[Vision2020] Who Wants to See Sarah Palin as the Next President?

[Sam Scripter]

Mr. Tom . . .

What is the source/reference for the interesting Garrison Keillor piece?

Tom Hansen wrote:
> Who wants to see Sarah Palin as the next president?
> By Garrison Keillor
> Sept. 3, 2008
>
> The Republicans are meeting down the hill from my house, helicopters are 
> pounding the air, and there are more suits on the streets and big black 
> SUVs and a brownish cloud venting from the hockey arena where the 
> convention is assembled. A large moment for little old St. Paul, which is 
> more accustomed to visitations by conventions of morticians and foundation 
> garment salesmen and the Sons of the Desert, and so we are thrilled. It 
> makes no difference that the city is Democratic. What matters is that, for 
> a few days, TV will show a few pictures of the big bend in the 
> Mississippi, the limestone bluffs, the capitol and cathedral, and a tree-
> shaded avenue or two, and some of the world will know that we exist.
>
> Too bad that the Current Occupant and Mr. Cheney canceled their St. Paul 
> appearances so they could focus on hurricane-threatened New Orleans and 
> lend their expertise to rescue operations. As it turned out, they weren't 
> needed, which has been generally true for a long time. Their reporting for 
> duty now only served to remind everyone of what happened three years ago. 
> And Mr. McCain, as of this writing, seemed torn between coming to St. Paul 
> to address the convention and comforting hurricane victims in Mississippi, 
> if any could be found.
>
> Meanwhile, he posed a stark question for voters to ponder: How much would 
> you like to see Sarah Palin of Wasilla, Alaska, as the next president of 
> the United States? And what does the question say about Mr. McCain's love 
> of the country that she might suddenly need to lead? No need to discuss 
> these things at length, really. The gentleman played his card, a two of 
> hearts. Make of it what you will.
>
> The challenge for Republicans is how to change the subject from the dismal 
> story of Republican triumph the past eight years and get voters to focus 
> on, say, the old man's war record or Mrs. Palin's perkiness or the oddity 
> of the skinny guy's last name. If they can succeed there, they can win 
> this thing.
>
> The Senate race in Minnesota is a good example. The Republican, Norm 
> Coleman, has scored points by whooping up a couple tiny scandalettes -- 
> some old jokes that, like a lot of old jokes, aren't so funny, and a tax 
> snafu by some bookkeeper with dandruff on his shoulders -- against 
> Democrat Al Franken, which may yet succeed in distracting voters from 
> Coleman's important role as whistle-plugger in the $23 billion Iraq 
> scandal.
>
> >From 2003 to 2006, Coleman was chairman of the Senate Permanent 
> Subcommittee on Investigations, which is responsible for investigating, 
> among other things, "fraud, waste, and abuse in government contracting," 
> and on his watch, the subcommittee held no hearings on the disappearance 
> of billions of tax dollars into "reconstruction projects" in Iraq that 
> didn't seem to reconstruct anything whatsoever. Bundles of newly minted 
> $100 bills on pallets in Baghdad that simply vanished. No-bid contracts 
> lavished on people with connections. What may be the biggest case of war 
> profiteering in the history of buzzardry.
>
> The PSI is a big hammer. It's the subcommittee Joe McCarthy used to go 
> after the U.S. Army and Sen. John McClellan used to go after labor 
> racketeers with the young Bobby Kennedy as chief counsel, but as the 
> Coleman subcommittee it went after federal employees who were traveling 
> business class instead of economy, meanwhile money was pouring out of the 
> Treasury for any Republican who could write "Iraq" with fewer than two 
> spelling errors, and an old Bush retainer was appointed special inspector 
> general to oversee the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, but without 
> authority to oversee money spent on reconstruction by the Pentagon, which 
> was where most of the money went. All of this Sen. Coleman watched with a 
> cool eye, and he now calculates that Minnesota voters won't have the 
> attention span to read a story with a lot of dollar amounts and acronyms 
> like PSI and IRRF and SIG. Maybe, maybe not.
>
> The simple truth is that, while more than 4,000 Americans gave their lives 
> in the war in Iraq, the war was an enormous financial opportunity for 
> neocons and their friends, and Sen. Coleman was a passive observer of one 
> of the biggest heists in history. The cynicism is staggering to the normal 
> person. He was the cop who busted the hot dog vendor for obstructing the 
> sidewalk while the McGurks were cleaning out the bank. This is no joke. A 
> crook is walking around looking for votes. And the truth is marching on.
>
> ---------------------------------------
>
> Seeya round town, Moscow.
>
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
>  
> "We're a town of about 23,000 with 10,000 college students. The college 
> students are not very active in local elections (thank goodness!)."
>
> - Dale Courtney (March 28, 2007)
>
>
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