For Scandal Rich John McCain, Keating Five Is Just The Tip Of The Iceberg

Above is the Barack Obama 13 minute trailer re: John McCain’s Keating Five involvement. And as extensive as this video is, HAN has discovered that McCain has quite a few more skeleton’s in his double wide walk-in closet.

From The Nation magazine: McCain’s Kremlin Ties:

“Yet despite McCain’s tough talk, behind the scenes his top advisers have cultivated deep ties with Russia’s oligarchy–indeed, they have promoted the Kremlin’s geopolitical and economic interests, as well as some of its most unsavory business figures, through greedy cynicism and geopolitical stupor. The most notable example is the tale of how McCain and his campaign manager, Rick Davis, advanced what became a key victory for the Kremlin: gaining control over the small but strategically important country of Montenegro.”

The Nation’s entire article appears here.

The following names are directly tied to McCain’s behind the scenes dealings: Rick Davis (McCain campaign manager who until August was paid $15,000/month from Freddie Mac ostensibly for access), Oleg Derpaska (had his US visa revoked after Bob Dole helped him procure one) and Raffaello Follieri (if you watched actor Anne Hathaway’s SNL intro last Saturday, you heard her disavow their former relationship). The articles here and here and here and here detail their connections to John McCain. McCain’s been keeping very busy.

With all this damaging information waiting to blow up his campaign, why John McCain has given permission to raise flat and already proven false charges against Obama is beyond comprehension.

And we haven’t even begun rummaging through Governor Palin’s closet. Yet.

HAN

Sarah Palin: Is She *Masquerading As A Republican?

The above video is from a meeting with Alaskan Independence Party (AIP) Vice Chairman North, Dexter Clark. 

AIP is a secessionist organization. Some have described it as fringe, though AIP have elected both an Alaskan governor, Walter HIckel, and Lt. governor, Jack Coghil.  HIckel’s views are mentioned here. HIckel backed Palin in her 2006 run for governor.

(An aside: from the Anchorage Daily News: “…complaints arose when [as mayor] Palin hired a public works director with no engineering background, Cindy Roberts, who had been a Commerce Department official in the administration for former Gov. Wally Hickel. The wife of longtime Hickel aide Malcolm Roberts, she lasted a year in the job.”).

In the above video Clark says that Sarah Palin is a former AIP member and as governor should be sympathetic to the secession cause.

The AIP platform is here. There are plenty of articles on the net about Palin’s ties to AIP, here and here and here. Oh, and (HAN bites bottom lip, hard) here.

Clark’s following statement is found at 6:00.

Clark: “Our current governor, who I mentioned at the last conference, the one we were hoping would get elected… Sarah Palin… did get elected, there’s a joke… she’s a pretty good-looking gal… there’s a joke goes around…that we’re the coldest state with the hottest governor…(room laughter). And there’s a lot of talk about her moving up… she was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town, that was a non-partisan job. But you get along to go along. She eventually joined the Republican Party where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics and, uh, got well…I won’t go into that. Uh, she also has about an 80% approval rating and is pretty well sympathetic because of her, her former membership.” 

Clark complains about Alaska’s meager share of Big Oil profits -12.5% – adding that sharecroppers received more money from landowners. He says that Alaskans are “fed up.”   

Clark’s following statement is found at 8:26.

Clark talks about *masquerading inside political parties in order to win elections: “I think Ron Paul has kind of proven that …and he’s a dyed in the wool Libertarian. I mean he came to Alaska and spoke as a Libertarian and he put the Republican label on to get elected. That’s all there is to it. And anyone in your organization should be using that same practice….you should infiltrate, I know that  the Christian Exodus is in favor of it, The Free State Movement is in favor of it. I don’t know if they even care which party it is. Whichever party you seem in that area you can get something done…get into that poilitical party even though, it does have its problems right now… that is one of the only avenues and when you get a few people  on a city council or county board you can have some effect………………… I kind of digressed there a little bit….”

Imagine Republican/media response if Barack Obama was a former member of a group inciting Party infiltration by way of *masquerade, in addition to state secession. Just imagine the frenzy.

Why are media outlets mum on this issue?

HAN

McOops-Palin Campaign Begins (this is going to be fuuun…!)

The ‘Sarah is not the real mother’ rumor had HAN guffawing all the weekend!

The rumor was ignited by what seemed to be a rather ridiculous story of events as provided by Palin. While in Texas for a conference, Palin pregnant and leaking amniotic fluid, gave a 30 minute speech before hopping aboard a plane for a flight back to Alaska… via Seattle. After reaching Alaska she drove past a larger, better equipped hospital, choosing, instead, to drive to a smaller hospital some 45 minutes away.

Her doctor, who is a family doctor and not an OB, induced delivery. Three days later, Lady Govinator was back on the job.

The theory is that Palin was not in pre-delivery distress and was not, in fact, preggo. The theory goes that Palin needed to get back home in a hurry so that she could be at her daughter’s side when the baby was delivered.

Today, to short-circuit that rumor, the McOops/Palin Campaign decided to take the heat off Candidate Palin by “tossing the kid under the bus” with their announcement that Bristol is pregnant and therefore, (nah, nah, nah, nah!) could not be Trig’s mom.

Ruuhr!

Dearest Mommy?

Palin was introduced to the nation as a tough gamer and hunter. But, is she really? This perverse move may take Mommie Bunyan out of the fire, but it tosses Child Bristol into the proverbial frying pan. 

These Republican Masters Of Manipulation couldn’t have found a better, more dignified time or way of announcing that Bristol, age 17?, had premarital sex more than likely against her fundie mom’s wishes and got pregnant? 

Maybe the governor is bear skin tough, apparently she’s not tough enough for the game of politics.

Yikes!

HAN couldn’t help but tiptoe over to the conservative blogs to witness them falling all over themselves pretending how ‘out of wedlock babies are no big deal’ and after all ’she’s getting married…soon!’  They also added how ‘Obama’s smoked weed.’ A few are wanting to start plans for a Bristol baby shower suggesting that the RNC be its headquarters. (HAN can tell those posters know nothing about politics). They tossed in a few reminders of how ‘progressives are supposed to be caring people’… that translates into ‘progressives ought not talk about this.’ Yeah, right!

HAN agrees that there’s nothing wrong with having babies out of wed-lock. We think many, if not most, progressives know this. Sex is a natural act. Sometimes we have babies when we just want intimacy or fun.

What IS wrong is when well-meaning, albeit fearful people push a policy of ignorance and abstinence over one of information and birth control… which the fundies are all too proud of doing.

All the best to Bristol, her fiance and their growing family.

* While preparing this post, HAN learned that this story may not be over… not just yet. 

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Georgia Admits To Dropping Cluster Bombs

Georgia has admitted to dropping cluster bombs on break away province South Ossetia.  Human Rights Watch in a story dated August 15, 2008 cited Russia as having dropped cluster bombs in populated areas of Georgia. The Georgia cluster bombs are said to US made. HAN is looking for citation now. 

HAN

Never Have To Say You’re Sorry

Years ago when I was 8 years old my sister started attending a college in the south. We were not close, my sister and I, I guess because of the wide gap in our ages. Don’t really recall any long chats with her about anything in particular. My immature actions were mostly seen by her as an annoying bug buzzing around her head. However, every now and then she’d deign me with a dose or two of her wisdom that, quite honestly, left me more confused than enlightened. She’d tell me things such as: “a person’s shoes will tell you a great deal about who that person is. Always look at a person’s shoes.” She also taught me how to properly hold a knife and fork “European style” and how to properly set the dinner table; niceties that my divorced, raising four children alone, mother showed no interest in doing. Those are sisterly lessons for which I am still quite grateful, for Mom was busy getting her own college degree too, at the same time she was working. Other bits of her wisdom shared with me during those early years have long vanished or been vanquished from my memory as I replaced her wisdom with my own. All… save one. A memory she gave me during a talk we had Christmas Eve still remains etched on my brain.

She’d only been attending college in the south for a semester and was home for Christmas break. On Christmas Eve, mom announced that she’d be going on last minute holiday errands leaving me with my sister – as usual – in charge of… me. I’d begged mom to take me shopping with her because the relative peace I’d felt (there was still a brother to deal with) while my sister was away at school had disappeared with the start of her vacation. When she came home that Christmas, as in the past, my sister was hostile and distant towards me. Maybe even moreso.

Mom, however, needed to run Christmas errands and I would only slow her down. “Stay home and catch up with your sister,” mom insisted. Mom didn’t know about the probably long-term psychological damage I was suffering at my sister’s hands with constant taunts of being too skinny, “skinny legs and all,” she’d rant at me from out of nowhere or grill me with the incessant question of “why are you so anti-social?” because I liked to squirrel away in my bedroom reading books or building hundred pieces jigsaw puzzles.

This day however, was different. After mom left the house, my sister pulled me to the sofa and asked me to sit down. I was puzzled by her kind tone towards me, but knew better than to let my guard down. I was immediately taken aback as tears flowed rapidly from her eyes, gushing down her cheeks and onto her favorite pink ruffled blouse. I was taken aback because this was one tough chick. Years earlier, I had heard her verbally break a neighbor lady into itty- bitty pieces when this neighbor mistakenly thought she could tell our brother, older than me, though younger than our sister, what to do in the absence of our mom, who was at work. So scared was I that my sister was going to give this adult a merciless beatdown that I ran away to keep clear of the altercation and the burden of being an eyewitness, thereby embarrassing the neighbor no further.

But now here my sister was, crying in front of me, the pesky bug. They were two tough women, my mother and my sister. I had never seen my mother cry and my sister definitely took after our mother. The story she told me was devastating to my sister.

My sister told me that she shared a suite with three other girls in an all women’s dormitory. The suite contained a sleeping area, a small sitting area and a toilet. The showers were common, located down the hall. One suite mate had been fooling around with a boy becoming pregnant. The roommate had not told her parents though, according to my sister, everyone in the dormitory seemed to know. The girl was quite naturally fearful of her parents reaction. She also refused to go to a doctor. One night after the roommate experienced quite severe pains she delivered a baby-stillborn. Not knowing what to do she took the baby into the bathroom where she attempted to flush it down the toilet. My sister said that the baby’s head would not fit down the narrow hole of the toilet and so just sat there…motionless. No one one knew what to do and so the baby lay in the toilet as a parade of dorm mates came through to see the sight for themselves.

“Don’t be bad with boys and let them get you into trouble,” she intoned to me with a solemnity that I didn’t understand at the time was a precursor to her more mature years.

I was too young to know what it meant to be bad with boys, or being pregnant, but the image of that undeveloped baby inside that toilet remains in my head to this day. I never did ask my sister how they eventually removed the baby from the toilet or what happened to the baby’s mother. Or if I did ask, I imagine I was too traumatized by her words to retain that bit of information.

I hope that we are not so angry with each other over this election process that we can’t see the forest for the trees. The conservative-leaning Supreme Court is slowly chipping away at Roe v Wade and a woman’s right to choose her own destiny. And no matter how we may personally feel about abortions we have to give our daughters better alternatives than shyster back-street doctors, self-induced expulsions or any of the myriad of horrible methods women resort to out of desperation and/or frustration.

Also, we must consider the hundreds of soldiers who have wittingly or not so wittingly put their life on the line to “protect this country in addition to the innocent civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq and possibly Iran who did nothing wrong other being born in lands of milk and honey. I’m sure you can think of other pressing issues our country faces.

My sister continued to torment me for a few more years until she started her own family. With a little time and a lot of space I was able to put my childhood in perspective eventually realizing the better, deeper side of her. My sister never again mentioned to me the shock of her freshman year experience. Not even as adults have we dared broach the topic.

Here’s hoping that we elect a Democrat for president (not the real John McCain) who will uphold our values and principles. Here’s hoping that we never have to say we’re sorry to more innocents in this world because in the rawness of our emotions we made the wrong choice.

Let’s hang onto the the notion that liberal/progressives have concern for the welfare of others. That’s what love means.

Roller Coaster Ride

The last couple of weeks have been heavenly for the MSM who rather fancy the increased audience they get from exposing juicy and sordid stories of some of our country’s most powerful citizens.  Things began slowly with the resignation of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer after the revelation of his illicit relationship with a 22 yo hooker. Weaving in and out of the Spitzer story were snippets of the passionate words of Senator Obama’s erudite preacher, shocking the sensibilities of some segments of the American populace. Tales of the tapes were threatening to derail his front-runner status.  Just as Senator Clinton’s poll numbers were beginning to rise from Obama’s misfortune we learned that the Bosnian bullet-dodging story she’d told over the last several months was not as dramatic as she’d claimed…. there were no bullets to dodge.  Still, a story slowly coming to a boil in the background concerned Detroit’s Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick who, though a lawyer, is alleged to have lied under oath in an attempt to conceal a love affair with his chief of staff. Sound slightly familiar?  Wow. We need to catch our breath. It’s as though the very gates of hell were thrown open. Who would survive? How would they survive? Lots of apologies to be had.   edit: Thanks to all who are posting.  HAN

Behold… All Things Are New Again!

Each spring, tourists flock to Washington DC to witness the cherry trees bloom. These trees, a gift from Japan, line the Tidal Basin in Washington DC adding a dazzling spectacle of pink and white beauty to the nation’s capital. For Americans the yearly cherry blossoms mark the arrival of spring and reflects to the country the yearly call to make all things new again.

To the Japanese culture the cherry tree represents transition as well as the delicacy and immediacy of life. For in a just a brief span of two weeks, the cherry tree opens one of the world’s most alluring flowers before falling to the ground… after which time the delicate blossoms are swiftly swept away by wind or rain. During this short blossoming period the Japanese gather together to watch the cherry trees: A lifetime of living in practically the blink of an eye reminding them- subtly- of how precious a thing life is… how time is not to be wasted, but cherished.

 

“Something is going on,” the television pundits say almost daily. “People are seeking change.” We agree. There is something going on.

Healing A Nation is a blog for those of us who are compelled by the hurried passage of time to make a healing change in our lives and in the lives of others. Part of healing change means to admit and then move beyond past mistakes… wiping the slate clean so that we have a clear conscious for moving forward without baggage or bad karma or guilt- or whatever else we might call it- that’s weighing us down. It’s essential to correct the past before stepping bravely into the future, guilt-free.

 

How many of us have ever said to ourselves, “if he’d only say he’s sorry I could forgive him,” or have uttered these words in despair,” I was so mean to her in high school, if I ever get a chance to say I’m sorry…?”

Well, here’s your chance to set the record straight. You can sign your name or use this site anonymously, if you like. However, please protect the privacy of others and do not use anyone’s full name in your post. (Try using nicknames or other unique identifiers). All full names, whether fictional or not, will be removed. Otherwise you can describe the circumstance as fully as you’d like so that the offended party will recognize the circumstance.

 

Let’s take this opportunity to heal a nation and change the world…one person at a time beginning with ourselves.

Sí, se puede means yes we can…change.

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