Month: September 2008

You go, Jen!

Mimiboo Too

Seriously, Sarah Palin? You’re going to snark on Barack Obama for being a community organizer, for mobilizing the poor in Chicago to seek more opportunities, better schools, for forcing the government to pay attention to them? Giuliani mentioned it too, drawing laughter from the crowd with his dismissal of Obama’s Ivy League education and community experience.

You know what? Community organizers remember the people that mayors and governors and presidents forget. They empower people who have had no power at all. Jesus was a community organizer. So was Gandhi. Jane Addams. Martin Luther King Jr. Women gained the right to vote through community organizing; the civil rights movement began that way too. Don’t knock community organizers. I’d much sooner support a community organizer than a small-town mayor who wanted to ban books from the public library.

CNET News

The two presidential candidates’ energy policies fall along philosophical lines with McCain calling to scale back government ethanol policy and Obama promising expanded support for renewable energy, according to an analysis published on Wednesday.

Los Angeles Times

For much of his long career in Washington, John McCain has been throwing darts at the special spending system known as earmarking, through which powerful members of Congress can deliver federal cash for pet projects back home with little or no public scrutiny. He’s even gone so far as to publish “pork lists” detailing these financial favors.

Three times in recent years, McCain’s catalogs of “objectionable” spending have included earmarks for this small Alaska town, requested by its mayor at the time

Now, McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, has chosen Palin as his running mate, touting her as a reformer just like him.

Let’s go back to the good ol’ book burning days!

Not Politics as Usual – NYTimes.com

Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.

Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,” Ms. Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to “resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support. Ms. Emmons, who left her job and Wasilla a couple of years later, declined to comment for this article.

washingtonpost.com

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin began building clout in her state’s political circles in part by serving as a director of an independent political group organized by the now embattled Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.

Palin’s name is listed on 2003 incorporation papers of the “Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.,” a 527 group that could raise unlimited funds from corporate donors. The group was designed to serve as a political boot camp for Republican women in the state. She served as one of three directors until June 2005, when her name was replaced on state filings.

Palin’s relationship with Alaska’s senior senator may be one of the more complicated aspects of her new position as Sen. John McCain’s running mate; Stevens was indicted in July 2008 on seven counts of corruption.

Boston.com has some fantastic photos from the recent Olympics: Beijing 2008 – It’s a wrap