“Sarah: How A Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down.”

The author, Kaylene Johnson is a writer and long-time Alaskan who lives on a farm outside Wasilla, Alaska. I gave her a call at 8:00 p.m. ET to set up a radio interview. We also got permission to post photos from the book as well as an excerpt:

Just who is the candidate tired of the establishment?  Who is ready to rock ‘em, sock ‘em?  Obama or McCain? 

After watching two political conclaves the last two weeks, it would be easy to be confused about which was really the gathering of the opposition. As Senator John McCain accepted the Republican nomination for president, he and his supporters sounded the call of insurgents seeking to topple the establishment, even though their party heads the establishment.
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ERIE COUNTY EXECUTIVE CHRIS COLLINS GREAT JOB!!!!

“Joe:  I just got home and am very happy I was able to speak to the nation and mention Buffalo and Erie County in a positive speech.  While I was disappointed I was unable to deliver my scheduled speech on Tuesday night, I wanted to share that speech with you.  I was given the chance to alter my speech on Wednesday night to include references to my work in Erie County and to remind the nation that Buffalo is the City of Good Neighbors.  I literally made the changes on the fly since the schedule was changing minute by minute and I wasn’t shown the outline of my speech until minutes before I was scheduled to go on stage.  In fact, I ad libbed during the speech hoping the person running the teleprompter wouldn’t get confused!”  Chris

                                                                      PoliticsNY.net

Wednesday morning the residents of New Orleans were being let back in to the city.  Electricity is not on for everyone and all medical services are not fully available, but people are pouring back in.

“Citizens began trickling back to hot, dank homes on the emptied streets by Wednesday afternoon, as the city — and much of the state — was still mostly without electric power. Despite angry blasts from Gov. Bobby Jindal and even a plea from President Bush, utility officials gave no word on when electricity would be restored. But some residents said they had no choice but return, the intense heat and humidity notwithstanding.”

“Traffic was reported bumper-to-bumper for miles on the Interstate highways leading to the hobbled city, testimony to the immense clamor to return home after a storm that proved far less damaging than had been feared.”
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If you ask folks in Wasilla Alaska about Ms. Palin you would hear that once she came on board nothing was the same.  It was not the same old politics they say.  Not bad, you say.  We want change.  Yes, but at what cost?  She is an aggressive reformer who who isn’t afraid to break glass, and Washington needs some of that. 

“Her supporters say she helped Wasilla evolve from a ridiculed backwater to fast-growing suburb.  But her critics say too much growth too quickly has made a mess of what not long ago was homesteaded farmland.”

“For some, Ms. Palin’s first months in office here were so jarring — and so alienating — that an effort was made to force a recall. About 100 people attended a meeting to discuss the effort, which was covered in the local press, but the idea was dropped.”

“Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books.” 

Is that what we really want in Washington.  Someone who wants to be our moral and social judge?  Do you want her determing what you can read, listen to or watch?
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If you were waiting for a real conservative to  run for the highest office in our country, he’s here.  McCain has really stepped up his message to religious conservatives, who have long viewed him as a nemesis.

McCain has abandoned previous calls to moderate the Republican platform’s support for a ban on abortion without exception. Instead, he allowed conservative organizers like Phyllis Schlafly to shape what many advocates say is the most conservative platform in the party’s history.  At Ms. Schlafly’s behest, for example, the party approved an immigration plank calling for new laws to speed widespread deportations and other punitive measures at odds with Mr. McCain’s stance on one of his signature issues.
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What a difference three years made.  It also helped that Gustav was a category three rather than category five hurricane.  Never the less, the residents of New Orleans who evacuated the city are ready to return.  Not so fast.  They will not be allowed to return until Thursday.  Many are angry but officials are playing it safe wanting power and medical care to be back to normal. A curfew will remain in effect at night.

“Many of those who could not get in said that a house without power was preferable to another night sleeping in a car in a hot parking lot.”

““They should let people back in, the storm is over with,” said Dominique Jones, a landscaper from east New Orleans who was leaning, shirtless in the broiling heat, against his truck, while his wife, Kim, a security guard, sat inside. “We might not have lights, but we can light candles. We have canned goods. We don’t have anything out here. We’re dead broke.””
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The price of oil has been dropping from a high of about $147 per barrel to about $100 per barrel.  Many are breathing a sigh of relief, fully expecting the price at the pumps to drop significantly.  Not so fast, say the oil companies.  They still need to recover money lost in the run-up. 

“As oil tumbles, prices at the gas pump come down. But the costs of many other products have not. Procter & Gamble, for example, has raised by 7 percent to 10 percent the prices it charges retailers for items made with ingredients derived from oil. The company is planning to maintain the increase “to recover costs already incurred,” Paul Fox, a spokesman, said.”

“Such decisions will come as little relief for thousands of retailers and wholesalers that have been forced to squeeze margins instead of passing their elevated costs to consumers, who have cut back on consumption of finished goods as their bills for groceries and gas jumped.”
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By Steve Holland

John McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin said Monday that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant, an announcement campaign aides said was aimed at rebutting Internet rumors that Palin’s youngest son, born in April, was actually her daughter’s.

A statement released by the campaign said that Bristol Palin will keep her baby and marry the child’s father. Bristol Palin’s baby is due in late December.

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents,” Sarah and Todd Palin said in the brief statement.

The disclosure of the pregnancy came on the opening day of the Republican National Convention, scaled back because of Hurricane Gustav, and three days after McCain named Palin as his running mate. Other news was likely to overshadow the disclosure.

“Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family,” they added. The father was identified in the statement as Levi, but the campaign said it was not disclosing his last name or age.

Sarah Palin’s fifth child, a son named Trig, was born in April with Down syndrome. Internet bloggers have been suggesting that the child was actually born to Bristol Palin but that her mother, the 44-year-old Alaska governor, claimed to be the mother.

Palin spokesman Bill McAllister emphatically denied those rumors, and McCain adviser Mark Salter said the campaign announced the daughter’s pregnancy to rebut them.

“Senator McCain’s view is this is a private family matter. As parents, (the Palins) love their daughter unconditionally and are going to support their daughter,” said McCain spokesman Steve Schmidt.

“Life happens,” he said.

“An American family,” added Salter.

The advisers said Palin told them about the pregnancy during lengthy discussions about her background. At several points during the discussions, McCain’s team warned Palin that the scrutiny into her private life would be intense and that there was nothing she could do to prepare for it.

Prominent religious conservatives, many of whom have been lukewarm toward McCain’s candidacy, predicted that Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy would not diminish conservative Christian enthusiasm over the vice presidential hopeful.

“I think it’s a very private matter,” said Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America. “It’s a matter that should stay in the family and they have to work through it together. My prayers go out to them.”

Added Combs: “We’re excited about the governor and think she’s going to do well.”

Mathew Staver, dean of Liberty University School of Law, said: “We’re all sinners.”

“We all make mistakes. Certainly, the ideal is not to get pregnant out of wedlock. But she made the right decision after her mistake,” he said.

Staver also criticized anyone who would seek to make it a negative campaign issue: “It’s absolutely shameful to put her child in the spotlight. She’s not running for office. When someone can’t face issues, they try to tear down a family.”

One can study and cram for any exam, but the test of your work will be when you are put to the test.  For FEMA that day is upon them.  What have they learned in the three years since Katrina hit and they failed, miserably?

“Representatives of more than a dozen federal agencies tried to ensure that everyone knew what part they had to play as Hurricane Gustav churned toward the Gulf Coast.”

“Nature has a way of upending disaster-response plans. But there was a certain confidence Sunday that the federal government had learned its painful lessons and that there would be no repeat of the ineptitude that defined the response to Hurricane Katrina three years ago.”
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