Charles Manson-Obama linked at Republican rally

Setting:


Duluth Sportsmen for Coleman political rally

Cast of characters:

Norm Coleman, U.S. Senator from Minnesota

Todd Palin, husband of Sarah Palin, Republican candidate for Vice President

Props:

Hand-lettered sign reading "Charles Manson Was a Community Organizer"

I thought at first that the First Dude was holding this sign.  But it was a member of the audience. 

You say, well it wasn't Todd.  I say I am sorry for making that mistake. 

However, entry to Republican events is TIGHTLY CONTROLLED to a degree that surprises most people.  That sign could not have made it to the front of the rally unless those in power wanted it there. 

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Of course, John McCain shouldn't be held responsible for the outrageous behavior of his supporters-- hey, wait a minute...

Barbies for War!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/opinion/17dowd.html?em

September 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
‘Barbies for War!’
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

Carly Fiorina, the woman John McCain sent out to defend Sarah Palin and rip anyone who calls her a tabula rasa on foreign policy and the economy, admitted Tuesday that Palin was not capable of running Hewlett-Packard.

That’s pretty damning coming from Fiorina, who also was not capable of running Hewlett-Packard.

Carly helpfully added that McCain (not to mention Obama and Biden) couldn’t run a major corporation. He couldn’t get his immigration bill passed either, but now he’s promising to eliminate centuries of greed on Wall Street.

The Wall Street Journal reported that McCain was thinking about taking Palin to the U.N. General Assembly next week so she can shake hands with some heads of state. You can’t contract foreign policy experience like a rhinovirus. To paraphrase the sniffly Adelaide in “Guys and Dolls,” a poy-son could develop a cold war.

The latest news from Alaska is that the governor keeps a tanning bed in the Juneau mansion. As The Los Angeles Times pointed out, when Palin declared May 2007 Skin Cancer Awareness Month in Alaska, the press release explained that skin cancer was caused by “the sun and from tanning beds.”

I sautéed myself in Sarahville last week.

I wandered through the Wal-Mart, which seemed almost as large as Wasilla, a town that is a soulless strip mall without sidewalks set beside a soulful mountain and lake.

Wal-Mart has all the doodads that Sarah must need in her career as a sportsman — Remingtons and “torture tested” riflescopes, game bags for caribou, machines that imitate rabbits and young deer and coyotes to draw your quarry in so you can shoot it, and machines to squish cows into beef jerky.

I talked to a Wal-Mart mom, Betty Necas, 39, wearing sweatpants and tattoos on her wrists.

She said she’s never voted, and was a teenage mom “like Bristol.” She likes Sarah because she’s “down home” but said Obama “gives me the creeps. Nothing to do with the fact that he’s black. He just seems snotty, and he looks weaselly.”

Ten Obama supporters in Wasilla braved taunts and drizzle to stand on a corner between McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. They complained that Sarah runs government like a vengeful fiefdom and held up signs. A guy with a bullhorn yelled out of a passing red car: “Go back to the city, you liberal Communists!”

At gatherings in The Last Frontier, pastors pray for reporters, drilling evokes cheers and Todd Palin is hailed as a guy who likes to burn fossil fuels.

I had many “Sarahs,” as her favorite skinny white mocha is now called, at the Mocha Moose. “I’ve seen her at 4 a.m. with no makeup,” said manager Karena Forster, “and she’s just as beautiful.”

I stopped by Sarah’s old Pentecostal church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, and perused some books: “The Bait of Satan,” “Deliverance from PMS,” and “Kissed the Girls and Made them Cry: Why Women Lose When They Give In.” (Author Lisa Bevere advises: “Run to the arms of your prince and enter your dream.”)

In Anchorage Saturday, I went by a conference conducted by James Dobson’s Focus on the Family and supported by Sarah’s current church, the Wasilla Bible Church, about how to help gays and lesbians “journey out” of same-sex attraction.

(As The Times reported recently, in 1995, Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues she had seen “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelf of the library and did not approve. The Wasilla Assembly of God tried to ban “Pastor, I Am Gay” by Howard Bess, a liberal Christian preacher in nearby Palmer.)

Anne Heche’s mother, Nancy, talked about her distress when her daughter told her she was involved with Ellen. Jeff Johnston told me he had “a struggle” with homosexuality “for a season,” but is now “happily married with three boys.” (Books for sale there included “Mommy, Why Are They Holding Hands?” and “You Don’t Have to Be Gay.”)

I covered a boisterous women against Palin rally in Anchorage, where women toted placards such as “Fess up about troopergate,” “Keep your vows off my body,” “Barbies for war!” “Sarah, please don’t put me on your enemies list,” and “McCain and Palin = McPain.”

A local conservative radio personality, Eddie Burke, who had lambasted the organizers as “a bunch of socialist, baby-killing maggots,” was on hand with a sign reading “Alaska is not Frisco.”

“We are one Supreme Court justice away from overturning Roe v. Wade,” he excitedly told me.

R. D. Levno, a retired school principal, flew in from Fairbanks. “She’s a child, inexperienced and simplistic,” she said of Sarah. “It’s taking us back to junior high school. She’s one of the popular girls, but one of the mean girls. She is seductive, but she is invented.”

YouTube censors viral video documentary on Palin's churches

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/9/13/1538/09770

YouTube censors viral video documentary on Palin's churches
By Bruce Wilson Sat Sep 13, 2008 at 03:03:08 PM EST
Sarah Palin was baptized at Wasilla Assembly of God and attended the church for over two and a half decades, and she has been publicly blessed by a number of pastors and religious leaders employed by and associated with that church.

Last Sunday our research team released a video, a ten-minute mini-documentary, focusing on the Wasilla Assemblies of God and the video seemed on the verge of a massive "viral" breakthrough when YouTube pulled it down, citing "inappropriate content".

At the point the video was censored by YouTube it had been viewed by almost 160,000 people. The short of it is that YouTube has censored a video documentary that appeared to be close to having an effect on a hard fought and contentious American presidential election.

Sarah Palin a Mortal Threat, Not a Distraction

. Sarah Palin is a mortal threat to the possibility of Obama winning, not a distraction. The reason is simple: if she can add a couple of points to McCain from defecting white women and the newly-energized right wing religious base without losing more independent votes, McCain pulls ahead in some key states.

The dangerous tendency of the Obama campaign and its Democratic surrogates is to not fight back, but treat Palin as a "distraction" from McCain, the economy, the issues they feel familiar with, etc.

If they assume that the Palin bubble will return to earth naturally, or that the mainstream media and Saturday Night Live will do the job for them, the Obama campaign is mistaken.

There needs to be a controlled message that treats Palin as an extension of McCain, not a bobble-head to be laughed at.

The message has to cut off independent and women's support for McCain-Palin and, if possible, divide some of the right-wingers. Not an easy task.

Perhaps the point is that we've already suffered eight years under a president Bush and vice-president Cheney who were, in Palin's words, so "wired in a way to be committed to the mission" that they could neither blink nor think. She and McCain, like Bush and Iraq, are faith-based missions that will crash on us.

An excellent editorial in Sunday's NY Times makes the connection from McCain to Palin in terms that will reach independent and moderate voters. It should be quoted and widely circulated. The choice of an unqualified candidate to be a heartbeat from the presidency of a 72 year old man with four melanomas "was shockingly irresponsible," the Times said.

I think we can see in McCain-Palin a kind of faith-based extremism that reminds us of Bush and, even more, the persona of Gen. Custer.

We have seen where righteous faith-based politics goes in the Supreme Court decisions, corruption scandals, the official lies, and the unnecessary wars of the past eight years, all carried out in the name of what both McCain and Palin now call "God's plan."


2. The McCain-Palin foreign policy is a mortal threat to America from the same neoconservatives who brought us Iraq wrapped in lies. Her neocon speechwriters had the audacity to repeat the 2002 claim that Iraq was behind 9/11. She told her son's Iraq-bound troops that "you'll be there to defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the deaths of thousands of Americans." [NYT, 9/14] This was the original lie of Bush's war.

We cannot give the Republicans an advantage with their false clams of "victory in sight." We have to emphasize the three-trillion dollar cost of the war, and we have to connect the war to the price of oil. Democratic consultants should stop compartmentalizing the economy like it was 1992 all over again.

This is apparently not the advice of the biggest Democratic heavyweights like Bill Clinton and James Carville who tend to revert to "it's the economy, stupid." But it's not 1992. It's the 9/11 era, the Iraq War era, the War on Terrorism era -- and also the middle of the worse economic and energy crisis in memory. The issues are tied together. Not enough people will vote on "lunch bucket" issues if they think McCain-Palin will protect them from terrorists, but they might vote against McCain-Palin if they think they are being lied to again.

In Office, Palin Hired Friends and Hit Critics

In Office, Palin Hired Friends and Hit Critics

By JO BECKER, PETER S. GOODMAN AND MICHAEL POWELL

WASILLA, Alaska — 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 one of her qualifications 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!”Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.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.Still, Ms. Palin has many supporters. As a two-term mayor she paved roads and built an ice rink, and as governor she has pushed through higher taxes on the oil companies that dominate one-third of the state’s economy. She stirs deep emotions. In Wasilla, many residents display unflagging affection, cheering “our Sarah” and hissing at her critics.“She is bright and has unfailing political instincts,” said Steve Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska. “She taps very directly into anxieties about the economic future.” “But,” he added, “her governing style raises a lot of hard questions.”Ms. Palin declined to grant an interview for this article. The McCain-Palin campaign responded to some questions on her behalf and that of her husband, while referring others to the governor’s spokespeople, who did not respond.Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell said Ms. Palin had conducted an accessible and effective administration in the public’s interest. “Everything she does is for the ordinary working people of Alaska,” Mr. Parnell said.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. 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. Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that it would cost $468,784 to process his request.When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages — through a federal records request — he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show.“Their secrecy is off the charts,” Mr. Steiner said. State legislators are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, charges that she denies. But interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.Last summer State Representative John Harris, the Republican speaker of the House, picked up his phone and heard Mr. Palin’s voice. The governor’s husband sounded edgy. He said he was unhappy that Mr. Harris had hired John Bitney as his chief of staff, the speaker recalled. Mr. Bitney was a high school classmate of the Palins and had worked for Ms. Palin. But she fired Mr. Bitney after learning that he had fallen in love with another longtime friend. “I understood from the call that Todd wasn’t happy with me hiring John and he’d like to see him not there,” Mr. Harris said. “The Palin family gets upset at personal issues,” he added. “And at our level, they want to strike back.”Hometown MayorLaura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin’s first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions. “I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,’ ” Ms. Chase recalled. “She replied, ‘I want to be president.’ ”Ms. Palin grew up in Wasilla, an old fur trader’s outpost and now a fast-growing exurb of Anchorage. The town sits in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, edged by jagged mountains and birch forests. In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration took farmers from the Dust Bowl area and resettled them here; their Democratic allegiances defined the valley for half a century. In the past three decades, socially conservative Oklahomans and Texans have flocked north to the oil fields of Alaska. They filled evangelical churches around Wasilla and revived the Republican Party. Many of these working-class residents formed the electoral backbone for Ms. Palin, who ran for mayor on a platform of gun rights, opposition to abortion and the ouster of the “complacent” old guard. After winning the mayoral election in 1996, Ms. Palin presided over a city rapidly outgrowing itself. Septic tanks had begun to pollute lakes, and residential lots were carved willy-nilly out of the woods. She passed road and sewer bonds, cut property taxes but raised the sales tax. And, her supporters say, she cleaned out the municipal closet, firing veteran officials to make way for her own team. “She had an agenda for change and for doing things differently,” said Judy Patrick, a City Council member at the time. But careers were turned upside down. The mayor quickly fired the town’s museum director, John Cooper. Later, she sent an aide to the museum to talk to the three remaining employees. “He told us they only wanted two,” recalled Esther West, one of the three, “and we had to pick who was going to be laid off.” The three quit as one.Ms. Palin cited budget difficulties for the museum cuts. Mr. Cooper thought differently, saying the museum had become a microcosm of class and cultural conflicts in town. “It represented that the town was becoming more progressive, and they didn’t want that,” he said. Days later, Mr. Cooper recalled, a vocal conservative, Steve Stoll, sidled up to him. Mr. Stoll had supported Ms. Palin and had a long-running feud with Mr. Cooper. “He said: ‘Gotcha, Cooper,’ ” Mr. Cooper said.Mr. Stoll did not recall that conversation, although he said he supported Ms. Palin’s campaign and was pleased when she fired Mr. Cooper.In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.Your attorney, Mr. Showers told Ms. Palin, is costing me lots of money. “She told me she’d like to see him fired,” Mr. Showers recalled. “But she couldn’t do it herself because the City Council hires the city attorney.” Ms. Palin told him to write the council members to complain. Meanwhile, Ms. Palin pushed the issue from the inside. “She started the ball rolling,” said Ms. Patrick, who also favored the firing. Mr. Deuser was soon replaced by Ken Jacobus — then the State Republican Party’s general counsel. “Professionals were either forced out or fired,” Mr. Deuser said.Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayor’s use — employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.“People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship. But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.“Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”“I’m still proud of Sarah,” she added, “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”Reform CrucibleRestless ambition defined Ms. Palin in the early years of this decade. She raised money for Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from the state; finished second in the 2002 Republican primary for lieutenant governor; and sought to fill the seat of Senator Frank H. Murkowski when he ran for governor.Mr. Murkowski appointed his daughter to the seat, but as a consolation prize, he gave Ms. Palin the $125,000-a-year chairmanship of a state commission overseeing oil and gas drilling.Ms. Palin discovered that the state Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, a commission member, was conducting party business on state time and favoring regulated companies. When Mr. Murkowski failed to act on her complaints, she quit and went public.The Republican establishment shunned her. But her break with the gentlemen’s club of oil producers and political power catapulted her into the public eye. “She was honest and forthright,” said Jay Kerttula, a former Democratic state senator from Palmer.Ms. Palin entered the 2006 primary for governor as a formidable candidate. In the middle of the primary, a conservative columnist in the state, Paul Jenkins, unearthed e-mail messages showing that Ms. Palin had conducted campaign business from the mayor’s office. Ms. Palin handled the crisis with a street fighter’s guile. “I told her it looks like she did the same thing that Randy Ruedrich did,” Mr. Jenkins recalled. “And she said, ‘Yeah, what I did was wrong.’ ”Mr. Jenkins hung up and decided to forgo writing about it. His phone rang soon after.Mr. Jenkins said a reporter from Fairbanks, reading from a Palin news release, demanded to know why he was “smearing” her. “Now I look at her and think: ‘Man, you’re slick,’ ” he said.Ms. Palin won the primary, and in the general election she faced Tony Knowles, the former two-term Democratic governor, and Andrew Halcro, an independent. Not deeply versed in policy, Ms. Palin skipped some candidate forums; at others, she flipped through hand-written, color-coded index cards strategically placed behind her nameplate. Before one forum, Mr. Halcro said he saw aides shovel reports at Ms. Palin as she crammed. Her showman’s instincts rarely failed. She put the pile of reports on the lectern. Asked what she would do about health care policy, she patted the stack and said she would find an answer in the pile of solutions.“She was fresh, and she was tomorrow,” said Michael Carey, a former editorial page editor for The Anchorage Daily News. “She just floated along like Mary Poppins.” GovernmentHalf a century after Alaska became a state, Ms. Palin was inaugurated as governor in Fairbanks and took up the reformer’s sword. As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church. Mr. Parnell, the lieutenant governor, praised Ms. Palin’s appointments. “The people she hires are competent, qualified, top-notch people,” he said.Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.“I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?’ ” said a family friend, Kathy Wells. “He said, ‘No, but I think I’ll get some help.’ ” The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.To her supporters — and with an 80 percent approval rating, she has plenty — Ms. Palin has lifted Alaska out of a mire of corruption. She gained the passage of a bill that tightens the rules covering lobbyists. And she rewrote the tax code to capture a greater share of oil and gas sale proceeds.“Does anybody doubt that she’s a tough negotiator?” said State Representative Carl Gatto, Republican of Palmer. Yet recent controversy has marred Ms. Palin’s reform credentials. In addition to the trooper investigation, lawmakers in April accused her of improperly culling thousands of e-mail addresses from a state database for a mass mailing to rally support for a policy initiative. While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a “personal device” like a Blackberry “would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.” The governor’s office did not respond to questions on the topic.Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palin’s state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: “Frank, this is not the governor’s personal account.”Mr. Bailey responded: “Whoops~!”Mr. Bailey, a former mid-level manager at Alaska Airlines who worked on Ms. Palin’s campaign, has been placed on paid leave; he has emerged as a central figure in the trooper investigation. Another confidante of Ms. Palin’s is Ms. Frye, 27. She worked as a receptionist for State Senator Lyda Green before she joined Ms. Palin’s campaign for governor. Now Ms. Frye earns $68,664 as a special assistant to the governor. Her frequent interactions with Ms. Palin’s children have prompted some lawmakers to refer to her as “the babysitter,” a title that Ms. Frye disavows.Like Mr. Bailey, she is an effusive cheerleader for her boss.“YOU ARE SO AWESOME!” Ms. Frye typed in an e-mail message to Ms. Palin in March.Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau, records show. During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins. Many politicians say they typically learn of her initiatives — and vetoes — from news releases. Mayors across the state, from the larger cities to tiny municipalities along the southeastern fiords, are even more frustrated. Often, their letters go unanswered and their pleas ignored, records and interviews show. Last summer, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, a Democrat, pressed Ms. Palin to meet with him because the state had failed to deliver money needed to operate city traffic lights. At one point, records show, state officials told him to just turn off a dozen of them. Ms. Palin agreed to meet with Mr. Begich when he threatened to go public with his anger, according to city officials.At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governor’s remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally.The administration’ s e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath.Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of Ms. Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, he found himself branded a “hater.” It is part of a pattern, Mr. Fagan said, in which Ms. Palin characterizes critics as “bad people who are anti-Alaska.” As Ms. Palin’s star ascends, the McCain campaign, as often happens in national races, is controlling the words of those who know her well. Her mother-in-law, Faye Palin, has been asked not to speak to reporters, and aides sit in on interviews with old friends. At a recent lunch gathering, an official with the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce asked its members to refer all calls from reporters to the governor’s office. Diane Woodruff, a city councilwoman, shook her head.“I was thinking, I don’t remember giving up my First Amendment rights,” Ms. Woodruff said. “Just because you’re not going gaga over Sarah doesn’t mean you can’t speak your mind.”

A Gidget for God's "Truth"

http://www.truthout.org/article/sarah-palin-a-gidget-gods-truth

SATURDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2008


Truthout Original

Sarah Palin: A Gidget for God's Truth
Tuesday 09 September 2008

by: Steve Weissman, t r u t h o u t | Perspective (reader comments follow)

"The Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation," declared John McCain back in September 2007. With his vice-presidential pick of Governor Sarah Palin, he has found a winsome soul mate who is even more of a Christian nationalist, eager to use government to impose her religious views on the rest of us.

Palin's stance on abortion illustrates her approach. As she proudly declares, she sees the Bible as literally true, which leads her to believe that aborting a fetus is murder. That position contradicts our long history of common and statutory law. She then goes on to conclude that government should severely punish anyone who has an abortion or performs one, even in the case of rape or incest. She also opposes stem cell research.

Also see:
Steve Weissman |
America's Religious Right: Saints or Subversives? •

McCain hears God less extremely, but the Republican platform echoes Palin, and if she ever became president, she would feel completely justified in making her religious belief a litmus test for appointees to the Supreme Court.

Her attitude toward gays and lesbians is similar, though observers in both the gay press and corporate media have misrepresented the firmness of her convictions. The confusion stems from a legal suit that some same-sex couples filed in 1999, arguing that Alaska had no right to deny domestic partners of state employees the same health and pension benefits that the state gave to married spouses. The case made its way to Alaska's Supreme Court, which ruled in 2005 that the state could not discriminate against the domestic partners.

In the political firestorm that followed, the Alaska legislature passed a bill forbidding state officials to pay the benefits. Alaska's attorney general then declared the bill unconstitutional, and the newly inaugurated Governor Palin felt legally obliged to veto it. But, she loudly proclaimed her opposition to spousal benefits for domestic partners and signed a separate bill calling for a state referendum, which she said would lay the groundwork for overturning the state Supreme Court ruling.

She also declared her long-time opposition to same-sex marriage, a position she had displayed as early as 1998 when she enthusiastically backed a constitutional amendment to ban the practice in Alaska.

"I believe that honoring the family structure is that important," she told the Anchorage Daily News in 2006. She was "not out to judge anyone and has good friends who are gay." But, she explained, her opposition grew out of her strong religious views.

Palin's religious convictions, and her willingness to use the power of government to force them on others, has won strong backing from far-right groups, such as James Dobson's Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, and the Council for National Policy, the normally secretive network of right-wing preachers, political operatives, and fat cats who have been a major force in the Republican Party ever since they backed Ronald Reagan for president.

These overlapping groups view homosexual acts as "an abomination" and have led the fight against what Dr. Dobson calls "the radical Homosexual agenda." Focus on the Family will soon bring to Anchorage a conference on "curing homosexuality" through the power of prayer, an event that Palin's hometown church in Wasilla is actively promoting.

In the same vein, Palin has opposed extending hate crime laws to protect gays and lesbians, called for teaching creationism in public schools, and - as mayor of Wasilla - looked into banning books from the public library because they contained inappropriate language.

She described the building of a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in Alaska as "God's will," which she would work to carry out as governor.

She supports the presence of US troops in Iraq as a "task that is from God."

And she has told colleagues that Christ will return within her lifetime, which raises questions about what sort of Armageddon she has in mind.

However absurd one finds all this, Palin's religious convictions should normally remain her own private concern. But her eagerness to use public office to enforce and implement what she believes makes her beliefs a matter of enormous public importance.

If you don't believe me, just listen to the enormous support Palin is receiving from Dr. Dobson, "End Time" author Tim La Haye, and others on the Christian right. Dobson once swore he would never vote for John McCain. He now calls McCain's choice of Palin "outstanding" and is promising his enthusiastic support.

Sarah Palin is their gal, and if she is elected vice president, these warriors of God could find themselves only a heartbeat away from their long-held goal of turning America into an ultra-rightwing Christian nation.
»

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A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France.


Comments
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This piece contains
Sat, 09/13/2008 - 10:44 — QueerAlaskan (not verified)
This piece contains inaccurate information on the issue of same-sex domestic partner benefits in Alaska. See the articles posted to http://www.bentalaska.com/search/label/Sarah%20Palin for more accurate information on this history and Palin's involvement in it.
Let's see: Thou shalt not
Sat, 09/13/2008 - 00:38 — Anonymous (not verified)
Let's see: Thou shalt not kill... fetuses. Thou shall kill Muslims... and anyone else who gets in my way.
""She supports the presence
Fri, 09/12/2008 - 22:01 — Verbatim (not verified)
""She supports the presence of US troops in Iraq as a "task that is from God." "" It is particularly useless to presume that we may act as instruments of God or that we are implementing His will. To dare presume is to try to justify not the higher calling but the inconceivable--and the misdeeds some of us would rather attribute to God. For it is mostly when we act out what we believe to be God’s wrath that we fool ourselves into believing that we are implementing his will. Only very seldom do we act out His justice, kindness and patience, to really implement His will.
I am sick to death of the
Fri, 09/12/2008 - 13:50 — C.J.Gelfand (not verified)
I am sick to death of the constant insertion of religion into politics and government, to the point where I will start tearing out my hair if I hear one more person start proselytizing! Our constitution gives us the right to practice, or not practice religion, whatever the case. Our country was never meant to have a state religion, and religion must remain a private matter if we are to be a nation at peace with ourselves. Why isn't it enough for all you religionists to practice what you believe without hitting all the rest of us on the head constantly to make us live your way? What are you so insecure about? Stop the paranoia--people of different beliefs are not out to get you. All religions and philosophies (except those based on hatred) are at our disposal to help us lead a good life. There is not only one way to go. And try thinking for yourselves for a change. I know of no other way to encourage rampant fascism than to let others do your thinking for you without asking your own questions.
Because this column is about
Fri, 09/12/2008 - 10:43 — elizabeth (not verified)
Because this column is about the reactionary religion of a key political candidate, I am sharing comments below providing an alternative perspective regarding that religion. It is not my usual practice, but in this case, it is on topic and appropriate. My comments also come full circle as they are applied to my observations of the candidate. We progressive Christians like to think that we are actually attempting to live according to the Gospels. For example, even if the framers hadn't made the separation of church and state clear, Jesus mostly certainly did. It's also crucial that we take back the word "evangelical" from the fundamentalists, literalists and millienials. Paul charged all Jesus-followers to be evangelical (from the Greek, same root as "heaven" and "angel"). It means we live by the Gospels and use our lives as examples to share the Good News. This is relevant because it is so misunderstood and misused, now by a major candidate for VP (and the media just absorbs it as if she were a theologian). It is not our job to aggressively convert or judge people, unlike the message of the fundamentalists who have hijacked this basic concept and twisted it every way to Sunday, as Sarah Palin does. We also live by the Gospels (and the New Testament), not by the Hebrew Scriptures. The Hebrew Scriptures are in the Christian bible for context, not for instruction, but fundamentalists mistakenly give the Hebrew scriptures more weight than our own. Jesus gave us all the instruction needed for Christians, love God and love your neighbor as yourself. That is not the message I hear repeated by Sarah Palin, nor does she live a life of example according to the Gospels (at least not in public). Publicly, she appears to be a true believer in the worst possible ways. And this concerns me at least as much if not more than the secular concerns I noted in my first post, which was edited by someone other than me, leaving out these concerns, and also leaving other progressive Christians wondering where the progressives were among those commenting. Elizabeth Rose, O.C.P.
I live in Wyoming and attend
Fri, 09/12/2008 - 03:25 — The sHiZ NiCk!!!! MaSTer MMM!!!!! (not verified)
I live in Wyoming and attend a private charter school. Can't tell you the name of the school or the names of the people (I promised my G.F. that I wouldn't). I remember my high school's history teacher last year, he asked my freshmen class this question: What's more important, the Bible or the U.S. Constitution? A few timidly raised their hands up for the Constitution, but the majority quickly raised up their hands in support of the Bible. The teacher asked why they voted that way. One said: "Because Jesus is supreme over anything written by men and that why the Bible is more important because its words comes from God." Another student said, "Because I learned that if it wasn't for the Constitution, you may not have the freedom to believe in the Bible." That student was beaten up after school was out. Some guys in the football team beat him up so bad he was put into the hospital, and he was in traction and partial body casts for 14 months. He transferred to another school. The history teacher that taught the course, he was fired, cut. Seems that a lot of religious parents complained to the local school board about what he was teaching. The science teacher for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th periods was fired too, a week later. I guess they didn't like him teaching the concept of evolution in biology, or geology, as to the age of the Earth. They said our school's better off, now that science, history and biology are now taught by these new Christian teachers that mince no words about convincing the class to vote Republican when they enter into their senior year. Now, almost all the students in our school go to school with a small Bible in our pockets. I don't carry a Bible in my back pocket. FIGHT THE POWER, FIGHT THE CORPORATE BEYOTCHES OF AMERICA, YEEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Many Religious Right
Fri, 09/12/2008 - 02:57 — Anonymous; I live in a neighborhood full of Evangelists (not verified)
Many Religious Right activists have attempted to rewrite history by asserting that the United States government derived from Christian foundations, that our Founding Fathers originally aimed for a Christian nation. This idea simply does not hold to the historical evidence. Of course many Americans did practice Christianity, but so also did many believe in deistic philosophy. Indeed, most of our influential Founding Fathers, although they respected the rights of other religionists, held to deism and Freemasonry tenets rather than to Christianity. 1799, Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11: "...the United States is in no way a Christian nation..." Unanimously by both chambers of Congress and signed by John Adams, the "father" of the Declaration of Independence. The United States Constitution serves as the law of the land for America and indicates the intent of our Founding Fathers. The Constitution forms a secular document, and nowhere does it appeal to God, Christianity, Jesus, or any supreme being. (For those who think the date of the Constitution contradicts the last sentence, see note 1 at the end.) The U.S. government derives from people (not God), as it clearly states in the preamble: "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union...." The omission of God in the Constitution did not come out of forgetfulness, but rather out of the Founding Fathers purposeful intentions to keep government separate from religion. From the 1rst Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: “Congress shall make NO law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” [capital letters, mine] Moreover, the mentioning of God in the Declaration does not describe the personal God of Christianity. Thomas Jefferson who held deist beliefs, wrote the majority of the Declaration. The Declaration describes "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." This nature's view of God agrees with deist philosophy and might even appeal to those of pantheistical beliefs, but any attempt to use the Declaration as a support for Christianity will fail for this reason alone. Note 1: The end of the Constitution records the year of its ratification, "the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven." Although, indeed, it uses the word "Lord", it does not refer to Jesus but rather to the dating method. Incredibly, some Christians attempt to use this as justification for a Christian derived Constitution. The term simply conveys a written English form of the Latin, Anno Domini (AD), which means the year of our Lord (no, it does not mean After Death). This scripted form served as a common way of dating in the 1700s. The Constitution also uses many pagan words such as January (from the two-headed Roman god, Janus), and Sunday (from the word Sunne, which refers to the Saxon Sun god). Can you imagine the ludicrous position of someone trying to argue for the justification of a pagan god based Constitution? The same goes to any Christian who attempts to use a dating convention as an argument against the Constitution's secular nature, and can only paint himself as naive, or worse, as dishonest and deceiving. (For a satire on using calendar words to support pagan Gods, see The United States: A Country founded on paganism. http://www.nobeliefs.com/pagan.htm
I must say it is refreshing
Fri, 09/12/2008 - 00:15 — Anonymous (not verified)
I must say it is refreshing to hear someone takes the bible literally these days. The bible having been scorned as a book giving testament only to the corruption of human nature. May Palin be president if for me to be given the pleasure of me knowing what someone like her could do behind the reins.
I am so tired of the
Thu, 09/11/2008 - 22:59 — Anonymous (not verified)
I am so tired of the hypocrisy. The Republican machine has questioned the patriotism of both Barack and Michelle Obama. They have gone so far as to accuse Michelle Obama's fist bump as a terrorist action! Then we are told that Palin's family is hands off! So do we just ignore the information that Sarah Palin's husband is affiliated with a secessionist group and she is supportive of his involvement? This is a man who wants the state of Alaska to secede from the US! The last time this occurred, we ended up engaging in a Civil War! Is this not treasonous behavior. This smells of militia mentality. My grandfather used to say, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck!
Palin is indeed scary. She
Thu, 09/11/2008 - 22:53 — V. Selanik (not verified)
Palin is indeed scary. She is a glib know it all and that tells you right away she is not qualified. Compare Palin with Nancy Pelosi...another mother of five who waited until her children were mature before she went into politics. Her education is sketchy and shows her lack of connecting with the modern educated women of America.
Read Katha Pollit's
Thu, 09/11/2008 - 21:44 — altovuelo (not verified)
Read Katha Pollit's excellent column about Palin in the current issue of The Nation: "Lipstick on a Wing Nut": http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080929/pollitt
Thu, 09/11/2008 - 14:00 — Dana (not verified)
Palin is really Cheney with lipstick (not Bush)
To Mr. Anderson, I am so
Thu, 09/11/2008 - 04:55 — Anonymous (not verified)
To Mr. Anderson, I am so sick of the Christians' hypocrisy:I love how Christians interpret "Creator" to mean a Caucasian-looking deity floating in the heavens as opposed to "Nature." I love how Christians seem to embrace any reference to GOD as a reference to something "above" or "different" from "Nature." Perhaps that is what eases their minds when they vote for people whose policies destroy the very "Nature"that GOD (whatever he/she/it is to an individual) obviously intended for humans to live in balance with. And if you truly believe all people are "created equal," whether by Nature, or the floating white head you envision, you should believe that "he" would not condone prejudices against those who are "different" than how you perceive yourself to be. I'm sickened by the fact that most Christians I know vote for people that are obviously immoral because of rhetoric about abortion and gay rights. Do abortion and gay rights really weigh on your day-to-day life MORE than all the other injustices we impose as a nation on ourselves, our children and other nations. Wake up! -S
It is obvious that the GOP
Thu, 09/11/2008 - 02:58 — truth! not deceit or spin (not verified)
It is obvious that the GOP is DESPERATE at this point, and it is sickly comical to watch the republicans and christian extremists wave their flags so fervently that they have blinded themselves to the truth. Palin Scares me, and so does McCain. Neither are fit for the White House, McCain is a hothead selling just more of the same (and cannot stick to his own stories), and Palin... a mother of a newborn Down Syndrome child - shouldn't that be her first priority? And she also can't keep her facts straight! But then again we are at war, and the truth is always the first casualty in war. I just hope that Obama wins the election and that he isn't just a wolf in sheep's clothing and will make the changes so desperately needed in were not only this country is headed, but the entire world. wake up people across the land! Unplug FOX news and go out into your community and talk about what really matters, right here, right now. Register to VOTE! Follow your heart, not what corpmedia is spinning into your heads! (OK, I'm talking sugar in the candy shop... but still...)
John McCain is not only a
Thu, 09/11/2008 - 02:45 — Jeanot (not verified)
John McCain is not only a war hero, but is actually a "war lover." He has supported every military move by this nation, and looks first for a power or military response to every conflict that pops up. His instant reaction to the situation in Georgia ("We are all Georgians") shows he has no appreciation for the complexity of the situation. Where thoughtful analysis is called for we get quick gut reactions...helped along by close advisors were recently paid agents for one of the participants. We see in this case that it wasn't a simple matter of the Big Bad Bear running roughshod over its neighbor...all sorts of religious, ethnic, nationalistic divisions were in the mix. There usually are two or more sides to most issues, and unless our leaders can see this we are in for endless conflict. John McCain doesn't seem to get this.
PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! I am
Thu, 09/11/2008 - 02:36 — Anonymous (not verified)
PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! I am begging some of the posters here! STOP refering to right-wing evangelicals as "Christians", as if all Christians agree with them. I don't care what religioun you espouse, or if you're an atheist. That's your business, but when you refer to the evangelical right-wing as "Christians", some honest Christians get offended and actually think your attacking them. Liberalism IS NOT LESS CHRISTIAN. It is just MORE HONESTLY Christian. Please don't give these sleazebags more fuel to add to their burning cross. The ONLY thing they believe in is the sanctity of Holy Oil Industry.
I am convinced that she
Thu, 09/11/2008 - 02:21 — Anonymous (not verified)
I am convinced that she TRIED TO CAUSE A MISCARRIAGE with her latest baby. Why else did she go out of her way to avoid medical treatment and schedule a trip to Dallas while she was leaking amniotic fluid and was obviously going into labor a month early?
Palin is Bush with lipstick.
Thu, 09/11/2008 - 01:31 — Anonymous (not verified)
Palin is Bush with lipstick.
Along with books being
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 21:42 — Anonymous (not verified)
Along with books being banished, women's right set back 2000 years, faux-Christianity forced down our gullets, gay rights abolished, education bankrupted, all intellectuals, artists and dissenters best beware. They are next to be eliminated. We've seen it all before. Remember?
1799, Treaty of Tripoli,
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 20:08 — bob sauerbrey (not verified)
1799, Treaty of Tripoli, acticle 11: "...the United States is in no way a Christian nation..." Unanimously by both chambers of Congress and signed by John Adams, the "father" of the Declaration of Independence. McCain, Palin, and their supports may know their bible, but they a certainly ignorant of history.
Saint Francis of Assisi,
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 18:24 — Fulvia (not verified)
Saint Francis of Assisi, Italy, the Saint who was talking to the the wolf, and teach love to all creature, to the sun to the star to the moon, because all were beautiful and all of them creation of God. I really don't see any link with the appalling misbelieve of Palin and the true Christianity.
Good piece and some
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 17:18 — elizabeth (not verified)
Good piece and some excellent comments. So glad to see the prescient Margaret Atwood novel "The Handmaid's Tale" mentioned. That book has haunted me since 2002 because it was clear even then that we are on the same path. (I read it when it came out in the 80s and saw the excellent film adaptation when it came out in the early 90s.) I would change only one thing. Somehow, growing up in Alaska made Sarah Palin talk not like Gidget, but like a Valley Girl. A Valley Girl spewing invective and inhuman filth. Maybe the campaign is hoping that we'll be like dogs, responding more to the tone of voice than to what is said. And it is sad but true that there are voters who would vote for an ignorant Valley Girl. (Ironically, REAL Valley Girls grew up and many of them have gone on to fine lives and careers.) I've followed Sarah Palin for years, ever since I saw "the moose hunter" hunting wolves from a helicopter. I come from a long line of hunters, and that is NOT hunting. It's vicious and lacks any sense of sport or fair play. That told me everything I needed to know about Sarah Palin, although having her on my radar, I've learned a lot since, enough to almost faint when McCain announced her for the ticket, because I have not found one politically redeeming quality about this woman. And I'm a woman who would really like a woman president. But she has to be the best possible candidate, because if we have a woman in the WH who is as stupid and ignorant as the current crop, it will set women's rights back decades.
has anyone thought this
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 14:16 — Anonymous (not verified)
has anyone thought this woman could be the anti christ?
ditto!! Stop
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 14:02 — Anonymous (not verified)
ditto!! Stop whining! Let's use this time well, to be the best, and win this election. Lets get active, now. Nothing could be more important. What else? What else can we do?
Our Declaration of
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 11:40 — Anonymous (not verified)
Our Declaration of Independence does not come from Christian origins. Most of the founding Fathers were Freemasons,and Huminists, or claimed no religious belief at all. If you want to argue this passage "The laws of Nature and Natures God" is clear they are talking about "mother nature" or science "natures God" It's PAGAN all over!!
hey sarah? the bible is what
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 11:08 — Anonymous (not verified)
hey sarah? the bible is what you follow?so i would guess Psalm 137 would be the policy for iraq and such?after all we are doing gods work there arnt we? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalm_137
Christian Republican males
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 10:24 — Jesus wept (not verified)
Christian Republican males will vote for McCain because, among other things, they think on some semiconscious or unconscious level that it will improve their chances of getting into the panties of women that look and think like Palin. So what if McCain's policies, combined with Palin's relgious extremism turns this country into a fascist, militant theocracy that goes bankrupt. These chickenhawks voted for the tits and boobs, and Jesus, and Bush-Mccain's machismo war machines that make them obscenely rich... so what do they care what would Jesus do if he was here again, because they believe that Jesus will forgive them of all their selfishness, greed and arrogance; as a result, they believe that when the time comes and they've ruined the Earth, they can take their wealth and power with them to heaven after they become immortal by the way of the Rapture. So in that way, the unchristian neocons that claim they are Christians, can have their cake and eat it, too... at the expense of our rights, drained us of all of our money and our very lives of course, but what do they care? Thanks to Bush in power, they got theirs.
We fought a Civil War and
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 10:21 — Anonymous (not verified)
We fought a Civil War and killed 1,000,000 of our fellow citizens a hundred and fifty years ago, in what was at base a conflict within the culture of this country. We didn't learn the lesson then, and we probably won't learn it this time, only this time there will be no use to learning it, cos there won't be anything to put back together again. The Lincoln of our time - Barack Obama - is villified for appealing to the better angels of our nature. I remember when America had ideals and hope and faith, and I have watched these past 60 years as they have all turned to dust and facsimile.
"Thou shalt not take the
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 10:00 — Anonymous (not verified)
"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God in vain." A pipeline? "God's will"?!? Why are the fundamentalist Christians not coming out of the woodwork to burn this blasphemous bitch at the stake, politically speaking?
What can all of us do at
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 05:25 — Joan (not verified)
What can all of us do at this stage of the game? Palin Palin is on the scene, alive and well. Now let's get out the vote and challenge the Republicans.Lets go to swing states and talk to people. Get on the phone lines. Make sure all our friends are registered and voting. Make sure the election is not stolen. Support, speak, protest, flood the media when they lie and let the candidates lie. Let's use this time well, to be the best, and win this election. Lets get active, now. Nothing could be more important. What else? What else can we do?
I am so damned sick of all
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 04:09 — Anonymous (not verified)
I am so damned sick of all the religious crap in our politics I could puke! This is what happens people when you don't get involved! The religious right has been working this path for decades! Wake up or you'll get what you deserve with Bush II and the sociopath.
she's beautiful no
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 03:30 — Anonymous (not verified)
she's beautiful no doubt! he loves it! but maybe he chose her because the both have the letter 'in' in their name. how sane!
to j. andersen,(see
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 03:24 — kl (not verified)
to j. andersen,(see above) unalienable rights are human rights. this republican party supports taking unalienable human rights and listing them under crimes and criminal behaviors. back to the drawing board. thanks for the history lesson. pro-life and pro-choice.
Choice is the whole point,
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 01:48 — kcjones (not verified)
Choice is the whole point, M. If America "chooses" the progressive/liberal way for her to go, over the traditional values/conservative way, either way the other half will be screaming they don't want to be forced to do what their opponents have chosen democratically! I don't want to see young children "forced" to be indoctrinated in public schools about the normalicy of homosexuality when I believe with all my heart they've been emotionally twisted somehow, somewhere in their lives, even if they are wonderful, productive, loving people in every other aspect. I don't believe abortion is about "choice" when the fetus is a viable, separate human being who just so happens to be inside their mother's womb. (abortion scripture, btw: Proverb 6:17....which should also convict some Republican warmongers) In fact, if you want something to talk to Christians about, try scripture. Try Proverbs 6:16-19 and apply them to President Bush, for example...And for all you people who think we actually evolved from nothing (ie: spontaneously generated), try watching Michael Behe's movie "Unfolding the Mysteries of Life". I challenge anyone to watch that and deny intelligent design. Or, "The Privileged Planet". Same deal. I'm not red or blue. I'm purple. Both platforms have awesome and horrible attributes. But "Hypocracy Now" (spelled that way on purpose) was the mantra for the last elections. PRO-WAR!! PRO-LIFE!! vs FREE LUV!! PRO-CHOICE!! Let's have some intelligent input on how we can actually live democratically. You know, extremists on both sides actually pull people to the middle, which is good. And for the record, I believe God's will will be done whoever is elected President, and that's what gives me peace. Jesus was no dullard. There are powers that be way beyond most of our understanding.
It is extremely embarrassing
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 01:10 — The embarrassed pastor (not verified)
It is extremely embarrassing and difficult to be a liberal Christian minister in this day and age. There are so many Christians (like those everyone is writing about) who have bastardized the religion and made it into something it is not. I wish people would understand that Jesus was an iconoclast, speaking out against the hypocrites of his day. If we would really pay attention to what he was saying and if we endeavored to follow his suggestions for living a good life, we would understand that what the Christian right and fundamentalists are expounding are man made rules that have nothing to do with Jesus' message. I asked my husband the other day where he would like to move to if the Republicans win. So far, Canada is the favorite. I don't know if they'll take us, but we can try. Pray for the highest good for our country.
As a Canadian, all I can say
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 00:04 — Peg Young (not verified)
As a Canadian, all I can say is, "God (assuming It exists) help America."
The ball is in Joe Biden's
Wed, 09/10/2008 - 00:00 — Carole Auger-Richard (not verified)
The ball is in Joe Biden's camp. Here's an exceptional occasion to kill the Palin myth! Go Joe go!
Sarah Palin is scary . Very
Tue, 09/09/2008 - 23:39 — Anonymous (not verified)
Sarah Palin is scary. Very scary indeed. She as well as John McSame are obviously just puppets of the right wing good 'ol boys that want to stay in power and turn back the clock . Where will it end, in armageddon? I can't believe a person with such an old brain who believes the word of the bible is true) could potentially be the comander in chief. If they steal the election for a third time, it will be time to get the hell out. God bless us all.
These are not Christians,
Tue, 09/09/2008 - 23:22 — Anonymous (not verified)
These are not Christians, but ANTI-Christians. Very very insightful, since in Greek anti can mean "instead of" or a replacement-counterfeit (cf: Liddell and Scott's unabridged Lexicon of Classical Greek). These wingnut Christians are indeed anti-Christians in every sense of the Greek word. Ironically, they may represent the very Anti-Christ they claim is presented in the Apocalypsis of St. John. Just a thought, but how wonderfully ironic.
Any one who says the United
The big dichotomy... I
Tue, 09/09/2008 - 22:47 — mapsguy1955 (not verified)
The big dichotomy... I don't get how the party of the neocons gets the votes of the Christian right. Were those all Christians at the ENRON parties? Didn't jesus say something about turning the other cheek? The Republican mantra is not "Drill Baby Drill", but "The world is REALLY scary, you should be terrified of anyone who doesn't think like us, it might make you GAY or you might be forced to have an ABORTION". The right couldn't possible be more wrong.
I think the diversity of
Tue, 09/09/2008 - 22:32 — Mike (not verified)
I think the diversity of religions is yet another positive dynamic at this unique time. Catholicism, United Church of Christ, Latterday Saints, United Methodist, Baptist, and Assembly of God. I think that if Tim Russert was still with us he would say, "What a country!"
Have the republicans noticed
Tue, 09/09/2008 - 22:28 — Anonymous (not verified)
Have the republicans noticed that they have completely lost control of their party? The sponsorship of McCain and Palin for America's highest office is an irresponsible, possibly criminal act, for which this country will pay dearly if they are elected. Listen to Obama please: America is better than this. Note to McCain: Constantly blowing your own horn about your POW experience does not convince anyone that you are better qualified. Lying about your opponent makes you look dishonorable. What a shame. Picking Sarah Palin makes you look like an idiot and a pawn, not a statesman. Sorry, old man.
So, dean men and women of
Tue, 09/09/2008 - 21:47 — granny (not verified)
So, dean men and women of the "professional" media, when are you going to visit her church, record the rolling and dancing and tongues-talking and armeggadon-expecting, and put it out there for all to see? If you would attack Barack Obama through attacks on his paastor, the same treatment should be accorded to Palin and her pastor. And has anyone vetted McCain's pastor, if he goes to chruch for other than press-op moments?
Christ taught us to love
Tue, 09/09/2008 - 21:22 — Anonymous (not verified)
Christ taught us to love God; to love your neighbor as yourself and to love your enemy. The"new and everlasting covenant" is about promoting the common good, not the chosen few of the old covenant. These people are not Christians-they're Anti-Christians
I'd like Palin to tell us
Tue, 09/09/2008 - 20:57 — M (not verified)
I'd like Palin to tell us what verse of her precious Bilble forbids abortion. Oh, KCJONES. There is a qualitative difference between gays (why you mention them as a voting bloc is mind boggling) and liberals. It's the democratic concept of "choice" which Republicans don't believe in. We won't MAKE you live a life you don't want. You, however, will force everyone to live the life YOU decide for us. That's just a tiny difference, don't you think? It's called Democracy. Ever hear of it?
You can't believe the Bible
Tue, 09/09/2008 - 20:43 — Anonymous (not verified)
You can't believe the Bible is literally true and believe that aborting a fetus is murder. Genesis 2:7 says that Adam wasn't a living soul until God gave him the breath of life. Exodus 21:22 says that if two men are fighting and cause a woman to abort her child, they must pay the father for the loss of his property, the fetus. Ecclesiastes 6:3 says that unless a man has a good life and a proper burial it is better that he be stillborn. People who say they believe the Bible is literally true should read it some time, Especially those scriptures where God commands the Israelites to commit genocide, killing men, women, children and that would include pregnant women and their fetuses. I don't believe God commits murder or commands others to do so.
I think calling Sarah Palin
Tue, 09/09/2008 - 20:42 — Oakjoan (not verified)
I think calling Sarah Palin "Gidget" is a VERRRY big mistake. Gidget was a cute, bouncy, sweet thing. There is NOTHING sweet about Palin. I can easily picture her using a German accent and saying "Vee vill conquer Poland!" A person who holds such ugly and wrong-headed beliefs is anything but cute. She is out to force her beliefs on all of us. This is doubly dangerous since she has proved during her political career that she has few moral scruples. I'm not afraid of her Armageddon and other fundamentalist beliefs, I am terrified of her history of unscrupulous and self-serving behavior in politics (getting back at enemies by having them fired, attempting to bring Fahrenheit 451 to the local library, changing her stance on issues when it became politically expedient). Of course this is not exactly far from the usual politicians' changeable stances, but they usually at least have the smarts to realize they'll be found out eventually. Most of them are not the subjects of governmental investigation as Palin is now. End of rant.

Zombie feminists of the RNC

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/09/11/zombie_feminism/index.html

Zombie feminists of the RNC

How did Sarah Palin become a symbol of women's empowerment? And how did I, a die-hard feminist, end up terrified at the idea of a woman in the White House?

By Rebecca Traister

Sep. 11, 2008 | I have been dreaming about Sarah Palin. (Apparently, I'm not alone.) I wish I could say that I'd been conjuring witty, politically sophisticated nightmares in which she leads troops into Vancouver or kindergartners in the recitation of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." But, alas, mine have been nonsensical, kiddie-style doozies in which she kidnaps my cats, or enjoys a meal with my girlfriends while I bang on the restaurant window. There's also a chilling one, in which a scary witch stands on a wind-swept hill and leers at me.

What troubles me most -- aside from the fact that there is suddenly a Republican candidate potent enough to so ensnare my psyche -- is my sense that these are dreams in which it matters very much that Palin is a woman.

I have been writing about feminism for more than five years; I have been covering the gender politics of the 2008 presidential election for more than two. And I am absolutely gobsmacked by the intensity of my feelings about Sarah Palin. I am stunned not only by the way in which her candidacy has changed the rules in the gender debate, or how it is twisting and garbling the fight for women's progress. But I'm also startled by how Palin herself is testing my own beliefs about how I react to women in power.

My feelings about Palin have everything to do with her gender -- a factor that I have always believed, as a matter of course, should neither amplify nor diminish impressions of a person's goodness or badness, smartness or dumbness, gravitas or inconsequence. Why are my rules changing?

I am still perfectly capable of picking out the sexism being leveled against the Alaska governor by the press, her detractors and her own party. Every time someone doubts Palin's ability to lead and mother simultaneously, or considers her physical appeal as a professional attribute, or calls her a "maverette," I bristle.

But that's the easy stuff. The clear-cut stuff. I'm far more torn about the more subtle, complicated ways in which Palin's gender has me tied in knots.

Perhaps it's because the ground has shifted so quickly under my feet, leaving me with only a slippery grasp of what the basic vocabulary of my beat -- feminism, women's rights -- even means anymore. Some days, it feels like I'm watching the civics filmstrip about how much progress women made on the presidential stage in 2008 burst into flames, acutely aware that in the back of the room, a substitute teacher is threading a new reel into the projector. It has the same message and some of the same signifiers -- Glass ceilings broken! Girl Power! -- but its meaning has been distorted. Suddenly it's Rudy Giuliani and Rick Santorum schooling us about pervasive sexism; Hillary Clinton's 18 million cracks have weakened not only the White House's glass ceiling, but the wall protecting Roe v. Wade; the potential first female vice president in America's 200-year history describes her early career as "your average hockey mom" who "never really set out to be involved in public affairs"; and teen pregnancy is no longer an illustrative example for sex educators and contraception distributors but for those who seek to eliminate sex education and contraception.

In this strange new pro-woman tableau, feminism -- a word that is being used all over the country with regard to Palin's potential power -- means voting for someone who would limit reproductive control, access to healthcare and funding for places like Covenant House Alaska, an organization that helps unwed teen mothers. It means cheering someone who allowed women to be charged for their rape kits while she was mayor of Wasilla, who supports the teaching of creationism alongside evolution, who has inquired locally about the possibility of using her position to ban children's books from the public library, who does not support the teaching of sex education.

In this "Handmaid's Tale"-inflected universe, in which femininity is worshipped but females will be denied rights, CNBC pundit Donny Deutsch tells us that we're witnessing "a new creation ... of the feminist ideal," the feminism being so ideal because instead of being voiced by hairy old bats with unattractive ideas about intellect and economy and politics and power, it's now embodied by a woman who, according to Deutsch, does what Hillary Clinton did not: "put a skirt on." "I want her watching my kids," says Deutsch. "I want her laying next to me in bed."

Welcome to 2008, the year a tough, wonky woman won a primary (lots of them, actually), an inspiring black man secured his party's nomination for the presidency, and a television talking head felt free to opine that a woman is qualified for executive office because he wants to bed her and have her watch his kids! Stop the election; I want to get off.

What Palin so seductively represents, not only to Donny Deutsch but to the general populace, is a form of feminine power that is utterly digestible to those who have no intellectual or political use for actual women. It's like some dystopian future ... feminism without any feminists.

Palin's femininity is one that is recognizable to most women: She's the kind of broad who speaks on behalf of other broads but appears not to like them very much. The kind of woman who, as Jessica Grose at Jezebel has eloquently noted, achieves her power by doing everything modern women believed they did not have to do: presenting herself as maternal and sexual, sucking up to men, evincing an absolute lack of native ambition, instead emphasizing her luck as the recipient of strong male support and approval. It works because these stances do not upset antiquated gender norms. So when the moment comes, when tolerance for and interest in female power have been forcibly expanded by Clinton, a woman more willing to throw elbows and defy gender expectations but who falls short of the goal, Palin is there, tapped as a supposedly perfect substitute by powerful men who appreciate her charms.

But while the Republicans would have us believe that Palin can simply stand in for Hillary Clinton, there is nothing interchangeable about these politicians. We began this history-making election with one kind of woman and have ended up being asked to accept her polar opposite. Clinton's brand of femininity is the kind that remains slightly unpalatable in America. It is based on competence, political confidence and an assumption of authority that upends comfortable roles for men and women. It's a kind of power that has nothing to do with the flirtatious or the girly, nothing to do with the traditionally feminine. It is authority that is threatening because it so closely and calmly resembles the kind of power that the rest of the guys on a presidential stage never question their right to wield.

The pro-woman rhetoric surrounding Sarah Palin's nomination is a grotesque bastardization of everything feminism has stood for, and in my mind, more than any of the intergenerational pro- or anti-Hillary crap that people wrung their hands over during the primaries, Palin's candidacy and the faux-feminism in which it has been wrapped are the first development that I fear will actually imperil feminism. Because if adopted as a narrative by this nation and its women, it could not only subvert but erase the meaning of what real progress for women means, what real gender bias consists of, what real discrimination looks like.

Perhaps that's why my reaction to Palin is so bone-deep, and why she is shaking some of my convictions about how to approach gender. When, last Sunday, I picked up the New York Post, with its front-page headline "Ladykiller: Hillary to Check Hockey Mom" next to photos of Palin in porno librarian mode and Clinton with her teeth bared, I didn't roll my eyes in disgust at the imagined cage match. Instead, I envisioned it. And I enjoyed it. I was overcome by the desire to see Clinton take on Palin, not only checking her but fouling her, smushing her, absolutely crushing her. Get her, Hillary! Don't let her channel all the energy generated by you and your Democratic supporters into anti-woman, pro-God government! You are the only one who can stop her.

It's true that the last time I had this kind of visceral yearning for a politician to save the day was on the evening of Sept. 11, when the only person whose face I wanted to see on my television was Bill Clinton's. Perhaps when the Clintons took office in my 18th year, they became imprinted on my brain as my presidential parent-figures, my ur-protectors. But it's hard not to notice that if that's the case, it's Bill I want to nurture and soothe me, and Hillary I want to show up, guns blazing Ripley-style, to surprise the mother alien just as she is about to feast on independent voters, protectively shouting, "Get away from them, you bitch!"

There I go again with the hyper-feminized anxieties. I think it's mostly that I want Hillary Clinton -- the imperfect history maker whose major selling points for "First Woman..." status, in retrospect, included the fact that she was not a Republican, not pro-life, did not believe in teaching creationism alongside evolution, had never inquired about the feasibility of banning books, understood the American economy, supported universal healthcare and did not kill wolves from planes -- to make Sarah Palin go away and stop threatening to make history I don't want to see made.

It is infuriating that Clinton, her supporters and, yes, also those Obama supporters who voiced their displeasure at the sexist treatment Clinton sometimes received, and also female voters, and also females full stop, are being implicated in feminism's bastardization.

But if we inadvertently paved the way for this, then the Democratic Party mixed the concrete, painted lanes on the road, put up streetlights and called it an interstate. The role of the left in this travesty is almost too painful to contemplate just yet.

For while it may chafe to hear Rudy Giuliani and John McCain hold forth on the injustice of gender bias, what really burns is that we never heard a peep or squawk or gurgle of this nature from anyone in the Democratic Party during the entire 100 years Hillary Clinton was running for president, while she was being talked about as a pantsuited, wrinkly old crone and a harpy ex-wife and a sexless fat-thighed monster and an emasculating nag out for Tucker Carlson's balls. Only after she was good and gone did Howard Dean come out of his cave to squeak about the amount of sexist media bias Clinton faced. That may not be pretty to recall, especially in light of the Grand Old Party's Grand Old Celebration of Estrogen. But it's true. And it's also true that if there hadn't been so much stone-cold silence, so much shoulder-shrugging "What, me sexist?" inertia from the left, if there had been a little more respect (there was plenty of attention, of the derisive and annoyed sort) paid to the unsubtle clues being transmitted by 18 million voters that maybe they were interested in this whole woman-in-the-White-House thing, then the right would not have had the fuel to power this particular weapon.

Which leads us to my greatest nightmare: that because my own party has not cared enough, or was too scared, to lay its rightful claim to the language of women's rights, that Sarah Palin will reach historic heights of power, under the most egregious of auspices, by plying feminine wiles, and conforming to every outdated notion of what it means to be a woman. That she will hit her marks by clambering over the backs, the bodies, the rights of the women on whose behalf she claims to be working, and that she will do it all under the banner of feminism. How can anybody sleep?


-- By Rebecca Traister




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CNN Documents Palin's Numerous Misstatements

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

Palin Unsure about Church-State Separation

http://www.zimbio.com/Sarah+Palin/articles/343/Sarah+Palin+Believe+Separation+Church+State

From Tony :)

Does Sarah Palin Believe in the Separation of Church and State?
EmailWritten by JJ on Sep-3-08 12:38pm
O'FALLON, MO- AUGUST 31: Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain's (R-AZ) vice presidential pick Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin waits to be introduced to speak during an event at T.R. Hughes Ballpark . August 31, 2008 in O?Fallon, Missouri. McCain is campaigning before heading to the Republican National Convention. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America)


Judging from her past appearances at the Wasilla Assembly of God church and her association with its lead pastor, Ed Kalnins , it appears likely Sarah Palin has some issues with separating church and state.

During the 2004 election season, when Bush was up for reelection pastor Ed Kalnins didn't mince words about how he felt about Democratic nominee John Kerry.

"I'm not going tell you who to vote for, but if you vote for this particular person, I question your salvation. I'm sorry," Kalnins said. "If every Christian will vote righteously, it would be a landslide every time."

That's one of the many quasi-political religous statements common from Kalnins, the lead pastor of the Assembly of God church in Wasilla, Alaska, which was previously attended by Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin.

Kalnins' sermons and speeches were posted on the Assembly of God Web site until recently when they were removed due to the large volume of traffic the site was receiving. In them, Kalnins also revealed his opinion that the 9/11 attacks and the war in Iraq were part of a "world war" in which Jesus Christ called on his true believers to be willing to sacrifice their lives.

The controversial opinions have surfaced as the national press takes a closer look at Palin leading up to her appearance at the Republican National Convention.

Perhaps most interesting is a video filmed in June, 2008 in which Palin appears with Kalnins. In it she says U.S. soldiers in Iraq are on a task from God and that the war is "God's plan." She then calls for the people of the church to pray for an oil pipeline.

"I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built."

In the same video, pastor Kalnins later explains that it's important for Alaska to tap into its natural resources because he believes "Alaska is one of the refuge states in the last days."

The combined statements paint a picture of a church where politics and religion are bound together. While some of the views may be common among some evangelical Christian churches, they certainly lie outside the mainstream.

By choosing Palin, with her seemingly extreme political and religous views, the McCain campaign is now running the risk of alienating moderate voters who are reluctant to support a candidate who so freely ties God to political workings.

What do you think? Is Sarah Palin's political background cause for concern? Vote here.

Are Evangelicals Really Sold on Palin?

Saturday, Sep. 06, 2008
Are Evangelicals Really Sold on Palin?
By Amy Sullivan

"Over the past few years, a growing number of Evangelicals have been consciously distancing themselves from the more extreme stands of the Christian right. They live in the suburbs, hold graduate degrees, and while they might not want their children reading certain novels, would be embarrassed by attempts to ban certain books from libraries, as Palin is reported to have briefly considered while mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. They don't attend churches where speakers charge that violence against Israelis is divine punishment for the failure of Jews to accept Jesus, as happened at one of Palin's churches two weeks ago (though Palin has now issued a statement saying she does not agree with those views). And they would disagree with Palin's decision to use her line-item veto as Governor to slash funding for an Alaska shelter that serves teen mothers."


Sure, John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin to be his running mate fully consumed a GOP convention that was supposed to be focused on thumping Barack Obama over the head. And it may have raised questions about McCain's own judgment and seriousness. But, as we have been told ad nauseam since the surprise choice was announced last Friday, Palin has already provided one unquestionable, invaluable assist to the Republican campaign: with one sweep of her perfectly manicured hand, she has supposedly erased McCain's Evangelical problem and united the base that proved so key to George W. Bush's victory in 2004. (See photos of Sarah Palin here.)

To a degree, that's true. Palin's pro-life credentials are impeccable — she opposes abortion in all circumstances, even in cases of rape and incest, except when a delivery will result in death. And her strong, open religious faith will make her the perfect person to reach out to conservative Evangelicals, who still don't fully trust the Republican nominee. But McCain and his aides may not want to say hallelujah just yet. While Palin is inspiring rhapsodies from the lions of the Christian right, her appeal to more moderate and younger Evangelicals — as well as independent swing voters — may be limited.

Lost in the stampede of social conservatives to embrace Palin this past week is the fact that she is culturally outside the mainstream of Evangelicalism. Over the past few years, a growing number of Evangelicals have been consciously distancing themselves from the more extreme stands of the Christian right. They live in the suburbs, hold graduate degrees, and while they might not want their children reading certain novels, would be embarrassed by attempts to ban certain books from libraries, as Palin is reported to have briefly considered while mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. They don't attend churches where speakers charge that violence against Israelis is divine punishment for the failure of Jews to accept Jesus, as happened at one of Palin's churches two weeks ago (though Palin has now issued a statement saying she does not agree with those views). And they would disagree with Palin's decision to use her line-item veto as Governor to slash funding for an Alaska shelter that serves teen mothers.

That goes double for younger Evangelicals. These voters tend to be even more pro-life than their parents, but abortion isn't always a priority that moves their votes — it wasn't when McCain was alone on the ticket, and there's no reason for that to change with the addition of Palin. More important, Palin has problematic stances on many of the issues that do motivate young Evangelicals. Her insistence that global warming is not man-made, for instance, is unlikely to appeal to those Evangelicals who have embraced so-called "creation care" in the past few years. This is particularly relevant to the current race, as young Evangelicals account for much of that demographic's undecided bloc. No one knows what the size of their impact may be in November because young Evangelicals are consistently underrepresented in polls of white Evangelicals. (Even a TIME poll of likely white Evangelical voters conducted last month used a sample in which just 10% of respondents were between 18 and 35. That age group made up 22% of the total electorate in 2004, and its share of the electorate is expected to increase this year.)

At first glance, it may seem ridiculous to say that McCain has an Evangelical problem at all, considering that he already has commanded support in the high 60s or low 70s. As of last week, however, the percentage of white Evangelicals who planned to vote for McCain was still 10 points lower than the final percentage of those voters who went for Bush in the last presidential election. The most conservative Evangelicals — the ones who served as foot soldiers for the Bush-Cheney campaign, mobilizing their neighbors and fellow parishioners — were the least enthusiastic about McCain's candidacy. And many leaders of the Christian-right establishment were ostentatiously withholding their endorsements of the Arizona Senator.

McCain's difficulty exciting white Evangelicals has been twofold. The people in the pews had lingering questions about his commitment to the pro-life cause. McCain's "maverick" political reputation has led many women, including some angry Hillary Clinton supporters who have thrown their support behind him, to assume that he must also buck the GOP's staunch opposition to abortion — and many Evangelicals worry about just the same thing, despite the Senator's lifelong record of supporting nearly all abortion restrictions. While McCain tried to address that concern by declaring at Rick Warren's Saddleback Forum held last month that "life begins at conception," his continued flirtation with pro-choice running-mate possibilities like Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge hurt his efforts to make inroads.

His tense relationship with Christian-right leaders has had different roots. They have spent the campaign looking for signs that McCain, who during his 2000 presidential run famously referred to some of them as "agents of intolerance," is one of them; instead he revealed that while he attends a Baptist church in Phoenix, he has not been baptized. But what about that moving POW guard story, you might ask? The one about the guard who drew a cross in the sand to share his Christian identity with McCain? That tale, it turns out, is actually a large part of the problem for Evangelical leaders. In off-the-record conversations, they complain that the story is about someone else's faith — which is one reason McCain has recently added a line about how he and the guard "were just two Christians, venerating the cross" — and that surely McCain must have an example of his own faith from the past 40 years.

But they're mostly annoyed that it's the only answer McCain gives to any question about religion or faith. It's the story he told last spring at a gathering of conservative leaders when asked to explain his faith in God. "He blew that question off by telling us about the faith of his jailer," direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie fumed to the Los Angeles Times afterward. "It was very obvious to those three or four hundred conservative leaders there." One month later, McCain pulled out his trusty tale once again when a student at a town-hall event asked what effect his faith would have on his "executive decision-making."

There is no doubt that Palin will help calm the doubts of that core Evangelical base and leadership. While many pundits have wondered whether social conservatives will recoil from the news that Palin's 17-year-old daughter is five months pregnant, they're clearly not grasping the mores of that community. If Bristol Palin were the daughter of Democratic parents, she would undoubtedly be held up as an example of the failures of a liberal, permissive culture. Instead, she is viewed — as are the majority of teenage mothers in Evangelical churches — as a Christian who sinned, is forgiven, and needs to be embraced and supported.

The revelation about her daughter's pregnancy, and the fact that Palin herself chose to give birth to a baby with Down Syndrome, are just another part of the compelling picture Palin can paint of her faith. She was baptized in the Catholic Church and for most of her life belonged to an Assemblies of God congregation — a Pentecostal denomination. In high school, Palin was the local leader of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and most recently she moved her family to a nondenominational Evangelical church in her hometown.

That move away from the Pentecostal Church, which took place in 2002 when Palin first ran for lieutenant governor in Alaska, is the only potential sign she has given that her religious beliefs might be a political liability. Her spokeswoman now says that Palin does not identify herself as a Pentecostal. Historically Pentecostals and other Evangelical Protestants haven't always gotten along, largely because of theological differences. Pentecostal theology elevates the role of the Holy Spirit and includes belief in spiritual gifts, such as healing and speaking in tongues. But the groups have often been able to set aside their doctrinal disagreements for political purposes. Pat Robertson, a Pentecostal, and the late Jerry Falwell, a Fundamentalist, famously had bitter theological disputes but still joined forces as leading figures of the Christian right. (See photos of Jerry Falwell here.)

Palin's red-meat conservatism and Evangelicalism will almost certainly play well with those party faithful who attended the Republican National Convention this week. But with fewer than 60 days until Election Day (and a month before the start of early voting in many states), the McCain campaign's continued courting of the more traditional base spells trouble for any efforts to expand his appeal to independent voters and less conservative Evangelicals. If so, McCain may find himself quoting a bowdlerized verse of Scripture in November: What does it profit a man to gain the Christian right and lose the White House?

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