So, Why Did Palin (R-Ak) Resign?

Could it be to spend more time with her family? Or maybe, to spend her time getting ready to make a run for the White House.

Or

Maybe

There are other reasons


Tags
Culture of Corruption, Palin

GOP Ticket's Appalling Contempt for Knowledge

Christopher Hitchens has a little to say about Sarah.

it didn't seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber. But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy "I kid you not."

It was in 1933 that Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for showing that genes are passed on by way of chromosomes. The experimental creature that he employed in the making of this great discovery was the Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly. Scientists of various sorts continue to find it a very useful resource, since it can be easily and plentifully "cultured" in a laboratory, has a very short generation time, and displays a great variety of mutation. This makes it useful in studying disease, and since Gov. Palin was in Pittsburgh to talk about her signature "issue" of disability and special needs, she might even have had some researcher tell her that there is a Drosophila-based center for research into autism at the University of North Carolina. The fruit fly can also be a menace to American agriculture, so any financing of research into its habits and mutations is money well-spent. It's especially ridiculous and unfortunate that the governor chose to make such a fool of herself in Pittsburgh, a great city that remade itself after the decline of coal and steel into a center of high-tech medical research.


...

This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

Tags
Palin

Palin Knifes McCain

I hope John can get a little help getting that knife out of his back.

I am not real sure, but I don't think that it is proper etiquette to announce your intent to run for an office in the next election cycle while you are still supposed to be helping your candidate get elected to that position this year.

But, that is what McCain's lipsticked pitbull just did.

However, based on her past behavior, this should surprise no one. She did this on every step of her rise to the Governor House.


Tags
Palin

Climate Change and Walden Pond

Henry David Thoreau was many things, including a fantastic naturalist. One of the treasures he has passed down to our generation is a collection of documents about the flora around Walden pond. By looking at his data and comparing it to what we can check with current field studies, it is clear that all is not well in Walden.

Comparing data meticulously gathered by Henry David Thoreau more than a century and a half ago with more recent observations, Harvard biologists report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that more than a quarter of Walden's plant species have already been lost. And an additional 36 percent are in imminent danger, including lilacs, roses and buttercups.

"It had been thought that climate change would result in uniform shifts across plant species, but our work shows that plant species do not respond to climate change uniformly or randomly," said co-author Charles Davis, a biologist at Harvard, in a release.

The Walden study shows that even small changes in temperature can have outsized impacts on plants that are evolutionarily adapted to fulfill ecological niches. Together with changes seen in other locations, like the unprecedented pine beetle damage in the West, the new work suggests that finely tuned biological systems are having a difficult time keeping up with the rapid pace of human-induced climate change.

Yet, Sarah Palin claims that this is either not happening or not very important. What an ignorant person she is.


Tags
Climate Change, Palin

Your Friday Reading Selections

BadTux quickly debunks the right wing myth that the economic collapse is the fault of the poor.


Vote fraud and Acorn are looked at at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.


From Informed Comment, a look at McCain Feingold and how Sarah Palin's $150,000 shopping spree broke that law.


And a look at the current economic situation and it's effect on education can be found in Millard Filmore's Bathtub.

Tags
Economics, Election 2008, Palin, Vote

Putting Personal Gain First

Wow, if Mark Sanford had tried to pull the stunts that Sarah Palin has tried as the Governor of Alaska, he would have been drawn and quartered.

Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.

Lets see, she charged the state for family travel, and then after the fact 'corrected' the paper work to cover her rear end. And, by the way, what kind of official state business can a 2nd grader do?

The charges included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel.

In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters' 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. She also has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.

While it appears that see may not have broken a single state law, it does bring me to question both her judgement and ethics. Why should the people of Alaska pay to have her kids go see her father race, or visit New York. There is nothing wrong with having her kids travel with her, but she, not the tax-payers would foot the bill.

Just another reason why the selection of Palin is damning to McCain's claim that she was a well thought out and completely reasonable selection as a running mate. For as bad as Palin's judgment appears to be, McCain's appears even worse.





Tags
Election 2008, McCain, Palin

Palin Report : She Is Guilty

and I am surprised.

No, not surprised that she is guilty (that was obvious) but surprised that the damning report ever saw the light of day.

Investigator Stephen Branchflower, in a report to a bipartisan panel that looked into the matter, found Palin in violation of a state ethics law that prohibits public officials from using their office for personal gain.

The committee that approved this reports release had 5 Republicans for every 2 Democrats and while a couple of the Republicans may have had political motivations for the release, some of those who voted to release this had to be motivated by simple integrity. That is refreshing and a bit surprising.

Of course, the Palin/McCain camp's first step was to declare the report (like the joke report the campaign released earlier) exonerated her.

Gov. Sarah Palin's communications director says investigator Steve Branchflower's report vindicates the governor with a finding that she "acted within her constitutional authority" to remove executive employees who serve at her pleasure.

Interesting argument, except that what not what she was charged with. Yes, she had authority to fire Monegan, but she did not have the authority to fire Wooten and her efforts at that are where the violations came from. It is very much like Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre, where the use of executive power was abused to achieve a goal not allowed.

The report is clear and Palin is the loser in this little political drama. The big loser however, is McCain. What does the selection of Palin as his running mate say about his executive capacity?

How can anyone with a straight face claim that Palin was properly vetted. Aside from her Nixonesque behavior toward personal enemies that should have struck her from consideration at once, Palin is a collection of baggage and bad ideas that should never have been considered viable for a national office.

To start off, simply put, she is ignorant. She is anti-intellectual. It is clear that she works at being uninformed. She is against sex education, arguing that it is the parents responsibility, then her 16 year old daughter turns up pregnant. What does that say about her following her own pronouncements? She has sat through sermons where a guest argued that the Jews were responsible for terrorism in Israel because they had not accepted Jesus. At another service, she goes forward to get a personal blessing from a witch hunter (both of these events happened this summer). She believes that the earth is only 6,000 years old and the Cain and Able lived among T-Rex and Triceratops. She is anti-science (I suspect because she can not understand it) and an end-timer.

How John McCain found any of this acceptable is unfathomable. It is a clear indicator that her selection was not well thought out and there was no real investigation of the person he selected to replace him in the case of emergency. This incredibly poor choice is a clear indicator of what a McCain presidency would be like.

Tags
Election 2008, McCain, Palin

Alliances and Friendships, Imagined and Real

Today the market opened down about 650 points. Markets around the world are all basically in a panic mode. In response, McCain's campaign is still focused on Professor Ayers, his crimes 4 decades ago and his acquaintance with Obama.

It is a silly story, debunked by all the real media (Fox news excluded) with is weak foundation based on distortions.

Obama was in 2nd or 3rd grade when Ayers committed his crimes, Obama has denounced his acts, and simply put Obama is not Ayers friend. They do live in the same part of Chicago, they both are politically active and they have both served on 2 of the same boards focused on improving education (not surprising since Ayers is an education professor and Obama was a community activists). That's it, the whole basis of this silliness.

Now, what is fun is who is being most aggressive in pushing this smear. It is the VP candidate, Mrs. lipsticked pit bull herself, Sarah Palin. But after you watch this video, one is left wondering who is associating with radicals and who isn't.

From Mudflats:

Now, we get to the interesting part, just before 6:00 on the video.

“Our current governor, we mentioned at the last conference, the one we were hoping would get elected, Sarah Palin, did get elected. There’s a joke, she’s a pretty good looking gal, there’s a joke goes around we’re the coldest state with the hottest governor. (laughter) And there was a lot of talk about her moving up. She was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town — that was a non-partisan job. But to get along and go along — she eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won’t go into that. She also had about an 80% approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership.“

What Clark is saying here, is that Palin’s philosophical loyalties lie with the Alaska Independence Party, but in order to get elected, she had to distance herself from the AIP and pretend to be a Republican, because that was the only way for her to get elected. But not to worry, Clark reassures those in attendance, her heart is still with us at the AIP, and her sympathies are with our agenda, namely, Alaskan ndependence.

He goes on:

If there is ever a time that is right for change, this is it. [snip] The pitfalls of an organized political party - you don’t have any control over who joins that party. They put the X next to it on the registration form, and if they join the — go into the primary, and win that primary, they’re your candidate, like it or not. I think Ron Paul has kind of proven that. He’s a dyed -in-the-wool Libertarian. He came to Alaska and spoke as a Libertarian. And he put the Republican label on to get elected. That’s all there is to it. And any one of your organizations should be using that same tactic to infiltrate.

Palin claims to have been a member of the Republican Party since 1982. Clark is telling us that Palin ‘marked the Republican box”, but she isn’t one. He loves the fact that she got elected. He’s already dreaming about ripping one of those stars off the flag. And though Sarah Palin’s membership is not documented officially, there is no dispute that Todd Palin was a card-carrying member of the AIP as recently as 2002 when his wife was the mayor of Wasilla. After that, he decided to change his registration to “Unaffiliated.”

.....

And finally, here’s the quote of the day from AIP founder Joe Vogler.

“The fires of Hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government, and I won’t be buried under their damn flag! I’ll be buried in Dawson, and when Alaska is an independent nation, they can bring my bones home.”

Reverend Wright suddenly sounds stunningly patriotic.

Sarah Palin, meanwhile, is saying that the fact that Barack Obama served on the same non-profit board as Bill Ayers a Weather Underground member 40 years ago, “is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” She continued, “This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America,” Palin said.

This leaves me asking; So who is palling around with anti-American extremist and who isn't?


Tags
Ayers, Election 2008, Palin

Where McCain's Champaign Is Taking Us

We had the chance to see how some of McCain's followers are responding to his rhetoric, it is less than appealing.

Well, it seems as McCain and Palin's lies and smears become more overt the reaction from his followers are becoming more racist and disgusting.

Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

And that is not all, we are also hearing threats of violence. The followers of McCain and Palin are beginning to look like out of control lynch mobs shouting for blood. In addition to the racial taunts at yesterdays events shouts of "kill him" and "terrorist" erupted when Obama is mentioned.

The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

Palin also told those gathered that Obama doesn't like American soldiers. "He said that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, 'air-raiding villages and killing civilians,' " she said, drawing boos from a crowd that had not been told Obama was actually appealing for more troops in Afghanistan.

Palin's lies are assuring a degree of partisanship that has never before been seen in DC will exist there, no matter who wins.

But she is not the only one who is bringing the hate out. At a McCain event we got this:

after john McCain delivered the central question of his speech today -- "who is the real barack obama?" -- the first, and loudest, supporter seems to yell:

"terrorist!"

As I said before, what a vile batch of people the republican ticket attracts, Racist, Liars, and want to be murderers.





Tags
Election 2008, Lies, McCain, Palin

Palin Train Wreck Continues

Palin is almost painful to watch. She is a talking point machine, she can say them but has no clue what they mean. When she has to provide real information all she can do it repeat the hollow talking points creating a word salad.

Wilfully Ignorant

More Palin Interviews

COURIC: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —

COURIC: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.

PALIN: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.

COURIC: Can you name any of them?

PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news

and I have been told by Palin supporters that she holds a Journalism degree.

She is not stupid, not dumb, but uninformed by choice.

She can only name one supreme court decision, she returns other questions with out of context talking points or blank stares.

Palin can be charming, witty and engaging, but you can't claim she is well informed or even interested in being well informed.

Tags
Palin

When Going On A Job Interview

taking a parent along is not considered a good idea. In fact, it is considered by most to be a sure path to continued unemployment.

You have to wonder if anyone in the McCain camp realized how awful it looked to have the person who they think should be the vice president having to be chaperoned by a protector.



Tags
Election 2008, McCain, Palin

Saturday Night Does Palin (Again)

Again, dead on and again, frightening.

First John Edwards, Now Sarah Palin

It appears that the National Enquirer has struck again. This time our lipsticked pitbull is the target of their efforts.

They claim to have 3 sources and a signed affidavit.

After the fuss our blogger friends on the right raised about Edwards, after their screaming claims that the media's reluctance to give the Enquirer some air time was political, how do they think should this story be played out.

PS

As the National Review's Jonah Goldberg pointed out:

it's worth pointing out that while the Enquirer may or may not be scrupulous in its choice of stories — that's in the eye of the beholder — it is pretty scrupulous about its facts. They win lawsuits. They've broken a host of stories the MSM guys couldn't.

As I have said before, I love McCain's selection of Palin for VP. Is says so much about him and what his administration would be like.

Tags
Election 2008, Palin

Quote of the Day

About McCain's choice of running mate, Sarah Palin:

She is a liar with theocratic tendencies, sports an intellect that makes Bush look like a Mensa member, and features an obvious fondness for Cheney-style abuses of power.

Tags
Palin

A Quick Review Of What I Am Seeing

out in the blogisphere

More that a few people have noted how often McCain and Palin are lying and that they are lying about almost everything. Even our regularly blind media has noticed. Of course this lying includes lying in their advertising when they try to attack Obama's actions. There is humor to be found in this dishonesty, like the discovery that it appears that the McCain/Palin ticket what to protect child molesters.

As would be expected, a big topic is the economic meltdown we are seeing. It is being noted by many that our current situation is a direct result of policies that Republicans have been promoting. You have to remember that the Republicans have been in charge for years and it is the deregulation they pushed that has allowed the meltdown to occur. If fact some have made it very clear that this collapse is a direct result of policies pushed by John McCain's and his lead economic adviser Phil Gramm.

Of course other traditional republican issues are also getting some mention. It appears that Palin supports banning books but not so found of actual oversight. In fact it is clear she is a big fan of abusing power. And it becomes clear that she is a true hard core Reoublican when we see just how quickly she moves to start obstructing investigations, It is a favorite pastime of republicans.

While I still wonder what makes so many Republicans tick, the argument that it is a mental illness is starting to make more sense.



Tags
Economics, Election 2008, McCain, Palin

Sarah Palin Is A Classic Republican

Now, I am not talking about small government, low taxes, keeping you nose out of other people's business republican. That is so middle twentieth century. She is a classic modern twenty first century republican.

She is anti intellect, anti science. She is a liar without shame, she is investigation obstructing, obsessed with loyalty over honesty and she is a very public, very dogmatic, self professed christian.

George Bush in a skirt, just a little dumber.


Tags
Palin

John McCain's Crew Will Lie About Anything

In the last two weeks we have seen the serial dishonesty of Sarah Palin and John McCain as they have spouted lie after lie about Palin's political history. Even when confronted with clear evidence, sometime with video tape of Palin's own words and actions, they continued to lie.

And now we see more evidence of the dishonesty of John McCain and his followers.

Senator John McCain has drawn some of the biggest crowds of his presidential campaign since adding Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to his ticket on Aug. 29. Now officials say they can't substantiate the figures McCain's aides are claiming.

McCain aide Kimmie Lipscomb told reporters on Sept. 10 that an outdoor rally in Fairfax City, Virginia, drew 23,000 people, attributing the crowd estimate to a fire marshal.

Fairfax City Fire Marshal Andrew Wilson said his office did not supply that number to the campaign and could not confirm it. Wilson, in an interview, said the fire department does not monitor attendance at outdoor events.

...

The McCain campaign said 10,000 people showed up at the Consol Energy Arena in Washington, Pennsylvania, home of the Washington Wild Things baseball team.

The campaign attributed that estimate, and several that followed, to U.S. Secret Service figures, based on the number of people who passed through magnetometers.

``We didn't provide any numbers to the campaign,'' said Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service.

I guess John McCain subscribes the the belief that if you "Tell a lie often enough, loud enough, and long enough and people will believe you." It has been the foundation to more than one government, but I hope we are a little better than that.


Tags
Election 2008, Lies, McCain, Palin

Palin, More Cluelessness On Parade

She has no idea what the Bush Doctrine is (or what a doctrine is for that matter) and is equally ill informed about economics and the US budget.

Matthew Yglesias says it very well

If you try to sit down and make sense of John McCain’s tax and budget proposals, you’ll find that they don’t make any sense. There are assertions that certain kinds of cuts could save way more money than is in fact there, you’ll find budget figures that count on eliminating all U.S. aid to Israel, inconsistent projections, goofy talk about balancing the budget by achieving “victory” in Iraq, etc. But everyone in the press “knows” that John McCain is responsible, so he doesn’t get asked about this stuff. But Sarah Palin’s not in the club, so Charlie Gibson asks her some basic questions about the budget and it turns out that there’s no there there. But this has nothing to do with her, and everything to do with policies outlined by McCain before Palin joined the ticket:

GIBSON: So let me break some of those down. You talk about spending. How much smaller would a McCain budget be? Where would you cut?

PALIN: We’re going to find efficiencies in every department. We have got to. There are some things that I think should be off the table. Veterans’ programs, off the table. You know, we owe it to our veterans and that’s the greatest manifestation that we can show in terms of support for our military, those who are in public service fighting for America. It’s to make sure that our veterans are taken care of and the promises that we’ve made to them are fulfilled.

GIBSON: So you’d take military off the table, the veterans’ benefits. That’s 20 percent of the budget. &Do you talk about entitlement reform? Is there money you can save in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?

PALIN: I am sure that there are efficiencies that are going to be found in all of these agencies. I’m confident in that.

GIBSON: The agencies are not involved in entitlements. Basically, discretionary spending is 18 percent of the budget.

PALIN: We have certainly seen excess in agencies, though, and in — when bureaucrats, when bureaucracy just gets kind of comfortable, going with the status-quo and not being challenged to find efficiencies and spend other people’s money wisely, then that’s where we get into the situation that we are into today, and that is a tremendous growth of government, a huge debt, trillions of dollars of debt that we’re passing on to my kids and your kids and your grandkids … It’s unacceptable.

I suppose in practice a McCain administration’s budgets would just look like George W. Bush’s budgets or Ronald Reagan’s budgets — tax cuts and huge deficits. But it is telling that the woman John McCain chose as his running mate doesn’t seem to understand what “entitlements” are. Clearly, just as most citizens don’t know what the Bush Doctrine is, most people probably aren’t all that familiar with the meaning of the entitlement/discretionary distinction in federal budgeting. But it’s a big deal for people who actually pay attention to political and policy issues in the United States. I wonder if McCain chatted with Palin at all about her views on entitlement reform before adding her to the ticket?

Palin has spent 2 weeks hiding from the media and when she finally agrees to a softball interview, she makes it clear she is in no way ready for prime time. She is undereducated, anti-intellectual and apparently unaware of her shortcomings.



Tags
Election 2008, Palin, Stupidity

With Change Like McCain's Offering

Why not just keep Bush, Cheney and company in place for 8 more years.

Just look at the style of reform Palin offers.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a "per diem" allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd, has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.

.....

The governor's daughters and husband charged the state $43,490 to travel and many of the trips were to and from their house in Wasilla and Juneau, the capital city 600 miles away, the documents show.

.....

She wrote some form of "Lodging -- own residence" or "Lodging -- Wasilla residence" more than 30 times at the same time she took a per diem, according to the reports. In two dozen undated amendments to the reports, the governor deleted the reference to staying in her home but still charged the per diem.

Palin charged the state a per diem for working on Nov. 22, 2007 -- Thanksgiving Day. The reason given, according to the expense report, was the Great Alaska Shootout, an annual NCAA college basketball tournament held in Anchorage.

Now, this appears to be legal in Alaska and not unusual according to reports, well at least some of it does.

But just because something is traditional and legal doesn't make it right nor do these actions live up the the reformer image that she is busy trying to wrap herself up in.

McCain Palin, so much like Bush Cheney in so many special special way.


Tags
Bush, Cheney, Election 2008, McCain, Palin