Why not the joker?

Via Wonkette and from points outward on the intertubes....





Best. Parody. Evah.

Fantastic!

Dave gets to the senator for dissing him last night...

The other shoe.

Ouch... This is going to leave a mark at the checkout counter...:

"In a world exclusive The NATIONAL ENQUIRER names GOP VP Candidate Sarah Palin's secret lover!

No less than three members of the man’s family including one by sworn affidavit have claimed that Sarah Palin engaged in an extramarital affair with husband Todd’s former business partner, Brad Hanson."

I shit you not.

McCain jumps shark, suspends campaign.

Stop me if you've heard this one from CNN.com...

Is John McCain freaking nuts?! I have been shocked and amazed by some crazy shit before during this campaign season but this takes the topper. He has called a time out not only on his campaign but possibly on the debates as well. I have no idea whether he thinks that this is a presidential looking move but to me it surely looks like a cut and run from the debates, especially as he was in debate prep at the time.

Look, Mr. "The-economy-is-not-my-strong-suit" McCain is not going to ride into town and save the government from itself as a model for bipartisan unity. He is not going to do anything but inject a lot of presidential politics into what is already looking like a knock-down-drag-out fight between congress and the white house on a subject that he has little familiarity with. I appreciate the chutzpah but I can do without the grandstanding.

Please senator, sit down and take your meds. This will all iron itself out with the help from the other congressmen and women. Seriously.

Fucking brilliant!

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Palin’s transparency proposal already exists in D.C. � - Blogs from CNN.com: "CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (CNN) – Sarah Palin likes to tell voters around the country about how she “put the government checkbook online” in Alaska. On Thursday, Palin suggested she would take that same proposal to Washington.

“We’re going to do a few new things also,” she said at a rally in Cedar Rapids. “For instance, as Alaska’s governor, I put the government’s checkbook online so that people can see where their money’s going. We’ll bring that kind of transparency, that responsibility, and accountability back. We’re going to bring that back to D.C.”

There’s just one problem with proposing to put the federal checkbook online – somebody’s already done it. His name is Barack Obama."

Todd Palin and the question of authorized access

Salon.com has a very good and scary article on Sarah Palin's husband.

It brings up a point that has been nagging me for weeks. How did Todd Palin get the power to put pressure on the police commissioner to fire that trooper? I mean according to law Todd Palin has absolutely no authority to ask for anything in the government (excepting as any other normal citizen would).

Add to that the fact that he is routinely copied on emails that go to the Governor on policy and even personnel issues and you have some very weird politics indeed. Imagine that. There is a guy who is not even on the payroll of the state that has potential access to personnel records of state employees.

He is not the Governor! He is a citizen.

Adding even more to this, there have been several requests by concerned citizens and journalists to view the questioned emails via freedom of information requests and they have been denied. The reasoning behind the refusal? The very Bush-like "Executive Privilege." But Todd Palin is not a member of the executive branch. He is not even an employee of the state of Alaska. How does he get to see those emails and other private citizens are denied? This is a double standard that cannot be denied.

There is a real problem here. I hope to hear more about this as we go forward. Ask some questions.

That's not experience we can believe in...

From The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan:

"I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security, I've been involved in every national crisis that this nation has faced since Beirut, I understand the issues, I understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge we face from radical Islamic extremism. I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn't a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn't a governor for a short period of time,' - Senator John McCain, October, 2007."

How many more lies can we take?

Yahoo! News Brings us more in the ongoing trainwreck that is the Palin campaign. It seems that she just can't open her mouth without outright lying. This time she is lying about HER OWN STATEMENTS from just last year. And what's more, she has just dared the press to tell her when she said the things she said!

"Show me where I have ever said that there's absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect or no effect on climate change. I have not said that," Palin told ABC News in an interview broadcast Thursday and Friday.

The daily show is going to have a field day...

Here's a bit of advice to the Governor: STOP LYING! it is really easy to catch you on it. You may be following the lead of your computer illiterate running mate and not expect that anyone will be able to fact check your responses but here's the news flash: We can!

Matt Damon

Via Ben Smith at Politico Via CBS

Giblets is back!

I quote in it's beautiful entirety:

By Giblets,

Sarah Palin Sarah Palin Sarah Palin!
Well there's a brand new political superstar on the scene and she's tough as nails and the media won't leave her alone and she's a rough-and-tumble Alaskan hockey mom and why are they asking all these questions and she is the pure reincarnation of the invincible Anglo-Saxon frontier earth mother and stop picking on her!

So maybe Sarah Palin doesn't have all that much "experience." Maybe she doesn't pay much attention to your fancy-pants "foreign policy" or "domestic policy" or "policy." Maybe she's "crazy" and "corrupt" and was picked by a "vetting process" that consisted of "tossing darts at a phone book in the middle of an all-night Ambien-and-Ketamine binge." But maybe that's just because Sarah Palin's just too busy being a real American to hang around with your namby-pamby liberal candidates with their arugula lattes and their east coast Ivy League universities and their "qualifications" while they tax the Jesus Fetus to pay for gay Muslim healthcare! Well Sarah Palin understands that being vice-president takes more than just book-smarts or regular-smarts or knowing what a vice president does! It takes gumption and spunk and other made-up words that hearken back to another time - a realer time - a whiter time - back when men were men and women were men and great big hairy-chested frontiersmen of the plains wrestled oxen and caribou and the savage Injun Man in their mighty conquest of the West before succumbing to explosive amoebic dysentery! And with the help of God and millions of dollars in energy industry donations, Sarah Palin will give us that dysentery again!

VALUES.
As a Jesus-fearing moose-hunting hockey-mom mother of five, Sarah Palin understands real American values, because she is a real American just like you, only with much more money and power and a tiny invisible fairy that lives in her brain and tells her to ban books and blow up Muslims. Sarah Palin understands that the key to America's success is personal responsibility, and the key to personal responsibility is getting lots of money from oil companies and the federal government while you enforce other people's personal responsibility! Oh, you wanted state funding to help with your out-of-wedlock Sin Child? Shoulda thoughta that before you decided to not be born to Sarah Palin!

Sarah Palin will also ban abortion, 'cause in the hardscrabble up-by-the-bootstraps wilderness of the Alaskan suburbs, they don't have abortion. They also do not have adequate access to health care, birth control, or equal pay for equal work, as it turns out.

MAVERICKNESS.
As a moose-hunting Jesus-fearing hockey-mom mother of five who hunts moose, Sarah Palin isn't some petty Washington bureaucrat. She's a petty Alaskan bureaucrat, and she's gonna shake things up in Washington! For her first reform she will pose for photographs with a gun and a stuffed moose head! For her second reform she will say something bold and brassy. For her third reform she will give birth at a live press conference to six eagle scouts, three peregrine falcons and an American mastodon, rear them in the Christian faith and release them into the wild before hunting them down, shooting them and mounting their heads in the Roosevelt Room!

Now some of you are saying "oh Giblets these aren't actual reforms" because you are boring and stupid and I hate you. But if you think about it, Sarah Palin would be reforming Washington just by being elected and finally giving a voice to marginalized white Christian evangelicals everywhere. She will also re-ban abortion, in case abortion got away the first time.

ENVIRONMENTALNESS.
As a Jesus-fearing moose-hunting hockey-mom mother of five who hunts moose for Jesus, Sarah Palin is kin to the wild outdoors and appreciates its bountiful splendor as she is gunning it down from her airplane. Sarah Palin understands that America is dangerously addicted to oil, and that the only cure is more oil. She also understands that nature is our natural enemy, created by a malevolent Satan to come between us and our God-given oil deposits with its hateful, clean water and its foul, pristine air. But Sarah Palin also also knows that we've got to leave this earth behind for our children, at least until we can find a way to drill for oil in our children. Sarah Palin is committed to exploring Baby Trig's vast and abundant petroleum reserves.

Sarah Palin may not know if global warming is man-made. She may not know if global warming is real. She may not know what global warming is. But if global warming is caused by abortions, Sarah Palin will fight it - by banning abortion, just in case the first couple times didn't take.

COMMANDERNESS.
As a hockey-playing moose-hunting Jesus-fearing hockey-mom mother of five who plays hockey, Sarah Palin lives in Alaska, which is just a couple thousand miles away from Russia and the Red Chinese, giving her valuable insight into their inscrutable foreign ways. Every day for forty-four years Sarah Palin has gotten up and thought to herself, "Hmmm, the weather is cold today - and I bet the weather is similarly cold in Russia at this latitude." Isn't it about time we had a vice-president who understands the climatological grievances of our most deadliest frenemies? Think about it! But not for very long!

Alaska is also close to the International Date Line, giving Sarah Palin the power to traverse the distance between Today and Yesterday at will and making her the Wizard of Speed and Time. She's sassy and white and ready to lead, people! And to ban abortion. Just look at that blastocyst! How can you say no!


___


We now return to our regularly scheduled program...

OMFG!!!! DONT HIT THAT ON SWITCH!!!!

You would think that the Large Hadron Collider was going to turn the earth into a scorched mass of coal or something! I mean look at this headline from CNN that I just pulled off the website! Talk about not knowing your ass from your proton! I mean what do they expect? that scientists don't know what will happen?! OH CRAP! We're all GOING TO DIE!!!!


Really? Is that what constitutes scientific journalism now days?

Well I for one am really excited. I can't wait to see if the energies that the LHC can accomplish will be enough to finally show us the elusive Higgs Boson or if any of the myriad other near unity energy subatomic particles will be proven to exist. The next year or two are going to usher in huge amounts of understanding about our current model of the universe. It is going to be a fantastic amount of discovery.

If we all don't die of course.

I just can't keep this up...

So depressing. I have been looking for anything that might be a political story that has anything to do with another candidate that Sarah Palin. I have not been able to find it. So it looks like I will just take a break from the political reporting today and hang back. Misters Obama and McCain might get an article in here somewhere but it looks like the entire focus of the national press corps is on Palin. I have officially had enough of her. I await McCain and Obama stories to get back into the fray.

Perhaps there will be LOLCats or a good bit of humor to put up here. If not then I may just not post.

I have no words

This is the list of books Palin tried to have banned. As many of you will notice it is a hit parade for book burners.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It’s Okay if You Don’t Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women’s Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil’s Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won’t by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

Let them eat cake!

This is not the kind of attention you want to attract when the average person in the USA makes as little as we do:

"Friday may be the start of New York's Fashion Week, but couture has been in the Minnesota convention hall all week.

It kicked off on Monday with Cindy McCain and First Lady Laura Bush in Oscar de la Renta.

Vanity Fair editors estimated that McCain's fierce saffron shirt dress with the popped collar, diamond earrings, four-strand pearl necklace, white Chanel watch and strappy shoes totaled up to $313,100."

Oh you can't be serious!

Shorter Andrew Sullivan: Here We Go...

Todd Palin's former business partner files an emergency motion to have his divorce papers sealed. Oh God.

this is an amazing read!

Ben Smith at Politico.com brings us this diatribe against Palin:

I have seen a number of disturbing reports about the VP pick of the republican party but this is so thorough, thoughtful and complete that it is really just staggering. Here's ben describing his vetting of the letter:

've received some 50 copies of a long e-mail from a woman named Anne Kilkenny of Wasilla, and it may be the most potent attack on Sarah Palin out there, bouncing around the Internet at the viral speed of an Obama-Muslim rumor.

The Anchorage Daily News confirms its authenticity and describes her as a "stay-at-home mom, letter-to-the-editor writer and longtime watcher of [Mat-Su] Valley politics" who has been deluged with e-mail as she become's Palin's leading local critic.

She says she clashed with Palin over her 1996 "attempt at censorship," a reported suggested to ban books at a local library, which Palin later said wasn't a serious proposal.

The letter mostly contains undisputed facts, and while it's occasionally positive — "she's smart" — it offers a bit of an alternate, and mostly hostile, history to the campaign biography.

The letter itself is truly a masterwork. It is very detailed and seen from a total insiders view. Palin has always made me think that she had some fishy ideas about managing people and institutions but this puts a lot of truth to the "feelings" To wit:

During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a "fiscal conservative". During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren't enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn't even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later--to the delight of the lawyers involved!

There's more! Oh yes, there is so much more.... Read it here...

Those cheeky Republicans!

TheHill.com has this great nugget where Rep Westmorland calls Obama "Uppity."

Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.

"Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they're uppity," Westmoreland said.

Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

Well! It sure is nice to see that the old codewords for racism are finally just being done away with. Yep! They're coming out and just saying it now!

Wow! they don't want you to know anything about their pick

Hit this You Tube link to see what the McCain Campaign thinks about americans learning anything about Their VP pick.




The say "Who cares?! Nobody wants to know anything else about her and we certainly won't allow her to talk to anyone like you!"

An truly awesome performance from the campaign to make everyone feel like they are being heard... NOT!

Lilly White...

The RNC has a problem with diversity. There isn't any.

Thirty-six blacks out of 2,380 conventioneers, says today's WaPo.

Wow. How are they going to spin that to the minority voters? Have they just given up? You would think that they would at least pretend to be inclusive if only to show future generations that they were not all total bigots.

Pretty amazing stuf

The Jed Report has this great bit that Howard Fineman said after the McCain speech last night. It seems that Palin is not going to be campaigning with McCain this week after all. Lets look in:

Howard Fineman reports a top McCain adviser tells him that Palin is going to be taking a "timeout" from the campaign trail through the middle of next week. According to Fineman, Palin will use the time to "begin the education of Sarah Palin." Apparently, the excuse will be that she needs to attend to personal business, including seeing her son off to Iraq.

Fineman says they want to make sure she understands John McCain's positions on issues and the issues she is going to need to deal with as a vice presidential candidate. Most notably, she won't be doing any substantial media interviews until she returns to the trail, which could be at least as late as next Wednesday.

Sounds like they have a serious problem if they are taking her completely off the reservation for the most important campaign week of the season. I doubt that they will find any solace from the media in AK though as there are already a huge number of investigative reporters in her hometown right this minute that would love to get a chance to bag her.

Best. Comment. Ever.

In the WAPO story "All About Sarah" :

"Having grown up in New England, I'm an ice hockey fan. Back in the early to mid-70s, teams had players called goons. The Boston Bruins' goon was Derek Sanderson. The goon, with no appreciable offensive skills, had only one job, and it was this - to pick a fight with the opponent's best player and have both end up in the penalty box, thereby giving the losing team a chance to win. When the goon came out, the crowd went wild.

Sarah Palin is the GOP's goon. No substance whatsoever, and engaged for no other reason than to win at any cost.

Posted by: Bob B | September 5, 2008 12:47 AM"

So I had to ask if this was appropriate behavior.., I know the whole thing screams "NO!" but there is actually a more deep thought here. Is it OK according to the laws of the USA and, more to the point the Flag Code of the USA to wear...THAT?

The answer it would seem is no...

The U.S. Flag Code, section 4-(d) states: "The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery...."

I suppose that it could go on to state "Even if you are a super conservative right wing whore you should not wear that even if you were going out to a Kid Rock concert!" But no... Especially if you were hoping to be the Vice President of the United States of America, you should not wear the American Flag to cover your tits and ass. I may be a screaming liberal who is ranting away into this good night, but I would never do that to our national symbol. And I wouldn't let my friends do it either.


LATE UPDATE: SO this is totally fake. I have been taken in by too easy a target. Snopes.com has busted this myth of Sarah Palin but the flag code is the real deal. (But it is Scetion 8-d not 4-d. Sorry.)

A great article from my local paper the Seattle Times:

It looks like Sarah Palin might not be as reformist as she has made it out that she is.

"But earmarks have never been a dirty word in Alaska, a huge state dotted with small communities that have enormous dollar needs for sewers, roads and other projects.

Instead, earmarks — pet projects that members of Congress fund but that no federal agency has requested — have become a mainstay of political life here, and one that Palin embraced from early on in her career as a mayor of Wasilla to the governor's mansion in Juneau.

Just this year, she sent to Sen. Ted. Stevens, R-Alaska, a proposal for 31 earmarks totaling $197 million — more, per person, than any other state.

Her presidential running mate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., does not sponsor earmarks, calling the practice of doling out favors, often with scant oversight, 'disgraceful.'"

Mayor Palin: Tell me if you've heard this one...

In the article "Mayor Palin: A Rough Record" - TIME has this quote:

"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,' he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. 'The librarian was aghast.' That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving 'full support' to the mayor."

Haven't I heard that song before somewhere...

talk about keeping your enemies closer!

Jake Tapper at ABC News has this about the McCain Campaign:

"Former officials of Sen. John McCain's 2000 campaign expressed shock and disbelief Monday to learn than the GOP presidential nominee had hired South Carolina political consultant Tucker Eskew.

Eskew, along with Warren Tompkins and Neal Rhodes, were key members of then-Gov. George W. Bush's South Carolina team during the 2000 primaries. McCain and his team long held Bush, Tompkins, Rhodes and Eskew responsible for the various smears against McCain and his family in the Palmetto state during that contentious contest."

I find it amazing that the campaign would hire the one guy probably the most responsible for the most egregious and nasty smear attacks on John McCain, or indeed, any candidate in recent memory. It is all a very classic pattern in GOP circles. Slime and retreat. Rinse & repeat.

Finally an admission!

The Anchorage Daily News has this nugget from the attorney representing (at the taxpayers expense) the Governor of Alaska in the troopergate case:

"'Our concern is that Hollis French turns into Ken Starr and uses public money to pursue a political vendetta rather than truly pursue an honest inquiry into an alleged ethics issue,' Van Flein said in an interview."

Does that mean that the republicans are finally admitting that the Ken Starr "investigation" was no more or less than a partisan witch hunt? Looks like it does.

Compassionate conservatism part deux

CBS News has this little piece:

"Republican John McCain, whose running mate disclosed that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, has opposed proposals to spend federal money on teen-pregnancy prevention programs and voted to require poor teen mothers to stay in school or lose their benefits."

Sure is nice to know that the two parts of the GOP ticket are in such Sync with each other isn't it?

Oh dear Jesus god make it stop!

Now ABC News has more in the continuing saga of Palin.

French says the investigation will also seek to learn how the Governor's office obtained confidential information from her ex-brother-in-law's personnel file.

"If she was involved, it would be a violation of state law," said French.

If this is what they mean by a "reform candidate" in Alaska, what is the rest of the political establishment like?!

But wait, there'smore!

WaPo gets into the act:

As mayor of Wasilla, however, Palin oversaw the hiring of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh, an Anchorage-based law firm with close ties to Alaska's most senior Republicans: Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens, who was indicted in July on charges of accepting illegal gifts. The Wasilla account was handled by the former chief of staff to Stevens, Steven W. Silver, who is a partner in the firm.

...

Palin and the Wasilla City Council increased Silver's fee from $24,000 to $36,000 a year by 2001, Senate records show.

Soon after, the city benefited from additional earmarks: $500,000 for a mental health center, $500,000 for the purchase of federal land and $450,000 to rehabilitate an agricultural processing facility. Then there was the $15 million rail project, intended to connect Wasilla with the town of Girdwood, where Stevens has a house.

The Washington trip is now an annual event for Wasilla officials.

Read the whole thing here

the hits keep coming!

From that same NYTimes.com article::

"With time running out — and as Mr. McCain discarded two safer choices, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, as too predictable — he turned to Ms. Palin. He had his first face-to-face interview with her on Thursday and offered her the job moments later. Advisers to Mr. Pawlenty and another of the finalists on Mr. McCain’s list described an intensive vetting process for those candidates that lasted one to two months.

“They didn’t seriously consider her until four or five days from the time she was picked, before she was asked, maybe the Thursday or Friday before,” said a Republican close to the campaign. “This was really kind of rushed at the end, because John didn’t get what he wanted. He wanted to do Joe or Ridge.”

The mind staggers.

Properly Vetted

NYTimes.com:

"Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin’s background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Ms. Palin."

I need say no more...