TO THE ORIGINAL SOURCE
SARAH PALIN AND WHO'S REALLY 'PALLING AROUND WITH TERRORISTS'
Written by One People's Project
Saturday, 04 October 2008
See this picture? It is of Gov. Sarah Palin when she was just a mere member of the Wasilla, Alaska City Council back in '95. If you click on it and enlarge the picture, you will notice she has her hands on a bit of literature. It is actually an article from the New American - a magazine published by the John Birch Society.
Now while we were here in Philly taking in a free concert for Sen. Barack Obama by Bruce Springsteen, she was in Colorado attacking Obama for, in her words, "palling around with terrorists". This is that old chestnut that has been bandied about among the conservatives smear circles because at one time Obama served on a charity board with Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers. Now we understand what the deal is.
Gov. Palin is still reeling from the less-than-stellar performance during her debate with Sen. Joe Biden, and she is looking for anything - ANYTHING - to get back in the good graces of the McCain campaign. She has fast become an albatross around the neck of the campaign and we have exactly one month before The Election That Changes Everything, so she has to do a Hail Mary like this. The problem is this picture is out there, and it reminds people of Palin's own dubious political connections. In addition to this photo, we have other interesting things, like her quoting during her convention acceptance speech of a John Birch Society member who once said that it was "clearly the bounden duty of all intelligent Americans to proclaim and practice bigotry", her husband's association with a political party that wants Alaska to secede from the Union, not to mention her own support for the group from as recent as this year when she gave the group a videotaped welcome for their conference, and her expressed sentiment that fascist congressman Ron Paul is "cool". So if she wants to get on Barack Obama's case, she should be warned - we have a hell of a lot more on her to throw at her than she does on Obama. For good measure, we include an article about this JBS connection.
AOL.com
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (Oct. 4) - Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Saturday accused Democrat Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists" because of an old association with a former '60s radical, stepping up an effort to portray Obama as unacceptable to American voters.
Palin's reference was to Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the group the Weather Underground. Its members took credit for bombings, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol, during the Vietnam War era. Obama, who was a child when the group was active, served on a charity board with Ayers several years ago and has denounced his radical views and activities.
The Republican campaign, falling behind Obama in polls, plans to make attacks on Obama's character a centerpiece of candidate John McCain's message in the final weeks of the presidential race.
Palin told a group of donors at a private airport, "Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." She also said, "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."
The Obama campaign called Palin's remarks offensive but not surprising in light of news stories detailing the campaign's come-from-behind offensive.
"What's clear is that John McCain and Sarah Palin would rather spend their time tearing down Barack Obama than laying out a plan to build up our economy," Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan said in a statement.
Palin's remark about Obama "palling around with terrorists" comes as e-mails circulate on the Internet with suggestions that the Democratic candidate is secretly a radical, foreign-born Muslim with designs against the U.S. — even though Obama is a native of Hawaii, a Christian and has no connections to Muslim extremists.
Palin, Alaska's governor, said that donors on a greeting line had encouraged her and McCain to get tougher on Obama. She said an aide then advised her, "Sarah, the gloves are off, the heels are on, go get to them."
The escalated effort to attack Obama's character dovetails with TV ads by outside groups questioning Obama's ties to Ayers, convicted former Obama fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko and Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Early Signs Of Sarah Palin's Radical Agenda?
BAGnewsNotes
Here is a biographical and personality insight one would only turn up through a more careful examination of political pictures.
Last week, the NYT published a widely-read story about the way Sarah Palin treated her friends and foes as the Wasilla mayor. The photo leading the article, supplied by the Heath family, shows Palin flanked by the council in 1998, two years into her mayoral tenure. If you scroll down, however, the article offers a second photo, also supplied by the family, of Palin when she was still a Wasilla councilwoman. (Although undated, she was a city council member from '92 - '96.) The photo is one of those easy-to-pass-by, standard sitting-at-your-desk shots in front of your name plate.
The picture, however, is also one of those published by The Times you are invited to click to enlarge.
Doing so, what you can suddenly make out quite clearly is what Palin chose to be photographed attending to, which is a newsletter with a photo of a guy in a suit, the page headlined with the title: "Con-Con Call." A "con-con" call, if (like me) you're not versed in government-speak, is a call for a constitutional convention, intended to either revise or completely rewrite the constitution of a state or the federal government.
The point is, and what the photo telegraphs is that, even at this early stage of her local career, Palin is revealing herself as an activist officeholder with not just ambitious, but much larger and radical notions.
Update: 8:55 pm PST -- Thanks to a BNN reader for identifying the article by Don Fotheringham ("Saving the Constitution: unbeknownst to most people, ten years ago the United States nearly had its Constitution rewritten under the guise of bringing the federal government to heel") published in the September 19, 2005 issue of American Opinion Magazine. American Opinion was the official publication of the John Birch Society.
The article outlines the effort by the Birch Society to oppose constitutional conventions where, as Fotheringham writes, "demagogues, internationalists, and think-tank reformers could get their hands on it." Totheringham explains how this and previous articles on the subject had been published or copied and distributed widely by the Birch Society to state government officials across the country to expose:
... the groups bent on a federal convention, which was now being promoted under almost any wishful pretext, such as term limits, the right to life, school prayer, anti-flag burning, and lately, same-sex "marriage."
In the article, Fotheringham identifies himself as the author of the article Palin is holding, published in March 1995 in The New American, also a John Birch publication and the bi-weekly replacement of American Opinion. The magazine features Utah's Governor Leavitt on the cover, as Leavitt was spearheading a legislative attempt in Utah to approve an constitutional convention in favor of a federal balanced budget amendment. (Fotheringham describes how 32 of the necessary 34 states had already signed on.)
With a sense of urgency, 100,000 reprints of the article were made and distributed even before the actual magazine was printed. Fotheringham goes on to explain how the efforts of the Birch society were instrumental in successfully blocking the effort to convene a constitutional convention to approve a balanced budget amendment, or anything else.
In light of this additional information and research, it is important for me to state that possession of this article doesn't, in itself, suggest Sarah Palin was an advocate for any particular agenda. Certainly, her posing with it could just as simply mean she was one of the thousands of state elected officials who were in receipt of this reprint distributed by the John Birch Society.
On the other hand, David Neiwert over at FDL examines the photo from the standpoint of the Palins attendance at Alaskan Independence Party gatherings; the couple's befriending of AIP leadership; and Todd's membership in the organization. Given the John Birch Society's sympathy for militias and Todd's overlapping notion of the government as "illegitimate," Neiwert sees ample possibility the Palins had more than a casual interest in the Birch society and its political philosophy. Jed Report raises similar questions.
Update 2: 9/19. 9:41 am PST: Of course, it doesn't help the argument that the visual association here is a completely innocent one after Palin anonymously quoted the right wing reactionary Westbrook Pegler in her RNC acceptance speech. Pegler was primarily known with his attacks on government power, and his specific hatred for Roosevelt who he characterized as a dictator. Pegler himself was a writer for the JBS publication, American Opinion, before being kicked out of the society in 1964 for his anti-semitic views.
Update 3: 9/19/ 1:28 pm PST: A commenter at Huffington raises an interesting point. Although the John Birch Society went out of its way to distribute this article to state elected officials with voting authority in the case of a constitutional convention vote, it is much less likely Palin would have been on such a distribution list as a member of a local city council.
Update 4: 10/4/08: David Neiwert has been interviewing people in Wasilla about Palin's past. Her connection with the far-right fringe makes him even more convinced the publication didn't just cross her desk by accident.
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