I Hate What You Just Said

Sarah Palin’s understanding of her role as a state executive isn’t just limited to the exercise of personal vendettas and rank nepotism. It also includes bilking hardworking Alaskans of the tax dollars they earned canning salmon and trucking on frigid ice roads.

In a lengthy report the AP discloses that Palin’s sense of entitlement to public funds was almost unlimited:

Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.

The charges included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel.

In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters’ 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls. [. . .]

What Alaskan wouldn’t be proud that their income taxes helped young Willow and Piper Palin help with this critical act of governance:

In January, the governor, Willow and Piper showed up at the Alaska Symphony of Seafood Buffet, an Anchorage gala to announce winners of an earlier seafood competition.

“She was just there,” said James Browning, executive director of Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation, which runs the event. Griffin said the governor’s office received an invitation that was not specifically addressed to anyone.

When Palin amended her children’s expense reports, she listed a role for the two girls at the function — “to draw two separate raffle tickets.”

In the original travel form, Palin listed a number of events that her children attended and said they were there “in official capacity helping.” She did not identify any specific roles for the girls.

Or pay for this little junket:

In July, the governor charged the state $2,741.26 to take Bristol and Piper to Philadelphia for a meeting of the National Governors Association. The girls had their own room for five nights at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel for $215.46 a night, expense records show.

Or this precious week of bonding:

In October 2007, Palin brought daughter Bristol along on a trip to New York for a women’s leadership conference. Plane tickets from Anchorage to La Guardia Airport for $1,385.11 were billed to the state, records show, and mother and daughter shared a room for four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House hotel, which overlooks Central Park.

The Palin family has also been shaking down the RNC to pick up some swanky new outfits. Politico reports today that

The Republican National Committee has spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.

According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.

The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.

The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.

The cash expenditures immediately raised questions among campaign finance experts about their legality under the Federal Election Commission’s long-standing advisory opinions on using campaign cash to purchase items for personal use.

I’d like to hear some folksy common sense from Joe the Plumber on all this since Palin’s bill at Saks alone is almost identical to his yearly income.

Perhaps he’d change his vote if he knew that Obama resoles his shoes.

The Troopergate investigation will continue. The Alaska Supreme Court said “thanks but no thanks” to the injunction.

In last Thursday’s debate between Vice Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, moderator Gwen Ifill asked both individuals to describe their Achilles’ heel. Palin’s response revealed her to be the unlettered tundra hick that we’d always suspected:

PALIN: My experience as an executive will be put to good use as a mayor and business owner and oil and gas regulator and then as governor of a huge state, a huge energy producing state that is accounting for much progress towards getting our nation energy independence and that’s extremely important.

But it wasn’t just that experience tapped into, it was my connection to the heartland of America. Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how are we going to pay those tuition bills? About times and Todd and our marriage in our past where we didn’t have health insurance and we know what other Americans are going through as they sit around the kitchen table and try to figure out how are they going to pay out-of-pocket for health care? We’ve been there also so that connection was important.

But even more important is that world view that I share with John McCain. That world view that says that America is a nation of exceptionalism. And we are to be that shining city on a hill, as President Reagan so beautifully said, that we are a beacon of hope and that we are unapologetic here. We are not perfect as a nation. But together, we represent a perfect ideal. And that is democracy and tolerance and freedom and equal rights. Those things that we stand for that can be put to good use as a force for good in this world.

John McCain and I share that. You combine all that with being a team with the only track record of making a really, a difference in where we’ve been and reforming, that’s a good team, it’s a good ticket.

1) Achilles Heel:

This is standard fodder for Job Interview 101 — explain your weaknesses. But Sarah Palin clearly doesn’t understand the literary reference to the Iliad, much less the common — even threadbare — expression of the Achilles’ heel that is used to describe a character flaw or personal weakness. I think we know what her Achilles’ heel really is: she doesn’t read anything.

2) American Exceptionalism:

The term American Exceptionalism is an academic keyword used as a criticism of American nationalism, our belief in a “manifest destiny,” and our willful forgetting of all the violence and suffering that attended the founding and expansion of our nation. It carries the exact opposite meaning that she intended.

3) A Shining City on a Hill:

Palin’s statement that America is a “shining city on a hill” is falsely attributed to Ronald Reagan. Had Palin actually read Reagan’s speech, she would know that the former president himself acknowledges that the source of the quotation is John Winthrop, a Puritan, and first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Significantly, Winthrop’s quote — which is taken from a sermon entitled “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630) — is widely discussed as the earliest expression of American Exceptionalism. Winthrop describes the Puritan’s presence in the New World as a mission from God. Several million Indian deaths later, the idea appeared somewhat less “shiny.” Incidentally, Winthrop didn’t say “shining” — Reagan added that part.

And we should also point out that Reagan wasn’t even original here: he lifted the line from president-elect John F. Kennedy who quoted Winthrop in a speech to the Massachusetts Legislature on January 9, 1961. Kennedy used the quote to describe his efforts to assemble his administration for the “awesome” task of governing our country.

Oh, and Kennedy quoted the line correctly.

The O.J. Simpson trial concludes in Las Vegas:

O.J. Simpson, the former football star who was famously cleared of double murder in the sensational 1990s “Trial of the Century,” was found guilty on all charges in his Las Vegas kidnapping and robbery case on Friday.

Simpson was convicted along with co-defendant Clarence “C.J.” Stewart on the 13th anniversary of his controversial 1995 acquittal and immediately jailed by Clark County District Court Judge Jackie Glass.

Both Simpson, 61, and Stewart, 54, face mandatory minimum sentences of five years behind bars and could be sentenced to life in prison.

And Troopergate makes its final stop at the Supreme Court of Alaska:

The Alaska Supreme Court will decide whether to block the findings of an abuse-of-power investigation due to be released next week that could be potentially damaging to Governor Sarah Palin’s vice presidential candidacy.

The court accepted an emergency appeal late on Friday filed by six Alaska politicians who claim the investigation is being manipulated to hurt Palin before Election Day on November 4.

The court scheduled verbal arguments for Wednesday on whether to suppress the probe’s findings.

The independent investigator conducting the probe plans to turn over his conclusions by next Friday to the Legislative Council, the body that authorised it.

Can we make an amendment to the Constitution so that people who are unable to pronounce the word “nuclear” are disqualified from holding high office?

It’s the shibboleth for the retarded and the incompetent:

Here’s the transcript of Palin’s rambling, non-responsive answer:

Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be all, end all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet, so those dangerous regimes, again, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, period.

Our nuclear weaponry here in the U.S. is used as a deterrent. And that’s a safe, stable way to use nuclear weaponry.

But for those countries — North Korea, also, under Kim Jong Il — we have got to make sure that we’re putting the economic sanctions on these countries and that we have friends and allies supporting us in this to make sure that leaders like Kim Jong Il and Ahmadinejad are not allowed to acquire, to proliferate, or to use those nuclear weapons. It is that important.

In the wake of last night’s V.P. debate , a distressing number pundits and columnists are all-too eager to declare Sarah Palin’s performance a success.  At the Boston Globe, for example,  J.J., is postiviely gushing.  After saying that Joe Biden was ”in fine form,” he adds:

But Sarah Palin was incredible! She turned in a performance that would have done any vice presidential nominee proud - and she did it after less than six weeks in national life, and having never before debated in front of a national audience. She was strong, well-spoken, intelligent, an obvious quick study, and not in the least intimidated by her opponent’s decades of experience.

Well-spoken.

Seriously.

And for her own part, Palin declared that she was happy to have the chance finally to talk to the American people, without the filter of the mainstream media.  Palin - the candidate who has been largely hiding from view (and earshot!), the candidate who shows no inclination even to hold a press conference - says she is happy that the American people finally heard her in her own words.

Her own words are worth examining.  From the transcript of the debate, here are Palin’s comments on three rather important issues: education policy, climage change, and the Middle East.

 On education policy:

Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he’s a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here’s a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate. Education credit in American has been in some sense in some of our states just accepted to be a little bit lax and we have got to increase the standards. No Child Left Behind was implemented. It’s not doing the job though. We need flexibility in No Child Left Behind. We need to put more of an emphasis on the profession of teaching. We need to make sure that education in either one of our agendas, I think, absolute top of the line. My kids as public school participants right now, it’s near and dear to my heart. I’m very, very concerned about where we’re going with education and we have got to ramp it up and put more attention in that arena.

On climate change:

Yes. Well, as the nation’s only Arctic state and being the governor of that state, Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it’s real. I’m not one to attribute every man — activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet. But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don’t want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts? We have got to clean up this planet. We have got to encourage other nations also to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that. As governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change sub-cabinet to start dealing with the impacts. We’ve got to reduce emissions. John McCain is right there with an “all of the above” approach to deal with climate change impacts.We’ve got to become energy independent for that reason. Also as we rely more and more on other countries that don’t care as much about the climate as we do, we’re allowing them to produce and to emit and even pollute more than America would ever stand for. So even in dealing with climate change, it’s all the more reason that we have an “all of the above” approach, tapping into alternative sources of energy and conserving fuel, conserving our petroleum products and our hydrocarbons so that we can clean up this planet and deal with climate change.

Responding to this question from Ifill: “Has this administration’s [Middle East] policy been an abject failure, as the senator says, Governor?”

No, I do not believe that it has been. But I’m so encouraged to know that we both love Israel, and I think that is a good thing to get to agree on, Sen. Biden. I respect your position on that. No, in fact, when we talk about the Bush administration, there’s a time, too, when Americans are going to say, “Enough is enough with your ticket,” on constantly looking backwards, and pointing fingers, and doing the blame game. There have been huge blunders in the war. There have been huge blunders throughout this administration, as there are with every administration. But for a ticket that wants to talk about change and looking into the future, there’s just too much finger-pointing backwards to ever make us believe that that’s where you’re going. Positive change is coming, though. Reform of government is coming. We’ll learn from the past mistakes in this administration and other administrations. And we’re going to forge ahead with putting government back on the side of the people and making sure that our country comes first, putting obsessive partisanship aside. That’s what John McCain has been known for in all these years. He has been the maverick. He has ruffled feathers. But I know, Sen. Biden, you have respected for them that, and I respect you for acknowledging that. But change is coming.

Eight hundred and nine words.  And she hasn’t said a thing.

Here’s a little warm-up for tonight’s debate.  It speaks for itself.

Start popping the popcorn, because  this promises to be a hell of an evening.

Matt Taibbi has some thoughts on Sarah Palin.

I haven’t cringed this much since the first season of The Office. But this isn’t funny. This is insulting. It is an obscenity that McCain would put this person on the presidential ticket:

Andrew Sullivan is on a roll - a serious anti-Palin roll. In “The Twelve Lies of Sarah Palin,” my favorite Obamacon succinctly makes the case that Palin’s pants are now a four-alarm fire:

So for the record, let it be known that the candidate for vice-president for the GOP is a compulsive, repetitive, demonstrable liar. If you follow the links, here is the proof. I repeat: proof:

- She has lied about the Bridge To Nowhere. She ran for office favoring it, wore a sweatshirt defending it, and only gave it up when the federal congress, Senator McCain in particular, went ballistic. She kept the money anyway and favors funding Don Young’s Way, at twice the cost of the original bridge.

- She has lied about her firing of the town librarian and police chief of Wasilla, Alaska.

- She has lied about pressure on Alaska’s public safety commissioner to fire her ex-brother-in-law.

- She has lied about her previous statements on climate change.

- She has lied about Alaska’s contribution to America’s oil and gas production.

- She has lied about when she asked her daughters for their permission for her to run for vice-president.

- She has lied about the actual progress in constructing a natural gas pipeline from Alaska.

- She has lied about Obama’s position on habeas corpus.

- She has lied about her alleged tolerance of homosexuality.

- She has lied about the use or non-use of a TelePrompter at the St Paul convention.

- She has lied about her alleged pay-cut as mayor of Wasilla.

- She has lied about what Alaska’s state scientists concluded about the health of the polar bear population in Alaska.

You cannot trust a word she says. On anything.

Nope. It appears that you cannot.

Sarah Palin, the most knowledgeable person in America about energy, fielded a question on the subject at a recent townhall meeting:

“Oil and coal? Of course, it’s a fungible commodity and they don’t flag, you know, the molecules, where it’s going and where it’s not. But in the sense of the Congress today, they know that there are very, very hungry domestic markets that need that oil first,” Palin said. “So, I believe that what Congress is going to do, also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it’s Americans that get stuck to holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here. It’s got to flow into our domestic markets first.”

I, for one, support flagging some coal and oil molecules to be diverted to our hungry market. I say “flag baby flag.”

And I’ll be goddamned if I get stuck to any energy bags that I’m holding!