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04 September 2008
Whoa! This is hidden away in that never-ending Palin thread on the blue, but is really worth a read.
Sounds like Palin's no slouch at grudge-holding, either.
Who needs a city manager to run a town of 5,000? I was a reporter in a town of 8,000 and I know for a fact our mayor was drunk half the time and still had time to get city business done. Without putting the burg $22 million in debt.
I looked into the books she was trying to remove. Evidently she asked the librarian, in a letter I believe, if she would be willing to remove books if the occassion called for such a thing. The librarian refused. I don't think any titles were mentioned. It was more of a, "if I had to ask you in the future, would you do it?". Palin allegedly tried to fire the librarian, but later decided not to because the librarian had town support. Palin said later that her letters were a "test of loyalty."
"Palin told the Daily News back then the letters were just a test of loyalty as she took on the mayor’s job, which she’d won from three-term mayor John Stein in a hard-fought election. Stein had hired many of the department heads. Both Emmons and Stambaugh had publicly supported him against Palin."
That poor Wordpress is really getting hit hard. Here's the Coral cache.
I love these mayoral "tests of loyalty". This is exactly the sort of crap that led the original Progressives to promote council-manager government. In my town there's a persistent fringe calling for a return to mayoral government, supposedly because of too much "loyalty" to the manager. It's nuts. They really have no idea.
Yeah, I know what you mean, danf. Honestly, there are enough questionable aspects of a McCain/Palin ticket...
...on the other hand, swiftboating apparantly works pretty well. Didn't a Repub strategist say that this election will be about personalities and manufactured stories rather than issues?
A search of the basic directory websites indicates that there is an Anne Kilkenny who is listed as a resident of Wasilla, Alaska.
Whether she is the owner of this e-mail address or the author of this essay is another question altogether.
But given the amount of exposure this essay has had, I'm sure that, if someone were appropriating her identity and grafting her name onto this piece, she would have heard about it and spoken up.
The horseshit online is so deep now that I am fact-checking news stories from one site against another news site. Even the best blogs and their comments have become hopelessly inaccurate.
Well, it all rings true. As somebody who grew up in a small southern town, I saw LOTS of politicians like Sarah Palin, only they weren't quite as smart. You should all count yourselves lucky for that.
As much as they may love chanting the GOP lacks finesse. The local SEIU here would put them to shame. (and they need to remember a lot more than three letters!)
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
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