McCain-Palin supporter says no treats for Obama kids on Halloween

A suburban Detroit woman has decided to scare up the vote among neighborhood children by just offering treats to John McCain supporters.

Shirley Nagel of Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., handed out candy Friday only to those who shared her support for the Republican presidential candidate and his running mate Sarah Palin. Others were turned away empty-handed.

TV station WJBK, Fox 2 News says a sign outside Nagel’s house warned: “No handouts for Obama supporters, liars, tricksters or kids of supporters.”

Nagel calls Democrat Barack Obama “scary.” When asked about children who were turned away empty-handed and crying, she said: “Oh well. Everybody has a choice.”

There were kids as young as 4 years old that went away crying because she wouldn’t give them any candy. This is so sad that anyone would do this to a child.

Prominent Alaskans Demand an Apology from the McCain-Palin Campaign.

One of the most interesting things about living in Alaska is that you get a true appreciation of how large and how small it is – large geographically, and small socially. The fact that there are so few people means that it’s almost impossible to spend a day doing errands without running in to someone you know, it’s common to find out that two of your unrelated friends actually know each other, and that engaged citizens can really affect positive change in the political process. Another consequence of this “smallness factor” is that those who hold public office, and do a good job, become very well respected in the community. Everyone knows who they are, and when they have something to say, people listen.

People generally respect one another here. You learn quickly that you’d better treat people well or it might come back to haunt you. The guy you just told off will undoubtedly end up being your kid’s soccer coach, or the guy who pulls over to help you change a tire when it’s 20 below zero. The woman that just made you land on the horn in traffic is undoubtedly going to be standing next to you in line wherever you’re going, or will be serving you your lunch.

This is why Alaskans, regardless of their political affiliation, watched in horror as Megan Stapleton (former local newscaster turned Palin spokeswoman) and attorney Ed O’Callaghan (an ‘outsider’ hired by the McCain campaign) started giving press conferences, calling themselves the “Truth Squad”. The Truth Squad’s purpose it seemed, was to sully the reputation of former Commissioner of Public Safety Walt Monegan. According to the independent investigator hired by the Alaska State Legislature, Palin abused her power in his firing. She wanted Monegan to fire her ex-brother in law, an Alaska State Trooper who she felt had wronged her family. Monegan couldn’t legally act, because the matter was already closed. Palin fired him anyway.

[More...]

It was either going to play out in the media that Palin abused her power, or that Monegan deserved it. So the Truth Squad got to work, and they broke the cardinal rule in Alaska – treat people well. Monegan is well-loved, and respected across the board. So, for Palin’s story to stick, the McCain-Palin campaign had to make this look like Monegan’s problem. Enter the Truth Squad. According to them, Monegan had a “rogue mentality”, and he committed acts of “outright insubordination”. Try to get a job in law enforcement if the Governor of the state has called you an “insubordinate rogue”.

So, when Representative Les Gara, in an epic piece of video footage, demanded that Meg Stapleton (former news anchor turned Palin spokeswoman) apologize to Walt Monegan, and the other Legislators that had gotten smeared by the “Truth Squad”, he wasn’t kidding. This wasn’t some quaint, old-fashioned request, nor was it just a PR stunt. He really did think she owed them an apology. So did a lot of other Alaskans.

Now, two other prominent Alaska lawmakers have joined in the formal request for an apology. Gail Phillips, former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Chancy Croft, former Democratic President of the State Senate released a press release yesterday, that has already received wide coverage in the state, on radio and in today’s Anchorage Daily News. This is one more thing that will be waiting on Governor Palin’s desk when she gets home. It’s a good letter, and it sums up eloquently what many Alaskans feel. Here it is reprinted, by permission, in its entirety:

October 28, 2008

Dear Senator McCain:

We are writing because we believe an apology is owed from your campaign to Alaskans and our former Commissioner of Public Safety, Walt Monegan. As former legislative leaders of both major political parties in Alaska, we haven’t always agreed upon political issues. However, we adamantly agree that Mr. Monegan, who is well respected in Alaska by people of all party affiliations, is owed an apology. The attacks against Commissioner Monegan for his role in administering a personnel issue, now known statewide as “Troopergate”, were unwarranted and wrong. Mr. Monegan is a former U.S. Marine, a front-line police officer, was Chief of Police in Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, served as our State’s Commissioner of Public Safety and served both Republicans and Democrats with professionalism and honor.

This summer Governor Palin fired Mr. Monegan as Commissioner, which was within her purview. However, in July, the Legislature, through unanimous action by the bi-partisan Legislative Council, voted to investigate Commissioner Monegan’s termination and whether his refusal to fire Trooper Wooten played a role in his termination. The investigation had nothing to do with your campaign.

After Governor Palin was named as your running mate, your campaign stepped into the fray. In an effort to discredit and stop the bi-partisan legislative investigation into whether or not Governor Palin acted improperly in seeking the termination of her former brother-in-law, Trooper Wooten, your campaign engaged in a near-daily course of personal attacks against Mr. Monegan and members of the legislature. It’s obvious to many of us that you probably were not aware of these attacks by your campaign committee; however, since the final responsibility is yours, we feel Mr. Monegan is owed an apology from you.

Sarah Palin on the economy ???

Sara Kugler of AP writes …

*
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said Wednesday that the United States could be headed for another Great Depression if Congress doesn’t act on the financial crisis.
*
Palin said the answer to the financial crisis doesn’t necessarily have to be the bailout plan that the Bush administration has proposed, but that it should be some form of bipartisan action to reform Wall Street.

Another part of the article addressed Palin’s competence and her declining ratings …

*
Recent surveys have shown that Palin’s popularity, while still strong, has begun to fade.
*
Laura Bush said that Palin lacked sufficient foreign policy experience
*
McCain has insisted Palin is ready to take over as president, but he made no mention of including her in the meetings he wants in Washington to deal with the financial crisis.

LMW COMMENT:

Is there anyone in America who cares what Sarah Palin has to say about the economy?

Is there anyone, even her fervent supporters, who believes she has anything to say except whatever has been stuffed into her by the McCain campaign staff?

Sarah Palin is a Socialist, and She Can’t Buy My Vote.

Oh, how quickly they forget. While watching John McCain, and Sarah Palin decrying Obama for his “socialist” tendencies, I have found myself becoming increasingly amused. One of the things that defined Sarah Palin’s pre-VP candidate career in Alaska was the fact that nobody seemed to know what to make of her. I refer you to my comments on this, back in the beginning of June, 2008 titled “McCain’s a Greenie. Palin’s a Socialist. Hillary’s the President.”

I’m holding my sides laughing about the Newsweek article that has Alaskan’s all a-twitter, comparing Sarah Palin to Hugo Chavez. Having claimed my staunch neutrality about Sarah Palin, I’m enjoying standing in the middle of the swirling tornado that has become the Palin phenomenon and enjoying my popcorn. Is she a crazy creationist wingnut? A big business-hating, free-gas-doling socialist? A maverick hockey mom? The next Vice President? No one seems to know.

Obviously to regular readers, my “staunch neutrality” about Palin has gone the way of the Steller’s Sea Cow. (For you non-Alaskans; it’s extinct). I did not vote for Palin, but was willing to give her a shot. I like to think I’m open-minded. So, knowing what I know, and all the recent “socialist talk” made me look up this old post, and I was amused.

I got my $1200 energy rebate check from Sarah Palin a couple weeks ago, and so did every other human being in Alaska. This money, which came from the wealth of oil companies doing business in Alaska, got spread around by the Governor to help Alaskans defray the rising costs of energy that made the oil companies profitable enough to provide Alaska with the money for the rebate check that defrays the cost of energy…..(you get the circular idea).

The Descent of Sarah Palin, and the Decision of the GOP.

Golden Girl —> Pit bull —> Air Head —> Diva. Thus has been the progression of labels given to Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential wannabee, Sarah Palin. Now we can add a new monicker to the de-evolution of the Republican Party’s darling girl. “Whack job.”

And no, this didn’t come from a blog, or the “Liberal Media”. It came from an official in the McCain campaign! Have a listen.

This is a good segment. I particularly like the acknowledgment that the Republican party needs to decide what it’s going to be. After the next four years, which looks like a scenario in which the GOP will be wandering the moors like King Lear, they need to make some choices. Will they look to their pre-Reagan past for inspiration? Or will they allow the party to be cannibalized by the religious right, with the pit bull-diva-whack job as head chef?

Sarah Palin, proud socialist

The best part of Hendrik Hertzberg’s excellent New Yorker commentary about McCain and Palin’s failed attempt to convince people that Obama is a socialist is the final paragraph containing this boast from Gov. Sarah Palin:

The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.” Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist.

The Lyin’, the Witch and the Wardrobe – An Alaskan Tale.

Sarah Palin has “fairy tale” written all over her. From her humble beginnings to her humble middlings, to her swift Cinderella rise to fame as Alaska’s first female governor. And now to the surreal celestial realm of national celebrity, riding around in her pumpkin coach with her glass stilleto-heeled slippers trying to be the second-most important person in the land! I had almost convinced myself that this was the Palin metaphor, except for the one glaring problem. Cinderella was nice. Cinderella was humble, and sweet. She loved the little creatures. She sang like an angel. Cinderella was not a diva, or a pitbull, or a hockey mom. Not even close. And she didn’t shoot the little creatures for fun.

The quest for the perfect Palin metaphor fell stagnant, until coffee the other day with a couple friends. We were talking about how Barack Obama truly represents the American dream, but Palin is nothing but a fairy tale. Quest for metaphor woke up again. ”There has GOT to be a perfect metaphor for Sarah Palin,” I kept thinking. What are her features…She’s beautiful, she’s seductive, she’s not what she appears to be, she sucks people in, she has an agenda that people don’t realize, she has no qualms about throwing people under the bus if it suits her, she’s manipulative, she has a lust for power, she is the center of her world……lights flashing, buzzers buzzing, whirring machine noises……..DING! A small index card is ejected from the metaphor machine.

“Sarah Palin, Queen of Narnia”. Remember the White Witch? Well…everyone else called her the White Witch, but she called herself the Queen. Now close your eyes, and imagine… After struggling through the world of Alaska political corruption, we suddenly find ourselves out in the fresh air, standing by a lamp post, in a strange new place. We see a sleigh silently moving across the snow. Everything is glittering, and we can see our breath. It’s been snowing for a long, long time. The sleigh is pulled by six pure white caribou, (or polar bears…take your pick). There is the silver tinkling of little bells as the sleigh approaches, and we see sitting there, wrapped in the furs, and clad in something fabulous from Nieman Marcus, is the White Witch. Stunningly beautiful, icy cold, smiling.

She sizes us up. She smiles, a radiant glossy, tattooed lip-liner smile. She winks. We feel warm and reassured. She scoots over and pats the white furs on the seat, and we climb in. We’re special, she tells us. She’s here to serve us, to help us, to get ‘er done. She knows what we want. Even though she’s wearing a $3000 polar bear fur jacket and $400 designer snow boots, under all that, she’s really just like us. Are we cold?, she asks. We are offered hot cocoa. “Thank you”, we say, “That cocoa is just like a breath of fresh air!” ” The last guy that asked us into a sleigh, kind of beat us around a little bit”, we confide. “He told us we could trust him, but he was a bad bad man.”

The White Witch bites her lip a little, in sympathy, smooths our hair, and tells us the bad man is gone forever…she saw to that. He’ll never come back. She even sold his sleigh on Ebay so we wouldn’t have to think about him any more. We smile, and start to feel a little sleepy.

Response To RNC’s New McCain Attack Ad ‘Storm’

The RNC’s newest McCain attack ad (“Storm”) makes the case that John McCain would be a steadier presence in the Oval Office than Barack Obama. It’s a silly ad, and not just because the financial crisis revealed McCain to be as herky-jerky as Obama is confident and composed.

The problem with the ad is that when you’re 72 and you’ve selected Sarah Palin as your running mate, the last argument you should be making is the experience argument.

I’ve put together a response to the new RNC attack, turning the ad around on itself, and applying its line of attack to Sarah Palin. Here it is:

The Palin Talking Point Generator.

At the Alaska State Fair, and other craft shows around town, I’ve seen a little device that makes me smile and think, “Only in Alaska.” It’s the carved wooden likeness of a moose. The hollow moose body can be filled with jelly beans. The tail, which is moveable, is used as a lever, which, when operated, dispenses a jelly bean “moose nugget” in the palm of your hand. It’s beginning to remind me of the Palin campaign.

Their strategy has become obvious. Crank out a steady stream of half-truths, talking points, wedge issues, folksy filler words, justifications and shiny, sweet flat-out lies. Do this fast enough, and by the time anyone takes the time to review, research, analyze, debunk, refute, and thoughtfully respond, you’re already five piles of moose nuggets ahead of them.

Picture a five year old who gets a hold of the moose nugget generator, pumping that tail up and down as fast as his little hand can go, watching that big sticky pile accumulate in his hand. Yum.

It’s hard to know where to start, but let’s start with the interview she did with the Chicago Tribune today. And which nugget? Let’s try that nice shiny green one.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin insisted in an interview with the Tribune on Thursday that she did not accept $150,000 worth of designer clothes from the Republican Party and “that is not who we are.” ”That whole thing is just, bad!” she said. “Oh, if people only knew how frugal we are.”

Oh, dear. It sounds like she’s been very misunderstood indeed. People are so petty! But, wait a minute….hasn’t she…been..wearing those clothes? And….that’s the dollar amount that the RNC reported in their own disclosure forms. If you pay nothing, and get $150,000 in clothing, hair styling and makeup, that sounds pretty frugal to me. I just don’t get it. She’s not making any sense…WAIT! Another jelly bean! Look, it’s pink!

“I think Hillary Clinton was held to a different standard in her primary race,” Palin said. “Do you remember the conversations that took place about her, say superficial things that they don’t talk about with men, her wardrobe and her hairstyles, all of that? That’s a bit of that double standard.”

Hillary Clinton? Double standard? Wait a minute. There may be something to that, but I don’t think Hillary Clinton spent $150,000 of the DNC’s money to buy a new wardrobe. Her Senate wardrobe was just fine, just like…um….a Governor’s wardrobe should be, right? And what about John Edwards and that $400 hair cut? The Republicans had a field day over that one! Oh….look! A yellow one!

“I’m not going to complain about it, I’m not going to whine about it, I’m going to plow through that, because we are embarking on something greater than that, than allowing that double standard to adversely affect us,” she said.

We know American’s do NOT like complainers and whiners, that’s for sure. That’s pretty much the kiss of death for a politician. So it’s good she’s not complaining, except for saying it’s unfair, and sexist, and there’s a double standard, and people don’t understand the real her, and it’s painful because….heeeeeyy. Come to think of it, that actually kind of sounds like complaining and whining to me! That’s pretty hypocritic…..Oooo! Another one! It’s red!

But polls suggest that McCain is in trouble, partly because of Palin, who has been criticized as lacking the experience to become president. This week’s NBC/Wall Street Journal poll suggested more people now think that Palin is hurting McCain’s chances of becoming president than President George W. Bush, whose national approval ratings are in the 20s.

Palin disputed such conclusions.

“I think that those reporters asking those questions should come to some of our rallies and ask some of those in the crowd why it is they are enthused,” she said, adding that the crowds see her as representing “hardworking, everyday American families.”

But the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll isn’t actually made up of questions asked by reporters. It’s questions asked by pollsters, and it’s done in a pretty scientific sort of way. I don’t think it would really be appropriate to send pollsters to your rallies to ask them why they are there. You see, that wouldn’t really be impartial, or be a representative sample of the way the country is thinking, which is why we actually have polls. And the voters are made up of people from all over, not just “enthused” McCain-Palin rally-goers… Surely, you can’t possibly think that people will take this seriou….

No means no.

Taking one last (maybe) look at the Branchflower Report (as the Alaska State Personnel Board’s investigation gets underway), I think it’s informative to take note of how many times Sarah Palin, her stalker husband Todd, and members of her “administration” kept trying to force the Wooten issue onto Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan’s agenda. Not only that, but how many times Monegan and his deputy, John Glass, warned them that getting involved would create legal jeopardy both for the state and for them as individuals, not to mention political embarrassment when it all came out, as these things so often do.

Between this incessant pressure, the end-arounds Palin tries to pull by sending one member of her “administration” after another to Monegan with the same inquiry, and the other Palin stories that have come out over the past few days (her insistence on expanding the power of the vice presidency, her $150,000 wardrobe upgrade, etc.), I think it points to a strong sense of entitlement, and a dangerous unwillingness to take no for an answer, even when the answer is, “No, that’s illegal.”

To set us up, let’s start with Branchflower’s questioning of Monegan about his initial meeting with Todd Palin, who summoned him on his own (that is, not to a meeting called by Sarah which he attended) to a private sit-down within weeks of Sarah’s assuming office, and that turned out to be all about launching the official vendetta against Wooten:

MR. BRANCHFLOWER: Did he — did Todd Palin give you something? Did he ask you to do something?
MR. MONEGAN: Yes, he did. Actually, there was — those three stacks of paper, we combined. You know, the photos, the documentation, and the private investigator’s report, he gave it to me as a packet and asked me to review it, so I told him I would.
MR. BRANCHFLOWER: Did he give you any specific request about those materials?
MR. MONEGAN: Just basically to look it over to see if we missed anything. Because he didn’t think what transpired — they didn’t take the complaint seriously or something to that effect.
MR. BRANCHFLOWER: Okay. And what did you do with the stack of materials that he gave you?
MR. MONEGAN: I told him I’d have — I told Todd that I would have the — compare it to the investigation. So I took the stack with me at the end of the meeting, returned back to DPS, and I gave it to Major Matt Leveque and asked him do a page-by-page comparison, did we miss anything on this. And he said he would.
MR. BRANCHFLOWER: Did you make any promises to Todd Palin?
MR. MONEGAN: The only promise I made to him, or the only statement I made, is I would look into it.