Borderland

Things are so messed up. I cringe when I turn on the computer, the TV, or open the newspaper. It’s like gawking at the scene of an accident. But I can’t ignore this stuff.

The “troopergate” findings were released by the legislature on Friday, and Sarah Palin was found to have abused her power as governor.

Incredibly, she responded by saying that she appreciated being cleared of any wrongdoing. Then, even more strangely, in the same interview she said that the report was unfairly partisan:

Palin: …Well, I’m very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing … any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that.

[...]

KTVA-Channel 11: … The report that came out yesterday, do you think that the end result is partisan?

Palin: Yeah, I did think it did turn into a partisan circus to tell you the truth…What this legislative investigation — quote unquote — turned into was a political circus.

Huh?

Glenn Greenwald called it “the perfect snapshot for what we’ve had the last eight years,” since the McCain campaign has taken the same illogical position, contradicting the findings, and challenging the legitimacy of the report.

My favorite response to this comes from Andrew Halcro:

Palin’s clumsy attempt to try and rebrand the three month independent investigation into allegations she abused the power of her office is reminiscent of the Seinfeld episode where George Costanza tries desperately to rebrand himself as “T-Bone” to his co-workers and ends up being branded “Koko the monkey.”

In the midst of all this noise, we’ve got some real problems here. The cost of food and fuel in the Alaskan rural villages has gone up so high that there is an exodus into the urban centers. But nobody is talking much about this.

Instead, on the local hate-radio talk shows I hear people talking about stockpiling food and ammunition. It makes you stop and think. This is what it comes down to when our democratic processes fail, and our economic infrastructure is threatened.

Sarah Palin will have some explaining to do when she gets home, but there’s little reason to expect that anything she has to say will make any sense. I’m glad there are plenty of people around here willing to call her out.

The first thing we have to maintain is a grip on what’s actually happening. After that, we need to organize at the neighborhood level and begin to take an interest in what’s happening close to home. We had a neighborhood meeting last night, with about 30 people from up and down the road in attendance, discussing local land use issues and the need for us to present an organized response to the direction our local government seems to want to take us. It felt good to be part of this gathering.