Saturday, October 11, 2008

Hello, Pot? This Is Kettle Calling!

Abuse of power. Violations of ethical standards. Using an official position to pursue personal interests. Cover ups. Failing to co-operate with an investigation.

Oh, yes: Lying.

After eight years of Congress letting George Bush and Dick Cheney get away with all of these high crimes and misdemeanors, it took a heavily Republican-dominated committee of the heavily Republican-dominated Alaska state legislature to call out a Republican senior government official for malfeasance.

Put bluntly, the Legislative Council nails Gov. Sarah Palin for abusing her office, authority and state employees to settle a personal score with a former relative.

She is the pot who spent all of last week calling the kettle black.

Sarah, the GOP’s “everywoman,” turns out to be a cheap political weasler.

She is the phoney “hockey mom” earning a six figure salary who holds a wooden cross of goodness and light high above her head yet turns out to be nothing more than a craven idol, a garden gnome being carted around the real world by pranksters.

The supposed ally of a “Joe Sixpack” who’s trying to survive financially after a disastrous Republican president ruined the economy is worse than the Wizard of Oz in cheap pumps, hiding behind a curtain of false sanctimony. At least the Wizard of Oz tried doing some good; all Palin did this week was promote fear and hate mongering.

Set aside the $35,000 sun tanning bed she installed in the governor’s igloo; forget about charging the state $19,000 for days when she was living in her own home; forget about her whining that she couldn’t always use a state airplane when she wanted to go somewhere; forget about her not remembering the name of a single newspaper she reads; forget about claiming she fired the cook at the governor’s mansion when all she did was change the job title and assign the cook’s salary – but not her duties – to a different department; forget about her lack of knowledge, understanding or even curiosity about the world; forget about her attending five universities in six years; forget about her countless gaffes uttered during interviews; forget about her suspicious connections to a group that demands Alaska secede from the Union.

Forget about all of that.

All you need to know about Sarah Palin is that she is a mean, vindictive, political climber who abuses her public trust regularly, sending the little mister and her official staff out in her name to get someone fired that she doesn’t like.

Not even during the heyday of the Cook County IL Democratic machine with all of its tentacles reaching onto every street corner in the city and no civil service anywhere would the original Mayor Daley (father of the current Mayor Daley) ever try pulling a stunt like this. I know: I lived in Chicago during the last seven years of the life, times and mayorship of the beloved and all-powerful “Hizzoner.”

Sarah Palin is the “Peter Principle” come to life.

Worse, with the documented evidence of abusing her office, violating the law, using her office to pursue personal interests, engaging in cover ups, failing to co-operate with investigators and lying, she is Dick Cheney in drag.

Poor, Poor Sarah

- Guest post by Denis Campbell, editor-in-chief of VadimusPost.com

I feel like a Cheshire cat who swallowed a big-haired ‘g’ dropping canary whole ‘dontchaknow,’ gives me energy and sustenance without leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Saturday Night Live’s writers are feverishly re-working tonight’s Palin sketch having been handed today’s gift, Sarah Palin was found guilt of abusing the powers of her office in violation of state law by an Alaskan legislative committee when she fired public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan for not firing her State Trooper ex-brother-in-law. The sun shines brighter in Wales and birds sing more beautifully this morning because the lipsticked pit bull finally got caught going “a bridge too far.” Enough twisted metaphors for one paragraph?

I was thinking back to Spiro Agnew, the last Vice President from this party to resign in disgrace. He was investigated by the U.S. attorney in Baltimore for allegedly receiving payoffs from engineers seeking contracts when Agnew was Baltimore county executive and governor of Maryland .

Agnew asserted his innocence, then resigned the Vice Presidency eight months ahead of his boss, Richard Nixon, in 1973. He pleaded nolo contendere, or ‘no contest,’ to a single charge he had failed to report $29,500 of income received in 1967. He was fined $10,000 and placed on three years’ probation. After his resignation he started a successful business career as an international broker.

That seems quaint and honourable compared to destroying a man’s career and opening the state of Alaska to criminal and civil cases that will ensure that former Walt Monegan becomes a very rich man and earns big bucks on the speaking circuit for his troubles.

So the MSM will spend this weekend finally doing their job and digging deeply into Ms. Palin’s questionable tenure as Governor. This is a gift to them because the major networks have been cowed into submission for weeks by McCain campaign attacks of sexism in their coverage. Their gloves now come off and there is nowhere Governor Palin can now go without being hounded by the press to answer all the charges.

I’m halfway through the book written about her Vice Presidential idol, Dick Cheney, subject of the book Angler by Pulitzer Prize Winning author Barton Gellman and can see his fingerprints already all over the predicted McCain/Republican response. “We fully support Governor Palin and will appeal this decision all the way to the Supreme Court. This is a partisan witch hunt. My friends, Sarah Palin is a dedicated public servant persecuted and abused by Democratic demagogues. Who is Barack Obama, why are you not focused on that? The MSM is in the tank for Obama. Obama’s team influenced this.” and the list will go on and on and on.

And the there is the whole secessionist movement where she pals around with terrorists… scary.





The GOP (that’s their new brand hoping we’re dumb enough not to know that those initials stand for the Republican Party) will completely fracture itself live over the next week as moderate Republicans fighting to stay in office try to wipe the stain of BCMP (Bush, Cheney, McCain & Palin) onto flaming wood to distance themselves from the top of this fiasco of ticket.

The word ‘Republican’ will be further eliminated from even more adverts and flyers as the down-ticket races for Senate and House arrange deck chairs on this Titanic and pray nothing else bad hits in the last 24-days of the campaign. And the whacked out far right will fill arenas rushing to defend their poor, poor Sarah, the GOP’s money and celebrity machine.

And this is all so deserving of a woman who snidely and smilingly incited such racial hatred on the campaign trail. See, no one notices this stuff in Alaska . Walt must be very happy she was selected to come under the national spotlight. Is benefits would have run out and been stuck. Now McCain and Co. are sick this morning knowing that the vetting process is exposed as a complete sham.

Like I said, I’m grinning from ear-to-ear because it couldn’t happen to a nicer pit bull and her pals. Now if she and Cindy McCain could also be charged by the Secret Service for inciting crowds against a protectee, I will dance all weekend.