Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

As the election heats up, trust the nuns to come out of the woodwork for Barack.

On a side note, after 106 years of experience that ruler has gotta have some sting behind it.

Lately, Sarah Palin has been telling people that there’s a fundamental difference between how she sees America and how Barack Obama sees America.

I’ll grant her this. If Obama’s anything like me, then he probably doesn’t see America as a giant snake devouring Alaska whole.

That cartoon above comes directly from the website of the Alaskan Independence Party. This would be the party that Todd Palin was a registered member of from 1994 to 2002, when he shifted to “undeclared,” and whose leadership – according to several sources – collaborated with Sarah Palin while she was in office and supported her bids for both Mayor and Governor.

The year before Todd Palin joined the AIP, their founder – Joe Vogler – was killed. If you believe Manfried West’s confession, Vogler was killed in a plastic explosives buy gone bad. If you believe Lynnette Clark, the chair of the AIP, then Vogler was executed by the United States government.

But that’s all ancient history, right? The Palin’s haven’t been associated with the AIP since 2002, right?

Well, she did record this video for their 2008 convention in which she tells the AIP “Keep up the good work, and God bless you.”

Vogler’s most famous quote by far is the one that the AIP itself likes to cart out when they talk about him. That’s when he said: “I’m an Alaskan, not an American. I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions.”

Of course, if you happen to be passing by the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, you could always stop in at the Oral History Program in the Rasmusen Library. There, you can hear an interview with Vogler from 1991, where he said:

The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government. And I won’t be buried under their damn flag. I’ll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home.

For that matter, you can also visit his grave. But not in Fairbanks. In Dawson City, Yukon, Canada. He didn’t want to be buried in the United States, remember?

Of course, Vogler was actually willing to talk to Iran. In fact, he did. And got Iran to sponsor his statement to the UN regarding American “tyranny.”

Here’s the AIP claiming Sarah Palin as a member (they’ve since said no, only her husband was a member) and discussing their support for her.

Lynnette Clark told David Talbot, “She’s [Sarah Palin] Alaskan to the bone … she sounds just like Joe Vogler.”

Would that include when Joe Vogler said,

When the [federal] bureaucrats come after me, I suggest they wear red coats. They make better targets. In the federal government are the biggest liars in the United States, and I hate them with a passion. They think they own [Alaska]. There comes a time when people will choose to die with honor rather than live with dishonor. That time may be coming here. Our goal is ultimate independence by peaceful means under a minimal government fully responsive to the people. I hope we don’t have to take human life, but if they go on tramping on our property rights, look out, we’re ready to die.

BTW – If you stop by the AIP’s website, you can find that cartoon on their “Statehood Primer.” And you can also find that they favor forcing the federal government to give up all ownership of land in Alaska (including, presumably, national parks and military bases) as well as disenfranchising any member of the “federal military.”

Sure, it’s all over the news that Sarah Palin couldn’t remember the name of any Supreme Court case aside from Roe v. Wade.

But what about the fact that just four months prior to that interview, she had an awful lot of disagreeing to do with a Supreme Court decision that had just been made?

Sarah Palin: No short term memory, or compulsive liar?

After weeks of telling us that Sarah Palin’s more experienced than, well, anybody, that she’s tough, that she’s a barracuda, that she’s a pit bull in lipstick, that she’s ready on day one, that she’s seasoned—the McCain campaign has demanded that the Vice Presidential debates be softened up for her.

At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.

McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.

Gee, I hope that if she gets any calls at 3 AM, they’re short and structured enough for her.

It’s amazing to me just how much of the Republican platform has become “We’re really quite terrible. Really.” Who knew (well, aside from anybody who’d been paying attention to his voting record), for instance, that “maverick” John McCain who likes to begin every other sentence with “my friends” really wants his friends to pay for their justice, especially if they’re seeking justice for rape.

Biden’s legislation required that state, local, and Indian governments provide the rape exams to victims free of charge as a condition of receiving federal funds under the Violence Against Women Act. In 2000, Alaska finally passed state legislation in order to qualify for federal funding.

McCain not only opposed Biden’s legislation, but also has voted against funding it as recently as October 2007.

But that’s just maverick, cowboy up, “I’ll bring in the scum that did this to ya, Nadine, but only if ya can pay” McCain. He’s old-school. I’m certain that Governor Palin would never have condoned anything like that. Surely, the woman who believes that a woman should not be able to get a legal abortion even in the case of rape would see to it that a woman who had been the victim of a rape would get justice.

Oh. Right. Republican. Forgot.

The McCain campaign’s surrogates have sucked up a lot of air time this past week shouting “Palin is a victim of sexism!” every time her credentials for the second highest office in the land are questioned. Yet so far they’ve managed to avoid hard questioning about Palin’s role as mayor of Wasilla in overseeing policy that charged REAL victims, rape victims, for the expensive medical and forensic test necessary for prosecuting rapists.

A policy, mind you, that may have been illegal as well as heartless.

Heartless? Absolutely. Illegal? If it wasn’t at the time, then it should have been. A rape kit is not a medical procedure. Well, okay, it involves medical expertise – but its not like having an emergency appendectomy, and it’s certainly not like getting a nose job. A rape kit is a vital element in an investigation into sexual assault, and it’s almost impossible to get charges pressed without it. Telling someone they have to pay for a rape kit is not just like making someone pay for access to police protection and the justice system, it is making someone pay for access to police protection and the justice system.

And both McCain and Palin feel that it’s all right to make victims pay for their own justice to save the taxpayers money, even as Palin feels it’s all right to demand a per diem for staying in her own house.

I’ve asked people before when talking about the medical system – what if fire departments acted like health insurance companies? What about police? What if you suddenly got a phone call that due to droughts, the flammability of certain areas of the city was now a pre-existing condition and the fire department would not be expected to put out fires in those neighborhoods? Or that due to the rise in crime in your neighborhood, it was no longer cost-effective to offer you police protection and they would no longer be responding to 911 calls from your local area?

Little did I know that the McCain/Palin campaign would think that I was making a suggestion.

I have to hand it to the McCain campaign. Some people would have been satisfied with their thorough campaign of caging in purple states, sending out absentee ballot requests that are incorrectly filled out to keep people from getting their vote. But the Republicans have an even grander scheme. Now that they’ve taken people’s homes away, it’s time for them to make a return to old-fashioned American values. Specifically, the old-fashioned American values of only the landed gentry having a vote.

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township.”

The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.”

I find that more and more, when I discuss the McCain/Palin ticket, I’m using the phrase “I don’t know what’s worse,” followed typically by the form, ”[situation a] or [situation b].”

For instance: I don’t know what’s worse, the idea that McCain may have only used a Google search to vet Palin or the idea that the staffer who told this to the LA Times might have been bragging about it to dispel the talk that John McCain doesn’t know technology.

One Republican strategist with close ties to the campaign described the candidate’s closest supporters as “keeping their fingers crossed” in hopes that additional information does not force McCain to revisit the decision. According to this Republican, who would discuss internal campaign strategizing only on condition of anonymity, the McCain team used little more than a Google Internet search as part of a rushed effort to review Palin’s potential pitfalls. Just over a week ago, Palin was not on McCain’s short list of potential running mates, the Republican said.

Example Two: I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that Sarah Palin tried to use political muscle to get books banned from public libraries or the fact that she was so clueless as to the politics behind such a move that she actually asked a librarian how to do it. (link via librarian.net) Apparently, she’s missed the fact that National Banned Book Week is sponsored by the American Library Association, and that librarians tend to be the most fervent supporters of the First Amendment in the entire country.

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving “full support” to the mayor.

Between his wife and his veep, I’m pretty sure I know John Mccain’s criteria for selection.

Secretary of State Christie Brinkley?

John McCain seems almost obsessed with not only proving that he’s out of touch—mixing up Sunni and Shiia, not knowing how many homes he has, etc.—but that his entire team is just as bad off. Such as McCain’s advisor who recently went on the record as saying that there is no such thing as an uninsured American. (Link via HuffPo)

Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

“So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.”

If there is any great indicator that a vote for John McCain is a vote for More of the Same, it’s this page straight out of the Cheney/Bush playbook. The best way to solve a problem? Change the definitions of the terms, twist the truth behind the matter, and rewrite the laws to avoid counting the people you don’t want to have to face. With one pen stroke, millions of Americans who have valid concerns about their health and well-being will be simply erased from the dialogue without so much as a by-your-leave.

Meanwhile, Mr. Goodman fails to realize that emergency rooms are supposed to be just for that – emergencies. It’s not where you go for your annual check-up, or where you go to talk to a doctor about ways to correct your obesity, or where you go to your doctor to have your prostate/pelvic exam. And as for the government stepping in? Only after you’ve been bankrupted completely, and then it’s not really the government so much as the hospitals’ own insurance policies.

Emergency rooms are not health care – they’re for the treatment of catastrophic injuries and illnesses. Suggesting that they somehow automatically equal national health care is more than just misguided, it’s ignorant and villainous to the highest degree.

If I ever need a story that illustrated how one day the TSA will have us strip completely naked while security screeners giggle like rabid schoolgirls while snapping Polaroids, it has to be this one.

The Constitution bars unreasonable searches and seizures, Kates reminded the TSA supervisor, and scrutinizing a woman’s brassiere is surely unreasonable, she said.

The supervisor told her she had the choice of submitting to a pat-down in a private room or not flying. Kates offered a third alternative, to take off her bra and try again, which the TSA accepted.

“They tried to humiliate me and I was not going to be humiliated over this,” Kates said. “If I was carrying nail clippers and forgot about them, I wouldn’t have gotten so upset. But here I was just wearing my underwear.”

I think 500 adult websites just decided what their next video update is going to be.