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It says "gubernatorial appointees". This isn't a trivial point.
Here's your first lesson in Gricean maxims: You say everything you know that's relevant. If something would be relevant and it's not said, you're entitled to pragmatically infer (not "logically infer") that it's not known to be true. You're also entitled to pragmatically infer that since what's said must be relevant, that it means more than is said. These two "implicatures" are mutually contradictory, and neither is rooted in any kind of logical inferencing.
In this case, the reporter said "gubernatorial appointees", and, I think, would have gladly said "Palin's appointees". I get the implicature that she did not appoint them. Note the plural: the implicature is squishy, and allows for her having appointed 1-2 of them. But not all.
I can't get the second implicature, that lets me say "gubernatorial" = "Palin's", because I don't see the discourse relations plausibly playing out that way. The inferencing seems backwards unless I make assumptions about what the reporter's trying to say, assumptions that I don't see as warranted. However, I'm used to non-cooperative discourses, and know to be on the lookout for them. Most people aren't: They confuse having a series of true facts laid out in a way that lets them draw incorrect inferences with being told a lie. They're not lied to: They're merely allowed to make mistakes, sometimes they're even set up for mistakes. And since they have no information about how they actually construe meaning in discourse, they can't figure out (1) that they should blame themselves, and (2) how to avoid making the mistake in the future.
From other sources, I know that Murkowski originally appointed all three of the current board members, and that one of them was re-appointed by Palin. In other words, two are still there by virtue of an appointment by the guy Palin squashed after saying he'd squash her. They may suck up, but that's true of any administrative board.
In other words, you fell for it--just as * never said Saddam was involved in 9/11 (but by putting the two things side-by-side he allowed, but in no way forced, people to draw the incorrect pragmatic inference), so the reporter wrote things that were true that allowed--but in no way forced--you to draw the incorrect pragmatic inference. Wiki does a decent job with Gricean maxims. They're old fashioned and less elegant than they could be, but they're vastly more explicit and, I think, easier to understand than Stalnaker's relevance model and Craige Robert's "game" model. They should be taught in 9th grade (and, if we homeschool our kid, *will* be taught) to keep people from being their own deceivers.
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