Sunday, July 25, 2010

Bonafide Palin News. Or is it?

Now that Sarah Palin's fallen from the limelight, like everyone else, the Associated Press' Becky Bohrer has to stretch to publish a Palin news story. "Alaska gov restores calm after stormy Palin tenure" begins:
JUNEAU, Alaska -- Perhaps Sean Parnell's greatest accomplishment so far as governor is that he's not Sarah Palin.

In the year since inheriting the job when Palin resigned, Parnell has quietly gone about restoring a sense of calm that many Alaskans craved after the storm-that-was-Sarah. Barring any major missteps, that alone may be enough to help him carry next month's GOP primary and win the office he wasn't expecting [to] hold. ...

But isn't Parnell Palin without lipstick?
... While oil remains king, its revenue largely responsible for funding the state's operation, production is expected to keep declining. There are no firm answers for how best to stem those revenue losses.

One long sought project that could help is a major natural gas pipeline.

[Ralph] Samuels and [Bill] Walker [,both challenging Parnell, this fall, for the governorship,] have aggressively gone after Parnell's approach to building the line.

Parnell remains committed to the process championed by Palin, which she said would spur competition in bringing North Slope gas to market. Two competing projects are currently seeking shipping commitments and gauging interest. Parnell cites this as proof the market will win out.

But Samuels said the state is really no further ahead than it was several years ago in realizing a line.

Walker favors an "all Alaska line" that he says would put put (sic) Alaska, not oil and gas companies, in the driver's seat. He said Parnell has shown no leadership on the gas line. ...

And perhaps most importantly: How many Palin appointees remain in office to do Sarah's bidding?

Let's have a story about how Alaska's state government has changed or remained the same since Sarah Palin quit. Is Sarah Palin still influencing government through the appointments to boards and commissions she made? Those appointees serve at the governor's pleasure. Why hasn't Parnell cleaned house?

9 comments:

Joie Vouet said...

I keep an eye on Becky Bohrer, because she wrote a story with Rebecca Mansour's help. That story didn't seem to me to be much more than a thinly-veiled Palin-2012 cheerleading piece.

Anonymous said...

She's becoming more objective .. the "storm-that-was-Sarah"

rj said...

Bohrer may be imlicitly acknowledging there is no difference between Palin/Parnell - two peas in a pod? - when she wrote "Parnell's greatest accomplishement so far as gov. is that he's not Sarah Palin."

But instead of burying the lede she may have ignored it!

Joie Vouet said...

Thanks rj & anonymous. It's said that in the old Soviet Union ordinary Russians could dope out the news by reading between the lines of their papers. Has the same become true here? I once read an excellent article, "How to read a newspaper," which explained things like how to identify the probable source when an anonymous source is quoted ... I've looked for it, but it doesn't appear to be on the web.

Joie Vouet said...

Oops! Here's the article by Becky Bohrer that seemed at the time to be cheerleading a Palin run in 2012. Rebecca Mansour is directly quoted near the end of the article.

Anonymous said...

Well, Franci Havemeister, Sarah's high school buddy and appointed Director of Agriculture is still in place. The corruption continues there. There is talk about moving the Division of Ag over to the Department of Commerce. They are approving questionable loans as fast as they can before someone else is in charge. In addition a very large equipment loan (the State assets that were ripped out of Mat Maid and given to Sarah's new dairy) has quietly disappeared under Kristan Cole's lead.

The Gov and the Attorney General know all about it.....crickets.....and cover ups.

Anonymous said...

OT - You can read an interesting article, Literary Devices and the Bible Writers, at Leah Burton's blog.

Joie Vouet said...

The article mentioned by Anonymous 6:36 is quoted inside the post. It is worth reading.

Anonymous said...

Anon 6:16 - Sarah could give a crap about the minutiae of minding her Board and Commission appointees and issues they cover from when she made them over two years ago. Not only is she out of her short-term memory range, she simply.doesn't.care.

It's better this way that she's 'fighting for Alassssska' without getting involved with any of our issues.