The Quayled Lady: Why You Should Forget Sarah Palin

Good Morning. It's nice to know I'm still in your thoughts. I slept sondly last night, but woke to another of your screeds. It's interesting that you are now a self-apponted spiritual diviner. In my understanding, that is God's role in all of this.

I am often amazed at those who suggest that another FReeper isn't Christian enough to satisfy their own requirements. I am even more amazed that they consider it unfair, when someone calls them on their hypocrisy, and they start flinging the "you're not a Christian" because "insert any personal pet peeve here". The definition of Christian is "sinner saved by faith in Jesus Christ" in most of my Bibles (I have 14 translations). God had His whole Book ghost written on the subject. But, alas, I'm sorry to hear that I don't measure up on your list (not!). My name is written where it counts.

You posted a note saying that you agreed with the author of this tripe, and that Sarah Palin is in need of something more, to satisfy you (or whom?) I disagreed, and laughed at your suggestion. You began your "unfair" tirade because you allege I misquoted you. I rejected that premise and poked fun at you, while posting pictures and links to SarahPac. You then try to label me as a stalker or whatever, or being some other kind of pervert with a dysfunction...

Hmmmmm.... That's mighty Christian, isn't it?

I don't really think Sarah needs many more supporterslike you... but thanks for another day lingering in your mind!

Hard for my to imagine how a Christian in Spirit can lie with such ease.

"Forgive me brother for I have (allegedly) sinned...".

If you find me offensive, sorry. I did not lie, and you can't point to anything I misquoted or misspoke. You agreed with the author, and I will continue to make fun of you. You are in the MINORITY and claiming to speak for the "great unwashed". FRiend, that is the ultimate, vanity! I know that only those God intends to see them, will see and hear my posts. I am not in control of those things.

But, if you wish, I will give you a quick lesson on Christianity. Vanity is the origianl sin, but blasphemy is when one really gets it wrong. Testing a spirit is one thing, but denying His Spirit is alive in another brother or sister, is the wrong. That is God's role. Your pitiful diatribes approach that point. I will add a couple of short quotes from the Author:

Matthew 12: 30"He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. 31 And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32 Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

33 "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. 34 You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. 36 But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. 37 For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned." ...

Luke 12: 49 "I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed! 51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. 52 From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. 53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."

54 He said to the crowd: "When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, 'It's going to rain,' and it does. 55 And when the south wind blows, you say, 'It's going to be hot,' and it is. 56 Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don't know how to interpret this present time?

57 "Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right? 58 As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled to him on the way, or he may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. 59 tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny."

“There’s been much debate about when she was for it and when she was against it but the bottom line is that there was one person responsible for the decision to kill this project and it was Gov. Palin. She probably lost the votes of most of the 8,000 or so townfolk when she did it, but she DID kill it. End of story.”

Baloney. Palin was for the bridge to no where going so far as denigrating opponents of it. Once it became a national “cause celebre” of pork barrel spending and realized it was loser politically, and that was after congress pulled the final funding, she was against it.

Palin made a political decision because she is a politician. She is woman, she is not a king or queen, she is just the same as any politician you know.

BRIDGE TO NOWHERE

But it is the federally funded Bridge to Nowhere in Ketchikan that seems destined to make or break Palin’s national reputation as a cost-cutting conservative.

The bridge was intended to provide access to Ketchikan’s airport on lightly populated Gravina Island, opening up new territory for expansion at the same time. Alaska’s congressional delegation endured withering criticism for earmarking $223 million for Ketchikan and a similar amount for a crossing of Knik Arm at Anchorage.

Congress eventually removed the earmark language but the money still went to Alaska, leaving it up to the administration of then-Gov. Frank Murkowski to decide whether to go ahead with the bridges or spend the money on something else.

In September, 2006, Palin showed up in Ketchikan on her gubernatorial campaign and said the bridge was essential for the town’s prosperity.

She said she could feel the town’s pain at being derided as a “nowhere” by prominent politicians, noting that her home town, Wasilla, had recently been insulted by the state Senate president, Ben Stevens.

“OK, you’ve got Valley trash standing here in the middle of nowhere,” Palin said, according to an account in the Ketchikan Daily News. “I think we’re going to make a good team as we progress that bridge project.”

One year later, Ketchikan’s Republican leaders said they were blindsided by Palin’s decision to pull the plug.

Palin spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said Saturday that as projected costs for the Ketchikan bridge rose to nearly $400 million, administration officials were telling Ketchikan that the project looked less likely. Local leaders shouldn’t have been surprised when Palin announced she was turning to less-costly alternatives, Leighow said. Indeed, Leighow produced a report quoting Palin, late in the governor’s race, indicating she would also consider alternatives to a bridge.

CHANGE OF VIEW

Andrew Halcro, who ran against Palin in 2006, told The Associated Press on Saturday that Palin changed her views after she was elected to make a national splash.

Mayor Weinstein said many residents remain irked by Palin’s failure to come to Ketchikan since that time to defend her decision — despite promises that she would.

Weinstein may be especially sore — he helped run the local campaign of Palin’s 2006 Democratic rival, Tony Knowles. But comments this week from area Republicans show bitterness there too.

Bert Stedman, a Sitka Republican who represents Ketchikan in the state Senate, told the Ketchikan Daily News he was proud to see Palin picked for the vice-president’s role, but disheartened by her reference to the bridge.

“In the role of governor, she should be pursuing a transportation policy that benefits the state of Alaska, (rather than) pandering to the southern 48,” he said.

Businessman Mike Elerding, who helped run Palin’s local campaign for governor, told the paper he would have a hard time voting for the McCain ticket because of Palin’s subsequent neglect of Ketchikan and her flip-flop on the “Ralph Bartholomew Veterans Memorial Bridge.”

TIMING OF PRESS RELEASE

Palin’s 2007 press release announcing her change of course came just a month after McCain himself slammed the Ketchikan bridge for taking money that could have been used to shore up dangerous bridges like one that collapsed in Minnesota.

Leighow said she had no record of what time she sent out the press release, but does not recall being told to send it out early for East Coast media.

Once Palin spiked the bridge project, the money wasn’t available to Minnesota or other states, however. Congress, chastened by criticism of the Alaska funding, had removed the earmark but allowed the state to keep the money and direct it to other transportation projects.

Enhanced ferry access to Gravina Island is one option under consideration, the state said.

Meanwhile, work is under way on a three-mile road on Gravina Island, originally meant to connect the airport and the new bridge. State officials said last year they were going ahead with the $25 million road because the money would otherwise have to be returned to the federal government.

Leighow said the road project was already under way last year when Palin stopped the bridge, and she noted that it would provide benefits of opening up new territory for development — one of the original arguments made for the bridge spending.

http://www.adn.com/sarahpalin/story/511471.html

“Contrary to your ‘sources’, these numbers come from the AK governor’s website. You’re on your own. I ain’t doing your research for you.’

I’ve been all over the Alaska guv website, sometimes it’s hard to make heads or tails of it. But one thing I do know, you’ve included every kind of non-discretionaty spending in your numbers including things like debt repayment, funding retirement accounts, capital expenditures that have already been approved and funded through bond measures, etc.

How about we talk about discretionary spending alone, you know, the stuff Palin had control over. Year to year that kind of spending increased, not that you wouldn’t expect it not to, but it is in direct contradiction to your claims that she was some kind of cost cutting maverick.

In fact in the last couple of years due to a decrease in revenue from dropping oil proces she had to draw significantly (billions of dollars) from the states savings account just to balance her budgets.

BTW - I’m not saying she wasn’t fiscally aware or concerned, I’m just saying all these claims aout her being a spending tightfist are not true. Her budgets increased significantly every year just like governors before her.

LOL Bob, you're becoming quite...unhinged over this Palin-hating. You need to get your head out of the libtard rags that quote all the Palin-haters and get a balanced view. And BTW, I'm well aware that Palin supported the Bridge to Nowhere project while running for governor.

As for the ADN article...a bunch of emotions and opinions masquerading as journalism in a Palin-hating rag. Big deal, and standard fare for the ADN. Two quick comments:

Andrew Halcro -- Bob, if this is the kind of Alaskan whose opinion you value, you seriously need help. Halcro is the poster-boy for PDS. He ran for governor in 2006 and got his a$$ kicked by a girl, getting a whopping 9% of the vote as Palin sailed to the Governor's Mansion. He's a lunatic who wrote on his blog that Palin must be a scientologist just because she associated with Greta Van Susteren and John Coale. LOLOL. He's a joke Bob. Conservatives laugh at him up there. Two local talk show hosts in Anchorage accused him to his face on the air of "getting paid to hate Palin". Who's your next source for the real facts on Palin? Jeanne Devon? Andrew Sullivan? Shannyn Moore? GMAB.

The one other thing in the article that caught my attention was the lame attempt by the ADN to nefariously link her Sept. 2007 press release announcing the final death of the project to something McCain said shortly before. Please. Palin had known for months the project was toast. She deleted the state funding for the project in her FY 2008 budget. This was months before the press release and months before McCain opened his mouth on the project.

Matthew Continetti of The Weekly Standard devotes several pages to the Bridge To Nowhere controversy in his book on Palin and the press treatment of her. He went to Alaska and interviewed people involved in the decision like Murkowski's Deputy Commissioner of Transportation, John MacKinnon, who told Continetti that he knew this project was a loser before Palin even took office. Murkowski and the congressional delegation kept pushing up to the federal trough for the money, though. The project was a national joke long before Palin got involved, and according to MacKinnon, it was a straightforward transformation for Palin, as Governor, to get to the point where she realized this was a bad deal as the project costs soared toward $400 million. Here's a short excerpt from Continetti's book, pg. 49:

When she ran for governor in 2006, Palin expressed support for the bridge. But she changed her position once in office. The budget she sent the legislature in 2007 cut the state money appropriated for construction. Gradually it became clear to Palin that the entire project was doomed. In September 2007, she directed the Alaska Department of Transportation (ADOT) to find a less expensive alternative to the Gravina Island Bridge. "She looked at it and determined the project was one we couldn't afford," MacKinnon said. The Bridge to Nowhere was no more.

That's a first-hand account, not outlandish opinions from people who have an axe to grind. MacKinnon has no state job to protect. He was no longer employed by the state when Continetti interviewed him and Palin was no longer the governor.

Bob, you gotta give the Palin smears a rest, man. You sound just like the deranged libtards, GOP Beltway hacks, and media that went nuts over her.

Sarah Palin is a work-in-progress. She's not perfect, she's made mistakes and she's no Messiah. She's a courageous, God-fearing, America-loving patriot, an instinctive fiscal conservative, a corruption buster and a natural-born leader IMO. You keep insulting Palin supporters and you'll deserve every response you get from them on this forum and I wouldn't blame them.

How about we talk about discretionary spending alone, you know, the stuff Palin had control over.

How about we talk about the budget she submits, gets massaged, amended and acted on by the legislature, and comes back to her for signature subject to line item veto. How about that? She's responsible for developing it, negotiating it and she has the line item veto. This includes (1) operating expenses (2) capital expenses and (3)debt service (not much) and formulaic contributions to the Permanent Fund. She has control over all of it...it's a very strong-governor system in Alaska.

I'm not playing games with you Bob. Palin reduced the budget in REAL terms in FY 2008 from Murkowski's last budget by $1.2 billion.

For FY 2009, the budget numbers might LOOK like a big increase due to ballooning oil revenues. You're welcome to make that case but keep in mind that I'm aware of the $2 billion she included for additional contributions to the Contingency (rainy day) fund and for FORWARD-FUNDING school expenses into FY 2010.

The FY 2010 budget in the face of the oil price collapse was a REAL reduction any way you look at it.

You say she is a big spender. PROVE IT.

There isn't an elected executive anywhere in state or national government that can claim the results she achieved in her 3 budgets. She reigned in the spending from the big-government Republicans in the Murkowski Administration and kept her commitment to reduce Alaska's dependence on earmark spending.

That is complete BS. She dumped $3.6 billion into the rainy-day fund in FY 2008. Her FY 2009 budget included an additional $1 billion more. It is true they planned to draw from the Contingency Fund in FY 2010 but the amount was significantly below what she had previously dumped in. I'll find the amount but it may be a moot point, as the oil prices have gone back up some $20 over the baseline budget number for oil prices. They may have not even needed to draw on the fund. I haven't paid attention to it since Parnell took over except to note with alarm a news article that Parnell's first budget may signal a return to the old ways.

Her budgets increased significantly every year just like governors before her.

The hell they did.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.