Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, while out on the hustings likes to ask her audiences: "Who is the real Barack Obama?" But it took a bipartisan commission of the Alaska State Legislature to give us a more accurate glimpse at the real Sarah Palin. The commission concluded that Governor Palin abused her powers in pressing subordinates to terminate a state trooper, Michael Wooten, who three years earlier had gone through a bitter divorce and child custody battle with Palin's sister, Molly McCann. As a result, Trooper Wooten ended up on the wrong side of a family feud.
Governor Palin first claimed that she never did anything to try to get Wooten fired, but later changed her story admitting that she did try to terminate him but only because she and her relatives lived in fear of him. The independent investigation for the State Legislature, however, concluded otherwise: "Such claims of fear were not bona fide and were offered to provide cover for the Palins' real motivation: to get Trooper Wooten fired for personal family reasons." The 263-page report also points out that Palin had reduced the size of her security staff, which didn't make sense if she and her family were "living in fear" of Wooten. A member of Governor Palin's security detail stated: "I never really felt they were in fear of Mr. Wooten doing anything to them."
The panel concluded that Governor Palin violated Alaska's Executive Branch Ethics Act. According to the report, Palin "knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda."
On July 11, 2008, Palin fired Alaska's public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, because he resisted dismissing the trooper who was under his command. Monegan also testified that Palin was slashing the budget for his department because he resisted her efforts to can Wooten. Palin has changed her story several times on why she fired Monegan, who had a long and impressive record as an Alaskan public official. She first claimed she wanted to move Monegan to another position in the government, and then she insisted Monegan's firing was performance related.
Brace yourself for the ear-shattering self-righteous anger blaring from the throats of Republican media shills as they denounce as "unfair" and "partisan" the Alaska State Legislature's account. But it will be difficult to sell that story given that it was a 14-member Republican-dominated Legislative Council that voted unanimously in favor of the investigation long before John McCain picked Palin as his running mate.
Late in a campaign, one thing any presidential candidate does NOT want to see is the name of his VP choice in an official government report that confirms a violation of a state law with the word "ethics" in its title. Especially in Alaska where the Republican Party leadership is notoriously corrupt and cut from the same cloth as Jack Abramoff. In fact, one of the reasons Sarah Palin was catapulted to the governor's office so quickly in the first place was because she was the last woman standing after the Republican leadership in Alaska imploded under multiple, overlapping corruption scandals. Now, with the commission's report, even the "maverick reformer" is tainted.
Who is the real Sarah Palin?
Is Sarah Palin the evangelical, do-gooder "hockey mom" who millions of people believe is truthful and honest? Or is she a "She-Bush" megalomaniac who wields power behind the scenes by personal whim? And lies about it?
Is Sarah Palin the wife of an empty-headed, yet harmless "First Dude?" Or is she married to a Machiavellian insider who carried out her wishes with efficient dispatch in an attempt to settle petty personal scores?
And can we really trust someone who is closely associated with a person who used to belong to a radical Alaskan separatist group that committed Treason against the United States of America by urging Alaska to secede from the Union?
If Palin can go around the country inciting mobs to call for Barack Obama's head after she grossly exaggerates his passing encounters with an aging '60s radical, then we should be able to scrutinize her more recent abuses of power as Alaska governor.
But the most dangerous problem Palin poses is her apparent cluelessness about the kind of overt racism and potential violence she is stirring up. Her highly personalized attacks against Obama are inciting hatred among the Republican herd. The mainstream press might be contented to portray this as nothing out of the ordinary in a "tough" campaign, but this false "balance" in reportage excuses the seriousness of Palin's attacks.
Palin is telling large crowds of white people in Red districts that Obama "pals around with terrorists" and she even implies that he may be a "terrorist" himself. Representative John Lewis of Georgia, who has been at the center of every civil rights battle for the past fifty years, thought the situation warranted writing a letter to John McCain calling for a more civil political dialogue. "As public figures with the power to influence and persuade," Lewis wrote, "Senator McCain and Governor Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy." McCain simply blew off Lewis's legitimate concerns in favor of a predictable Republican counterattack. McCain threw the issue back on Lewis and demanded an apology from him for comparing McCain's tactics to those of Alabama Governor George Wallace.
The Republicans are playing the "race card" now because that is all they have left. Right-wing talk radio, Fox News, Kenneth Blackwell, and the McCain-Palin campaign have all been accusing the activist group, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), of "voter fraud" and even playing a role in the subprime mortgage crisis. They have lumped Obama in with ACORN even though he never worked for the organization, and because ACORN is heavily identified with African-American urban communities the Rightwing is trying to tarnish ACORN's current voter registration activities as being somehow "unfair" to white Republicans and use that charge to smear Obama. The allegations have been proven false but they remind me of D. W. Griffith's 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation, glorifying the history of the Ku Klux Klan. In the film there are scenes of black "freedmen" in the Reconstruction South stuffing ballot boxes to rig elections against the white majority. The KKK bursts on the scene to render "justice" for the white victims of what today Rush Limbaugh would call "voter fraud." It is noteworthy how little the tropes of racism have changed in America in the past hundred years.
The near total collapse of the financial system and the subsequent panic selling on Wall Street have repudiated everything for which the Republican Party stood for the last 30 years: Neo-cons wishing to use American military power to assert dominance and spread "democracy?" Forget it -- We don't have the money to do that anymore. War hawks who want U.S. troops to stay in Iraq until "victory" is attained? Forget about it -- We don't have $4 billion a month to throw at Iraq. Tax cutters and deregulators who promise that if we just strip away government our "ownership society" will efficiently distribute the bounty because that's what markets do -- Are you telling us a bad joke!?
The economic crisis upended the McCain campaign. In desperation, McCain has chosen to go negative 100 percent of the time. He sent forth his evangelical VPILF to hurl McCarthyite smears and race-baiting attacks at the African-American candidate. And she has done so in a way that only a person from a lily-white noncontiguous state could do.
But McCain's is a failed "strategy." The Bush Administration's reckless disregard for governance has finally precipitated the humungous crisis many of us believed was lurking beneath the surface for many years now. He ran the United States in a manner akin to that of a tin-pot dictator in a banana republic. We are fortunate that the timing of the great financial collapse allows us to hold a referendum on the miserable years of misrule under George Walker Bush. "No" or "Si."
Let the voting begin!
Something smells rotten here. Guess they are trying to assume the "Clinton" role - two for the price of one. Everyone thought if Hilary made it in, we got Bill for free. Problem with the Palins is that nothing plus nothing still equals nothing.
http://www.news-record.com/content/2008/10/09/article/rosemary_roberts_palin_purposely_sowing_bigotry_hatred
She knew no one knew "the real Sarah", so she tried aiming that at Obama...asking who is the real Obama.
She knew she was in no way ready for this national office, so she tried to plant that one on Obama. Is he ready to lead? Hell yes.
Its all so transparently obvious and we should laugh her all the way to the backwoods of Alaska, with our sincere sympathy for the REAL Alaskans.
They always kill me with that "Who is the REAL Obama?" HE'S THE GUY THAT DID 22 DEBATES WITH CLINTON!!
The thing most troubling is that -- who ever is running for office -- if they are from a "different" family (even if they just have an ethic last name), the opposition can insinuate all kinds of crazy things that have no basis in fact.
I am galled that the allegedly liberal-biased, anti-McCain/Palin “mainstream media” have been so cowed by the Republicans that it has not broadcast or published one detailed story that sets forth the Report’s actual findings, and instead covers only that campaign’s misinterpretations thereof. It is consistent with the media’s covering, but failing to identify as false or misleading, that campaign’s continuous stream of racial, ethnic, and xenophobic attacks. The media does not cite those who have criticized McCain/Palin for not publically repudiating the horrendous and illegal (e.g., threatening to kill a U.S. Senator is against the law) outbursts by their supporters that the campaign’s vilification of Obama has engendered. If Obama/Biden are elected, and I hope they are, it is proof that the voting public can see through the shallow cesspool of McCain/Palin.
Who has time for their tactics and their policies? Americans move on towards a Smart, Rational,
Respectful and a can do Government.
Obama/Biden 08
Please help me spread the word...
Help stop the hate - here are three things you can do to make a difference right now:
1. Sign the petition to end incitement of hatred by McCain/Palin.
2. Write your Congressperson about it.
3. Write a letter to the editor of your local paper.
And spread the word!
Help stop the hate - here are three things you can do to make a difference right now:
Sign the petition to end incitement of hatred by McCain/Palin:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Obamashield/index.html
Write your Congressperson about it:
https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
Write a letter to the editor of your local paper.
And spread the word!
And so does McCain. He just doesn't like being caught in the same room, on camera, with it.
What about his association with the AIG and the fact that she spoke to their convention in 2008. Why isn't anybody talking about that?
It makes me wonder what Todd Palin would be doing if he had access to the vice-president's office.
Interview With AKIP Chairman, Lynette Clark on Palin's Involvment
http://newsone.blackplanet.com/elections/akip-interview-on-palin/
It's all about Ayers. Anything reported about Palin, quickly turns to her speculations about what Obama is "hiding."
I guess it's more fun to speculate about some radical guy from the 60s and how many times he and Obama spoke 10 years ago, than to take a good hard look at what Palin can NOT hide. Abuse of power and total disdain for the limitations of governmental power and the rule of law.