Hell, Conservative American Style

Quite good looking and she manages to reproduce okay. Up to five little critters she calls her own, helping over populate America that much more, as if it were needed. But, alas, her credentials even at the meager urban level where she ostensibly has some--ahem--experience, is sorrowfully, woefully, deeply lacking....Which is to say, she is the perfect Republican poster child: lacking in any and all expertise, but pleasing to the eye for men, and (thank God!) more than willing to crank out Republican babies while teaching them the happy lessons of 'creationism', conservative America's very own fairy tale science. Just what our nation needs.

Anyhow, it doesn't really matter as I subscribe first and foremost to Jeff Lieber's take:

She doesn't help win a "swing" state.

She doesn't win a demographic (and may, in the end, cause more women to vote Obama).

She doesn't even get you into a movie theatre with a ten percent discount.

She is a distraction; there to add "Noun-Verb-Mother-Of-Five" to "Noun-Verb-P.O.W".

She is nothing more and surely, clearly, much, much MUCH less.

And, should you happen to be interested in how much less she actually is, which is to ask the question -- if that old coot John McCain kicks, what will this fertile lady actually 'rule' like, or what area has she actually 'ruled'? Take a gander at the following post. And keep in mind; John McCain is seriously old, and he's been hacking out skin cancer cells for longer than I've been blogging.

Some things you should know about Sarah Palin

by Smintheus

Sarah Palin was had political experience only as a small town mayor until less than two years ago. What we don't know about her could fill a book. Here are a few things we're learning about Palin.

Sarah Palin left the finances of her town Wasilla in tatters when she moved on in 2002 (h/t xgz). She wanted a legacy as mayor, it seems, and pushed hard for the town to build a hyper-expensive sports complex. But Palin screwed the process up badly. Instead of buying the land for the complex when it was offered, her administration allowed a developer named Gary Lundgren to snap it up. Then Wasilla tried to seize the land from Lundgren through eminent domain. In the end, what with court costs Wasilla paid at least $ 1.7 million for land it could have bought for less than one tenth that sum - if the purchase had been handled properly. For this incompetence, Wasilla is still paying a steep price: higher taxes and cutbacks in services. In other words Palin is about as efficient as Michael Brown, onetime head of FEMA.

Diarist loyalson, a resident of Wasilla, has more to say about the damage Palin did to his town while she was mayor.

On the single most debated issue of our times, the Iraq war, Sarah Palin similarly was out to lunch until as recently as last spring. Shortly after becoming governor, she was asked her views on the surge (h/t LizzyPop):

Alaska Business Monthly: We've lost a lot of Alaska's military members to the war in Iraq. How do you feel about sending more troops into battle, as President Bush is suggesting?

Palin: I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe. Every life lost is such a tragedy.

John McCain would have us believe that Iraq is the central battle in the war on terror, and yet he selects as his running mate somebody who was paying almost no attention to the Iraq war for 4 long years after the invasion.

So what was Palin focused on?

Alaska Business Monthly: It's extremely early to ask this, but when your tenure as governor is over, what would you like to have accomplished? How would you like to be remembered?

Palin: I want people to remember me as having always conducted the state's business in an upright and honest manner. I want them to understand that I put Alaska first in every decision I made.

Try to square that with the troopergate scandal, in which Palin allegedly misused her power as governor by bringing inappropriate pressure for two employees to be fired. What's perhaps most interesting is that Palin appears to have begun misusing power almost as soon as she got any real power.

Speaking of inconsistencies, earlier this month Palin praised Barack Obama's energy plan (h/t Excelscior1). Here is the cached version of the press release that had been posted at the Governor's website. The original document has been scrubbed sometime during the last day (since Aug. 28). I wonder if that could have anything to do with McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate?

So how does it feel to live in Sarah Palin's screwed up 'Republican' dream town?

Sarah Palin was my mayor

by loyalson (from dKos)

I hope this helps paint the true picture of Sarah Palin's "experience."

My family moved to Wasilla when I was eleven years old. The road I lived on was still gravel, and the town then was still on its first of three successive Wal-Marts. It was 1996, and Sarah Palin would not be mayor for another three years.

Today, under Sarah Palin's leadership, Wasilla has become the picture of exurban sprawl: an explosion in the housing stock, tons of new highway expansion, tons of new big box stores and fast food franchises, and absolutely 0 sustainability. Combined with a lack of zoning, and a predilection for building open-pit gravel mines all over the place, and Wasilla could be the poster-town for bad municipal leadership.

Wasilla, like a lot of Alaska, is defined by its remoteness. It is a 45 mile drive from Anchorage, yet functions primarily as a bedroom community. The city limits are confined mostly to a narrow strip along the Parks Highway (a major route from Anchorage to Fairbanks), but Wasillans can live dozens of miles away from the town center. An official population of roughly 6,000 balloons to dozens of thousands in the greater Wasilla area. Despite their small size, Wasilla and Palmer form the major social and political axis of the Mat-Su borough, a county equivalent the size of West Virginia.

Demographically, the town is almost exclusively white. I didn't realize this, until I left and went to university in New Jersey. There is, or at least was, a stunning lack of diversity, even for Alaska. It is is extremely religious, primarily baptist judging from the many churches, tucked away into every nook and cranny. It is also extremely politically conservative, and is consistently a republican stronghold. Characteristically, it is also economically depressed, and is dependent on low-quality resource extraction, and the service industry, for the vast majority of local jobs.

Wasilla was essentially a giant gravel mine. There was a gravel mine behind my middle school. There was a gravel mine across the highway. There were gravel mines in residential neighborhoods. There were gravel mines all over the place.

A gravel mine is exactly what it sounds like: someone buys a block of land, and more or less completely converts it into gravel, like mountain-top removal done at ground level. The mine itself is an open pit which sits in production for years, and then, more often than not, is abandoned in situ, oftentimes sprinkled with abandoned extraction equipment. The pit behind the middle school, for instance, had a few rusted hulks that remained for years, and which may still be there today.

If there wasn't a gravel mine somewhere, then there was a strip mall. Wasilla love their gravel, and they love their strip malls.

Growing up, my father used to take me to a barber shop in one of our many strip malls to get my hair cut. I call it a barbershop, and the sign said it was a barber shop, but it was more of a combination barber shop, guitar repair shop, ammo store, and local NRA headquarters. That barber shop was a microcosm of Wasilla: an odd mix of country friendliness and can-do work ethic, and hardcore, reactionary conservatism.

When I graduated from Wasilla High School, Sarah Palin's alma mater, there were 1200 students, some fantastic teachers, and a strong Advanced Placement program. When Sarah Palin graduated, I doubt there were less than half that many students. Unfortunately, the last several years' budget cuts have hit WHS rather hard, and it's been shedding good teachers and AP classes, with no end in sight. Last I heard, the coordinated advanced learning program had been disbanded, for lack of funds. Wasilla High School used to turn out some amazing students, many of whom were friends of mine who went onto MIT, Harvard, Colgate, Tufts, and many other top universities. Now, WHS is a school in decline, even amidst an explosion in the local housing stock, and record state revenues from oil extraction. This decline began under Mayor Palin's watch as mayor, and is coming to its inevitable conclusion under her watch as governor.

Beyond gravel mines and strip malls, there is one thing that defines Wasilla more than anything else:

Walmart.

Wasilla has always had a Walmart, for as long as I can remember. A few years after I arrived, they built a new, much larger store across the street from the original. Just recently, the Wasilla Walmart was converted into a super center, not long after the neighboring town of Palmer was successful in defeating plans to open a Walmart in their town. Mayor Palin officiated:

Wasilla’s own Gov. Sarah Palin cut the red duct-tape ribbon early this morning with a really big pair of scissors and a slug of local pride.

Palin heaped praise on the store’s hard-working employees, the company’s community spirit and the hometown atmosphere that keeps the parking lot full just about any time of day.

“There’s something about Wal-Mart in the Valley that is always an event,” Palin said.

Anchorage Daily News: Walmart Opens In Wasilla As State's Largest Store
I don't know why people in Wasilla love Walmart so much. Perhaps its because every few years Walmart makes a big deal out of their Wasilla store selling more duct tape than any other store in the country. It might seem odd to those of you from Outside, and today it seems odd to me too, but Duct Tape sales once became a major point of local pride in Wasilla.

And that might be all you need to know about Wasilla, Alaska.

Editor's note: She also managed to leave Wasilla a few million dollars in debt. Serious peonage for an urban unit of 6,000.