As governor and mayor, Palin hired friends for public posts

WASILLA, Alaska - Governor Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the state Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as one of her qualifications for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Havemeister was one of at least five high school classmates Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

When Palin had to cut the 2007 state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.

Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of "good old boys" politics and a champion for ethics reform. The 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as speechmakers who never have run anything.

But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Activists at a conservative political forum snapped up boxes of waffle mix depicting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a racial stereotype on its front and wearing a turban-like headdress typically worn by Arabs, on its top flap.

Values Voter Summit organizers stopped sales of Obama Waffles boxes yesterday, saying they had not realized the boxes displayed "offensive material." The summit and the exhibit hall where the boxes were sold had been open since Thursday afternoon.

The box was meant as political satire, said Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, two writers from Franklin, Tenn., who created the mix. They sold it for $10 a box from a rented booth at the summit sponsored by the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council.

David Nammo, executive director of the lobbying group FRC Action, said summit organizers were told the boxes were a parody of Obama's policy positions but had not examined them closely.

While Obama Waffles takes aim at Obama's politics by poking fun at his public remarks and positions on issues, it also plays off the old image of the pancake-mix icon Aunt Jemima, which has been widely criticized as a demeaning stereotype. Obama is portrayed with popping eyes and big, thick lips as he stares at a plate of waffles and smiles broadly.

Placing Obama in turban-like headdress recalls the false rumor that he is a follower of Islam, though he is actually a Christian.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON - Alan Greenspan says the country can't afford tax cuts of the magnitude proposed by John McCain - at least not without a corresponding reduction in government spending.

"Unless we cut spending, no," the former Federal Reserve chairman said Friday when asked about McCain's proposed tax cuts, pegged in some estimates at $3.3 trillion.

"I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money," Greenspan said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. "I always have tied tax cuts to spending."

McCain has said that he would offset his proposed cuts by ending congressional pork-barrel spending, unnecessary government programs and overhauling entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

Democrats pounced on Greenspan's comments, in part because McCain professed last year that he was weaker on economics than foreign affairs and was reading Greenspan's memoir, "The Age of Turbulence," to educate himself.

"Obviously he needs to go back to that book and study it some more," Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, said during a conference call arranged by Barack Obama's campaign.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Blessed by a beautiful late summer morning, the Barack Obama supporters who packed into Manchester's Veterans Memorial Park yesterday were jubilant - happy to have him back in the Granite State, confident about the election, pumped up by the music and the chants of "Yes we can!"

But Obama, almost as soon as he took the mike, struck a somber tone, and the place went quiet. Hurricane Ike had slammed into the Texas coast, he said, and things weren't looking good. He said he had been on the phone with the head of FEMA, the Houston mayor, and other officials.

The extent of the damage is unclear, he said, but the signs were ominous.

"This could be a very difficult, trying time for the people who live in the Gulf," Obama said. "It's important for us to make sure that we are keeping them in our thoughts and prayers today."

He urged supporters to donate to the Red Cross, and to be prepared to volunteer and send supplies. "You will help them - I have confidence," he said.

But as he transitioned back to his stump speech, Obama noted that the Gulf wasn't the only place suffering - that people across the United States had seen their jobs shipped overseas, their health coverage disappear, and their pensions evaporate. "There are a lot of quiet storms that are taking place throughout America," he said.

SCOTT HELMAN