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October 10, 2008

Palin Report: The Mavericky Governor "Abused Her Power"

Were Sarah "I can see Russia" Palin not already having a tough time on the campaign trail, the report released on Friday by a special prosecutor in Alaska finding that she "abused her power" might be more of a blow to the McCain-Palin campaign. But even though she has already fallen in the polls, there is room for more of a drop. And now the mavericky reformer who is part of a campaign attacking Barack Obama as old-style Chicago pol looks like a lying, vengeful pol herself.

The report was commissioned by a bipartisan group of Alaskan legislators after Palin was accused of firing her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, after Monegan did not dismiss Mike Wooten, a state trooper who had gone through an ugly divorce with Palin's sister. Though Palin--pre-veep campaign--had pledged to cooperate fully, once she became part of the Republican ticket, she reneged on that promise, as the McCain camp tried to shut down the investigation. But the Alaskan courts refused to short-circuit the investigation, and Stephen Branchflower, a former prosecutor retained by the Alaskan legislators, managed to finish his inquiry, after getting reluctant witnesses--including Todd Palin, the governor's husband--to answer written questions.

The report is blunt:

I find that, although Walt Monegan's refusal to fire Trooper Michael Wooten was not the sole reason he was fired by Governor Sarah Palin, it was likely a contributing factor to his termination as Commissioner of Public Safety.

Branchflower explained that Palin's firing of Monegan was "lawful"--because she has the authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads--but that Palin "knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired." She thus violated the state Ethics Act which says that "any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust." The violation was not the dismissal but the exertion of pressure Palin either orchestrated or permitted.

Before the report was released, the Palin camp was busy spinning, claiming it would not mean much because Branchflower had not interviewed Palin. But as Branchflower notes in the report:

Out of deference to her position, no subpoena was issued for Governor Sarah Palin. However, she was requested to cooperate with the investigation by providing a sworn statement. She has not done so. Governor Palin's sister Molly McCann was requested by me to give a deposition; she declined through her attorney.

So now this supposedly new-and-clean politician whom McCain has been selling as an antidote to business-as-usual politics in Washington has been found to have violated a law of her own state. Hard-core Palin supporters will, no doubt, accept the party-line: this was a partisan witchhunt. They will ignore the fact that the investigation was a thoroughly bipartisan endeavor. (At the legislative meeting today that led to the report's release, McCain-Palin volunteers dressed up as clowns and handed out kangaroos--as in kangaroo court--in a stunt that was reminiscent of the GOP protests during the Florida recount and an action that demonstrated the McCain-Palin camp has no regard for the day-to-day workings of government.) But if the McCain crew still harbors hope that Palin can appeal to indie voters as a reformer, this report will make that now difficult task even more difficult.

Alaska Judge Cracks Down on Palin's Emails

A judge in Alaska has ordered the state to preserve any business-related emails sent by Sarah Palin from her private email accounts. Palin's emails have generated a lot of attention, possibly because the situation mirrors the Bush Administration's own missing emails scandal.

We know that Palin is withholding 1,100 emails from open records requests on the grounds that they are protected by executive privilege, despite the fact that her husband was frequently a recipient of the emails.

We know that Palin used private email accounts for public business, a tactic used by the Bush Administration to deter oversight. We also know that the Palin Administration has declared that making the emails in these accounts public will require so much work and time that it is impossible for them to be released before the election.

Finally, we know that as mayor of Wasilla, Palin used her official city account to campaign for higher office, a seeming violation of Alaskan state law that has gone unaddressed.

The action of the court may lead to greater oversight down the road, but it is unlikely anything Governor Palin is hiding will come to light before the all-important date of November 4th.

George W. Bush: Helping Candidates Lose Election in Other Countries, Too

Canada's parliamentary elections are coming up shortly, and the majority Conservative party is having a tough time maintaining its lead over the opposition Liberals.

How is the Liberal party making its gains? In part, by tying the prime minister to George W. Bush. Look familiar?

(Via Yglesias)

Connecticut Supreme Court Legalizes Gay Marriage

Marriage equality is on the march. Just not in the voting booth.

Old McCain Aides Regret New McCain

John McCain has had a coterie of advisers that has worked with him, off and on, for his entire political career. John Weaver and Mike Murphy are two such men. Despite the fact that they are not working for McCain's current presidential campaign, they are devoted McCainiacs. And both have become disheartened with the direction the McCain campaign has taken these past few weeks.

Weaver, a man the Washington Post once called McCain's Karl Rove, is quoted in the Politico:

"People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our civil society, the differences with Sen. Obama are ideological, based on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared to Sen. McCain," Weaver said. "And from a purely practical political vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive."

"Sen. Obama is a classic liberal with an outdated economic agenda. We should take that agenda on in a robust manner. As a party we should not and must not stand by as the small amount of haters in our society question whether he is as American as the rest of us. Shame on them and shame on us if we allow this to take hold."

Murphy, who was a key player in McCain's 2000 campaign, has similar sentiments. Here he is writing in Time:

For the last nine weeks the McCain campaign has tried win [sic] by raising Obama’s negatives. Ads have attacked, McCain and Palin has have attacked. This has failed. Over the top negative attacks and a campaign message that too often seems to be little more than sarcasm and suppressed anger has damaged McCain’s priceless and hard earned "brand" as a different kind of Republican. McCain's best option now is to ditch the chainsaw and offer a scared and angry country what it badly wants; hope and leadership.

Both of these men fell in love with the McCain of 2000, who believed in the power of clean politics, government reform, and respect for the process and one's opponents. They don't see that McCain anymore. Keep in mind, though, that their only experience with McCain in a cauldron was the 2000 primary campaign. McCain didn't win. If he had, who knows how he would have behaved in October, especially if he found his dream of obtaining the White House slipping away.

Fear-Mongering and Fox

Various outlets are growing concerned with the anti-Obama anger that seems to have taken over McCain/Palin rallies of late. I'd like to point out that Fox News is doing far, far more to entice hatred and possibly violence than the McCain campaign is. If you take your cues from Fox News, you're likely to think America is under attack by a foreign terrorist agent who holds both a Islamic faith and a communist agenda. Further, you likely believe that this secret Stalinist Muslim will steal the election from god-fearing Americans through his connections to ACORN, the single sleaziest organization on the planet.

Yes, McCain and Palin have drifted into seriously shady territory by implying that Obama is an unamerican terrorist sympathizer. But Fox is way more explicit in its race-baiting and fear-mongering than the McCain campaign is.

As just a bit of evidence, see this Daily Show clip:

McCain's Foreign Policy Advisor and Ahmad Chalabi: How Close?

Back in the fall of 2002, long before president Bush had told the public of his plans, the man who would become the John McCain campaign's top foreign policy advisor was tasked with a sensitive mission that had come from the White House: to set up a group to lobby for war with Iraq. The group that Randy Scheunemann subsequently set up and became president of, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, argued, as did Iraqi exile politician Ahmad Chalabi, that the problem with Saddam Hussein was not just his (alleged) weapons, but the nature of the regime: "We believe it is time to confront the clear and present danger posed by Saddam Hussein's regime by liberating the Iraqi people," Scheunemann said in a press release announcing the creation of the Committee on the Liberation of Iraq, which was celebrated by a party at Chalabi's Georgetown home, according to Chalabi's biographer Aram Roston.

So how close really were Scheunemann and Ahmad Chalabi? In this piece, I asked long-time Chalabi advisor Francis Brooke, among others:

Brooke says he met Scheunemann in 1996 when he and Chalabi were hitting Capitol Hill to try to drum up increased US government support for the Iraqi opposition. Brooke's pitch then was that putting pressure on Saddam Hussein was not just the right policy; it was also a vehicle for attacking Bill Clinton, then running for reelection. "I thought it was a good time to educate the Republican Congress…and give them the ammunition they needed to beat the president up." In Scheunemann and other hardliners on the Hill, Brooke says he found kindred spirits—a clique of Republicans deeply disillusioned with how George H.W. Bush had let both the Cold War and the first Iraq War end without meting out sufficient punishment to America's adversaries. "These people had a great sense of psychic loss that we had not finished the first Iraq War in the most comprehensive way. They hated George Bush the first."

Still, Scheunemann, who then worked for Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, was initially skeptical. After he and Chalabi made their pitch, Brooke said, "Randy said, 'This is all fine but on the other hand, the CIA and other parts of the US government tell me that the Iraqi opposition is a feckless bunch of people, that can't do anything, have no support inside the country, and have probably been up to no good all over the place.'" Brooke says he encouraged Scheunemann to do his own research, and eventually convinced him.

Go read the whole piece.

Tough Times for Conservative Philanthropist

After taking a hit of $4 billion in the recent financial turmoil, conservative philanthropist and Freedom's Watch-backer Sheldon Adelson is no longer the third wealthiest person in the United States, according to a revised Forbes' list. Bloomberg:

Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chief Executive Officer Sheldon Adelson's net worth declined by $4 billion between Aug. 29 and Oct. 1, the steepest drop among Americans who lost $1 billion or more during the credit crisis, according to Forbes magazine.

The magazine, in its Oct. 27 issue, recalculates the effect of September's financial news on the wealthiest Americans, those who make up its Forbes 400 list. That list was published on Sept. 17.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett overtook Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates as the richest American by posting an $8 billion gain to $58 billion during the period, the magazine said. Gates's net worth declined $1.5 billion to $55.5 billion during the 33-day period. He had been first for 15 straight years.

I wrote about the right's frustration with Adelson's tendency to take a hands-on role in projects he funded back in the spring. And Peter Stone profiled the casino mogul in the magazine.

October 9, 2008

Jim Crow's Muslim America

Watch this video and join me in saying: Wow.

When Andrew Sullivan posted the video above, his Atlantic colleague, Ta-Nehisi Coates (who is black) piped up to say he thinks it's unfair. Coates likens it to the dreaded media's televising of the most ignorant Negroes they can find whenever something "black" happens, so America can assume we're all that stupid. I dunno.

I think it's valid to discuss, inasmuch as folks like these are just the unvarnished versions of those who think Obama's middle name—hiss! boo! Hussein—actually tells you something about him. It might be that hideous things like this, from true cretins, are most useful in getting white folks to take a good, hard look in the mirror at themselves: Do I, deep down and with better than a fourth grade education, really agree with these morons? If so, what does that make me? There are plenty of well-educated folks happy to tell a TV camera that having a president with "Hussein" in his name is a nightmare. What's the difference, really? Classy bigotry versus ignorant bigotry isn't much of a choice.

Speaking of videos, you cannot miss Donna Brazile's impassioned appeal to America not to be distracted by race. She reminds us that we need to be proud of how far we've come on race, and proud enough to remember that we're better than Jim Crow. Because Jim Crow is all it is when we politely, or impolitely, demand that our fear of "Muslims" be accorded respect and deference. Let's call inveighing against "Muslims" (we're at war with them, you know) and "A-rab" middle names what it is: just another way to keep blacks and non-Christians at the back of the bus.

Like Brazile, I'm afraid that I'll wake up in 31 days knowing that I'll have to tell my bi-racial children their mother grew up under Jim Crow and they will, too. Vote for whoever you want, but here's the bottom line: If you care whether or not Obama "really" is a Muslim, however expansive your vocabulary, that hideous video speaks for you.

Top McCain Aide Lobbied for Pro-Russian Foreign Politicians

I know, I know, its hard to keep John McCain's lobbyists-turned-top-advisers straight. There's chief campaign strategist Charlie Black, who lobbied for dictators in the '80s and just about everyone else since. There's campaign manager Rick Davis, who headed a lobbying organization for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for years and was still on Freddie's payroll as late as August 2008. There's top foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, who has lobbied for Latvia, Macedonia, Georgia, and Taiwan. (And there's 83 others who lobbied for Wall Street before and during the financial crisis.)

But National Journal has a new one for you. Christian Ferry, McCain's deputy campaign manager and Rick Davis's #2 man, has worked for some nasty characters:

Starting as a driver for Davis, Ferry worked his way up and was assigned key responsibilities for some of the firm's foreign clients. They included a political party in Montenegro and a political leader in Ukraine, both backed by wealthy businessmen and oligarchs who sought to sway the outcome of elections in 2006 in those two nations...

In Ukraine, Ferry was part of a Davis Manafort team that advised Victor Yanukovich, the country's then-prime minister, whose pro-Russian party made gains in the 2006 parliamentary elections. (In 2004, Yanukovich lost to the U.S.-backed candidate, Victor Yushchenko, in a hotly contested presidential race.)

So Ferry was lobbying for the guy the American government opposed. And now he's one step away from a man running for president. National Journal gets the key quote from Larry Wilkerson, former top aide to one-time Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"When you take central advice from people who have advocated for foreign interests not necessarily congruent with American interests, it's really naive to assume that the advice you're receiving is not influenced by their previous work."

Palin's Secessionists Problem

Secessionists? Alaska wants to secede from the US (which its leadership "hates") and the Palins are hip deep in it?

She demands to see her Republican opponent's marriage license (how could he be married, as all decent people must be, if his "wife" had a different name?)—but won't release her mysterious fifth child's birth certificate?

All of this feels really smarmy, but that's because Palin feels really smarmy. We've been forced to lay down with that dog and now we're covered with fleas. How can someone so compromised stand on the threshold of the American presidency?

The National Debt Clock Ran Out of Digits

According to CNN:

The National Debt Clock in New York City has run out of digits to record the growing figure.

As a short-term fix, the digital dollar sign on the billboard-style clock near Times Square has been switched to a figure—the "1" in $10 trillion. It's marking the federal government's current debt at about $10.2 trillion.

The Durst Organization says it plans to update the sign next year by adding two digits. That will make it capable of tracking debt up to a quadrillion dollars.

The late Manhattan real estate developer Seymour Durst put the sign up in 1989 to call attention to what was then a $2.7 trillion debt.

I was in the former Yugoslavia in the late 80's/early 90s, just as they'd had to devalue their currency. My then-boyfriend and I were mystified whenever locals tried to explain to us that we needed to add three zeroes or subtract them, who knew which, from whatever was on the bill. Either our disgusting room cost us $10 or $100, we were never quite sure. Everywhere we went, guys with unibrows and "Natasha-and-Boris" accents were pssst-ing at us and going "change mon-ye? change mon-ye?"

You see, back in those long gone days, US currency was the bomb. Now it's just a bomb, I guess. Will we eventually become the slightly scary guys desperately trying to get foreigners to change their good money for our lousy stuff?

I'll have to check with the ex-boyfriend; maybe that was Hungary. Either way, we seem to be going the same way. Backwards.

The Long Saga of John McCain and the NRA

Opinions change in Washington. Before the National Rifle Association loved John McCain — it favored McCain with its endorsement Thursday — it had some very sharp disagreements with the Arizona Senator. In 2000, McCain said of the gun lobby, "I don't think they help the Republican Party at all." A year later, the NRA shot back by calling McCain "one of the premier flag carriers for the enemies of the Second Amendment."

There were two reason for the NRA's hostility toward McCain: campaign finance and a bill McCain co-sponsored with Joe Lieberman to close the so-called "gun show loophole." The NRA put McCain on the cover of its newsletter, called "America's 1st Freedom," in July 2001. Next to him were the words, "John McCain, What Are You Thinking?" An article inside explains that earlier that year McCain and Lieberman had teamed up to champion legislation to eliminate the loophole, which the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence explains this way:

Under federal law, anyone who wants to engage in the business of selling firearms must obtain a federal firearms license. The Brady Law requires that when a federal firearms licensee (FFL) wants to sell a firearm, they must contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to ensure that the purchaser is not prohibited from possessing firearms. FFLs must comply with these laws whether they are selling firearms from a gun store or at a gun show.

The Brady Law, however, does not apply to the sale of firearms by non-licensees. Every year, there are thousands of gun sales without background checks by vendors claiming not to need a federal license because they are merely selling from their "personal collection" of guns. Many of these sales take place at gun shows and the problem has become known as the "gun show loophole."

The NRA's Political Victory Fund rated the McCain-Lieberman bill an "F." The proposed law, said the NRA's article, was "jeopardizing the freedom of law-abiding gun owners." It argues that McCain's motives in joining with Americans for Gun Safety (AGS) and other gun control groups were phony. "John McCain has recently become a prominent Washington champion of more federal gun legislation in large part because AGS has heavily publicized McCain," wrote the NRA. "AGS is doing everything it can to keep McCain in the news."

The same article slammed McCain for advocating campaign finance laws that would limit the influence and money of powerful independent groups like the NRA. "Future battles fighting government gun grabs will become far more difficult if McCain's campaign finance reform bill becomes law," the NRA wrote. The reason was limitations the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, aka McCain-Feingold, placed on something called "electioneering communication." McCain-Feingold defines that as:

Any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication which--
(I) refers to a clearly identified candidate or Federal office;
(II) is made within--
(aa) 60 days before a general, special, or runoff election for the office sought by the candidate; or
(bb) 30 days before a primary or preference election, or a convention or caucus of a political party that has authority to nominate a candidate, for the office sought by the candidate; and
(III) in the case of a communication which refers to a candidate for an office other than President or Vice President, is targeted to the relevant electorate.

These limitations, the NRA wrote, "could effectively prohibit the NRA from even mentioning in a public mailing which candidate it supports or opposes." (Ironically, the Supreme Court has since weakened this key element of McCain-Feingold and the NRA has used the opportunity to launch discredited attacks against McCain's opponent, Barack Obama.) The NRA also accused McCain of hypocrisy, saying that financed his campaign to cleanse Washington of soft money by using plenty of his own.

The NRA contentious relationship existed before and after this one newsletter. In 2000, McCain told CNN, "The NRA is entitled to their advocacy. I don't think they help the Republican Party at all. But I don't they should in any way play a major role in the Republican Party's policymaking." In February 2002, "America's 1st Freedom" took after McCain again, titling another article on the gun show loophole, "What Doesn't John McCain Want You to Know?" In it, the NRA accused McCain and AGS of using "deceit" to "restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens." The executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action called McCain's bill a "cynical attack on our rights." Similar attacks were launched in an article in the September 2002 issue of the NRA newsletter. That issue morphed McCain and Lieberman together and called them "two-faced."

Today, McCain and the NRA have made nice. In 2007, McCain said, "I strongly support the Second Amendment and I believe the Second Amendment ought to be preserved — which means no gun control." He addressed the NRA's annual convention earlier this year and said:

"For more than two decades, I’ve opposed efforts to ban guns, ban ammunition, ban magazines and dismiss gun owners as some kind of fringe group unwelcome in modern America. The Second Amendment isn’t some archaic custom that matters only to rural Americans, who find solace in firearms out of frustration with their economic circumstances. The Second Amendment is unique in the world. It guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms. To argue anything else is to reject the clear meaning of our founding fathers."

The relationship between McCain and the NRA has become so cozy that one registered NRA lobbyist, Wayne Berman, serves as a co-chair of McCain's national finance committee and another, James Jay Baker, heads the National Steering Committee of Sportsmen for McCain. (The dual roles appear to be in violation of the internal McCain campaign ethics policy, a fact which has gone unaddressed. Additionally, Baker controlled the NRA's political arm when Mary Lou Sapone was infiltrating gun control groups on its behalf.)

McCain's willingness to genuflect at the NRA's altar clearly worked. Thursday, the NRA endorsed McCain and promised an advertising campaign on his behalf worth "eight figures." If McCain is elected president with the NRA's help, we'll see if the gun group plays "a major role in the Republican Party's policymaking."

Rednecks for Obama

If you've seen this and this (careful about the language in that last one), you'll probably need this little story to restore some faith.

Update: Here's another one of these videos. This is getting ugly.

Gay Marriage Ban Succeeding in California

I'm really unhappy that my home state looks like it will pass a gay marriage ban next month. (California's Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, is ahead in the polls.) This serves as a reminder that no matter how badly Barack Obama beats John McCain and no matter how many Senate seats the Democrats pick up, this is not a fundamentally progressive country. This is a country fed up with Republicans. I mean for christ's sake, this is California, the one place you would think voters would embrace gay marriage!

The success of Prop 8 supports a theory I have and that I'm sure many share: electing a black man named Barack Hussein Obama was only possible because of just how screwed we are as a country. Let's keep in mind, during the post-election pats on the back we're all going award ourselves because we elected the nation's first black president, that in a test of our tolerance conducted in a vacuum, one of our most progressive states failed.

(Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Maybe I'm overly-pessimistic. Whatever. I'm in a bad mood about this.)

...And Some Growing Increasingly Sane

While some conservatives grow increasingly batty, some are growing increasingly sane. And by "increasingly sane," I mean increasingly cognizant of some of the Republican Party's troubling undercurrents that have brought it to this point. Here's David Brooks.

Here's the relevant excerpt transcribed:

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. . … Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I’m afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.

(Via Think Progress)

On Right-Wingers Going Crazy...

Two notes on Kevin's observation that right wing writers are descending into hilarious self-caricature as Obama pulls ahead in the polls.

(1) Kevin notes that the right wing blog The Corner is now posting about "Obama being a secret Maoist." He's not kidding. Here's an actual quote, written with high seriousness: "[Obama] fits comfortably with Ayers, who (especially now) is more Maoist than Stalinist." And, no, they aren't kidding. It makes me wonder: as someone who now wants the federal government to own America's bad mortgages, what kind of communist is John McCain?

(2) The right wing isn't just becoming more and more divorced from reality as their electoral prospects worsen. It's also becoming more racist and more susceptible to crazy conspiracy theories. One of them is actually claiming, sans evidence, that Bill Ayers ghost wrote Dreams of My Father.

Like I said yesterday, this is going to get hilarious before it's over.

Doonesbury, Cont'd.

Here's yesterday's strip:

And here's a link to today's. The crusade continues.

Calendars Show Gov. Palin's Foreign Policy Experience: About 20 Meetings for About 12 Hours

In her first interview after John McCain picked her to be the GOP's vice presidential nominee, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin claimed that her foreign policy credentials were enhanced because "you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska." She also pointed out that she had experience dealing with trade delegations. Later, asked by CBS News' Katie Couric if she had ever participated in negotiations with Russia, Palin said, "We have trade missions back and forth. We—we do—it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia ."

But the calendars tracking Palin's official meetings during her tenure as governor contain not one listing indicating she ever met with a Russian official. In fact, the 562 pages of her daily schedules—obtained by Mother Jones under Alaska's Open Records Act—indicate that Palin had few meetings at all with any foreign representatives and rarely dealt with any topic related to foreign policy. The schedules include about 20 meetings, events, or phone calls in which Palin interacted with foreign officials. And in many instances, these interactions were cursory or ceremonial and did not involve policy details. According to the schedules released, Palin spent roughly 12 hours over the course of 19 months on these meetings. (This doesn't count what happened during a four-day trip she took to Kuwait to visit members of the Alaska National Guard. The schedules for those days do not detail whom she met.) The calendars show no meetings between her and a trade delegation from any nation.

It's possible that the calendars are not fully accurate reflections of what happened—perhaps some meetings ran longer (or shorter) than scheduled. And it's possible that in her off hours, Palin pored over Foreign Affairs, held unofficial chats with foreign officials, and sought out foreign policy experts. Also, there is a six-week gap in her calendars—from mid May through the end of June 2007—due to what her office calls a "computer failure." But according to the schedules, throughout her stint as governor, Palin has devoted merely a few hours to anything of a foreign relations nature, and most of her contact with foreign officials came through discussions with Canadian officials about a natural gas pipeline involving a Canadian company.

Here is a complete list of all of Palin's official calendar entries for events or meetings in which she had to interact with a foreign representative. The missing weeks aside, this list represents the sum of the foreign policy experience she obtained while serving as governor.

January 18, 2007 -- Palin hosts an afternoon reception at the governor's mansion for representatives of the Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER), a regional US-Canadian forum that includes several Canadian government officials. Her office previously has announced she will hold separate meetings to discuss trade and border issues with three Canadian officials--Yukon Premier Dennis Fentie, Canadian Consul General Peter Lloyd (who is based in Seattle) and Minister of Tourism Brendan Bell—who are in Alaska in conjunction with the PNWER meeting.

January 19, 2007 -- Palin meets with Fentie for 30 minutes, with Lloyd for 30 minutes, and with Bell for 30 minutes. She does not attend the PNWER dinner hosted that night by the Canadian government for Alaskan officials and business leaders.

January 22, 2007 -- Palin receives a call at 7:00 am from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to discuss cross-border issues and visas.

February 24, 2007 -- In Washington, DC, for a National Governors Association meeting, Palin attends a reception at the Italian embassy. She stays for 30 minutes before leaving for a dinner hosted by the Republican Governors Association.

March 10, 2007 -- Palin hosts the annual Fur & Ice reception in Fairbanks for about 30 diplomats and international tourism representatives. A Palin press release issued before the event noted, "Governor Sarah Palin will welcome members of Alaska's diplomatic corps to Fairbanks to view the ice carvings of Ice Alaska's 2007 World Ice Art Championship." Following the afternoon reception, Palin attends the NCAA rifle championships.

March 19, 2007 -- Palin meets with 10 foreign exchange students.

April, 3, 2007 -- Palin spends 15 minutes filming a short video message for a trade show in China.

April 4, 2007 -- In Juneau, Palin and several of her aides meet with British Columbia's premier, Gordon Campbell, and several of his aides for about 90 minutes.

April 16, 2007 -- Palin and a few aides meet with Taiwanese officials for an hour.

May 15, 2007 -- Palin holds a "brief courtesy" meeting with Martin Uden, then the head of the British consulate in San Francisco. The calendar notes, "He'll be visiting Juneau today off of one of the Cruise Ships."

July 23-26, 2007 -- Palin visits Kuwait to meet with members of the Alaska National Guard. (After Palin was selected as McCain's running mate, her aides, referring to this trip, said she had traveled to Ireland, Germany, Kuwait and Iraq. But on this visit, she did not go beyond the Kuwait-Iraq border, and she did not truly visit Ireland; her plane made a refueling stop there.)

August 27, 2007 -- David Akov, the Israeli consul general for the Pacific Northwest, pays a 30-minute-long "courtesy call" on Palin. David Gottstein, AIPAC's Alaska chairman, also attends. Akov invites Palin to visit Israel. She reportedly tells Akov that Alaskans "love Israel."

September 12, 2007 -- Palin holds a 15-minute-long "courtesy" meeting with Hideo Fujita, the new chief of Japan's consulate in Anchorage.

September 13, 2007 -- Palin holds a 15-minute long "courtesy" meeting with Peng Keyu, the head of the Chinese consulate in San Francisco.

October 15, 2007 -- Palin meets Iceland's president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson. The session is scheduled for 30 minutes. Grimsson is in Alaska to attend the Arctic Energy Summit Technology Conference. (After she became McCain's running mate, she was asked if she had ever met with a world leader. She said, no—forgetting this meeting.)

January 4, 2008 -- Palin holds a ten-minute-long phone conversation with Canadian Minister of Industry Jim Prentice. Her calendar also refers to "Canadian officials phone calls" that day.

January 21, 2008 -- Palin is schedule for a brief "stop by" visit with Joe Balash, a Palin aide, and Brian Mason, a member of the legislative assembly of Alberta, Canada. The calendar says, "Balash Office would like a picture w/ GOV."

March 8, 2008 -- Palin welcomes guests to the 2008 Fur & Ice reception for the diplomatic corps. Diplomats from the Philippines, South Korea, the Slovak Republic, South Africa, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Poland, Finland, Germany, and Egypt attend. Her calendar lists no separate meetings with any of them.

May 22, 2008 -- At 7:15 am, Palin calls Yukon Premier Dennis Fentie; for ten minutes they discuss the news that her administration will ask the state legislature to award a license for a 1,715-mile-long natural gas pipeline to TransCanada. (Her administration has turned down bids from other conglomerates, including ConocoPhillips.) Later, she has a five-minute-long phone call with Canadian Minister of Industry Jim Prentice.

August 11-12, 2008 -- Palin attends a reception and delivers welcoming remarks for the Eighth Conference of Arctic Parliamentarians. The conference, which meets every two years, includes delegates from Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States. This year, it holds panels on human health in the Arctic region, Arctic marine policy, adaptation to climate change, and energy resources in the Arctic. After welcoming the delegates, Palin leaves to attend a "dedication and blessing ceremony" for a cultural and visitors center in Fairbanks.

October 8, 2008

McCain Recommends Voters Review His Record Via Nonprofits Linked to His Campaign

At Tuesday's town hall-style presidential debate at Tennessee's Belmont University, an audience member named Theresa Finch asked the candidates a question that has no doubt been weighing on the minds of many Americans: "How can we trust either of you with our money when both parties got us into this global economic crisis?" When it came time for McCain to respond, he said, "I can see why you feel that cynicism and mistrust, because the system in Washington is broken. And I have been a consistent reformer." He said he had a clear record of taking on special interests and reaching across the aisle to get things done in Washington. "So let's look at our records as well as our rhetoric," he said. "That's really part of your mistrust here. And now I suggest that maybe you go to some of these organizations that are the watchdogs of what we do, like the Citizens Against Government Waste or the National Taxpayers Union or these other organizations that watch us all the time."

It's not surprising that McCain directed Finch to Citizens Against Government Waste or the National Taxpayers Union. Both anti-spending organizations are ideologically aligned with the Arizona Senator and have ties to his presidential campaign. But if Finch were to take McCain's advice and visit the NTU's web site to look up its most recent congressional scorecard, she would find "N/A" next to the candidate's name, for he didn't vote on enough bills in the 110th Congress to qualify for a rating. (Obama receives an F. In past years, McCain's NTU rating has ranged from B-minus to A.)

CAGW, however, gives McCain its highest marks—100 percent—in its latest report [PDF], though Finch and other voters may want to consider the source before placing stock in the nonprofit's congressional scorecard. CAGW was one of five nonprofits accused by Senate investigators of "laundering payments and then disbursing funds" at the direction of Jack Abramoff. Earlier this year the Washington Post reported that CAGW was actively helping McCain.

When McCain came under fire last winter for supporting a $40 billion tanker deal that critics said would export thousands of jobs overseas, "McCain's advisers wanted to strike back against key Democratic critics," according to the Post. "But they did not mount an expensive advertising campaign to defend the candidate's position." Instead, they called CAGW, which "partnered with Northrop and one of its consultants to produce a vitriolic advertising campaign defending the tanker deal."

McCain's close friend Orson Swindle, who was the senator's cellmate in the "Hanoi Hilton," has served on the group's board. And CAGW's political arm has donated $11,000 to McCain's campaign and political action committee since 2004—an amount that far surpasses its contributions to any other candidate. Just a day before McCain cited CAGW as one of the go-to watchdogs, the group's political action committee began running ads in support of McCain in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and Virginia. The 30-second spot, dubbed "Taxpayer Hero," states: "In 25 years, McCain never requested a single pork barrel spending project. Not a dime in special interest earmarks. Barack Obama? $740 million in special interest earmarks in just 3 years. There's nothing Washington's tax-and-spend politicians fear more than John McCain in the White House."

The National Taxpayers Union is also less than an impartial source on McCain. Several of its top honchos have donated generously to McCain's campaign. And one of its board members, Edward Failor Jr., is a political operative who worked for McCain's campaign in Iowa. Failor also serves on the board of the newly formed independent expenditure group, American Issues Project, which has spent millions on an ad campaign attacking Barack Obama for his connection to 1960s radical William Ayers. On Wednesday, the group announced a million dollar ad buy for a TV spot, which will run on Fox and CNN, blaming Democrats for the financial meltdown and for protecting the interests of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. "Who should you trust on the economy?" the ad asks.

This was precisely what Theresa Finch was wondering on Tuesday night. And CAGW and NTU are not the best places to go for answers.

Retired Building Supply Regional Manager Would Have Been King

George Washington gained such fame as the hero of the American Revolution that people literally begged him to become king of the United States. He declined, of course, and set a precedent for the peaceful transition of power when he voluntarily left the presidency after two terms. What if he had accepted? What if the United States had become a monarchy with power passed down through the generations? Who would be king today? Ancestry.com claims to have answered that question. Washington died without a direct heir, but genealogists tracked four different family lines that grew out the greater Washington clan and found 8,000 people, now living, who can trace their ancestry back to the first president. But there can be only one king, and according to Ancestry.com's Megan Smolenyak, a retired regional manager for a building supply company "won the sweepstakes." Paul Emerson Washington, 82, of San Antonio, Texas, is the man who would be king. Not that he's upset about losing the throne. "He's always been a modest, soft-spoken person," his son told the Associated Press, adding, "the idea of one individual having supreme power over all others is an antiquated idea."

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from cliff1066.

Bush Policies Help Bring the Financial Crisis Home

With U.S. banks now partially nationalized, the government is struggling to hold the line, finally linking up in an international network to staunch the hemorrhaging that has been going on in financial markets here, and now around the globe. As the financial crisis spreads out across the world, it is also trickling down to state and local governments, and right up to the doorsteps of most Americans..

This dire picture is rendered even grimmer by the policies of the Bush administration, which has pushed for deep cuts in vital domestic programs amidst this crisis. This will place even more pressure on the states, whose budgets already are badly strained. The downsizing of federal support, combined with the financial crisis, will make it difficult for many states to continue providing basic services to their residents in the coming months and years.

The administration’s crusade to cut spending on a wide array of domestic programs is revealed in studies by the usually reliable Center for Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, an independent think tank that tracks and critiques federal spending with special attention to domestic programs. Under the administration’s 2008 budget, the Center reported last year, “domestic discretionary programs—the programs that are funded each year through the annual appropriations process, other than defense and international programs—are slated for sizable reductions over the next five years.”

The details of these cuts are largely hidden from public scrutiny, since “the Administration has chosen for each of the past three years not to show in its standard budget materials the funding levels that it is proposing for each discretionary program.... for years after the coming fiscal year.” But based on backup documents, the Center calculated some of the cuts:

* Environmental programs would sustain some of the biggest cuts. Funding for pollution control, for example, would be cut by a total of $5.5 billion over the next five years (relative to the expected 2007 funding level adjusted for inflation).
* K-12 and vocational education would be cut by $10 billion over five years.

* The part of the budget that includes community health centers, domestic HIV/AIDS programs, and maternal and child health would be cut by $2.5 billion over five years.

* Funding for hospital and medical care for veterans would be increased next year but cut in each of the four years after that.

These projections are borne out by a 2008 report from the Center, which found that “The President’s 2009 budget would provide some $20.5 billion less for domestic discretionary programs outside of homeland security...than the 2008 level, adjusted for inflation.”

A large proportion of these cuts come from funding to the states, which provide many of the public services their residents depend upon daily, as well as programs for the poor and the sick, children and the elderly. Yesterday, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities released a new study showing the depth of the fiscal crisis now facing states. Already, “Most states have been facing budget deficits that have forced, or are now forcing, them to raise taxes, cut spending, or do both to balance their budgets.”

Rising joblessness and falling consumer spending are generating less income and sales tax revenues than states expected when they wrote their budgets. Three months into their fiscal year, the budgets of at least 15 states have opened new gaps. Fourteen of the 15 states are among the 29 that already cut spending, used reserves, or raised revenues in order to adopt a balanced budget at the start of the current fiscal year (July 1 in most states). Now, their budgets have fallen out of balance again, raising the likelihood of reduced public services or higher taxes and fees. More states will likely make similar announcements in coming weeks and months.

Now, the credit crisis is adding to the states’ financial woes in a new way. The Center reports, “Many states and localities routinely use short-term borrowing to manage their short-term cash flow. State income tax and other kinds of revenue come in more strongly in the second half of most states’ fiscal years than in the first. Thus, they borrow to meet their spending obligations when revenues are temporarily insufficient. Indeed, they issue what are called ‘tax anticipation notes’ or ‘revenue anticipation notes’ for just this purpose. …states are facing the same problem faced by millions of businesses across the country – tightening credit markets. Lenders are reducing lending, so states are concerned they may not be able to borrow when they need to. That’s why California, Massachusetts, and other states may seek to borrow their needed funds from the federal government. The Treasury or Federal Reserve may have to serve as the lender of last resort for them.”

All of this adds up to a growing domestic crisis that will be felt in every corner of the country--and felt most keenly by those who are already hurting.

This Campaign Could Get Really Fun...

This photo restores some of the faith in mankind's creativity that I lost on Monday. Props to Kos for catching it.

And, frankly, the signage isn't far off. Late last night, CNN flashed a poll that said not only did debate-viewers prefer Obama on the economy by double digits, they preferred him on Iraq by about four or five points. That has to signal the beginning of the end for McCain, doesn't it? Iraq is supposed to be the one issue he will always own; the fact that it's drifting away from him suggests that more and more Americans are talking themselves into a President Obama and his ability to handle all the tough issues.

For what it's worth, Obama won just about every category in last night's polls. Numbers here. I'm guessing Sarah Palin is really going to regret her brief excursion into national politics in a month or so.

Elect Conservatives to Limit the Power of Incompetent (Conservative) Government!

Tom Frank has a delightful line in his Washington Post column today. I'll provide the setup. The line I'm referring to is in bold.

Over many years of ascendancy, conservative Republicans have filled government agencies with conservative Republicans and proceeded to enact the conservative Republican policy wish list -- tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, outsourcing federal work, and so on.

And as a consequence of these policies our conservative Republican government has bungled most of the big tasks that have fallen to it. The rescue and recovery of the Gulf Coast was a disaster. The reconstruction of Iraq was a disaster. The regulatory agencies became so dumb they didn't even see the disasters they were set up to prevent. And each disaster was attributable to the conservative philosophy of government.

Yet now we are supposed to vote for more conservative Republicans because we learned from the last bunch of conservative Republicans that government just doesn't work.

That is the advice of Sarah Palin, Republican vice-presidential nominee, in last week's debate with her Democratic counterpart, discussing the dread prospect of universal health care: "Unless you're pleased with the way the federal government has been running anything lately, I don't think that it's going to be real pleasing for Americans to consider health care being taken over by the feds."

Conservative misrule, prompted by conservative disdain for government, proves that government cannot be trusted -- and that the only answer is to elect another round of government-denouncing conservatives.

This reminds me a line Al Franken uses frequently on the campaign trail. "Conservatives always campaign by saying that government doesn't work. Then they get elected, and prove it."