Sarah Palin (Alaska Gov) McCain's VP

[Stephanie]

Originally Posted by jannieC

You would think that given my circumstances (inability to get pregnant, etc), I would be a staunch pro-lifer and I'm not. I believe in women having the right to make their own decisions. However, those decisions should and must be made early on. Late term abortion is heinous, imo. I don't believe in abortion as a method of birth control AT ALL Birth control is so readily available, but people (particularly young people) believe that they are invincible and that bad things won't happen to them. Of course it's stupid thinking, but it is what it is. It's my understanding that Sarah Palin is against abortion under any circumstances, including incest and rape, and that is just amazing, coming from a woman.

I can't remember what the source was, but she had circumstances where it is ok.

[estranged4life]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

Oh man. The next two months are going to be f-u-n.

the First Round of the MLB playoffs, the NLCS & ALCS and then the World Series in late October - After that my TV will be off due to lack of ANY entertainment on TV.

As for abortion "Why when it is a human it's a fetus, but with a chicken it's an omelet?" I think it should be a woman's choice - not a choice made by some judge or guy in Washington in a black suit.

[gldstwmn]

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpu...s-of-frin.html

Members of 'Fringe' Alaskan Independence Party Say Palin Was a Member in 90s
September 01, 2008 6:52 PM

The campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., likes to herald the independence of its new running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Officials of the Alaskan Independence Party say that Palin was once so independent, she was once a member of their party, which, since the 1970s, has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United States.

And while McCain's motto -- as seen in a new TV ad -- is "Country First," the AIP's motto is the exact opposite -- "Alaska First -- Alaska Always."

Lynette Clark, the chairman of the AIP, tells ABC News that Palin and her husband Todd were members in 1994, even attending the 1994 statewide convention in Wasilla. Clark was AIP secretary at the time.

"We are a state's rights party," says Clark, a self-employed goldminer. The AIP has "a plank that challenges the legality of the Alaskan statehood vote as illegal and in violation of United Nations charter and international law."

She says it's not accurate to describe the party as secessionist -- they just want a vote, she says, adding that the members of the AIP hold different opinions on what Alaska should be.

"My own separate opinion as an individual is that we should be an independent nation," Clark says. Others in the AIP "believe that being a commonwealth would be a good avenue to follow." Some advocate statehood -- but a fuller statehood than exists now.

She doesn't know what Palin's position was.

"It never came up in conversation," Clark recalls. "But when she joined the party, our platform was right under her nose."

Clark says that Palin left the party and became a Republican in 1996, when she first ran for mayor of Wasilla.

The McCain-Palin campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The AIP platform states that the purpose of the party is to "seek the complete repatriation of the public lands, held by the federal government, to the state and people of Alaska in conformance with Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17, of the federal constitution ... To prohibit all bureaucratic regulations and judicial rulings purporting to have the effect of law, except that which shall be approved by the elected legislature ... To support the privatization of government services ...”

Walter Hickel, a former Republican governor, was elected to the governorship in 1990 as an AIP member -- the third-largest party in Alaska -- with a plurality vote of 38.8%. A Seattle Post-Intelligencer story that year said that "Hickel is running with the Alaska Independence Party, a fringe group advocating that the 49th state declare itself a sovereign nation. But he's not a separatist; he's an opportunist: the Independence Party was the only 11th-hour ticket to the general election."

Hickel returned to the Republican Party in 1994; he endorsed Palin in her gubernatorial run in 2006. Subsequent AIP gubernatorial candidates did not fare as well as did Hickel, garnering less than 2 percent of the vote.

Earlier this year, Palin sent a video message to the AIP for its annual convention, where AIP vice chair George Clark told the small crowd that Palin "was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town –- that was a non-partisan job. But you get along to go along -– she eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won’t go into that. She also had about an 80 percent approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership."

Lynette Clark says that Palin is "a fine individual. She's forthright and she puts Alaska first."

She is not a fan of McCain.

"I can't understand why in God's name she has aligned herself with a candidate who opposes the development of our republic and Alaska's resource wealth," Clark says.

[gldstwmn]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/us...ewanted=1&_r=2

Disclosures on Palin Raise Questions on Vetting Process

ST. PAUL — A series of disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain’s choice as running mate, called into question on Monday how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket.

On Monday morning, Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, issued a statement saying that their 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, was five months pregnant and that she intended to marry the father.

Among other less attention-grabbing news of the day: it was learned that Ms. Palin now has a private lawyer in a legislative ethics investigation in Alaska into whether she abused her power in dismissing the state’s public safety commissioner; that she was a member for two years in the 1990s of the Alaska Independence Party, which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede; and that Mr. Palin was arrested 22 years ago on a drunken-driving charge.

Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin’s background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Ms. Palin.

Although the McCain campaign said that Mr. McCain had known about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy before he asked her mother to join him on the ticket and that he did not consider it disqualifying, top aides were vague on Monday about how and when he had learned of the pregnancy, and from whom.

While there was no sign that her formal nomination this week was in jeopardy, the questions swirling around Ms. Palin on the first day of the Republican National Convention, already disrupted by Hurricane Gustav, brought anxiety to Republicans who worried that Democrats would use the selection of Ms. Palin to question Mr. McCain’s judgment and his ability to make crucial decisions.

At the least, Republicans close to the campaign said it was increasingly apparent that Ms. Palin had been selected as Mr. McCain’s running mate with more haste than McCain advisers initially described.

Up until midweek last week, some 48 to 72 hours before Mr. McCain introduced Ms. Palin at a Friday rally in Dayton, Ohio, Mr. McCain was still holding out the hope that he could choose a good friend, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, a Republican close to the campaign said. Mr. McCain had also been interested in another favorite, former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania.

But both men favor abortion rights, anathema to the Christian conservatives who make up a crucial base of the Republican Party. As word leaked out that Mr. McCain was seriously considering the men, the campaign was bombarded by outrage from influential conservatives who predicted an explosive floor fight at the convention and vowed rejection of Mr. Ridge or Mr. Lieberman by the delegates.

Perhaps more important, several Republicans said, Mr. McCain was getting advice that if he did not do something to shake up the race, his campaign would be stuck on a potentially losing trajectory.

With time running out — and as Mr. McCain discarded two safer choices, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, as too predictable — he turned to Ms. Palin. He had his first face-to-face interview with her on Thursday and offered her the job moments later. Advisers to Mr. Pawlenty and another of the finalists on Mr. McCain’s list described an intensive vetting process for those candidates that lasted one to two months.

“They didn’t seriously consider her until four or five days from the time she was picked, before she was asked, maybe the Thursday or Friday before,” said a Republican close to the campaign. “This was really kind of rushed at the end, because John didn’t get what he wanted. He wanted to do Joe or Ridge.”

In the final stages, two Republicans familiar with the process said, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, emerged as a key advocate for Ms. Palin.

Mr. McCain’s advisers said repeatedly on Monday that Ms. Palin was “thoroughly vetted,” a process that would have included a review of all financial and legal records as well as a criminal background check. A McCain aide said the campaign was well aware of the ethics investigation and had looked into it.

“It was obviously something that anybody Googling Sarah Palin knew was in the news and there was a very thorough vetting done on that and also on the daughter,” the aide said.

People familiar with the process said Ms. Palin had responded to a standard form with more than 70 questions. Although The Washington Post quoted advisers to Mr. McCain on Sunday as saying Ms. Palin had been subjected to an F.B.I. background check, an F.B.I. official said Monday the bureau did not vet potential candidates and had not known of her selection until it was made public.

Mark Salter, Mr. McCain’s closest adviser, said in an e-mail message that Ms. Palin had been interviewed by Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., a veteran Washington lawyer in charge of the vice-presidential vetting process for Mr. McCain, as well as by other lawyers who worked for Mr. Culvahouse. Mr. Salter did not respond to an e-mail message asking if Ms. Palin had told Mr. Culvahouse and his lawyers that her daughter was pregnant.

In Alaska, several state leaders and local officials said they knew of no efforts by the McCain campaign to find out more information about Ms. Palin before the announcement of her selection, Although campaigns are typically discreet when they make inquiries into potential running mates, officials in Alaska said Monday they thought it was peculiar that no one in the state had the slightest hint that Ms. Palin might be under consideration.

“They didn’t speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn’t speak to anyone in the business community,” said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Ms. Palin served as mayor.

Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her.

“I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called,” Ms. Phillips said. “I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven’t found anybody who was asked anything.”

The current mayor of Wasilla, Dianne M. Keller, said she had not heard of any efforts to look into Ms. Palin’s background. And Randy Ruedrich, the state Republican Party chairman, said he knew nothing of any vetting that had been conducted.

State Senator Hollis French, a Democrat who is directing the ethics investigation, said that no one asked him about the allegations. “I heard not a word, not a single contact,” he said.

A number of Republicans said the McCain campaign had to some degree tied its hands in its effort to keep the selection process so secret.

“If you really want it to be a surprise, the circle of people that you’re going to allow to know about it is going to be small, and that’s just the nature of it,” said Dan Bartlett, a former counselor to President Bush.

Former McCain strategists disagreed on whether it would have been useful for Ms. Palin’s name to have been more publicly floated before her selection so that issues like the trooper investigation and her daughter’s pregnancy might have already been aired and not seemed so new at the time of her announcement.

“It’s a risk,” said Dan Schnur, a former McCain aide who now directs the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. “No matter how great the candidate, it’s a significant risk to put someone on the ticket” who hasn’t been publicly scrutinized.

“They obviously felt it was worth the risk to rev up the base and potentially reach out to Clinton supporters,” Mr. Schnur said.

[paleshadow]

Originally Posted by BombaySapphire3

Apparently Sarah can't even teach the basics of birth control to her own high school age daughter ..The unmarried 17 year old is preggers.What a wackadoodle!

Doesn't this fall under the same lines as democrats saying Bill Clinton's affair had nothing to do with him being able to conduct the responsibilities of President because it was his personal life?

[BombaySapphire3]

Originally Posted by paleshadow

Doesn't this fall under the same lines as democrats saying Bill Clinton's affair had nothing to do with him being able to conduct the responsibilities of President because it was his personal life?

And wasn't it the Republicans that invesigated his affairs with the ferocity of pit bulls .Now the Repubs , the self proclaimed party of family values have been beset themselves with sex scandals of all stripes.Just more rank hypocrisy..What is probably really going to do Palin in though is the invesitigation into misuse of her office in Alaska if it is found to be true..the preggers kid is an embarrasment and a poor reflection on her as a mother and her stupid abstinance and no sex education stance as the only form of B.C.I just don't think gramps McCain vetted her properly ..Oh well looks like I'm not out of the woods yet in laying to rest my fears about Mike Huckleberry or Mittens Romney as the V.P. pick.

[paleshadow]

Originally Posted by BombaySapphire3

And wasn't it the Republicans that invesigated his affairs with the ferocity of pit bulls .Now the Repubs , the self proclaimed party of family values have been beset themselves with sex scandals of all stripes.Just more rank hypocrisy..What is probably really going to do Palin in though is the invesitigation into misuse of her office in Alaska ..the preggers kid is an embarrasment and a poor reflection on her as a mother and her stupid abstinance and no sex education stance as the only form of B.C.I just don't think gramps McCain vetted her properly ..Oh well looks like I'm not out of the woods yet in laying to rest my fears about Mike Huckleberry or Mittens Romney as the V.P. pick.

Yes, that's my point. Hypocrisy runs rampant on both sides. It's what I find the most frustrating about politics. This forum seems predominantly liberal, so I believe if Palin was the democratic VP nomination the article about her daughter probably would not have been mentioned here, and perhaps you would not have called her parenting to task? I've always said that if a republican president had performed sex acts with a cigar on an intern the democrats would have raised hell, and on the contrary, the republicans would have tried to justify it. I just wish more people would own up to the fact that it's two sided.

[BombaySapphire3]

Originally Posted by paleshadow

Yes, that's my point. Hypocrisy runs rampant on both sides. It's what I find the most frustrating about politics. This forum seems predominantly liberal, so I believe if Palin was the democratic VP nomination the article about her daughter probably would not have been mentioned here, and perhaps you would not have called her parenting to task? I've always said that if a republican president had performed sex acts with a cigar on an intern the democrats would have raised hell, and on the contrary, the republicans would have tried to justify it. I just wish more people would own up to the fact that it's two sided.

Oh there are a couple of "conservatives " on here that might have posted it if the party was reversed though one was recently banned for making truly vile homophobic remarks in this thread.But of course you are right in general and that is politics..the Republicans with their often homophobic legislation ,bible thumping and in Palin's case preposterous notions of sex education just set themselves up though when the scandal is in their own house.And BTW I believe it was a Dem that posted the John Edwards scandal on here.

[Sorceress]

I laid in bed thinking about this at 12:30a.m. this morning... Wow. Just wow.

The whole story of how Trig was born makes Palin seem cold and cavilier to me. Her priorities were WAY off, and decision-making just plain dumb. Putting her baby's health at risk in order to make a speech and fly back to Alaska, even with her Dr.'s consent, was a risk she didn't need to take.

Returning to work after 3 days with Trig and 2 days after the 7-year old makes her seem like some super-human machine. Again, whacked out priorities, and cold. I almost censor myself as I type that, questioning if I have a double standard for her because she's a woman. But no, I would expect a father to take time from work to give full attention to taking care of the new baby too. Even the most dedicated, career-oriented professionals and public servants need to know when to prioritize their families.

And finally, glossing over the 17 year-old's pregancy with "She's keeping it and is getting married (and will have to grow up fast)" as if everything will now be rosey is cavilier over-simplification, IMO. Smiling and being pleased to be grandparents does not make this situation just go away. I'd be less judgemental about the situation, (and its reflection of her parenting skills and views on abstinence-only education), if she could be REAL about it and the impact on her daughter's life.

I make these judgements as a feminist and working mom and human being. Let Obama take the high road and say how a candidate conducts his or her family life is off-limits, but voters can't ignore what that conduct says about the ability to run the country.

[BombaySapphire3]

Wonderfully insightful post Sorceress ^^^^I would hope that it would give some serious pause to any Hillary supporters who might read this and were thinking of voting the McCain/Palin ticket primarily because of the gender of this whackjob.

[estranged4life]

Originally Posted by paleshadow

Hypocrisy runs rampant on both sides. It's what I find the most frustrating about politics.

a winner!! Ding ding ding ding ding!!!

Great statement, and the reason WHY I am in the middle and never registered as a member of either political party...Hypocrisy (Not the great death metal band either)

[BTFLCHLD]

How many kids does this woman have?

[estranged4life]

Originally Posted by BTFLCHLD

How many kids does this woman have?

after four


Five, for those who are not mathematically inclined

[BombaySapphire3]

Originally Posted by BTFLCHLD

How many kids does this woman have?

Could be four ..could be five ..likely we will never know the definitive answer.

[skcin]

Originally Posted by paleshadow

Doesn't this fall under the same lines as democrats saying Bill Clinton's affair had nothing to do with him being able to conduct the responsibilities of President because it was his personal life?

Good point, although the argument could be made that if Sara can't raise a responsible child, how can she help run the country. That's not MY argument, mind you.

I do think it's a bit embarrassing for her to be so staunchly against sex ed, and to be against teaching evolution, and to not want birth control education in schools, and to talk about "family values" with your unmarried teenage daughter pregnant. But kids screw up - I don't think she's a terrible mother or person. She does look like kind of an a-hole now, however.

Chris - I couldn't see the pic in that link you posted about the baby being her kid's. Is it working? Maybe it's my internet...

My main concern would be that McCain only met her TWICE (once over the phone, if I recall) before selecting her as his VP candidate. How can they be a strong team & lead the country? They don't even KNOW eachother.

And wtf was Cindy McCain doing in the country Georgia?