The Republicans hoped that Sarah Palin would add excitement to the race, and they got their wish. If their wish was to piss Hillary off.

In an outreach dubbed "Hillary Sent Me," the New York senator invited her primary-season partisans to get involved directly in Obama's campaign and to donate to it. As part of that, she urged them to travel to a specific battleground state each weekend, beginning with New Hampshire on Sept. 27, when she will be campaigning for Obama in Michigan.

"Today I am asking all of you to stand up with me, to hit the road and spread the word that we must elect Barack Obama president and send a Democratic, filibuster-proof majority to Congress," Clinton told supporters in a conference call Friday. "This is a call to action, a must-do. We all have a role. And there is not a moment to lose."

Oh yeah! Now we are talking!

The Democrats are energized, the Republicans are second guessing their choices, and the voters are getting tired of being lied to by the lipstick wearing pitbull from Alaska, let the games begin!

(Hillary sent me". Wow! I never thought I would say that without it being the punchline to a Bill Clinton joke.)

Last nights New Rules with Bill Maher on Real Time is a must see.

Much of the show was dominated by an argument between Andrew Sullivan and Naomi Klein. But then it hit its stride and by the time Bill Maher got to the New Rules it was hitting on all cylinders.

I am going to have to buy one of those "Free Levi" t-shirts.

Shannyn Moore does Alaska Bloggers proud!

What? Doesn't every state's Governor have a witch hunter pray over them?

Shannyn is one of our best progressive Alaskan bloggers and didn't she rock?

Another Palin lie uncovered! She approved Walt Monegan's trip to Washington.

An internal government document obtained by ABC News appears to contradict Sarah Palin's most recent explanation for why she fired her public safety chief, the move which prompted the now-contested state probe into "Troopergate."

Fighting back against allegations she may have fired her then-Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan, for refusing to go along with a personal vendetta, Palin on Monday argued in a legal filing that she fired Monegan because he had a "rogue mentality" and was bucking her administration's directives.

"The last straw," her lawyer argued, came when he planned a trip to Washington, D.C., to seek federal funds for an aggressive anti-sexual-violence program. The project, expected to cost from $10 million to $20 million a year for five years, would have been the first of its kind in Alaska, which leads the nation in reported forcible rape.

The McCain-Palin campaign echoed the charge in a press release it distributed Monday, concurrent with Palin's legal filing. "Mr. Monegan persisted in planning to make the unauthorized lobbying trip to D.C.," the release stated.

But the governor's staff authorized the trip, according to an internal travel document from the Department of Public Safety, released Friday in response to an open records request.

The document, a state travel authorization form, shows that Palin's chief of staff, Mike Nizich, approved Monegan's trip to Washington, D.C., "to attend meeting with Senator Murkowski." The date next to Nizich's signature reads June 18.

One by one the Palin lies fall.

And don't let us forget that Monegan went on that trip to get money to provide funds to protect victims of sexual assault. Governor Sarah's problem with funding any programs for victims of sexual assault or to teach children how to avoid sexual assault seems to form a pattern, as evidenced by her decision to charge rape victims for their medical exams. And the fact she cut funding for teenage moms. And of course her stance against teaching sex ed in public schools.

Palin's extreme version of Christian faith may have a lot to do with her twisted view of sexuality and create a fear that helping a victim of rape may in some way anger her God. Remember she does not believe in abortion, even for victims of rape or incest.

Of course we know that seeking these funds was not the REAL reason Walt Monegan was fired.

Here is the political campaign ad that Ted Stevens does NOT want you to see.

Sen. Ted Stevens' re-election campaign called on Alaska radio and television stations to stop showing a pair of political commercials attacking the longtime Republican Senator this week.

The Stevens campaign spent all day Thursday arguing the ads are deceptive, while a national Democratic group battled to keep the commercials on the air.

The radio and TV commercials accuse Stevens of getting a sweetheart deal on a car from the former head of the Veco Corp., and of steering money to groups that hired his son as a consultant. They're paid for by a Washington, D.C.-based group that works to get Democrats elected to the Senate.

Well it is common knowledge in Alaska that Stevens got legislation passed that directly benefited his son Ben Stevens. That has been well documented. And you can read about just one of the examples here.

I think the thing that is really starting to anger our Uncle Ted is that he is losing his grip on power here in Alaska. It was not too far back in our history that if Ted Stevens had told a local broadcaster not to air an ad, you can bet your ass it would not have been aired.

But the tide is turning, and Ted Stevens is part of a past that many Alaskans are trying to forget. And that does not bode well for Stevens criminal case or his bid for re-election.

Mark Begich will make a great Senator for Alaska.

I fell asleep before I could see The Colbert Report last night, but now that I have seen it I know I must share this segment with you.

You gotta love the "Palin signal"!

Sign the petition to Stop the Troopergate coverup.

I found this petition over at MamaDance and think it is a good idea.

If you want to do more please scroll down to my post from yesterday and send a message to an Alaskan lawmaker or write a letter to your local newspaper.

We are better then this, and we need to send a message to Sarah Palin and the McCain/Palin campaign.

TIME Magazine calls John McCain a liar!

McCain's lies have ranged from the annoying to the sleazy, and the problem is in both degree and kind. His campaign has been a ceaseless assault on his opponent's character and policies, featuring a consistent—and witting—disdain for the truth. Even after 38 million Americans heard Obama say in his speech at the Democratic National Convention that he was open to offshore oil-drilling and building new nuclear-power plants, McCain flatly said in his acceptance speech that Obama opposed both. Normal political practice would be for McCain to say, "Obama says he's 'open to' offshore drilling, but he's always opposed it. How can we believe him?" This persistence in repeating demonstrably false charges is something new in presidential politics.

Worse than the lies have been the smears. McCain ran a television ad claiming that Obama favored "comprehensive" sex education for kindergartners. (Obama favored a bill that would have warned kindergartners about sexual predators and improper touching.) The accusation that Obama was referring to Sarah Palin when he said McCain's effort to remarket his economic policies was putting "lipstick on a pig" was another clearly misleading attack — an obnoxious attempt to divert attention from Palin's lack of fitness for the job and the recklessness with which McCain chose her. McCain's assault on the "élite media" for spreading rumors about Palin's personal life — actually, the culprits were a few bloggers and the tabloid press — was more of the same. And that gets us close to the real problem here. The McCain camp has decided that its candidate can't win honorably, on the issues, so it has resorted to transparent and phony diversions.

Well of course this is nothing new to the blogging community, we have been calling John McCain a liar for months now, but it is very significant that publications as respected as the TIMES have decided to chime in as well.

The sad fact is that John McCain, who used to be synonymous with integrity, has sold out everything he seemed to believe in for this one long shot at gaining the Presidency. He is now for things he was always against. He now embraces tactics that he called scurrilous in past years. And he has allowed pressure form the Right Wing fringe to force him to put a running mate on his ticket who represents everything that he hates about his own party.

And then there is Sarah Palin. If John McCain has just recently learned to embrace the lie, Palin appears to have been born with lies pouring out of her mouth. Palin is a habitual liar who finds doing it so as simply as taking a breath.

And she also brings with her an SUV full of scandal. John McCain may be labeled many things, but the man had few if any scandals to impugn his character. But Palin has enough scandal for everybody! One has to wonder if the Republicans just cannot bring themselves to support a ticket with out some scandal associated with it.

Well if that is the case then Sarah Palin certainly solved that little problem now didn't she?

Jon Stewart takes the "ouch" out of yesterday's bad news.

The entire last twenty plus minutes of the show yesterday was dedicated to a very interesting interview with Tony Blair.

It was, at times, uncomfortable but certainly worth watching and I encourage you to do so by clicking the link in the title.

Todd Palin refuses to testify in "Troopergate" probe.

Gov. Sarah Palin's husband has refused to testify in the investigation of his wife's alleged abuse of power, and a key lawmaker said today that uncooperative witnesses are effectively sidetracking the probe until after Election Day.

This is getting ridiculous!

There is no way that this garbage should be able to fly in Alaska. We don't allow people to ignore subpoena's and scoff at the law. We convict people and punish them for not showing up to court.

I don't care how they do it in the lower 48, but in Alaska you are expected to cooperate with investigations and law enforcement. And if Alaskans start letting themselves get pushed around by John McCain's legal team now then what can we expect in the future from Ted Stevens legal team, or Don Young' legal team?

This is starting a dangerous precedent that must not be allowed to stand!

Come on Alaska! Let's show these pencil neck east coast weasels that they are screwing with the biggest state in all of the United States of America and we don't take shit from anybody!

So take a moment to write a letter detailing your frustration at this blatant manipulation of our rule of law to one of the newspapers listed below:

ADN http://www.adn.com/help/v-letters/
Juneau Empire editor@juneauempire.com.
Alaska Star news@alaskastar.com
Alaska Journal of Commerce letters@alaskajournal.com
Chilkat Valley News http://www.chilkatvalleynews.com/contact.html
Fairbanks Daily News Miner http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113%257E7321%257E,00.html
Frontiersman info@frontiersman.comHomer News letters@homernews.com
Homer Tribune letters@homertribune.com
Ketchikan Daily News http://www.ketchikandailynews.com/contact_us.php
Peninsula Clarion news@peninsulaclarion.com
Anchorage Press info@anchoragepress.com
Delta Discovery http://www.deltadiscovery.com/speakyourmind/speakform.html
Arctic Sounder, Bristol Bay Times, Cordova Times, Dutch Harbor Fisherman, Seward Phoenix Log and Tundra Drums all can be reached at editor@alaskanewspapers.com

Perhaps you would also like to contact your State Senate about the matter, and ask them if they still respect Alaska law. Here is their contact information:
Lyda Green
Johnny Ellis
Gene Therriault
Con Bunde
John Cowdery
Bettye Davis
Fred Dyson
Johnny Ellis
Kim Elton
Hollis French
Lyda Green
Lyman Hoffman
Charlie Huggins
Albert Kookesh
Lesil McGuire
Donald Olson
Bert Stedman
Gary Stevens
Gene Therriault
Joe Thomas
Thomas Wagoner
Bill Wielechowski
Gary Wilken

And if that is not satisfying enough for you then perhaps you would like to contact members of the House of Representatives and give them a piece of your mind. Here is their contact information:
John Harris
Beth Kerttula
Ralph Samuels
Bob Buch
Mike Chenault
Sharon Cissna
John Coghill Jr.
Harry Crawford
Nancy Dahlstrom
Andrea Doll
Mike Doogan
Bryce Edgmon
Anna Fairclough
Richard Foster
Les Gara
Berta Gardner
Carl Gatto
Max Gruenberg
David Guttenberg
John Harris
Mike Hawker
Lindsey Holmes
Kyle Johansen
Craig Johnson
Reggie Joule
Scott Kawasaki
Wes Keller
Mike Kelly
Beth Kerttula
Gabrielle LeDoux
Bob Lynn
Kevin Meyer
Mary Nelson
Mark Neuman
Kurt Olson
Jay Ramras
Bob Roses
Woodie Salmon
Ralph Samuels
Paul Seaton
Bill Stoltze
Bill Thomas, Jr
Peggy Wilson

Okay there you go. The ball is in your court.

Are we as spineless and pathetic as the Democrats in Washington? Or are we going to stand up and say that we are Alaskans and we don't let ANYBODY step all over our due process and spit on our constitution!

We demand the truth and we demand it now!

Interesting website called "Women against Sarah Palin".

This is good place to go to see what intelligent women think of Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

There are some very interesting perspectives to be found there.

Don't you just hate it when somebody forgets to serve the Kool-aid before one of your televised campaign stops?

Quick whose smile seems more plastic? John McCain's or his wife "Malibu Botox Barbie's"?

My new favorite line from Barack Obama is this one:
"The Old Boys Network? In the McCain campaign that's called a staff meeting!"

That is just pure gold in my opinion.

Obama asks his supporters to get tough.

"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face," he said.

"And if they tell you that, 'Well, we're not sure where he stands on guns.' I want you to say, 'He believes in the Second Amendment.' If they tell you, 'Well, he's going to raise your taxes,' you say, 'No, he's not, he's going lower them.' You are my ambassadors. You guys are the ones who can make the case."

I think that many of us have found ourselves in a situation where we have had to explain to some knuckle dragging mouth breather that Obama is not a Muslim, that his birth certificate has been verified and is available for all to see, and that Trinity church was not a hot bed of racism.

For many of these people there is literally nothing you can say that will change their minds. They would not vote for Obama even if a sickly old man and a crazed religious zealot were running against hm. Oh wait....

But if we get out there and knock down as many of these ridiculous assertions as possible perhaps we can at least keep their influence from spreading quite so far and wide.

The McCain/Palin ticket has demonstrated that there is no bottom to how low they are willing to go, so there should be no ceiling as to how high we want to raise the level of information.

"A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Drink deep or taste not the pierian spring.
Where shallow draughts intoxicate the brain.
And drinking largely sobers us again."

Alexander Pope.

Bush does a drive by press conference and says absolutely nothing!

Was that it? Oh hell even Sarah Palin has more to say then that, and she does not say a damn thing! Bush got out from behind those camera so fast you would have thought he was afraid of sniper fire. Or possibly questions that he just cannot answer?

The President says he will cancel his plans today and work with his economic advisers to solve the problems facing our nation right now.

And I have just one thing to say to that.

"Don't touch anything!"

I mean my God haven't you done enough? This problem did not happen by itself, this administration did everything they could to MAKE it happen. Nothing you can do will make it any better!

I would just like to see George Bush sit in his office, fold his hands in front of him, and just wait until Barack Obama comes in to replace him. Then we will see some progress in solving this crisis, and the many other disasters, that have occurred during this mental midgets reign of terror.

Sarah Palin is not just any Republican, she is Dick Cheney in control top pantyhose!

Sarah Palin has been touting herself as fiscal watchdog throughout her political career. But Palin's tenure as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, was characterized by waste, cronyism and incompetence, according to government officials in the Matanuska Valley, where she began her fairy-tale political rise.

"Executive abilities? She doesn't have any," said former Wasilla City Council member Nick Carney, who selected and groomed Palin for her first political race in 1992 and served with her after her election to the City Council.

Four years later, the ambitious Palin won the Wasilla mayor's office -- after scorching the "tax and spend mentality" of her incumbent opponent. But Carney, Palin's estranged former mentor, and others in city hall were astounded when they found out about a lavish expenditure of Palin's own after her 1996 election. According to Carney, the newly elected mayor spent more than $50,000 in city funds to redecorate her office, without the council's authorization.

"I thought it was an outrageous expense, especially for someone who had run as a budget cutter," said Carney. "It was also illegal, because Sarah had not received the council's approval."

According to Carney, Palin's office makeover included flocked, red wallpaper. "It looked like a bordello."

Although Carney says he no longer has documentation of the expenditures, in his recollection Palin paid for the office face-lift with money from a city highway fund that was used to plow snow, grade roads and fill potholes -- essential municipal services, particularly in weather-battered Alaska.

Carney confronted Mayor Palin at a City Council hearing, and was shocked by her response.
"I braced her about it," he said. "I told her it was against the law to make such a large expenditure without the council taking a vote. She said, 'I'm the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can't.'"

When I was breaking bread with my fellow Alaska bloggers on Sunday, I made the observation that Sarah Palin was essentially "George Bush with a vagina".

Even though the get together was predominantly female, nobody took any offence at my crude remark. As a matter of fact all of them seemed to concur with my observation.

But perhaps I was incorrect. I have always believed that George Bush was merely a simpleton who was easily shaped by the neo-cons into an instrument of destruction to move forward their plan for world domination. But the above article seems to demonstrate that Sarah Palin is much more then simply an empty vessel waiting to be filled with the kind of evil that allows somebody to lie about a war and send thousands to their unnecessary deaths.

No Sarah Palin, the Alaska Ice Queen, seems to have already invited the darkness into her soul years before having any inclination of what the Republican demonic forces had planned for her.

She charged rape victims for the rape kits that would assist in bringing their assailants to justice, she cut funding for the mentally ill, and now we learn she spent money that Alaskans desperately needed for snow removal to buy knick knacks for her office.

The woman is pure evil! And we must defeat her at all cost!

Hackers break into Sarah Palin Yahoo e-mail account!

Hackers broke into the Yahoo! e-mail account that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin used for official business as Alaska's governor, revealing as evidence a few inconsequential personal messages she has received since John McCain selected her as his running mate.

"This is a shocking invasion of the governor's privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them," the McCain campaign said in a statement.

The Secret Service contacted The Associated Press on Wednesday and asked for copies of the leaked e-mails, which circulated widely on the Internet. The AP did not comply.

Well first off I should make clear that I had nothing to do with this. I lack the computer chops to do it, and even if I could I still wouldn't have done so. I still have some integrity left and there are some things off of the table as far as I am concerned.

But damn would I like to see what is in those e-mails! Just to put my mind at ease about a few things.

To be honest though even if ALL of my suspicions are confirmed I still would not post the e-mails here. I just cannot be part of any unlawful activity.

You can read more about the e-mails here. And here. And here. And here.

Last night's Colbert Show "Threatdown" is a must see.

Do yourself a favor and take about seven minutes out of your busy day to watch this great segment. I totally promise it will be worth it.

Yet another Alaskan politician we can all be proud to have representing our state. The fact that she is a Republican purely coincidental.

State Sen. Lesil McGuire created a disturbance on an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this month and, after landing in Anchorage, was escorted through the airport by police for questioning, according to an official report of the incident.

On the Sept. 4 flight from Juneau to Anchorage, McGuire continued using her BlackBerry after being asked to turn it off, the report said. She kept texting, which resulted in the pilot having to stop the plane as it was taxiing, according to the report by police at Stevens International Airport. After flight attendants refused to serve her alcohol, she threw a glass of water onto the aisle floor, said passengers interviewed by police.

She was rude, used profanity, bad-mouthed the pilots, and caused further delay by getting out of her seat, according to statements to police by witnesses.

Just like Sarah Palin, Lesil McGuire's life also reads like a soap opera.

Soon after McGuire was elected to the State Senate in 2001 (Representing my district at the time) she quickly started a romance with Representative Tom Anderson. There were lots of rumors but they did not come clean about their relationship until 2004 (This may have been because Anderson was still married, or so the rumors imply.), they secretly married in the summer of 2005, and Lesil gave birth to their son in March of 2006. ( I am not good with math but does that mean anything?)

Anyhow Tom Anderson was one of the first politicians to get caught up in the VECO corruption case and was indicted on August 31st of 2006, and convicted in July of 2007.

So as you can see the Alaskan political soap opera has a much larger cast of miscreants then Sarah Palin, Ted Stevens, and Don Young. We are simply brimming over with corrupt and unethical politicians.

Jealous yet?

Update: I just remembered how we found out about McGuire and Anderson's relationship.

From Mar 3, 2004:

State Representatives Lesil McGuire and Tom Anderson have issued a joint statement in response to reports of a 9-1-1 call. Juneau police are saying little about the incident, only that they got a domestic disturbance call and that they are still investigating. In their statement, McGuire and Anderson say it's unfortunate that a personal disagreement between them is being reported publicly.They say they are best friends and colleagues and that any misunderstanding between them has been resolved. McGuire and Anderson, both Republicans from Anchorage, serve together on the House Judiciary Committee.

New Barack Obama advertisement about the economy.

I have heard some criticism that Obama comes off too much like an intellectual or college professor. I find that argument patently ridiculous.

Who do we want to come to our aid in such dire times? Somebody who admits they don't understand the problems facing this economy, or somebody smart?

And notice that a link to Obama's economic plan is included in this advertisement. He is not using double speak to confuse the voter or try to direct attention away from his policies to launch an attack on his opponent. No he is literally saying "Come have a look at my ideas. And judge for yourself".

And I have done exactly that, and it fills me with hope. And that is not something that is easy to come by in these frightening times.

Interesting post from the Alaska Dispatch.

Writer Don Mitchell finds himself sitting behind Bristol Palin and her fiancee Levi Johnston.

Second, sitting three-quarters of the way up the bleacher was Bristol Palin and her eighteen-year-old impregnator, Levi Johnston. Once I noticed them, I kept my eye on Bristol and Levi. What I learned provoked an odd empathy for the awful pickle Wasilla High School’s hockey stick wielding homeboy now finds himself in.

Bristol and Levi sat shoulder-to-shoulder. But not once did they look at each other, speak to each other, or in any way acknowledge each other’s physical presence. Not once. For an entire hour. Instead, Bristol stared straight ahead and Levi had the glazed look of a trapped feral animal.

Then when Sarah wound up her autograph signing and the people sitting in front of him on the bleacher began climbing down, Levi stood up and, without looking at or speaking to his betrothed, turned in the opposite direction and walked away.

What I took away from that is that the People Magazine spin about how excited the happy couple is about their upcoming nuptials and Levi’s “Bristol” finger tattoo is the Karl Rovian nonsense that anyone who thinks about it for a scintilla of a second intuitively knows that it is. If McCain-Palin lose, my easy bet is that there will be no nuptials. But if they win, the hand Levi dealt himself by having had the poor luck to knock up the daughter of the Vice President of the United States (at the time who could have known?) will have to be played out.

The more I see or hear about Bristol Palin, and how her personal business has been made public, and how she and the rest of her family are paraded about like living breathing props to make her mother seem genuine and accessible, the more my heart goes out to her.

I feel nothing but disdain for Sarah Palin, and anger at John McCain and the Republicans, but my emotions concerning Bristol and her sisters, not to mention baby Trig, are much softer and more complicated.

My most overwhelming emotional response is that they need to be rescued.

I feel they have been taken prisoner by their mother's ambitions. And that they are simply caught up in a whirlwind much like Dorothy was before her house landed in Oz. And when these children finally touch earth again I do not think they will like where they find themselves.

I am convinced that Bristol is Trig's mother, and that her role in her baby's life has been usurped and she has been relegated to the sidelines while her mother accepts the adoration of thousands for her decision to give birth to a child with Downs syndrome. And if that were not humiliating enough Bristol is forced to pretend to be the happy little mother-to-be, sitting beside her future husband, in front of the television cameras and throngs of people who are there to see a mother that is simply too busy to provide her daughter with the attention she obviously so desperately needs right now. No wonder Bristol looks so sad in all of the pictures we see of her at these events.

I would like nothing more then to break the story that would bring Sarah Palin back to earth, and give Bristol her baby back, and provide an opportunity for this family to start the healing process.

Trust me I will never give up trying, you can count on that.