Association Rationalization

One would at least think that the Republican running for the highest office in the land would spend more time discussing his plan for economic recovery.

Well, one would be completely wrong when that man is John McCain.

While he and Plain are ramping up the rhetoric regarding Obama and his minimalist connections to William Ayres, Obama is focusing on things that matter.

But, Max Blumenthal ( The Nation ) and Dave Neiwert ( the new managing editor at C&L ) did a little investigation of their own. However, it had to do with Sarah Palin. It turns out that she has "connections" of her own with the Alaskan Successionist Party:

-That Gov. Palin, when a Wasilla city council member, formed an alliance with some of the more radical far-right citizens in Wasilla and vicinity, particularly members of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party who were allied with local John Birch Society activists. These activists played an important role in her election as Wasilla mayor in 1996.


-Once mayor, one of Mrs. Palin’s first acts was to attempt to appoint one of these extremists (a man named Steve Stoll) to her own seat on the city council. This was a man with a history of disrupting city council meetings with intimidating behavior. She was blocked by a single city council member.


-Afterward, Mrs. Palin fired the city’s museum director at the behest of this faction.


-She fomented an ultimately successful effort to derail a piece of local gun-control legislation which would simply have prohibited the open carry of firearms into schools, liquor stores, libraries, courthouses and the like. The people recruited to shout this ordinance down included these same figures, notably the local AIP representative (who became the AIP’s chairman that same year).


-She remained associated politically with the local AIP/Birch faction throughout her tenure as mayor on other issues, particularly a successful effort to amend the Alaska Constitution to prohibit local governments from issuing any local gun-control ordinances.

The entire write-up can be read at salon.com.

Whereas Obama was a member on a board of The Chicago Annenburg Challenge whose primary focus was education reform - and had multiple ties to the Republican party - Mrs. Palin had direct links and actively sought to empower a group of successionists.

So, if they want to play this game, i say let them.