Well, it won't be lox and bagels, or a nice, leisurely brunch for the Palin Truth Squad tomorrow.
Nosireebob ... Likely, they'll be churning for days after this.
So, oil up your Lie-O-Meters, as the PT Squad will have to come out with gatling guns, just to catch up and attempt to be in the game on this one (and, of course, they'll get to claim their per diems).
Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.
So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.
Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.
When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.
And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.
“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”
That's just for openers.
How's this;
In Wasilla, a builder said he complained to Mayor Palin when the city attorney put a stop-work order on his housing project. She responded, he said, by engineering the attorney’s firing.
It's as if the West Wing of the Bush Grindhouse was located up there in Alaska.
Monica Goodling wouldn't last a day in a Palin Administration, she'd be viewed as too soft.
There's more;
But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.
Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.
Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.
Now, I can just imagine the reaction from the Right Wing Freak Show.
It will be along the lines of "Yeah, so ..." ... And, "What's the big deal?"
It really is remarkable. In an attempt to distance himself from the Bush Administration, John McCain scoured the country in search of a running mate and eventually chose, from all appearances, the one politician who most closely resembles George W. Bush. God help us if this person ever becomes president.
Does that not seem eerily reminiscent of George W. Bush's appointment of Michael Brown to FEMA? Cronyism, debt, lies, religious fanaticism, and utter ignorance about foreign policy. You want another four years of Bush? McCain-Palin is the ticket
Politico offers "To put it more bluntly, the piece portrays Palin as, in the words of a friend, the Rudy Giuliani of the Last Frontier."
The entire article’s a must read, but do so replacing “Palin” with “Bush” and see if it strikes you as a redux of the past eight years. Plus, there’s something really disturbing about someone who keeps appointing their high school classmates to things - there’s a level of corruption I think we’ll all agree is indicative of a certain level of competence at the evil thing. Putting Wasilla High’s Class of ‘82 in charge of a state is something out of a shitty dark comedy.
Prom Dress Boy Jonah Goldberg is leading the pack on this one, with all the Flying Monkeys jumping on board (you can go Here, Here, and Here to see the faux outrage and crocodile tears).
Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "extraordinary." The reason he doesn't send email is that he can't use a keyboard because of the relentless beatings he received from the Viet Cong in service to our country ...
Now, I'd hardly be surprised if McCain could type for short stretches and all that. The point is, that it's perfectly understandable why he wouldn't get in the habit of it.
This won't work. For one thing, a variety of press reports claim that McCain uses a Blackberry, so he can't be wholly incapable of using a keyboard. (John Cole has pictures.) For another, Jonah Goldberg might not realize this, but there are a lot of products out there that are designed to allow people with disabilities to use computers. For people with motor disabilities, or just a desire to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome, speech recognition software can be a godsend. It's not hard, it doesn't involve using your hands, and we know that McCain can speak perfectly well.
So, if Fly Boy is so crippled, that he can't use a computer, work a keyboard, send an email, how is it he can stand in a casino, at a crap table for 14-hours, rolling the dice?
Earlier this year, stories poured out on the, legendary gambling addiction of Stumblin' Bumblin' Johnny. From Time Magazine;
Over time he gave up the drinking bouts, but he never quite kicked the periodic yen for dice. In the past decade, he has played on Mississippi riverboats, on Indian land, in Caribbean craps pits and along the length of the Las Vegas Strip. Back in 2005 he joined a group of journalists at a magazine-industry conference in Puerto Rico, offering betting strategy on request. "Enjoying craps opens up a window on a central thread constant in John's life," says John Weaver, McCain's former chief strategist, who followed him to many a casino. "Taking a chance, playing against the odds." Aides say McCain tends to play for a few thousand dollars at a time and avoids taking markers, or loans, from the casinos, which he has helped regulate in Congress. "He never, ever plays on the house," says Mark Salter, a McCain adviser. The goal, say several people familiar with his habit, is never financial. He loves the thrill of winning and the camaraderie at the table.
Only recently have McCain's aides urged him to pull back from the pastime. In the heat of the G.O.P. primary fight last spring, he announced on a visit to the Vegas Strip that he was going to the casino floor. When his aides stopped him, fearing a public relations disaster, McCain suggested that they ask the casino to take a craps table to a private room, a high-roller privilege McCain had indulged in before. His aides, with alarm bells ringing, refused again, according to two accounts of the discussion.
You may have read the Time piece already so here is an excerpt from an earlier Connie Bruck piece in The New Yorker, May 30, 2005:
The moment the car stopped at McCain's hotel in downtown New Orleans, he set out at his usual fast clip for Harrah's, across the street. McCain is an avid gambler. Wes Gullett, a close friend who worked for McCain for years, told me that they used to play craps in Las Vegas in fourteen-hour stints, standing at the tables from 10 a.m. to midnight. "Craps is addictive," McCain remarked, and he headed for the fifteen-dollar-minimum-bet tables. At the most obvious level, the game is incredibly simple -- players rotate turns throwing the dice, and you either win or lose depending on what number comes up. But McCain's betting formula makes it much more complicated. "Uh-oh!" he cried, as a player accidentally threw the dice off the table. "This is a very, very superstitious game," he said.
I guess, sitting at a computer, to do some surfing, send some emails, just doesn't kick in the same kind of adrenaline rush, as standing in a casino, at a crap table for 14-hours.
It must the adrenaline that allows him to overcome his crippling injuries, kiss the dice and, mind you, having to extend his arm, toss the dice, perhaps excitedly shouting "C'mon seven! ... Mama needs some new drugs!"
Also, as we have witnessed, over the past weeks (and specifically, the past few days), the crippling injuries that prevent Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain from using a computer, absolutely do not affect his ability to tell lies.
Yes, how silly of us, of Obama ...
Naturally, any problem Stumblin' Bumblin' Johnny has, any gaffe he commits, if it's a cloudy day, it's only due to McCain's POW-POW-POW status ...
He said he did not know that he would ever use the word "victory": "This is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade... it's not war with a simple slogan."
WOODRUFF: Senator, at the Republican convention, a couple of speakers, most notably your running mate, vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, made somewhat derisive comments about Senator Obama's experience as a community organizer. I've heard you say you haven't taken that tone. So I guess my question is, are you saying to others in your campaign and your supporters that that's not the kind of language you want to hear?
MCCAIN: Well ...
WOODRUFF: How do you -- how are you approaching that?
MCCAIN: First of all, this is a tough business. Second of all, I think the tone of this whole campaign would have been very different if Senator Obama had accepted my request for us to appear in town hall meetings all over America, the same way Jack Kennedy and Barry Goldwater had agreed to do so. I know that, because I've been in enough campaigns.
Look, Governor Palin was responding to the criticism of her inexperience and her job as a mayor in a small town. That's what she was responding to.
Of course I respect community organizers. Of course I respect people who serve their community. And Senator Obama's record there is outstanding. And so I praise anyone who serves this nation in capacities that, frankly, we all know that could have been far more financially rewarding to individuals, rather than doing what they did.
WOODRUFF: Less significant than the work of a small-town mayor?
MCCAIN: I think a small-town mayor has very great responsibilities. They have a responsibility for the budget. They have hiring and firing of people. They have great responsibilities. They have to stand for election. I admire mayors.
I'm -- listen, mayors have the toughest job, I think, in America. It's easy for me to go to Washington and, frankly, be somewhat divorced from the day-to-day challenges people have.
First of all, this is a tough business. Second of all, I think the tone of this whole campaign would have been very different if Senator Obama had accepted my request for us to appear in town hall meetings all over America, the same way Jack Kennedy and Barry Goldwater had agreed to do so. I know that, because I've been in enough campaigns.
Being that Obama is running for President for the first time, apparently he wasn't aware that he was supposed to allow his competitor to dictate his own campaign strategy.
Of course I respect community organizers. Of course I respect people who serve their community. And Senator Obama's record there is outstanding. And so I praise anyone who serves this nation in capacities that, frankly, we all know that could have been far more financially rewarding to individuals, rather than doing what they did.
Stepping back, it's striking that McCain still, even now, can't answer obvious questions about his own running mate. Caldwell's question was direct, but hardly an unexpected curveball. Indeed, the obvious answer for McCain is that Palin doesn't have a background in national security, but neither do most governors who seek national office, and he's confident in her judgment, her ability to learn quickly, etc.
But, no. Asked an obvious question, McCain offers a confused response that doesn't make any sense.
Maybe the next time the Republican handlers prep Palin on how to answer questions, McCain should sit in and take a few notes.
After watching this, think back how McCain has been whining about how Obama won't join him in Town Hall debates.
Are they hampered (that is, if they have uniforms) by the lack of public telephone booths from getting to the scene of the needed smear or exploitation?
Will they, as the person they will be welding lies and smears for, be able to claim Per Diems during their work?
For a moment, I thought this was some internal mechanism, signaling that Stumblin' Bumblin' Johnny was throwing out a Mea Culpa, and promising to launch what he promised months ago, that being running an "honorable campaign".
I will defer to someone else, with graphic art abilities, to design an appropriate uniform for the gaggle of prevaricators.
Maybe, we can officially roll them out with this;
Faster than a speeding smear, More powerful than a pig with lipstick, Able to heap tall lies in a single call, Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's the Palin Truth Squad!
Yes. It's the Palin Truth Squad, strange visitors from another political party, who came to the campaign with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.
The Palin Truth Squad, who can change the course of media content, bend truth with their bare hands, and who, disguised as McCain-Palin surrogates, mild mannered supporters for a great swiftboating cause, fights a never-ending battle for non-truth, injustice and the Republican Party way.
Hmmm ... That may be giving them too much respect.
Afterall, Superman is the King, and he wouldn't have put up with their nonsense for very long.
Wait a minute ...
I got it ...
And this will keep it in the species that it belongs.
Mighty Mouse!
Mr. Honesty never hangs around, when he hears this Mighty sound, Here we come to save the day! That means the Palin True Squad is on the way! Yes sir, when there is a wrong to right, The Palin Truth Squad will join the fight! On the sea or on the land, They've got the lipstick well in hand!
So though she is in danger We never despair Cause we know that where there's danger The Palin Truth Squad is there! The Palin Truth Squad is there! On the campaign! On the stump! In Alaska! We're not worryin' at all We're just listenin' for her call "Here we come to save the day!" That means the Palin True Squad is on the way!
If it wasn't obvious by now, it's crystal clear that the Rove Rats are firmly in control of Stumblin' Bumblin' Johnny, and what's going down this week will seem like a day-on-the-beach before we see what else they (and the Palin Truth Squad) throw in the road, right up to the minute the polls close on November 4th.
Maverick small-government conservative Sarah Palin charged Alaskan taxpayers $16,941 to spend 312 nights of her first 19 months as governor at her own house in Wasilla. Governor Palin has an official mansion in the capital, Juneau, but she’s happier making Alaska’s citizens pay her $54.33 a night to sleep in her own bed.
In 1988, the head of the state Commerce Department was pilloried for collecting a per diem charge of $50 while staying in his Anchorage home, according to local news accounts. The commissioner, the late Tony Smith, resigned amid a series of controversies.
"It was quite the little scandal," said Tony Knowles, the Democratic governor from 1994 to 2000. "I gave a direction to all my commissioners if they were ever in their house, whether it was Juneau or elsewhere, they were not to get a per diem because, clearly, it is and it looks like a scam -- you pay yourself to live at home," he said.
Palin and her husband both make six-figure incomes. They don't need to be chiseling the state for this money to live, and she sure isn't entitled to be running on fiscal responsibility when she's pocketing cash in a way that has a history of being regarded in Alaska as a "scam."
Hmmm ...
In the "Original Mavericks Handbook for Dummies", do they have a section in there for scamming petty per diems from your office?
Well, it was School Daze out on the campaign trail today, with Barack Obama giving some schoolin' to Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain, including going to the Way Back Machine, to remind Fly Boy of his past position.
Linking McCain to "ideologues," Obama declared in his speech Tuesday, "you certainly don't reform our education system by calling to close the Department of Education. That would just make it harder for us to give out financial aid, harder for us to keep track of how our schools are doing, and lead to widening inequality in who gets a college degree."
Republican officials and McCain staffers, meanwhile, are in full-out counter-attack mode, criticizing Obama for his education policies and claiming that the Senator is misrepresenting McCain's proposals on the matter.
"Senator Barack Obama's new campaign attack ad on education," wrote spokesman Tucker Bounds this morning, "claims that John McCain's economic plan will divert money from public education without any factual citation or basis." The campaign provided a list of resolutions increasing funding for federal education efforts that McCain supported.
But Bounds' statement made no mention of McCain's previous support for doing away with the Department of Education. Neither did two counter-attack emails blasted out by the Republican National Committee.
Hmmm ... "Calling to close the Department of Education"?
Here's the full context of a CNN interview on December 11, 1994 (via Nexis), when Newt-mania was gripping the land:
FRANK SESNO: Senator McCain, would you favor doing away with the Department of Housing and Urban Development or the Department of Energy?
Sen. JOHN McCAIN: I would certainly favor doing away with the Department of Energy and I think that given the origins of the Department of Education, I would favor doing away with it as well. HUD had experienced many failures under both Republican and Democrat administrations and I would certainly want to revamp it from the bottom up, because, clearly, public housing in America is almost as big a disaster as the welfare program
WOW!
The Department of Energy (something tells me he's going to get a chalky eraser flung at his head on this one pretty soon) and the Department of Education!
In 1980, Ronald Reagan ran for president with the promise that if he were elected, he would abolish the Department of Education. His opponent, President Jimmy Carter promised to protect the department, which he had created several years earlier. The department still exists, but the Republicans are gearing up to fulfill Reagan's promise.
Presidential candidate Bob Dole has said the funding for his $2.5 billion voucher program would come from ending Goals 2000 and cutting deep into the Department of Education's bureaucracy. On September 9, 1996, while campaigning in Georgia, Dole said "We're going to cut out the Department of Education." And the GOP Presidential platform reads:
"Our formula is as simple as it is sweeping: the federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the work place. That is why we will abolish the Department of Education, end federal meddling in our schools, and promote family choice at all levels of learning. We therefore call for prompt repeal of the Goals 2000 program and the School-To-Work Act of 1994, which put new federal controls, as well as unfunded mandates, on the States. We further urge that federal attempts to impose outcome- or performance-based education on local schools be ended."
You know, something like "John McCain knows all about schools ... He got a great education in a special school, for five-years, where they would beat you for the correct answers ..."
In case you need help sorting through the lies and fabrications coming from Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain, and his Vice Presidential running mate, that he chased "to the gates of the Arctic Circle", Mommy Moose, aka Sarah Palin, the good folks over on Think Progress have been diligently busy.
From the day he nominated Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AZ) to be his vice presidential running mate, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and his campaign advisers have been repeating the lie that Palin opposed the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. (In fact, Palin repeatedly expressed strong support for the project.) ThinkProgress has been keeping track of these lies and compiled them here. Please let us know if we’ve missed any, and you can comment on this document here.
The McCain campaign, however, continues to repeat the lie. ThinkProgress has put together a Lies To Nowhere report, documenting every time the McCain campaign repeats the myth that Palin opposed the Bridge to Nowhere. So far, we have counted the lie being repeated at least 18 times:
Campaign Manager Rick Davis: “Congress didn’t beat back the ‘bridge to nowhere.’ … That funding was in the grant, and she said, ‘I’m not spending that money.’ And what they did — they took a $500 million bridge and she turned it into a $2 million ferry. And that’s what she did on her own without any help from anybody else.” [Fox News Sunday, 9/7/08]
Check it out, and, remain vigilant - If the Dead Campaign Express comes rolling through your area, keep track of the lies and fire them off to Think Progress's "Lies To Nowhere Report".
This is from the same nitwits, the stuffed shirts and suits in the upper echelons of NBC, MSNBC, General Electric (or some combination of, maybe all), that fired Phil Donohue and hired Rita Cosby. Rita Cosby, for heavens sake!
The public (very public) dumping, demotion, spanking, and/or otherwise, stiff slap-to-the-face of Keith Olbermann and Chris "Tweety" Matthews by Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC was/is meant to embarrass them.
Whatever it was about their chores as anchors of political events (debates, primaries, conventions), could have been handled internally, without public fanfare, a subtle shift that may, or may not, have gone unnoticed.
Ratings, maybe, likely were the biggest reason, however, with the various outcries from the Right Wing, most recently by Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain's camp, it certainly gives the appearance the Griffin is caving in to the Freak Show crowd.
I'll just add, for the hundredth time, that Keith Olbermann's expressed "liberalism" is almost entirely limited to a dislike and distrust of the Bush administration, a view shared by 70% of the public, and a concern for civil liberties and executive power abuse. On top of that he has a somewhat liberal "sensibility," but his show covers little of the broader "liberal agenda." But he makes Tom Brokaw uncomfortable so, you know.
The irrefutable fact is that nothing attracts ratings for MSNBC -- and nothing has attracted ratings in the entire history of that channel -- the way that Olbermann does. Yet here is MSNBC removing him from the anchor position, reducing his role in its political coverage, and clearly diminishing his stature (and implicitly criticizing his coverage). That is extraordinary for a media company to publicly embarrass, diminish and tarnish its own principal asset. It is plainly doing so for ideological, not ratings-based, reasons: namely, it fears doing anything to anger the White House, the McCain campaign and the Right in this country.
The most recent item that, likely, drew ire, was Olbermann pissing in the tea of the Republican's cup, rightly calling them out on the propaganda 9-11 Tribute video they ran at the convention last week.
"This "tribute" which served to only throw fear into the political discourse and frighten voters was shown at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Keith Olbermann spoke for many of us at the sickening images used for political gain"
A classic, if anything, to show who's pulling Stumblin' Bumblin' Johnny's strings, with his Rovian campaign.
Because the video narrator assured us, this won't happen again, as in "This is a war American will win, because we'll have a President that knows how".
Knows "how to" what - make propaganda films?
Start wars on lies and false information?
Torture people, obstruct justice and stomp on the Constitution?
Inferring McCain will be the "President that knows how"?
Please ....
(We should note, as, no doubt, you heard, how the GOP, in their video shows, used stock images of African Americans, and, more hideously, of a soldiers' funeral, and the infamous McCain Green Screen, in which they screwed up showing Walter Reed Hospital, instead, displaying a school in Southern California has been much-discussed.
I didn't want to write about that. It's still pretty close to the bone. But I have never thought that I had a monopoly on honor and decency and love for my country. I wish more prominent Republicans would stop assuming that they do.
ST. PAUL -- One of the most enduring taboos in American politics, the airing of graphic images from the September 11 attacks in a partisan context, died today. It was nearly seven years old.
The informal prohibition, which had been occasionally threatened by political ads in recent years, was pronounced dead at approximately 7:40 CST, when a video aired before delegates at the Republican National Convention included slow-motion footage of a plane striking the World Trade Center, the towers' subsequent collapse, and smoke emerging from the Pentagon.
The September 11 precedent was one of the few surviving campaign-season taboos. It is survived by direct comparisons of one's opponents to Hitler.
Then again, Olbermann, if he really wants to push the envelope, rock the boat, and risk being fired, he can always have Phil Griffin be the "Worst Person in the World" tonight (though, he may want to do a Special Edition of it, and label Griffin the "Biggest Asshole in the World!").
Also worth watching, aside from it being the debut, is to see if Golden Girl Rachel Maddow weighs into it at all.
