The Wounded GOP Ticket Died Today

John McCain



My friends, today the maverick himself ousted many of his prime supporters by defending Obama. His constituents booed him!


Sarah Palin

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A legislative committee investigating Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has found she unlawfully abused her authority in firing the state's public safety commissioner.

My favorite part happens 51 seconds in. A woman accuses Obama of being an Arab she can't trust. McCain shakes his head and says, "No Ma'am." and takes the microphone away from her. How many points will the McCain/Palin ticket lose from today's news. Five? More?

“McCain, Palin value all life”

Here is a great letter that my brother sent to the editor of his local paper.

I agree with the author of Friday’s letter “McCain, Palin value all life”. I, too, think that their value of life is commendable. In fairness, though, I cannot recall any pro-choice individual espousing the opinion that anyone should be aborted; rather such a decision should be the choice of the individual, not the government. Also in fairness, McCain’s and Palin’s position on the value of life should be more clearly defined.

Not only are neither McCain nor Palin vegetarians, but Palin is an active hunter and as governor has offered incentives for people to kill wolves. This amends the position to the value of all human life. McCain has been a supporter of the Iraq war from the beginning and Palin recently suggested that fighting the Iraq war was doing God’s work. During this war, thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children have been killed. McCain has also rather surprisingly voted consistently against veteran's rights. So the statement needs to be further amended to “McCain and Palin value all American non-military life”.

Further, both Alaska and Arizona have the death penalty. While the Republican leadership, with McCain leading the charge, was all over the hurricane that overlapped their convention, they are nowhere to be seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. Neither McCain nor Palin has been known to champion the rights or protection of children in abusive homes.

McCain’s and Palin’s exact position, then, seems to be, “McCain and Palin support all American non-military life, so long as that individual is of voting age and has not been found guilty of a crime and is not threatened by a natural disaster”. Or maybe we can simplify that mouthful and just say that, “McCain and Palin value all American pre-natal life; everyone else is on their own”. It’s beautiful, really.

John McCain's ads are LIES. Here's the video proof.

A letter from someone who has known Sarah Palin since 1992

This is an email circulating that exposes Palin.

ABOUT SARAH PALIN

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992.Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on afirst-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Herfather was my child’s favorite substitute teacher. I also am on afirst name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended moreCity Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of theresidents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she’s like the most populargirl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice andwon’t vote for her can’t quit smiling when talking about her becauseshe is a “babe”.

It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. Shekept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parentsfor seven months.
She is “pro-life”. She recently gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby.There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby.

She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.
She is savvy. She doesn’t take positions; she just “puts things outthere” and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.

Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is achampion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin’s kind of job is highlysought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges hiswork schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month orso in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing theirmajor source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anythinglike that of native Alaskans.

Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters. She’s smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000(at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about670,000 residents.
During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of runningthis small city was turned over to an administrator. She had beenpushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she hadgotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which hadgiven rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative”. During her 6years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by theCity increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation(1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased aregressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that shepromoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than theybenefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administrationweren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowedmoney was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left itwith indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encouragethe voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she saidshe supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or anew library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of amulti-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a pieceof property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that wasstill in litigation 7 yrs later–to the delight of the lawyersinvolved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to thecommunity but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed itwould be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects thatcould have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her officeredecorated more than once.

These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplusin Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that willmake us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor sheproposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.
In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, sherecommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even whileshe proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today’ssurplus, borrow for needs.

She’s not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideasor compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t generated byher or her staff. Ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits, but on thebasis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respectedCity Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing fromthe library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residentsrallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’sattempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrewher termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust theLibrarian are on her enemies list to this day.
Sarah complained about the “old boy’s club” when she first ran forMayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of “old boys”. Palinfired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and asGovernor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people,creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternallygrateful and fiercely loyal–loyal to the point of abusing their powerto further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in thecase of pressuring the State’s top cop (see below).

As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla’s Police Chief because he “intimidated”her, she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska’s topcop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasureand she had every legal right to fire him, but it’s pretty clear thatan important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn’tfire her sister’s ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigationfor abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than 2 dozencontacts were made between her staff and family to the person that shelater fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried toreplace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimandedfor sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrewher support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her inhelp. The City Council person who personally escorted her around townintroducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Councilbecame one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. Sheabruptly fired her loyal City Administrator; even people who didn’tlike the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.

Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anythingpublicly about her.
When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah gotthe best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: oneof the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had nobackground in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this greatjob which paid $122,400/yr, she was complaining in the press about thehigh salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, thestructured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of thisCommission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party)engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which someundoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved allher problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated andgarnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as agutsy fighter against the “old boys’ club” when she dramatically quit,exposing this man’s ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork fromSenator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrelpolitics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the “bridge tonowhere” after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.
As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budgetguidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoingprojects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislativeaction restored most of these projects–which had been vetoed simplybecause she was not aware of their importance–but with the unobservantshe had gained a reputation as “anti-pork”.

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State partyleaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliatedthem. Other members of the party object to her self-description as afiscal conservative.

Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah.They call her “Sarah Barracuda” because of her unbridled ambition andpredatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very uglystories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be madepoint guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah’smother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community andexperienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of packageof legislation known as “AGIA” that forced the oil companies to marchto the beat of her drum.
Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National WildlifeRefuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked toglobal warming. She campaigned “as a private citizen” against a stateinitiaitive that would have either a) protected salmon streams frompollution from mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in thestate (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the State’slawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior’s decision to list polarbears as threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be aheartbeat away from being President.

There has to be literally millions of Americans who are moreknowledgeable and experienced than she. However, there’s a lot of people who have underestimated her and areregretting it.

CLAIM VS FACT

•“Hockey mom”: true for a few years•“PTA mom”: true years ago when her first-born was in elementaryschool, not since

•“NRA supporter”: absolutely true•social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, BUT vetoed a billthat would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships(said she did this because it was unconsitutional).

•pro-creationism: mixed. Supports it, BUT did nothing as Governor topromote it.

•“Pro-life”: mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down’s syndrome babyBUT declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-lifelegislation

•“Experienced”: Some high schools have more students than Wasilla hasresidents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska.No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-onsupervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a cityadministrator to run town of about 5,000.

•political maverick: not at all•gutsy: absolutely!•open & transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good atexplaining actions.•has a developed philosophy of public policy: no

•”a Greenie”: no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box storesand disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.

•fiscal conservative: not by my definition!

•pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a citywithout a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Builtstreets to early 20th century standards.

•pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden onresidents

•pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of citygovernment in Wasilla’s history.

•pro-labor/pro-union. No. Just because her husband works uniondoesn’t make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claimthat she is pro-labor/pro-union.

WHY AM I WRITING THIS?

First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informedvoter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student votingprograms in the schools. If you google my name (Anne Kilkenny +Alaska), you will find references to my participation in localgovernment, education, and PTA/parent organizations.

Secondly, I’ve always operated in the belief that “Bad things happenwhen good people stay silent”. Few people know as much as I do becausefew have gone to as many City Council meetings.

Third, I am just a housewife. I don’t have a job she can bump me outof. I don’t belong to any organization that she can hurt. But, I am nofool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this willcost me somehow in the future: that’s life.

Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah’sattempt at censorship.
Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid tosay anything because they were somehow vulnerable.

CAVEATS

I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase inspending & taxation 2 years ago (when Palin was running for Governor)from information supplied to me by the Finance Director of the City ofWasilla, and I can’t recall exactly what I adjusted for: did I adjustfor inflation? for population increases? Right now, it is impossiblefor a private person to get any info out of City Hall–they areswamped. So I can’t verify my numbers.

You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for thepopulation of Wasilla, ranging from my “about 5,000″, up to 9,000. Theday Palin’s selection was announced a city official told me that thecurrent population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was5,460. I have used about 5,000 because Palin was Mayor from 1996 to2002, and the city was growing rapidly in the mid-90’s.

Anne Kilkenny
annekilkenny@hotmail.com

August 31, 2008

Barack Obama Extreme?

Is Obama too extreme for old, rich white people in North Carolina? Apparently so. The North Carolina Republican Party is planning a new ad calling Obama "too extreme.." for their state. Why can't these clowns let the Rev. Wright thing go? Like McCain hasn't had any controversial people in his past? How about Hagee and Falwell too name a few and he still hasn't dropped their endorsements! McCain is claiming that he asked the NC GOP to not run the ad but as of yet they are planning to go with the ad anyway. Apparently the state GOP doesn't really care what their national presidential nominee thinks. Hypocrisy knows no bounds in the Republican party.

Osama Bin Laden’s Agenda

Bin Laden warns Europe over Mohammed cartoons


WASHINGTON (AFP) — Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden warned Europe Wednesday of a "reckoning" for publishing controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, monitoring groups said.

You can read the full article by clicking here.

There is something fishy going on here. There are only a few reasons for Bin Laden to continue to taunt the U.S. Here are some of my theories. First, the Bush administration planned the 911 attacks and the atrocities that followed with Bin Laden to grow personal wealth. Second, Bin Laden did not post the new video; rather, it is a phony produced by the Bush administration to help support McCain’s candidacy. Third, Bin Laden is egging on the US, so the US continues its war efforts in the Middle East. If governments collapse, it would make it easier for Bin Laden’s gorillas to take over more regions.

What are your theories?

McCain Might Have Dementia

This article was posted on Press TV.
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McCain: Hasty Iraq pullout boosts Iran


Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:55:16



Hasty pulling out of Iraq is a 'mistake' that would boost up Iran and al-Qaeda and damage America's credibility, Sen. John McCain claims.

"Visiting Iraq ... it just becomes so palpably clear what a mistake it would be if the United States precipitously withdrew our forces,'' McCain told reporters in Jordan on Tuesday before moving on to Israel.

"The victors in that (pullout) would be the extremists, and America would lose its credibility,'' he added.

"Al-Qaeda and the Iranian extremists would be the winners,'' claimed McCain.

The claims came after McCain met with US and Iraqi diplomatic and military officials in Baghdad on Monday.

The Arizona senator, however, failed to elaborate on the negative effects of the long-fought war in Iraq which was supposed to be quick and cheap.

He was a strong supporter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and US President George W. Bush's troop increase last year.

McCain, the likely Republican nominee for the US presidential election this year, has linked his political future to America's success in Iraq.

MHE/DT
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My Thoughts and Questions

I learned in grade school that we study history to learn from decisions of the past. When studying history, one has the advantage of hindsight to see how all decisions in regards to matters played out. McCain’s support of the Iraq war baffles me, in part, because he is a Vietnam veteran. Apparently he did not learn the lessons that the majority of our citizens have learned from the conflict. Additionally, he is still playing the fear card in his speeches. Is it possible that McCain really believes the Bush rhetoric? Does he really believe that he can eliminate Al-Qaeda, Iran, and all other Bush proclaimed “Evil-Doers”? McCain made it clear yet a gain today that a vote for him means a continued war with Iraq and a soon to be war with Iran. Will he go after the other member of the “Axis of Evil” (AKA N. Korea) too?

Careful....

Obama and his wife need to be REAL careful about statements like this. The lunatic fringe will pounce on it. I know what she meant, and I don't think there was anything wrong with her saying it. Unfortunately, I actually have brain that functions on it's own. Most of this country sadly does not.

UPDATE: I warned the Obama's! The talking heads have been spinning the crap outta her quote. Now as I watch Real Time with Bill Maher, and they spent about 7 minutes discussing the quote. Jack Kingston goes on to say that Osama "refuses to do the Pledge of Allegence." Bill did not call him out on it either. The lunatic fringe just spew hate and lies, and no one has the balls to stand up in their face and yell LIAR! YOU ARE A LIAR!

Does this ever get old?

I don't think I need to comment on this. It speaks for itself. How do the Republicans continue to be the family values party? We live in strange times. Honestly, after Foley, Haggard, Craig, Vitter....the list goes on and on. Oh, then there's highly respected White House reported Jeff Gannon.