It just keeps more surreal.  Now we have State Senators (D) asking Sarah to stay on for another few weeks, to save the state money... no less.

I tell you, both Dems and Repubs (in both Alaska and elsewhere) have had enough of this flake to last us a lifetime.

[and, go ahead, check the original sources...  they are all accurate]

Jim..

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shannyn-moore/sarah-palins-constitution_b_230390.html

Sarah Palin's Constitutional Train Wreck

When Senator Bill Wielechowski came on my radio program this week, he dropped a bomb I wasn't ready for; in order for Alaska to avoid a constitutional crisis, "The real solution...is for the governor to say...'I will withhold my resignation until the legislature can meet.'"

Dead air...please explain, Senator.

Wielechowski pointed out that this was the first summer in years that the legislature was not called into a special session. Lawmakers made plans. Plans to fish, plans to visit friends and relatives Outside, plans to just enjoy an Alaskan Summer. Getting everyone together prior to July 25 (Palin's last day as governor) is almost next to impossible ("...we estimate we can (meet) first-second week in August...").

For some reason, nothing seems simple in Alaska. It would seem with the governor's resignation, the Lieutenant Governor, Sean Parnell, could simply take his seat. The appointed third-in-line would then slip into Sean's chair and we could get back to business.

Sorry. According to both parties, Alaska sits on the edge of a constitutional crisis because of the "chain of command vacuum" created by the governor's abrupt resignation.

The perfect storm of events lined up on February 6, 2009. Senate Resolution 5 passed 16 - 1. It found Todd Palin and the governor's aides guilty of contempt of the State of Alaska Senate. Their refusal to co-operate with subpoenas during the Branchflower Investigation came with no penalties; just the finding. Four days later, Attorney General Talis Colberg resigned. Colberg purportedly advised those found in contempt to ignore their subpoenas.

In February 2007, Palin appointed her AG, Talis Colberg, to serve as successor to the Lieutenant Governor. The legislative body confirmed him. His resignation called for not only a new AG, but a new successor as well.

On April 16^th, the nomination of Wayne Anthony Ross for AG was defeated after a long, controversial hearing. Commissioner of Corrections, Joe Schmidt was confirmed as "third in line" in the event the governor or lieutenant governor were unable to fulfill their duties.

Hey, great, constitutional obligations met! Not so fast...

When the governor resigned, Joe Schmidt, who had lobbied for the job and sent thank you notes to those who voted for him, decided "Thanks, but no thanks." Schmidt, a high school friend of Palin's, was a controversial nomination after a 514-19 vote of "no confidence" by the Alaska Correctional Officers Association in 2008. Their lack of confidence had to do with cover up of a contagious bacterial infection, MRSA, among prisoners and guards. In May, the ACOA filed a lawsuit against Sarah Palin's administration for purposefully dragging its feet in getting the legislature to appropriate pay increases, thereby sabotaging new contract arbitration.

It's hard to know why Mr. Schmidt declined his previously sought duty, but a replacement was named by the governor quickly; Alaska National Guard Lieutenant General Craig Campbell.

Last August, just days after Sarah Palin's VP nomination, then Major General Campbell told the AP the governor had no control over the Alaska Air National Guard. He continued breaking down the meme of her experience in an interview with the Boston Globe. Two days later, on Friday, September 8^th, Campbell flip-flopped on Fox news. He sang the governor's praises. The following Monday, Palin promoted him to Lieutenant General in the Alaska National Guard-a rank only recognized in Alaska. Now she has promoted him for his loyalty again; this time to Lieutenant Governor.

Here is where the constitutional crisis has a head on.

With Palin's resignation, Joe Schmidt declining the Lt. Gov job, and Mr. Campbell not being confirmed by the legislative body...we are left with one leader, Sean Parnell, and no spares. According to the Constitution we have to have a spare. The only way to get a spare is to have a special session and confirm Mr. Campbell. Palin's newest attorney general appointee, Dan Sullivan, formerly of the Bush Administration, supports the unconfirmed succession of Mr. Campbell. Mr. Sullivan has yet to be confirmed by the legislature.

Oooh, lucky us! An oh-so-special session! Wait!

Governor Palin's $28.6 million veto of federal stimulus funds for energy assistance and weatherization is on the desk waiting for next year's session to start. The legislature has 5 days to override the governor's veto, or forfeit it. The decision was made not to have a special session to flip her decision-not for the lack of votes, but because of the expense.

As more information rolls out, Palin's excuses for leaving office become weaker. The ethics complaints were to blame. "Millions of dollars" have been sifted down to less than $300,000-$296,042.58 to be exact. The ethics complaint Palin filed on herself in a political attempt to derail the Branchflower Investigation cost the state $187,797. That means all of the other complaints combined cost the state $108,245.58. But wait, Alaskan Frank Gwartney's "travelgate" complaint forced Palin to cough up $8,143.62 back to the state coffers. So the net cost of all of the ethics complaints, excluding Palin's expensive political stunt, was $101,101.84.

On June 26, 2007, a joint special session was called to fund a program for low income seniors. The cost of the one day meeting? $103,500.

Here's the rub; Governor Palin aborting her term will end up costing Alaskans more than all of the non-Palin ethics complaints combined. Former legislators I spoke with estimated this session would cost somewhere north of $150,000. $150,000 just to sort out her mess! Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers I've talked to see this "July Surprise" as an expensive constitutional train wreck. Most are projecting the session needing at least a few days.

Let's do the math:
Branchflower Report: $75,000 (Legislative investigation that found Sarah Palin guilty of abuse of power.)
Palin's own ethics complaint: $187,245.58 (A political tactic filed in an attempt to de-rail the Branchflower Report.)
Special Session (Low estimate):$150,000
PALIN'S cost to the State of Alaska? $402,245.58
"FRIVOLOUS ETHICS COMPLAINERS" cost to the State of Alaska? $101,101.84

Maybe we need to start AlaskaPAC.

If the solution to averting a constitutional crisis is for Sarah Palin to stay on as governor for a few weeks, as one Democratic Senator suggested on my radio show, Alaska should be a reality show. "Help, I'm A Celebrity Governor, Get Me Out Of Here!"

Mr. Jenkins was right from the beginning.  More's the pity.

Jim..

http://www.adn.com/opinion/comment/story/861704.html

Palin trotting out her 'poor little me' campaign strategy yet one more time


PAUL JENKINS
COMMENT

(07/11/09 20:27:58)

Watching Sarah Palin's discomfiting, rambling, slightly paranoid revelation that she is turning her back on Alaska's top elected job in mid-term because people -- evil complainers and Outside political hit men -- have been mean to her was a flash of deja vu all over again.

Mind you, it was all there, as it was in her 2006 bid for governor. The same weird syntax. The cold calculation. The same vindictiveness. The same need to be a heroine selflessly standing alone in the political storm against potent foes, sacrificing herself for the good of us all.

The same casual disregard for the truth. Since Palin was blinded by the Klieg lights on the national stage, she has accumulated enemies, real and imagined. Among them, in her mind, are news media outlets, which are not as kind as they once were.

"You don't hear much of the good stuff in the press anymore, do you?" she asked peevishly, forgetting that until recently the media stood idly by and polished her halo, "reporting" on her winning smile, her hair, her clothes. That was then. This is now.

"Political operatives descended on Alaska last August, digging for dirt," Palin fumed. "The ethics law I championed became their weapon of choice. Over the past nine months I've been accused of all sorts of frivolous ethics violations -- such as holding a fish in a photograph, wearing a jacket with a logo on it, and answering reporters' questions." She wants us to believe the tab amounted to millions. The truth seems to be a problem for Palin.

A series of e-mails between Palin and John McCain campaign official Steve Schmidt about Todd Palin's membership in the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party is illustrative.

In e-mails published last week by reporters embedded with her vice presidential campaign, Palin demanded McCain's campaign put the issue to rest. She said her husband just checked the wrong box when he was signing up to vote; that he was not a party member. Schmidt fired back that his records showed Todd had been a member for seven years. Oops.

After her twitchy July 3 speech, Palin was off to Juneau to watch a parade, to Bristol Bay to be a normal Alaskan and fish as TV crews watched, and then a whistle-stop tour of Alaska villages despite her vow to eschew costly, meaningless trips that other "lame ducks" take on the public dime.

In 2006, it was the ubiquitous "they" who were out to get her. In her mind, I was one of them.

When I discovered she had used her Wasilla city computer for political e-mails -- the same thing she had accused Randy Ruedrich of when she worked with him at the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, costing him his job -- I became, she said in a news release, the leading edge of a "rumored smear campaign" engineered by shadowy interests.

Then I learned that as mayor of Wasilla she had directed her 2002 lieutenant governor's campaign from her office using city time, telephones and employees. She conjured up an imagined "smear" in that campaign, too.

That's apparently a staple, along with "enemies -- powerful enemies." It was her "poor-little-me campaign strategy." Then, as now, Palin craved rock-star adoration and acceptance as something other than a politician of the most ordinary stripe with the same base instincts as Spiro Agnew, albeit with fewer skills.

Not everybody bought the pitch. When Palin was Wasilla mayor and nobody knew her, the Frontiersman newspaper was a harsh critic. In a blistering 1997 editorial, it opined "Palin promised to change the status quo, but at every turn we find hints of cronyism and political maneuvering. We see a woman who has long-since surrendered her ideals to a political machine." When things went bad, the newspaper promised, she would "blame everybody but herself."

Those words were prophetic. Nowadays, to hear Palin tell it, her problems are not caused by her lack of skills or interest or effort, but by political operatives and the news media and enemies and shadowy interests and an unfair double standard. She is her own worst enemy.

In a column a few years back, I said of Palin, "based on her qualifications and experience, the odds of her being a successful governor in these complicated times, with this complex government, are between slim and zip."

I wish I had been wrong.

***********************************

I've learned that the people you care most about in life are taken from you too soon and
all the less important ones just never go away.
And the real pains in the ass are permanent.

   Your posting belies your claimed sentiment.  Let her resign!  Let her go fish!  Let her go write books, make speeches, and get wealthy!  What the *hell* do you care?

gus.

 

that she is not part of the established political class of professional politicians that will do "anything " to keep getting re-elected.

maybe she understands the doctrine of wasted energy.



if your car engine had blown a piston and wouldn't start....would you continue to turn the key in hopes that it would fix itself?


would you push it down the hill and try to "pop the clutch " and throw it into gear hoping it would magically run?

or would you seek alternate transportation until you could either replace the engine or rebuild it?


do you think Palin should keep turning the key ?


what if you had your family in that busted car and an angry mob was bearing down on you?


stay or go?

she's been attacked worse than any politician in memory (along with her family)

that is what america haS BECOME?


why would any person of character want that for their family?


in this day and age...if you are not leftist and run for office...the politics of personal destruction will reign down on you and your whole family from the press ...(who only want certified moonbats in office)(the left will not tolerate dissent of any kind)


do you think Thomas Jefferson would approve?

Its no mystery why Sarah Palin stepped down now to stop the waste of time and money for the Alaskan people and to quench the infliction of pain on her family. If the love of the governor for her state and the mother for her children causes her to step down and become a quitter, then may her kind of quitting increase.

Sandy Rios





http://www.network54.com/Forum/580059/thread/1247092056/last-1247092056/Palin-+Why+She+Left+is+No+Mystery

Jim's article is making Alaska sound like New Jersey.  We went through  a similar crisis when our gov reigned (for really strange reasons) because we don't have a lieutenant gov.

 

I hope all these people supporting Palin actually read the article Jim posted.

Quitting for the good of Alaska?  Sarah puts herself first always.

Was that McGreevy, sandi?  That whole thing was a bit strange.  Politicians suck (no pun intended). 

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"We are all equal, but we definitely are not the same"
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Quitting for the good of Alaska?  Sarah puts herself first always.

  LOL!  Perfect...  If she stays, she's a sorry govenor, preening herself for higher office.  If she leaves, she's "putting herself first.".  Moonbats... *chortle*

gus.

 

Yes , Roby