Sarah Palin the Alaska Disasta'

W o w!
Look at these pictures of a great bunch of people, carrying home-made signs…
ASK YOUR TV STATIONS WHY WE DIDN’T GET TO SEE THE BIGGEST RALLY IN ALASKA ?
Enjoy….pass it on!

[The] Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was to be held outside on the lawn in front of the Loussac Library in midtown Anchorage . Home made signs were encouraged, and the idea was to make a statement that Sarah Palin does not speak for all Alaska women, or men. I had no idea what to expect.

The rally was organized by a small group of women, talking over coffee. It made me wonder what other things have started with small groups of women talking over coffee. It's probably an impressive list. These women hatched the plan, printed up flyers, posted them around town, and sent notices to local media outlets. One of those media outlets was KBYR radio, home of Eddie Burke, a long-time uber-conservative Anchorage talk show host. Turns out that Eddie Burke not only announced the rally, but called the people who planned to attend the rally "a bunch of socialist baby-killing maggots," and read the home phone numbers of the organizers aloud over the air, urging listeners to call and tell them what they thought. The women, of course, received some nasty, harassing and threatening messages.

I felt a bit apprehensive. I'd been disappointed before by the turnout at other rallies. Basically, in Anchorage, if you can get 25 people to show up at an event, it's a success. So, I thought to myself, if we can actually get 100 people there that aren't sent by Eddie Burke, we'll be doing good. A real statement will have been made. I confess, I still had a mental image of 15 demonstrators surrounded by hundreds of menacing "socialist baby-killing maggot" haters.

It's a good thing I wasn't tailgating when I saw the crowd in front of the library or I would have ended up in somebody's trunk. When I got there, about 20 minutes early, the line of sign wavers stretched the full length of the library grounds, along the edge of the road, 6 or 7 people deep! I could hardly find a place to park. I nabbed one of the last spots in the library lot, and as I got out of the car and started walking, people seemed to join in from every direction, carrying signs.

Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn't honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn't happen here.

Then, the infamous Eddie Burke showed up. He tried to talk to the media, and was instantly surrounded by a group of 20 people who started shouting O-BA-MA so loud he couldn't be heard. Then passing cars started honking in a rhythmic pattern of 3, like the Obama chant, while the crowd cheered, hooted and waved their signs high.

So, if you've been doing the math… Yes. The Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was significantly bigger than Palin's rally that got all the national media coverage! So take heart, sit back, and enjoy the photo gallery. Feel free to spread the pictures around to anyone who needs to know that Sarah Palin most definitely does not speak for all Alaskans. The citizens of Alaska , who know her best, have things to say.

It's Official: The "War on Terrorism" is Stupid and Doesn't Work

John McCain continues to pound his chest about what a great commander-in-chief he would make. Like his war loving Siamese twin brothers Bush and Cheney his only tool is the hammer of the military and every problem looks like the nail of a war. Now one of the hawks favorite institutional friends the Rand Corporation (the folks who brought you the brilliant strategy of Vietnam) are saying that the "War on Terror" is a stupid concept because it doesn't
work.

In a study released July 29th entitled How Terrorism Ends: Lessons for Countering al Qa’ida Seth Jones,Ph.D. and Martin C. Libicki make the case that the "War on Terror" has failed to curb the world wide terrorist activities of al Qa'ida. They examined 648 terrorist groups that existed between 1968 and 2006 looking for how they eventually ended their activities. What
their, dare I say it, scientific, study revealed is that the concept of
a military solution to the problem of terrorist activity has never worked. Instead,

"most terrorist groups end either because they join the political process, or because local police and intelligence efforts arrest or kill key members."

Not that most of the readers of this site didn't already know it but they also found that the terrorist activities of al Qa'ida have only increased since 9-11 and that they also have expanded into Europe, Asia, Africa and of course the Middle East. So what did stop terrorist groups activities?

They found that the most common way (43%) that terrorist groups ended their activities was through the political (diplomatic) process. That is to say through negotiations, another forbidden term in the Bush/Cheney lexicon. Policing was the second most effective approach because police are permanently present in the area of terrorist activities and therefore are privy to better intelligence than the military. You may recall that in the run up to the 2004 election Sen. John Kerry was ridiculed for saying that terrorism was "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world — the very thing this [Bush] administration is worst at."

Military action was only successful 7% of the time out of all of the groups they studied over 38 years but the terrorists won 10% of the time. Even within their own study the authors claim that military action should be used against large, well armed groups who form an insurgency. Sounds like they covered their asses on the Surge. But a closer look at the surge actually supports the authors major findings.

General Petraeus' work in Iraq has reduced violence but he did not use only military might to do it. What he actually did was to become the hard nosed diplomat in the country that Connie Rice refused to be. He negotiated with the Sunni terrorists that were killing so many of our troops and found that they too were angry at the foreign fighters that al Qa'ida had brought in to their country. With the help of generous donations of cash they agreed to help Petraeus and his troops root out and kill al Qa'ida fighters. Then he used the extra troops of the surge to police the streets and establish permanent placements within each neighborhood, which sounds like well fortified police stations to me. So let's get this straight. John McSame and King George would have us believe it was our military "winning" a "war" on the terrorists in Iraq that substantially slowed down attacks there. In fact, it was the diplomatic and policing efforts of a well educated General who focused on negotiations with local (terrorist) leaders that brought about the reduction in violence.

The difference between the way McCain and the neocons describe it and the reality of what Gen. Petraeus accomplished is not just semantic, but the semantics are important. In framing our efforts to end terrorism as a war we feed the war profiteers of the military-industrial complex, create new enemies, break our own laws and lose our standing in the world. By framing terrorism as a matter of diplomacy and using policing as a method of keeping the streets people live on safe, we engender friends, cooperation, progress and we enhance our standing in the world.

But don't expect any Democratic leaders to point out these obvious facts because they suck at framing issues. They haven't even tried on Iraq, they seem to have just surrendered that issue to the Repubs. George Lakoff could write a thousand books and they still wouldn't get it. In the meantime you can bet that McCain will be touting the winning "military" strategy of the surge as though he thought it up.

For more information:

The General's Dilemma by Steve Coll NewYorker Sept.7th 2008

How Terrorist Groups End Rand Corporation

Barbara Boxer KO's McCain's acceptance speech

From Meteor Blades at Daily Kos,

Last night at the Republican National Convention, John McCain used the word "fight" more than 40 times in his speech.

In the 16 years that we have served together in the Senate, I have seen John McCain fight.

I have seen him fight against raising the federal minimum wage 14 times.

I have seen him fight against making sure that women earn equal pay for equal work.

I have seen him fight against a woman's right to choose so consistently that he received a zero percent vote rating from pro-choice organizations.

I have seen him fight against helping families gain access to birth control.

I have seen him fight against Social Security, even going so far as to call its current funding system "an absolute disgrace."

And I saw him fight against the new GI Bill of Rights until it became politically untenable for him to do so.

John McCain voted with President Bush 95 percent of the time in 2007 and 100 percent of the time in 2008 -- that's no maverick.

We do have two real fighters for change in this election -- their names are Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

A Sarah Palin reminder

"Mrs. Palin needs to be reminded that Jesus was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor”

It's Not about Experience It's About Honesty

Michael Kinsley wrote an excellent column in today's Washington Post. In describing the contradictions of the Republican's framing of the debate about who would best govern he says:

"That's why the important point about Palin's lack of experience isn't about Palin. It's about McCain. And the question is not how his choice of Palin might complicate his ability to use the "experience" issue or whether he will have to drop experience as an issue. It's not about the proper role of experience as an issue. It's not about experience at all. It's about honesty. The question should be whether McCain -- and all the other Republicans who have been going on for months about Obama's dangerous lack of foreign policy experience -- ever meant a word of it. And the answer is apparently not. Many conservative pundits woke up this morning fully prepared to harp on Obama's alleged lack of experience for months more. Now they face the choice of either executing a Communist-style U-turn ("Experience? Feh! Who needs it?") or trying to keep a straight face while touting the importance of having been mayor of a town of 9,000 if you later find yourself president of a nation of 300 million.

We all know that modern political campaigns choose their issues from the cafeteria line, after market-testing them and then having them professionally framed. Rarely, though, are we offered such a clear and unarguable example. How could anyone truly believe that Barack Obama's background and job history are inadequate experience for a president and simultaneously believe that Sarah Palin's background and job history are adequate? It's possible to believe one or the other. But both? Simply not possible. John McCain has been -- what's the word? -- lying. And so have all the pundits who rushed to defend McCain's choice.

This is especially damning to McCain because his case for himself (besides not being Obama, a standard under which many of us might qualify) has rested on his honor and integrity. The North Vietnamese couldn't break him, and neither could the Brahmins of his own party in the Senate. He was a maverick who always told it straight.

So much for that.

The writer is a columnist for Time magazine and a contributor to The Post. Read more from Michael Kinsley at washingtonpost.com's new opinion blog, PostPartisan.

Bad News and Bad News coverage of Sarah Palin

There is the image of Palin as the oh-so-cute, mother of five, political reformer and maverick. Then when you turn over that shiny rock there is the raw political truth staring up at you. The MSM (mainstream media) is doing it's diligent best to polish the rock, instead of their job, which used to involve real investigative reporting.

Fake consultant takes a look under beneath the image with some real reporting which isn't oh-so-cute but is oh-so-truthful.Here is his closing paragraph:

"So that’s the story for today...Vice Cheney Nominee Palin, the fresh face with executive experience that McCain has brought to the table, is giving away half a billion dollars in taxpayer money to the Big Gas/Big Oil (for openers), has overseen the end of a “dairy industry subsidy” she couldn’t save, pulled the blinds down on “open and transparent government”, kind of “hired” her husband to be an unofficial “Personnel Director”, has apparently decided that the mantra of “anti-spending” is much more important than public safety—even while her State is the recipient of more than $11,000 in Federal spending per Alaska citizen--and she’s going after her sister’s ex-husband, and of course, there’s also that bipartisan “abuse of power” investigation she’s now dealing with...

Not bad for two years in office, eh? "

Media Matters notes how Bob Shieffer at C-BS gushed about her as a reformer even though she supported 31 Federal Earmarks for Alaska in 2008 and vocally supported "the bridge to nowhere" when she ran for office in 2006. They also dispute David Brook's sunny assertions that she "talks about global warming quite a lot" and is pretty progressive on gay and lesbian issues". In point of fact she has said "A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made." She also vetoed a bill that would have granted same sex partners of state employees spousal benefits and ignored a ruling and an order by the state Supreme Court to give them benefits.

Remember, if you are still watching the "news channels" you are only getting corporate propaganda put out by paid talking heads. As we say in Texas,"you can tell they are lying because their lips are moving". Blogs are were real journalism takes place now days.

Palin pales in her own back yard

from SusanG at Daily Kos


Even Locals Are Blasting Palin Pick
by SusanG
Sat Aug 30, 2008 at 11:00:18 AM PDT

An editorial in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner:

She has never publicly demonstrated the kind of interest, much less expertise, in federal issues and foreign affairs that should mark a candidate for the second-highest office in the land. Republicans rightfully have criticized the Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, for his lack of experience, but Palin is a neophyte in comparison; how will Republicans reconcile the criticism of Obama with the obligatory cheering for Palin?...Most people would acknowledge that, regardless of her charm and good intentions, Palin is not ready for the top job. McCain seems to have put his political interests ahead of the nation's when he created the possibility that she might fill it. It's clear that McCain picked Palin for reasons of image, not substance.

The Anchorage Daily News samples some state politician reaction:

"She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? said [State Senate President Lyda Green, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla]. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"

And the News-Miner again, in round-up local reaction story:

Lately her reputation within the state has been bit by allegations of mixing political and family business, and by mistreating one of the state's premier marine mammals. Palin's catch-phrase of "openness and transparency" has been tarnished by revelations that staff members tried to have Palin's former brother-in-law fired from his job as an Alaska state trooper. Also, the governor of the only state with polar bears has adamantly opposed listing the animals as a threatened species, despite strong evidence that global warming has devastated their sea ice environment off Alaska's coast. Dermot Cole, a longtime columnist for Alaska's second largest newspaper, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, called McCain's choice of Palin "reckless" and questioned her credentials. "Sarah Palin's chief qualification for being elected governor was that she was not Frank Murkowski," Cole said of her enormously unpopular predecessor, who lost favor with Alaskans in part because of unpopular budget cuts. "She was not elected because she was a conservative. She was not elected because of her grasp of issues or because of her track record as the mayor of Wasilla."

Sunday News Roundup

Frank Rich has a great column today in the New York Times. He suggests a significant change in Barack's strategy.

Wikipedia has an excellent rundown of Joe Biden's career and influence on the Senate.

Newsweek has an article on the corruption connection between Dick Cheney and Sen. Ted Stevens.

Brains and Eggs has a several posts worth reading and a great collection of political cartoons.

The Alliance for Retired Americans has a terrific rundown of John McCain's planned attacks on Social Security and Medicare.

The intense conservative bias of the MSM (mainstream media) is described in detail and vigorously attacked by Daily Kos creator Markos Moulitsas on the Politico blog today.

LTR (Liberal Talk Radio) has a post about the popular Air America host Rachel Maddow getting her own show on MSNBC.

Maybe you have noticed that our economy is crashing. McCain's response is to strengthen and make permanent the Bush tax breaks for the rich. He says Obama's plan to raise taxes on the very rich will kill jobs. Dean Baker and economist for the Center for Economic Policy Research dissects the absurdity of McCain's position

More of the Callous Indifference of Sen. Cornydog

From Rick Noriega's campaign:

This week, John Cornyn told the Greater Houston Pachyderm Club that Texas is a national model for improving access to health care, revealing just how out of touch our senator is with Texas families.

But here are the facts:

TEXAS FACT: Analysis of Census Data Shows That 45.7% of Texans Don't Have Health Insurance For All Or Part Of The Year. According to analysis of Census data by Families USA, more than 9 million Texans go without health insurance for all or part of the year. It's more than 45% of Texans, and it's usually longer than a month. [Families USA 09/07]

TEXAS FACT: Texas Had Highest Number of Uninsured Children In the
Nation. A 2007 report estimated that Texas had 1,410,000 uninsured children.
[Families USA, 9/07]

And Cornyn Was One Of Only 18 Senators To Block Efforts to Provide Health
Insurance to Children. As reported in the Houston Chronicle, "Last year, Cornyn was among 18 members of the 100-member Senate who opposed a huge expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program." [Houston Chronicle, 08/13/08]

In fact, Cornyn Voted SIX TIMES AGAINST Health Insurance For Texas Kids.
[Vote 307, 8/2/07; Vote 352, 9/27/07; Vote 353, 9/27/07; Vote 401, 10/31/07; Vote 402, 11/1/07; Vote 403, 11/1/07; Financial Times.com, 8/2/07; DPC, 7/31/07]

Wonder why? Cornyn Accepted $75,500 from Health Services/HMO Industry.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Cornyn has accepted $75,500 from the Health Services/HMO industry throughout his career. [Center for Responsive Politics, 8/12/08]

We need your help in letting Texans know that not only has Cornyn blocked health insurance for Texas families, but it's because he thinks that there's no health care crisis in Texas.

Lisa Falkenberg wrote in today's Houston Chronicle something that I think we're
all very familiar with, "If Texas is a model, the crisis in this country is deeper than any of us realize."

It's time to take John Cornyn to task for his failures at the expense of Texas families.

Jerry Falwell a Moony?

From Forbes:

Moonstruck

Facing financial ruin from $90 million of debt coming due, Jerry Falwell saved his fundamentalist Baptist organization with secret funding from the doctrinally different church of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, a new book says. Falwell Inc., by FORBES senior reporter Dirk Smillie, says Moon's Unification Church--which holds that Jesus met a youthful Moon in Korea on Easter Day 1935--gave Falwell $5.5 million in 1992 and 1993 that allowed him to buy up $29 million of debt at a big discount and gain needed breathing room. Moral Majority founder Falwell, who died last year, credited others for the largesse in what the book calls "probably the biggest whopper Falwell ever told." --W.P.B.