I've saved the best for last. This is the concluding post based on the interview of June 1, 2005. It's about... ethics! (And word salad)
Background:
Palin resigned from the oil and gas commission after a public squabble with fellow commissioner Randy Ruedrich, who also happens to chair the Republican Party of Alaska. Palin in 2003 alerted Gov. Frank Murkowski's administration that she suspected Ruedrich of an ethical misstep, doing party work on government time.
Palin resigned from the commission rather than, she said at the time, be forced to remain silent about Ruederich's ethical lapses.
Palin later took on Murkowski's attorney general in a conflict-of-interest scandal that forced his resignation.
The questions and answers:
Q: Were you at all surprised with the outcome of the Renkes case?
A: I'm surprised at the reactions still from the administration on the whole issue, that there's still such denial that there was any wrongdoing when obviously and legally there was wrongdoing. But between that and the Randy Ruederich case, I'm amazed still that some in the administration don't want to believe that there was anything amiss when obviously there was.
Q:Do you see any fallout?
A: The fallout politically for me is that the chair of the Republican Party, Randy Ruderich, he certainly is not an ally. The crazy thing about it too is that he and some of his followers used to act like, you know, I could do anything. I would help the state, help the party, and I'm the same person that I was back then, when he still supported me. I have the same positions; I have the same values. But now, I'm an enemy, ... because I asked questions, because I did my job as a supervisor and asked.
Q: Did you get any of that from your journalism background?
A: I did. I did. Two things I called upon, well, three things. One is just, you know, things that you teach your kids, that you want your kids to be honest and have a good character. But my journalism degree and my 10 years in local government had me very perplexed as to why there was a, it seemed, this desire to wheel and deal behind closed doors. This was the public's business. The attorney general is a public servant; it's the public's business that we were dealing with there. ...You would have no motivation to try to get away with something like that in a small town like Wasilla or anywhere else across Alaska. So for those who came from Washington, D.C., and came from outside of Alaska, to come in here and to engage in some of those activities, it was, it was un-Alaskan even, that that was going on.
The Ruedrich affair: as the ethics supervisor of the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission she blew the whistle on him for conducting party work on government time. She hacked into his computer, photocopied lots of documents and ultimately Ruedrich had to resign and pay a heavy fine. (The article says the fine was $1,200. It's a typo, the fine was $12,000)
The funny thing is that she had done exactly the same while she was mayor of Wasilla and ran for lieutenant governor in 2002. She used office equipment, office staff, all on the city's dime, to run her campaign. When challenged about it, Sarah Palin responded by calling the accusations exaggerated and not at all comparable to Ruedrich's transgressions on the oil and gas commission. She said she apologized for any mistakes. Mostly, she dismissed the charges as last-minute smears by desperate opponents.
Sarah Palin expresses amazement at the fact that some people didn't want to believe that there was anything amiss regarding Renkes when obviously there was. She was a fierce anklebiter in the case against Gregg Renkes. What a girl!
If anybody can decipher her last answer, please, please write in an explain what it means. What are the two, well, three things she got from her journalism background?
Full interview
Another Sarah Palin background post
Recall Sarah Palin
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9 comments:
Hi everyone - hope you don't mind - and since it concerns CouCou and a comparison with M. Bachmann....I stole this from KOS so you could all take a gander at what KOS thinks of both of them ... ENJOY EVERYONE:::::
Imagine having this kind of dipshit as your Vice President.
The media did actually did a pretty decent job of figuring out both that Sarah Palin was an empty-headed clown and finding a way to let everyone know they knew that without saying it outright. It's time for them to Palinize Michele Bachmann. She's a complete dingbat, and is -- like Sarah -- a dangerously crazy as well. And so far, she hasn't had a reason in the world to care about using correct information, or to be ashamed enough not to spew her poisonous nonsense every time she sees a camera.
There are those reading this right now who, doubtless, will complain that I'm already giving her too much attention. But the attention I'm giving her right now is rather different in kind than the attention she gets from the traditional media. And it has a rather different purpose, too.
Exposing Sarah Palin for what she really is was a task bloggers were all too eager to take on. And while we clearly had an assist from the high profile nature of the office she was seeking that made it much easier than it will be with a relative nobody like Bachmann, the project is worth undertaking if it's even a tenth as effective. Sarah Palin is a national joke. Michele Bachmann ought to be. The traditional media knows from its experience with Palin that it can play this game and find a way to let America know what Bachmann is really all about. It's time they thought about doing so
I'll bite.
Three things SP learned from her journalism background
1. to be honest and have good character (mom and apple pie stuff)
2. that the govt wheels and deals behind closed doors
3. that it's the journalist's duty to inform the public about these secret dealings
The reason given to the public: Palin resigned from the commission rather than, as she said at the time, be forced to remain silent about Ruederich's ethical lapses.
However, someone on The Immoral Minority awhile back, with inside knowledge, said that her kids, especially Track, were unhappy with her being gone from home for so long each day(working at the commission). Keep in mind, this was a "real" job, not the part-time job in Wasilla town hall. So the poster on IM said that she was looking for a reason to quit the commission without just saying "I quit." Somehow the incident with Ruedrich was used as her excuse to leave the demands of the full time job with the commission.
The poster went into more detail, but I've forgotten all the details.
Maybe I'm nuts. Well, I am, but didn't I read somewhere that Palin's actual degree is "Sports Journalism"? That smacks of a degree conferred in order to get someone to matriculate when that person has been flagged by administration as having enough credits, but not as having earned enough in any one area. For example: a nitwit I once knew hung around college for about six years, changing majors about once a year. They finally called her to the registrar's and announced that she was taking her degree in interdisciplinary studies, and hasta la vista. Now, say a dingbat of this stripe had a bunch of PE credits and a few journalism classes- viola - a degree in sports journalism. I say this partly because I find no evidence that U of I ever gave a specific "sports journalism" degree.
As seen here:
http://tinyurl.com/3kcskz
By the way, the twit twitters here:
http://twitter.com/AKGovSarahPalin
Reg,
I love how you find the most psychotic pics of GINO! Too Cool!!!!
Ethics? We all know that's a no, no in her book!
basheert said...
OMG! Remind me not to read your post while eating or drinking as I spit out my coffee, lol!!!!
Coffee not good for keyboards...nooooo!
When you wrote, in exasperation, "What a girl!", I doubled up with laughter. I also was dazzled by "ferocious anklebiter," a phrase that I have never seen applied to someone over kindergarten age, but which fits SP like Naughty Monkey "abstinence-me" pumps.
Heck, I can't tell you what SP said that she learned in J-school, and I graduated from one of the best.
Regarding SP and higher education, another commenter on another site mentioned that he had been both a university admissions officer and a personnel manager: One of the things that made people in both professions go HMMMMMMM is someone whose college path was as jumpy and fragmented as SP's. And, he added wisely, someone who was neither a parent nor a military spouse while in college.
From UH-Hilo (where she didn't even enroll), to Hawaii Pacific (for a year, she says, with straight A's, she says), to North Idaho College... and here the path gets murkier. From North Idaho College to Mat-Su Community College, then the UI, from which she allegedly flunked out, and then back to Mat-Su CC, and then back to the University of Idaho for the last stretch... If SP can't keep all that straight, how can we expect her to be consistent about anything else? ("Facts are stupid things," said Ronald Reagan.)
This is going to sound snotty, I know, but I had friends who went to state colleges and took journalism classes... in spelling and punctuation! Where I studied, if your grammar was weak, you never would have been admitted to the university in the first place.
So G-d only knows what SP's scatty academic record taught her. It certainly didn't make her more articulate.
She resigned to distance herself from the "problem" she was about to take advantage of. so that she'd appear uninvolved, innocent and just doing this as caring citizen, a soccer mom. She had an angle to get her foot in the door.
She'd run for lt.gov and lost, this was her way in, this was now her political career game plan to win the big seat, forget lt. gov, this was her golden opportunity, she could "appear" to be the clean, pure breath of fresh air, she could "appear" to rescue Alaska from the evil grip of corruption, she was ticked and gonna do something about it. she was gonna move in for a kill and start by outing Ruedrich, she "unethically if not illegally" took the goods on him before she got out, she used that to make her public fuss, then used it to point towards the evil Murkowski in order to take him out too. It was all a strategy to give her the "tough take em" on election platform.
What other "take em on" did she do, towards any of the other corruption in Alaskan politicians? there was plenty more around, eh?
She used corrupt people to get herself in with backing from (Allen, Stevens, Young)and they did, so she left them alone. She's just as corrupt, underhanded, scheming wheelin dealin behind doors as the rest of them.
She only used this one situation to position herself with a "refreshing" platform in order get her butt in office, it worked. She saw her crack in the door and plowed through, yep.
Why don't her groupies see the ethics complaints directed towards her the same as her's directed towards Ruedrich, why are they not as valid as hers? Heck, she's far worse, she's rackin them up left and right and yet they "buy" her spew as she's being unduly attacked. Why don't ethic complaints apply to her?
Why don't conflicts-of-interest apply to her? Because she she "says" in her press releases that they're unwarranted? WTF.....I am so sick of her BS!
Stop being unethical and the complaints would stop. Stop being underhanded and the conflict-of-interest charges would stop.
She is such a hypocrit, why was it okay to grow her own government in each of her elected positions from mayor to gov, but is now suddenly growing national government is evil?
Why was pork and lobbying for it okay for Wasilla and Alaska before this year, but now it's not fiscally responsible for her to take government funds? It was fine for her to spend money under the Bush administration while he was running up debt year after year draggin us towards this point, but suddenly now, oh gosh, she's afraid of that, when it's about the only way we can dig ourselves out of Bushes and the republicans hole they dug for the country.
I am sick of the republicans fighting this new administration that the majority of the country overwhelmingly voted it. They lost, work with the president! Quit causing division and strife.
What was the attempted recall of Mayor Palin all about?
Anybody know?
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