Massive Palin Scandal Brewing

Whoa! It's the Alaska right-wing criminal conspiracy! How cute. They are all in bed together.

Not that Democrats are immune from charges of helpin' out their buddies...it's just not INSTITUTIONALIZED as it is for the Republicans.


http://plaidlemur.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/massive-palin-scandal-brewing/

The Branchflower Report: Reports of Palin's Innocence are Exaggerated

Branchflower Report, Page 12.

Todd Palin's call to John D. Glass about Trooper Wooten

Veteran Alaska law enforcement officer John D. Glass received a call from Todd Palin on November 8, 2006, four days after Sarah Palin was elected Governor of Alaska.

Mr. Palin wanted to talk about Mike Wooten. At the time Glass was the Chief of Police for the Wasilla Police Department. He was appointed Deputy Commissioner of Public Safety by Walt Monegan a short while later. At the time he received the call from Palin, Chief Glass had two vacant police officer positions on his police force.

Chief Glass testified:

MR. GLASS: Todd had basically told me that he did not want Wooten
hired as a City police officer, that Wooten was a very bad trooper and
needed to be fired from his job as a trooper, and that Wooten should not be
considered at all as a City police officer.

When Atheists Attack!

http://www.newsweek.com/id/160080/page/1
When Atheists Attack
A noted provocateur rips Sarah Palin—and defends elitism.

Sam Harris
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Sep 29, 2008
Let me confess that I was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin's performance at the Republican convention. Given her audience and the needs of the moment, I believe Governor Palin's speech was the most effective political communication I have ever witnessed. Here, finally, was a performer who—being maternal, wounded, righteous and sexy—could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant a three-inch heel directly on that limbic circuit that ceaselessly intones "God and country." If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could.

Then came Palin's first television interview with Charles Gibson. I was relieved to discover, as many were, that Palin's luster can be much diminished by the absence of a teleprompter. Still, the problem she poses to our political process is now much bigger than she is. Her fans seem inclined to forgive her any indiscretion short of cannibalism. However badly she may stumble during the remaining weeks of this campaign, her supporters will focus their outrage upon the journalist who caused her to break stride, upon the camera operator who happened to capture her fall, upon the television network that broadcast the good lady's misfortune—and, above all, upon the "liberal elites" with their highfalutin assumption that, in the 21st century, only a reasonably well-educated person should be given command of our nuclear arsenal.

The point to be lamented is not that Sarah Palin comes from outside Washington, or that she has glimpsed so little of the earth's surface (she didn't have a passport until last year), or that she's never met a foreign head of state. The point is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her. There is nothing to suggest that she even sees a role for careful analysis or a deep understanding of world events when it comes to deciding the fate of a nation. In her interview with Gibson, Palin managed to turn a joke about seeing Russia from her window into a straight-faced claim that Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia gave her some essential foreign-policy experience. Palin may be a perfectly wonderful person, a loving mother and a great American success story—but she is a beauty queen/sports reporter who stumbled into small-town politics, and who is now on the verge of stumbling into, or upon, world history.

The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. "They think they're better than you!" is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. "Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!" Yes, all too ordinary.

We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter's microphone, saying things like, "I'm voting for Sarah because she's a mom. She knows what it's like to be a mom." Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security … the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them.

Palin's most conspicuous gaffe in her interview with Gibson has been widely discussed. The truth is, I didn't much care that she did not know the meaning of the phrase "Bush doctrine." And I am quite sure that her supporters didn't care, either. Most people view such an ambush as a journalistic gimmick. What I do care about are all the other things Palin is guaranteed not to know—or will be glossing only under the frenzied tutelage of John McCain's advisers. What doesn't she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin's ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth.

I care even more about the many things Palin thinks she knows but doesn't: like her conviction that the Biblical God consciously directs world events. Needless to say, she shares this belief with mil-lions of Americans—but we shouldn't be eager to give these people our nuclear codes, either. There is no question that if President McCain chokes on a spare rib and Palin becomes the first woman president, she and her supporters will believe that God, in all his majesty and wisdom, has brought it to pass. Why would God give Sarah Palin a job she isn't ready for? He wouldn't. Everything happens for a reason. Palin seems perfectly willing to stake the welfare of our country—even the welfare of our species—as collateral in her own personal journey of faith. Of course, McCain has made the same unconscionable wager on his personal journey to the White House.

In speaking before her church about her son going to war in Iraq, Palin urged the congregation to pray "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God; that's what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan." When asked about these remarks in her interview with Gibson, Palin successfully dodged the issue of her religious beliefs by claiming that she had been merely echoing the words of Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times later dubbed her response "absurd." It was worse than absurd; it was a lie calculated to conceal the true character of her religious infatuations. Every detail that has emerged about Palin's life in Alaska suggests that she is as devout and literal-minded in her Christian dogmatism as any man or woman in the land. Given her long affiliation with the Assemblies of God church, Palin very likely believes that Biblical prophecy is an infallible guide to future events and that we are living in the "end times." Which is to say she very likely thinks that human history will soon unravel in a foreordained cataclysm of war and bad weather. Undoubtedly Palin believes that this will be a good thing—as all true Christians will be lifted bodily into the sky to make merry with Jesus, while all nonbelievers, Jews, Methodists and other rabble will be punished for eternity in a lake of fire. Like many Pentecostals, Palin may even imagine that she and her fellow parishioners enjoy the power of prophecy themselves. Otherwise, what could she have meant when declaring to her congregation that "God's going to tell you what is going on, and what is going to go on, and you guys are going to have that within you"?

You can learn something about a person by the company she keeps. In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy "baptism in the Holy Spirit," "miraculous healings" and "the gift of tongues." Invariably, they offer astonishingly irrational accounts of this behavior and of its significance for the entire cosmos. Palin's spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of "the final generation," engaged in "spiritual warfare" to purge the earth of "demonic strongholds." Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? Do we actually want our leaders thinking about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy when it comes time to say to the Iranians, or to the North Koreans, or to the Pakistanis, or to the Russians or to the Chinese: "All options remain on the table"?

It is easy to see what many people, women especially, admire about Sarah Palin. Here is a mother of five who can see the bright side of having a child with Down syndrome and still find the time and energy to govern the state of Alaska. But we cannot ignore the fact that Palin's impressive family further testifies to her dogmatic religious beliefs. Many writers have noted the many shades of conservative hypocrisy on view here: when Jamie Lynn Spears gets pregnant, it is considered a symptom of liberal decadence and the breakdown of family values; in the case of one of Palin's daughters, however, teen pregnancy gets reinterpreted as a sign of immaculate, small-town fecundity. And just imagine if, instead of the Palins, the Obama family had a pregnant, underage daughter on display at their convention, flanked by her black boyfriend who "intends" to marry her. Who among conservatives would have resisted the temptation to speak of "the dysfunction in the black community"?

Teen pregnancy is a misfortune, plain and simple. At best, it represents bad luck (both for the mother and for the child); at worst, as in the Palins' case, it is a symptom of religious dogmatism. Governor Palin opposes sex education in schools on religious grounds. She has also fought vigorously for a "parental consent law" in the state of Alaska, seeking full parental dominion over the reproductive decisions of minors. We know, therefore, that Palin believes that she should be the one to decide whether her daughter carries her baby to term. Based on her stated position, we know that she would deny her daughter an abortion even if she had been raped. One can be forgiven for doubting whether Bristol Palin had all the advantages of 21st-century family planning—or, indeed, of the 21st century.

We have endured eight years of an administration that seemed touched by religious ideology. Bush's claim to Bob Woodward that he consulted a "higher Father" before going to war in Iraq got many of us sitting upright, before our attention wandered again to less ethereal signs of his incompetence. For all my concern about Bush's religious beliefs, and about his merely average grasp of terrestrial reality, I have never once thought that he was an over-the-brink, Rapture-ready extremist. Palin seems as though she might be the real McCoy. With the McCain team leading her around like a pet pony between now and Election Day, she can be expected to conceal her religious extremism until it is too late to do anything about it. Her supporters know that while she cannot afford to "talk the talk" between now and Nov. 4, if elected, she can be trusted to "walk the walk" until the Day of Judgment.

What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents—and her supporters celebrate—the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world's only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth:

"Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child's brain?"

"Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I'm an avid hunter."

"But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind."

"That's just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink."

The prospects of a Palin administration are far more frightening, in fact, than those of a Palin Institute for Pediatric Neurosurgery. Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated.

I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex—and dangerous—with each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us. When asked why she is qualified to shoulder more responsibility than any person has held in human history, Palin cites her refusal to hesitate. "You can't blink," she told Gibson repeatedly, as though this were a primordial truth of wise governance. Let us hope that a President Palin would blink, again and again, while more thoughtful people decide the fate of civilization.

Harris is a founder of The Reason Project and author of The New York Times best sellers “The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation.” His Web site is samharris.org.

Palin Calling for an End to Investigation She Requested

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5827023&page=1

The outrageousness of this new twist surpasses my wildest imaginings. She called for an investigation, the Republican-dominated Alaska Senate Committee voted for it. Now she wants to end it because it might be getting close to information that she does not want revealed?

And the reason that she now gives for Monaghan's firing is that he sought money to help victims of sexual crime? Why would anyone find THAT reason more legitimate than the ostensible and logical reason for his firing: that he defied pressure from the governor's office into an internal matter having to do with intra-family feuding?

Someone give me a drug that will help this situation make sense, ok? If she has nothing to hide, then she should allow the investigation to continue. If she has something to hide, well...she is doing a good job of making that perfectly clear...she has something to hide.

Update: A suit has now been filed to stop the investigation. http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5816914&page=1

~Deb


Palin Calling for an End to Investigation She Requested
Alaska AG Also Has New Objections to Probe
By EMMA SCHWARTZ and JUSTIN ROOD
Sept. 17, 2008—

GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin shifted her tactics for the second time in three weeks on the "Troopergate" investigation, this time calling to end the very investigation that she herself called for and the one the McCain campaign had said was the only proper venue for a probe.

Palin's Attorney General, who initially launched an internal probe into Palin, even before the legislature began theirs, is now asking the legislators to withdraw their subpoenas of Palin aides and Palin's husband.

When the Alaska Legislature's Legislative Council, a Republican-dominated panel of 14 legislators which conducts business when the Legislature is out session, voted to investigate the firing of former Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan in July, Palin pledged her full support.

But almost immediately after joining the GOP ticket, Palin's Troopergate strategy veered sharply. Despite her earlier vows of full cooperation with the probe, she declared it unlawful. The legislature lacked the authority to investigate the matter, she said. Instead, it should be handled by the state personnel board, Palin asserted -- a panel which is under her authority.

Palin promptly filed an ethics complaint against herself, prompting the panel to begin its own probe. "GOVERNOR PALIN CALLS FOR FORMAL REVIEW OF REPLACEMENT OF COMMISSIONER MONEGAN," headlined the Sept. 2 press statement released by her lawyer's office announcing the move. "I. . . look forward to the Personnel Board's investigation," Palin's statement read.

But on Monday, Palin shifted tactics again: Her attorney, Thomas V. Van Flein moved to stop that panel's efforts, saying the governor's lawyers had reviewed all the evidence and saw no grounds for any investigation. In his filing, Van Flein argued there was "no probable cause" for such an investigation.

McCain-Palin campaign spokesman Taylor Griffin said the move was not a flip-flop. "The filing on the 15th was the mechanism to provide evidence to the personnel board investigation, which they will now have to consider. The governor is cooperating fully with the unbiased, nonpartisan investigation by the personnel board," said Griffin. He said he expected they will gather evidence themselves.

Now, Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg has sent a letter asking legislators to withdraw the subpoenas they had approved for 10 state employees. In his letter, Colberg wrote that the employees would only testify unless the full state Senate or Legislature voted to compel their testimony.

Colberg launched his own internal administration probe before the legislature began its own -- and before Palin moved onto the Republican ticket. Critics reportedly criticized Colberg's probe saying it was an effort to tamper with witnesses before the state's investigator reached out to them.

Colberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Colberg owes his position to Palin, who handpicked him to the position in 2006 and appointed him successor to the lieutenant governor last year. Before his nomination as state attorney general, Colberg was unknown on the state level, having no experience in criminal or oil and gas law. He was a former member of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly who was considering a job as director of the Alaska State Fair Board at the time of his appointment, according to press reports at the time.



Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

CNN Documents Palin's Numerous Misstatements

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tc7BF_Fd7I

E-mail on Sarah Palin grabs spotlight

By Robert Farley, Times Staff Writer
In print: Saturday, September 6, 2008


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anne Kilkenny of Wasilla set out to tell out-of-town friends about Sarah Palin, but she has been quoted worldwide.

Campaign 2008

The first draft of Anne Kilkenny's e-mail went to her mother in California. Then she sent it out to a few dozen friends and family members, many "in the lower 48." That was Sunday.

[ERIK HILL | Anchorage Daily News]

Today, Kilkenny's words, the observations of a Wasilla, Alaska, homemaker who remembers Gov. Sarah Palin when she was mayor, have circled the globe. The letter is posted on a thousand Web sites. It's being cited in countless blogs and e-mails.

Kilkenny, 57, has been quoted on the front page of the New York Times. She has been interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, four British papers, L'Express from France and Der Spiegel from Germany, to name just a few. She has gone on TV with ABC and NBC and CNN, which spent four hours at her house yesterday. She has spoken with National Public Radio.

Kilkenny is now a significant voice in the national discussion of the presidential election, but she began with a modest goal. She merely wanted to answer out-of-town friends who asked: "You're from Wasilla, what's Sarah Palin like?"

Kilkenny was more than a casual observer. She says she attended virtually every City Council meeting in Palin's first year as Wasilla mayor in 1996. She is not a fan.

Kilkenny put her thoughts in a 6-page e-mail in which she praised Palin as smart, energetic and hardworking but also labeled her intolerant, ambitious and ruthless. Kilkenny was perhaps the first to spread the story, now being widely reported, of how Palin once tried to fire the town librarian after the librarian made it clear that she would oppose efforts to remove books from the local collection. Palin was the freshly elected mayor then, and although she didn't have any particular books in mind, she posed what she later called "rhetorical" questions about how objectionable books could best be removed.

Kilkenny was part of the insurgency that saved the librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, from dismissal by Palin, who had asked for Emmons' resignation, according to news accounts at the time. Palin relented after a public uprising.

Kilkenny, whose husband is retired, says Palin left the city in debt over pet projects. And she concludes "there has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she" who would be better suited to be vice president.

At the top of the e-mail, Kilkenny told friends they should feel free to distribute the e-mail to friends. But, she asked, "please do not post it on any websites as there are too many kooks out there."

Ha ha ha.

Within hours, she was getting e-mails referencing her "blog."

"What blog? Did I blog?" she wondered. She had never blogged before.

Google "Anne Kilkenny and Palin" and you'll get more than 17,000 page hits now. Her letter has become a popular chain e-mail. "Intellectually, you realize there is this pyramid effect," Kilkenny said. "But it's still mind-boggling."

A couple of factors conspired to propel Kilkenny's letter to Web fame. First, few Americans outside Alaska had ever heard of Palin before she was announced as Sen. John McCain's running mate. Since that day just a week ago, the public has had a voracious appetite for information about her.

Second, Kilkenny provides a critical voice. Palin is wildly popular in Alaska, and even more so in Wasilla, a town beaming with pride at having one of their own nominated to become vice president of the United States.

Kilkenny's critical voice has appealed to journalists, who have called by the dozens, eager for a perspective that differs from the hometown boosters. More than one reporter has called with just two questions: "Are you a real person? Did you write this?"

She's not sure how all this may be playing with her neighbors. She's been so inundated with calls and interviews, she hasn't had time to leave the house. Her mother worries about the attention. She suggested her daughter change her phone number and move in with her until the firestorm passes.

But so far the e-mail response has been overwhelmingly positive, Kilkenny said. Many have praised her courage. Others have written in defense of Palin. That's okay with Kilkenny too.

Kilkenny, a Democrat, said she does not share Palin's political point of view. But for those who are socially conservative, she said, her e-mail should be in some ways reassuring. "I want people to know," she said. "If they are social conservatives, they can trust that's who she is."

Overall, she's been pleased with the tone of responses.

"The American public is not a vicious, vindictive, ugly group of people," she concluded. "They care deeply about their country. They take their responsibility as citizens very seriously. My faith in the American people was really pumped up."

Another thing she has learned: The public is very distrustful of the media. "But they are very trustful of me," she said.

Which she finds a little alarming. Because, she said, they really don't know who she is. She could be anyone.

"I have known Sarah since 1992..."

Letter to the editor of the Anchorage Daily News:

"I have known Sarah since 1992..."
Posted by Alaska_Politics

Posted: September 4, 2008 - 12:11 pm

From David Hulen in Anchorage --

The e-mail below has been bouncing around the Internet since Sunday. It was written by Anne Kilkenny of Wasilla - stay-at-home mom, letter-to-the-editor writer and longtime watcher of Valley politics. She's a registered Democrat. She was one of the delegates to the Conference of Alaskans in Fairbanks back in 2004. Her bio from the conference is here.

She e-mailed this letter over the weekend to family and friends Outside, and (despite her request not to post it) it went viral on the Internet very quickly, showing up on blogs and Web sites all over. Since then, Kilkenny has been inundated with phone calls and e-mails. She said she stayed up until 3 a.m. last night answering e-mails, and found nearly 400 new ones waiting when she logged on this morning.

It's posted here with her permission.

***

Dear friends,

So many people have asked me about what I know about Sarah Palin in the last 2 days that I decided to write something up . . .

Basically, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton have only 2 things in common: their gender and their good looks. :)

You have my permission to forward this to your friends/email contacts with my name and email address attached, but please do not post it on any websites, as there are too many kooks out there . . .

Thanks,
Anne

ABOUT SARAH PALIN

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child's favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she's like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and won't vote for her can't quit smiling when talking about her because she is a "babe".

It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months.

She is "pro-life". She recently gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby. There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby.

She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.

She is savvy. She doesn't take positions; she just "puts things out there" and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.

Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin's kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anything like that of native Alaskans.

Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters.

She's smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents.

During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a "fiscal conservative". During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren't enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn't even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later--to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once.

These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today's surplus, borrow for needs.

She's not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren't generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren't evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin's attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Sarah complained about the "old boy's club" when she first ran for Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of "old boys". Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal--loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the State's top cop (see below).

As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla's Police Chief because he "intimidated" her, she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska's top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it's pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn't fire her sister's ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than 2 dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal City Administrator; even people who didn't like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.

Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.

When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job which paid $122,400/yr, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this Commission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the "old boys' club" when she dramatically quit, exposing this man's ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the "bridge to nowhere" after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.

As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects--which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance--but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as "anti-pork".

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.

Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah's mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as "AGIA" that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum.

Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned "as a private citizen" against a state initiative that would have either a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the State's lawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior's decision to list polar bears as threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being President.

There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she.

However, there's a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.

CLAIM VS FACT
*"Hockey mom": true for a few years.

*"PTA mom": true years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since.

*"NRA supporter": absolutely true

*social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, BUT vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she did this because it was unconstitutional).

*pro-creationism: mixed. Supports it, BUT did nothing as Governor to promote it.

*"Pro-life": mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby BUT declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life legislation

*"Experienced": Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.

*political maverick: not at all

*gutsy: absolutely!

*open & transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.

*has a developed philosophy of public policy: no

*"a Greenie": no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.

*fiscal conservative: not by my definition!

*pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards.

*pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on residents

*pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla's history.

*pro-labor/pro-union. No. Just because her husband works union doesn't make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is pro-labor/pro-union.

WHY AM I WRITING THIS?

First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting programs in the schools. If you google my name (Anne Kilkenny + Alaska), you will find references to my participation in local government, education, and PTA/parent organizations.

Secondly, I've always operated in the belief that "Bad things happen when good people stay silent". Few people know as much as I do because few have gone to as many City Council meetings.

Third, I am just a housewife. I don't have a job she can bump me out of. I don't belong to any organization that she can hurt. But, I am no fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow in the future: that's life.

Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah's attempt at censorship.

Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say anything because they were somehow vulnerable.

CAVEATS
I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in spending & taxation 2 years ago (when Palin was running for Governor) from information supplied to me by the Finance Director of the City of Wasilla, and I can't recall exactly what I adjusted for: did I adjust for inflation? for population increases? Right now, it is impossible for a private person to get any info out of City Hall--they are swamped. So I can't verify my numbers.

You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for the population of Wasilla, ranging from my "about 5,000", up to 9,000. The day Palin's selection was announced a city official told me that the current population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was 5,460. I have used about 5,000 because Palin was Mayor from 1996 to 2002, and the city was growing rapidly in the mid-90's.

Anne Kilkenny
August 31, 2008

An Alaskan Comments

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/09/03/as-palin-gets-picked-over-some-eyes-turn-to-culvahouse/

"She has consistently supported drilling in ANWR, use of coal-burning power plants (as I write this, a new coal plant is being built in her home town of Wasilla), strip mining, and almost anything else that will unnecessarily exploit the diminishing resources of Alaska and destroy its environment."

As an Alaskan, I am writing to give all of you some information on
Sarah Palin, Senator McCain’s choice for VP. As an Alaska voter, I
know more than most of you about her and, frankly, I am horrified that
he picked her.

The most accurate description of her is red neck. Her husband works in
the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay and races snow mobiles. She is a life
time member of the NRA and has worked tirelessly to allow
indiscriminate hunting of wildlife in Alaska, particularly wolves and
bears. She has spent millions of Alaska state dollars on aerial
hunting of these predators from helicopters and airplanes, dollars
that should have been spent, for example, on Alaska’s failing school
system.We have the lowest rate of high school graduation in the
country. Not all of you may think aerial predator hunting is so bad,
but how anyone (other than Alaska wolf-haters, of which there are
many, most without teeth), could think this use of funds is
appropriate is beyond me. If you want to know more about the aerial
hunting travesty, let me know and I will send some links to
informative web sites.

She has been a strong supporter of increased use of fossil fuels, yet
the McCain campaign has the nerve to say she has “green” policies. The
only thing green about Sarah Palin is her lack of experience. She has
consistently supported drilling in ANWR, use of coal-burning power
plants (as I write this, a new coal plant is being built in her home
town of Wasilla), strip mining, and almost anything else that will
unnecessarily exploit the diminishing resources of Alaska and destroy
its environment.

Prior to her one year as governor of Alaska, she was mayor of Wasilla,
a small red neck town outside Anchorage.The average maximum education
level of parents of junior high school kids in Wasilla is 10th grade.
Unfortunately, I have to go to Wasilla every week to get groceries and
other supplies, so I have continual contact with the people who put
Palin in office in the first place. I know what I’m talking about.
These people don’t have a concept of the world around them or of the
serious issues facing the US. Furthermore, they don’t care. So long as
they can go out and hunt their moose every fall, kill wolves and bears
and drive their snow mobiles and ATVs through every corner of the
wilderness, they’re happy. I wish I were exaggerating.

Sarah Palin is currently involved in a political corruption scandal.
She fired an individual in law enforcement here because she didn’t
like how he treated one of her relatives during a divorce. The man’s
performance and ability weren’t considered; it was a totally personal
firing and is currently under investigation. While the issue isn’t
close to the scandal of Ted Steven’s corruption, it shows that Palin
isn’t “squeaky clean” and causes me to think there may be more issues
that could come to light. Clearly McCain doesn’t care.

When you line Palin up with Biden, the comparison would be laughable
if it weren’t so serious. Sarah Palin knows nothing of economics
(admittedly a weak area for McCain), or of international affairs,
knows nothing of national government, Social Security, unemployment,
health care systems - you name it. The idea of her meeting with heads
of foreign governments around the world truly frightens me.

In an increasingly dangerous world, with the economy in shambles in
the US, Sarah Palin is uniquely UNqualified to be vice president. John
McCain is not a young man. Should something happen to him such that
the vice president had to step in, it would destroy our country and
possibly the world to have someone as inexperienced and inappropriate
as Sarah Palin. The choice of Palin is a cheap shot by McCain to try
to get Hillary supporters to vote for him. when McCain introduced her
today, Palin had the nerve to compare herself with Hillary and
Geraldine Ferraro. Sarah Palin, you are no Hillary Clinton.

To those of you who, like me, supported Hillary and were upset that she
did not get the nomination, please don’t think that Sarah Palin is a
worthy substitute. If you supported Hillary, regardless of what you
think the media and the democratic party may have done to undermine
her campaign, the person to support now is Obama, not Sarah Palin. To
those of you who are independent or undecided, don’t let the choice of
Palin sway you in favor of McCain. Choosing her shows how unqualified
McCain is to be president. To those of you who are conservative, I
guess you have no choice for president. But please try to see how the
poor choice of Palin tells us a great deal about McCain’s judgment.
While the political posturing inherent in the choice of Palin is
obvious, the more serious issue is the fact that the VP is, literally,
a heartbeat away from the presidency. Sarah Palin is totally and
unequivocally unqualified to be vice president, let alone president.
I know this is a lengthy and emotional email, but the stakes are high.
I thought it might help for all of you, regardless of political
affiliation, to know something about Palin from someone who has to
live with her administration in Alaska on a daily basis.

Comment by Harmon Bring - September 3, 2008 at 2:47 pm

State Probing Palin's Troopergate

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/03/cbsnews_investigates/main4413750.shtml

State Probing Palin's Troopergate

WASILLA, Alaska, Sept. 3, 2008
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(CBS) CBS News Investigative Producer Laura Strickler and Intern Kim Lengle wrote this story for CBSNews.com.

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Alaskans refer to it as “troopergate” but the McCain campaign is convinced the investigation into Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s attempts to fire her ex-brother-in-law, state Trooper Mike Wooten, will show no wrongdoing. Palin allegedly demanded that Wooten be fired from his job while Wooten was in the midst of a bitter divorce with her sister. The results of the investigation will be released a few days before the November election.

The focus of the investigation will surround whether Palin abused her power as governor by pressuring Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan, to fire Wooten. After Monegan declined to fire Wooten, Palin asked him to step down. Investigators will try and figure out if the two incidents are related, Palin says they are not.

A senior official from the McCain campaign close to the vetting process says they were "convinced there was no impropriety" after thoroughly researching the firing. The source also said they "spent a lot of time" looking into it.

John Cyr runs the Public Safety Employees Association that represents Wooten. Cyr’s organization is planning to file a new round of ethics complaints against the Palin administration related to the fring of Monegan. He says the national spotlight on the four-year-old issue is quite a change, "I don’t have a strategy, I am the executive of a little union at the fringe of the earth," Cyr told CBS News.

And Cyr notes that according to his records, Wooten has not had a formal complaint filed against him in his eight years as a trooper with the exception of the raft of complaints from the Palin family. He says his office handles about 40 serious trooper complaints each year.

According to The Associated Press, the Palin family accused Wooten of drinking a beer while in his patrol car, illegal hunting and taser-ing his 11-year-old stepson. They also claimed Wooten threatened to kill Sarah Palin's father.

“He is 6 foot 5 and goes 285 - which is not bad if you are an Alaska state trooper, but it doesn’t make you exactly sympathetic in the eyes of the public,” Cyr told CBS News.

But while Wooten has support of the union, one Alaska trooper who did not want to be named tells CBS News in his opinion the accusations against Wooten reflect negatively on all troopers, "Wooten had been making extremely poor decisions and I would never want to work with the guy.”

Wooten is currently on the job as a trooper in the Mat-Su Valley region of Alaska which includes the town of Wasilla, Palin's hometown. The region he patrols is the size of the state of West Virginia, Cyr says.


By Laura Strickler
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

With Palin Revelations, McCain's Gamble Is Clearer

WEDNESDAY 3 SEPTEMBER 2008

http://www.truthout.org/article/with-palin-revelations-mccains-gamble-is-clearer
Opinion

With Palin Revelations, McCain's Gamble Is Clearer
Tuesday 02 September 2008

»
by: Peter Wallsten, The Los Angeles Times

The original article, found at the LA Times, featured the picture herein. The LA Times later revised the article to show a different, less unhappy picture, of Bristol Palin.


Governor Sarah Palin and Senator John McCain. (Photo: Reuters)
Details emerge one after another, and the campaign can't be sure what will capture and hold public interest.


St. Paul - Only four days ago, the nation's voters were asked to accept John McCain's assurances that Sarah Palin, known to only a tiny portion of the public and barely to McCain himself, was fully suited to be vice president.

But now the magnitude of McCain's gamble is becoming clear.

For every piece of the portrait of Palin that the McCain campaign sketches, a far more complicated picture of the Alaska governor is drawn.

The youthful mother of five whose placement on the ticket was meant to reinforce traditional values has now revealed that her unmarried teenage daughter is pregnant - a piece of information that the family and the campaign said they had hoped to keep private.

The woman introduced to America as a reform-minded Washington outsider who opposed the infamous "bridge to nowhere" - the symbol of McCain's hatred of wasteful spending - originally supported its construction. The governor who in her introductory speech decried the practice of budgetary "earmarks" sought, as the state's chief executive and as mayor of Wasilla, hundreds of millions of dollars in such federal funding for local projects.

Moreover, Palin has now retained a lawyer to represent her in a controversy the McCain campaign said it had fully researched - Palin's role in dismissing a state police official who had refused to fire a trooper who divorced Palin's sister.

On Monday, the McCain campaign dispatched lawyers to Alaska in a move described as an attempt to manage a growing crowd of journalists who have traveled there to inspect Palin's background. But the move raises the impression that the McCain campaign didn't know everything about his No. 2 and is now racing to learn what it can while trying to avoid tough questions about the Arizona senator's decision-making process.

"I really hope McCain did his homework," said David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush. "I cannot stifle a growing sense of unease that he didn't."

A former McCain advisor, Mike Murphy, said Monday that it remained an open question whether "the running mate in a good or bad way becomes a window into the skills of the nominee."

Most dangerous of all, McCain's team does not seem to know what new development, if any, might grab the public's attention.

One Republican strategist with close ties to the campaign described the candidate's closest supporters as "keeping their fingers crossed" in hopes that additional information does not force McCain to revisit the decision. According to this Republican, who would discuss internal campaign strategizing only on condition of anonymity, the McCain team used little more than a Google Internet search as part of a rushed effort to review Palin's potential pitfalls. Just over a week ago, Palin was not on McCain's short list of potential running mates, the Republican said.

The unease comes as Palin, 44, prepares for her next big public test: a prime-time, nationally televised speech Wednesday at the Republican National Convention.

She will no doubt receive an enthusiastic welcome from delegates and party activists who continued Monday to express unqualified excitement about Palin's presence on the ticket.

As a staunch opponent of abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, Palin has invigorated religious conservatives and other members of the GOP base who have been cool to McCain's candidacy and reluctant to work for the campaign with the same verve that fueled President Bush's 2004 reelection.

And the speech by Palin is shaping up as a dramatic moment in a convention that has been muted by Hurricane Gustav.

Although grass-roots Republicans remain protective of Palin, the campaign has clearly moved from celebratory mode into a full defensive posture.

Critics continue to question why McCain, after months of assailing Democratic nominee Barack Obama as lacking foreign policy experience, would tap a running mate who has been governor for less than two years and before that was mayor of Wasilla, population 7,000.

McCain's wife, Cindy, told an interviewer over the weekend that Alaska's proximity to Russia bolstered Palin's credentials, and Palin has pointed to her leadership of the Alaska National Guard and her Army son's imminent service in Iraq as evidence of expertise.

The campaign has little room for error. A new CBS News poll found that 66% of registered voters were undecided about Palin. And although enthusiastic support from the GOP base is important, strategists know that McCain cannot win without appealing to moderate voters as well - a bloc that the campaign had hoped Palin's middle-class roots would help win over.

"She remains very popular in the convention hall," said Murphy, "but it's the rest of the country that matters."

Palin could face questions in on other facets of her past, such as her 1990s membership in the Alaskan Independence Party, a group that has pushed for more than 30 years to give Alaskans a vote on whether to secede from the union.

Another potentially troublesome story line is Palin's past support for federally funded projects that she now claims to have opposed - a key piece of her reformist image to which McCain was most attracted.

As mayor of Wasilla, Palin made regular trips to Washington seeking federal aid. The city received $26.9 million in earmarks during her tenure from fiscal year 2000 to 2003, according to the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense, which tracks pork barrel spending.

As The Times reported Monday, Palin has requested 31 earmarks in next year's federal budget worth about $197 million. On Friday, she portrayed herself as a champion of curbing the "abuses" of earmark spending.

For McCain, the Friday surprise of introducing Palin resulted in a weekend of buzz and anticipation. But if additional surprises surface about Palin, McCain could face stark choices.

Might he be forced to anger conservatives by dumping Palin? Could he risk an admission of poor judgment, tainting what he has long claimed as a key strength?

And if a new stumbling block could have been discovered by a more careful search, critics will no doubt question a well-known trait of McCain's: that he sometimes makes decisions on emotion instead of careful deliberation.

"John McCain is decisive and listens mainly to John McCain," said David Keene, head of the American Conservative Union.

"That is either comforting or discomforting, depending on whether you're trying to get him to do what you want."

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Times staff writers Doyle McManus, Tom Hamburger, James Rainey and Maeve Reston contributed to this report.