Say What You Will.....

[Chief Grey Bear]

This doesn't look good:

http://news.aol.com/elections/article/pane...3197x1200673714

[jdmidwest]

Many get confused that Palin fired her ex-brother in law over the matter and do no realize the issue really was about a person in charge farther up the chain, Monegan. He refused direct orders from his superior, Palin, and she reassigned him to a different position. He either quit or was fired for failing to do his job at that position. The ex brother in law was a screw up, drinking while on duty, tasering his kid, and shooting a moose out of season. Palin never was able to get his job or exact any gain over the matter using her powers of Governorship. Todd Palin seems to be a culprit to some extent, being a strong business man, he may have been using his abilities to get something done.

This matter has been going on for a long time, over a year if I remember correctly, just got pushed to center stage because of the election.

I really don't see how this even compares to Obama and his terriorist friends....

[Chief Grey Bear]

Don't you find it odd that nobody is saying a word about how he is a professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, holding the title of Distinguished Professor.

I think it got pushed to the center stage because she is trying to become the VP. Its shows the same patteren of abuse of power as is currently used by our sitting Vice Prez. And Prez too really.

Taxi can you find for me how many were killed and injured in any of those bombings? I can't seem to find that anywhere. You must have some information that I don't know of. Or anybody for that matter.

[jdmidwest]

Latest update from Alaska Daily News today. Seems like one is saying Ethics Violation and the other is saying she acted within her rights. Seems like Governor Palin and her aides think this has cleared her. Would be nice if we could see the whole report. Seems like the non-partisan report may have been biased.

Palin says report vindicates her

INVESTIGATION: Governor offers no apologies for her role in "Tasergate."

By LISA DEMER

ldemer@adn.com

Published: October 12th, 2008 01:45 AM

Last Modified: October 12th, 2008 04:41 AM

In a brief telephone conversation Saturday with Alaska reporters, Gov. Sarah Palin said she did nothing wrong in the Troopergate affair involving her ex-brother-in-law and feels vindicated by a legislative investigation, the results of which are detailed in a hefty report.

"Well, I'm very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing ... any hint of any kind of unethical activity there," the governor said from her car on the way to a campaign stop in Philadelphia.

The investigation was ordered by the Legislature in July to examine the circumstances under which Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan was terminated. The results of that probe, released Friday, concluded she abused her power in pressing for the firing of an Alaska state trooper once married to her sister but was within her authority in firing Monegan.

Palin's characterization of the report is wrong, Sen. Kim Elton said later Saturday when told of the governor's comments. The Juneau Democrat chairs the Legislative Council, which authorized the investigation and released the report.

"Finding No. 1 says she violated the ethics law," Elton said. "Anybody who suggests that the report does not say she broke the law, they just need to read the report. They don't even need to read all 300 pages of it, just page seven or eight."

Aides said Saturday that Palin had not read the report but had been "extensively briefed" on it.

When Palin became John McCain's vice presidential running mate, the investigation became sharply politicized and the report's release didn't ease tensions.

Special counsel Steve Branchflower, a retired state prosecutor, found that Palin failed to stop her husband, Todd, from pressuring state employees to fire Trooper Mike Wooten. Palin's sister and Wooten divorced in 2006 but continue to fight over custody and visitation.

Branchflower determined Palin's termination of Monegan likely was related to his refusal to get rid of Wooten but still amounted to a "proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads."

Palin has had barely any contact with Alaska reporters since going on the campaign trail in August. Saturday's tightly controlled telephone press conference with three Alaska reporters lasted for about 5 minutes and 30 seconds. Each reporter was limited to one question. Palin was traveling to a Philadelphia Flyers hockey game, where she dropped the puck. Taylor Griffin, a campaign spokesman, said she's trying to find more time to talk with Alaska reporters before the Nov. 4 election.

Palin said she appreciated the chance to address what she called "Tasergate," a reference to an earlier finding in a state trooper investigation that determined her ex-brother-in-law used a Taser on his 11-year-old stepson, among other issues.

Before Palin became governor, she and others in the family pushed troopers to investigate Wooten, then in the midst of the divorce, over a variety of issues, including the tasering. They claimed he threatened Palin's father, drank beer in his patrol car and illegally shot a moose, and the pressure continued once Palin was elected. Wooten ultimately was suspended for five days, but the Palins have said they didn't know the result of the internal trooper investigation until after Monegan's firing in July.

"Todd did what the state's Department of Law Web site tells anyone to do if they have a concern about a state trooper. And that's you go to the commissioner and you express your concern," Palin said.

Neither she nor Todd had anything to apologize for, the governor said.

"Todd did what anyone would have done given this state trooper's very, very troubling behavior and his dangerous threats against our family," Palin said Saturday. "So again, nothing to apologize there with Todd's actions and again very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing."

Yet, Elton said, if anything, Branchflower didn't go far enough in a separate finding that criticized the state Attorney General's office for failing to provide requested e-mails. That was just one problem with Attorney General Talis Colberg's actions in the case, the senator said. Colberg initially agreed to allow state workers to give depositions, then broke that agreement, and only after a court ruled the investigation was legitimate did he allow them to answer written questions, Elton said.

On Saturday, Palin was asked whether she thought she had done anything wrong, given the report's finding that she abused her power.

"Not at all and I'll tell ya ... I think that you're always going to ruffle feathers as you do what you believe is in the best interest of the people whom you are serving," Palin said. "In this case I knew that I had to have the right people in the right position at the right time in this cabinet to best serve Alaskans, and Walt Monegan was not the right person at the right time to meet the goals that we had set out in our administration."

In a deposition for the Legislature's investigation, Monegan said he at first was confused about why he was fired but later came to believe Wooten's continued employment was the primary cause.

"I had no idea. I suspected. But why I feel more certain now than I did in July is that I have watched through the media where she would make -- well, he didn't recruit enough, or he wasn't a budget player, or he wasn't concerned about the Bush enough."

None of those things were true, Monegan told Branchflower. "So by her statements, it literally was a process of elimination for me ... What was the central theme through the 17 months of my tenure at (the Department of Public Safety)? And that was Wooten, from the beginning to the end."

Asked whether the report was partisan, Palin said it was. "What this legislative investigation -- quote unquote -- turned into was a political circus," she said.

The state Personnel Board, which is doing its own investigation, is the proper venue, she said.

Palin was also asked about whether she approved of how the campaign is going in Alaska, especially regarding concerns about attacks on " good people," such as Monegan being called "rogue."

"Rogue isn't a negative term when you consider that in a cabinet you need a team effort going forward with a governor's agenda," Palin said.

What happens next is unclear. Some legislators are planning bills to address weaknesses exposed in the investigation. The Legislature could take up the report when it convenes in January. The Personnel Board's investigation continues on, but it's being done in secret. Under the state ethics act, the board has authority to impose fines or take other actions, including recommending impeachment, for ethics act violations.

[twosets]

So Chief, if no one was killed would it be ok with you?

Dohrn is Ayers wife.

Weatherman: bombs, rage and revolution

Weatherman was a revolutionary communist sect that split from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1969. Weatherman's founding document called for a "white fighting force" that would be "akin to the Red Guard in China" to work with the Black Liberation Movement and other "anti-colonial" movements to bring about a communist revolution and destroy "US imperialism." Weatherman committed at least 40 bombings between 1969 and 1975. Targets included the Pentagon, the State Department and the US Capitol, other government buildings, military bases, police offices and corporations. Two of the group's primary leaders were Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

Defenders argue that Weatherman was not a terrorist group, since it frequently tipped off police about the devices. Bill Ayers recently called the bombings "a dramatic form of armed propaganda" and claimed "no one was ever hurt." In reality, the relatively low death toll from the bombing campaign was mostly due to technical incompetence.

On March 6, 1970, three members of Weatherman were killed when a powerful bomb they were constructing exploded prematurely. The device had been made from dynamite, wrapped with roofing nails to maximize casualties. Its intended target was a dance for noncommissioned officers and their dates scheduled for that evening at Fort Dix. The bomb that killed three in a Greenwich Village townhouse would have killed far more on a crowded dance floor.

Larry Grathwohl, an undercover FBI agent who infiltrated Weatherman, later testified that Ayers had identified Bernadine Dohrn as the person who bombed a San Francisco police station in February 1970, killing one officer and injuring two others. The agent also said that Ayers had constructed a bomb made from 13 sticks of dynamite that the group placed in a Detroit police officers' association building. The agent contacted the police, who cleared the area, but the bomb failed to explode. Ayers' murderous intent was clear enough, however. According to the FBI agent, "Bill said that we should plan our bombing to coincide with the time when there would be the most people in those buildings."

Ayers and Dohrn were never prosecuted for the bombings because of government misconduct in collecting evidence. In 2001, Ayers told the New York Times, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."

Befriending America's foreign enemies

Even before Weatherman began its notorious bombing campaign, the group's future leaders had formed relationships with others who shared their hatred for "Amerikkka."

Bernadine Dohrn made numerous contacts with Fidel Castro's Cuban Mission at the UN in 1968 and 1969, during which time she arranged for SDS groups to visit Havana.

After returning from Cuba, Dohrn and others met with North Vietnamese and Viet Cong representatives in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss antiwar strategy on US campuses. Speaking a few days later at an assembly of revolutionary student movements at Columbia University, Dohrn reported that the Vietnamese communists she met in Budapest were working with US GIs in Saigon, attempting to obtain military information.

As a gesture of solidarity, the Vietnamese who Dohrn met in Budapest presented her with a ring made from an American aircraft shot down over North Vietnam. Bill Ayers would receive a similar ring while meeting with Vietnamese communists in Toronto. He later recalled being so moved by the gesture that he "left the room to cry." He said, "I realized...America was an evil... and that I was... living inside the belly of the beast...."

In January 1969, at the request of the Cubans and the Vietnamese, Dohrn assembled another SDS delegation to travel to Havana to plan what the Chicago Sun-Times called an "antiwar campaign during an eight-day seminar with representatives of Hanoi and the Viet Cong."

Dohrn became a key planner in the founding of the Venceremos Brigades. Ostensibly a "solidarity" program for US leftists to visit and support Castro's Cuba, the group was actually organized by Cuban intelligence as a covert attack on US security. Cuban secret police offered the "brigadistas" money, advice and logistical support. Some Americans were also given guerrilla warfare training and instructed in the use of weapons and explosives. While they were in Cuba, Huynh Van Ba, a representative of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (Viet Cong) advised his American allies to "look for the person who fights hardest against the cops." Dohrn stayed in telephone contact with Ba after returning home.

In his autobiography, Fugitive Days, Bill Ayers recalled the "Days of Rage" protests he helped to lead in the streets of Chicago in October 1969:

"...A small determined group suited up for battle...wearing...motorcycle or army-surplus helmets...goggles and gas masks, heavy boots and gloves...Most of us carried an arsenal of...steel pipes and sling shots, chains, clubs, mace, and rolls of pennies to add weight to the punch... our bonfire was full up, feeding on...splintered park benches.... The crowd roared...HO, HO, HO CHI MINH...Bernardine (Dohrn)...shouted, ‘BRING THE WAR HOME'."

Speaking before an SDS "National Action" conference in Cleveland, Ayers called "Days of Rage" "a strategy...that's going to help the NLF [National Liberation Front] concretely."

Ayers also led a group of rioters in an attack on the South Vietnamese Embassy in Washington. The mob broke windows, smashed cars, and threw rocks, sticks, firecrackers and bottles at the Embassy. At one point, a counter-demonstrator grabbed a Viet Cong flag from the group and set it on fire. Ayers proudly recalled that he had "burned my left hand and broke my ring finger rescuing" the flag. In contrast, Ayers was later photographed for a New York Times profile standing on a crumpled US flag.

Working within the system

Ayers and Dohrn were fugitives from justice for several years, living "underground" with assistance from sympathetic fellow radicals. When they emerged, both were welcomed into the ranks of academia, where they quickly rose to positions of influence. Ayers is now a professor of education and a Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was recently elected vice-president for curriculum of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association, the largest US association of education professors and researchers. Dohrn, who is now married to Ayers, is an Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University, where she also directs the Children and Family Justice Center. She has participated in several key American Bar Association committees and boards and was a founding co-chair of the ABA's Children's Law Committee.

Ayers now uses his academic position and political connections to promote his theories of "progressive" education, a topic on which he has authored several books. In 1995, Ayers co-founded the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a radical education reform project created to award grants to Chicago schools and "education networks." The grant-making non-profit handed out well over $100 million between 1995 and 2001, but failed to measurably improve the Chicago school system. Where all the money went may never be determined, but some of it was used to fund projects run by Ayers' radical friends.

For example, $175,000 went to former SDSer Mike Klonsky, who until recently was also a blogger at Obama's official campaign website. Before reinventing himself as an educator, Klonsky founded an American Maoist communist sect that worked with the Chinese communists. Among the organizations receiving funding from CAC were the community action group ACORN, the Arab American Action Network, Bernadine Dohrn's Children and Family Justice Center, and Trinity United Church, home base of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The man Ayers and his friends chose as CAC's first board chairman was a little-known 33-year old associate at a small Chicago law firm, Barack Obama. Ayers himself co-chaired CAC's other operational arm, the "Collaborative." Ayers and Obama held their respective positions for more than four years, working closely together during that time. They also served together on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago for three years.

Their association extended beyond working hours. In 1995, Obama launched his first political campaign, for the Illinois State Senate, at Ayers and Dohrn's home in Hyde Park. In 1997, Obama endorsed Ayers' book on juvenile justice, and Michelle Obama hosted a panel discussion of the book in which Ayers and Barack Obama participated.

However, when asked to describe their relationship during the Philadelphia primary debate last April, Barack Obama recalled Ayers merely as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood."

[jdmidwest]

Good research twosets. There is no doubt that Ayers was the leader of the Weatherunderground, the "group" that instigated the various bombings. While none had the impact of Oklahoma City or World Trade Center, they were still "terroristic acts" under current laws put in place since 911. And Obama is his friend!

[3wt]

I can't say that I'm a strong supporter of McCain. Or even a strong supporter of all republicans. But I do realize that the progressives (liberals, leftists, most democrats) are looking at a progression towards something. Also, that progression is away from something.

Given, forward motion is necessary, but it has to be towards the right things and away from the wrong things. I'm not sure that I can sit around and let far-left socialism be the thing we move away from be capitalistic small government democracy. If your associations tell anything about you, then it is pretty clear that Obama is essentially looking for that "new America," but not one that our founders would recognize, but one that he and the enilghtened ones see as

We're in a time where suddenly "deregulation" is a dirty word - rather that the proper limited regulation. That's gonna open Obama's door for his big government involvment over-regulation. I'm not saying we'll see radical socialism in a 4 or 8 year period under the guy, but the road will be paved and the route will be set, and like Phil put it, it will be hard to undo. I shudder to imagine the supreme court of Obama's dreams...hopefully he'd only get a couple seats if elected.

Let's not forget that the government is supposed to be a necessary evil, not the thing we all rely on for everything. "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." -Ronald Reagan

[Chief Grey Bear]

So Chief, if no one was killed would it be ok with you?

Not at all but, thanks for trying to put words in my mouth none the less. It would be nice if Taxi would follow the rules that Phil put forth on these discussions a couple of weeks ago. That is my point. I like you spin on it though.

[Chief Grey Bear]

While none had the impact of Oklahoma City or World Trade Center, they were still "terroristic acts" under current laws put in place since 911. And Obama is his friend!

Yeah, I wonder how many of us under these new rules could be considered terrorist?

[Chief Grey Bear]

BTW twosets, can you post the link to your souce? It will be interesting to see that.