggots,” and several call Obama a terrorist, a socialist, a traitor, and more.

It’s easy to view this footage and feel panic welling up inside. Easy to feel that a tide is rising in the heartland of fear and anger, ignorance and violence, that is on the verge of flooding the ballot boxes and carrying John McCain and Sarah Palin to the White House.

What’s important to bear in mind is that these are hardly “swing voters.” These are the 19 percent of the country who might yet call themselves “Bush Republicans,” even after the verdict of history. Bush Republicans are not the concern, in the end. Reagan Democrats are. As McCain’s own former top strategist John Weaver was quoted as saying: “Please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive.”

What’s happening at these rallies is a series of convulsions and spasms no less primordial than those we make at the end of life — a kind of death dance. The death of John McCain, American Hero — who may be hearing plaudits from the pitchfork-wielding mob, but who is hearing nothing but disappointment and disapproval from those Republicans and Independents who once held him in such esteem. And in the throes of that death, McCain is waltzing with a dying breed of sad old white Americans, whose tragedy continues to be their belief that those who have fleeced them were their greatest friends, and those who might plausibly have their interests at heart politically are a bunch of commie faggots. These rallies smell of rot, the stench rising from these hollow crowds carries the odor of lynch mobs and blacklisters, Father Coughlin and the Silent Majority.

But no more are these folks a Silent Majority. They are a loud, vocal, ugly minority. They are literally a dying breed. And when we write their obituary in the next few years, there really won’t be a wet eye in the house.

Cue the Skynyrd: Ooh, that smell, can’t you smell that smell? The smell of death surrounds you.

What is terrifying about these images, these sounds, these ugly days, is not what might befall Barack Obama at the ballot box. It is that unthinkable thing that we all think about, that Palin and McCain are conjuring like a dark specter. The game McCain is playing is as real as Russian Roulette and might have the same outcome. David Gergen has warned on CNN that “real violence” could be the bitter fruit of these dark electoral arts. “There is a free-floating sort of whipping-around anger that could really lead to some violence. And I think we’re not far from that,” Gergen said. “I really worry when we get people — when you get the kind of rhetoric that you’re getting at these rallies now. I think it’s really imperative the candidates try to calm people down.”

The dire question that seems to be rising is this one: How many more crowds can McCain whip up this way and not expect to stumble on the loaded chamber? ++

Keating Connection: The Sequel
Cindy McCain Makes a Deal
By John Dougherty, Washington Independent
10/10/08

PHOENIX—Sen. John McCain’s wife and father-in-law continued a lucrative business partnership with disgraced financier Charles H. Keating Jr. for 11 years after the GOP presidential nominee said he ended his close friendship with Keating in March 1987.

Cindy McCain’s business partnership with Keating in a real-estate development between 1986 and 1998 netted her a tidy profit, in addition to years of significant tax benefits. Her father, who died in 2000, earned similar returns.

McCain’s campaign and his Senate office did not respond to repeated phone calls and emails concerning Cindy McCain’s investment with Keating. McCain and his wife file separate tax returns and signed a pre-nuptial agreement before their marriage in May 1980. Cindy McCain owns one of the nation’s largest beer distributorships, Hensley & Company.

On Monday, McCain’s attorney, John Dowd, said in a conference call with reporters that McCain was not aware of his wife’s and father-in-law’s investment with Keating at the time it was made. “John was unconnected to that and unaware of it at the time and did not participate in it,” Dowd said.

However, during the Keating Five Senate Ethics Committee hearings in 1990-91, McCain testified that he was aware of the family investment with Keating in early 1986.

Under questioning from Dowd, McCain said he learned of the investment from a Hensley & Co. executive.

“I was told …they were going to invest in a shopping center and that the investment –- the project — was being put together by a subsidiary of American Continental,” McCain told the ethics committee. “He [the executive] later told me that had happened. And I had no interest in it and just noted in passing that this investment took place.”

The GOP presidential candidate writes in one memoir that a turbulent 30-minute verbal altercation in his Senate office on March 24, 1987, ended his six-year friendship with Keating. The argument began after McCain heard from another senator that Keating had called him “a wimp.”

“We never met again,” McCain wrote in his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For.” “I never had another conversation with him.”

The rupture in their personal relationship, however, didn’t stop McCain from attending two meetings the next month with federal banking regulators at Keating’s insistence. McCain’s attendance at the April meetings nearly halted his political career. The Senate Ethics Committee, which investigated McCain’s actions on behalf of Keating, who was seeking regulatory relief for his savings and loan business, found that McCain used “poor judgment” in his dealings with Keating.

Nor did the end of McCain’s relationship with Keating affect his immediate family’s business relationship with the financier. Cindy McCain and her father, James Hensley, remained investors in the Keating real-estate partnership that included a north Phoenix shopping center. The center sold in July 1998 for $15.4 million.

Their business relationship with Keating began April 15, 1986, when the two bought an 8 percent stake in Fountain Square Associates Ltd. Partnership. Cindy McCain and her father made the $359,100 investment through Western Leasing Co., a partnership they jointly owned.

Fountain Square Associates was structured as a tax shelter for wealthy investors. Its only asset was the Phoenix shopping center, which was built by another Keating-controlled company. The shelter allowed investors to use real-estate depreciation as a tax deduction, a provision later banned by Congress.

The Fountain Square Associates’ prospectus promised investors a 37 percent annual return on their investment. Cindy McCain and Hensley were among 54 investors in the partnership, most of whom were Keating employees and associates. Western Leasing purchased six shares in the partnership, Keating bought two and most of the remaining investors one share or less. Each share sold for $59,850.

Fountain Square Associates’ general partner, which oversaw daily operations, was American Continental Resources Corp., a subsidiary of Keating’s Phoenix-based American Continental Corp. American Continental also owned Lincoln Savings & Loan, the thrift that Keating asked McCain and the four other senators to protect from regulators.

In 1989, American Continental filed for bankruptcy, leaving more than 23,000 investors holding worthless bonds. Many bondholders were elderly and thought thought their investments were insured because Keating had sold them at federally insured Lincoln Savings branches.

Keating was convicted on 73 counts of bankruptcy and wire fraud in 1993, and sentenced to 12 years in federal prison. Four years later, his conviction was overturned on a technicality. In 1999, Keating pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and was sentenced to time served.

Despite the bankruptcy, American Continental Resources managed to keep control of the shopping center owned by Fountain Square Associates, which allowed Cindy McCain and Hensley to take advantage of its tax breaks. After the shopping center sold, McCain’s 1998 Senate financial disclosure statement reported under “unearned income” that his wife made between $100,001 and $1 million on the sale of the property. In previous years, McCain’s financial statements had valued the Fountain Square partnership at less than $1,000, generating income of less than $200.

In 1998, Cindy McCain held millions of dollars worth of assets in stocks, municipal bonds and other securities, including a partnership share worth at least $1 million in the Arizona Diamondbacks. She also had investments in two other real estate projects, each worth at least $1 million, including a master planned community in Yuma, Ariz., and 160 acres of undeveloped property in Mesa, Ariz.

The same year, Cindy McCain also owed more than $1 million to a Phoenix bank, and had more than $200,000 in loans from the family’s beer distributorship.

Sen. McCain’s only income in 1998, besides his Senate salary, was his $49,688 Navy pension. He also listed three bank accounts totaling less than $31,000. He reported no liabilities.

The Fountain Square sale generated the second largest amount of income from Cindy McCain’s array of investments in 1998, according to Sen. McCain’s financial disclosure statement. Only dividends from Cindy McCain’s investment in Hensley & Company stock, which exceeded $1 million, generated more income.

Cindy McCain’s and Hensley’s 1986 investment in Fountain Square earned the father and daughter team a nice return. Its greater value to the family, however, may have had more to do with politics than money. Their investment was made the same year that McCain was running for the Senate seat held by the retiring Barry M. Goldwater. Keating and his employees contributed more than $50,000 to McCain’s campaign, bringing their total contributions to McCain since 1982 to at least $112,000. ++

McCain Linked To Private Iran-Contra Group
Ties To Group That Supplied Aid To Rebels Re-Examined As Campaigns Probe Candidates’ Pasts
CBS News/AP
Oct. 7, 2008

(AP) GOP presidential nominee John McCain has past connections to a private group that supplied aid to guerrillas seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua in the Iran-Contra affair.

McCain’s ties are facing renewed scrutiny after his campaign criticized Barack Obama for his link to a former radical who engaged in violent acts 40 years ago.

The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe.

The council’s founder, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain was launching his political career in Arizona. Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member in the group.

“McCain was a new guy on the block learning the ropes,” Singlaub told The Associated Press in an interview. “I think I met him in the Washington area when he was just a new congressman. We had McCain on the board to make him feel like he wasn’t left out. It looks good to have names on a letterhead who are well-known and appreciated.

“I don’t recall talking to McCain at all on the work of the group,” Singlaub said.

The renewed attention over McCain’s association with Singlaub’s group comes as McCain’s campaign steps up criticism of Obama’s dealings with William Ayers, a college professor who co-founded the Weather Underground and years later worked on education reform in Chicago alongside Obama. Ayers held a meet-the-candidate event at his home when Obama first ran for public office in the mid-1990s.

Obama was roughly 8 years old when Ayers, now at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was working with the Weather Underground, which took responsibility for bombings that included nonfatal blasts at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol. McCain’s vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, has said that Obama “pals around with terrorists.”

In McCain’s case, Singlaub knew McCain’s father, a Navy admiral who had sought Singlaub’s counsel when McCain, a Navy pilot, became a prisoner of war and spent 5½ years in North Vietnamese hands.

“John’s father asked me for advice about what he ought to do now that his son had been shot down and captured,” Singlaub recalled in one of two recent interviews. “I said, ‘As long as you don’t give any impression that you care more about him than you care about any of the other prisoners, he won’t be treated any differently.”‘

Covert arms shipments to the rebels called Contras, financed in part by secret arms sales to Iran, became known as the Iran-Contra affair. They proved to be the undoing of Singlaub’s council.

In 1987, the Internal Revenue Service withdrew the tax-exempt status of Singlaub’s group because of its activities on behalf of the Contras.

Elected to the House in 1982 and at a time when he was on the board of Singlaub’s council, McCain was among Republicans on Capitol Hill expressing support for the Contras, a CIA-organized guerrilla force in Central America. In 1984, Congress cut off CIA funds for the Contras.

Months before the cutoff, top Reagan administration officials ramped up a secret White House-directed supply network and put National Security Council aide Oliver North in charge of running it. The goal was to keep the Contras operational until Congress could be persuaded to resume CIA funding.

Singlaub’s private group became the public cover for the White House operation.

Secretly, Singlaub worked with North in an effort to raise millions of dollars from foreign governments.

McCain has said previously he resigned from the council in 1984 and asked in 1986 to have his name removed from the group’s letterhead.

“I didn’t know whether (the group’s activity) was legal or illegal, but I didn’t think I wanted to be associated with them,” McCain said in a newspaper interview in 1986.

Singlaub does not recall any McCain resignation in 1984 or May 1986. Nor does Joyce Downey, who oversaw the group’s day-to-day activities.

“That’s a surprise to me,” Singlaub said. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard that. There may have been someone in his office communicating with our office.”

“I don’t ever remember hearing about his resigning, but I really wasn’t worried about that part of our activities, a housekeeping thing,” said Singlaub. “If he didn’t want to be on the board that’s OK. It wasn’t as if he had been active participant and we were going to miss his help. He had no active interest. He certainly supported us.” ++

Palin Watch

Body blow for McCain as Palin found to have abused powers
Ian Cobain in Anchorage and Ewen MacAskill in Washington, Guardian UK
Saturday October 11 2008

John McCain’s election campaign last night suffered the body blow which Republicans had been bracing themselves for when his vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, was found to have abused her powers in pursuit of a personal feud with her former brother-in-law.

At the end of the 10-week investigation into the so-called Troopergate affair, Palin was found to have breached the ethics rules which govern her conduct as governor of Alaska. The findings, delivered by an investigator who had been hired by the Alaskan state legislature before she was picked as McCain’s running mate, are certain to lead to questions over his judgment, and to queries and challenges as to her suitability for national office.

Stephen Branchflower, a former prosecutor, found that Palin had breached the Alaska executive branch ethics act, which states that “each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust”.

Branchflower also concluded that Palin’s feud with her former brother-in-law, an officer of the Alaskan state police, was “likely a contributory factor” in her decision to dismiss the head of that force, Walt Monegan. However, he did also conclude that the action had been carried out in a “proper and lawful” fashion.

A committee of the Alaskan state legislature voted to make much of Branchflower’s report public after a closed discussion of more than six hours which ended early this morning. The committee, eight Republicans and four Democrats, did not endorse the report, but voted unanimously to release it.

Palin will probably not face impeachment proceedings, with both local Democrats and Repubicans saying they have little appetite for such a move.

With McCain struggling to overtake Barack Obama in the polls, however, and less than four weeks before the election, the report’s findings could barely have been worse for the Republicans.

Palin had denied all wrong-doing; her husband, Todd, sought to shoulder some of the blame by admitting that he had he repeatedly complained about the trooper, Mike Wooten, believing him to be a danger to the public. Wooten had been through an acrimonious divorce and custody battle with the governor’s younger sister. A number of complaints that the Palin family made about him at that time were upheld, and in March 2006 he was disciplined but allowed to keep his job.

Palin came into office as governor of Alaska nine months later, and then put Monegan immediately under pressure to fire Wooten.

A further finding of Branchflower’s 263-page report was that the Alaska state attorney general failed to comply with his request to release information about the case held in various emails.

A number of Alaskan Republicans attempted to halt publication of the report with a series of court cases, but the state’s supreme court dismissed their final bid on Thursday, paving the way for its publication.

Alaskan state senator Gary Stevens, a Republican, objected to the report while agreeing that its contents should be made public. “I would encourage people to be very cautious, to look at this with a jaundiced eye,” he said.

With Barack Obama building up significant poll leads all week as a result of the public anxiety over the economic crisis, McCain could have done with a weekend free to concentrate on attacking his rival rather than having to deal with Troopergate.

If the election were to be held today, polls suggest Obama would win by a landslide, but the gap could still narrow. A poll published yesterday gave Obama an 8% lead over McCain in Florida, which was pivotal for the Republicans in 2000 and held by them again in 2004.

McCain is resting much of his election hopes on taking Pennsylvania from the Democrats, but polls over the last few days give Obama double-digit leads, including one of 13%. The third of the big three swing states, Ohio, is tighter but Obama has leads of between 4-6% in four polls and McCain is ahead by 1% in another. ++

Palin’s Base
The Daily Show, via Daily Dish

Jon Stewart, on his personal political choices
New York Daily News

“Neither of them is perfect, but if you, out of nowhere, are going to grab a woman out of the woods and make her your vice presidential candidate, what can I do?

“[Sarah Palin] is like Jodie Foster in the movie ‘Nell,’ ” Stewart continued. “They just found her, and she was speaking her own special language.

“Have you noticed how [Palin's] rallies have begun to take on the characteristics of the last days of the Weimar Republic? In Florida, she asked ‘Who is Barack Obama?’ Hey, lady, we just met YOU five f-ing weeks ago.” ++

Olbermann highlights Palin

Alaskan Independence Party: The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., HuffPo
October 9, 2008

In 2004, America’s malleable mainstream media allowed itself to be manipulated by artful Republican operatives into devoting weeks of broadcast attention and drums of ink to unfairly desecrating John Kerry’s genuine Vietnam heroics while obligingly muzzling serious discussion of George W. Bush’s shameful wartime record of evasion and cowardice.

Last week found the American media once again boarding Republican swift boats against this season’s Democratic candidate armed with unfair and hypocritical attacks artfully designed by GOP strategists to distract attention from the cataclysmic outcomes of Republican governance. Vice Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin has taken to faulting Senator Barack Obama for his casual acquaintance with a respected Illinois educator Bill Ayers, who forty years ago was a member of the Weathermen, a movement active when Obama was eight and which he has denounced as “detestable.” Palin argues that the relationship proves that Obama sees “America as being so imperfect that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

The Times dedicated a page one article to Obama’s relations with Ayers and CNN’s Anderson Cooper obliged Palin by rewarding her reckless accusations about Obama’s patriotism with a major investigative report. Fox, meanwhile, is still riveting its audience with wall to wall coverage of this pressing irrelevancy.

But if McCarthy-era guilt-by-association is once again a valid political consideration, Palin, it would seem, has more to lose than Obama. Palin, it could be argued, following her own logic, thinks so little of America’s perfection that she continues to “pal around” with a man–her husband, actually–who only recently terminated his seven-year membership in the Alaskan Independence Party. Putting plunder above patriotism, the members of this treasonous cabal aim to break our country into pieces and walk away with Alaska’s rich federal oil fields and one-fifth of America’s land base–an area three-fourths the size of the Civil War Confederacy.

AIP’s charter commits the party “to the ultimate independence of Alaska,” from the United States which it refers to as “the colonial bureaucracy in Washington.” It proclaims Alaska’s 1959 induction as a state “as illegal and in violation of the United Nations charter and international law.”

AIP’s creation was inspired by the rabidly violent anti-Americanism of its founding father Joe Vogler, “I’m an Alaskan, not an American,” reads a favorite Vogler quote on AIP’s current website, “I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions.” According to Vogler AIP’s central purpose was to drive Alaska’s secession from the United States. Alaska, says current Chairwoman Lynette Clark, “should be an independent nation.”

Vogler was murdered in 1993 during an illegal sale of plastic explosives that went bad. The prior year, he had renounced his allegiance to the United States explaining that, “The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government.” He cursed the stars and stripes, promising, “I won’t be buried under their damned flag…when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home.” Palin has never denounced Vogler or his detestable anti-Americanism.

Palin’s husband Todd remained an AIP party member from 1995 to 2002. Sarah can be described in McCarthy-era palaver as a “fellow traveler.” While retaining her Republican registration, she attended the AIP’s 1994 convention where the party called for a draft constitution to secede from the United States and create an independent nation of Alaska. The McCain Campaign has reluctantly acknowledged that she also attended AIP’s 2000 Convention. She apparently found the experience so inspiring that she agreed to give a keynote address at the AIP’s 2006 convention and she recorded a video greeting for this year’s 2008 convention. In other words, this is not something that happened when she was eight!

So when Palin accuses Barack of “not seeing the same America as you and me,” maybe she is referring to an America without Alaska. In any case, isn’t it time the media start giving equal time to Palin’s buddy list of anti-American bombers and other radical associates? ++

Meet Sarah Palin’s radical right-wing pals
Extremists Mark Chryson and Steve Stoll helped launch Palin’s political career in Alaska, and in return had influence over policy. “Her door was open,” says Chryson — and still is.
Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert, Salon
Oct. 10, 2008

Editor’s note: Research support provided by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund.

On the afternoon of Sept. 24 in downtown Palmer, Alaska, as the sun began to sink behind the snowcapped mountains that flank the picturesque Mat-Su Valley, 51-year-old Mark Chryson sat for an hour on a park bench, reveling in tales of his days as chairman of the Alaska Independence Party. The stocky, gray-haired computer technician waxed nostalgic about quixotic battles to eliminate taxes, support the “traditional family” and secede from the United States.

So long as Alaska remained under the boot of the federal government, said Chryson, the AIP had to stand on guard to stymie a New World Order. He invited a Salon reporter to see a few items inside his pickup truck that were intended for his personal protection. “This here is my attack dog,” he said with a chuckle, handing the reporter an exuberant 8-pound papillon from his passenger seat. “Her name is Suzy.” Then he pulled a 9-millimeter Makarov PM pistol — once the standard-issue sidearm for Soviet cops — out of his glove compartment. “I’ve got enough weaponry to raise a small army in my basement,” he said, clutching the gun in his palm. “Then again, so do most Alaskans.” But Chryson added a message of reassurance to residents of that faraway place some Alaskans call “the 48.” “We want to go our separate ways,” he said, “but we are not going to kill you.”

Though Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure figure outside of Alaska, Chryson has been a political fixture in the hometown of the Republican vice-presidential nominee for over a decade. During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin’s campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.

Palin backed Chryson as he successfully advanced a host of anti-tax, pro-gun initiatives, including one that altered the state Constitution’s language to better facilitate the formation of anti-government militias. She joined in their vendetta against several local officials they disliked, and listened to their advice about hiring. She attempted to name Stoll, a John Birch Society activist known in the Mat-Su Valley as “Black Helicopter Steve,” to an empty Wasilla City Council seat. “Every time I showed up her door was open,” said Chryson. “And that policy continued when she became governor.”

When Chryson first met Sarah Palin, however, he didn’t really trust her politically. It was the early 1990s, when he was a member of a local libertarian pressure group called SAGE, or Standing Against Government Excess. (SAGE’s founder, Tammy McGraw, was Palin’s birth coach.) Palin was a leader in a pro-sales-tax citizens group called WOW, or Watch Over Wasilla, earning a political credential before her 1992 campaign for City Council. Though he was impressed by her interpersonal skills, Chryson greeted Palin’s election warily, thinking she was too close to the Democrats on the council and too pro-tax.

But soon, Palin and Chryson discovered they could be useful to each other. Palin would be running for mayor, while Chryson was about to take over the chairmanship of the Alaska Independence Party, which at its peak in 1990 had managed to elect a governor.

The AIP was born of the vision of “Old Joe” Vogler, a hard-bitten former gold miner who hated the government of the United States almost as much as he hated wolves and environmentalists. His resentment peaked during the early 1970s when the federal government began installing Alaska’s oil and gas pipeline. Fueled by raw rage — “The United States has made a colony of Alaska,” he told author John McPhee in 1977 — Vogler declared a maverick candidacy for the governorship in 1982. Though he lost, Old Joe became a force to be reckoned with, as well as a constant source of amusement for Alaska’s political class. During a gubernatorial debate in 1982, Vogler proposed using nuclear weapons to obliterate the glaciers blocking roadways to Juneau. “There’s gold under there!” he exclaimed.

Vogler made another failed run for the governor’s mansion in 1986. But the AIP’s fortunes shifted suddenly four years later when Vogler convinced Richard Nixon’s former interior secretary, Wally Hickel, to run for governor under his party’s banner. Hickel coasted to victory, outflanking a moderate Republican and a centrist Democrat. An archconservative Republican running under the AIP candidate, Jack Coghill, was elected lieutenant governor.

Hickel’s subsequent failure as governor to press for a vote on Alaskan independence rankled Old Joe. With sponsorship from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Vogler was scheduled to present his case for Alaskan secession before the United Nations General Assembly in the late spring of 1993. But before he could, Old Joe’s long, strange political career ended tragically that May when he was murdered by a fellow secessionist.

Hickel rejoined the Republican Party the year after Vogler’s death and didn’t run for reelection. Lt. Gov. Coghill’s campaign to succeed him as the AIP candidate for governor ended in disaster; he peeled away just enough votes from the Republican, Jim Campbell, to throw the gubernatorial election to Democrat Tony Knowles.

Despite the disaster, Coghill hung on as AIP chairman for three more years. When he was asked to resign in 1997, Mark Chryson replaced him. Chryson pursued a dual policy of cozying up to secessionist and right-wing groups in Alaska and elsewhere while also attempting to replicate the AIP’s success with Hickel in infiltrating the mainstream.

Unlike some radical right-wingers, Chryson doesn’t put forward his ideas freighted with anger or paranoia. And in a state where defense of gun and property rights often takes on a real religious fervor, Chryson was able to present himself as a typical Alaskan.

He rose through party ranks by reducing the AIP’s platform to a single page that “90 percent of Alaskans could agree with.” This meant scrubbing the old platform of what Chryson called “racist language” while accommodating the state’s growing Christian right movement by emphasizing the AIP’s commitment to the “traditional family.”

“The AIP is very family-oriented,” Chryson explained. “We’re for the traditional family — daddy, mommy, kids — because we all know that it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. And we don’t care if Heather has two mommies. That’s not a traditional family.”

Chryson further streamlined the AIP’s platform by softening its secessionist language. Instead of calling for immediate separation from the United States, the platform now demands a vote on independence.

Yet Chryson maintains that his party remains committed to full independence. “The Alaskan Independence Party has got links to almost every independence-minded movement in the world,” Chryson exclaimed. “And Alaska is not the only place that’s about separation. There’s at least 30 different states that are talking about some type of separation from the United States.”

This has meant rubbing shoulders and forging alliances with outright white supremacists and far-right theocrats, particularly those who dominate the proceedings at such gatherings as the North American Secessionist conventions, which AIP delegates have attended in recent years. The AIP’s affiliation with neo-Confederate organizations is motivated as much by ideological affinity as by organizational convenience. Indeed, Chryson makes no secret of his sympathy for the Lost Cause. “Should the Confederate states have been allowed to separate and go their peaceful ways?” Chryson asked rhetorically. “Yes. The War of Northern Aggression, or the Civil War, or the War Between the States — however you want to refer to it — was not about slavery, it was about states’ rights.”

Another far-right organization with whom the AIP has long been aligned is Howard Phillips’ militia-minded Constitution Party. The AIP has been listed as the Constitution Party’s state affiliate since the late 1990s, and it has endorsed the Constitution Party’s presidential candidates (Michael Peroutka and Chuck Baldwin) in the past two elections.

The Constitution Party boasts an openly theocratic platform that reads, “It is our goal to limit the federal government to its delegated, enumerated, Constitutional functions and to restore American jurisprudence to its original Biblical common-law foundations.” In its 1990s incarnation as the U.S. Taxpayers Party, it was on the front lines in promoting the “militia” movement, and a significant portion of its membership comprises former and current militia members.

At its 1992 convention, the AIP hosted both Phillips — the USTP’s presidential candidate — and militia-movement leader Col. James “Bo” Gritz, who was campaigning for president under the banner of the far-right Populist Party. According to Chryson, AIP regulars heavily supported Gritz, but the party deferred to Phillips’ presence and issued no official endorsements.

In Wasilla, the AIP became powerful by proxy — because of Chryson and Stoll’s alliance with Sarah Palin. Chryson and Stoll had found themselves in constant opposition to policies of Wasilla’s Democratic mayor, who started his three-term, nine-year tenure in 1987. By 1992, Chryson and Stoll had begun convening regular protests outside City Council. Their demonstrations invariably involved grievances against any and all forms of “socialist government,” from city planning to public education. Stoll shared Chryson’s conspiratorial views: “The rumor was that he had wrapped his guns in plastic and buried them in his yard so he could get them after the New World Order took over,” Stein told a reporter.

Chryson did not trust Palin when she joined the City Council in 1992. He claimed that she was handpicked by Democratic City Council leaders and by Wasilla’s Democratic mayor, John Stein, to rubber-stamp their tax hike proposals. “When I first met her,” he said, “I thought she was extremely left. But I’ve watched her slowly as she’s become more pronounced in her conservative ideology.”

Palin was well aware of Chryson’s views. “She knew my beliefs,” Chryson said. “The entire state knew my beliefs. I wasn’t afraid of being on the news, on camera speaking my views.”

But Chryson believes she trusted his judgment because he accurately predicted what life on the City Council would be like. “We were telling her, ‘This is probably what’s going to happen,’” he said. “‘The city is going to give this many people raises, they’re going to pave everybody’s roads, and they’re going to pave the City Council members’ roads.’ We couldn’t have scripted it better because everything we predicted came true.”

After intense evangelizing by Chryson and his allies, they claimed Palin as a convert. “When she started taking her job seriously,” Chryson said, “the people who put her in as the rubber stamp found out the hard way that she was not going to go their way.” In 1994, Sarah Palin attended the AIP’s statewide convention. In 1995, her husband, Todd, changed his voter registration to AIP. Except for an interruption of a few months, he would remain registered was an AIP member until 2002, when he changed his registration to undeclared.

In 1996, Palin decided to run against John Stein as the Republican candidate for mayor of Wasilla. While Palin pushed back against Stein’s policies, particularly those related to funding public works, Chryson said he and Steve Stoll prepared the groundwork for her mayoral campaign.

Chryson and Stoll viewed Palin’s ascendancy as a vehicle for their own political ambitions. “She got support from these guys,” Stein remarked. “I think smart politicians never utter those kind of radical things, but they let other people do it for them. I never recall Sarah saying she supported the militia or taking a public stand like that. But these guys were definitely behind Sarah, thinking she was the more conservative choice.”

“They worked behind the scenes,” said Stein. “I think they had a lot of influence in terms of helping with the back-scatter negative campaigning.”

Indeed, Chryson boasted that he and his allies urged Palin to focus her campaign on slashing character-based attacks. For instance, Chryson advised Palin to paint Stein as a sexist who had told her “to just sit there and look pretty” while she served on Wasilla’s City Council. Though Palin never made this accusation, her 1996 campaign for mayor was the most negative Wasilla residents had ever witnessed.

While Palin played up her total opposition to the sales tax and gun control — the two hobgoblins of the AIP — mailers spread throughout the town portraying her as “the Christian candidate,” a subtle suggestion that Stein, who is Lutheran, might be Jewish. “I watched that campaign unfold, bringing a level of slime our community hadn’t seen until then,” recalled Phil Munger, a local music teacher who counts himself as a close friend of Stein.

“This same group [Stoll and Chryson] also [publicly] challenged me on whether my wife and I were married because she had kept her maiden name,” Stein bitterly recalled. “So we literally had to produce a marriage certificate. And as I recall, they said, ‘Well, you could have forged that.’”

When Palin won the election, the men who had once shouted anti-government slogans outside City Hall now had a foothold inside the mayor’s office. Palin attempted to pay back her newfound pals during her first City Council meeting as mayor. In that meeting, on Oct. 14, 1996, she appointed Stoll to one of the City Council’s two newly vacant seats. But Palin was blocked by the single vote of then-Councilman Nick Carney, who had endured countless rancorous confrontations with Stoll and considered him a “violent” influence on local politics. Though Palin considered consulting attorneys about finding another means of placing Stoll on the council, she was ultimately forced to back down and accept a compromise candidate.

Emboldened by his nomination by Mayor Palin, Stoll later demanded she fire Wasilla’s museum director, John Cooper, a personal enemy he longed to sabotage. Palin obliged, eliminating Cooper’s position in short order. “Gotcha, Cooper!” Stoll told the deposed museum director after his termination, as Cooper told a reporter for the New York Times. “And it only cost me a campaign contribution.” Stoll, who donated $1,000 to Palin’s mayoral campaign, did not respond to numerous requests for an interview. Palin has blamed budget concerns for Cooper’s departure.

The following year, when Carney proposed a local gun-control measure, Palin organized with Chryson to smother the nascent plan in its cradle. Carney’s proposed ordinance would have prohibited residents from carrying guns into schools, bars, hospitals, government offices and playgrounds. Infuriated by the proposal that Carney viewed as a common-sense public-safety measure, Chryson and seven allies stormed a July 1997 council meeting.

With the bill still in its formative stages, Carney was not even ready to present it to the council, let alone conduct public hearings on it. He and other council members objected to the ad-hoc hearing as “a waste of time.” But Palin — in plain violation of council rules and norms — insisted that Chryson testify, stating, according to the minutes, that “she invites the public to speak on any issue at any time.”

When Carney tried later in the meeting to have the ordinance discussed officially at the following regular council meeting, he couldn’t even get a second. His proposal died that night, thanks to Palin and her extremist allies.

“A lot of it was the ultra-conservative far right that is against everything in government, including taxes,” recalled Carney. “A lot of it was a personal attack on me as being anti-gun, and a personal attack on anybody who deigned to threaten their authority to carry a loaded firearm wherever they pleased. That was the tenor of it. And it was being choreographed by Steve Stoll and the mayor.”

Asked if he thought it was Palin who had instigated the turnout, he replied: “I know it was.”

By Chryson’s account, he and Palin also worked hand-in-glove to slash property taxes and block a state proposal that would have taken money for public programs from the Permanent Fund Dividend, or the oil and gas fund that doles out annual payments to citizens of Alaska. Palin endorsed Chryson’s unsuccessful initiative to move the state Legislature from Juneau to Wasilla. She also lent her support to Chryson’s crusade to alter the Alaska Constitution’s language on gun rights so cities and counties could not impose their own restrictions. “It took over 10 years to get that language written in,” Chryson said. “But Sarah [Palin] was there supporting it.”

“With Sarah as a mayor,” said Chryson, “there were a number of times when I just showed up at City Hall and said, ‘Hey, Sarah, we need help.’ I think there was only one time when I wasn’t able to talk to her and that was because she was in a meeting.”

Chryson says the door remains open now that Palin is governor. (Palin’s office did not respond to Salon’s request for an interview.) While Palin has been more circumspect in her dealings with groups like the AIP as she has risen through the political ranks, she has stayed in touch.

When Palin ran for governor in 2006, marketing herself as a fresh-faced reformer determined to crush the GOP’s ossified power structure, she made certain to appear at the AIP’s state convention. To burnish her maverick image, she also tapped one-time AIP member and born-again Republican Walter Hickel as her campaign co-chair. Hickel barnstormed the state for Palin, hailing her support for an “all-Alaska” liquefied gas pipeline, a project first promoted in 2002 by an AIP gubernatorial candidate named Nels Anderson. When Palin delivered her victory speech on election night, Hickel stood beaming by her side. “I made her governor,” he boasted afterward. Two years later, Hickel has endorsed Palin’s bid for vice president.

Just months before Palin burst onto the national stage as McCain’s vice-presidential nominee, she delivered a videotaped address to the AIP’s annual convention. Her message was scrupulously free of secessionist rhetoric, but complementary nonetheless. “I share your party’s vision of upholding the Constitution of our great state,” Palin told the assembly of AIP delegates. “My administration remains focused on reining in government growth so individual liberty can expand. I know you agree with that … Keep up the good work and God bless you.”

When Palin became the Republican vice-presidential nominee, her attendance of the 1994 and 2006 AIP conventions and her husband’s membership in the party (as well as Palin’s videotaped welcome to the AIP’s 2008 convention) generated a minor controversy. Chryson claimed, however, that Sarah and Todd Palin never even played a minor role in his party’s internal affairs. “Sarah’s never been a member of the Alaskan Independence Party,” Chryson insisted. “Todd has, but most of rural Alaska has too. I never saw him at a meeting. They were at one meeting I was at. Sarah said hello, but I didn’t pay attention because I was taking care of business.”

But whether the Palins participated directly in shaping the AIP’s program is less relevant than the extent to which they will implement that program. Chryson and his allies have demonstrated just as much interest in grooming major party candidates as they have in putting forward their own people. At a national convention of secessionist groups in 2007, AIP vice chairman Dexter Clark announced that his party would seek to “infiltrate” the Democratic and Republican parties with candidates sympathetic to its hard-right, secessionist agenda. “You should use that tactic. You should infiltrate,” Clark told his audience of neo-Confederates, theocrats and libertarians. “Whichever party you think in that area you can get something done, get into that party. Even though that party has its problems, right now that is the only avenue.”

Clark pointed to Palin’s political career as the model of a successful infiltration. “There’s a lot of talk of her moving up,” Clark said of Palin. “She was a member [of the AIP] when she was mayor of a small town, that was a nonpartisan job. But to get along and to go along she switched to the Republican Party … She is pretty well sympathetic because of her membership.”

Clark’s assertion that Palin was once a card-carrying AIP member was swiftly discredited by the McCain campaign, which produced records showing she had been a registered Republican since 1988. But then why would Clark make such a statement? Why did he seem confident that Palin was a true-blue AIP activist burrowing within the Republican Party? The most salient answer is that Palin was once so thoroughly embedded with AIP figures like Chryson and Stoll and seemed so enthusiastic about their agenda, Clark may have simply assumed she belonged to his party.

Now, Palin is a household name and her every move is scrutinized by the Washington press corps. She can no longer afford to kibitz with secessionists, however instrumental they may have been to her meteoric ascendancy. This does not trouble her old AIP allies. Indeed, Chryson is hopeful that Palin’s inauguration will also represent the start of a new infiltration.

“I’ve had my issues but she’s still staying true to her core values,” Chryson concluded. “Sarah’s friends don’t all agree with her, but do they respect her? Do they respect her ideology and her values? Definitely.” ++

“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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