See What Sarah Hath Wrought

This may be the most disturbing video to come out of this election campaign - McCain supporters whipped into a frenzy of hatred. One can only wonder if we would be seeing anything like this if McCain had made a different choice for VP candidate. I don't think so. Sarah Palin has been McCain's attack dog. She has helped the dark side of the American psyche to rise to the top of a bubbling stew of now overt racism. And she's done nothing to tamp it down. McCain hasn't done much about it either as he is now so desperate to get elected that anything goes.

Former Reagan Official Jumps Ship Because of Palin

It is now clear that Sarah Palin has become radioactive to the McCain ticket. McCain himself continues to defend her, blaming the press for her troubles (as though the New York Times forced her to spend $150,000 on clothes or use her governor's office to fire a police chief). But the evidence is mounting that she has become a huge liability to McCain.

The latest proof of this may be the most damning. According to the Michigan Messenger , former Reagan Justice Department official, Charles Fried, who served on McCain campaign committees, has voted for Obama by absentee ballot. When asked why, he made it clear that Palin was the reason. He couldn't vote for McCain because of Palin.

Here's the story:

Shocking endorsement of Obama by conservative legal titan Fried

By Ed Brayton 10/26/08 7:26 PM

In perhaps the most significant Republican defection yet, former Reagan Justice Department official Charles Fried, who had previously endorsed McCain and served on committees for the McCain campaign, has announced that he voted absentee ballot for Obama.

Fried also asked that his name be removed from McCain campaign literature. One of the primary reasons: Sarah Palin. From an article in the New Republic:

This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision “is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis.”

FULL ARTICLE

David Letterman Says: Give Us Sarah Palin!

Look out, folks. David Letterman is pissed. McCain dissed him tonight. Preferred looking "presidential" with Katie Couric. Things are far too serious to be yukking it up with Letterman. Far too serious even to be debating the issues with Senator Obama. Apparently McCain thinks the country is waiting for him to save us. Without his presence in Washington at this very moment the whole business is going to go down the tubes. Save us, Senator McCain. Oh, please save us!

What Letterman says is, "OK, maybe it's a good thing for McCain to go to Washington. But why suspend the campaign? He's got a pinch hitter. That's what a vice president does. Let McCain go to Washington. Give us Palin instead..

Yeah, right. Like that's going to happen.
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Here's Letterman. Never seen him so steamed . . . .

McCain's "Protection" of Sarah Palin: Sexist??

CNN's Campbell Brown goes on the attack accusing McCain's camp of sexism in its sequestering of Sarah Palin.

Could be on to something here . . .

Commentary from Newsweek:

Sarah Palin: The Great White Hope

One of the most powerful productions of the late '60s was a play written by Howard Sackler (later made into a film) which fictionalized the drama surrounding the first black heavy weight boxing champion, Jack Johnson. At the heart of the drama was the inability of many in America to accept the prospect of a black champion, either in boxing or any other field.

We like to believe that we've moved beyond this. And in many ways we have. But scratch the surface of what remains a thin veneer of racial civility and this darker side of the American psyche is ready to re assert itself.

Sarah Palin's appearance at the Republican National Convention was a stunning moment in American political history for any number of different reasons. Most stunning to me was the reaction of the predominantly white middle to upper middle class convention crowd. You would have thought that they were Catholics greeting the pope or Dead Heads surging the stage at a Grateful Dead concert. And this for a woman who very few in that crowd knew anything about other than that she was a working mother from a small town whose values harked back to the era when white privilege was the predominant paradigm. The surface had been scratched; the veneer peeled away.

This hasn't been explored much in the national press. For good reason. It would be hard to substantiate given the reluctance of many white Americans to acknowledge racial prejudice.What makes this even more difficult to pin down is the fact that what is on display here is not the same kind of blatant racism that Jack Johnson encountered. Rather it has more to do with the threat that diversity poses to many white Americans, blue collar for the most part, but not exclusively so.

Much is made of Sarah Palin's small town values and "aw shucks" demeanor. What isn't said is how that contrasts with the savvy cosmopolitanism and multi-culturalism represented in the biography of Barak Obama. He is the face of the new America where race and ethnicity matter, but not as the great barriers they once were. In a growing number of social circles, in fact, diversity is celebrated.

Obama's popularity among younger university- educated voters underscores the contrast. To them he represents not just the future, but their own reality in a way that the 72 year old McCain (who keeps bringing up that war that this generation is sick and tired of hearing about), and lily white Sarah Palin (have you ever seen any people of color in any of her photos?) cannot.

Sarah Palin and, in different ways, John McCain, are the great white hopes. The question that needs to be asked is whether this represents America's best hope. Given our growing diversity and need to engage a global economy, I think not.

Florida: Familiarity Breeds Contempt

Much has been made of what a difference Sarah Palin has made to the Republican ticket. Her selection, they say, found white folks, especially female white folks, flocking to her like lemmings to a cliff.

But now it seems that that old saw is true. Familiarity breeds contempt.

Rather than driving folks towards McCain, Sarah is driving them away. That, at least, is what an informal study done by the St. Petersburg Times discovered. That's St. Petersburg, Florida; one of the states McCain has to win to keep the Bush party in power.

Looks like the Republicans should have kept Palin under wraps just a little bit longer.




From the St. Petersburg Times:

ST. PETERSBURG — Five weeks ago, the St. Petersburg Times convened a group of Tampa Bay voters who were undecided about the presidential election. Their strong distrust of Barack Obama suggested it was a group ripe for John McCain to win over.

Not anymore. The group has swung dramatically, if unenthusiastically, toward Democrat Obama. Most of them this week cited the same reason: Sarah Palin.

"The one thing that frightens me more than anything else are the ideologues. We've seen too many," said 80-year-old Air Force veteran Donn Spegal, a lifelong Republican from St. Petersburg, who sees McCain's new running mate as the kind of "wedge issue" social conservative that has made him disenchanted with his party.

"I'm truly offended by Palin,'' said Republican Philinia Lehr, 37, of Largo, a full-time mother with a nursing degree who voted for George Bush in 2004. Like Palin, she has five children and she doesn't buy that the Alaska governor can adequately balance her family and the vice presidency.

"You're somebody's mom and what are you going to do, say, 'Excuse me, country, hold on?' … She's preaching that she's this mom of the year and taking that poor little baby all over everywhere. And, you know, what she's doing to her 17-year-old daughter is just appalling.'' Lehr said she's bothered by the way Palin's pregnant daughter has been brought into the national spotlight.

Of the 11 undecided voters participating in the discussion one recent evening at the Times — four Republicans, five Democrats, and two registered to no party — only two Republican men applauded the selection of Palin.

Nobody had finalized a choice, but seven of the panelists said that McCain's running mate selection had made them more likely to vote for Obama, and in several cases much more likely.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

Mudflats Asks the Right Question: Is Palin McCain's Albatros?

FROM MUDFLATS

Is Palin an Albatross?

20 09 2008

Is Sarah Palin becoming an albatross around the neck of John McCain? Two weeks ago, the thought that we would be asking this question seemed unlikely at best. Alaska’s own ’hockey mom/beauty queen’ governor had become the overnight darling of the political world. She had everything - spunk, principles, smarts, beauty, ethics, and an attitude that was just plain “maverick”. Right?

Never mind that the hearts of progressive Alaskans (and even some Republicans) were gripped with an icy fear that made breathing alone difficult, nevermind shouting, “Noooooooo!” The rest of the world loved Sarah. Lipstick became an iconic symbol of political girl power. Her recent stint as a small town mayor, and her journalism degree from the University of Idaho showed us that ”anyone can be president”. Her eyeglass frames were sold out at retail outlets around the land almost instantly. Pitbulls gained an unlikely place in our hearts. And all of a sudden John McCain didn’t have to grovel, and offer to bus people in from miles away to make his rallies look not so embarrasingly empty. It was a Disney movie - Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington, Cinderella and The Mighty Ducks all rolled into one.

But now, it’s the morning after, and America is starting to have some regrets. Sarah, it seems, has been our “rebound girl” after our escape from a disastrous and abusive long-term relationship with our soon-to-be ex, Dick Cheney. Rebound relationships are normal, but no one expects them to last.

FULL BLOG POST

More Evidence that the "Palin Effect" Has Failed

What could have been predicted when Senator McCain appointed an unknown, under-qualified, skeltons-in-her-closet hockey mom, who readily admits the only real difference between her and a pit bull is lipstick; that's it, just lipstick; is pretty much turning out to be true. She is becoming yesterday's news. Worse for the Republicans, she is becoming a drag on the ticket.

Check out the latest:

from Telegraph.com.uk

"After an initial burst of support among white women, the shock choice for Republican vice-presidential nominee of an inexperienced governor who hunts moose and has five children has solidified the female vote in the party's base, but has not so far attracted new women voters in significant numbers, a new poll by the New York Times-CBS suggested.

At the same time, her strong anti-abortion views and withering put-downs of Mr Obama seem to have galvanized Democrats. Mr McCain led in the category of white women under 45 by three percentage points before Mrs Palin's introduction, but now trails by 14, according to the poll. The survey was conducted before the bank failures of the past few days which are only likely to push Mrs Palin further into the shadows."

Trained Monkeys can do that

I was in a children's film a few year's back. I played a pirate. I had done community theater before that, but never a film. The other adult principal was a drama professor from a local college who also had only ever done stage productions. After we had filmed for a couple of days she put into words something that I had thought about, but didn't dare to express out loud. It was pretty blunt.

"Trained monkeys can do this," she said.

What my fellow thespian meant was that unlike stage productions where so much depends on your own interpretive skills, on film it's more a matter of simply speaking and acting the way the director tells you to. And you don't even have to get it right the first time as each scene requires numerous takes before they say: "that's a cut." "Trained monkeys can do that."

I was thinking about this as I was watching snippets of Governor Palin's speeches on the news tonight, snippets taken not from her acceptance speech at the convention, but on tour with Senator McCain. What struck me is that she continues to repeat the same lines over and over again in exactly the same way. That, plus the fact that the Republicans are shielding her from the "piranha-ical" press, makes me realize that we are watching a performance that is so carefully scripted that a trained monkey could do it (given a voice, of course). At this point we can only wonder what the governor might say if she had to think for herself.

But that is exactly what the Republicans are afraid of; what she might say if she were forced to use her own thoughts and words and, God forbid, her own meager resume. There's so little there that commends her for the office of vice president that it's better simply to have her stay on script (even when that script has her repeating outright lies).

I happen to believe that Governor Palin is a very capable, intelligent person who can think for herself. She wouldn't have gotten as far as she has without being able to do so. I'm just hoping that the Republicans unleash her sometime soon so we can figure out for ourselves what she's like and what she's thinking. Too much is at stake for us to be considering a vote for a trained monkey.

Jesus Was a Community Organizer

Thanks to  my new favorite up north Alaskan blog, Mudflats, for this brilliant idea for a T-shirt and/or bumper sticker inspired by the governor's withering attack on Senator Obama for using his education to empower the poor rather than doing something really useful like becoming a sports announcer.  

Jesus was a Community Organizer

 Pontias Pilate was a Governor.

Who is Sarah Palin?

Welcome to the Matanuska Valley Republican Women’s Club!

By:

Stan Moody, Ph.D.

I have been struggling to get a handle on Sarah Palin and her evangelical/political agenda. The letter below from an education official in Alaska was forwarded to me by a colleague in, of all places, China. What has been gnawing at me is the sense that I have encountered numerous Sarah Palins in the past – hard driving, positive, narrowly-focused “Hockey Moms” set on conquering America for God, skipping the inconvenience of credentials and experience.

In a word, “The Holy Spirit will give me utterance! If not, I still have plenty to say.”

A peak into the world of Phyllis Schlafly, redux:

Lots of friends and relatives have been asking me (as an Alaskan) what I think of Sarah Palin, our Governor, and new choice for McCain as a VP candidate.

This pick floored me. Sarah Palin is a nice person. I've met her. I've even talked to her for a few minutes at a principal's conference a couple of years ago. She has lots going for her superficially. She speaks from the heart, like a spitfire mother; she can even be sort of funny sometimes. She is quite beautiful, athletic and has that radiant glow of someone who actually spends time doing things outside. Unlike many politicians, she has lived a "real life" and done things that few living and working in DC could ever do....like dipnettin' fish, shootin' stuff and eating it out on the tundra, and havin' 5 kids.

Personally, I'd never vote for her. She has an extremely simple view of the world. I don't even think she has ever been abroad. As governor she has repeatedly shown us that she is unable to grasp the demands of leadership. She is very prone to cronyism of the worst kind. Every cabinet level political appointment she has made she has over-ridden suggestions of our state advisory boards and, instead, promoted those who had granted her direct political favors. Not that other politicians don't do this; they do, but most of them are able to balance their appointments to ensure that at least a few people with real skill and experience are running big state agencies.

She also has been unable to pay attention to her Alaskan constituency. Personally, I've written several of our previous gov's and been asked to comment publicly on education policy. All the previous gov's have always acknowledged that contribution, criticism or comment – sometimes by direct reply, or at least through a staff member. Palin's office has been a zone of silence. Not I; not one person I know has ever gotten any sort of reply. Her claim of running an open or transparent government is totally false; the public simply has no role in her administration.

Her previous claim to fame was being mayor of Wasilla, a growing town about 40 minutes from Anchorage. Wasilla is a hellhole, even by Alaskan standards, where there are plenty of hellhole towns and villages. Wasilla is an ugly place that shows a complete absence of planning, design or sense of public vision. Gov't agencies and services are completely overrun in this town; things are so bad that they can't even track their population or build schools in the right place. Because most parts of the town don't require building permits, the only clue about where people are settling is utility receipts. Imagine trying to be an emergency responder in this kind of place: Houses don't just catch on fire in Wasilla, they burn to the ground, because by the time the fire department has figured out which road to take (no signs) or whose house it is (no directory), the place is done for. Palin was mayor this town for at least 2 terms before being elected gov. a year and a half ago.

Her moral sense is simplistic and not inclusive. She is the sort of person who is used to using their "faith" to divide and isolate minority groups of human beings instead of uniting them. To her credit as Gov. she has kept out of this arena pretty well, but when in comfortable company (i.e the Matanuska Valley Republican Women's Club), she lets her moral cat out of the bag.

I will do what I can to ensure her defeat and that of her running mate as well. Please share this information with those who can use it well.

Stan Moody
www.thehopepartnership.org
207/626-0594

Stan Moody, founder of the Christian Policy Institute and The Hope Partnership (www.thehopepartnership.org), has served in the Maine House of Representatives...He is an Advisory Board member of "Jews-On-First" and the "Institute for the Study of Christian Zionism." Dr. Moody is the author of several provocative books, including, "Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship" and "McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry." Pastor of a rural country church in Central Maine, Moody has enjoyed a long and productive career in small business development and management.