Tag: Palin

Kids Say The Darnedest Things

No….not the Art Linkletter show from days gone by…in case you are old enough to remember Art and his TV show……this case I am talking about the Palin kids, Bristol and Willow…….

Bristol Palin posted a brief apology on Facebook late Tuesday after 16-year-old sis Willow used anti-gay slurs (captured in screen shots by TMZ) to attack a classmate who criticized the family’s TLC reality show. “Haha your [sic] so gay,” wrote Willow. “Sorry that you guys are all jealous of my families [sic] success and you guys aren’t goin to go anywhere with your lives.” Bristol also weighed into the debate, but later had a change of heart: “Willow and I shouldn’t have reacted to negative comments about our family. We apologize.

“Haha your so gay. I have no idea who you are, But what I’ve seen pictures of, your disgusting … My sister has a kid and is still hot.” She followed that up with another comment that read, “Tre stfu. Your such a f—–.”

First, with all the news about kids being bullied and committing suicide you would think that Mommy would have had a talk with the children that she uses as campaign props….maybe not…..second, do they each spelling and proper usage of the English language in Alaska….maybe Willow is home schooled so she does not have to mingle with her inferiors…..

It’s A Family Thing

The mid-term campaigns are in full bloom…idiocy…silliness…..are the rule of the day.  Voters are inundated with what Spaniards called “Mierda”…..from all directions….phone calls….door greets….Mall appearances…the fools are everywhere….and all want your vote  so they can go to Washington and get their piece of the pie…..whoever named it the “silly season” was a very wise person….

All the pomp and ceremony of the elections has become boring…even for a politics junkie like me…..there is only so much BS that one can stand…especially if you have an IQ above “tickle me Elmo”……but just when I thought I was about over the stuff……I was mistaken!

Bloomberg has a report that just tickles the crap out of me….Thanx to Traci McMillan for the article……

President Barack Obama is distantly related to two of his most outspoken critics — Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin and talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh — as well as to former President George W. Bush, according to a genealogy website.

Family trees revealed Obama and Palin, the former Alaska Governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, are 10th cousins through common ancestor John Smith, according to Ancestry.com Inc. Smith was Obama’s and Palin’s 12th-great- grandfather. Smith, a Protestant pastor, was an early settler in Massachusetts and was criticized by the ecclesiastical community for supporting Quakers, said Anastasia Tyler, a genealogist for the website.

Obama and Limbaugh are 10th cousins once removed through shared connections to Richmond Terrell, a Virginia settler who came to America in the mid-1600s, Tyler said.

The family-tree website also found that Palin is related to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and author and commentator Ann Coulter. The three are tied to John Lathrop, an Englishman who was banished to Boston after he served as minister of an illegal church independent of the Church of England, Tyler said.

Just I have thought for decades….and now there is PROOF……Politics is ALL one big, power hungry family……

What Now For The GOP?

First of all, looks like the Reagan era is over!  The next great conservative movement will be back to the future type of government, more Goldwater-esque.  Smaller government, less spending, government out of private lives, etc….but the question will be…who will lead the new GOP?

I look for the likes of Romney, Giuliani, Jeb Bush and Palin fighting it out for control of the Party.  I feel that Romney and Jeb Bush wioll come out of the battle with the control.  Palin will be marginalized, but a heavy hitter.  She will most likely become the Huckabee of the next election.

After this past election, take a long hard look at the map, the red states in particular, The GOP has become the party of white rural America and a party of the South.  To play in the rest of the US it has to find a new direction.  This coming battle for control could become the political story of the next 4 years.

The GOP has to find a new message that will appeal to Americans, a new direction and a new face.  They may deny it, but the GOP voting was along racial lines, to discount this is to deny the obvious.

The Republicans have a number of problems.

Younger voters favoured Mr Obama by a big margin. So too did Latinos. Both groups represent major parts of the electorate in the coming years.

The executive editor of the Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes, argues that two things have gone wrong.

“The first is the party’s image, which has suffered because of an unpopular Republican president, scandals in Congress, and a party the media claims is too conservative.

“The other is the sour political mood in the country caused by a weak economy, the financial meltdown, and the feeling the nation is headed in the wrong direction.”

A possible Republican response to its problems, Mr Barnes suggests, “might be to elevate moderates to positions of leadership”.

It is a huge umbrella group of social-conservatives – whose primary policy goal is the protection of the unborn; fiscal-conservatives who wish the party instead would focus on tax rates; neo-conservatives who advocate military pre-emption abroad; anti-immigration hawks who helped turn off the Latino vote.

The battle, some believe, will be between economic conservatives and culture warriors.

Ms Palin may lead the cultural conservative faction’s efforts to control the party in 2012 in a battle with Republicans seeking a more centrist approach.

“Is the Republican Party finished? No, and even though it will go through the typical agonizing post-train-wreck re-appraisals, the party’s remedy might be far simpler than it now appears. The Republicans are just one compelling leader away from being back in the game.'”  Now the question that needs to be asked is:  Who will that leader be?

Sowing The Seeds Of Chaos–Part 2

Is their a statute of limitations in politics?  Apparently so!  The media or Obama cannot bring up the Keating affair because that was 20+ years ago and does not add to the conversation of today’s politics.  But somehow something that happen 40 years ago is okay territory to attack.  Someone explain that logic..  If we are talking about Obama’s thinking and decisions, could we not say the same for McCain and Keating?

The media has become a willing accomplice in this brand of chaos, by allowing the question to go unasked and allowing the McCain surrogates to control that part of any dialog.  It is like they are afraid to ask the question.  Where have the journalist with nuts gone?  Long time passing.

Obama has his drags on the campaign like Ayers, Wright, whoever, but so does McCain with Keating, Singlaub and Palin with the Alaskan Independence Party, with the founder talking about hating the US and the flag, but none of this is asked or reported.  Why?  McCain surrogates question Obama’s patriotism but yet the AIP stuff is allowed to lie undisturbed, even after the president of the party calls US troops in Alaska, An occupying force.  Why is this?

The media hates bloggers and with good reason.  Why?  Bloggers are not afraid to bring up the crap, they do not have to answer to their corporate owners.  They can ask real questions and not let the surrogates control the tone of the debate.  The early morning media is afraid to challenge the McCain machine, bloggers are not.

The media is allowing the McCain camp to sow the seeds of chaos and of hate, by pretending that their questioons of Obama’s patriotism and judgement are valid.  Just once I would like to find a news outlet that has a set of cajones.  The people would be better served and the seeds of chaos would die a natural death.

Guilty by Association

Since no one in the media has addressed this piece of information, I will do it for them.
Sarah Palin is attacking Barack Obama for “palling around with terrorists,” twisting media accounts to falsely connect Obama with the Weather Underground figure Bill Ayers. Let me say that I have no sympathy, and never had, for the anarcho-syndicalist craziness and bona fide infantile leftism, that Ayers and his associates represented nearly 40 years ago, when Obama was in the 3rd grade.

By contrast, Sarah Palin has real and documented connections to the Alaska Independence Party, which is far more extremist than even the most far right of the Republican Party. The main platform of that party, as Alaska Independence Party leaders have stated, is a rejection of the United States and an effort to cause Alaska to leave the union. Given what this party represents today, Palin’s ties to that party deserve to be an issue in the campaign.

Alaska Independence Party leaders have also claimed that Sarah Palin was a member before she was elected mayor of Wasilla, which the McCain campaign has denied. Officially, records show that Palin was a registered Republican since 1982, six years before she married her husband Todd, British Petroleum supervisory employee, self-employed fisherman, and snowmobile mobile racer.

The Director of the Alaska Division of Elections has stated that Todd Palin, however, was a registered member of the Alaska Independence Party from 1995 to 2002. Todd Palin, all sources agree, has played a significant role as a policy adviser to his wife’s administration. There is significant disagreement about Sarah Palin’s attendance at Alaska Independence Party conventions before she became mayor of Wasilla. She did visit their convention after she became mayor, however, which the McCain workers try to downplay as a mere courtesy call. As governor, she sent a video tape to the most recent 2008 convention telling the delegates to “keep up the good work” and calling their convention “inspiring.”

Here is a little history on the Alaska Independence Party. The Party was founded by an ultra-rightist gold miner, Joe Vogler in the 1970s with an “anti-American” platform. Palin has denounced those abroad in oil rich countries who “hate America.” Joe Vogler hated America. He said in the 1970s, “I’m an Alaskan, not an American. I have no use for America or her damned institutions.”

Later Vogler said that “the fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred of the US government. And I won’t be buried under their damn flag….when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home.” He said this in an oral history interview at the University of Alaska in 1991, at which time Bill Ayers had rejected his own past and had become respectable. Two years later Vogler disappeared. A criminal subsequently confessed to murdering him in a conflict over the sale of plastic explosives (which may suggest terrorism).

Like I have said in the past that I really detest the whole premise of guilt by association.  I mean there are many of us that would be guilty if that was the law of the land.  But I guess it is win at any cost.

“Putting Our Country First”

McCain and Palin have embraced change but the message is that they will put our country first. But does that mean…..exactly? Mean? Besides being a cute, but effective little slogan.

But what does it mean?

Does it mean that Americans will live working? Maybe that there will be adequate healthcare of all people? Possibly that there will be more domestic spending? Or maybe keeping the US militarily strong? How about giving corporations more leeway to do as they want?

Just what does the phrase mean?

The amazing part of this election season is that half the voting population wants the US to move into the 21st century and the other half is stuck in the US of their fathers. That is the thinking of the wonderful 50’s.

So the election will come down to which sector will show up at the polls. Will Americans, as a nation, take a chance on the future or will we just be happy with living in the past?

In conclusion, which thinking is putting the country first?

OOPS! On The Veep Choice

This whole conversation woiuld be nowhere if Obama had chosen Clinton as his running mate. Along the same line of thinking—then Palin would not be on the Republican ticket.

Now the PUMA women have someone to vote for and support, regardless of her positions on abortion and such. THis, in my opinion, was an excellent choice for McCain or whoever came up with this scheme. Since the Repubs are short on substance on “real” issues; this situation keeps the media focused on her and not on the issues trhat the American voter deserves.

None of this he said, she said, doing anything to educate the voter on issues and positions of the candidate. Confusion, misdirection and obfuscation are just what the Repubs need to make their way to the finish line.

If white middle America votes with their gut, then McCain will most likely win the election. That is why they are continuing to keep the media focused on Palin and not the issues.

McCain’s Trivialization

The sad truth in John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate is that it betrays his repeated promise to put the needs of his country before the needs of his election campaign. That McCain would ask Americans to entrust their future to the health and acuity of a 72-year-old president and to an utter neophyte in national and international affairs completely trivializes the challenges this country faces. Were it not so tragic it would be worthy of “Saturday Night Live.”
Barack Obama’s criteria for his running mate included not only a shared vision, but also someone who would help him govern the nation and be a good president in case something happened to him. That is wise leadership.
In choosing Palin, McCain has sacrificed good governance to the litmus test of ideology. His choice indicates either that he thinks he is invincible or that leading America in the 21st century can really be done by almost anyone – or both. It is an insult to all of us, and I hope that sober reflection on the disparity between these two views of governance will lead Americans to make the wiser choice in November.
This is an article written by Douglas Johnstone and published in the Salt Lake Tribune. Will someone please tell Tina Fey to do something with her hair.

What Did Palin Do To The Alaskan Oil Industry?

These are exerpts from a piece in the WSJ.

Oil companies in Alaska are paying more money in taxes than ever before. The state’s oil and gas tax revenues for its just-ended fiscal 2007 topped $10 billion. That’s twice as much as fiscal 2006 and four times more than 2004.

Some supporters of Barack Obama see that money coming in and say that John McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, must have done what Sen. Obama wants to do — sock those companies with a big fat windfall profit tax. This is a deeply misleading reading of her 2007 tax reform.

A few years ago, Alaska had a big problem. Despite high oil prices, the state’s fiscal future was in peril because the state relies on only three aging oilfields for 80% of its oil and gas tax revenue.

As a new governor in 2007, Mrs. Palin stepped in to address the fiscal crisis and restore accountability. Working with Democrats and Republicans alike, she chose a 25% profits tax. But in lean years the state reverts to a 10% gross revenue tax on legacy fields that do not require massive continuing inputs of new capital.

Relative to the old system, Mrs. Palin’s plan — called “Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share” (ACES) — improves incentives for developing new resources. It ensures the state does well in boom times — as it is doing now — when oil prices are high. But it also hedges against low prices in the future by ensuring that oil companies exposed to commodity price swings don’t face a crushing tax burden when commodity prices fall.

Her plan includes an escalator clause that gives the state a larger share of revenues when oil prices rise. This is common to production-sharing agreements all over the world.

Mr. Obama proposes to give each American a $1,000 check funded by windfall profit taxes to ease the pain of high energy prices. Some say Mrs. Palin’s ACES is like that, because this year every Alaskan will receive a $1,200 check as a share of the oil bonanza. (The check comes in addition to the approximately $2,000 every Alaskan will receive this year as a dividend from the Permanent Fund, which was established by state constitutional amendment in 1976 as a way of sharing the state’s mineral wealth with the people.)

The real comparison is not between Mr. Obama’s windfall profit tax and Mrs. Palin’s risk-and-profit-sharing plan. It is between Alaska’s constitutional rule — that the people must share directly in the state’s mineral wealth — and Mr. McCain’s proposal that coastal states should share in federal offshore oil revenue. His plan is for the funds to be used for public purposes like roads, schools and conservation. A share of royalties dramatically improves the coastal states’ incentive to support drilling. But if Mr. McCain offered every individual American a royalty check too, he might find it easier to sell his program.