The Gauleiter of Wasilla

We're reliably informed that the tenor of carefully scripted Sarah Palin tubthumpers is taking on something of a nasty turn, with the audience responding to the Gauleiter's intemperate remarks with the usual hoots and catcalls, shouts of "Treason!" and in one memorable instance, "Kill him!". 

All of this was in an effort to demonize Senator Obama by associating his name with that of William Ayers, a person with a nasty past that Obama had a passing acquaintance with.

Nothing happens by accident on the campaign trail, but this is new and desperate stuff from what used to be the party of Lincoln and Grant. 

Now. We here at the Dougloid Towers generally try to take the high road, but we're wondering, if the pot is calling the kettle nasty names, maybe it's time to look at the pot a little closer.

Mrs. Palin has more than a passing acquaintance with the Alaska Independence Party. She addressed their convention via a videotape this last March. Far from taking them to task, her address was rather chatty. Is this a person who's uninterested in the things that AIP members think are important?

None of that would be news, except for the rather unsavory founders of that organization and the positions they've taken.  

Their platform speaks for itself. It's an assemblage of posse comitatus positions that'd look right at home at the next Freemen's Kommon Law Konvention. 

AIP founder Joe Vogler was known to have observed "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government. And I won't be buried under their damn flag. I'll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home." 

Joe Vogler also assumed room temperature back in 1993 at the hands of one Manfried West in an unsuccessful effort to buy a large quantity of plastique. Of course that wasn't quite heroic enough for the Party, which has concluded that Vogler was actually assassinated by the U.S. Government.

Joe was, in fact, as good as his word and was buried in Dawson, over Canada way. The soil here in America smells a little sweeter for it, and how the Canadians ever got talked into playing host to Joe's remains is beyond me.

Their current Chair and Vice Chair attended the second Secession Convention held in Tennessee in 2007. Here's a bit of dialog from the current vice chair that outlines some of their"policies".

Also, if you can stand it, you can listen to hours and hours of Joe Vogler's maunderings, which, in fact, seem to be historically challenged at times. 

Give ear to the segment on how he came to Alaska. Consider also, when you listen to his version of history that when the events occurred that Joe seems to think precipitated the Pacific war happened, the Japanese fleet had already set sail from on their mission to destroy the American fleet, which action had been preapproved by the Tojo government at an Imperial conference on September 6, 1941. It's a matter of historic record. 

Joe was simply wrong.

If Sarah Palin has a license to savage Obama for his past associations the people of this country have the absolute right to inquire as to her past association with a secessionist political party and her frequent contacts with it, up to and including her video address to their Konvention this year.

But there's more. Mr. And Mrs. Clark, the leaders of the AIP, were more than happy to claim Sarah Palin as a member-that is, until details of Palin's connection began to emerge. Jake Tapper of ABC News says that the Clarks were in error when they claimed her as a member. 

But it's passing strange that the Clarks first discovered the error of their ways after this mess blew up in Palin's face. 

Here's what George Clark said at the AIP convention in March of this year: Palin "was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town –- that was a non-partisan job.  But you get along to go along -– she eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won’t go into that.  She also had about an 80 percent approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership."

That sounds unequivocal and not exactly something a person would be uninformed about.

Mrs. Clark told ABC News on September 1 of this year  that Palin and her husband Todd were members in 1994, even attending the 1994 statewide convention in Wasilla. Clark was AIP secretary at the time. Clark has since recanted, blaming the entire contretemps on an unidentified person who misinformed her. 

That also sounds unequivocal.

At the very least, the connection's far more than casual, particularly the murky agenda of the AIP.

Seems that there's an episode of A&E's excellent series City Confidential that deals with the untimely demise of Joe Vogler. I've ordered my copy.