The more American voters find out about Sarah Palin, the less comfortable they are with the idea that she could, in the case of an elderly McCain’s illness or death, become President of the United States in as little as five months from now.
The Militant Moderate writes: “I want to vote for McCain, but he is working hard to convince me otherwise. The nomination of Sarah Palin is only the latest, most egregious, example.”
The McCain campaign says that Sarah Palin is not ready to hold a press conference or to be interviewed by journalists. The mystery on the minds of voters is how Palin could possibly be ready to succeed John McCain as President of the United States if she can’t even answer a reporter’s questions.
If the McCain-Palin campaign won’t give the Press the chance to find out more about Sarah Palin directly, then it’s up to the Press, and to the rest of us, to find out what we can on our own. A good place to start is the sixty six page summary of Sarah Palin’s time as mayor of Wasilla, created by Democrats in 2006. The summary is written by Democrats, but the information is from state and local newspapers and the public record.
Read. Inform yourself.
Then call the McCain-Palin press office at 703-650-5550 and tell them you expect Sarah Palin to start answering reporters’ unscripted questions today. Call the Washington Post ombudsman at 202-334-7582 too, and get ask the D.C. paper to put the pressure on McCain as well.
Last month I wrote about Random House’s craven decision to revoke its publication of the historical romance The Jewel of Medina on the grounds that some unknown terrorist somewhere might bomb someone after reading it and getting hypothetically homicidally upset. The new Random House rule: If It Might Miff a Muslim, Muffle it. Oddly enough, Random House proudly carries a number of titles that harshly critique Christianity, and The Jewel of Medina doesn’t even try to act as a critique of Islam, but those are just tiny little facts hit by the wave of Random House’s peevish publishing panic.
Strangely enough, not one person at Beaufort Books or NPR has been killed by an Islamofascist. One clerk at Beaufort did get a hangnail after the announcement, though. Now more than ever, we must persevere. Cue the tinkly piano music of mourning.
“You ask me my feelings on an issue and I’ll give it to you straight up, because that’s the only way a voter knows where his employee stands. Elected officials are exactly that—employees.” — Sarah Palin, September 30 1992.
9 days since Sarah Palin was announced as VP pick. 0 press conferences with Sarah Palin answering reporters’ questions. 58 days left until the election.
Sarah Palin is still not ready.
Go ahead, steal that little web badge. I want you to. I want you to stick it up on your blog and remind everybody who visits that Sarah Palin is still not ready to answer the questions a Vice President should answer. Remind your visitors that, should John McCain kick the bucket, Sarah Palin is still not ready to answer the questions a President must answer.
To point this out in even larger style, steal a larger graphic:
Once you hyperlink to one of these graphics, it will automatically update on your web page every day that Sarah Palin refuses to stand before a room full of reporters and answer their questions.
Sarah Palin is running scared. Palin is terrified of reporters. She’s frightened by journalists. Sarah Palin lives in fear of appearing in public at an occasion that isn’t pre-scripted for her convenience.
Even the McCain campaign admits that Sarah Palin isn’t ready to talk to reporters yet.
Palin isn’t ready yet? It’s less than two months until Election Day! If Sarah Palin isn’t ready now, then she never will be.
If Sarah Palin isn’t ready to talk intelligently to reporters, then how will she ever speak intelligently with the leaders of foreign countries? That’s something that the Vice President has to do quite frequently.
And what if, as is quite likely, John McCain dies and leaves Sarah Palin President. How will Sarah Palin ever get ready for that?
For the McCain campaign to keep Sarah Palin hidden, running away from reporters who want to ask her important questions that the American people deserve to have answered is an insult. It’s an attempt to prevent American voters from finding out who Sarah Palin really is - without the mask of a script to make her look pretty and sound prepared.
If the McCain campaign is keeping Sarah shielded in this way, they must know something about her that they want to stay hidden. Maybe it’s that Sarah Palin has little knowledge or understanding of national and international issues. Maybe it’s that Sarah Palin can’t speak without being told what to say. Maybe it’s something else.
Whatever the reason for the McCain campaign to keep Sarah Palin protected from unscripted questions, we cannot sit and wait passively for the Republicans to tell the tales that want to be told. It’s time to wake up the Press, and shake the McCain campaign into letting us see who the real Sarah Palin is.
Action #1: Call the Press to action. Start with your own community’s newspaper, and express your displeasure that reporters are being given no access to Palin. Communicate your expectation that the Press will pressure the McCain campaign to provide unfiltered access for reporters to Palin - or stop reporting on Palin’s scripted publicity events.
Continue with the newspaper in our nation’s capitol, and call Deborah Howell, the Washington Post’s obmudsman, at 202-334-7582.
Action #2: Call the press office of the McCain campaign itself, at 703-650-5550, and tell the staff there that for Palin to be shielded from free questioning by journalists is an unacceptable insult to voters.
Last Sunday, I was in the audience with my audio recorder rolling as I heard Ohio State University Associate Registrar Jack Miner explain why he could no longer call himself a member of the Republican Party. This is what he said:
Most of you know me because of Ohio State, but a lot of you also know me because I’ve been a lifelong Republican. I’ve been pretty active over the years for the Republican Party, enough said. In this election, my family, my community and the nation can’t afford four more years of the same thing.
So this is the year that I know I’m heading out of the party and I’m supporting Obama. That’s become even more clear the past couple of days where I’m almost embarrassed to say I that used to be a Republican based on the ticket they’ve put together. So if you think about not just a heartbeat, but — not a strong heartbeat away from the presidency, we can’t afford to have someone who’s not strong in foreign relations, who’s not strong with domestic policy, and really has no experience. We can’t afford the Republicans.
Good Saturday morning reading comes from the band Portugal. The Man. One of the band’s members, John Baldwin Gourley, grew up in Wasilla, Alaska, also the home town of Sarah Palin.
The story boils down to a remembrance of moose hunting as a boy - a classic Alaskan experience with a twist. The moose lived to see another day. As the father told his son, they wouldn’t shoot and kill the moose “because we don’t need it.”
That idea is proposed as a core Alaskan ethic - take what you really need, but not more.
Sarah Palin’s ethic, shooting moose to show off for the cameras and hunting wolves from helicopters, chanting drill baby drill at the Republican National Convention, doesn’t fit with that ethic.
“We don’t need drilling in some of our most beautiful and untouched land,” says Gourley.
“We don’t need aerial hunting,” says Gourley.
“We don’t need book burners and censors,” says Gourley.
Thanks for showing us another view of life in Wasilla than the one offered by Sarah Palin, Mr. Gourley.
If like me you’ve been wondering where the Sarah Palin press conferences are, now we have our answer: the Sarah Palin press conferences are nowhere. The Sarah Palin press conferences are not happening. Journalistic interviews with Sarah Palin are not happening either. They will not be happening for the foreseeable future, either.
A few days ago, I placed the following video online, so that people could see the bizarre ideas being promoted by Sarah Palin’s church in Wasilla. This is the church at which Palin gave a speech on June 8th this year, proclaiming that the fighting and killing of American soldiers in Iraq is a part of God’s will, and a fossil fuel pipeline in Alaska is too.
In response to the video a supporter of Sarah Palin wrote,
“Fuck you heathen, I bet you can see Hell creeping up on your life already, can’t you?”
Every time I see journalists refer to people like this as “values voters”, I feel the urge to vomit.
Senator Sam Brownback gave an exceptional example of the incoherence that results from the mixing of religion and politics. Giving a speech to warm up the crowd for John McCain, Brownback tried to reconcile the belief that God has given America a destiny with the political assertion that the fate of America depends upon who we elect as President this year. Brownback said,
“I believe in American exceptionalism, that this is a special land and that to whom much is given much is required. We are blessed to be a blessing, but for America to fulfill its God-given destiny, we need leaders to help take us there…. John McCain is one of those leaders.”
So, on the one hand, Senator Brownback claims that America is a special nation that has been chosen by the Christian God to lead the world. He says this destiny is “God-given”. That’s past tense, which means the deal is already sealed. The destiny of world leadership has been given to us already.
Well, if that’s really true, and not just a lot of pretty meaningless God-talk babble, then we don’t need to do anything. It’s destiny, and destiny cannot be changed. If destiny can be changed, after all, it’s not destiny, but mere possibility. So, Sam Brownback is asserting, through the power of his religious faith, that the success of the United States of America is all wrapped up. It’s for sure, and nothing can stop us.
That’s in accordance with the religious belief of American exceptionalism that Sam Brownback claims to believe in, but it seems that as he was writing his speech, it occurred to Brownback that his religious pronouncement was giving Republicans permission to sit at home and do nothing - not even vote. You see, if God had guaranteed American leadership of the world as destiny, then it would mean that it wouldn’t matter if John McCain were elected or not. Whomever the titular President of the United States would be, God would be the real one in charge of the USA. So, why bother campaigning for John McCain?
That’s where Sam Brownback’s 180 degree turn begins, with the nonsense phrase “We are blessed to be a blessing,” which doesn’t mean anything except to express Senator Brownback’s feeling that he really has no idea what he’s talking about.
Then, Senator Brownback gives the internally inconsistent declaration that if we are to fulfill our God-given destiny, we need leaders to take us there, and that John McCain is one of those leaders. The clear implication is that if we do not choose John McCain as our President, America will not achieve its destiny. So, says Brownback, vote McCain!
That’s nonsense, of course. First of all, Senator Brownback never explained how he could tell that it was John McCain, and not Barack Obama, who would lead America toward the destiny already given to us by God. Did God come down out of the heavens and tell Senator Brownback? Did the angels send a memo to Senator Brownback’s office, or maybe, did Senator Brownback just make it all up and just pretend that he knows what the destiny of America is?
That’s the trouble with destiny. You can’t really know if something is destiny before it happens, because, well, there’s still a chance that it won’t happen. Even after something happens, you don’t really know if it was destiny for it to happen, or if there could have been another outcome. You don’t know, because you haven’t had the chance to try out that alternate reality, and you never will get the chance.
But, in spite of all the reasons he can’t possibly really know what America’s destiny is, Senator Brownback says that there is a destiny for America, and that it’s for America to be successful, and that God has made it a sure thing as a gift to us all.
So why was it that religious Americans need to elect John McCain again? Oh, yeah. It was because God has given us a destiny, but the destiny won’t ever take place unless we ourselves work to make it happen. It’s a tricky kind of destiny, see, kind of like a matching funds donation drive from God.
Only, where are God’s matching funds in this deal? According to Sam Brownback, God has told him that America has been given the gift of a destiny of successful world leadership, only it won’t take place unless we do the work ourselves.
Well, that’s not really a gift, is it? I mean, if I tell my nephew that I’m giving him the gift of a wooden sword, but he won’t get it unless he goes out into the forest and finds a big branch, and then carves the sword, then I haven’t really given my nephew the sword, have I? No. All I’ve done is tell my nephew what to do. I’ve just been a big talker. Talk, talk, talk.
So, according to the second half of Sam Brownback’s statement, God is a lazy, good-for-nothing spirit who won’t actually follow through on his promises. So, why bother paying attention to what God wants? Really? What’s God going to do about it if we ignore him? Will he doom us to Hell? Well, if God’s doom is like his destiny, then it’s all just a bunch of empty promises he’ll eventually forget about.
Neither version of Sam Brownback’s idea of God’s destiny makes sense. It’s ridiculous to claim that it doesn’t matter what Americans do, because God has America’s future all pre-arranged. It is equally ridiculous to assert that God is a great divine being who claims to direct the course of American history, but then lets the American people actually make the choices.
The sensible alternative that Senator Brownback never seems to have considered is that there is no God, and no destiny, and that the future course of history is not at all predetermined, but is created by our actions in the present. It’s a model of reality that gets rid of all the outrageous logical contradictions of Sam Brownback’s beliefs.
Unfortunately, the no-God model is not popular with voters. Apparently, the American people get rather nervous when they’re told that the future of their nation depends upon their choices today. They’d rather have a destiny that doesn’t make sense than a responsibility that does.
What’s most salient in the liberal zeitgeist? To get an idea, take a look at these, our top five selling bumper stickers from September 1 to September 5, 2008:
This week, opposition to Sarah Palin and John McCain tops support for Barack Obama. And some Alaskan governor-type politicians apparently still need to learn their lesson: never mess with a librarian.
The National Ice and Snow Data Center has released its measurements of the extent of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean through the end of August. The area of the Arctic Ocean covered with ice is at its second-lowest point since measurements began (last year was the record):
The rate of sea ice loss during the month of August 2008 hit a record. If August’s rate of continues, we’ll see a record low Arctic ice extent this year:
Regardless of whether it will be a record low or very near a record low, we’re talking about a very low extent of sea ice compared to the average of measurements made by the Center.
Republicans are all agog over Sarah Palin. They’re practically drooling. It isn’t for the policies of Palin, though, or the substance of Sarah, so much a it is for her image. It’s Republican identity politics at its worst. They say that Sarah Palin is the hottest VP from the coolest state. Really. That’s what the GOP is putting on buttons.
As for myself, I have a bit of trouble finding a woman who is as mentally unhinged as Sarah Palin is, to be hot. When you’re always wondering if a woman is going to stab you in the back, or put a rabbit in the crock pot, or leave a moose head in your bed, or try to take you to her weird Wasilla church of prophecy, it’s kind of hard for a man to feel any kind of real attraction.
One personality trait that both Republicans and Democrats could agree that Sarah Palin exhibits is control. However, there is sure disagreement about whether Palin’s obsession with control is a positive or negative trait.
In her short executive experience, Sarah Palin has already built up a long record of using executive power to control government employees in order to promote her political agenda - and firing those in government who get in her way.
There’s the instance of the librarian who refused to comply with Sarah Palin’s demands that books in the Wasilla public library be censored. Palin tried to fire librarian Mary Ellen Emmons because the librarian didn’t want to restrict the public’s access to books just to suit Palin’s fancy.
Then there was the case of Irl Stambaugh, the Wasilla Police Chief. Sarah Palin fired him without even saying why she was doing so. Stambaugh asked for an explanation, but Palin refused. “I do not feel I have your full support in my efforts to govern the city of Wasilla. Therefore I intend to terminate your employment,” is all she said. “You know in your heart when someone is supportive of you.”
You know in your heart whether government employees to fire? You fire them for lack of political support? Is that how Sarah Palin would make decisions as President if John McCain died and left her the Oval Office? Would she purge the government of political dissidents that she identified with her heart?
Chief Stambaugh asserts that he had offended people who had contributed to Sarah Palin’s campaign, including local members of the National Rifle Association. Stambaugh attempted to restrict the carrying of concealed weapons in Wasilla. He also worked to require bars to close their doors at 2:00 AM after a series of drunk driving incidents. Bar owners allegedly supported Sarah Palin in order to keep the alcohol flowing, and get Stambaugh out of their way.
The fondness Sarah Palin has for establishing control by firing government employees her heart feels a grudge toward has continued with Palin’s short term as Governor. Most infamously, there is the case in which Sarah Palin used the power of her public office to target her sister’s ex-husband: State Trooper Mike Wooten. There are serious allegations against both Mike Wooten and Sarah Palin. It is alleged that Palin fired Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan when Monegan refused to fire Wooten at Palin’s request.
The entire truth of the matter isn’t yet known, because the Alaska legislature’s investigation is still underway. Yet, instead of allowing the legislature’s investigation to continue out in the open, Sarah Palinis trying to stop the investigation and replace it with one of her own. Palin proposes having her alleged misconduct investigated by her own administration, with a board comprised completely of her own political appointees. Those people know Sarah Palin’s record of firing people who refuse to bend to her will. Their positions depend upon their ability to make Sarah Palin happy.
Whatever actually happened between Palin, Wooten and Monegan, the fact that Sarah Palin is attempting to use her power as Governor to crush an independent investigation of the matter is troubling in itself. It seems that Palin ascribes to the model of executive power that George W. Bush has inflicted upon America. She is using her power to place herself above accountability, even as she asserts the ability to hold others accountable on nothing more than her whim. Sarah Palin, like George W. Bush, seems to think of herself a law unto itself, beyond the control of the people she claims to represent, and yet able to impose her control upon others.
Palin supporters call that being a maverick. To me, it looks more like being an autocrat.
Our newest book set:
2008 Reasons to Elect a Progressive President, Volume 1:
Reasons 1-1034 on Community, Economy, Education, the Environment and Freedom
2008 Reasons to Elect a Progressive President, Volume 2:
Reasons 1035-2008 on History, War and Peace, Democrats, Republicans, and Values
The Militant Moderate writes: “I want to vote for McCain, but he is working hard to convince me otherwise. The nomination of Sarah Palin is only the latest, most egregious, example.”
Palin isn’t ready yet? It’s less than two months until Election Day! If Sarah Palin isn’t ready now, then she never will be.
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