Off to bed early (for me)!
With over 823,000 views on YouTube, I must be the last one to know about this great Dr. Seuss style story of John McCain and Sarah Palin. I’m several days late and a whole lot short, but this is so good, I don’t care. It’s a good bedtime story, especially now that we know the ending!
Brilliant.
I leave it to you night owls, and other continentals! Good night!
It’s been a delightfully slow news day here on the Mudflats. It’s cold and grey, and at 5:00 Alaska time, the pale orange sun has set over Cook Inlet. So it was nice, on this quiet, lazy day, to get a message from one of our favorite Mudflatters, and one we haven’t heard from in a while, Representative Les Gara. No gripping press releases or dragon slaying this time….just a nice election update.
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I thought I’d offer you the kind of election analysis you just can’t buy. Mostly because it’s not worth that much.
The Mark Begich-Ted Stevens race remains too close to call, and word is we might have some new numbers soon. My good friend Ethan Berkowitz (we’ve been friends from long before either of us stumbled into politics) has an outside chance of closing his gap against Congressman Don Young, but the gap in that race is pretty substantial right now. And we have a roughly half dozen State House and Senate races with less than 200 vote differences that could change too.
Also – Friday the State Senate organized a bi-partisan coalition across party lines (applause); but the House Republicans have so far declined offers to do the same (no applause). We’re still working on them, but right now it’s a 22 Republican, 18 Democrat, with 5 House races still to be decided. I think the news story that the Republicans have closed the door on a bi-partisan coalition was as premature as the decision by the Republican leadership was unwise. We’ll see if the newspaper got this one wrong. At least they should have done a little investigation before simply repeating the press release they received from Republican House members yesterday. Don’t get me started on the state of our newspapers – where staff has been cut so much that “he said she said” stories, and stories that just take politician statements at face value, have become too common. Anyway – many of my colleagues and I are still promoting a bi-partisan coalition in the House. It’s an uphill, but worthy effort.
Closest to home - I need to announce that I beat no one. Don’t worry (or celebrate, depending on your views). I didn’t lose. It’s just that no one ran against me (I did have an opponent in the August Primary). The good news - or at least what I’ve emphasized for my mother - is that I got something like 95% of the vote. The bad news is that 5% either didn’t feel like filling out their ovals, or decided, um… Maybe it’s better if I don’t think about that.
For all Alaskan Mudflatters, here is an opportunity to participate in the final vote count. No, our election is not over yet, and all the early votes that came in between October 31 and November 3, plus a steady stream of absentee ballots being received by mail, and “question” ballots still need to be counted.
Vote monitors are needed to help in Fairbanks, Juneau, Wasilla, Nome, and Anchorage.
If you can offer some time to help with this effort, please contact one of the following:
Mark Begich campaign: info@begich.com or featherlydean@gmail.com
Alaska Democratic office: info@alaskademocrats.org
Ethan Berkowitz campaign: info@ethanberkowitz.com
Thanks for considering one last way you can participate and help every vote be counted in this historic election!
My mother is a die-hard Democrat. A while ago, she called me and told me how upset she was at Rush Limbaugh. I asked her why on Earth she was listening to Rush Limbaugh, and she said, “Know your enemy.” Taking this maternal advice to heart, I decided to subscribe to the Human Events newsletter. That’s Newt Gingrich’s little pet project, and it features writing from the likes of Ann Coulter.
I read this newsletter, so you don’t have to, and frankly most of the time there really isn’t much to say about it. It’s a steady stream of reactionary fear-mongering drivel, occasionally punctuated with hateful diatribe, and sprinkled with ignorance. But this particular newsletter almost made me choke on my tongue. Behold the Republican Grand Strategy:
I’ll keep my guns, freedom, and money. You can keep “the change!” Vote Sarah Palin for President in 2012! The Liberal Media wants you to think that Sarah Palin held John McCain back. We all know that John McCain’s campaign surged ahead because of Sarah. She’s a rising star in the GOP and could easily defeat Barack Obama in 2012! The Palin Revolution is about to break out and you can be on the cutting edge with this clever new bumper sticker! This 2-PACK includes one for each of your vehicles, whether it’s your gas guzzlin’ SUV, pick-up truck, or “hockey mom” minivan!
Wow. I really didn’t make any of that up, I promise. Not even the part about “your gas guzzlin’ SUV”. Not only is Sarah Palin a parody of herself, but now it’s the whole Human Events team. I still don’t know if I want to fight Palin 2012 with every fiber of my being, or whether her candidacy would be the final salvo that would shatter the hull of the GOP and sent it plummeting to the bottom of the ocean.
Good night, Mudpuppies.
I leave you with the following thought from Mark Twain for no particular reason….
All you need in life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
Think waaaay back to November 3rd…I know it seems like a lifetime ago, and another era. In many respects it was another era. The 2008 election will go down in history, and we were all there, drinking it in as it happened. Nobody feels like looking backward. And that’s just what those who released the report from the Personnel Board’s investigation into Palin’s ethical conduct in the Troopergate scandal are counting on. Their report is old news. It’s sooooo pre-election. Let’s just move along…nothing to see here.
You’ll recall that Palin initiated this investigation of herself, into her own actions, by a board that reports to her, and whom she can fire…..and the report found her innocent! This report conflicts with the ‘other’ investigation by the Alaska State Legislature’s bipartisan Legislative Council. They found her guilty of violating the state executive ethics act. I remember this well, as the giant green bound copy of that report has been sitting on my desk since October 10th. Here’s the exact wording:
Finding Number One: For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) provides”
“The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.”
The not-so-coincidental timing that released the Personnel Board’s contrary “Palin is innocent” finding on November 3rd, meant that headlines on election day in Alaska and elsewhere proclaimed Palin’s exoneration of wrongdoing. How very beneficial for her.
So now that election day is past, it’s time to revisit that slippery little event that snuck past us right before the election.
There’s a lot to cover, and these two Troopergate reports contradict each other in multiple ways. So, rather than to overload our poor brains that are still recovering from the frenzy of the election season, let’s just look at one for now.
The question at hand: Did Palin, and/or her staff inappropriately apply pressure to then Commissioner of Public Safety Walt Monegan to fire her ex-brother-in-law Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten? And was the reason that Monegan subsequently lost his job at least in part because he didn’t fire Wooten?
Commissioner Monegan testified under oath that the Governor called him in January 2007 to talk about Trooper Wooten.
Sarah Palin denied, under oath, that the conversation occurred.
<<<LOUD FIRE ALARM SOUND>>>
One doesn’t need to be a great legal mind to realize that if two people are questioned about the same thing, and both are under oath, and each one contradicts the other one….then….somebody is lying. And when you lie under oath, that’s known as perjury. And perjury is a crime. (ominous chord played on giant pipe organ)
Furthermore, although Todd Palin acknowledges talking to Monegan about Trooper Wooten, he states, and Governor Palin concurs that she had no knowledge of this. And Petumenos tells us if the Governor says it, and her husband says it, then that’s good enough for him. Case closed.
Only one problem. There’s the matter of a little email to one Commissioner Monegan. It is dated February 7, 2007, shortly after that aforementioned phone call that did, or didn’t happen, depending on who you believe. In this email, Palin states to Monegan”
“I know you know I’ve experienced a lot of frustration with this issue. I know Todd’s even expressed to you a lot of concern about our family’s safety…”
Hmmmm. So…if we believe the Governor about not talking to Monegan about the Wooten issue, then how does she know that Monegan knows….and if she didn’t know about Todd talking to Monegan, then how does she know that Todd has expressed concern to Monegan.
<<<<ANOTHER FIRE ALARM SOUND>>>>
One of the options that could have been exercised by the Personnel Board is that after the investigation, they had discovered ”probable cause” to believe that there may have been a violation of the State Executive Branch Ethics Act. This acknowledgment would have resulted in further investigation to determine if any violation had occured. One would think that the above situation would be enough to indicate “probable cause.”
Not so, says independent investigator Tim Petumenos. As a matter of fact, the report completely ignored the email. (Mental picture of Tim Petumenos sticking his fingers in his ears going LALALALALALALA!)
With all these alarm bells going off, you’d think someone would be paying attention. And this is only scratching the surface. Stay tuned.
Here’s part of Sarah Palin’s press availability on Friday at her Anchorage office. She’s back on the job, sans stylist, sans makeup artist, and sans Neiman Marcus wardrobe. She perks up a little by the end, but she is not looking particularly happy these days. When questioned about her abrupt change in lifestyle, Palin responded:
“It’s gonna be busy days here like it was busy days on the trail bein’ the governor full-time, in addition to bein’ a candidate. Now, of course, we get to concentrate on just one of those.”
It’s interesting to note, that Palin never actually turned the reins over to Lt. Governor, Sean Parnell while she was gone. Instead, she felt she would be the best person to manage the affairs of state (since she had all that free time to concentrate on Alaska), and took along with her long-time hometown friend and aide Kris Perry to the tune of $1000 a day. Perry was facilitating communication between the governor and her staff in Alaska. This travel bill will be paid by the residents of Alaksa to the tune of $1000 a day. Keep this in mind when you get to that first highlight I’ve marked below.
Highlights:
1:35 - talking about “being prudent with other people’s money”
2:18 - I know that I know that I know…..?!? (A new Palinism for sure)
5:19 - Advice to the girls of America - “You better study hard.” (learned that one at the Couric interview)
6:30 - The other 49 states are behind Alaska in equality
7:30 - A run for the senate seat if Stevens gets elected and expelled? “Not plannin’ on that.”
7:45 - “This is the best job in the world” (Who wanted that VP job anyway…)
9:30 - She wants to help “fix” the media. There’s a funny exchange in here where Palin tried to discredit whoever reported on those “anonymous sources” in the McCain campaign that said she was a nightmare. Then she finds out it was the New York Times.
Now that you know what to look for, grab a cup of tea or a glass of wine, or a crunchy snackfood, and enjoy 10 minutes of post-election Palin.
yawn…..Good night all.
Moose update! I did see Brenda the moose hanging out in the neighbor’s yard as I drove in from a meeting this evening. She was standing right by the edge of the road and didn’t seem bothered by me as I drove by. Too dark to get a picture, unfortunately. But she looks well and healthy, with a very shiny coat…for a moose.
See you in the morning!
How the man has any stomach lining left, I do not know. But Mark Begich, Democratic candidate for the Senate has been in a holding pattern, 3300 votes behind Republican incumbent convicted felon Ted Stevens since Election night.
There may be as many as 80,000 ballots yet to count, including absentee ballots and those early votes that came in between Friday morning and Monday night. Nate Silver, the numbers guru at fivethirtyeight.com has looked over the returns and raises the following point:
Although Ted Stevens currently holds a lead of approximately 3,200 votes in ballots counted to date in Alaska’s senate contest, there is good reason to believe that the ballots yet to be counted — the vast majority of which are early and absentee ballots — will allow Mark Begich to mitigate his disadvantage with Stevens and quite possibly pull ahead of him.
The reasoning behind this is simple: some early ballots have been processed, and among those ballots Begich substantially leads Stevens. A tally of Alaska’s 40 house districts as taken from Alaska’s Division of Elections webpage suggests that Begich has won about 61% of the early ballots counted so far, as compared with 48% of ballots cast on Election Day itself.
So, if this trend continues with the votes still outstanding, Begich may pull this one off. Here are the current numbers:
Mark Begich 103337 46.61%
Ted Stevens 106594 48.08%
…and then Nate Silver does all kinds of statistical, mathematical, wonky magic, and we end up with:
Begich ahead in the final count by 3000 votes. For the man who won his race for mayor of Anchorage by 18 votes, this would be a landslide.
With all the players involved in the sordid debacle that was the McCain-Palin campaign, there’s one character that has only been discussed peripherally, despite being one of the hardest workers of the campaign. I speak of the campaign jet. Now, there’s nothing to say that this jet was Republican by nature. Really, if you think about it, it was just an unwitting victim of the political madness.
Minding its own business, and with no powers of self-determination, the JetBlue aircraft was hijacked, if you will, from its normal life, tattooed with a giant blue McCain-Palin logo, and subjected to a gruelling personal schedule. Covering dozens of states and tens of thousands of miles in a few short weeks, the poor campaign jet was forced to haul Sarah Palin, her extended family, the press, the Truth Squad, and untold tonnage of newly acquired wardrobe.
Little did I know, as I stood there in the dark, freezing to death at the Sarah Palin Welcome Home event, that the campaign plane from which Sarah and her entourage disembarked, was about to make history. I was standing next to a future world record holder.
The record flight came Thursday as the E190 was being returned to JetBlue from the McCain-Palin campaign, which had chartered the aircraft. The plane had been ferrying vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin around the USA, and earlier this week returned Palin and her family to their home state of Alaska.
In a message to employees on the company’s intranet, JetBlue says “aircraft 239, the McCain-Palin charter jet, set a new record by jetting from Anchorage, to Buffalo nonstop. At 2,694 nautical miles, this was the longest E190 flight ever operated by any airline on the planet!”
“Flight 4500 took off from Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport at 11:23 a.m. (Alaska time) and landed some 6 hours and 11 minutes later, at 9:34 p.m. (ET), at Buffalo Niagara International Airport. This ultra-long segment was the first leg of the aircraft’s return to JFK and its eventual return to scheduled service in the coming days,” JetBlue adds on its intranet.
Relieved of its oppressive burden of Palin family, staff, press, and seventeen brand new suitcases crammed full of Neiman Marcus goodies, the beleaguered campaign jet finally cast off its shackles, and flew free. The record setting journey ends with a well-deserved aeronautic exfoliating spa treatment of sorts, in which our little friend will have the McCain Palin tattoo scraped off its hull. What’s next for the survivor? Its normal non-partisan routine will begin soon, and the McCain-Palin campaign will be but a distant memory. Hopefully our hero will move forward unscathed to lead a normal life.
Had I been prophetic the other night, I would have given the poor thing a snappy farewell salute, and imagined it soaring off into the frigid arctic night thinking, “Free at last! Free at last….”
It’s been three days since Election Day, and the post mortems are rolling in. Today, The New York Times is weighing in on the rocky relationship between John McCain and his unlikely running mate.
“I think it was a difficult relationship,” said one top McCain campaign official, who, like almost all others interviewed, asked to remain anonymous. “McCain talked to her occasionally.”
The disputes between the campaigns centered in large part on the Republican National Committee’s $150,000 wardrobe for Ms. Palin and her family, but also on what McCain advisers considered Ms. Palin’s lack of preparation for her disastrous interview with Katie Couric of CBS News and her refusal to take advice from Mr. McCain’s campaign.
But behind those episodes may be a greater subtext: anger within the McCain camp that Ms. Palin harbored political ambitions beyond 2008.
As late as Tuesday night, a McCain adviser said, Ms. Palin was pushing to deliver her own speech just before Mr. McCain’s concession speech, even though vice-presidential nominees do not traditionally speak on election night. But Ms. Palin met up with Mr. McCain with text in hand. She was told no by Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest advisers, and Steve Schmidt, Mr. McCain’s top strategist.
On Wednesday, two top McCain campaign advisers said that the clothing purchases for Ms. Palin and her family were a particular source of outrage for them. As they portrayed it, Ms. Palin had been advised by Nicolle Wallace, a senior McCain aide, that she should buy three new suits for the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in September and three additional suits for the fall campaign. The budget for the clothes was anticipated to be from $20,000 to $25,000, the officials said.
Instead, in a public relations debacle undermining Ms. Palin’s image as an everywoman “hockey mom,” bills came in to the Republican National Committee for about $150,000, including charges of $75,062 at Neiman Marcus and $49,425 at Saks Fifth Avenue. The bills included clothing for Ms. Palin’s family and purchases of shoes, luggage and jewelry, the advisers said.
I haven’t heard of the arrival of the GOP forensic clothing accountant, and I expect that Palin and the RNC will want to keep this below the media radar. I have a picture in my mind of some guy in a suit with horn-rimmed glasses, a skinny tie and an adding machine walking through the Ted Stevens Anchorage International airport, past the stuffed polar bear, heading for the rental cars, with shiny shoes, and a steely glint in his eye.
Yes, I know he’ll have a laptop, but somehow the image of a guy going through Sarah Palin’s pile of shoes, with a stack of receipts and that little tape that pops out of the adding machine, piling up on the floor is too delicious of an image to give up.
Will he bring empty bags to pack up for his return flight? Will he just ship them out in boxes? Will they end up at her favorite consignment shop, “Out of the Closet”? If so, will she buy them back for cheap? Will the Palin-bots that attended her welcome home event at the airport snap them up and hang them in their closets just to feel the fabric? Will some guy be drinking champagne out of her red stilettos?
But more interesting still is implosion occuring in the Republican Party itself, both inside and outside Alaska. The meme that “Poor Sarah is getting torn to shreds by the Democrats” is persistent, but the fact that this latest round of horror stories is coming from the McCain campaign shoots that one in the foot. You can almost smell the smoke coming from the collective brain of the GOP when they realize that in one person simultaneously lies the best hope, and the potential death knell of the party as they know it. This confusion mimics what’s been going on here in Alaska since Palin became governor. Many Republicans in Alaska can’t stand Palin. Many Democrates like her…..or I should say, “liked” her. Past tense. Before she threw them under the bus during the Troopergate investigation, and before she accused our new president elect of “palling around with terrorists.”
Now she returns home with a strange sort of clout. She lost, but she got to run. She may be responsible for John McCain losing the election, but she may be the next great hope for the GOP. She may be a pariah. She may be President. She may be loathed by lawmakers and loved by the people. We’re going to be smelling smoke for a while.
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