Alaska's Governor Palin and her "First Dude" Todd

With her emphasis on ethics and openness in government, "it turned out Palin caught the temper of the times perfectly," wrote Tom Kizzia of the Anchorage Daily News. She was also lucky. News broke of an FBI investigation of corruption by legislators between the primary and general elections. So far, three legislators have been indicted.

In the roughly three years since she quit as the state's chief regulator of the oil industry, Palin has crushed the Republican hierarchy (virtually all male) and nearly every other foe or critic. Political analysts in Alaska refer to the "body count" of Palin's rivals.

"The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who crossed Sarah," says pollster Dave Dittman, who worked for her gubernatorial campaign. It includes Ruedrich, Renkes, Murkowski, gubernatorial contenders John Binkley and Andrew Halcro, the three big oil companies in Alaska, and a section of the Daily News called "Voice of the Times," which was highly critical of Palin and is now defunct.---Fred Barnes (7-11-07)

Senator McCain has selected Alaska's Republican Governor Sarah Palin as his vice-Presidential running mate. Governor Palin is an athlete and a hunter. She used the money she won in a beauty contest to attend college. She has a degree in journalism and a minor in political science. She began her political career in the PTA, so she is interested in improving the educational standards of Alaska's children.

Governor Palin, whose nickname on the high school basketball team was "Sarah Barracuda," made her reputation by fighting corruption in Alaska's Republican Party. I think both parties could use more people like that.

I suspect that Governor Palin will campaign against Senator Obama by telling the American people how he channeled Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) educational funds to Maoists and other radicals. Maybe "Sarah Barracuda" will sink her teeth into Senator Obama, who "doled out more than $100 million in grants but...failed to achieve any improvement in the Chicago schools."

Maybe if Senator Obama had started his career in the PTA like Sarah Palin, he wouldn't have been so wasteful with other people's money.

Wikipedia also notes:

[Governor Palin] chaired the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from 2003 to 2004 while also serving as Ethics Supervisor of the commission.

Palin has five children with her husband "first dude" Todd Palin, who apparently has some Native Alaskan Yup'ik ancestry.

The Yup'ik people live in Alaska and the Russian Far East. The Yup'ik practice Christianity (mostly Russian Orthodoxy) or their traditional Shamanism. Christianity was introduced to Alaska by missionaries from Russia.

All Saints of North America Orthodox Church in Canada has a site which explains:

This project, digitizing original Alaskan Orthodox materials, has been blessed by His Eminence SERAPHIM, Archbishop of Ottawa and all Canada, and by His Grace Right-Reverend NIKOLAI, Bishop of Sitka, Anchorage & Alaska.

This site is an electronic library of historic Orthodox Christian resources in the indigenous languages of Alaska.

The church site has Orthodox songs in the native languages of Alaska and historical information from the perspective of the Russian Orthodox Church. Orthodox missionaries have often given non-literate people their own written language. The Slavic people were originally given a written language by Saints Cyril and Methodius.

Mr. Palin, who is called "the first dude" in Alaska, is a fisherman, like many Yup'ik people; but I don't know his religious orientation.

Governor Palin is non-denominational Christian. I read she believes in Creationism, which is one disagreement I have with her. I think that if people believe in Creationism, or Creation Science, they should study that in church. In school, children should study Biology. Creationism, sometimes called Creation Science or Intelligent Design, might be treated in a course that studies religious beliefs, of course.

UPDATE: On FOX News I heard that when she was elected as Governor of Alaska, Palin agreed not to promote Creationism in the schools. She has said that if students bring up Creationism in class discussion that they should be free to debate the topic, but she said it would not be taught in Alaska's schools. If that is her position, I don't have a problem with it. I want my children to be taught science by the teacher, but occasional exposure to the idea that some students believe in Creationism isn't going to hurt my children. The biology teacher could tactfully explain why scientists don't accept Creationism.

UPDATE #2: In an appearance on FOX News Palin pointed out that her father was a science teacher.

In the summer, first dude Todd Palin usually works in the fishing industry, and in the winter he usually works in the oil business. Right now, he is taking care of the Palin children because his wife is the governor.

Governor Palin recently gave birth to a baby with Down Syndrome. Even though she knew before delivery that her baby would be a special needs child, she didn't have an abortion. I really admire a mother who is that strong in her faith. I recently lost my handicapped brother, and his strength was an inspiration to our whole family and all his friends.

I can't understand how women can destroy their babies, but I am not sure that abortion can be stopped with a law. A strong, liberated woman isn't irresponsible with sex and protects her children. She doesn't let some man in her life or some other relative bully her into killing her unborn child. I think Governor Palin exemplifies this type of strong, liberated woman.

Because Senator McCain is in his 70s, it concerns me that Governor Palin does not have any experience in national politics, but she does have some experience in foreign affairs because her state is near Canada and Russia.

Governor Palin's best traits as a public official are her interest in fighting corruption--Look out Senator Obama!--and her knowledge about the oil industry. She will also bring a perspective to Washington that many so-called "conservative Christians" feel comfortable with.

I don't always agree with conservative Christians and their unscientific belief in Creationism, but they have strong churches, offer many social and cultural programs for their communities, and raise a lot of money to help the less fortunate in their communities. I admire this a lot, even while I disagree with some of their beliefs.

I am extremely uncomfortable with so-called Christians like Senator Obama's former minister Rev. Wright: he is a hater who preaches liberation theology and the divisive, anti-American, KGB-inspired "scientific" conspiracy theory that the U.S. government made AIDS to kill black people.

This crackpot KGB "science," which is reminiscent of Stalin's belief in Lysenkoism, was a big embarrassment to real scientists in the former USSR, and they disavowed the KGB's AIDS theory in November 1987.

The New York Times (11-5-87) reported:

Soviet scientists have disavowed charges in the Soviet-sponsored press that the AIDS virus was artificially cultivated at a secret American military base.

The scientists, Roald Sagdeyev and Vitali Goldansky, publicly distanced the Soviet Academy of Sciences from the accusations about American responsibility for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. They said they had protested the appearance of Soviet articles that repeated those contentions.

The disavowal was contained in Izvestia, the Soviet government newspaper, on Friday. The timing of the article by the scientists suggested that it had been written in response to complaints raised by Secretary of State George P. Shultz in an Oct. 23 meeting with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, about Soviet discussion of the AIDS issue. Mr. Shultz told Mr. Gorbachev that Moscow had been peddling ''bum dope'' on the subject. [No doubt Senator Obama and Rev. Wright were only eight years old in 1987 so they weren't reading the NYT.]

In 1992, the chief of Russia's foreign intelligence service--in a burst of glasnost' followed by a clumsy lie--admitted before an audience of Russian college students who were being recruited for the Russian intelligence service that the KGB made up this lie.

The Russian newspaper Izvestiya (3-19-92) reported:

[Russian foreign intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov] mentioned the well known articles printed a few years ago in our central newspapers about AIDS supposedly originating from secret Pentagon laboratories. According to Yevgeni Primakov, the articles exposing US scientists' 'crafty' plots were fabricated in KGB offices. [For the motives behind Primakov's frank admission see here.]

The crackpot science underpinning the KGB's AIDS fabrication was cooked up by Jacob Segal, a disreputable East German "scientist" who collaborated with the KGB propaganda apparatus. Jacob Segal fabricated and publicized the same kind of lie that Ward Churchill spread about how the U.S. Army allegedly deliberately infected the Mandan Indians with smallpox. So much for "scientific communism."

According to the medical and scientific community who study AIDS, this KGB-inspired crackpot "scientific" conspiracy theory endangers the health and lives of black people:

More than 20 years after the AIDS epidemic arrived in the United States, a significant proportion of African Americans embrace the theory that government scientists created the disease to control or wipe out their communities, according to a study released today by Rand Corp. and Oregon State University.

That belief markedly hurts efforts to prevent the spread of the disease among black Americans, the study's authors and activists said.

...Phill Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles, said past discrimination is no longer an excuse for embracing conspiracies that allow HIV to fester.

"It's a huge barrier to HIV prevention in black communities," Wilson said. "There's an issue around conspiracy theory and urban myths. Thus we have an epidemic raging out of control, and African Americans are being disproportionately impacted in every single sense."

"The whole notion of conspiracy theories and misinformation . . . removes personal responsibility," Wilson said. "If there is this boogeyman, people say, 'Why should I use condoms? Why should I use clean needles?' And if I'm an organization, 'Why should I bother with educating my folks?'

It seems to me that the "progressive" Harvard-educated Senator Obama could have enlightened his minister and his church about this hideous KGB lie, but he sat in his pew didn't do anything to serve his church family. I think this destructive KGB lie masquerading as science is a lot worse than Creationism.

Senator Obama was involved in programs that gave government money to churches for social programs, but I wonder what these programs were serving up to their clients--more anti-American crackpot "science"?

I can't get over the fact that Senator Obama frittered away millions of dollars to improve education for Chicago's children, but their education didn't improve at all. This is because Senator Obama gave the money to crackpot radical ideologues--even Maoists--instead of to real educators who would be able to raise the educational standards of Chicago's children.