By Dewie Whetsell, Alaskan Fisherman.
As posted in comments on Greta's article referencing the MOVEON ad about Sarah Palin.
The last 45 of my 66 years I've spent in a commercial fishing town in Alaska . I understand Alaska politics but never understood national politics well until this last year. Here's the breaking point: Neither side of the Palin controversy gets it. It's not about persona, style, rhetoric, it's about doing things. Even Palin supporters never mention the things that I'm about to mention here.
1. Democrats forget when Palin was the Darling of the Democrats, because as soon as Palin took the Governor's office away from a fellow Republican and tough SOB, Frank Murkowski, she tore into the Republican's "Corrupt Bastards Club" (CBC) and sent them packing. Many of them are now residing in State housing and wearing orange jump suits The Democrats reacted by skipping around the yard, throwing confetti and singing, "la la la la" (well, you know how they are). Name another governor in this country that has ever done anything similar.
2. Now with the CBC gone, there were fewer Alaskan politicians to protect the huge, giant oil companies here. So she constructed and enacted a new system of splitting the oil profits called "ACES." Exxon (the biggest corporation in the world) protested and Sarah told them, "don't let the door hit you in the stern on your way out." They stayed, and Alaska residents went from being merely wealthy to being filthy rich. Of course, the other huge international oil companies meekly fell in line. Again, give me the name of any other governor in the country that has done anything similar.
3. The other thing she did when she walked into the governor's office is she got the list of State requests for federal funding for projects, known as "pork." She went through the list, took 85% of them and placed them in the "when-hell-freezes-over" stack. She let locals know that if we need something built, we'll pay for it ourselves. Maybe she figured she could use the money she got from selling the previous governor's jet because it was extravagant. Maybe she could use the money she saved by dismissing the governor's cook (remarking that she could cook for her own family), giving back the State vehicle issued to her, maintaining that she already had a car, and dismissing her State provided security force (never mentioning - I imagine - that she's packing heat herself).. I'm still waiting to hear the names of those other governors.
4. Now, even with her much-ridiculed "gosh and golly" mannerism, she also managed to put together a totally new approach to getting a natural gas pipeline built which will be the biggest private construction project in the history of North America. No one else could do it although they tried. If that doesn't impress you, then you're trying too hard to be unimpressed while watching her do things like this while baking up a batch of brownies with her other hand.
5. For 30 years, Exxon held a lease to do exploratory drilling at a place called Point Thompson. They made excuses the entire time why they couldn't start drilling. In truth they were holding it like an investment. No governor for 30 years could make them get started. Then, she told them she was revoking their lease and kicking them out. They protested and threatened court action. She shrugged and reminded them that she knew the way to the court house. Alaska won again.
6. President Obama wants the nation to be on 25% renewable resources for electricity by 2025. Sarah went to the legislature and submitted her plan for Alaska to be at 50% renewables by 2025. We are already at 25%. I can give you more specifics about things done, as opposed to style and persona Everybody wants to be cool, sound cool, look cool. But that's just a cover-up. I'm still waiting to hear from liberals the names of other governors who can match what mine has done in two and a half years. I won't be holding my breath.
By the way, she was content to return to AK after the national election and go to work, but the haters wouldn't let her. Now these adolescent screechers are obviously not scuba divers. And no one ever told them what happens when you continually jab and pester a barracuda. Without warning, it will spin around and tear your face off. Shoulda known better.
You have just read the truth about Sarah Palin that sends the media, along with the democrat party, into a wild uncontrolled frenzy to discredit her. I guess they are only interested in skirt chasers, dishonesty, immoral people, liars, womanizers, murderers, and bitter ex-presidents' wives.
So "You go, Girl." I only wish the men in Washington had your guts, determination, honesty, and morals. I rest my case. Only FOOLS listen to the biased media.
Copyright 2009 Canada FreePress..Com
Joebama American citizens 2024 print
9 months ago
Having lived in Alaska, I still follow the politics up there. Sarah Palin was very effective and popular up until she became the VP-candidate, at which time she totally changed and suddenly moved from being practical and non-partisan to being ideological and very partisan.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Dewey Whetzell's analysis, but think he only offers half the story with his final conclusion. If the far-right who love Palin realized how moderate and willing to compromise with Democrats she was while Governor, they might not be so confident in their beliefs that she's a true-believing, rock-ribbed Republican.
I think you should read what you wrote again. And try to spot the logical flaw.
ReplyDeleteLet me help. The "Far Right" are not "true-believing, rock-ribbed Republicans".
We despise the GOP almost as much as we hate the Democrats.
We don't care about the Party. We care about LIBERTY. And if Democrats are the one supporting that...We'll vote for them.
Generally speaking, they're not, of course...so it doesn't happen often.
But we don't really care what letter is after your name. We care what principles you hold, and what you believe in.
I dug into her background the week she burst onto the scene and posted Sarah Palin: Teddy Roosevelt in a skirt... is that a good thing?
ReplyDeleteKeeping in mind the progressive nature of Alaska's constitution which sets the stage for her actions to begin with, she has shown more than a touch of the TR progressive to her ideas and actions, but after reading several older interviews and narratives of what she had set out to do, and Done! in her various positions (I think most of those items I linked to are still good), I noted back then,
"Palin's biggest selling point, and the reason that I will still support her and McCain (having no other viable options, and the prospect of an obamama Presidency too horrifying a prospect to allow by default), is that she is forthright, not a dissembler, someone who very much does believe in Right and Wrong and the importance of facing upto and defeating that which is Wrong.
That is a trait, aka Character, not only trumps any silly fears about 'lacking experience', but is the best bet for seeing a leader acquiring wisdom in office, developing through, and from, her continuing experience.
Those who care for and seek a defense of the Constitution and our Founders Classical Liberal Principles, will find in a McCain/Palin administration, equal parts support and unwitting attacks upon them. Think of them as attempting to slow down, if not stop our slide down the hill, and even attempting to gain legitimate ground, whereas the Dem's will have us charge downhill at even faster breakneck speed. Viewed against an Obama/Biden administration, which will seek to actively avoid and undermine America's founding principles, the Republican ticket will be far and away superior to the Dem's, and very much worth heartily supporting.
In all of the best connotations of the image, Teddy Roosevelt in a skirt! "
I think anyone who tries to cast her as 'stupid', inexperienced, etc, does nothing but display their own ignorance, prejudice and shallow thinking in spades - all the facts and references needed to debunk that were available the moment she came to national attention - to continue to blather such things about Palin, marks one out as a complete selfmade dunderhead.
Palin is clearly smart, capable, and a bulldogedly determined person... one of those people who is so baffling to the opposittion not because she 'thinks outside of the box', but because she doesn't even take the box into consideration in the first place! She focuses not on any box, but on what she want's to acomplish.
The idea of giving up power, as she did with the governorship, is so far outside the range of anything thinkable to a leftist, that they've no framework for even considering it - but to Palin, it was just a matter of 'this isn't working, it's holding back what I want to accomplish, and I can do more to accomplish my goals by cutting this office loose and approaching it from another direction'.
Incomprehensible to a leftist... and many a 'rightist' as well.
But bold, impressive and potentially very effective... we'll see... but for the moment, all I've got to say is,
Bully!!!
I remember Palin saying in some interview recently that she realized you don't have to hold office to have power.Paradigm shift? After all,how often does political office tie hands that would really REALLY make a difference? Methinks the accepted paradigm of "Right","Left",etc. is out-dated.Watching Fox News or CNN or MSNBC,etc. is like watching a tap-dance by decrepid vaudevillians,or Olivier's "Archie" character from the movie "The Entertainer".Sad...And I'm not so sure about the "Teddy Roosevelt" stuff.He had a good heart generally,well-intentioned,but beneath his zeal for "doing right",he increased the power of the Federal government WAY outta bounds to what the Founders intended.Give the FedGov enough power to "fix" things...what happens when a jerk gets hold of the reins of power? Then again,I'm dealing with the contradictions of reading Orwell's press dispatches (an heretical socialist who ,in the end,sided with individual freedom....).Humans are messy,which is a lesson lost on the current cyborg-in-chief and his co-conspirators..
ReplyDeleteLet me help. The "Far Right" are not "true-believing, rock-ribbed Republicans".
ReplyDeleteOK, you're right. (No pun intended.)
Tjones said "I remember Palin saying in some interview recently that she realized you don't have to hold office to have power.Paradigm shift? After all,how often does political office tie hands that would really REALLY make a difference?"
ReplyDeleteYes, first of all I should have said 'giving up a political office of power', and yes, I think there is a paradigm shift happening right now... big time. The Amnesty bill wasn't stopped in the halls of congress, but through the phones, letters and emails of the people who were able to organize outside the traditional precincts of power, and cause their representatives to represent their views. That's been magnified several times over through the Tea Parties. It gets back to the argument I was having with Trubollota in a previous post, that Power, the real source of power, is actually the ability to influence someone to act in a particular way, and the source of that is Ideas and the willingness to act on them.
It used to be the only way to organize that power, through people, was through the upper ranks of an organization such as Govt, because that was the only place communication could be established. Talk Radio, and especially the WWW have radically changed that old paradigm; today people can organize themselves, without money, without offices, and exert their power upon those in govt, rather than only the reverse, which has been the way of it since civilization began.
Interesting times, these.
"...I'm not so sure about the "Teddy Roosevelt" stuff.He had a good heart generally,well-intentioned,but beneath his zeal for "doing right",he increased the power of the Federal government WAY outta bounds to what the Founders intended."
Definitely. Every divisive and destructive govt policy was either passed by TR, or proposed and legitimized by TR and then later passed by Taft, Wilson, FDR, etc. Alphabet agencies, Income Tax, Welfare, and of course Health Care, and so much more. That alone is enough to make TR the most pivotally disastrous U.S. President in history, but there's also a book out now, I haven't read it but thumbed through it the other day, that during his famous "Walk softly and carry a big stick" gunboat diplomacy, he had Taft make secret, unconstitutional, 'treaties' with the Japanese and others, which nearly guaranteed WWII in the Pacific.
However, his personal qualities, energy, courage, etc were admirable to say the least... how can you not admire a guy who goes to make a speech, gets shot, wrestles the gun away from the shooter, goes in and makes his speech (and not a short one), and only then bothers to alter his schedule and see a Doctor? Bully indeed, and those are the qualities people think of when they think of him... but politically he was a dark disaster.
"Humans are messy,which is a lesson lost on the current cyborg-in-chief and his co-conspirators."
Yep... messy and complicated creatures... I have to constantly remind myself that the Principle I see in play, may not be the only, or even the primary one guiding the action - Hubris is a good term for it, and Nemesis awaits with glee those who neglect that.
Btw, the new TR book I mentioned is The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War.
ReplyDeleteWhat they said.
ReplyDelete