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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (81058)	8/31/2008 11:15:34 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 542836

Reckless pick bad news for Australia ALLIES like Australia have reason to be worried about John McCain's vice-presidential pick. Geoff Elliott, Boulder, Colorado \| September 01, 2008 One doesn't wish McCain ill, but if he wins in November, at 72 he will be the oldest president to enter the White House. He's had bouts of cancer, including aggressive surgery on his face to remove a melanoma. Imagine the scenario, heaven forbid, if he were to die in his first few months in office. Sarah Palin, with no foreign policy experience and untested on the national and international stage, would be calling the shots, setting policy on US engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, where our Diggers are, or have been, in harm's way. It would make a president McCain's decision on who is secretary of state, defence secretary and national security adviser even more important than it usually is. What McCain has done in selecting Palin is an entirely political decision to win him the general election, which proves again that self-interest always triumphs in politics. But in terms of foreign policy, in which Australia has most interest, this is a reckless move and potentially stressful toour alliance in the event that early in the next administration Palin were elevated to the presidency. The comeback from the McCain campaign is that Barack Obama is even less experienced than Palin. As a political argument, this is understandable and worth running, but it is intellectually dishonest. You don't pull off what Obama has done in the past 18 months and not be qualified to lead. In fact, this is what the whole process is about - testing candidates in the public glare seven days a week for nearly two years so Americans can make their judgment on who should lead their parties. Obama has passed that test with his party's voters, and is now being tested again against McCain in the general election. Obama's intellectual heft plus his state department in waiting - about 300 foreign policy advisers are already signed on to his team - shores up his credentials. And his pick of Joe Biden, 65, as his VP means that should Obama come to harm, the US and its allies will have in a president Biden - a life-long senator and two-time presidential candidate - an expert in foreign policy and international relations. That's not to say Obama's decision on Biden was not a political decision either, designed to neutralise the argument that he lacked experience. But from an Australian perspective, there appears little risk in the pairing of the Obama-Biden ticket. Senior Republican sources with knowledge of McCain's thinking say the Republican faced two scenarios in his VP decision. Either he was travelling well in the campaign against Obama, so choose an establishment VP candidate such as a Mitt Romney. Or that the headwinds are so strong against Republicans this year that there was little chance he would win, so he had to try to go for a game changer. "This selection shows where McCain thinks the campaign was at - that they faced the prospect of a wipeout in November," a source said. McCain can be expected to placate allies by saying that he, as commander-in-chief, will be calling the shots and doesn't need someone, as Obama needs Biden, to help him through - in this way again highlighting Obama's lack of experience. Fair enough, and McCain's knowledge and experience in foreign relations is beyond dispute. But it's another political argument, since Canberra is comfortable with Obama, tested as he has been through the Democratic process and as he is shown to have remarkable administrative abilities. Canberra's main concern with Obama is on trade policy, in which he has sounded the usual populist rhetoric, although less so now he is the presidential nominee and has moved to the centre of US politics. Palin? For the US, she might be a great vice-president - her reformist agenda is admirable and she has star quality and a fascinating life story. But that's for Americans to debate. Australia, rightly, has no say in the electoral process in the US. We are observers. But this is a poor decision. The Howard government and now the Rudd Government have had to do some hefty political lifting at home to ensure that, despite the mistakes in Iraq and the unpopularity of the Bush administration, the alliance with the US remains core foreign policy. But as an ally who has fought alongside the US forces in every conflict America has been involved in for the past 100 years, there is reason to be worried. As an ally, we deserved better than this from McCain. theaustralian.news.com.au

To: Dale Baker who wrote (81058)	8/31/2008 11:27:04 AM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 542836

Troopergate in detail: Josh Marshall's crew had been investigating this well before Palin was picked. He has a longish post this morning that offers his take, a much more narrative driven take. Helps a lot. ------------------------ Getting Real I've noticed some people who should know better claiming that bringing up Gov. Palin's troopergate scandal is tantamount to making a victim of or defending her slimeball ex-brother-in-law who allegedly once used a taser on his stepson. That's awfully foolish. So I thought I'd put together a post explaining why. The person in question is state trooper Mike Wooten -- Palin's ex-brother-in-law who's embroiled in a bitter custody and divorce battle with Palin's sister. Back in the second week of August, well before Palin became a national political figure, TPMMuckraker was reporting on this story. And as part of the reporting we tried to get a handle on just how bad a guy Wooten was. Most people who are familiar with the ugliness that often spills out of custody and divorce cases know to take accusations arising out of the course of them with a grain of salt unless you know a lot about the people involved. And if you look closely at the case there are numerous reasons to question the picture drawn by the Palin family. Regardless, we proceeded on the assumption that Wooten really was a rotten guy because the truth is that it wasn't relevant to the investigation of Palin. Let's review what happened. The Palin family had a feud with Wooten prior to her becoming governor. They put together a list of 14 accusations which they took to the state police to investigate -- a list that ranged from the quite serious to the truly absurd. The state police did an investigation, decided that 5 of the charges had some merit and suspended Wooten for ten days -- a suspension later reduced to five days. The Palin's weren't satisfied but there wasn't much they could do. When Palin became governor they went for another bite at the apple. Palin, her husband and several members of her staff began pressuring Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan -- a respected former Chief of the Anchorage police department -- to can Wooten. Monegan resisted, arguing that the official process regarding Wooten was closed. And there was nothing more that could be done. In fact, during one of the conversations in which Palin's husband Todd was putting on the squeeze, Monegan told Todd Palin, "You can't head hunt like this. What you need to do is back off, because if the trooper does make a mistake, and it is a terminable offense, it can look like political interference." Eventually, Palin got fed up and fired Monegan from his job. This is an important point. Wooten never got fired. To the best of my knowledge, he's is still on the job. The central bad act was firing the state's top police official because he refused to bend to political pressure from the governor and her family to fire a public employee against whom the governor was pursuing a vendetta -- whether the vendetta was justified or not. Soon after this, questions were raised in the state about Monegan's firing and he eventually came forward and said he believed he'd been fired for not giving in to pressure to fire Wooten. After Monegan made his accusations, Palin insisted there was no truth whatsoever to his claims. Nonetheless, a bipartisan committee of the state legislature approved an investigation. In response, Palin asked the Attorney General to start his own investigation which many in the state interpreted as an effort to either keep tabs on or tamper with the legislature's investigation. Again, very questionable judgment in someone who aspires to be first in line to the presidency. The Attorney General's investigation quickly turned up evidence that Palin's initial denials were false. Multiple members of her staff had raised Wooten's employment with Monegan. Indeed, the state police had a recording of one of her deputies pushing Monegan to fire Wooten. That evidence forced Palin to change her story. Palin said that this was the first she'd heard of it and insisted the deputy wasn't acting at her behest, even though the trascript of the recorded call clearly suggested that he was. Just yesterday, Monegan gave an interview to the Washington Post in which he said that not only Palin's aides, but Palin's husband and Palin herself had repeatedly raised the Wooten issue with him and pressured him to can him. And now he says he has emails that Palin sent him about the matter. (In an interesting sidelight, that may end up telling us a lot, Monegan says no one from the McCain campaign ever contacted him in the vetting process.) The investigator appointed by the state legislature began trying to arrange a time to depose Gov. Palin last week. So let's put this all together. We rely on elected officials not to use the power of their office to pursue personal agendas or vendettas. It's called an abuse of power. There is ample evidence that Palin used her power as governor to get her ex-brother-in-law fired. When his boss refused to fire him, she fired him. She first denied Monegan's claims of pressure to fire Wooten and then had to amend her story when evidence proved otherwise. The available evidence now suggests that she 1) tried to have an ex-relative fired from his job for personal reasons, something that was clearly inappropriate though possibly understandable in human terms, 2) fired a state official for not himself acting inappropriately by firing the relative, 3) lied to the public about what happened and 4) continues to lie about what happened. These are, to put it mildly, not the traits or temperament you want in someone who could hold the executive power of the federal government. --Josh Marshall talkingpointsmemo.com

To: Dale Baker who wrote (81058)	8/31/2008 12:22:34 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542836

OK, I really am trying here! I went to the Issues page, where they are trying hard to fill in her views and positions, but it's slim pickins right now, and some of the things I am reading cause me even more concern. In addition to her totally oil and gas concentrated goals, I came across these statements: Education: Committed to providing strong education, including morals.. (Jan 2008) (Stay OUT of my child's morals. I take care of those, thank you.) Foreign policy: Ohmygosh: Armed forces, including my son, give us security and freedom. (Jan 2008) Visits Kuwait; encourages Alaska big game hunting to troops . (Sep 2007) (maybe this means like- top Al Queda leaders?) Promote from within, in Alaska's National Guard. (Nov 2006) Environment: Sue US government to stop listing polar bear as endangered. (Aug 2008) (because it messes up the plans to drill?) We must encourage timber, mining, drilling, & fishing. (Jan 2008) Provide stability in regulations for developers. (Jan 2007) Convince the rest of the nation to open ANWR. (Jan 2007) (Now there's a global plan) There are the expected ones- anti gay marriage, anti abortion for almost all circumstances, for the death penalty What they are going to do is "create" her. She will be forcefed views that she hasn't really evolved on her own, and she will be managed carefully. It could work, I suppose.