Premier! What a cool idea!

I've been tossing around some confusing thoughts about who it is I'm reminded of whenever I see BC premier, Christy Clark come out and speak publicly.

Then Rod Mickleburgh wrote this:

Increasingly, it appears that Ms. Clark simply liked the idea of being Premier, without much thought of what to do after that. Almost willfully uninterested in policy, she’s been lurching from slogan to slogan, while claiming to be responsible for virtually everything good that moves.

It’s not working.

Veteran political analyst Norman Ruff, who has seen premiers rise, and mostly fall, in British Columbia over the past 40 years, says Ms. Clark is the victim of her own shortcomings.

“There’s a gap between her smile and her actual performance,” says Mr. Ruff of the perennially-upbeat Premier.

Rather than establishing substantive programs of her own, Ms. Clark has spent most of her time reacting to events, and that’s not cutting it with British Columbians, according to Mr. Ruff, professor emeritus at the University of Victoria.

Then I ran across something at Balloon Juice. 

Yup. Pretty much the same thing.

The Wacko from Wasilla . . .

WACKO, INDEED. SLATE has a fascinating article by David Weigel, "Rogue Author", which describes aspects of and the controversy over Joe McGinniss' new book on the life and times of Mama Grizzly, aka Sarah Palin. Conservatives are upset, but the author is unrepentant. Adding to the fun is the appearance of the book on Doonesbury.

Joe McGinniss is no longer surprised at the hate engendered by his new biography, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin. "Did you see this crazy blogger, Stacy McCain, saying he's starting a legal fund for Todd Palin?" he asks. The blog post appeals for $25 donations to SarahPAC to "help defray Todd's legal expenses when he shows up at McGinniss's first book signing and pounds that scurvy worm into a bloody pulp."

• • • •

Palin won office in Wasilla with the help of evangelical Christians. "On her first day in office, Sarah changed the screen saver on the mayor's official computer to read GOD LOVES YOU SARAH PALIN." Phil Munger, whose band played at a commencement for homeschoolers that Palin spoke at, reports on her creationist views, saying she spoke of seeing "pictures that showed human footprints inside dinosaur tracks."

• • • •

This story pales before the already infamous Glen Rice anecdote. In 1987, according to McGinniss, Palin slept with the University of Michigan basketball star while she was a reporter for Anchorage's KTUU-TV and told friends that it was a mistake. "The thing that people remember is her freak-out," says an anonymous friend, "[and] how completely crazy she got: I fucked a black man! She was just horrified." Rice confirms the story to McGinniss, but he's puzzled by the secondhand report of regret. "Even after I left Alaska, we talked a lot on the phone."

What a sociopathic douchebag. Anyway, it's a great excuse to insert this wonderful song by the late, great Johnny Horton, who died way too soon. Although better known as a country/honky-tonk blues singer, Johnny had 3 huge pop hits, and they all went into the Top 10 within a six month period beginning with "Battle of New Orleans" in late '59, "Sink The Bismarck" in early '60 and the title song to the John Wayne film "North To Alaska" which peaked at #4 in October of 1960. Johnny died in an auto accident in November of 1960, killed by a drunk driver, while "North To Alaska" was still high on the charts.

You're either with her or you're with the the turkeyists

The inimitable TBogg plays a holiday classic for US Thanksgiving. It's got everything: blood, gore, supporters of North Korea and a latte.

That brings up something else. Palin is being dismissed far too easily by far too many as a contender for the US presidency in 2012. That she's an ongoing train wreck is almost irrelevant. She may be a horror story but she's a horror story to both the Democrats and the Republicans.

I had been curious about what it was she was trying to set up with all the celebrity fame-whoring and I can only come back to "name recognition". That plays a bigger part in American politics than competence when one is playing to the navel-gazing masses. If she bangs on the GOP door looking for a nomination and the Republicans shut her out, she will take her witless, self-absorbed self into a realm that will leave the Republican power-brokers reeling in terror - she will run as an independent and shatter the GOP base.

I went back and forth with this scenario wondering if it was likely. She doesn't have the strategic sense to work that play on her own. But it's obvious from the spotlight she's managed to find herself in that there is an organizational mastermind behind it and it isn't Steve Schmidt.

Lo and behold, along comes Robert Reich with a clearer depiction of the Palin strategy.

The Republican establishment doesn’t get it. Celebrity is part of The Palin Strategy – as is avoiding the insider game. She doesn’t want to do what Huckabee, Pawlenty, Gingrich, or Romney have to do. She has an outside game.

Palin’s game plan is directly related to America’ white working class, and the economy it faces – and the economy it’s likely to continue to experience for years.

No prospective candidate so sharply embodies the anger of America’s white working class as does Palin. And none is channeling that anger nearly as effectively.

And while Schmidt pointed out back in January that Palin was both dishonest and a geographic moron, Reich makes the case that none of that matters to the white working class voter. And then he launches that bomb.

The Palin Strategy is to circumvent the Republican establishment, filled as it is with career Republicans, business executives, and Wall Streeters. That’s why her path to the Republican nomination isn’t the usual insider game. It’s a celebrity game – a snark-fest with the nation’s entire white working class. Vote for Bristol and we’ll show the media establishment how powerful we are! Buy my book and we’ll show the know-it-all coastal elites a real book directed at real people! Tune into my cable show and we’ll show the real America – far from the urban centers with immigrants and blacks and fancy city slickers!

As I believe will become clearer, the Palin Strategy will involve a political threat to the GOP establishment: Deny her the nomination she’ll run as independent. This will split off much of the white working class and guarantee defeat of the Republican establishment candidate. It will also result in her defeat in 2012, but that’s a small price to pay for gaining the credibility and power to demand the nomination in 2016, or threaten another third-party run in 2020.

It's worth reading all of Reich's article.

H/T Jill

Speaking of wingnut book campaigns ...

The airhead Alaskan who was too incompetent to govern the 4th least populous state in the U.S. and thus had to quit, has had someone produce some new wingnut literature for her. (Small words, short sentences, lots of pictures and a free box of Crayola 48)

TBogg explains.

Beware the... ignorance

And you have the citizens of the United States of America, wallowing around trying to make sense of a situation they brought upon themselves by being lazy. Shorter: Going to vote is such a pain in the ass.

And then they get this.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in a speech that sounded a lot like a 2012 trial balloon, or at least an effort to drum up speculation on the subject and boost her brand within the Republican party, told a Bakersfield, Calif., conference Saturday to consider the next two elections together.

Hands up! Who thinks Palin isn't running a decade long campaign to be a female version of George W. Bush?

And we didn't think there was anybody dumber than W.

Well, actually, there wasn't. Offer ice-floe Barbie something more lucrative, like president of something larger than a failing nation, and she'll quit. She's already done it once.

The "dumber" are the people that believe this fucking bimbo has something to offer beyond the Alabama jack-off factor.

Palin, 46, appeared at the Bakersfield Business Conference before a sold-out crowd of about 10,000. Full-day tickets for the conference were $495 each.

You can point out ignorance, but you can't stop it from taking a cab to the polling place.

Psycho grizzly . . .

VANITY FAIR has a fine article by Michael Joseph Gross, "Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury", and it's worth the read.

Even as Sarah Palin’s public voice grows louder, she has become increasingly secretive, walling herself off from old friends and associates, and attempting to enforce silence from those around her. Following the former Alaska governor’s road show, the author delves into the surreal new world Palin now inhabits—a place of fear, anger, and illusion, which has swallowed up the engaging, small-town hockey mom and her family—and the sadness she has left in her wake.

This spring and summer I traveled to Alaska and followed Palin’s road show through four midwestern states, speaking with whomever I could induce to talk under whatever conditions of anonymity they imposed—political strategists, longtime Palin friends and political associates, hotel staff, shopkeepers and hairstylists, and high-school friends of the Palin children. There’s a long and detailed version of what they had to say, but there’s also a short and simple one: anywhere you peel back the skin of Sarah Palin’s life, a sad and moldering strangeness lies beneath.

Of her supporters, known as Palin's Paladins,

Erratic behavior and a pattern of lying matter little: “Such falsehoods never damage Palin’s credibility with her admirers, because information and ideology are incidental to this relationship.”

Richard Boone would not be impressed.

Maxime Bernier for PM? You betcha!

C'mon, he's decorative, he's dumb, and besides, since he came out today as a climate change 'skeptic', the Blogging Tories have been falling all over themselves to get their teabagging credentials in order :

"Maxime really is great!!! Keep up the good work Maxime. One day you will be HM PM.

"You had me at Bonjour"

"Finally a Canadian Conservative Speaks Truth"

"Enter Maxime Bernier with a daring volley launched in the heart of climate lunacy."

"Maxime Bernier for Prime Minister! Finally, someone on the government side with the cajones to speak out."

Finally - I think they meant to say - a Sarah Palin with cajones.

Max speaks :

"What is certain is that it would be irresponsible to spend billions of dollars and to impose unnecessarily stringent regulations to solve a problem whose gravity we still are not certain about."

Gravity? Gravity is also a hoax! The earth sucks! Max for PM! You betcha! Also! Too!

Shatner does Sarah Palin

Sort of.

William Shatner is so much better.



Yes, there is something vaguely familiar about the Shatner touch with poetry. The, now famous, Rocketman by Bill Shatner.



H/T Gawker

Hmmm... If the embedded video of Shatner interpreting Palin doesn't work, go here.

Palin running for cover...

As Cathie says, the excuses provided for Sarah Palin's sudden and unexpected departure from the governor's chair in Alaska stinks like a three-day-old Alaska King Crab.

Apparently Palin was simply bugged by "bloggers and activists".

Hmmm. What were they blogging about?

Ohhh! They went a little farther than calling her Cariboo Barbie. They might actually have some heavy duty dirt.

In 2012...

This little nugget, which will have passed into the conservative memory hole, and which will be forever maintained by our madame industrieaux at DAMMIT JANET! should be regurgitated just in time to put the boots to Alaska's Iditarod Barbie when she announces her run for the US presidency.

You know she's going to do it. She's too stupid not to.

By the way, Ms Palin, journalism is an arts degree. Oceanography is a science degree. And yes, there is a difference.

Project Palin for a New American Century

Pacific Free Press :

"In June 2007, a cruise liner sponsored by the political journal The Weekly Standard set anchor in Juneau, Alaska. Editors and guests of the publication were then treated to a reception with Governor Sarah Palin.

A key organizer and participant in the Palin meeting was Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, who can fairly lay claim to having "discovered" Palin for Washington political circles. Palin's name appeared in fifty-seven Weekly Standard articles since the Juneau meeting-starting with a paean entitled "The Most Popular Governor" that ran right after the reception.

Kristol, in any event, was quick to press the campaign for the Palin candidacy with the party's faithful. Taking a cue from the Straussian handbook, Kristol appeared on Fox News on June 30, 2008, confidently predicting that McCain would select Sarah Palin and as a public display of support, oil prices would miraculously fall."

That's William Kristol - NYT writer, Iraq occupation booster, co-founder of PNAC, and son of Irving, founder of neoconservatism.

palling around with terrorist

Palling around with terrorists

Sarah Palin says Barack Obama palls around with terrorists because an acquaintance of his, William Ayers,was once a member of the Weather Underground, back when Obama was eight years old. As future Alaska Gov. Dave Noon (aw cmon Dave, run! please! Wouldn't you just love to debate her yourself?) points out, the Republicans really don't want to go there.

There is also talk that the Republican smear machine is gearing up to talk about Rev. Jeremiah Wright some more. Oh yeah, lets talk about whose preacher is crazier, the ex-Marine civil rights firebrand that Obama has split with, or the gay-hating, witch-hunting brace of looney toons who speak in tongues and think the Iraq war is part of the God's plan that Palin embraces.

If Team Maverick want to talk about who has connection to shady characters, radicals or ideologues that might affect the way they govern, well, bring it on. McCain has some very, very troubling friends - the aforementioned Watergate spook G. Gordon Liddy, financial deregulator Phil Gram, American Taliban Pastor John Hagee, to say nothing of the various mobbed-up gambling industry types and assorted lobbyists.

And of course, there's this guy:

The Post Turtle

WHILE SUTURING A CUT
on the hand of a 75-year old Texas rancher whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Sarah Palin and her bid to be a heartbeat away from being President. The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Palin is a post turtle."

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was. The rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."

The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain. "You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, she doesn't know what to do while she is up there, and you just wonder what kind of dummy put her up there to begin with."

It is what it is and what it is, is unqualified

I know, I know, I said we should stop talking about her, but the more I see of her, the more I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I'm delighted that the Republicans have picked such an obviously, comically unqualified candidate to shore up the glaring gaps in McCain's areas of expertise. On the other hand, I'm horrified that there is any chance at all that this woman could get anywhere near the Oval office.

Caribou Barbie, Sarah America, Bible Spice -- call her what you want, but by any name. Sarah Palin should not be allowed to work in the White House, not even as a tour guide.

The title of this post, at least the first part of it, is one of my father's favorite little verbal tics of late. I was warned that he has taken to watching FOX news -- this is a guy who has always been a centerist politically, more or less, but like many of us seems to have gotten more conservative as he's gotten older. He was Trudeau fan, but I suspect he voted for both Harris and Harper. We are both political junkies, but tend to treat it more as a spectator sport than something we would want to actually get our hands dirty with as candidates--It isn't that we don't care who wins, we do, its just that I suspect we'd both rather be handicappers or bookies than racehorses. I don't really want to drag him into this, but the fact that he didn't express outright support for either candidate had me wondering. He made some predictions, but he never really said which side he hoped would win and since he's the closest thing to a conservative I'm on face-to-face speaking terms with these days, I was curious to see his reactions to the presidential race.

Both the Democratic and Republican conventions were on while I was back in Canada. We watched Obama's speech together and he said he thought Obama would win, but that as usual his speech was short on specifics. I couldn't watch the Republican convention with him, mostly because I couldn't suppress my gag reflex long enough or keep from making snide comments whenever Mitt Romney or Rudy 9u11ani said something stupid, (ie: every time they opened their mouths).

"You have to listen to both sides" he'd keep telling me as he flipped from CNN to FOX and I started to sneer at Bill Kristol. Hey, I'm a journalist, I know all about listening to both sides, but if I'm doing a story on the Holocaust and one side is concentration camp survivors, soldiers who liberated camps and every serious historian on the planet and the other side is David Irving and a couple of knuckledraggers from the American Nazi Party, it isn't a "he said/she said/who knows what the truth is" kind of a situation and I can tell one side to shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of my office with a clean conscience. Eventually, I went and watched in another room.

When it came to Sarah Palin, I was suspicious from day one. I looked around for bio info on the internet when McCain first announced he had picked a running mate, realized she had zero policy experience, was a fundamentalist Christian, was a family values conservative, anti-choice, pro-war, pro-drilling here, there and everywhere, had ties to corrupt bum Sen. Ted Stevens and pretty much wrote her off as a losing prospect. I knew she'd never get the disappointed Hillary voters. When it came out that her teenage daughter was knocked up, I admit I cackled with schadenfreude, wondering how the hell McCain's people missed it and how they would try to spin it. I watched her speech and figured "okay, she can tell a really old joke and make mean misinformed cracks about he opponent. The republican base is gonna love her, but that's it. No problem."

But then the press loved her. And my dad seemed to think she was okay -- he seemed to like the pit bull gag--god knows he sat next to enough hockey moms during my and my brother's minor hockey days. He seemed to think she was as qualified as anyone for the job. "It is what it is" he said. This worried me. My dad is a pretty smart guy and he wasn't dismissing this travesty. Could the American people fall for this bullshit? God knows, they've fallen for some stupid shit before, but would they buy into the neocon Cinderella narrative about her being a tough and sassy hockey mom who could hunt moose in the morning and run the state in the afternoon? I hoped not, but they bought the absurd idea that John Kerry was a coward whose war record was a lie and George W. Bush was a fighter pilot/war leader, so anything was possible.

Then some cracks started showing. The GOP machine was keeping her away from the press and unfriendly crowds. Then they let her be interviewed.

"In what respect Charlie?"

"I'll try to find some and I'll bring'em to ya"

Watch CBS Videos Online

These all reminded me of something.

The best description comes from the comments at Balloon Juice:

"I'm still in shock over how terrible the Palin/Couric interview was. "Train wreck" is being charitable -- it was more like a train derailing on a bridge, tumbling a thousand feet into a canyon and landing on a pile of old dynamite and gas drums. And then a jumbo jet crashed into the flaming wreckage. Followed by an earthquake that caused the whole mess to slide off a cliff into the sea, where the few miraculous survivors were eaten by sharks."

In a way, I'm not worried anymore.

Sorry Dad, but this is a case where one side is grounded in reality and the other is not even sure where reality is anymore--in fact, I don't think they could find reality at this point with both hands and a search party if it was safety-pinned through both ass cheeks. Seriously, if you want to be vice president and you can't even manage to bullshit your way through an interview Katie Freaking Couric, how does she think she's going to do if she has to sit down across the table from Vladimir Putin or even Joe Biden?

I don't think anyone could watch these and get the idea that this person is well suited to be Vice President. I don't think most people watching these clips would even think she should be running the least populous, most remote state in the USA. I don't think anyone but a dyed-in-the-wool, born-again, Republican partisan would think she was even qualified to be the mayor of a town of 5,000. Frankly I'm amazed Wallisa doesn't have a monorail, but maybe that's more of a Shelbyville idea.

She can't seem to form and express a coherent opinion or even put together a full sentence.

That McCain picked her should disqualify him from ever holding public office again. This choice is not a demonstration of poor judgement, its is evidence that he has lost his freakin' mind.

crossposted from the Woodshed

Special rules?

Of course there have to be special rules. Let's not forget that as far as the Republicans are concerned, Sarah Palin is a dainty, not-to-be-treated-equally female first, and contending understudy for president second.

I would have given her more credit than her own party seems to have done... until I found out about fungible molecules.

Palin understands NATO....

At about the same level as I understand entomology. And bugs get an undeservedly raw deal from me.

There have been thousands of posts all over the blogosphere and in the daily journals about Sarah Palin's jaw dropping interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night. Terrifying, expected, pity-inducing and so mind-burning that it sends one reaching for the nearest bottle of anything to kill the pain are common themes. The greatest focus of many reports centered on the fact that Palin clearly had no idea what the Bush doctrine is. Her eyes told a greater story than her "blizzard of words". Sarah Palin is a joke.

A dangerous joke.

During the interview the following exchange took place:

GIBSON: Let's start, because we are near Russia, let's start with Russia and Georgia.

The administration has said we've got to maintain the territorial integrity of Georgia. Do you believe the United States should try to restore Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia?

PALIN: First off, we're going to continue good relations with Saakashvili there. I was able to speak with him the other day and giving him my commitment, as John McCain's running mate, that we will be committed to Georgia. And we've got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable and we have to keep...

GIBSON: You believe unprovoked.

PALIN: I do believe unprovoked and we have got to keep our eyes on Russia, under the leadership there. I think it was unfortunate. That manifestation that we saw with that invasion of Georgia shows us some steps backwards that Russia has recently taken away from the race toward a more democratic nation with democratic ideals.That's why we have to keep an eye on Russia.

Except that Russia has a different view and no amount of repeated Bush/Cheney rhetoric is going to change the fact that Georgia used force to try to prevent the secession of South Ossetia, despite prior warning from the Russians not to do so.

No matter how hard people try to deny it, Russia still views the former Soviet states, now-independent countries of the Caucasus, as totally within its sphere of influence. All others can just bugger off. Right or wrong, no one is ever going to change the minds of the Russians as to who has and shall retain authority as the power in the region. When Gibson interjected with, "You believe unprovoked," it was because after the whole thing had washed out, it was clear that Georgia initiated the fight with Russia in the expectation that recent coziness with NATO would permit their hand-me-down army to operate in South Ossetia with impunity. And don't for a minute think that a certain amount of "ethnic cleansing" wasn't on the Georgian agenda.

However, Gibson then went deeper. Given that Palin is supposed to sit second chair on a presidential ticket, I doubt that Gibson was attempting to spring any form of trap. Whether that was his intention or not, that's precisely what happened.

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?

PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.

GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO.

Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to -- especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members. We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

What Palin provided as answers were little more than partially memorized talking points. She clearly has no grasp at all as to the complications and conditions under which Georgia would enter NATO.

NATO, particularly for new members, is akin to a property insurance policy. In that regard, the underwriters of collective security weigh the risk of any prospective member. Not the prospective member's risk - the underwriter's risk, which in the case of NATO is the level of likelihood that they might have to respond as one under Article 5 of the NATO charter in an armed and deadly conflict.

Georgia presents an extremely high risk to the underwriters. So much so that Germany and France refused to include Georgia in any plan for inclusion in NATO until regional conflicts were fully resolved. Georgia has more than a border disagreement with Russia - it is dragging sabres over the cobblestones. Any way you read Georgia's desire to be included as a member of a western military alliance, until they have completely removed themselves from the issues over the secessionist regions such as South Ossetia the threat of war with Russia remains. That, to a property insurance company is like underwriting a fuel-oil refinery that employs arsonists. No underwriter would think of insuring someone who was clearly going to require a payout - NATO is never going to include a country that is assured of dragging the alliance into a war with Russia. That's not only stupid, it's just bad business. Unless Georgia could pay a huge premium, (a first-rank, modern army requiring little in the way of outside support, which Georgia does not have), the underwriters, particularly the European members, are not going to be willing to commit their forces as a guarantee against future conflicts.

There is another detail of which Palin is clearly not aware. That would be Article 10 of the NATO charter. Aside from the original members the only countries which may be invited into the alliance are European nations. To include Georgia would require a rewriting of the map and a redefining of what constitutes Europe. Georgia is on the wrong side of the Caucasus. It is in Asia - not Europe.

Palin's answer to Gibson was an outright repetition of the Bush administration's effort to include Georgia in NATO. It is arrogant at worst and erronious at best. Palin, knowing nothing of the treaty conditions of the alliance, assumes that the inclusion of Georgia in NATO is a US presidential decision requiring nothing more than Senate ratification. Nothing could be further from the truth. The US military contribution to NATO gives them no special status when it comes to the introduction of new members. The inclusion of Georgia as a member requires the unanimous approval of all members, and that has not and is not going to happen until Georgia divests itself of a conflict with Russia. And that will never happen - at least not in Palin's lifetime. The last thing the world needs is a US administration which repeats the last seven years. The last thing the US needs is a vice-president who understands less about the world than the collective Bush administration in its seventh year of office.

Palin, supposedly someone who could communicate "change", proved to understand the position of NATO at the same level of an elementary school student. If anything stood out, however, it was her belief that simply adding new nations, on Russia's doorstep, and then giving them military support was as simple as joining the yacht club. Every expansion of NATO brings military risk, but more importantly, it dilutes the political resolve of the alliance itself. NATO is not the United Nations. The treaty itself is a finely crafted document which allows a single country under threat to invoke UN article 51, the right of self-defence, with the assistance of a collective military force without violating the UN Charter.

Every time a new country is added the risk of a political rift exists. And the risk that a country will abuse the priviledges of membership increases.

Palin proved she understands none of this, but worse, that she does not care to. It is completely beyond what she can see across the Bering Strait.

--------

Additional reading: Putin warns the West against starting an arms race. (Thanks to Cat)

N.B.:

"Sarah Barracuda" Palin

Hell, even I can't resist this. With all the personal crap flying around the pedestal of Sarah Palin we finally get something with some political history... and it ain't pretty.

The following quotes comes from Crosscut Seattle which received an email from a housewife in Anchorage who knows Sarah Palin apparently much much better than John McCain or any of his campaign staff.

What I found interesting when reading all of this was that if I had substituted the name George Bush, (The Younger), where Palin's name appears, it fits almost perfectly. Given that, and the fact that John McCain's remaining heartbeats are less than the annual output of a Ford truck plant, Palin as president gets even more unnerving.

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Gov. Sarah Palin since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child's favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first-name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99 percent of the residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she's like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice for vice president and won't vote for her can't quit smiling when talking about her because she is a "babe."

That's the good part.

During her mayoral administration, most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings, which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a "fiscal conservative." During her six years as mayor, she increased general government expenditures by more than 33 percent. During those same six years, the amount of taxes collected by the city increased by 38 percent. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax, which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefitted large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenue during her mayoral administration weren't enough to fund everything on her wish list, though — borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt but left it with indebtedness of more than $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? Or a new library? No. $1 million for a park. $15 million-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex, which she rushed through, on a piece of property that the city didn't even have clear title to. That was still in litigation seven years later — to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5 million for road projects that could have been done in five to seven years without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once.

These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

This has a ring to it which is all too familiar.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as governor Sarah proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenue: Spend today's surplus, borrow for needs.

That seems to be a conservative trait. Give all the money away to buy votes and then quietly borrow to run government.

She's not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As mayor, she fought ideas that weren't generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren't evaluated on their merits but on the basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was mayor of Wasilla, she tried to fire our highly respected city librarian because the librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the city librarian and against Palin's attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

And I suspect the writer of this email may well also be on Palin's list of enemies. But, damn, this is all sounding so familiar.

Sarah complained about the "old boy's club" when she first ran for mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of "old boys." Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the city and as governor, she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal — loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the state's top cop.

Uh huh. Hang on, this gets better.

As mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla's police chief because he "intimidated" her, she told the press.

I'm only guessing, but perhaps he demonstrated a distinct lack of fealty.

As governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects — which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance — but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as "anti-pork."

Line item vetos? Where have we heard that before? And then only to be overruled by the state legislature. Interesting. Apparently though, her lust for power goes back to her high-school basketball days.

Around Wasilla, there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah's mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

Point guard? Yeah, I suppose, but the situation with her mother-in-law is even more interesting. It would explain why her mother-in-law is saying that she's still not sure who she will vote for.

The above are excerpts from a much longer work. You really need to read the whole thing. It's worth it and instead of the personal shit swirling around the drain you get a picture of an ambitious, ruthless, no-account, small town politician who cares more about her personal advancement then the people she is sent to serve.

She's also out of her depth.

If Anne Kilkenny's email is accurate, Sarah Palin is just a female version of George W. Bush. No wonder the conservative base is so enamoured with her.

It's not about Palin; It's about McCain.

I agree with Digby, it doesn't matter what comes out about Sarah Palin.

Did she fire her Public Safety commissioner over a personal issue? So what? That's pretty much the Republican norm these days. It fits the authoritarian view of their position.

Did her 17-year old daughter get knocked-up? So what? That simply means the abstinence-only education didn't take.

The truth is, the morals espoused by the politically active Christian Right don't apply to them. Look at the stream of hypocrisy flowing out of the Christian Right and behaviour which they would wag fingers over if it was anybody else and you can see where they stand. The Christian Right isn't going to drop an axe through Sarah Palin's nomination over any particular failure because she's one of them. The Christian Right forgives their own, no matter what they do.

Anyway, the only people who make a fetish of other people's reproductive choices are social conservatives and they will forgive her anything because she's a right wing Christian. There are, of course, many many other things about Palin and her selection that are very damaging, but in my view this Jerry Springer, Jamie Spears stuff may even help her more than hurt her.

Later on Digby makes the real point. This is not about Palin; it's about McCain. And while we can all question his judgement, something else, far more terrifying is on display.

Many have observed that all this is a reflection of McCain's bad judgment, but I think it's more than that. It's a reflection of his reckless temperament, which is not something you want in a president, particularly one who has spent most of his life as a warrior and has a violent temper. (Just think about the Cuban missile crisis for a minute and consider what would have happened if an erratic, impulsive president had been in charge.) This, to me, is the central problem with McCain, and his VP choice reflects that. It's as if he woke up and said "fuck it --- let's do it!" and didn't think through the consequences. After all, he is far more likely to die in office than most because of his advanced age --- to choose someone with a gargantuan learning curve, along with all the baggage of being an unknown "first," is an act of extreme recklessness. It's almost as if he did it to defy his own mortality. (He can't die and leave the country in the hands of this neophyte.) You can't get more arrogant than that. Or less patriotic.

And the Cuban missile crisis is a perfect example of what would have happened if someone who didn't weigh the consequences of every possible action. The whole thing lasted thirteen days. If Kennedy had listened to the likes of Curtis LeMay it would have been a whole lot shorter and there is a good likelihood that nobody would be around to hold elections in 2008. It was only because the president's ExComm team developed a list of options and ground through the consequences of each that the Cuban missile crisis didn't end in an intercontinental nuclear exchange.

Do you really think someone like McCain could have or would have pulled it off?