McCain's VP:

I don't see that being necessary for Obama or Biden. They can each stand alone as president.

(Damn... gotta go check out the "now you see it, now you don't" news on Palin investigation.)

A Tick-Tock of The Big Palin Scandal

In Alaska, it's known as Troopergate and, sometimes, Wootengate.

Newly selected GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, Alaska's first female governor, has been dogged by controversy since July 11, when she fired Public Safety Commissoner Walter Monegan. At the time, a spokesperson for Palin said the 44-year-old governor wanted to take the public safety department in a new direction. Monegan said any complaints from the governor about his job performance had "never been communicated" to him.

Then things started to get messy. Reports arose that Palin had fired Monegan because, despite pressure from her, her family, and her staff, he had refused to fire State Trooper Mike Wooten, the ex-husband of Palin's sister, Molly McCann. Monegan told The Anchorage Daily News that "for better than a year," his office had received phone calls and other inquiries from Palin's office and even her husband, Todd, about why Wooten hadn't been dismissed. At the time, he was embroiled in a custody fight with McCann. Todd said he had set up a meeting with Monegan in December 2006, just after his wife took office, to discuss Wooten, but insisted that he never told Monegan to fire the trooper.

Palin has claimed that she didn't know about any pressure being placed on Monegan. On August 13, she released a recording of a call placed by her boards and commissions director Frank Bailey to trooper Lt. Rodney Dial in February. In the call, Bailey accused Wooten of misconduct, including lying on an application, and said that Palin was concerned about Monegan's inaction. Palin also acknowledged that other members of her staff, including her chief of staff Mike Tibbles, had contacted Monegan about Wooten roughly two dozen times. Palin insisted that she had "only now become aware of" the contacts. She quickly placed Bailey on paid leave.

Palin and her family, however, have been feuding with Wooten since 2005, when he and Molly divorced, and the governor hasn't been hands-off in the debate. In August 2005, Palin sent a lengthy e-mail to Colonel Julia Grimes, director of the state's troopers, with a litany of complaints about Wooten's conduct. She accused Wooten of driving drunk, using illegal hunting techniques, abusing and cheating on his wife, threatening to kill his father-in-law, and tasering his stepson, Payton, in the presence of the governor's daughter, Bristol. "It is my understanding that months ago you were made aware of Wooten's problems," Palin wrote. "So the question begs: Is it acceptable for an Alaska State Trooper to use his badge and power in the aforementioned ways?"

In March 2006, Grimes suspended Wooten for ten working days, citing the tasering incident, illegal hunting, and drinking in his trooper vehicle. Monegan has alleged that Palin's staff and family continued to exert pressure on him to fire Wooten until his dismissal last month.

Now, Palin is facing a state ethics investigation about possible misconduct in Monegan's firing. Approved by Alaska's legislature, the investigation will cost at least $100,000 and be conducted by Anchorage prosecutor Stephen Branchflower, under the supervision of state senator Hollis French, a Democrat. The legislature has asked for an initial report by October 31, just prior to the general election November 4.

--Seyward Darby

That gets most of my initial impressions. I really don't get the selection of her for VP unless McCains realizing he doesn't really have it in him to be president but has to keep going through the motions since it is so late in the game.

29.08.2008
Did Palin Really Fight The “Bridge To Nowhere”?

Republicans have been heavily touting Sarah Palin's reformist credentials, with her supposed opposition to Alaska's "Bridge to Nowhere" as Exhibit A. But how hard did she really fight the project? Not very, it seems. Here's what she told the Anchorage Daily News on October 22, 2006, during the race for the governor's seat (via Nexis):

5. Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?

Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now--while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.

So she was very much for the bridge and insisted that Alaska had to act quickly"the party of Ted Stevens and Don Young might soon lose its majority, after all. By that point, the project was endangered for reasons that had nothing to do with Palin"the bridge had become a national laughingstock, Congress had stripped away the offending earmark, shifting the money back to the state's general fund, and future federal support seemed unlikely. True, after Palin was sworn into office that fall, her first budget didn't allocate any money for the bridge. But when the Daily News asked on December 16, 2006, if she now opposed the project, Palin demurred and said she was just trying to figure out where the bridge fit on the state's list of transportation priorities, given the lack of support from Congress. Finally, on September 19, 2007, she decided to redirect funds away from the project altogether with this sorry-sounding statement:

"Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport, but the $398 million bridge is not the answer," said Governor Palin. "Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it's clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island," Governor Palin added. "Much of the public's attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here. But we need to focus on what we can do, rather than fight over what has happened."

Maybe I've missed something, but it sure looks like she was fine with the bridge in principle, never had a problem with the earmarks, bristled at all the mockery, and only gave up on the project when it was clear that federal support wasn't forthcoming. Now, Charles Homans, who knows Alaska well, says Palin's anti-corruption instincts are fairly solid (she sold off the gubenatorial jet upon taking office, for one), and a casual Nexis search suggests that she's fiscally conservative (insofar as that term makes sense in a quasi-socialist state like Alaska), but this hardly looks like the "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" moment everyone's making it out to be.

P.S. Here's a piece that Palin's special counsel, John Katz, wrote in March of this year for the Juneau Empire, assuring the Alaskan public that Palin was still very much in favor of earmarks, but sadly needed to scale back her requests somewhat (to "only" 31 earmarks this year"down from 54 last year) in response to "unwanted attention" from Congress and the press.

--Bradford Plumer

Posted: Friday, August 29, 2008 7:42 PM with 10 comment(s)

Also, people googling for information on Sarah Palin and Dan Quayle are in the top 100 searches of the day.

It gets better:

Quote:

" Stevens and Young, redux. She has distanced herself from the state’s two most popular politicians, but both appeared at Palin fundraisers during her 2006 gubernatorial bid.

" The environment. As governor, Palin vetoed wind power and clean coal projects, including a 50-megawatt wind arm on Fire Island and a clean coal facility in Healy that had been mired in a dispute between local and state governments.

" And, maybe, censorship. According to the Frontiersman newspaper, Wasilla’s library director Mary Ellen Emmons said that "Palin asked her outright if she could live with censorship of library books.” Palin later dismissed the conversation as a “rhetorical” exercise.

So one tenth of her campaign financing in 2002 was from oil company bosses, she's being investigated by her own legislature for a scandal where she appointed a sexual harasser, she vetoed wind and clean coal energy projects, and wanted to impose Christianist censorship on public libraries. I mean: did anyone even vet her?

It's useful to judge the veep picks as an insight into how the two presidential candidates make decisions. A reader sums it up:

Quote:

Looking at these two events, what do we see? Obama is cautious, conservative and highly deliberative in his approach. McCain is a risk-taker, indeed, even a bit rash.

In a world of Jihadist terror, resurgent great power politics, and proliferating WMDs, who are you more comfortable with? And how eager are you to roll the dice?

This is a reckless act of egotism and politics. The more you think about it, and the more you consider how many charges he has leveled against Obama's alleged inexperience in a time of peril, the more outrageous it is that she he picks an unknown local politician he has only met once before to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Palin isn't the issue here. McCain's judgment is. It's completely off the wall. Is there something wrong with him?

... people googling for information on Sarah Palin and Dan Quayle are in the top 100 searches of the day.