The McCain campaign is now accusing fired Alaskan Public Safety Director Walt Monegan of “insubordination”, according to papers filed Monday by would-be President Puti…, sorry – “Palin”.
Motley Moose – Archive
Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics
Alaska
“Alaska Women Reject Palin” Rally – 150% the Size of Pro-Palin Rally
Mudflats, a blog by Alaskan AKMuckraker has an article today about a rally – organized by eight women over coffee – held to counter the event welcoming Gov. Palin home from her ordeal answering questions for the first time since being nominated by the GOP for President (er: *Vice* President). The turnout dwarfed the Pro-Palin rally yesterday.
Alaskan Women Reject Palin was, by this account, the *”biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state”*. At least 1,400 people showed up, and to put that in perspective that would be akin to 100,000 New Yorker women showing up to a political rally in New York City (we can be fairly certain no-one took the train from New Jersey to Anchorage or drove up from Philadelphia for the event). This compares to perhaps 1,000 Palin fans who showed up for her event that same day.
Alaska Daily News also has an article with 50 more first-hand pics.
Anne K in Alaska – Wisdom from Wasilla
You have all read the diary about the note written by Anne K in Alaska, or seen other articles about it. Anne lives in Wassilla, has known Sarah Palin for many years and has an experienced opinion of Gov. Palin’s history that she wanted to share. She had asked that her thoughts be forwarded with her name attached – she did not want to hide from the responsibility of speaking her mind – though she asked that they not be posted on websites: “there are too many kooks out there…” (you know who you are… ;~).
Somewhere along the way someone posted the email in its entirety as a comment on the Washington Independent. Since that moment, articles and diaries have popped up all over the web (and here’s another: curious critters, ain’t we?).
There has been discussion about this comment, some of it along the lines of: “Gee, I dunno, I think this may not be real…” So instead of just bantering about the veracity of Anne’s words amongst those of us who were reading them second and fifth-hand, I decided to give Anne a call.
Palin: Anti-Birth Control, Under Investigation, Anti-EPA and Other Fun Items
Q&A with Palin on the issues in July 2006
Palin and “Femistists for Life” oppose Birth Control
The problem is that FFL doesn’t just oppose abortion. FFL wants abortion to be illegal. All abortions, period, including those for rape, incest, health, major fetal defects and, although Foster resisted admitting this, even some abortions most doctors would say were necessary to save the woman’s life. (Although FFL is not a Catholic organization, its rejection of therapeutic abortion follows Catholic doctrine.) FFL wants doctors who perform abortions to be punished, possibly with prison terms.
It was extremely difficult to get Foster to say what she thought would happen if abortion was banned. At one point she would not concede that women would continue to have abortions if it was recriminalized; at another she argued that criminalization was no big deal: Instructions on self-abortion were posted on the Internet. I had to work to get her to admit that illegal abortion was common before Roe, and that it was dangerous–numbers on abortion deaths were concocted by pre-Roe legalization advocates, she told me. Yet the FFL website prominently features gory stories of abortion mishaps and discredited claims that abortion causes breast cancer. (Challenged on the cancer connection, Foster says they just want women to have medical information. Asked why they don’t then link to the 2004 Lancet article debunking their cancer claims, she says they are not medical experts and have considered taking the cancer pages down.) So legal abortion is dangerous but illegal abortion would be safe? When I pointed out that in countries where the operation is banned, such as Brazil and Peru, rates are sky-high and abortion a major cause of injury and death, she professed ignorance.
I got similarly evasive answers when I asked why FFL didn’t promote birth control, and when I asked if FFL considered the pill an “abortifacient.” She did tell me that “birth control doesn’t work” for swing-shift nurses because they lose track of their body clock–interesting, if true–or for teenagers, which I know to be false.
Palin visits D.C., lobbies for Alaska issues Feb 25, 2008