I Didn’t Vote For Obama Today (great piece from Talking Points Memo)

You can see the original post here

I Didn’t Vote For Obama Today

November 4, 2008, 9:37AM

I have a confession to make.

I did not vote for Barack Obama today.

I’ve openly supported Obama since March.  But I didn’t vote for him today.

I wanted to vote for Ronald Woods. He was my algebra teacher at Clark Junior High in East St. Louis, IL.  He died 15 years ago when his truck skidded head-first into a utility pole.  He spent many a day teaching us many things besides the Pythagorean Theorem.  He taught us about Medgar Evers, Ralph Abernathy, John Lewis and many other civil rights figures who get lost in the shadow cast by Martin Luther King, Jr.

But I didn’t vote for Mr. Woods.

I wanted to vote for Willie Mae Cross. She owned and operated Crossroads Preparatory Academy for almost 30 years, educating and empowering thousands of kids before her death in 2003.  I was her first student.  She gave me my first job, teaching chess and math concepts to kids in grades K-4 in her summer program.  She was always there for advice, cheer and consolation.  Ms. Cross, in her own way, taught me more about walking in faith than anyone else I ever knew.

But I didn’t vote for Ms. Cross.

I wanted to vote for Arthur Mells Jackson, Sr. and Jr. Jackson Senior was a Latin professor.  He has a gifted school named for him in my hometown.  Jackson Junior was the pre-eminent physician in my hometown for over 30 years.  He has a heliport named for him at a hospital in my hometown.  They were my great-grandfather and great-uncle, respectively.

But I didn’t vote for Prof. Jackson or Dr. Jackson.

I wanted to vote for A.B. Palmer. She was a leading civil rights figure in Shreveport, Louisiana, where my mother grew up and where I still have dozens of family members.  She was a strong-willed woman who earned the grudging respect of the town’s leaders because she never, ever backed down from anyone and always gave better than she got.  She lived to the ripe old age of 99, and has a community center named for her in Shreveport.

But I didn’t vote for Mrs. Palmer.

I wanted to vote for these people, who did not live to see a day where a Black man would appear on their ballots on a crisp November morning.

In the end, though, I realized that I could not vote for them any more than I could vote for Obama himself.

So who did I vote for?

No one.

I didn’t vote.  Not for President, anyway.

Oh, I went to the voting booth.  I signed, was given my stub, and was walked over to a voting machine.  I cast votes for statewide races and a state referendum on water and sewer improvements.

I stood there, and I thought about all of these people, who influenced my life so greatly.  But I didn’t vote for who would be the 44th President of the United States.

When my ballot was complete, except for the top line, I finally decided who I was going to vote for – and then decided to let him vote for me.  I reached down, picked him up, and told him to find Obama’s name on the screen and touch it.

And so it came to pass that Alexander Reed, age 5, read the voting screen, found the right candidate, touched his name, and actually cast a vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Oh, the vote will be recorded as mine.  But I didn’t cast it.

Then again, the person who actually pressed the Obama box and the red “vote” button was the person I was really voting for all along.

It made the months of donating, phonebanking, canvassing, door hanger distributing, sign posting, blogging, arguing and persuading so much sweeter.

So, no, I didn’t vote for Barack Obama.  I voted for a boy who now has every reason to believe he, too, can grow up to be anything he wants…even President.

This is how disgusting , and desperate, the Republicans have become

Have we hit an all-time low yet?

More on Joe, er, I mean, “Sam” the Not so plumber plumber

More on “Joe” , er, Sam the non-plumber

Joe the Plumber? More like Joe the Keating Family Operative

I guess it’s no wonder John McCain was so happy to use “Joe the Plumber” as a debate prop last night — he’s a partisan Republican who also happens to be a member of McCain’s old friends, the Keating family.

From Martin Eisenstadt:

Turns out that Joe Wurzelbacher from the Toledo event is a close relative of Robert Wurzelbacher of Milford, Ohio. Who’s Robert Wurzelbacher? Only Charles Keating’s son-in-law and the former senior vice president of American Continental, the parent company of the infamous Lincoln Savings and Loan. The now retired elder Wurzelbacher is also a major contributor to Republican causes giving well over $10,000 in the last few years.

Now I guess we know why Joe is telling the press that Obama is a “socialist” and that the Obama tax plan “infuriated” him. After all, it would hit families like the Keatings and their minions the hardest.

Not to mention that Obama’s economic-recovery plan would put the crimps on influence peddlers like McCain’s old friends, the Keating Five.

But he sure made for a good one-day story.

http://www.newscloud.com/read/Joe_the_Plumber_More_like_Joe_the_Keating_Family_Operative

A Reverse “Bradley Effect”?

You guys know what the supposed “Bradley Effect” is, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect
Well, it turns out there a reverse version of it going on. in this version, white voters don’t want to reveal to their other white friends or family that they want to vote for Obama.

“The Bradley effect has mutated. We are seeing it in several states, but the reverse effect is much stronger,”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/A_reverse_Bradley_Effect.html

The Dirt Trail (The Obama Smears)

Thanks to Malcolm Mills for sending me this article

A herd of elephants on a mud trail makes for a pretty noisome combination

Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Election2008.mud.htm
10/13/08

Usually, at this point, just 22 days before the election, I’m at the
point where I’m running out of things to say about the campaigns and am
looking around a bit desperately for something non-political to write
about, just to take a break and maybe restart my brain. This time
around, I had an essay about a kitten – yes, a kitten, that’s what I’ve
descended to – on the back burner ready to go against the point where I
couldn’t post one more Palin quote without puking.

But of course, this year has been a little different. The worldwide
economic crash is huge, news that is once-in-a-lifetime, vast in its
implications. It has been so big that even the campaign for what is
arguably the most important election America has seen since 1932 has
been pushed to the side.

So: three weeks to go, and I’m looking for opportunities to write about
politics. Right now, the kitten’s not even on the horizon, even though
he is indisputably a very nice kitten.

Europe is effectively nationalizing their banks while US “leadership” is
dithering. Tick, tick, tick. That’s where the economy stands. We’re at
that point in a Roadrunner cartoon narrative where we’re Wile E. Coyote,
and we’ve just noticed a shadow forming around us, bugged our eyes
skyward, and opened a little paper parasol in an effort to shield ourselves.

Paul Krugman just won the Nobel Prize for Economics. I posted
congratulations to his blog, noting that if elected, Obama was going to
need a really, really good economic advisor.

So let’s talk about the campaign. First, there’s the right wing smear
machine. Smearing isn’t limited to the right, and you can find Democrats
willing to swear that McCain caused the Forrestal accident, or is
actually not a citizen and not eligible to run for president, or turned
coward and traitor whilst being held captive in North Vietnam. All three
can be regarded, at best, as unprovable and more likely to be
politically motivated nonsense.

But the smears against Obama are organized, coordinated, carefully
planned, and crafted, and repeated, over and over. However, between the
huge distraction of the economy and Obama’s willingness to fight the
smears, they just aren’t gaining ground.

The far right, predictably, has become pretty hysterical. One user on
Usenet breathlessly posted recycled stories of a silly case demanding
that Obama prove his citizenship with the breathless header, “This could
be a game-changer!” The source in this case was something called “The
Illuminati Press.” That just added to the gravitas. Apparently he didn’t
know that the Dark Illuminati, by all accounts, aren’t very nice people.
Or if David Icke is to be believed, aren’t people at all. Another user
has posted at least 300 messages claiming that Obama had gay sex in the
back of a limousine with a man named Larry Sinclair. Another claimed
that Obama boasted of having sex with 10,000 white women, which would be
nearly a different one every day for his entire adult life. Forget
electing him president: vote him in for God!

Along with the usual suspects – Sun Myung Moon, Richard Scaife, Karl
Rove, Dick Morris, and Matt Drudge – the smear machine has some other
faces.

The NY Times just did a piece on Andy Martin, the clown who started the
“Obama is secretly a Muslim” crap back in 2004. They noted, among other
things, that Martin was diagnosed “moderately severe character defect
manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a
grandiose character.” In other words, he invents and may well believe
lurid and crazed conspiracy stories in which he is a hero. The problem
was evident enough that it was used to stop him from being accredited as
a lawyer. The NY Times notes that over the years, he’s filed hundreds of
crackpot lawsuits, despite being too mentally unfit to even be a lawyer.

Larry Sinclair has been discredited as a felon with a 27 year track
record of lies, fraud and deceit. He’s the one who claims that Obama had
sex with him in the back of a limo. Larry himself gave a press
conference at the National Press Club in Washington DC, which tells you
volumes about the state of American journalism, and at the end of the
conference, was arrested for the umpteenth time, this time on charges of
larceny in Delaware. He spent 12 years in prison for one fraud
conviction in 1987. According to Tim Shipman of the Daily Telegraph,
Sinclair came to the conference with a lawyer in tow, one Montgomery
Blair Sibley. Sibley, who wasn’t licenced to practice law in DC, was
wearing a kilt, and took advantage of his time at the mike to explain to
all assembled that he had to wear a kilt instead of trousers because of
his enormous genitalia. For some reason, News of the World didn’t cover
that story, but if Monty is Scottish, then perhaps there was mention of
it in Ewes of the World. Even Sibley’s, um, imposing presence didn’t
stop his client from being arrested. Again.

Finally, there was Larry Corsi. He of the “swiftboat” fame in the 2004
election. He released a book, “Obama Nation” which promptly sank in a
sea of derision except among the double-digit IQ members of the extreme
right, who quote it to one another endlessly. When last heard from Corsi
was in Kenya trying to find more dirt on Obama, and annoyed the
authorities and got kicked out of the country. That may not have the
cachet of being a mentally-ill lawyer, but it’s still pretty good.

It would be nice to say these are just fringe crackpots, but
unfortunately, these fringe crackpots have pretty much become the voice
of the GOP. They have a new leader in Sarah Palin, who has been inciting
crowds to shout things like “Traitor!” and “Kill him!” of Obama. One
half expects her to start hoisting a noose every time she mentions his
name, to cheers from the hooded crowd.

I noted at the second debate that then was the time for McCain to
apologize to Obama and disassociate himself from such tactics. The press
was beginning to notice the really ugly tones Palin was deliberately
whipping up among the mentals who believe that people like Sinclair,
Corsi, and Martin are telling the truth, and Obama really is a gay
moslem communist, his wife a black panther, and his daughters suicide
bombers. What’s left of the GOP these days has no shortage of ignorant,
hate-filled nuts.

But that moment has passed. McCain clearly realizes that his campaign
misstepped, and it’s possible that deep in his heart, the man genuinely
regrets it. But with it now getting widespread attention in the press,
he can’t make a show of changing the tone without it looking like yet
another erratic political gambit to try to save a campaign that is
foundering.

There’s also the fact that people like the woman who told McCain she
supported him because “Obama is an Arab” (McCain called her to task on
it) make up most of McCain’s support these days. If McCain loses them
(and they support Palin in the American European Heritage Party in 2012
or some damn thing) then he’ll be lucky to get Arizona and Utah in the
electoral college. Most responsible conservatives have already bugged
out from the GOP, leaving only the loons.

But McCain should do it anyway, if only because it’s the right thing to
do, and if he is to lose, at least he can do so with some class and dignity.

And it can start the GOP on the path to breaking away from the clutches
of the lunatic-fringe right. The lies and smears aren’t working, that’s
for sure, and people are getting pissed off that in the middle of a
major crisis, that’s about all they have to offer.

——————————————————————————————-

also: the racist at this blog still has her disinformation as the featured post on wordpress.com’s main page. Tell the people who run this site that you want it off the main page. this post originates on Stormfront’s website. they are a white-supremist, violent, hate-mongering group. WordPress needs to put up a different post as a featured post. the woman has the right to say what ever she wants…even lies…but, wordpress has STILL not removed it from the main page.

The REAL Maverick’s Not So “Mavericky”

I just wanted to spread the word on a fantastic article in Rolling Stone this month. Check out Make-Believe Maverick by Tim Dickinson.

“In its broad strokes, McCain’s life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers’ powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives’ evangelical churches.

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.”

Here are a few of my favorite parts:

1.”the truth of the matter is that ambition is John McCain’s basic character. Seen in the sweep of his seven-decade personal history, his pandering to the right is consistent with the only constant in his life: doing what’s best for himself. To put the matter squarely: John McCain is his own special interest.

“John has made a pact with the devil,” says Lincoln Chafee, the former GOP senator, who has been appalled at his one-time colleague’s readiness to sacrifice principle for power. Chafee and McCain were the only Republicans to vote against the Bush tax cuts. They locked arms in opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And they worked together in the “Gang of 14,” which blocked some of Bush’s worst judges from the federal bench.

“On all three — sadly, sadly, sadly — McCain has flip-flopped,” Chafee says. And forget all the “Country First” sloganeering, he adds. “McCain is putting himself first. He’s putting himself first in blinking neon lights.”

2.(On his time at Annapolis) McCain’s self-described “four-year course of insubordination” ended with him graduating fifth from the bottom — 894th out of a class of 899. It was a record of mediocrity he would continue as a pilot.

3.

TRIAL BY FIRE

Sometimes 3 a.m. moments occur at 10:52 in the morning.

It was July 29th, 1967, a hot, gusty morning in the Gulf of Tonkin atop the four-acre flight deck of the supercarrier USS Forrestal. Perched in the cockpit of his A-4 Skyhawk, Lt. Cmdr. John McCain ticked nervously through his preflight checklist.

Now 30 years old, McCain was trying to live up to his father’s expectations, to finally be known as something other than the fuck-up grandson of one of the Navy’s greatest admirals. That morning, preparing for his sixth bombing run over North Vietnam, the graying pilot’s dreams of combat glory were beginning to seem within his reach.

Then, in an instant, the world around McCain erupted in flames. A six-foot-long Zuni rocket, inexplicably launched by an F-4 Phantom across the flight deck, ripped through the fuel tank of McCain’s aircraft. Hundreds of gallons of fuel splashed onto the deck and came ablaze. Then: Clank. Clank. Two 1,000-pound bombs dropped from under the belly of McCain’s stubby A-4, the Navy’s “Tinkertoy Bomber,” into the fire.

McCain, who knew more than most pilots about bailing out of a crippled aircraft, leapt forward out of the cockpit, swung himself down from the refueling probe protruding from the nose cone, rolled through the flames and ran to safety across the flight deck. Just then, one of his bombs “cooked off,” blowing a crater in the deck and incinerating the sailors who had rushed past McCain with hoses and fire extinguishers. McCain was stung by tiny bits of shrapnel in his legs and chest, but the wounds weren’t serious; his father would later report to friends that Johnny “came through without a scratch.”

The damage to the Forrestal was far more grievous: The explosion set off a chain reaction of bombs, creating a devastating inferno that would kill 134 of the carrier’s 5,000-man crew, injure 161 and threaten to sink the ship.

These are the moments that test men’s mettle. Where leaders are born. Leaders like . . . Lt. Cmdr. Herb Hope, pilot of the A-4 three planes down from McCain’s. Cornered by flames at the stern of the carrier, Hope hurled himself off the flight deck into a safety net and clambered into the hangar deck below, where the fire was spreading. According to an official Navy history of the fire, Hope then “gallantly took command of a firefighting team” that would help contain the conflagration and ultimately save the ship.

McCain displayed little of Hope’s valor. Although he would soon regale The New York Times with tales of the heroism of the brave enlisted men who “stayed to help the pilots fight the fire,” McCain took no part in dousing the flames himself. After going belowdecks and briefly helping sailors who were frantically trying to unload bombs from an elevator to the flight deck, McCain retreated to the safety of the “ready room,” where off-duty pilots spent their noncombat hours talking trash and playing poker. There, McCain watched the conflagration unfold on the room’s closed-circuit television — bearing distant witness to the valiant self-sacrifice of others who died trying to save the ship, pushing jets into the sea to keep their bombs from exploding on deck.

As the ship burned, McCain took a moment to mourn his misfortune; his combat career appeared to be going up in smoke. “This distressed me considerably,” he recalls in Faith of My Fathers. “I feared my ambitions were among the casualties in the calamity that had claimed the Forrestal.”

The fire blazed late into the night. The following morning, while oxygen-masked rescue workers toiled to recover bodies from the lower decks, McCain was making fast friends with R.W. “Johnny” Apple of The New York Times, who had arrived by helicopter to cover the deadliest Naval calamity since the Second World War. The son of admiralty surviving a near-death experience certainly made for good copy, and McCain colorfully recounted how he had saved his skin. But when Apple and other reporters left the ship, the story took an even stranger turn: McCain left with them. As the heroic crew of the Forrestal mourned its fallen brothers and the broken ship limped toward the Philippines for repairs, McCain zipped off to Saigon for what he recalls as “some welcome R&R.”

4. To watch the Republican National Convention and listen to Fred Thompson’s account of John McCain’s internment in Vietnam, you would think that McCain never gave his captors anything beyond his name, rank, service number and, under duress, the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line. His time in Hanoi, we’re to understand, steeled the man — transforming him from a fighter jock who put himself first into a patriot who would henceforth selflessly serve the public good.

There is no question that McCain suffered hideously in North Vietnam. His ejection over a lake in downtown Hanoi broke his knee and both his arms. During his capture, he was bayoneted in the ankle and the groin, and had his shoulder smashed by a rifle butt. His tormentors dragged McCain’s broken body to a cell and seemed content to let him expire from his injuries. For the next two years, there were few days that he was not in agony.

But the subsequent tale of McCain’s mistreatment — and the transformation it is alleged to have produced — are both deeply flawed. The Code of Conduct that governed POWs was incredibly rigid; few soldiers lived up to its dictate that they “give no information . . . which might be harmful to my comrades.” Under the code, POWs are bound to give only their name, rank, date of birth and service number — and to make no “statements disloyal to my country.”

Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. “I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital,” he later admitted pleading with his captors. McCain now insists the offer was a bluff, designed to fool the enemy into giving him medical treatment. In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. “I had to tell them,” he insisted to Dramesi, “or I would have died in bed.”

Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain’s service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot’s behavior as heroic — “he wasn’t exceptional one way or the other” — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. “This business of my country before my life?” Dramesi says. “Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he’d be dead.”

Once the Vietnamese realized they had captured the man they called the “crown prince,” they had every motivation to keep McCain alive. His value as a propaganda tool and bargaining chip was far greater than any military intelligence he could provide, and McCain knew it. “It was hard not to see how pleased the Vietnamese were to have captured an admiral’s son,” he writes, “and I knew that my father’s identity was directly related to my survival.” But during the course of his medical treatment, McCain followed through on his offer of military information. Only two weeks after his capture, the North Vietnamese press issued a report — picked up by The New York Times — in which McCain was quoted as saying that the war was “moving to the advantage of North Vietnam and the United States appears to be isolated.” He also provided the name of his ship, the number of raids he had flown, his squadron number and the target of his final raid.

AND THAT’S JUST IN THE FIRST 5 PAGES. Take the time to read this article. I think you’ll find, as the title of the article suggests, McCain is no maverick. In fact, you may just find that this man is worse than you could have imagined. He does NOT have the class, temperament, or anything that should qualify him to be president. In fact, all those things have convinced me we would ALL be safer if he never gets that chance.

Poor Sarah

I’m almost starting to feel sorry for Sarah Palin. Look! She was thrown into this thing by people who, frankly, are even more idiotic than she is . I’ll get to the main one of these people later.*

If someone offered me the position, I’d be both excited and alarmed. But, I’d take a shot. And guess what? I’d be skewered. And, rightly so. On the other hand, I’d be able able to answer most of Katie Couric’s questions. Sarah Palin was asked what Supreme court decisions she disagreed with? She couldn’t come up with one….

Just off the top of my head:

Habeas Corpus

George Bush’s win in 2000

Serial child molesters…in my opinion…snuff em

You might not agree with any of those positions. But…I had a position.

——–

My point is: We all know she’s not even close to capable. I doubt, if you asked her, she’d be able to name a book she’s read this year (other than the bible)…or in her lifetime. But, imagine you’re some schlup up in Alaska with dreams. Suddenly, one of the most famous, admired, senators and candidates for president taps YOU to be VP. This guy is saying, YOU…a nobody…just a regular numbnut…not even on the radar…could be President of the United States of America…leader of the free world. That’d be fucking awesome. No?

It’d be like hitting the lottery. what are the odds?

So, who can blame her for accepting. I’d accept. I’d cause the presidential candidate to regret it. Even so, I’d say yes in a heartbeat. Dreams do come true and all that shit.

Considering all that…Who’s really fucked up in all of this? Isn’t the REAL idiot McCain?* He’s the one who thought this would be a good idea.Come on, folks…that’s an astounding example of poor judgement. It’s fucking unbelievable.

I totally respect the conservatives who are coming out against this ticket. While McCain is babbling gibberish about “country first”… He’s really asking people to chose party loyalty over their country’s best interest.These conservatives have decided that country DOES come first. They, unlike the Christian right and the neocons, actually care about what direction the country goes in the future. They have morals. They are patriots. McCain seems to only care about being president. He doesn’t seem to care about what happens when he’s gone. He wants to be in the history books…damn the torpedoes.

Well, this is their Waterloo. Considering the many screw-ups that should have been their Waterloo…it’s almost a minor one. The good news is…we can stop them…before it’s too late. I believe Americans will band together to do just that on November 4th.

One last thing: I’ve heard a lot about how nomination being an advancement for women. I doubt intelligent women see it that way….in either party. THAT argument is as vile as the party loyalist concept. America…and American women…can offer up much better. I look forward to the day that they do. I’ll support whomever she is…if she’s right for the job.

opinion by Damian Mann

Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean”

Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean”

September 5, 2008

by Charley James – http://tinyurl.com/6zetn4

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

“It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole.

Then, almost with a sigh, she added, “But that’s just Alaska.”

Racial and ethnic slurs may be “just Alaska” and, clearly, they are common, everyday chatter for Palin.

Besides insulting Obama with a Step-N’-Fetch-It, “darkie musical” swipe, people who know her say she refers regularly to Alaska’s Aboriginal people as “Arctic Arabs” – how efficient, lumping two apparently undesirable groups into one ugly description – as well as the more colourful “mukluks” along with the totally unimaginative “f**king Eskimo’s,” according to a number of Alaskans and Wasillians interviewed for this article.

But being openly racist is only the tip of the Palin iceberg. According to Alaskans interviewed for this article, she is also vindictive and mean. We’re talking Rove mean and Nixon vindictive.

No wonder the vast sea of white, cheering faces at the Republican Convention went wild for Sarah: They adore the type, it’s in their genetic code. So much for McCain’s pledge of a “high road” campaign; Palin is incapable of being part of one.

Tough Getting People Who Know Her to Talk
It’s not easy getting people in the 49th state to speak critically about Palin – especially people in Wasilla, where she was mayor. For one thing, with every journalist in the world calling, phone lines into Alaska have been mostly jammed since Friday; as often as not, a recording told me that “all circuits are busy” or numbers just wouldn’t ring. I should think a state that’s been made richer than God by oil could afford telephone lines and cell towers for everyone.

On a more practical level, many people in Alaska, and particularly Wasilla, are reluctant to speak or be quoted by name because they’re afraid of her as well as the state Republican Party machine. Apparently, the power elite are as mean as the winters.

“The GOP is kind of like organized crime up here,” an insurance agent in Anchorage who knows the Palin family, explained. “It’s corrupt and arrogant. They’re all rich because they do private sweetheart deals with the oil companies, and they can destroy anyone. And they will, if they have to.”

“Once Palin became mayor,” he continued, “She became part of that inner circle.”

Like most other people interviewed, he didn’t want his name used out of fear of retribution. Maybe it’s the long winter nights where you don’t see the sun for months that makes people feel as if they’re under constant danger from “the authorities.” As I interviewed residents it began sounding as if living in Alaska controlled by the state Republican Party is like living in the old Soviet Union: See nothing that’s happening, say nothing offensive, and the political commissars leave you alone. But speak out and you get disappeared into a gulag north of the Arctic Circle for who-knows-how-long.

Alright, that’s an exaggeration brought on by my getting too little sleep and building too much anger as I worked this article. But there’s ample evidence of Palin’s vindictive willingness to destroy people she sees as opponents. Just ask the Wasilla town administrator she hired before firing him because he rebelled against the way Palin demanded he do his job, or the town librarian who refused to hold the book burning Walpurgisnach Mayor Palin demanded.

Ironically, Palin was pushed into hiring the administrator by the party poobahs who helped get her elected after she got herself into trouble over a number of precipitous firings which gave rise to a recall campaign.

“People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day,” states Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla resident and one of the few Alaskans willing to speak on-the-record, for attribution, about Palin. In fact, Kilkenny actually circulated an e-mail letter about Palin that was verified and printed by The Nation.

For good measure, Palin booted the Wasilla police chief from office because, she told a local newspaper, he “intimidated” her.

Running on Extreme Fringe Evangelical Views
Sarah Palin drew early attention from state GOP apparatchiks when, during her first mayoral campaign, she ran on an anti-abortion platform. Normally, political parties do not get involved in Alaskan municipal elections because they are nonpartisan. But once word of her extreme fringe evangelical views made its way to Juneau, the state capitol, state Republicans tossed some money behind her campaign.

Once in office, Palin set out to build a machine that chewed up anyone who got in her way. The good, Godly Christian turns out to be anything but.

“She’s doesn’t like different opinions and she refuses to compromise,” Kilkenny notes. “When she was mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t hers. Worse, ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits but on the basis of who proposed them.”

Sound familiar? Palin may well be Dick Cheney’s reincarnate.

Something else has a familiar Republican ring to it: Her tax policies, and a “refund surpluses but borrow for the future” attitude.

According to Kilkenny and others in Wasilla as well as Juneau, Palin reduced progressive property taxes for businesses while mayor and increased a regressive sales tax which even hits necessities such as food. The tax cuts she promoted in her St. Paul speech actually benefited large corporate property owners far more than they benefited residents. Indeed, Kilkenny insists that many Wasilla home owners actually saw their tax bill skyrocket to make up for the shortfall. Two other Wasillian’s with whom I spoke said property taxes on their modest, three bedroom homes rose during the Palin regime.

To an outsider, it would seem hard to do, but an oil-rich town with zero debt on the day she was inaugurated mayor was left saddled with $22 million of debt by the time she moved away to become governor – especially since nothing was spent on things such as improving the city’s infrastructure or building a much-needed sewage treatment plant. So what did Mayor Palin spend the taxpayer’s money on, if not fixing streets and scrubbing sewage?

For starters, she remodelled her office. Several times over, as a matter of fact.

Then Palin spent $1 million on an unnecessary, new park that no one other than the contractors and Palin seemed to want. Next, Sarah doled out more than $15 million of taxpayer money for a sports complex that she shoved through even though the city did not own clear title to the land; now, seven years later, the matter is still in litigation and lawyer fees are said to be close to at least half of the original estimated price of the facility.

She also worked hard to get voters approval of a $5.5 million bond proposal for roads that could have been built without borrowing. Anchorage may not be the center of the financial universe but, like good Republicans everywhere, Sarah Palin knows how to please Alaskan bankers and bond dealers.

For good measure, she turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots.

Sarah Barracuda
En route to the governor’s igloo, Palin managed to land what Anne Kilkenny says is the plumb political appointment in the state: Chair of Alaska’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (OGCC), a $122,400 per year patronage slot with no real authority to do anything other than hold meetings. She took the job despite having no background in energy issues and, as it turned out, not liking the work.

“She hated the job,” an OGCC staff member who is not authorized to speak with the news media told me. “She hated the hours and she hated what little work there was to do. But she couldn’t figure out a way to get out of the thing without offending Gov. Murkowski” and the state Republican Party regulars, some of whom were pissed off they didn’t get appointed.

But ever the opportunist, Palin quickly concocted a way. First, she waged a campaign with the local news media claiming that the position was overpaid and should be abolished – despite the fact that she lobbied Murkowski hard to get it. Then, mounting what she saw as a white horse, Palin raised a cloud of dust by resigning from the OGCC and riding away with an undeserved reputation as a “reformer.”

But when a local reporter dared to suggest that the reformer Empress has no clothes, Palin tried to get her fired.

“She came at me like I was trying to steal her kids,” said the targeted reporter, who now works for an oil company in Anchorage. “I heard she had a wild temper and vicious mean streak but it’s nothing like you can imagine until she turns it on you.”

Not surprising since some of her high school classmates still openly call her “Sarah Barracuda,” Kilkenny insists.

Still, as a Republican Party hack Palin managed to get herself elected running under the false flag of a “reformer.”

And what did she bring to the job? No legislative experience other than a city council of a village of 5,000 people, which is smaller than some high schools in Chicago. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; after all, she needed to hire a city administrator to run Wasilla. No executive experience, except for almost being recalled as mayor. A philosophy of setting public policy based on one word: No.

And what has she done since winning the job?

According to Kilkenny, nothing. Well, nothing other than suggesting the state’s multi-multi-million dollar, oil-generated surplus be distributed to residents and finance future state needs by borrowing money. Gee, doesn’t that sound precisely what George Bush did with the surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton in 2001 and we all know in what great shape Bush’s economic policies left the nation.

It may explain why, when asked by reporters, including me, what she thought about Palin being picked to be McCain’s running mate, her mother-in-law replied with a sardonic, “What has Sarah done to qualify her to be vice president?” Of course, when the woman – said by many I spoke with to be well-respected in Wasilla – was running to succeed Palin as mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her, so that may explain the family tension.

As Governor, Palin gave the legislature no direction and budget guidelines, according to the chair of a legislative committee. But then she staged a huge grandstand play of line-item vetoing countless projects, calling them pork. “They were restored because of public outcry and legislative action,” the aide said. “She vetoed them mostly because she had no idea what they were or why they were important.”

But it was enough to get the McCain, who is mostly unobservant of the world around him anyway, to think Palin has a reputation as being “anti-pork”.

In fact, Juneau observers note that Palin kept her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork ladled out by indicted Sen. Ted Stevens. She only opposed the “bridge to nowhere” after it became clear that it would be politically unwise to keep supporting it, these same insiders assert. Then, Palin fell back on her old habits and publicly humiliated him for pork-barrel politics.

As for being “ready on day one” to be commander in chief, despite the repeated public claims she’s made, the Alaska National Guard commander said that, “she has made no command decisions, other than sending some troops to help fight a few brush fires and march in parades at county fairs.”

“Sambo Beat the Bitch”
“Palin is a conniving, manipulative, a**hole,” someone who thinks these are positive traits in a governor told me, summing up Palin’s tenure in Alaska state and local politics.

“She’s a bigot, a racist, and a liar,” is the more blunt assessment of Arnold Gerstheimer who lived in Alaska until two years ago and is now a businessman in Idaho.

charley-james.jpg“Juneau is a small town; everybody knows everyone else,” he adds. “These stories about what she calls blacks and Eskimos, well, anyone not white and good looking actually, were around long before she became a glint in John McCain’s rheumy eyes. Why do I know they’re true? Because everyone who isn’t aboriginal or Indian in Alaska talks that way.”

“Sambo beat the bitch” may be everyday language up in the bush. Whether it – and the outlook, politics and worldview Palin reflects when she says such things in public – should be part of a presidential campaign is another thing altogether. The comment says as much about McCain as it does about Palin, and it says a lot of things about Americans who overlook such statements (as well as her record) and vote anyway for McCain.

by Charley James

Some facts about Sarah Palin that everyone should know

2007: the year in which Sarah Palin first obtained a passport (Source)

312: the number of nights during her first 19 months in office that Palin charged taxpayers a “per diem” totaling $16,951 forstaying in her own home — an allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business (Source)

$500 to $1,200: the fee that Wasilla charged rape victims to pay for post-sexual assault medical exams, after the city cut funds during Palin’s tenure that had previously covered the exams (Source)

$150: the cash payment offered by the Palin administration to hunters who turn in legs of freshly killed wolves gunned down from airplanes (Source)

3: the number of times during her first few weeks as mayor that Palin inquired with the Wasilla librarian about banning books (Source)

3: the number of months after the censorship discussion that Palin fired the librarian (Source)

100: the approximate number of Wasilla residents who rallied to support the librarian, prompting Palin to withdraw her termination letter (Source)

0: the number of foreign heads of state Palin has met (Source)

0: the number of commands Palin has issued as head of the Alaska National Guard (Source)

2: the number of times in Palin’s ABC News interview that she said the word “nucular” (Source)

0: Wasilla’s long-term debt when Palin took office in 1996 (Source)

$18.6 million: the long-term debt Palin racked up by the time she left office in 2002, amounting to about $3,000 per resident (Source)

$50,000: the amount of city funds Palin used without authorization to redecorate the Wasilla mayor’s office, including adding flocked, red wallpaper that made it look “like a bordello,” according to a former Wasilla City Council member (Source)

33: the percentage by which Palin increased the budget of Wasilla during her tenure, despite billing herself as a fiscal conservative and champion of smaller government (Source)

25: the percentage by which Palin raised the local sales tax in Wasilla to pay for a sports center, despite claims that she cut taxes (Source)

$27 million: the total amount of federal earmarks Palin secured for Wasilla’s town of 6,700 people while she was mayor, thanks to the help of a Washington lobbyist with ties to indicted Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and convicted felon Jack Abramoff (Source)

3: the number of times John McCain specifically criticized earmarks requested by Sarah Palin when she was mayor of Wasilla, citing them as examples of wasteful spending (Source)

$453 million: the total amount of earmarks Palin has asked U.S. taxpayers to fund for Alaska projects over the past two years, despite McCain’s insistence that she hasn’t sought earmarks or special-interest spending from Congress (Source)

$506.34: the amount of federal earmarks Alaska residents will receive per capita in 2008, the highest level of any state (Source)

$223 million: the earmark secured for the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” that Palin initially supported (Source)

See more Sarah Palin numbers of note here

Found at Women against Palin