The news from the Alaska State Legislature on their investigation of governor Sarah Palin’s abuse of power was not good. The Branchflower report [pdf] was released last week with some damning conclusions about the Palin’s personal vendetta against her ex-brother in law and Todd Palin’s immediate misuse of state resources and personnel to further their attempt to get Trooper Wooten fired from his job and denied worker’s compensation for an on the job injury. Beginning the very day after Sarah was elected governor.

Sarah Palin, now John McCain’s vice presidential candidate, spent the weekend expressing how happy she is that the investigation showed that she broke no laws, even though the actual report demonstrates clearly that she did violate ethics regulations – which is illegal. Especially in terms of allowing her husband, who was not elected to any office, to use state resources and personnel to pursue his family feud.

The situation is currently up in the air as to what the Alaskan legislature will do with the findings, state law seemingly requires that Palin be impeached for her violations. That of course cannot be accomplished before November 4th, but on November 5th Palin will be heading back to Wasilla, merely the governor again and not the VP of the United States. I predict she will be impeached by the time Barack Obama is sworn in on January 20, 2009. At which point she will be free to spend more quality time with the family she’s been so eager to exploit for her own personal gain.

Check out DKos front-pager Kagro X’s overview of the report and its findings in Todd Palin, Creepy “First Stalker”. These are not people we want in any position of real power over all of us, even if you happen to be John McCain. Who, despite his desperate desire to be President, was hoodwinked into allowing Dobson & Co. to pick his running mate sans vetting, and is finally coming to realize as their appearances become uglier and uglier that he’s been had big time. I think he’s purposefully throwing the race at this point. Possibly the most honorable thing he as a patriot has ever done for his country.

Now if he could just rein in his gangster-affiliated wife and HER thirst for power… This country absolutely doesn’t need a Cindy-Todd administration!

Well, I was going to report on the St. Paul RNC this week like I did the DNC in Denver last week, but it never quite caught my attention. Hardly anybody went (including the President and Vice-President of the United States, who are the party’s figureheads), Weather was lousy in Louisiana so the first day got put off altogether, and Fred Thompson makes me go to sleep.

But I’ve honestly gotta say, this whole Alaska Momma mooseburger beauty queen thing with Sarah Palin has me utterly and completely befoozled. Bamboozled. Conundrumated. WTF???

First thing out of the gate was that she’s been governator for less than two years, and before that was mayor of a town the same size as Wilburton, Oklahoma (where Granny lives). Then she violated military regulations and operations security by telling everybody her 18-year old son is deploying on September 11. Then she lied about her close relationship with indicted AK senator Ted Stevens and his “bridge to nowhere”, and ‘forgot’ to tell anyone that her own state Senate has her under current investigation for abuse of power. Oops.

Then she threw her pregnant 17-year old daughter under the bus to ‘prove’ the Downs Syndrome baby is really her son and not her grandson, even though just showing his birth certificate would have done the trick fine. Then she denied ever being a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, but only addressed their conventions occasionally as some sort of ‘courtesy’. Before it came out that her hubby indeed was a member of AIP – and its “plastic explosives deal gone bad” characters until 2002. Then… then…

It’s just a scandal a minute, I can’t keep up! Obviously, no one from McCain’s campaign – or the government – ever vetted Ms. Mooseburger. Well, there’s a reason for that too, now that the mainstream media’s awake and paying attention. Turns out she was vetted by James Dobson & Crew, who apparently got carte blanche from the McMansions campaign to pick the V.P. And I’m guessing the only vetting CNP did was to call her hometown preacher. Just… Wow.

So. Since I’m too fascinated by this soap opera to bother with the RNC, here’s the icing on the cake:

Via NRO, Enquirer reporting Palin Adultery

Another incredible allegation emerging from the family war is that Palin, a mother of five, had an affair with a former business associate of her fisherman husband, Todd.

“Todd discovered the affair and quickly dissolved his friendship and his business associations with the guy,” charges an enemy. “Many people in Alaska are talking about the rumor and say Todd swept it under the rug.”

Who knows if that one’s true? It *is* the Enquirer, which isn’t noted for its journalistic standards. But then again, they’re the ones who busted John Edwards, so it might be. I’m not taking any odds at this point, given how completely bizzaro this whole thing is so far.

And it’s been less than a week since we first heard of her. Just… Wow.

Looks like we’ll be treated beginning on September 1 to the spectacle of what happens when the Party of Bush/Cheney meets in St. Paul, Minnesota for their quadrennial bash and the inside-the-beltway crowd of insiders decides to stay home, closer to their call-girls (and boys). I mean, Minnesota is so… so… midwestern.

Instead of an all-star lineup and four long days of never-ending party, the focus has been on the number of Republican senators and such who have decided to skip the formalities this year and spend their time trying to save their jobs from increasingly disgusted voters in their home states.

The Associated Press reports that at least six Republican senators are opting out – Ted Stevens of Alaska, who was indicted on felony graft charges last month, won’t be there. Gordon Smith of Oregon has been touting his close working relationship with Barack Obama and John Kerry to his constituents, hoping not to get tossed in the anti-Bush backlash against McSame. Liz Dole of North Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine are both facing challengers who are entirely likely to win. Wayne Allard of Colorado and “Wide Stance” Larry Craig of Idaho won’t be there either. They’re retiring.

George Bush and Dick Cheney will of course be there to speechify their increasingly dispirited troops. Looks like ‘independent’ Joe Lieberman will be attending, probably to accept the VP nomination from McSame that will do more to seal the doom of the modern Republican Party than anything Democrats could possibly think up.

Should be interesting to see who else decides to stay home this year. I’ll report on no-shows as they don’t show.

Links:

Wonkette: Even Republicans Don’t Want to Attend Convention
Six Republican senators to skip GOP convention

Before my beloved Father-in-Law died, my ‘challenging’ Mother-in-Law was one of my more inspiring (and intimidating) role models. She’d occasionally vote Republican (which Dad ALWAYS did), but more often went Democratic for reasons of weighed value to more inclusive values and concerns for all citizens, even if the system’s not perfect. She became an ombudsman fighting for the rights of nursing home patients, she sat on the local zoning board, and she was never afraid to give elected officials – any denomination – a piece of her ample mind whenever they deserved it.

But then the love of her life died, and she’s been lonely ever since. In clinging to something of him and his views of life, she became addicted to Fox News, which – it has been noted many times – is the most successful mass propaganda/mind-control experiment ever deployed by partisan human beings against members of their own species. It has turned her into a regular O’Reilly puppet, victim of subliminal programming, a hater of all who are different or disagree. She was someone who never had a hateful bone in her body in all her years before reaching her late 70s and falling to this addiction.

She’ll be 86 this year. We’ve got to go visit and do what we can to get her some help around the house or live-in care, since she’s too stubborn to do it herself, too independent to go to “The Home,” and still in possession of most of her mental faculties Fox hasn’t yet stolen from her. It’s very sad to see this wonderfully smart, able, strong and loving person become a grim, insulated hater. She hates gays, immigrants, blacks, Muslims, Democrats, the French… anybody Bill O’Reilly tells her to hate. Which – even more sadly – now includes her own children. My husband and I (confirmed liberals) as well as his younger brother, who is a conservative Baptist preacher with his own SBC church! Very strange.

She’s alienated her family, her friends… people she’s known for decades or for their entire lives. I believe it’s a crime to prey on people like Fox does. It does real harm to real people, and they’re doing it purely for the profit. They should be stopped, a treatment for the mind-disease they’ve caused should be high on the list of urgent NIH projects.

I’ve wondered in these last few years if there’s a possible class action lawsuit out there to be filed on behalf of regular people’s aging loved ones who have been twisted and corrupted by the Fox Network’s propaganda hypnosis. I’d sure sign on, she’d be an excellent witness who could make any jury cry.

In this vein, Marcos Moulitsas of Daily Kos offers some actual reality in his blog post, Wolfson and a whole lot of stupid. According to an article in The Hill, regular viewers of Fox News are way harder-core Republicans than the broader base of all registered Republicans are. In fact, self-identified conservatives, white evangelical Christians, gun owners and supporters of the Iraq war all give George Bush fewer votes of confidence than the Fox-Bots do.

There’s nothing “Fair and Balanced” about Fox News, and nobody pretends so other than the hypnotized ‘bots, or they wouldn’t have copyrighted that slogan as a trademark instead of an actual description of their coverage.

For those of us who have ‘lost’ loved ones to the hatred spewed 24-7 on this insidious propaganda mind-control outlet, the harm is much worse than just a relative who doesn’t agree with our policy choices, it’s real, very hurtful damage to the few years those loved ones have left. Years which might have been spent just loving each other, spending time with the family (without spewing hatred), growing old gracefully and accepting the inevitability of cycles of life and death on planet earth.

So. If there are any class action lawyers reading this who would care to take ‘em on, there are a great many estranged loved ones of abused Fox-Bots out there who would join. I sure know I would.

Links:

OutFoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism
SourceWatch: Fox News
OpEdNews: Fox fair and balanced

Ah, REASONS to vote Republican! Sure wish the Republican in my life were so darned terrified of these nasty Intertubes that she really feels she needs Bill-O to protect her! It’s pretty funny anyway, so enjoy, all you Intertubers out there!

The US Supreme Court ruled on April 28th that voter ID laws are constitutional despite the fact that they disenfranchise at least 11 million eligible voters, expand restrictions on felony voting to millions of people who have unpaid parking tickets or minor moving violations that haven’t been taken care of, or have lost their auto insurance for some reason. It also amounts to an onerous poll tax for millions more Americans whose crime is simply being poor, elderly or disabled.

The justices split on the decision along entirely political lines, not surprising because these laws that require voters to produce a photo ID with a future expiration date primarily affect traditional Democratic Party voters. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion, citing the usual Republican fear of voter fraud as the state interest. Yet according to a survey by the Center for Policy Alternatives, voter fraud is extremely rare. From 2002 to 2005, an Ohio survey showed a total of 52 people convicted of any type of voter fraud, while just a tad less than 200,000,000 votes were cast in general elections by Ohio voters.

That’s half of one ten-thousandth of 1 percent. This is not a big issue.

Our household – with three workers who don’t quite make 150% of poverty level put together (this is Appalachia) – recently were pressed to get a photo ID for my teenage grandson so he could take the SAT tests. He starts college next year, but does not yet drive. We put a rush order on his birth certificate (original got lost) from another state. The copies and rush cost $55. It took longer to get a replacement SS card (required for ID along with birth certificate here), which cost another $15. Then our daughter had to take a day off work to spend the hours at DMV to get the stupid thing. That cost $80 plus the $20 price of the ID, a total of $170. A considerable cost and if your boss won’t give you time off, nearly impossible to accomplish. Grandson turns 18 three days before the May 6th primary in NC. He is registered and will be voting.

It’s a new burden, and it’s too expensive for many people who should have a voice in their representation. It’s a complicated bother for people who don’t drive, and there are 11 million adult citizens in this country who don’t have birth certificates (born in countries that no longer exist or have lost records due to disasters or wars, are elderly and/or born at home and never got one, etc.). They have been flatly disenfranchised because one half of one ten-thousandth of one percent of voters might try to vote twice. Which would add up to half of one thousandth of one percent of votes. Only in Florida would that tip a close election, and even then the court would step in and declare a winner regardless of the votes. As they did in 2000.

It’s a poll tax, forbidden by the 24th Amendment to the US Constitution. The Bush Supreme Court has now abrogated yet another of the established amendments to our governing charter for purely partisan political reasons – our rights. We need new leadership immediately, and the makeup of the court must change. Volunteer to take some neighbors to the polls this year, maybe help someone negotiate the gauntlet to get a valid photo ID. This election will make or break us.

We’re just over two weeks away from the Iowa Caucus, which will establish the party frontrunners going into New Hampshire and on to the “Super Tuesday” sew-up, months before the summer conventions that supposedly start the race to November. Why Iowa and New Hampshire are considered to be an authoritative gage of America’s best choice of Presidential candidates is something I’ve never figured out. By the time my state has it’s primary the results are already decided.

My own opinion is that the 2008 Presidential campaigns started way too early this cycle, egged on by an erroneous assessment of what Republican defeats in 2006 really meant. The change of Congressional power from Republicans to Democrats has accomplished nothing much. The leadership has steadfastly thwarted all meaningful reform legislation, all meaningful exercise of oversight, and bowed regularly to the spoiled shrubbery in the White House who has suddenly found his veto pen to be more useful than his “signing statements” stating what laws he may ignore with impunity.

Still, here we are. The Democratic field is more impressive across the board than in any other primary I can remember – all of them are sane and non-threatening, all have some great ideas, some of them have vast experience, and others are genuine populists. Compared to them the Republican field is a joke. Or, would be a joke if it weren’t so God-awful. And I do mean God…

We all know the religious right’s thirst for political power has delivered a significant, highly reliable voting bloc to the Republican Party for the last two decades. Regardless of how little that bloc actually receives in the way of legislation designed to further their theocratic ambitions, they do seem content with the nauseating lip service Republicans are always willing to deliver. The fundamentalists represent a dependable 38% of the Republican “Base” we hear so much about, even though in real numbers they don’t represent that large a percentage of the population.

Saddled with a lame duck whose approval ratings barely hover in the 20s and a sickly cyborg veep whose numbers are barely in the teens, it is clear that large numbers have been defecting and may just stay home in November. Thus watching the Holier Than Thou act between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee over the past couple of weeks has been particularly nauseating. You’d think the “Base” could by now recognize blatant hypocrisy when confronted with it so graphically. Alas, we’ll have to await the results to find out.

Between Romney’s impassioned pretense that Mormonism is just like the Baptist version of Christian fundamentalism and Huckabee telling the base that Mormons believe Jesus and Satan are brothers, Romney now has to worry about losing evangelicals and home schoolers to Huck.

Of course, the rest of the Republican stable are running well behind the two theocratic front-runners, so I doubt Democrats need be concerned. Perhaps as the primaries head into the big blow-out we’ll see much more religious in-fighting in the Republican ranks. Which will of course translate into a divided base and a likely reduction in the reliability of that base for the November election. The Dems need not lift a finger (or a voice) here – the smartest thing to do is let Republicans go ahead and demolish their own base. They don’t need any help.

Links:

NYT: Huckabee Draws Support of Home-School Families

Huckabee: ‘I don’t have anything to apologize for’

NYT: Candidates Scrambling to Cope with Rise of Huckabee

Yes, it’s torture. It’s labeled such, known as such, practiced as such. The fact that we subject our SEALs and Rangers and other special forces operatives to it to give them an idea of what torture *is* and how to resist it, tells us that it’s legitimately, objectively classifiable as TORTURE.

So, you might ask with wonder in your eyes, why are Senators and Congresscitters and administration hacks arguing about it in public? Why is it “important” on somebody’s scale of things to do to make this long-ago made distinction? Why won’t AG candidate Michael Mukasey lend us his views on the issue? It’s a fair question, let’s ask it…

Unless you happen to be a member of the National Association of Waterboarders and Controlled Drowners, this whole debate probably makes no sense at all.

Not to worry, Waterboarders of Amerika! Darth Cheney is solidly on Your Side. Speaking to reporters this past week, his resolve was clear…

Braving chilly November temperatures to make their point about the media’s negative stereotyping of them, the angry torturers got some moral support when one of their most prominent supporters, Vice President Dick Cheney, emerged from his secure undisclosed location to address them.

The vice president received a thunderous ovation from the crowd when he proposed that the government earmark $1.6 billion to improve the media image of waterboarding and waterboarders.

“There’s nothing wrong with waterboarding that a little public relations makeover wouldn’t fix,” the vice president told the crowd. “For starters, why not call it dunking?”

“Dunking” has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Reminds one of the glory days of Witch Hunts and general persecution and genocides of the Middle Ages.

This is such a travesty. Surely even the defenders recognize that. Are we not all human?

Links:

TPMemo: How Low Can We Go?

Andy Borowitz: Waterboarders Protest Negative Media Stereotypes

Graeme Frost speaking to reporters after delivering the Democratic radio response to Bush’s SCHIP veto.

Just when you thought Mister 22% and his Brownshirts couldn’t go any lower in their efforts to prevent millions of children from accessing health care through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program [SCHIP], they managed to find yet another sub-basement cesspool from which to spew slime.

When Bush vetoed the SCHIP legislation passed by both the House and Senate, the Democratic response was delivered by courageous 12-year old Graeme Frost of Baltimore, Maryland. Graeme and his parents, who earn ~$45,000 a year but get no employer-provided health care and with 4 children cannot afford $1,200 a month for private coverage, went public with how the SCHIP program helped them after a 2004 auto accident left Graeme and his younger sister seriously injured and hospitalized for five months.

The Frosts expected to draw some ire from Republicans, but they did not expect the level of hatred aimed their way. As reported by The Baltimore Sun, right wing bloggers and talking heads went wild. Typical offerings went something like this, from the wingnut website RedState:

“If federal funds were required [they] could die for all I care. Let the parents get second jobs, let their state foot the bill or let them seek help from private charities… I would hire a team of PIs and find out exactly how much their parents made and where they spent every nickel. Then I’d do everything possible to destroy their lives with that info.”

…not to mention threatening phone calls, physical harassment and other published threats too crude to reprint here. All that ‘Compassionate Conservatism’ sort of gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling, doesn’t it? The New York Times’ Paul Krugman put it this way:

All in all, the Graeme Frost case is a perfect illustration of the modern right-wing political machine at work, and in particular its routine reliance on character assassination in place of honest debate. If service members oppose a Republican war, they’re “phony soldiers”; if Michael J. Fox opposes Bush policy on stem cells, he’s faking his Parkinson’s symptoms; if an injured 12-year old child makes the case for a government health insurance program, he’s a fraud.

Graeme in the hospital following the 2005 accident that injured him and his little sister Gemma.

Vicious. Hateful. Disgusting. It’s not hard to come up with adjectives for this sort of low-life garbage, even though Americans have become quite used to the fascist tendencies of today’s Neocons and their Fearless (but moronic) Leader.

A new poll from NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health demonstrates that 70% support expansion of SCHIP as passed by the House and Senate.

The override vote takes place tomorrow (October 18), and Democrats acknowledge they do not have enough votes to get the 2/3 majority needed. If it were up to the Senate SCHIP would already be a done deal. Hopefully this travesty will translate directly into votes next November to replace Republican legislators who refuse to represent their constituents, which would give Democrats a veto-proof majority at the time a Democratic administration takes office.

There’s a lot of clean-up work to do after 8 years of greed, profiteering, destruction of the Constitution and impoverishment of the middle class. At least we can be fairly sure that history will record the Bush-II administration as the anti-democratic force it really is. By then GWB should be safely ensconced at his retirement estate in Paraguay, safe from extradition.

For the fourth time during his reign of terror, George Bush used his veto pen to reject reauthorization and expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance program [SCHIP], in defiance of the wishes of a solid 72% majority of the American people and a Veto-Proof majority in the Senate on this completely bipartisan bill.

The 6.6 million children who were covered did have their coverage extended through November, the SCHIP funding from last year expired this past Sunday. The 4 million more children this bill would have covered are SOL, as usual.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are scrambling to come up with the two dozen extra votes they need to override the veto, but it’s not looking very hopeful. Senator Edward Kennedy weighed in over at Daily Kos with a challenge to the President, but then he’s a Senator holding a veto-proof majority on this legislation.

There’s a heart-wrenching diary by a mother who is out of work, whose husband committed suicide just this past July, who is now facing a future being unable to insure a teenage daughter under SCHIP until that daughter can get safely graduated and into college (or Mom can find a job with health benefits). SCHIP and my husband’s suicide is there if you really need it to convince you what a travesty this veto represents, but I find New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s double post to Kos and Huffington Post a probably more effective strategy than trying to tug the heartstrings of people who have no hearts.

Why I’m Suing the Bush Administration is Spitzer’s message to the outraged nation about what he plans to do about the 400,000 uninsured children in New York, and that doesn’t include waiting until they’re sick enough to “just go to the emergency room” as Bush flippantly suggested.

“Somebody had to do it,” Spitzer said in his opening statement. Spitzer says he has joined with both Democratic and Republican governors of Maryland, Washington, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Illinois to challenge the new restrictions on SCHIP eligibility the Bush administration imposed by regulatory action, which blocks states from expanding coverage to more uninsured children.

With the veto, Bush has taken away insurance from those who were covered (after November), and the state caps on Medicaid have ensured that coverage isn’t even extended to all the children of the working poor who qualify for that much.

The reason Bush has defied a solid majority of U.S. citizens as well as both the House and Senate? He said he’s worried that children who already have insurance (inadequate, high-deductibe and often useless insurance through their parents’ employers) will choose to give up their coverage in order to join the program.

It doesn’t get any more WRONG than that. While we debate the shortcomings of for-profit health care in this country, the gross shame of “Murder by Spreadsheet” policies of those for-profit insurers, and whether we can join the ranks of all other democracies on the planet to offer basic health care to citizens as a right, the very least we can do is make sure the children get their health care needs addressed. Without forcing parents into bankruptcy, without forcing them to wait until they’re sick enough for the ER, without turning our backs on their suffering because of class or the status of their parents.

Write your Congress Critters. Send a wire to the White House. Vote in polls when they ask the question. Make your opinion known. This is an outrage.