Blue Hearts

Hey All,

You may know that I love a good thriller. But, in the real world I'm happy with a blow-out. My nerves can't take it.

However you look at it, it's getting exciting. How are you holding up?

Kristin

HUMOR OR CLIPS





John McCain wants you to forget about his role in our country's last major financial crisis and costly bailout: the savings and loan crisis of the late '80s and early '90s.

But voters deserve to know that the failed philosophy and culture of corruption that created the savings and loan crisis then are alive in the current crisis -- and in John McCain's plans for our economic future.

We just released a short documentary about John McCain's role in that financial crisis -- watch it now and share it with your friends:

http://my.barackobama.com/keatingvideo

Voters should know the facts about John McCain's poor judgment -- judgment that has twice placed him on the wrong side of history.

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The News from Britain...Britain is Repossessing the U.S.A.
A Message adapted and updated from Mr. John Cleese:
To the Citizens of the United States of America:
In light of the strong possibility you are about to elect an elderly gentleman with a bad temper and a lady who thinks she can run foreign policy because she can see Russia from her house, as President and President-In-Waiting of the USA and thus to risk Life As We Know It for everyone else on the Planet, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy). She won't actually be in charge, but she'll greet foreign leaders as necessary and not put her foot in it or vomit on anyone at dinner.

Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections. He will choose someone who does not have his or her hand in the till and has significant experience in running Big Things. You have not had one of them for almost a decade and trust me, it is a big plus.
Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. They have given away too much of your money already to rescue incompetent business executives and soon your American Dollars will resemble Zimbabwean Dollars in total worthlessness. There is no free lunch you know. Although we originally let you get away with secession because King George was robbing you blind, recent events demonstrate that your present leaders are doing much worse things and unfortunately you have not noticed.

A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether more than half of you still believe Saddam Hussein was behind 9-11. Information to the contrary will again be provided by the rest of the world and we request you read it this time and refrain from invading the wrong country ever again if you possibly can.
To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary.

1. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix -ize will be replaced by the suffix -ise.
Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').

3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.
There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize. You will relearn your original national anthem, God Save The Queen.

4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. But we have a lot of Bank Holidays you will enjoy instead.

5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent.
Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.

6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

7. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

8. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

9. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline)-roughly $9/US gallon. Get used to it. Your driving armoured cars to buy groceries is unnecessary, boorish and killing the planet.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

11. We will require that people running things, like your government, are at least moderately competent and not related by blood or bribes to those who benefit from their decisions. We know it makes you more cozy when your leaders know as little as you do, but, honestly, it is short sighted: you need doctors who know more about medicine, pilots who know more about flying and leaders who know more about leading.

12. We respectfully request you give up this notion that Politics is Entertainment, and that very complicated things can only be explained to you in less than fifteen seconds. If you wanted to have a democracy, honestly, you'd really need to have taken the time to understand things a bit more before you voted. And may I suggest the startling notion that politicians don't need to look good to do a good job? And it really is acceptable if they are a bit boring, so long as they do their homework. It's especially important if evidently you have not done yours. Poor old Al Gore. Poor old John Kerry. And by the way, are you happy now you chose a Governor for California based on his teeth?

13. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting Nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth - see what it did for them.

14. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie McDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

15. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). Don't try Rugby - the South Africans and Kiwis will thrash you, like they regularly thrash us.

16. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first in their country. The six out of ten of you who don't own a passport will need to get one first.

17. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

18. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776). Although this will raise your taxes, remember that the Neoconservatives will no longer be robbing you blind and so your Dollars will stop shrinking. Didn't you know that inflation and government bailouts of huge companies were really paid for by you? We must do something about your educational system. What on earth is going on over there? Are you oblivious to the crushing debt you are leaving your children? You might as well throttle them now.

19. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; strawberries in season.

God Save the Queen. But at least God won't instruct your President to invade any more wrong countries.

Adapted from John Cleese.

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Love this one. K

http://slatev.com/player.html?id=1842856410

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GENERAL

This is from a fellow blogger: http://leishacamden.blogspot.

Mary lacked money to fly home to Norway – he saved her love

ÅSGÅRDSTRAND (VG): Mary was a newlywed and ready to move to Norway, but was stopped at the airport because she didn’t have enough money for the trip. Then a stranger turned up and paid for her.

Mary Menth Andersen was 31 years old at the time and had just married Norwegian Dag Andersen. She was looking forward to starting a new life in Åsgårdstrand in Vestfold with him. But first she had to get all of her belongings across to Norway. The date was November 2nd, 1988.

At the airport in Miami things were hectic as usual, with long lines at the check-in counters. When it was finally Mary’s turn and she had placed her luggage on the baggage line, she got the message that would crush her bubbling feeling of happiness.
-You’ll have to pay a 103 dollar surcharge if you want to bring both those suitcases to Norway, the man behind the counter said.

Mary had no money. Her new husband had travelled ahead of her to Norway, and she had no one else to call.
-I was completely desperate and tried to think which of my things I could manage without. But I had already made such a careful selection of my most prized possessions, says Mary.

Although she explained the situation to the man behind the counter, he showed no signs of mercy.
-I started to cry, tears were pouring down my face and I had no idea what to do. Then I heard a gentle and friendly voice behind me saying, That’s OK, I’ll pay for her.

Mary turned around to see a tall man whom she had never seen before.
-He had a gentle and kind voice that was still firm and decisive. The first thing I thought was, Who is this man?
Although this happened 20 years ago, Mary still remembers the authority that radiated from the man.
-He was nicely dressed, fashionably dressed with brown leather shoes, a cotton shirt open at the throat and khaki pants, says Mary.

She was thrilled to be able to bring both her suitcases to Norway and assured the stranger that he would get his money back. The man wrote his name and address on a piece of paper that he gave to Mary. She thanked him repeatedly. When she finally walked off towards the security checkpoint, he waved goodbye to her.

The piece of paper said ‘Barack Obama’ and his address in Kansas, which is the state where his mother comes from. Mary carried the slip of paper around in her wallet for years, before it was thrown out.
-He was my knight in shining armor, says Mary, smiling.

She paid the 103 dollars back to Obama the day after she arrived in Norway. At that time he had just finished his job as a poorly paid community worker* in Chicago, and had started his law studies at prestigious Harvard university.

In the spring of 2006 Mary’s parents had heard that Obama was considering a run for president, but that he had still not decided. They chose to write a letter in which they told him that he would receive their votes. At the same time, they thanked Obama for helping their daughter 18 years earlier.

In a letter to Mary’s parents dated May 4th, 2006 and stamped ‘United States Senate, Washington DC’, Barack Obama writes**:
‘I want to thank you for the lovely things you wrote about me and for reminding me of what happened at Miami airport. I’m happy I could help back then, and I’m delighted to hear that your daughter is happy in Norway. Please send her my best wishes. Sincerely, Barack Obama, United States senator’.

The parents sent the letter on to Mary.

This week VG met her and her husband in the café that she runs with her friend Lisbeth Tollefsrud in Åsgårdstrand.
-It’s amazing to think that the man who helped me 20 years ago may now become the next US president, says Mary delightedly.

She has already voted for Obama. She recently donated 100 dollars to his campaign.

She often tells the story from Miami airport, both when race issues are raised and when the conversation turns to the presidential elections.
-I sincerely hope the Americans will see reason and understand that Obama means change, says Mary.


*Not at all sure about this part of the translation. The Norwegian word used is 'miljøarbeider', I don't know what the exact English word for that is or even if there is one, and I don't know enough about Obama to say what job of his they're talking about.
**This is my translation of the reporter's translation of the letter. From English to Norwegian and back to English. So obviously it is not correct word for word.


This is not a big or important story. But it is a nice story and if one is voting for a person, and not just for a political platform, it might be interesting to hear it. Somehow I don't see this story being covered in American media much, so let's count this as one blogger's contribution to the news coverage of the 2008 election. :-)

If anyone wants to post this anywhere else, be my guest.
POSTED BY LEISHA CAMDEN AT 6:17 PM

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The GOP goes back to its ugly roots

McCain is resurrecting the GOP's oldest tactic: Smearing Obama as a scary black terrorist sympathizer. But he may meet the same fate as Barry Goldwater.
By Gary Kamiya

Oct. 07, 2008 | The End of Days is approaching for John McCain and Sarah Palin, and at least one member of the ticket is not likely to greet this development with religious rapture. Their numbers are tanking. Their campaign has had to pull out of Michigan, and they are trailing in most of the battleground states they must hold onto. Even Karl Rove has predicted an Obama win if the election were held today. McCain's hotheaded behavior during the Wall Street crisis and his numerous other erratic tactical swerves have backfired. And his biggest gamble, choosing Sarah Palin as vice president, is increasingly looking like a disaster.

McCain's all-too-predictable response: get ugly, as he did on Monday is his disturbing rant against Obama in New Mexico.

The man who incessantly talks about "honor" has checked his own at the door. Back in April, McCain -- himself the victim of a vicious, race-baiting smear campaign orchestrated by Karl Rove in 2000 -- disavowed a North Carolina ad attacking Obama for his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "It's not the message of the Republican Party," McCain said. "It's not the message of my campaign. I've pledged to conduct a respectful campaign."

But that was before McCain faced imminent defeat. His "pledge" has turned out to be about as credible as his sudden incarnation as a lifelong enemy of Wall Street. On Monday, McCain rolled out a new TV ad, "Dangerous," that accuses Obama of being "dishonorable." "Who is Barack Obama?" a narrator ominously asks. "He says our troops in Afghanistan are 'just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.' How dishonorable."

Of course, this is an outrageous smear. Obama was simply pointing out the well-known fact that in fighting an insurgency, over-reliance on air power is counterproductive. That's because airstrikes inevitably result in civilian deaths, which turn the population against the side carrying them out. U.S. airstrikes and the ensuing civilian casualties are one of the biggest points of contention between the U.S. and Hamid Karzai's regime in Afghanistan, and they are a huge issue in Pakistan and Iraq as well.

But none of those facts matter, because McCain desperately needs to paint Obama as a traitor, an alien, a defeatist, and un-American. The rhetorical question "Who is Barack Obama?" is not accidental: It is intended to raise fundamental doubts about whether he is a real American. It ties into the online smears that accuse him of being a Muslim, a terrorist, of not saluting the flag, hating the troops, attending a madrassa, hating Israel, and so on.

In a fear-mongering speech on Monday, McCain continued this Mysterious Stranger tactic. "Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there's always a back story with Sen. Obama," McCain said. "All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short: Who is the real Barack Obama?" Cue a subconscious image of a dark, menacing figure planning to impose sharia law on America.

Sarah Palin, confidently pronouncing on Obama's bona fides despite the fact that she has repeatedly revealed herself to a terrified world to be someone who must be kept as far away from the presidency as possible, joined in the smear campaign. Citing Obama's acquaintance with former Weatherman founder Bill Ayers, Palin said about the Democratic presidential nominee, "This is not a man who sees America as you and I do -- as the greatest force for good in the world. This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country."

Never mind the fact that Palin herself supported, and her husband belonged to, a secessionist Alaska political party that advocated armed opposition to the U.S. Never mind the fact that Obama's relationship with Ayers, as detailed in the very New York Times story that Palin cited as her source, was utterly casual. Facts are for those in the reality-based community. The point is to paint Obama not just as a terrorist sympathizer and America-hater, but as an alien. Hence Palin's description of him as "not a man who sees America as you and I do."

McCain is also using Palin to bring up the Rev. Wright. Prompted by GOP publicist Bill Kristol, whose intellectually vacuous, water-carrying New York Times column is one of the biggest embarrassments in that paper's storied history, Palin said that "I don't know why that association isn't discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country ... But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up."

Ah, the joys of having your vacuous, yet robotically perky, running mate do your dirty work for you, while she pretends that she isn't.

Calling Obama a traitor, un-American and dishonorable may be somewhat effective, but the best thing McCain and Palin have going for them is that Obama is ... black. The subliminal message of all their ads is "scary, black, unknown, black, alien, black, un-American, black." The challenge for McCain, however, is that he can't be explicitly racist: It's no longer acceptable to run Willie Horton-type ads. But ingenious minds find a way to get around this.

In a McCain ad called "Mum," Obama is portrayed as a tax-raising incompetent. But the real point of the ad, which is so nonsensical it's hard to believe anyone will pay attention to its ostensible message, may be to incite racial fears.

"In crisis, experience matters," a tough voice warns. "McCain and his congressional allies led. Tough rules on Wall Street. Stop CEO rip-offs. [An image of a grinning black man in a suit appears.] Protect your savings and pensions. [An image of an elderly white woman appears.] Obama and his liberal allies, 'mum on the market crisis.' Because 'no one knows what to do.' More taxes. No leadership. A risk your family can't afford."

This ad requires voters to have ignored reality in three ways. First, they must have somehow missed the fact that it was Republican congressmen, not Democrats, who stalled the bailout package. Second, they must swallow the fairy tale that McCain "led" the effort. And third, they must believe that McCain and the GOP have magically been transformed into sworn enemies of "Wall Street" and "CEO rip-offs." With all due respect for the incapacity of Americans, that's too much stupidity to ask for.

Which is why the real point of the ad may have been the image of the smirking black man who appears as the poster child for "CEO rip-offs." The man is Franklin Raines, former head of Fannie Mae, who resigned in 2004 under a cloud of scandal. It may seem odd that McCain's hit team selected a black CEO to illustrate the Wall Street meltdown -- there are about as many black CEOs as there are white defensive backs in the NFL. But it isn't odd at all. Using Raines serves the GOP's interests in two ways, both of them with explicit racial subtexts.

First, it furthers the bogus right-wing story that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, pushed by the Clinton administration to increase the number of minority homeowners, were responsible for the Wall Street meltdown. (In fact, as the New York Times has reported, rapacious Wall Street investors pushed Fannie Mae into the exotic, high-risk bundled deals that brought it down.)

More important, it associates Barack Obama with an allegedly corrupt black man. Few viewers are likely to know who that black face belongs to, but that doesn't matter. Working-class white voters have repeatedly told reporters that they're worried that if he's elected, Obama will turn the country over to black people. The "Mum" ad plays to those racial fears in a way that allows plausible deniability.

The GOP and its media allies are going into their two-minute drill, and it ain't pretty. Moving in lockstep with the GOP, as usual, Fox News ran a ludicrous Sean Hannity show Sunday night that painted Obama as a terrorist sympathizer and dangerous radical. And we can expect more smears, concealed race-baiting, overwrought accusations of "radicalism" and crude ad hominem attacks in the next month.

McCain's last-ditch smear campaign isn't surprising. The modern conservative movement came to power by playing on white racial fears, and McCain is hoping that there's one shot left in that gun.

The seeds of modern conservatism were sown by Barry Goldwater, whose anti-government ideology was crafted to appeal to Southern whites enraged at federal intervention into what they considered to be their own racial business. Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy" brought Goldwater's approach to fruition. By inciting populist white anger at do-gooder liberals and the black poor, Nixon was able to split the Democratic Party, peeling off the South and making deep inroads with blue-collar ethnic Democrats in states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Some analysts believe that the South will remain Republican forever, although demographic changes could weaken the GOP's grip. Ronald Reagan continued the strategy, kicking off his 1980 presidential campaign by giving a speech in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were killed, in which he promised to support states' rights -- a code word for institutional Southern racism.

The founding success of the modern conservative movement was that it convinced large numbers of Americans to reject "liberalism" and "big government," even if they themselves benefited from both, because they were associated with social programs aimed at helping poor blacks.

In one of the climactic political showdowns in American history, McCain and Palin are now using the GOP's time-tested tactics -- against a black man. The tactics always worked before, and one might think they would be foolproof now, with a black target. But a closer look at the very beginning of the GOP's rise to power reveals why they may not.

In fall 1964, Barry Goldwater was tanking in the polls, hammered by the media and by his Democratic opponent, Lyndon Johnson, as a radical who might start a nuclear war and would threaten cherished social programs like Social Security. As Rick Perlstein relates in "Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus," Goldwater realized that he needed to scare Americans. So he turned away from his high-minded speeches about freedom and started talking incessantly about moral decay and social unrest -- subjects that had never been raised by a presidential candidate before.

To spread its message about scary blacks and moral rot, the Goldwater campaign let loose a bare-knuckle political operative named Rus Walton, who "was possessed of an almost desperate need to burn conservative truths into an audience's heart by whatever means worked -- high or low, fair or foul." Walton's staff cranked out brochures depicting black Harlemites caught in the act of smashing windows and attacking policemen, with captions like "Lyndon Johnson's Administration Is Too Busy Protecting Itself to Protect You." Another brochure read, "Are you safe on the streets? What about your wife? Your kids? Your property? What about after dark? Why should we have to be afraid? This is America!" A poster linked government with race riots, braying, "Government officials make millions while in public service. They let crime run riot in the streets ..."

Goldwater commissioned a bizarre documentary film, "Choice," that interwove images of a speeding Cadillac, wild revelers, shapely, twisting derrieres, civil rights protests, naked breasts, and criminals resisting arrest. Over these images Raymond Massey intoned, "Now there are two Americas. One is words like 'allegiance' and 'Republic' ... The other America -- the other America is no longer a dream but a nightmare." It was the first shot fired in what would later come to be called the culture wars. (Goldwater chickened out and disavowed the film.)

As Joseph Lowndes argues in his book "From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism," "race was probably the most compelling issue Goldwater had on his side." And Goldwater, though himself no racist, did his best to appeal to white fears. But it didn't work. He went on to lose in a landslide, carrying only a handful of Deep South states. The reason, as Lowndes points out, was that "[c]onservatism did not yet appeal to a majority of Americans, who saw conservatism and the Republican Party as representing wealthy, elite interests."

There are some uncanny parallels between Goldwater's campaign and McCain's. The American right has come full circle in 44 years, with two allegedly maverick senators from Arizona playing bookend roles, one at the beginning, one perhaps at the end. Goldwater was the prophet of modern conservatism, but he came too early. For his part, McCain may have come too late. He may be remembered as the last, failed Republican candidate to use the GOP's four-decade-old strategy of attacking big government, demonizing liberals and mobilizing white resentment of blacks.

McCain is playing dirtier than Goldwater did. But the smear game still may not work. And if McCain loses, it will be for the same reasons that Goldwater lost: because conservatism itself -- which means the GOP, since it no longer has a moderate branch -- has been discredited. The Republican Party under Nixon and Reagan succeeded because it was able to convince enough white Democrats and swing voters that it was the party of the "average American," oppressed by federal bureaucrats and do-gooder programs like busing and affirmative action. It was able to conceal the fact that it was the party of the rich beneath a populist, race-tinged appeal to white resentment.

But the truth is that America is not a particularly ideological country, and Americans' allegiance to conservative ideas has always been fairly superficial. Yes, our frontier mythology and tradition of federalism makes us less supportive of the welfare state than European countries -- but New Deal-inspired programs like Social Security and Medicare are deeply rooted in our society. A loose, de facto centrism is America's default position. By embracing cracked ideologies like trickle-down economics, by letting big corporations do whatever they want, and by religiously refusing to raise taxes, the GOP since Reagan has tilted much too far to the right. George W. Bush pushed the party over the cliff, with the final straw being his own unique contribution, a demented and pointless war.

Now the bills are coming due. The colossal failure of the Bush administration has destroyed the right wing's appeal to most Americans. In effect, conservatism has returned to being what it was in the days of Goldwater -- a fringe movement. McCain is desperately trying to disavow the movement he has followed all his life by painting himself as a "maverick," but as Joe Biden pointed out in perhaps the most devastating retort in his "debate" with Palin, he has not voted like a maverick on any issue of importance -- he has voted like a Republican.

Which is why so much hangs on this election. An Obama victory could signal a fundamental correction in the course of American politics, one that could last for decades. If McCain wins, it will mean that all the forces that led to the rise of modern conservatism -- racial resentment, unthinking anti-governmentalism and hatred of "liberals" -- still reign supreme. And that would force us all to stare into a national chasm, one deeper than any since McCarthyism.

-- By Gary Kamiya

Copyright ©2008 Salon Media Group, Inc. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. SALON® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon Media Group Inc.

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One of my favorite articles. Please send this to friends worried about their taxes. K

October 8, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Palin’s Kind of Patriotism

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”

What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.

I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.

Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”

I can understand someone saying that the government has no business bailing out the financial system, but I can’t understand someone arguing that we should do that but not pay for it with taxes. I can understand someone saying we have no business in Iraq, but I can’t understand someone who advocates staying in Iraq until “victory” declaring that paying taxes to fund that is not patriotic.

How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now?

We are in the middle of an economic perfect storm, and we don’t know how much worse it’s going to get. People all over the world are hoarding cash, and no bank feels that it can fully trust anyone it is doing business with anywhere in the world. Did you notice that the government of Iceland just seized the country’s second-largest bank and today is begging Russia for a $5 billion loan to stave off “national bankruptcy.” What does that say? It tells you that financial globalization has gone so much farther and faster than regulatory institutions could govern it. Our crisis could bankrupt Iceland! Who knew?

And we have not yet even felt the full economic brunt here. I fear we may be at that moment just before the tsunami hits — when the birds take flight and the insects stop chirping because their acute senses can feel what is coming before humans can. At this moment, only good governance can save us. I am not sure that this crisis will end without every government in every major economy guaranteeing the creditworthiness of every financial institution it regulates. That may be the only way to get lending going again. Organizing something that big and complex will take some really smart governance and seasoned leadership.

Whether or not I agree with John McCain, he is of presidential timber. But putting the country in the position where a total novice like Sarah Palin could be asked to steer us through possibly the most serious economic crisis of our lives is flat out reckless. It is the opposite of conservative.

And please don’t tell me she will hire smart advisers. What happens when her two smartest advisers disagree?

And please also don’t tell me she is an “energy expert.” She is an energy expert exactly the same way the king of Saudi Arabia is an energy expert — by accident of residence. Palin happens to be governor of the Saudi Arabia of America — Alaska — and the only energy expertise she has is the same as the king of Saudi Arabia’s. It’s about how the windfall profits from the oil in their respective kingdoms should be divided between the oil companies and the people.

At least the king of Saudi Arabia, in advocating “drill baby drill,” is serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. My problem with Palin is that she is also serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. That’s not patriotic. Patriotic is offering a plan to build our economy — not by tax cuts or punching more holes in the ground, but by empowering more Americans to work in productive and innovative jobs. If Palin has that kind of a plan, I haven’t heard it.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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My sister and her friends have been doing their share in CA to help the cause. Here are some photos for our enjoyment.




Us selling food, signs and t-shirts










This is how we grow 'em in California. It's fun to be a Democrat in the Bay Area! Wish you were here. We send our encouragement to all you swing staters!
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Meet Sarah Palin's radical right-wing pals

Extremists Mark Chryson and Steve Stoll helped launch Palin's political career in Alaska, and in return had influence over policy. "Her door was open," says Chryson -- and still is.
By Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert

Editor's note: Research support provided by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund. For Salon's complete coverage of Sarah Palin, click here.

Oct. 10, 2008 |

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- By Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert

Copyright ©2008 Salon Media Group, Inc. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. SALON® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon Media Group Inc.

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She's such an environmentalist, though...

Sarah Palin: The view from Alaska

Amid "Troopergate" and other government scandals, including killing wolf pups, an Alaskan writer explains why the Palin phenomenon rings hollow in his home state.
By Nick Jans

Oct. 11, 2008 |

I sat on the bank of the Kobuk River in northwest arctic Alaska on a mid-September morning. Upstream somewhere, wolves were howling -- their chorus filling the silence, close enough that I could hear the aspiration at the end of each wavering call. Behind me, the slate-gray heave of the Brooks Range spilled off toward the north, the shapes of some peaks so familiar I've seen them in my sleep. The nearest highway lay 250 miles away. This is the Alaska where I spent half my life, and the only place that's ever felt like home -- the land of Eskimo villages, waves of migrating caribou and seemingly limitless space.

Though I was beyond the reach of the Internet and cellphones, and life was filled with rutting bull moose, incandescent autumn light and fresh grizzly tracks, I knew that thousands of miles to the south, the rest of the country was getting a crash course on our governor, Sarah Palin -- someone who believes that climate change isn't our fault; is dead set against a woman's right to choose; has supported creationism in the schools; and was prayed over by a visiting minister at her church to shield her against witchcraft.

How was I to explain to all my lower 48 friends and writing colleagues how such a person could have been elected to lead our state -- let alone been chosen to possibly become vice-president? Truth be told, I was as startled as anyone when I heard the news. At first I thought the McCain campaign's announcement was some sort of bad joke.

In the broadest sense, Palin is a poseur. Alaska is too large and culturally diverse (it's only a bit smaller than the entire lower 48 east of the Mississippi, and once was divided into four time zones) to be summed up by some abstract, romanticized notion. And even if it could be, it sure wouldn't be symbolized by Palin. "The typical Alaskan? She couldn't be farther from it," says Alaska House Minority Leader Beth Kertulla.

Still, Palin is a genuine Alaskan -- of a kind. The kind that flowed north in the wake of the '70s oil boom, Bible Belt politics and attitudes under arm, and transformed this state from a free-thinking, independent bastion of genuine libertarianism and individuality into a reactionary fundamentalist enclave with dollar signs in its eyes and an all-for-me mentality.

Palin's Alaska is embodied in Wasilla, a blue-collar, sharp-elbowed town of burgeoning big box stores, suburban subdivisions, evangelical pocket churches and car dealerships morphing across the landscape, outward from Anchorage, the state's urban epicenter. She has lived in Wasilla practically all her life, and even now resides there, the first Alaska executive to eschew the white-pillared mansion in Juneau, down on the Southeast Panhandle.

Folks in the Mat-Su Valley, as the area is known, overwhelmingly support their favorite daughter's policies -- including a state-sanctioned program where private pilots chase down and kill wolves from small aircraft, and another that favors oil drilling offshore in the arctic sea ice and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. These same voters forage at McDonald's and Safeway in their hunter camouflage, and make regular wilderness forays up and down the state's limited highway grid with ATVs, snowmobiles and airboats in tow behind their oversize trucks. Sometimes I imagine I can hear the roar echoing across the state, all the way to the upper Kobuk, where easements for the highways of tomorrow are already staked out across the tundra.

Like many Alaskans, I resent Palin's claims that she speaks for all of us, and cringe when she tosses off her stump speech line, "Well, up in Alaska, we…." Not only did I not vote for her, she represents the antithesis of the Alaska I love. As mayor, she helped shape Wasilla into the chaotic, poorly planned strip mall that it is; as governor, she's promoted that same headlong drive toward development and despoilment on a grand scale, while paying lip service to her love of the place.

As for that frontierswoman shtick, take another look at that hairpiece-augmented beehive and those stiletto heels. Coming from a college-educated family, living in a half-million-dollar view home, basking in a net worth of $1.25 million, and having owned 40-some registered motorized vehicles in the past two decades (including 17 snowmobiles and a plane) hardly qualifies Palin and her clan as the quintessential Joe Six-Pack family unit -- though the adulation from that quarter shows the Palins must be fulfilling some sort of role-model fantasy.

Palin can claim to know Alaska; the fact is, she's seen only a minuscule fraction of it -- and that doesn't include Little Diomede Island, the one place in Alaska where you actually can see Russia. So she can ride an ATV and shoot guns. Set her down in the bush on her own and I bet we'd discover she's about as adept at butchering a moose and building a fire at 40 below zero as she is at discussing Supreme Court decisions. And that mountain-woman act is only the tip of a hollow iceberg.

Palin, and by extension, the McCain campaign, has hijacked our state for political purposes, much to the chagrin of the tens of thousands of Alaskans who loathe what she stands for. Her much-touted popularity among residents has eroded over the past six weeks to somewhere in the mid-60s -- not exactly what you'd expect in support of a home girl making a White House run.

There are no doubt a variety of reasons for this decline, but many Alaskans are embarrassed -- not just by her, but for our state and for ourselves. What's with the smug posturing, recently adopted fake Minnesota accent, and that gosh-darn-it hockey mom pitch? Maybe it plays well in Peoria (and presumably Duluth), but it's all an act. "She's definitely put on a new persona since she's been a vice-presidential candidate," says Kertulla, who has worked closely with Palin for the past 18 months. "I don't even recognize her."

Affectations aside, there's plenty about Palin we Alaskans do recognize, and all too well. She's already proven to us that her promises of transparent government, attendant to the will of the people, are bear pucky. We know about her private e-mail accounts and her systematic obstruction of the Alaska Legislature's investigation of the so-called Troopergate scandal. But let's turn to her environmental record, where a similar pattern of obfuscation continues.

First, Palin pushed hard, along with sport hunting and guiding interests, to help defeat a ballot initiative that would have stopped the state's current aerial wolf control program, which had been criticized by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council for flawed science. Now her administration has pointedly refused to respond to repeated public information requests (I'm one of the petitioners, and a potential litigant), regarding the apparently illegal killing of 14 wolf pups at their dens on the Alaska Peninsula this spring by state personnel, including two high-level Department of Fish and Game administrators. A biologist at the scene admitted to an independent wolf scientist that the 6-week-old pups were held down and shot in the head, one by one. This inhumane practice, known as "denning," has been illegal for 40 years. But a simple request for information on the details of this operation, including to what extent the governor was involved in the decision, has resulted in a typical Palinesque roadblock and a string of untruths.

Our I-love-Alaska governor was also instrumental in defeating a ballot initiative to stop development of a gargantuan open-pit mine incongruously known as Pebble near the headwaters of the most productive salmon watershed in the state, Bristol Bay. The current mine design calls for building the world's largest earthen dam to hold back an enormous lake of toxic waste -- this in a known earthquake zone. Crazy stuff, yet Palin openly opposed the initiative, in lock step with international mining corporations that invested millions of dollars in a misinformation campaign.

But Palin's certified anti-environmental whopper is her lawsuit against the Bush administration (of all outfits) for listing polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. She claimed Alaska's own experts had completed a review of the federal data and concluded that the listing was uncalled for. The truth was, state biologists had come to the opposite conclusion. But that report was never released, and her researchers had a gag clamped on them. Palin simply didn't want anything to get in the way of offshore oil drilling in moving pack ice -- where there is no way to contain, let alone clean up, catastrophic spills.

Whenever science or rules get in Palin's way, she blows them off. Says homesteader Mark Richards, co-founder of the Alaska Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (a moderate conservation group), "Palin, like Governor Murkowski before her, is part and parcel of the good-ol-boy network that says, 'Alaska is open for business.'"

Want to talk to Sarah? As governor, she has been accessible only on her carefully chosen terms, a trend we're now witnessing on the national stage. And how about those Katie Couric moments when she drifts just a skosh off a well-rehearsed script? Are those a recent phenomenon, brought on by all this new information, pressure and the liberal-gotcha media? Nah. She's been spouting "political gibberish" (to quote gubernatorial opponent Andrew Halcro) since she arrived on the Alaska scene. Yet somehow she continues to get away with it.

In the end, Palin's attempt to cash in on the Eau d'Alaska mystique as she supports its destruction sickens those of us who do love this land, not for what it will be some day, after the roads and mines and pipelines and cities and malls are all in, but for what it is now. What we see before us is the soul of an ambitious, ruthless, Parks Highway hillbilly -- a woman who represents the Alaska you probably never want to meet, and the one we wish never existed. That said, we're all too willing to take her back. The alternative is just too damn frightening.

-- By Nick Jans

Copyright ©2008 Salon Media Group, Inc. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. SALON® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon Media Group Inc.

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Great news!!!


October 10, 2008
A Buckley endorses Obama
Posted: 07:08 PM ET

From CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney

Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, is backing Obama.

(CNN) - No, hell has not frozen over, but a Buckley is backing a Democrat for president.

Christopher Buckley, the son of the late conservative icon William F. Buckley, said Friday he's decided to back Barack Obama's White House bid, the first time in his life he will vote Democrat.

"It's a good thing my dear old mum and pup [sic] are no longer alive. They'd cut off my allowance," Buckley, a columnist for the
conservative National Review, wrote on the Web site The Daily Beast Friday.

Buckley, who praised McCain in a New York Times Op-Ed earlier this year and defended the Arizona senator's conservative credentials against wary talk-radio hosts, said McCain is no longer the "real" and "unconventional" man he once admired.

"This campaign has changed John McCain," Buckley wrote. "It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget 'by the end of my first term.' Who, really, believes that?

"Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis," Buckley added. "His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?"

But Buckley made clear he's not just voting against McCain, praising Obama for his "first-class temperament and first-class intellect.

"Obama has in him-I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy 'We are the people we have been waiting for' silly rhetoric-the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for," Buckley wrote.

LOCAL

I write to you to encourage your vote on November 4th to retain all of the judges on your ballot.

The Missouri Bar has done an extensive job in screening our judges who are up for retention. In Missouri, under our plan to select judges, we have removed partisan politics from the process and we vote to either retain or not retain judges. The judicial performance review does more than just ask lawyers who practice in front of these judges if they meet up to 16 criteria, the Missouri Bar have also done surveys of jurors. If you would like to see the review for any specific judge, they are available at www.mobar.org. In short, I ask that you consider voting for the retention of all the judges. You should know that the review process is very serious and very thorough. In Jackson County, the results showed that all the judges deserve to be retained. That is not true for at least one judge in St. Louis. As you speak with folks, please spread the word about the judicial performance review and about voting to retain these important, non-partisan public servants. Please consider forwarding this email on to your neighbors, friends and colleagues.

Thanks for your help in spreading the word on this important issue on the November 4th election.
Stephen R. Bough
The Law Offices of Stephen R. Bough
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