Based on how Palin is running her own state, it's a good thing she's quitting

Lost in all the discussion about how Sarah Palin's resignation will affect her future and her feud with a nineteen year old stud (how many 45 year old politicians get dragged into public spats with a teenager anyway), is the disaster she has been as Governor of the 'last frontier.' But today a story is out that is a prime example of how things have been going up there: Feds suspend Alaska's in-home health care programs.

ANCHORAGE — State programs intended to help disabled and elderly Alaskans with daily life — taking a bath, eating dinner, getting to the bathroom — are so poorly managed, the state cannot assure the health and well-being of the people they are supposed to serve, a new federal review found.

The situation is so bad the federal government has forbidden the state to sign up new people until the state makes necessary improvements.

No other state in the nation is under such a moratorium, according to a spokeswoman for the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

My question is this: what exactly has she done competently since she's been in Government? Anything? And this is who some conservatives want for President? Man, if she ever becomes President there may even be some people who will miss Dubya, that's how bad she is.

Sarah Palin: I QUIT.

A GOP Presidential contender for 2012 hadn't melted down yet this week, so I figure since it's Friday, there's still time. And sure enough--

I'm reading that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, apparently upset about a Vanity Fair article out this week that quoted anonymous former McCain staffers who said that she was difficult to work with, has decided to quit.

No, not in the sense of 'won't run for re-election.' More in the sense of 'I quit.' Now.

In a stunning move, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. John McCain's 2008 vice presidential running mate, announced today that she'll resign later in the month and won't seek a second term next year.

Palin, a possible 2012 GOP presidential candidate, didn't answer any questions today and remains mum about her future intentions.

McCain, an Arizona Republican, made Palin a household name nearly a year ago when he picked her to join his ticket. On the national scene, Palin is one of those political figures who inspires passion in supporters and detractors alike. This week, Vanity Fair published a lengthy critical piece on Palin that allowed anonymous former McCain-Palin campaign officials to bash her.

Which, in my opinion, only proves that those who were concerned that she was too flaky and erratic to be President are right. Far from 'balancing' the ticket, the McCain-Palin ticket was erratic and inconsistent paired with erratic and inconsistent.

According to University of Virginia Political Science guru Larry Sabato, "Bizarro World: Sarah Palin just committed national political suicide by resigning as Governor of Alaska."

He's right about that. And every week another potential 2012 Republican Presidential candidate commits Hari-kiri.

Two weeks ago, it was John Ensign, who was in Iowa testing Presidential waters even as his fate was being sealed. One week ago it was South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Now it is Palin.

This benefits President Obama in two ways. First of course, potential 2012 foes are dropping like flies, but second this is now the third weekend when the GOP would prefer to talk about their opposition to health care, climate change legislation or Sonia Sotomayor but they will be competing in getting their message out with the weekly Republican meltdown story. In fact, the only Republican who is probably counting this as good luck is Mark Sanford.

At this rate, President Obama will have an easy time with re-election in 2012 because there won't be any Republicans left who haven't hit the self-destruct button.

One loose cannon deserves another

This is the kind of moment in which Rush Limbaugh makes it clear to all how big of a buffoon he is.

Republicans, led by Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney held a townhall meeting this week in northern Virginia, an area that has trended strongly towards Democrats, as part of a new effort to 'rebrand' the GOP. Not that they are really proposing any new policies, so it is just a repackaging tour for the same old crap but at least they are trying to put a different face on the party.

Rush Limbaugh went ballistic on them, accusing them of "hating" and "depising" Sarah Palin, which is why they didn't invite her.

Leaving aside the obvious fact that if they want to present a new face of the GOP then inviting last year's disaster is hardly the face they want, I wonder whether Rush's real pique is that they didn't invite him (I mean, he's the effective leader of the Republican party, and he didn't even warrant an invitation.) Palin just was the first name that came up when he was casting around for someone to yell at them for not inviting. "I'm angry because they didn't invite her" is code-speak for "I'm angry because they didn't invite me."

And the truth is, Palin showed herself to be something of a loose cannon both during last year's campaign and in the days and weeks afterward. Maybe Rush can relate to that.

In fact, the best line Limbaugh threw out there during his fit of apoplexy was this: He accused Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney of not inviting Palin because they have their own "Presidential perspirations."

Yes, you read that right. Now I'm sure that Mitt perspired a lot when he was running all over the country last year in his desperate bid to catch McCain, and Jeb Bush probably broke a sweat last year when he realized how hard it will be for him to climb out from under the ten ton weight of his brother's legacy of failure, but Limbaugh could have just mailed them each a can of Right Guard if he had a problem with that, instead of putting it on air.

Rightist rhetoric makes a disturbing turn into their conscious thinking.

It's a funny way that those on the right define 'American.'

Last week, Sarah Palin made the comment that she thinks that some parts of the country are 'more American' than others. The exact quote, made in North Carolina last week is that she praised areas where she was as the, "pro-America areas of this great nation"

That sentiment is not confined to Palin however.

On MSNBC's hardball, Chris Matthews asked Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann about Palin's comments and about Senator Obama in particular. Not only did Bachmann agree and say that Obama may have 'anti-American views,' but she went farther, calling on the media to look at members of Congress to "find out, are they pro-America or anti-America."

Then Republican congressman Robin Hayes of North Carolina last week said that liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God. Hayes originally denied saying that until he was confronted by an audiotape of the speech.

It's even gone to the state level. McCain advisor Nancy Pfotenhauer said that Northern Virginia is 'not the real Virginia.' She said that "I can tell you that the Democrats have just come in from the District of Columbia and moved into northern Virginia....But the rest of the state, 'real Virginia,' if you will, I think will be very responsive to Senator McCain’s message "

This view shows the elitism of the right. After years of listening to cranks on the radio scream that anyone who disagrees with their narrow view of America is actually anti-American and trying to destroy, not change, America-- this view has permeated the minds of otherwise rational people. They actually believe (or why would this attitude come out four times within a week) that liberals or anyone else who has a vision for America that doesn't agree with their doctrinaire conservative view is actually anti-American, or at least not sufficiently pro-American.

To some degree this is nothing new. The GOP has regularly been questioning the patriotism of people who don't happen to agree with their schemes since at least the days of McCarthy and Nixon. But the offhanded and casual ways in which these comments have rolled off the tongue recently makes me think that this whole way of thinking (i.e., 'traitor out to destroy the country' replacing 'American with whom I have a disagreement') has reached the point of being taken for granted by people in positions of responsibility on the right, that they sound like Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage without even thinking about it.

Well, I have to tell you something, jerkfusses on the right.

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I want to see people in AMERICA be able to go to a doctor without being afraid of going broke if they get sick.

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I want to see a country where when people do have to go to the hospital the focus is on getting them well, not on whether they have insurance.

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I want to see our military ready to respond immediately to any challenge, not bogged down in a stupid war that we started years ago in a small country thousands of miles away.

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I want to see war-- as costly and ugly as it is-- considered only as a last, not as a first, resort to future international problem spots.

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I want to see a country where people feel safe from their own government, and don't have to worry that someone is listening in on their phone conversations.

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I want to see the land that we live on, the air that we breathe and the water that we drink preserved and kept clean for the next generation of AMERICANS.

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I don't want to see any young person who is capable of going to college and earning a degree denied that opportunity because they are too poor to be able to afford it.

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I want working people in AMERICA to feel secure in their jobs.

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I want to see the degreed professionals that we hire to prepare our own kids to go to college, to earn enough to send their own kids to college.

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I want to see people staying in their homes, not moving into homeless shelters in record numbers because their homes are being foreclosed on and their credit is too poor to even qualify for a rental contract.

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I want to see my country respected-- not just feared but respected and trusted and listened to again in the world.

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I want to see us take the lead again in scientific research.

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I want to see us develop renewable sources of energy so that we don't need to use all that oil anymore (and therefore, not have to pay for it.)

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I want to see us go back to the budget surplus we enjoyed a few years ago.

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I want to see other Americans, in Louisiana and Mississippi, get the help rebuilding their homes that was promised but more than three years later has still never been delivered.

Because I'm an AMERICAN, I want to see a country in which we quit trying to divide people against each other and start looking at how we can all work together for a better AMERICA.

Patriotism is not blindly following your leaders. It is questioning them and where necessary opposing them.

Memo to the right: there are more than 300 million Americans spread out all over the country. So quit trying to claim that only those who happen to support you are 'real Americans' or are 'pro-America. We are all Americans.

The Sarah Palin way to avoid trouble: investigate yourself and discover you are innocent

Sarah Palin seems to have figured out an all-new way to dodge any negative or damaging conclusions in a report due tomorrow: investigate yourself and then declare yourself exonerated.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Trying to head off a potentially embarrassing state ethics report on GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, campaign officials released their own report Thursday that clears her of any wrongdoing.

Sen. John McCain's running mate is the subject of a legislative investigation into whether she abused her power as governor by firing her public safety commissioner. The commissioner, Walter Monegan, says he was dismissed in July for resisting pressure from Palin's husband, Todd Palin, and numerous top aides to fire state trooper Mike Wooten, Palin's former brother-in-law.

The move came hours after the state Supreme Court refused to halt the ethics investigation.

Lawmakers were expected to release their own findings Friday. Campaign officials have yet to see that report — the result of an investigation that began before she was tapped as McCain's running mate — but said the investigation has falsely portrayed a legitimate policy dispute between a governor and her commissioner as something inappropriate.

Keep in mind that this probe, begun by a Republican-led legislature back in July when Monegan was fired, was originally supposed to be completed and a report due October 31. The date was actually moved ahead three weeks for the benefit of Palin and McCain-- so that it wouldn't be released four days before the Presidential election. In spite of this, Palin and officials in her administration, who had cooperated with the probe initially spent weeks refusing to cooperate after she was tabbed as John McCain's running mate.

So, apparently afraid of what the report might say tomorrow about whether Palin used the power of her elected office to try and settle a petty family squabble, Palin and the McCain campaign actually investigated this themselves and are now issuing a report clearing Palin.

What a novel concept! Maybe using this as a precedent, McCain will, if elected, allow people accused of crimes to conduct the investigation themselves. Using the Palin-McCain standard for investigations, O.J. Simpson should have been allowed to run the investigation into his Las Vegas hotel room holdup himself. He should have been allowed to collect his own evidence, interview his own witnesses and expect the court and the jury to accept his own report instead of the police report.

This so-called 'report' by the McCain-Palin campaign could be called a whitewash, but that would do a disservice to Tom Sawyer, Richard Nixon and anyone else who has ever been associated with the term, 'whitewash.' It is a fraud and a dupe.

Really, publishing a report you wrote yourself, hoping people will read your report instead of the official one. How stupid do they think we are?

Too cute by half

The first thing that Sarah Palin said at last night's debate was to Joe Biden, "Hey, can I call you Joe?"

Certainly that fit her 'folksy' outlook better than if she'd used 'Senator Biden,' though at a time when people are looking for knowlege and breadth of understanding about the myriad issues facing America today I'm not sure if 'folksy' is what they want. We've had eight years of 'folksy,' (remember that supporters of President Bush bragged about him being a 'C' student?) Where has it gotten us? Into a very, very tough spot, that's where.

But I was waiting for a specific 'Joe' line, and it came towards the end of the debate.

Palin responded to something Biden had said with, "Say it ain't so, Joe."

For all but the oldest of baseball fans, the zinger there was lost. But it's one of the most famous sayings to come out of an awful situation.

The 1919 Chicago White Sox, led by their star, "Shoeless Joe" Jackson (considered by many baseball historians to be the second greatest player of his day, after Ty Cobb) won the American league pennant and were favored to win the World Series. Gamblers bought off eight members of the team, including Jackson, paying them money to lose the series on purpose. And sure enough, they did lose. The next year the plot fell apart. As Jackson left the Federal Courthouse, the story is told that a young fan, who had always idolized Jackson and looked up to him as a role model, went up to the star with tears in his eyes and pleaded, "Say it ain't so, Joe." Of course the great Joe Jackson could only hang his head in shame as he knew he could not speak those three simple words.

Maybe in ninety years, Mark McGwire's "I'm not here to talk about the past," will be similarly enshrined in America's lexicon of phrases whose original meaning is slowly being lost, but somehow I doubt it. It's hard to imagine heartbreak in a Senate subcommittee the same way as it is to imagine it in a ten year old boy.

So what was Palin up to by alluding to baseball's most painful moment of the past century? And yes, even though it happened before virtually anyone alive today can remember I rank the 'Black Sox scandal' as a peculiarly painful moment in the history of baseball ahead of the tragic and untimely deaths of stars Lou Gehrig, Roberto Clemente and Thurman Munson, the ugly and horrible treatment that was accorded to Jackie Robinson all through the National League (and which came back to life though not so intensely and echoed again a quarter century later for Henry Aaron), the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn, the Pete Rose ban, the cancellation of the 1994 World Series and the recent 'roid rage' scandals. All painful moments for baseball, but none so painful as the Black Sox scandal. Apparently Palin wanted to suggest something deeper than just "I think you're wrong about that, Senator." Viscerally the pain from the first time that phrase was uttered still lingers, even among people who aren't quite sure why it should hurt-- but it does.

Not coincidentally, Barack Obama is from the south side of Chicago-- White Sox territory.

Palin takes a dig at Biden's age, but it was obviously scripted

It's been a couple of weeks since I've written anything about Sarah Palin. Truthfully, there really isn't much to write.

But I have to question something she said last week to Katie Couric that was broadcast today, and which she also said at a rally in Ohio.

She said she has been listening to Joe Biden's speeches since she was in the second grade.

The original comments came at an Ohio rally Monday, when Palin told the cheering crowd, "I'm looking forward to meeting [Biden] too, I've never met him before — but I've been hearing about his senate speeches since I was in, like the second grade."

Hmmm. My kids are pretty politically in tune, but I can guarantee you that when they were in the second grade they did not turn on C-SPAN II so they could listen to Senate speeches.

And somehow Palin just doesn't come across as that wonkish to me.

So this line was obviously inserted. Palin, 44, is clearly trying to take a swipe at the age of Biden, who is 66.

But I don't see how she wins on that at all. For one thing, the vice President only becomes President if the President doesn't finish his term. And Obama is 47. For another thing, if Biden, at 66 is old, then what about John McCain, who is six years older than Biden?

It is true that Biden and McCain are statistically speaking more likely to not make it through the next four years than are Obama and Palin. But put it this way-- suppose that in the next four years McCain and Biden both go to meet their maker. In that case, would you rather have elected this year's Democratic ticket, or this year's Republican ticket?

Hillary was right to dodge a GOP photo op

Today Hillary Clinton is being derided for backing out of a rally at the United Nations to protest Iranian nuclear development once she found out that Sarah Palin would also be there.

I think she made a wise decision. There is nothing wrong with protesting Iranian nuclear development or the failure of the U.N. to take a stronger stand against it (though I believe that the Iranians will do what they want to do whether the U.N. toughens their stand or not; and our own misadventure in Iraq has effectively taken any real threat of a U.S. invasion of Iran off the table for the foreseeable future since we right now don't have the available military units to be able to carry it out.)

There is also nothing wrong with Governor Palin going as a representative of the McCain campaign, clearly indicating Senator McCain's support for stronger U.N. action against Iran.

The reason Hillary was right to decide against going is that she might have been stuck with a no-win situation, completely unrelated to Iran or nukes.

Keep in mind that last week Hillary informed the Obama campaign that while she is willing to keep up the attack on McCain she refused to jump all over Palin. And I can see why that is, she herself would gain nothing from such an attack and frankly is probably happy in at least the most general sense that a woman (even one she herself would never support) is now running for VP. It does in a sense validate the historic nature of Hillary Clinton's campaign earlier this year.

Suppose that Governor Palin made a point of seeking out Senator Clinton and making a light conversation, possibly including a handshake? In this hyper-political year, that would be all over the front page and would seem to imply that Hillary at least found a McCain-Palin Presidency acceptable (remember that the McCain folks have spent a lot of time and effort going after disaffected Clinton supporters.) So if that is not a message that Hillary Clinton wants to send she can't afford to be photographed yukking it up while shaking hands with Sarah Palin (though publically neither woman has said anything negative about the other recently).

The other alternative, to publically snub Governor Palin, would be even worse. That would cast Hillary as purely a party hack (not that you would find many Republicans who would say she's not, but it's still a label she doesn't want to refresh.) It would also cast her to a lot of people as rude and would seem to undercut the whole success she had in earning 18 million votes. And that would also be a headline that the Obama campaign doesn't need right now, with Obama gaining momentum in the polls this week thanks to a combination of the Lehman Brothers-Dow Jones-AIG economic woes and McCain's gaffe on Monday that have definitively moved the focus away from Sarah Palin and onto the economy.

So going to the rally was a lose-lose proposition for Hillary. True she is now still getting some bad press (and the right will spin this is a snub of Palin anyway) but it's a minor story and doesn't look one fiftieth as bad as a face to face snub would be.

Smoke and mirrors

Remember the carnival magician? You'd buy a ticket, go into a tent and watch as the Amazing Zandolini seemed to pull a canary out of an empty box, saw a woman in half and then put her back together, escape from a straightjacket while locked inside a safe, hand you two interlocked iron rings and then separate them, make a rope rise up out of a basket and dance as he played some vaguely middle eastern tune on the recorder, levitate a volunteer in thin air and make all sorts of objects disappear and reappear in a puff of smoke.

You knew of course that it was all sleight of hand, but it was entertaining anyway.

Who knew that the Amazing Zandolini's assistant would go on to run for Vice President of the United States?

We've heard a compelling story this week about Sarah Palin-- that she fought corruption, fought earmarks, cancelled the so-called "bridge to nowhere," cut taxes. and sold her predecessor's private plane on e-bay.

Turns out that it's all smoke and mirrors.

Start with the corruption, since we've been learning all week about how Palin is under investigation herself for apparently abusing the power of her office as Governor to try and help her sister out in a custody dispute with her ex-husband. This has been reported on fairly widely (including here) so I won't repeat all the details, except to say that to claim that Sarah Palin is a corruption fighter is a bit like suggesting that Eliot Spitzer was a fighter against prostitution. She's throwing stones and they are breaking her glass house all around her on that one. She also likes to point out that she ran against and defeated corrupt former Governor Frank Murkowski, who was especially unpopular after engineering his daughter into a U.S. Senate seat. OK, so she beat him. Corrupt politicians often lose because they are corrupt. She was astute enough politically to realize that Murkowski could be beaten in a primary but that in itself says nothing about her own views on corruption.

What about earmarks? Isn't she big against earmarks? Well, no actually. We've learned that while she was mayor of Wasilla, a town about the size of Winslow, she hired a Washington lobbying firm which brought in over 27 million dollars in earmarks for the town. She even once praised Congressman Don Young for helping her town get this 'largesse.' Yup, a fighter against pork. NOT!!

Then when she ran for Governor she promised more of the same. On one campaign trip to Ketchikan she said she supported the proposed bridge that has now become infamous.

So what about the bridge? It became a symbol of so-called wasteful government spending. Demogogues on the right made no end of pointing out that the bridge cost $223 million and would provide road access to an island that had a population of fifty. In fact, they either ignorantly or intentionally omitted the fact that on the island was an airport that serves 200,000 passengers per year who have to be brought over to the mainland by ferry, so in fact a good case could be made for building the bridge. In any case though, Congress decided to make it the symbolic sacrifice of pork they could kill and all look good back home. So Palin, the consummate politician realized it was about to be gone anyway so she cancelled it and took the credit. In her speech this week she said "I told Congress, thanks but no thanks." Only she kept the money! The money that had already been sent up there stayed in Alaska and went to other projects. Not only that but right now the state of Alaska is building the access road to the proposed bridge for a twenty-five million dollar price tag (they did keep that money too.) So if the bridge is never built then this must be wasting money on the 'road to nowhere.'

What about tax cuts? Well, that would be difficult since in Alaska there is no sales tax and no income tax to begin with. Most of the state revenues come from royalties paid to the state by the petroleum industry, as well as the Federal largesse that Alaskans enjoy on a grander scale than residents of any other state (and which Palin for years dined at the trough of.) And in a remarkably progressive policy, the state of Alaska has for several decades sent excess oil revenue to all residents of the state in the form of a once per year check. It is true that with oil prices soaring the revenue has gone up commensurately so this year's check, about $1,200 per permanent resident was substantially more than last year's. If you want to call that a tax cut, I guess you can call it one. But you can call a mule a horse and it still doesn't make it a horse.

What does that leave? Oh, yes that airplane. It is true that when Palin took office she found that Murkowski had purchased an airplane with state money. So she put it on e-bay. Again, a good political move, and if she and the GOP left it at that, she'd have scored a point. Only they haven't; they've implied and have now actually been saying that she sold it on e-bay. Which is false. We learn today that the plane did not sell on e-bay, but was subsequently sold to a businessman in a private transaction, and at a $600,000 loss.

Specifically, the plane originally cost $2.7 million and was sold for $2.1 million to businessman Larry Reynolds.

Yet today John McCain is quoted as saying at a campaign stop in Wisconsin,

You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor and sold it on eBay -- and made a profit!"

Well, McCain can be excused-- this is hardly the first time he's gotten his facts wrong on the campaign trail.

But on the video played about Palin at the GOP convention they said outright that she had 'auctioned it' on e-bay. Either the video was intentionally misleading or very poorly researched. But I'm sure Palin must have known that it didn't really sell on e-bay but she has said nothing to correct the error-- which reflects directly on her own character, and not in a good way.

And for that matter, if she took a loss on the plane then it is fair to ask, now that the state government doesn't have that plane anymore, how she gets around a state where flying is a necessity (you can't drive to Juneau from the rest of the state, for example.) Does she take commercial air? If so does the state government pick up the tab for the flight? If not, then did they buy another airplane? Come on, if they lost $600,000 on the deal then where is the savings? Only an advocate of Bush economics could figure out a way to claim that the state is better off selling a plane they already owned at a loss and then having to pay for the services that the plane would have been providing.

So it looks like everything that Sarah Palin is supposed to be running on is a mirage. A carefully crafted mirage, which makes you wonder exactly who is writing the story-- it looks like something that might be written in a Washington think tank rather than in Alaska.

At least when the Amazing Zandolini pulled a rabbit out of a hat nobody was trying to tell me that it was real.

The election IS about issues

Yesterday, before Sarah Palin gave her speech, the U.S. News and World Report had an article asking whether Palin would talk about paychecks or flags tonight.

Well, we know what the answer is.

Joe Biden responded today very directly:

I didn't hear a single word about health care. I didn't hear a single word about helping people get to college, I didn’t hear a single word or phrase about how to deal with the retirement, security for people, and Social Security.

I didn’t hear the word Afghanistan or Pakistan mentioned where the terrorists live. You know, I mean -- where Al Qaida is. So, you know, what I’m going to try to do and I may not be able -- I mean she’s so good, I may not be able to get to her I’m going to try, is try to point out where we want to take the country and how they don’t have a single answer how to dig us out of the hole we’ve been dug into the last eight years.

Exactly. Barack Obama may have been criticized for what he said about issues in his speech last week, but he addressed them head on. It seems that the McCain campaign doesn't want to talk about them at all.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis was even more direct this week in an interview published in the Washington Post.

“This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”

Yeah. Who cares about what a President will actually do in office, we just need someone with a good life story. That's the new G.O.P. line.

Palin sat and listened to an anti-semitic sermon two weeks ago. Did she condemn it?

Politico's Ben Smith suggests that Sarah Palin's nomination may have helped Barack Obama with Jewish voters, and then raises a very troubling comment made just two weeks ago, on August 17 in a sermon at Sarah Palin's church.

The transcript of the sermon is here.

Pastor Larry Kroon, who has been Palin's pastor since she and her family joined the Wasilla Bible Church in 2002, introduced David Brickner, the national director of a group called Jews for Jesus. Brickner then gave a sermon, which included an assertion that terrorist attacks in Israel are God's judgement against Jews for not accepting Jesus Christ as their God. Brickner said at one point,

"Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When Isaac [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can't miss it."

Also in the Politico article, we see this snippet:

Palin was in church that day, Kroon said, though he cautioned against attributing Brickner’s views to her.

Now I agree that what someone else says in church are their words and don't necessarily reflect the views of people sitting in the pews (though that hardly dissuaded the right from trying to suggest that Jeremiah Wright's sermons reflect Barack Obama's views.)

But it is fair to ask, since we have the word of her own pastor that she was present in church two weeks ago, whether this reflects her own view of the reason why there is terrorism in Israel. Barack Obama has been very clear in laying out which statements by Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger he disagrees with, so it is time to ask Sarah Palin to do likewise.

Palin procured more pork than any small-town mayor I ever met

The Washington Post is reporting that while Sarah Palin was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she hired a lobbying firm to help the town procure millions of dollars in Federal pork.

$27 million, to be exact. For a town of 6,700 residents. That works out to about $4,000 per person in Federal largesse.

Now, I actually don't have a problem with that. I believe that what is commonly termed 'pork' represents an investment in needs all over America that might not otherwise be met. In isolated and rural areas, pork is actually of critical importance in building and maintaining infrastructure.

But she should quit pretending to be a crusader against pork. She was a master at procuring it, and she might do better to acknowlege that. After all, isn't a President supposed to have some skills at negotiating with Congress and obviously Palin already has them.

Palin trooper vendetta story just keeps growing

Since I posted the other day on the investigation launched by the Alaska legislature of Sarah Palin regarding whether she used her official position to punish a state official who didn't satisfy her desire for revenge against her sister's ex-husband, it seems to be growing.

There had been recorded phone conversations of an official who worked for Palin, Frank Bailey calling Public Safety commissioner Walt Monegan and pressuring him to fire the trooper, Michael Wooten. Some on the right had hopefully argued that it may stop there, and that Bailey may have done this without the Governor's knowledge. Perhaps, but apparently in the past twenty four hours it has come to light that there are emails, including some originating from the Governor herself that have been collected and retained by the private investigator in the case. Palin herself has now retained an attorney.

What is most interesting though is that a team from the McCain campaign is now on their way to Alaska. Now, if this was all expected and had shown up when Palin was vetted, why would they be sending people to Alaska now? Clearly they are worried about how all this will play out. He may end up with a choice between accepting a Dan Quayle (keeping her on the ticket even though she is a drag on it) or a Tom Eagleton (kicking her off the ticket.) Either way it's not good for him. Maybe Palin will do him a favor and find an excuse to step down before the convention is over.

In this day and age of the internet, instant communication and professional dirt diggers though, it was foolish of either McCain or Palin to think that just because it was something going on up there in Alaska, this would stay buried. Digging up skeletons is hard work, but if it's there then it will come to light.

Would you trust me to pick a Vice President? I hope not.

What led John McCain to Sarah Palin?

Two words: Righty bloggers.

Over the past few months right leaning bloggers have launched a 'draft Palin' movement on the internet. To start with, they've thrown out a number of other names as well-- Condi Rice, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Bobby Jindahl (who was actually seriously vetted for a time.) What ties these together is that they all represent a measure of diversity (exposing their own insecurity at the realization that the GOP Presidential field this year was full of nothing but old white guys while the Democratic field was a picture of diversity). Palin is, of course a woman. And they love her because she shoots her own food, denies global warming and is good looking (90% plus of righty bloggers are male, and we will leave it at that.)

And yes, the same righty bloggers are loving it. Today anyway. I have a feeling though that by a few weeks from now the names Walt Monegan, Michael Wooten, Steve Branchflower and Frank Bailey will be pretty well known. They won't love the Palin pick then.

But here is my question: We know that Caroline Kennedy vetted Obama's veep candidates before recommending Joe Biden among a short list of others for Obama to ponder and make his final decision. Who vetted McCain's list? Righty bloggers?

I love blogging. But I'm not qualified to help someone choose the Vice President of the United States. At that, I'm probably more qualified to do something like that than most bloggers, having worked on numerous campaigns for federal, state and local office, and having served as a precinct committeeman, First Vice Chair of a county party and a member of the State committee. But I'm still unqualified.

So what does it say about John McCain when he chooses someone who the right side of the blogosphere adores, but is otherwise unknown and saddled by a burgeoning scandal?

I know he was about to pick Mitt Romney, when McCain's own gaffe about how many homes he owns made Romney (the only guy in the picture who is even richer than the McCains) a sudden liability. So he didn't have a backup choice, but instead turned it over to righty bloggers.

We will see how well this choice holds up. But if it doesn't, then don't blame Walt Monegan when it unravels. Put the blame where it belongs-- on the right side of the blogosphere.

Palin under investigation for misuse of her official powers

Although John McCain is to be commended for bringing the Republican party up to the point the Democratic party was 24 years ago by choosing a female running mate, his specific choice, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, shows stunningly poor judgement.

You'd think that if John McCain picked a running mate who has served as a governor for less than twenty months, the least you could expect is that she would be scandal-free.

But the Republican-controlled Alaska legislature has hired a private investigator to look into evidence that Palin fired Alaska's public safety commissioner because he refused to fire her sister's ex-husband, who is a state trooper.

If the investigator concludes she did, this misuse of her office to settle a petty family squabble could be used as grounds for impeachment. No wonder Palin wants out of Juneau.

How could John McCain screw up something this big, this badly? And what does that say about his judgement?