Looks like the Alaska Independence Party might be a bigger issue than we first thought. Although the McCain campaign has proven that Sarah Palin was never a member of the AIP, she did attend the convention in 2000 (and in 1994 according to the AIP) and also recorded the message to the AIP convention that I posted about yesterday. Also, her husband, Todd Palin, definitely was a member of the AIP from 1995-2002 (note that 2002 is the year that Sarah Palin first ran for statewide office).
The AIP founder, Joe Vogler, made the comments in 1991, in an interview that’s now housed at the Oral History Program in the Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
“The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government,” Vogler said in the interview, in which he talked extensively about his desire for Alaskan secession, the key goal of the AIP.
“And I won’t be buried under their damn flag,” Vogler continued in the interview, which also touched on his disappointment with the American judicial system. “I’ll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home.”
At another point, Volger advocated renouncing allegiance to the United States. In the course of denouncing Federal regulation over land, he said:
“And then you get mad. And you say, the hell with them. And you renounce allegiance, and you pledge your efforts, your effects, your honor, your life to Alaska.”
I think it’s critical we get to the bottom of this. How deep are Palin’s ties to the AIP and to Joe Vogler? Does she actually support Alaskan seccession? How can she be Vice President of the United States if she advocates seccession for her state?
Poor John McCain really didn’t think this through very well. Or maybe he did. I can’t decide which would be worse. Either way, the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate got him a weekend of nonstop press coverage, and made the right wing nuts in his party very happy. But things appear to be turning around now as the media and the blogosphere have begun digging into who Sarah Palin really is.
Then there is the very interesting information about Palin’s membership in the Alaskan Independence Party. The AIP wants Alaska to secede from the United States. And the McCain campaign will have a hell of a time denying this one, since Palin recorded a message to the 2008 AIP Convention.
OOPS! One might wonder if someone who doesn’t want her state to be part of this country should really be Vice President. This might be a problem.
And don’t forget “Troopergate,” Palin’s ongoing problem concerning her firing of Alaska’s chief public safety officer for refusing to fire the ex-husband of Palin’s sister.
That’s not really news, we all know John McCain cheated on his first wife. But Alan Colmes actually had some fun with that fact on Hannity & Colmes. Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for pointing out this hilarious video:
Our family has been through a lot. Some caused by nature, some caused by human weakness, and some – most recently – caused by the desire for sensationalism and profit without any regard for the human consequences. None of these has been easy. But we have stood with one another through them all. Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now, when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him.
John made a terrible mistake in 2006. The fact that it is a mistake that many others have made before him did not make it any easier for me to hear when he told me what he had done. But he did tell me. And we began a long and painful process in 2006, a process oddly made somewhat easier with my diagnosis in March of 2007. This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well. Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private.
The pain of the long journey since 2006 was about to be renewed.
John has spoken in a long on-camera interview I hope you watch. Admitting one’s mistakes is a hard thing for anyone to do, and I am proud of the courage John showed by his honesty in the face of shame. The toll on our family of news helicopters over our house and reporters in our driveway is yet unknown. But now the truth is out, and the repair work that began in 2006 will continue. I ask that the public, who expressed concern about the harm John’s conduct has done to us, think also about the real harm that the present voyeurism does and give me and my family the privacy we need at this time.
John Edwards has admitted that he had an affair with Rielle Hunter. The National Enquirer has been claiming this story for almost a year now, despite the repeated denials from Edwards. Edwards still claims that he is not the father of Rielle Hunter’s daughter.
What’s really a shame, I think, is that this will distract from the election. The media loves scandals, so this will probably be the dominant story for the next week or so. Hopefully they will tire of it by the time the conventions come around so we can get back to the much more important task of choosing our next president.
John McCain has a problem on his hands. His campaign manager Rick Davis was a well known, prominent lobbyist. McCain apparently thought that there wouldn’t be a problem having this lobbyist in charge of his campaign. Turns out he was wrong.
Rick Davis lobbied on behalf of the German owned shipping company DHL in its efforts to buy Airborne Express five years ago. Because of Davis’ fine work, the deal succeeded. Airborne Express is based in Wilmington, Ohio. But now DHL wants to move operations out of Ohio and to Kentucky, which will result in the loss of more than 8,000 jobs in Ohio.
So John McCain has quite the problem. The man responsible for more than 8,000 lost jobs in the most crucial of swing states is his campaign manager.
McCain is scrambling to address the problem:
In Wilmington on Thursday, McCain promised to hold congressional hearings and send a letter to the CEO of DHL’s parent company, Deutsche Post AG, asking him to meet with the affected workers.
“I’m deeply troubled by the specter of job loss confronting the town of Wilmington and this entire area, nine counties,” said McCain. “My concerns are being reinforced in my meeting today with those facing the most personal consequences.”
Jobs are a critical issue in economically-struggling Ohio, a swing state that awarded George W. Bush the 2004 election. Wilmington, located in the southwest part of the state, is traditionally a Republican stronghold.
Perhaps it won’t be such a “Republican stronghold” this year.
Yes, we are. And that’s a direct result of the Bush Administration and Republican Congress. McCain campaign vigorously for Bush in 2004 and has been a supporter of Bush’s policies in Congress. Yes, we are worse off than four years ago; it’s McCain’s fault.
Only McCain has taken on Big Tabacco, Drug Companies, fought corruption in both parties, he’ll reform Wall Street, battle Big Oil.
Well that list is full of more lies than I can count. McCain supported the Medicare “reform” that forced Medicare to not negotiate for drug prices, costing taxpayers and seniors billions of extra dollars to pay for medicine. As for corruption, John McCain sure knows about that: I’ll refer you to The Keating Five.
He’s the original maverick. One is ready to lead.
No, he’s been a party line guy who has taken a few different positions here and there to cultivate the maverick image. He’s no maverick though. He rubber-stamped Bush policies for eight years and drove this country into ruin. John McCain is not offering change. He’s offering more of the same.
ABC News points out that Congressman Don Young (R - AK) is under investigation for dealings with Veco, the same company that Senator Ted Stevens got in trouble for dealing with. Young has also been tied (though not charged) to Jack Abramoff; a former staffer plead guilty in relation to the Abramoff scandal.
Mr. Stevens, 84, was indicted on seven counts of falsely reporting income. The charges are related to renovations on his home and to gifts he has received. They arise from an investigation that has been under way for more than a year, in connection with the senator’s relationship with a businessman who oversaw the home-remodeling project.
…
Republicans on Capitol Hill were already jittery over a lobbying and influence-peddling scandal related to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is now in prison. Mr. Stevens’s troubles are not linked to that affair. Instead, they stem from his ties to an oil executive whose company won millions of dollars in federal contracts with the help of Mr. Stevens, whose home in Alaska was almost doubled in size in the renovation project.
Just what the GOP needed, a reminder of how corrupt they are. This will hurt the Republicans far beyond Alaska. As if people needed another reason not to vote Republican this year…
