Junior Johnson Endorses Roy Carter for Congress

Video.

As endorsements go, this one's fairly significant in the 5th Dist.

P.S.
And by the way, recent polling shows the Carter-Foxx match-up the closest Congressional district race in the state of North Carolina, according to Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling.

The Palin Delivered the Down Payment, But How About the Principal?

She did a great job. She hauled a great big ole slab of red moose meat into the Xcel Center in St. Paul and threw it out for the hungry wolves. She solidified the base of the Republican Party.

'Course, solidifying the base early in September kinda highlights the problem McCain has, doesn't it? Forget the swing voters! Let's go get all those anti-choice, anti-environment, anti-gay culture warriors on board. To hell with everyone else.

But the questions about Palin remain. Eventually, maybe, her McCain palace guard will allow her in front of the press.

1. What exactly is her opinion about the Iraq War. One minute she says it's a "task from God" and the next (after her own son gets called up?) it's apparently a "war over energy sources" (i.e., oil?). In March she was far off the McCain reservation: "I want to know that we have an exit plan in place."

2. When is she going to come clean about her actual record on pork-barrel spending? She SUPPORTED the "bridge to nowhere" during her 2006 campaign for governor (here). She didn't decide to oppose the bridge until AFTER Congress killed the earmark and it became a national embarrassment. As mayor of Wasilla, she hired a private lobbyist, sought, and eventually received $27 million in earmarks from the federal government.

3. She denies man-made global warming, and as governor she is suing the federal government to lift the protected species status of polar bears. In 2007 she illegally established a $150 bounty per animal on "fly-by wolf hunting," which was soon overturned by a state court.

4. Speaking to the Wasilla Assembly of God church in June, Palin said it was clearly "God's will" that a $30 billion national gas pipeline project be built.

5. She believes in teaching creationism in public schools.

6. She opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest, slashed state funding to help teenage mothers, and advocates abstinence-only sex-education programs. In other words, she has the gall to declare that her own daughter's "choice" to have a baby is nobody's business but wants us to elect her so that she can empower the federal government to remove most such choices from other women.

7. Palin cheered on the Alaska Independence Party, which advocates for secession of the state from the federal union.

That's just a bare START on some issues and areas of concern that deserve a few questions, followed by a few answers.

Palin Used Eminent Domain to Seize Private Property

How much is the hard right willing to swallow to stay in love with The Palin?

As mayor of Wasilla, she used eminent domain powers to seize land for the city's sports complex, and that seizure is now costing local taxpayers over $1 million in a judgment against it ... not counting what was initially paid and all the legal costs. The total cost is expected to go over $2 million.

A Junior-League Dictator

We learn the following about Sarah Palin as a city official of Wasilla, Alaska:

1. Sarah Palin first ran for mayor in 1996 as a 32-year-old. Though town council races are officially non-partisan, Palin brought Republican wedge politics to the race, particularly anti-abortion flyers and claims about her own (superior) Christianity against an incumbent mayor who had been raised a Lutheran but who was also not "a church-going guy." The local Republican Party ran ads for Palin, and she won.

2. She was very pro-development as mayor, bringing in big box stores, a $15 million sports complex (paid for with taxpayer money), and the small town of 5,000 grew rapidly.

3. Her first months in office as mayor were "so jarring — and so alienating — that an effort was made to force a recall." About 100 people attended a meeting to discuss organizing a recall vote, but the idea was later dropped.

4. At first she was hot to censor and even ban some books from the city library. She approached the librarian. The librarian resisted. Mayor Palin backed off the censorship idea but fired the librarian. An uproar over the firing caused Palin to reinstate the librarian (who soon left the area).

5. Palin forced the resignations of town employees who had publicly backed the former mayor -- "something virtually unheard of in Wasilla in past elections. The public works director, city planner, museum director and others were forced out. The police chief, Irl Stambaugh, was later fired outright."

6. Palin issued "a surprise edict: No employee was to talk to the news media without her permission."

7. In her second term as mayor, she pushed through a half-cent raise in the local sales tax to pay for the $15 million sports complex.

8. Palin had campaigned promising to cut her own full-time salary. She did reduce it from about $68,000 to about $64,000, but she also hired a city administrator, adding his salary to the payroll. Result: a net increase in city salaries.

9. When Palin completed her second and final term in 2002, her stepmother-in-law, Faye Palin, ran to succeed her. Faye Palin supported abortion rights and was registered as unaffiliated, not Republican. So Palin threw her weight behind another woman in the race, a religious conservative, who won.

Fiscal Conservative?

A Wasilla resident who has known Palin since 1992 has written up her assessment of the mayor (full, long text here). A brief excerpt:

During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a "fiscal conservative." During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren't enough to fund everything on her wish list though. Borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million....

Earlier this year in her capacity as governor of Alaska, Palin used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.

Seriously.

Big Tentism

Ex-presidential candidate Ron Paul won't be allowed to address the Republican National Convention, and Paul himself says that John McCain apparently wants to keep him off the convention floor.

However, The Palin said earlier this year that she found Paul way cool. But that's nothing: as recently as a month ago, The Palin was also agreeing with the Obama energy plan. (HT: LO)

'The First Dude' of Alaska

Another Alaska blog -- this one by a former state legislator -- with a good deal of info about Todd Palin's influence on state government.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Northern Exposure

Just as we were learning to type "abstinence-only programs obviously really work," and before we could even begin to look into the obvious comforts of blaming God for global-warming, The Palin lawyers up. Yikes! Too many new developments in too short a time.

We can't even begin to keep up any more with which version of reality we're supposed to believe. And what does the verb "to vet" actually mean?

One thing, though, is (fer shore!) proven beyond any shadow of a doubt: John McCain is one hell of a decision-maker.

Meanwhile, the readership of the only blog north of 60 degrees of latitude, "Mudflats," has just jumped 1,000 percent, cause this blogger knows a whole lot about The Palin. As only a fellow Alaskan could.

Labor Day

This holiday began a lot longer ago than you may think. The Central Labor Union of New York, an early confederation of workers, help the first parade and picnic of laborers in New York on the first Monday in September in 1882. A machinist named Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., is credited with proposing the holiday.

By 1884 the First-Monday-in-September parade in New York had grown exponentially. By the first Monday in September 1885, Labor Day was being celebrated by workingmen in many industrialized cities across the country.

In 1887, Oregon, Colorado, New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey recognized Labor Day as state holidays. Other states followed. Then in 1894, the U.S. Congress passed a law recognizing Labor Day as an official national holiday.

Classic Labor Day celebrations have always included a street parade of union members "to exhibit to the public the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families."

While the holiday became identified with the Democratic Party, in Newport, Rhode Island, and other watering holes of the super-rich, Labor Day became a boundary marker after which it was considered unfashionable to wear summer whites.

To each his own.