Along with lipstick-wearing pitbulls, the dogs of war need gouge themselves at the trough of Big Oil.
Black Gold, as modern history has so bloodily demonstrated, is both the reason and the means for Bushco and the Military Industrial Complex to run roughshod over the world and the American people.
That reality also is why the Greedy Oil Perverts have foisted upon us one Sarah Palin. To do so first required the support of a particular set of circumstances and individuals from the Last Frontier State,
The Corrupt Bastards Club. Its members come from Alaska government and Big Oil. I wish that I’d given this particular BFEE division that moniker, but the honors go to CBC members who gave it to themselves as a sort of “barroom joke.”
Some joke. Above, far left, is one of the club’s biggest members, if not biggest bastard, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), at work, shaking hands in the Oval Office with George W Bush. They’re in a happy mood, just having signed legislation protecting overfishing the sea and benefitting that industry in Alaska – a bill that conceivably helped Stevens’ son,
Alaska Sen. Ben Stevens (R-Anchorage), continue to get a leg up in the business.But didn’t Sarah Palin say she helped clean-up all this corruption? Yeah, but saying so doesn’t make it so. The fact is Palin and Stevens are very close political allies. Proof for the skeptical:
Palin served Ted Stevens’ 527 Group, “Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.” (sic).Palin Was a Director of Embattled Sen. Stevens's 527 GroupBy Matthew Mosk
Washington Post
ST. PAUL -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin began building clout in her state's political circles in part by serving as a director of an independent political group organized by the now embattled Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.
Palin's name is listed on 2003 incorporation papers of the "Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.," a 527 group that could raise unlimited funds from corporate donors. The group was designed to serve as a political boot camp for Republican women in the state. She served as one of three directors until June 2005, when her name was replaced on state filings.
Palin's relationship with Alaska's senior senator may be one of the more complicated aspects of her new position as Sen. John McCain's running mate; Stevens was indicted in July 2008 on seven counts of corruption.
Palin, an anti-corruption crusader in Alaska, had called on Stevens to be open about the issues behind the investigation. But she also held a joint news conference with him in July, before he was indicted, to make clear she had not abandoned him politically.
Stevens had been helpful to Palin during her run for governor, swooping in with a last moment endorsement. And the two filmed a campaign commercial together to highlight Stevens's endorsement of Palin during the 2006 race.
Shortly after Palin was announced as McCain's vice presidential pick, the ad was removed from her gubernatorial campaign web site. It remains available on YouTube.
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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/01/palin_was_a_director_of_embatt.html Neocon ApprovedGee. I bet that “swooping in with a last moment endorsement” must’ve really been something.
But that small fry’s the little story. The big-game story involves the really big money in Alaska. And like a lot of the rest of the world, that means Big Oil.
And big petroleum reserves means demand for oil-services companies. No, I don’t mean the now-kaput VECO. I mean Halliburton.
The Veep’s Pipeline PushMichael Isikoff and Tony Hopfinger
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 3:08 PM ET Aug 23, 2008
A two-year-old letter by Vice President Dick Cheney that pushed a controversial Alaska natural-gas pipeline bill is getting renewed scrutiny because of recently disclosed evidence in the Justice Department's corruption case against Sen. Ted Stevens. In a conversation secretly tape-recorded by the FBI on June 25, 2006, Stevens discussed ways to get a pipeline bill through the Alaska Legislature with Bill Allen, an oil-services executive accused of providing the senator with about $250,000 in undisclosed financial benefits. According to a Justice motion, Stevens told Allen, "I'm gonna try to see if I can get some bigwigs from back here and say, 'Look … you gotta get this done'." Two days later, Cheney wrote a letter to the Alaska Legislature urging members to "promptly enact" a bill to build the pipeline. The letter was considered unusual because the White House rarely contacts state lawmakers about pending legislative matters. It also angered state Democrats, who accused Cheney of pushing oil-company interests. The former executive director of Cheney's energy task force had gone to work as a lobbyist for British Petroleum, one of three firms slated to build the pipeline.
Stevens confirmed to NEWSWEEK last week that he asked Cheney to write the letter. "We wanted the federal government to tell the state to act quickly on it," he said. (A spokesman for Alaska's other senator, Lisa Murkowski, said her office also had contacts with Cheney's office.) A Cheney spokeswoman said his office does not comment on pending legal matters.
In the motion, prosecutors said they want to show that Stevens, who has pleaded not guilty, used his political clout to benefit Allen's business interests while the oil exec was paying for renovations on the senator's home. As an example, the motion points out that Stevens discussed contacting the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission about the pipeline; soon after, FERC issued a report on the project "similar to the message delivered by Stevens." But the Justice motion made no mention of Cheney's letter. A department spokesman did not respond to requests for comment about why prosecutors did not also include the letter or whether they expect Cheney to come up at Stevens's trial, now slated to begin next month.
SOURCE:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/154916 It seems to me, Palin doesn’t have either the critical faculties or the financial resources for her own Palin Family Evil Empire. Like W the Crazy Warmonkey, Karibu Barbie seems content to work as a soldier for the BFEE. Maybe that’s why Stevens and Cheney endorsed her candidacy for Veep.
Why are good DUers not surprised? Read our lips: “We told you so.”
Crude SarahSarah Palin: A Champion For Big OilThinkProgress.org
Our guest bloggers are Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and James Kvaal, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.With the choice of Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) as his running mate, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is not backing down from oil drilling. Palin is a champion for drilling, the Bush-Cheney approach to energy policy that brought us $4.00-per-gallon gasoline and the rising threat of global warming.
Like McCain, Palin believes that oil drilling is the only solution to our energy problems. “I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem,” she says. She supports more drilling in protected areas of the Outer Continental Shelf and the Alaska Natural Wildlife Refuge, once attacking McCain for his “close-mindedness on ANWR.”
But the Department of Energy believes that offshore drilling “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.” Moreover, about three-quarters of all the oil in public lands in the continental U.S. are already open to drilling – and yet only one quarter of this oil is under production. Opening the Arctic Refuge would cut gasoline prices by two cents in 17 years. For that, Palin would destroy the home of America’s native polar bears. Not even T. Boone Pickens still thinks we can drill our way out of this crisis.
Palin rejects clean renewable energy that is an alternative to oil. Earlier this month, she claimed that “alternative-energy solutions are far from imminent and would require more than 10 years to develop.”
Alaska has become the “poster state” for the threat of global warming as the climate gets hotter and dryer and sea levels rise. More than 100 towns are vulnerable due to eroding sea lines. Polar bears are threatened by the melting ice floas, and this month bears were spotted swimming as much as 50 miles offshore.
Nonetheless, like many other oil champions, Palin is skeptical of global warming. During her gubernatorial campaign, she said she was unconvinced about how much human emissions contribute to current global warming trends. Palin also opposes listing our polar bears as a threatened species because it could require action on climate change.
As Carl Pope of the Sierra Club says, “No one is closer to the oil industry than Governor Palin.” Sarah Palin has taken positions that would ensure a continuation of the Bush-Cheney energy policies. She supports drilling everywhere and ignores the need for binding reductions in global warming pollution even though her state is melting. The continuation of these policies will continue higher energy costs, more severe hurricanes and droughts, and despoiled natural treasures.
SOURCE w Loads o’ Links:
http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/08/29/palin-oil-champ/ Alaska - The Corporate Collective StateSo, Alaskans get a check for $2,400 or $3,000 or whatever the heck it is. The oil companies doin’ bidniss in their state pay a royalty on the black gold. With all that spreading of the state’s wealth socialism, it’s a demi-miracle right-wing nutjobs like Grover Norquist don’t call the place the People’s Republic of Alaska.
The thing is, when the price of oil skyrockets, oil companies skyrocket, but taxpayers’ stake stays about the same. While the price of oil goes from $20 to $140 a barrel, taxes only go up pennies on the gallon, or a few bucks a barrel.
Palin did her bit to get a big jump of oil revenue into the public purse, but it wasn’t anywhere near as much as what Big Oil’s getting on the skyrocketing price per barrel. So, it’s the transnational oil companies what get the lion’s share – and their owners, of course.
Here’s one more major point we need to make:
Palin is unfit for Second Banana.(My personal reason for not liking her politically is because Pat Robertson is for her.) From Dan Payne in the Boston Globe comes an excellent summation of the case against Ms. Palin:
Unfit to stand so close to presidencyDan Payne
The Boston Globe
September 11, 2008
TODAY, on the anniversary of the horror of Sept. 11, 2001, we should recall what happens when an unqualified candidate captures the presidency. An incurious western governor, George W. Bush, arrived in Washington unprepared for the job. And it showed every day of his presidency.
John McCain's health could kill us. It's conceivable that a 72-year-old hot head who has had four bouts of cancer might not make it through his first term as president, leaving the country in the hands of a person whom McCain (a former POW) met one time. One time! I've spent more time shopping for a car than he spent choosing a potential president. Yet Sarah Palin could be one heart attack, one stroke, one metastasized melanoma away from becoming president of the United States.
Sarah Palin is Clarence Thomas, completely unqualified but cynically chosen for being a member of a demographic group that usually votes Democratic. No wonder so many women are insulted by the choice.
Will Hillary voters buy Palin's extreme antiabortion stance that allows no exceptions, not even for incest or rape; her belief in "market- and business-driven healthcare"; her support for teaching creationism in public schools; her rejection of global warming as man-made?
Stopping the Russians. In a goofy attempt to give Palin foreign policy credentials, McCain (an ex-POW) said Alaska is near Russia. Come to think of it, there haven't been any Russian invasions since she's been governor.
The day she was picked, she called herself "commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard." This is so preposterous even Mitt Romney didn't try it. The head of the Alaska Guard told the Associated Press that he and Palin play no role in national defense.
God is in the pipeline! Palin told ministry students at her former church that the United States invaded Iraq as a "task that is from God." While she was there, she urged them to pray for a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in the state, calling it "God's will."
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http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/09/11/unfit_to_stand_so_close_to_presidency/ Clear as CruelWhat this means for the future is clear as crude.
Here’s hoping Ol’ Maverick has a good doctor he can trust.
We the People can do something big about them. It only requires that we tell and spread the truth:
Palin and her friends in politics are members of the biggest Corrupt Bastards Club the planet has ever seen. It’s called the BFEE.And that makes her a corrupt bastard, too. Lipstick or no.