By Larry Jones
As of this writing some pundits are saying that John McCain’s pick for
VP, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, may not or should not remain on the
ticket, so frightening is the possibility of her being one heartbeat
(or cancer attack) away from the presidency. As a flood of negative
columns have appeared on numerous Internet sources, and even in
mainstream media, the question is being asked: Did McCain shoot from
the hip in this selection? Did his team not adequately vet her? Or
did he just want a right wing Christian WOMAN to win over the religious
crazies as well as to try to get some of Hillary Clinton’s backers.
One blogger, Ruth Rosen on AlterNet, said, “How stupid does he think we
are?
PALIN’s SUPER-FUNDAMENTALIST CONNECTIONS
Dig into Palin’s religious associations and it appears that she will
be running as a stealth candidate for the dominionists – those folks
who want a form of theocracy in which harsh biblical law will rule.
Her church, Juneau Christian Center, an Assemblies of God church, is
connected to the Third Wave Movement popular in Neo-Pentecostal circles
and linked to Joel’s Army. People are trained in “Destiny” classes.
“Destiny” became code for Joel’s Army when it began to receive
negative publicity for its alleged biblically violent language and its
coercive tactics known to have caused serious psychological damage,
according to victims who later left such groups. (Seehttp://dogemperor.
is also a dominionist broadcast center with programs carried on numerous
broadcast channels in Alaska.
PALIN HONORED BY ASSEMBLIES OF GOD IN ALASKA
The newsletter of the Assemblies of God in Alaska ran this story recently:
The opening night banquet of the 2008 Alaska District Council was honored
to have Governor Sarah Palin address the delegates and guests. Governor
Palin spoke of her appreciation for the Assemblies of God and requested
that the Council pray for both her and the State of Alaska. Superintendent
Ted Boatsman, who was Palin’s junior high pastor at Wasilla Assembly
of God, along with Pastor Mike Rose of Juneau Christian Center, where
Palin presently attends church when in Juneau, laid hands on the Governor
and led the Council in prayer.
Palin is a young earth creationist who does not believe in evolution,
although she has said both should be taught in school. She is rabidly
anti-abortionist and has said that even if one of her daughters was
ever raped, she would require her to carry it to term.
FEMINISTS FOR LIFE, A DECEPTIVE ANTI-ABORTION GROUP
Since Sarah Palin is an admitted member of Feminists for Life (FFL),
whose membership list is secret, it is important to know what this group
is actually up to. One of their main goals may already be nearly accomplished
by a proposed Health and Human Services regulation that would define
pregnancy as beginning at conception rather than at implantation on
the wall of the uterus. This definition is the basis upon which the
religious right hopes to include birth control methods such as the pill,
the patch, the shot, the ring, the IUD, and emergency contraception,
under the classification “abortion.” This is the stand of
FFL members.
These pseudo-feminists also say that a single pregnant woman can choose
to bear the child and use welfare, or choose adoption. Their president,
Serrin Foster, talks about the need for child care for working women
or students, but their proposals for achieving that worthy goal are
hard to find, if they exist at all. The one choice women must make is
to refuse abortion under any circumstance. They spend a great deal of
effort working on high school women.
Palin once said, “I am pro-life [even though her oldest son has finished
his military training to be a killer and is headed for Iraq] and I believe
that marriage should only be between a man and a woman”” She opposes equal rights for gay and lesbian couples, and
she is ardently opposed to stem cell research.
THE SECRETIVE COUNCIL FOR NATIONAL POLICY
The Council for National Policy is another of the most powerful groups
you never heard of. They do not say who their members are, when or where
they meet, or what is discussed, but they gather together some of the
most far right religious leaders, wealthy right donors and leading conservative
politicos. They are delighted with Sarah Palin and said as much when
they met recently. Even James Dobson of Focus on the Family was there
although he had previously said he would not vote for McCain because
he wasn’t far right enough on the religious spectrum.
Since secretive meetings are frequently leaked, “Nation” writer
Max Blumenthal was able to talk to Tom Minnery, who is one of Dobson’s
people. As the group watched Palin accept her Veep selection on a hotel
room TV in Minneapolis, Minnery said: “I was standing in the back
of a ballroom filled with largely Republicans who were hoping against
hope that something would put excitement back into this campaign. And I have to tell you, that speech
by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin — people were on their seats applauding,
cheering, yelling … That room in Minneapolis with people watching
on the television screen was electrified. I have not seen anything like it in a long time.”
Dobson will now vote for the McCain/Palin ticket and so will a lot of
other religious whackos.
ON THE ENVIRONMENT
Alaska’s governor does not believe that global warming is caused by
human action, apparently believing that the dangerous warming of the
earth is an historic cycle and in time will rectify itself. Thus it
follows that she has fought hard against the federal government “s
declaring polar bears as an endangered species. According to Associated
Press: “She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will
cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the
state’s northern and northwestern coasts.”
Republicans speak of Palin as an energy expert, meaning she is in favor
of more oil drilling, including at the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge
(ANWR), which McCain has opposed in the past. She is a very outspoken
advocate of the oil industry. Two years ago, Palin got the Alaska legislature
to impose a tax of 22.5% on oil companies. Not too long after, gas prices
in Alaska rose to 30% over the national average instead of the previous
5% above. Then last year the tax on oil companies was raised to 25%
and gas prices rose to 50% above national averages. The public thought
Palin was on their side because of the taxes, but big oil passed the
cost on to them as consumers. Thus the state’s income was increased
and Palin’s popularity rose. Very sly!
It is now well known that the governor is a hunter and something of
a sharp shooter. It is less well known that she supports hunting wolves
from Cessna’s flying overhead. They call such hunting “safaris,”
but they are not anything alike African safaris we have read about in “National Geographic,” although surely just as harmful. Palin’s
disturbing efforts were successful in getting Alaskans to vote against
a measure to outlaw such aerial hunting. This week Alaskans were to
vote on a clean water measure which Palin opposed and broke the law
to do it. The issue was whether the open pit mining at Bristol Bay,
the world’s largest, would damage the quality of the citizen’s water and fail to protect the wild salmon
runs. It is illegal for the governor to take sides on such measures,
yet she used state Department of Natural Resources monies to lobby against
the initiative. Environmentalists filed a complaint and succeeded in
getting the state website on which the opposition appeared taken down.
MORE UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR
Palin’s other ethical violations include the ongoing legislative investigation
of why she fired the public safety commissioner after he refused to
fire a state trooper who had a messy divorce with her sister. Further,
she lied to the Republican audience to whom she first spoke in Dayton,
Ohio last week. About the infamous bridge to nowhere she said, “I
told Congress “thanks but no thanks.”” Since McCain had called
the proposed bridge a prime example of unwise pork barrel spending,
the crowd cheered. However, when she was running for governor, she said
she wanted to press ahead with the bridge from Ketchikan to an island
with 50 residents “while our congressional delegation is in a strong
position to assist.” This was a classical case of opportunism.
Currently there has been much discussion of the revelation that Palin’s
17 year old daughter Bristol is pregnant. The GOP campaign has made
a great deal of the fact that she “made the decision on her own to
keep the baby.” But if McCain and Palin are elected they will see
that Roe v. Wade is overturned, thus denying all women the right to
make or reject that decision. Further, Palin would like to see more
than a Supreme Court decision, she would like to see any form of abortion made illegal by legislation.
Sarah Palin is being touted by Republican operatives as a reformer.
However, her record shows that what may be called reformist is actually
reactionary in the extreme.
It just gets better and better