With the global financial meltdown underway, right-wing fundamentalist Christians are gleefully packing their bags for the final Rapture ride. It's quite possible that Sister Sarah will literally not be on our planet by the time November rolls around.
In the event that the great almighty doesn't decide fall 2008 is the ripe time to harvest all the good, anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-gun Christians and deliver them to their eternal sky-box before election day, let us keep the gimlet eye on Alaska's finest lipstick-smeared hockey mom.
In a previous post I wrote that Sarah Palin isn't really one of those plain-talkin', diaper-changin', moose-huntin' Erma Bombecks from "small town" America that she likes to channel in her speeches, but in fact has likely been groomed and coached by a shadowy group of sophisticated right-wing Christians who seek out normal-looking folks like her to assist in their theocracy-promoting business.
I was just a-guessin' there folks, but, lo and behold! Bless us all, amen, brothers and sisters! In the wake of the show-stopping performance by their girl in Juneau, her creepy handlers just cannot resist stepping out of the shadows to take a little bow.
Yesterday, the AP reported that Palin and her employees in Alaska government were being legally coached -- pro bono -- not to cooperate with an investigation into the firing of her brother-in-law by none other than a Texas-based organization called the Liberty Legal Institute. Liberty Legal has nothing to do with either freedom or the traditional use of the legal system. It is financed by a rabid anti-feminist called Kelly Shackelford, who, according to the website Right Wing Watch was recently heard chortling on Focus on the Family James Dobson's radio program about how he had drafted "the strongest pro-life platform ever in the history of the Republican Party."
Liberty Legal Institute is not the only national right wing Christian group on Palin's speed-dial. An Alaska attorney named Kevin G. Clarkson, affiliated with the Virginia-based Alliance Defense Fund, takes credit for coaching Palin now and previously. According to Right Wing Watch: "Back in 2006, he [Clarkson] personally assured Focus on the Family that Palin shared their views -- and he'd know since he was providing legal counsel to her on the Alaska Supreme Court's ruling regarding benefits for partners of state employees."
All these deceptively named big-time "legal" foundations beavering away in Palin's camp ... just don't sound so small-town to me. If they really gave a good god-damn about small towns they'd be in the Southern District of Manhattan right now, filing suit on behalf of working Americans getting shafted with the bill for all the private jets, Hamptons estates, skiing trips to Gstaad and freighters' worth of bling our reckless captains of Wall Street have gorged on.
Apparently that kind of legal action just isn't part of god's greater plan.