Well guess which Wasillabilly family is nominated for TPM's Golden Dukes ward, under the category "Best Scandal -- Sex and Generalized Carnality." Did you peek?

Here are the categories according to Talking Points Memo:

Best Scandal -- Sex and Generalized Carnality -The Palin clan for the brawl of the century (no, no sex but nominated for just generally gettin' down and dirty when everyone's good and drunk.) 

-Gov. Tom Corbett who was Attorney General when members of his staff exchanged pornographic emails. 

-Carl Demaio for multiple sexual harassment allegations. 

-Investigator David Nieland, who conducted the internal review of the Homeland Security Department's prostitution scandal, and then resigned himself over an incident involving a prostitute in Florida.

Aww, come on! Those other scandals cannot hold a candle to the Throwdown at the Hoedown!

I mean we have both pictures AND audio.

You can actually HEAR the drunken stupidity, and threatening behavior for yourself.

Okay look according to Josh Marshall of TPM the decision will not be rendered until December the 31st, so that gives us quite a few days to let him know that there is NO scandal more deserving of that award than the Palin drunken family brawl.

Don't just stand there, go leave a comment. And make sure to leave links to the police audio too.

No way can we let those scandal wannabes Tom Corbett of Carl Demaio walk away this thing.

After 18 months Rep. Darrell Issa finally releases his report which finds, hold on for a shocker folks, NO connection between the White House and the IRS "scandal." What?

Courtesy of the LA Times:  

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) wasted enormous congressional resources over the last 18 months trying to inflate the IRS "scandal" into a mountain. The release Tuesday of his final, petulant report on the affair marks what may be its final decline into a mouse. 

The bottom line: Contrary to his assertions in countless appearances on Fox News, there's no evidence that the Obama White House directed -- or indeed was involved in any way -- in the supposed targeting of conservative nonprofit groups for special scrutiny by the IRS. There's no evidence that "tea party" groups were exclusively targeted, as opposed to tax-exempt "social welfare" organizations from across the political spectrum. 

The evidence set forth in the report, which was issued by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's GOP majority without sharing it first with the Democratic minority, instead depicts an IRS struggling to apply complicated rules for nonprofits engaging in political activity, all without guidance from Congress. 

Issa launched his investigation last spring with the charge that the IRS had screened c-4 applications for words such as "tea party" in their names in an effort to deprive conservative organizations of a tax exemption.

Of course that turned out to be bullshit as the report  reveals that the IRS also applied scrutiny to various liberal groups seeking the c-4 exemption as one of the keywords they were looking for was "progressive."

In fact the ONLY group applying for the exemption, who did not receive it, was a group called Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office.

So in other words there was a wild goose and Darrell Issa spent millions of taxpayer money to chase it around for a year and a half. 

And let's not forget that Issa wasted similar amounts of taxpayer money in his "Fast and Furious" and Benghazi investigations.

God what a tool.

Benghazi might not be over as an issue in 2016 after all. At least not if Rand Paul has anything to say about it.

Courtesy of The Hill:  

Paul, a likely 2016 presidential contender, criticizes potential rival Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of State during the attacks, and vows to seek the truth about Benghazi. 

"This new Benghazi ‘intelligence’ report is little more than a C.Y.A. attempt designed to protect incompetent politicians and government agents at the expense of justice for the victims of September 11, 2012," Paul writes in an op-ed for Breitbart, a conservative website, using an acronym for "cover your ass." 

The report in question was issued by the House Intelligence Committee before Thanksgiving, and counters several claims made by some Republicans critical of the Obama administration's handling of the 2012 attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi. 

The report found that "there was no intelligence failure prior to the attacks," "no evidence" of a stand down order to U.S. personnel responding to the assault and no CIA operation to secretly ship arms from Benghazi to Syria. 

Paul expresses skepticism at the report’s findings.

Now this is important because lately Rand Paul has been working pretty hard to portray himself as far less wingnutty than we know him to be. (Remember Paul has a fifteen year relationship with professional lunatic Alex Jones, and was once a frequent guest on his radio show.)

So for Paul to ignore the fact that this is just the latest of several investigations into Benghazi, all of which turned up no evidence of malfeasance on the part of the White House, nor any attempt to launch a coverup.

Now personally I expected certain individual to speak out against these findings, and so they have including Senator Lindsey Graham ("Full of crap!"), former Congressman Allen West, and various other Right Wing types. However I thought that Rand Paul was attempting to resist the conspiratorial whispers from the voices in his head and continue straightening his hairpiece and trying to play the grownup.

However I believe I may have given him too muhc credit. Take a look at how he justifies his reticence in accepting the findings of the report: 

"None of these accusations contain even a modicum of truth?" he asked. 

He points to a Fox News report that U.S. security personnel said the top CIA officer in Benghazi prevented them from responding faster, and to multiple articles on arms smuggling from Libya to Syria. 

"The Obama Administration has tried to paint members of Congress who ask these questions as somehow being extreme or crazy — and perhaps the House Intelligence Committee will now follow suit," Paul writes. "But remember, this is the same administration that called the investigation into the IRS scandal a product of a 'conspiracy theory.' "

So to support his faith that there really is a Benghazi scandal, despite the fact that his has been debunked, Paul turns to the IRS "scandal," which has also been debunked.

Awesome plan.

Military recruiters to return to Anchorage schools after removal in response to sexual misconduct by National Guard.

Superintendent Ed Graff

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch: 

Superintendent Ed Graff suspended all military recruiting indefinitely on Oct. 20, pending review of the program and discussion with recruiters on student safety, reporting protocol and other issues. Graff outlined what meetings military recruiters would have to attend and what paperwork they would have to submit before they would be permitted to return to ASD schools. 

"When students come to school each day, they deserve to be safe and treated with respect by everyone in the building, including visitors," Graff said in a statement. 

Investigative files leaked to the media describe accusations of widespread sexual misconduct among officers in the Alaska Army National Guard's Recruiting and Retention Battalion, including incidents involving Anchorage students. 

District spokeswoman Heidi Embley said Wednesday the district has received a stack of paperwork from military recruiters that includes answers to questions probing into their training and management. The guard met with Graff last week in an additional meeting to discuss their procedures, she said. 

Embley said Graff has approved the first group of military recruiters to move forward and talk with school principals. The rest should be approved by next week, she said. She would not specify which branches of the military made up the first group. 

"At this point we have no concerns, it's just having an opportunity to review the paperwork," Embley said. 

Yeah well I have concerns, and I certainly don't think that the recruiters should be returned to high school campuses so quickly, or to be honest at all. 

I have never been comfortable with the recruiters plying kids with pizza and sodas while selling them on a job that could see them fighting for their lives on foreign soil.

And even if these kids return in one piece we have now learned that looks can be deceiving as they may be saddled with emotional issues, permanent brain damage from bomb blasts that did not rend their flesh, and PTSD which could make them unemployable and possibly suicidal.

My advice to parents and their teenagers is to steer well clear of these war pimps, and my advise to the superintendent would be to rid our schools forever of even the possibility that these men may physically or sexually assault any of our kids.

What will Superintendent say the next time this happens? Sorry?

In response to lawsuit the state of Alaska did a huge document dump concerning the Alaska National Guard scandal late yesterday. Can you say "redacted?"

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch:  

An initial review of Alaska National Guard-related documents released by the state Friday in response to a media lawsuit shows the Parnell administration received more complaints about the guard than have so far been reported. 

But so many words and paragraphs among the 596 pages of emails and attached documents were redacted by state lawyers and the administration that the significance of some of the correspondence was difficult to discern.

The attorney general’s office made the document dump Friday afternoon in response to a court order in a public records lawsuit brought by Alaska Dispatch News and Alaska Public Media. The news organizations sued the state after records requests going back to May were denied or ignored by the governor’s office.

I have only had a little while to go through the e-mails and correspondence, but it is pretty clear that most of what could damage Sean Parnell has been redacted, much like those Sarah Palin e-mails from years ago.

However the one thing that is crystal clear is just how long this problem existed in the Alaska National Guard, and the fact that nothing was really ever done to stop it up until the media started to report on it.

It will take days, if not weeks to go through the entire document dump, and the Alaska Dispatch is asking or help from its readers, so if any of you have the time....

Remember we only have this weekend to find any smoking guns to use against Parnell before Tuesday's election. But hey, no pressure.

Withering under public scrutiny over the Alaska National Guard scandal, Sean Parnell decides it's time to hide behind his wife's skirt.

Today Sandy Parnell, Sean's very private wife, has decided to come out of the shadows to protect her incredibly disappointing husband.

Here is a portion courtesy of Alaska Dispatch: 

We’re all deeply concerned about the revelations of wrong-doing coming from the guard -- for the victims, for the men and women of the rank-and-file, and for our state. The terrible actions of a few, with the failure we’ve seen within the guard’s top ranks, are unforgivable. Our guard members and their families do incredible work on behalf of Alaskans, and they deserve better. 

I was with my husband, Sean, when he got the call in February with concrete information that called the Alaska guard command into question. Sean immediately called the National Guard Bureau’s Office of Complex Investigations (OCI). 

Sean was very frustrated, but I saw grim determination, too. The report he received on the phone that day was in sharp contrast to what he was being told by guard leadership, and my husband was committed to getting to the bottom of this. 

I am thankful that the bureau’s OCI responded so quickly and so professionally when my husband called for this independent, outside investigation. The insinuation by some that Sean would not take action is wrong. That is not who my husband is, and that’s not what I have seen him do. He took action, immediately, every time. When he got the facts, he acted. With every specific allegation of assault, he followed up personally.

Sadly that does not line up with what we have been told about Parnell's response to this crisis.

Earlier this month the Dispatch reported that: 

The record shows that Parnell took nearly his entire four-year term to remove officials at the top of the guard and its related civilian department. 

Parnell, officially the guard’s civilian commander, has acknowledged receiving complaints about deeply entrenched problems within guard leadership starting in 2010, but he said they lacked specifics. 

The problems didn’t go away. More than three years later, on Feb. 28, Parnell called for help from the Pentagon. 

Nor does it line up with statements made by  State Senator Fred Dyson who said the following:“I three times went to Sean and said: "You need to get on top of this and do something,’ and his response was, ‘I’ve done everything asked of me and every charge that has been brought has been referred to law enforcement. What more should I do?’ I said, ‘You need to be in charge of this and there’s more stuff, including an atmosphere that allows this stuff to go forward.”

No as much as Sandy Parnell might want to rescue her husband from his lack of leadership and inability to protect the soldiers under his command, this is a crisis of his own creation.

And having your wife come out to defend you and claim you were doing your job, how pathetic is that?

No wonder even Sarah Palin has endorsed his opponent.

Alaska National Guard scandal breaks nationally. About damn time!

Image courtesy of the Anchorage Press

So late yesterday I started to receive links from all of you to stories about the AK National Guard scandals.

I have no idea if this is the result of my request for all of you to spread it far and wide or not, and it really doesn't matter. All that matters is that now it is starting to get coverage in news outlets NOT centered inside of Alaska. And that is very good news indeed.

First there is one of my favorite news outlets Raw Story:  

A top commander for the Alaska National Guard was recommended for “other than honorable” discharge earlier this year following an investigation that found he allowed recruiters to sexually assault and harass women. 

Lt. Col. Joseph Lawendowski failed to act on multiple complaints of serious misconduct, including rape, against four noncommissioned officers under his command, according to an Army investigation.

The article links directly to the Anchorage Press, who I absolutely believe should be getting the lion's share of the credit for their incredible coverage of this scandal.

Next up there is RT.com:

 Several leaked documents show that the Alaska National Guard's leadership supported a culture of sexual assault, theft and smuggling. The released reports coincide with the state's contentious gubernatorial election. 

The May 3 Army Regulation 15-6 (AR) report obtained by The Anchorage Press alleges that Lt. Col. Joseph Lawendowski, who joined the Alaska National Guard (ANG) in 2003, promoted steroid use by recruiters, used government vehicles for strip club outings, and possibly used government-issued credit cards for improper purchases when he led the command from 2008-2009. He also created a workplace environment where three male officers – Jarret Carson, John Nieves and Shannon Tallent – repeatedly violated regulations by having consensual sex with women while working.

Once again, as you can see, the Anchorage Press is credited with much of the reporting.

And finally we have Wonkette:  

Wonkette would like to give a hearty welcome to Lt. Col. Joseph R. Lawendowski, our daily (hourly?) “He seems nice” contestant. 

Lt. Col. Lawendowski is a rough tough military man and the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Training of the Alaska National Guard. Please note the use of present tense there, which is rather surprising, given that military investigators submitted a confidential report (an “AR 15-6” in military terms, not to be mistaken for the similarly named semiautomatic rifle) back in March and leaked to the Anchorage Press. 

The Press says Lawendowski was found “directly responsible for empowering Alaska guard recruiters to sexually assault and harass female soldiers, recruits and civilians.” The report recommended that he be given an “other than honorable” discharge for his role in allowing some seriously bizarre misbehavior by recruiters when he served as commander of the Alaska Army National Guard Recruiting and Retention Battalion (RRB) from November 2007 to May 2012. Also, too, the growing scandal could very well spill over into the 2014 Alaska governor’s race, since there are questions about Gov. Sean Parnell’s knowledge of the mess — the usual what did he know and when did he know it stuff. 

Gotta love Wonkette!

You probably could not help but notice that, while also giving credit to the Anchorage Press, Wonkette drew a line right back to Governor Parnell as well.

The other articles made that connection too, as of course they all should.

I actually watched quite a bit of cable news yesterday hoping this would get some coverage but so far I have not seen any.

We NEED to help make this a story that simply cannot be ignored.

I think once they get their hands on it, the national media will have a hard time letting it go.

And that is not only good for Alaskans, but that is good for everybody.