Think Progress

The ‘Kristol Ball’ plots Palin’s long-shot path to the White House.

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol reaffirmed his “contrarian” take on Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) recent decision to quit. The “Kristol Ball” argued that Palin is now “all in” for a “high risk” presidential run. Depending on her “talents and abilities” Kristol used a strained comparison to President Obama to lay out Palin’s winding road to the White House:

KRISTOL: Everyone said [Obama couldn't] compete with people with these long records. … He seems to have gotten President. I don’t think it is foolish for Palin to think, “You know what, if that’s the world we live in now where people don’t value — maybe correctly — experience in years of experience in Washington, or two terms counts more than two and half years as Governor of Alaska. Maybe she thinks she gets out there and becomes a leader of the conservative movement, and then a leader of the Republican Party, and then conceivably a nominee of the Republican Party, and then conceivably a president just as Obama did.

Watch it:

Kristol has been particularly unreliable as of late, and has been extremely poor in predicting the likely success of would-be presidential candidates. In 2006, he declared that “Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single democratic primary.” Earlier in the program, Karl Rove expressed a less charitable view than that of Kristol, saying, “[E]ffective strategies in politics are ones that are so clear and obvious that people can grasp it. It is not clear what her strategy is.”

Palin threatens to sue media outlets for publication of investigation rumors.

In the wake of her resignation speech on Friday, Max Blumenthal reported for The Daily Beast that Sarah Palin may have quit her job in order to avert a major, yet-to-be-disclosed corruption scandal. Blumenthal explained that “political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators…[are] searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home.” In response, Palin’s attorney sent a letter to several major news outlets threatening to sue for republishing rumors of any federal investigation:

Gov. Sarah Palin’s attorney threatened Saturday to sue mainstream news organizations if they publish “defamatory” stories relating to whether Palin is under federal investigation.

This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law,” Van Flein warned, citing Alaska liberal blogger Shannyn Moore.

The LA Times reports today that “the FBI’s Alaska spokesman said the bureau had no investigation into Palin for her activities as governor, as mayor or in any other capacity.” “There is absolutely no truth to those rumors that we’re investigating her or getting ready to indict her,” Special Agent Eric Gonzalez told the Times. It is not clear if this also applies to rumored IRS investigations.

Did an embezzlement scandal force Sarah Palin to resign?

Max Blumental reports on The Daily Beast that Sarah Palin may have quit her job today because she was trying to avert a major, yet-to-be-disclosed corruption scandal. The gist of the rumor is that an Alaska building company called Spenard Building Supplies (SBS) was awarded a contract by Palin to build a hockey arena in Wasilla, AK, and in return, SBS helped construct Palin’s home:

Many political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators have been seizing paperwork from SBS in recent months, searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home on pristine Lake Lucille in 2002. The home was built just two months before Palin began campaigning for governor, a job which would have provided her enhanced power to grant building contracts in the wide open state.

SBS has close ties to the Palins. The company has not only sponsored Todd Palin’s snowmobile team, according to the Village Voice’s Wayne Barrett, it hired Sarah Palin to do a statewide television commercial in 2004.

Though Todd Palin told Fox News he built his Lake Lucille home with the help of a few “buddies,” according to Barrett’s report, public records revealed that SBS supplied the materials for the house. While serving as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin blocked an initiative that would have required the public filing of building permits—thus momentarily preventing the revelation of such suspicious information.

Just months before Palin left city hall to campaign for governor, she awarded a contract to SBS to help build the $13 million Wasilla Sports Complex. The most expensive building project in Wasilla history, the complex cost the city an addition $1.3 million in legal fees and threw it into severe long-term debt. For SBS, however, the bloated and bungled project was a cash cow.

Alaska bloggers have reported in recent weeks that “a long simmering embezzelment/IRS scandal is still being looked at by the feds.” In her press conference today, Palin asked the public to “trust me with this decision and know that it is no more politics as usual.” But she also bemoaned “political operatives” who have “descended on Alaska” to investigate “all sorts of frivolous ethics violations.” Palin said this “politics of personal destruction” was one of the key motivating factors behind her decision today.

Why are Palin, Perry and Jindal refusing to talk to Biden about the stimulus?

In a new article, Time’s Michael Scherer describes how Vice President Biden has been aggressively reaching out to mayors on the their use of stimulus money. “My rear end is on the line just like yours,” said Biden on a recent conference call with five mayors and county executives. “I’m the guy in charge of this deal. So if this doesn’t work, it’s me.” In a follow-up blog post, Scherer reveals that Biden has talked to “dozens of mayors and 47 of the 50 state governors about the Recovery Act”:

One interesting fact that didn’t make it into the story. Since March, Biden has talked, usually in conference calls, to dozens of mayors and 47 of the 50 state governors about the Recovery Act. The three governors who have not yet been on the line, though they have been invited: Alaska’s Sarah Palin, Texas’ Rick Perry and Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal. You can draw your own conclusions.

Palin wrote an e-mail to friends pretending to be God: ‘Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.’

In a new article in next month’s Vanity Fair by Todd Purdum, former McCain presidential campaign aides unload on former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, calling her a “Little Shop of Horrors,” a “diva,” and a “whack job.” The exposé also reveals that Palin, in an e-mail to her friends announcing the birth of her baby Trig, pretended to play God:

When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God’s, and signed it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”

Also, Purdum reports that Palin lied about not having insurance to show “she could empathize with uninsured Americans.” Palin insisted that in her early years of marriage, she and husband Todd did not have coverage, when in fact they had catastrophic coverage. Palin “insisted that catastrophic insurance didn’t really count and need not be revealed.”

ThinkProgress’s Amanda Terkel goes on MSNBC and weighs in on the Palin-Letterman fight.

This morning, ThinkProgress’s Amanda Terkel and Sabrina Schaeffer of the Independent Women’s Forum went on MSNBC to talk about the controversy between comedian David Letterman and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R). Both Terkel and Schaeffer said that Letterman’s jokes were inappropriate, but added that Palin should turn back to policy issues and not dwell on this controversy for too long. While Schaeffer said that there was a different standard for conservative and liberal women, Terkel pointed out that President Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, was also the target of frequent attacks (e.g. Rush Limbaugh calling her the “White House dog” when she was 13 years old). Watch it:

Palin: The less money Alaska has, the better.

During a recent interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) once again criticized President Obama for “spreading the wealth” while at the same time boasting that Alaska spreads its own wealth. “We have a share of our oil resource revenue goes back to the people who own the resources. Imagine that,” she said. But somewhat shockingly, later in the interview (and in a part that did not air on Hannity’s program last night) Palin actually said that she would rather have Alaska pull in less money in oil revenues that more:

HANNITY: The price of oil is going up again. It’s not quite at $140 a barrel, but it’s certainly on its way up to $70 and $80.

PALIN: Yeah, well and I thank God it’s not at $140. You know people say, “Hey, Alaska! Eight-five percent of your state budget is based on the price of a barrel of oil. Aren’t you glad the price is going up?” I say, “No!” The fewer dollars that the state of Alaska government has, the fewer dollars we spend. And that’s good for our families and for the private sector.

Watch it:

The Mudflats writes, “The less we have, the less we spend? And here we all were worried about the economy. So exactly how much of the 85% of our state budget does she wish will go away? Inquiring Alaskan minds want to know. Welcome to the 2012 election.”

GOP rushes to placate Palin after trying to prevent her from upstaging Gingrich at fundraising dinner.

Last month, the NRSC and the NRCC issued a joint press release announcing that Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) would deliver the keynote address at their annual fundraising dinner. Palin’s staff quickly quashed the excitement and said the governor would not be attending. (She was allegedly “worried about overexposure.”) Instead, the NRSC and NRCC turned to former House speaker Newt Gingrich. Palin “hadn’t been expected to attend the event until last week, when her advisers approached organizers saying she would be near Washington and would like to come.” However, as news outlets reported today, Palin’s team is now balking because the governor will no longer be allowed to speak:

Gingrich has done more than his part, according to many involved in raising the money, and Sessions didn’t want the former Speaker overshadowed by someone who had not helped raise the millions the dinner is expected to pull in. Sessions said Palin could be introduced, but would not be allowed to speak.

Palin’s team was offended that she was not given the chance to speak and said they would not send the governor to the dinner, even though she is in Washington on Monday. In the end, it was Palin’s camp that leaked word of the spat.

Over the weekend, Cornyn did his best to smooth over the ruffled feathers. The NRSC chief called Palin on Sunday; that call has not been returned.

Greg Sargent reports that Sessions is now rushing to make nice with Palin. Ironically, Sessions plans to stress that the GOP is “a unified party” in his speech at the fundraising event.

Palin on Obama administration: ‘We told ya so.’

Tonight, Fox News’s Sean Hannity will air an interview with Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK). In portions of the transcript leaked to the Drudge Report, Palin agrees that the U.S. is on the road to socialism, adding, “we told ya so”:

HANNITY: You know but it goes back - It does go back a little to the campaign. I mean, ‘spread the wealth, patriotic duty…’

PALIN: Kind of a ‘we told ya so’.

HANNITY: Well, is that how you feel?

PALIN: That’s how I feel! … And this many months into the new administration, quite disappointed, quite frustrated with not seeing those actions to rein in spending, slow down the growth of government. Instead Sean it is the complete opposite. It’s expanding at such a large degree that if Americans aren’t paying attention, unfortunately our country could evolve into something that we do not even recognize.

HANNITY: Socialism?

PALIN: Well, that is where we are headed. That is where we have to be blunt enough and candid enough and honest enough with Americans to let them know that if we keep going down these roads… nationalizing many of our services, our projects, our businesses, yes that is where we would head.

Even if the National Republican Congressional Committee and Senatorial Committee won’t have her, Palin will always be welcome at Fox News.

Palin distinguishes herself as the only governor to refuse energy conservation funds.

Every single governor except Sarah Palin (R-AK) has written to Energy Secretary Steven Chu accepting millions of stimulus dollars meant to increase energy conservation and efficiency. Last month, Palin rejected $28.6 million for energy conservation work because she said it would force Alaska buildings to adhere to a “universal energy code.” Newsminer points out that the Energy Department has accepted other states’ pledges to simply work with local governments to improve efficiency, and that no “universal” requirement is needed:

The federal stimulus law requires states to pledge they will meet energy efficiency standards on 90 percent of new and renovated commercial and residential square footage by 2017.

“Alaska could likely achieve that goal by relying on municipal standards in Anchorage, Fairbanks and its other urban areas (with the vast majority of Alaska’s building square footage), without needing a statewide code,” [Harry Persily, an aide to the House Finance Committee in Juneau] said in an e-mail to legislators Friday.

Global warming flood in Wasilla forces Palin to cancel correspondents dinner appearance.

Because of a climate disaster, global warming skeptic Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) has been forced to cancel her attendance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The Wall Street Journal reports that an “unusually warm spring thaw in Alaska is causing some of the state’s worst flooding in decades, with rising rivers wiping out an entire village and bombarding another town with ice chunks as big as houses”:

Gov. Sarah Palin on Thursday was scheduled to fly over the stricken areas after canceling a planned trip to the East Coast for primarily state business. The governor on Wednesday had declared a disaster for the flooded areas, including the Susitna River, which runs through her hometown of Wasilla near Anchorage.

The floods resulted from “a rare combination of unusually heavy winter snow and a spring warm-up over the past week that saw temperatures soar into the 70s — a good 20 degrees higher than normal for this time of year.” Palin “had planned to attend the White House Correspondent’s Dinner this weekend in Washington, D.C., but a spokesman said her husband, Todd, would attend in her stead.”

Is Palin violating ethics rules by backing parental consent ballot initiative?

There is currently a ballot initiative trying to gain support in Alaska that would bypass the state legislature and “forbid a girl under 18 from getting an abortion unless the doctor informed at least one of her parents beforehand.” The organizers’ goal is for Alaska Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell to certify the ballot language as legal, collect signatures, and get the initiative on the ballot for the August 2010 primary elections. Gov. Sarah Palin (R) has now come out and said that she plans to be the first in line to offer her signature:

“I got a preliminary opinion from Law (Department) just giving me a heads up that critics would certainly file an ethics charge against me if I were to sponsor an initiative. So though I maintain I have First Amendment rights just as any other citizen does, I won’t flirt with the notion of giving critics more ammunition to keep filing wasteful ethics charges against me, but instead I’ll volunteer to be the first signature,” Palin said.[...]

“I acknowledge the ‘new normal’ we’re dealing with today will no doubt see someone filing a charge against me anyway, for exercising my First Amendment rights as a citizen, but I will not hesitate to speak up in support of Alaska’s daughters,” she wrote.

State law says that a governor cannot spend money or “provide anything of value” to influence the outcome of a ballot measure unless the Legislature has appropriated money for that purpose.

Alaska election regulators are already investigating whether “Palin violated the law last summer when she said in response to a question at a state press conference that she would vote no on a controversial ballot measure to tighten limits on water pollution discharges from mines.”

Palin to American Choppers: ‘You’ve got that patriotism in you that people just so respect. Thank you for that.’

Thursday episode of “American Chopper” on TLC features an interview with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), who is leaning against a bear skin in her office. Hosts Paul Sr. and Paul Jr. are visiting Alaska to create a bike to help commemorate Alaska’s 50th anniversary of statehood. Some highlights from the interview:

Q: So you snowmobile?
PALIN: Oh yeah. Snow machine. Yes.
Q: What kind of snowmobile do you got?
PALIN: We’ve got an Arctic Cat. We’ve got a couple of different kinds. Race machines. I inherit whatever Todd rejects from the year prior. … We love those motor sports.

PALIN: You do so many good things for some of the other states, also. You’ve got that patriotism in you that people just so respect. Thank you for that.

ThinkProgress obtained a copy of the interview. Watch it here:

After weeks of grandstanding, Palin will accept stimulus funds.

Following the lead of the other 2012 GOP presidential contenders, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) announced last month that she would reject nearly half of the $930 million Alaska was to receive from the stimulus package on education, health care, and labor. But after calling the stimulus “an unsustainable, debt-ridden package of funds,” Palin has now decided to accept the vast majority of the package:

Palin spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said the governor changed her mind after the public weighed in during legislative hearings prior to lawmakers passing bills to seek almost all of the funding. Palin had warned about the state having to finance projects created by the stimulus funds after the federal money runs out. … The only funds Palin will reject, Leighow said, will be nearly $29 million for a State Energy Program she says are tied to adopting a statewide energy code.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) also recently backed down from his standoff with the White House over his desire to reject stimulus funding.

Alaska lawmakers reject Palin’s controversial attorney general pick.

The Alaska Legislature rejected Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) pick for state attorney general, Wayne Anthony Ross, by a vote of 35-23 today. Ross’s nomination caused a firestorm because of his radical right-wing views. He had called gay people “degenerates” and allegedly defended men who rape their wives. He also praised a student for creating a large statue of a Ku Klux Klan member, saying the “project gets ‘A’ for courage.” Introducing Ross last month, Palin said he “brings years of good service, in more ways than one.” “He will make an excellent attorney general,” she said.

Palin’s AG pick defended statue of KKK member, said it ‘gets an A for courage.’

Wayne Anthony Ross, Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) nominee for Alaska Attorney General, has come under fire recently for previously calling gays “degenerates,” defending men who rape their wives, and downplaying the the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Max Blumenthal reports that Ross once wrote an op-ed defending the presence of a statue of a KKK member after a black student complained:

Dozens of op-eds Ross authored during the 1980s and 1990s surfaced as key exhibits in the case against his confirmation. Among them is a 1993 piece entitled, “KKK ‘art’ project gets ‘A’ for courage,” in which Ross defended a local college student who had offended an African-American classmate by creating a statue of a Klansman with a cross in one hand and a flag in the other.“It might have been fun to see [the African-American student] try to remove the display,” Ross wrote. “Then she could have been arrested and her future as a student of the university could have been resolved through the university disciplinary proceedings.”

“The university, quite rightly, allowed the artwork to remain, but art professor Gray capitulated and removed the figure from display,” Ross wrote, defending the statue as freedom of speech. Progressive Alaska dug through old newspaper archives and has more offensive commentary from Ross.