Legion of Angels News Archive

(CNN) – Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin suggested Tuesday that it would be Sen. Barack Obama’s policies that would spark the international crisis that Sen. Joe Biden has said would be likely within months of Obama taking office.

At a fundraiser Sunday night, Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, said that after taking office, “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. … We’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

He added that the Obama administration would need people to stand with it at the time because “it’s not going to be apparent initially … that we’re right.”

“I guess we have to say, “Thanks for the warning, Joe,’ ” Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, told supporters during a rally in Reno, Nevada.

She speculated that instead of the crisis being generated by another world leader, as Biden suggested, an international crisis could be sparked by Obama’s willingness “to sit down with the world’s worst dictators without preconditions,” to send troops into Pakistan to try to kill Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda officials, or to draw down U.S. troops in Iraq.

In response to earlier criticism of the comments from Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential candidate, Obama-Biden campaign spokesman David Wade issued a statement saying:

“Sen. Biden was making it clear that history has shown presidents face challenges starting on day one, and with our nation fighting two wars and 21st century threats abroad, we know that we need steady leadership in tumultuous times, not the erratic lurching and stubborn ideology of John McCain.”

But Palin zinged her Democratic counterpart, saying, “I guess the looming crisis that worries the Obama campaign right now is Joe Biden’s next speaking engagement.”

Trailing in polls nationally as well as in battleground states, the Republican ticket in recent days has been aggressively jumping on any opening given to it by the Democratic presidential ticket.

To reach voters in critical swing states, Palin and McCain have also increased the number of interviews they have done with local media outlets, in part to blunt the Obama campaign’s huge cash advantage.

On Sunday, the Obama campaign announced it raised a record $150 million in contributions in September.

McCain on Tuesday continued to hammer Obama for the comment the Democrat made to “Joe the plumber” in which — as he defended his decision to raise taxes on couples earning more than $250,000 a year while cutting taxes for people with lower incomes — Obama said that “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

“After months of campaign trail eloquence, we’ve finally learned what Sen. Obama’s economic goal is. … Sen. Obama is more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the pie than he is in growing the pie,” McCain told supporters during a rally in Bensalem, Pennsylvania.

McCain also accused Obama of waffling on which team he was backing in the World Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays, which begins Wednesday.

“It’s kind of like the way he campaigns on tax cuts, but then votes for tax increases after he’s elected. Or the way he says he backs the middle class and then goes and attacks Joe the plumber after he’s asked a tough question,” McCain said.

Obama, however, has said he was rooting for the Phillies and has never said he was also rooting for the Rays.

When he was joined by a number of Rays at a rally in Florida on Monday, Obama said, “I am a unity candidate bringing people together, so when you see a [Chicago] White Sox fan showing love to the Rays, and the Rays showing some love back, you know we’re onto something right here.”

On Tuesday, Obama keep his focus on Florida and the economy, the issue that is foremost on voters’ minds. Polls also suggest that voters have more trust in Obama’s handling of the current financial crisis than in McCain’s.

During an economic roundtable discussion in Lake Worth, Florida, Obama called the crisis “the worst since the Great Depression” and blasted the Bush administration for not doing enough to help “Main Street.”

“While President Bush and Sen. McCain were ready to move heaven and earth to address the crisis on Wall Street, President Bush has failed to address the crisis on Main Street — and Sen. McCain has failed to fully acknowledge it,” Obama said. “Instead of commonsense solutions, month after month, they’ve offered little more than willful ignorance, wishful thinking and outdated ideology.”

The nation’s economic woes appear to be affecting the presidential race more than at any previous time this election cycle, according to a poll released Tuesday.

More than three-quarters of voters who responded to a new survey by CNN and the Opinion Research Corp. say the United States is in a recession, and 40 percent say another depression is likely to hit the country within a year.

According to the new poll, 61 percent of registered voters say the economy is extremely important to their vote, a jump of three points since June and more than 10 points higher than the next most important issue on voters’ minds: terrorism.

Source — CNN

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin left open the option Thursday of waging war with Russia if it were to invade neighboring Georgia and the former Soviet republic were a NATO ally. “We will not repeat a Cold War,” Palin said in her first television interview since becoming Republican John McCain’s vice presidential running mate two weeks ago.

Palin told Charles Gibson of ABC News that she’d favor including Georgia and Ukraine, both former Soviet republics, in NATO despite opposition by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Asked whether the United States would have to go to war with Russia if it invaded Georgia, and the country was part of NATO, Palin said: “Perhaps so.”

“I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help,” she said.

Pressed on the question, Palin responded: “What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against … We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.”

She added: “It doesn’t have to lead to war and it doesn’t have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.”

Palin spoke the same day Putin insisted that Russia has no intention of encroaching on the sovereignty of Georgia, following a brief war that left Russian troops in firm control of two breakaway regions. Putin also aggressively defended the decision to send troops to Georgia, saying Russia had to act after Georgia attacked South Ossetia last month.

On other matters, Palin said she “didn’t hesitate” when McCain asked her to be his running mate, a surprise selection that shook up the presidential race.

“I answered him ‘yes’ because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink. So I didn’t blink then even when asked to run as his running mate,” said the 44-year-old Palin, who has been in office less than two years.

Questioned about whether she felt ready to step in as vice president or perhaps even president if something happened to the 72-year-old McCain, Palin said: “I do, Charlie, and on January 20, when John McCain and I are sworn in, if we are so privileged to be elected to serve this country, we’ll be ready. I’m ready.”

Gibson also read Palin a comment she made in her former church — “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God” — and asked whether she thought the United States was fighting a holy war.

Palin said she was recalling Abraham Lincoln’s words when she made the comment and said: “I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words.”

She said she didn’t know if her son Track who is headed to Iraq was on a mission from God.

“What I know is that my son has made a decision. I am so proud of his independent and strong decision he has made, what he decided to do and serving for the right reasons and serving something greater than himself and not choosing a real easy path where he could be more comfortable and certainly safer,” Palin said.

Source — Yahoo!

Ron Alexander has long been intrigued with the true story of a young idealist who met his death in Alaska’s unyielding wilderness in 1992.

The film adaptation of the book “Into the Wild” only cemented the mystique for Alexander and others heading to Alaska this summer, hoping to retrace the last steps of Christopher McCandless along the Stampede Road near Denali National Park.

Alexander and his fellow travelers want, in particular, to see the old abandoned bus where the 24-year-old Virginian starved to death after more than three months alone in the harsh landscape.

“That’s sort of the heart of the story,” said Alexander, 44, of Arlington, Va. “It’s almost like a Jim Morrison grave site, where people just want to go see it.”

This is exactly what residents in the interior town of Healy, 25 miles east of the bus, feared with the release last fall of the movie adapted from Jon Krakauer’s best-seller of the same name.

They envisioned hordes of copycats making dangerous pilgrimages in the footsteps of a character often seen as a spiritual visionary rather than an ill-prepared misfit, as many Alaskans view McCandless.

People from all over the world have journeyed to the rusted bus over the years. But there are signs this could be a boom year for those captivated by a college graduate who turned his back on his wealthy family for his restless wanderings.

The local chamber of commerce has already received a few dozen e-mails from would-be visitors wanting to track the unmonitored route taken by McCandless to the 1940s-era bus, used for decades as a shelter for hunters and other backcountry travelers.

Former chamber president Neal Laugman warns visitors about a terrain — about 180 miles north of Anchorage — with no cell phone service, unpredictable weather, clouds of mosquitoes and the raging Teklanika River, whose swollen banks prevented McCandless from seeking help. Laugman has gotten replies from people who are determined to make it to the bus no matter what.

“I don’t want people to go out there and die. It’s that simple,” Laugman said. “We won’t know that they’re there until it’s too late.”

The EarthSong Lodge is among the last developments along the Stampede Road, which eventually gives way to an old mining trail that traverses the Savage and Teklanika rivers, although the Teklanika is often too high and swift to cross.

As the weather warms, lodge owner Jon Nierenberg sees hikers walking past the lodge every couple days, starting the 22-mile trek to the bus. Most of the travelers are young men.

This year, most of his guests are familiar with McCandless. Or rather, Nierenberg said, they’re aware of a romanticized figure, a characterization not shared by many Alaskans or others.

Released about the same time as the big-budget movie was the independent documentary, “The Call of the Wild,” in which filmmaker Ron Lamothe attempts to debunk what he calls lingering myths about McCandless.

“I don’t look at them as nut jobs,” he said. “I can easily see where they’re coming from. But I think they’re sort of idealizing an idea rather than a person,” said Nierenberg, a musher and former backcountry ranger.

Alexander, who plans to make the trek with a friend or two in late August, considers himself a bit of a wanderer with a passion for the untamed West. Leaving his urban surroundings as much as possible is crucial for him, said Alexander, a salesman for a Washington, D.C., documentary production company.

Alexander said he’ll be much better prepared than McCandless and will visit other parts of Alaska not connected to the doomed young man.

“We’re not coming up just to do this little pilgrimage,” he said. “This is one little element. We’re not completely nuts.”

Ridership is significantly higher in the “backcountry safari” offered by Alaska Travel Adventures, which this summer is noting the “Into the Wild” connection.

Also up are the backpackers tramping past a cooking camp where safari riders stop for a wilderness meal, said manager Nick Prosser. Many hikers heading back are dehydrated, blistered and “pretty beat,” he said.

Prosser, who has read “Into the Wild” and seen the movie, plans to hike out to the bus himself before he heads back home to Celina, Texas, at the end of his seasonal job.

“I just would like to go for the adventure,” he said. “I’m up here. I might as well go.”

Source — ABC