Alaska Progressive Blog Roundup - Saradise Lost Book 4 - Chapter 1 - NY 23

I. Saradise Lost Resurrected

Back on July 27th, I wrote what I hoped would be the last chapter of the Saradise Lost series at Progressive Alaska. After 313 chapters, I was more than tired of her antics, and there are enough other very important issues in Alaska, that I wanted to move on.

I've skewered my fellow Alaska bloggers for their continuing concentration on Palin. I've sought not to mention her name in the majority of PA post-resignation posts that touch upon issues she has continued to insinuate herself into, by calling her "The Crazy Woman," a term that may be an insult to genuinely crazy women everywhere.

But here we are, fifteen weeks after the CW quit, with the person she and her fellow Teabaggers sought to keep from being elected to the U.S. Congress last week, casting the deciding vote today that brought the U.S. House version of a health care reform bill possibility over its last hurdle, before the U.S. Senate makes it into an even more willowy shadow of what the bill really should be.

As Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore observed earlier today on newly the minted Democratic Party congressman's health care vote:

it is so perfect that Bill Owens was elected despite Sarah’s blessing and money…shocking…ha! According to some vote calls he was #218 which was the passing vote.

Palin's insinuation into last week's elections wasn't something that will help her chances of becoming a 2012 candidate for president. Nor will the spate of unfavorable books coming out this month, next year and in 2012. Her upcoming public appearances, promoting Going Rogue, will undoubtedly lead to more gaffes and scenes where her answers to questions or lack of answers to questions will reinforce images from 2008 and 2009.

Whether or not PA will be a major participant in Alaska blog coverage of Palin's continuing demise, I don't know yet. But a big hat tip needs to go to the other Alaska progressive blogs and their abilities to cover almost every aspect of the Crazy Woman's ineptitude and dishonesty.

The day after the Tuesday election, conservative talk radio host, Michael Smerconish interviewed New York State Assemblywoman Dierdre Scozzafava about the Teabagger assault on her in the second half of October, that led to Scozzafava's withdrawal from the NY-23 race, and later endorsement of Bill Owens. It is obvious, listening to Scozzafava describe her positions on GOP issues, that she really is a Republican. The Daily Beast has posted a recording of the Smerconish-Scozzafava interview.

I know a lot of Republicans from New York and New England, and Dede is more conservative than many of them. That people like Palin or Glenn Beck and the Teabaggers think that they can fathom Northeast GOP ideals and sensibilities is more than a little bizarre. Beck, Palin and Limbaugh wouldn't recognize a real Northeast Republican if they met one, as a real Republican.

It is becoming more apparent that the result of the Teabagger mentality will probably be a third party movement between the middle of this winter and the end of 2012 race filing deadlines.

II. President Obama comes to Alaska as lower 48 progressives become more disenchanted with his wars.

I'm not at all excited that the current President of the United States will have his airplane refueled at Elmendorf Air Force Base on his way to Asia this week. Here's my list of things I won't be allowed to ask him:

1) Why are you expanding the roles of private contractors who are not beholden to U.S, Iraqi or Afghan laws in their job performance overseas?

2) Why did you instruct the Defense Department to try to quash the U.S. House move to force contractors with the Defense Department to be held accountable for rapes of their employees while overseas?

3) Why are you continuing the illegal practice of extraordinary rendition?

4) Why aren't you pushing for more accountability on Wall Street in a meaningful way? I still can't tell the bankers from the robbers.

5) Why aren't you articulating a more science-based U.S. position for the upcoming Copenhagen U.N. climate conference?

6) Just what is it about the Goldstone Report that is biased? Have you read it? Why have you let the Israeli far right politicians and office-holders insult you so openly and disparagingly in the Israeli press?

7) Why is it taking the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration about nine months to answer Gov. Parnell's request for an economic disaster declaration for the lower Yukon River?

8) Is anybody above the rank of company-grade officer ever going to be prosecuted for the hundreds of homicides U.S. forces and intelligence operatives committed while torturing people during the Bush administration?

I've noticed that some of the Alaska progressive bloggers are getting a bit more skeptical about the president, but - to my knowledge - only Shannyn Moore has brought up the Middle East, the expanding wars and the banking system, and put it into a context of concern about the responsibility this president now has for these failing policies.

I'm not calling my colleagues out so much as observing that it might be best to stay away from Obama idolatry this coming week during the refueling stop, while so many Americans, allies, Iraqis and Afghans are continuing to die every hour.