Please, please go to the source and read and contemplate the entire report.
This is journalism at its best. It is going beyond press releases and sound bites, to the heart of darkness.
Sarah Palin and the new Apostolic reformation
by Russ Bellant
October 28, 2008
Sarah Palin has been associated all her adult life with churches and political groups that are way out of the theological and political mainstream. Her extreme policy views as Governor reflect this background and raise questions about what kind of vice president John McCain seeks to have voters endorse.
It has been widely reported that McCain barely knew Palin and his team never fully evaluated her to determine her fitness to be vice president.
A recent report in The Anchorage Daily News stated that evangelist Franklin Graham made the Palin connection to McCain, not Republican professionals. Graham, the once-estranged son of Billy Graham, has strong ties to the various strands of the religious rightwing. He met with McCain on June 30 at his headquarters in Boone, North Carolina, after which Graham issued a statement praising McCain’s "personal faith" and prayed for "God’s will to be done in this upcoming election."
The Daily News concluded that "subsequent events suggest that the price of support for McCain by the fundamentalist Christian leadership would be a vice presidential candidate of their liking. Governor Palin was a logical choice for Franklin Graham, whose ties to Alaska include a palatial, by Alaska bush standards, second home in Port Alsworth, a community that has served as a retreat for Christian fundamentalist leaders."
Graham has been the keynote speaker at Palin’s annual prayer breakfasts for the last two years. When she fired the Public Safety Director over what is being investigated as a family matter, few noticed that she hired a local police chief, Chuck Kopp, who was "a rising star in Alaska’s Christian conservative movement," according to the Daily News. He was a frequent speaker at religious and "patriotic" gatherings, but perhaps more significantly he was a director of a Bible training camp in Port Alsworth primarily funded by Graham.
Those and other ties give credence to Graham’s support for Palin. When her nomination was ratified at the Republican convention, Graham called to congratulate her through the cell phone of Rev. Jerry Prevo, a Republican delegate who is considered the leader of Alaska’s evangelical movement, according to the Washington Post. He is also on the board of directors of Graham’s charity, Samaritan’s Purse.
A recent report in the New Yorker stated that conservative writers around the National Review and the Weekly Standard had met with Palin in 2007 and some had advocated for her.
The Nation reported that she had been vetted by the secretive Council for National Policy just before the convention, but that meeting may have been more of a ratification of the McCain selection. The Council is composed of several hundred of the foremost leaders and funders of the ultraconservative right wing, including billionaires from the Amway families, the Prince families ( the Blackwater mercenary operations in Iraq ), as well as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Phyllis Schlafly and the late Jerry Falwell.
While McCain may have trusted Graham to help him out of the political decline he was experiencing at the time he named Palin as his vice presidential pick, he would have benefited by having a thorough review of her character before he took the plunge with her name.
McCain would have found that she supported Ron Paul, not himself, in the Republican primaries; that she tried to ban books not to her liking; that her amateurish land deals ( building on land that the city did not own ) put Wasilla in deep debt; she also tried to fire people that disagreed with her or crossed her family. He would have found that she was active in churches that are part of a movement that excoriates major Christian denominations while building a movement to take dominion over society. He would have found a Governor who flirts in a fringe rightwing pro militia political party that wants Alaska to secede from the United States.
There is much, much more. Hunter Thompson is with us no more, but his headline term, "fear and loathing" remains his legacy.
READ THE ENTIRE ITEM BEFORE YOU VOTE.
_______UPDATE________
Earlier, Rolling Stone did an incisive review of John McCain -- who he's been and who he is, posted about on Crabgrass, here. This item takes the same detailed approach in examining the GOP candidate for vice president. I think voters should read both items together, and decide whether they or the nation should stomach a McCain-Palin presidency. To me it is unpalatable. They stink. Together and individually.
_____FURTHER UPDATE______
Another voice heard from, an Oct. 29, item, here, about the Council for National Policy [probably, not for certain] and their plans for the GOP future of their dreams [and prayers?] It is not my beautiful dream. Have a look, and the same site has an item on Bachmann and Musgrave, here.