Sarah Palin’s Welfare State – Alaska

Poor old Sarah Palin. She and the Geezer pitched her as the frontierswoman leader of a tough, independent, self-reliant frontier state, Alaska. Yessir, she was going to bring some of that self-reliant, “can do” attitude to Washington where it’s so badly needed.

Except, as AlterNet inconveniently points out, Sarah Palin’s Alaska is, in fact, America’s number one welfare state:

Actually, much of Alaska long ago lost the tradition of self-help. Palin might be campaigning on an anti-government, do-it-yourself platform, but her state is the most dependent on the federal government of all 50 states. Washington sends Alaska more money per capita than any other state. Alaskans receive back from the federal government almost $2 for every $1 they send to Washington. It’s a sweet deal.

And when it comes to government pork, Alaska is king. As USA Today noted back in March, Palin’s state ranks number one — no other state is even close. In 2007 Alaska received some 2.5 times as much as runner-up Hawaii and 15 times more than the national average.

Alaska has by far the most state government employees per capita as any other state and about five times as many as Obama’s Illinois.

The part of Alaska not dependent on federal government largesse is dependent on big oil. Almost 90 percent of Alaska’s general budget comes from royalties and taxes on oil, which explains how the state can be number one in state government spending while ranking far down the list in taxes its residents pay. Alaska has no income tax or sales tax. Recently, its legislature suspended the gasoline tax.

So, there goes the McCain campaign’s narrative about Sarah Palin, straight into the dumper.

 

Palin Craters – Score One for the Blogosphere

At first Sarah Palin was a balloon lifting John McCain’s stagnant campaign. Now that balloon has burst as people see Palin for what she is/was – a totally cynical ploy by John McCain and Americans are beginning to reject her with the same passion they so recently embraced her.

Markos Moulitas of Daily Kos credits the blogosphere for not letting McCain get away with it:

Bloggers and tradmed reporters took a hard look at Sarah Palin and began raking her over the coals for myriad transgressions. She is a liar with theocratic tendencies, sports an intellect that makes Bush look like a Mensa member, and features an obvious fondness for Cheney-style abuses of power. And that’s not even the worst of it.

…we continued to focus on Palin. Republicans were busy trying to build a positive narrative about Palin — the “hockey mom” who was so folksy she could “field dress a moose” and had “said no to the Bridge to Nowhere and other government waste” and was overflowing with “small town values.” McCain had shot up in the polls because of Palin. Common sense dictated it would be hard to knock him back down as long as she consolidated her popularity.”

Then he points to the numbers. In just one week Palin’s approval numbers fell from 52 down to 42% while her disapproval numbers climbed from 32 to 46% – all in just one week.

“That’s a shocking 21-point collapse in a single week. She went from being just about the most popular person on the top of the ticket, to the (lipstick wearing?) goat.

…Palin will continue to excite and energize the wingnut base. She was designed for that purpose, and won’t fail at that task. But her cratering popularity now hampers McCain’s efforts to expand beyond that core base.

All of this is happening because we did not relent on Palin, blocking Republican efforts to paint her in a positive light. The results are speaking for themselves.“

Moulitas also points out that there’s been a change in the latest McCain ads. A week ago they were “McCain-Palin.” Lately they’ve gone back to just “McCain.”

Palin is trending down and it’s hard to see that she has any other way to go. Now even her husband is refusing to appear to hearings after being subpoenaed. Todd must’ve got the word that top Republicans – or their spouses – are above the law.

 

Sarah Palin Doesn’t Know What She Doesn’t Know – And She Could Care Less

It’s becoming increasingly plain that John McCain’s chosen running mate, Alaskan governor Sarah Palin is grossly unprepared to serve as America’s vice president.

The Washington Post published this interesting assessment of Palin by Chuck McLean of the Denver Research Group that produces the Global Power Barometer:

“The selection of another incurious, ill-schooled politician with no foreign policy judgment and a simplistic “the military can solve everything” view of foreign policy will continue the dramatic slide of the U.S.’s global influence. It will also dig us much deeper into a foreign policy hole that has already brought us to an international situation more dangerous than the darkest days of the Cold War.

As we’ve watched world reaction to the Bush administration over the years, the people and leaders of the world are not as much interested in “experience” per se as they are two critical human traits: 1) curiosity about the world, and, 2) a knowledge of the history and cultures of their nations. Governor Palin has neither and that’s downright dangerous.

The Governor, who obtained her first passport less than two years ago, has traveled outside the U.S. only once, to visit Alaska National Guardsmen stationed in Germany and Kuwait. She claimed a visit to Ireland, but the Irish quickly pointed out that a refueling stop in which you don’t leave the airport is not a “visit.” In fact, she has never even visited Alaska’s important next-door neighbor, Canada.

Consistent with a complete lack of curiosity about the world around her, Governor Palin has never had any formal education in history (of the U.S. or the world,) let alone any experience with global culture or politics that might serve as a substitute for formal education.

In the current crisis with Russia, an understanding of Russian culture, history and 20th-century experience (and, of course, the right judgment to apply the lessons of that history) would have avoided creating the situation in which Russia had little choice but to draw the line at South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The U.S. has a history as long as a blink of an eye in comparison to much of the rest of the world, so it may be understandable that we have little interest in world history. U.S. citizens are some of the least traveled among developed countries, so that may explain our lack of knowledge of other cultures. But in order just to protect ourselves and avoid mistakes that strengthen our enemies and weaken the U.S., we need leaders who are curious about the world, its history and its cultures. The nomination of Sarah Palin sends exactly the wrong message to the world and guarantees four more years of foreign policy and military mistakes in a world far more dangerous than it was eight years ago.“

 

Your Daily Laugh

Check out this hilarious vid on Sarah Palin

 

NOW Backs Obama-Biden

The most influential women’s organization in America, the 500,000-member National Organization for Women, has come out in support of Barack Obama and Joe Biden over McCain-Palin. From The Independent:

“The addition of Sarah Palin gave us a new sense of urgency,” Kim Gandy, the head of NOW, told National Public Radio. “She is being portrayed as a supporter of women’s rights… as a feminist when in fact her positions on so many of the issues are really anathema to ours.
“A lot of women think it’s a great thing for a woman to be running for vice-president,” she continued, “but they are completely dismayed when they find out her positions. The idea that she opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest – those kinds of positions are completely out of step with American women and once they find out about those positions, they get a little less excited.”

In Alaska at the weekend, a Welcome Home rally for Mrs Palin was dwarfed by a demonstration organised by Alaska Women Reject Palin, which was held on the lawn of a downtown Anchorage library.

…Wasilla resident, Phil Munger, a music composer and teacher, says she pushed an evangelical agenda in the town. “She wanted to get people who believed in creationism on the [school] board. I bumped into her after my band played at a graduation ceremony at the Assembly of God [a church]. I said, ‘Sarah, how can you believe in creationism – your father’s a science teacher.’ And she said, ‘We don’t have to agree on everything.’ I pushed her on the earth’s creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she’d seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them.”

Mr Munger also asked Mrs Palin if she believed in the End of Days, the doomsday scenario when the Messiah will return. “She looked in my eyes and said, ‘Yes, I think I will see Jesus come back to earth in my lifetime’.”

No wonder Palin doesn’t flinch at the idea of war with Russia. She’s a complete, Rapture-lovin’ nutjob.

 

Cottle on Palin

Michelle Cottle is a powerful, successful woman. As senior editor of The New Republic, Cottle has made great strides in revitalizing her publication. She’s also a strong, effective voice for feminism, something that’s reflected in her take on Republican running mate Sarah Palin:

“…the strong, proud, fearless, gender-transcendent Hillary morphed into a disrespected, mistreated victim. Grievance feminism came roaring back with a vengeance. Clinton’s supporters increasingly went from praising her gender-neutral success to celebrating her triumph over a male-dominated system and decrying the patriarchal forces still aligned against her. Obama wasn’t just beating Clinton; he was behaving, as Hillary surrogate Geraldine Ferraro charged, in a “terribly sexist” fashion.

…just when you thought it was all over and the recovery could begin, Republicans handed us Sarah Palin.

The Palin pick is disheartening on so many levels. For starters, even what little we know about the Alaska governor’s policy views is enough to make a traditional feminist weep. The staunchly conservative Palin not only opposes abortion rights (even in cases of rape or incest), she also supports abstinence-only sex education and takes a strict free-market approach toward health care.

Of course, these days, the feminist mantle is claimed by pro-life conservatives and pro-choice progressives alike. Palin herself is a proud member of Feminists for Life. Feminism seems no longer to denote a particular set of values or ideological agenda; it is merely a label appropriated to proclaim that one is committed to the best interests of women–whatever one believes those to be.

By far the most insulting aspect of Palin’s candidacy is the McCain team’s hope that placing a ballsy female on the ticket will attract some former Hillary supporters by stoking their gender-based resentments against Obama and the DNC. Palin has been happy to encourage this strategy by cheering Hillary’s “eighteen million cracks in the glass ceiling” and offering herself up as a way to help women go even farther. Sadly, some Hillary dead-enders may be so blinded by bitterness that they fall for this nonsense. The rest of us should be outraged by a strategy so nakedly founded on the premise that Hillary gals were driven more by identity politics than by any interest in their candidate’s values, ideology, or qualifications.

Am I suggesting that all of these setbacks for feminism are Palin’s fault? Or Hillary’s? Or that there is nothing at all to celebrate in their achievements? Of course not. Neither would I argue for a second that these smart, ambitious women shouldn’t be pushing as hard as they can to get what they want out of life. But, as with any enduring movement, feminism has its shining moments and its discouraging ones. I just wish someone had warned me ahead of time that this election season would wind up falling with such a thud into the latter category.”

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=c1fd53cd-51a8-4078-9269-674b24fdabea

 

Steinem on Palin

Another feminist icon has denounced McCain VP nominee, Sarah Palin. This time it’s Gloria Steinem. Excerpted from Steinem’s op-ed piece in the LA Times:

“This isn’t the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters.

Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton’s candidacy stood for – and that Barack Obama’s still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, “Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.”

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can’t do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn’t say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden’s 37 years’ experience.

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she’s won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain’s campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn’t know it’s about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate’s views on “God, guns and gays” ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let’s be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can’t tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin’s value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women’s wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves “abstinence-only” programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers’ millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn’t spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don’t doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn’t just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn’t just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn’t just echo McCain’s pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, “women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership,” so he may be voting for Palin’s husband.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can’t appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can’t be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.

This could be huge.”

 

Warner on Palin

At a time when merely questioning a candidate’s qualifications for the job means running the risk of being branded a misogynist, I was relieved to read Judith Warner’s rebuke of Sarah Palin in The New York Times. Here are some excerpts:

It turns out there was something more nauseating than the nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate this past week. It was the tone of the acclaim that followed her acceptance speech.

“Drill, baby, drill,” clapped John Dickerson, marveling at Palin’s ability to speak and smile at the same time as an indication of her unexpected depths and unsuspected strengths. “It was clear Palin was having fun, and it’s hard to have fun if you’re scared or a lightweight,” he wrote in Slate.

Thus began the official public launch of our country’s now most-prominent female politician. The condescension – damning with faint praise – was reminiscent of the more overt misogyny of Samuel Johnson.

“A woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs,” the wit once observed. “It is not done well; but you are surprized to find it done at all.”

Palin sounded, at times, like she was speaking a foreign language as she gave voice to the beautifully crafted words that had been prepared for her on Wednesday night.

But that wasn’t held against her. Thanks to the level of general esteem that greeted her ascent to the podium, it seems we’ve all got to celebrate the fact that America’s Hottest Governor (Princess of the Fur Rendezvous 1983, Miss Wasilla 1984) could speak at all.

Could there be a more thoroughgoing humiliation for America’s women?

Why does this woman – who to some of us seems as fake as they can come, with her delicate infant son hauled out night after night under the klieg lights and her pregnant teenage daughter shamelessly instrumentalized for political purposes — deserve, to a unique extent among political women, to rank as so “real”?

Because the Republicans, very clearly, believe that real people are idiots. This disdain for their smarts shows up in the whole way they’ve cast this race now, turning a contest over economic and foreign policy into a culture war of the Real vs. the Elites. It’s a smoke and mirrors game aimed at diverting attention from the fact that the party’s tax policies have helped create an elite that’s more distant from “the people” than ever before. And from the fact that the party’s dogged allegiance to up-by-your-bootstraps individualism — an individualism exemplified by Palin, the frontierswoman who somehow has managed to “balance” five children and her political career with no need for support — is leading to a culture-wide crack-up.

One of the worst poisons of the American political climate right now, the thing that time and again in recent years has led us to disaster, is the need people feel for leaders they can “relate” to. This need isn’t limited to women; it brought us after all, two terms of George W. Bush. And it isn’t new; Americans have always needed to feel that their leaders were, on some level, people like them.

But in the past, it was possible to fill that need through empathetic connection. Few Depression-era voters could “relate” to Franklin Roosevelt’s patrician background, notes historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. “It was his ability to connect to them that made them feel they could connect to him,” she told me in a phone interview.

“This election is not about issues,” Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager said this week. “This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” That’s a scary thought. For the takeaway is so often base, a reflection more of people’s fears and insecurities than of our hopes and dreams.

We’re not likely to get a worthy female president anytime soon.

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/the-mirrored-ceiling/?hp

 

Miss Perception

Oh John, Oh Sarah!

I’m beginning to wonder whether John McCain wasn’t having another “senior moment” when he chose Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. McCain, never one to get caught up in trivial detail – such as Sunni versus Shiite or whether he’s got five homes or seven – didn’t seem to notice that Saint Sarah, hockey mom of America, has a few stains on her apron.

It seems that, so long as the woman is a political opponent, Mrs. Palin will laugh heartily enough when someone calls that other woman a “bitch”, or a “cancer” or just plain fat. As the Huffington Post reports, the Repug veep nominee did just that during a talk show appearance earlier this year that the Anchorage Daily News called, “plain and simple one of the most unprofessional, childish and inexcusable performances I’ve ever seen from a politician.”

“Early on in the conversation before Palin started to crack up, Lester referred to Sen. Green as a jealous woman and a cancer. Palin, who knows full well Lyda Green is a cancer survivor, didn’t do what any decent person would do, say, “Bob, that’s going too far.”
But as the conversation moved on, Lester intensified his attack on Green.

Lester questioned Green’s motherhood, asking Palin if the senator cares about her own kids. Palin laughs.

Then Lester clearly sets the stage for what he is about to say by warning his large audience and Palin. He says, “Governor you can’t say this but I will, Lyda Green is a cancer and a b—-.” Palin laughs for the second time.

What were teenage boys thinking when they heard the governor laugh at someone being called a b—-? How about the teenage girls who look up to Palin. What did they think when they heard her laugh?

But there is more. Lester then describes Green’s chair as big and cushy. A clear reference to the senator’s weight. Palin laughs a third time. She’s just having a grand old time.

Palin was clearly enjoying every second of Lester’s vicious attack on her political rival.”

Mrs. Governor Palin later released a statement. “The Governor called Senator Green to explain that she does not condone name-calling in any way and apologized if there was a perception that the comment was attributed to the Governor.”

It’s sort of like how Mrs. Palin addresses the “perception” that two dozen phone calls from her governor’s office to urge the commissioner of Public Security to fire trooper Wooten might be an attempt to twist arms, just because Wooten was in a custody battle with Palin’s sister.

It doesn’t take too many incidents like this before a real perception emerges and, in the case of this Repug, it’s a perception that comes with its own odour.

 

And Now, Wrap Up the Disgruntled Women’s Vote

John McCain is all about experience. He says so every chance he gets to anyone who’ll listen.

So, who did John pick as his veep candidate – the person who will have to take over the reins in the Oval Office when his already wobbly mind packs in?

It’s Alaska’s rookie governor Sarah Palin! Sarah has all the credentials one would expect in someone second to the throne. She was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska until just two years ago and has held the governorship of that state since, gasp, 2006.

Mayor of a town of 6,000 to vice president in two easy steps. Just add water and stir!

Why did McCain pass over far more “experienced” prospects? Hmmm, I don’t know, can you figure it out?

Before the announcement, McCain’s communications director, Jill Hazelbaker, said,
“He’s going to choose someone who can be a partner in governing. He’s going to choose someone who brings character and principle to the table and who shares his priorities. And I’m confident that he’s going to make a great pick.”

Oh great, we’re going to have the mayor of Wasilla as McCain’s “partner in governing.”