Is 2008 already fixed?

BBC-TV: "Set up to steal it again."

"A lot of Europeans wonder:  Why are Americans so crazy, they keep reelecting this guy?"  Well the answer is, we don't!  They keep stealing these elections!  And they stole it in 2000, they stole it in 2004, and they're all set up to steal it again!" - Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on BBC Television Newsnight.

On Friday at 6pm  and 10pm Eastern Time, BBC America will bust open the story of the systematic attack on US voters that could easily cost Barack Obama the White House. (Watch the promo below)

Or watch it, beginning Friday night, at www.Gregpalast.com.

Newsnight investigative reporter Greg Palast travels from the Native pueblos of New Mexico to the war-zone of the 8 Mile neighborhood of Detroit to meet some of the three million voters who have been disappeared by a GOP campaign draining voter rolls of the poor, the dark-skinned, the defenseless.

In Detroit, Palast is bounced out of the local McCain headquarters - housed under the black flag (literally) of foreclosure profiteers.  We meet Robert Pratt, a union worker, who fears he will lose his home - and his vote.

Are the Republicans turning a economic devastation into an electoral bonanza?

BBC Reporter Palast follows the path of investigation laid out by civil rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - encountering along the way the Republican Party lawyers, funders - and Karl Rove.  The GOP charges that the Democrats have registered five million fraudulent voters, a claim backed by a recent US government report.

Palast meets the report's author - who claims her words were turned upside down.  And they went to court to stop her from speaking out.

Democrats don't have clean hands either, as Palast discloses:  from the Acoma Pueblo, we find Natives (almost all Democrats) who've had their ballots illegally junked by local Democrats.

But whichever party attacks the poor, it's McCain that's the winner.

http://www.gregpalast.com/bbc-tv-set-up-to-steal-it-again-is-2008-already-fixed/

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Warming to Palin

 

by David Swanson

It's the second week of October. When I was a kid it would sometimes snow and always be cold by now. I'm typing this on my laptop sitting outdoors in the warm sun with no sweater or jacket on the downtown mall, a pedestrian street in Charlottesville, Va. Flowers are blooming, and butterflies and hummingbirds are hanging out, several states out of their old territory. We haven't had the heat or the air conditioning on in our house for months. The weather is perfect and we're saving money. Global warming is making it easy for us to take steps to reverse global warming. So why does the perfect summer breeze on the back of my neck scare the hell out of me?

Because I'm not a fundamentalist hoping for the end of the world, a raving lunatic unclear on the concept of science, or a certified moron who claims to read every newspaper in the country but reads and knows essentially nothing. In other words, I'm not Sarah Palin. The entire damn planet is in danger, ecosystems are collapsing, the mild warming is getting dangerously close to entering a vicious cycle that nobody will be able to reverse, species are vanishing at an ever faster pace, and the town I live in, no matter how pleasant it may be at the moment, is not an island. If it were, it would be in danger of going under, as real islands are.

So, it comes to this: Are we a nation of complete and utter imbeciles?

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/17798

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CEO life

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Alaskan Independence Party: The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel

by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In 2004, America's malleable mainstream media allowed itself to be manipulated by artful Republican operatives into devoting weeks of broadcast attention and drums of ink to unfairly desecrating John Kerry's genuine Vietnam heroics while obligingly muzzling serious discussion of George W. Bush's shameful wartime record of evasion and cowardice.

Last week found the American media once again boarding Republican swift boats against this season's Democratic candidate armed with unfair and hypocritical attacks artfully designed by GOP strategists to distract attention from the cataclysmic outcomes of Republican governance. Vice Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin has taken to faulting Senator Barack Obama for his casual acquaintance with a respected Illinois educator Bill Ayers, who forty years ago was a member of the Weathermen, a movement active when Obama was eight and which he has denounced as "detestable." Palin argues that the relationship proves that Obama sees "America as being so imperfect that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

The Times dedicated a page one article to Obama's relations with Ayers and CNN's Anderson Cooper obliged Palin by rewarding her reckless accusations about Obama's patriotism with a major investigative report. Fox, meanwhile, is still riveting its audience with wall to wall coverage of this pressing irrelevancy.

But if McCarthy-era guilt-by-association is once again a valid political consideration, Palin, it would seem, has more to lose than Obama. Palin, it could be argued, following her own logic, thinks so little of America's perfection that she continues to "pal around" with a man--her husband, actually--who only recently terminated his seven-year membership in the Alaskan Independence Party. Putting plunder above patriotism, the members of this treasonous cabal aim to break our country into pieces and walk away with Alaska's rich federal oil fields and one-fifth of America's land base--an area three-fourths the size of the Civil War Confederacy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/alaskan-independence-part_b_133261.html

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Man At Palin Rally Displays Monkey Doll Donning Obama Sticker

(CBS)

From CBS News' Scott Conroy:

(PHILADELPHIA) As the crowd cheered at a Sarah Palin rally this morning in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a man in the audience grinned as he held up a stuffed monkey doll with a Barack Obama bumper sticker wrapped across its forehead.

The incident came at a time when McCain and Palin's events have increasingly been fueled by angry crowds, since Palin began drawing a connection between Barack Obama and 1960s radical William Ayers, claiming that the Democratic nominee has a history of "palling around" with a terrorist.

At a rally in Lakeville, Minnesota, on Friday, McCain was booed after he called on his audience to be respectful of Obama. The Republican nominee took the microphone away from one woman who said she couldn't trust Obama because "he's an Arab."

After Palin finished her remarks this morning, the man holding the stuffed monkey seemed to notice that a video camera was pointed at him, at which point he removed the Obama sticker from the doll's head and crumpling it up in his hand. He then handed the doll to a young boy who was watching the rally from his father's shoulders. The boy's parents later told CBS News that they weren't acquainted with the man who gave their son the stuffed monkey.

Watch the video below:


Watch CBS Videos Online

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/10/11/politics/fromtheroad/entry4515246.shtml

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Feeling panicky? Here are four reasons not to overreact

When the market indexes plunge and your portfolio shrinks, it's natural to think about bailing out of your investments, particularly stocks. But before you head for the exits, consider four reasons why sticking with your investment plan, and resisting the temptation to sell, may be your smartest move.

Reason 1: Market timing is a losing strategy.

You may be thinking you should sell now and get back into stocks later when the market "settles down" and the economy starts to recover. But this approach—called market timing—can lead to disappointing returns. In effect, it puts you at risk of selling low and buying high.

If you do try to time the market, how are you going to know for sure what's the "right" time to get in and out? There is never an announcement that a declining market has started or ended. The direction of stocks can change very quickly; market rallies often occur suddenly and over very short periods. If you happen to be out of the market during those times, you could miss all or most of the gains for that year. This is sometimes called "out-of-market" risk, and it's a risk you should consider when making decisions about your investments.

"Market timing is extremely difficult," said Donald G. Bennyhoff, a senior investment analyst with Vanguard Investment Strategy Group. "To profit from market timing, you have to be able to get out before the low and be able to get back in before the market moves decidedly higher. It's impractical. It may sound good in theory, but market timing mostly fails in practice."

 

https://personal.vanguard.com/us/VanguardViewsArticlePublic?ArticleJSP=/freshness/News_and_Views/news_ALL_reaction_10092008_ALL.jsp&src=NMC&returnLink=/freshness/News_and_Views/news_ALL_reaction_10092008_ALL.jsp

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The Next American Revolution: When It Becomes Necessary To Bring King George to Justice

When, in the course of human events, it can't wait any longer

By Nat Hentoff

A revolutionary, Thomas Jefferson, provided the reason for continuing the project started at the Robert H. Jackson Conference on Planning for the Prosecution of High-Level American War Criminals, which I first mentioned last week. The conference brought together 120 legal authorities, activists, law professors, public officials, and scholars in Andover, Massachusetts, on September 13 and 14. Its aims were summed up by Jefferson: "Every government degenerates when trusted solely to the rulers of the people. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree."

Since Obama, McCain, Palin, and Biden have never once mentioned the Constitution during the campaign, let alone any of the specific war crimes by the Bush administration, the people, to prevent further degeneration of their individual liberties, will have to learn how to restart the American revolution through the work of this conference and other such groups as the national Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Amnesty International, and the ACLU.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-10-08/columns/the-next-american-revolution/

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Tell ABC to Air Our Ad

Join the 222,673 people who have sent a message!

ABC recently refused to run our Repower America ad, even though they run ads from oil companies that mislead the American people about the role fossil fuels play in the climate crisis.

Ask ABC to reconsider their decision and air our Repower America ad this Friday.

When you complete the form below, we'll send your message to ABC, and let them know how you feel.

http://www.wecansolveit.org/page/s/ABC

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Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition: Sarah Palin's Extremist Ties

by Plutonium Page

It was only slightly over a month ago that America was swept up in the carefully orchestrated GOP storm known as Sarah Palin. On August 29, 2008, John McCain told Americans that Palin is tenacious, tough, and could handle the job of Vice President just fine.  He praised her "grit", "integrity", and "good sense".  He said that:

"She is exactly who this country needs to help us fight the same old Washington politics of me first and country second,"

Indeed, "Country First" has become the official McCain campaign slogan.  "USA! USA! USA!" is shouted by the frenzied, hate-filled, nationalistic crowds that gather to hear McCain and Palin speak.

What they don't know about Palin is that her political career in Alaska was shaped by the ideology and support of fringe, anti-government, militia-organizing secessionists.

Here at dailyKos, we have but scratched the surface of Palin's connection to the Alaska Independence Party (AIP). The big story that we suspected was there has finally been uncovered by Dave Neiwert and Max Blumenthal, who recently traveled to Wasilla, Alaska.

Neiwert laid the background for their AIP story in a September 22, 2008 article.  Of note:

This morning I interviewed John Stein, the former Wasilla mayor who was defeated by Palin in 1996 by using "a quiet campaign by some Palin supporters raising emotional issues like abortion and gun control, which had no apparent tie to municipal politics" -- and as Phil Munger notes, a whisper campaign that Stein was secretly Jewish (Stein is a Lutheran).

The connection revolves mostly around three men known to have far-right leanings in the community: a builder named Steven Stoll, a computer repairman named Mark Chryson, and a third man named Mike Christ. All three subscribed to a bellicose, "Patriot" movement brand of politics -- far-right libertarianism with a John Birch streak.

According to Stein, Steven Stoll -- whose local nickname, according to Phil Munger, is "Black Helicopter Steve" -- was involved in militia organizing in Wasilla the 1990s, and subscribed to most of the movement's paranoid conspiracy theories: "The rumor was that he had wrapped his guns in plastic and buried them in his yard so he could get them after the New World Order took over."

The "black helicopter" concept "became popular in the United States militia movement, and in associated political circles, in the 1990s as an alleged symbol and warning sign of a conspiratorial totalitarian military takeover of part or all of the United States".  Timothy McVeigh, among others, was a firm believer.

Neiwert and Blumenthal followed up with a fantastic article published yesterday in Salon. If you weren't already convinced that John McCain's team had no idea what they were doing when they chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, you will be after reading this story.

Meet Sarah Palin's best Alaska pals:

Though Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure figure outside of Alaska, Chryson has been a political fixture in the hometown of the Republican vice-presidential nominee for over a decade. During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin's campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.

Palin backed Chryson as he successfully advanced a host of anti-tax, pro-gun initiatives, including one that altered the state Constitution's language to better facilitate the formation of anti-government militias. She joined in their vendetta against several local officials they disliked, and listened to their advice about hiring. She attempted to name Stoll, a John Birch Society activist known in the Mat-Su Valley as "Black Helicopter Steve," to an empty Wasilla City Council seat. "Every time I showed up her door was open," said Chryson. "And that policy continued when she became governor."

So let's get this straight. John McCain's team chose someone whose political career was tightly interwoven with - and supported by - extremists. Not just average wingnuts. Extremists. Radicals. A secessionist and a paranoid militia organizer.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/12/13228/301/977/627523

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What McCain Hasn't Tried

 

John McCain likes Barack Obama. He admires and respects Obama. He believes Obama is "very impressive, he's thoughtful, he's centrist." Obama has "probably got a great future." He is "a very honest and fine person" -- "absolutely" qualified to be president.

How do we know McCain feels this way? Because he said so, in public comments ranging from 2005 to as recently as May. And as the McCain campaign grew uglier last week -- casting Obama as dangerous, dishonest and un-American -- it was tempting to imagine the campaign McCain might have waged if he had based it on the respect for his opponent, and for the process, that he had long professed.

Last week, for example, McCain was angrily promising to "name the names" of those who caused the nation's worst financial crisis in decades. He was blaming Obama and his "cronies," and the "corruption" that Obama had "abetted" in Washington. Meanwhile, almost as if there were no meltdown, his running mate remained stuck on attacking Obama for "palling around with terrorists."

But imagine if McCain had selected for his running mate not a partisan attack dog but someone with deep knowledge of the economy and a record of reaching across the aisle.

Imagine if McCain himself had decided to respond to this crisis as an American first, a candidate second. "Yes," he might have said, "Democrats contributed to our problems with their lobbyist-fueled defense of Fannie and Freddie. But let's not pretend that Alan Greenspan, Phil Gramm, George W. Bush -- and John McCain -- weren't part of this, too. Warren Buffett saw this coming, but not many of the rest of us did. Let's postpone the recriminations and work together to fix this thing."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/12/AR2008101201632.html

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Why ‘Body of Lies’ lost to ‘Chihuahua’

Leonardo DiCaprio in 'Body of Lies'

Ridley Scott's Body of Lies, starring Leonard DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, opened third at the box office over the weekend, said Stuart Heritage in Heckler Spray, while Beverly Hills Chihuahua took No. 1 for the second week in a row. How did a movie about a "funny dog" beat a "taut, relevant thriller" with huge stars? Could it be that "movie audiences are dumb"?

It means that filmmakers "don't seem capable of understanding" one "simple rule," said Ben Child in the Guardian online. "If you want your movie to be a U.S. box office success, don't set it in Iraq." Now more than ever, American audiences are sick of films about terrorism.

Maybe they're just sick of DiCaprio and Crowe, said Mark Caro in the Chicago Tribune online. Or it could be that "Hollywood makes so few family-friendly comedies," Beverly Hills Chihuahua "was bound to stand out."

Whatever the reason, said Brooks Barnes in The New York Times, "escapism definitely ruled" again. And that "should ring alarm bells for almost all the Hollywood studios as they prepare to flood the market with somber awards-driven pictures."

http://www.theweek.com/article/index/89742/3/3/Why_Body_of_Lies_lost_to_Chihuahua

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Fox’s Cavuto Wins SPLC’s Dobbsy Award for Pinning Blame on Minorities for Mortgage Crisis

Posted in Dobbsy Awards by Mark Potok

The first wave of nominations are in, and one man stands head and shoulders above the rest to claim our inaugural Dobbsy Award – Neil Cavuto of Fox News.

The host of "Your World with Neil Cavuto" used his program to put the blame for the subprime mortgage meltdown squarely where he believes it belongs – on the shoulders of poor minorities who have dared try to own a home. In doing so, Cavuto has exemplified what it means to be a Dobbsy winner – a "mainstream" figure who makes utterly false or misleading statements that denigrate or defame an entire group of people.

Cavuto played Pin-the-Blame-on-the-Minority during a Sept. 18 interview with U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.).

"[W]hen you and many of your colleagues were pushing for more minority lending and more expanded lending to folks who heretofore couldn't get mortgages, when you were pushing homeownership… . Are you totally without culpability here?" he asked. "Are you totally blameless? Are you totally irresponsible of anything that happened?"

And just in case the audience didn't catch his drift, he later spelled it out.

"I'm just saying, I don't remember a clarion call that said, 'Fannie and Freddie are a disaster. Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster,'" he said.

That's right. In Cavuto's world, the real problem isn't Wall Street greed or lax federal regulation of reckless banking behemoths. No, it's all a matter of those irresponsible minorities who were willing to destroy the country's economy for a two-bedroom home in the 'burbs.

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2008/10/06/cavuto-mortgage-dobbsy/?splcnewsletter=newsgen-101308

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Saturday Night At The Movies - Choke: Shades of Ashby

By Dennis Hartley

At the risk of sounding like your sage Gramps, wistfully pining for the halcyon days of yore, I'm going to go ahead now and sound like your sage Gramps, wistfully pining for the halcyon days of yore. There was a time, not too far removed, when the descriptive phrase "character study" was not necessarily the American film industry's code for "box office poison." Okay, I'll stop beating around the bush. I'm talking about the 1970's, when maverick directors like Hal Ashby, Robert Altman and Bob Rafelson made quirky, compelling "character studies" that audiences actually went out of their way to see. The protagonists were usually iconoclastic fringe dwellers or workaday antiheroes who, like the filmmakers themselves, questioned authority, flouted convention and were generally able to convey thoughts and feelings without CG enhancement. The films may not have always sported linear narrative or wrapped up with a "Hollywood ending", but they nearly always left us a bit more enlightened about the human condition.

I'm not saying that the character study ever really went away; it just became increasingly more marginalized as the era of the Hollywood blockbuster juggernaut encroached. Indie films of more recent vintage like Buffalo 66, Jesus' Son and SherryBaby are direct stylistic descendants of episodic 70s fare like Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces, Altman's California Split, and Ashby's The Last Detail, and prove that the genre is alive and well. The main difference between then and now, of course, is that when you venture out to the multiplex to seek such a film these days, you almost feel like donning dark glasses and a raincoat. When I went to a weekend matinee to catch Clark Gregg's Choke, I counted exactly 4 other patrons in the postage stamp auditorium. It just made me feel so…dirty.

Choke is one of the most original comedy-dramas I have seen this year, undoubtedly due in no small part to the fact that Gregg's screenplay is based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, whose previous book-to-screen adaptation was 1999's Fight Club. Choke, similar to Fight Club, serves up a mélange of human foibles (addiction, perversion, madness and deception, to rattle off a few) and tops it all off with a dark comic sensibility. To put it another way, it's a sort of a screwball romantic comedy for nihilists.

 

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/saturday-night-at-movies-choke-shades.html

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Blue America

By: Howie Klein

I was on the phone with Alan Grayson a few days ago and he told me that he feels the campaign he so painstakingly put together has degenerated into a quest for money to run ads on television, instead of an opportunity to talk with the people of Orlando about how government can help to improve their lives. There are many ways to approach running a campaign, but almost every candidate and staffer I talk to says, no matter how idealistic it starts, it always ends with TV ads. Alan's ground game probably won him the primary-- but his startling TV ads sure didn't hurt.

Today Blue America, with our partners at SaysMe.TV, is launching a new application that can make everyone a political media consultant-- or, better yet, a replacement for a political media consultant.

Click here to see the program.

Start by picking a media market:

Cincinnati- Vic Wulsin
Miami- Annette Taddeo
Washington, DC- Judy Feder
Detroit- Gary Peters
New York- Dennis Shulman
Seattle- Darcy Burner
Philadelphia- Sam Bennett
Charlotte- Larry Kissell (should be up Monday)
Los Angeles- Debbie Cook or Russ Warner (should be up Tuesday)

Then pick which ad you want to run. Right now we have one ad available per candidate but we're hoping to add some more in the next week.

Type your name in at the top, because at the end of the ad it will credit you with paying for it.

Then pick the network and the daypart (time).

An individual ad can cost as little as $10, but the minimum purchase per candidate is $100.

Review the ad purchase, then check off all the boxes that attest that you're a U.S. citizen and that you're not a member of the Bush cabinet, etc.

http://firedoglake.com/2008/10/11/blue-america-3/

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Better Lenses for Less Money: How To Use Vintage Lenses with Your DSLR

 

Back in the day (i.e. 7th grade), we "borrowed" our dad's camera gear. Eventually, when we could afford a camera of our own (i.e. age 27), we finally gave it back.

Now we're thinking of "borrowing" Dad's lenses again, because using vintage lenses on our DSLR is a lot easier than we thought.

All you need is a cheap adapter ring that allows you to attach a particular lens to your camera. And manual-focus vintage lenses are all over eBay, dirt-cheap and ripe for the plucking.

Yes, you have to use manual focus, but you won't miss autofocus as much as you think. Especially when you consider that vintage lenses are better-made, more reliable, and exponentially cheaper than comparable autofocus lenses.

So dust off your dad's gear. Fling wide the closet doors, and hike up to the attic! Shake down your relatives for all the old lenses they have stashed away. It's time to become the gear-geek you always wanted to be.

Photojojo's Guide to Using Vintage Lenses on New DSLRs

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Politics is the Shadow Cast on Society by Big Business

As Noam Chomsky put it this week:

"The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats."

And as the social philosopher John Dewey put it early in this century:

"Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business."

And that will remain true as long as power resides in "business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press, press agents and other means of publicity and propaganda," Dewey said.

Nader/Gonzalez is churning.

Agitating.

Creating a force for change.

Against the shadow cast by big business.

Against all odds, we are optimistic about the future.

http://www.votenader.org/blog/2008/10/12/politics-is-the-shadow/

 

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The Terror Party

by digby

Michael Froomkin reports from Florida that this is what is arriving in mailboxes in Annette Tadeo's District:

Froomkin says:

This is accompanied by a smiling photo of Governor Charlie Crist, along with a message warning that terrorists want to kill us, and that we should vote for Republicans to "help keep America safe." (You can download a .pdf of the entire mailer, if you want.)

Got that? The State GOP, which paid for this thing, and the formerly post-partisan Governor, are saying that Democrats want to surrender to terrorists. Talk about low-class smear jobs…

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/terror-party-by-digby-michael-froomkin.html

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Please Vote for the Schvartzeh!

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I’m a little confused

 

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight…..

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."

Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with more than 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with fewer than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude," with at least one DUI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

http://azspot.net/post/50111548/im-a-little-confused

 

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Wall Street Blue Balls

Someone painted the balls of the Wall Street bull blue!

http://urbanprankster.com/2008/10/wall-street-blue-ball/

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Meet Sarah Palin’s radical right-wing pals

Extremists Mark Chryson and Steve Stoll helped launch Palin's political career in Alaska, and in return had influence over policy. "Her door was open," says Chryson — and still is.

Editor's note: Research support provided by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund. For Salon's complete coverage of Sarah Palin, click here.

By Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert

Video: Interview with former Alaskan Independence Party chairman Mark Chryson

Oct. 10, 2008 PALMER, Alaska — | On the afternoon of Sept. 24 in downtown Palmer, Alaska, as the sun began to sink behind the snowcapped mountains that flank the picturesque Mat-Su Valley, 51-year-old Mark Chryson sat for an hour on a park bench, reveling in tales of his days as chairman of the Alaska Independence Party. The stocky, gray-haired computer technician waxed nostalgic about quixotic battles to eliminate taxes, support the "traditional family" and secede from the United States.

So long as Alaska remained under the boot of the federal government, said Chryson, the AIP had to stand on guard to stymie a New World Order. He invited a Salon reporter to see a few items inside his pickup truck that were intended for his personal protection. "This here is my attack dog," he said with a chuckle, handing the reporter an exuberant 8-pound papillon from his passenger seat. "Her name is Suzy." Then he pulled a 9-millimeter Makarov PM pistol — once the standard-issue sidearm for Soviet cops — out of his glove compartment. "I've got enough weaponry to raise a small army in my basement," he said, clutching the gun in his palm. "Then again, so do most Alaskans." But Chryson added a message of reassurance to residents of that faraway place some Alaskans call "the 48." "We want to go our separate ways," he said, "but we are not going to kill you."

Though Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure figure outside of Alaska, Chryson has been a political fixture in the hometown of the Republican vice-presidential nominee for over a decade. During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin's campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/10/palin_chryson/

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