Tag: John McCain

Long ago, a young farmer and a haberdasher from Missouri, he followed an unlikely path — he followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency. And a writer observed, “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity,” and I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman.

— Sarah Palin in her convention speech, Sept. 3, 2008, comparing her qualifications for the vice presidency to those of Harry Truman.

Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don’t know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon and stars and all the planets had fallen on me.

— Harry Truman, speaking to reporters on April 13, 1945, upon learning that Franklin Roosevelt had died and he had ascended to the presidency. Truman was serving in his second term as a U.S. senator when FDR chose him to be his third-term running mate, and had won plaudits for his work as chairman of a committee that investigated military waste during World War II.

[O]n January 20, when John McCain and I are sworn in, if we are so privileged to be elected to serve this country, will be ready. I’m ready…. I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink.

— Sarah Palin, Sept. 11, 2008, responding to Charlie Gibson’s question asking her whether she was ready to be president of the United States.

The man Sarah Palin appointed to run the Wasilla police department thinks that forcing rape victims to pay for their own forensic tests is just a swell idea. He said so himself a little more than eight years ago.

Anchorage Daily News reporter George Bryson writes that former Alaska governor Tony Knowles, a Democrat who took part in a news conference yesterday, charged that a law passed by the state legislature to outlaw that loathsome practice was aimed solely at Wasilla, where Palin was mayor at the time.

“There was one town in Alaska that was charging victims for this, and that was Wasilla,” Knowles is quoted as saying. Bryson continues:

A May 23, 2000, article in Wasilla’s newspaper, The Frontiersman, noted that Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies regularly pay for such exams, which cost between $300 and $1,200 apiece.

“[But] the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests,” the newspaper reported.

It also quoted Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon objecting to the law. Fannon was appointed to his position by Palin after her dismissal of the previous police chief. He said it would cost Wasilla $5,000 to $14,000 a year if the city had to foot the bill for rape exams.

This should be appalling to any decent-thinking person, needless to say. But working-class women who supported Hillary Clinton — one of the prime demographics the Palin pick is aimed at attracting — really ought to take a close look at their new hero’s record.

And please note that Knowles’ accusation, though it is a partisan attack, is backed up by facts reported by Palin’s hometown newspaper at the time this outrage was unfolding. There is no excusing or explaining away such reprehensible conduct.

Adam Reilly has a terrific post on a highly problematic piece put together by FactCheck.org, Annenberg’s normally reliable, nonpartisan debunker of lies and spin. Under the excited title of “Sliming Palin,” FactCheck presents five stories it says the media have gotten wrong about Sarah Palin.

Sliming? There’s nothing personal in there — it’s all on policy and politics, and it includes some errors that have been corrected and some differences in interpretation.

Sliming it isn’t, and the folks at FactCheck ought to think about why they’ve bought into the false construct that the mainstream media (as opposed to, say, Daily Kos and the National Enquirer) are, well, “sliming Palin.”

Steve Waldman of Beliefnet, who’s far more learned and sensible on the subject of religion than I am, takes a close look at Sarah Palin’s religious pronouncements and places a few of them in the “scary” category.

In particular, Waldman singles out Palin’s request that people pray that a natural-gas pipeline would be built. “Saying a particular public policy is God’s will is far over the line, considerably beyond anything that George W. Bush ever said,” Waldman writes. “It means the advocate is impervious to argument, and critics are going against God’s will.” No kidding.

My earlier post on the subject.

Is Sarah Palin a conservative evangelical Christian? Or is she something quite a bit more exotic than that? It’s an important question, because she herself has suggested she holds some peculiar beliefs that could affect the way she executes her duties as a public official.

The two best stories I’ve come across on Palin’s religious beliefs are this piece on NPR, by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, and one in today’s Anchorage Daily News by George Bryson and Richard Mauer.

First, the NPR story. Hagerty, who’s been described as a conservative Christian herself (though I can’t find a relevant link), does Palin the favor of taking her faith seriously, describing Palin’s beliefs as those of a Pentacostal. Here’s an excerpt for you to chew over:

“Pray our military men and women who are striving to do what is right also for this country — that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God,” Palin said. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God’s plan.”

Poloma [Margaret Poloma, a scholar of Pentacostalism who is a Pentacostal herself] says some people might hear that and say Palin believes this is a holy war, or that Pentecostals think this is a holy war.

“I would think it’s fair to say. Yes,” Poloma says.

One reason, Poloma says, is that most Pentecostals believe Islam is a false religion.

Let’s turn next to the Anchorage Daily News story, which describes her visit to her former church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, last June. That’s the appearance at which she made the comments about God’s will and the war, as well as her suggestion that Alaskans should pray for a natural-gas pipeline. Now consider this:

Later, senior pastor Ed Kalnins — with Palin standing at his side — spoke about tapping into Alaska’s natural resource wealth in order to fulfill the state’s destiny of serving as a shelter for Christians at the end of the world.

“I believe that Alaska is one of the ‘refuge states’ — come on you guys — in the Last Days,” Kalnins said, raising his arm to underscore his point. “And hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to this state to seek refuge. And the church has to be ready to minister to them.”

Oh, my.

So what are Palin’s own beliefs? It’s hard to say, given that neither she nor the McCain campaign is talking about her religion. (And try to remember the last time a Republican candidate at the national level didn’t go on about his religious beliefs at great length.)

The Daily News story does hint that perhaps she’s not as out-there as some of her activities make it sound — noting, for example, that she advocates but has not pushed for teaching creationism in schools and banning state benefits for same-sex couples. But I’m not sure if I’m supposed to feel better if someone prays for a gas pipeline but doesn’t actually mean it.

And what about her apparent acquiescence when Pastor Kalnins went off about Alaska’s role in a post-Apocalypse world? Does she think he was on to something, or was she just being polite? I would argue that Americans have a right to know if the woman who may be our next vice president uses the Book of Revelations as a guide to forming public policy.

Purely by coincidence, I wrote about the Constitution’s lack of a religious test a week before Palin was named. As I argued then, the government may not disqualify a candidate for religious reasons, but we the people are free to judge a candidate on any criteria we like, including religion. We all have our religious test.

Quite frankly, anyone who prays for a gas pipeline violates my religious test. (I’ll give her a pass on the war, since her remarks could be construed as merely praying for the safety of the troops.)

How long does the McCain campaign plan on keeping Sarah Palin under wraps? When is she going to answer legitimate questions about her career, her qualifications and her beliefs?

Earlier this week Sarah Palin, acting as governor, took out an ethics complaint against herself. She then asked the personnel board to investigate charges that she had abused her office in the “Troopergate” affair. Since the personnel board has jurisdiction, she argued further, then the state Legislature’s probe would have to be shut down.

The personnel board is appointed by the governor, though the three currently serving were named by Palin’s Republican predecessor, Frank Murkowski, whom she defeated in a hard-fought primary in 2006. But it’s not quite that arm’s-length; Palin reappointed one of them, Debra English, and English now chairs the board.

Looks like the Alaska Legislature is not going to roll over, though, for the moment at least, Palin has escaped being subpoenaed.

In her convention speech on Wednesday, Sarah Palin wowed the delegates by telling them she had taken her predecessor’s taxpayer-funded luxury jet and sold it on eBay.

Oh, wait … she said she “put it on eBay.”

Big difference, as it turns out, because it didn’t sell, and she eventually turned it over to a private broker, who unloaded it at a loss. So on top of everything else, it appears that we also have to parse every word she says.

No such problem with John McCain, who bragged the other day that Palin “sold it on eBay — made a profit.” That’s just wrong.