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"I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." ~ Joe Vogler

Back in late August and early September - following news of the Palin VP selection and reports of her connections to the AIP (Alaska Independence Party) - I mentioned briefly in comments AIP's connections to Howard Phillips and the US Taxpayers Party... including anti-democratic Christian Reconstuctionist/Dominionist (kissing cousins to the racist, sometimes neo-Nazi, Christian Identity movement) ideological undercurrents arcing those conncections.

So, now, here we go... this covers in greater detail some of what I was referring to back then and more - from Max Blumenthal and Dave Neiwert writing at Salon, Meet Sarah Palin’s radical right-wing pals

The AIP was born of the vision of “Old Joe” Vogler, a hard-bitten former gold miner who hated the government of the United States almost as much as he hated wolves and environmentalists.

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Vogler made another failed run for the governor’s mansion in 1986. But the AIP’s fortunes shifted suddenly four years later when Vogler convinced Richard Nixon’s former interior secretary, Wally Hickel, to run for governor under his party’s banner. Hickel coasted to victory, outflanking a moderate Republican and a centrist Democrat. An archconservative Republican running under the AIP candidate, Jack Coghill, was elected lieutenant governor.

Hickel’s subsequent failure as governor to press for a vote on Alaskan independence rankled Old Joe. With sponsorship from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Vogler was scheduled to present his case for Alaskan secession before the United Nations General Assembly in the late spring of 1993. But before he could, Old Joe’s long, strange political career ended tragically that May when he was murdered by a fellow secessionist.

Hickel rejoined the Republican Party the year after Vogler’s death and didn’t run for reelection. Lt. Gov. Coghill’s campaign to succeed him as the AIP candidate for governor ended in disaster; he peeled away just enough votes from the Republican, Jim Campbell, to throw the gubernatorial election to Democrat Tony Knowles.

Despite the disaster, Coghill hung on as AIP chairman for three more years. When he was asked to resign in 1997, Mark Chryson replaced him. Chryson pursued a dual policy of cozying up to secessionist and right-wing groups in Alaska and elsewhere while also attempting to replicate the AIP’s success with Hickel in infiltrating the mainstream.

[...]

When Palin ran for governor in 2006, marketing herself as a fresh-faced reformer determined to crush the GOP’s ossified power structure, she made certain to appear at the AIP’s state convention. To burnish her maverick image, she also tapped one-time AIP member and born-again Republican Walter Hickel as her campaign co-chair. Hickel barnstormed the state for Palin, hailing her support for an “all-Alaska” liquefied gas pipeline, a project first promoted in 2002 by an AIP gubernatorial candidate named Nels Anderson. When Palin delivered her victory speech on election night, Hickel stood beaming by her side. “I made her governor,” he boasted afterward. Two years later, Hickel has endorsed Palin’s bid for vice president.

Just months before Palin burst onto the national stage as McCain’s vice-presidential nominee, she delivered a videotaped address to the AIP’s annual convention. Her message was scrupulously free of secessionist rhetoric, but complementary nonetheless. “I share your party’s vision of upholding the Constitution of our great state,” Palin told the assembly of AIP delegates. “My administration remains focused on reining in government growth so individual liberty can expand. I know you agree with that … Keep up the good work and God bless you.”

And that doesn't even include John McCain's connections to WACL which you can read more about (WACL and stuff that is) back there here (Jan 2005), at that link there... or whatever, ya know... also... what i mean. Doggoneit.

'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Tuesday October 7, 2008

OLBERMANN: The U.S. Council for World Freedom, a private group that more than 20 years ago tried to help overthrow the elected government of Nicaragua, linked to the Iran-Contra scandal, to right-wing death squads, to former Nazi collaborators, to funding the rebels in Afghanistan who sort of became the Taliban and linked to John McCain? What was the then congressman's name doing on its letterhead and what was he doing in its organization? Kind of a problem the night of a presidential debate.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

OLBERMANN: Yesterday, it was Sarah Palin's association with secessionist and a domestic terrorist-turned preacher in Kenya. Today, it's John McCain's haunting connection to a man named John Singlaub, an organization tied to Latin American right-wing death squads of the 80s and even the founding of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

[...]

On Sunday, Democratic strategists, Paul Begala reminded us that McCain sat on the board of the U.S. Council for World Freedom, the local neighborhood chapter of the world anti-communist league. McCain joining in 1982 after the anti-defamation league called it, "a gathering place for racists and anti-Semites" with links to Nazi collaborators and right-wing death squads.

[...]

John McCain publicly claimed he left that group because of its activities but the "Associated Press" reports his resignation letter referred only to his lack of time to be involved in those activities. He reportedly attended a 1985 event and the group still used his name on its letterhead until at least, 1985. "Huffington Post" reports it was 1986.

I'm sure Pentagon media embed John Roberts at CNN and Dippidy Doo Showroom Dummy correspondent Contessa Brewer at MSNBC will be all over it all tomorrow morning.

Fer shur. You betcha'.

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Eric Alterman (The Nation):

During the 1980 presidential campaign, Republicans latched onto a theory that enjoyed virtually no support among professional economists: so-called "supply-side" economics. Its promoters were a discredited economist named Arthur Laffer and a self-described "wild man" editorialist at the Wall Street Journal named Jude Wanniski. Laffer had drawn up the doctrine on the back of a napkin, and Wanniski promoted it in the Journal's editorial pages before selling it to Jack Kemp, who made it a condition of his withdrawal from the Republican race that the nominee, Ronald Reagan, embrace it as well. Other than in a few Journal editorials, the only discussion of this notion occurred in two pieces published in the neoconservative policy journal The Public Interest, co-edited by Irving Kristol; one was by Wanniski, the other by Kemp aide Paul Craig Roberts. Before Wanniski's "The Mundell-Laffer Hypothesis: A New View of the World Economy" appeared there, neither Laffer nor Robert Mundell, a Canadian economist who had influenced Laffer, was even aware that they had fashioned a "hypothesis" together. Next thing you knew, Reagan was president, supply-side was in place and government deficits took off for outer space.

[...]

McCain and Palin are losing to Obama and Biden, thank God. But even the possibility that the most powerful nation on earth is in danger of electing yet another president characterized by dishonesty, belligerence, ideological obsession and personal recklessness--coupled with a vice president whose life experience makes her more appropriate for a casting session of Desperate Housewives than a cabinet meeting--gives one pause when considering the future of this country, regardless of whether we manage to avoid this catastrophe on election day. If providence smiles upon us, and working-class whites in Ohio, Michigan and Virginia are willing to help elect America's first nonwhite president--a brilliant and inspiring one at that--then perhaps we can skip the tragedy this time around. Lord knows, we are already living the farce.

Read in full: Reality Bites

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S. 2280 [109th]: STOP FRAUD Act

Introduced Feb 14, 2006 --- Summary:

Stopping Transactions which Operate to Promote Fraud, Risk, and Underdevelopment Act or the STOP FRAUD Act - Amends federal criminal law to make it unlawful for any mortgage professional (as defined by this Act) to execute, or attempt to execute, a scheme or artifice to: (1) defraud any natural person or financial institution in connection with the offer of consumer credit secured by an interest in real property, or in personal property used or expected to be used as a principal dwelling; or (2) falsely obtain any money or property from a natural person in connection with an extension of consumer credit secured by an interest in real property, or in personal property used or expected to be used as the principal dwelling of such natural person.

Provides for: (1) fines and/or imprisonment for violations of such provisions; and (2) a private right of action.

Includes within the definition of "financial institution" for specified federal monetary transaction provisions the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae), the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), mortgage appraisers, real estate accountants, real estate attorneys, real estate brokers, mortgage underwriters, mortgage processors, mortgage settlement and title companies, mortgage brokers, mortgage loan originators, and any other mortgage professional engaged in the mortgage industry.

Amends the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 to authorize the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to provide tenants, homeowners, and other consumers with mortgage fraud counseling.

[bill] Sponsor: Sen. Barack Obama [D-IL]
[bill] Full Text

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Ralph Stanley endorses Obama.





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