Why oh why do some Alaskans still seem to carry a bit of a chip on their shoulder about the subject and personage of Sarah Palin? Here's why. My friend Linda at Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis explains it better than anyone. Part 1 and Part 2. Yes, it takes at least that many parts to explain it because with Palin, "it's complicated". Excellent work, Linda! The only thing missing is Todd's sexy silk NY boxers and you can bet your sweet ass you can pin THAT one on Sarah, too.
-Laz
Showing posts with label Ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethics. Show all posts
10.29.2009
10.16.2009
I Love The Smell Of Deperation First Thing In The Morning...
Not mine but rather Sarah Palin's seeming desperation. Remember this is an independent, ad-free and unpaid blog -- thus I have no financial gain or benefits to disclose for writing what I write. It is my personal opinion covered by my right to freedom of speech. Period. Nobody is slipping me money under the table nor paying me either directly or indirectly, in fact it costs me over $600 a year for my broadband access. I have never even asked for any donations to support this blog, myself or my writing! Lastly, Google provides the blogspace for free. So there you have it. That is MY disclosure statement, so please indulge my whims again for a moment by allowing me to relate the following bits of recent Palin related information with those thoughts in mind.
There are two items of recent note about our ex-governor, the perpetual second runner up, that I now discuss -- first, she announced yet another PAC yesterday. Why? According to Fred Malek, apparently one of the few former McCain campaign staffers still willing to talk about her, "She wants to continue to be in a position to help causes dear to her heart and help people close to her". Hmm... does that not sounds exactly like what she herself said on the day she quit her job as governor of Alaska? Perhaps Fred helped her write her July third abdication speech? So basically then it is the announcement of a new PAC funding Sarah and her aparent megalomaniacal personal ambitions, right Fred? At this point you may be wondering as much as I am just what exactly is wrong with the old SarahPAC which would cause the need for an announcement of an entirely new PAC? Incidnetly, even after this announcement the old SarahPAC is still functioning online and continues to beg for more money from her supporters. So really -- why a second PAC?
Allow me to take a stab at explaining this from the perspective of a non-lawyer but as someone who has done extensive research concerning her troubles with personal finance and her various online fund raising efforts. At face value this new PAC appears to be exactly the same thing as SarahPAC, which again immediatly begs the question as to why she needs yet another PAC? Why Sarah, WHY? Is it because the hammer of justice is about to drop hard on SarahPAC due to its original thinly veiled charter that essentially makes it a slush fund to pay her friends, family, cronies and the monthly fees of spokes-model Meg "The Mouth" Stapeltongue rather than actually supporting political candidates and causes other than Team Sarah itself? My short answer is yes I believe so, yes precisely. Here comes the hammer, Sarah and lovers of Sarah. Better brace yourself.
As a PAC, the FEC has already officially grumbled about SarahPAC's legality based upon its original charter, pretty much alleging hers is NOT truly legal under the rules, regulations and laws governing what qualifies as a tax exempt 527 group. It has also been suggested by some at the FEC that there are glaring legal difficulties with the original charter of SarahPAC in claiming it to be a 501(c)3 which would allow her donors to write their contributions off on their taxes. Since Sarah is not currently running for political office how can she and her team continue to ethically claim tax exempt status? It's not a campaign fund. Add to that the fact that the limited amount of FEC disclosures available also show only small portions, indeed a minor percentage of the donations to SarahPAC have actually been passed along to support other political campaigns and causes of interest to her and her team. A comparatively miniscule amount, even. Essentially it seems thus far that the money mostly goes towards furthering her personal ambitions which presently appear to be a nothing less than a personal money making venture for Sarah and her team. No pun intended but the cash cow seems to be Sarah herself as is the direct majority beneficiary of the PAC amply demonstrated by FEC disclosures of the percentage of total monies doled out from the PAC towards other legitimate political causes and concerns. So unless she has declared herself PERSONALLY to be a non-profit entity, a candidate or a registered lobbiest concern and is willing to back it up with public disclosures to both the FEC and IRS, she seems to be dancing around with the truth in a murky gray area both legally and ethically about the usage of funds donated by her supporters to her original PAC.
Her recent FEC disclosures show a limited amount of actual "political actions" or "causes", mostly in the form of donations to a select few of her fellow Republicans and their campaign funds (John McCain and Michelle Bachman amongst them). In addition, the few times she and team Sarah even bothered to actually spend PAC donations on something recognizably political OTHER than her or team Sarah, they over donated above the legally permitted per annum amount which in turn then had to be reimbursed back to her PAC just to keep everything within the law. Fair enough. A simple mistake for which I will not cruxify them. These things happen. Those campaigns returned the excess amounts when directed to do so by the FEC because of excess per anum dollar amount violations, so no problems there other than the seeming perpetual stupidity of her PAC administrators. But as has often been the case in the recent past with so many of her legally required public personal financial disclosures, she and her team may have been playing fast and loose with the truth, the rules and their adherance to actual law. The FEC disclosures I have read show that she has been just as lax at reporting SarahPAC expenditures to the FEC as she has been in declaring (within a legally mandated set period of time) the financial value of gifts given to her while serving as governor of the state of Alaska. I cease to be surprised and -- surprise! -- she has been just as late complying with FEC rules as well. Sarah and team Sarah always seem to be late with their legally mandated "homework", having to erase the smiley faces and hearts and replace them with properly dotted i's and properly crossed t's.
Most interesting to me however is that her team's actions appear to be a literal demonstration of an acting and actual confederacy of dunces! You bet'cha! She has hired herself her very own circular firing squad! From my perspective it is obvious that perhaps she is getting somewhat less than what she is paying for from her employees who continue to act as some sort of perpetual newsmaking gaffe machine. It would almost be funny if it weren't so damn sad. It makes it hard to decide if I should feel cynical or maybe even sorry for her. In most cases I'm going to choose cynical because often it seems intentional and almost orchestrated rather than accidental. On top of all of this it appears, again through the limited disclosuers team Sarah HAS actually made to the FEC and in both the main stream media and as reported on various partisan or non-partisan political blogs, that many of these very same dunces may be directly paid out of her SarahPAC slush fund. Which of course only further compounds her potential problems with the FEC and IRS and their rules. Team Sarah will probably claim otherwise but though their own initial and perhaps accidental uncoordinated press releases and in words taken directly from her spokesperson Meg "The Mouth" Stapletongue, it was originally disclosed that this was actually the case before someone had a cow (Sarah, doing damage control C.Y.A. work as undoubtedly advised to do by her more politically savvy hired gun mercernary attorney, I'd wager) and quickly tried to claw those statements back by asserting that Sarah was actually paying for all these employees personally. Sorry folks. You already said it was paying for Meg and the Team Sarah folks at first. Once you hit the 'SEND' button it it nigh well impossible to 'UNSEND'. In my opinion all of this crazy sideshow freak circus amounts to the appearance of her and her team wilfully skirting the bounds of what is both legal AND ethical and serves only to confirm the hapless antics of her confederacy of dunces perhaps even in a craven effort to only get her still more press merely to keep her name in the headlines. Sad to contemplate that possibility but how esle is one to explain the veritable Keyston Cops nature of her and her team and their crazy press release circus? It's almost like the Three Stooges, only without the funny parts! Oh wait... never mind. Anyhow, the news and press releases are out there in the wilds of the untamed internet and I don't feel the need to provide citations. I've seen them, I've read them and I have now reported them. If you are truly interested in unraveling all this crap (and I pray for the sake of your sanity) then I encourage you all to go look for it yourself. Again, I have nothing to gain from retelling all of this other than amusement at the total and continued ineptitude of her team plus the personal satisfaction of reminding everyone of their possible lies concerning her, her ambitions and the somewhat shadowy financial details of her and her political machine. It totally boggles the mind just how badly one could possibly screw up what supposedly started out as a bright political career and yet from all appearances that seems to be the case.
Whatever the causes or reasons it does appear to help keep her name in the news which is probably the most important issue for Sarah and team Sarah. Especially considering the other item of note today: her popularity. According to a newly published Gallup poll, her popularity numbers nationally are still on the wane as they have been since the end of the McCain campaign. Don't even get me started on how low they have dropped for her within her own state! I'd go as far as to say that even the majority of Alaskan Republicans no longer favor or support her. Most Alaskans don't like quitters. Especially ones that quit on Alaska. Ask former governor Hickel. The latest numbers show fourty percent overall average favorable opinion nationwide, with sixty-nine percent of polled Republicans still seeing her favorably. So nationally many Republicans who didn't have to live with her as their governor still seem to have the wool pulled over their eyes. Perhaps more telling is that twenty-five percent of Republicans nationally see her unfavorably with just six percent registering no opinion. Still even more telling is the approval rating of those valuable "swing voter" independents: a full fourty-eight percent register as unfavorable, with eleven percent registering no opinion and only fourty-one percent registering approval. It goes without saying that the vast majority of Democrats both nationally and locally register as unfavorable.
All of these factors lead me to believe that her announcement of another new PAC is precisely because they already have an inkling that the old one is about to be shut down for both FEC and IRS violations. But as has been the case for her sketchy and incomplete (not to mention LATE) personal gift disclosures while the governor of Alaska, we have yet to have an official declaration of any legal violations and any subsequent penalties or remedies, so this story isn't over yet. Not by a long shot, unfortunately. As an Alaskan I am comfortable with the idea that many of us would prefer that her and the questionable antics of her political machine just go away forever. She has become an utter embarassment for many, many Alaskans and with every hapless gaffe continues to reflect negatively on both the state and it's inhabitants. As far as I am concerned we Alaskans need only be patient a little while longer until the she and the whole shebang implodes on her, her employees and her supporters at NewsCorp (including but not limited to Fox News, Harpers, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal who continue to promote her as Rupert Murdoch's (mostly undisclosed to those NOT in the know) pet project). May we all collectively offer a deep and loud sigh of relief when this impending implosion occurs and she fades into personal and political obscurity as a sad Alaskan hisorical footnote. May we also cheer at her and her hapless minions repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot (as they still continue to do), thus liberating us and the rest of America from any further news about her, her causes and her political ambitions (whatever the hell those may be now she's been branded a quitter and hasn't yet announced for any office) now and forever. Then and only then we will ALL be able to breathe that collective sigh of releif and we Alaskans can return to rebuilding our now sullied reputation as hardy and THINKING rugged individualists. From my fingertips to your eyeballs to her ears. Amen.
-Laz
There are two items of recent note about our ex-governor, the perpetual second runner up, that I now discuss -- first, she announced yet another PAC yesterday. Why? According to Fred Malek, apparently one of the few former McCain campaign staffers still willing to talk about her, "She wants to continue to be in a position to help causes dear to her heart and help people close to her". Hmm... does that not sounds exactly like what she herself said on the day she quit her job as governor of Alaska? Perhaps Fred helped her write her July third abdication speech? So basically then it is the announcement of a new PAC funding Sarah and her aparent megalomaniacal personal ambitions, right Fred? At this point you may be wondering as much as I am just what exactly is wrong with the old SarahPAC which would cause the need for an announcement of an entirely new PAC? Incidnetly, even after this announcement the old SarahPAC is still functioning online and continues to beg for more money from her supporters. So really -- why a second PAC?
Allow me to take a stab at explaining this from the perspective of a non-lawyer but as someone who has done extensive research concerning her troubles with personal finance and her various online fund raising efforts. At face value this new PAC appears to be exactly the same thing as SarahPAC, which again immediatly begs the question as to why she needs yet another PAC? Why Sarah, WHY? Is it because the hammer of justice is about to drop hard on SarahPAC due to its original thinly veiled charter that essentially makes it a slush fund to pay her friends, family, cronies and the monthly fees of spokes-model Meg "The Mouth" Stapeltongue rather than actually supporting political candidates and causes other than Team Sarah itself? My short answer is yes I believe so, yes precisely. Here comes the hammer, Sarah and lovers of Sarah. Better brace yourself.
As a PAC, the FEC has already officially grumbled about SarahPAC's legality based upon its original charter, pretty much alleging hers is NOT truly legal under the rules, regulations and laws governing what qualifies as a tax exempt 527 group. It has also been suggested by some at the FEC that there are glaring legal difficulties with the original charter of SarahPAC in claiming it to be a 501(c)3 which would allow her donors to write their contributions off on their taxes. Since Sarah is not currently running for political office how can she and her team continue to ethically claim tax exempt status? It's not a campaign fund. Add to that the fact that the limited amount of FEC disclosures available also show only small portions, indeed a minor percentage of the donations to SarahPAC have actually been passed along to support other political campaigns and causes of interest to her and her team. A comparatively miniscule amount, even. Essentially it seems thus far that the money mostly goes towards furthering her personal ambitions which presently appear to be a nothing less than a personal money making venture for Sarah and her team. No pun intended but the cash cow seems to be Sarah herself as is the direct majority beneficiary of the PAC amply demonstrated by FEC disclosures of the percentage of total monies doled out from the PAC towards other legitimate political causes and concerns. So unless she has declared herself PERSONALLY to be a non-profit entity, a candidate or a registered lobbiest concern and is willing to back it up with public disclosures to both the FEC and IRS, she seems to be dancing around with the truth in a murky gray area both legally and ethically about the usage of funds donated by her supporters to her original PAC.
Her recent FEC disclosures show a limited amount of actual "political actions" or "causes", mostly in the form of donations to a select few of her fellow Republicans and their campaign funds (John McCain and Michelle Bachman amongst them). In addition, the few times she and team Sarah even bothered to actually spend PAC donations on something recognizably political OTHER than her or team Sarah, they over donated above the legally permitted per annum amount which in turn then had to be reimbursed back to her PAC just to keep everything within the law. Fair enough. A simple mistake for which I will not cruxify them. These things happen. Those campaigns returned the excess amounts when directed to do so by the FEC because of excess per anum dollar amount violations, so no problems there other than the seeming perpetual stupidity of her PAC administrators. But as has often been the case in the recent past with so many of her legally required public personal financial disclosures, she and her team may have been playing fast and loose with the truth, the rules and their adherance to actual law. The FEC disclosures I have read show that she has been just as lax at reporting SarahPAC expenditures to the FEC as she has been in declaring (within a legally mandated set period of time) the financial value of gifts given to her while serving as governor of the state of Alaska. I cease to be surprised and -- surprise! -- she has been just as late complying with FEC rules as well. Sarah and team Sarah always seem to be late with their legally mandated "homework", having to erase the smiley faces and hearts and replace them with properly dotted i's and properly crossed t's.
Most interesting to me however is that her team's actions appear to be a literal demonstration of an acting and actual confederacy of dunces! You bet'cha! She has hired herself her very own circular firing squad! From my perspective it is obvious that perhaps she is getting somewhat less than what she is paying for from her employees who continue to act as some sort of perpetual newsmaking gaffe machine. It would almost be funny if it weren't so damn sad. It makes it hard to decide if I should feel cynical or maybe even sorry for her. In most cases I'm going to choose cynical because often it seems intentional and almost orchestrated rather than accidental. On top of all of this it appears, again through the limited disclosuers team Sarah HAS actually made to the FEC and in both the main stream media and as reported on various partisan or non-partisan political blogs, that many of these very same dunces may be directly paid out of her SarahPAC slush fund. Which of course only further compounds her potential problems with the FEC and IRS and their rules. Team Sarah will probably claim otherwise but though their own initial and perhaps accidental uncoordinated press releases and in words taken directly from her spokesperson Meg "The Mouth" Stapletongue, it was originally disclosed that this was actually the case before someone had a cow (Sarah, doing damage control C.Y.A. work as undoubtedly advised to do by her more politically savvy hired gun mercernary attorney, I'd wager) and quickly tried to claw those statements back by asserting that Sarah was actually paying for all these employees personally. Sorry folks. You already said it was paying for Meg and the Team Sarah folks at first. Once you hit the 'SEND' button it it nigh well impossible to 'UNSEND'. In my opinion all of this crazy sideshow freak circus amounts to the appearance of her and her team wilfully skirting the bounds of what is both legal AND ethical and serves only to confirm the hapless antics of her confederacy of dunces perhaps even in a craven effort to only get her still more press merely to keep her name in the headlines. Sad to contemplate that possibility but how esle is one to explain the veritable Keyston Cops nature of her and her team and their crazy press release circus? It's almost like the Three Stooges, only without the funny parts! Oh wait... never mind. Anyhow, the news and press releases are out there in the wilds of the untamed internet and I don't feel the need to provide citations. I've seen them, I've read them and I have now reported them. If you are truly interested in unraveling all this crap (and I pray for the sake of your sanity) then I encourage you all to go look for it yourself. Again, I have nothing to gain from retelling all of this other than amusement at the total and continued ineptitude of her team plus the personal satisfaction of reminding everyone of their possible lies concerning her, her ambitions and the somewhat shadowy financial details of her and her political machine. It totally boggles the mind just how badly one could possibly screw up what supposedly started out as a bright political career and yet from all appearances that seems to be the case.
Whatever the causes or reasons it does appear to help keep her name in the news which is probably the most important issue for Sarah and team Sarah. Especially considering the other item of note today: her popularity. According to a newly published Gallup poll, her popularity numbers nationally are still on the wane as they have been since the end of the McCain campaign. Don't even get me started on how low they have dropped for her within her own state! I'd go as far as to say that even the majority of Alaskan Republicans no longer favor or support her. Most Alaskans don't like quitters. Especially ones that quit on Alaska. Ask former governor Hickel. The latest numbers show fourty percent overall average favorable opinion nationwide, with sixty-nine percent of polled Republicans still seeing her favorably. So nationally many Republicans who didn't have to live with her as their governor still seem to have the wool pulled over their eyes. Perhaps more telling is that twenty-five percent of Republicans nationally see her unfavorably with just six percent registering no opinion. Still even more telling is the approval rating of those valuable "swing voter" independents: a full fourty-eight percent register as unfavorable, with eleven percent registering no opinion and only fourty-one percent registering approval. It goes without saying that the vast majority of Democrats both nationally and locally register as unfavorable.
All of these factors lead me to believe that her announcement of another new PAC is precisely because they already have an inkling that the old one is about to be shut down for both FEC and IRS violations. But as has been the case for her sketchy and incomplete (not to mention LATE) personal gift disclosures while the governor of Alaska, we have yet to have an official declaration of any legal violations and any subsequent penalties or remedies, so this story isn't over yet. Not by a long shot, unfortunately. As an Alaskan I am comfortable with the idea that many of us would prefer that her and the questionable antics of her political machine just go away forever. She has become an utter embarassment for many, many Alaskans and with every hapless gaffe continues to reflect negatively on both the state and it's inhabitants. As far as I am concerned we Alaskans need only be patient a little while longer until the she and the whole shebang implodes on her, her employees and her supporters at NewsCorp (including but not limited to Fox News, Harpers, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal who continue to promote her as Rupert Murdoch's (mostly undisclosed to those NOT in the know) pet project). May we all collectively offer a deep and loud sigh of relief when this impending implosion occurs and she fades into personal and political obscurity as a sad Alaskan hisorical footnote. May we also cheer at her and her hapless minions repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot (as they still continue to do), thus liberating us and the rest of America from any further news about her, her causes and her political ambitions (whatever the hell those may be now she's been branded a quitter and hasn't yet announced for any office) now and forever. Then and only then we will ALL be able to breathe that collective sigh of releif and we Alaskans can return to rebuilding our now sullied reputation as hardy and THINKING rugged individualists. From my fingertips to your eyeballs to her ears. Amen.
-Laz
7.31.2009
The sky was falling, the sky was falling!
As mentioned in my previous post, my good friend Linda at Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis talked me down from my original apoplexy over the missing Palin press releases on the official State of Alaska Governor's website. She posted an update and sent email with the proverbial "remain calm!" command. Since I implicitly trust her and her word -- and I have absolutely no reason not to -- I went frosty. It probably prevented a coronary. She had found the missing evidence at an archive website and shared the URLs in an update to my diary post at the Oasis. Whew.
Allow me to state for the record that I certainly don't mind playing the role of Chicken Little if it brings attention to something potentially as troublesome as the destruction of public records, most especially if those records were potentially libelous and could be used in a lawsuit against the issuer of said libel. Did I overreact? I don't think so. Until Linda revealed her online find it DID appear that the records were illegally expunged. Do I feel embarrassed for all the work I put in on the larger blog post, sleuthing out the truth? Not really. Linda has skills, skills she used to help "talk me down" (ala Rachael Maddow) and for that I give her a big, huge, she just won the Masters Tournament loud and not so polite golf clap. Bravo, I say! Brav-effen-O! Well played! Well played indeed.
Here's a link to the article Lisa Demer at the Anchorage Daily News posted about the incident including the part about my "tizzy". Heh. Tizzy is such a nice word compared to the abject dismay and sinking feeling I experienced at the time. The word "tizzy" seems most kind and motherly, considering... so thanks, Lisa. A polite golf clap for bringing in info from both Linda and I and then adding in some necessary back story to her column in the "dead trees" sponsored main stream media of ADN online. I say it this way because I believe her post is only available online and is fairly well burried. Nonetheless I appreciate the article and the effort. It's not front page news nor do I necessarily think it should be... unless it proved to be true that all of the records were deep-sixed. THAT would have been front page news.
So here are the archives of the records removed from the SOA governor's website, safely held at a site that Sarah and her minions do not and cannot control. I'll give you the raw links:
http://www.archive-it.org/
http://www.archive-it.org/collections/1200
My thanks to everyone involved including the Alaska State Library system for having the foresight to preserve this warped little bit of Alaskan history, for better or worse. I have many librarian friends and the real reason most of them are dead sexy is because many of them know and fully realize that information and free access to it is and should be a right. Especially if it is public records.
Now ladies and gentlemen, START YOUR LAWYERIN' ENGINES! Or satisfy your historical curiousity. Either way, for now I'm moving on to other more important things. Like getting a good single payer/public option health care plan in place. I will try to ignore S.P. v. 1.0 as much as the rest of America and the MSM now seems to be doing unless and until she finally works up the nerve to follow through on her "twitter promise" to let the "...less politically correct twitters fly frm my fingertps outside the state site...". Like they were ever PC. And wait -- does that sentence mean her fingertips are outside of the state [site]? Always pushing the word salad envelope, Sarah. Baffle 'em with bullshit, as usual. You stay classy, Sarah Palin. You maverick.
If she ever IS allowed by her lawyers to unleash the dogs of her twitter stupidity again, you can bet Alaskan progressive bloggers will be all over her like a defenseman on Scotty Gomez. Like lipstick on a pitbull. Like. Stink. On. Shit. Because in many ways Alaskan progressives have been the ONLY ones to attempt to hold this elusive hockey mom, to use her own words, "transparent and accountable" during her brief reign of seemingly unethical and unlawful terror as governor of the great state of Alaska.
-Laz
Allow me to state for the record that I certainly don't mind playing the role of Chicken Little if it brings attention to something potentially as troublesome as the destruction of public records, most especially if those records were potentially libelous and could be used in a lawsuit against the issuer of said libel. Did I overreact? I don't think so. Until Linda revealed her online find it DID appear that the records were illegally expunged. Do I feel embarrassed for all the work I put in on the larger blog post, sleuthing out the truth? Not really. Linda has skills, skills she used to help "talk me down" (ala Rachael Maddow) and for that I give her a big, huge, she just won the Masters Tournament loud and not so polite golf clap. Bravo, I say! Brav-effen-O! Well played! Well played indeed.
Here's a link to the article Lisa Demer at the Anchorage Daily News posted about the incident including the part about my "tizzy". Heh. Tizzy is such a nice word compared to the abject dismay and sinking feeling I experienced at the time. The word "tizzy" seems most kind and motherly, considering... so thanks, Lisa. A polite golf clap for bringing in info from both Linda and I and then adding in some necessary back story to her column in the "dead trees" sponsored main stream media of ADN online. I say it this way because I believe her post is only available online and is fairly well burried. Nonetheless I appreciate the article and the effort. It's not front page news nor do I necessarily think it should be... unless it proved to be true that all of the records were deep-sixed. THAT would have been front page news.
So here are the archives of the records removed from the SOA governor's website, safely held at a site that Sarah and her minions do not and cannot control. I'll give you the raw links:
http://www.archive-it.org/
http://www.archive-it.org/collections/1200
My thanks to everyone involved including the Alaska State Library system for having the foresight to preserve this warped little bit of Alaskan history, for better or worse. I have many librarian friends and the real reason most of them are dead sexy is because many of them know and fully realize that information and free access to it is and should be a right. Especially if it is public records.
Now ladies and gentlemen, START YOUR LAWYERIN' ENGINES! Or satisfy your historical curiousity. Either way, for now I'm moving on to other more important things. Like getting a good single payer/public option health care plan in place. I will try to ignore S.P. v. 1.0 as much as the rest of America and the MSM now seems to be doing unless and until she finally works up the nerve to follow through on her "twitter promise" to let the "...less politically correct twitters fly frm my fingertps outside the state site...". Like they were ever PC. And wait -- does that sentence mean her fingertips are outside of the state [site]? Always pushing the word salad envelope, Sarah. Baffle 'em with bullshit, as usual. You stay classy, Sarah Palin. You maverick.
If she ever IS allowed by her lawyers to unleash the dogs of her twitter stupidity again, you can bet Alaskan progressive bloggers will be all over her like a defenseman on Scotty Gomez. Like lipstick on a pitbull. Like. Stink. On. Shit. Because in many ways Alaskan progressives have been the ONLY ones to attempt to hold this elusive hockey mom, to use her own words, "transparent and accountable" during her brief reign of seemingly unethical and unlawful terror as governor of the great state of Alaska.
-Laz
7.16.2009
Holy Sh*t!
Does ANY of this sound familiar?
Frankly I've always harbored a certain suspicion of anyone who feels as though they are "God's chosen people". I mean, nothing personal but if you go around believing you can commit any sin, any possible atrocious act against your fellow human or the planet and automatically receive a "get out of jail free card" morally and ethically, you are sadly mistaken grasshopper. Actions always have consequences. Oh and congrats to C-Street hypocrite loser number three.
You see I have an idea that when we separate things as "God is up there" and "we are over or down here" one mentally separates the very creator from creation! What is it that isn't a part of "God" or that we are not part of? It is all interconnected. A living, breathing organism to some, a mutually inclusive shared delusion to others. Or both. Or neither. It's your journey, right?
But to commit crimes, to sin amorally and with avarice with no remorse for one's actions or personal responsibility is to throw the whole creation out of whack, out of balance. One works against one's own best interests this way when in actuality we should all naturally prefer to enjoy happiness, prosperity, comfort and longevity and work together to share and wish the same for ALL of our fellow humans during our mutual short existences upon this planet. Otherwise we only repeat the cycle of suffering if one doesn't realize that each and every one of us, indeed each and every single interconnected molecule has an equal and important role to fill in this crazy clockwork of a world.
Or maybe that's just the the "godless" Buddhist in me talking.
-Laz
(note: I edited this a day later to remove gender from the "remove the creator from his creation..." line. Why? Because attaching a gender to something as ineffable (a most excellent word, by the way) as the concept of 'creator' is about as silly as arguments over what people choose to call this 'creator', this animus, this unknown and perhaps unknowable 'thing'. Personal sensibilities usually allow me to avoid attaching any 'thing-ness' to the ineffable as most occidental religions insist. Frankly it offends those sensibilities that much of the world seems to be too busy staking out, dividing, claiming ownership and fighting long standing bitter wars over what essentially boils down to a mental construct, this ineffable. Cast as something that requires both faith and belief to accept. In their eyes, if you don't have exactly the same faith and belief as them then you are the enemy, which is oh so very wrong headed and counterintuitive to the survival of the human race itself. Whereas discernment might inform one that fluidity of the potentiality of ideas and our ability as humans to manifest compassion directly as ACTION rather than just words is where the balance of our mutual co-existence on this planet should reside. - 7/18/09 12AM***
Updated 7/20/09 6:30PM
More horrifying details of "The Family" came out today in an article by Jeff Sharlet of Salon. The list of politicians associated with the C Street house is practically a laundry list of all the bigots who oppose Obama not because of reasoned argument against any particular policy of the administration but because these people see themselves as Christian warriors on a mission, directly communicated to them by God. I kid you not. The more light that gets shone upon their delusions of grandeur the better. Again, Jesus himself said "the kingdom of heaven is not of this Earth..." -- isn't it about time people like these started listening to the actual words their savior instead of their own pompous egos?
-Laz
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Frankly I've always harbored a certain suspicion of anyone who feels as though they are "God's chosen people". I mean, nothing personal but if you go around believing you can commit any sin, any possible atrocious act against your fellow human or the planet and automatically receive a "get out of jail free card" morally and ethically, you are sadly mistaken grasshopper. Actions always have consequences. Oh and congrats to C-Street hypocrite loser number three.
You see I have an idea that when we separate things as "God is up there" and "we are over or down here" one mentally separates the very creator from creation! What is it that isn't a part of "God" or that we are not part of? It is all interconnected. A living, breathing organism to some, a mutually inclusive shared delusion to others. Or both. Or neither. It's your journey, right?
But to commit crimes, to sin amorally and with avarice with no remorse for one's actions or personal responsibility is to throw the whole creation out of whack, out of balance. One works against one's own best interests this way when in actuality we should all naturally prefer to enjoy happiness, prosperity, comfort and longevity and work together to share and wish the same for ALL of our fellow humans during our mutual short existences upon this planet. Otherwise we only repeat the cycle of suffering if one doesn't realize that each and every one of us, indeed each and every single interconnected molecule has an equal and important role to fill in this crazy clockwork of a world.
Or maybe that's just the the "godless" Buddhist in me talking.
-Laz
(note: I edited this a day later to remove gender from the "remove the creator from his creation..." line. Why? Because attaching a gender to something as ineffable (a most excellent word, by the way) as the concept of 'creator' is about as silly as arguments over what people choose to call this 'creator', this animus, this unknown and perhaps unknowable 'thing'. Personal sensibilities usually allow me to avoid attaching any 'thing-ness' to the ineffable as most occidental religions insist. Frankly it offends those sensibilities that much of the world seems to be too busy staking out, dividing, claiming ownership and fighting long standing bitter wars over what essentially boils down to a mental construct, this ineffable. Cast as something that requires both faith and belief to accept. In their eyes, if you don't have exactly the same faith and belief as them then you are the enemy, which is oh so very wrong headed and counterintuitive to the survival of the human race itself. Whereas discernment might inform one that fluidity of the potentiality of ideas and our ability as humans to manifest compassion directly as ACTION rather than just words is where the balance of our mutual co-existence on this planet should reside. - 7/18/09 12AM***
Updated 7/20/09 6:30PM
More horrifying details of "The Family" came out today in an article by Jeff Sharlet of Salon. The list of politicians associated with the C Street house is practically a laundry list of all the bigots who oppose Obama not because of reasoned argument against any particular policy of the administration but because these people see themselves as Christian warriors on a mission, directly communicated to them by God. I kid you not. The more light that gets shone upon their delusions of grandeur the better. Again, Jesus himself said "the kingdom of heaven is not of this Earth..." -- isn't it about time people like these started listening to the actual words their savior instead of their own pompous egos?
-Laz
7.11.2009
Ruh Roh!
Yeah. Maverick-y. In the same way a sock puppet is maverick-y.
Is there absolutely NOTHING that S.P. says that is grounded in truth?
-Laz
Is there absolutely NOTHING that S.P. says that is grounded in truth?
-Laz
7.09.2009
For maximum effect...
I'd suggest listening to Three Dog Night "Liar" while reading the following from Andrew Sullivan.
Pretty much every lie ever told by Sarah Palin is in there. I am heartened by the idea that Sullivan has apparently put down the kool-aid as it pertains to S.P. Enjoy!
-Laz
Pretty much every lie ever told by Sarah Palin is in there. I am heartened by the idea that Sullivan has apparently put down the kool-aid as it pertains to S.P. Enjoy!
-Laz
7.06.2009
The OTHER Naughty Monkey pump DROPS...
I knew that eventually Alaska's "Grifter-in-Chief" would have to face the music for getting a per diem for living in her own damn house in Wasilla when she should have been ensconsed in the Governor's Mansion in Juneau...
From now until July 25th it's going to be a never-ending litany of "we told you so" from her constituents (including me), culminating in a huge blowout party by progressives on July the 26th when she officially leaves. Yes she was right. Alaska WILL be a better place without her (and her deeply flawed political instincts) around. Thanks, Sarah!
-Laz
From now until July 25th it's going to be a never-ending litany of "we told you so" from her constituents (including me), culminating in a huge blowout party by progressives on July the 26th when she officially leaves. Yes she was right. Alaska WILL be a better place without her (and her deeply flawed political instincts) around. Thanks, Sarah!
-Laz
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