"Cover Girl Update" By Don Mitchell

Don Mitchell is a Native American Rights Attorney in Alaska. He has testified Congress on the matter and has written two books. This “report” comes via email. There are some interesting/inflammatory speculations here from the northwestern front, but there is also a tremendous revelation: there are not one, but TWO “Bridges To Nowhere”

“Cover Girl Update”
By Don Mitchell

As I indicated last week, my work here in the subarctic keeping all of you
up to date vis-a-vis Sarah Palin’s arrival as a card-carrying member of
the mass media celebrity culture is over because, since the middle of last
week, every news organization of national reputation, from The National
Inquirer to the New York Times, now has reporters on the ground here.

When over the past day or two I’ve asked several of them how long they
expect to stay, to the man and woman they have replied that they have no
idea. So many of them may be in it until November.

As the days get darker and the weather more rotten, those who are soon
will find out how much fun their new “Who in the Name of God (pun
intended) Is Sarah Palin” beat isn’t. But they’re several weeks away from
having that thought fully dawn on them.

So at the moment they’re scrambling around elbowing each other on
deadline. Us locals have been having terrific fun helping them out as we
chew down on 15 to 20 seconds of our allotted 15 minutes of fame. So far,
sitting here pretty much (although not quite completely) minding my own
business, I have been consulted by (in no particular order of priority)
the Washington Post, US News & World Report, ABC News, the Seattle Times,
National Public Radio, the Anchorage Daily News, as well as by others who
I’ve already forgotten.

And I’m down the food chain. My friends Mike Carey and Mike Doogan (here
in Anchorage) and Greg Erickson (in Juneau) are falling into new careers
as professional pundits. If things keep going as they have been, McCain
(by selecting Sarah) may end up doing for them what the Juice (by carving
up Nicole and Ron) did for Greta van Susteren.

In any case, the press has 60 days and counting to vet Sarah in three
respects:

1. If McCain falls face first onto the Oval Office carpet and Sarah
inherits the presidency, what are the implications for the nation if the
executive branch of the federal government is taken over by a
Bible-thumping, snake-handing, tongue-speaking evangelical who opposes
abortion even in cases of rape or incest and thinks public high school
science classes should be teaching creationism? One new rumor relevant to
this query is that, when Sarah was mayor, the City of Wasilla started
making rape victims who called the Wasilla Police Department pay for their
own rape kits. My ex-pal Tony Knowles, who was governor at the time,
purportedly heard about that, was appropriately outraged, and made Sarah order her police to stop doing so. I have no idea whether that is true.

2. Is Sarah lying about her biography? I have expressed the view in prior
reports that, since time is of the essence, the most expeditious way to
figure that out is to forget the Washington Post and New York Times and
send to Wasilla reporters carrying briefcases stuffed with thousand dollar
bills. I am pleased to report that the National Inquirer has done so and I
much look forward to reading the results of its reporters’ research.

The word swirling here is that the Inquirer soon is breaking the story
that several years ago Sarah put the sanctity of her martial vows on the
shelf in order to spend some quality time recreationally boffing a guy who
was a business partner of husband Todd in a joint venture to open a car
wash in Wasilla (a perfect Mat-Su small business if ever there was one).
Todd supposedly put a stop to it. But the best part of this rumor is that,
when McCain selected Sarah, the ex-business partner sprinted to the Palmer
courthouse to try to convince the Superior Court to seal the records of
his divorce proceedings. So stay tuned on that.

Also, in a prior report I passed along that a friend of a friend (who I
assume, albeit without knowing, had access out in the Mat-Su to sealed
juvenile court records) had passed along to my friend that there is no
court record that Track Palin had been given the choice of being
prosecuted for participating in vandalizing the Wasilla school bus barn or
joining the army. I have since been told by another friend who has a
friend who has equally stellar Mat-Su credentials that that Track Palin
story in fact is true and that the reason there is no court record is that
Sarah/Todd cut the deal at the arresting officer level. There also is a
related buzz making the rounds that Track didn’t bother to graduate from
high school before setting about on his new career as terrorist Ghost
Buster.

As stated, I have every confidence that the National Inquirer soon will be
getting to the bottom of these and related matters.

3. How has Sarah governed the State for the past two years? That's the
only evidence America has that gives an indication of how she might govern
the nation should she inherit the presidency.

In that regard, you may be interested in my view of the recent Palin-Obama dust-up over the “Bridges to Nowhere.”

In her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention Sarah
bragged that when Congress tried to give her the “Bridge [in the singular]
to Nowhere” she told Congress “No thanks.”

Last night the Lehrer News Hour broadcast a sound bite in which Obama
criticized Palin for that by saying that she had supported the “Bridge
[again in the singular] to Nowhere” earmark before she opposed it.

What Obama does not seem to understand is that there were two earmarks for
two "Bridges [in the plural] to Nowhere". The first bridge would have
crossed the channel between Ketchikan and Gravina Island on which the
Ketchikan Airport is located. The second bridge still may cross the Knik
Arm of Cook Inlet between Anchorage and an expanse of almost completely
unadulterated wilderness in the Mat-Su Borough (Sarah's home geography).
(A year or so ago the Anchorage Daily News reported that a hunk of land
close to the Mat-Su Borough side of the bridge crossing had been purchased
by Art Nelson (Alaska Congressman Don Young's son-in-law), Trevor McCabe
(Alaska Senator Ted Stevens's former chief-of-staff), and Mike Hyde (an
executive at the American Seafoods Company in Seattle who Ted - and Trevor
- made a multi-millionaire by in 1998 tacking the American Fisheries Act
on as a rider to that year's Omnibus Appropriations Act - a play in which
I participated on the margin representing an Eskimo fishermen's
organization.)

I mention all that because for Obama to say only that "Sarah was for it
before she was against it" misses two important parts of the story.

After the "Bridges to Nowhere" became a big deal, Congress circled back
around and eliminated the designations for the earmarks, i.e., the legal
requirement that the State of Alaska had to spend the money on the
Ketchikan and Cook Inlet bridges. But Congress did not take the money back.

As a consequence, when (purportedly because the cost overruns had gotten
out of hand) Sarah pulled the plug on the Ketchikan bridge, she did not
return the money that Congress had appropriated to build it. She still has it.

Of equal importance, the last time I checked, Sarah still supports the
Anchorage "Bridge to Nowhere", which, should it ever be built (which, for
reasons not worth detailing here, I doubt), will be considerably more
expensive than the Ketchikan bridge. Given all that, the correct Obama
message should be:


There are, not one, but two Bridges to Nowhere that
Ted Stevens/Don Young bamboozled Congress into
having the American taxpayer fund.

With respect to the first (Ketchikan) bridge, Sarah
was for it. Then, when she decided that it would be
politically useful to be against it, she kept the
money that the earmark had appropriated.

With respect to the second (Anchorage) bridge, Sarah
still supports it. And she still has that money as
well.

All that is commonplace knowledge here. Which is why the Obama research
operation appears to be dropping the ball.

Maybe more later.