Palin: The Real Godfather

By JO BECKER, PETER S. GOODMAN AND MICHAEL POWELL

updated 7:17 p.m. ET, Sat., Sept. 13, 2008 NY TImes
WASILLA, Alaska - Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as one of her qualifications for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.

And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

Points to her management experience
Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.

But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.

Still, Ms. Palin has many supporters. As a two-term mayor she paved roads and built an ice rink, and as governor she has pushed through higher taxes on the oil companies that dominate one-third of the state’s economy. She stirs deep emotions. In Wasilla, many residents display unflagging affection, cheering “our Sarah” and hissing at her critics.

“She is bright and has unfailing political instincts,” said Steve Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska. “She taps very directly into anxieties about the economic future.”

“But,” he added, “her governing style raises a lot of hard questions.”

Declined interview for article
Ms. Palin declined to grant an interview for this article. The McCain-Palin campaign responded to some questions on her behalf and that of her husband, while referring others to the governor’s spokespeople, who did not respond.

Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell said Ms. Palin had conducted an accessible and effective administration in the public’s interest. “Everything she does is for the ordinary working people of Alaska,” Mr. Parnell said.

In Wasilla, a builder said he complained to Mayor Palin when the city attorney put a stop-work order on his housing project. She responded, he said, by engineering the attorney’s firing.

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that it would cost $468,784 to process his request.

When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages — through a federal records request — he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show.

“Their secrecy is off the charts,” Mr. Steiner said.

State legislators are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, charges that she denies. But interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.

Last summer State Representative John Harris, the Republican speaker of the House, picked up his phone and heard Mr. Palin’s voice. The governor’s husband sounded edgy. He said he was unhappy that Mr. Harris had hired John Bitney as his chief of staff, the speaker recalled. Mr. Bitney was a high school classmate of the Palins and had worked for Ms. Palin. But she fired Mr. Bitney after learning that he had fallen in love with another longtime friend.

“I understood from the call that Todd wasn’t happy with me hiring John and he’d like to see him not there,” Mr. Harris said.

“The Palin family gets upset at personal issues,” he added. “And at our level, they want to strike back.”

Hometown mayor
Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin’s first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.

“I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,’ ” Ms. Chase recalled. “She replied, ‘I want to be president.’ ”

Ms. Palin grew up in Wasilla, an old fur trader’s outpost and now a fast-growing exurb of Anchorage. The town sits in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, edged by jagged mountains and birch forests. In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration took farmers from the Dust Bowl area and resettled them here; their Democratic allegiances defined the valley for half a century.

In the past three decades, socially conservative Oklahomans and Texans have flocked north to the oil fields of Alaska. They filled evangelical churches around Wasilla and revived the Republican Party. Many of these working-class residents formed the electoral backbone for Ms. Palin, who ran for mayor on a platform of gun rights, opposition to abortion and the ouster of the “complacent” old guard.

After winning the mayoral election in 1996, Ms. Palin presided over a city rapidly outgrowing itself. Septic tanks had begun to pollute lakes, and residential lots were carved willy-nilly out of the woods. She passed road and sewer bonds, cut property taxes but raised the sales tax.

And, her supporters say, she cleaned out the municipal closet, firing veteran officials to make way for her own team. “She had an agenda for change and for doing things differently,” said Judy Patrick, a City Council member at the time.

Careers turned upside down
But careers were turned upside down. The mayor quickly fired the town’s museum director, John Cooper. Later, she sent an aide to the museum to talk to the three remaining employees. “He told us they only wanted two,” recalled Esther West, one of the three, “and we had to pick who was going to be laid off.” The three quit as one.

Ms. Palin cited budget difficulties for the museum cuts. Mr. Cooper thought differently, saying the museum had become a microcosm of class and cultural conflicts in town. “It represented that the town was becoming more progressive, and they didn’t want that,” he said.

Days later, Mr. Cooper recalled, a vocal conservative, Steve Stoll, sidled up to him. Mr. Stoll had supported Ms. Palin and had a long-running feud with Mr. Cooper. “He said: ‘Gotcha, Cooper,’ ” Mr. Cooper said.

Mr. Stoll did not recall that conversation, although he said he supported Ms. Palin’s campaign and was pleased when she fired Mr. Cooper.

In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.

Your attorney, Mr. Showers told Ms. Palin, is costing me lots of money.

“She told me she’d like to see him fired,” Mr. Showers recalled. “But she couldn’t do it herself because the City Council hires the city attorney.” Ms. Palin told him to write the council members to complain.

Meanwhile, Ms. Palin pushed the issue from the inside. “She started the ball rolling,” said Ms. Patrick, who also favored the firing. Mr. Deuser was soon replaced by Ken Jacobus — then the State Republican Party’s general counsel.

“Professionals were either forced out or fired,” Mr. Deuser said.

Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayor’s use — employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.

The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.

“People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”

Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.

But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

“Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”

“I’m still proud of Sarah,” she added, “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”

Reform Crucible
Restless ambition defined Ms. Palin in the early years of this decade. She raised money for Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from the state; finished second in the 2002 Republican primary for lieutenant governor; and sought to fill the seat of Senator Frank H. Murkowski when he ran for governor.

Mr. Murkowski appointed his daughter to the seat, but as a consolation prize, he gave Ms. Palin the $125,000-a-year chairmanship of a state commission overseeing oil and gas drilling.

Ms. Palin discovered that the state Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, a commission member, was conducting party business on state time and favoring regulated companies. When Mr. Murkowski failed to act on her complaints, she quit and went public.

The Republican establishment shunned her. But her break with the gentlemen’s club of oil producers and political power catapulted her into the public eye.

“She was honest and forthright,” said Jay Kerttula, a former Democratic state senator from Palmer.

Ms. Palin entered the 2006 primary for governor as a formidable candidate.
In the middle of the primary, a conservative columnist in the state, Paul Jenkins, unearthed e-mail messages showing that Ms. Palin had conducted campaign business from the mayor’s office. Ms. Palin handled the crisis with a street fighter’s guile.

“I told her it looks like she did the same thing that Randy Ruedrich did,” Mr. Jenkins recalled. “And she said, ‘Yeah, what I did was wrong.’ ”

Mr. Jenkins hung up and decided to forgo writing about it. His phone rang soon after.

Mr. Jenkins said a reporter from Fairbanks, reading from a Palin news release, demanded to know why he was “smearing” her. “Now I look at her and think: ‘Man, you’re slick,’ ” he said.

Ms. Palin won the primary, and in the general election she faced Tony Knowles, the former two-term Democratic governor, and Andrew Halcro, an independent.

Not deeply versed in policy, Ms. Palin skipped some candidate forums; at others, she flipped through hand-written, color-coded index cards strategically placed behind her nameplate.

Before one forum, Mr. Halcro said he saw aides shovel reports at Ms. Palin as she crammed. Her showman’s instincts rarely failed. She put the pile of reports on the lectern. Asked what she would do about health care policy, she patted the stack and said she would find an answer in the pile of solutions.

“She was fresh, and she was tomorrow,” said Michael Carey, a former editorial page editor for The Anchorage Daily News. “She just floated along like Mary Poppins.”

Half a century after Alaska became a state, Ms. Palin was inaugurated as governor in Fairbanks and took up the reformer’s sword.

As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church.

Mr. Parnell, the lieutenant governor, praised Ms. Palin’s appointments. “The people she hires are competent, qualified, top-notch people,” he said.

Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.

“I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?’ ” said a family friend, Kathy Wells. “He said, ‘No, but I think I’ll get some help."

The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.

To her supporters — and with an 80 percent approval rating, she has plenty — Ms. Palin has lifted Alaska out of a mire of corruption. She gained the passage of a bill that tightens the rules covering lobbyists. And she rewrote the tax code to capture a greater share of oil and gas sale proceeds.

“Does anybody doubt that she’s a tough negotiator?” said State Representative Carl Gatto, Republican of Palmer.

Yet recent controversy has marred Ms. Palin’s reform credentials. In addition to the trooper investigation, lawmakers in April accused her of improperly culling thousands of e-mail addresses from a state database for a mass mailing to rally support for a policy initiative.

While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a “personal device” like a Blackberry “would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.”

Private e-mail addresses used for state business
The governor’s office did not respond to questions on the topic.

Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palin’s state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: “Frank, this is not the governor’s personal account.”

Mr. Bailey responded: “Whoops~!”

Mr. Bailey, a former mid-level manager at Alaska Airlines who worked on Ms. Palin’s campaign, has been placed on paid leave; he has emerged as a central figure in the trooper investigation.

Another confidante of Ms. Palin’s is Ms. Frye, 27. She worked as a receptionist for State Senator Lyda Green before she joined Ms. Palin’s campaign for governor. Now Ms. Frye earns $68,664 as a special assistant to the governor. Her frequent interactions with Ms. Palin’s children have prompted some lawmakers to refer to her as “the babysitter,” a title that Ms. Frye disavows.

Like Mr. Bailey, she is an effusive cheerleader for her boss.

“YOU ARE SO AWESOME!” Ms. Frye typed in an e-mail message to Ms. Palin in March.

Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau, records show.

Where's Sarah?
During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins.

Many politicians say they typically learn of her initiatives — and vetoes — from news releases.

Mayors across the state, from the larger cities to tiny municipalities along the southeastern fiords, are even more frustrated. Often, their letters go unanswered and their pleas ignored, records and interviews show.

Last summer, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, a Democrat, pressed Ms. Palin to meet with him because the state had failed to deliver money needed to operate city traffic lights. At one point, records show, state officials told him to just turn off a dozen of them. Ms. Palin agreed to meet with Mr. Begich when he threatened to go public with his anger, according to city officials.

At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governor’s remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally.

The administration’s e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath.

Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of Ms. Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, he found himself branded a “hater.”

It is part of a pattern, Mr. Fagan said, in which Ms. Palin characterizes critics as “bad people who are anti-Alaska.”

Aides sit in on interviews
As Ms. Palin’s star ascends, the McCain campaign, as often happens in national races, is controlling the words of those who know her well. Her mother-in-law, Faye Palin, has been asked not to speak to reporters, and aides sit in on interviews with old friends.

At a recent lunch gathering, an official with the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce asked its members to refer all calls from reporters to the governor’s office. Diane Woodruff, a city councilwoman, shook her head.

“I was thinking, I don’t remember giving up my First Amendment rights,” Ms. Woodruff said. “Just because you’re not going gaga over Sarah doesn’t mean you can’t speak your mind.”

Controversial film on Islam delivered nationwide:

Paid newpaper insert stirs anger

Bundled in home-delivered editions of The News & Observer today is a paid insert featuring a controversial DVD on Islam that has stirred anger nationwide.
The documentary, "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," features scenes of Muslim children being encouraged to become suicide bombers, interspersed with those of Nazi rallies. The two-year-old film was produced by Raphael Shore, a Canadian who lives in Israel, and was directed by Wayne Kopping of South Africa.

When no traditional distributors picked it up, the film was screened on college campuses. This month, it is being distributed in more than 70 newspapers across the nation, including two other McClatchy newspapers, The Charlotte Observer and The Miami Herald.

"There is no greater threat than radical Islam," said Gregory Ross, spokesman for the Clarion Fund, a New-York based nonprofit organization that is paying newspapers to distribute the DVD. "It needs to be pushed to the forefront of the political discussion."

Ross said the DVD was timed to coincide with the seventh anniversary of the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11, 2001. He said it is "purely coincidental" that this September also is the holy month of Ramadan.

Jim McClure, vice president of display advertising for The N&O, declined to say what it is charging to deliver the DVD as part of today's newspaper. He dismissed allegations that it is inflammatory.

"In the beginning of the DVD it clearly states it's not about Islam. It's about radical Islam," McClure said.

Despite the disclaimer, the film features prominent anti-Muslim pundits, including Daniel Pipes, Steven Emerson and Walid Shoebat, who told the Springfield News-Leader -- a Missouri daily -- that "Islam is not the religion of God -- Islam is the devil."

Films aim in question

Muslims across the nation and in the Triangle said they are disappointed by the film.

"It adds fuel to the fire and devalues the work we do," said Khalilah Sabra, an organizer with the Raleigh chapter of the Muslim American Society, which lists "promoting understanding" as its mission.

The film features footage of elementary schoolchildren reciting mantras such as "When I wander into the entrance of Jerusalem, I'll turn into a suicide warrior."

Its aim is to liken radical Islam to Nazism and to promote the state of Israel, said Omid Safi, a professor of Islamic Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, who has seen the film several times.

"One of the running themes is, 'We stand today as the world stood in 1938,' " said Safi, referring to the rise of Nazism. "It's fear mongering. It appeals to people's emotions."

The DVD has already been inserted into copies of The New York Times distributed in midwestern states. This weekend and next, it is slated to be distributed in many newspapers in Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and Colorado, in addition to North Carolina.

Some have wondered if the distribution is intended to influence voters in swing states for this year's presidential election.

The Clarion Fund refused to disclose its board of directors or donors. New York state documents list Eli David Greenberg, a 49-year-old lawyer with the firm of Freeman and Hertz, as the registered agent for the Clarion Fund.

Greenberg is a registered Democrat and has donated money to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. He did not return phone calls.

Censorship issue?

In a statement, N&O Publisher Orage Quarles III wrote: "As a newspaper we tend to shy away from censorship. In cases of controversial topics, if we err, we tend to do so on the side of freedom of speech."

But some questioned whether this is a censorship issue.

"If there was a 30-minute DVD warning people against the danger of blacks or Jews, would the N&O distribute it?" asked Safi.

The DVD is available for sale on the Internet and can be viewed for free on YouTube.

One Muslim reader wrote the N&O to say that the film can only make local Muslims feel vulnerable.

"I must say that this video makes me fear for my safety and the safety of my family since people may not be able to differentiate between Muslims living here in Raleigh and the way Muslims are depicted in this scary film!" said Shadi Sadi, a data analyst in Raleigh.

Dear America,

Dear America, There must come a time when we no longer allow ouselves to be fooled by the manipulative games and gimmicks being played by the Republican Party. Just because Sarah Palin could be our next door neighbor or one of our co-workers does NOT mean that she (as the Republicans are saying about Obama) is "Ready to Lead". She openly admits that doesn't even know what she is getting herself into... How foolish can we be? I know that I would not want my next door neighbor or my co-worker to be leading the country... so why is this so appealing to people? ...Or is it something else? Is America looking for a way out? A reason to NOT have to elect Barack Obama as the next leader of our nation. Are we subconsciously that close minded and afraid of the thought of our beloved country being run by...a Black man? Does something about the thought of that just not sit well with us? Are we so unsettled by this thought that we are now considering squandering an opportunity to bring about progession and real change because Barack doesn't fit the image that "we" have of a President. We tried electing an idiot to lead our country and look where it got us! Do we REALLY want to make the same mistake... again? McCain wasn't likeable so the Republicans gave us All-American Sarah Palin. But the fact of the matter is, her incompetence will never make a difference and she will not be allowed to make any major mistakes because she will not be President, John McCain will. And the thought of this does not appeal to people, which is why the Republicans have to give us Sarah Palin in the first place! Not only that, but women everywhere should be outraged by the way she is being paraded around the country as a more attractive, but a less intelligent and informed version of Hillary Clinton. The way the Republicans are exploiting Sarah Palin brings about even more questions about her intelligance. Does she see that she was only chosen because of WHO she is [typical Republican tactic: SEE Clarence Thomas] or does she honeslty beleive that she was really the best person for the job? ...If she believes that she was the best person for the job then she is being irrational. Because Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee were much more well known and more experienced than Palin, and even more liked by the conservative base than was McCain! If she KNOWS that she was chosen because of WHO she is ...then she has disgraced herself and women all across the country, because now she is doing national interviews and making a fool of herself which will make it that much more difficult for the next woman competing for a VP or Presidential nomination. I am a Barack supporter surprise, surprise right? But I, like most of you, am a very logical person, and I have no loyalty to any party or candidate. Bill O'Reilly interviewed Barack Obama last week (you should Google it) and even "Bill O" had to admit that he was impressed by how Barack handled himself in the "Hot Seat." [Not something that O'Reilly admits very often, especially about a Democrat.] I ASSURE you that neither Sarah Palin nor John McCain would take on Keith Olbermann. [SEE: The liberal equivalent to O'Reilly] Although O'Reilly will never be HALF the man Olbermann is, so maybe that a was bad analogy. In closing, America remember "Fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, shame on me." Kevin Bryant

REDMAN hits the South this Sunday

cleck here to RSVP for FREE

Meet Barak Obama

Barack Obama was raised by a single mother and his grandparents. They didn't have much money, but they taught him values from the Kansas heartland where they grew up. He took out loans to put himself through school. After college, he worked for Christian churches in Chicago, helping communities devastated when steel plants closed. Obama turned down lucrative job offers after law school to return to Chicago, leading a successful voter registration drive. He joined a small law firm, taught constitutional law and, guided by his Christian faith, stayed active in his community. Obama and his wife Michelle are proud parents of two daughters, Sasha and Malia.



Early Years
Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born and raised in a small village in Kenya, where he grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British.

Barack's mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in small-town Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression, and then signed up for World War II after Pearl Harbor, where he marched across Europe in Patton's army. Her mother went to work on a bomber assembly line, and after the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved west to Hawaii.

It was there, at the University of Hawaii, where Barack's parents met. His mother was a student there, and his father had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams in America.

Barack's father eventually returned to Kenya, and Barack grew up with his mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia. Later, he moved to New York, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.



The College Years
Remembering the values of empathy and service that his mother taught him, Barack put law school and corporate life on hold after college and moved to Chicago in 1985, where he became a community organizer with a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment.

The group had some success, but Barack had come to realize that in order to truly improve the lives of people in that community and other communities, it would take not just a change at the local level, but a change in our laws and in our politics.

He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. Finally, his advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for eight years. In 2004, he became the third African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the U.S. Senate.



Political Career
It has been the rich and varied experiences of Barack Obama's life - growing up in different places with people who had differing ideas - that have animated his political journey. Amid the partisanship and bickering of today's public debate, he still believes in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose - a politics that puts solving the challenges of everyday Americans ahead of partisan calculation and political gain.

In the Illinois State Senate, this meant working with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state. He also pushed through an expansion of early childhood education, and after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Senator Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.

In the U.S. Senate, he has focused on tackling the challenges of a globalized, 21st century world with fresh thinking and a politics that no longer settles for the lowest common denominator. His first law was passed with Republican Tom Coburn, a measure to rebuild trust in government by allowing every American to go online and see how and where every dime of their tax dollars is spent. He has also been the lead voice in championing ethics reform that would root out Jack Abramoff-style corruption in Congress.

As a member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, Senator Obama has fought to help Illinois veterans get the disability pay they were promised, while working to prepare the VA for the return of the thousands of veterans who will need care after Iraq and Afghanistan. Recognizing the terrorist threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, he traveled to Russia with Republican Dick Lugar to begin a new generation of non-proliferation efforts designed to find and secure deadly weapons around the world. And knowing the threat we face to our economy and our security from America's addiction to oil, he's working to bring auto companies, unions, farmers, businesses and politicians of both parties together to promote the greater use of alternative fuels and higher fuel standards in our cars.

Whether it's the poverty exposed by Katrina, the genocide in Darfur, or the role of faith in our politics, Barack Obama continues to speak out on the issues that will define America in the 21st century. But above all his accomplishments and experiences, he is most proud and grateful for his family. His wife, Michelle, and his two daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, live on Chicago's South Side.

About John McCain

John McCain has a remarkable record of leadership and experience that embodies his unwavering lifetime commitment to service. First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona in 1982, John has led the fight for reforming Washington, eliminating wasteful government spending, and strengthening our nation's armed forces.

John McCain's reform agenda to reduce federal spending and lower taxes quickly elevated him to statewide office and he was elected to the United States Senate in 1986, after serving two terms in the U.S. House.

In the Senate, John continued to demand that Congress put an end to loopholes for special interests and fix the broken system in Washington that too often allows lobbyists to write legislation and members of Congress to waste taxpayer money. In November 2004, Senator McCain was overwhelmingly reelected with nearly 77 percent of the vote.



As the son and grandson of distinguished Navy admirals, John McCain deeply values duty, honor and service of country. John attended college at the United States Naval Academy, and launched a 22-year career as a naval aviator upon his graduation. He continued the McCain tradition of service to country passed down to him from his father and grandfather when he asked to serve in the Vietnam War.

On July 29 1967, John narrowly survived the first of many near-death experiences during his lifetime while preparing to take off on a bombing mission over North Vietnam from his ship, the USS Forrestal. A missile accidentally fired from a nearby plane struck the fuel tanks on John's plane and created a deadly inferno aboard the ship. John barely escaped the fiery disaster that killed 134 men, injured hundreds more and destroyed 20 planes.

Instead of taking the option to return home after the Forrestal disaster, Senator McCain volunteered for more combat duty - a fateful decision that stopped the clock on his life and separated him from his family, and country, for five and a half years.

During his 23rd bombing mission on October 26, 1967, a missile struck John's plane and forced him to eject, knocking him unconscious and breaking both his arms and his leg. John was then taken as a prisoner of war into the now infamous "Hanoi Hilton," where he was denied necessary medical treatment and often beaten by the North Vietnamese. John spent much of his time as a prisoner of war in solitary confinement, aided by his faith and the friendships of his fellow POWs. When he was finally released and able to return home years later, John continued his service by regaining his naval flight status.

Senator McCain's last Navy duty assignment was to serve as the naval liaison to the United States Senate. John retired from the Navy in 1981. His naval honors include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart, and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Senator McCain has seven children and four grandchildren, and currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife Cindy

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If you take the time to register and vote -- and make sure everyone you know is registered as well -- we'll be able to turn the tide of the past eight years.

It's people just like you who will transform this nation.

https://www.voteforchange.com/index_obama.php?source=091008emailR



Thanks,

Barack

To all our Shadetree staff members and citizens in Houston our prayers are with you.

Tyler Perry's New Family Affair

By
Shirea L. Carroll

He has done it again. How is still uncertain, but as predictable as Tyler Perry’s plays-turned-movies are, his newest flick, A Family That Preys, manages to evoke real emotion in spite of its predictability.

Produced, directed, and written by Perry, A Family That Preys stars Alfred Woodard and Kathy Bates, as Alice And Charolette, two close friends and matriarchs doing their best to keep their families together. Total opposites racially, economically, and morally, both families find themselves connected in the midst of scandal, deceit, and hardship.

Like so many of Perry’s box office hits, anything and everything that could possibly go wrong does. Sanaa Lathan as Woodard’s newlywed daughter, Andrea, is having difficulty securing a job, which leads to bigger issues respecting the marital vows she took with husband Chris, played by Rockmond Dunbar. Actor Cole Hauser, plays William Cartwright, a man who believes he has it all, while leaving those closest to him with nothing. Overcome by greed and arrogance, the only way William knows how to play is unfair. Tyler Perry, Taraji P. Henson, and KaDee Strickland are also featured in the movie with supporting roles that provide the film extra drama, laughter, and secrets.

Allowing the audience to witness the characters highest of highs, and lowest of lows, Perry knows the formula to truly connect with his audience and make them feel. Not just pay, watch, and laugh but to really feel, and somehow relate to every character and their story. This is especially true in one scene where one of the characters slaps another character – a scene so good, details will be spared so as to not ruin the impact.

In spite of the best slap scene ever, A Family That Preys lacks surprises. Even in a Tyler Perry film where he is not dressed up as his most famous character, Madea doesn’t make an appearance, it’s easy to figure out who is going to do what and why.

But what A Family That Preys does have in abundance shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with Perry’s work: Drama that runs the gamut of emotions topped off with an ending that satisfies

Rodriguez saves the day, ties Thigpen's record

ANAHEIM, Calif. - With the Los Angeles Angels cruising along with a 7-0 lead after seven innings, Francisco Rodriguez was kicking back in the bullpen, figuring he wouldn’t get his chance to tie a record.

Then Seattle scored three runs in the eighth, put runners on first and second with no outs in the ninth, and Rodriguez got the call. Greeted by rousing cheers as he took the mound, he got the final three outs Thursday night’s 7-4 win for his record-tying 57th save of the season.

“When it was 7-0 in the seventh inning, I was just trying to chill and watch the game and relax. This is like the third or fourth time it’s happened to me like this. But after their bats started coming alive, I started getting ready,” said Rodriguez, who has 16 games left to try to top the major league record set by Bobby Thigpen with the 1990 Chicago White Sox.

Los Angeles manager Mike Scioscia also figured Rodriguez was getting the night off.

“When you’re sitting on a seven-run lead, really the furthest thing from your mind is, when do you get your closer up?” Scioscia said.

Rodriguez didn’t know anything about Thigpen until it began to look as if he might make a run at the record.

“I didn’t even know that he’s the one that had the record. I didn’t know about him until you guys (reporters) told me about him before the All-Star break,” he said. “I started thinking I could get to the record a couple of weeks ago, and I started thinking about it more and more the closer I got.

“I knew if the guys kept playing the way they’ve been playing, I was capable of doing it. That’s what I get paid for. But I’ve got to give the credit to my teammates and the guys who make the plays behind me. I’d be real selfish if I said I’ve done this by myself.”

His chance to break the record is one of the remaining details of the regular season for the Angels, who clinched their fourth AL West title in five years on Wednesday. None of those division titles have led to a World Series. Their only World Series title came in 2002 as a wild card — when Rodriguez was a 20-year-old sensation in October.

He wants another.

“I’ll tell you, I would trade the record for the ring. Obviously, my next step is to try to break the record, and after that, win the championship,” Rodriguez said. “That’s what I’m here for, and that’s what I really want right now.”

He may be pitching his final season for the Angels. He has said he wants to test the free agent market after this season, although both he and the Angels haven’t ruled out a chance he will return.

Rodriguez replaced Scot Shields with runners on first and second and no outs. He got Ichiro Suzuki to ground into a double play, gave up an RBI single to Jeremy Reed and a single to Adrian Beltre before finally ending it on Raul Ibanez’s broken-bat grounder to first.

Rodriguez ran toward the bag on Ibanez’s grounder, but first baseman Kendry Morales was able to make the play himself. Rodriguez lifted both arms, jumped and did a joyful little spin.

Seattle’s Brandon Morrow, a converted reliever who held the Angels to two runs in five innings in his second major league start, could only shake his head at Rodriguez’s numbers.

“For us, J.J. (Putz) had an unbelievable year last year, and he had 40 saves. Now Rodriguez has got 57,” Morrow said. “They have (89) wins and he has that many saves. Wow. That’s something.”

Although Rodriguez, who has developed a less violent delivery so he won’t re-injure his feet on the landing, has not pitched as many 1-2-3 ninths as in the past, he seems to be able to still turn it on when necessary.

“He has made some more games more interesting,” Morrow said. “But he knows when to turn up the intensity.”

Seattle pitcher Jarrod Washburn, formerly with the Angels, also marveled at Rodriguez’s accomplishment.

“How long has that record stood — 18 years? To even have that many opportunities just tells you how good that ballclub is. And for him to be able to close the door that many times, that tells you he’s a talented guy and he always has been ever since he broke in with us in ’02,” Washburn said.

The 26-year-old Rodriguez has 203 saves and has blown six opportunities this year, one of those against the Mariners.

The right-hander from Venezuela went 5-1 in the 2002 postseason to help the Angels go all the way, in the process becoming the youngest pitcher ever to win a World Series game.

Jered Weaver had blanked Seattle on three hits over his six innings, and Garret Anderson drove in three runs before Rodriguez came on to a standing ovation.

Weaver (11-10) had missed more than a week after cutting two fingers in a dugout accident on Sept. 2. He struck out three and walked three.

After taking a 2-0 lead against Morrow, the Angels jumped on reliever Sean Green for four runs and four hits during a five-run sixth. Jeff Mathis and Anderson both singled in two runs, and Vladimir Guerrero added an RBI single.

Morrow (2-3) gave up two runs and five hits, walked four and struck out four over five innings. The 24-year-old right-hander, moved out of the bullpen and into the rotation, had taken a no-hitter into the eighth inning of his first start, a 3-1 victory over the New York Yankees last Friday.

The Mariners put up three runs against Justin Speier in the eighth. Suzuki led off with his sixth homer, Jose Lopez doubled in a run and Yuniesky Betancourt singled in another.

Notes: The game was delayed for several minutes when home plate umpire Eric Cooper was hit in the chest by a foul tip off Guerrero’s bat. Cooper went down and remained there momentarily, was checked out by Angels trainer Ned Bergert and, when Cooper lined up again behind the plate, received a rare — for an ump — ovation from the crowd. ... Beltre returned to the lineup after missing two games because of a torn ligament in his left thumb and extended his hitting streak to 14 games with the single in the ninth. ... Weaver cut his right index and ring fingers on staples under the dugout bench in Detroit during last week’s series. ... Anderson played in his 2,000th regular-season game for the Angels. The only other active player to reach that total with one team is Atlanta’s Chipper Jones.

Palin's Dangerous Saber Rattling on Russia

by
Ilan Goldenberg

Sarah Palin said something very very dangerous today during her interview with Charlie Gibson.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO. Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

There are numerous problems with this statement. The most important element is that it sends a very dangerous and extreme signal to the world -- especially other nuclear powers. This type of dangerous talk reinforces the militaristic saber-rattling of the McCain campaign. From joking about bombing Iran, to talking about invading Iraq, Iran and Syria weeks after 9/11 to the misguided "we are all Georgians now," the McCain campaign is sending all kinds of horrifying signals to the world about the types of wars it would fight. Leaders in other capitals are paying attention and words matter.

Technically, if Georgia and Ukraine were to become part of NATO under Article Five, we would be obligated to protect them and even Obama-Biden support bringing them into NATO. But here's the thing...

No sane American or European leader would ever ever ever give an answer like that. You do not get into hypotheticals about nuclear war. You just don't. Palin references the Cold War. The only reason the Cold War stayed cold is because our leaders understood the stakes of getting things wrong and saying things that could lead to catastrophic nuclear war. During the Cuban Missile Crisis every word, every public statement, and any message that the Kennedy administration sent to the Soviets was checked, double checked, and triple checked to make sure it was sending precisely the right signal. This is what you are forced to do when you have thousands of nuclear weapons and so does your opponent. The stakes are simply too high. And yet there is a nominee for the vice presidency of the United States who may one day have her hand on the button and she is casually talking about potential catastrophic nuclear war.

Barack Obama would never give that answer. Joe Biden would never give that answer. They would say that we don't discuss those types of hypotheticals. That might sound like a cop out, but think of the Palin alternative and what kind of alarm bells that sets off in Moscow. Prescisely the type of alarm bells that could one day lead to mushroom clouds.

Saber rattling matters. Words matter. We've learned that from the past eight years. When George Bush said "With us or against us" it mattered. When he referred to a "crusade" it mattered. When McCain jokes about war with Iran, calls our allies "vaccous and posturing", says that Iraq is building a weapons assembly line for al Qaeda, it matters.

And when Sarah Palin, a first term Governor with no national security experience or expertise, talks about hypothetical nuclear war it really matters. It reflects badly on her and her readiness. It reflects even worse on John McCain who thought that she was qualified to be Commander in Chief.

Sarah Palin said something very very dangerous today during her interview with Charlie Gibson.PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those...
Sarah Palin said something very very dangerous today during her interview with Charlie Gibson.PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those...

8 year Anniversary

Palin candidacy sparks working moms debate

Will vice presidential candidate help or hurt everyday working moms?

By Allison Linn
Senior writer
MSNBC

For most working mothers, the third day after giving birth to a new baby is still a whirlwind of joy, sleep deprivation and recovery. For Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, it also was time to go back to work.

Palin, who is now the Republican vice presidential candidate, returned to her job just a few days after giving birth last April to her fifth child, Trig, who has Down syndrome. She toted her newborn son to official events and nursed him during conference calls.

Palin’s candidacy is shining the spotlight on countless issues surrounding working women, including the sticky topic of whether having such a hard-working mom in the White House would ultimately help or hurt other working mothers fighting to find a balance between their jobs and family life.

“It’s caused us as a society to have discussions that we haven’t had before,” said Mary Gatta, director of workforce policy and research at Rutgers University’s Center for Women and Work.

It’s far from clear how those discussions — some of them heated — will trickle down to the lives of everyday mothers and fathers, many of whom are raising children and working under very different circumstances than Palin.

Experts say that in some ways Palin’s visibility could be a benefit to working mothers — and their spouses — who are seeing their own struggles writ large in a public arena. But others worry that Palin’s candidacy could spark a backlash against working mothers, either because Palin has faced such strong criticism for pursuing a high-powered job while raising young kids or because more mothers could face pressure to return to work as quickly as Palin did.

Gatta also notes that just because Palin is a working mother herself does not mean she will automatically support federal policies that could benefit other working moms or dads — especially since Republicans traditionally have opposed some of those policies.

A spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign said she was unable to say at this time what Palin’s position is on federal policies relating to job protections and benefits for working mothers.

Palin herself has dismissed those who call into question her ability to balance raising five children with her political duties.

''To any critics who say a woman can't think and work and carry a baby at the same time, I’d just like to escort that Neanderthal back to the cave,” the Anchorage Daily News quoted Palin saying last March, after the surprise announcement that she was seven months pregnant with Trig.

Some argue, however, that the discussion isn’t about whether Palin — or any other woman, for that matter — can juggle the demands of a high-powered job and a family, but rather why she would want to.

In an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman argued that more women are moving away from the notion of “having it all” and toward the idea of a work/life balance that allows them time for both.

The authors of a forthcoming book on the trend said Palin has hit a nerve “not because she's a woman with children trying to do a man's job. It's because she's actually pushing the combination of professional and personal ambitions beyond the sensibilities of this generation of working moms.”

Janet Gornick, a professor of political science and sociology at City University of New York and an expert on family leave policies worldwide, said she has no concerns with Palin returning to work so soon after her infant was born — as long as Palin was making that choice, rather than being forced to get back on the job.

She notes that educated women in high-level jobs like Palin are likely to have more flexibility when it comes to balancing family and work life. On the other hand, women in lower-paying jobs such as housekeeping or retail are less likely to be able to take a child to work, work from home or find a place to breastfeed or pump milk for a baby.

Her concern is that Palin may be held up as a champion of working moms when it’s far from clear that Palin would support the kind of policies that she believes could make it easier for all working women to balance child-rearing responsibilities.

“Personally, I don’t care about any of this: Her children, the moose burgers, the pistol packing,” Gornick said. “I care about the policy story. She is running with a party that has opposed, at the state and national level, virtually every form of policy that supports working parents.”

A key piece of that policy, the Family Medical Leave Act, guarantees male and female employees who meet certain criteria 12 weeks of unpaid leave for family or medical reasons, including childbirth. Former Democratic President Clinton signed the law into effect in 1993, after years of political wrangling. His Republican predecessor, the first President Bush, had previously vetoed the legislation.

Michelle Easton, president of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, a nonprofit that promotes conservative women leaders, declined to discuss Palin specifically. But she said she believes that, in general, conservative women favor ironing out work/life balance issues on their own, rather than having legislation that mandates certain policies.

“Conservatives tend to look to the family and private sector whereas liberal women, feminist women, say, ‘Oh we have a problem, let’s create a program,’ ” Easton said.

Palin’s candidacy also has shed light on another brewing change among working women: The dads’ increased role in child-rearing, epitomized in this case by Palin’s husband, Todd.

Marji Ross, president of the conservative publisher Regnery Publishing, said she thinks Palin’s candidacy has again reminded Americans that a double standard exists between working mothers and working fathers. But Ross, who said she shares the job of raising her three daughters with her husband, also hopes it has prompted a discussion about how more dads these days are picking up some of the workload that traditionally fell only to moms.

Ross said the candidacy also has helped battle the stereotype that career women are more liberal, while those who choose to stay at home are more conservative.

Indeed, the prospect of the nation's highest-ranking female politician being a Republican has raised some uncomfortable issues for liberal-leaning feminists, who might otherwise have been among her biggest boosters.

“If she’s experiencing sexism, that’s wrong, regardless of her policy issues,” said Gatta of Rutgers. “You can support her fair treatment without necessarily supporting her policies.”

Galveston, part of Houston evacuated ahead of Ike

(CNN) -- Special-needs residents in the city of Houston and Harris County will begin evacuating Thursday morning as Hurricane Ike headed for the Texas coast, officials said.


Earl Barnes waits to be evacuated Wednesday at a senior citizens center in Corpus Christi, Texas.

A mandatory evacuation for residents in surrounding low-lying areas of Houston will begin Thursday afternoon, officials said.

"We strongly urge you to evacuate before tomorrow," said Judge Ed Emmett, Harris County's chief executive officer, at a news conference Thursday with Houston Mayor Bill White.

Government offices and schools will be closed Friday in Houston in anticipation of the hurricane. Officials are still deciding whether to put a contraflow system in place, or reverse highway lanes to make them one way to help with evacuations, Emmett said.

Seven other counties have begun partial or full evacuations.

Forecasters said the storm could slam into the Texas coast -- south of Galveston -- as a powerful Category 4 storm late Friday or early Saturday.

Because of the size of the storm, forecasters warned weather in areas along the Texas coast could be dangerous even before Ike hits. Watch how the hurricane has grown in size »

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KPRC: Galveston gears up for Ike
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Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas issued a mandatory evacuation order for the entire Galveston Island. No shelters will be open, according to the city's Web site.

At 11 a.m. ET Thursday, Ike -- now a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale of 1 to 5 in strength -- was heading toward the northwestern Gulf of Mexico, the National Hurricane Center said.

Ike was moving west-northwest near 10 mph; that motion should continue over the central and western Gulf of Mexico on Thursday and Friday, the hurricane center said. Track the storm »

At 11 a.m., Ike had top sustained winds near 100 mph, and was about 580 miles east of Corpus Christi, Texas, and 470 miles east-southeast of Galveston.

Hurricane-force winds extended outward up to 115 miles from the center, the hurricane center said, and tropical storm-force winds extended outward up to 275 miles.

Aransas County has ordered a mandatory evacuation of all nonessential government employees.

In Rockport, special-needs residents gathered at the Live Oak Elementary School for the evacuation.

"All my family is up north," James Beaird, who has Type 2 diabetes, told CNN affiliate KIII-TV in Corpus Christi. "I'm glad they pick up an old cripple dude, like me, and get me somewhere."

Farther up the Gulf Coast and closer to where the National Hurricane Center predicts a direct hit, Brazoria County ordered a mandatory evacuation to begin at 8 a.m. CT (9 a.m. ET) Thursday. Some other Texas localities have ordered mandatory evacuations, while others have left the decision to depart up to residents.

"One of the things that the public has to understand if they decide to stay, there will be a period of time during this storm when they will absolutely be on their own," Brazoria County Sheriff Charles Wagner said.

"There will be no medical services; there will be no fire department; there will be no law enforcement, groceries, gasoline, drugs, electricity."

Some Brazoria County residents said they didn't want to leave but realized it was in their best interest to do so.

"You don't have a choice when you have kids," Deborah Davis of Freeport told CNN affiliate KPRC-TV in Houston.

Diana Rangel, who also lives in Freeport, filled up her car with gas Wednesday at a convenience store overrun with other vehicles waiting in line, CNN affiliate KHOU-TV in Houston reported.

"We don't want to get stuck out here [in floodwaters]," Rangel told KHOU.

In Matagorda County, southwest of Galveston, officials ordered a mandatory evacuation for all areas except the cities of Bay City and Van Vleck. The evacuation must be completed by at 6 p.m. (7 p.m. ET) Thursday.

A hurricane warning has been issued for the northwestern Gulf Coast, from Morgan City, Louisiana, to Baffin Bay, Texas. Hurricane conditions could reach the coast within the warning area by late Friday. A hurricane watch is in effect from south of Baffin Bay to Port Mansfield, Texas.

Forecasters issued a tropical storm warning from south of Baffin Bay to Port Mansfield. A tropical storm warning also is in effect from east of Morgan City to the Mississippi-Alabama border, including New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry put 7,500 National Guard members on standby and issued a disaster declaration for 88 counties.

President Bush declared an emergency, making federal funds available for the state to prepare for the storm.

Corpus Christi officials also began the evacuation process for residents with special needs, supplying buses to transport them out of town.

Voluntary evacuations were issued in San Patricio and Victoria counties and parts of Jackson County, according to the governor's office.

More than 1,300 inmates from the Texas Correctional Institutions Division's Stevenson Unit in Cuero were being evacuated to facilities in Beeville and Kenedy, Perry's office said, and 597 were transferred from the substance abuse Glossbrenner Unit in San Diego, in south Texas, to Dilley.

Naval air stations in Texas also began to prepare for Hurricane Ike's expected arrival by moving aircrafts.

Evacuations appeared to have saved lives in Cuba when Ike slammed into the island. Four deaths were reported from the storm, according to the Cuban government. The Cuban Civil Defense brought buses or trucks to take people to shelters. See the damage from the storm »

The United States, which provided $100,000 in emergency aid to communist-run Cuba through private aid agencies after Hurricane Gustav hit the island August 30, said that it was considering additional emergency aid for Cuba because of Ike. Watch flooding damage in Cuba »


The storm pounded Grand Turk Island in the Turks and Caicos chain, putting a strain on the British territory's tourism industry. Watch houses lie in heaps on Grand Turk »

Kanye West arrested after skirmish at airport

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Police say they have arrested Kanye West at Los Angeles International Airport on suspicion of vandalism after an altercation with a photographer.

An airport spokesman says police also arrested West's road manager shortly before 8 a.m. on Thursday.

Airport spokesman Marshall Lowe says early reports are that West got into an altercation with a commercial photographer and a camera valued at more than $10,000 was broken.

The incident happened before West and his manager, who was not identified, cleared a security screening at the airport.

Lowe says police are continuing to interview witnesses and West may be booked later this morning.

What is wrong with McCain

Spike Lee: My Spat With Eastwood May Have Cost Me Oscar

Spike Lee told King magazine that he fears his public war of words with Clint Eastwood may have cost him an Oscar nomination.

Earlier this year, at Cannes, Lee criticized Eastwood for not having African-Americans in Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima, Eastwood then said Lee should "shut his face" and Lee responded "we're not on a plantation."
Now Lee thinks the controversy that followed his remarks may have ruined his Academy Award chances for new movie "Miracle at St. Anna."

Lee tells King magazine:


"My wife Tonya told me I may have hurt my chances with the Clint Eastwood stuff... They (Oscar voters and Academy bosses) take everything into account with me. They take into account that I like the Knicks or that I'm in New York."


Lee is adamant the fact he's a Big Apple guy has cost him an Oscar Best Director nomination in the past: "If you did a survey, the bulk of the people who vote in the Academy are in Los Angeles. There's definite bias, considering that my films are typically New York-based." He's still upset that his Do The Right Thing movie wasn't even considered for an Oscar the year Driving Miss Daisy claimed Best Film.

He adds, "Nobody is watching motherfucking Driving Miss Daisy today. Do The Right Thing is being taught in classes at major universities and high schools all over the world. That's how you're supposed to test art. Does the work stand up?"

While Rome Burned...They Talked About Lipstick

On Tuesday, as McCain campaign surrogates were dispatched far and wide to ensure railroad coverage of the contrived "lipstick" controversy, Barack Obama responded not with a harder counterpunch or attack ad, but a call for the country to keep its focus on...actual issues.

"You know who ends up losing at the end of the day?" Obama said about the latest dust-ups during a stop in Virginia. "It's not the Democratic candidate, it's not the Republican candidate. It's you, the American people, because then we go another year or another four years or another eight years without addressing the issues that matter to you. Enough."

So, if you've spent the last few days following what's become of the presidential race, here's the actual news you may have missed:

U.S. global leadership is dwindling: "An intelligence forecast being prepared for the next president on future global risks envisions a steady decline in U.S. dominance in the coming decades." According to the U.S. intelligence community's top analyst, U.S. leadership is eroding "at an accelerating pace" in "political, economic and arguably, cultural arenas."

Market diving, another massive bank may collapse: Stocks fell 280 points on Tuesday, a dive that was accelerated when concerns mounted about the Lehman Brothers investment bank's ability to raise capital. "Waves of selling wiped out nearly half of Lehman's value in the stock market on Tuesday, leaving the firm, one of the nation's oldest and largest investment banks, in an all-out fight for survival," the New York Times reported.

Fear of violence, terrorism slows Iraq withdrawal: "U.S. defense officials said the president's decision to withdraw only 8,000 soldiers from Iraq reflects a persistent concern among top commanders that the improvements in security could be temporary and that renewed violence could erupt. Officials fear that Iran might reactivate the Shiite Muslim militias it's armed and trained and that the Sunni group al Qaida in Iraq is trying to reestablish itself in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city."

Iraqi parliament gridlocked: "Iraqi lawmakers returned from their summer recess Tuesday, still gridlocked over the critical law on provincial elections and with no new vote in sight."

Economy weakening: "The U.S. economy continues to be marked by weak housing and labor-market conditions," the Wall Street Journal reported today, "suggesting economic performance will be sluggish at best through the end of the year."

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On 9/11 anniversary, aviation still vulnerable: "The nation's top domestic security official," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, "said Wednesday aviation remains vulnerable to terrorist attack seven years after 9/11."

Unemployment rising: The nation's unemployment rate has "bolted above the psychologically important 6 percent level last month for the first time in five years," the AP noted over the weekend, "and it's likely to go even higher in the months ahead, possibly throwing the economy into a tailspin as Americans pick a new president." Moreover, a new study released yesterday showed that pending home sales dropped 3.2% in July, reversing gains made in June.

Federal deficit ballooning: The weak economy is not only devastating the federal government's coffers -- likely driving the federal budget deficit over the $500 billion mark by January, according to government estimates -- but is also depleting state unemployment insurance trust funds.

U.S. 'running out of time' in Afghanistan: "The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said today the U.S. is 'running out of time' to get the war in Afghanistan right and announced that he was developing a "new, more comprehensive strategy" to cover the entire region."

Military suicides reaching record levels: Suicides among active-duty soldiers this year "are on pace to exceed both last year's all-time record and, for the first time since the Vietnam War, the rate among the general U.S. population," according to Army officials.

U.S.-Russia relations worsening: "Just three months ago, President Bush reached a long-sought agreement with Russia intended to open a new era of civilian nuclear cooperation and sent it to Congress for review. Now, according to administration officials, Mr. Bush is preparing to scrap his own deal."

OPEC trying to prevent oil prices from falling: The OPEC oil cartel announced its intention to reduce oil production by approximately half a million barrels per day in what the New York Times described as "a bid to stem a rapid decline in oil prices in recent weeks."

And that's not even counting the 36 million Americans living in poverty this year, the sky high prices of gas and food, the sinking consumer confidence, and the 46.9 million people without health insurance (about 16 percent of the total population), etc.

No, the stories above are just from the last few days...

Lose your house, lose your vote

Lose your house, lose your vote



By Eartha Jane Melzer
Michigan Republicans plan to foreclose African American voters


The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township.”

The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.”

One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.

“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”

As for the practice of challenging the right to vote of foreclosed property owners, Hebert called it, “mean-spirited.”

GOP ties to state’s largest foreclosure law firm

The Macomb GOP’s plans are another indication of how John McCain’s campaign stands to benefit from the burgeoning number of foreclosures in the state. McCain’s regional headquarters are housed in the office building of foreclosure specialists Trott & Trott. The firm’s founder, David A. Trott, has raised between $100,000 and $250,000 for the Republican nominee.

The Macomb County party’s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. More than 60 percent of all sub-prime loans — the most likely kind of loan to go into default — were made to African-Americans in Michigan, according to a report issued last year by the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Growth.

Challenges to would-be voters

Statewide, the Republican Party is gearing up for a comprehensive voter challenge campaign, according to Denise Graves, party chair for Republicans in Genessee County, which encompasses Flint. The party is creating a spreadsheet of election challenger volunteers and expects to coordinate a training with the regional McCain campaign, Graves said in an interview with Michigan Messenger.

Whether the Republicans will challenge voters with foreclosed homes elsewhere in the state is not known.

Kelly Harrigan, deputy director of the GOP’s voter programs, confirmed that she is coordinating the group’s “election integrity” program. Harrigan said the effort includes putting in place a legal team, as well as training election challengers. She said the challenges to voters were procedural rather than personal. She referred inquiries about the vote challenge program to communications director Bill Knowles who promised information but did not return calls.

Party chairman Carabelli said that the Republican Party is training election challengers to “make sure that [voters] are who they say who they are.”

When asked for further details on how Republicans are compiling challenge lists, he said, “I would rather not tell you all the things we are doing.”

Vote suppression: Not an isolated effort

Carabelli is not the only Republican Party official to suggest the targeting of foreclosed voters. In Ohio, Doug Preisse, director of elections in Franklin County (around the city of Columbus) and the chair of the local GOP, told The Columbus Dispatch that he has not ruled out challenging voters before the election due to foreclosure-related address issues.

Hebert, the voting-rights lawyer, sees a connection between Priesse’s remarks and Carabelli’s plans.

“At a minimum what you are seeing is a fairly comprehensive effort by the Republican Party, a systematic broad-based effort to put up obstacles for people to vote,” he said. “Nobody is contending that these people are not legally registered to vote.

“When you are comprehensively challenging people to vote,” Hebert went on, “your goals are two-fold: One is you are trying to knock people out from casting ballots; the other is to create a slowdown that will discourage others,” who see a long line and realize they can’t afford to stay and wait.

Challenging all voters registered to foreclosed homes could disrupt some polling places, especially in the Detroit metropolitan area. According to the real estate Web site RealtyTrac, one in every 176 households in Wayne County, metropolitan Detroit, received a foreclosure filing during the month of July. In Macomb County, the figure was one household in every 285, meaning that 1,834 homeowners received the bad news in just one month. The Macomb County foreclosure rate puts it in the top three percent of all U.S. counties in the number of distressed homeowners.

Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Kent and Genessee counties were — in that order — the counties with the most homeowners facing foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac. As of July, there were more than 62,000 foreclosure filings in the entire state.

Joe Rozell, director of elections for Oakland County in suburban Detroit, acknowledged that challenges such as those described by Carabelli are allowed by law but said they have the potential to create long lines and disrupt the voting process. With 890,000 potential voters closely divided between Democratic and Republican, Oakland County is a key swing county of this swing state.

According to voter challenge directives handed down by Republican Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, voter challenges need only be “based on information obtained through a reliable source or means.”

“But poll workers are not allowed to ask the reason” for the challenges, Rozell said. In other words, Republican vote challengers are free to use foreclosure lists as a basis for disqualifying otherwise eligible voters.

David Lagstein, head organizer with the Michigan Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), described the plans of the Macomb GOP as “crazy.”

“You would think they would think, ‘This is going to look too heartless,’” said Lagstein, whose group has registered 200,000 new voters statewide this year and also runs a foreclosure avoidance program. “The Republican-led state Senate has not moved on the anti-predatory lending bill for over a year and yet [Republicans] have time to prey on those who have fallen victim to foreclosure to suppress the vote.”

Uninformed and Uneducated Palin!! GO Figure

Gov. Sarah Palin made her first potentially major gaffe during her time on the national scene while discussing the developments of the perilous housing market this past weekend.

Speaking before voters in Colorado Springs, the Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." The companies, as McClatchy reported, "aren't taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization." Economists and analysts pounced on the misstatement, which came before the government had spent funds bailing the two entities out, saying it demonstrated a lack of understanding about one of the key economic issues likely to face the next administration.

"You would like to think that someone who is going to be vice president and conceivable president would know what Fannie and Freddie do," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "These are huge institutions and they are absolutely central to our country's mortgage debt. To not have a clue what they do doesn't speak well for her, I'd say."

Added Andrew Jakabovics, an economic analyst for the progressive think tank, Center for American Progress: "It is somewhat nonsensical because up until yesterday there was sort of no public funding there. Even today they haven't drawn down any of the credit line they have given to Treasury. 'Gotten too big and too expensive' are two separate things. The too big has been a conservative mantra for a while and there is something to be said of that in that they hold about half of the mortgage guarantees that are out there. And in the last year they have been responsible for roughly 80 percent out there. The 'too expensive to tax payers,' I don't know where that comes from."

Even conservative analysts acknowledged that the statement simply did not hold true. "Heretofore, if the treasury had a balance sheet there would have been a liability but there was never a taxpayer payment before [the bailout]," said Gerald P. O'Driscoll, an economist with the Cato Institute. "[Fannie and Freddie] were not taxpayer funded. They had taxpayer guarantee, which is worth something, especially in the stock market..."

The Palin misstatement comes as Fannie and Freddie are set to be placed under control of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, created by President Bush in late July to help regulate the two housing giants. Both presidential candidates have been critical of Fannie and Freddie but neither is opposed to the government's plans for the companies. The treasury is hoping that the government's role will help stabilize credit markets and incentive more mortgage lending.

"With the takeover they will be taxpayer funded," said O'Driscoll. "As I understand it they get to withdraw funds with permission going forward."

How politically significant a "gaffe" it is remains to be seen. The major concern about Palin's position on the ticket is that she lacks the economic and foreign policy wherewithal to serve as vice president. This certainly doesn't help on that front. At the same time, the remark went almost entirely unnoticed over the weekend and discussions on the developments of the housing market can be difficult to process for even the most attuned voter.

There are varying explanations that could be offered for Palin's defense. As O'Driscoll noted, both Fannie and Freddie "were hybrid institutions because they had private ownership but... an implicit government guarantee which people thought at the end of the day was explicit." Meanwhile, as Baker noted, as of July the two lenders were being offered low market interest rates by the fed again, theoretically, at the taxpayer's expense. But, he added, "I kind of doubt she had any sense of that."

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The Vote

I read this today on "TheNation.com", website so I decided to share it with the readers of Under The Shadetree.

"The vote" is a human right. It is seen as an American right. In a democracy there is nothing more fundamental than having the right to vote. And yet the right to vote is not a fundamental right in our Constitution. Some liberals argue that the fundamental right to vote for every American citizen is implied in the Constitution, based on Supreme Court precedent. Yet when I ask them about the denial of voting representation in Congress to District of Columbia citizens, or about the denial of ex-felons' voting rights in most states, many liberals concede that the current structure of our Constitution limits the ability of the courts and Congress to adequately address important voting-rights issues.

It is amazing to me that many Democrats failed to grasp the most fundamental finding in Bush v. Gore: "The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States."

Our voting system's foundation is built on the sand of states' rights and local control. We have fifty states, 3,141 counties and 7,800 different local election jurisdictions. All separate and unequal.

In four states, if you're an ex-felon you're barred from voting for life. There are 5 million Americans (including 1.8 million African-Americans, mostly in Southern states--where 55 percent of African- Americans live) who have paid their debt to society but are prohibited from voting. At the same time, in Maine and Vermont you can vote even if you're in jail.

We need to build our voting system on a rock--the rock of adding a Voting Rights Amendment to the US Constitution. The amendment I have proposed in each of the last several Congresses (HJR 28) would provide the American people with a citizenship right to vote. It would also give Congress the authority to craft a unitary voting system for federal, state and local elections--one that guarantees all votes will be counted in a complete, fair, free and efficient manner.

Democrats have been made so defensive by right-wing Republicans' constant stream of absurd amendments--anti-gay, antichoice, anti-flag "desecration"--that we've developed a negative rationale and posture about the Constitution: It's fine just the way it is. But fights over "rights" and constitutional amendments are where elections are being won and lost. And when Democrats don't fight for common laws, defending human rights, we're just reaffirming states' rights and local control, both of which are inherently separate and unequal.

Building a more perfect union by turning human rights into American rights--that's what Democrats should be fighting for. Let's wage this fight one issue at a time, rolling out a sort of second Bill of Rights. After the Voting Rights Amendment, we might add public education and equal-quality healthcare to every American's citizenship rights. An equal rights for women amendment. An affordable-housing amendment. A clean, safe and sustainable environment amendment. A fair taxes amendment. A full-employment amendment. An amendment for direct election of the American President and Vice President.

Fighting for human and constitutional rights is a theme, and a strategy, that could keep Democrats together for the next fifty years, election after election. It's time to begin a lofty fight to add the right to vote to the Constitution--and paint a truer picture of most Republicans as undemocratic. It's time to stand up and insure every American's right to vote to have that vote fully protected and to have it fairly counted.

Jesse Jackson Jr
2006

Jon Stewart nails 'em with the archive soundbites