The Enlightened Despot

Over the past few weeks I’ve been fielding a number of questions about the status of this blog, so I’ve decided to address the issue head-on here. The problem, in short, is that no new posts have been going up. The explanation is that in my efforts to secure some sort of income in this wintry economic climate, I’ve come to the conlcusion that the solipsistic delights of writing for an audience of thirty cannot justify the time they consume. I love all thirty of you, but even a Despot has to eat.

My colleagues are similarly busy. Meiji has been securing your freedoms via various activities in Iraq - I don’t understand the specifics either, but I feel as free as ever, so clearly it’s working. Frederick has been doing whatever it is he does in his undisclosed location. Our Photoshop and finance experts are no doubt making better use of their respective talents.

None of which is to say that the Despot is finished. Like MacArthur, We Shall Return, and I suspect that, in the meantime, the political blogosphere - unlike the Phillipines - will be just fine. I doubt I’ll be able to produce much over the next month and a half, though if I see an amusing New York Post cover, you’ll be the first to know. But by early September, I expect to have rejoined the regular, documented work force (thus making a small dent in the dreary job statistics you keep reading about), and I will work regular blogging back into my routine.

For now, I leave you with the madness of Sarah Palin’s final speech as governor, first via a Wordle graphic, then via some highlights, supplemented, as always, by snark.

Brace yourselves, here we go:

The rugged rugged hardy people that live up here and some of the most patriotic people whom you will ever know live here, and one thing that you are known for is your steadfast support of our military community up here and I thank you for that and thank you United States military for protecting the greatest nation on Earth.  Together we stand.

Together we stand indeed. I hear the elitists say it differently on the east coast of these Together States of America, but they should remember that the military.

And getting up here I say it is the best road trip in America soaring through nature’s finest show. Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun.  And then the extremes.  In the winter time it’s the frozen road that is competing with the view of ice fogged frigid beauty, the cold though, doesn’t it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs?  And then in the summertime such extreme summertime about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter than just some months ago, than just some months from now, with fireweed blooming along the frost heaves and merciless rivers that are rushing and carving  and reminding us that here, Mother Nature wins.  It is as throughout all Alaska that big wild good life teeming along the road that is north to the future.  That is what we get to see every day.  Now what the rest of America gets to see along with us is in this last frontier there is hope and opportunity and there is country pride.

Dadaism is the new populism.

And it is our men and women in uniform securing it, and we are facing tough challenges in America with some seeming to just be Hell bent maybe on tearing down our nation, perpetuating some pessimism,  and suggesting American apologetics, suggesting perhaps that our best days were yesterdays.

Dadaism is also the new WaitDidIMentiontheMilitary?! In case I didn’t:

But as other people have asked, “How can that pessimism be, when proof of our greatness, our pride today  is that we produce the great proud volunteers who sacrifice everything for country?”   Now this week alone, Sean Parnell and I we’re on the, um, on Ft. Rich the base  there, the army chapel, and we heard the last roll call, and the sounding of Taps for three very brave, very young Alaskan soldiers who just gave their all for all of us.  Together we do stand with gratitude for our troops who protect all of our cherished freedoms, including our freedom of speech which, par for the course, I’m going to exercise.

The course, in this case, being Sarah Palin. She has a handicap of awesome.

And first, some straight talk…

Wait, what? Just whose resignation is this? Is there going to be a part about her father working in a coal mine later?

… for some, just some in the media because another right protected for all of us is freedom of the press, and you all have such important jobs reporting facts and informing the electorate, and exerting power to influence.

Were I an accredited journalist, I would immediately get business cards printed up with the phrase ‘exerting power to influence’. Actually, I think that might already be the motto of her sponsor, the Weekly Standard.

You represent what could and should be a respected honest profession that could and should be the cornerstone of our democracy.

Because, let’s face it, we need someone respected and honest to make sure elected officials don’t mess with the cornerstones of our democracy.

Democracy depends on you, and that is why, that’s why our troops are willing to die for you. So, how ’bout in honor of the American soldier, ya quite makin’ things up. And don’t underestimate the wisdom of the people, and one other thing for the media, our new governor has a very nice family too, so leave his kids alone.

She knows whereof she speaks; I used to think it was impossible to go wrong underestimating the wisdom of the people, until John McCain announced his running mate.

Our founders wrote “all political power is inherent in the people.  All government originates with the people.  It’s founded upon their will only and it’s instituted for the good of the people as a whole.”  Their remarkably succinct words guided us in all of our efforts in serving you and putting you first, and we have done our best to fulfill promises that I made on Alaska Day, 2005, when I first asked for the honor of serving you.

You know, give or take a few years.

And I promised I’d govern with fiscal restraint, so to not immorally burden futre generations.  And we did…we slowed the rate of government growth and I vetoed hundreds of millions of dollars of  excess and wtih lawmakers we saved billions for the future.

Or perhaps that’s the opposite of what happened. It all seems like a distant memory.

Let me tell you, Alaskans really need to stick together on this with new leadership in this area especially, encouraging new leadership… got to stiffen your spine to do what’s right for Alaska when the pressure mounts, because you’re going to see anti-hunting, anti-second amendment circuses from Hollywood and here’s how they do it.  They use these delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets, they use Alaska as a fundraising tool for their anti-second amendment causes.

Lock and load, Alaskans, the Olson twins are coming!

Stand strong, and remind them patriots will protect our guaranteed, individual right to bear arms, and by the way, Hollywood needs to know, we eat, therefore we hunt.

Actually, someone really should tell the Olson twins about that first part. Sorry.

And I promised that we would get a natural gas pipeline underway and we did.

Not physically underway, mind you, but pipe-related happy thoughts are up 70% since the Murkowski adminstration.

Since I was a little kid growing up here, I remember the discussions, especially the political discussions  just talking about and hoping for and dreaming of commercializing our clean, abundant, needed natural gas.

And now, finally… Moving right along.

What I promised, we accomplished. “We” meaning state staff, amazing commissioners, great staff assisting them, and conscientious Alaskans outside the bureaucracy - Tom Van Flein, and Meg Stapleton and…

It’s touching to see regular everyday Alaskans outside the administration coming together to do their part, from the governor’s attorney, right on down to the governor’s personal spokeswoman. This is what makes America great.

So much success, and Alaska there is much good in store further down the road, but to reach it we must value and live the optimistic pioneering spirit that made this state proud and free, and we can resist enslavement to big central government that crushes hope and opportunity.  Be wary of accepting government largess.  It doesn’t come free and often, accepting it takes away everything that is free, melting into Washington’s powerful “care-taking” arms will just suck incentive to work hard and chart our own course right out of us, and that not only contributes to an unstable economy and dizzying national debt, but it does make us less free.

And that’s what made Alaska great.

And we have come so far in just 50 years.  We’re no longer a frontier outpost on the periphery of the world’s greatest nation.

I don’t know how to read this other than as a smear against America (and Russia). Congratulations, Tibet, you’re the new Alaska!

Todd and I, and Track, Bristol, Tripp, Willow, Piper, Trig…I think I got ‘em all.  We will forever be so grateful for the honor of our lifetime to have served you.

One last chance for Palin to argue that her children’s travel represented legitimate state business, one more chance for me to snicker at their names.

[I]n Alaska it is not an easy living, but it is a good living, and here it is impossible to lose your way. Wherever the road may lead you, we have that steadying great north star to guide us home.

This is actually true if the road only ever leads you south to the lower 48.

So let’s all enjoy the ride, and I thank you Alaska, and God bless Alaska and God bless America.

Note that she doesn’t call for God to bless the troops. I guess she doesn’t support them.

Sarah Palin doesn’t understand why people won’t accept her stated reasons for quitting at face value. Kevin Drum is somewhat sympathetic. Stanley Fish thinks the pundits searching for an angle are more dispicable than Palin herself. They are all way off the mark.

Human interaction would be pretty difficult if it weren’t the default assumption that most people were telling the truth most of the time. Most utterances are fairly trivial; we can generally assume that people aren’t lying to us about the weather, because even the slightest inclination toward honesty would be sufficient to outweigh any possible incentive to lie about such a thing.

Of course, it is customary to give people the benefit of the doubt even when they do have a tangible incentive to lie. Our attitudes toward lying and liars make even this a good bet under many circumstances. Since we tend not to associate with people who have proved to be dishonest in the best, our odds get better with time. And since people are generally rational enough to save their lies for situations in which they are unlikely to be found out, a ceteris paribus assumption of honesty works out fairly well.

If, however, we are concerned only with figuring out what is actually true about the world, and have no interest in common courtesy - as we shouldn’t in analyzing the public actions of political figures - there is no reason whatsoever to make this assumption. That a politician says that x is true when the stakes are high and the chance of being proven a liar are essentially zero (even if a scandal breaks, no one can prove she was lying about her motivation here) should barely count as prima facie evidence for the actual truth of x. When the politician in question is Sarah Palin you can drop the qualifiers: that Palin is quitting for the reasons she gave is no more likely than if she had said nothing at all. Which is to say, not very likely at all.

As always, a little David Hume is instructive:

It is, therefore, a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.

Every woman, too. And in Palin’s case, it isn’t just a supposition.

It is no secret that, when subjected to any pressure whatsoever, Sarah Palin loses the ability to speak English. But it’s not just her - she has surrounded herself with quasi-verbal lunatics, and even her lawyers are struggling with the basics of the English language. Think I’m exaggerating? Some excerpts from her legal team’s most recent release:

• Just as power abhors a vacuum, modern journalism apparently abhors any type of due diligence and fact checking before scurrilous allegations are repeated as fact.
• Contrary to the insinuation that as Mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin “personally” oversaw bidding, construction, funding and accounting for the project (and thus, the allegation goes, “embezzled” from the project), the truth is far more mundane, and publicly available: [There is a lot wrong with this, but it is only fair to point out that the British comma usage is consistent throughout, so perhaps this is merely a diplomatic gesture]
• As Mayor, Governor Palin did appoint the committee, another fact readily verifiable, and she was publicly on record supporting the need for such a facility—as was most of Wasilla. [The outlet that is recording on the record statements from more than 4,000 residents of Wasilla needs to seriously reevaluate its priorities.]
• In addition, Sarah Palin was then criticized by some of not showing enough interest in the
  project.
• As described by the City of Wasilla itself: [It's exciting to have a city talk to you, but peyote consumption and public relations work simply do not mix]
• The Mayor of Wasilla, be it Sarah Palin, or her successor, did not handle the funds, or the materials, for this project. To thus suggest she “embezzled” is as false as it is impossible. [The first sentence is too deranged to think about. As to the second: your complaint is that people are suggesting she embezzled, which they couldn't do if such a suggestion were impossible.]
• The deeds of trust are recordable public records. [Yikes.]
• To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now
  claiming as “fact” that Governor Palin resigned because she is “under federal investigation” for
  embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to
  address such defamation. [It strikes me as unlikely that Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore is a website. On the other hand, this sentence clearly states that they will not be exploring legal options this week. There, I think, they have accidentally stumbled upon the truth at last.]

When John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin was announced, there was only one sensible response: this is a joke and, barring a DGLB situation, this election is over. Of course, very few people actually responded this way. There are four reasons for this, three of which aren’t that interesting, namely:

1. There are, obviously, a lot of people who are insane, stupid, and approve of Palin’s rhetoric when they can understand it. Naturally, these people don’t recognize that running one of their own is a mistake - just about everyone thinks that doing what they themselves approve of is also, conveniently enough, a cunning and effective strategy. Over at the Daily Kos, a lot of people think running Michael Moore would be a stroke of political genius.
2. People too sane to approve of Palin but who wanted McCain to win had an obvious incentive to pretend the Empress had clothes, or at least to refrain from gawking at her.
3. A lot of liberals were desperate to find reasons to panic and despair at a time when empirical evidence was not on their side. For whatever reason, Democrats are like fans of an ill-fated sports franchise, always waiting for their guys to blow it so they can get back to grumbling.

As I said, none of these are interesting, because none of them explain why people are still debating Palin and various Palin activities. The problem is that people who think and write about politics can only agree about counterfactuals. No one will disagree with me now if I say that it’s a good thing Obama didn’t choose Jesse Jackson as his running mate, but if he had actually chosen Jackson, you’d start to see the argument that his hymie town rhetoric might help Obama’s problems in Appalachia.

Consensus is boring, and it’s more fun to be thought-provoking than it is to be right. But sometimes things happen that really aren’t that interesting or difficult to pin down. Sarah Palin is a crazy person and there is nothing fox-like about it. She is incapable of telling the truth. She is perpetually mired in scandal. All of this was clear within a few hours of her selection. Since then, there really hasn’t been anything interesting to add to that analysis.

I have a guest post up over on the Mudflats sister site. For regular readers, there’s nothing there you haven’t seen before, but if you love Alaskan political scandals as much as I do, give it a look. For any Mudflatters who find their way here, welcome!

Some catch-up to attend to after two missed installments, so, without further ado, the links:

• Terrorists were arrested for attempting to blow up a synagogue a few blocks away from my childhood home. I assume the punishment is especially severe for that sort of thing. Unfortunately for them, they were using fake bombs sold to them by the FBI. The men had been under investigation for almost a year.
• The NYT reported the other day that ammunition sent to the Afghan government by the US and its allies had been discovered in Taliban hands. No one was under any illusions about the existence of ties between the Taliban and elements within the government so, in a sense, this isn’t news at all. It would be surprising if some of our ammo weren’t being used against us. But this sort of concrete discovery can sometimes focus thinking on an issue we already knew about.
• California is facing bankruptcy, and not just the moral kind. Voters rejected five out of six ballot measures introduced to address the fiscal crisis in a special election on Tuesday. The good news is that there has been a surge in public support for overhauling California’s constitution. Just about everyone who has even briefly thought about it agrees that the requirement for a supermajority on all matters budgetary is a complete disaster.
• CATO’s Jerry Taylor is apparently still not afraid to get jerrytaylored.
• The boy who hacked Sarah Palin’s email during the campaign has asked that the case against him be thrown out on the grounds that her emails were public records.
• Peter Kirsanow thinks that despite Dick Cheney’s unpopularity, Americans would want him in charge of any effort to defend the earth from destruction via asteroid. That is, to the extent that Peter Kirsanow thinks.
• Felix Salmon says there is nothing to worry about in the possibility of a downgrading of US debt, because the ratings agencies are now irrelevant. I hope he’s right, and there have certainly been some positive signs, but I think some more concrete steps need to be taken to make the ratings system in its present form as irrelevant as it deserves to be.

The quote of the day is this beautiful piece of understatement from Ben Smith:

The Palin family media strategy can be hard to figure.

You don’t say. He’s reacting in particular to the magazine cover above, which, in case you missed it, includes this equally quotable gem from Bristol Palin:

If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex. Trust me. Nobody.

Ah, Bristol. Ah, humanity.

Finally, apropos of nothing in particular, here’s Nino Brown’s defense of his murderous - though fictional - reign as a crack kingpin:

This amazing photograph comes via Michael Crowley. I’m speechless, so on to the links:

• Marc Ambinder reports that Obama will announce his nominee to replace Justice Souter sometime next week, probably toward the end of the week. I predict a week and a half of baseless speculation, followed by widespread outrage.
• Bill Clinton is being sent to Haiti, as good a place as any to keep him.
• His wife, meanwhile, is one of the subjects of a new J-Mart story. Supposedly, John Coale - Hillary in the primaries, Palin aide in the general, and Fox News in-law until death do them part - attempted to broker a deal in which Sarah Palin’s PAC (SarahPAC! Really!) would help out with Hillary Clinton’s campaign debt in exchange for which the Clintons would become her friends in a high-profile way, or make left wing Palin critics back off, or… something. Chalk full of sources-close-to-so-and-so, it’s the sort of piece that inspires outrage in the sorts of people who get outraged about journalistic practices.
• Speaking of Sarah Palin, over at the Mudflats, the results are in for the Name Sarah Palin’s Book competition. How Winkin’, Blinkin’, and Todd failed to win is beyond me. Carpe per Diem is also pretty clever.
• Maureen Dowd was busted stealing a paragraph from Talking Point’s Memo. Inexplicably, rather than going with the tried-and-true excuse that she meant to provide a citation, she claimed that she’d never seen the TPM post, and that she got the idea for the “line” from a friend who must have read it, which is a curious explanation for the near-verbatim reproduction of an over 40-word sentence.
• Jerry Taylor continued to be savaged by the rank-and-file over at the National Review. Today he is guilty of “pseudo-principled indifference to public opinion”, the eigth deadly sin.
• Ending two decades of civil war, and proving that these bullet points aren’t ordered by importance, the Tamil Tigers have been defeated, supposedly for good. Here’s hoping.

And, finally, our quote of the day, which is actually quite a few days old, from Matt Yglesias:

I’m actually 100 percent positive that were Oprah on the Supreme Court she would do a good job. In a lot of ways, it’s just not that difficult a job.

More effort is put into rebutting this notion than it deserves here.

Decide for yourself whether you want to click through to see what this means, or just use your imagination:

Palin Cancels Friday Night Date With Dog Barbecueing Jew Counter.

Sarah Palin is without a doubt the most consistently and egregiously overrated politician of my lifetime. It has been almost eight months since John McCain attempted to shoot the moon without first looking at his hand, yet, somehow, people are still surprised that this woman doesn’t know what she is doing. Over the past few weeks, as regular readers of this blog will recall, Palin has been flouting public opinion - not to mention the law - in an attempt at marginal gains for the GOP in a state she is no longer particularly interested in governing. This would be difficult behavior to explain if we weren’t talking about Palin, but as it is, it’s par for the course. Yet somehow, people are still shocked. Here’s Reihan (a former supporter!):

Palin’s campaign antics can be forgiven. What can’t be forgiven is the ham-handed way she’s tried to build her national profile since she returned to Alaska. She’s abandoned the bold right-left populism that won over Alaska voters—and me—in the first place in favor of an increasingly defensive and harsh partisanship. After making her name as a determined enemy of Alaska’s corrupt Republican establishment, she recently called for Democratic Sen. Mark Begich to step down so the hilariously crooked Ted Stevens could get another crack at the seat. She loudly promised to leave federal stimulus money on the table before clawing that promise back with a whimper. One can’t help but get the impression that Palin is a clownish, vindictive amateur.

Now, for example, Palin is raising hackles for naming colorful crackpot Wayne Anthony Ross to be Alaska’s attorney general. It turns out that Palin may have consulted with Ross over a state senate appointment, a move that would have been against state law. As a general matter, state law is something you might want your AG to be on top of.

And here is Chris Orr, who was never a fan:

Perhaps the most mystifying element of Palin’s recent forays into nuttery is that, politically speaking, it would be difficult to come up with stupider way to position herself in the wake of her v.p. run. The base already loves her–the diehard pro-lifers, the hands-off-mine individualists, the anti-elitist brigades, you name ‘em. Where she has (deepening) trouble is with everyone else: moderates, socially liberal libertarians, DC-establishment types, and anyone who places a premium on basic competence.

The obvious, obvious play for her was to move to the center to reassure moderates that she wasn’t her far-right caricature and reestablish some of the different-kind-of-Republican glow that once attracted reformist conservatives such as Reihan. Instead, she’s been performing partisan panders so acrobatic they’d embarrass Mitt Romney–who, unlike Palin, actually needs to build credibility on the right. Whoever is advising her these days–assuming she’s taking anyone’s advice at all–is hammering early nails into the coffin of her future prospects.

I find Palin herself endlessly entertaining, but the punditry’s take on her makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills. When she was first announced as McCain’s running mate, I joined the rest of the world in a massive double-take. Then I did a few hours of due-diligence, did a few more double-takes, and concluded that McCain’s candidacy was over. Meanwhile, millions of liberals, with access to the same information, lost their composure, convinced that she was the magic bullet that would stop Obama’s momentum. Everything she has done since, and every fact about her that has come to light, has reinforced the obvious truth that she is too crazy, too ignorant, and too verifiably corrupt to be a serious contender for national office. Yet people continue to be ‘mystified’ when her actions work at cross-purposes to her ambitions.

Alaskans clearly aren’t surprised by any of it at this point. If the rest of the country is still fooled after all this time, what can possibly get us up to speed?

From the confirmation hearings of Wayne Anthony Ross, Sarah Palin’s nominee for state Attorney-General and all-around crazy person:

WAR: You don’t go to Washington D.C. anymore.  Washington D.C. is not friends with Alaska.  The General’s job is not to cause casualties with its own people.  The General’s job is to win the war against the enemy.  Alaskans should be working together.

…

And now we’ve got the federal government sticking its nose in the state of Alaska, and we need to realize  that we’ve invited a giant to our state and that we need to work together to protect all of us from the giant.  We’ve invited….have you seen the old Western movies where they get a new marshal in town and they bring the marshal in and he turns out to be far worse than they had before?  That’s what we did.  OK?  And we can work out our problems .  If we sit down and talk about what’s needed, we can work those out.  As I told you at the very beginning, 95% of my cases were settled because even though there’s a lot of emotion in divorce cases, we were able to calm them down and get it worked out.  But, you don’t invite the giant into your house, or the bear (if you want to say that) invite the bear in your house and expect not to get eaten up.  We’re being eaten up and we need to get together.

The enemy/giant/marshal/bear has apparently decided that you can catch more flies with honey:

With enemies like this, who needs friends?

Here’s what crazy right-wingers, crazy left-wingers, and Sarah Palin have to say today:

From the right, Brookhiser wins the very competitive contest for the most deranged reaction to a picture of Obama bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia:

I wish he had been raised Muslim. Then it would be habit, not baseness.

Meanwhile, Ed Whelan reacts to the Iowa Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage:

The lawless judicial attack on traditional marriage and on representative government continues.

On the left, Bill Keller has an interesting take on how people view the decline of his publication, the New York Times:

Saving the New York Times now ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause.

Finally, Sarah Palin responds to the suggestion that Senator Begich should resign and make way for a special election, as it is unclear that he would have been elected if voters had known Ted Stevens’s seven felony convictions would be overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct:

I absolutely agree.

It’s about time I came clean: my name is not ‘Akhbar’ and I was not born in 1542.  I’ve decided it’s best you hear it from me, rather than from some legislator I offend, as happened to AKMuckraker:

The day that Sarah Palin got nominated to be John McCain’s Vice President, life changed.  My sister called me at some pre-dawn hour and said, “Did you hear?”  I, like many Alaskans, was completely stunned.  Sarah Palin?  Was I still dreaming?  Really?  I knew I had to take the day off.  I made a pot of coffee, and thought to myself, that my 250 people might not be the only ones interested in this VP pick.  Now, many people adored Sarah Palin, and maybe some of them had blogs too….I had never checked, but they must be out there somewhere.  But I knew some things about her, and her policies and positions that others might not be able to find out so easily.  I decided to write my opinion.  So I wrote a post, “What Is McCain Thinking?  One Alaskan’s Perspective.” And that’s exactly what the piece was - one Alaskans perspective.  My perspective.  Just in case anyone was interested.

It took me about 45 minutes to crank it out and click Publish.  (Yes, I was still in my pajamas at the time) And it turned out that people were interested. Really interested.  By the time I’d made myself a couple eggs and toast, and sat back down there were more than 7,000 hits.  By the end of the day there were 64,000.  The total readership of that post ended up being almost 270,000 with more than 1300 comments.  To say I was shocked is putting it mildly.  I began to get emails and comments asking me when I was going to post again, asking questions about Palin, and saying that this was the only “real” information they were getting.

…

After [publishing a post critical of State Representative Mike Doogan] in Mudflats, I started hearing from fellow bloggers that Mike Doogan was trying to figure out who I was.  It seemed strange to me, because really, all I’d done was take his own words and actions and comment on them.  Anyone was perfectly free to disagree, or comment on the piece.

…

I didn’t think much more about it until yesterday, when I got this email:

From: “doogans@gci.net” <doogans@gci.net>
To: akmuckraker@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 2:55:14 PM
Subject: your identity

Jeanne:

I am reliably told that you are the anonymous blogger who writes Mudflats. I am planning to reveal this in the enews I send to my constituents tomorrow, and am writing to let you know this and offer the opportunity to comment.

Mike Doogan

I was a bit surprised to see my real name, as you can imagine.  But after the initial surprise wore off, it really hit me.  This is an elected State Representative, of my own political party, who has decided that it’s not OK for me to control the information about my identity; that it’s not OK to express my opinion on my own blog without shouting from the rooftops who I am.

This infuriates and saddens me. But I’ll start by saying that I am biased on at least two fronts: I am an (ostensibly) anonymous blogger, and I am a fan of Mudflats. I qualify the former point for a reason: I don’t care about anonymity, and I have done nothing to protect mine. People I know are aware that I write for this blog under the name ‘Akhbar the Great’. Occasional contributor and regular source of background information Meiji is also not very anonymous, because I’m not, and I don’t know all that many members of the United States Marine Corps. We adopted the pseudonyms because Frederick wanted to remain anonymous, and thus far that has worked out swimmingly.

If the Despot were to become famous overnight - yeah, I know, but just hear me out - that wouldn’t, I imagine, make Frederick any more eager to reveal his identity. Indeed, I would think anyone who doesn’t want to admit their authorship of a blog with a small readership would care at least as much, if not more, about concealing his identity on a blog with a huge readership. Yet Doogan felt that by becoming widely read and influential, AKMudflats forfeited her right to anonymity. Doogan had this to say in his defense:

My own theory about the public process is you can say what you want, as long as you are willing to stand behind it using your real name.

If you turn that comma into a period and purge the rest, you have a sensible take on American freedom of speech. The right to comment on government does not have enterance requirements. Nor is anonymity a child of blogging. Perhaps Mr. Doogan is unfamiliar with the Federalist Papers, but if so, he doesn’t belong in government in the first place.

The good news, however, is that in a place as small (population-wise, of course) as Alaska, a blogger with a large national audience is much more of a heavyweight than a low level elected official; I strongly suspect that Doogan has just torpedoed his own career. In the meantime, AKMudflats is back to work reporting on (amongst other things) the ever expanding list of Palin scandals. The latest:

She has selected Tim Grussendorf as the person to replace the recently relocated to Washington D.C. Senator Kim Elton.

Normally, the Senate sends a list of 3 possible replacements to the governor, who chooses one.  This time the Senators bucked tradition because one candidate shone so brightly above all others - Rep. Beth Kerttula.  The candidate must be a Democrat who lives in Juneau, and Kerttula is smart, very qualified, and ready to step from her role in the house, to a new position in the senate without missing a beat.  She is so beloved and respected, that hers was the only name submitted to the governor.  This one is kind of a no-brainer, which means right off the bat, we know we’re in trouble.

Here’s the problem.

Kerttula has been an outspoken opponent of the governor for quite some time.  And we all know how that works out for people.

So, the governor made an announcement saying she’d like to get applications from other qualified Alaskans who are interested in the appointment.  It’s kind of like when the teacher asks a question, only one kid raises their hand, jumping up and down in their seat,  and the teacher scans the room and says, “Anybody?  Anybody else??”  Obviously Kerttula wasn’t going to get the nod.  At least not in the first round.

And so after interviews, Palin has made her selection.  She has chosen Legislative aid Tim Grussendorf.  I, like many of you, had no idea who Tim Grussendorf was.  And let me start off by saying, he may be a stand up guy. *shrug*  But we know this:

Until two weeks ago, he was a registered Republican. According to Grussendorf, he didn’t realize he was registered as a Republican and it was some kind of clerical error in 2006.  I’m not entirely clear on how someone could have gone through the 2008 political season and not realize one was a registered Republican, but that’s the story.  I guess the “R” on the voter registration card slipped under the radar.  Perhaps he thought all those donation requests, and shiny 4-color postcards, and letters from the Republican party were just coincidence.  We may never know.

Just when you think Palin is done shocking you, she goes and does something like this. I don’t see how grabbing one more seat for her party can possibly be worth the blowback on such obvious fraud, but this is just Palin being Palin. God bless her, and AKMudflats too, for keeping up the good work.

This is the vehicle driven by the man Sarah Palin just nominated for Attorney General as a replacement for the man that resigned over a controversy arising from his advice to the Palin crowd that showing up to court after being subpoenaed by the state congress was ‘optional’. And yes, his license plate is ‘WAR’, though, in fairness, those are his initials.

(h/t Mudflats)

That new Palin scandal I promised has been announced, and it has to do with the sponsorship of Todd’s snowmobile team:

Arctic Cat really wanted to sponsor team Davis-Palin this year. For obvious reasons that go above and beyond Todd’s defending champion status, they knew that “Team Palin” was getting lots of attention from Alaskans, and the national media. All eyes would be on that bright green Arctic Cat logo.  Turns out there was even a photo shoot and article in Sports Illustrated this year focusing on the “first dude.” That’s some nice exposure; exposure that was worth $5000 for Arctic Cat to get permission to “brand” Todd Palin and his team.

But, as anyone who has taken time to consider “conflict of interest” or anyone who has read the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act (like, hopefully, our governor) knows, there’s a line that can’t be crossed.  If the governor’s family benefits directly from a private sponsor, (like getting a $5000 check from them) and the governor shows up to take an official role at an official event, representing all Alaskans, it’s a big fat no-no to show up plastered like a billboard with the official “gear” and giant flaming logo of the company that’s been paying you money.

The only shocking thing here is just how little this impresses me. Sure, allowing corporations to pay politicians for sponsorship rights to official functions is obviously illegal, and for all the right reasons. Another ethics complaint has been filed against Palin, and presumably the charge will stick. That’s 11 complaints thus far for the Barracuda. And therein lies the rub: if she’s still standing at this point, what’s one more moral and legal lapse going to do? Anyone crazy enough to still see her as fit for any sort of office at this point isn’t going to let this be the last straw.

Call me when she kills somebody.