Palin's Troopergate: 10 things you need to know

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Saturday August 30, 2008 · 11:37 PM PDT

2008/08/30 · 23:37

Lots of official documents are available which include key information. Here are some crucial facts that jump off the page when those documents are examined. Most of this information is not being widely reported elsewhere, as far as I can tell.

A) TASING THE KID WAS DUMB, BUT HARDLY A VICIOUS ASSAULT

Mike Wooten's stepson Payton was 11 at the time (some reports say 10). He volunteered to be Tased, out of curiosity. The following statements are from police interviews of all four people who were in the house during the incident (pdf):

Payton advised that a year or two ago Mike Wooten had tased him … he [Payton] was in the living room when Mike was showing him and his cousin, Bristol his equipment [Bristol is Sarah Palin's daughter; Bristol was 14 at the time]. He [Payton] stated that Mike asked him if he wanted to try it (the Taser) and he agreed. … Payton stated that he wanted to be tased to show that he's not a mommy's boy in front of Bristol. Following being tased he went upstairs to tell his mother that he was fine.

jukeboxgrad

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Tuesday March 20, 2007 · 9:40 PM PDT

2007/03/20 · 21:40

Various people have made a terrific effort to provide text-searchable versions of the 3000 pages recently issued by DOJ (that have been posted by the House in the form of 61 separate non-searchable pdfs), but in my opinion all the prior efforts have fallen short.

This includes my own effort, here, which was early but incomplete. Also, I was using an OCR program with a somewhat high error-rate.

ePluribus Media posted files (announced here). But for some reason their files are unnecessarily large. By the time they're done, I think the whole batch will be over 250mb (this is bigger than the original non-searchable files, which add up to about 172mb). [Update and correction: the original files add up to 142mb. The ePM files add up to 204mb.] I've created files 85% smaller, containing the same information, including graphics. Also, their approach requires searching across 61 separate files (Adobe Reader allows this, but it's cumbersome when the files are so big). I provide two approaches where 100% of the text is aggregated in a single file.

jukeboxgrad

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Tuesday March 20, 2007 · 8:05 AM PDT

2007/03/20 · 08:05

[MUCH BETTER VERSION NOW AVAILABLE. SEE UPDATE BELOW.]

Through the miracle of OCR (optical character recognition), it's now possible to search in these files. I think this makes research a lot easier.

Two versions are provided (aside from the original non-searchable version available at http://www.judiciary.house.gov/ ):

COMPILATION VERSION

Click here to get a single pdf (933 pages, 6.9mb) which is a merged compilation of all the separate pdfs that have been released so far. This approach makes it easy to do a single search across all the aggregate content. (Since that's a large pdf which may be slow to open in directly in your browser, it might be a good idea to use control-click [Mac] or right-click [Windows] to download the file instead.)

jukeboxgrad

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Tuesday October 31, 2006 · 6:21 AM PST

2006/10/31 · 06:21

Lots of current reporting talks about how October is our worst month in almost two years. In 43 months since the invasion, only three other months have been worse (as measured by US troop fatalities). If four more of us die between now and midnight, I'll have to update the preceding sentence to say "two other months" instead of "three other months."

There's also fairly ample reporting of the fact that our recent push to secure Baghdad was a miserable failure.

However, I think few are noticing that this is happening at the exact moment that troop levels are increasing sharply. Moreover, this is exactly the time when troop levels were supposed to be going down.
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(VA-SEN) NYT: 3rd named witness heard Allen's n-word

jukeboxgrad

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Tuesday September 26, 2006 · 10:06 PM PDT

2006/09/26 · 22:06

Yes, another one. First we heard from Shelton. Then from Taylor. Now NYT reports a third named witness: Ellen G. Hawkins "said Tuesday that she heard him use a racial slur in 1976."

The details:
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Weekly Standard: Bush is lying about Talibanistan

jukeboxgrad

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Sunday September 24, 2006 · 11:39 AM PDT

2006/09/24 · 11:39

This morning, lowkell's terrific diary pointed out that the Weekly Standard is taking a big shot at Allen. That's real news. Here's some more news: they're also taking a shot at Bush.

It's not every day that the Weekly Standard says Bush is a liar. It's not every day that WS aligns itself with dKos and Maureen Dowd, on a point like this. But that's exactly what's happening, and it's worth noticing.

Most dKos readers are well-aware that Pakistan has surrendered to the Taliban, and released a large number of jihadist prisoners. This critically important developing story has been well-covered at dKos (links provided below). The main purpose of this diary is to note an important milestone: the Weekly Standard (9/23/06, print date 10/02/06) is starting to catch on:

these events may constitute the most significant development in the global war on terror in the past year--yet the media have taken little notice

jukeboxgrad

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Tuesday September 19, 2006 · 7:33 AM PDT

2006/09/19 · 07:33

Yesterday LondonYank posted a terrific diary noting many connections between Pakistan and terrorism ("The REAL Reason for Secret Tribunals? Pakistan Terrorism Timeline"). Daniel Pearl was mentioned in the diary and also in the comments (including comments by LondonYank and PaulGaskin). These comments pointed out apparent connections between Pakistan and 9/11, connections that Pearl was reportedly investigating when he was killed. LY also made this important point: Bush is planning to send Pakistan F-16s. This prompted me to remember one of the major demands made by Pearl's killers: to send Pakistan F-16s.

In other words Bush is now in the process of appeasing and rewarding Pearl's killers, by sending Pakistan the F-16s those killers demanded.
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Plamegate for dummies: the best Plamegate article ever

jukeboxgrad

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Thursday September 14, 2006 · 8:55 AM PDT

2006/09/14 · 08:55

OK, that might be a bit of hyperbole. I can't know for sure if this is the best one. But I think it is, and I've read zillions of them.

The Plamegate story is exceptionally important (below I'll explain why). Unfortunately, the story is complicated. And the Bushists (with the help, witting and unwitting, of various journalists) cynically exploit that complexity to discourage people from understanding the story.

However, if explained well, anyone can grasp the story in about five minutes. And yesterday Eric Mink of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch explained the story very, very well.

Here's what makes Mink's article great. It's short (1250 words). In that small space, he manages to tell the whole story from beginning to end. He makes it simple and concise by omitting every needless word and every secondary detail. Plamegate has a mountain of confusing secondary details; Mink includes 100% of what's important, and leaves out everything else.

And the one minor flaw in Mink's article is something I think I manage to correct in this diary.
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Krauthammer caves: "[potentially] unwinnable ... civil war"

jukeboxgrad

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Friday September 08, 2006 · 9:40 AM PDT

2006/09/08 · 09:40

Over the last year or so, important milestones were reached when major righty voices jumped ship, with regard to the war. People like William F. Buckley and George Will (along with various other major figures) have now turned their back on the war.

But naturally there have been a few holdouts. And perhaps none is more prominent than Charles Krauthammer. As far as I can tell, he has stood relatively alone as a very, very influential conservative voice who has not budged even an inch on his commitment to Dubya's folly.

But now even Krauthammer is getting ready to jump ship. In my opinion, this is a significant milestone that's going relatively unnoticed (aside from here, about 5 paragraphs down).

Let's look at today's column from Krauthammer, titled "Iraq: A Civil War We Can Still Win."
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Bush: creating the world's first radical Islamic nuclear power

jukeboxgrad

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Thursday September 07, 2006 · 12:29 PM PDT

2006/09/07 · 12:29

The Dubai/UAE ports deal had huge political impact because it spoke to Bush's base. It punctured their illusion that Bush and the GOP are working to keep them safe. It vividly exposed the reality, that our first MBA president values corporate profits more than he values national security, and that the GOP is the party of global business, not the party of America.

Now, Bush and the GOP are going down that same road again, but in a manner that's infinitely more dangerous. Amazingly, the reality of what's happening is largely unnoticed. No surprise: the Dubai ports deal had already been public information for months, at the time the press and public finally woke up to the significance of the story, quite strenuously but also quite abruptly and almost by accident.

Below the fold: the devastating overlooked truth.
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UN base under Israeli fire for 7 days, not 7 hours

jukeboxgrad

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Wednesday July 26, 2006 · 10:26 PM PDT

2006/07/26 · 22:26

We can learn a lot if we pay close attention to what one of the dead men said. Unfortunately, his words have been largely ignored, here and elsewhere. We can also learn a lot by looking at the details of what the UN reported, in the days prior to the incident. But those words have also been largely ignored.

I've read SusanHu's diary ("Kofi Annan: Don't You Dare Criticize Israel") and I notice that certain critical information is missing not just from the diary itself, but also, for the most part, from the 900 comments (last time I checked) that are attached. (A handful of the comments allude to the following issues, but for whatever reason those comments seem to have received little attention.)
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Take action now against Ann 'raghead' Coulter

jukeboxgrad

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday February 11, 2006 · 6:17 AM PST

2006/02/11 · 06:17

Since Coulter has now spoken of taking "a shot at Clinton," presumably she will soon be visited by the Secret Service. After all, Clinton is under their protection. And we know the Secret Service takes any threat very seriously. For example, they saddled up in response to the idea that some high school kids were merely planning to sing the exact words of a 40-year old Bob Dylan song.

Contact information for the Secret Service is here. Presumably Coulter's threat would fall under the jurisdiction of the DC field office (202-406-8000). Concerned citizens should do their patriotic duty and make sure the government is aware of this assassination threat against a Secret Service protectee. Call now. CPAC is going on today, in DC, until about 6 PM. Presumably the Secret Service would want to appear there promptly to make sure that no other CPAC speakers are making further threats against SS protectees.
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Palin's Troopergate: 10 things you need to know

DOJ emails, searchable text. One file, 1.5mb. Complete.

DOJ email dump: text-searchable files now available

Stealth escalation: US troop levels up 18% in 3 months

(VA-SEN) NYT: 3rd named witness heard Allen's n-word

Weekly Standard: Bush is lying about Talibanistan

Bush to Daniel Pearl's killers: "here's your reward -- F-16s!"

Plamegate for dummies: the best Plamegate article ever

Krauthammer caves: "[potentially] unwinnable ... civil war"

Bush: creating the world's first radical Islamic nuclear power

UN base under Israeli fire for 7 days, not 7 hours

Take action now against Ann 'raghead' Coulter