As I sit here chomping Tums, I found this lovely gem from the master of satire Andy Borowitz of the Borowitz Report in my in-box.
Pitbull Owners Blast Palin
Comparison ‘Offensive,’ Dog Fanciers Complain
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who famously compared herself to a pitbull in her vice-presidential acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, appears to have antagonized a key voting bloc in the upcoming election, the nation’s pitbull owners.
While Gov. Palin’s assertion that the only difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull was “lipstick” drew a loud ovation from the Republican faithful in St. Paul, it raised the ire of the Pitbull Anti-Defamation League, a powerful association of pitbull fanciers who monitor the portrayal of pitbulls in the media.
“As someone who has owned pitbulls for the past twenty years, my jaw dropped,” said Carol Foyler, the group’s executive director. “Most of us are thinking the same thing: enough is enough.”
Ms. Foyler said that for pitbull owners who have grown weary of their prized dogs being defamed and mistreated, Gov. Palin’s wisecrack was the last straw: “We’re all like, first the Michael Vick thing, and now this.”
Tracy Klugian, an irate pitbull owner from Buffalo, New York, echoed Ms. Foyler’s sentiments: “I can think of many differences between pitbulls and Gov. Palin – for starters, pitbulls don’t try to get their ex-brothers-in-law fired.”
With Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill) and John McCain (R-Ariz) fighting for every last vote, a coveted voting bloc like pitbull owners could very well decide the 2008 election, political insiders believe.
While Gov. Palin was not available for comment on the pitbull controversy, a spokesperson for the McCain-Palin ticket offered this official statement: “Gov. Palin does in fact have one thing in common with a pitbull: neither is capable of answering questions from reporters.”
Looks like it’s going to be another good day to tune in to the live feed from KUDO radio, here in Anchorage. The show Cutting Edge, with host CC will air from 3-6pm Alaska Time. That’s one hour earlier than PST, four hours earlier than EST.
Today, they’ll be dishing some good dirt.
On the show, Representative Les Gara is goint to talk about how “McCain’s people are coming after Senator Hollis French“. French is the legislator who is heading up the ongoing Palin ethics investigation.
Republican representative John Coghill said in a letter to the chairman of the Alaska Legislative Council that comments made by Hollis French concerning Palin and the “troopergate” probe were political.
Coghill, a preacher who is a staunch supporter of Palin, said French’s comments that the inquiry into Palin’s dismissal of Alaska’s public safety commissioner could form an “October surprise” indicated he was not neutral.
Also in the show, John Cyr, the Executive Director of Public Safety Employees (PSEA) will talk about the ethics complaint that was recently filed against Palin by the union, alleging improper use of information from the personnel file of Alaska State Trooper, Mike Wooten – the ‘trooper’ in ‘Troopergate’.
They love hearing from out of state callers, so feel free to call in and ask questions, or share your views, even if you’re not from Alaska.
FOR THE LIVE FEED, CLICK HERE. To call in, the number is 907-569-1080
OK, it wasn’t that bad, but it was a pretty bad gaffe.
The number one issue of concern on people’s minds these days is the economy. Speaking before voters in Colorado Springs today Saturday, Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.”
>>>>>HOCKEY BUZZER NOISE!<<<<<<
Sorry. These lending institutions “aren’t taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization,” according to McClatchy.
As the current administration skips merrily along with their convenient ideology of privatizing profits, and socializing failures, Palin is obviously oblivious to the inner workings of….uh oh….the ECONOMY.
Palin’s statement “is somewhat nonsensical because up until yesterday there was sort of no public funding there,” said Andrew Jakobovics of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “The ‘too expensive to tax payers,’ I don’t know where that comes from.”
“You would like to think that someone who is going to be vice president and conceivable president would know what Fannie and Freddie do,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “These are huge institutions and they are absolutely central to our country’s mortgage debt. To not have a clue what they do doesn’t speak well for her, I’d say.”
Neither does she. But notice that Palin didn’t dodge the question. She didn’t panic and say she’d need to check with someone, or that she needed more information, or skirt around it. She actually felt confident enough to answer, and lay it all out there – and be completely wrong. She had no clue.
At least we now know that McCain, who admitted he didn’t really know much about the economy, decided to balance the ticket by choosing a running mate who doesn’t know ANYthing.
Anyone searching the internet for information about the suddenly famous governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, won’t take long to stumble across the letter written by Anne Kilkenny, resident of Palin’s home town of Wasilla, Alaska. Kilkenny wrote the letter, exposing the not-so-pretty side of Sarah Palin to family and friends the day after Palin’s surprise VP nomination. It went instantly viral.
She said she worked and reworked the letter to add things as people have asked more questions, deleted things that sounded too much like speculation and tried to keep it balanced with both positive and negative information.
“It’s not to make her look bad. It’s not to make her look good. It’s just to make her what she is,” she said.
In the letter, she lauds the former mayor as smart, hardworking and savvy. But, she says, far from being a fiscal conservative, Palin left Wasilla in debt, was intolerant of “divergent opinions” and “has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help.”
Much of what Kilkenny states has been pointed out by others in news stories. Palin, on the national pulpit, has lauded herself as a fiscal conservative who cut government budgets. But as mayor and governor she presided over growing budgets. Some of her information has received less attention.
As mayor, as Kilkenny notes, Palin benefited enormously from a sales tax passed by the previous mayor John Stein, whom she defeated in a bitter campaign in which she derided him as a “good ole boy.” That sales tax, passed to fund the police force, left the city flush with so much cash Palin was able to cut property taxes and still have revenues increase.
The letter is everywhere. Picked up by the Atlantic Monthly, the Anchorage Daily News, Daily Kos, this blog and too many others to list. Google it, and be amazed. Kilkenny has talked to the New York Times and National Public Radio, and is being hounded by the flock of press that has descended on our usually sleepy ‘little’ state.
With some notable exceptions, reaction to her letter has been positive, especially by those who are seeking the ‘real’ story of Sarah Palin from someone who knew her long before her meteoric rise to political stardom.
“How’s anyone to know if the people who do know don’t say anything,” she said.
As the McCain-Palin ticket promises to ‘drain the swamp’ in Washington D.C., Kilkenny has begun that process in Wasilla.
Whoa, Nellie! You may need to be sitting down for this one. Check out this video from a meeting of the Alaskan Independence Party. The guy in the beard and suspenders is Vice Chairman of the AIP, Dexter Clark. Partial transcript is below, but you may want to sit and really listen to the whole thing. It’s like being a fly on the wall at the crazy uncle/secessionist convention! The AIP now has over 13,000 registered members, and added 300 this year.
The basic argument of the Alaskan Independence Party has always been the number one plank in our platform – the question of our vote to become a state. So…the most blaring disparity in that vote was the definition of an eligible voter. Among those qualified to cast a ballot were 41,000 American soldiers and 36,000 dependants. Now, to the native population of Alaska, to me, these were occupation troops! And they were made eligible and, in fact encouraged to vote. There were educational meetings held on the military bases. I can’t imagine them telling anyone that anything but that statehood would be very good for the military – in fact they still have 6, 7 big bases and numerous smaller holdings in the state. Statehood would be good for the military. Now can you imagine the international uproar if American troops had all went and got their purple fingers in Iraq?
After his discussion of the American ‘occupying troops’ getting the right to vote (purple finger analogy), he goes on to say that instead of having the options to vote to either remain a territory, become a commonwealth, become a state or become an independent nation, that voters were only given the option – Statehood? Yes or No. And also, under the Voter Rights Act of the time, you had to be able to read and write English to vote, which disenfranchised much of the Alaska Native population. There’s the rationale for taking the vote we never got to take. Now, we get to the good part, just before 6:00 on the video.
“Our current governor, we mentioned at the last conference, the one we were hoping would get elected, Sarah Palin, did get elected. There’s a joke, she’s a pretty good looking gal, there’s a joke goes around we’re the coldest state with the hottest governor. (laughter) And there was a lot of talk about her moving up. She was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town — that was a non-partisan job. But to get along and go along — she eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won’t go into that. She also had about an 80% approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership.“
So…basically what he’s saying here, is that Palin’s philosophical loyalties lie with the Alaska Independence Party, but in order to get elected, she had to distance herself from the AIP and infiltrate the Republican Party, because they’re the only ones who can ever actually get voted into office. But don’t worry boys and girls, her heart is still with us, and her sympathies are with the agenda of the Alaskan Independence Party, namely, independence.
Then he begins to discuss the the oil industry, how it breeds corruption, and how Alaskans aren’t making enough money from it. He also talks about Republican Senator Ted Stevens and Republican Congressman Don Young being under investigation. (Young is still under investigation, and Stevens is indicted on seven felony counts of non-disclosure of gifts totalling over $250,000 from an oil service company). He goes on:
If there is ever a time that is right for change, this is it. In our own situation, we discussed several options. Do we try and get our case into the International Court of Justice, or to the World Court? Several Native Alaskan organizations are taking that route, independent of us. They want to do it on their own terms. They haven’t realized, in my mind, the potential of their own political party. The pitfalls of an organized political party – you don’t have any control over who joins that party. They put the X next to it on the registration form, and if they join the — go into the primary, and win that primary, they’re your candidate, like it or not. I think Ron Paul has kind of proven that. He’s a dyed -in-the-wool Libertarian. He came to Alaska and spoke as a Libertarian. And he put the Republican label on to get elected. That’s all there is to it. And any one of your organizations should be using that same tactic to infiltrate. I know that Christian Exodus is in favor of it, I know that the Free State Movement is in favor of it. I don’t know that they even care which party it is. Which ever party you see where you can get something done, get into that political party, even though it does have it’s problems. Right now that is one of the only avenues. If you can get a few people on the city council, or a town board, you can have some effect.
Wow. Another plot twist in our drama. So, despite the claims that Palin has been a member of the Republican Party since 1982, this would appear to contradict that pretty strongly. Dexter is implying that Palin ‘marked the box’ Republican, but isn’t one.
Let’s indulge in a little mind movie for a moment. Suppose, if you will, a video surfaced of a local Islamic mullah talking in a mosque about how Barack Obama, in order to get elected, had infiltrated a Christian church, and was planning to take over the country with an Islamic agenda. How would that play in Peoria?
So, the Alaskan Independence Party has 13,000 registered members, but how many others are out there??? ….They walk among us…
UPDATE: Oops…forgot my Quote of the Day from Alaskan Independence Party founder Joe Voegler:
“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!”
Mudflats 
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