The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    KiSLAW: Kick Sarah's Lying Ass Week

    Let's try a coordinated approach that takes major Palin issues one at a time, devoting a day to the major problems with McCain's running mate. If we stay on message each day, maybe someone will notice. The week after this, it's back to holding John McCain accountable on taxes, health care, war, etc. SUNDAY: Palin is no reformer. Palin was hip-deep in pork-barrel earmarks as both a mayor and a governor. Palin and McCain are lying about her being against the Bridge to Nowhere. Palin hired a lobbyist to get $27 million in US taxpayer money for her town of less than 6,000 people. Palin billed Alaska for 312 nights spent in her own home and charged the state another $43,490 for flying her husband and children around. MONDAY: Palin is a vindictive and secretive politician. Sarah "Barracuda" Palin abuses her power to exact revenge on her enemies and silence her critics, just like the Bush Administration has done. Trooper-gate is a prime example of this, in many ways. Not only has she used her office to slander her ex-brother-in-law, she fired the state's top law enforcement official for not doing her dirty work, and now has an army of Republican lawyers trying to block the bipartisan investigation authorized by the state legislature. Her rise to prominence in Alaska politics is built on the bodies of those who disagreed with her. TUESDAY: Palin uses hard-earned taxpayer dollars frivolously. Palin put the state jet plane on eBay, but ended up selling it through an aircraft broker at a loss. Palin raised Wasilla city sales taxes on groceries and everything else to fund cuts in business taxes. She left the city of Wasilla $19 million in debt for a skating rink she defiantly had built on someone else's land. As governor, she gave a private energy firm $500 million in taxpayer dollars as guaranteed seed money for a pipeline that hasn't been built and may never be built. WEDNESDAY: Palin cloaks her support for oil interests by pandering to Alaskans. Her support for gas pipelines, energy company profits, drilling in ANWR and other positions straight from the oil and gas industry are hidden behind populist rhetoric and increased payoffs to state citizens through the Alaska Permanent Dividend Fund. That state taxation of oil and gas costs those of us in the Lower 48 more at the pump, more in environmental damage and more in dependence on fossil fuels. THURSDAY: Palin is anti-feminist. Palin is anti-abortion even in cases of rape and incest. She allowed her own Wasilla police department to charge rape victims up to $1200 for "rape kits" to collect the DNA evidence of the crimes committed against them, a municipal policy unique in all the state that required special action by the legislature and the Democratic governor to outlaw. As governor, she cut programs for pregnant teenagers in Alaska, ironic for a woman whose own teenage daughter carries a baby out of wedlock. (Please, NO posts bashing Bristol or concerning allegations about a fake pregnancy!) FRIDAY: Palin is a radical conservative: Her views on God, the "End Times" and the role of religion in public life inform her policies as a mayor and governor to an unparalleled degree. Her approaches to global warming, social issues and freedom of speech and press are all influenced by a skewed concept of humanity's place in history. Her husband was a member for many years of the extremist, anti-American, secessionist Alaska Independence Party. Her connections to the AIP represent pandering to a dangerous group, at the very least. SATURDAY: Commander-in-chief day. Kick it six ways from Sunday. War with Russia over Georgia? First strikes? Bush Doctrine huh? We have to win in Iraq and Afghanistan before we can go after bin Laden in Pakistan? We're fighting al Qaeda and "Shia" extremists? She'd make a great CinC because she "knows about" energy? Have at it.