Joe Miller Overboard

It's patently impossible-- considering a field of candidates ranging from Christine O'Donnell (DE), Pat Toomey (PA), Carl Paladino (NY), Paul LePage (ME) and Taliban Dan (FL) on the East Coast, Joe Miller (AK), Dino Rossi (WA), Dan Quayle's slow, porn-addicted son, Ben (AZ) and Carly Fiorina (CA) on the West Coast, and Ron Johnson (WI), Rand Paul (KY), Ken Buck (CO), and Sharron Angle (NV) in between-- to be able to pick out the single most deranged and unhinged candidate for office this year... and that's just the challengers. Incumbents like Jim DeMint (R-SC), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL), Matt Blunt (R-MO), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Steve King (R-IA) are in a category all their own. This week, however, despite crazy Christine O'Donnell's obsession with her old days as a witch-- possibly a deft move to get people's minds off her former obsession with the great masturbation issue-- it seems like a winner is emerging, Alaska's craziest catch, Joe Miller.

He's been bouncing around from declaring Social Security, unemployment insurance (for anyone other than his own family), Medicare, the minimum wage, the EPA, the Department of Education, and the 17th Amendment all unconstitutional to talking about himself in the third person and giving Miss McConnell the middle finger. And, like all Republican insurgents early on, he "vowed that he won’t be changed by Washington, even if he winds up living here."

“Joe is not gonna change. Trust me, I’m not gonna be boring,” he said.

Miller also said he’s not prepared to commit to supporting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as leader of the GOP caucus.

“Fitting in is not my concern,” Miller said.

That's lucky for him... since he doesn't even fit in with the Palins any long-- and they practically created him! As Alaska blog Mudflats reported yesterday, Palin is getting ready to run for president-- no doubt the White House's dream coming true-- and the Palin's went nuts when Miller said he isn't sure she's qualified.

An irate email written by Todd Palin seems to confirm his wife’s presidential ambition, and revealed his anger at Alaska Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller. The email demands that the treasurer of SarahPAC, Tim Crawford, “hold off on any letter of support for Joe,” and came on the heels of an interview Miller gave to Neil Cavuto on Fox News Sunday.

In May, the then dark horse Republican/Tea Party senate candidate Joe Miller gleaned an endorsement from long-time friend Todd Palin, followed on June 2nd by an official endorsement via Facebook post from Sarah Palin. Miller’s subsequent stunning upset over Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski may have had more to do with a ballot proposition calling out social conservatives,  but has been widely credited, at least in part, to the Palin nod. Certainly, the Palins’ endorsement helped Miller receive an official endorsement, as well as substantial financial backing from the national Tea Party Express, which made possible a massive media buy in a small, easily-dominated market.

When Cavuto asked if Palin is qualified Miller hedged-- "I don't know if she is"-- the Palins sent an e-mail instructing one of their operatives to hold off on Sarah Palin's official letter of endorsement of Miller.

In the email Todd Palin went on to ask, “Joe, please explain how this endorsement stuff works, is it to be completely one sided.” The specific use of the word “endorsement” and the Palins’ anger at the endorsement being “one-sided” appears to be strong evidence that the Palins were, in fact, not only expecting a quid pro quo endorsement from Miller for a yet-to-be-announced Palin presidential run, but were furious that they didn’t get it.

The email continues “Sarah spent all morning working on a Face book post for Joe, she won’t use it, not now. Put yourself in her shoe’s [sic] Joe for one day.” Though the exact contents of the Facebook post and the previously mentioned letter are not clear, it is obvious that the Palins did not, at the time of the email, intend to put any more political muscle behind Miller’s candidacy, and were specifically withholding support they had intended to give in retribution for Miller’s failure to support Palin’s presidential aspirations.

Palin has been putting all her energy into Christine O'Donnell's campaign and has ignored Miller's race (in her own state). It's a race up for grabs, with Palin's mortal enemy, Lisa Murkowski. mounting a surprisingly strong write-in vote against Miller, while moderate Democrat is looking more and more like the alternative to the bloody fraternal bickering between the Murkowskis, Millers and Palins. I hope you've already seen Blue America's Craziest Catch ad. If not, please have a look. We can really use some help getting it up on the air in Alaska-- something you can do right here.



UPDATE: Miller Disses Palin Again

I don't watch Fox... ever. But Time reported this afternoon that Miller was on with Megyn Kelly and again refused to endorse Palin, although he acknowledged that she's older than 35 and was born in the U.S..A.

MEGYN KELLY: Let me just put it out there then: are you willing to say now whether you think Sarah Palin is qualified to be President?

JOE MILLER: You know, I'll tell you the exact same thing that I just said this last week while I was in D.C., and that is -- she, if she puts her name in the hat and that's totally up to her, there are a number of others that are there, as well, any of which would be a far better Presidential candidate than what we've got right now in the Oval Office -- but her decision to run is hers and hers alone.

It's not our decision as to whether or not she runs. It certainly is a sideline to what's going on in Alaska, and we aren't going to fall into the trap again that the media's trying to plant and create this as being some sort of a struggle between the Murkowskis and Palins, because that's not what this race...

KELLY: [interrupting].... I hear you, I hear you. I'm not trying to lay any trap. I'm just wondering, you know, she endorsed you, and Todd Palin was clearly upset that you wouldn't say whether she was qualified, and I wanted to give you the chance to, you know, say "yes" or "no", and it sounds like you're not really going to say "yes" or "no."

MILLER: No, let me make this unequivocal. She's done phenomenal things for this country, there's no question about that. She's elevated the debate critical to our race, and let me tell you also: we know what qualified means, don't we?

We know that we have a constitutional requirement for somebody that's gonna run for President. Of course, she's qualified.
And, you know, with the press trying to continue to create this as some sort of a debate or as some sort of fight between the Murkowskis and Palins, I think it really does a disservice to Alaskans.

Maybe Miller saw that Pew poll that shows that 42% of voters say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate backed by Sarah Palin, while only 15% say Palin's endorsement would make them vote for a candidate.

Palin Livin': Levi Johnston Wants To Be A Model

In a TV interview with the local Anchorage CBS station the 18 year old Johnston said the Palins are lying about him and that his family isn't "white trash." He also said he'd like to work as a model (or an actor). He looks like he'll need to cut out a few of the Big Macs every day. I can't remember, though; which one of the Palins was arrested for burglary last week?

Meghan McCain prides herself on being blunt and outspoken but she says there's one-- and only one-- aspect of her father's presidential campaign she will not comment on; the Sarah Palin aspect. Nor will she endorse the stunningly unqualified Alaska governor for president-- which kind of says something about her father's opportunistic and shockingly irresponsible VP pick. But, then again, he won't endorse Palin either.

Meanwhile at least one crazed right wing propagandist is having a conniption because Katie Coric is winning the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Journalism for the interview she did exposing Sarah Palin as a vapid, ignorant and hollow candidate.

Andrew Sullivan says this whole ugly Palin blot is all about class, although I don't see where there is any at all in this trailer park mess. In fact, one GOP publicist is trying to imply that Levi Johnston was dicking his sister-- ala Deliverance.




UPDATE: Sarah Palin’s Ratings Plummet after CBS Levi Johnston Interview

Ken just sent me this:

A new national study conducted among 303 viewers of the CBS interview with Levi Johnston and his family revealed that most (81%) believe Sarah Palin distorted details of her daughter, Bristol Palin, and Levi Johnston’s relationship to better her own image in the recent political campaign.

Sarah? Palin? She would use someone to further her own ambitions? Well... "respondents rated Sarah Palin significantly lower on scales of likeability, believability and sincerity after watching the interview with Johnston."

Livin' Palin-- Who Can Possibly Be Surprised By This?

In the wake of all the Rush Limbaugh brouhaha-- and WOW do Americans ever hate that asshat!-- who even thinks about Sarah Palin anymore? When you want a dose of right-wing stoopid, there are any number of Republicans-- from Mark Sanford to Patty McHenry to Tom Coburn-- you can turn to without having to go all the way to Russia's back porch. During the presidential campaign we may have been a little unkind in suggesting that the quarter million dollar payoff McCain gave Levi Johnston's family to make believe he would marry Palin's daughter and that he was the father of her illegitimate baby wouldn't last much longer than the campaign. I mean it isn't like they were paying him to marry her... just to behave himself for a few months. Time's up-- and the "engagement" is off.

The whole thing reads like an opening act for a Limbaugh-Steele cage match-- or some Ann Coulter-Meghan McCain nude mud wrestling. And it must be confusing for Palin fans "because in an interview just last month with FOX's Gretta Van Susteren, Bristol said the 19-year-old Levi is a hands-on dad and that they planned on marrying after finishing their education." Apparently she was either as delusional as her mom-- or as big a liar.

[I]n a new interview with Star Magazine, Levi's sister Mercede Johnston says Bristol actually broke up with Levi more than a month ago, is not attending school and rarely lets her baby daddy see their young son. Mercede also says Bristol even told him that she hates him and, when she learned she was pregnant, wished the baby wasn't his.

Mercede told Star: "Bristol's just crazy. That's the nicest way I can put it. She and Levi actually broke up a while ago!"

Apparently, Levi is also far from being a hands-on dad. Said Mercede: "Levi tries to visit Tripp every single day, but Bristol makes it nearly impossible for him. She tells him he can't take the baby to our house because she doesn't want him around 'white trash.' She treats him so badly!"

Let's let a broader perspective on which family is more white trashy from Lexus and Escalade Johnston.


UPDATE: PALIN'S PAC WEIGHS IN

Gov. Palin's PAC issued a statement on behalf of Bristol accusing the Johnstons of going to the media with salacious stories for cash. "Unfortunately, my family has seen many people say and do many things to `cash in' on the Palin name. Sometimes that greed clouds good judgment and the truth." Very sordid and very trashy and probably destined for a chair throwing scene on a TV talk show in the not too distant future.

Before we get to news from the good Palin (Michael), is there any chance the Troopergate report will make the bad one (Sarah) disappear?

Who's out to get Safety Bear? Gov. Sarah "Danger Moose" Palin freaked out when she heard that her archenemy the infamous Trooper Wooten would be at the 2007 Alaska State Fair when she attended. Turns out he was volunteering, as he often did, to play the ever-beloved-by-children Safety Bear. (Thanks to Blue Tidal Wave for the photo.)

by Ken

So it's official. According to investigator Stephen Branchflower's report to Alaska's Joint Legislative Council, as released yesterday, the governor (and now GOP vice presidential candidate) abused her powers. Howie has gone over the ins and outs of the report in some detail in his post below.

In the end, the thugs who run the McCranky campaign would probably have done better to leave the thugging to the locals, who at least know the territory. The McCrankyites, channeling the bipartisan spirit of Genghis Rove, brought in their squadron of city-slicker goons for the express purpose of clamping the lid on the legislature's originally bipartisan investigation into the Palin Gang's Troopergate abuses, but as usual with the McCranky campaign, they screwed up. Oh, the GOP slickers produced their usual quotient of intimidation and left their expected amount of carnage. But mayhem is about all the present McCranky brain trust seems capable of creating.

True, many of the potential witnesses suddenly decided not to bear witness, but the ones who mattered had already given their testimony, and it doesn't seem to have been especially difficult for Branchflower to piece together what seemed pretty clear from the evidence already made public: that the Palin Gangsters routinely lie, cheat, and steal -- and above all bully anybody who gets in their way, under the delusion that they're marauding in the name of some psychotic, satanic God -- because that's who they are. Ignorant, megalomaniacal ideological wackos.

Of course neither the Palin Gang nor their new Rovian masters in the Lower 48 will accept the Blanchflower findings. As true 21st-century Republicans, it's not just their right but virtually their obligation to make poopy on the truth. These people, after all, have a "higher truth," which they imagine is delivered to them by their gargoyle of a God, who would presumably smite them if they ever acted in accordance with the dictates of truth, decency, or authentic morality.

SPEAKING OF KARL ROVE . . .

My weekend plans include trying to catch Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, a documentary that I'm hearing from all sides not only is remarkable in its own right, helping us understand the life's work of the father of modern gutter-style campaigning -- and guru to slimemaster Rove -- but is invaluable for understanding the kind of campaign we're seeing now being thrown up against the wall by McCranky campaign "genius" (and Rove disciple) Steve Schmidt.

Lee Atwater is best remembered for "Willie Horton"-ing the 1988 presidential campaign of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis into oblivion. It's also remembered that during his terminal struggle with a brain tumor, he saw and repented of the evil he had done in his professional life.

So naturally they bellow like wounded hippos about shameful partisan politics! This is what happens when ultra-partisan right-wing loons look in a mirror. They're the ones who reflexively behave in accord with shameful partisan politics. Or should we say shameless politics? Because these people are surely incapable of shame. Quite possibly in their degraded brains they really believed they were doing the Lord's work when they did everything in their power -- well, actually well beyond their lawful power -- to settle their score with Governor Sarah's former brother-in-law, Trooper Mike Wooten.

Now I'm prepared to believe that Trooper Wooten isn't a great guy, although I have to say that when all the evidence comes from the mouths of the Palin Gang, its total evidentiary value is roughly zero. But the measure of their ruthlessness and truthlessness isn't what they did, or tried to do, to the hapless trooper. It's their single-minded devotion to their only discernible Guiding Principle: Getting What We Want When We Want It. Which meant that they had to mow down the man who stood in the path of their vengeance, doing his job. State Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, who appears to be as upright and universally admired as you'll find in public service, steadfastly resisted the relentless (and, he believed, illegal) pressure from First Dude Todd Palin and assorted other Palin Gang henchpersons to fire Trooper Wooten. And so, eventually and outrageously, he had to be fired himself.

I suppose I should qualify that description of Monegan as "universally admired." That was the case before the invasion of the GOP slickers, who promptly set about sliming him. Of course you realize that as spiritual heirs of Karl Rove they had no choice. One gaping hole the cover-up could never cover up was the absence of a remotely plausible reason for Monegan's firing. The serial lies put out by the governor became increasingly more pathetic.

But that's why Rove disciples never travel without vats of slime. You get the feeling they take special pleasure in trashing the reputation of a good man. So, everyone in Alaska knew Monegan to be both competent and principled, eh? For low-lifes like the Palin Gang and the McCrankyites, that probably just adds to the satisfaction of bringing the sumbitch down.

Poor Walt has been vindicated but still faces the task of picking up the pieces of his reputation. Rachel Maddow asked him about this when he spoke to her on her show last night, and he really didn't seem to know how he's going to do this.

I realize how crazed and hyperbolic I sound talking about the right-wingers as, effectively, spawns of Satan. I sound as crazy as I'm accusing them of being. The only difference is that they really are.

In other words, I'm stuck in the same position I was not quite a month ago when I wrote a post called "Can we really have a presidential election in which one side does nothing but lie? (Apparently so.)"

I expect that many people who read the piece assumed I was being hyperbolic or metaphorical, if not downright hysterical, in proclaiming that new-school Republicanism requires total abandonment of truth, substituting what we would like to be true or in some cases what we think ought to be true. Alas, no, as the Rs have continued to demonstrate since I wrote the earlier piece, they are entirely off the truth standard.

Meanwhile our beloved Infotainment News Media, as always, report this as a case of "both sides exaggerating," or "both campaigns stretching the truth." So when it comes to sliming, "both sides" are doing it, and never mind that the charges against McCranky are pertinent and true, while the vilifications of Obama are psychotic tissues of lies, innuendo, and irrelevance.

Now, of course, the insanitization has reached the point of actively fomenting violence, to the point where even dead-to-the-world McCranky felt obliged to pull back. Make no mistake, though: He is the candidate of hatred, ignorance, bigotry, criminal thuggery, and outright violence. And the people who support him are doing everything in their power to turn the country into an ungovernable cauldron of ignorance and hate.

There's a tendency among pundits to minimize the significance of the Troopergate charges. Of course now we know conclusively that this charge of political abuse in Gov. Danger Moose's administration is true. And the more we look at the Palin Gang's track record at both the local and the state levels, this wasn't an isolated instance -- it's the way the gang does business. Most important, the whole stinking mess is a function of the appalling judgment of the pathetic McCranky, clutching desperately at his last chance for the presidency.

Electorally speaking, however, none of this matters much. In all likelihood, the Troopergate report is just another nail in the coffin of the McCranky-Danger Moose ticket, courtesy of the economic catastrophe brought on by decades of the kind of governance Young Johnny has fought for so passionately for so long. It's looking highly unlikely that the Crankyman will be spending any extended time in the White House.

But does that mean Gov. Danger Moose is going to sink back into the much she crawled out of? Or that the crusade for ignorance and thuggery of which she has become the perky heroine will magically disappear? I wish it were so, but I don't think so.


MICHAEL PALIN WANTS IT KNOWN: HE'S NO RELATION
TO YOU-KNOW-WHO -- HE'S "SAHARA" (NOT SARAH) PALIN

I know I'm not the only one who did a double take on first encountering the name of Alaska's scumbag governor. The only other Palins I've heard tell of are the family of legendary Monty Pythonite (and more recently master traveler, having invented his own genre of travel film and book) Michael Palin, one of the globe's more treasured inhabitants.

Of course it seemed improbable that there was any connection. But for a lot of us "Palin" is a brand name that stands for something. It came as something of a jolt to discover that our Michael has been been undergoing a sort of identity crisis himself.

For his far-flung network of fans, Michael sends out too-infrequent but periodic e-mail updates (you can get information and sign up on the Palin's Travels website, www.palinstravels.com), and one just went out yesterday, presumably occasioned by news of his latest travel project -- 80 Days Revisited, a return journey ("the first I've ever attempted") after 20 years in which he will attempt to find as many shipmates as he can from --

one of the best-remembered sequences of any of my travel adventures, the dhow journey from Dubai to Bombay, episode three of Around the World in 80 Days. As we sailed agonisingly slowly down the Persian Gulf on board one of world's oldest surviving traditional sailing ships we formed a unique relationship with our Indian crew. Mutual incomprehension gradually gave way to friendship and affection, as we accepted the fact that our lives, and the success of our journey Around the World in 80 Days was in the hands of this band of ragged, under-paid sailors from Gujerat.

Now that's the serious-news part of the new e-mail. Easing into the news, Michael tell us:

I'm conscious, as ever, that a lot of water has flown under the bridge since my last message. Since then I've been working hard at an edit of my Diaries 1980 -1988 in time for publication next year, whilst watching Archie grow up and trying to come to terms with my identity theft by a hockey mum in Alaska. And no, Sarah Palin is not my sister, daughter or alias. And I'm Sahara Palin not Sarah.

In case you don't know, Michael did a fascinating trek across the Sahara which produced the series and book of that name.

By the way, the new project ("currently called 80 Days Revisited") "will hopefully be shown as a one-hour special on BBC-1 around Christmas." Which means we'll get it, well, goodness knows when and where. There's also a revised edition of the Around the World in 80 Days book in the works.

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Didn't we see this coming? The Cheney Doctrine says McCranky and the Palin Gang can do and say any damn thing they like, and we can't touch them

"Subpoenas? Laws? We're the Palin Gang --

we use subpoenas to wipe our smelly butts!"

by Ken

It's not as if nobody warned us. Especially once the Democrats wrested control of Congress from the clutches of the full-time Bush co-conspirators, and Speaker Pelosi promptly announced that impeachment was "off the table." It wasn't just a matter of justice -- i.e., making the criminals pay for their crimes, appropriate as that would have been from a legal and moral standpoint. More important was the signal sent by allowing the career criminals of the Bush regime to walk:

We can't touch you. You're too smart for us. You can do whatever you damn please from -- from here to eternity.

Throw in all the well-intentioned efforts to peel the lid off the Republican transformation of our government into an organized-crime conspiracy working for the financial benefit of the wheeler-dealers who put a pestilential twerp in the White House and the ideological advantage of the organized wackos who helped do it. and the further efforts to turn the country into a single-party dictatorship, all the congressional inquiries, all the other investigations including the wave of damning reports by the regime's own long-neutered inspectors general -- efforts uniformly flouted, even sneered at by the regimists. Same message:

We can't touch you. You're too smart for us. You can do whatever you damn please from -- from here to eternity.

Yup, they beat the rap -- Cheney, Rove, the whole rampaging kit and caboodle.
And they did it sporting shit-eating grins on their faces, winking a they whined: "Pure partisan politics."

Oh, they couldn't do it alone. They did it with the enthusiastic collaboration of large quantities of voters and potential voters willing, often eager, to vote against their own interests -- people who behave so stupidly, they would need a 50-point IQ bump to qualify as morons.

And in the end, the regimistas were right. The squeaky, creaky wheels of justice never laid a finger on them. (Even when Irving "Lewis" Libby took one for the team, the figurehead boss of the crime family was there to fish him out of the drink.) And now, in good part as a result, the Right thinks it has across-the-board carte blanche.

So we get a presidential campaign in which not a word of truth is spoken.

And in the American Far North we have those newly made members of the Republican crime family thumbing their noses at investigations of their assorted malfeasances. Sure, they promised to cooperate with the Troopergate investigation, but that was Back Then, back before they became federalized soldiers in the family. And, oh yes, when the state investigators were about to issue subpoenas. No need to do that, they said, we're all friends here.

(Ironic parenthetical note: And yet it was possible for the Palin administration, which appears to have been merely thuggish and authoritarian, and making its wacko-Christian-zealot ideology law. By the standards of the local Republican crime families Governor Palin displaced -- the Stevenses, the Murkowskis, the Youngs -- the Palin Gang was, shall we say, "revenue neutral." Or maybe you just have to get your governmental sea legs before you feel entitled to treat the state treasury as your personal piggy bank and the state's business partners as your Daddy Warbucks.)

Call it the Cheney Doctrine. If Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten don't have to answer subpoenas, no matter what any stinkin' judge says, then why should Alaska's First Dude? (And speaking of the First Dude, have you ever seen anyone you were more sure was destined one day to dress in prison garb?) If Karl Rove can do whatever he damn pleases with his e-mails, no matter what the (sneer!) laws say, why can't the Palin Gang? It's all very well to say that, with the First Dude being illegally copied on every gubernatorial e-mail, no possible claim of executive privilege can be made. They don't even have to claim privilege -- they're Right-Wing Republican Hoodlums, they're above the law, they can do whatever they want

So here we have the McCranky regime running way ahead of the Bush regime: They've already got their first cover-up in place, and it's still more than six weeks to Election Day! Young Johnny himself is already exercising the Bush Privilege of spewing any damned lie he wants. The man who is a creature of the Washington Inside, whose political career is owned and operated by lobbyists, whose entire history has been committed to turning the American economy into the outlaw free-fire zone that is now imploding? Why, hasn't he been warning us all along?

Er, no, Young Johnny, you haven't. You're a fucking liar, and back in the Keating Five days you admitted you were on the take. (Of course you've gotten smarter about your nest-feathering in the days since.) Apart from enriching yourself and your cronies

Flip-flop? Me? Prove it, coppers! And while you're at it, you can take your damn subpoenas and shove them up your --


AND APPARENTLY THE CHENEY DOCTRINE ALLOWS THE
ARMY TO CIRCULATE ANY DAMN "INFORMATION" IT WANTS
Our colleague Lindsay Beyerstein directs our attention to a scandal reported by the Columbia Journalism Review, whose Megan McGinley reported yesterday:

Army Alters Photographs, Issues Them To AP

The Associated Press retracted two government-issued photographs last night after a photographer in Texas alerted the agency that the photos in question appeared to be doctored.

Bob Owen, chief photographer of the San Antonio Express-News, notified the AP that the photos of two deceased soldiers, who died in Iraq on Sept. 14, were nearly identical. Upon examining the photos, Owens noticed that everything except for the soldier’s face, name, and rank was the same. The most glaring similarity, Owen told CJR, was that the camouflage patterns of the two uniforms were “perfectly identical.”

After inspecting the photographs, the AP confirmed that the images were, indeed, Photoshopped, and issued eliminations on the two photos.

The elimination reads:

The content of this image has been digitally altered and does not accurately reflect the scene. No other version of the photo is available.

The photos were released by the U.S. Army at Fort Stewart in Georgia. Officials at the base could not be reached for comment.

“I’d like to think that the media holds itself pretty accountable and we try really hard to keep high standards,” Owen said. “Obviously the army, and the government, doesn’t see anything wrong with that [photo altering] at all.”

Did the Army not have actual photos of the two dead soldiers? Were the folks too lazy to dig them up? Or did they just like their faked photos better?

Apparently it just doesn't matter.

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