I wrote most of this last night, and now I'm posting it in a very un-Benzene-like hurry because I know Palin will be speaking at the convention tonight, and I'd like to get it out before a whole new news cycle begins. Not that anyone reads Benzene in real time, but if I don't post it now, I know I'll be tempted to throw it all out and start over. I'll miss the speech because I'm off to rehearsal.

In case I've given the wrong impression, I don't pretend to be an expert on Alaska state politics. Yes, I grew up there, and yes, I've continued to pay some attention, but I haven't lived there since 1986, and I haven't visited since 2005. I did take some notice of Gov Palin in her first year in office. That puts me ahead of 99% of the national journalists out there, but it does not put me ahead of the hundreds of current Alaskans who have suddenly appeared all over the blogosphere to offer their comments. So no, I'm not pretending to be more in touch than any of them.

Benzene's law of stupid political scandals: If it has "-gate" on the end of it, it's stupid. There's a lot of new gates out this week. I think the avalanche of criticisms of Sarah Palin has become absurd. I'm not going to defend her against every charge, because I think some of them are legitimate. But in their enthusiasm to pile on, journalists have made a lot of mountains out of molehills.

It does disturb me that Ms Palin isn't very good at telling the truth. That's not an automatica disqualification for me — Bill Clinton had a similar problem, and I still think he was a good president — but it's not admirable either. And while Bill was a smooth and skillful dissembler, Palin doesn't seem to be very good at it.

It also disturbs me a little that her ambition outruns her preparation. In the post I was writing in my head weeks before Palin was actually chosen, I intended to add a line saying something like, "But this is all silly speculation because she'll never be chosen. And even if she is asked, she'll say no. Sarah Palin doesn't want to be vice president." Looks like I was wrong about that. She must have known she was a long shot, but when a wild, crazy and unexpected opportunity knocked, she grabbed it and ran with it.

Another argument I won't rebut is the one that says McCain's recklessness in picking a running mate without properly vetting her first could indicate a similar recklessness he might exhibit in presidential decision-making. I don't, however, like the part that says, "Even if there's no actual wrongdoing here, he should have known that it would look bad." I hate that argument. The logical conclusion of it is that any nominee, even a good one, can be scared off by the threat of unwarranted smears.

On to the phony scandals and accusations. In no particular order:

This reminds me of "Travelgate" from 1993, when Bill Clinton fired the staff of the White House travel office. The press crucified him for that. All those nice people that we like so much. Personal vendetta. Abuse of power. Blah blah blah. The director was found not guilty of embezzlement, so that vindicates him. All of that missed the point, which is that the travel office staff deserved to be fired.

We're seeing the same thing here. I don't care whose brother-in-law he is, Trooper Wooten is a class-A dickhead, and he deserved to be fired. The fact that the commissioner and all the other cops rallied around him doesn't tell me he was a good guy. It tells me that they all cover for one of their own. Palin says her decision to fire Commissioner Monegan has nothing to do with Wooten. I don't know. Seems to me that if the Commissioner rallies behind his boys even when they're in the wrong, maybe that commissioner needs to go too.

I used to live in Oakland. I wish one of Oakland's mayors had a brother-in-law who was a rotten school principal, so that he could have "abused the power of the office" to sack the whole damn crooked school board.

(And if I might nest a bad rap within a bad rap, although there are many reasons why Wooten deserved to be canned, the fact that he tasered his son is not one of them. The kid was curious to know what it felt like, so Dad put it on the lowest setting and let him try. The way you hear it said sometimes makes it sound like child abuse of the worst sort. Wooten is an asshole and a drunk, but he's not that bad.)

We've discussed the bridge here before. In brief, in spite of the clever name, the bridge wouldn't really go nowhere. It would connect the town of Ketchikan to its airport, which is on another island. The bridge would be very useful to the people of Ketchikan who currently have to take a ferry to the airport. The problem with the bridge is not that it's useless, but that its cost is way way out of proportion to the small number of people it would serve.

I didn't hear Palin's acceptance speech, so I have no idea what she claimed about herself. If she misrepresented her position, OK, I'll grant you that. Here's what really happened: Master porkbarrelers Don Young and Ted Stevens were trying to get the federal government to pay for the bridge. When the feds were to pick up the tab, Palin was for it. But this time Young and Stevens didn't get their way and the funding was stripped so that the State of Alaska would have to pay a significant part of the bill. At that point Palin looked at her budget and said, "Uh, nevermind."

Proposals like this bridge are born only when someone else is paying the tab. So long as the federal government was paying for it, it was a great deal for Alaska. Once the state had to chip in, the governor decided it wasn't so important after all. Gov Palin's positions are entirely consistent with serving her constituents' interests.

I'm not even sure what the exact accusation is here. Randi Rhodes, whom I normally like but who is positively nauseating in her slimy and nasty ridicule of Palin, calls her "Rush Limbaugh's oil chick". What the heck does that mean? It's just a meaningless smear designed to make you think bad thoughts without any actual assertion that might be called true or false.

Here's how it is. First of all, oil makes up 80% of Alaska's economy. You don't go anywhere in Alaska politics without dealing with the oil industry. That said, Palin is most certainly not a lackey of the big oil companies. Gov Palin loves oil companies in the same way that the Sultan of Oman does: She wants their business, she wants them to drill, and she wants them to make money ... so that she can collect her cut of it. The oil industry hates Palin. They thought she'd be a push-over, but then she went and jacked up their windfall profits tax like no one ever had.

Another silly little factoid you may have heard says that 10% of Palin's campaign funds in the 2002 election came from oil industry executives. This is true. It's also meaningless. In 2002 she was an underdog in a five-candidate field competing for a second-tier office (for lieutenant governor; she placed second). Her entire budget for the campaign was $50,000. In Alaska, who else has the money to invest in a minor-league prospect like that? Honestly, it's a wonder she managed to find enough NON-oil industry executives to come up with the other $45,000.

I join with those who say none of the pregnancy-related questions have any bearing on Palin's ability to serve as vice president. And I derive no joy from using them as a way to score political points at her expense. (I do, however, derive harmless juvenile amusement from contemplating the Cockney slang meaning of daughter Bristol's name, bringing to mind a certain election-related Monty Python sketch.)

Speaking of the kids' silly names, in spite of what you may have read, daughters Willow and Piper were not named after television witches. You don't even need to know the Alaska-related origins of those names to figure that out. You just have to notice that Willow Palin is a teenager, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series didn't premiere until 1997. (And the Willow character didn't become a witch until a few seasons into the show.) The show Charmed does predate younger daughter Piper, but it's not where her name comes from. Piper is a sort of airplane common in Alaska. Willow is a town north of Wasilla which was voted to be the new state capital. (The Alaska electorate voted yes when asked if Willow should be the new capital, but then voted no when asked to pay for it. Sort of like Gov Palin with the bridge.)

We touched on this in the last post. The founder of the party, the late Joe Vogler, was a raving loon with regard to his political views. But he created a nice little political party and organization that likes to play ball with mainstream Republicans. Basically it's a tradeoff. The AIP will let you use them for votes (or, in Hickel's case, a party label to run on), and the party will use you for fundraising and status. Apparently Sarah Palin has been friendly with the AIP bigwigs, and her husband once registered with the AIP. Yes, secession is the official platform of the AIP (well, not quite, the actual call is for a plebiscite which might lead to secession, though we all know how the die-hards would vote), but voting AIP doesn't necessarily mean you actually want to secede, nor that you hate America. People understand that in Alaska.

Those who have compared this to Barack Obama and William Ayers have it right, I think. In both cases it's an unwarranted attempt at guilt by association. William Ayers is a mover and shaker in Democratic politics in Chicago, so young Barack shakes his hand, attends his events, and takes his money; it doesn't mean he hates America. The AIP is an important player in Republican politics in Alaska, so young Sarah says nice things to the leaderhsip, attends AIP events, and takes their money; it doesn't mean she hates America.

Likewise, the Jews for Jesus flap parallels nicely with Obama's troubles over Jeremiah Wright. Apparently some guy came to Palin's church and preached about how Israelis are being killed as punishment for not converting to Christianity. I haven't heard much about this yet, but most of those who do bring it up pusillanimously hide behind a phrase like, "If the Republicans thought Jeremiah Wright was bad, I wonder what they'd think of this." It's like they know it's a stupid charge, but because the other guys used it against us it's only fair that we should use it against them. That's fine for your sense of parity, but it would show that all the arguments you laid out in defending Obama against the Jeremiah Wright charges are just bullshit that you never really believed.

It was a stupid charge against Obama, and it's a stupid charge against Palin. There are lots of reasons to go to church besides subscribing to every sentence uttered by your pastor. Criticize Palin for what she believes, but don't blame her for what some guest speaker at her church said, nor demand that she must stand up and denounce him to prove she doesn't agree. I would have thought we learned that when they tried that against us with Jeremiah Wright, but I guess not.

Some journalists, like Andrew Sullivan, who has gone on a Palin-muckracking binge with all the composure of a boisterous puppy, like to point out that — z'oh-my-god, even the Republican president of the state senate says that Palin is unqualified! And she's from Wasilla, too! Uh huh. Everyone has enemies in local politics. Palin knocked over a lot of rivals in her whirlwind trip to the top. Yes, Palin has enemies. They're going to say bad things about her. That doesn't suddenly make them experts, just because they know Palin better than journalist X does.

Both Andrew Halcro and Lyda Green are illustrations of what I was trying to explain about Alaska politics in the first post. Halcro was the independent (lowercase "i") candidate who made it a three-way race for governor in 2006 when Palin won with 48% of the vote. I'm not saying he tipped the race in her favor (it would be hard to argue either way), but with 9% of the vote you never know. As a witty and articulate alternative, he gave disgruntled Democrats a good excuse to vote against Knowles.

Lyda Green is the "Republican president of the state senate" you keep hearing about. That's a correct label. I put it in quotes only because everyone is so consistent in labeling her as such. Many seem to think the Republican part is significant, proving as it does that Palin is hated even by members of her own party.

If you were laboring under the assumption that Alaska is a normal two-party state, you might figure that since the president of the senate is a Republican, the Republicans must control the state senate. You would be wrong. Yes, the Republicans are a majority in the state senate (11 to 9), but as usual the rift between the two wings of the Republican party is greater than the rift between the centrists and the Democrats. As a result, six of the 11 Republicans, including Ms Green, have caucused with the Democrats. The majority leader is a Democrat, and the chairmanships are split among Democrats and coalition Republicans.

So whatever credence you want to give to Ms Green's criticism of Palin, don't base it on the fact that they're members of the same party, because for all practical purposes they are not.

Did I miss any? Probably. And even if I didn't there will be new ones by tomorrow.

Basically, I just don't trust anything written or spoken about Sarah Palin after August 28, 2008. If you want to learn something, find some articles from before then. Anything since then is probably biased by a partisan intent, and even if the story itself is genuine, there is bias inherent in the process by which that particular story found its way to you and another didn't.

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