An 'Idiot Wind'

Note from Greetings: Has John McCain disavowed and condemned the acts of G. Gordon Liddy, his "friend" (in McCain's words), who suggested shooting government agents and bombing the Brookings Institute and who was sent to jail for subverting the Democratic Process in the 1960's? Has Sarah Palin condemned the Alaska Independent Party who want to secede from the U.S., and whose conference Palin addressed as recently as June of this year, saying "Keep up your good work"? (And to which her husband belonged.)

And has John McCain talked about the large sums of money he helped to give the same below-mentioned Rashid Kalidi? ????

And what about Governor Palin's church in Alaska, where she had hands "laid on her" to "drive away witches" by Pastor Muthee who persecuted women in Africa for being withches, much like our days in the Salem witch trials. Let's hope we do not return 4oo years in our history.

What IS a terrorist? If we go by McCain and Palin's own words (which I don't), then McCain and Palin fit the bill as well. By their own definition.

John McCain's latest attempt to link Barack Obama to extremism

Friday, October 31, 2008; A18, Washingtonpost.com Editorial

WITH THE presidential campaign clock ticking down, Sen. John McCain has suddenly discovered a new boogeyman to link to Sen. Barack Obama: a sometimes controversial but widely respected Middle East scholar named Rashid Khalidi. In the past couple of days, Mr. McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, have likened Mr. Khalidi, the director of a Middle East institute at Columbia University, to neo-Nazis; called him "a PLO spokesman"; and suggested that the Los Angeles Times is hiding something sinister by refusing to release a videotape of a 2003 dinner in honor of Mr. Khalidi at which Mr. Obama spoke. Mr. McCain even threw former Weatherman Bill Ayers into the mix, suggesting that the tape might reveal that Mr. Ayers -- a terrorist-turned-professor who also has been an Obama acquaintance -- was at the dinner.

For the record, Mr. Khalidi is an American born in New York who graduated from Yale a couple of years after George W. Bush. For much of his long academic career, he taught at the University of Chicago, where he and his wife became friends with Barack and Michelle Obama. In the early 1990s, he worked as an adviser to the Palestinian delegation at peace talks in Madrid and Washington sponsored by the first Bush administration. We don't agree with a lot of what Mr. Khalidi has had to say about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the years, and Mr. Obama has made clear that he doesn't, either. But to compare the professor to neo-Nazis -- or even to Mr. Ayers -- is a vile smear.

Perhaps unsurprising for a member of academia, Mr. Khalidi holds complex views. In an article published this year in the Nation magazine, he scathingly denounced Israeli practices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and U.S. Middle East policy but also condemned Palestinians for failing to embrace a nonviolent strategy. He said that the two-state solution favored by the Bush administration (and Mr. Obama) was "deeply flawed" but conceded there were also "flaws in the alternatives." Listening to Mr. Khalidi can be challenging -- as Mr. Obama put it in the dinner toast recorded on the 2003 tape and reported by the Times in a detailed account of the event last April, he "offers constant reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases."

It's fair to question why Mr. Obama felt as comfortable as he apparently did during his Chicago days in the company of men whose views diverge sharply from what the presidential candidate espouses. Our sense is that Mr. Obama is a man of considerable intellectual curiosity who can hear out a smart, if militant, advocate for the Palestinians without compromising his own position. To suggest, as Mr. McCain has, that there is something reprehensible about associating with Mr. Khalidi is itself condemnable -- especially during a campaign in which Arab ancestry has been the subject of insults. To further argue that the Times, which obtained the tape from a source in exchange for a promise not to publicly release it, is trying to hide something is simply ludicrous, as Mr. McCain surely knows.

Which reminds us: We did ask Mr. Khalidi whether he wanted to respond to the campaign charges against him. He answered, via e-mail, that "I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over." That's good advice for anyone still listening to the McCain campaign's increasingly reckless ad hominem attacks. Sadly, that wind is likely to keep blowing for four more days.

Palin Found Guilty of Abuse of Power

Palin's ties With the Alaskan Independence Party

Whose Leader Wants to Secede From the U.S. - quote: "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."

Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008 10:59 EDT
The other 49
Before even starting this post, can we just pause for a moment and consider what would have happened to that unpatriotic, American-hating Muslim the Democrats nominated for president if he had been part of a secessionist group led by a man who once said he was “an Illinoisan, not an American”? To borrow Clarence Thomas’ famous phrase, it would been a high-tech lynching.

But here comes Sarah Palin, former member of the Alaskan Independence Party and current Republican nominee for vice president of the United States. ABC's Jake Tapper reports:


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.


Oops. The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder clarifies that Palin’s association with the AIP is not ancient history, either, for she addressed the organization earlier this year:


Basically, the AIP wants a vote on secession. According to the organizations' website. "[T]hough it is widely thought to be a secessionist movement, the Party makes great effort to emphasize that its primary goal is merely a vote on secession, something that Party advocates say Alaskans were denied during the founding of the state."

The AIP says that Gov. Sarah Palin used to be a member of the party. Earlier this year, Palin recorded a welcoming address to the AIP's convention.

This is a party whose founding member, Joe Vogler, said: "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."

Lee Atwater must be wincing in his grave right now. If he were alive -- in his pre-conversion/apology incarnation, that is -- and he found this on the résumé of a Democratic vice-presidential candidate, he would have attacked with relish. Unfortunately for the GOP, the candidate associated with people who want to bail on the other 49 states of the United States of America is Sarah Palin.

― Thomas Schaller

Sarah Palin Addresses the Alaska Secessionist Party Convention

A party her husband belonged to for many years (until her career as Governor started to take off). She tells them "keep up the good work"... to start a revolution against the U.S.???