Quickie Time Again

This time it's about abortion.


The major hypocrisy with those who want the Government to step in and tell women they may not terminate a pregnancy (yes, the very same big bad get Government off our backs people promote this) is this:

1. If they themselves (women of course) get pregnant and don't want to deliver, they have the means to discreetly get rid of the problem thanks to their financial resources, regardless of whatever law may be in place.  That's the reason Roe v Wade still exists, actually. Do you really think these women want to be lawbreakers?  No.  They just want to reserve the privilege for themselves.
2. These same people, male and female, almost universally support the death penalty. At what point in "life" does a human being cease to deserve preservation? Why does the pro-life crowd hunger for killing, especially when we know our justice system is imperfect and those convicted are not always guilty? Is it only the mass of cells inside a woman's uterus that is sacred?  Not the mass of cells that walks down the street?
3. They also are, almost universally, gung-ho for the Bush doctrine (listen up Sarah...), which basically asserted that we have a right to invade anywhere in the world we think someone may be thinking about doing bad things to Americans.  Invasions mean killing.  People dying.  Children and other innocents with guts ripped out, dead. The numbers of innocents slain in Iraq since 2003 is staggering.  The legacy of our phosphorus and our depleted uranium arms and armaments will continue to devastate the land and its peoples for many generations to come.
4. They basically support the military-industrial complex which runs on OIL and creates jobs only in the weapons manufacturing industries. They also basically support guns and high-volume clips for automatic weapons, even though a hunter never needs this firepower, and even though our police chiefs fight against the overpowering weapons.
5. They turn a blind eye to the horrendous civilian body counts that result from "war" and never have a thing to say about the tens of thousands of infants born with horrific deformities due to our use of illegal munitions.

In short, the pro-life crowd acts as if it is anti-Jesus and anti-life in every form other than that of the unborn fetus. Their hands are so bloody in every other aspect of human and mammal life that their feigned disgust at the thought of someone aborting a fetus is laughable.

People are certainly entitled to their opinions.  But if what you voice out loud cannot be supported and sustained, due to the hypocrisy in the rest of your life, you basically lose.  Make sure that by protesting of abortions you do not also inspire someone to gun down the medical professionals who provide this vital, legal service.  Bill O'Reilly will forever be on my personal a-hole list for broadcasting, day after week, "Tiller the baby killer."

If you feel ultra-strongly about abortion, revisit how you feel about other kinds of involuntary life termination.  I'd be a lot more likely to give you space if you also oppose the death penalty and wars of choice.

The Myth That Political Rhetoric Is Harmless

Sarah Palin opines, in her most recent video from an undisclosed location,

There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal. And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently.

I like the part about "apparently apolitical," which must have been inserted to give her some wiggle room in case inconvenient facts emerge about what influenced the shooter's actions. Even so, she apparently didn't notice that the gunman specifically targeted a politician who just happened to be a Democratic congresswoman in the middle of performing her congressional duties. Since the accused had purchased his gun over a month ago, and no doubt ran across many other people in the time between November 30, 2010 and January 8, 2011, it's reasonable to assume his first target was carefully chosen precisely because she was political.  Nice try, Sarah.

Mrs. Palin goes on to dissemble,

We know violence isn’t the answer. When we ‘take up our arms’, we’re talking about our vote.

Let's face it, nobody I know conflates 'taking up arms' with voting. And if there should be any doubt about the meaning of "Don't retreat, instead RELOAD"—the words she used in her Tweet to point to the now-infamous crosshairs map— may I present this image brought to you by "Second Amendment Task Force:"

I don't think about voting when I see this...

Mrs. Palin's overarching concerns in this incompetently-timed and self-obsessed video are (1) for her own potential culpability in the massacre and then (2) for any dampers that may be placed on her free speech as a result of the tragedy. To mitigate the first concern, she rigorously insists that any fault must lie clearly, and only, on the perpetrator—accountability, personal responsibility, and all that. Unfortunately, she is entirely unpracticed in this herself.

To stave off the second concern, she turns to her oft-used attack mode:

No one should be deterred from speaking up and speaking out in peaceful dissent, and we certainly must not be deterred by those who embrace evil and call it good. And we will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of our country and our foundational freedoms by those who mock its greatness by being intolerant of differing opinion and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults.

Who is she talking about here, though, "those who embrace evil and call it good?" Is she calling me evil because I am blogging for cooling down the rhetoric?  Who is so intolerant that they would seek to "muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults?"  The catchphrases and Facebook rants and hostile imagery linked to self-righteous Sarah are real, not imagined. The very language she uses against her perceived opponents here is exceedingly hostile and supercilious.

Can't someone hand her a mirror and make her really see?

That paragraph above is quintessential Sarah Palin. I can think of several occasions where she has shrilly decried imagined insults, and several more where she along with members of her adoring flock have tried to deter others from speaking out about her; they cry foul and assist her in playing the victim.  I can think of only a few people, none of whom are ever mentioned as a candidate for the U.S. presidency, who are as intolerant of those holding a different opinion than the once-upon-a-time-governor-who-quit has proven to be.

Mrs. Palin's very good buddy Glenn Beck is on the record for inciting unhinged people to do violent things. David Brock's "A Message to Sarah Palin" is a superb accounting of Beck's accountability thanks to his hate-filled rhetoric. Daily radio show or not, Mrs. Palin is in the same camp and of the same ilk as Beck.  She still "stands with" him.

It is little wonder that she did her self-serving causes no good with the January 12, 2011 "blood libel" poor-me video. Now, if she would just quietly slink off to a remote desert cabin and stay there for a very, very long time.  She is welcome to shout her inanities at the top of her lungs as long as only lizards and cactii can hear it.

Blogging and Me

I recently told a friend about my blog and after he had a look, he was like, "It would be nice if you wrote about something other than Sarah Palin all the time."

There are definitely other things in my life that are more important than Mrs. (failed VP candidate and former half-term Alaskan Governor) Palin. First comes my family, but details about them are strictly personal and I will never expose that part of my life to an Internet audience. Then there's my job, but that's not something I can blog about either, and still keep said job. Let's just say that what happens at work stays at work. Then there are my diversions: one is my long-standing participation in online role-playing games. I could blog about that, but it is a world apart from politics and would seem incongruous here at H&HT to talk about how one of my World of Warcraft characters happened across the Time-Lost Proto Drake and got the high-speed mount item that mob dropped. Equally incongruous would be a warning I'd like to issue about the ripoff that is Evony, or my background in coding for and administering MUDs. That would require a new blog title and a great deal of effort and I hardly have time for this blog as it is!

Another is gardening, and I've been known to insert a few pictures of cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, and other produce from the lovely raised beds in my back yard.

But my other main diversion (or call it passion) is politics. Well, not exactly politics, but hypocritical people who are politicians or who are in public view, people who seem to capture attention and imagination and have an apparent impact on our national dialogue. That's what H&HT is devoted to, and that's why Mrs. Palin figures so heavily into the content here. She's not the only one who needs calling out. But she's the one that touches home with me because she is constantly "out there," thanks to someone who wants to keep her in the public eye. She's the one who is the biggest hypocrite of all, based on what I know about her. She's all over TV, the Internet, magazines, radio, and every sort of media out there. Her indiscretions are never-ending. Her lies are incessant. Her chutzpah is without parallel. Her phoniness is without par. And yet she keeps playing the victim while flaunting her ignorance and disparaging anyone who doesn't buy her schtick.

An aspect of Mrs. Palin's story that particularly grates on me is the lie that she "chose life" in order to give birth to Trig Palin. Her history as a Mayor of a town of about 6,000 pales in comparison. Nobody even mentions the consolation prize she won after her failed run for Lieutenant Governor, a position on the Oil and Gas Commission. And after she quit as Governor well before finishing even one term, she hangs her hat almost entirely on the fact that she is a mother (so?) and specially, a mother of a child with Down syndrome. In the absence of Trig, she'd still be in Alaska and out of the public eye. In the absence of Trig, she'd never have become McCain's chosen one. In the absence of Trig, even if McCain had picked her anyway, her star would have faded by December 2008.

Instead, you can find stories and videos and transcripts of her trademark "word salad" speech nearly every day in countless media outlets. But the Trig story is a lie, and so far she's gotten away with it. I know it, she knows it, and a good number of other people know it too. Mrs. Palin is giving women everywhere a bad name. That's what bugs me and as a woman, that is why I will point out her hypocrisies on H&HT as long as she keeps providing the ammunition. She is, as far as I'm concerned, the biggest hypocrite on the public scene today and therefore, a worthy target of most of my blog posts.

Sarahypalinocrisy

As in the title to this post, my new coined word is meant to express the supreme hypocrisy as embodied by Sarah Palin.

Take for example her recent quote that bad behaviour should be punished.  Then flip back through your cards to find that never once was Ms Sarah punished:  hacking Randy Ruedrich's computer; lying about being pregnant for the 5th time with "Trig;" Willow getting off scot-free even though she was the mastermind of breaking into and trashing a nearby vacant house for sale; spending $50,000 on a red velvet makeover of the Wasilla mayor's office, and when challenged, saying "I'll do what I want until the courts tell me I can't."

Unfortunately the hypocrisy that is Sarah Palin doesn't begin or stop here... it's rather an ongoing show with her. 

I'm about to add the word, "sarahypalinocrisy" to the urban dictionary.  If you have a concise description and some examples, please let me know. 

Sarah Palin - Queen of Fools

Sarah getting her hair sprayed...

We've all heard Bush the younger's infamous misstatement: "There's an old saying in Tennessee, I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee that says, 'Fool me once... shame on, shame on you.  [But] fool me, can't get fooled again."

Of course, the old saying really goes like this:  "Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me."

If there's one thing that really burns my oatmeal, it's getting fooled.  I'm not talking about April Fool's pranks, or any good-natured ribbing.  I'm talking about being fooled by someone who calculates what they are doing and plays me for the fool with malice intent.  Or, let's say, with premeditated purpose that essentially says, "Screw you, I'm going to do and say what I need to in order to advance my own agenda."

Those who are regular readers of H&HT know that Sarah Palin has fooled a lot of people into thinking she gave birth (in miraculous fashion) to a Down Syndrome child. Her acidic and avid lawyer has never (not once!) called anyone out for saying so. Sarah Palin has fooled countless thousands of devout ultra-Christians, winning their support, for this massive foolery.  There are too many links to list that show how she's pulled the wool over the eyes of her slavering minions (yes, C4P people, talking to you...).

Here are some other ways Sarah is fooling and continues to fool people.

1. Climate change
2. Resigning, mid-term, from the Alaska governorship in order to work for Alaska
3. Selling that jet on E-Bay
4. Being a champion of women
5. Pretending to run for office (POTUS) in order to garner funds for SarahPAC  (here, and here, and here)

The folks who believe in Sarah keep sending her Fund Trust money and her PAC money. Maybe they even send her money directly.  Maybe they don't realize that she is no longer "just like them..."  She owns several properties, several houses, a Cadillac, she gets paid twice as much for a single speech as most families earn in a single year.  She has a plane, lots of snowmobile toys, a gig on Fox television, private jets to shuttle her around, and she's playing to weaknesses and fears in middle America.  Plus she gets someone to apply hairspray.  I can't even imagine that.

She's fooling many, and she keeps trying to fool more.

When you realize someone is fooling you, how do you feel?  I feel totally sucky about it, so bad in fact that I can imagine someone denying what has become obvious truth in order to preserve my own sense of not-suckiness...!

We each must always guard against foolers.  Sarah Palin happens to excel at it.  Take note.  Otherwise, shame on you.

Short 'n' Sweet - Superbowl and Snow

Isn't it a pity that the "news" of this weekend is at least as much about the massive snowstorm that buried the mid-Atlantic states and tomorrow's Superbowl as it is about the Teaparty?

And honestly, doesn't Teaparty sound like something you did as a young child, a young girl-child, with stuffed animals as your fellow partiers?

I heard a Palin apologist today explain why Sarah is popular.  She said that Sarah sits down at her kitchen table with the rest of her family to figure out how to pay bills.  Just like you and I do, working within a family budget. I guess that apologist hasn't heard about Sarah's rise to stardom and her $100,000 a pop speaking fees, and the million dollars from her own PAC that she spent basically on herself, or her $1,250,000 (minimum) advance for "Going Rogue."

If I owned several pieces of real estate, along with 2 impressive houses, 3 luxury cabins, 2 outiftted snowmobile garage-workshops, a cadillac, and still had enough left over to hire a private jet and do my hair and nails regularly ... I wouldn't put myself in the category of most hard-working middle-class Americans anymore.  Would you?

What the Red Shirts Really Said

Last night's public testimony from the red-shirted ABT people (Anchorage Baptist Temple, the church led by Jerry Prevo) boils down to this:

The LGBT community is not okay because God said so, according to the Prevochristians™.  They are extremely agitated at the thought that the Anchorage Assembly might pass an ordinance saying that gays actually are okay in the eyes of the law.

The Prevochristians™ won't say this out loud, but they are afraid this might mean that they are not exclusively okay. According to Prevo, there is only one kind of okay.  People who believe as he does are it.  So people who don't believe as he does can't be okay, can they?

The red shirts claim that their rights will be taken away if sexual orientation is added as a protected class along with other identifiers like race, color, creed, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, and marital status.  The only "right" they would lose, it seems to me, is the right to discriminate against a lesbian or gay or transgender person—which seems just fine to me.  If they ever had that right in the first place it was because they assumed too much.

Pastor Prevo has developed a litany of reasons why gay people are not okay, and red shirt after red shirt stepped up to the microphone last night and read out the reasons.

1. Being gay is a choice, a lifestyle, a behavior.  (Even if this were true, going to ABT and believing what Prevo says is also a choice.) 
2. Since gayness can be cured it is okay to ostracize, ridicule, reject and otherwise discriminate against gays who don't seek treatment. (Sorry, being gay is not a physical or mental disease.)
   
3. God condemns homosexuality as a sin.  (Whose god?)
4. Gays have an agenda! (And Jerry Prevo does not?)
5. Gays try to convert you into being gay too!  (Ahem.  Who is trying to convert who?)
   

It is immensely sad and quite unsettling to me that in order to grow a church, certain religious leaders opt to create a box in which to keep their congregations.

It's very hard to see what is outside the box when you are inside it. The box protects you and shields you, but it also blinds you and breaks your connection to the rest of the world. I don't have a problem with people being in a box as long as they know they are in a box, and as long as they accept that being in that box isn't the only right way to live.

How's Your Self-Esteem Lately, Bristol?

In each of Sarah Palin's public discharges (I can't help but think of the ooze from a pus-filled wound) over the last day or two, she takes the opportunity to ream David Letterman for destroying the self-esteem of young women everywhere. It is with no small amount of head-shaking that I feel it necessary to remind "she who is a media whore from babble on" that she herself is the major factor in destroying her daughters' sense of self-worth.

Think back to the beginning of September, 2008. The GILF (Governor I'd Love to F*** was a frequent descriptor) was chosen as John McCain's running mate. She came with some baggage. Part of the baggage was a legislative investigation into her questionable firing of Walt Monegan. We all know how that turned out—she was found to have abused her power as Governor by the AK State Legislature, but her own Personnel Board simply took her word for the fact that she had no idea members of her family and staff were harassing Monegan to fire her ex-brother-in-law.

The other part of her baggage was this persistent, long-standing rumor that she had faked her supposed 5th pregnancy and that her daughter, Bristol, had in fact, given birth to the DS baby Sarah lugged around on stage during the campaign. Sarah attempted (unsuccessfully) to squash that story by shoving Bristol, then not even 18, onto the public stage by proclaiming that Bristol was now pregnant by "around 5 months." Instead of offering any records that she, Sarah, had given birth to Trig, she outed her 17-yr-old daughter's current pregnancy as a way of saying, "See, she's really pregnant now, so she couldn't have been pregnant before!"

Talk about embarrassing. Bristol was padded and stuffed into tight clothes and displayed on stage at the RNC and carted around throughout the campaign, curiously acting more motherly toward Trig than Sarah ever did. From that time on I felt sorry for Bristol. Her pre-marital sex with someone suddenly became common knowledge across the world. Had my mother done that to me (had I been unfortunate enough to become pregnant as an unwed teen) I would have despised her.

And that wasn't enough! Almost as if Sarah wanted Bristol to pay dearly for her indiscretions, Bristol somehow became a spokesperson for abstinence via Candies' "excuse me" subsidiary. Candies makes money by selling sex to very young girls. They also try to counter the negative publicity from this by running another enterprise that is intended to tell young girls that they should not engage in sexual intercourse -- all the while feeding them images that aim to get them to buy and dress in sexy revealing clothing.

So I ask, what has Sarah Palin done in her own small sphere—her family—to bolster her own daughters' self-esteem? She branded Bristol as an irresponsible youth for whom an equivalency high school diploma is some grand achievement and an out-of-wedlock child is a happy misfortune. Her brazen tossing of Bristol under the bus of her own political aspirations must have sent red flags to Willow, and even if Piper doesn't realize it yet, she too has been demeaned.

For Sarah to essentially call David Letterman a pedophile and a statutory rapist is not an ordinary reaction. It is an extreme over-reaction. It makes me wonder about the rape history in Sarah's family story. You only get that touchy about something that has touched you.

Here's another aspect of Sarah's hypocrisy in her recent blathering. She said in the Matt Lauer video,

Quite, I think, a sad commentary on where we are as a culture, as a society to chuckle and laugh through comments such as he had made the other night. I think it’s quite unfortunate.

But listen here to an audio broadcast where Sarah giggles when radio talk show hosts demean an Alaskan Republican legislator who happened to be recovering from cancer. The shock jocks call Lyda Green a bitch and a cancer. Way to go supporting women, Sarah! You agreed and laughed and never said one word to tamp down the very nasty speech against a fellow female politician IN YOUR OWN PARTY.

Sarah, take it from me. I'm a financial conservative and social liberal. I have three children, one of whom is a daughter. My mother was a dittohead (aka Rush Limbaugh devotee). If you had shown any promise whatsoever, even in one sphere (besides American Talibanism), I would have tried to find reasons to support you. Instead, you spit on me and those like me, because even though we are working women who have raised children while totally supporting our households in ordinary jobs (at less than 1/3 of what you make), you say we do not belong to "real America," whatever that is. What you are doing now, by smacking your lips and getting all in a roar about a late night comedian, is self-defeating. You have chosen to fight a paper dragon. Yet you are no warrior, you are a whiner. You are no lady, you are a tramp. You are no Christian, either, so get off it.

The jokes that Letterman told a couple nights ago were derived from you, the actions you took, the scrutiny you invited, the celebrity you sought and cultivated for you and your vulnerable children. Your daughters' self-esteem problems, whatever they may be, have nothing to do with Letterman compared to what you've already done to them.

Over the Top: C4P Can't Handle the Truth

It's not often that someone opposed to my personal views on political topics adds a comment here at Hypocrites and Heffalump Traps. But when someone has, that comment remained in the thread as part of the discussion. I have yet to remove a comment, much less ban someone from posting altogether. Maybe I'm just lucky not to have incited serious hate speech or excessive foulness.

I admit that I can be aggressive in a gentle sort of way. I was in that sort of mood when I posted a few comments on C4P's site last night under a topic that was excusing Sarah from "lifting" thoughts and words from the Gingrich-Shirley article without attribution. I wondered aloud if there was anything her highness could do or say that would raise an eyebrow of concern among her disciples. And I further wondered if anyone at C4P had a problem with Michael Reagan, and Sarah's glowing praise and encouragement of him when she introduced him.

The first poster to reply to me said, " Go away DivaPiglit."

Another wrote, "Tell your masters they need to come up with a better boogey man then Michael Reagan ok."

A third chimed in, "In case you haven't noticed, this isn't 'Converatives4MichaelReagan'. Who cares what he said or didn't say? And why the hell do you care if anyone here agrees with him or not?"

Then R.A. Mansour joined the fray, "She cited her source. How can she have plagiarized when she vited [sic] her source?"

The next thing I know, I read this from RAM, "Bye troofers. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out." Every post I'd made on the thread so far was removed.

So I wrote an e-mail asking what happened and why. Full content below, in chronological order:

Ejected from C4P...

Sunday, June 7, 2009 11:20 PM
From: "Lee Franklin"
To: ramansour@conservatives4palin.com

On what grounds, please?

I did not, to my knowledge, break any rules about posting.

Thank you for a prompt response,

Lee Franklin
aka Ennealogic

Re: Ejected from C4P...

Sunday, June 7, 2009 11:26 PM
From: "R. A. Mansour"
To: "Lee Franklin"

Off topic, spamming the thread, and being an over all jerk who annoys all of us. How's that?

I didn't actually ban you. This thread was your warning. Do it again and you're gone for good.

Re: Ejected from C4P...

Sunday, June 7, 2009 11:38 PM
From: "Lee Franklin"
To: "R. A. Mansour"

The topic was Goeffrey's article about Sarah's plagiarism. I do not believe I was off topic.

I opened some remarks and then responded to replies directly made to me. I do not understand how that qualifies as spamming.

As for being an "over all jerk who annoys all of [you]", perhaps that is how you see it, but I did not impugn any poster or the site. I did not malign you or anyone else there, I only asked a few questions about plagiarism and the speech that Sarah gave -- which was, in all 17 minutes, supposed to be a glowing introduction to Michael Reagan.

As for me, I did not receive even one honest answer to any of my questions from any of the people who spoke with me. Yet I am not annoyed, I am only saddened. Why does what I said annoy you?

As for your warning... I do not know what not to do again. Perhaps if you'd lay out the rules? Can one not question Sarah Palin's actions? Can one not point out that Mike Reagan wants to stuff hand grenades into babies' butts? Can one not link Sarah Palin with those she introduces and cheers on?

Thank you for a response, though. I wasn't expecting it.

Sincerely,

Lee Franklin

Re: Ejected from C4P...

Monday, June 8, 2009 11:56 PM

From: "R. A. Mansour"
To: "Lee Franklin"

You know what "saddens" me? Your Trig Trutherism.

Re: Ejected from C4P...

Sunday, June 7, 2009 12:08 AM
From: "Lee Franklin"

To: "R. A. Mansour"

I do not believe I have posted anything about Trig (Palin, right?) on the C4P site, ever. Have you removed my posts from a thread about Sarah's alleged plagiarism because you suspect I may not subscribe to your beliefs concerning the birth of Trig?

Seriously?

Re: Ejected from C4P...

Monday, June 8, 2009 1:16 AM

From: "R. A. Mansour"
To: "Lee Franklin"

"Trig (Palin, right?)"

That's it. Now you are banned for life, you sick son of a bitch.

"may not subscribe" to my beliefs?

Yes, I would also delete and ban racists, Obama birth certificate truthers, and Holocaust deniers.

You are at home with those people.

Don't ever come back to my blog. Don't email me again. Your emails are going in my SPAM filter.

For some reason I don't fully understand, the topic of Trig Palin's parentage is as horrific as garlic soaked in holy water and wrapped around silver stakes would be to a vampire. RAM and most everyone else at C4P seem to be deathly afraid of touching the topic at all. And I didn't even bring it up.

I pointed out the apparent disconnect between how they viewed Sarah Palin's cheerleading for Michael Reagan, and Obama's non-connection to Bill Ayers' revolutionary actions. Go figure.

Gosh, now that I'm branded as a sick son of a bitch, maybe I should get a tattoo?

Joe McGinnis Nails It

Let me lead off with a link to Pipe Dreams.  The author, Joe McGinnis, relates in a several-page article, just how much of a GINO Sarah Palin really is.

For a teaser, here's his opening paragraph:

Forget “Drill, baby, drill.” Sarah Palin says she’s building a $40 billion gas pipeline, which even President Obama wants. The only problem: It isn’t there. And it’s her fault.

 It only gets better from there.  Here's another gem:

Sarah Palin had been a bare-knuckle backwoods populist who’d built a career out of puffing up dragons she could then slay. Her tactic was first to demonize, then to defeat.

Populist.  Yes, that is exactly right.  In fact, Syrin from Wasilla has a most excellent blog post detailing exactly why GINO is nothing if not a populist.  Actually, I think populist is a kind tag, one that doesn't necessarily carry the negative impressions we get elsewhere... such as:

There is a considerable gap between the image Sarah Palin tries to project and the reality that underlies it. In sometimes startling fashion, her deeds often belie her words. And as I learned on a recent visit to Alaska, nowhere is this more evident than in the story of the still-chimerical gas pipeline.

Apparently, the horse Sarah wanted to ride in on has yet to be born.  She's managed to piss off the companies who can actually feed gas into the AGIA pipeline.  Instead, she cut them out of any conversation, in an attempt to sign up a company to build the pipeline, even though that company is in Canada.  But even with the $500,000 she gave them, the Canada company isn't about to start construction until the companies that OWN the gas commit to shipping it via the pipeline.  Companies like Exxon, Conoco and BP.  Yes, she pissed them off.  They have rights to the natural gas she wants to see running through this pipeline. 

That's our Sarah!  Here's more:

“Facts to her are like Silly Putty,” said Larry Persily, former deputy commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Revenue, who later worked for Palin in the state’s office in Washington. “She shapes them into whatever people want to hear.”

And this:

“It’s just so puzzling,” he told me, “that the state has gone in the direction of dividing the players instead of trying to bring them together. It dumbfounds me. I’m not sure what point the governor is trying to prove, but everything she’s doing is the opposite of ‘Drill, baby, drill.’

Suffice it to say -- the Conde Nast Portfolio article is biting, incisive and revealing.  The article's author sums up GINO's achievements like this:

The bottom line is that for all her posturing, and as much as she might wish it were not so, Palin’s only accomplishment in two years of work on the pipeline project has been to give $500 million from Alaska’s budget to Canadians and to leave Alaska, once again, at the not-so-tender mercies of Big Oil.

A sad legacy, considering that her term is about over... Team Sarah, tell me again just what you admire about this waffle-headed would-have-been???

AK Death Penalty and Abortion Bills, Oh My!

Isn't it Sarah Palin who says government should be put back in the hands of the people?  Isn't she all about keeping government small and getting it out of the way?  Hasn't she repeatedly said that government is not the answer?

Government makes laws, and yet no matter how hard government tries, every law has the potential of doing some harm in spite of the good it intends.

There is a death penalty bill and an abortion law working their way through the Alaska legislature.  Both laws have the potential to do great harm.  Both laws have Sarah Palin's support.

Instituting the Death Penalty
(Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski, sponsor)

Granted, some people have been guilty of committing horrible crimes. But there are also plenty of people who have been found guilty of horrible crimes yet they were innocent.  Innocent people have been executed in states that support the death penalty.  What greater harm could the state do?

What I don't understand is how a person can be adamantly "pro-life" and at the same time believe the state should kill people for their crimes.  Studies show that states without the death penalty have had consistently lower murder rates than states that do impose a death sentence. This tells me that the possibility of being put to death if caught does nothing to deter such crimes, which is the stated justification for the death penalty.

To strike a religious chord, the Christian Bible says that Jesus asked his heavenly father to forgive those who murdered him, "for they know not what they do."  (Luke 23:34)  I doubt Jesus would have supported the death penalty.






Parental Consent for Teen Abortions
(Alaska HB 35 and SB 6)

  On the surface, a law that requires caregivers to obtain the consent from parents of girls under 17 who seek an abortion sounds almost reasonable.  What harm could come of such a law? 

It is unrealistic to think that the only teens who get pregnant are delinquent, rebellious tramps with intact, loving, supportive, well-off families capable of providing everything a young mother and her baby needs.

Incest is real.  Rape happens.  Parents can be impoverished, or abusive, or addicts, or just single and struggling.  Some parents may believe the choice they make for their pregnant daughter, based on their own religious beliefs, is the right one.  They may be blind to the ramifications for their daughter's future.

Can a law force families to be whole, supportive, loving? Can a law insure that every child in every home has access to sex education and contraceptives in case abstinence doesn't work?  Can a law prevent incest or rape from happening?  Will the law insure that the special needs of a teenage mom and the child she may be forced to bear be met, during and after pregancy?  What about continuing support for the child as it grows up?  Or will the law provide free counseling for the teen mom if she has to put the baby up for adoption?

The main problem I see with the proposed consent law is that it is one-sided. The law does nothing to protect children, not the teen mother and not her child. The law only serves to cover for parents who failed to raise their children in an environment that made real communication between those parents and their children the norm.  

If a teenage daughter is unable, for whatever reason, to come to her parents when she discovers she is pregnant, that is not something the state can solve.

I think a law that prescribes penalties for parents who allow their children to procreate as teenagers makes at least as much sense.  But I doubt that Sarah would support that, now would she?

[Edited to add image credits, fair use claimed:
Hangman's Noose
In the Name of God (Pregnant Teenager)]

McCain Picks Palin: Lots of Real Stories

Depending on who you read, you'll get a different angle on what "the real story" is around the Republican nominee's VP pick. Here are just a few, accompanied by an image of Sarah Palin in Feb. 2008, reportedly 6+ months pregnant:

1. Sarah Palin's family values
• Endangering her unborn child with Down Syndrome, about to be born prematurely, by flying cross-country instead of seeking qualified medical care once her water broke
• Revealing to the world that her 17 yr old unwed daughter was pregnant, in order to counter viral internet rumors suggesting she had faked her pregnancy to cover the 17 yr old's pregnancy (let that one sink in a bit)
  
• Accepting the McCain campaign's offer to become the vice presidential candidate, a stressful and demanding role, instead of personally taking care of her special needs infant, her 7 yr old daughter, her 14 yr old daughter, and her pregnant 17 yr old daughter
2. Sarah Palin's ethics
   
• Alleged abuse of power as Mayor, firing two city officials and pushing two other city officials out for supporting her opponent in the mayoral election
• Alleged abuse of power as Governor, firing the state's chief law enforcement official because he would not buckle under pressure to fire a state trooper who was involved in a bitter custody battle with her sister
• Alleged abuse of power as Governor, summarily firing her own legislative liaison at the request of her husband who was distressed because the man was dating the soon to be ex-wife of the husband's friend
• Allegedly hacked into fellow Alaskan Oil and Gas Commission member's computer, obtaining 'dirt' on the member who was later fined for doing party work on government computers
• Alleged use of Mayor's office computers to do political work in her unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor in 2002
  
3. Sarah Palin's ability to govern well
   
• Hiring a deputy administrator to run the mayor's office for her, and leaving the town $20 million in debt when she left
  
• Disbanding the state's Agricultural Board because one of their subcommittees made recommendations she disagreed with, and hiring a new Board that ended up making the same recommendations, after costing the state an additional $900,000
• Replacing Alaska's public safety commissioner (whom she fired) with a man who had to resign two weeks later due when his sexual harassment history emerged, and then giving this man a $10,000 (or $15,000, I've heard both) separation paycheck
  
4. Sarah Palin's education and life experience
   
• Holding only a BS in journalism (1987), with no evidence of continuing education
  
• Obtaining a passport for the first time in 2007 for her only trip overseas to date
  
5. Sarah Palin's religious influence
   
• Exhorting members of her church to pray for a gas pipeline because it was God's will that the pipeline go through
• Supporting teaching creationism in public schools
  
• Attempting to get certain books (on evolution?) banned from her local library while she was Mayor
• Believing that the US Military is doing God's work in Iraq
  
6. Sarah Palin's job history
   
• 1988—briefly worked as a sports reporter
• 1992-1995—Wasilla city council member
• 1996-2001—Mayor of Wasilla (pop. 5469 in 2000)
  
• 2003—Chair of Alaska Oil and Gas Commission, but then resigned
  
• 2003-2005—one of 3 directors of a 527 PAC supporting Ted Stevens
• December 2006-present—Governor of Alaska
7. Sarah Palin's honesty
   
• Ran for Governor on a "build-the-bridge" platform, but after Congress rescinded the earmark, claimed that she was the one who told Congress no thanks on "the bridge to nowhere"
  
• Claimed that no one in the Governor's office had pressured anyone to fire the state trooper (her sister's ex-husband) but later admitted it when e-mails and recorded conversations were released
  
8. Sarah Palin and "Country First"
   
• Associating with the Alaska Independence Party for more than a decade, addressing their convention from her Governor's desk with words of support and encouragement
  
• Happy about her candidacy because it will be "great for Alaska"
  
9. John McCain's wisdom (or absence thereof)
   
• Campaign didn't go through routine vetting process
• McCain met her once
  
• FBI didn't vet her either
  

In other Alaska news, attorneys for embattled Senator Ted Stevens will try to keep certain audio tapes from the jury—saying the FBI illegally wiretapped an Alaska oil contractor and just happened to get Ted on tape 105 times. The irony is delicious.

P.S. Here's a truly terrific blog about Alaska, and Sarah Palin in particular!