My beat is clear: Global Warming and Energy.
And, the choice come November could not be starker in these arenas (that is, at least in fact not media framing). The contrast could not be starker … across a wide range of issues.
Among these, John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin has added a searing 
issue to the table:
Do we want a separtist with easy access to the centers of power in the nation?
What would it mean to have a Vice President (likely President) sleeping with a separtist?
This question is essentially absent from the pages of traditional media.
Imagine if Michelle Obama were a registered member of the Black Panthers until 2002? Imagine the drumbeat of outrage that all Americans would hear. About Todd “My Guy” Palin’s separtist credentials? Crickets chirping in the night …
Sarah Palin has not just sleeping with a separatist but clearly seems to be in the realm of fellow traveler.
Palin provided a warm and glowing video to the AIP’s annual convention. Note that she speaks in this video of Alaska as a “self-sufficient state”.
Guess that is why she has fought so hard against Wasilla, Alaska, having dependence on pork-barrel politics and has worked so successfully to remove Alaska from the Federal Government dole. NOT!!!
The Republican ticket is almost in balance on this: Alaska 1st, Ariz. last in pork spending.
But … back to secessionists
Dexter Clark, the head of the AIP, said:
Our current governor who I mentioned at the last conference, the one we were hoping would get elected, Sarah Palin, did get elected . . . .and there was a lot of talk about her moving up. She was an AIP member before she got the job as mayor . . . but to get-along-to-go-along, she eventually joined the Republican Party . .
.
Now, he has backed off those claims and it seems likely that Sarah was never a member formally. But consider what Dexter Clark says:
We don’t say we’re Americans, we say we’re Alaskans.
In videos previously available on YouTube, Clark bragged about student’s giving thumb’s down sign for America, but the thumb’s up for Alaska.
“We are a state’s rights party,” says Clark, a self-employed goldminer. The AIP has “a plank that challenges the legality of the Alaskan statehood vote as illegal and in violation of United Nations charter and international law.”
What does he advise AIP members to do? He urges members to infiltrate political parties to further their cause. Infiltration by a subversive organization? Todd Palin was a member of the AIP untill 2002 when he registered as a member of the Republican Party. Did he follow his Party leader’s instructions?
Remember 9/11
Tomorrow is September 11th, 2008. Seven years, 2557 days since the planes hit the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. Have we reached a point where, in all seriousness, we are considering putting into the very centers of the corridors of power someone sleeping with a secessionist? Someone who is a fellow traveler with an organization potentially linked to terrorism?
Let us be clear, the McCain-Palin ticket offers very dismal prospects for the future in terms of energy and global warming implications on economic, environmental, and national security terms. The McCain-Palin ticket might best be called McWorse, since George W Bush began his Presidency on the backs of the prosperity of the Clinton-Gore years. McCain will be starting from the deep hole that Bush-Cheney-Republican Members of Congress have worked to dig so deeply.
Even with all of the frustration and anger with Bush-Cheney, no one has credibly suggested that Laura Bush’s or Lynn Cheney’s very allegiance to the concept of the existance of the United States of America could be questioned.
With Todd Palin, with Sarah Palin, the question must be asked:
How can someone who could possibly be in line to become President of the United States be associated with a group that advocates secession from the United States?