Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
Month: October 2008
Sarah Palin, Queen of Secession
Posted on October 9, 2008 in Campaign 2008 Scoundrels
To understand Sarah Palin’s attacks on Obama’s alleged connections with Bill Ayers, you must understand her involvement with the [[Alaska Independence Party]]:
AIP’s charter commits the party “to the ultimate independence of Alaska,” from the United States which it refers to as “the colonial bureaucracy in Washington.” It proclaims Alaska’s 1959 induction as a state “as illegal and in violation of the United Nations charter and international law.”
AIP’s creation was inspired by the rabidly violent anti-Americanism of its founding father Joe Vogler, “I’m an Alaskan, not an American,” reads a favorite Vogler quote on AIP’s current website, “I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions.” According to Vogler AIP’s central purpose was to drive Alaska’s secession from the United States. Alaska, says current Chairwoman Lynette Clark, “should be an independent nation.”
Vogler was murdered in 1993 during an illegal sale of plastic explosives that went bad. The prior year, he had renounced his allegiance to the United States explaining that, “The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government.” He cursed the stars and stripes, promising, “I won’t be buried under their damned flag…when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home.” Palin has never denounced Vogler or his detestable anti-Americanism.
Palin’s husband Todd remained an AIP party member from 1995 to 2002. Sarah can be described in McCarthy-era palaver as a “fellow traveler.” While retaining her Republican registration, she attended the AIP’s 1994 convention where the party called for a draft constitution to secede from the United States and create an independent nation of Alaska. The McCain Campaign has reluctantly acknowledged that she also attended AIP’s 2000 Convention. She apparently found the experience so inspiring that she agreed to give a keynote address at the AIP’s 2006 convention and she recorded a video greeting for this year’s 2008 convention. In other words, this is not something that happened when she was eight! (Emphasis mine)
What Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. describes is treason, pure treason. Sarah Palin is the most dangerous major party candidate ever to seek the vice presidency of the United States. John McCain, therefore, is either the most dangerous or most inept candidate for president. Or maybe he is a [[Manchurian candidate]] following orders from Hanoi? Naw. Being too angry and full of himself is explanation enough for his hasty choice here.
Grocery Clerk
Posted on October 8, 2008 in Campaign 2008 Class
I have to wonder about middle-aged grocery clerks who pronounce financial apocalypse on the basis that Democrats are just going to go back to their old habits of the LBJ days. “Democrats are all tax and spend,” said the fellow checking my items at Trader Joe’s. “That just doesn’t work.”
“Unlike the Republicans who are don’t tax but spend anyways,” I replied.
“That was Bush.”
“And the Republican Congress,” I reminded him with a smile as I walked out the door into the October heat. Nice to see how the Republicans are cutting the lines to Bush, trying to forget that they lauded him and voted for his every program.
Don’t you forget.
The Mean Machine Gets Checked
Posted on October 8, 2008 in Campaign 2008
Oh they just keep going on and on. First, the McCain campaign’s latest tactic is that they are keeping the press away from Palin’s supporters:
When reporters tried to leave the designated press area and head toward the bleachers where the crowd was seated, an escort would dart out of nowhere and confront him or her and say, “Can I help you?” and turn the person around.
When one reporter asked an escort, who would not give her name, why the press wasn’t allowed to mingle, she said that in the past, negative things had been written. The campaign wanted to avoid that possibility.
Guess cranks attract cranks and they don’t want some crank who isn’t on the ticket upsetting things for the cranks who are. Then there is the matter of the Palin rape kit charges. Despite what the McCain campaign says, they are a real thing:
Wasilla once had a policy on the books — publicly supported by Palin’s hand-picked police chief — that it would charge rape victims or their insurers to collect evidence of sexual assaults. (Or to be more precise, the town would no longer pay for the fees out of its own budget and would seek reimbursements.)
And while that policy was in effect, Palin was mayor, and Palin approved the town budget. In 2000, though, that practice was deemed so offensive that the Republican-leaning Alaska Legislature stepped in and quickly passed a law so that towns like Wasilla could not charge victims.
And guess what? That’s all still true.
Pity the media doesn’t push this story more. Still she and McCain are doing aplenty to stick their feet in their mouthes, chew off their toes, and spit the bloody mass in the general direction of the Democrats.
Sean Hannity, one of their favorite minions, found himself tried by his own rules recently:
[Obama aide Robert] Gibbs decided he just wasn’t having any more of it, and in precisely the sort of parry that one wanted to see turned the guilt-by-association game on Hannity, asking him, “Are you anti-Semitic?” Soon, the conversation was a mess of yelling and crosstalk, with Gibbs loudly asking why Hannity would give a hatemonger a primo forum, and Hannity responding, “BENJAMIN NETANYAHU BLURBED MY BOOK! YAAHHHH! LOUD NOISES!”
Why’d he ask that? Oh, because Sean Hannity built an entire smear-job “news” program around the lunatic ravings of an anti-Semitic loon named Andy Martin. He’s not the only man of that ilk that Hannity pals around with, either.
Whoops. There’s probably a better case for Hannity being a closet anti-semite here than for Obama being a terrorist, don’t you think?
And the day is not yet over. Following yesterday’s disastrous debate showing, John McCain is going to keep it dirty. The so-called citizen’s militias are doubtlessly piling their assault rifles high for an attack on the White House and the Federal government. At very least, Republican jingoism is going to keep a sizeable segment of the American people divided from the rest for many years to come — unless Obama pulls yet another rabbit out of the hat.
I’ve always said that the greatest president is yet to come: the one who reverses all the damage done by Bush and the Republicans these past fourteen years (I’m counting the damage done by the Republican congress such as [[deregulation]] and the [[Donut_Hole_(Medicare)|Donut Hole]]). Maybe Obama will be it.
A look at Main Street Wasilla from one of Jon Stewart’s reporters.
[tags]campaign 2008, John McCain, Sarah Palin, jingoism, sleaziness, sleazy politics, sleazy campaign, Mean John McCain, Barack Obama, Obama, McCain, mudslinging[/tags]
What’s Around My Neck
Posted on October 8, 2008 in Commons Theft Trade
I don’t know the full ins and outs of the organization behind this ad — the Institute for America’s Future — but there’s stuff to think about:
Seems we cannot afford to produce generations full of Sarah Palins if we and George W. Bushes want to remain competitive.
A Cow in a Marsh
Posted on October 7, 2008 in DBSA Support Groups and Conferences Depression
I’ve fallen in a depression which has more to do with my missing a dose of my mood-stabilizers two weeks ago followed by missing a dose of my anti-depressant yesterday than any life event. I fell so hard after a week or so of light mania that I began to ache in my chest and in my head as I mucked around like a cow in a marsh trying to find a meadow.
The California State Conference for DBSA was the subject of the weekend. The feel of this compared to the National Conference in Norfolk was interesting to observe. At National, there was an emphasis on finding a meaningful life for yourself while at State there was the usual “get a 40 hour a week job and we’ll call you cured”. With my volunteer activities (I recently received an award for them given by GWB of all people), I would qualify as a failure rather than a success.
I don’t get why therapists are so out to put you in a full time job, especially when stress has precipitated me into many a depressed or manic state. I’m told that at fifty years of age I should go back to school and get a “real career” instead of the volunteer mission that satisfies me. There’s the usual “do what society expects of you” instead of doing what feels right and good to you.
What bothers me the most now is that I don’t feel much like writing or photographing. The photographs that I have taken don’t seem to excite others, so what’s the use, I think, even if I find they do something for me? I know this is the depression talking, but would the others on the outside shut up so I can ride this through? The life whose leather I find myself wearing is my own. Don’t try to skin me and throw the hide of a wolf or a plough-horse on my back.
[tags]depression, bipolar disorder, careers, career, choice[/tags]
McCain Runs Scared
Posted on October 7, 2008 in Campaign 2008
Smears and dirty tricks are signs that McCain’s campaign is failing:
I won’t be watching the debate, but I won’t be surprised if McCain tries to bring up the Ayers smear and maybe a surprise out of nowhere. All Obama needs to do is keep the focus on tonight’s topic which is the economy.
When it comes to character, John McCain ain’t presidential.
[tags]Campaign 2008, Mean John McCain, John McCain, Barack Obama, debate, debates, presidential debate, presidential debates, McCain, McSame, McCan’t, Obama[/tags]
The View from New England
Posted on October 7, 2008 in Photos Vacations
For now I am more comfortable taking pictures than talking about things. Maybe the voice will return later. This is of a tree near my mother-in-law’s house in Sorrento, Maine. More stuff in the Massachusetts and the Maine sections of my photo album.
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The View from Little Diomede
Posted on October 1, 2008 in Campaign 2008
The cruel thing about the Press is that ~sometimes~ they check your story. Sarah Palin has been telling the world that she can see Russia from Alaska. Sure, she can, but she never has. A CNN reporter went to Little Diomede Island, which is the only place where you can see Russia from Alaska. And guess what? She hasn’t been there!
No Alaskan governor has ever visited [[Little Diomede]], though indicted U.S. Senator [[Ted Stevens]] has made the trip. The town’s residents barely knew who Palin was, and one of them didn’t know she was the VP nominee.
Damn that so-called liberal media!
Pictures from a Spring Trip
Posted on October 1, 2008 in Photos Vacations
I finally got around to posting pictures from our spring trip to Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Yosemite National Parks. You can check them out at Paths of Light.
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