Month: September 2008

John McCain is not actually running for president.

He’s running for Senate majority leader. All his passion is directed at defects in the legislative process. He’s been a military man or a senator for virtually all of his adult life, and listening to him talk, you get the definite impression that the two great threats of the 21st century are Islamic extremism and the appropriations committee.

What part of the American flag is Ford, GM or Chrysler?

Let Detroit fund its own damned projects!

Big Auto has fought environmental laws and beaten down attempts to modernize the US industry to produce more fuel efficient cars. They sell fuel efficient cars overseas but always find reasons why they can’t sell them in the US. Now that their brilliant plan to only produce gas hogs has failed, look who is lining up for $50 billion worth of help, as if there’s cash laying around for the taking. If we were to prop up these colossal failures, we ought to insist that they are truly on the cutting edge of environmental, safety and efficiency and not just up to our backwards current standards. Otherwise, why bother?

Begging for government aid in hard times were big corporations who were the strongest opponents of ‘big government’.

Well, here we go again.
Automakers ask for for government loans of up to $50bn.
GM, Ford and Chrysler also lobby Congress for a $3.75bn on top of the $25bn in loans authorized for the industry last year to escape Union pledges.

Bush’s Treasury is negotiating windfall payments for the execs of failed Fannie and Freddie too?

“Under no circumstances should the executives of these institutions earn a windfall at a time when the U.S. Treasury has taken unprecedented steps to rescue these companies with taxpayer resources,” Obama wrote.

Blueprint for American Prosperity:
“Mountain Megas: America’s Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper” describes and assesses the new supersized reality of the Intermountain West – efforts to build a uniquely Western brand of prosperity that is at once more sustainable, productive, and inclusive than past eras of boom and bust. [heaps of pdf Brookings Institution]

It’s no wonder Rhode Island Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee called Sarah Palin a “cocky wacko”.

[Breaking ABC news story]
Sarah Palin wants Georgia and Ukraine in NATO noting that if attacked again the United States would go to war with Russia:

Asked by Gibson if the U.S. would go to war with Russia Palin said “Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help…. [As a] NATO ally if another country is attacked you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help,” she said.

Not in USA media:

In a blunt three-hour interview over lunch, Vladimir Putin turned the air blue and denied claims he is building a new Soviet empire as he defended his ’embattled and encircled’ country.

Reminding his guests that he had been at the Olympics in Beijing when the crisis broke out, Mr Putin said he was “astonished, astounded,” by the world media silence on the Georgian aggression. “What did you expect us to do? Respond with a catapult? We punched the aggressor in the face, as all the military text books prescribe.”

At this meeting, he seemed particularly intent on his new job as Prime Minister which he presented as being mainly responsible for Russia’s economy. Russia was facing problems today, he said, which demanded new solutions. “The solutions of the past wouldn’t do.” State infrastructure, housing, health and education all needed to be overhauled.

OK, don’t flame me, the point is Provocateur Palin should not enter the White House except to bring Obama her bear skin.

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said mastermind of 9/11 in jail.

What makes people vote Republican?

Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? [See, Republicans cost us money]

Diagnosis is a pleasure.
We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany’s best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death.

[See Altemeyer, Authoritarianism]
Here’s Professor Altemeyer’s free book: The Authoritarians – “The greatest threat to American democracy today.”

People vote Republican because Republicans offer “moral clarity”—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.

Who are the opponents of science and how have they have taken control of the Republican Party to redefine science, to undermine science, and to misconstrue science even to the point of dismissing scientific consensus in favor of increasingly discredited fringe ideas?

Last month a Pew Research Institute survey reported a decline in the number of Americans who want churches and other houses of worship involved in political matters. The survey also found that most of the drop in the past four years comes among conservatives. [link]

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly:

‘People react to fear, not love. They don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.’ – Richard Nixon

The phenomenon of misplaced fear in American culture is not uncommon, asserts sociologist Barry Glassner, author of The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things.

“A vibrant and functional democracy depends on the honest dissemination of information. The corporate media, in its rightward drift and easy compliance to political power, is failing the general populace.”

Fourteen Republicans

Over the past few years, corruption has become a significant political issue, with interest peaking in early 2007. In the 2006 mid-term elections, exit polls showed that 42% of voters called corruption an extremely important issue in their choices at the polls, ahead of terrorism, the economy, and the war in Iraq. With the downturn in the economy, however, voters’ attention is unsurprisingly more focused on pocketbook issues than on congressional misconduct. Nevertheless, ethics still matter…

Keith Olbermann
Special Comment on 9/11/2008
Vigorous Call For Removing Extra Hijackers

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pVJ4jgFpPg&hl=en&fs=1]

Oh, the lies McCain hides in his Palin. If you don’t understand his threat you won’t understand this utterly scathing exposition of McCain/Palin.

No, it’s not personal, lipstick on a pig, but it’s a rallying cry against the McCain Campaign and says nothing worse than, well, the Republican plank is lipstick on a pig.

Andrew Sullivan ranked at the top of the hit count today for his article at The Atlantic: “For me, this surreal moment – like the entire surrealism of the past ten days – is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It’s about John McCain.

“The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?’

A better media would open McCain’s cocoon to provide our electorate information about Rove and more than one hundred career lobbyists leading a cynical and low-hearted campaign. Here’s the list with few wanting the light of attention.

– Rick Davis, campaign manager, has lobbied for Airborne Express and DHL on their controversial merger deal, as well as telecom companies Bell South/SBC and Verizon.

– Charlie Black, senior advisor, lobbied for more than 100 clients, including Yukos Oil and Freddie Mac.

– Randy Scheunemann’s lobbying clients have included BP Amoco and the NRA.

– Nancy Pfotenhauer, senior policy advisor, is a former Koch Industries lobbyist.

– Frank Donatelli, the McCain campaign’s director at the RNC, has had 70 clients including PHARMA, Pfizer and Exxon Mobil.

– John Green, congressional liaison, has lobbied for at least 150 clients, including insurance industry trade groups, predatory lender Ameriquest, Chevron Texaco, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.

– Wayne Berman, campaign vice-chair, finance co-chair, and advisor has also lobbied for almost 100 clients, including Ameriquest, Fannie Mae, the National Rifle Association and American Health Insurance Plans.

SOURCE: Lobbying Disclosures, US Senate Office Of Public Records

McCain’s integrity is the big lie in this election.

Party loyalty is a mistake.

Republicans, please help me understand you. I hear you smack down anyone who supports the concept that global warming is a real issue, that we need to fix fuel and driving, that women should be able to own the body they walk in, that we need to reduce pollution in the air we breathe, and the damaging way we produce our food. When you brand these ideas as liberal lunatic rantings, do you intend to say that you would like dirty air, water, and food? You’re pleased with the price of a gallon of gas?

1. Who Are the Authoritarian Followers?
2. The Roots of Authoritarian Aggression
3. How Authoritarian Followers Think
4. Authoritarian Followers and Religious Fundamentalism
5. Authoritarian Leaders
6. Authoritarianism and Politics
7. What’s To Be Done?

Here’s Professor Altemeyer’s free book: The Authoritarians. Authoritarians may be “The greatest threat to American democracy today.”

Read it then throw it down because identification with imaginary collectives, Americans, Palestinians; there is no thing there but preconception, just people.

Yo, warriors and lamb, listen up, because elections glue us together and only a few days left.

Praising America won’t bring America. Fighting for it will not bring it. Crippling others is not America. America is what we are each day.

I think the radical voices are not condemning the powerful nor the good nor painting our streets in vice, but only crying when condemned. And I think nervous crowds are following avarice too. So I stand not for force, but humble, as if God wants me one million times better than the last time I thought I knew what he asked of me. I shrink hero claims and turn ambition away, a bias habit I admit, but forever true, always tears, or blood as we say. Never for one without all I feel, exactly our Union, and our Christ.

So, if not for the least are you Christian, and if not for the little are you American?

It’s not a divine vote, but every vote is perfect. We choose among what’s given; let’s be able. Make this election clear whether the candidates do or can’t. Please criticize. Please investigate to the last moment. It’s not their job we’re voting for, it’s our lives.

So take that. Let it be.

And a’that frost.

Took Lucky Lord Barkeley of Berkeley three miles along farmworker neighborhoods today while my truck was smogged for DMV. A 90 year old Mexican in a cape and brim hat dressed exactly like a 90 year old Mexican in a cape and brim hat lifted his eyes along the tractor path of the strawberry field and said something sweetly that I thought meant ‘Nice Dog’ but I don’t know ‘Nice Dog’ in Spanish. Owners were at work during our walk, a half-dozen pit bulls barked behind fences as we noised on their sidewalks. The mechanics were warm-hearted and said pit bulls are nice dogs too. I went to the Police HQ for a sign-off on the certificate. A guy dressed exactly like a Hollywood Detective, exactly like a Hollywood Detective, said to me “But VC-B needs a VC-402 before I can sign this off.” So I go back tomorrow, wondering if Washington knows what state we’re in, locally.

I understand
a silver nickel in a wooden jar,
carved, and
loud.

Particles, machines, tunnels and all the rest, the danger is not our science. Perhaps believing this requires a better faith and simple politics.

Study is never danger.
Only ignorance has killed us.

Superstition is common.
Higgs won’t hurt.
Pigs might.

I’m saying lies. The Wall Street Journal does not say lies.

“Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the McCain campaign continues to assert that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told the federal government “thanks but no thanks” to the now-famous bridge to an island in her home state.”

But humans are lie detectors, Seth says. “We hear stories. We enjoy them. We try them on for size. We’re looking for falsehoods and we sniff them out.”

We sniff them out?

Not you.

Not me.

We live in lies.

Seth says, “The spinners lie constantly.

“They lie with a straight face.

“They lie sentence after sentence, relentlessly.”

We’re accustomed to lies.

Why?
Because we lie?
Because we’re not lie detectors.?

Because the Wall Street Journal isn’t reporting lies but fluffs criticism and secures false populism and whitewashes corruption. We must investigate “significant evidence to the contrary” and call it a lie when it is a lie.

There is some research to say honesty is losing.

McCains and Palins of it.

Who apparently has a nastier streak than we have been led to believe?

The Boston Globe has posted several full-screen photos of hurricanes from space.

These chapters are very odd reading, similar to ’50s crime pulp,
but packed with stories of rock stars, actors, politicians, industrialists, and spies,
too many of them murdered!

? Sign
Nome Recreation Center, Alaska.

Don’t look now, but our cousin Sarah
just became leader of the free world!

Tune in next week
and watch her get sassy with Pakistan!

Sam Harris at LATimes cranks McCain’s starter wondering if his engine is broken.

“McCain not only has thrown all sensible concerns about good governance aside merely to pander to a sliver of female and masses of conservative Christian voters, he has turned this period of American history into an episode of high-stakes reality television: So let us ask the question that should be on the mind of every thinking person in the world at this moment….”

There’s over 1,000 comments to Sam’s short piece, most are mindless attacks of course, as if millions of pit bulls are loose among us: “There are plenty of non-Christian Liberal Socialist nations for you to move to Mr. Harris.”

But many are supportive, insightful and wise.

The problem with debating issues in this country is …intellectuals are not welcome here.

What happened to planning, developing and implementing a platform from which to be elected? It’s seems Palin just… incites nasty emotions.

She can surely fake being a Jesus-loving weirdo better than Obama. If her loyal Christian base only knew that she grew up collecting fossils with her science teacher Dad.

We should all be concerned by her lack of experience and qualifications. However, I am far more concerned by the ideologies she would bring to the table.

Wants federal government out of peoples’ lives (but in their womb).

I pray (yes, right wing conservatives, we Democrats believe in God and pray too) the bulk of our wonderful nation will say “no” to McCain’s reckless antics.

McCain-Palin have embraced the darkest side of the Conservative agenda in their quest for power.

Republicans say Obama has no substance as if they care about substance.

Wolloping Wallets, Batman, it seems we’ve been sold down the river!

I like the righteous new Women Against Sarah Palin site. A counter-campaign against Sarah’s Silly Suffrage is the only choice for the work ahead, although I’m truly wondering if Obama is obscured in a Palin of smoke.

I was reading a little at WASP and I thought:

Suffrage is enfranchisement, to say, not merely a right to vote but freedom from subjugation or servitude. The suffrage we know released women from patriarchal society. The suffrage we don’t know is to free us all from fraud.

And to franchise our Constitution until we are free again.

“The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them all.” – Arundhati Roy

Removing national news anchors because they are critical is an assassination of Democracy. As if these tactics had been rehearsed in demagogue states [wiki], or conspired in a Presidium [wiki], commandeering media is now American too.

Plucking our progressive pundits to elevate a mafia-like arrogance is a certain treason and conspiracy against our Constitution. At the very least, this exposes a terrible cynicism against our good people and against our great effort to live under principle.

This election may entrench the most blatant oligarchy since perhaps the 19th Century and can outlive our best efforts before it’s removed however vigorous resistance might be.

A very sad and shocking year.

I’ve noticed that each time I discover more of political guile (and folk’s vulnerable to it) I am always shocked. I guess we tend to defend ourselves in heart and head, and do not look to be crippled at the knees.

Poking around Sarah Palin’s Alaska, which she has dedicated to the Lord and commenced Christian Heritage Week “to remind Alaskans of the role Christianity has played in the state’s history”, I’m also learning more about Alaska’s indigenous peoples, the first inhabitants.

This is a post about the role Christianity has played in the state’s history, and it seems I can’t avoid discovering the works of Sarah Palin who seems to have no intention but to be falsely proud of nothing but more of the same.

The village of Eklutna [wiki] is the oldest inhabited location near Anchorage, settled more than 800 years ago. Russians arrived in the 1840s. When the Orthodox missionaries settled, their beliefs co-mingled with native traditions.

From an Alaskan blogger: More than 100 brightly colored “spirit houses” are on the [Eklutna] burial ground… “a custom that combines” indigenous peoples and Russian Orthodox practices.

She writes, “I stopped in for a visit the other day on the way to Anchorage and discovered my favorite little chapel Most Holy Theotokos was torn down and a new one being erected. This was a little sad because as I understand the spirit houses are left to the elements, year after year and eventually they fall apart and disintegrate into the earth symbolizing the cycle of life, from dust we came and from dust we shall return.”

Tearing down and erecting, American business arrived around 1915 and quickly ‘earmarked’ federal government boarding schools for Native children.

With the zeal of believers, entire cultures were expunged, if necessary by strapping, overworking and undernourishment – beaten for speaking their language.

The best account I’ve found of these so-called residential schools is Mothers of a Native Hell, revealing the “unquestioned assumption that white Christians had the right and duty to tear families apart.”

Which Alaska peoples did this genocide seek to remove or convert to “Christian values”?

The Ahtna, Deg Hit’an, Dena’ina, Gwich’in, Hän, Holikachuk, Kolchan, Koyukon, Tanana, Tanacross, Tsetsaut; most of the Kaska, Tagish, Tutchone, Bearlake, Dogrib, Hare, Mountain and Slavey, plus wherever encountered, the Babine, Beaver, Chilcotin, Dakelh, Nicola, Sekani, Tahltan, the Dene Suline of Nunavut, and not the last, the Yup’ik Eskimo.

Ten years ago the Canadian federal government admitted rampant physical – and sexual abuse – in the once-mandatory schools. “The “darkest most tragic chapter in Canadian history, but virtually no one knows about this,” says Phil Fontaine, a chief of the Assembly of First Nations… [story].

Today’s Alaska is a very different dominance. The old-style genocide is no longer government funded, although there is a story that Governor Palin has misdirected public funds to a church recreational facility. [no link] Perhaps the Eklutna ‘s economic development arm, established under the Small Business Administration to deal with Alaska’s Native peoples is helping. A manager says,

“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.”

An Alaskan blogger says, “Palin hasn’t done anything for Alaska Native people – what it is she could have been doing. As an Alaskan Native, it is obvious to me – but then I live it, and see it every day.”

I am proud to be from a group that has given so much to the world…

I am generally loathe to just report bad news, bad news, and more bad news, and some bad statistics thrown in. Especially since I don’t believe the Alaska Native people need to hear again and again what we get slammed in the face with at every turn – not to mention we just live it. I have heard the stats for a lifetime now – one in five below the poverty line, infant mortality is double that of white Americans, tuberculosis is twenty times over, twelve percent of the public school population, but a quarter of the drop out rate, and on and on and on.

New America Media, the country’s largest news aggregator for 2000 ethnic news organizations, posted a “devasting” 2002 report by the Alaska Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, ‘Racism’s Frontier: The Untold Story of Discrimination and Division in Alaska‘.

Today Alaska may be a haven for Christians, but also “a picture of decades long economic misery, discrimination, neglect and alienation for Native Alaskans”. The Commission asserted several recommendations that Alaska’s leadership does not seem to have seriously considered or tried to implement.

In a report on the plight of Native Alaskans, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission called for massive increases in spending on job and skills training and programs to boost employment, improve education and public services.

The commission called for sweeping reforms in the criminal justice and health care systems.

From the article: “Other than a brief mention of diversity in her gubernatorial campaign speech in 2006, there is no evidence that Palin has said or done anything about the commission’s recommendations. If she had it would have put a beam on the faces of thousands of Yup’ik Eskimos who aren’t named Todd Palin.”

Our proud Alaska Native blogger continues,

The point of the article is not saying that all these issues, this is all Sarah or Todd Palin’s fault. The point of the article is to show what I have said in about 20 different ways: Despite being the governor of this state, with nearly 20% of the population being Native, Sarah Palin has done absolutely nothing to address any of these issues.

There are plenty to choose from.

Record cancer rates. Record suicide rates. Record abuse rates. Record child mortality rates. Record victims of hate crime. Record imprisonment, with an extremely disproportionate representation of Native men.

Palin has attacked Alaska Native languages, attacked tribal sovereignty, attacked hunting for food but assisted tourist hunters, attacked Native subsistence fishing but promoted industrial fisheries, [cite, Lloyd B. Miller, Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse et LLP], and has refused language assistance to Yup’ik voters, the peoples of her husband Todd.

When I was young and living near the Cree, a Native friend told me a story about endurance, the human and the dog.

A man can do many things for a very long time. A cat can run faster but only for a short time. A buffalo is powerful but only for a short time. A deer can leap higher but only for a short time. At the end of the trail is the man and a dog, the only other creature with our endurance.

Perhaps all humanity, each of us, without dominance or expunging or poverty or injustice, will have the endurance to arrive together at the end of the trail.

David Simon reports from The Guardian, “There are two Americas – separate, unequal, and no longer even acknowledging each other except on the barest cultural terms.

“In the one nation, new millionaires are minted every day. In the other, human beings no longer necessary to our economy, to our society, are being devalued and destroyed.”

Why?

“The why is it. The why is what makes journalism an adult game. The why is what makes policy coherent and useful. The why is what transforms bureaucrats and foot soldiers and political leaders into viable instruments of rational and affirmative change. The why is everything and without it, the very suggestion of human progress becomes a cosmic joke.

…is the why even being argued any more?

Not in the stunted political discourse of an American election cycle, not in an eviscerated, self-absorbed press, not in any construct to which the empowered America, the comfortable and comforted America, gives its limited attention. … we are separate nations at this point.

…at the [American] millennium, the why has ceased to exist.”

Dan Rather indicts corporate media manipulation as “coverage that leaves the American public ignorant.”

“Write these people, call these people …tell them you deserve a press that provides the raw material of Democracy.”

Pointed out at the LATimes, “Seasoned newsman Dan Rather spoke out about the demise of an independent press, the lack of unbiased news coverage, conglomerate control and the way in which the mainstream media manipulates viewers for the almighty dollar.”

A blog commentor has said about Sarah Palin refusing media questions except under terms and conditions established by her Campaign,

Every now and again I stumble upon a MSM article and – reading the comments – am faced with the stark reality that the vast majority of Americans buy into the “red team vs blue team” WWF-style bull match that is political discourse in this country.

I know it’s fun to root for “your team” but you might want to pay attention long enough to recognize that the same group of multi-national corporate interests own both teams, the stadium, and everything else slightly related to the game.

Here’s Dan Rather’s 6-minute take on mainstream media manipulation.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhHYR12doXg&hl=en&fs=1]

How’s our media handling Sarah Palin?

In an earlier post, Speaking in Forked Tongues, Sarah Palin insists the media only describe her as “generic Christian”. McCain called Palin a quick study who has sound judgment, but what’s on the record about Sarah Palin when she insists, “We’re just a community church”?

Here she’s sharing the pulpit with senior pastor Ed Kalnins as he spoke about, “tapping into Alaska’s natural resource wealth in order to fulfill the state’s destiny of serving as a shelter for Christians at the end of the world.”

“I believe that Alaska is one of the ‘refuge states’ — come on you guys — in the Last Days,” raising his arm to underscore his point.

“And hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to this state to seek refuge. And the church has to be ready to minister to them.”

As governor, she spoke to a pastor’s conference of Pentecostal Assemblies of God clergy saying Alaska had been dedicated to the Lord — “and I know the Lord is not going to take it back.” Her government created “Christian Heritage Week” “to remind Alaskans of the role Christianity has played in the state’s history.”

Dominionism: A particular school of evangelical political thought that holds Christians as having rightful “dominion” over the earth- including its political institutions.

What do people who study fundamentalist evangelicals say about their fervent and relatively recent penetration into our political life?

Professor Robert Altemeyer at the University of Manitoba says they may be, “The greatest threat to American democracy today.” Christless Christianity by Dr. Michael Horton examines “the train wreck that is so much of popular Christianity”. And Toby Green explains in his powerful study of intolerance.

In 1506 a miraculous light was seen on one of the crucifixes in a Dominican monastery in Portugal. Crowds gathered to marvel at it, but when one man suggested it looked a bit as if a candle had been placed behind the image of Christ he was dragged into the street by his hair, beaten, kicked and burnt by an angry mob.

“You may be more afraid to bring that sentence against me than I am to accept it,” resigns Giordano Bruno in 1600. The inquisitors stripped him naked, tied his tongue and burned him on a stake for his ideas that the universe is infinite and that other solar systems exist. [link]

At the price of our weakness, pulpit forcefulness has cowered millions into mobs of hateful pit bulls. Are we tolerating a 21st Century equivalent of pulling out tongues to keep superstition and cull science?

Is religion in American government merely power, dominance and hierarchy? Yes. And this is all you really need to grasp about right-wing authoritarianism.

1. Who Are the Authoritarian Followers?
2. The Roots of Authoritarian Aggression, and Authoritarianism Itself
3. How Authoritarian Followers Think
4. Authoritarian Followers and Religious Fundamentalism
5. Authoritarian Leaders
6. Authoritarianism and Politics
7. What’s To Be Done?

Here’s Professor Altemeyer’s free book: The Authoritarians.

What’s happening lately?
“This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy.” said U.S. Representative Christopher Shays R-CT.

Why is there a mass movement of religious zealots in the USA?

Why now?

The European Tribune tries to explain.

Bill Moyers is angry when he reports, “”Without the Christian right, the corporations that now control Washington would not have had the votes…”

In John Dean’s book “Conservatives without Conscience“, he explains with a warning,

“Briefly these people are unquestioning followers of strong leaders who believe in a hierarchical social structure.

“How many ordinary people do you think an evil authority would have to order to kill you before he found someone who would, unjustly, out of sheer obedience, just because the authority said to?

“What sort of person is most likely to follow such an order?”

Dean is asking, “What kind of official is most likely to give that order?”

The big three telecommunications giants and their lobbyists have raised and donated millions of dollars for McCain.

“More than 60 present and former telecom lobbyists work for McCain’s campaign as staffers and volunteers…”

With McCain on their side, the Bells wound up escaping the stringent sanctions of a 1982 federal court antitrust case that broke up AT&T — then known as “Ma Bell” — and the curbs of the 1996 law. They now dominate local and long-distance phone markets.

McCain opposed the 1996 Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act, intended to spur competition by pressuring the Bells to lease their lines and switches to competitors cheaply….

As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee from 1997 to 2004, he proposed legislation and sent tough letters aimed at hindering the Federal Communications Commission… the Clinton-era FCC stood its ground in court.

Known for freezing competitors out, McCain’s ally on the FCC, Chairman Michael Powell, is now a McCain campaign adviser.

McCain is “an extreme market deregulator” who’s never recognized the need for “fair access to the monopoly market.”

“He has gotten too close to the lobbyists for industries over which he has had regulatory power. Trust-buster Teddy Roosevelt — whom McCain calls a hero — would be rolling in his grave.” McClatchy Newspapers

The New Orleans Chamber of Commerce, to bolster slagging sales after Katrina and the evacuation during Hurricane Gustav, has invited Oprah and the Paris haute couture to assist in a new promotion.

“Oprah’s Favorite Shoes of the Hurricane Season is our latest effort to show the good citizens of New Orleans that they are supported by business as well as government,” a Chamber spokesman announced.

The Army Corps of Engineers could not be reached for comment but a Washington representative of FEMA said off-record that the Bush Administration is pleased the free market is working, noting, “At least for the next breach of the levees, more folks in New Orleans can save themselves.”

Many thanks to Dave Barry for pointing out these new advances in public safety.

McClatchy Newspapers: About 25 members went to a Senate office building, hoping to meet with McCain. As they stood in the hall, McCain and an aide walked by.

As McCain continued walking, Jane Duke Gaylor, the mother of a missing serviceman, approached the senator. Gaylor, in a wheelchair equipped with portable oxygen, stretched her arms toward McCain.

Pushes her wheelchair causing her to hit a wall:

“McCain stopped, glared at her, raised his left arm ready to strike her, composed himself and pushed the wheelchair away from him,” according to Eleanor Apodaca, the sister of an Air Force captain missing since 1967.

McCain’s staff wouldn’t respond to requests for comment…

Six people present have written statements describing what they saw.

McCain said: “I didn’t go to Washington to win the Mr. Congeniality award … I love America. I love her enough to make some people angry.”

There IS a list.

Part of the facts of the controversy are based on a 1996 article by reporter Paul Stuart for the Frontiersman. (Frontiersman)

Assembly of God ministers are well-known in Wasilla for taking strong positions on moral issues, including this recent sermon by the current pastor: “Everybody in the world has a guilty conscience. That’s why homosexuals wants laws of the land to justify their sin because they have a guilty conscience.”

Around the time Palin became mayor, the church and other conservative Christians began to focus on certain books available in local stores and in the town library, including one called ‘Go Ask Alice,’ and another written by a local pastor, Howard Bess, called ‘Pastor, I Am Gay’

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’s attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day. [Snopes confirms this letter]

According to Anchorage Daily News, Palin asked Wasilla’s librarian if she would be all right with censoring library books should she be asked to do so. The librarian replied that she would definitely not be all right with it. [Truth or Fiction confirms]

“I was shocked. Mary Ellen sat up straight and said something along the line of, ‘The books in the Wasilla Library collection were selected on the basis of national selection criteria for libraries of this size, and I would absolutely resist all efforts to ban books.'” [Rindi White, Anchorage Daily News]

In December 1996, Emmons, now Mary Ellen Baker, told her hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman, that Palin three times asked her — starting before she was sworn in — about possibly removing objectionable books from the library if the need arose. A few months later, the librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, got a letter from Palin telling her she was going to be fired. Emmons had been city librarian for seven years and was well liked. After a wave of public support for her, Palin relented and let Emmons keep her job. [McClatchy Newspapers]

TIME reports former Wasilla Mayor John Stein says that as mayor Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books.”

Truth or Fiction has also discovered the first list from Sarah Pallin is not from the minutes of the Wasilla Library Board revealing books she requested to remove, that this link and others to a list of books Mayor Sarah Palin submitted for removal, is false. My previous post exaggerated in duplicating this eRumor, but thanks to Dave I located the facts.

If the book list looks familiar it is because many of these titles and works are listed in the American Library Association’s list of frequently challenged books.

Once a year, the American Library Association celebrates National Banned Book Week at public libraries all over the country in the spirit of celebrating the freedom to read.