As the Republican National Convention delegates awaken from the drunken stupors caused by their all-day partying yesterday (the fake Jerry Lewisesque telethon Gustav scenario having evaporated this morning like so many pink elephants), they might want to wash down their bloody marys by watching Democracy Now! or reading the Los Angeles Times.
The reality of the multi-level fakery of the Potemkin Village GOP Convention's facade, is etched into deep relief by the growing prominence in the convention's narrative of last Friday's choice by GOP Presidential nominee apparent Joseph Hazelwood, John McCain of Thomas Eagleton Sarah Palin as his first running mate, on the MV Potemkin Valdez.
The hastily reorganizing, regrouping Anchorage Daily News, attempting to deal with finally having to send a crew of reporters and photographers to Minneapolis and Wasilla, to action scenes they hadn't contemplated covering at the end of last week, is hilariousfascinating. These are some fine reporters, being sent scurrying to put morelipstick and makeup on two pigs - the national GOP, and the selection of the totally unqualified Sarah Palin. The story narratives are being triaged by two of the worst editors in Alaska history - Pat Dougherty and Matt Zencey. (Tom Brennan and Paul Jenkins don't count, because they're merely pretend, Potemkin editors).
This morning, the ADN posted the picture of a young male Wasilla High School student. They've now removed it. As I write, they're hastily revising and redacting. This is farce, Matt and Pat. Driven by a stupid story from a stinky NYC tabloid.
Let's get back to the bridge of the MV Potemkin Valdez:
As swarms of reporters descend on the Loussac, UAA Consortium, and Mat-Su College libraries, to go through micro-fiche rolls of old copies of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, coverage of Sarah Palin's possible candidacy on the GOP ticket for vice president of the United States, along with the oldest man to run for that office for the first time, has turned a corner.
Judy reminded me, as we walked around the outskirts of Wasilla today, canvassing for Obama, that when Palin was first elected mayor there in 1996, she had to hire a city manager. When her predecessors had occupied the office, they did that job themselves. There went $60,000 per year. And so it has continued to go for her.
CNN seemed to turn this new corner this evening, in both the Anderson Cooper coverage of Palin, and in the panel Larry King put together. Air America's Ed Schultz, who decided over the weekend to come up here for a town hall meeting at the Wendy Williamson Auditorium before the middle of September, was on King's show. He jumped all over the conservative talkng heads, who obviously weren't prepared to say more than "she cut taxes, stopped the bridge to nowhere, fought corruption in her own party, stood up to Ted Stevens," and "has been a fine commander-in-chief of the Alaska National Guard."
The Nation's Ari Berman, today citedTalking Points Memo, which has been highly reliant on Alaska bloggers and journalists in keeping track of Palin's ethical lapses, brought up a name I have been stressing in conversations and e-mails with journalists on this since early Saturday - Sen. Thomas Eagleton.
Another name stressed in these forums have been Harriet Meiers. Watching CNN's Krya Philips, whose husband is a bigtime GOP operative try to spin and minimize Troopergate reminded me of her early reports on the Meiers Supreme Court nomination.
I've heard some Alaskans are starting office pools on when she's pulled from the ticket. My guess is a week from tomorrow.
Judy and I spent the afternoon going through parts of two subdivisions between Wasilla and Palmer, canvassing for the Palmer Barack Obama office. We only visited homes of people who are registered as independent or unaffiliated, and who regularly vote.
The canvassing had been planned last week, so it wasn't a response to the temporary ascension of Gov. Palin.
We weren't supposed to push for Obama unless people wanted information about him. It was Labor Day, so a lot of people were gone, as the weather this weekend was as good as we've seen for a three-day period this summer. We registered some young voters.
A lot of people who had been uncommitted or leaning toward Obama last week, have come over to the McCain-Palin ticket, or, as they sometimes called it, the Palin ticket. They were as understandably proud as we expected they would be.
But we were happy that, given how many people claimed, "I know Sarah," or "I know the Palins," some who do felt she has now gone beyond where her talents might best serve Alaska or the USA.
Still, we didn't expect an Obama landslide to be gestating, even after last week's convention.
The police in Minneapolis-St. Paul are being very heavy-handed as the opening day of the Republican National Convention seeps into its afternoon and evening hours. Here's a YouTube of prominent progressive journalist Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! being arrested for inciting a riot. 187 people, including several journalists from such media outlets as ABC, have been arrested so far today.
Barbara Bachmeier walked into the Republican Party offices Friday looking for someone else but she found McHugh Pierre. He's on leave from the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and hand-picked by Sarah Palin to act as the Alaska Republican Party spokesperson in place of Republican Chair, Randy Reudrich.
Bachmeier walked in just as Pierre hung up the phone. She described his look as "the cat that just swallowed the canary." Pierre: "I just got off the phone with the McCain people. They are coming in tomorrow to do their investigations."
Bachmeier (incredulously): Now???!!! This is going to be like an episode of the "Beverly Hillbillies!"
Pierre: (nods and smiles)
Bachmeier: "Do you really think she's going to win?"
Pierre: "No, but she's really going to do a lot for Alaska."
Bachmeier goes to the Republican Party office as often as she visits the Alaska Democrats. She also attended the conventions of both parties. She is a registered "non-partisan" and maintains her neutrality in all-things-political because of her roll as an advocate for woman veterans who have experienced Military Sexual Trauma (MST) and the debilitating Post Tramatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is the result in most cases. As an MST survivor herself, her avocation is helping others like her by starting the 501-C3 "Women Serving Women Veterans" and the "Alaska Military Veterans PAC"--the only Federally recognized veterans Political Action Ccommittee in Alaska.
As a matter of fact, Barbara inadvertantly shared her conversation with Pierre while we were discussing the progress of both organizations and the work we would do together when I got home (I was still in Denver). My personal mission is to work with veterans...especially disabled vets. I am already dedicated to one non-profit, Veteran's Aviation Outreach, and I am also going to do some work with Barbara.
It was clear when she recounted the story of her day at Republican headquarters that she didn't expect my reaction.
"Oh my GOD...YOU ARE KIDDING ME!!!!"
In my writing, I had been very careful to leave Barbara's name out of it because a) she didn't have any political agenda when she told me this information, we were just talking about veterans' issues and b) I didn't want there to be any kind of retaliation against her.
However, McHugh Pierre's insistance upon lying in the comments of the blog posts got her back up. His second comment especially irritated her:
I figured I would share the truth with you. Obviously you don't care about the truth so soldier on rumor monger!
She found it interesting that he used the term "soldier on."
"If you don't stand for something, you stand for nothing. I am a soldier and I stand for the truth," Bachmeier stated as we talked in my cramped little office. "I can't stand it when anyone is being disingenuous and I know about it."
However, she wants it known that she's not anybody's "mouthpiece."
"I have no loyalty to either party. My loyalties are with the active-duty soldiers and the veterans. Many of Alaska's veterans are in dire straits and I need everybody's help to bring about change. I just call them as I see them"
Unfortunately this isn’t a rare story in Alaska. The story of Bristol Palin is that of so many girls I grew up with in rural Alaska. The age of consent is 16. Abstinence only works until it doesn’t, and then you’re buying pampers. This isn’t a reflection on her reputation, not at all.
We have some of the highest rates in the country when it comes to teen pregnancy, rape, incest, and domestic violence. Last year, the Democrats in Juneau fought hard to provide Denali Kid Care to more pregnant women and children.
As governor, Sarah Palin did not lift a finger to help this bill pass, a bill that may have covered her daughter. Bristol Palin’s story is not tragic in the sense that she has the love and support of so many. The tragedy is all those who don’t have family support , health assistance, vitamins or enough food.
image of Sarah, Trig and Bristol Palin, taken last Friday morning in Ohio, by Megan McCain
"Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media to respect our daughter and Levi's privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates."
--- Sarah and Todd Palin
note to the press:please call somebody else for Levi's last name.
OK. Sarah's off in Minnesota or NOLA or wherever the guy who can't keep his eyes off her cleavage wants her to be. So Sean Parnell, who was described in Sunday's Anchorage Daily News as "the candidate who put the lack in lackluster," must be in charge, eh?
Not much work to do this week, though. Except to count somewhere between 5,000 and 12,000 votes in a contest that sees him about 150 votes behind Don Young.
Hmmmm.....
Meanwhile, half the reporters in Alaska are converging on the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, where thousands of sexually repressed Republicans are tapping their feet, stalling their convention for a day or so. Yikes! Was that Larry Craig I just saw?
First of all, it needs to be pointed out that hadn't Andy Halcro and Linda Kellen pushed this hard from the start, Josh Marshall might not have been able to come up with such a great synthesis of this obvious ethics and veracity problem, about to thump down on the McCain campaign this coming week, as if Hurricane Gustav had missed NOLA and had swooped back to the earth's surface, right on top of Minneapolis-St. Paul.
I've noticed some people who should know better claiming that bringing up Gov. Palin's troopergate scandal is tantamount to making a victim of or defending her slimeball ex-brother-in-law who allegedly once used a taser on his stepson.
That's awfully foolish. So I thought I'd put together a post explaining why.
The person in question is state trooper Mike Wooten -- Palin's ex-brother-in-law who's embroiled in a bitter custody and divorce battle with Palin's sister. Back in the second week of August, well before Palin became a national political figure, TPMMuckraker was reporting on this story. And as part of the reporting we tried to get a handle on just how bad a guy Wooten was. Most people who are familiar with the ugliness that often spills out of custody and divorce cases know to take accusations arising out of the course of them with a grain of salt unless you know a lot about the people involved. And if you look closely at the case there are numerous reasons to question the picture drawn by the Palin family. Regardless, we proceeded on the assumption that Wooten really was a rotten guy because the truth is that it wasn't relevant to the investigation of Palin.
Let's review what happened.
The Palin family had a feud with Wooten prior to her becoming governor. They put together a list of 14 accusations which they took to the state police to investigate -- a list that ranged from the quite serious to the truly absurd. The state police did an investigation, decided that 5 of the charges had some merit and suspended Wooten for ten days -- a suspension later reduced to five days. The Palin's weren't satisfied but there wasn't much they could do.
When Palin became governor they went for another bite at the apple. Palin, her husband and several members of her staff began pressuring Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan -- a respected former Chief of the Anchorage police department -- to can Wooten. Monegan resisted, arguing that the official process regarding Wooten was closed. And there was nothing more that could be done. In fact, during one of the conversations in which Palin's husband Todd was putting on the squeeze, Monegan told Todd Palin, "You can't head hunt like this. What you need to do is back off, because if the trooper does make a mistake, and it is a terminable offense, it can look like political interference."
Eventually, Palin got fed up and fired Monegan from his job. (Palin claims, not credibly, that she fired Monegan over general differences in law enforcement priorities.) This is an important point. Wooten never got fired. To the best of my knowledge, he's is still on the job. The central bad act was firing the state's top police official because he refused to bend to political pressure from the governor and her family to fire a public employee against whom the governor was pursuing a vendetta -- whether the vendetta was justified or not.
Soon after this, questions were raised in the state about Monegan's firing and he eventually came forward and said he believed he'd been fired for not giving in to pressure to fire Wooten.
After Monegan made his accusations, Palin insisted there was no truth whatsoever to his claims. Nonetheless, a bipartisan committee of the state legislature approved an investigation. In response, Palin asked the Attorney General to start his own investigation which many in the state interpreted as an effort to either keep tabs on or tamper with the legislature's investigation. Again, very questionable judgment in someone who aspires to be first in line to the presidency.
The Attorney General's investigation quickly turned up evidence that Palin's initial denials were false. Multiple members of her staff had raised Wooten's employment with Monegan. Indeed, the state police had a recording of one of her deputies pushing Monegan to fire Wooten. That evidence forced Palin to change her story. Palin said that this was the first she'd heard of it and insisted the deputy wasn't acting at her behest, even though the trascript of the recorded call clearly suggested that he was. (Hear the audio here.)
Just yesterday, Monegan gave an interview to the Washington Post in which he said that not only Palin's aides, but Palin's husband and Palin herself had repeatedly raised the Wooten issue with him and pressured him to fire him. And now he says he has emails that Palin sent him about the matter. (In an interesting sidelight, that may end up telling us a lot, Monegan says no one from the McCain campaign ever contacted him in the vetting process.)
The investigator appointed by the state legislature began trying to arrange a time to depose Gov. Palin last week -- in other words, in the final days before her selection.
So let's put this all together.
We rely on elected officials not to use the power of their office to pursue personal agendas or vendettas. It's called an abuse of power. There is ample evidence that Palin used her power as governor to get her ex-brother-in-law fired. When his boss refused to fire him, she fired his boss. She first denied Monegan's claims of pressure to fire Wooten and then had to amend her story when evidence proved otherwise.
The available evidence now suggests that she:
1) tried to have an ex-relative fired from his job for personal reasons, something that was clearly inappropriate, and perhaps illegal, though possibly understandable in human terms,
2) fired a state official for not himself acting inappropriately by firing the relative,
3) lied to the public about what happened and
4) continues to lie about what happened.
These are, to put it mildly, not the traits or temperament you want in someone who could hold the executive power of the federal government.
As the Republican National Convention delegates awaken from the drunken stupors caused by their all-day partying yesterday (the fake Jerry Lewisesque telethon Gustav scenario having evaporated this morning like so many pink elephants), they might want to wash down their bloody marys by watching Democracy Now! or reading the Los Angeles Times.
