The Anchorage Daily News has endorsed Barack Obama for president. The paper acknowledges that after 50 years of statehood, Alaska for the first time has put forward a serious candidate for national office and calls Palin's nomination for vice president "a signal event" in the state's history.
There may be a reason John McCain has been hesitant to attach his name or voice to the Obama/Ayers relationship. Mr. McCain dips his foot into the pool a little deeper each day, almost as if he is "testing" the water. Is he more worried about the reaction from potential voters or is he concerned about the effective counter-punch he may receive from the Obama campaign?
We hear a lot about John McCain's military record. Most often we are hearing about it from John McCain, unless Sarah Palin is telling us how much he doesn't like to talk about it.
Apparently there is one part he doesn't like to talk about, and that's how he was saved from drowning and being beaten to death by Mr. Mai Van On.
The Palin Fail on abuse of power and ethics violation is a matter of record now. A non-partisan legislative council convicted her of those charges. The McCain machine response is that she wins because she does not face certain censure and impeachment due to her violations, only potential censure and impeachment. They - and most of the media - have missed the point.
The Palin administration has been convicted of rank amateurism. If this is the "executive experience" she touts, we are better off hiring an experienced executive crook like Ken Lay.
At least one person in the media didn't miss that.
For months we've been rightly warned that the only hope for the Rovian styled McCain campaign was to paint Barack Obama as an 'angry black man'.
I see the charged comments about 'palling with terrorists', Ayers, not being a 'real American' as deeply offensive, but above all provocative. They want to provoke Obama. They want him to respond angrily, and then they can say he's played the race card first, and thereby remind the electorate he is black, black, black and potentially angry.
[UPDATE 4] 9:28pm The report is out, and in brief it says: [sic]"She definitely did abuse power and break trust with the people, but we don't recommend a criminal investigation."
What this means is that those of her base will continue to be excited by what a Mavericky Maverick she is, and those on the fence will have yet another reason to question every word that comes out of her mouth.
She broke the public trust and abused the power of her office.
Expect the MSM to talk about this all weekend in between discussing how much the GOP has hosed the economy.
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The "Troopergate" report on Governor Palin's abuse of power is in the hands of the Legislative Council right now. They got their hands on the 200+ page report and 600+ pages of backup documentation this morning at 9am local time (1pm ET).
I am going to keep tabs on this and update this diary as events unfold.
