The best Sarah Palin analysis so far.

[L. Coyote]

Can anyone point me to a better one than this one?

Abramoff, McCain, Palin, Corruption & the GOP...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/1/1829/47514/959/581800

[Blue_In_AK]

1. L. Coyote, are you familiar with Phil Munger's blog

ProgressiveAlaska.com? He is a former Republican, turned progressive Democrat, who I volunteered with on Diane Benson's congressional campaign in 2006 and 2008. He is a very astute political observer, and seems to have connections with everybody who knows stuff here. You'd probably get a kick out of checking him out. I'm sure he knows Sarah personally since he's frm the Valley, so his observations are most likely right on target.

http://www.progressivealaska.blogspot.com/

[L. Coyote]

2. Thank. Some good reading there.

Robert Dillon pointed out the growing insidiousness in left blogs, grasping at anything they can find, to slime a person and family with a rumor, that, remarkably enough, started early last spring, in far right Alaska GOP circles. Yet Dillon was careless in attributing the DailyKos story to Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, which is untrue. The story was penned by a DailyKos diarist, named ArcXIX.

I've already written that I feel this choice of Palin is dangerously irresponsible. I'll continue to fight it. With the truth.

In a way it is scary. I've been critical, upset, angry, goddam mad and over the top about a lot of Alaska politicians, talk show personalities and editors, in the 10 months of Progressive Alaska. But, I have to say, there's something about Sarah Palin that makes some nutty people in the Valley way more nutty, in what they would do to stick up for her. ....

=================
His Progressive Alaskan Blogs list is handy too.

[Blue_In_AK]

3. She does have some extraordinarily loyal supporters

here, and even the Dems have admired her for taking on Frank Murkowski, Ted Stevens and the rest of the Corrupt Bastards. It's kind of hard to recognize Sarah Palin in some of the things that are being said about her on DU. I disagree with her all the time, but I find myself wanting to stick up for her on some level, like she's my fundie country cousin or something, part of my family.

She is a very poor choice for vice president, though.

[L. Coyote]

5. I perceive that she and Stevens/Cheney are working together

and she has barely distanced herself from Stevens.

It seems she is portraying the reformer after the fact, and her main accomplishment is benefitting one Big Oil giant over another.
To what extent is all the anti-corruption activity seen as BIG OIL in-fighting over the pipeline contracts/ownership/profits in Alaska?

I see the pipeline as a Stevens-Young-Murkowski pet project taken over by Palin to prevent the Dems from having a political role.
Did Palin step up ONLY because Murkowski was certain to lose to the Dems? Is she a tail wagging the Alaska dog? (No pun intended.)

[Steerpike]

4. Sara Palin

I've known her for a couple of years now. She is a true believer and a nice person. She is fearless. She is honest to the point of self destruction. She is hated by the Republican Party of Alaska. She has been the object of a campaign of destruction by conservative operatives here in Alaska.

Trooper Wooten abused her sister and threatened to kill her father. He tasered his stepson (Sara's 10 year old nephew). Sara was on the Gas and Oil commission. They gave her this crony job to shut her up and get her out of the way. She then proceeded to rat out Randy Ruidrich ( a fellow commissioner and head of the RPA) for e-mailing inside information to oil industry organization. He was found guilty and given a hefty fine and booted from the commission. This was before she was elected governor. She has been an outspoken foe of the oil industry. The Voice of the Times ( a veco funded online journal) has been slandering her for years. I really don't know what to say about what I've been reading here.

I've never voted for her. I won't vote for her because she supports, for the most part, the republican platform. But, she is no corporatist. She is a populist...and an honest one at that...I wonder if the repugs realize that if Sara finds out someone is breaking the law...She will rat them out. Hopefully they will find out the hard way.

Almost every single Talk Radio Host in Alaska has be trying to destroy her since she took office. And many Republican legislators (Lyda Green etc)have been trying to block everything she does. Even with all this organized opposition she has managed to pass one of the largest taxes on the oil industry in the world. She has a popularity rating here of about 70-80 per cent. He husband is a hell of a guy. I like them both. And even with all their flaws...they have some cool kids too. They are not rich people...they were born poor (middle class).

Hell, I can't think of anything else to say about her. If you have any questions ask and I will do my best to answer them.

I will end with this...do not underestimate this woman. She is not stupid nor is she weak. She is not this cartoon character I see portrayed now in the media.

[Witchy_Dem]

6. Palin and TransCanada

I'm looking for facts to back up the following comments. Further down that post there are two comments about the TransCanada Pipeline deal which in part reads:

A couple years ago, ConocoPhillips and BP proposed to build a gas pipeline with their own money to take (relatively) clean natural gas from Prudhoe Bay south, all the way to the Lower 48. What was Palin's response? She hustled the Alaska State legislature to award the license to a competitor, TransCanada Pipelines, but with a $500 million taxpayer incentive attached.

That's right, the people of Alaska gifted half a billion to get a pipeline built that another consortium was willing to build with its own nickle.

But, it gets even better. It turns out that the TransCanada Pipeline project won't be taking gas to the United States, after all. It will end at a preexisting terminal in Ft. McKenzie, Alberta. What's there? The world's largest tar sand pits. And, what might natural gas have to do with that? A billion cubic feet of the stuff is needed to cook the petroleum slury out of the sand for shipment to the U.S. for processing into motor fuels and heating oil, a much dirtier end use for the stuff. But, more profitable in an era of $150/bbl oil. So, who owns the processing plants and tar sands? If you guessed ConocoPhillips and BP, you get a cigar.

So, to wrap up, what was Sarah Plain's role as "reformer" and oil industry watchdog? She handed the oil companies $500 million taxpayer dollars to build the shorter pipeline that they really wanted to begin with.

Follow the pipeline, and you'll find the money.

What they're doing is first, an end-around of NAFTA, because the gas will come from the US (Alaska, remember?) rather than Canada, and second, getting more profit out of it because of the high price of oil and the comparatively low price of gas. The oil companies would otherwise have to tap the McKenzie gas fields to develop the Athabasca tar sands; but they can't do that because of NAFTA. With this pipeline in place, they can use the Alaskan gas instead, and basically sell it to us at five times the price by shipping synthetic crude from Athabasca made with the gas, rather than directly shipping gas from Alaska. To top it all off, they get to keep the price of gas high in the lower 48 because there's no major influx of gas from Alaska; they're burning it in Athabasca.

Joe Sixpack ain't gonna be able to follow this particular piece of legerdemain. The 500 million simoleans is seed money to get the project going to employ Alaskans. You can almost make a case for this if you ignore the global warming implications, the price of the Athabasca synthetic crude, and the price of natural gas in the lower 48.

This is one seriously slick piece of double-dealing. Palin can point to the benefits to Alaska and justify it that way; the oil companies can point to the Athabasca synthetic crude and claim they're providing what we said we wanted; and they make more profit off the gas two ways, first because they use it to make a higher-profit product, and second because they don't drive the price of the gas they're selling down by adding the Alaska gas to the market.

IS THIS SHIT FOR REAL?

[Blue_In_AK]

7. She was for an all-Alaska pipeline

before she was against it. You are absolutely correct about the tar sands. This deal is disgusting, in my book.