Saradise Lost - Chapter Sixty-Six -- PALIN TRUTH SQUAD: BURNING BRIDGES IN ALASKA

-- by Shannyn Moore


I attended Governor Sarah Palin’s press conference this week. I witnessed the “Palin Truth Squad” first hand. It was as “truthy” to politics as the Jeffrey Dahmer Cooking School would be to the culinary arts. It made me nauseous.

With a precarious political atmosphere in Alaska, we are still making our way through indictments, trials, and federal penitentiary sentences; the past two years of bipartisan work and healing thrown under the bus in attempt to win the White House.

National political assassins have invaded Alaska.

They were visible and in full force at the McCain-Palin press conference yesterday. Alaskans don’t roll that way. People get cranky, even nasty at times, over politics and what they think is best for the state. Alaska Lawmakers are sitting in federal prison for selling their votes and it wasn’t this nasty. The McCain-Palin ticket has become a poster child for partisan politics on steroids. On November 5th, the day after this election, the shrapnel of this campaign will be strewn across Alaska. It’s going to take Dr. Phil and a few Barry White albums to get the healing started.

Right off the bat, a full-on assault of character was laid out-Walt Monegan the target. Megan Stapleton, lead off hitter for the Palin Truth Squad was polished, assertive, dramatic, professional, fantastic….and LYING! For all of her assertions of Walt’s “loose cannon” behavior, you would have thought he was tasing Alaska children. A stack of emails from or regarding Monegan, chosen by Palin’s state paid attorney, were released to prove his incompetence.

I asked why, if he was such a terrible employee, was he offered another position in government? How could they risk something so important as the oversight of alcohol in rural Alaska? After all, alcohol is a huge contributor to our domestic violence and rape statistics. Megan’s answer felt like an out of control carnival ride for all the disingenuous spin!

Her co-“truther” is Edward O’Callaghan. He looks and acts like the evil and unstoppable Agent Smith from “The Matrix”. Six weeks ago he left his job as Co-Chief of the Terrorism and National Security Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York. Does the McCain camp consider a bipartisan group of Alaska Lawmakers to be terrorists?

The “last straw,” Megan-Super-Spokes-Model Stapleton said, was a July trip Monegan planned to Washington D.C. to seek federal money for investigating and prosecuting sexual assault cases. You would have thought he was planning to lobby Washington D.C. for a new super trooper jet-boat, complete with lightening bolts, water cannons, cup holders and satellite television. If it is true Monegan was fired for trying to drum up funds to protect Alaskans, I’m more disturbed than if he was fired for NOT carrying out an old family proxy vendetta against Trooper Wooten.

Four days before Walt Monegan was fired, John Katz, the governor’s special counsel and inaugural PTSer, in a July 7 e-mail, noted two issues with the trip: the Governor hadn’t agreed the money should be sought, and the request “is out of sequence with our other appropriations requests and could put a strain on the evolving relationship between the Governor and Senator Stevens.” Why the continuing theme of subverting the treatment of epidemic sexual assaults in Alaska?

Last Friday I sat through the subpoena hearings. The “Remote Control Legislator”, Gene Therriault, who would check his blackberry and then ask texted questions, was the knight in tarnished armor. Challenging reason and truth, the only thing transparent was his political crush on Sarah Palin.

Republican Senator Charlie Huggins, sitting in camo pants, wishing he was sitting on the edge of a muskeg listening to the sounds of love lorn moose, presented the best side of Alaskans. He announced himself as a McCain voter, and said he would also vote for subpoenas. So have many other Republicans in this investigation.

I never believed the argument from their party in the 90s over Bill Clinton’s lie. But I think now, when I see a Republican put truth and knowledge in front of protecting their party, some of them may have been telling the truth.

The partisan accusations are coming from partisan Republicans. Representative Bob Lynn is one of five Republican Lawmakers filing a law suit, all designed by the Palin Truth Squad, to stop the investigation of Sarah Palin’s abuse of power allegations. Just a couple of weeks ago, Lynn was a delegate on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. What isn’t “partisan” about that?

The PTS has posters with pictures of Alaska Democratic leadership and big arrows pointing to a photo of Obama. It is vulgar and flies in the face of truth and justice. Frankly, I didn’t expect anything different from John McCain. Sarah Palin knows better. How dare she sacrifice Alaska for the White House. The PTS is giving me PTSD…