Chris Shays on Sarah Palin: "She's Awesome"

Enquiring minds want to know (0.00 / 0)

IF Palin had an affair with her husbands former business partner?

Shocked!

The McCain campaign has run out of convention days to use as a reason to avoid all of the media's questions.  


Drinking Liberally in New Milford
ePluribus Media

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by: Connecticut Man1 @ Fri Sep 05, 2008 at 13:00:53 PM UTC

Is Alaska a complete Peyton Place? (0.00 / 0)

having dipped into the blogs in Alaska, you can't make this stuff up.  Sarah Palin may not have foreign policy experience, but she seems to have plenty of firsthand knowledge of entangling alliances.  Below is a digest of some of the many blog-snippets.

Debbie Richter and Scott Richter are business partners of the Palins (together they own acres of land in Big Lake, AK and they co-own the Palin residence in Wasilla), and Scott is said by some to be a former boyfriend of Sarah's.  The Richters are divorcing, and Debbie was Sarah's campaign treasurer, rewarded with a job as the Director of the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend Division for her service.  This division lost the computer list of citizens who applied for their annual payout from an oil and gas royalty fund, so you can tell it is well managed.

Another from-high school friend who worked on the campaign, last name Bitney, was then made Sarah's legislative aide and seems he started dating Debbie before the divorce was final.  He believes he was fired for dating Debbie, who works in a completely different division from his.  He thinks Todd, who inexplicably sits in on some of Sarah's meetings and is a good friend of Debbie's husband, had something to do with it.  My head hurts with the possible betrayals and cross-betrayals here.  So Scott may be an old boyfriend but may be not the boyfriend because some blogs say that when Todd found out about it, he dissolved a business partnership.

No way this candidate could have been vetted in a couple of days -- you can't even learn to keep the intertangling alliances straight in a couple of days, in order to figure out if any of it potentially matters.  The personal is appearing to be very densely entwined with the professional decisions she makes and alliances she forms.  

Perhaps the McCain campaign thought Alaska is very far away and no  one would ever find out half the stuff that's going on (maybe Sarah thought the same).  She is the governor of a small and isolated state with few alternative employment opportunities if  employees cross the guv; does that equal job security?

The Troopergate situation at present is laughable -- her lawyer is trying to say that the proper jurisdiction for considering the governor's actions is not the legislature, but a three-appointee personnel board (appointees all appointed by Sarah Palin).  Cut me a break.  Doesn't he know how blatantly self-interested and corrupt this looks in the lower 48?  There is no way that three Palin-appointees who can be fired at will are going to be an impartial venue to hear such a complsint.  They should recuse themselves and put it back in the legislature's hands.

If she succeeds in strong-arming this whole situation, it will send its own message about who she is and how she operates.  She will have a Pyrrhic victory.  The pattern seems to be to clothe personal motives in reformer rhetoric -- hmm, where have we seen this pattern before??

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by: greenpeas @ Fri Sep 05, 2008 at 16:31:03 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The squeaky clean Hockey Mom's purported lover? (0.00 / 0)

A local Palmer politician and...
A Hockey Coach

I am guessing we will see this on The Daily Show soon enough... Maybe Colbert too. They can give the writers a night off and just do factual Palin stories for a half an hour.


Drinking Liberally in New Milford
ePluribus Media

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by: Connecticut Man1 @ Fri Sep 05, 2008 at 19:37:12 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

at this point, this should be the LEAST of the Republican's worries (0.00 / 0)

this broads got alot more problems than a marital indiscretion (if there is one)

.Adding Another Dimension of Vituperation Toxicity to Blogging since 1999!.

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by: nolopro @ Fri Sep 05, 2008 at 20:07:38 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Shays: only McCain (0.00 / 0)

Shays says he might not have run again if his party had nominated someone other than McCain?  Haha.  He thinks only McCain can be sold as "able to deliver change" --any more than the other primary candidate-- but if you're trying to sell someone who's voted 90+% with Bush (when he's bothered to show up), you got a problem there, buddy.

The only reason McCain can claim that Obama voted in favor of subsidies for Big Oil is because McCain didn't even show up to vote.

Of course it would be nice if Obama stood against some of this crap once in a while, but I am trying to wait until he's in office to start ripping into him.

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by: Buckminster @ Fri Sep 05, 2008 at 13:50:46 PM UTC

It's hard to watch Shays up there just lie through his teeth (0.00 / 0)

"Obama's got no record" -- it's the same lie that Joe Lieberman told, and that was proven a lie at Factcheck.org.

Shays' support for Palin is also pretty pathetic. She's a global-warming denier, wants to teach kids creationism, opposes a woman's right to choose, declared open hunting season on Alaskan wolves, all stuff Shays claims to oppose. He has absolutely no principles. No self respect. He's just another Republican tool.  

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by: CaptCT @ Fri Sep 05, 2008 at 16:59:10 PM UTC

I think it's gonna bite him in the butt (0.00 / 0)

Just because there has been a lot of stuff about Palin in the news doesn't mean the tip of the iceberg has even been touched.

Compare her to Hillary when switched 6 times in 6 years among 2 schools in Hawaii, 2 in Idaho, and one in Alaska, taking 6 years to graduate?  It's not like these were tough schools, either.

The story about school number one, which doesn't have a record that she enrolled, was that it lasted two weeks, and she "quit" or stopped "attending" (sorry, shortage of facts here) because it "rained all the time".  

Maybe a page out of Sarah's book - a trip to ebay - would reveal 6 years of college yearbooks photos?

Then there is the announcement today that the Troopergate investigation by the legislature is moving up its report by 3 weeks instead of releasing it as previously announced on 10/31.

Finally, PSEA, the state troopers' union, has filed a request that the Alaska AG and personnel board (actually, a 3 person panel with all appointed by Sarah - should they
r e c u s e themselves?) investigate an ethics complaint against Palin.

It appears that to obtain info to use against Wooten, Trooper Wooten's personnel files were illegally searched and information gathered also from his workers comp file, and this info was passed along to others apparently and allegedly in violation of AK state law.  

Wooten is a checkered character, to be sure, but the complaint contains a phone transcript of one of the calls in which questions were raised about Wooten, and the caller is asked how he got the info and  admits to having accessed Wooten's confidential employment files.  

The official story is that Todd Palin got the information as a result of the Wooten divorce (married to Sarah's sister) proceedings (attorney given permission by Wooten to see files) and "Sarah never knew".  Because these old matters raised by those who amde phone calls were known, and the subject of past discipline, there was nothing new that the police could do without causing union problems.

Well, how well is that gonna wash?  The wife was Sarah's sister,  not Todd's.  Todd knew and didn't tell Sarah, thus endangering her career?  I. don't. think. so.

Methinks there is going to be either a lot of corrupt damage control, or a lot of BS hitting the fan on this one.

And if Todd Palin was the person behind the effort, I have only one question:  why was he as a BP employee involving himself in state business?

If she was lying about how the information was obtained, then the focus becomes her integrity, not secondguessing her personnel decisions.

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by: greenpeas @ Fri Sep 05, 2008 at 18:47:28 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Quotas (0.00 / 0)

Did Shays just come out in favor of quotas?

It's a women who should be selected, not a particular kind of woman.

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by: Gabe @ Fri Sep 05, 2008 at 18:04:28 PM UTC

Too Funny! n/t (0.00 / 0)

Drinking Liberally in New Milford
ePluribus Media

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by: Connecticut Man1 @ Fri Sep 05, 2008 at 19:42:06 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Naw... (0.00 / 0)

It's just yer typical Republican Affirmative Reaction.

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by: notcho @ Fri Sep 05, 2008 at 20:34:02 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Front-paged at DailyKos (0.00 / 0)

CT-04: Republican Chris Shays Demeans Women

Personally, I think Shays demeans all Connecticut voters by his silly pandering and cheerleading for the radical right. A faux moderate when it suits him, a pandering goofball the rest of the time.

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by: Scarce @ Fri Sep 05, 2008 at 22:52:19 PM UTC