A letter from a Palin neighbor

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DevilKitty100 · #26 Post by **DevilKitty100** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 7:19 pm

Beebs52 wrote:It's amazing. It has just been proven that Ms. Kilkenny wrote a letter! Whoo hooo!

Bless her heart. She probably got voted down as PTA Vice President.

I strongly suspect she's a lawyer. One million eighty-seven words to say exactly nothing.

Beebs52 · #27 Post by **Beebs52** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 7:24 pm

DevilKitty100 wrote:
Beebs52 wrote:It's amazing. It has just been proven that Ms. Kilkenny wrote a letter! Whoo hooo!

Bless her heart. She probably got voted down as PTA Vice President.
I strongly suspect she's a lawyer. One million eighty-seven words to say exactly nothing.

You mean spirited kitteh, you.

Spock · #28 Post by **Spock** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 7:34 pm

Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team

Most likely, the stories are still being circulated by those individuals or their parents -who thought they (their daughter) should have been point guard and are still mad about it. Yes, in small towns that S _ _T still resonates 20 + years later.

elwoodblues · #29 Post by **elwoodblues** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 7:52 pm

Spock wrote:
Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team
Most likely, the stories are still being circulated by those individuals or their parents -who thought they (their daughter) should have been point guard and are still mad about it. Yes, in small towns that S _ _T still resonates 20 + years later.

Is there an H, Pat?

ne1410s · #30 Post by **ne1410s** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 8:02 pm

sss:

Here's a deconstruction of the email from an anti-Obama web site.

"Somebody stole my shoes. I'm going to amputate my legs."

thguy65 · #31 Post by **thguy65** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 10:36 pm

Anne Kilkenny was interviewed on NPR's "All Things Considered" Friday night about the letter.

silvercamaro · #32 Post by **silvercamaro** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 10:56 pm

thguy65 wrote:Anne Kilkenny was interviewed on NPR's "All Things Considered" Friday night about the letter.

Thank you for the NPR link. There wasn't enough about her to help me determine whether she is the only sane person in Wasilla, or if she may have complaints about everyone she knows, but it seemed that she was clearly enjoying her own new-found attention.

silverscreenselect · #33 Post by **silverscreenselect** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:10 am

An article from the Anchorage Daily News written while Palin was running for governor:

http://dwb.adn.com/news/politics/story/ ... 1037c.html

Key points here. Wasilla was like a lot of small towns when she took over, run more like a neighborhood community association than a city. She improved the police department and other city amenities to the extent that businesses wanted to be annexed in the city to qualify for those amenities despite the high sales tax.

A sales tax, by itself, is a highly regressive tax, which is why I'm not a fan of the "fair" tax or high state sales taxes in general. However, municipal sales taxes have the effect of taxing commuters, tourists, and shoppers, who usually use municipal services heavily on a frequent basis without paying their fair share, and giving longtime property owners a break. The city of Atlanta has a high sales tax, as do a lot of Democratic run municipalities.

The sports complex may not be breaking even on a solely fiscal basis, but if you add the number of people who spend money in the city because they come there to visit the sports complex, it's a different story.

Palin was elected mayor because a majority of the voters wanted to expand the city, and she did so effectively. Whether that was the right decision from an aesthetic standpoint is a matter of question, but she certainly did so effectiely and efficiently, unlike a lot of other small town mayors in many states whose abilities did not match their grandiose ideas.

The "expansion" of city government that her critics snidely accuse her of seems largely to be an expansion of the police, road, sewer and similar infrastructure that are needed to support a growing, as opposed to a stagnant, community.

The practice of borrowing money to pay for long term capital projects instead of paying for them with cash on hand is universally accepted among businesses and municipalities. Lots of businesses issue long term bonds even while they are paying current dividends to stockholders. The idea is that since it will take years to pay the bills for a major road project, by funding now through bonds, you are assured that the money will be there as the project is completed. If you try to fund the project through current revenues over a multi-year period, and net revenues go down due to economic hardship or emergencies requiring additional expenditure of funds, then you either have to abandon the project, try to make an emergency tax raise (sure to be politically unpopular and possibly impossible in bad times) or do some drastic spending slashing somewhere else.

For this reason, most states and municipalities have two revenue and expense funds, a current and a long term, and keep separate accounting records on them.

What is truly disturbing about all this is that this email, which at best was written by a complete unknown who has completely failed to document the source of her accusations, and at worst is a hatchet piece ghost written by an Obama operative is published not just on left wing blogs but in the New York Times as gospel truth, without making any attempt to document or provide context for the charges.

Would the Times and other media have circulated a similar email from a longtime "neighbor" of Barack Obama containing similarly unsubstantiated charges? Of course not.

Read All the President's Men sometime to see how real investigative journalism works. Time after time, Woodward and Bernstein wanted to rush a story into print without proper verification and they were stopped by Ben Bradlee, who felt that it was far more important to get the story right than to get it in print fast. If Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee tried to adopt today's Palin standards, all Nixon would have had to do was rebut one or two of their accusations and then he could have skated on the whole matter, labelling it a witch hunt to get him.

The ironic thing about all this is that the public, in large numbers, is seeing through all this garbage that what passes for the press (the same press that refuses over and over again to properly investigate and report Obama's ties to Ayers, Rezko, Auichi, Khalidi, Wright, Pfleger, and company) is trying to pawn off on the public and her popularity keeps going up.

wintergreen48 · #34 Post by **wintergreen48** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 8:45 am

thguy65 wrote:Anne Kilkenny was interviewed on NPR's "All Things Considered" Friday night about the letter.

Good to know, but unfortunately I missed it. Did they run the piece on Kilkenny before, or after, they ran the piece on the neighbor who had good things to say about Palin?

Not that NPR ever has an agenda, of course.

Well, at least, unlike The Atlantic, NPR has not yet demanded that Palin release her OB/GYN records to prove that she is the mother of all of her children.

PlacentiaSoccerMom · #35 Post by **PlacentiaSoccerMom** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 9:21 am

While Sarah was mayor of Wasilla, she tried to fire our highly respected city librarian because the librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the city librarian and against Palin's attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

This, if true, really bothers me. Since I volunteer in the library, I know all about parents who try to ban books. I recall one parent trying to have all of the Halloween books removed because they were "Satanic" and she complained to the principal about the librarian, who wouldn't remove the books. My attitude is that if you don't want your kids to read certain books, tell them not to check them out. It's very simple.

themanintheseersuckersuit · #36 Post by **themanintheseersuckersuit** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 9:30 am

PlacentiaSoccerMom wrote:
While Sarah was mayor of Wasilla, she tried to fire our highly respected city librarian because the librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the city librarian and against Palin's attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day.
This, if true, really bothers me. Since I volunteer in the library, I know all about parents who try to ban books. I recall one parent trying to have all of the Halloween books removed because they were "Satanic" and she complained to the principal about the librarian, who wouldn't remove the books. My attitude is that if you don't want your kids to read certain books, tell them not to check them out. It's very simple.

Anchorage Daily News story on the issue.

And I think messing with Halloween Books just ain't right.

cindy.wellman · #37 Post by **cindy.wellman** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 11:42 am

themanintheseersuckersuit wrote:
PlacentiaSoccerMom wrote:
While Sarah was mayor of Wasilla, she tried to fire our highly respected city librarian because the librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the city librarian and against Palin's attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day.
This, if true, really bothers me. Since I volunteer in the library, I know all about parents who try to ban books. I recall one parent trying to have all of the Halloween books removed because they were "Satanic" and she complained to the principal about the librarian, who wouldn't remove the books. My attitude is that if you don't want your kids to read certain books, tell them not to check them out. It's very simple.

Anchorage Daily News story on the issue.

And I think messing with Halloween Books just ain't right.

I'm hoping this sounds pretty unbiased towards either side, but it might be worth mentioning that the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) leans towards the left.

After going out of business, The former Anchorage Times had a special arrangement through May of 2007 to have 1/2 page in the Anchorage Daily news to present a balanced portrayal of the news. The Times was then called "The Voice of the Times" when it appeared in the ADN. This agreement lasted from 1992 through May of 2007. http://www.voiceofthetimes.net/index.ph ... &Itemid=27

Where it gets a bit tricky is that VECO was the one that originally set this agreement up with the ADN. VECO is also part of the group who is under investigation for various wrongdoings. SO, that being said, I'm not entirely certain whether thevoiceofthetimes.net is so supportive of her regardless of their conservative stance. There were/are many interesting alliances in AK, and this is just one of them.

I have NO idea just where Palin officially (and unofficially) stands now regarding Stevens. Yesterday I read this about her: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/ ... 0794.shtml

I'm just keeping an open mind and trying to find out the facts, not sensationalism, but it is tough.

Spock · #38 Post by **Spock** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:20 pm

wintergreen48 wrote:
thguy65 wrote:Anne Kilkenny was interviewed on NPR's "All Things Considered" Friday night about the letter.

Good to know, but unfortunately I missed it. Did they run the piece on Kilkenny before, or after, they ran the piece on the neighbor who had good things to say about Palin?

Not that NPR ever has an agenda, of course.

Well, at least, unlike The Atlantic, NPR has not yet demanded that Palin release her OB/GYN records to prove that she is the mother of all of her children.

On NPR's agenda-it was so funny today

I was listening to a show interviewing a Poker expert and the gist of it was that Obama is a consummate poker player who thinks his moves out thoroughly etc etc-McCain is a Craps player who acts impulsively.

thguy65 · #39 Post by **thguy65** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 7:05 pm

wintergreen48 wrote:
thguy65 wrote:Anne Kilkenny was interviewed on NPR's "All Things Considered" Friday night about the letter.

Good to know, but unfortunately I missed it. Did they run the piece on Kilkenny before, or after, they ran the piece on the neighbor who had good things to say about Palin?

I posted the link so anyone who wanted to hear the segment and Kilkenny's own words about the e-mail could do so. Of course, it gives her another format to express her views, but the angle of the story was more about how viral her e-mail went very rapidly. In the beginning of the segment, they mention how Kilkenny told people to forward her e-mail to whoever they want, but asked them not to post it on the Internet. Oops.
I guess if she really wanted to make a big splash, she would have created a group called "Hockey Moms For Truth".