Alaska is a land of character and characters – colorful folks who’ve become deliciously quirky icons and who, like the late Uncle Ted Stevens, and the current Don Young, are mixed bags. Sure, the Congressman for All Alaska is admirably unafraid of his party’s leadership in DC. It’s always great to see him thumb his nose at John Boehner. And he completely deserves a gold star for dubbing Governor Sean Parnell “Captain Zero.” But must he wear a propeller beanie on his head in a committee hearing, or wave the penis bone of a walrus at the head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service?

There’s a certain quirky lad who fits this tradition nicely (the mixed bag one, not the walrus penis bone one). He was characterized by Sarah Palin in her book Going Rogue as an “effete young chap,” and came in third in a three-way race for governor against Palin, and former Democratic governor Tony Knowles.

There’s much to like about Republican Andrew Halcro, especially when considering how far his party has drifted into wingnuttery of late. He’s not a bigot, he doesn’t make demands to see the “real birth certificate,” and has spoken out eloquently against right-wing chestnuts like private school vouchers.  The voucher system, he says, does not make economic sense. He rightfully lambastes the Education Committee for passing HB145 on to the Finance Committee with ”no question how we fund a new program when we’re currently struggling to fund our existing education obligations.”

At a time when many Republicans hyperventilate about the secret Muslim Kenyan in the White House, or try to take steps to ban Sharia law here in Alaska, Halcro is a refreshingly cerebral, civilized sort of fellow. Like David Brooks and David Frum, he’s the sort of Republican of whom progressives will sometimes say nice things.

He has even brilliantly poked fun at his own foppishness in an unforgettable fireside reading of that offending passage from Going Rogue.

So, that’s the nice part.

The less appealing side appears when Halcro channels his inner Mitt Romney, resplendent in all his out-of-touch One-Percentish hyperbolic finery.

The Oil Tax Debate

Like Romney, Halcro has assumed the unenviable task of insisting to people who ought to know better, that not enough income has been upwardly redistributed to The One Percent. At a time Alaska faces domestic violence and sexual assault epidemics, chronic poverty in its rural villages, and school districts that are being forced to cut critically important positions, Halcro insists that it is some of the most profitable corporations on the planet and their absurdly compensated executives who require our sympathy, and our money, from our oil. If the Big Three were only richer, we’d have nothing to worry about. This is, to put it politely, a tough sell.

When Alaskan schoolchildren go to Juneau, and beg for desperately needed resources, only to be told “no” by Governor Zero, it’s a bit obscene to suggest that those who deserve our advocacy and our money are a few bazillionaires in Texas and Great Britain.

Halcro may fan himself and gasp “class warfare!” at this, but the component parts of fiscal policy do not occur in a vacuum. That is to say, there are two sides to the ledger, and each dollar taken from the state of Alaska and given to Texan and British oil companies is a dollar that is not going into our Permanent Fund, not building out our young, underdeveloped infrastructure, and not maintaining our commitment to educate the next generation of Alaskans.

The governor can brag all he likes in his State of the State Address about the sweet economic metrics that trickle like fiscal honey across our state budget—relatively low unemployment and foreclosure rates, coupled with budget surpluses at a time the Lower 48 states are running in the red. But if the net outcome of this is at the expense of our most vulnerable – selling out our future in order to subsidize Conoco CEO Jim Mulva’s next yacht – we may as well be Mississippi. And nobody wants that.

“Fiscal Conservatism”

Why is it most Republicans only discover “fiscal conservatism” when it comes to school kids and basic services, but in the case of tax giveaways to obscenely profitable corporations, they turn into drunk sailors on shore leave?  Even Halcro who comes down on the right side of “school choice” is perfectly willing to throw billions to the oil companies, with guarantee of return on investment. He says on his blog regarding vouchers:

It’s a bad idea. This year we’re paying private tuitions, next year were funding private school improvements. Anytime you give groups with political power direct access to state coffers, you’re in for a penny in for a pound.

Yes. Groups with political power always want more. More power, and more money. And it’s up to us to decide when enough is enough, and to restrain the rampant greed that would rob our state coffers and take money from the things we value, in order to enrich themselves beyond excess.

He goes on:

In this case, education committee members appeared to be all to willing to ignore the pesky little details like how do we financially sustain this new program and how will this impact the public school system which serves ninety percent of Alaskan students.

And he asks us to ignore that hypocrisy, and ignore the pesky little details like how do we financially sustain this $2 billion annual give away, and how will this impact the vital services and programs that serve all the residents of the state?

Perhaps the saddest part of Halcro’s sheltered, clueless elitism is that it colors the admirable parts of him. He’s someone whom thinking people want to like. He is witty, and charming, and good company over a martini. I’d like to think he takes his positions against homophobia and school vouchers on their merits, but have begun like many to wonder whether he simply cannot stomach the ghastly, downmarket Tea Party demographic much in the way old-monied Yankees like Bush Sr. of Kennebunkport could never quite stomach Southern rednecks.

Halcro in Carhartts would look as credible as Dukakis in a tank.

Why So Snippy?

Which brings us to a bizarre trajectory played out in the Alaskan media over the past several months—Halcro’s increasingly heated and snippy tone toward those with the nerve to not share his position on oil taxes.

It’s bizarre because, let’s face it, Halcro has much more in common with Bill Wielechowski and Hollis French than with most who share his oil tax position. I could actually conceive of the three of them matching wits in an impassioned but cerebral debate over a good microbrew.

I can not imagine Andrew enjoying himself while listening to monosyllabic blatherings from Cathy Giessel about how our biggest entitlement problem is public education.

Senators Wielechowski and French are not, as Halcro’s predictable, played-out meme has it, “anti-business” or “anti-oil and gas” or “anti mom and apple pie,” and it’s clear to anyone who is even halfheartedly paying attention. Just to set the record straight, they also don’t wish to kick down your door in the dead of night, eat your puppies, and inject you with liquid socialism.

No, contrary to Halcro’s breathless hyperbole about how Sen. French is a “one man assault on Alaska’s economy” etc. etc., the difference between the senator and Halcro is the difference between believing our relationship to the oil companies should be a partnership versus a servile one. Do we acknowledge that the relationship between Big Oil and Alaska has been one of mutual benefit, and move forward together, or do we become the beaten dog who hopes the master doesn’t get angry with us and smack us around with an empty pipeline? Do we simply want to acknowledge that it’s our oil, and it’s our responsibility to get the most we can for it , for the benefit of our future? Or do we want to hand over $10 billion from our bottom line to multinational corporations over the next five years and pretend that it won’t make a very real difference in the quality of our lives?

This flexibility-of-principle is a pattern with Halcro, who currently runs Avis Rent A Car in Anchorage. Happy to support an income tax, a sales tax, the raiding of the permanent fund, and even a head tax on Alaska workers (including children) during his legislative stint, apparently the only people who deserve tax breaks in Halcro’s view are oil …and rental car companies. Go figure.

It’s been correctly pointed out that oil pays 90% of the bills in our state. And the first thing any investment advisor will tell you is to diversify your portfolio instead of putting all your eggs into the same basket. In the case of Alaskan oil, it gives a handful of powerful corporations an undue amount of influence over those we elect to represent us. Alaska’s economy needs more diversity, not less.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Which brings us to the final Romney analogy. While a local right-wing blogger or two and their twelve readers may be urging Halcro to challenge Sen. French, simply because they hate the latter for being a thorn in their side, Halcro shouldn’t kid himself. Supporters of Hollis French will walk across broken glass to get to the polls because he’s likable, he’s effective, he’s smart, and he makes sense. Mental ninja gymnastics are not required to understand his positions across issues. Halcro just doesn’t inspire that kind of commitment from the GOP’s activist base, largely because they correctly view him as not one of their own, accurately remember him giving the Republican caucus the finger during his short legislative stint, and can be forgiven for wondering why, save for his position on oil taxes, he’d even run as a Republican anyway.

He’d probably get a nice check from Rebecca Logan and the rest of the oily “Make Alaska Submissive Coalition,” but good luck getting any of them to knock on doors in freezing weather.

As the immediate past Vice Presidential nominee, it’s hardly surprising that most people outside Alaska view Sarah Palin as a card-carrying member of the GOP establishment. Despite her husband Todd’s seven year dalliance with the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, and his quiet conversion to the GOP when his wife decided to run for office, Sarah has always been a party member—technically. Many are perplexed that Palin “suddenly” has turned against the very establishment that brought her national fame, and is now throwing her support (albeit not a formal endorsement) behind Newt Gingrich and against the party’s presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney.

What surprised onlookers don’t realize is that going from toeing the line as the party’s VP pick to her new role as bomb thrower is, to Palin, like slipping out of those shiny red high heels and into a nice comfy old pair of running shoes. She’s back in her element. The truth is that the only political tactic that ever won Sarah Palin an election—from Mayor of Wasilla to Governor of Alaska—was proclaiming herself the outsider, and railing against the powers-that-be. As the expression goes, she’s not the one inside the tent pissing out, she’s the one outside the tent pissing in. And she likes it that way.

In 2006, Palin was facing an incumbent Republican in the Alaska gubernatorial primary. Corruption was widespread in the Alaska legislature, and oil companies were purchasing their very own lawmakers, sometimes for as little as a few thousand dollars a pop. After an FBI raid, microphoned informants, hidden cameras in hotel rooms, and cash changing hands, 10 percent of the legislature (Republicans all) ended up indicted for bribery related offenses. The Governor at the time, Frank Murkowski, was trying to rush approval of a Petroleum Profits Tax—negotiated behind closed doors and highly favorable to oil companies who were eager to take as much as they could get at the expense of Alaska citizens.

It was easy to find fault with the Republican party in 2006, and Palin did just that. She rose up from near obscurity, red-suited, fresh-faced, like Joan of Arc ready to take on an army of evil-doers who were running the show. “The machine,” “the good ol’ boys’ network,” “the establishment,” “evil-doers”—these phrases flowed from her lips like a mantra. In fact, literal comparisons to Joan of Arc, King David, and the biblical Queen Esther peppered the emails of support she got from fans. Palin welcomed the allusions. She quite literally believed that God had called her to take on the fight. He had a plan for her. However, the political pragmatist in her knew not to wear her religious zealotry on her sleeve, and those who inhabited that world with her saw the wisdom in it. Mainstream they are not.

Palin’s is not a religion where a quick crossing of oneself in the end zone, a “God bless America,” or a sticky fish on the bumper of the SUV is sufficient. She lives in a world of divine interventions, laying on of hands, secret prayer teams, Providence, Destiny, casting out witches, prayer warriors, intercession, visions and dreams from seers sent through email, or on slips of paper passed at rallies… It is a Dungeons and Dragons world of magic, treachery, and Good with a capital G vs. Evil with a capital E. The world is pregnant with secret meaning. Signs are everywhere. One can imagine a long-ago Sarah as one of those children who plays dress-up, puts on the tiara and doesn’t just pretend she’s a princess—she becomes one.

This is why it is sometimes so difficult and frustrating for politicos to predict what Palin may do next. It all depends on what God wants, and how he delivers his message. The one constant is that if God opens a door, it’s not just an invitation to plow through—it’s a mandate. Palin has thereby become a living example of some sort of divine, political Peter Principle—she has risen to and exceeded her own level of incompetence.

She is not intellectually curious because she doesn’t need to be. She doesn’t know much because it’s not necessary that she does. And she really doesn’t have an overriding political philosophy, because she will be presented with people who will act as instruments of advancement and who’ll tell her what she needs to say. “God brought us together,” she told her inner circle as governor. Everything will work out as it was meant to be. She will arrive at whatever the destination is, whenever the time is right, with a small and tightly knit circle of confidants around her. She can only function through that inner circle.

As long as she is the devoted martyr, the populist Everyman, eyes gazing upward, standing strong against the forces of evil, suffering the injustices and untruths, little else matters.

And as much as Governor Palin hated the villains (the Alaska Republican Party), they hated her right back. She ousted Gov. Frank Murkowski with more than 50% of the vote in a three-way race for the Republican nomination. She clobbered popular former two-term Democratic governor Tony Knowles in the general election. And then once in office, she did the unforgivable. She worked with Democrats in the legislature to revamp Alaska’s oil tax policy, stuck a stake in the heart of Murkowski’s oil-friendly Petroleum Profits Tax, and replaced it with something called ACES (Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share). She wrote every Alaskan man, woman and child an energy rebate check for $1200 to help ease the cost of high energy bills. She went toe to toe with members of her own party in leadership positions, who’d built careers kowtowing to big oil. She praised Obama’s energy plan.

Of course, her administration wasn’t all smooth sailing. Despite the political talents she possessed, her own narcissism, obsessive tendencies, cronyism, middle school drama, truth twisting, and need to settle personal scores emphasized her incompetence as a leader. But using the GOP as target practice was a delicious indulgence for Palin—and its time has come again on the national scene.

Even during the 2008 race, it was almost unbearable for Palin to play ball and do as she was told. At that time, the opportunity ahead didn’t call for working with Dems and throwing darts at Republicans, nor did it call for compromise or praise where it was due. The door was open, and this time it called for brass knuckles. Nobody was going to tell her that Michigan was out of play. Nobody was going to tell her not to talk about Obama palling around with terrorists. Nobody was going to tell her to sit down and shut up on election night. Nobody puts Sarah in the corner.

Her latest quip for the 2012 election cycle  is that the Republican party is “Stalinesque.” Other than perhaps knowing that Stalin came from that country you can see from Alaska, it’s doubtful that analogy sprang forth from her own grey matter. But Palin has surrounded herself with a fresh new “inner circle” that knows of such things, and has been delivered to her. They are the Cyrano to her Christian de Neuvillette. They whisper “Stalinesque” and other smart things from the rose bushes, and she stands in the moonlight, speaking the mavericky words of insurgency to the camera, eyes shining, and beams of righteous light emanating from her like a halo.

In a 2009 email, after being uninvited to speak at a Republican event, Palin had quite a bit to say about Newt Gingrich, the man she now defends.

…Yes, (Newt/GOP) are egotistical, narrow minded machine goons... but all the more reason God protected me from getting up on stage in front of 5000 political and media “elites” to praise him, then it be shown across the nation. At some point Newt would have shown his true colors anyway and we would have been devastated having known we’d earlier prostituted ourselves up in front of the country introducing him and acting like that good ol’ rich white guy is the savior of the party.

Plus, I had nothing to wear, and God knew that too. Party machinery sucks. I can’t tell you how much I hate it – nothing ever changes – we went through it before and after the VP campaign… I’ve gone through it all my career. We just don’t fit into it, and maybe we should thank God for that. [From Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin - A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years]

The blatant hypocrisy of it will not occur to her. That was then and this is now. Then, he was the establishment, the machine, the good ol’ boy, the goon—everything she despised. But now, Mitt Romney is the golden boy of the party and Newt has become the outcast—the misunderstood, the Rogue. It’s a new day of dress-up. A new fairy tale. Regardless of her costume du jour—newscaster, sex symbol, fisherman, hunter, hockey mom—she’ll be playing the same role.  And there’s a new good guy and a new bad guy. All she knows is that’s the way it worked out, and if this is where she was meant to be, then so be it.

It’s also interesting to note, that back in 2006, Palin’s other Republican rival was Fairbanks businessman John Binkley. Palin referred to him as “the machine candidate”, “Rich Man Binkley” with his “cheesy smile,” and even hesitated about using a particular local pollster because he was Binkley’s “mormon bro’” and it might affect his loyalty to her. Fair warning to Mitt Romney—Palin is no stranger to snarking at rich, smiling machine Mormons.

~John Binkley

Whether Palin will attempt to jump in the race this time, make her move at convention time, wait until 2016, or take a different path entirely will depend on factors as of yet unknown. A door will open, a cast of characters will present itself, and Palin will do whatever needs to be done. Whatever it is, rest assured it will not be with the blessing of the “machine.”

By Thomas Dewar

The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed corporations. —Thomas Jefferson

ALEC is a dating service for state legislators and corporations. —Ed Muir, AFT

Who Is ALEC?

If you really want to know who and what is behind something in government, follow the money.

It’s not a coincidence that the recent assault on workers and their unions occurred simultaneously in different states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey and others. Or that, closer to home, there is now a war on Alaska’s public schools.

Funded by large corporate interests who view the wages and benefits that support your family only as an annoyance that cuts into their massive profits, ALEC (“American Legislative Exchange Council”)  is a clearinghouse that churns out anti-worker legislative templates for politicians who’d like to stick it to you without expending any actual effort on it. So when a union-busting legislator now wants to launch his perennial attack on working folks, ALEC provides him a handy, one-size-fits-all, ready-to-file template into which he only has to enter, say, “Alaska” and “Carl Gatto” before dropping it in the hopper.

They’re not honest about this, of course—one of ALEC’s hallmarks is the Orwellian use of language wherein things are called the opposite of what they really are, in order to make them sound more appealing. “Keeping your wages low and your benefits nonexistent” doesn’t have quite the same public appeal as “right to work,” it turns out. If all else fails, throw “freedom” in there, as the Alaska Health Freedom Act sounds way more catchy than “health care should about insurance companies making huge profits, not your sick kid’s ability to see a doctor.” If insurance companies want to drop women from coverage the moment they develop breast cancer and actually need their health coverage, why should the government interfere with the company’s “freedom” to thus abuse their customers?

But when we strip away the corporate spin, we unmask the sheer, unrestrained greed illustrated in this graph about ALEC sugardaddies the Koch Brothers, who, at the very time they amassed more and more billions simultaneously laid off more and more people. “Job creators?” Not so much:

For more background on the organization, Truthout has published fascinating pieces on its identity (ALEC—America’s Secret Political Power) as well as the lengths to which it will go to prevent the public from getting information about it (Inside ALEC—Naked Contempt for the Press and Public in Scottsdale).

What Is ALEC’s Strategy?

The ALEC shakedown of the middle class basically works like this. Let’s say you’re newly elected Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and your corporate BFFs the Koch Brothers have you on speed dial.

Step One: Drain your state budget into the coffers of your friends via more corporate loopholes and another round of tax giveaways.

Step Two: Tell the public how broke your state is. Which, due to Step One above, is now true.

Step Three: Point the finger at teachers, nurses, firefighters, and other public employees, thereby conning the public into blaming their own neighbors, family members and friends.

Divide and conquer, baby! Pit middle class folks against each other, while the Koch Brothers laugh all the way to the bank. With the right messaging, you can deflect public ire away from the greed of billionaires for whom no amount of wealth is ever enough, and instead gin up resentment of your kid’s teacher and her “greedy” desire to provide the basic necessities of life for her family. By ALEC’s math, making over $250,000 is considered not rich when it comes to extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, but one fifth of that—$50,000—is suddenly considered quite lavish when it comes to teachers and other public employees. Heck, that’s enough to provide their families with extravagances like “groceries,” a housing payment, and some of that fancy-pants “gasoline.”

A single mom working 3rd shift at the hospital or the guy driving the snow plow don’t, of course, have the ability to bankroll campaigns or hire lobbyists, and therefore lack the access to the corridors of power enjoyed by the corporate titans on Wall Street. As a result of the undemocratizing of our government and elections, corporate earnings and executive compensation have been setting record highs while the working families that comprise America’s middle class have been taking it in the teeth. Real wages have steadily declined for decades. Access to health care, a dignified retirement, the ability to send their kids to college, and now even the ability to hang onto one’s home are slipping further beyond the reach of working parents.

But this state of affairs is not enough for ALEC. Labor unions are the last thing standing in the way of their corporate clientele. Despite being outspent in elections, on average, by a 10-1 margin by corporations, unions do at least provide workers the ability to join forces and pool their resources in order to defend their families’ incomes & health benefits. Which is why it wasn’t enough for Gov. Walker to have public employees agree to concessions at the bargaining table—that is, to give up wages and benefits to help the governor fix a mess that was of his own making. No, this was never about balancing the budget for Walker, a man who clearly objects to “checks and balances” when it comes to any sort of check on corporate power. What instead he and ALEC demanded was the complete destruction of unions altogether. With us out of the way, with no organized opposition left to stand in its way, ALEC, its corporate clients, and the legislators who do their bidding would be free to pillage what little the American middle class has left without anyone left to resist them.

Who Represents ALEC’s Agenda in Alaska?

State Senate

Catherine A. Giessel; Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force
Lesil McGuire; Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force
Fred Dyson; ALEC Health and Human Services Task Force member, attended 2011 ALEC Annual Meeting
John B. Coghill, Jr.; International Relations Task Force

State House
Wes Keller; ALEC State Chairman, Education Task Force member and attended 2011 ALEC Annual Meeting
Anna I. Fairclough; Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force
Cathy E. Munoz; Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force
Bob Lynn; Public Safety and Elections Task Force
Mia Costello; Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force
Carl J. Gatto; ALEC Civil Justice Task Force member, cited ALEC’s “Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act,” when he introduced his “Alaska Health Freedom Act” in 2011

****************************************************************************************

To keep up with the latest, bookmark ALEC Exposed—an excellent source of information about an organization that doesn’t like to share information about itself. The site also features timely updates and news bulletins related to ALEC.

The winning gladiator, in whatever desperate shape he happens to be – steak on his eye, split lip, dragging one leg, bleeding on the carpet – has earned the right to move on to the big fight. He’ll be wildly flailing his half-functional limb at the current champion who’s had his feet up, eating grapes and watching the carnage.

During Ronald Reagan’s 1966 campaign for governor of California, he established the so-called Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”

“I am, in fact, the legitimate heir to the Reagan movement, not some liberal from Massachusetts,” Gingrich proclaimed on Sunday while simultaneously giving the Gipper’s eleventh, the finger. Don’t speak ill of a fellow Republican? Screw that. Newt has tasted win. And he likes it like crack. He’ll do anything for more, man… Anything. And with his numbers falling, and now behind by double digits to Mitt Romney, that means amping up the vitriol.

Having called Romney “pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-tax increase” on Sunday, Gingrich added the title “pro-gay rights” on Monday, in an acidic interview with Fox News. He rewound his last few days of attacks, combining all of his insults and all his vitriol into a string of remarkable assaults on Romney.

And so, the Romney Gingrich mad elephant fight rages on, with Republicans frantically choosing sides in an epic struggle for the right to lose in November. And the Democrats just laugh.

In Palinesque style, Gingrich has also perfected the art of the shameless pander. What’s a trip to Florida without promising the space coast a new lunar colony (by the end of his second term), or without casually mentioning that his opponent, during his time as Massachusetts governor, vetoed funds to expand the provision of kosher food for retirees. Gingrich, the Lutheran-turned-Baptist-turned-Catholic, ablaze with smugness and unashamed by his own transparency, announced that “Romney cut off kosher food to elderly Jews on Medicare.”

NASA – check
Jews – check
Retirees – check
Homophopes, evangelicals, and gun nuts? Check, check, and check.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney has countered by throwing four times as much money into his own advertising, and gazing down his nose, calling Gingrich’s desperate attacks “sad.” He has played the superiority card as only the perfectly coiffed moneyed elite can play it. (insert golf clap here)

And what would a bout of clown-on-clown violence be without a caustic screeching ring girl?

Yes, Sarah Palin has chimed in denouncing the Florida battle as “Stalinesque” and “cannibalism.” “I’m not whining about the viciousness,” she notes, but the “rewritten history.” “Enough is enough with the lies about Newt Gingrich.”

Nope, the viciousness is A-OK with Palin. Big thumbs up for that. As a matter of fact, Palin’s pseudo-endorsement of Gingrich was only, she claimed, to keep the competition going. Don’t call off the bloodbath yet! They’re both still technically standing! Palin’s rationale from the marble seat in the Coliseum where she sits is that “we need a big dog who has been sharpened and shaped through the school of hard knocks the most.”

And so they bludgeon on, with Gingrich vowing to take it all the way to the convention, and President Obama going up against the “sharpened and shaped big dog” who can stay upright and conscious the longest.

Our thoughts wander to November, and we picture the reigning champion, in gleaming Brooks Brothers gladiator-wear, fist pumping, nostrils flared, approaching the wheezing, swaying “big dog.” The champ touches his confused, sweaty opponent with an index finger to the solar plexus, and down he goes like a big oozing tree. A loser-shaped ring of dust rises around him as he lands.

But in the meantime, there is butter to melt, and salt to sprinkle, and corn to pop. We have many rounds to go before the end of this dog fight. Here’s to Florida. We don’t really care who wins, so the best we can do is hope for an entertaining night.

Airline spokesperson Bobbie Egan told msnbc.com that over the years the airline has received letters and e-mails from customers for and against the card. Last fall the company decided to stop distributing the cards because, Egan said, “We believe it’s the right thing to do in order to respect the diverse religious beliefs and cultural attitudes of all our customers and employees.”

The decision was welcomed by many, but distressed Alaska’s ex-half-governor who seemed baffled by the company’s decision posted a lamentation on Facebook. “It feels so odd that some may be offended by a little card with an encouraging non-denominational verse from the Psalms…” mused the befuddled Palin on her Facebook page. Not respecting diversity?  The card was non-denominational! It covers all Christian denominations. I mean… who could possibly take that the wrong way?

In a letter she wrote to the airline, she mused

“The Alaska Airlines traditions should be looked upon as an all-American, encouraging, hopeful gesture.”

What, after all, is more all-American than the Bible?

Palin likely doesn’t realize that Alaska Airlines meals have been served only in the first class cabin for the past six years. The rest of us in coach class have had to make due with a wing, minus the prayer, since that time. It’s the godless $7 snack pack for the masses.

And speaking of Christianity, the enemies of good are not only busy encouraging “censorship” of airline propaganda,  they also seem to have it in for Newt Gingrich.

Palin, yesterday characterized the recent wave of conservative criticism levied against presidential contender New Gingrich as the lamestream establishment attempting to “crucify” the former Speaker. It is hard to avoid the Christ-like metaphor when discussing Newt.

“Look at Newt Gingrich, what’s going on with him via the establishment’s attacks. They’re trying to crucify this man and rewrite history and rewrite what it is that he has stood for all these years.”

Rewriting history, we can all agree, is unconscionable, and the tool of bloviators who cannot stand on actual history to make their points.

One of the Roman soldiers who nailed Newt to the metaphorical cross, conservative columnist Peggy Noonan, called Gingrich an “angry attack muffin.” Ouch. That one’s going to leave a mark. The blistering attack brought forth this avalanche of word salad from Palin:

“They maybe subscribe such characterizations of Newt via words like that, but they don’t subscribe those to say Mitt Romney when he or his surrogates do the same thing. That’s that typical hypocrisy stuff in the media, you know, I’ve lived with over a couple of decades in the political arena. It is hypocritical of the media to subscribe to one candidate and not another, that kind of ‘angry attack muffin’ verbiage to one and not the other.”

Oh that “typical hypocrisy stuff” that has been dogging Palin since she first ran for the Wasilla City Council, twenty years ago. I can’t wait to see how she defends President Obama against the name calling, politics of personal destruction, and the rewriting of history from the GOP.

While most can no longer stomach the cringe-inducing, stomach-churning, never-ending bouts of ethically challenged mud wrestling that are the Republican debates, apparently to others they do make a difference.

CBS News notes:

Nearly two out of three South Carolina Republican primary voters say the recent Republican presidential debates played an important factor in their decision, according to early CBS News exit polls – a good sign for Newt Gingrich, who was widely seen as outshining rival Mitt Romney in both debates there this week.

…thus proving that a cow pie is shinier than a buffalo chip.

Since 1980, the winner of the South Carolina primary has gone on to take his party’s nomination, so the stakes are high between the two most reprehensible front-runners imaginable – unless, of course you chose any of the other two.

Exit polls go on to reveal that South Carolinians believe the ability to defeat President Obama in November is the single most important quality in a candidate (45%). Only 21% think experience is most important [insert animated .gif of Palin kicking herself here], and a mere 17% think that strong character is the most important (much to the delight of the Gingrich campaign, one would imagine).

And surprisingly, considering that candidates have been clawing, and climbing over each other in an elephantine stampede to the right, only 14% polled think the most important quality in a candidate is being a “true conservative.”

Today’s primary does bring something that the Iowa “we’re still not sure who won” caucuses, and the New Hampshire “Zzzzzzzzz” primary have not had – Stephen Colbert. Although the Comedy Central political satirist  and South Carolina native son did not get his name on the primary ballot, he did adopt a name that was already there – Herman Cain. Colbert told voters that a vote for the Herminator is a vote for him. Here he is at a joint Colbert/Cain rally yesterday in South Carolina, and a current commercial produced by Colbert’s SuperPAC Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.

Let the games begin!

UPDATE: Newt Gingrich has been projected the winner by MSNBC. His campaign party is now playing “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet”. A hat tip to whatever PR genius picked that one. Lyrics below…

I met a devil woman, she took my heart away
She said I had it comin’ to me, but I wanted it that way
I think that any love is good lovin’
And so I took what I could get, mmm
Oooh, oooh, she looked at me with big brown eyes
And said

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet
B-B-B-Baby, you just ain’t seen nothin’ yet
Here’s something, here’s something that you’re never gonna forget
B-B-B-Baby, you just ain’t seen nothin’ yet

By Elstun Lauesen

One of the terms we often hear lately is “agenda.” This politician has an “agenda” or that group has an “agenda.” Mostly we mere mortals are left to speculate what an “agenda” might be among the players in the rarified climes of politics. Thanks to the just concluded trial over the lines of the political districts drawn by the redistricting board, we get an actual glance into one of these “agendas,” the agenda of the Republican Party of Alaska.

By way of background let me explain that every decennial census requires adjustments of political boundaries based on the “one man one vote” decision by the Supreme Court in Reynolds vs. Sims — that is — each district must have an equivalent base which, in Alaska, is around 17,500 per representative. In sparsely populated areas, the districts can be very large. The districts need to conform to some standard of compactness, continuity and socioeconomic integration of the population. You can imagine that each 10 years, depending on who is in power, the party out of power will be suspicious of a political “agenda” in the drawing of the election map.

The board faced a difficult situation. Since statehood, Alaska required voters to read and write English, which was a common device used in southern states to limit Black voting. In Alaska it limited Native voting, and continued a controversial process that began in territorial days. More recently, Alaska has enacted “English-only” laws which prohibit use of ballots in any other language, and has not provided translators in Native communities where English is not the predominate language in use. These laws have been found to be discriminatory, and they have subjected Alaska to federal oversight intended to stop discrimination against Black voters in the south.

In the recent redistricting trial, Judge McConahy observed that talking about race and politics in Alaska is difficult. As Alaskans we often want to delude ourselves and pretend that we are better than the rest of the country and that we have progressed to the point that as a society we recognize and honor the humanity in all people. The recent litigation over the new plan redrawing Alaska’s legislative districts provided an ugly reminder that our smugness is probably not well earned.

The redistricting plan upset many because it created a district that included the Ester/Goldstream precincts in Fairbanks and the Yupik villages at the mouth of the Yukon River. Most Alaskans had difficulty understanding this plan, because the redistricting board didn’t publicly articulate why it was creating such a district. When the reasons came out in the trial, the press, unfortunately, focused on the easy and obvious: the partisan battle between Republicans and Democrats, and largely ignored the redistricting board’s stated reasons.

Under the federal Voting Rights Act, the U.S. Justice Department must review changes in Alaska’s election laws to insure that changes, such as redistricting, does not dilute the strength of Native voters. Some would like to characterize this as one more layer of senseless federal regulation, but as Alaska’s redistricting board started their work, they discovered Alaska’s dirty little secret.

The board found that racial block voting was increasing in Alaska. More specifically, they discovered that white Republican voters will generally not cross over to vote for a candidate preferred by Alaska Native voters. They discovered that white Democratic voters were more willing to cross over and vote for a candidate preferred by Alaska Native voters. The board claimed that the relative decline in Alaska Native population in rural Alaska required that a district combining some rural Native area and some “urban” non-Native area needed to be created. Thus, in order to not dilute Native voting strength, “urban” white Democrats needed to be added to this new “rural/urban” district. The theory is that urban white Republicans would never cross over to vote for a Native preferred candidate. Of course, the obvious unstated assumption is that white Republicans exhibit racist voting behaviors. The sensitivity of this unstated assumption is why the Republican-dominated board never publicly explained its decision, as well as the discomfort experienced by the press covering in the trial.

The challenge to the redistricting plan generated the predictable knee-jerk reaction by the Alaskan political and media establishment. “The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner,” for instance, has just called for an end to the federal Voting Rights Act review. They characterize the problem as unnecessary federal regulation. And they argue that Alaska should seek to end federal oversight of our election processes. But ignoring racism in our society only provides comfort for racists. It is in such comfort that racism gestates.

We Alaskans see ourselves as a tolerant multi-ethic society. We share that vision not because we are a tolerant multi-ethic society but because we want to be that tolerant multi-ethic society. But we will never achieve our dream if we do not confront the reality in which we find ourselves. We will not, nor should we, escape the need for federal oversight aimed at combating racism at the ballot box, until we take the necessary steps to purge racism from the soul of our society. Sadly, that cannot be accomplished by the Democrats in Ester/Goldstream. Rather the task is a challenge to the Alaska Republican party.

Was Sarah Palin’s proclamation, “If I were in South Carolina, I’d vote for Newt” really an endorsement, or just her attempt to keep the wounded elephant that is the current presidential GOP lineup limping forward as far as possible before it collapses under the weight of its own unelectability? Correspondence from Palin seems to indicate the latter.

During Palin’s VP candidacy, her relationship with Newt Gingrich was tumultuous at best. Emails sent on Palin’s Yahoo! account while she was governor, which (despite being in the hands of the state of Alaska) have never been made available to the public, reveal that Newt had some avuncular words of wisdom for the greenhorn candidate:

She didn’t need local and state allies, not with Newt Gingrich regularly emailing advice like suggesting she not answer difficult question and instead “she should reframe it into the question she wishes they asked,” or better yet, “When your opponent has posed a question designed to put you on defense, the right strategy is to destroy the very legitimacy of the question and pose a new question of your own.” [From Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin - A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years]

But after the unsuccessful campaign, the relationship between the two became more strained. Things came to a boiling point in the summer of 2009, just weeks before Palin quit the governorship of Alaska.

This transformation had to do with a speaking engagement on June 8 at the Washington D.C. Convention Center. Sarah was originally invited to be the keynote speaker at an annual congressional fundraising dinner. As was her custom, she hesitated before accepting and Gingrich was invited as a fall-back. A suddenly dis-invited and miffed Sarah threatened not to attend before begrudgingly relenting.

On June 7, the day before Gingrich’s speech, Sarah wrote to her close inner-circle of administration confidants (including Frank Bailey):

From: gshp

Subject: Fw: Newt

…I don’t know why we have to protect the elites who do things like this so we don’t “ruffle feathers” by keeping it to ourselves. Newt “uninvited” me yesterday to speak at tomorrow’s NSRC (sic for NRSC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee). I was the surprise guest … I’d be sitting at his table, unannounced (though I think they were purposefully already leaking it, I know Meg (Stapleton) leaked it to Politico), then would get up to do a surprise speech and introduction of Newt. So… I went from being the invited keynote speaker back in February, to just the surprise introducer of the speaker this month, to the back-of-the-bus’er (“sit down and shut up”) the day before the event. One of the organizers told Meg last night that Newt pulled the plug, said he didn’t want me to “steal the show”.

This has nothing to do with me. It has to do with the machine, and egos, and power. Their action…tells us they’re not ready to walk the walk and reform the party…

It knocks the political wind right out of my gut – but really we shouldn’t be surprised. And when I mentioned to Mike Reagan [Ronald Reagan’s stepson and GOP commentator] the other night that I’d be referencing Newt in my introduction of him, he wasn’t overly thrilled…maybe there’s something others see in Newt… Keep this confidential until we figure out how I’m supposed to explain flying all the flippin’ way across the country – leaving my baby at home – to be at this dinner, then we get accused of dodging the substantive events like the NSRC, when in reality they kicked us to the curb. I hate politics. 

Later that day, Sarah added more insight:

…Yes, (Newt/GOP) are egotistical, narrow minded machine goons... but all the more reason God protected me from getting up on stage in front of 5000 political and media “elites” to praise him, then it be shown across the nation. At some point Newt would have shown his true colors anyway and we would have been devastated having known we’d earlier prostituted ourselves up in front of the country introducing him and acting like that good ol’ rich white guy is the savior of the party.

Plus, I had nothing to wear, and God knew that too. Party machinery sucks. I can’t tell you how much I hate it – nothing ever changes – we went through it before and after the VP campaign… I’ve gone through it all my career. We just don’t fit into it, and maybe we should thank God for that. [From Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin - A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years]

Despite the good fortune of being saved from a wardroble gaffe by divine intervention, words of comfort and consolation came from Palin aide Ivy Frye: “Screw Newt, and let him take the heat for himself…”

None of this previous bad blood (of which Gingrich may or may not have been aware) seemed to dampen his enthusiasm over Sarah Palin’s comments yesterday. Nor did her explanation that the reason she’d vote for him is simply to see the carnage continue seem to faze him. He said he was “thrilled” after talking to Todd Palin who had formally endorsed him last week, and went on “It’s a signal to every conservative that the one conservative vote that’s effective is to Newt Gingrich and that’s very helpful.”

Palin’s desire to watch the five-way Republican cage fight is so appealing she told South Carolinians that she’d actually vote for the man she described as an “elite” “egotistical, narrow-minded machine goon” – a “good ol’ rich white guy” whom Palin said she didn’t even want to introduce to a crowd of a few thousand lest she “prostitute herself” in front of the nation.

We’ll find out on Saturday if the Palin non-endorsement endorsement helps Gingrich carry the day, and whether Palin continues to urge voters to cast their ballots for a man she actively dislikes.

By Jim Wright

What do you call a man who speaks multiple languages?

A polyglot.

What do you call a man who speaks two languages?

Bilingual.

What do you call a man who only speak one language – and poorly at that?

An American.

Goddamned right. There’s only one language worth knowing and that’s English American.

Speak it loud, speak it proud.

Speak it really slowly so that that natives will understand.

Turns out that Mitt Romney speaks French.

Can you believe it?

French.

Of all the languages that are not the biblically musical angelic language of Heaven, i.e. English American, Romney chose French. The language of beret wearing socialist surrender monkeys. The Romans who killed Jesus? They were speaking French, that’s a fact and you can look it up on the internet. While you’re at it, look up French in the dictionary, there’s a picture of Adolf Hitler French kissing Chairman Mao.  It’s totally true.

And Mittens croaks like a froggy Frog eating a little gay croissant.

French is probably the language of the Anti-Christ himself – well when he’s not speaking Chinese that is.

French!

See, it turns out that during his college years back in the socialist hippy 60’s, Mitt Romney spent two years in France as a Mormon Missionary. Two years! And get this, instead of proudly wearing a huge cowboy hat and a Chinese made T-shirt with a picture of US Marines eating actual French babies covered in ketchup, and instead of demanding in a really loud voice that all Frenchmen address him in God’s English American while serving extra double bacon cheeseburgers as is the inalienable right of all Americans abroad, Mitt actually learned French and actually conversed with Frenchy French people in French!

Probably while eating French Toast with a side of French Fries dipped in French Dressing while wearing a French Tickler!

What real American would do such a thing?

And would you really want him in the White House?

I mean, honestly, what kind of American President would speak French?

Besides George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, William Henry Harrison, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt.  Turns out Ben Franklin spoke French too, he wasn’t the president, but his face is on our money so it’s pretty much the same exact thing.  Ok, so besides those anti-American Frenchy-loving socialist traitors, what kind of President would speak French?  Did Reagan speak French? I don’t think so because Ronald Reagan was as American as the Statue of Liberty! You damned right he was.  Did George W. Bush speak French? Hell, he could barely speak English American (Texan being his native tongue), but darn it he tried and that’s what matters.

You know who else speaks French?

Liberals!

That’s right, filthy America-hating socialist Nazi moderate limp-wristed wussy liberals speak French:

And he speaks French too…

Mitt couldn’t have a couple of bastard children out of wedlock with his undocumented nanny, or a couple of extramarital affairs, or a history of ethics violations, or a conviction for snorting cocaine out of a gay prostitute’s shaved ass crack in a public restroom, or claimed a personal endorsement from Jedi Jebus, or have put out a bunch of racist and bigoted newsletters, or consulted for the very organizations what destroyed our economy, or even have a couple of pictures from his college days sitting on a Kegerator smoking a doobie and wearing a Party Naked T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off like a real patriotic conservative American hero of Patriotic America. Mitt hasn’t even molested one Congressional Page! Oh, no. No, Mitt has to go and learn French.

Why, I bet he listens to the Dixie Chicks!

Mitt Romney is the kind of guy who would have an autographed poster of Anthony Weiner tacked up on the wall in his garage!

Oh you think that’s going too far, do you?  He speaks French! French! He’s bilingual! And bilingual sounds a lot like bisexual! Which is only about one slobbery French man kiss away from just being out and out a flaming rainbow colored sparkly homosexual!

Bilingual, sounds a lot like two-faced to me.

He speaks French, just like John Kerry!  John friggin’ Kerry. What’s next? Are we going to find out Romney was awarded a Silver Star and a couple of Purple Hearts? Who the hell would want a guy likethat as President.  Honestly, you’re talking about somebody that isn’t even smart enough to arrange something as simple as a draft deferment for patriotic conservatism. Now, how would a Commander in Chief like that have the fortitude to be able to send other people’s kids off to die in a foreign land? Seriously. Think about it.

In the name of Fulminous Angry Bearded Capitalist Jesus, what else is a man like Mittens capable of?

Why, he might even know math!

Imagine a President who believes in that science crap!  Why he might believe that the earth is more than 6000 years old! You ever talk to somebody who knows math and science and stuff?  First thing they do is start in with all that totally unsupported gibberish about how it would have been impossible for Noah to have brontosaurs on the Ark while the Deluge was creating the Grand Canyon. They’ve got all those equations and radioactive decay things and fossils and stuff  that supposedly shows that the Earth isn’tthe center of the universe like it says in the Bible.  People like this think they’re smart because they know math, but they don’t even know what the word “theory” means! Honestly, people like this would believeanything. Why, why what if Mitt Romney believes in Global Climate Change?  Holy Mackerel!

I heard that Romney once gave a homeless illegal alien a sandwich!

That’s right. Shocking, I know. Just gave a hobo a sandwich. Didn’t make him earn it. Didn’t tell him to get a job and stop dragging down America. Didn’t tell him to go back to Mexico.  Didn’t force the man into indentured servitude on his family’s Texas ranch where the filthy bum could learn about American capitalism from the example of his betters.  No, just gave the man a big old socialist sandwich. Then, of course, he probably gave the man healthcare too! And a voucher for a free abortion!

Honestly, where does this end?

He speaks French, there’s no telling where that leads – honestly what if it turns out Romney believes that the Constitution applies to everybody, even gay people?

French is the gateway drug to liberalism, Folks, mark my words!

If Romney was a real Conservative, he’d learn to speak a good capitalist language.

Like German.

This 28-minute mini Mittens movie may as well have come from Moveon.org, but instead, the force behind the operation is none other than the equally loathsome Newt Gingrich. Now, mind you, even though the messenger is less than stellar, the message is pretty accurate and hard-hitting.

This is worth setting aside a little time for. Enjoy watching the elephant on elephant violence that is the current crop of GOP candidates. If Romney is the heir apparent, and will go head to head with Obama in the fall, stuff like this will make sure that he enters the race with a big steak on his eye, and a pronounced limp.

Go, Newt!