Life of the Mind defines mindlessness – “The United States is being invaded as surely as Poland was invaded by the Wehrmacht.”
That’s as irreal as the paranoia of kooks on the left who assume that Bush is Hitler and 9/11`was the Reichstag fire.
As per Wretch – doubt we need any more light shed on Sarah’s tanning bed, but there’s other stuff in her immediate past that may be more to the point. Especially given that the candidate for VP has not yet held a press conference with the national media – doubt there’s a precedent for that in modern American history…
So maybe the following SLATE story is slightly more relevant than the fact a public figure like Obama may once have been in a room with a financier who turned out to be dirty. (Ya’ll been following the story re Mac’s party on that yacht with the swindler Folinari! Well I haven’t been!! Cos it’s a waste of time!! On the other hand, if I was worthy of Wretch I should focus! If I let my inner paranoid out, I might be be able to work up some conspiracy theory focused on, say, anti-papism? Or Mac’s Montenegran connection? Or…). Here’s the conclusion of a Salon piece linked to today at Real Clear Politics…
Palin’s reputation as a reformer stems primarily from her headline-grabbing ouster of state GOP chairman Randy Ruedrich from the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission for flagrant conflict-of-interest abuses. At the time, Palin was heralded in the press as a whistle-blower, but it was later revealed that she was guilty of the same charge that she had brought against Ruedrich — using state office equipment for partisan political business. (While still mayor of Wasilla, she sent out campaign fundraising appeals from her office during her race for lieutenant governor.)
Others suspect that Palin had self-serving reasons for taking on Ruedrich and resigning her seat on the commission. The state energy panel had ignited a public firestorm in Palin’s home base, Mat-Su Valley, by secretly leasing sub-surface drilling rights on thousands of residential lots to a Colorado-based gas producer. Outraged farmers and homeowners, who woke up one morning to find drilling equipment being hauled onto their land, were in open revolt against the commission. While Palin initially supported the leasing plan, she was shrewd enough to realize it was political suicide to alienate conservative property owners in her own district. According to some accounts, she was also growing tired of commuting to state offices in Anchorage and poring over dry, tedious technical manuals for her job. All in all, it seemed like the right move to jump ship — and going out a hero was an added plus.
“Sarah quit the commission to make political hay,” Halcro asserted.
In the end, Ruedrich admitted wrongdoing and settled the ethics case by paying $12,000 in civil fines. But Palin did not drive the well-connected Republican operative into exile. In fact, he remains the party’s state chairman and he could be seen on the floor of the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., hugging the newly crowned vice-presidential candidate and cheering her feisty speech against greedy old boys like, well, him.
“The idea that Sarah shook up the state’s old-boy network is one big fantasy, it’s complete bullshit,” Halcro said. “She got all this public acclaim for throwing people who backed her under the bus — but she only did it after they became expendable, when she no longer needed them.
“The good old boys in Alaska are still the good old boys — they’re alive and kicking. Randy is still running the Republican Party — he wasn’t happy about being turned into a national poster boy for corruption, but he went along with the program. Ted Stevens is still running for reelection. And [scandal-tainted Alaska Rep.] Don Young is, too. So where’s the new era of change that Palin supposedly brought to Alaska?”
