Seething on the Third Rock

GOP Pundits Caught Trashing Palin ON TAPE!

Those hot mics always tell the truth!

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2008-09-03 Palin Requested and Received Millions in Earmarks

ohn McCain has made a big deal out of his objection to pork barrel spending through an appropriations procedure called earmarks.  He's even gone so far as to publish "pork lists" attempting to shame other legislators who use them to fund projects in their home districts.

Three times in recent years, McCain's has criticized earmarks requested by Mayor Sarah Palin for Wasilla, Alaska including:

• In 2001, a $500,000 earmark for a public transportation project in Wasilla
• In 2002, a $1 million earmark for an emergency communications center -- one that local law enforcement has said was redundant
• In 2002, Wasilla received a $450,000 earmark for an agricultural processing facility that was requested during Palin's tenure as mayor and cleared Congress after she left office

In total, Wasilla received $11.9 million in earmarks from 2000 to 2003. This year, Palin, who has been governor for nearly 22 months, defended earmarking as a vital part of the legislative system. [1]  In fact, Governor Sarah Palin sent a proposal for 31 earmarks totaling $197 million to Sen. Ted. Stevens, Alaska's Republican Senator who is currently under indictment.  This is more earmark funding per person, than any other state. [2]

The federal budget, in its various manifestations, is incredibly important to us, and congressional earmarks are one aspect of this relationship. 

Sarah Palin in a March 5, 2008 op-ed in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

2008-09-01 The Palins, Spears and Little House on the Prairie

n order to quell growing speculation that Sarah Palin's unmarried daughter Bristol was the real mother of Sarah's 5 month old baby, the McCain campaign has just acknowledged that Bristol is in fact 5 months pregnant.

"We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents," Sarah and Todd Palin said in the brief statement.  The irony of course is that Sarah wants to take away women's rights to make that same decision for themselves. 

Actually it appears that Sarah's own first son Track was probably a bastard as well.

1. Sarah's first son, Track was born on April 20, 1989.
2. Sarah Palin eloped on August 29, 1988
3. 38 weeks is the typical human pregnancy.
4. 38 weeks before her son's birthday, April 20, 1989, is July 28, 1988--the likely day of conception.
5. That would mean that Sarah Palin eloped four weeks after her son's conception.
6. Track could still be legitimate if he was born at least four weeks premature.

The point is that Sarah Palin is a human like the rest of us and faces the same types of personal, spiritual and professional challenges in life.  The problem is that Republicans feel that they should be forgiven for their weaknesses while they condemn and persecute everyone else for theirs. The Republicans are nothing if not intolerant hypocrites and liars. As a tax paying American forced to live in Canada with my same-sex partner because of homophobic US immigration laws espoused by the GOP I am indignant.

2008-09-01 More on Palin's Trooper Gate

arah Palin's sister Molly is embroiled in a child custody dispute with he ex-husband Mike Wooten an Alaska State Trooper. The Palin clan allege that Wooten tased his step son (who apparently wanted to know what it felt like), hunted moose out-of-season and drove drunk amongst other things.  Wooten says the taser was on the "test setting", that Palin's own father accompanied him on the infamous illegal moose hunt and that the family is basically stalking him.  In the end, Wooten was investigated and reprimanded but kept his job.  This all sounds like the usual divorce court kind of stuff to me.

Now it really gets interesting.  On July 11th of this year, Gov. Palin fired Walt Monegan, the Department of Public Safety Chief (and Wooten's boss).  Actually Sarah offered him a job as head of the Alcoholic Beverage Control board.  Monegan turned it down.  Monegan went to the press alleging that he was fired as retaliation from the Palin clan for not firing Wooten when ordered to do so.   Sarah initially denied ever having talked to Monegan about Wooten, or that anyone on her staff did. As you might imagine the telephone logs and email trail are now indicating distinctly otherwise.  Monegan says that there were dozens of such communications and he plans to turn over the records to the special prosecutor hired to investigate the matter by the State Legislature.  Not to be out done, Sarah has preempted the special prosecutor by ordering her own investigation conducted by the state's Attorney General so that “she could find out for herself.” 

But wait there is more.  After Monegan's abrupt departure, Sarah then appointed Chuck Kopp to replace him at the Department of Public Safety.  Unfortunately, Chuck is now the center of his own little scandal. Apparently, he was reprimanded and reassigned after sexual harassment allegations by a former coworker.  Needless to say, Kopp has stepped down and received a $10,000 severance package.  Monegan got nothing.

McCain's operatives are of course attempting to play down Trooper Gate but I think their arguments against Wooten's character miss three very important points.

1. This is a clear case of Abuse of Office.  Whatever the short comings of Wooten (Sarah's sister's ex-husband), a sitting governor cannot use her office in a vindictive personal campaign.
2. Sarah Lied.  When asked about her involvement Sarah repeated lied to the media and state officials regarding her communications with Monegan.
3. The case highlights the appalling lack of judgment of both Palin and McCain.  Not only did Sarah fire Monegan who had done nothing wrong, she then appointed a new Public Safety Chief with a history of sexual harassment.  For McCain, the matter raises disturbing parallels to Bush's appointment of incompetent right wing cronies at FEMA (Michael Brown), the Department of Justice (Harriet Miers and Antonio Gonzales) and the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

And it is this last point that is most disturbing.  Apparently, McCain had only talked to Palin twice before putting her on the Republican ticket.  It has now come to light that the McCain campaign didn't even access newspaper archives in Alaska in the vetting of Palin. America certainly doesn't need four more years of shoot-from-the-hip Republican incompetent decision making. 

Considering all of the other more experienced women in the Republican Party, it is disturbing that McCain would select Palin to be a "heartbeat away" from the most powerful position in the most powerful country on earth.  And for what?  To solidify his fascist base and attract Hillary voters?  Well he may have accomplished the former, though in a year of declining Republican voter registration I am not sure to what end.  With respect to the latter, it is apparently not working at all.  Initial Gallup polling among Democratic women (including many who supported Hillary Clinton) 9% say that Palin makes them more likely to support McCain, and 15% less likely a net negative of 6%.

2008-08-30 Sarah Palin Under Ethics Investigation

he Alaska Legislature voted unanimously last month to investigate allegations that Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain's running mate, may have abused her office in trying to pressure Walt Monegan, the state's public safety commissioner to fire her sister's ex-husband, an Alaska State Trooper.  The Legislature has hired a former district attorney to investigate and have asked him to issue a report by October 31st. [1]  Palin fired Monegan on July 11th.

Monegan, a respected former chief of the Anchorage Police Department, said in an interview with the Washington Post that despite initial statements to the contrary Palin and her husband had in fact contacted him repeatedly concerning the matter.  Monegan says that he has emails from Palin that he plans to turn over to the prosecutor.

Above: Miss Congeniality

2008-08-18 McCain is the Same Kind of Pathological Republican Liar as Dubya

WARREN: Now, my first question: Was the cone of silence comfortable that you were in just now? (Laughs.)

MCCAIN: (Laughs.) I was trying to hear through the wall.

. . .

MCCAIN: Could I — are we going to get back to the importance of Supreme Court Justices or should I mention –

WARREN: We will get to that.

MCCAIN: OK. All right. OK.

WARREN: Man you’re jumping ahead. You know all my questions.

(Above: Rick Warren and John McCain at the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency.)

This exchange is extremely suspicious given that 1) Rick Warren had not mentioned Supreme Court Justices at this point in the interview and 2) the McCain campaign has already admitted that McCain was in a motorcade on his way to the forum during the first half of the conversation between Senator Obama and Rick Warren.  It appears as if McCain anticipated the question.

It may come as a surprise to some that there are reasons why you have rules in this type of forum--to preserve the presumption of impartiality by which the parties agreed to appear at Saddleback in the first place.  It is ironic that the McCain camp is now trying to accuse NBC of being partial. [1]  You can't have it both ways.  There is absolutely no doubt that McCain had an obligation to inform Rick Warren and the viewers that he was not in fact in the agreed “cone of silence”.  To have not done so now makes it appear as if Rick Warren was complicit in this ruse which I believe he was not.  It highlights the degree of moral compromise that McCain is willing to accept in order to get what he wants.  McCain obviously believes that the ends justify the means.  Now that is a character issue.

The entire transcript follows.

2008-08-13 Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman Gunned Down!

Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman Bill Gwatney was shot and killed by a lone gunman in the Democratic Party Headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas today.  The gunman was later shot and killed by police.

See the whole story here --> http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/13/arkansas.shooting/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

I sincerely hope that this does not prove to be yet another example of the rising tide of violent fascism and right-wing pseudo-Christian extremism being nurtured by the ever more desperate lies and hate speech of the Republicans and their propaganda sewage pipe at Fox News.

2008-07-18 The Four Serious Issues Facing America: Healthcare Reform

ealth care is one of those issues that brings out idealogical and philosophical stances in the American political dialog like no other.  Whether or not you feel that access to quality health care is a basic human right that must be provided by all civilized countries there are a few basic facts about the American health care system that cannot be ignored.  First and foremost, the American health care system is the most costly and inefficient in the world.  It also has the lowest return on investment (ROI) when health care expenditure is measured as a function of average life expectancy.  (Click on the graphs to enlarge.)

The health care expenditure statistics come from the United Nations Human Development Report, 2007. The average life expectancies come from the CIA World Factbook.

So what is the significance of runaway American health care costs?  I guess there are two points.  First of all, there is no reason to believe that the American health care system is underfunded.  We don't need to spend any more money.  In fact, I would suggest that with respect to the 40 million Americans currently uninsured it is arguable that the only way to bring them into the system is to reduce the cost of access to health care.  Let me say that again.  The reason we have so many uninsured in the United States is because we spend to much money on health care in the first place.  This is easy to see.  If I open a new private clinic no one who is currently uninsured will be able to afford to pay for my cost recovery and so I will go out of business.  Why is health care in America so expensive then you may ask.

I remember seeing the following chart in the Economist that compared relative spending on information technology across different industries.  The health care sector spends less money on automation and information technology than virtually any other segment of our economy.

People fully expect that when they roam from state to state that their cellphone will continue to work and that they can go online and check the delivery status of their FedEx packages.  And yet, there is no system in place to electronically transfer your medical records or prescriptions from physician to physician or pharmacy to pharmacy.  And anyone waiting on the private sector to create its own information management and data transfer standards will be waiting a long time indeed.

This graphic is from the Gartner Worldwide IT Benchmark Service New Trends & Findings for 2007.  While there is not clear causality, sectors spending more on information technology as a percent of total operational expense are realizing higher operating profits.  It appears that IT increases economic efficiency probably through greater process automation and leverage of existing employees.

Health care is a 3-way value chain with providers (i.e., physicians and hospitals), customers (i.e., patients) and payors (i.e., employers and insurance companies).  All of these counterparties need standards to be defined for sharing financial data (e.g., bills and payments), patient data (e.g., medical records), provider data (e.g., capacity, utilization and pricing) as well as medical knowledge (e.g., drug indications, research trials, etc.)  In the financial services sector there are numerous standards to facilitate financial transactions, settlements and risk management.  In addition, heavy government accounting standards and regulations have given financial institutions greater tools to measure their own internal performance in order to better adjust to ever changing market conditions.  We need greater information innovation in health care in order to reduce costs, improve efficiency and increase access.  When will America wake up and bring the health care industry into the 21st century?

2008-07-17 A Generational Challenge to Repower America

We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that’s got to change.

--Al Gore, D.A.R. Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C. July 17, 2008

See the complete video --> here.

Ladies and gentlemen:

There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment. The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more – if more should be required – the future of human civilization is at stake.

I don’t remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously. Our economy is in terrible shape and getting worse, gasoline prices are increasing dramatically, and so are electricity rates. Jobs are being outsourced. Home mortgages are in trouble. Banks, automobile companies and other institutions we depend upon are under growing pressure. Distinguished senior business leaders are telling us that this is just the beginning unless we find the courage to make some major changes quickly. 

2008-07-15 Download the Subprime Primer

his is a rather illuminating and humorous portrayal of the origins of the current subprime mess.  May God bless Wall Street.

-->  Download the Subprime Primer

(Click on the image above to enlarge.)