A Vice Presidental candidate thread.

Biden apparently admits Clinton might have been a better pick than him! That is kind of hilarious, isn't it. [..]

“Make no mistake about this, Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Lets get that straight,” Biden said in Clinton’s defense.

“She’s easily qualified to be vice president … and quite frankly, might have been a better pick than me. But she’s first rate. I mean that sincerely. She is first rate. So let’s get that straight,” he said."

McGentrix wrote:

Last week Palin made the comment "What's the difference between a hocky mom and a pitbull? Lipstick."

Now this week Obama says you can put a pig in lipstick. Obviously the freshness of Palin's comment is still in the minds of people. So, the implication is that Palin is a pig.

Sounds pretty far-fetched to me. What, now all words that Palin has recently prominently used are off-limits to use in any negative sentence, however unrelated? Can you imagine the kind of scorn and ridicule PC-fighters like you would heap upon the Democrats if they'd try to sell people that kind of argument?

Could you imagine tha hullabaloo that would be raised by so many Democrats if the roles were reversed?

Palin, meanwhile, has requested $3.2 million to be spent in part researching the “genetics of harbor seals,” in one of the state’s many requests for federal funding of research into Alaska’s fauna.

Palin Warned of Trooper-Gate "Wolves" by Ethics Adviser, Letter Shows
By Kate Klonick - September 11, 2008, 9:19AM

Sarah Palin was counseled by an ethics adviser on the gravity of the allegations against her in the burgeoning Trooper-Gate scandal -- and encouraged to apologize -- letters reviewed by the Wall Street Journal show.

A former U.S. attorney, Wevley Shea, wrote two letters (pdf) to the Alaska governor, once in July and once in early August, stating that Palin's "'political advisors' have given you poor counsel; the situation is now grave. . . I am extremely concerned about certain 'wolves' if my recommended action is not taken immediately."

Shea gave the following recommendations to Palin in a letter dated July 24:

Apologize for not personally terminating Commissioner of Public Safety Walt Monegan. Apologize for your statements regarding Commissioner Monegan in Press Release no. 08-125. Apologize, with Todd, for overreaching or perceived overreaching on Trooper Mike Wooten. Terminate any "state advisor" who addressed Trooper Wooten with Commissioner Monegan. Withdraw former Kenai Police Chief Chuck Kopp's name as Commissioner of Public Safety. Do not, in writing [as in Press Release no. 08-125], "define" the credibility of state employees.

Palin had previously commissioned Shea in late 2006 to co-write an ethics report recommending new financial-disclosure rules for elected and appointed statehouse officials.

Is this American Idol or a presidential race?

The Boar's peculiarly hermaphroditic nature is almost universally recognized in mythology. This presumably derives from our long and intimate acqaintance with the unique bodily character of this most impressive, dangerous, fascinating and human of the animals that are both domesticated and hunted. As a matriarch equally well known, the cow has been given the benign, spiritual role of the nursing mother. But the sow has attracted different associations. Her combination of gross whiskery nakedness and riotous carnality is siezed by the mythic imagination, evidently, as a sort of uterus on the loose--upholstered with breasts, not so much many-breasted as a mobile tub entirely made of female sexual parts, a woman-sized, multiple udder on trotters. Most alarming of all is that elephantine, lolling mouth under her great ear-flaps, like a Breughelesque nightmare vagina, baggy with over-production, famous for gobbling her piglets, magnified and shameless, exuberantly omniverous and insatiable, swamping the senses. The sow has supplanted all other beasts as the elemental mother ( even Zeus was born of a sow, even Demeter, Mother of Iacchos/ Dionysus and Persephone , was a sow. But she fulfills an ambiguous lunar role. Her variable dark part is sinister, not only because she incorporates more shocking physical familiarity, more radical enterprise, more rapturous appetite, cruder travesties of infantile memory, wilder nostalgias, than the cow, but because she is inseperable from the lethal factor of the Boar, who carries the same vaginal grin yet is prodigiously virile--that same swinging, earth-searching, root-ripping mouth but equipped with moon-sickle tusks-- and who incarnates the most determined, sudden and murderous temperment. (As a country boy, and the nephew of several farmers, Shakespeare enjoyed a familiarity with pigs that is not irrelevant to his myth. The imagination's symbols are based on subliminal perception. The male, aphrodisiac pherenome scent spray, sold in modern sex shops, is commonly based on a hormone extract from the wild boar.) This figure of the Boar has assimilated the magical birth-source of the Sow to create a symbol that emerges, in a man's eyes, from everything about female sexuality that is awesome, alien, terrifying and 'beyond' the reaches of his soul. So the Boar becomes the animal form of the Queen of Hell, the Black Witch, the Terrible Mother, bringing the crippling wound in the thigh, wherever he enters man's fantasy. In his role in this myth of the god who dies for and by the Goddess, and who is reborn to destroy her, he appears at the centre of religious mysteries, and Shakespeare could have found him, in the same role, as easily in England (for instance, as the Twrch Trwyth, the terrible Boar King, who is hunted through the Celtic world in the gret Welsh myth of Culhwch and Olwen) as in classical mythology.

Is this American Idol or a presidential race?

Apologize for your statements regarding Commissioner Monegan in Press Release no. 08-125. . . . Do not, in writing [as in Press Release no. 08-125], "define" the credibility of state employees.

Palin Responds to Latest Falsehoods
Addresses Commissioner's Comments

No. 08-125

July 22, 2008, Juneau, Alaska " Governor Sarah Palin today strongly denied the latest accusations made by the former commissioner of the Department of Public Safety. The Governor also released details of her schedule outlining her meetings with former Commissioner Walt Monegan.

Through various media outlets, Monegan has accused the Governor of expressing concerns about the contents of an annual trooper report. “Walt has falsely accused me of making a comment to him that a draft report on troopers’ activities would somehow make my administration look bad,” Governor Palin said. “Why would it? I would welcome further proof that my administration needs the resources we requested to get the job done. My administration asked for nearly $7 million more for the Department of Public Safety. However, working with the dollars that the legislature funded, I am confident that under new leadership, we will develop new public safety initiatives that are reasonable and actionable.”

For more than a week, Monegan has also falsely accused the Governor of having only four in-person meetings with him over the last 17 months. In fact, a quick review of state records proves more than two-dozen meetings, including one-on-one meetings and calls, Cabinet meetings and visits to the Governor’s home. This does not include meetings with the Chief of Staff and Special Assistants, community events and staff functions. Notably, the Governor and the former Commissioner made several trips to remote areas of the state in an effort to address public safety issues in rural Alaska. In fact, there were three separate trips that the Governor and former commissioner Monegan took together including Bethel, Dillingham and twice to New Stuyahok. During those trips, the Governor and Monegan were seated together and spent their days together tackling rural issues. Several commissioners and cabinet members have also countered Monegan’s claims.

“Communication has always been paramount in Governor Palin’s administration,” acting Chief of Staff Mike Nizich said. “Commissioners have always had open access to the governor and members of her top staff. It is unfortunate that a former commissioner has deliberately and inaccurately portrayed her as inaccessible.” “I have open communication with Governor Palin and her staff,” Labor Commissioner Click Bishop said. “Anytime I have asked to have a meeting with the Governor, I have been given the opportunity.” “The Governor has made herself available every time I have asked for advice, guidance or support,” Corrections Commissioner Joe Schmidt said. “She’s been one hundred percent supportive, and she’s an excellent listener. Governor Palin never micro-manages and has never interfered with any operation or development of the Department of Corrections.”

"Governor Palin has always been accessible to me,” Military and Veterans Affairs Commissioner Craig Campbell said. “Whenever she or I have had the need to discuss any issue, we have been able to. For those who think that our Governor is not accessible, all you have to see is the hours she and her top staff put in. She is communicating all hours of the day and night. Our meeting and travel schedules are extremely packed, we are very busy; however, I have never had any difficulty communicating with her no matter where I may be. I do not believe that my experience is any different than those of her Cabinet."

“I have no problems communicating back and forth with the Governor,” Director of State and Federal Relations John Katz said. “Often, this occurs in e-mails between her and me. She is almost instantaneous in her responses. In addition, we communicate at Cabinet meetings, in teleconferences, and when she is in D.C. The reason for these communications is to inform the Governor and to get policy guidance from her on key issues. I find her to be well-informed on federal issues, and she provides the guidance we need in D.C. to advocate the State's interests.”

Monegan has also raised questions about the propriety of the First Gentleman, Todd Palin, meeting with Monegan right after the Governor was elected to discuss security concerns surrounding a state trooper. That meeting occurred following standard questioning of any newly-elected Governor and First Family members regarding security detail concerns. The First Gentleman was specifically told to meet with Monegan by the Governor’s top security detail, Special Agent Bob Cockrell, to forward serious concerns that were substantiated in an internal trooper investigation. The concerns regarding the trooper included: using a Taser stun gun on his stepson, illegally killing a moose and driving with an open container in his patrol car. The First Gentleman also expressed concern over death threats made against a family member by the trooper.

“When made aware of the security concerns regarding a state trooper, I instructed the First Gentleman to contact the commissioner of Public Safety,” Cockrell said. “It is standard protocol to ask every governor about any threats they perceive or have realized. I will not hesitate to set the record straight in answering these false allegations by former Commissioner Monegan.”

Cockrell, who joined the Alaska State Troopers in 1963, started with the Office of the Governor in 1983, under Governor Bill Sheffield. He is now serving his sixth governor.

Bookseller: JD Holmes, ABAA - ILAB
(Sequim, WA, U.S.A.)