Saturday, September 13, 2008

The Next-Gen George Bush

This weekend the evidence is in: Sarah Palin is just as much of a deceitful, crony-mongering, power-hungry narcissist as our current President.

It turns out she lied about visiting Iraq, and she's still lying about her support for the Bridge to Nowhere, tonight in Nevada:

Palin has come under fire in recent days for misleadingly saying she told Congress “thanks but no thanks,” refusing an earmark for a bridge to a sparsely inhabited island in her home state. Independent groups and media fact-checkers have said Palin advocated for the federal earmark before opposing it, only ended after Congress had essentially killed it, and kept the $223 million for the appropriation after the project was killed.

Palin had cut the refrain from her speech during her three-day visit to Alaska. But she came back to it today, citing it as an example of earmark reform she and McCain would push for in the White House.

Hired unqualified old friends to state jobs as Governor and ran the office as her personal fiefdom:

But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.

And it's all about her and her trail of bad blood (WaPo):

"Sarah always did and still does surround herself with people she gets along well with," she said. "They protect her, and that's what she needs. She has surrounded herself with people who would not allow others to disagree with Sarah. Either you were in favor of everything Sarah was doing or had a black mark by your name."

There's more from The New York Times, and decide for yourself how disturbing it is:
Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

***

Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin’s first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.

“I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,’ ” Ms. Chase recalled. “She replied, ‘I want to be president.’ ”

***

In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.

Your attorney, Mr. Showers told Ms. Palin, is costing me lots of money.

***

Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayor’s use — employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.

***

But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

“Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”

“I’m still proud of Sarah,” she added, “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”

***

During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins.

Many politicians say they typically learn of her initiatives — and vetoes — from news releases.

Mayors across the state, from the larger cities to tiny municipalities along the southeastern fiords, are even more frustrated. Often, their letters go unanswered and their pleas ignored, records and interviews show.

***

At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governor’s remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally.

The administration’s e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath.

Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of Ms. Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, he found himself branded a “hater.”

It is part of a pattern, Mr. Fagan said, in which Ms. Palin characterizes critics as “bad people who are anti-Alaska.”

Any of this sound familiar?

She just younger.

Which means she'll be around longer.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Marshall is now PUMMELING Gramps in ways that I think get right to the heart of the issue of his supposed honor, and are going to be impossible for the MSM to ignore, like:

"Yesterday I asked what consequences John MccCain might face for repeated instances of lying if he were still in the Navy. The Uniform Code of Military Justice covers official lies and, more generally, immoral conduct. But there's also the US Naval Academy Honor Concept. The USNA makes clear it's not a 'code', in that it's not a specific set of rules but a general statement of moral conduct. But in the more colloquial sense most of us understand, it's the Academy's honor code, the rules of conduct midshipman are supposed to live by and against which they are judged.

The first two lines of the Concept are:
1) Midshipmen are persons of integrity: They stand for that which is right.
2) They tell the truth and ensure that the full truth is known. They do not lie."


Also, it appears that Gramps' campaign has thrown down the gauntlet to all news organizations that they can f*ck off:

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said this to the Politico about the increased media scrutiny of the campaign's factual claims: "We're running a campaign to win. And we're not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it."

I think they're making a BIG mistake, and are going to be under an deluge this week.

Mark Netter said...

I'm only hoping that the 52 days left don't give them enough time to pull out of this tailspin.

In fact, if they try to reverse, maybe that becomes an even bigger point at the debates.

Can McCain be branded, in time, as a flip-flopper, or is liar going to work and do the job?

Anonymous said...

This is going to be very interesting, because there's NO WAY Gramps is going to change his tune. Republicans don't believe in it -- lying is what they do, and a free pass is what they get.

Until now.

His only hope is to bully and bully and bully the press to try to make them buckle. If that doesn't work, he'll start screaming that the elitist media is trying to capsize him, and see if he can gin up the "real Americans vs the Eastern snobs" bullshit.

We'll see.

Just as an aside, Gramps has watched all manner of Repub since Reagan lie with impunity and get away with it; his own career was derailed by GWB telling ridiculous lies about him in 2000, and nobody cared. But now that he's trying to do the same thing to BO, journos are finally calling bullshit.

He must be ready to blow a gasket.

Mark Netter said...

I'd like to see that gasket blow about 45 minutes into the first Obama-McCain Presidential debate on September 26th!